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y 



UNIOV COLLEGE 
SCHENECTADY 



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L I- 









JW 



^ 



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THE 



HISTOEY OF EOMAIfISM: 



FROM THE EARLIEST CORRUPTIONS OF CHRISTIANITY 



TO THE PRESENT TIME. 



WITH FULL CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE, ANALYTICAL AND ALPHA- 

BETICAL INDEXES AND OLOSSARY. 



LLU8TRATED Bt NUMEROUS ACCURATE AND HIGHLY FINISHED EN- 
GRAVINGS OF ITS CEREMONIES, SUPERSTITIONS, PERSECUTIONS, 

AND HISTORICAL INCIDENTS* 



BY REV. JOHN DOWLING, A.M. 



PASTOR OF THE BBRBAN CHURCH, NEW YORK. 



) 



Rbt. ZTii., & 



r.VIO.VCUIJ.EGK 

s('}jkxf;(-t\i)\ 



FOURTH EDITION. 






/^ 



NEW YORK: 
EDWARD WALKER, 114 FULTON STREET. 

1845. 



T«E NEW YCTrkI 

PUBLIC LIBRARY] 



A«TO»|, LCIiOX AND 
TILDCN FOUWOATlOJift 



Eauved aceordiog to Act of Congreait fn the ]re«r 1845, by 

EDWARD WALKER. 

In the Clerk*! Office of the Diitiict Court for the Southern Diitrlot of New York. 




119 rolloo BtTMt 



O. ValaatliM. 8Mr«otyp«r. 
45 O^d Stnau 



« * . . 



PREFACE. 



mmmtmfv 



Thb present work is intended to sttpply a chasm that has long beeo 
felt by miniaters, theological students, and other intelligent protet* 
tantSy in the faislorical and religioas literature of the age. 

While a multitude of works have been published (many of great 
â–¼aloe) on the subjects of controrersy between protestants and 
papists, or on special topics illnstratire of particular periods in the 
history, or particular traits in the character of Fbpery, the need has 
long been felt of a complete, yet comprehensiye History of Roman- 
ism, through the whole period of its existence, which, in the couk 
pass of a single Tolume, might present, in chronolo^cal order, the 
origin and history of its unscriptural doctrines and ceremonies, the 
biography of its most fiunous (or infamous) popes, the proceedings 
and decrees of its most celebrated councils, with so much of die 
details of its tyranny OTor monarchs and states in the days of its 
glory— of its inquisitions, massacres, tortures, and burnings— and 
of the successful or unsuccessful efforts of reformers, in various 
ages, to rescue the worid from its thraldom, as mfght be necessary 
for a foil exhibition of its unchanging character. 

There are comparatively but few ministers or private Christians 
who can spare either the leisure or the expense to procure and to 
study the library of works— Roman Catholic as well as protestant, 
Latin as well as English — ^through which are scattered the multi- 
plicity of facts relative to this subject, a knowledge of which is 
necessary to all who would understand the true character of 
Popery, and be prepared to defend against its Jesuitical apologists 
and defenders the doctrines of Protestantism and of the Bible. 
Hence the desirableness of a work which should collect together 
all such fects as might be necessary for this purpose from these 
sources, and present them in systematic order, and in as striking 
a point of light as the importance of the subject might demand. 

Such a work is attempted in the present volume. The subject 
has for years past occupied the attention of the author, and much 
of his reading and research has been directed into this channel. 



It PR£FACE. 

Probably, however, years more might have elapsed before he woula 
have summoned courage to present such a work to the world, had 
it not been for the persuasions of his enterprising publisher, Mr 
Walker, and his assurances that if the author would prepare his 
materials for the press, he would spare no expense to issue the 
work in a style of mechanical execution and artistical embellish* 
menl superior in these respects to any work that has ever been 
published in America upon the character or the history of Roman* 
ism. How completely Mr. Walker has redeemed this promisOf the 
appearance and illustrations of the volume must testify. 

With respect to the matter of the work, the author has availed 
himself of all the standard and authentic works on general and 
ecclesiastical history, on the Inquisition and Persecution of Popery^ 
on the Reformers and the Reformation, and on the points of contro- 
versy between Popery and Protestantism to which he could 
gain access, either in private collections or in public libraries. 
Among Roman Catholic authors, the Latin annals of Baronius and 
Raynaldus (the great storehouse of Romish history), and the Church 
histories of Fleury and Dupin, have been freely examined, besides 
the works of Bellarmine, Paul Sarpi, and many others of a more 
special or limited scope, relating to particular pontifis, councils or 
events. Full extracts have been made from the bulls of Popes and 
the decrees of Councils, especially of the council of Trent, illustra- 
tive of the doctrines and character of Popery. These valuable 
and authentic documents are taken from their own standard works, 
and printed generally in the original Latin, with the English trans- 
lation in parallel columns. This plan has been adopted, so as to 
permit Popery to speak for itself, and for the purpose of obviating 
the common objection of Romanists, of inaccurate translations. 

Among protestant writers, most of the standard historians and 
writers on Romanism have been consulted, and from them impor* 
tant facts have been freely gleaned. The references at the foot of 
the page will show the extent of the author's obligation to Gieseler, 
Edgar, Conyers Middleton, Isaac Taylor, Mosheim, Jones, Bower, 
Walch, Ranke, Robertson, Waddington, Hallam, George Stanly 
Paber, Southey, Townley, Sismondi, Russell, Tillotson, Jortin, Bar- 
row, Chillingworth, L'Enfant, Bonnechose, D'Aubign^, Cox, Lim- 
borch, Llorente, Puigblanch, Perttn, Cramp, Elliott, M'Crie, Lorimer, 
Browning, &c. &c., besides a multitude of other authors referred to 
in the course of the work. The learned " Text-book of Ecclesiastical 
History*' by Gieseler, and the " Variations of Popery" by Dr. Edgar, 



. PBEFAGB. T 

Bife been found especially vahiaUe, for the copioua citationi from 
original aulhoritiefl» many of which are not to be found in America. 
In tome instancea, the focti mentioned in these authorities ha?a 
been translated and incorporated in the present woi^ ; and in otheri^ 
some of the most remarkable citations from original Romish author- 
ities have been copied^ on account of their immense value to the 
scholar and the thedogian* as illustrative of the character of 
Romanism^ as drawn by her own writers. 

The copious analytical and alphabetical Indexes, Glossary, and 
fiill Chronological Tablet have been prepared with much labor and 
care ; and the author hesitates not to say, from the inconvenienee 
he has often experienced in consulting works, from the want of such 
tables, will be found a most valuable addition to the worL 

The engravings were executed by Mr. B. J. Lossing, of 
New York, and are not mere fancy sketches for the sake of 
embellishment, but are illustrative of unquesti(»iable facU^ and 
intended to impress those fiusts more vividly upon the memory. A 
M description of the subject of each will be found in the page 
adjoining; an important desideratum, the absence of which de- 
strojrs more than half the value of many pictorial embellishments. 

The author only deems it necessary to add, that he has en- 
deavored to avoid all matters of controversy between the differ- 
ent denominations of proteslant Christians. He has written as a 
member of the great protestant family, and not as a member of any 
one particular branch of that family. It is his belief that all pro- 
testants should unite in the conflict with Rome ; and it has been 
his aim to furnish, from the armory of truth, weapons for that con- 
flict, which shall be alike acceptable to all — to the Protestant Epis- 
copalian, the Presbyterian^ the Lutheran, the Dutch Reformed, the 
Congregational ist, the Methodist, the Baptist, and, in a word, to 
every one who is not ashamed of the name of PROTESTANT. 

To that (rod, who has declared in the sure word of prophecy, 
that ** Babylon the Great" must fall, the author humbly commits his 
book. If the work shall be the means of extending light through- 
out our yet happy America, upon the history and character of that 
hierarchal despotism, which is straining every nerve to reduce the 
people of this land to its tyrannical sway, and of thus arresting the 
efllbrts of Rome to spread over the western continent, the darkness, 
the superstition and the mental and spiritual thraldom of the middle 
ages, he will feel that he is richly rewarded. J. D. 

Benan Parxonage^ Bedford fireet, > 
yew York, July lOth, 1845. C 

2 



ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTBl^rS. 



HI8T0BT OF ROMANISM. 



<WW«nMMMMM»MMMaMMMMWII«# 



BOOK L--POPERT IN VUBBYO.r^Vmm tbb sAsunr imaug t m m cr 
CaMmnAMot to thm MlTal •onuuox* ▲.». 008. 

