id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentence	flesch	summary	cache	txt
_005195854	Middleton, Conyers, 1683-1750.	Tract on popery. Exact conformity of popery and paganism.	1836		.txt	text/plain	16711	754	73	In their very priesthood, they have contrived to keep up as near a re- semblance, as they could, to that of Pagan Rome : and to the sovereign Pontiff, instead of deriving his succession from Peter, who, if ever he was at Rome, did not reside there at least in any worldly pomp or splendor, may with more reason and much better plea, style himself the successor of the Pontifex Maximus, or chief priest of old Rome ; whose authority and dignity was the greatest in the republic ; and who was looked upon as the arbiter or judge of all things, civil as well as sacred, human as well as divine : whose power established almost with the foundation of the city, “ was an omen,” says Polydore Virgil, “ and sure presage of priestly majesty, by which Rome was once again to reign as universally, as it had done before by the force of its arms.” This is what every man of curiosity will, in the like circumstances, find true in himself ; and for my own part, as oft as 1 have been rambling about in the very rostra of old Rome, or in that temple of Concord, where Tully assembled the Senate in Ca- taline’s conspiracy ; I could not help fancying myself much more sensi- ble of the force of his eloquence whilst the impression of the place served to warm my imagination to a degree almost equal to that of his old au- dience.	cache/_005195854.txt	txt/_005195854.txt