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protection of St. Peter; that is, under immediate subjection to the pope. The proposal was, with avidity, accepted at Rome. That politick court saw immediately, that nothing could be better calculated for supporting papal power. Whoever obtains privileges is obliged, in order to secure his pri vileges, to maintain the authority of the grantor.

Very quickly all the monasteries, great and small, abbeys, priories, and nunneries, were exempted. The two last were inferiour sorts of monasteries, and often subordinate to some abbey. Even the chapters of cathedrals, consisting mostly of regulars, on the like pretexts, obtained exemption. Finally, whole orders, those called the congregations of Cluni and Cistertio, Benedictines and others, were exempted. This effectually procured a prodigious augmentation to the pontifical au thority, which now came to have a sort of disciplined troops in every place, defended and protected by the papacy, who, in return, were its defenders and protectors, serving as spies on the bishops as well as on the secular powers. Afterwards the mendicant orders, or begging friars, though the refuse of the whole, the tail of the beast, as Wickliff termed them, whereof the Roman pontiff is the head, obtained still higher privileges, for they were not only exempted every where from episcopal authority, but had also a title to build churches wherever they pleased, and to administer the sacraments in these independently of the ordinary of the place. Nay, afterwards, in the times immediately preceding the convention of the aforesaid council, things had proceeded so far, that any private clerk could, at a small expence, obtain an exemption from the superintendency of his bishop, not only in regard to correction, but in relation to orders, which he might receive from whomsoever he pleased, so as to have no connexion with the bishop of any kind.

What had made matters still worse was, that the whole business of teaching the christian people had, by this time, fallen into the hands of the regulars. The secular clergy had long since eased themselves of the burden. Preaching and reading the sacred scriptures properly, made no part of the publick offices of religion. It is true, it was still the practice to read, or rather chant, some passages from the gospels and epistles, in an unknown tongue; for all in the western churches must now, for the sake of uniformity, to which every thing was sacrificed, be in Latin. Now, for some centuries before the council of Trent, Latin had not been the native language of any country or city in the world, not even of Italy or of Rome. That such lessons were not understood by the people, was thought an objection of no consequence at all. They were not

the less fitted for making a part of the solemn, unmeaning mum mery, of the liturgick service. The bishops and priests having long disused preaching, probably at first through laziness, seem to have been considered at last as not entitled to preach for, on the occasion above-mentioned, they very generally com plained, that the charge of teaching was taken out of their hands, and devolved upon the friars, especially the mendicants, who were a sort of itinerant preachers, licensed by the court of Rome.

How the friars discharged this trust, we may learn from the most authentick histories, which sufficiently show, that the representations of the scope of their preaching, made by the bishops in that council, were not exaggerated, when they said, that the end of their teaching was not to edify the people, but to collect alms from them, either for themselves or for their convents; that in order to attain this purpose, they solely considered not what was for the soul's health, but what would please, and flatter, and sooth the appetites of the hearers, and thereby bring most profit to themselves; so that the people, instead of learning the doctrine of Christ, are but amused, said they, with mere novelties and vanities. But whatever be in this account, the pope could not fail to draw an immense advantage from this circumstance, that the instruction of the people was now almost entirely in the hands of his own creatures. How great, then, must be the advantage of a similar but still more important kind, resulting from the exemptions granted to universities, who being taken, as it were, under his immediate patronage, were engaged from interest to instil principles of obedience to the pope into the minds of the youth, of whose education they had the care.

Now if the chain of dependence of the secular clergy on the head, be similar to that which subsists in a civil, particularly a feudatory constitution, where the obligation of every inferiour through the whole subordination of vassallage is considered as being much stronger to the immediate superiour than to the sovereign, the dependence of the regulars may justly be represented by the military connexion which subsists with the sovereign in a standing army. There the tie of every soldier and subaltern is much stronger to the king than to his captain or his colonel. If, then, the secular clergy, in Romish countries, may be called the pope's civil officers, the regulars are his guards. This matter was too well understood by the friends of Rome, who were the predominant party in the council of Trent, ever to yield to any alteration here that could be called material. Some trifling changes, however, were made, in or der to conciliate those who were the keenest advocates for re

forming the discipline of the church, or at least to silence their clamours. The exemptions given to chapters were limited a little. The bishops were made governours of the nunneries within their bishopricks, not as bishops of the diocese, but as the pope's delegates; and friars, who resided in cloisters, and were guilty of any scandalous excess without the precincts of the cloister, if the superiour of the convent, whether abbot or prior, refused, when required, to chastise them within a limited time, might be punished by the bishop.