Gkaptie L^CkriaHmiijf PrkMm mU PifA 

I l.--€lnM»s kingdom DoC of diit mild, U 

|Sw--Apoidet doipued an worldly hooon, U 

jS-^-Primitifeaiidp^airiitiuii^eoiitimil^ M 

|4^— PntffingeflbetofptguipeTWciitioiM, •••••• SI6 

{6.— Fopefjasabjectofpraiilie^. Teitidliui quoted, • • • • 99 

{8^— TIm UndniKe to the ravehtioo of tiM *inui of rin'*nmof«d intiM 

tiiae of the eaupaor Oowtmrtine, ••••-• 99 

|7^— fihqipoied mimeoloas conveiaion qf CoMtenHnei • • • • 80 

|8.-— Undertakes to remodd the goivenuneiilc^ the diQick Dignity of the 

Patriarchs, &c., .... ...-81 

{ 9. — Bishops of Rome. Spiritual assumntion and tyranny of Victor. First 

instanoa of pretended authority or Rome over other hishops, - 89 

1 10. — Stephen, bishop of Rome, ezdmles St Cyprian of Cartha^, bat the 
ezoommnnication regarded as of no aamority. Increasmff wealth 
and pride of the bishops. Bfartin of Tours and the emperor Mazimns, 38 

Chaptbb m. — 8t^ toward papal Supttmaeif. 

) 11.— 43imple organiiation and government of the primitive churches, - 86 

1 19w— ^rieseler's and Mosheim's account of the frst changes in this primi- 
tive form. This change the first step toward Popery, - - - 86 

{ 18.^ — Another step toward papal supremacy. Council of Saidisj in 347, al- 
lows of appeals to Home. I)eci8ion of Zosimus, in 416, in the case 
of an appeal, rejected by the African bishops, who refiised to ao- 
knowleoge the authority of the decree of Saitlis, - - - 89 

|14w— Other steps. Law of Valentinian. Romish decretals. Council of 

Chalcedoo, 40 

{16- — Faviv of the difirent barbarian conquerors, - .... 42 

{ 16. — Willinffness of the Roman pontiffs to conciliate them, by adopting 

heauen rites. Testimony of Robertson and Hallaniy ... 42 

CsAFTKE IV. — Divine right cf supremacy claimed and disproved, 

f 17«— A mspenontj of rank had been tacitly conceded by many to the bishop 
of Rome, on account of the importance of that city. After the fall 
of Rome, ito bishops began to demand supremacy as a divine rights 44 



viii ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS 

{ 18. — ^The claim examined. No proof that Peter was ever bishop of Rome, 44 

} 19. — ^Nor if he had been, that he was constituted by Christ supreme head of 

the church, ----------46 

{ 30. — Others more worthy, Paul, Peter, and John, and wherefore, - - 47 

^21. — ^If Peter had been supreme, still no proof that the supremacy de- 
scended. Note. Uncertainty about the first bishops of Rome, - 48 

Chapter V. — Popery fuUy established, — The man cf m revealed. 

{ 22. — ^Disgraceful and bloody struggles between rival pontifi&, - - - 60 

} 23. — Contests between the bishops of Rome and Constantinople, for the title 

of Universal Bishop, --------61 

{ 24. — Gregory's letter to the patriarch John, against the ^ blasphemous " title, 62 

{ 26. — ^Ilis letters to the emperoi Mauritius on the same subject The title ob- 
tained by pope Boniface IIL, for himself and his successors, by the 
grant of the tyrant Phocas, A. D. 606, - - . . - 63 

{ 26. — ^Henceforward the religion of Rome properly termed Popery, or the 

religion of the Pope, ---------66 

Chapter VI. — Papal Supremacy. — The actors in its establishment. — The tyrant 
Phocas, the Saint Gregory, and the pope Boniface. 

\ 27. — Efibct of the establishment of the papal supremacy, - - - 67 

{ 28. — Biography of the emperor Phocas, the author of the papal supremacy, 68 

{ 29. — His cruel massacre of the emperor Mauritius and five sons. His mur- 
der of the queen and daughters, -------68 

{ 30. — Gibbon's character of this blood-thirsty tyrant, . - - - 69 

{ 31-33. — Saint Gregory's flatteries of the tyrant Phocas, and joy at his suc- 
cess, on account of his flELvor to the Roman See, - - - - 60 

{84. — Boniface exercises his newlv obtained supremacy. His decree de- 
claring all elections of bishops null and void, unless confirmed \j 
the Universal Bishop, the Pope, -.---. 64 

BOOK II.— POPERY AT ITS BIRTH, A. D. 606.— Its doctrihal ahd ri- 
tual CHARACTER AT THIS EPOCH. 

Chapter I. — Romish errors traced to their origin. — Their early growth no argUf 

ment in their favor. 

} 1. — ^The germs of popish errors of early date. No argument in their fistvor, 66 

} 2. — Chillingworth's noble sentiment quoted, ^ The Bible only the religion 

of Protestants," - --- 66 

} 3. — Protestantism defined. Refuses to receive any doctrine upon the mere 

authority of tradition, --....--66 

i 4. — ^Papists and Puseyites place the BiUe and Tradition wpaa a level, - 67 

Chapter II. — Origin of Romish errors continued. — CeUbacy of the clergy. 

i 6. — ^Forbidding to marry a mark of anti-Christ. Note : Is marriage a ne- 
cessary qualification for a minister ?-----. 69 

{6. — ^Tertullian's extravagant praise of celibacy. Consequences of such 

notions, ---.-.-....70 

{ 7. — Sensible remarks on this subject, by Clement of Alexandria, - - 71 

{ 8. — Cyprian's address to female devotees. Consecrating and crowning of 

Nuns, ----.---.-.71 

} 9. — Second marriages prohibited to the clergy. Next step in the innovatioQ, 

they are forbidden to marry at all, after ordination, - - - 72 

1 10. — ^Paphnutius, at the council of Nice, opposes this corraptioD, - - 72 



ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. ix 



PASB 



1 11. — ChryBostom's nngular explanation of the parable of the ten virgingy 75 

{ 12.— Siricios, bishop of Rome, decrees the celibacy of the clergy, - - 77 

i 13. — This doctrine plainly contrary to the New Testament Note : The early 

Refonners, vigilantiiis and Jerome, --.-.. 77 

} 14. — ^Instances of primitive married clergymen, ----- 79 

Chaptss nL — Origin of Romish errors continued, — Worship of the Virgin Mary, 

{ 15. — Chrysostom's description of the sanctity of a professed virgin, - - 80 

) 16. — Fanciful conceits in the fourth century, relative to the perpetual virgin- 
ity of Mary, 81 

} 17. — Origin of the worship of the Virgin Mary. Sect of the Collyridians, 88 

) 18. — ^Modern worship of the Virgin worse than that q{ the ancient heretics. 

Instances of this kind of modem idolatry, ----- 88 

( 19. — The idolatrous reverence of the Virgin accelerated by the Nestorian 
controversy, about the title " mother of God." Images of the Virgin. 

Note: Amusing anecdote of the emperor Constantine Copronymns, 86 

|90. — Festivals eatabliahed in honor of the Virgin Mary, - - - • 86 



Chaptbr IV. — Origin of Romish errors continued. — Monkery, 

)S1. — ^Monkery of heathen origin. Originated in ESgypt, • . • 87 

{88. — ^Besemblanoe between heathen and Christian anchorites, • • 88 

{83. — ^Eariy monks. Paul, Anthony, Hilarion, Martin of Tours, - • 88 

\ 84. — Gregory Nazianzen quoted. Symeon, the pillar saint, - - - 89 

1 86. — ^Monasteries and abbots, ..--.-..90 

)S6. — ^EUempted from the jurisdiction of bishops, and taken under the protec- 
tion of the popes. Thus become the tools of Rome. Instance of 
inhuman severity to a poor monk, by Gregory the Great, - - 91 

J 27. — ^Monkish saints and their fabulous legends, ..... 98 

Chapter V. — Origin of Romish errors continued, — Worship of saints and relics, 

\ 88. — ^Invocation of saints grew up by degrees, from the reverence paid to mar- 
tyrs. Relics enshrined m altars, ...... 93 

1 29. — St Ambrose's discovery of the bodies of two saints. Relics necessary, 

before a Komish church can be consecrated, .... 93 

}30. — Bodies of saints embalmed in Egypt. Churches dedicated to them, 94 

\ 31. — Gregory Nazianzen's invocations to his departed father and St. Cyprian, 97 

\ .32. — ^Worship of images unknown to Christians in the fourth century. Let- 
ter of Epiphanius, ..--..--.98 

J 33. — ^Pagan ceremonies imitated and adopted, ..... 98 

} 34. — Frauds. Fictitious saints and relics. Bones of a thief reverenced as a 

saint, ---...-....99 

{ 35. — Mount Soracte converted into a saint, - - - - - -100 

{ 36. — Ludicrous mistakes in saint-making. Saints Evodia, Viar, and Amphi- 

bolus, the name of a cloak. St. Veronica, - - - - 101 

) 37. — Two pernicious maxims arose. That it was lawful to deceive, and to 

persecute for the good of the church, - - - - - - 102 

\ 38. — ^Praying at the sepulchres of the saints. Other superstitions, - - 105 

\ 39. — Increase of superstition in the sixth century. Purgatory, efficacy of 

relics, &c., .......... 106 

\ 40.^-St, Gregory's curious letter to the Empress, in reply to her request for 

the head of St. Paul. Wonderful prodigies, .... 107 

) 41. — St, Gregory exalts the merit of pilgrimages, inculcates Purgatory, &c. 

