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an authority, before which all opposition was silent; and maintained the pretended majesty of the Roman pontiffs against kings, princes, bishops, and heretics, with incredible ardour and success. The Dominicans and Franciscans were before the Reformation what the Jesuits have been since that happy and glorious period; the very soul of the hierarchy, the engines of the state, the secret springs of the motions of the one and of the other, and the authors and directors of every great and important event both in the religious and political world." The complete distinctness of this first horn or ecclesiastical kingdom of the beast from the other, by means of their exemption from episcopal jurisdiction, will appear yet more evidently from the following passage. "While the pontiffs accumulated upon the mendicants the most honourable distinctions and the most valuable privileges which they had to bestow, they exposed them still more and more to the envy and hatred of the rest of the clergy; and this hatred was considerably increased by the audacious arrogance that discovered itself every where in the conduct of these supercilious orders. They had the presumption to declare publicly, that they had a divine impulse and commission to illustrate and maintain the religion of Jesus; they treated with the utmost insolence and contempt all the different ranks and orders of the priesthood; they affirmed without a blush, that the true method of obtaining salvation was revealed to them alone; proclaimed with ostentation the superior efficacy and virtue of their indulgencies; and vaunted, beyond measure, their interests at the court of heaven, and their familiar connections with the Supreme Being, the Virgin Mary, and the saints in glory. By these impious wiles they so deluded and captivated the miserable and blinded multitude, that they would not intrust any others but the mendicants with the care of their souls, their spiritual and eternal concerns."+ Thus it appears, that the monastic orders constituted a well organized body, governed by their own laws, exempt from episcopal jurisdiction, subject to their respective generals or superiors, but pay+ Ibid. p. 204.

* Mosheim's Eccles. Hist. Vol. iii. p. 195.

ing at the same time an implicit obedience to the Pope. In short they perfectly answer to every idea that we can form of an ecclesiastical kingdom under the control of the head of an ecclesiastical empire.

The second horn of the beast I suppose to be the secular popish clergy. As the monks were subject, first to the superiors of their orders, and ultimately to the Pope; so the secular or parochial clergy were subject, first to their respective bishops, and ultimately to the sovereign pontiff. Various preparatory steps were taken towards the erecting of this second ecclesiastical horn or kingdom before the year 606, when the Pope was declared universal Bishop, and whence therefore I date the rise of the second beast or the papal catholic empire. The decrees of the Emperors, and the metropolitan diguity of Rome, gradually conferred upon the Popes an archi-episcopal authority over the western bishops, previous to the time when they were formally declared by Phocas the head of the universal Church. In the eighth century Germany was reduced under the yoke by an English friar named Boniface, whom Gregory the third consecrated Archbishop of Mentz; constituting him at the same time his vicar, with full power to call councils, and to constitute bishops in those places, which were by his assistance converted to the Christian faith. In the first of these councils, Boniface presiding in quality of legate of the Roman chair, the clergy signed a certain confession of faith, whereby they obliged themselves, not only to maintain the catholic faith, but also to remain in constant union with the Roman church, and to be obedient to the successors of St. Peter. "This Boniface," says Puffendorff, "was the first, who put it upon the bishops of Germany to receive the episcopal pall from the Pope, who sent it to the bishops of France without their request, thereby to unite them with the Roman chair. And, when once these ornaments were become customary amongst them, they were put upon them afterwards as of absolute necessity; and the episcopal function was forbidden to be

The reader will find a very circumstantial account of the manner in which the Bishops of Rome gradually extended their authority over the West, in Sir Isaac Newton's Observ. on Daniel, chap. viii.

exercised by them before they had received these ornaments."* The same author further observes, "Besides this, the Popes assumed to themselves an authority of giving leave to the bishops to remove from one episcopal see to another, and obliged all the western bishops to receive their confirmation from Rome, for which they were obliged to pay a certain sum of money as an acknowledgment, which was since converted to annats. The Popes also, by making void the decisions of the provincial synods or assemblies, overthrew their authority: wherefore, when every body plainly perceived that the decrees of these assemblies could produce no other effects but to be continually annulled by the Popes, without so much as hearkening to any reasons, they were by degrees quite abolished. Pope Gregory the seventh also forced the bishops to swear an oath of fealty to the Pope, and by a decree forbad,† that none should dare to condemn any one that had appealed to the Pope. They were also not forgetful in sending legates or nuncios to all places; whose business was to exercise in the name of the Pope the same authority, which had formerly belonged to the bishops, metropolitans, and provincial assemblies."+ In this passage mention is made of the oath of fealty exacted by Gregory the seventh from the bishops. A similar oath has been imposed, even since the Reformation, by Pius the fourth on all the beneficed clergy. He decreed, that they should all swear true obedience to the Roman pontiff, the successor of St. Peter, and vicar of Jesus Christ. In short, how completely the clergy under their bishops became one of the two ecclesiastical kingdoms of the papal beast, will best appear from the following oath, set forth by order of Pope Clement the eighth to be taken by all bishops at their consecration, and by all metropolitans at their instalment.

