was especially sanctioned by the fourth council of Lateran. This practice has, however, become so obnoxious in modern times, that the right has been indignantly disowned by most of the advocates of the Roman Catholic church; and this disavowal forms a part of the liberties of the Gallican church. And yet a public act has been performed in our own times by the Roman pontiff, in the face of all Europe, which seems to have had no other foundation than the assumption of an absolute power in the church to set aside the most solemn engagements. The case alluded to is the divorce of the empress Josephine, the lawful wife of Napoleon, contrary to the principles of the Christian religion, and the express authority of Jesus Christ himself.

An English statesman3 has, in a printed work, called upon the English and Irish Catholics to give an explicit statement of their sentiments upon certain points which are, as he supposes, misapprehended by the protestants; intimating, at the same time, the hopelessness of attempting to draw such a declaration from the authorities of the church. But this would in no respect affect the grand point at issue between the catholics and protestants. We are sufficiently informed respecting the opinions of the English and Irish catholics and those of many other private bodies in the church of Rome. Our doubts only regard

2 Mr. Wilmot Horton, "Letter to the Duke of Norfolk," pp. 45, 46.

their authority to make such declarations, as members of a church which prohibits the right of private judgment where the church has determined. And all we apprehend is, that should it ever be within the power of the Roman church, and consistent with her policy, to proceed against the English and Irish heretics, the declarations of the respectable bodies we have mentioned, and even the authority of the most eminent individuals, would not shield us from the fate of the Albigenses in the thirteenth century.

In practice, we are doubtless secure from such a revolution; but to what are we indebted for this security?—to any change in the principles of the church of Rome, since the times of the crusades against heretics; or to our own power, and the progress of public opinion? If to the former, it belongs to the catholics to show us this magna charta of our rights and immunities. If to the latter, we are then obliged to tell them, that we hold our liberties only by the tenure of our power to maintain them; and that every concession, made to that church, is a voluntary manifestation of our sense of security, arising from our own efforts, against any future attempts at persecution.

It is also an interesting subject of inquiry, on what grounds modern catholics can justify or palliate the persecutions against the Albigenses; and they are thus stated by a writer of that per

3

suasion in a work published in 1793: "The Albigenses avowed the leading principles of the Manicheans, and differed from them only by adopting the principal errors of other heretics who had been condemned in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. These were distinguished by the names of Cathari, Puritani, Paulicians, Patarini, Bulgari, New Manicheans, New Arians, Vaudois, and many other appellations. Pope Innocent III commissioned several ecclesiastics to preach against the Albigenses of Languedoc who were openly protected by Raymond VI, count of Toulouse. Alanus, a cistertian monk, wrote two books against them in the year 1212. Peter de Vaux Cernai has left a history of them. William de Pui Laurent gives an account of them in his chronicle. All these writers, who were not only contemporary but ocular witnesses of what they relate, and Roger de Hoveden, ascribe the following impious and seditious errors to the Albigenses in general: "That there are two Gods, and two first principles; one good, the other bad. That there were two Christs, the one good, the other bad. They united with the other heretics in subverting the hierarchy, by condemning the priesthood, and denying the necessity of ordination; they despised the Old Testament as the work of the devil. They ridiculed the resurrection of the flesh, and maintained that the soul of

3 Review &c. by a Roman Catholic clergyman, London, 1793.

each person was a devil or fallen angel in a state of punishment for his pride, who would return to heaven, after having done penance in seven different terrestrial bodies. They thought it an act of religion to burn the images of the cross and destroy altars and churches, and to defile them by converting them into receptacles for the unhappy votaries of Venus. They condemned all the sacraments, and considered infant baptism in particular as a vain superstitious ceremony. They blasphemed against the dignity and purity of the blessed virgin, by denying the divine maternity; and outraged Jesus Christ himself, sometimes denying his divinity, at other times his humanity, and even his sanctity; they held marriage to be unlawful without considering chastity as a virtue. They were divided into two classes, the perfect and the believers. The former boasted of their continency and abstemiousness; the others were shamefully irregular, and declared their firm assurance of salvation by the faith of the perfect, and their assurance that none of those who received the imposition of their perfect hands would be damned. Such were the execrable tenets of the Albigenses, which they propagated like Mahomet, by plunder, rapine, fire, and sword. The blasphemies, seditions, and tumults, of these sects were encouraged by the counts of Foix and Comminges, by the viscount of Bearne, and other feudatory lords; but principally by count Ray

mond of Toulouse who held his domains by investiture from the crown of France."

These are the characters with which the persecutors seek to brand the victims of their cruelty, and on account of which they would represent themselves as the champions of truth, of purity, and of social order. But there is one other character, with which the God of truth has branded every liar, and that is self-contradiction. It is impossible to escape it; no tale of falsehood can be so artfully framed, as not to contain within itself its own confutation. This is manifestly the case with the stories fabricated respecting the Albigenses. The catholics had persecuted and destroyed them; they had also destroyed all their documents, and rendered it utterly impossible for them to speak in their own defence. They had excommunicated and dethroned the rulers under whose government they had enjoyed protection, freedom, and happiness; but though they had done all this, they could not give a consistent justification of their proceedings. The Albigenses were, they say, the most detestable of heretics,―licentious and seditious; they propagated their execrable tenets by fire and sword, rapine and plunder; they burned the crosses, destroyed the altars and churches, and desecrated the latter by converting them into brothels. Yet their lawful sovereigns, the counts of Toulouse, of Foix, and Cominges, and the viscount of