IN my two last prelections, I laid before you, in their utmost extent, the papal claims of jurisdiction over the clergy, and the clerical claims not only of independence, but of authority over the secular powers. I promised to take notice, in the present lecture, of the reception which the last mentioned claims over the secular powers met with from those against whom they were aimed.

Copies of those articles, for the reformation of princes and magistrates, having been sent by the ambassadours to their respective courts, they were instructed to give them all the oppo, sition in their power. In this resolution, none were more determined than the emperour, and the king of France. The former wrote to cardinal Moron, that neither as emperour, nor as archduke, would he ever consent, that they should speak in council of reforming the jurisdiction of princes, or of divesting them of their right to draw contributions from the clergy; that he considered all their past evils as having sprung from the oppressions attempted by ecclesiasticks, both on the people and on the princes. The French ambassadours prepared a protestation, which they were commanded to make, if there should be occasion for it.

In one of their meetings called congregations, one of the fathers, in a long speech, advanced, that the cause of all their corruptions proceeded from the princes, who, of all men, had the greatest need of reformation; adding, that the heads of a scheme for this purpose were already digested, meaning that which I gave you in a preceding lecture, and that it was now time to propose them, and not suffer so important a design to come to nothing through their dilatoriness. As here the rights of sovereigns were touched, the ambassadour Ferrier, of whose vehemence, as well as freedom in speaking I have already given you a specimen, interposed, and, in a very resolute tone, supported the rights of the secular powers in general, and of

his master the king of France in particular. Though he was by no means destitute of eloquence, his eloquence was not al ways adapted to time and place.

The liberty of expression, in which he indulged himself, was too great for the prejudices of the age in which he lived; and the reflections which he threw out were too galling, to be borne by men of so much importance as those reverend fa thers, who looked on themselves as the only rightful legislators of the universe, and whose authority they deemed it treason, or what was still worse, sacrilege, even in sovereigns to dis pute.

Ferrier, in his oration, lamented, that christian kings had now, for more than a hundred and fifty years, at the councils of Constance, Basil, Lateran, and Trent, been earnestly re quiring of popes the reform of ecclesiastick discipline, and that all their endeavours had proved abortive. They had, indeed, got a large return of decrees and anathemas. They demanded one thing, and they are put off with another; insomuch, that in all probability, for three hundred years to come, the same grievances will be lamented, and the same requests of redress will be made to no better purpose. In regard to the huge mass of reforms which had occupied the council for some months past, they had sent their opinion of it to the king, who, in return, wrote them, that he found therein few things conformable, but many contrary to ancient discipline. →Ferrier maintained further, that the plaster which they had been preparing, far from being adapted to heal the wounds of the church, could serve only to make them fester, and to cause even sores that had been healed, to break out afresh particu larly that those expedients of excommunicating and anathematizing princes were unexampled in the primitive church, and solely calculated for opening a wide gate to rebellion in every state; that the whole chapter of the reformation of kings and princes had no other aim, than to divest their temporal rulers of all authority. Yet by such rulers some excellent ecclesiastick laws had been made, which even popes had not disdained to adopt, honouring their authors with the name of saints; that by those laws the church had been governed, not only since the times of the pragmatick and the concordate, but before,nay, for more than four hundred years before the book of decretals, which later popes had got substituted into their place, had been so much as heard of. He then attempted a comparison between the ancient canons and the modern, particularly the regulations made for the reform of discipline in the preceding sessions of the present council, exposing the futility of their new canons in a strain of contemptuous irony, the most provoking imagi

Rr

nable. He maintained, that the king, his master, the founder and patron of almost all the churches of France, may, for the instant and urgent necessities of the state, in consequence of the power given him of God, and by the most ancient laws of the kingdom, freely avail himself of even the ecclesiastical goods and rents of his subjects. He said, that the king was particularly surprised at two things; that those fathers adorned with great ecclesiastical power in the divine ministry, and assembled solely for restoring ecclesiastical discipline, not attending to that, had turned aside to reform those whom, though wicked, it behoved them to obey and pray for; and he was surprised still more, that they should imagine themselves entitied, without admonition, to excommunicate and anathematize princes, who are given them of God, a thing not to be done even to a plebeian, who perseveres in a heinous transgression; that Michael the archangel did not dare to curse the devil, neither did Michaiah or Daniel curse the most impious kings, yet those fathers vented all their curses against kings and princes; nay, their maledictions were levelled even against his most christian majesty, for defending the laws of his ancestors, and the liberties of the Gallican church. He concluded, that the king required them not to decree any thing against those laws and liberties, and, if they should, commanded his ambassadours to oppose their decrees, as they then did, adding, that if, not meddling with sovereigns, they would at tend to that which all the world expected of them, their conduct would be most agreeable to his majesty, and should have the utmost aid of his ministers. Hitherto he spoke in the name of the king. Then, in a bold epiphonema, he invoked heaven and earth, and the fathers themselves, to consider whether it suited the time, to show no sympathy with the church, in the present distractions, or with France, involved in a civil war on account of religion, but to have all their sensibility engrossed by their own dignities, and honours, and revenues, which cannot be preserved by other arts than those whereby they were acquired; that in such confusions, it was their duty to repent, and when Christ cometh, not to bawl out, Send us into the herd of swine; that if they would restore the church to its ancient reputation, bring adversaries to repentance, and reform princes, they should follow the example of good king Hezekiah, who did not imitate his impious father, nor the first, counting backwards, second, third and fourth of his very deficient progenitors, but went further back to the imitation of his remote, but more perfect ancestors; in like manner it behoved those fathers not to attend to their immediate predecessors, however learned, but to ascend to an Ambrose, an

