in the west, who was both able and willing to support their bold pretensions.

I must likewise add, however unlikely, that the ambition of secular princes concurred in the establishment and exaltation of the hierarchy. Nothing can be more evident, than that it was the interest of the princes of Christendom, and their people, to combine against it. But though this was the general and most lasting interest of all the states of Europe, what was, or at least was conceived to be, the immediate interest of a particular prince, or state, might be, to favour the hierarchy. Let it be observed, that the European monarchs were almost incessantly at war with one another. Neighbour and enemy, when spoken of states and kingdoms, were, and to this day too much are, terms

almost synonymous. The pope, therefore, could not make even the most daring attempt against any prince, or kingdom, which would not be powerfully backed by the most strenuous endeavours of some other prince, or kingdom, whose present designs the pope's attempts would tend to forward.

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If England was the object of papal resentment,-if the enraged ecclesiarch had fulminated an excommunication, or interdict, against the kingdom, or issued a bull deposing the king, and loosing his subjects from their oaths and allegiance, (for all these spiritual machines were brought into use one after another,) France was ready to take advantage of the general confusion thereby raised in England, and to invade the kingdom with an armed force. The more to encourage the French monarch to act this part, the pontiff might be prevailed on (and this hath actually happened) to assign to him the kingdom of which he had pretended to divest the owner. A man may ford to give what never belonged to him. But if the owner found it necessary to make submissions to the priest, the latter was never at a loss to find a pretext for recalling the grant he had made, and re-establishing the degraded monarch. In like manner, when France was the object of the pontiff's vengeance, England was equally disposed to be subservient to his views. Nay, he had the address, oftener than once, to arm an unnatural son against his father. Such was the situation of affairs all Europe over. Those transactions, which always terminated in the advancement of papal power, could not fail, at last, to

raise the mitre above the crown. Every one of the princes, I may say, did, in his turn, for the gratifying of a present passion, and the attaining of an immediate object, blindly lend his assistance in exalting a potentate, who came, in process of time, to tread on all their necks, and treat both kings and emperors, who had foolishly given their strength and power to him, as his vassals and slaves.

It were endless to take notice of all the expedients which Rome, after she had advanced so far as to be esteemed, in the west, the visible head of the church universal, and vested with a certain paramount, though indefinite, authority, over the whole, devised, and easily executed, both for confirming and extending her enormous power. It is true, she never was absolute in the east; and, from about the middle of the ninth century, these two parts of Christendom were in a state of total separation. But that became a matter of less consequence to her every day. The eastern, which may be said to have been the only enlightened, and far the most valuable, part of the empire, in the days of Constantine, was daily declining, whilst the western part was growing daily more considerable. In the eastern empire, one part after another became a prey to Turks and Saracens,-Egypt, Barbary, Syria, Asia, and at length Greece, Macedonia, and Thrace. The only part of the western empire that not only was, but still continues to be, subjected to the depredations of these barbarians, is Proconsular and West Africa. Whereas, in the western and northern parts of Europe, there were, at the same time, springing up some of the most powerful and polished, and, I may now add, the most enlightened monarchies and states, with which the world has ever been acquainted. The very calamities of the east, particularly the destruction of the eastern empire, the last poor remains of Roman greatness, and the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, left the western patriarch totally without a rival, and Christendom without a vestige of the primitive equality and independence of its pastors.

When Rome had every thing, in a manner, at her disposal, it was easy to see that all canons, in regard to discipline, and decrees, in relation to doctrine, would point invariably to the support of this power. Hence the convenient doctrines of

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transubstantiation, purgatory, prayers and masses for the dead, auricular confession, the virtue of sacerdotal absolution. Hence the canons extending so immensely the forbidden degrees of marriage, the peculiar power in the popes of dispensing with these and other canons, the power of canonization, the celibacy of the clergy, the supererogatory merits of the saints, indulgences, and many others.

There is, indeed, one right that has been claimed, and suceessfully exerted by Rome, which, as being a most important spring in this great and complex machine of the hierarchy, will deserve a more particular notice :—I mean, the pope's pretended title to grant exemptions to whomsoever he pleases, from subjection to their ordinary ecclesiastical superiors. But this I shall reserve for the subject of another lecture.

LECTURE XIX.

FROM what has been discovered, in the course of our enquiries into the rise, the progress, and the full establishment of the pa pacy, we may justly say, that if happiness consist in dominion, (which it certainly does not, though all mankind, by their conduct, seem to think it,) what a wonderful good fortune has ever attended Rome! From the first foundation of the city, by a parcel of banditti, she rose but to command, and gradually advanced into an empire of such extent, renown, and duration, as has been unexampled in the world, either before or since. And from the first declension of that enormous power, for it could not subsist always, she is insensibly become the seat of a new species of empire, which, though not of equal celebrity with the former, is much more extraordinary, and perhaps more difficult to be surmounted, being deeply rooted in the passions and sentiments of men.

Nay, how fortunate has been this queen of cities in what concerned both the formation and the advancement of this second monarchy. She continued the imperial city during the nonage of the hierarchy, that is, as long as was necessary to give her priest, though under the humble title of pastor, the primacy, or precedency among his brethren, for these two terms were at first synonymous, and by the wealth and splendour to which she raised him, to lay the foundation of those higher claims he hath since made, of supremacy and jurisdiction over them. And she ceased to be the seat of empire at the critical period when the residence of a court must have eclipsed his lustre, confined him to a subordinate part on the great theatre of the world, and stifled, in the birth, all attempts to raise himself above the secular powers. Had the eastern empire remained to this day, and Constantinople been the imperial residence, it would have been impossible that her patriarchs should ever have advanced the claims which the Roman patriarch not only advanced, but compelled the Christian world to admit. When

Rome was deserted by the emperors, her pontiff quickly became the first man there; and in the course of a few reigns, the inhabitants came naturally to consider themselves as more connected with him, and interested in him, than in an emperor who, under the name of their sovereign, had his residence and court in a distant country, who spoke a different language, and whose face the greater part of the Romans did not so much as know. Nor was the matter much mended in regard to them after the division of the empire, as the royal residence, neither of the emperor of the west, nor afterwards of the king of the Goths, was Rome, but either Milan or Ravenna.

And when, in succeeding ages, the pope grew to be, in some respect, a rival to the German emperor, the Romans, and even many of the Italians, came to think, as it might have been foreseen that they would, that their own aggrandizement, the aggrandizement of their city, and of their country, were more concerned in the exaltation of the pontiff, who, by the way, was then, in a great measure, a creature of their own making, (for the office was not then, as now, in the election of the conclave,) than in that of a monarch, who, from whatever origin he derived his power, was, in fact, an alien, and not of their creation, and who was as ill situated for defending them against their enemies, as the successors of Constantine had been before. Of the inability of both to answer this purpose, the invasions and conquests made at different times by Goths and Lombards, Franks and Normans, but too plainly showed. In short, had Rome never been the imperial city, its pastor could never have raised himself above his fellows. Had it continued the imperial city, he might, and probably would have had, such a primacy, as to be accounted the first among the patriarchs, but without any thing like papal jurisdiction over church and state. Had Rome remained the seat of empire, the pope's superiority to councils had never been heard of. The convocation of these, whilst the empire subsisted, would, in all probability, have continued, as it was for several ages, in the hands of the emperor. The dismemberment of the empire teuded but too visibly to subvert the emperor's claim, and occasion the setting up of another in its stead. A sovereign has no title to convoke the subjects of another sovereign, of whatever class they be, and call them out