First mention of Purgatory, -.-.--- 108 



X ANALYTICAL TABLE OP CONTENTS. 

f 43.— WHh few exceptioni, Popery at its birth, in 606, and Popeiy in fta do- 
tage, in the nineteenth century, identical, - - - - -109 

Chaptbe Vl,^8triking rtsembUmce between pagan and papai cerem o n i es^— 'The 

latter derived from the former. 

} 43. — ^The classical scholar cannot avoid recognizing the resemblance, • 109 

} 44. — ^Earl J adoptten of these pagan ceremonies. This policy adopted by 

Gregory Thaamaturgns, ----•.-• no 

\ 46. — ^After Constantino, this sinful conformity to Paganism increased. Chris- 
tianized Paganism. Saying of Augustine, - - - -111 

{ 46. — ^Dr. Convers Middleton's visit to Rome. His object not to study Po- 
pery, but the pagan classics. Discovered that the best waj to study 
Paganism, was to study Popery, which luid been mostly copied from it, 1 IS 

{47. — ^Instances of this conformity, - ..-•... 113 

(1.)— Worshipping toward the East, ••••-•. 114 

(2.)— burning of incense, ..•--.••. 115 

: (3.)— Use of holy water. Sprinkling of hones on St Anthony's day, • 116 

(4.) — ^Burning of wax candles in the day-time, • • . • • 121 

(5.)— Yodve gifts and oflbrings, ' \%\ 

(6.)— Adoration of idols or images, .•••••• ISS 

fr.)— The 'gods ofthe Pantheon turned into popish saints, • • • 134 

' (8.) — ^Road gods and saints, 135 

(9.)— The Pope and the Pontifex Mazimus, and kissing the Pope's toe, • 1S6 

(10.) — Processions of worshippers and self-whippers, .... 197 

(11.)— Religions orders of monks, nuns, dLc., ..••-• 128 

\ 48. — ^This conformity acknowledj^ed b^ a Romish author. Hence the conclu- 
sion drawn that Popery is mamly derived from Paganism, - - 129 

\ 49. — St Gregory instructs Augustin the monk, and Serenus, bishop of Mar- 
seilles, to &vor the pagan ceremonies, . . • - . I80 

BOOK m.— POPERY ADVANCING.— From the bstabushiisiit or thb 
ansiTUAL suFREMACT, A. D. 606, TO THS fofe's tsmforal sovsbxiohtt, 756, 

AXD TO THE CSOWXIHa OF THl BMPBBQB GHABLEHAOHEy 800. 

Chapter I.^ — Qradual increase of (he papal power, — Davknea^ superstkiomf ^md 

ignorance of thie period. 

\ 1. — ^The churches did not all immediately submit to the supremaey of the 

Pope, 133 

} 2. — ^Election of the popes confirmed by the emperon or tiieb viceroys, - 134 

1 3. — ^Rival candidates for the popedom. Sergius pays the Exarch a hundred 

pounds of gold to secure his election, .-.-•- 136 

\ 4. — ^Means taken by the popes to enlarge their power. Pope Vitatianus 

appoints, by his own authority, Theodore as archbishop of Canterbury, 136 

1 6. — Important matters of dispute. Diflerent modes of shaving heads, - 136 

{ 6. — ^Archbishop Theodore detained at Rome three months, to have lus head 

shaved, -- 139 

1 7. — ^The popes encourage appeals to their tribunal, by deciding in favor of 

the appellant Instance. Appeal of Wilfred, bishop of York, • 139 

^ 8.— First instance of a pontiff requiring an oath of allegiance. Boniface, 

bishop of Germany, •----•-•• 140 

{ 9«— Felix, archbishop of Ravenna, rejects the authority of tiie Pope, who^ 
with the Emperor, inflicts upon him the most horrid crueltifla. His 
eyes dog ou^ Ac, • •••..- ••141 



ANALYTICAL TABLE OF GQNTEmRl. si 

(lOw— Ori^ of kiMbgtfie Pope's foot PopeCoMlaatiiio'svkiltoOoMlui- 

tmople. fkroied by the empMor Jiiiitiii»ii| • ^ . • 141 

11.— Cinel chmmcter of tfak tynmt, •-•.«« ^ 1^ 

IS.— IgBortBoe aai dezimeee of this age. Biehope viable to wiite, • I4t 

i>. â– Specimen of pqial reawoning, to prove that mopkaaieaiigele. 8t Peter 

in penoB oonaecrating a chwch, •-•••• 144 

14w— Specimen of the doctrine of this age. StEligiiu,- ... 144 

Idw— BJae of MahomelaniBniy -•^•••.. 145 



Gbarie TL^Histary tf the B&moAdUe c a n i ra9e n ff,^PMe EbmHtu eimdemmi 
Off a htTttfCf hff ike tixih genentl couneQ^ A. D. ^. 

16ii— Oiigm of thia controveny, •••••••« 140 

17w— Pbpe Honoring pro fe aae a himaelf in &?ar of die doetiine of one wilL 

Tlie decree called the Eehtfaeaia, 14i 

18w— Pofie John IV. diftra from hia ptedeceaaor HonotiiUy and aaaAemar 

tiaea the doctrine, «•••-. ..^ I47 

19-Mw— Pngreaaoftiiediapiite, ^140 

tl.— Pope Theodore eieommuiicatea Pyrriraa, and aigna the aentanoe with 

the eonaecrated wine of the aaciament, • * • • • 140 

1^. — Pyiriraa raatored to hia dignity of patriarch of Conatantinqde, notwith- 

iihinding the Pope's anathema, ••-•••« liO 

ttw— Pope Martin aeiied and banished by the Emperor, • • • • IM 

S4.— Pope Engenina and Vitalianoa more moderate, • • • • i^i 

M. — Pope Honorioa condemned at the aiitfa general coimeil, lor hereay. 

Monothelitiam condemned, •••.••• 151 

\i$^ — Leaaona from thia controversy. ••«..*• IM 

(1.) — Popes carefril to advance their anthority, . • • . • 152 

(S.)— Their authority not yet aniversaUy received, - - - • - 168 

(I.) — Popes did not yet dare to anathematize and depose kings, • • 16S 

(4)— Disproves papal infidlibility. Note: Extracts from Bellarmine, dltc., 
infiJlioility, - -•----••- 



Gurm in^-^imdge'Wor$ki9,^'fh»n the heginmng of Hie great eontroveny on 
Au tubfeet^ to the death of the emperor Leo^mid of fope Oregory^boA in the tame 
fear« A.II. 741. 

i^-SS. — Opinions of the early fathers relative to image-worship, • • 154 

§29. — Paidiniis adorns a church with pictures, A. D. 431, • • . 165 

f tOv— St Gregory's opinion. Pope Constantine in 718, enrses those who 

deny veneration to images, •••-•.. 156 

1 31w— Commencement of the great controversy, in 726, • • . • 156 

I tt. — ^Efibits of the emperor Leo to destroy image-worship. Insurrection in 

conseqnence ot his decree in 730, ...-•• 157 

fSSw— Pope Gregory's insulting letter to the emperor Leo, ... 158 

f 34^— Revolt against the Emperor at Rome, in consequence of his decree 

against imagea, •....-••-- 159 

f 35.— Letter of pope Gregory m., to Leo, 160 

{ 36. — Gregory expends vast sums on images and rolics at Rome. The Em- 
peror and the Pope both die, A. D. 741, i(M) 

CkAPTtn IV. — Conthmatum of the controversy on Image^worskip.^'F)rom the deaik 
<fLee and Gng&rv, A.D. 741, to the ettMiahment ofihu idolairyt hy Ae aeoomi 
general eomncU of rfiee^ A. D. 784. 

|f7w— TheemperOrCoAatantineV.aldlpopeZadiaiy, • * • « lit 



»i ANALYTICAL TABLE OP CONTENXa 

PAsa 

J 38.— Imftge-wonhip condeamed by the council at Constantinople, in 764, 162 

\ 89. — Crimes of the empress Irene, vife of the emperor Leo IV., - - 162 

} 40. — ^Baronius justifies- the torture or murder of her son, - - - •163 

1 41. — She assembles the seccHid council of Nice, in 784, which finally estab- 
lishes image-worship^ ........ 164 

|4d. — ^Popish idolatry thus established by law, - - - - - - 164 

Chapter V. — _The Pope JlnaUy becomes a temporal sovereign, A. D. 766. 

