Protestants also need a Pope

Protestants also need a Pope

Anyone who says: I believe in the Bible but I do not believe in the Pope, do[es] not know what he says. He lies to himself and lives inconsistently. The day he will not live, he will be atheist or Catholic.

In the meantime, he does not live, he vegetates. Thus, the Protestant can deny the personality of the Pope, but, in spite of himself, he is forced to admit the Pope's principle.

There are better. This necessity of the Pope, to remain a Christian, is so implacable that no one is as papist as the Protestant. The Catholic recognizes only one Pope, bishop of Rome. The Protestant is not satisfied with so little. He has as many popes as there are ministers, kings, or queens; as much as he himself, in the course of a day, of religious affirmations. He always has a pope with him; he is even his Pope. [...]

The Catholic Pope never varies. The essence of Protestant popes is to always vary.

They never agree with each other or with themselves. Do you want proof? Look at the myriad of sects in which they have broken down Christian dogma. It is to this point that all that remains of common beliefs among Protestants today could, says one of their ministers, be written on the thumbnail.

By its nature this principle of division tends to infinite fragmentation [much like the many 'versions' of sedevacantism]. Who prevents him from getting there? It's still the Pope. Why ? Because the Pope is an affirmation and as long as an affirmation exists, the negation can not be complete.

Keep this for certain: without the Pope's indirect action on the Protestant countries, that is, without the permanent influence of Catholic affirmation in the baptized world, the last vestiges of Christian truth have long been and with them, the last element of civilization, would have disappeared from heterodox nations.

Bishop Gaume - What is the use of the Pope (1861) - [emphasis in the original]