BLASPHEMY OF THE BISHOPS OF ROME. 9 that those who were of the pope's train, ravished with admiration, spake one to another in the words of ancient prophecy, "all the kings of the earth shall worship him, and all nations shall do him service." So also in the council of Lateran, a person complimented Leo X. with an application of those scriptures: "God has given you all power both in heaven and earth. Weep not, daughter of Zion: behold the lion of the tribe of Judah, of the stock of David."+ It is related also of the people of Palermo, that they prostrated themselves at the feet of pope Martin IV., and made their addresses to him in the very words which the priests apply to Jesus Christ before their altars: "Thou that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us: thou that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us: thou that takest away the sins of the world, grant us thy peace."+ The arrogant pretensions of the popes, claiming authority over emperors and kings, making their crowns to depend on their pleasure, to dethrone them, give away their kingdoms to others, and absolve their subjects from their oaths of allegiance, is in strict keeping with what has now been said. Every reader of history knows what the decisions were that Gregory VII. made in a council held at Rome, in the year 1076, against the emperor Henry IV. whom he had deposed, and whose subjects he had absolved of their oaths of allegiance.§ Those decisions may not improperly be designated the papal dictatorship. Let the reader take a specimen of their articles, as set down by cardinal Baronius, in his Annals, ad ann. 1076. "That the bishop of Rome only could wear the imperial ornaments-that all princes were wont to kiss the feet of the pope alone—that his name alone ought to be mentioned in the churches-that there was but one chief name in the world, which was that of the pope-that He had a right to depose emperors-that his decrees could be made void by none, whosoever he were-but that he alone could make void all others-that he could release the subjects of wicked princes from their oaths of allegiance." The decretals are full of the like Baronius, ad ann. 1162. + Concil. Lateran. Sess. 7 and 9 in nat. Paulus Jovius, in Philippo iii. § See my History of the Christian Church, vol. i. ch iv. sect. 2. attempt of pope Boniface VIII. upon Philip the Fair, one of the kings of France. This pontiff went so far as to absolve the subjects of the latter from their oath of allegiance, and finally to give away his crown to the emperor Albert.* Happily, however, in this instance, the sovereign pontiff met with a disappointment, and moreover was punished as he deserved; the subjects of the French king took part with their sovereign, and served him with great zeal. On the death of this pontiff, Platina makes the following remarks: "Thus died this Boniface, who thought of nothing less than of terrifying emperors, kings, and princes, and indeed all other men, that he might the more readily inspire into them a religious awe and deference; and who pretended to give and take away by force whole kingdoms, to overturn and re-establish all men by the mere motion of his will."+ The failure of Boniface in his scandalous attempt to wrest the sceptre out of the hands of the king of France, and transfer it to other hands, could not fail to have a powerful tendency to open the eyes of men to the insolent pretensions of the court of Rome. It impressed thinking men with the conviction that those who made their very religion subservient to their ambition, especially when they saw that their ambition had no bounds, had a peculiar interest in feeding the people with their superstitions; for they were such as enslaved their souls, where true piety would have ennobled and rescued them from the yoke that the papal system sought to impose. But if the reader would see how far the claims of the priesthood went, he should read what Augustin Steuchus, who was librarian to the pope, has written; for he ascribes to the popes the very same temporal rights, and in the same latitude, too, in which the old Roman emperors possessed them; and he also proves from the register of Gregory VII., that Spain, Hungary, England, Denmark, Russia, Croatia, Dalmatia, Arragon, Portugal, Bohemia, Sweden, Norway, Dacia, all belonged, heretofore, to the popes; and that all that Pepin, Charlemagne, Henry, and other emperors, gave to the church, brought him not any new rights, but only put him in possession of that which the * Sec Dr. Rankin's History of France, vol iv. p. 56-82. SPECIMEN OF PAPAL USURPATION. 11 violence of the barbarians had wrested from him, at the subversion of the empire in the fifth century. The usurpations of the papal chair over the whole body of the church, claiming authority to decide all matters of faith, to make new laws and abrogate old ones, to dispense with ancient constitutions when it suited their purpose so to do, to convene councils, and transfer them from one place to another; to authorize or to condemn them; to judge the world, without being themselves subject to the control of any—in a word, of making all things to depend on their power, and binding all churches to submit themselves to its decisions in whatever relates to matters of faith and rules of discipline, and that not with a bare external obedience merely, but with the real acquiescence of their consciences—was an impious assumption of pretended sovereignty, and ought to have roused a spirit of resistance long before it did. By reason of this they were accustomed, even as they still do in their bulls, to place in the front "the fulness of their power," and to subjoin this clause," that no man should dare to be so rash as to infringe upon, or go contrary to, their decrees, under penalty of incurring the indignation of God, and the blessed apostles, Peter and