I have now traced the principal causes, which co-operated to the erection of the hierarchy, and shall, in what remains to be observed on the subject, in a few more lectures, consider both the actual state of church power, and the different opinions concerning it at the time of the council of Trent, which shall terminate our inquiries into the rise and establishment of the hierarchy.

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I Have now, in a course of lectures, endeavoured, with all

possible brevity, to lay before you the principal arts, by which the Roman hierarchy was raised, and have also pointed out some of the most remarkable events and occurrences, which facilitated the erection. It is chiefly the progress of ecclesiastical dominion, that I have traced. The papal usurpation on the secular powers, though I have explained its source in the erection of episcopal tribunals, and glanced occasionally at its progress, I have, for several reasons, not so expressly examined. 'One is, it does not so immediately affect the subject of the hierarchy, with which I considered myself as principally concerned. Another is, that the usurpation here is, if possi ble, still more glaring to every attentive reader of church his tory, and therefore stands less in need of being pointed out. A third reason is, that though the claims of superiority over the civil powers, formerly advanced by Rome with wonderful success, have never been abandoned, but are, as it were, reserved in petto for a proper occasion, yet, at present, the most sublime of their pretensions are little minded, and are hardly, as affairs now stand in Europe, capable of doing hurt. Nothing can be better founded than the remark, that the thunders of the Vatican will kindle no conflagration, except where there are combustible materials. At present there is hardly a country in christendom so barbarously superstitious (I do not except even Spain and Portugal) as to afford a sufficient quantity of those materials for raising a combustion. We never hear now of the excommunication and deposition of princes, of kingdoms laid under an interdict, and of the erection and the disposal of kingdoms by the pope. Such is the difference of times, that these things, which were once the great engines of raising papal dominion, would now serve only to render it

contemptible. The foundation of all is opinion, which is of great consequence in every polity, but is every thing in an ecclesiastick polity. To the above reasons, I shall add a fourth. It is only a part, and not the greater part neither, of the Roman Catholicks, who acknowledge that the pope, as pope, or bishop, has any kind of authority in secular matters over the civil powers. They make but a party comparatively small, who carry the rights of the papacy so far as to include therein a paramount authority over all the powers of this earth, spiritual and temporal. A gentleman of the house of commons, in a celebrated speech on the affairs of America, in the beginning of the American revolt, speaking of the religious profession of those colonies, denominated it the protestantism of the protestant religion. In imitation of the manner of this orator, I shall style the system of that highflying party in the church of Rome, the popery of the popish religion. It is the very quintessence of papistry. Nay, we have some foundation even from themselves for naming it so; for those who hold it are, even among Roman Catholicks, distinguished by the name pontificii, or papists, and mostly consist of the people and clergy of Italy, the immediate de pendencies on the papal see, and the different orders of regu lars. It was in a particular manner the system strenuously supported by the order of jesuits now abolished. The doc. trine of the more moderate Roman Catholicks, which is that of almost all the laity, and the bulk of the secular clergy in all European countries, except Italy and its islands, is unfavourable to those high pretensions of the Roman pontiff. But even these are far from being entirely unanimously in regard to the spiritual power and jurisdiction, which they ascribe to him. The bounding line, which distinguishes the civil from the ecclesiastick, is one of the arcana of that church's policy, and therefore never to be precisely ascertained. I shall then, in order to give you some idea ere I conclude, of the sublimity and plenitude of the ecclesiastick power, claimed in behalf of his holiness over the ministers of the church, by the advocates of that see, and to give you some notion of their manner of supporting those claims, exhibit to you the substance of a speech on episcopal jurisdiction, delivered in the Council of Trent, by father Lainez, general of the jesuits, translated from the Italian of Fra Paolo Sarpi. Afterwards I shall take a little notice of the encroachments made on the civil powers.

"Lainez," says that historian, "spoke more than two hours "with great vehemence, in a distinct but magisterial tone. "The argument of his discourse consisted of two parts. The

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