the bishop in whose diocese the abbey was situated, and to whom, as things stood at first, the abbot and the friars owed spiritual subjection. Out of their mutual jealousies sprang umbrages; and these sometimes terminated in quarrels and injuries. In such cases, the abbots had the humiliating disadvantage to be under the obligation of canonical obedience to him, as the ordinary of the place, with whom they were at variance.

That they might deliver themselves from these inconveniencies, real or pretended, and might be independent of their rivals, they applied to Rome, one after another, for a release from this slavery, as they called it, by being taken under the protection of St Peter; that is, under immediate subjection to the Pope. The proposal was with avidity accepted at Rome. That politic court saw immediately, that nothing could be better calculated for supporting papal power. Whoever obtains privileges is obliged, in order to secure his privileges, to maintain the authority of the granter.

Very quickly all the monasteries, great and small, abbeys, priories and nunneries, were exempted. The two last were inferior sorts of monasteries, and often subordinate to some abbey. Even the chapters of cathedrals, consisting mostly of regulars, on the like pretexts, obtained exemption. Finally, whole orders, those called the congregations of Cluni and Cistertio, Benedictines and others, were exempted. This effectually procured a prodigious augmentation to the pontifical authority, which now came to have a sort of disciplined troops in every place, defended and protected by the papacy, who, in return, were its defenders and protectors, serving as spies on the bishops as well as on the secular powers. Afterwards the mendicant orders, or begging friars, though the refuse of the whole, the tail of the beast, as Wickliff termed them, whereof the Roman pontiff is the head, obtained still higher privileges; for they were not only exempted everywhere from episcopal authority, but had also a title to build churches wherever they pleased, and to administer the sacraments in these independently of the ordinary of the place. Nay, afterwards, in the times immediately preceding the convention of the aforesaid council, things had proceeded so far, that any private clerk could, at a small expense, obtain an

exemption from the superintendency of his bishop, not only in regard to correction, but in relation to orders, which he might receive from whomsoever he pleased, so as to have no connexion with the bishop of any kind.

What had made matters still worse was, that the whole business of teaching the Christian people had by this time fallen into the hands of the regulars. The secular clergy had long since eased themselves of the burden. Preaching and reading the sacred scriptures properly made no part of the public offices of religion. It is true, it was still the practice to read, or rather chant, some passages from the Gospels and Epistles in an unknown tongue: for all in the western churches must now, for the sake of uniformity, to which every thing was sacrificed, be in Latin. Now, for some centuries before the council of Trent, Latin had not been the native language of any country or city in the world, not even of Italy or of Rome. That such lessons were not understood by the people, was thought an objection of no consequence at all: they were not the less fitted for making a part of the solemn unmeaning mummery of the liturgic service. The bishops and priests having long disused preaching, probably at first through laziness, seem to have been considered at last as not entitled to preach; for, on the occasion above-mentioned, they very generally complained that the charge of teaching was taken out of their hands, and devolved upon the friars, especially the mendicants, who were a sort of itinerant preachers licensed by the court of Rome.

How the friars discharged this trust, we may learn from the most authentic histories, which sufficiently show, that the representations of the scope of their preaching, made by the bishops in that council, were not exaggerated, when they said, that the end of their teaching was not to edify the people, but to collect alms from them, either for themselves or for their convents; that, in order to attain this purpose, they solely considered, not what was for the soul's health, but what would please, and flatter, and soothe the appetites of the hearers, and thereby bring most profit to themselves; so that the people, instead of learning the doctrine of Christ, are but amused, said they, with mere novelties and vanities. But whatever be in this account, the Pope could not fail to

draw an immense advantage from this circumstance, that the instruction of the people was now almost entirely in the hands of his own creatures. How great then must be the advantage, of a similar but still more important kind, resulting from the exemptions granted to universities, who being taken as it were under his immediate patronage, were engaged from interest to instil principles of obedience to the Pope into the minds of the youth of whose education they had the care.