{ 43. — ^Rebellious tumults at Rome. Rome becomes a kind of republic under 

the Pope, 166 

} 44-46. — The Pope applies, in 740, to Charles Maitel, for help against the 

Lombards, -....-----. 166 

} 46. — Pope Zachary and Luitprand, king of the Lombards, ... 167 

1 47. — ^Pepin of France, with the approval and advice of Zachary, depoees his 

master Childeric, ..-.-...- 167 

} 48-49. — Rome in danger from Aistulphus, king of the Lombards, - - 167 

} 60. — Succored by Pepin, who forces the Lombards to yield up the exarchate 

to the Pope, 169 

} 61. — ^Aistulphus, after Pepin's return, refuses to deliver up tiie places to the 

Pope, 169 

)63. — ^Pope Stephen applies again to Pepin, ...... 170 

1 63. — Forges a letter to Pepin from St Peter in heaven, - • • - 171 

} 64. — ^Pepin forces Aistulphus to keep his engagement with the Pope, who 

thus becomes a temporal monarch, A. D. 766, - - • - 17] 

CkAFTER VI. — The confirmation and increase of the Pope's temporal powers to ike 

coronation of Charlemagne^ A.D. 800. 

{66. — ^limits of the papal territories, ....... 174 

{ 66. — Enlarged by Charlemagne, - - •- - - - - 174 

} 67-68. — Charlemagne twice visits Rome, ...... 176 

{ 69. — Crowned Emperor by the Pope, A. D. 800, . - . - - - - 176 

} 60-61. — ^Daniel's little horn and three horns or kingdoms plucked up by it 

Final complete establishment of the independence of the papal states, 177 

BOOK IV.— POPERY IN ITS GLORY.— THE WORLD'S MIDNIGHT-— 
From the coronation of Charlemagne, A. D. 800, to the beoinnihg or 

THE PONTIFICATE OF POPE HlLDEBRAND, OR GrEGORT VH., A. D. 1073. 

Chapter I. — Proofs cf the darkness of this veriod, — Forced deeret£ds, — Reverenct 
for monkSy saints, and relics. Worship of the Virgin, Purgatory, 

\ 1. — ^This period designated the dark ages, the iron age, &c. Lamentable 

ignorance, ....-.-.-*. 181 

1 2. — ^False decretals. Pretended donation of Constantine. Extract from it, 182 

{ 3. — ^The world duped for centuries, by these forgeries. Gibbon quoted, 183 

{ 4. — ^Acknowledged bv Baronius, Fleury, and other Romanists, to be forged. 
* Opinions of tiallam, Mo^eim, and Campbell, - - - - 184 

{ 6-6. — ^Increasing reverence for monks, relics, &c., .... 186 

{7-8. — ^Multiplication of new saints. Absurd legends of their lives, - 186 

{ 9. — ^The popes assume the exclusive privilege of saint-making, - - 187 

1 10.P— Increase of festivals or saints' days. Feast of All-Saints, - - 188 

) ll.-*Aosary of the Virgin. Absurd stories invented to do her honor. Specie 

mens, -.-...-...- 189 

) la— Fean of Purgatory. Fetftof All-Soolf, 19Q 



ANALTTIGAL TABLE OF OCfflTENTS. jja 



CaimM IL — P^^ocfit of ike JaHatess of this period oofiltmiedL — Origin tmiJMl 
ettehH$hmeni of TVansii^stantiafttm. — Persectitvm of Bertnger^ Us famous » 
poaer. — Popish miracles in its protf. 



} 13.— TimDsnbBtMitiatioiii an innih to cammnn tense. Stated in the wonk 

of its advocates, ----..... |^ 

}14^-^Hrattnu:ea of the doctrine in 754. Tillotsoo (jnotod, • . . 193 

i 15.— Psschasins Radbeit in 931, first formaOy propoonds this absurdity, - 193 

} 1&— Rabanos Manros's treatise in oi^iosition to it, A. D. 847. QnotatioD 

from it, 194 

{17-18.— The celebrated Berenger opposes Tiansnbstantiation, His perse- 

etflioAs and death, in 1088, 195 

1 19.— first made an article of fiuth, in tlie fourth cooncfl of Lateran, A. D. 

1915. The deerea quoted, 197 

iiO.— Means hv which the worship of the wafer idol was established. Pre- 
tended miracles of bees, asses^ dogs, and horses worshipping it Six 
• spcjuJBwe, as given by Romish writers, ..... 199 

I SI .—Cannibalism of tiie doctrine. Romish andiora quoted showinff why 

the ooDsecrated wate does not look like ** raw and bkwdy fl^," 901 

(SS.—^ Lying wonders," a characteristic of anti-Christ, . • . • 999 

J83-24.— Horrid blasphemies of a pope and a cardinal. Creating God, the 
Creator of all tbinss. Tlie decree of Trent on TransnbstantiatiaL 
Cais es npoQ all who do not believe it, - • • • . . 908 

Chattek HL — Protfo of the darkness of this period cotUinued. — Baptism of bdls^ 

and Festival of tie Ass. 

{S5.— Bsptism of bells first introduced by pope John Xm., in 973, - - 907 

{ 36-97. — Descriptions of this absurd ceremony at Montreal and Dublin, - 907 

{38. — Carious ancient description of bell-baptism from Philip Stnbbes, a. d. 

1589, 911 

{99.- Feast of the ass. Original and translation of the ode smig by the 

priests in honor of the ass, - - . - - . - . 913 

Chaptsb IV. — Profligate popes and clergy of this period. 

\ 30. — Holy links in the mihroken chain of apostolic snccession, • - 915 

j 31. — John VUL, a monster of cmelty, 916 

\ 39.— Sergios ID., the &ther of pope John XI., the bastard eon of the harlot 

Marozia, ...-.-.-.-. 917 

}33w— John X. the paramonr of the harlot Theodora, sister of Marozia, 

raised to the papal throne by her means, ..... 917 

{ 34. — John XL the bastard of pope Sergios ID., ..... 317 

1 35. — John Xn. nephew of John the bastard. His monstrous tyranny, de- 
bauchery, and cruelty, ........ ais 

\ 36. — ^These &ct8 admitted by Romanists. Baronius quoted, - - • 919 

f 37. — ^Attempts of Romanists to reconcile the profligacy of their popes with 
apostolic succession and uapa] infallibility. Father Gahan quoted. 
*'I)o all that they say, ana not what they do," .... 920 

( 38. — ^Benedict IX. described by pope Victor m. as " a successor of Simon 
the sorcerer, and not of Simon the apostle." No doubt, true, but 
what becomes of the uninterrupted apostolic succession, - - 991 

1 39. — ^The vices of the popes imitated by the inferior clergy, ... 991 

{40.^ — Concubines of the priests confessing to their paramours, - - 999 

h 41 «— Priestly concubinage declared by Romanists a less crime than mar- 
riage, - 998 



sdT ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTa 

{ 42-44. — Amidst all this profligacy, the power and influence of the popes fai- 
creased. Accounted for by the ignorance of the Scriptures, the 
authori^ of the fomd decretals, Sod donation of Constantine, and 
the awud terrors of excommunication and interdict, - • - 224 

1 46. — ^The iron age of the world was the golden age of Pqiery. An im- 
portant truth taught by this &ct, ...••• 236 

Chaftbb V. — Popery in Englanivrior to the eonouesL Augustin Hie minionanff 

and Dunstan the mom, 

{ 46. — PrimitiTe Welsli^ Christians refuse to submit to Popery, • • - 297 

\ 47.— Augustin's reception in England by king Ethelbert Ten thousand 

converU in a day, ••••••••• 228 

f48. — ^The ancient pagan temples of Enriand converted Into Christian 
churches with the same &cility, ay washing the walls with My 
watoTf and depositing relic$ in them, •-•••• 228 

{ 49. — ^Increase of popish superstitions. The Pope's evnning eonlrivaiiee to 

raise a tribute in England, •.-•••• 229 

{60. — Odo, an archbishop of the school of Hildebrand, • • • • 280 

} 61. — Saint Dunstan, abbot of GUstonbury, pulls the devil's nose wilfa red- 
hot tongs (!) and performs other wonderful miracles, • • • 280 

{ 62. — ^Description of the remams of Glastonbury Abbeys ... SBl 

\ 68-64. — ^Dunstan is made archbishop of Canterbury, and works mirades to 

show the wickedness of marriage in the clergy, ... 2S2 

1 66. — Dunstan pays a visit to Heaven, learns a song from the angels, and re- 
turns to teach it to his m^cs. His death in 988, ... 335 

BOOK v.— POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT.— From thb Accsssioir or 
POPE GsBOORT vn., A. D. 1073, to the death of Bosifacb vm., A. D. 1808. 

Chapter I. — The life and reign of pope ERJdebrand or Gregory VII. 