"IN. elect of the church of N. from henceforward will be faithful and obedient to St. Peter the Apostle, and to the holy Roman church, and to our lord, the lord N. Pope N. and to his successors canonically coming in.

* Introduct. to Hist. of Eur. cited by Whitaker, p. 404.
Introduct. to Hist. of Eur. cited by Whitaker, p. 406.

+ Enacted.

§ Ibid. p. 407.

I will neither advise, consent, or do any thing, that they may lose life or member, or that their persons may be seized, or hands any wise laid upon them, or any injuries. offered to them under any pretence whatsoever. The

counsel, which they shall intrust me withal, by themselves, their messengers, or letters, I will not knowingly reveal to any to their prejudice. I will help them to defend and keep the Roman Papacy and the royalties of St. Peter, saving my order, against all men. The legate of the apostolic see, going and coming, I will honourably treat and help in his necessities. The rights, honours, privileges, and authority, of the holy Roman church, of our lord the Pope, and his foresaid successors, I will endeavour to preserve, defend, increase, and advance. I will not be in any counsel, action, or treaty, in which shall be plotted against our said lord, and the said Roman church, any thing to the hurt or prejudice of their persons, right, honour, state, or power; and, if I shall know any such thing to be treated or agitated by any whatsoever, I will hinder it to my power; and, as soon as I can, will signify it to our said lord, or to some other by whom it may come to his knowledge. The rules of the holy fathers, the apostolic decrees, ordinances, or disposals, reservations, provisions, and mandates, I will observe with all my might, and cause to be observed by others. Heretics, schismatics, and rebels to our said lord, or his foresaid successors, I will to my power persecute and oppose. ""**

As for the precise steps, by which this ecclesiastical kingdom was finally and perfectly organized, they are well pointed out by Lord Lyttelton in his history of Henry the second. "It was now an established notion," says he, "that all metropolitans were only the vicars or rather viceroys of the Pope in their several provinces ; and the pall was the ensign of their office. This was too lightly given way to by kings, and proved in its consequences one of the deepest arts, by which the policy of the court of Rome supported its power. For thus all the greatest prelates, who might have affected an independ

* Whitaker's Comment. p. 408.

ence on that see, had another object of ambition set up, namely, an independence on their own sovereigns, and an imparted share of the papal dominion over all temporal powers." And again" Henry the first did not enough consider, how much the design of detaching the clergy from any dependence upon their own sovereign, and from all ties to their country, was promoted by forcing them to a life of celibacy: but concurred with the see of Rome, and with Anselm its minister, in imposing that yoke upon the English church, which till then had always refused it-He was also prevailed upon to suffer a legate a latere, the Cardinal of Crema, to preside in a council held at London upon this and other matters, in derogation to the metropolitan rights of the archbishop of Canterbury; thereby confirming that dangerous and degrading subjection to the Bishop of Rome, which his father had brought upon the church of England."* There was yet another step, by which the second ecclesiastical kingdom of the papal empire was both completed, and kept in subjection. Well knowing the truth of the maxim Divide and rule, the artful pontiffs dexterously contrived to play off the one kingdom against the other, to govern the secular clergy by the instrumentality of the regular. "Whenever any bishop," says Puffendorff, "attempted any thing against the Pope's authority, the mendicant friars with their clamour and noise pursued him every where like so many hounds, and rendered him odious to the common people, amongst whom they were in great veneration through their outward appearance of holiness; and from thence it came to pass, that the bishops, who opposed the Pope's authority, never could make a great party among the common people. Besides this, the friars always kept a watchful eye over the actions of the bishops, giving continual advices concerning them to their generals residing at Rome, whereby the Popes were enabled to oppose timely any design intended against their authority. And these friars proved the main obstacle, why the bishops could not so effectually oppose the Pope's authority which he assumed over them; so

• Hist. of Henry II. cited by Whitaker, p. 410, 411.

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