then by the Pope over the whole world. A corrupt state of the clergy followed upon the institution of all this hierarchical grandeur, and kept pace with it in arrogance, voluptuousness, and contentions for preeminence of rank and glory. Bishops adopted the state and grandeur of princes, particularly the bishops who had under them the more numerous and wealthy congregations; they sat on thrones surrounded by their ministers, and were clad in dazzling garments. The presbyters imitated the bishops, and the deacons imitated the presbyters, and then came a host of minor officers, sub-deacons, acolythes, readers, door-keepers, exorcists, and others. The people were at length excluded from all voice in ecclesiastical affairs, and the bishops appropriated the ecclesiastical property to themselves, or distributed it as they pleased.

From the time of Constantine, the wealth, honors, and privileges of the clergy in this vast hierarchy, first more accurately modelled and by law incorporated by him, received an immense increase. The bishops maintained disgraceful contests respecting the boundaries of their sees, and the extent of their jurisdiction; they trampled on the rights of the people and the inferior clergy, and vied with the civil governors of provinces in luxury, arrogance, and voluptuousness. Thus was reared an enormous fabric of Church grandeur and dominion; and soon the very idea of the church as Christ instituted it, came to be forgotten. The church signified merely the church dignitaries; people were not considered as a part of it, except as so much material to be used and governed. Power was considered inherent in particular offices, and the

custom of election, with its privileges, was entirely taken away from the people.

THE ECCLESIASTICAL JUDICATORY.

The episcopal authority became absolute. It is a deeply interesting matter to trace it from its beginnings. I might refer you to many authors, as the learned Peter Jurieu, Geiseler, Mosheim and others, but on this point I shall more directly take the assistance of Campbell, as beyond all question the most vigorous and accurate ecclesiastical anatomist. Among the early Christian societies there had grown up very naturally, from an unwillingness to go to law before unbelievers, the custom of nominating their pastors as judges or arbitrators in their questions of civil right and wrong. At length this trust of arbitration came to be considered by the pastors as their right. Especially was it so asserted when the churches grew in wealth, and the bishops in a worldly sense did so magnify their offices. Then, when the Roman emperors became Christian, they were ready to confirm by law whatever prerogatives were supposed to belong to Christ's ministers. So the bishop's power of judging was, under Constantine, ratified by the law; the magistrate was bound to execute his decision; and in any cause before a secular power, if an appeal were made by either party to the court of the bishop, it was to be carried thither, and from that tribunal there could be no appeal. This was in effect "throwing the whole judiciary power of the state into the hands of the

clergy. All the ordinary judicatories were now reduced to act solely in subordination to the spiritual courts, which could overrule the proceedings of the secular, whilst their own was not liable to be overruled by any." The effect of such power was injurious in the highest degree to the interests of religion. The dignitaries of the Church, having such vast authority, were flattered, caressed, bribed, courted by inferiors and dependents. The prelates, being armed with the terror of the magistrate, religion ceased to be the power of love, and men's consciences were trampled on. The prelates had their appendages judicatorial, their chancellors, commissaries, officials, advocates, proctors, registrars, apparitors, etc.; and bailiffs, tipstaves, fines, imprisonments, distraining of goods, coercive power in every shape, as Campbell with vigorous satire has remarked, came to be the order of the day instead of that beautiful simplicity of Paul, Now, I Paul, myself, beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ. The jurisdiction of the bishops was greatly enlarged by successive emperors; the principal bishops were chosen by the prince for his councillors, a distinction which added immense authority to the Episcopal tribunal. At length they assumed the absolute and exclusive right to all criminal and civil jurisdiction over the clergy, and in various cases even over the laity, in ecclesiastical causes. In mixed causes they insisted that the bishop should be judge as well as the magistrate. They had a rule also that every cause should devolve on the ecclesiastical tribunal, if the magistrate either refused or neglected to do justice. And finally, they asserted that this power of judgment

After

in the bishop was a divine right, annexed by Christ to the essence of prelatical dominion, as one of its prerogatives. "Thus, in the course of ages, upon the spiritual power given by Christ to the Church of binding and loosing, that is, of excluding from, and receiving back into their communion, and upon the institution of Paul for terminating amicably their differences in matters of property by reference (to believers), without recurring to the tribunal of infidels, there had been erected, by several degrees, a spiritual-temporal tribunal, the most wonderful the world ever saw." wards, in the more complete development of the Romish hierarchy, the Popes claimed to be of divine right the fountain and depositaries of all secular as well as spiritual jurisdiction; and one argument on which they founded this claim was this passage: They said, Lord, here are two swords. And he said, It is enough; denoting that there were two sorts of power deposited by the Saviour with the Church, the temporal and the spiritual, and that these two were sufficient for all her occasions, and that these two were entrusted to the Pope because they were entrusted to Peter, and that they were entrusted to Peter because he cut off the right ear of Malehus with one of them, and he must have had both! How dark must have been the state of the world when such an argument could dare to be palmed upon it!

But what can be said when I tell you that not to ignorance and superstition was this argument confined, but that St. Bernard himself, an angel of light, in comparison with the darkness of the Papacy, and yet, with all his learning, the most unflinching of the Papal

champions, condescended to employ the same argument! The spiritual and material swords, said he, belong to the Church; and if it did not belong to the Pope to use them, or to his nod to have them drawn, the Lord, when two swords were offered to him, would not have said it is enough, but, it is too much! Astonishing mixture of piety and pride, of religion and learning, with the demon of spiritual aggrandizement !

THE PAPAL SUPREMACY.

In the progress of the Hierarchy to its perfection, the principal cities of the Roman Empire, Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch, came to be dignified with the title of Patriarch. The jealousy between these cities came at length to a contest of rivalry between the Patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople. But in the year 533 the Emperor Justinian declared the Bishop of Rome to be chief of the whole Ecclesiastical body of the Empire. In the letter of the Emperor to the Romish Bishop thus constituted Pope, he speaks of his desire to preserve the unity of the Apostolic Chair, and says, "For we cannot suffer that anything which relates to the state of the Church, however manifest and unquestionable, should be moved, without the knowledge of your Holiness, who are the Head of the Holy Churches, for in all things, as we have already declared, we are anxious to increase the honor and authority of your Apostolic Chair." The plea of supreme authority derived directly from Peter had meanwhile been gaining ground. It seems to