\ 1. — ^Hildebrand's influence at Rome before he became pope, • - • 287 

{ 2. — ^Robert of Normandy ptanaded to acknowledge himself a vassal of 

Rome, 238 

} 8.-^The decree confining the election of pope to the cardinals, - • 288 

{ 4. — ^Hildebrand chosen Pope. His inordinate ambition and tyranny, • 289 

f 6. — ^His plans for a universal empire, with the Pope at the head, • * 240 

} 6. — Commencement of his contest with the emperor Henry IV., • - 241 

} 7. — ^Dispute about investitures with the ring and the crosier, • - 241 

\ 8. — Gregory threatens the Emperor with excommunication, . • • 248 

\ 9. — Executes his threats, and deposes him from the empue. Henry's ab- 
ject humiliation. He waits three days at the gate of the palace, 
where the Pope was, before he is granted the privily ^ xissing 
the Pope's toe, ....^k.^.. 343 

1 10. — ^Henry renounces his submission, and is a second time excommuni- 
cated. Extracts from the Pope's anathema, m * m , 344 

\ 11. — Sequel of Henry's life. His own sons seduced to rebel against him, 247 

1 12. — Unnatural conduct of his son Henry. Misfortunes and death of the 

unfortunate old Emperor, •••^•«*<. 248 

t^KAFTSR XL— 14^ of Gregory VIL continued. Other thsftmoef of &ts tyranny 

and usurpation, 

1 18. — ^Pope Gregory claims Spain as belonging to St Peter, • • - 249 

{ 14.-'-His demand of Peter-pence in France. Ujb claim of Hungary as ^ 

property of the Holy See, -260 



iOkALTHCAL TABLE 01* CONTENTS. if 



\ 16w— MdoM tUOut ckinn upon Conict, Sardinia, Dalmatia, and Rwaia. 

Meota with leas aneceae in England than anywhere elae, • - 36i 
16. — Maxima or Dictates of Hildebrand, • .... 252 

17.— Qnesdon of their genuineness. The tyrannieal doctrines of Hilde- 
brand advocated in the nineteenth century. This pope, Gregory 
Vn., still reverenced by papists as a Saiht, . • • • 26$ 

18. — The learned Deylingios's account of the gradual rise of papal power 

andtfranny, 854 

Chaftbe m. — Pope Urban and the Cru$adei. 

19. — ^Rival popea, Victor, Clement, and Urban. Ceremony of sprinkling 
with uhes on Ash-Wednesday established by pope Urban. Incena- 
ing of crosses, ••....••. 359 

90.*Pblie Urban establishes tiie crusades at the council of Clermont in 1096,269 

Nate — ^Popular and wide-spread panic of the end of the world in the year 

1000, 360 

il^-^-Peier the hermit viaits Palestine, and upon his return preachea the 

crusades,- •••••.•••• 951 

93-23. — ^Eloquent speech of pope Urban in &vor of the crusades, - - 969 

34. — General enthusiasm of the people. Multitudes set out for Jerusalem, 368 

86. — ^Effects of the crusades in enriching the popes and the priesthood, - 364 

36. — ^Vast quantities of pretended relics introduced from Palestine, - 366 

Cbaftse IV. — Popery in England after the conquest. Archbishope Ansebn and 

Thomas a Becket, 

97. — William of Normandy obtains the Pope's sanction of his intended in- 
vasion of England, who sends him as a token of his fiivor, a ring 
with onecf St, Peter's hairs. (/) 866 

38. — ^After William's conquest, Gregory requires him to do homage to him 

for the kingdom of England, but king William refuses, - - 367 

39. — Quarrel between archbishop Anselm and king William Rufus, - 368 

30. — ^Honors to Anselm at Rome. The English required to kiss his toe, 368 

31. — ^Anselm refuses to do homage to king Henry, the successor of William, 369 

33. — Haughty claims of pope Pascal, and overbearing insolence of Anselm, 370 

33. — Cardinal Crema, the Pope's legate in England, detected in gross licen- 
tiousness, ---------- 271 

34. — Cruel measures against the married clergy of England, - - - 371 

35. — Cruel persecution of some disciples of Arnold of Brescia. First in- 
stances of death for heresy in England, 272 

36. — ^King Henry 11. of England, and Louis VII. of France, leading the 

Pope's horse, 378 

37.^I!ommencement of the quarrel between king Henry and Thomas a 
Becket The Pope releases the Saint from the obligation of his 
oath to submit to the laws of England against clerical criminals, 374 

38.-»Becket refuses to obey a summons to the King's court He is tried 

and found guilty by the Parliament, but refuses to submit, - - 377 

39. — Declines the jurisdiction of the King and barons, and q>peals to the 

Pope, 378 

40. — ^Tbe death and canonization of Becket. Pilgrimages to the tomb of 

the Saint, ^ - - 279 

Chaptsk V. — Popery in England continued. Pope Innocent and king Jchm 

1 41.— Innocent III. treads in the steps and acts upon the maxims of Gregory 

vn., *» 



^Yi ANALYTICAL TABLE OF GQNTENT& 

pj 

42.— Olden an episcopd palace to be demoliahed which was being erected 
at Lambeth, in London. The King, terrified by the thunders of 
Rome, unwillingly obeys, ...--•-• 380 

43. — The nalace is subsequently erected. Description of Lambeth palace 

and LoUard's tower, 381 

44. — ^Pope Innocent orders Stephen Langton to be chosen archbishop of 

Canterbury, which gives rise to the dispute with king John, - 232 

45. — ^The Pope endeavors to reconcile king John to this usurpation by a 

present of four golden rings. The lUng's angry letter to the Pope, 285 

46. — ^Innocent lays England under an interdict Fearful consequences of 

this sentence, -.-.--.... 286 

47.-^hi8olence of the Pope's legate to the King. Papal sentence of depo- 
sition against John, --------- 287 

48. — ^The Pqw invites king Philip of France to invade and conquer £n^ 
land. King John's abject submission. Yields up his crown on his 
knees to the legate Pandulph, and receives it back as a vassal of 
the Pope, 288 

49. — Copy of John's deed of surrender of England to the Pope, - - 291 

50. — ^Henceforward king John an obedient vassal of the Pope. Innocent's 

thunders of excommunication against the barons of Kngland, - 291 

Cbaftbk VI. — More instances of papal despotism. Popes Adrian IF., AJexander 

111 I v2 hmoceni III. 

51. — Contest between the Pope and the empire renewed. Adrian IV. and 

Frederick Barbarossa, - -' - 293 

52. — Frederick's submission to pope Alexander m. Leads the Pqw's hofse 

In St Mark's Square, Venice, 294 

53-56. — ^Instances of the tyranny of Innocent m. toward several of the 

sovereigns and nations of continental Europe, - - • - 294-298 

Chatter Vn.— T^ Waldenses and Albigenses. 

57.*-Theee spiritual Qn^ants could broc^ no opposition. Hence their perse- 
cution of the Waldensian heretics. Testimc y of Evervinus, one 
of their persecutont, relative to their character and doctrine, - 299 

58-4^. — Similar testimony of Bernard, Claudius, and Thuanus, - - 801 

60-61. — ^Bloody decree of pope Alexander m., and the third oouncfl of 

Lateran, for extermmating these heretics, - ... - 302 

62. — ^Burning of Waldenses. Thirty-five in one fire, .... ZOA 

63. — ^Tbe church of Rome responsible for these butcheries. Another 

bloody edict of pope Lucius ID. -.--.. 304 

64. — The emperor Frederick's cruel decrees issued to oblige die Pdpe. The 

priest the judge, and the king the hangman, • . • . 805 



CsAFTEK Vlll. — Pope hmootnCs UooAf crusade against the AUngemses^ under his 
Legatej Iheferocious abbot (f Citeaux, and Stmoii, eari of MomtforL 

65. — Emissaries of the Pope dispatched to preach the crusade against the 

heretics, throughout Europe. Specimen of their texts and sermons, 307 

66. — ^Raimond VI., count of Thoulouse, unwilling to engage in exterminat- 
ing his heretical subjects. Excommunicated in consequence, - 307 

67. — ^Innocent's fierce letter to Raimond. The Legate killed in a quarrel 

with one of Raimood's friends, ---.... 308 

68. — Pqw Innocent's bulls. No fiuth with heretics. Indulgences for those 

who would engitge in the crusades against the Waldensee, - 309 

69. — Count Raimnnd submits and seeks abeolutiQO from die Pope, • • 310 




ANALYTICAL TABLE OP CONTENTS. xvii 



PASS. 



