Pope Benedict IX. was guilty of such flagitious crimes that he became an object of public abhorrence, and he finally sold the Popedom.  One of his infallible (?) successors in the Papal chair, Pope Victor III., pronounced this infallible (?) profligate a person “abandoned to all manner of vice.  A successor of SIMON THE SORCERER, and NOT OF SIMON THE APOSTLE.”  I do not question the truth of this assertion, but what becomes of their boasted uninterrupted apostolical succession?  Baronius, the Popish annalist, confesses that Pope Sergius III. was “the slave of every vice, and the most wicked of men.”  Among other horrid acts Platina relates that he rescinded the acts of Pope Formosus, compelled those whom he had ordained to be re-ordained, dragged his dead body from the sepulchre, beheaded him as though he were alive, and then threw him into the Tiber!  This Pope cohabited with an infamous prostitute named Marozia and by her had a son named John, who afterwards ascended the Papal throne, through the influence of his licentious mother, under the name of John XI.  So the unlawful amours of Sergius produced this infallible, necessary link in the holy chain of uninterrupted apostolical succession!  It must be remembered, also, that the Popes have for ages laid claim themselves to infallibility; and in the last General Council of that body, held at the Vatican in 1870, it was declared a dogma of the church.  Romanists will tell us that this decree refers only to his official acts, and not to his personal character; but official acts have been the main thing under consideration in the case of Sergius, Honorius, and Benedict.  But if such monsters of vice can produce good, holy, infallible acts, as Papists declare, then Jesus Christ is mistaken; for he declared positively that “a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit ... neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.”  Mat. 7:17, 18.  “God forbid:  yea, let God be true, but every man a liar.”  Rom. 3:4.  During these dark ages thousands of priests, who were by the laws of the church denied their Scriptural right of possessing a wife (1 Cor. 7:9, etc.), lived openly with concubines; and the Council of Toledo decreed that they should not be condemned therefor, provided they were content with one.

But the devil produced his master-piece of iniquity in the person of Roderic Borgia, who ascended the Papal throne in 1492 under the name of Alexander VI.  The utmost limits assigned to Papal depravity were realized in him, so that the very name Borgia has come to be used as a designation of any person unusually wicked.  Says Waddington:  “The ecclesiastical records of fifteen centuries ... contain no name so loathsome, no crimes so foul as his....  Not one among the many zealous annalists of the Roman church has breathed a whisper in his praise....  He publicly cohabited with a Roman matron named Vanozia, by whom he had five acknowledged children.  Neither in