thus elevated above their brethren, for prudential purposes, claimed a superiority of office; took into their hands the sole power of ordaining, and began to prescribe, as the delegates of Christ, rules of faith, and rites and ceremonies. In support of their pretensions, they shrewdly plead the form of the Jewish priesthood; asserting that they were the natural successors of the High Priest, while the presbyters succeeded to the priests, and the deacons to the Levites.

In the third century, we find the bishops of Rome, Antioch and Alexandria, commanding great respect and reverence as bishops of primitive and apostolic churches, and assuming a place above all other bishops; and the bishop of Rome exercising a preeminence of order, though not as yet of power, over the other two. When Constantine made Christianity the religion of the state, he effected but little alteration in the government of the Church. The chief that he did, was to place himself at its head, and make its government, in some measure, like that of the empire. The four bishops of Rome, Antioch, Alexandria and Constantinople, answered to his four pretorian prefects; under these were the exarchs or patriarchs, who governed several provinces; then came the archbishops, who ruled over certain districts; then the bishops of dioceses and pastors of churches.

As Rome was the emporium of the world, its bishopric increased perpetually in grandéur, opulence and power. Its revenues became princely. Its dependents, like those of a monarchy. All the splendid trappings of royalty surrounded the incumbent. He sat on his throne, covered with sumptuous garments, attracting the admiration of the ignorant multitude. It became, therefore, a most seducing object of ambition. When a new bishop was to be elected, the whole city was agitated. Dissensions, tumults and cabals were witnessed, which would have disgraced the election of a worldly chieftain.

But the bishop of Rome met with a sudden and serious check in his progress toward spiritual dominion. Constantine had removed the seat of empire from Rome to Constantinople, and given the bishop of his capital a rank equal to that of any other spiritual power. Rome, however, did not surrender the ground it had taken. These two prelates at once became rivals. A contest was carried on for ages, which resulted in sundering entirely the Greek and Latin churches.

The former continued to acknowledge the dominion of the bishop of Constantinople; but, from various causes, his dominion rather decreased; while that of Rome again soon gained amazing strength and power. The bishops of Rome were,

thus elevated above their brethren, for prudential purposes, claimed a superiority of office; took into their hands the sole power of ordaining, and began to prescribe, as the delegates of Christ, rules of faith, and rites and ceremonies. In support of their pretensions, they shrewdly plead the form of the Jewish priesthood; asserting that they were the natural successors of the High Priest, while the presbyters succeeded to the priests, and the deacons to the Levites.

In the third century, we find the bishops of Rome, Antioch and Alexandria, commanding great respect and reverence as bishops of primitive and apostolic churches, and assuming a place above all other bishops; and the bishop of Rome exercising a preeminence of order, though not as yet of power, over the other two. When Constantine made Christianity the religion of the state, he effected but little alteration in the government of the Church. The chief that he did, was to place himself at its head, and make its government, in some measure, like that of the empire. The four bishops of Rome, Antioch, Alexandria and Constantinople, answered to his four pretorian prefects; under these were the exarchs or patriarchs, who governed several provinces ; then came the archbishops, who ruled over certain districts; then the bishops of dioceses and pastors of churches.

As Rome was the emporium of the world, its bishopric increased perpetually in grandeur, opulence and power. Its revenues became princely. Its dependents, like those of a monarchy. All the splendid trappings of royalty surrounded the incumbent. He sat on his throne, covered with sumptuous garments, attracting the admiration of the ignorant multitude. It became, therefore, a most seducing object of ambition. When a new bishop was to be elected, the whole city was agitated. Dissensions, tumults and cabals were witnessed, which would have disgraced the election of

many of them, men of talents and vast ambition. Leo 1st called the Great, who flourished in the fifth century, was a man of uncommon genius and eloquence, and indefatigable in his efforts for spiritual dominion. Gregory the Great, also, in the next age, distinguished himself in a violent contest with the bishop of Constantinople, and in extending the bounds of the See of Rome.