1 70.-^Bt demdiog penance. Whipped on the naked Bhoaldera in a church 

bf the Popes legate. Siege of Beziera, - - - - - 313 

|71w— The taking of Beziera. Inhuman cruelty of the Pope's legate. Sixty 
thousand killed, and not a human being — man, woman, or child — 
left alive, 314 

(72.— Roffer, the young count of Beziera, treacherously entrapped by the 

Pope's legate. He dies in prison, probably of poison, - - 316 

1 71.— The inhabitants of Carcassone escape from the popish butchera 

through an underground passage. Horrible cruelty of Montfort, 316 

|74.— Menerbe taken by the papists, and the inhabitants slaughtered. One 

hundred and forty burnt in one fire, ---•-. 317 

(75.— Lavanr taken, and the heretics burnt (in the words of the popish his- 
torian), ** with the utmost joy," 319 

(76.— Sixty more heretics at Cassoro burnt ^ with infinite joy," - - 319 

\ 77.— The bloody crusades against the Albigenses prove that the riffht to ex- 
tirpate heresy and to put heretics to death, is properly a cbctrine of 
the unchangM>le Roman Catholic church, .... 330 

) 78.— Proofs that the Romish church claims the rig^t of dissolving oaths, 

and instances of its exercise, ....... 321 

1 79.— Unjust Flandera against the Albifi;enses. If true, the Pope had no 

right to send his armies to invade their country and butcher them, 322 

Chaftzb IX. — EsiablishmerU cf the Meni: t Orders. SairU Dominic and 

Saint Frond*, 

\ 80.— Profligacy of the ordera of the monks and nuns, • • - - 323 

{81.— Contrast between their character and the holy lives of the teachere of 
the Waldensian heretics, even according to the confession of their 
enemies, ----------- 323 

1 81.— Hence Innocent IH. encourages the establishment of Mendicant Ordera, 
who, by their austerity and sanctity, might rival the heretical 
doctora, .-324 

\ 83.— Dominicans and Franciscans. Life of St. Dominic, the inventor or the 

first inquisitor-ge^ral of the holy Inquisition, - - - - 334 

{ 84. — Extravagant stories of Dominic's pretended miracles, ... 326 

( 85. — Dominicans, great champions of the Virgin. Marvellous Dominican 

miracles of the Virgin and the Rosary, - - . . . 32G 

{ 86. — Life of St. Francis, founder of the Franciscans, the ** Seraphic Order," 329 

\ 87. — Rapid and vast increase of the Franciscans, .... - 329 

\ 88. — ^Pretended miracles of St. Francis. The holy stigmas, or wounds of 
Christ, inflicted upon the Saint by the Saviour nimself. This hor- 
rible imposture still commemorated as a fact in the Roman Catholic 
church. Day of its commemoration, according to the Romish calen- 
dar, September 17th, 330 

) 89. — ^Prodigious influence acquired by the Mendicant Ordera, ... 330 

Chaptsb X. — Tfc« Fourth council of Lateran decrees the extermination of here^ 
ticSf Tyansubstantiationj and Auricular Confession. 

(90. — ^Fourth councQ of Lateran held A. D. 1215. Bestow the dominions 
of the unfortunate count Raimond upon the blood]^ Montfort, on ac- 
count of the tardiness of the Count m exterminating heretics, - 331 

} 91. — ^Decree of the Pope and council commanding princes, under heavy 
penalties, to exterminate heretics. Extract from this bloody edict 
of the highest legislative authority in the Romish church, - - 332 

J 92^-^Auricular confession once a year decreed by this council. Priestly 

iolicitaUon of females at confession, ------ 333 



xviu ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

\ 93. — ^Inaairy in Spain relative to the aolicitatian and sednction of females 
by popish priests at confession. Females commanded, under penalty 
of the Inquisition, to lay infonnations. Inquiry hushed up, on ac- 
count of the immense number of criminals. One hundred and 
twenty days consumed in the city of Seville alone in taking infor- 
mations from females, -..----- 335 

} 94. — ^In this council also, Transnbstantiation first decreed as an article of 

&ith. In after ages, this was the great burning article, - - 3||g 

(96. — ^Worship of the host, or wafer. Origin of the festival of Corpus 

Christi, 337 

(96. — Manner of its celebration in popish 'countries. Spain, Italy. Vio- 
lence to an American stranger in Rome for not bowing the knee to 
the idol, 338 

Chapter XI. — Contest between ihe popes and the empervr Frederick 11. Otielphs 

and Qhibelmes. 

\ 97. — Honorius m. succeeds Innocent III. The Isle of Man ceded to the 

Pope, and received back as a fief of the Holy See, - - - 342 

{ 98. — Frederick's successful expedition to Palestine, .... 342 

} 99. — ^Pope Gregory IX. makes war on his dominions in his absence. Fred- . 

erick's reprisals on his return. He is excommunicated, - - 343 

} 100-101. — ^Innocent IV. at the council of Lyons in 1246, pronounces a sen- 
tence of deposition against the Emperor, and absolves his subjects 
from their allegiance. Frederick's death, and the unbounded joy 
of the Pope, 344 

} 102. — Successors of Innocent IV. The quarrel continued by Frederick's 
son, Manfred, king of the two Sicilies. Pope Urban invites Charles, 
count of Anjou, to conquer from Manfred tne kingdom of Sicily, 346 

( 103. — Amusing instance of the care which the Pone took of his own per- 
sonal mterest in the agreement with Manfrea, .... 346 

J 104. — Defeat and death of Manfred, and cOtaquest of Sicilv by Charles, 

who murders the youthful Conradin, nephew of Manured, - - 347 

{ 106. — Sicily delivered from the dominion of Charles and the French by the 

popular outbreak and massacre called the Sicilian Vespers, - 347 

\ 106. — ^The council of Lyons in 1274, decrees the election of Pope in con' 

dave of the cardinals, ........ 348 

( 107. — Horrible profligacy of Heniy, bishop of Liege, .... 343 

} 108. — ^Pope Gresory X. threatens the German princes unless they imme- 
diateljr choose an emperor, to do it for them. Note: Annals of 
Baronius and Raynaldus, ........ 349 

^109. — ^Under pope Nicholas III., the Papal States become entirely inde- 
pendent of the empire, about A. D. 1278, ..... 350 

} 110. — ^Pope Martin IV. excommunicates the emperor of Constantinople and 
Don Pedro, king of Arragon. The latter treats the papal thunders 
with derision. The terror of these spiritual weapons, since the 
successful resistance of the emperor Frederick, gradually declining, 360 

{111. — ^Pope Celestine the hermit. Rare spectacle. A eood nuin for a 

Pope. Soon persuaded to resign as unfit for the omce, - . 351 

(112-113. — Cardinal Benedict Cajetan, who had been chief in persuading 
Celestine to resign, succeeds him as Boniface VIII. His dispute 
with Philip the Fair, king of France, 362 

( 114. — ^Pope Boniface's lordly arrogance. Extract from the bull Unam 

Sanctanif .-..-..,.- 353 

J 115. — ^Bonifiice excommunicates Philip. The Pope, arrested by Nogaret, 

dies of rage and vexation, ... . . . ^ 354 



41IALTHCAL TABU OP OQNTDIIB. uK 



Boqual eitncti on tbli niBjeeti frooi Hilkiii, • • • • SM 

|il7 KrtiWMiminf of tiie Jubflae by Boni&ee VIIL laqviiy on tho Ro- 

â– kh dbotrine of Uiilfanooi^ IM 

(lUL— Unknown to tfieaneionta. Pkovod by oitiaoli ton A^tamn^ Polib 

don ViifOt and coidinol GMoten» 156 

lUA.;— Inddg^noeodaptndinftlDralltlioir impoitenoo on Iho lletion of Pnr- 

gotay* Wi 

il90.1Slw--Ol%inoftliopiiisitorianikotkaL AiffiHlino, Gnfoqrt - - t56 
jlii^— Vkitof DikhdrntoPoigitoiy. Hbnifalo feof rifirinni, • - 861 
|it»w— IndolgoncaofinftedonP ur git o iy, •••••• $61 

I IMw— Wbiki of flnpoiw ogi t io ni •••••••• 369 

jll^T^WholoMlo IndolfBneM at JobOoo of Bodfim, Ae. OOier Jnbi- 



BOOK VI.— POFERT ON A TOTTERINO THRONEUAoH td sxais 
or Bonrja VID^ A* D. 1808, to xhi co m i M c gi iMT ov td oouMa ov 
Tun. A. D. 154ft. 



QumB L— nt iiiiiiiiM €f At Powt cf Am g m m t md At gywt IVcitfim 




)l-8w— DeeEneofthepovrerofthelHspeoitftmrBoni&fiaVIIL, • • 867 

1 4---TI10 Avignon POfw. AktnlGatlierino, 868 

|5-6^— Obeaaion of great Wootem Schum. Elootion of two rival popea, 

Urban VL and dement VII. ' Conaeqoencea of tbia aofaiamf - 870 

1 10. — Cooncil of Piia electa a third pope, Alexander V., ... 878 

j 11-lS. — ^Fierce and bloody contests. Jdm Haas writes against pope Jdm's 

bun of cmsade against Ladiskns, --.... 874 

1 13.— Council of Constance deposes the rival popes and electa Martin V., 376 

Ceapter n. — Widdiff' the Engluh reformer. The condemnation cf hi$ toorks, and 
the burning of hU 6mes by order of the council of ConUance, 

114-16.— Life and labors of Wicklifl^ 376 

1 17. — ^His translatian of the New Testament Specimen, ... 380 

1 18-19.— The hatred of the papists to an English bible. Wickliff's bold 

protestations on behalf of the Scriptures, 388 

1 80-22.— The council of Constance order his bones to be dog up and burnt 

Execution of the sentence, 385 

CHinxs nL — John Hum of Bohemia. His condemnation and martyrdom by the 

couneii of Constance, 

{ 83, 84.— Eariy life of Huss. Reads WickliTs writings, - - - 387 

i 85-86. — Gives himself to his destined work. Wickliff 's writings burnt in 
Bohemia. Prague laid under an interdict by John X}QII., on ac- 
count of Hubs, who solemnly ai^ieals to Jesus Christ, - - 389 

(97.— His pious letters, and presentiment of martyrdom, .... 390 

1 88.— Jerome of Prague unites with Hnss in the work of reform, - - 891 

1 89, 30. — ^Their opposition to indulgences and the Pope's bull of crusade. 