Paul." That such arrogant assumptions as these should occasionally rouse opposition can excite no surprise; and accordingly we find that now and then a strong resistance to these pretensions of the court of Rome was made, that some councils laboured to repress them, and that the French clergy, ever jealous of their liberties, opposed the usurpation. The opposition, however, rarely met with the success that might have been expected; for the popes almost always found means to elude them, though they could not fail to rouse the prejudices of men, by daily discovering to them more and more of the corruption of the see of Rome. There was another thing also not a little calculated to awaken inquiry and open the eyes of men to the iniquitous practices of the court of Rome, and that is, the dispensations which the popes were wont to grant in the affair of marriage within the prohibited degrees, against the express words of the divine law, and also in the case of vows, which they themselves held to be lawful, and in divers other matters. "What do we think we ought to say," asks Gerson," of the easiness whereby dispensations are given by the pope and the prelates, to lawful oaths, to reasonable vows, to a vast plurality of benefices, against all the minds, or even to a universal gainsaying of councils, in privileges and exemptions that destroy common equity? Who can reckon up all the ways in which they serve themselves to loosen the force of ecclesiastical discipline, and to oppose and destroy that of the gospel? Who can read without some commotion what Innocent III. has written? viz." that by the fulness of his power he was lawfully authorized to dispense with that which was beyond all equity." And that which the glossary has subjoined, "that the pope can dispense against an apostle, against the canons of the apostles, and against the Old Testament in the case of tithes."* The manner in which ecclesiastical functions were dispensed in the church of Rome, in those days, was none of the least of the enormous abuses that then prevailed. These were given most frequently to persons altogether unworthy and incapable of discharging the duties of the office, and sometimes to children, to the great scandal of Christianity, and it was a loud and long subject of complaint. Let us hear the renowned St. Bernard on this point. Thus he describes the matter:-"They prefer little schoolboys and young children to church-dignities, because of the nobility of their birth. So that you may see those that are just got from under the ferula, go to command priests, who were yet more fit to escape the rod than to be employed in government, for they are far more sensible of the pleasure of being freed from their masters than of that of becoming masters themselves. Those are their first thoughts, but afterwards growing more bold, they very soon learn the art of appropriating the altars to themselves, and of emptying the purses of those that are under them, without going to any other school than that of their ambition and their covetousness."+ "How few are to be found now-a-days," said Nicholas de Clemangis, "who have either read, or know how to read, the holy Scriptures, otherwise than by first beginning to read? They have never touched any other part of the Holy Bible than the cover, although in their instalment they swear that they know it all."‡ Joan. Gerson de Eccles. potest. Consid. 10, Decretal, Greg. lib. iii. tit. 8. cap. 4. PROSTITUTION AND SALE OF OFFICES. 13 The practice of simony, too, which was universally exercised in the church of Rome, was one of its crying evils. Observe what Æneas Sylvius, himself afterwards a pope, narrates on this subject. "The court of Rome," says he, "gives nothing without money. It sells the very imposition of hands, and the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and will grant the pardon of sins to none but such as will part with their money."* "The church that Jesus Christ has chosen for his spouse, without spot and blemish," says another writer, "is in these days a warehouse of ambition and traffic, of theft and rapine. The sacraments and all the orders, even to that of the priests, are exposed to sale. For money they bestow favours, dispensations, licenses, offices, benefices. They sell pardons of sin, masses, and the very administration of our Lord's body. If any one have an inclination to a bishopric, he need but to get himself furnished with money,-yet not a little sum, but a great one, must purchase such a great title. He only needs to empty his purse to obtain the dignity he seeks, but he may soon after fill it again with advantage, by more ways than one. If any one desire to be made a prebendary, or a priest of any church, or to have any other charge, it matters not whether his merits, or his life, or his manners, be known, but it is very requisite it should be known how much money he has ; for according as he has that, he will find his hopes to succeed."+ Such were the complaints made by honest men in the time referred to, and one might make a large volume of them if the corruptions of the church in those days were not so generally known in ours. In fact, a treatise has been published for the purpose of propounding the rates of the apostolic chamber, and the taxes enjoined for penances, which alone declares more than it will be necessary to lay before the reader in this place! In that book, not only rules for the despatch of business, but every sin also, every crime, has its set price, and as there is nothing to be done without money, so there is nothing which money cannot do. This is a fruitful topic, and were it necessary to enlarge upon it, a multiplicity of other things of equal enormity present themselves, to augment the sum, and still more darken the appalling + Nicholas de Clemang. de Præsul. Chancellerio. ⚫ Æneas Sylv. Epist. lib. i. cap. 66. |