Now, if the chain of dependence of the secular clergy on the head be similar to that which subsists in a civil, particularly a feudatory constitution, where the obligation of every inferior, through the whole subordination of vassalage, is considered as being much stronger to the immediate superior than to the sovereign, the dependence of the regulars may justly be represented by the military connexion which subsists with the sovereign in a standing army. There the tie of every soldier and subaltern is much stronger to the king than to his captain or his colonel. If, then, the secular clergy, in Romish countries, may be called the Pope's civil officers, the regulars are his guards. This matter was too well understood by the friends of Rome, who were the predominant party in the council of Trent, ever to yield to any alteration here that could be called material. Some trifling changes, however, were made, in order to conciliate those who were the keenest advocates for reforming the discipline of the church, or at least to silence their clamours. The exemptions given to chapters were limited a little. The bishops were made governors of the nunneries within their bishoprics, not as bishops of the diocese, but as the Pope's delegates; and friars who resided in cloisters, and were guilty of any scandalous excess without the precincts of the cloister, if the superior of the convent, whether abbot or prior, refused, when required, to chastise them within a limited time, might be punished by the bishop.

I have now traced the principal causes which co-operated to the erection of the hierarchy, and shall, in what remains to be observed on the subject, in a few more lectures, consider both the actual state of church power, and the different opinions concerning it at the time of the council of Trent; which shall terminate our inquiries into the rise and establishment of the hierarchy.

LECTURE XX.

I HAVE now, in a course of lectures, endeavoured, with all possible brevity, to lay before you the principal arts by which the Roman hierarchy was raised, and have also pointed out some of the most remarkable events and occurrences which facilitated the erection. It is chiefly the progress of ecclesiastical dominion that I have traced. The papal usurpation on the secular powers, though I have explained its source in the erection of episcopal tribunals, and glanced occasionally at its progress, I have, for several reasons, not so expressly examined. One is, it does not so immediately affect the subject of the hierarchy, with which I considered myself as principally concerned: Another is, that the usurpation here is, if possible, still more glaring to every attentive reader of church history, and therefore stands less in need of being pointed out: A third reason is, that though the claims of superiority over the civil powers, formerly advanced by Rome with wonderful success, have never been abandoned, but are, as it were, reserved in petto for a proper occasion, yet at present the most sublime of their pretensions are little minded, and are hardly, as affairs now stand in Europe, capable of doing hurt. Nothing can be better founded than the remark, that the thunders of the Vatican will kindle no conflagration except where there are combustible materials. At present, there is hardly a country in Christendom so barbarously superstitious, (I do not except even Spain and Portugal), as to afford a sufficient quantity of those materials for raising a combustion. We never hear now of the excommunication and deposition of princes, of kingdoms laid under an interdict, and of the erection and the disposal of kingdoms by the Pope. Such is the difference of times, that these things, which were once the great engines of raising papal dominion, would now serve only to render it contemptible. The foundation of all is opinion, which is of great consequence in every polity, but is every thing in an ecclesiastic

polity. To the above reasons I shall add a fourth: It is only a part, and not the greater part neither, of the Roman Catholics, who acknowledge that the Pope, as pope or bishop, has any kind of authority in secular matters over the civil powers. They make but a party comparatively small, who carry the rights of the papacy so far as to include therein a paramount authority over all the powers of the earth, spiritual and temporal. A gentleman of the House of Commons, in a celebrated speech on the affairs of America, in the beginning of the American revolt, speaking of the religious profession of those colonies, denominated it the protestantism of the protestant religion. In imitation of the manner of this orator, I shall style the system of that high-flying party in the church of Rome, the popery of the popish religion. It is the very quintessence of papistry. Nay, we have some foundation even from themselves for naming it so; for those who hold it are, even among Roman Catholics, distinguished by the name pontificii, or papists, and mostly consist of the people and clergy of Italy, the immediate dependencies on the papal see, and the different orders of regulars. It was in a particular manner the system strenuously supported by the order of Jesuits now abolished. The doctrine of the more moderate Roman Catholics, which is that of almost all the laity, and the bulk of the secular clergy in all European countries, except Italy and its islands, is unfavourable to those high pretensions of the Roman pontiff. But even these are far from being entirely unanimous in regard to the spiritual power and jurisdiction which they ascribe to him. The bounding line which distinguishes the civil from the ecclesiastic, is one of the arcana of that church's policy, and therefore never to be precisely ascertained. I shall then, in order to give you some idea, ere I conclude, of the sublimity and plenitude of the ecclesiastic power claimed, in behalf of his holiness, over the ministers of the church by the advocates of that see, and to give you some notion of their manner of supporting those claims, exhibit to you the substance of a speech on episcopal jurisdiction, delivered in the council of Trent by Father Lainez, general of the Jesuits, translated from the Italian of Fra Paolo Sarpi. Afterwards,