Tumult at Prague, 393 

1 81. — Hnas writes against the rival popes. The Six Errors, dtc., • - 896 

f 88-40w— Goes to the councQ of Constance. Safe-conduct of the ESmperor 



XX ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

treacherously violated ; and Haas impriBoned, condemned, degraded 
and burnt, - - - - - - - -'. 399-404 

Chapter IV. — Jerome of Prague at the council of Congtanee. His condemnaiion 

and martyrdom, 

1 41. — Jerome sets out for Constance, but flees in alarm and is arrested, - 407 

{ 42-44. — He is cruelly imprisoned and recants ; but soon renounces his re- 
cantation, and courageously professes his fiiith before the council, 407 

} 46. — Contends for the supreme authority of the Scriptures, - . . 410 

{ 46-48. — Sentenced by the council and burnt, - - - - -410 

{ 49. — Copies of the decrees of the council establishing the doctrine of no 

faith with heretits, --------- 413 

} 60. — The same doctrine openly avowed by pope Martin V., - • • 414 

(61,62. — Close of the council. The members rewarded with i9u2tii|^enees. 

Denial of the cup to the laity, - - - - ' - - - 416 

Chapter V. — Popery and the Popes for the century preceding the R4formaium, 

( 63. — ^Pope Martin V. His pompous titles, - 417 

( 64-63. — ^Pope Eugenius IV. His violent dispute with the council of Basil, 418 

( 67, 68. — Jubilee of 1460. Capture of Constantinople, - - - - 420 

{ 69, 60. — Pope Pius 11. (JBneas Sylvius) proposes to go to the aid of the 
eastern Christians asainst the Turks. His change of views on the 
supreme' authority of the Pope, - 420 

{61,62. — ^Popo Innocent VIII. and his seven bastards. His cruel edict 

agamst the Waldensian heretics, .-..-. 426 

{ 63, 64. — ^Pope Alexander VI. the devil's master-piece. His horrible profligacy 

and miserable death by poison he had prepared for another, - - ' 426 

} 66. — ^America discovered and given, by a papal bull, to the Spaniards, - 428 

} 66-68. — ^Pope Julius a warrior. Absolves himself from his oath. His 

quarrel with Louis XII. of France and with the council of Pisa, 429 

{ 69-71. — ^Leo X. and the fifth conncU of Lateran. Laws against the free- 
dom of the press, and enjoining the extirpation of heretics, - 434 

Chapter VI. — Tfc« Reformation — Luther and Tetzd. The reformer* s toar against 

indulgences, 

( 72, 73. — ^Indulgences the occasion of the Reformation. Tax book for sins, 436 

{ 74-77. — ^Tetzel, and his mode of peddling indulgences. Incidents, - 439 

} 78, 79. — Luther oppo6^ indulgences. His celebrated theses, - - 446 

} 80. — ^Tetzel bums Luther's theses, and the Wittemberg students bum his, 447 

{81, 82. — Luther's Sdutions, and letter to pope Leo X., - - - - 448 

Chapter VTI. — Luther and Ck^'etan. The noble constancy cf the reformer. 

{ 83. — Leo commissions Cajetan to reduce Luther to submission, - - 461 
{ 84. — Leo writes to the elector Frederick, to persuade him to withdraw his 

protection from Luther. Arrival of Melancthon at Wittemberg, 462 
{86-91. — Luther goes to Augsburg, and appears before cardinal Cajetan. 
His constancy and courage in defending the trath, and return to 
Wittemberg, after ten days, ------- 462 

Chapter VHI.— Luther strikes at (he throne of anti^ChrisL The breach made 

irreparable, 

{ 92. — The legate, Charles Miltitz. Luther reads the decretals, and gradually 

discovers that the Pope is anti-Chriisft, - - - . • 469 



ANALYTICAL TABLE OP CONTENTS, xxi 

(93. — ^Disputes with Eck, at Leipsic, on the pope*8 primacy, ... 4^ 
} 94-96.— Ulric Zwingle tries to befriend Luther. Pope Leo's bull against 

Lather, who bums it, with the Decretals, at Wittemberg, - - 461 
{97. — Lather finally excommunicated as an incorrigible heretic. Aleander 
the papal legate bums his books, but is not permitted by the Elector 
to bam him, ---....... 4^ 

Chaptse IX. — Luiher at the Diet rf Worms^ and in his Patmos at Wartburg, 
\ 96. — Aleander, the papal legate's efforts against Lather at Worms, - 466 

(99,100. — ^Luther's courage in going to Worms, and his constancy when 

there, --.-----... 45Q 

{ 10^104. — His constrained retreat to his Patmos at Wartborg. Translates 
the New Testament His retum to Wittemberg. His peacefal 
death, 468 

} 105, 106. — ^Loyala the founder of the Jesuits. Popish pandlel with La- 
ther, 472 

BOOK VIL— POPERY AT TRENT.— Feom the qpbhihg ssssioir of the 
oouHciL OF Tbeht, A. D. 1645, to the closihq sessior, a. D. 1663. 

Cbaptek I. — T%6 first frur sessions. Preliminaries^ and decree upon the author' 

tty of Tradition and the Apocrypha, 

jl, 3. — Openii^ of the council about two months before Luther's death. 

The Pope's opposition to measures of reform, .... 475 

(3-6. — ^The three first sessions. Cardinal de Monte, President, - - 477 

1 6.— The fourth session. Tradition placed on a level with Scripture, - 478 

(7, 8. — ^The Apocryphal books inserted in the Scriptures. Proofs that they 

are not inspired, --..----- 48O 

Ceapter n. — Fourth session continued, Latin Vulgate exalted above the inspired 
Hehrew and (rreek Scriptures. Private judgment and liberty of the press for^ 
\nditn^ and a popish censorship of the press established, 

1 9.— Decree on the Latin Vulgate. Its numerous errors. Dr. Jahn quoted, 486 

\ lO.—Two editions of the Vulgate published by popes Sixtus and Clement, 

both declared infallible^ ana yet 2000 vanations between them, - 487 

{U, 12. — ^Decrees agamst private judgment and liberty of the press, - 488 

( 13. — Protestants indignant at these decrees. Congregation of the Index, 490 

i 14. — The fJEimous ten rules adopted by the council concerning prohibited 
books, describing the kinds of books prohibited, the examination of 
bookseller's shops by popish inquisitors, and the punishments of ex- 
ercising tlie liberty of the press, - - • - - -491 

i 16. — Names of some authors prohibited. Copy of a papal license granted 

to Sir Thomas More, to read heretical books (note)f . - - 497 

Chapter ID. — Original sin and Justification, 

j 16. — ^The fifth session. Decrees on original sin and Justification, - - 499 

{ 17. — Christ's work made a stepping-stone for human merit. Extracts from 

Romish prayer books, -------- 601 

( 18. — ^Extract firom Tyndal. Experience of Luther on Justification, - 602 

Chapter IV. — The Sacraments and the doctrine of Intention, Baptism and Conr 

firmatwn, 

J 21. — Seventh session. Decree on the Sacraments in general, - - 606 

} 22-24. — Doctrine of Intention. Its absurdity. Defects in the Mass, - 606 

3 



xxii ANALYTICAL TABLE OP CONTENTS. 

Chaftsr v. — Suspension of the Council in 1549, and resumption under pope 
Julius III. in 1661. Decree on TVansubstantiation, 

\ 36, 36. — Council adjonrned to Bologna. Suspended. Death of pope Paul 
III., and choice of De Monte, the legate, a notorious Sodomite, aa 
Julius in., 511 

{37 38. — Council resumed. Thirteenth session. Decree on Transnbstan- 

tiation, ----------- 513 

Cbaftsr VL — Cf Penance^ Auricular confession. Satisfaction, and Extreme Vn> 

tionr-^to Ae second suspension in April, 1663. 

\ 39.-^Fouiteenth session. Decrees on Penance and Auricular confession. 514 

i 30, 81. — ^Indecency of female confession. Questions from ^ Garden of the 

Soul," 515 

{ 33, 33. — ^Insult to a female at confession. Confessing sick ladies at Rome, 618 

^ 34. — Confession declared necessary to salvation. Bigotry and tyranny, 531 

{ 36. — ^Decree on Satisfiiction. Penitents redeeming themselves. - - 532 

\ 86. — ^False translations. ** Doing penance" fer ** repent" Bordeaux Tes- 
tament (fiate), ---------- 632 

} 37, 38. — ^Decree on Extreme unction. Adjournment April 38th, 1663, - 534 

Craftbr Vn. — Frtnn the seventeenth to the twenty-fifth and closing session. De- 
nial nf the cup to the laity. The Mass. Sacraments of Orders and Matrix 
many. Purgatory, Indulgences, Relics, 4^. 

