found, except in her own traditions. We have, therefore, on our part, a right to demand a renunciation of those claims, as public and authoritative as the exercise of them has ever been, or to guard ourselves against their repetition, by such prudential and cautionary measures, as the circumstances of the times may require.

The crusades against the Albigenses seem to present one of those occasions by which the rights, claimed by the Roman church towards heretics, may be most fully and accurately ascertained. They were her exclusive and deliberate act. The church of Rome had been then, according to its own principles, established for nearly twelve hundred years. It professed to have been endowed with miraculous powers, and to be guided by the teachings of the infallible spirit of God. All the temporal authorities had submitted to its domination and were ready to execute its orders. If therefore there is any period in which we should seek for its genuine and authentic principles, it must be under the unclouded dominion of Innocent III. Nor can the opponents of all reformation possibly desire any thing more, than to restore that golden age of the church. Should they say, that, civilization and philosophy having then made but small progress, we are to charge the cruelties which were committed against the heretics to the ignorance and barbarism of the times, we would reply, that all these cruelties were

prompted, encouraged, and sanctioned, by Rome itself, and that an infallible church cannot require the lights of philosophy to instruct her in her duties towards heretics. To an impartial inquirer it would seem rather strange, that under the spiritual illumination afforded by this church to the nations, heresies should have arisen which required such severe measures for their extirpation, and that with all the powers of heaven and earth on its side, the church could not trust itself in the field of reason and argument against them. But certain it is, that heresies did arise, and that the church of Rome felt itself called upon to shew to that age, and to all succeeding ones, the full extent of the power, with which it was invested by heaven, for their suppression and extirpation.

The dogma on which all these transactions were founded is that the church possesses the right to extirpate heresy, and to use all the means which she may judge necessary for that purpose-and to those who are not acquainted with the subtle distinctions of the Roman casuists, this dogma seems to possess all the claims to authority which the church ever makes necessary for an article of faith. It was on this dogma that Innocent III and his legates preached the crusade against the heretics, and promised to those who engaged in it, the full remission of all sins; it was on this dogma that they excommunicated the civil powers by whom they were, or supposed to be, protected,

1

and disposed of their dominions to those who assisted in this spiritual warfare. This dogma was repeatedly avowed by provincial councils, and finally ratified by an oecumenical or general council, the fourth of Lateran. It was received by the tacit-nay by the cordial and triumphant assent of the universal church, and had also the sanction of the civil authorities, who received from the church the spoils of the deposed and persecuted princes. We can therefore conceive of nothing which should be still necessary to constitute this dogma an article of faith, and hold ourselves justified in considering the church of Rome to claim, as of divine authority, the right to extirpate heresy, and for that purpose, if she judge it necessary, to exterminate heretics.

1 This council not only determined the spiritual power of the church over heretics, but defined the application of that power to temporal princes. Cap. iii, “Si dominus temporalis requisitus et monitus ab Ecclesia, terram suam purgare neglexerit ab hæretica fœditate, per Metropolitanos et cæteros provinciales Episcopos vinculo excommunicationis innodetur; et si satisfacere contempserit infra annum, significetur hoc Summ. Pontifici, et extunc ipse vassalos ab ejus fidelitate denunciet absolutos, et terram exponet Catholicis occupandam, qui eam, hæreticis exterminatis (id est, ex vi vocis expulsis), sine ullo contradictione possideant, salva jure Domini principalis, dummodo super hoc ipse nullum præstet obstaculum, eadem nihilominus lege servata, circa eos qui non habent Dominos principales."-See Delahogue, Tract. de Ecclesia Christi, p. 202. The author adds, " Nonnulli critici dubitant de authenticitate hujus canonis." And well they do; for without this doubt, the cause of the Romish church is lost irrevocably. The count of Toulouse and the Albigenses however felt its authenticity. The parenthesis (vi vocis expulsis) does not belong to the original article, but is a gloss of the learned author, by which he would insinnate that the heretics were only to be banished: a miserable attempt to pervert the plainest language and the most notorious facts.

Nor has this principle, which was evidently avowed and acted upon at the period of these Crusades, been ever renounced by any authentic or official act of that church; on the contrary, the church has, during the six hundred years which followed these events, invariably, as far as occasions have served, avowed the same principles, and perpetrated or stimulated the same deeds. As soon as the wars against the Albigenses were terminated, the inquisition was brought into full and constant action, and has always been encouraged and supported by the Romish church, to the utmost of its power, in every place where it could obtain an establishment. The civil authorities, finding by experience that some of the claims of the church were more prejudicial than useful to themselves, have denied to it the right` of deposing sovereigns, and of freeing subjects from their allegiance: but the church itself has never, generally and explicitly, renounced this claim, and, long after the Reformation in Germany, continued to exercise it. And, notwithstanding the professions made by modern catholics on this subject, history does not furnish an instance of any body of that profession interposing its protest against the persecution of heretics by the church of Rome. The French government under the administration of Cardinal Richelieu did indeed, for the sake of weakening the power of Austria, support the German free states,

and consequently the protestants, but it joined at the same time with the church in the persecution of the French protestants; and could it have obtained the ascendancy which it sought for in Germany, would doubtless have exercised the same persecutions there.

One of the rights the most constantly claimed and exercised by the Roman see, throughout its whole history, is that of dissolving oaths. The history of the Italian Republics in the middle ages, by this same M. de Sismondi, contains instances of this, as a recognized, undisputed, and every-day practice, in almost every pontificate. One instance may serve for an illustration, amongst a multitude of others. There were certain reforms in the pontifical government, which were required by the leading persons of the church, but which they could never obtain from the Popes themselves. The cardinals, therefore, when they were going to elect a new Pope, were accustomed to bind themselves, by the most solemn oaths, that whoever of them should be chosen Pope would grant those reforms. And, invariably, as soon as the pope was chosen, he released himself from his oath, on the ground of its being contrary to the interests of the church. The power of releasing from the obligation of oaths was also extended, during these crusades especially, to freeing the subjects of heretical princes from their oaths of allegiance; and it