Augustin, a Chrysostome, who conquered hereticks, not by the modern method of instigating princes to slaughter them, but by methods more primitive, by their prayers, by the example of a godly life, by preaching pure doctrine; for if the fathers whom he addressed would first form themselves into Ambroses, Augustines, and Chrysostomes, and thus purify the church of Christ, they would soon transform princes into Theodosiuses, Honoriuses, Arcadiuses, Valentinians, and Gratians. This he prayed that with the help of God they might effectuate, and so concluded.

We cannot wonder, that this bold, and even dictatorial language, should irritate, as in fact it did, in a very high degree, not the pontificii only, but the other prelates, even the French clergy themselves. The historian tells us, that he had no sooner ended, than there arose such a general murmur, that it was found necessary to dismiss the congregation. Some taxed the discourse with heresy; others said it looked very suspicious; almost all agreed that it was offensive to pious ears, (meaning, no doubt, their own) and could be calculated only to break up the council; that he attributed to kings more than belonged to them; that he inferred the pope's authority not to be necessary to entitle them to ecclesiastical goods; that he made the king of France like the king of England, Harry the eighth, head of the church within his own dominions. Above all, nothing offended more grievously than his suggesting, that the authority of the king of France over persons and goods, was not founded on the pragmatick, concordate, and papal privileges, but on the law of nature, the sacred scriptures, the ancient councils, and laws of christian emperours. As his speech was every where attacked, and often misrepresented, he was obliged to disperse some copies of it for his own vindication. This occasioned a formal answer in writing, to which he made a spirited reply.

The principal instruction to be drawn from such altercations, is the knowledge they afford of the opinions and the spirit of the times, and of the mode of reasoning employed in their controversies. We are sometimes surprised to observe, that the things which proved matter of reprehension, were such as we should have least suspected. Thus what he affirmed of princes that they were given of God, was combated with great keenness as heretical, and condemned by unam sanctam, one of the decrees very happily named extravagantes of pope Boniface the eighth. He ought, said they, to have distinguished, by affirming, they are of God, mediante suo vicario. An easy device for making all power, temporal and spiritual, to be immediately from the pope, and but mediately from God.

To their exceptions on this head, his excellency's answer was very brief. He had not said more simply and absolutely, that princes are from God, than the prophet Daniel and the apostle Paul had said before him, and that if there be no heresy in their expressions, there can be none in his; that for his own part, the distinction of mediate and immediate, and the extravagant constitutions of Boniface, never entered into his mind. His apology, instead of diminishing, only increased the odium and clamour against him. He obstinately defends, said they, those errours which he ought penitently to recant. His opposition, however, and the alarm taken by sovereigns, were sufficient to prevent those attempts on the secular power being carried further. In the other questions agitated, as those about residence, and the jurisdiction of bishops, there was a division of the clergy into two parties, the pontificii, or patrons of papal despotism, on one side, and those on the other, who maintained, that the bishops had a divine right to a share in the jurisdiction. But in the struggle between the spiritual power and the temporal, the ambassadours had the whole council for antagonists. Both the contending factions were united on this head. It had been, indeed, uniformly the policy of Rome to exert herself in supporting the attempts, made in every country, to draw both power and pro perty out of the hands of the laity into those of the clergy. When this was once effected, she was never at a loss for expedients, whereby she might again draw the whole, or the greater part, out of their hands into her own. By the first, she secured in her interest the clergy of every nation, and laid the foundation of such a close dependance on herself, as rendered the exertion necessary for obtaining the second object much easier, than what had been employed for obtaining the first.

To adduce some instances with what infinite labour and contention did the pope, aided by the bishops, (always ready, at his instigation, to rebel against the civil powers) wrest the investitures in church livings out of the hands of princes, in order, as appeared at the time, to restore them to the chapters of the several dioceses; and with what ease, comparatively, were the chapters afterwards wormed out of that right by the pope? First, he employed the gentler method of recommendation. When this was ineffectual, he commanded. As even commands were sometimes disregarded, he proceeded to cause his commands to be conveyed by nuncios, empow ered to give collation, if necessary; and armed with the highest censures against the disobedient. Thus the clergy found, to their cost, that the last errour was worse than the