At length, in the commencement of the seventh century, the emperor Phocas conferred upon Boniface III. bishop of Rome, the title of œcumenical or universal bishop. This title had been usurped by the bishop of Constantinople; but it was now, in this public manner, taken from him and conferred upon the bishop of Rome; and this too by one of the most odious tyrants that ever lived. What they had thus obtained, the Roman pontiffs used every effort to hold; and they did hold it—a power which no other earthly potentate ever possessed. It is from this grant of Phocas that many date the establishment of the Papal power, though the most decisive marks of Antichrist, idolatry and false doctrine, did not appear until a later age. But the period of her establishment was not the period of her full growth. On the contrary, she was as many centuries gaining her astonishing dominion, as she had been rising to the point at which we can now view her. An account of some of the great causes which contributed to her enlargement, and of the various steps by which she marched on to the summit of power, will give a general view of the ecclesiastical world from the seventh to the fourteenth century.

The period before us was one of extreme ignorance, superstition and corruption.

The world was sunk in Egyptian darkness. The cultivation of the human intellect was abandoned. The incursions of the barbarous nations from the north, had driven every thing like literature into the cells of the monasteries. Books were unknown among the common people; and had they been known, they would have been useless, for few were acquainted with the art of reading. The great mass of the clergy were incapable of reading the Apostle's creed. Even the bishops in general were unable to compose any thing like a sermon, and delivered to the people insipid homilies, which they had taken from the writings of Augustin and Gregory. Such an age was exceedingly favourable to artful and daring men, who continually made pretensions to authority which few had the ability to question.

It was also an age of deep superstition. Men had scarce any rational views of religion. They had almost wholly lost sight of the character of God, and the state of the heart, of the gospel of Christ, and of the duty which God requires of man.

The

doctrine of salvation by faith in Christ, was almost as unknown as at Athens, in the days of Paul. The minds of men were wholly turned to an attendance on a multitude of rites and ceremonies as the sure way of gaining heaven. These, issuing from the papal throne, gave the popes an immense control over the heart and conscience. The multitude easily learned to look up to them as standing in the place of God, and to be honoured as God. And it was a circumstance extremely favourable to the ambitious designs of the popes, that those vast barbarous nations, which had overspread the fair fields of Europe, had been accustomed to regard their priests with an awful superstition, and to attribute to their arch-druid little less than god-like power. Easily were such men made to transfer all this reverence to those who officiated at Christian altars, and to give to the Roman pontiff the authority and power of the archdruid.

Above all, it was an age of awful corruption. In the East, the Holy Spirit had, to human appearance, ceased to operate. In the West, there was, indeed, to be found some piety. God, in every age, it is believed, has had a people to serve him. The gates of hell have never been suffered entirely to prevail against the Church of Christ. What piety there was, however, was chiefly in nations remote from Rome, and newly converted; though here and there was one to be found in the seat of the beast who had not his mark in their forehead, and who made vigorous opposition to him, and excited much trouble. The spirit of prophecy had declared, that through the long night of popery, there should be two witnesses who should prophesy in sackcloth. But, in general, the civilized world, from the seventh to the fourteenth century, was sunk in the lowest depths of moral corruption. No law of God, requiring holiness and forbidding sin, was placed before men. Morality did not enter into the religion of the age. He who would practise some rite, or possess some relic, or pay a sum of money, was assured of heaven, though he were a thief and a murderer. Mankind,, therefore, were left to go fearless into eternity, amid the grossest vices; while no cultivation of mind or manners existed to keep them above the sensualities of brutes.

The priests and bishops were a most worthless, stupid and corrupt race. They often passed their lives in the splendour of courts, or at the head of soldiers, and aspired to the honours and authority of Dukes, Marquises, and Counts. Even the Roman pontiffs, with a few exceptions, were monsters of iniquity; who sought the chair as a place of dominion, and who were perpetually guilty of the most flagitious wickedness. In such an age of