{ 39-41. — ^The council re-opened Januaiy 8th, 1663. Eighteenth to twen- 
tieth session, ---------- 636 

} 43. — ^Twenty-first session. Decree on refusing the cup to the laity, - 637 

\ 43, 44. — ^Twenty-second session. Decree on the Mass and use of Latin 

tongue, ----------- 638 

{ 46. — Twenty-third session. Decree on the sacrament of Orders, - • 630 

{ 46. — Twenty-fourth session. Decree on the sacrament of Matrimony, - 631 

(47. — Twenty-fifth session. Decrees on Purgatory, Indulgences, Relics, 

&c., -- 533 

Chaftbr Vm. — Conclusion of the Council. Acclamations of the Fathers, and 

pope Piuses creed. 

^ 48. — Decree of Confirmation of tiie Decrees, - . - • - 535 

} 49. — ^Acclamations of the Fathers. Curses on all heretics, - - - 535 

} 60. — ^Pope Pius's creed, containing a sununary of the decrees of Trent, 537 

(51. — ^Accordimr to this creed, Leighton, Baxter, Nevins, Payson, Milnor, 

6lc., aU now in Hell, -------- 539 

BOOK Vra.— POPERY DRUNK WITH THE BLOOD OP THE SAINTS.— 
PsRsxcunoirs of Pofbbt to the Rsvocatioh of the Edict of Nantss, A. D. 
1686. 

Cfip. I. — Persecution proved from decrees of general councils and torittngs of 
celebrated divines to be an essential doctrine of Popery. 

\ 1. — ^Ingenious cruelties of Popery. Fifty million victims, - - - 641 

\ 3. — ^Decrees of general councils, enjoming persecution, - . - - 542 

) 3.^-Citations from Aquinas, Dens and Bellannine defending persecution, 645 

{4.— Popery unchangeable. Charies Butler ouoted. Peter Dens teaches 

that heretics should be put to death. Rhemish testament {note), 548 



ANALYTICAL TABLE (» GCKiTBNTSL xxiii 




lL--9id^mgt ^ dm E^glitk pmainis wi^dtr Bkmiy Qmm Mmm. 
The kmrmmg if Laiimer, Ridlaf, Crmmmer, 4^ ^ 

of VictiM. S88 bonnl aim by ttoody M«iy, • • • 649 

aai Ridley. Cerenoo j of defrnktioB. MutrnloiB, • 650 

Hit lecanlatioB, nmaemikm of that recantatioo, noble 
djin^ teaUmonj, and nnityidom, --•••• 55^ 

f 14.— Laet band of maityn. Death of Maij, and joj of the people, • 68i 
il&— <mef of pooe Paal IV^ at tlie deatk of hia '^fiuthfnl daughter^ Maiy. 

Copj of hia Ban, frmmnianifariiiy and deposing queen Eliabelh, 6€S 

OuLTTWM UL-'Tke Imjminikm. aeimre cf Ae Vktms. Moia €f Thrtun^md 

ukiim tim cf Ae Aiifo dk Fi. 

\ 16. — The maatcj piec e of popiah cmdty. PbQock'i deacriptSoa, • • 607 

1 17>19.-^AppreheiiBiQO of the victims. Diflerent kinds of tortures, • 668 

(90-32^ — Anto da lie. Proceasaon of the victinia. Dresses, the osross, tan 

bexUa^ dtc Great burning. Joy of the people, • • • 574 

Chaptzk IV. — lukwmam, PerteaUiata cf the WaUentes^ 
(23.— Cmdtiesonthe WaMensesuidie?mIleyof Prage]a,A.D. 1400, • 679 



(34, 36.— Similar oatrarai in the Tmlleys of Loyae and Fiassiniere, under 

pope Innocent vliL,dLc., ..••••• 660 

1 36.— Horrible cruelties on the Waldenses of Calahria, .... 681 

f 37, 38. — Waldenses of Piedmont Interference of Oliver Cromwell. Mil- 

ton^s Sonnet Sufferers of Mount Cenis, ..... 686 

CBAPTEm V. — Peneevtions in Fnmet, Massacre of St, Bartkoiomew^ and Rewh 

cation of the Edict cf Nantes. 

(39-31. — ^Massacre of St Bartholomew in 1573. Numbers slain, - - 667 

(33. — Joy of the Pope and cardinals at the news. Procession at Rome to 
return thanks to God for the extirpation of heretics. Medal struck 
in honor of the event Recent issue of that medal at Rome, • 690 

\ 33. — ^Tolerating edict of Nantes in 1698. Revocation by Louis XIV. in 

1685, at the instance of his Jesuit confessor, .... 593 

\ 34. — Cruelties consequent upon the revocation. Dragoonading, • - 594 

\ 35. — The galleys. Popery loves to persecute the holiest men, - - 594 

\ 36-38. — ^ProoCs. Extracts from letters of Le Febvre, Marolles, and Mauru, 695 

\ 39. — ^Fiendish cruelty to a mother and her babe, - . . • • 597 

{ 40. — ^Pope's letter applauding Louis for persecuting the heretics, - - 698 

BOOK EX.— POPERY IN ITS DOTAGE.— Prom the Revocatioii or the 
Edict of Nuttes, A. D. 1685, to the fresert time, A. D. 1845. 

Chaftsr I. — The Jesuits. Their missions. Their suppression^ revival, arid pre- 

sent position. 

(1. — Early Jesuit missions. College De Propaganda, dtc., ... 599 

( 3. — ^Temporizing policy. Adoption of Heathen ceremonies, ... 600 

{3. — ^The Jansenists. Pascal and Father Quesnel, - - - - • • 601 

\ 4. — The Jesuits, notorious assassins of sovereigns, .... 60i 

} 5, 6. — Their suppression in various countries, and final abolition of the 

Older by pope Clement XIV., 604 

{7. — ^Revival of the order by pope Pius in 1814. Jesuits* oath, • - 605 

Cbafter II. — The persecuting and intolerant spirit of Popery in the eighteenth 

and nineteenth centuries. 

)8 9^— PflfaecntionsintheCevennes. Cruel death of BoeUm, - 606 



xxiv ANALYTICAL TABLE OP CONTENTS. 

FAOB 

10, 11.— Still later persecutions. DeBubas in 1746, Rochette in 1763, . 607 

12.— Efforts of the French priests to reyiye the persecution so late as 1773. 

French Revolution, .----.-. 609 

18. — ^Last victim of the Inquisition in Spain. Inquisition still in Rome, 609 

14. — ^RafiEaele Ciocci. Popery still a wolf, though in the skin of a lamb, 610 

16.— Public burning of Bibles at Champlain, N. v., in 1842, - - 612 

16. — ^A woman condemned to death for heresy in 1844, - - - 613 

17. — Persecution part of the system of Popery. Bishop's oath, - - 616 

18, 19. — Annual cursinff and excommunication of all the classes of heretics 

on Maunday Thursday, by the Pope, &c., .... 616 

Chapter m. — Popery unchanged. Modem documentary evidence of its haired to 
liberty of oninion^ separation of church and state, freedom of the press, and a 
translated Bible. 

f 20. — ^A Romish author cited on the unchangeableness of Popery, - - 618 

J21. — Popery still opposed to freedom of thought. Pope Gregory's bull of 

1832 cited, 619 

{ 22. — Opposed also to separation of church and state, political liberty, &c. 

Quotations, -- ....... 619 

) 23. — Still opposed to liberty of the press. Quotation, .... 620 

{ 24, 26. — ^To the Bible in the vulgar tongue. Pope Pius quoted in 1816, Gre- 
gory in 1844, 621 

{ 26, 27. — ^No Bibles allowed without popish notes. Burning of Catholic 

testaments because without notes, in South America, - - 624 

Chaptbe IV. — Popery as it now is. Testimony of eye-witnesses. Its modem 

pious frauds and pretended miracles. 

{28. — ^Unchanged in its grovelling superstitions and lying wonders, - 636 

f 29. — ^Interesting letter from a recent traveller on the continent and in Rome, 626 

f 30. — ^Parallel between Popery and modem Heathenism by Rev. E. Kincaid, 627 

f 31. — ^Bfiracle of liquefying the blood of St Januarius, .... 629 

f 32. — ^The holy house at Loretto. Flight through the air from Nazareth (!), 

holy porringer and all (! !). 630 

{ 33. — ^The miraculous virgins of the Tyrol exhibited in 1841 with the wounds 

of Christ. The Adolorata and Ecstatica, .... 630 

j 34. — ^Virgin Mary weeping. The imposture detected, ... 631 

{ 36.-- The miraculous medal of 1830, and its wonders, .... 632 

Chapter V. — Recent events. Discontent in Italy, Puseyism. The holy coat, 
and the priest Range. Jesuits in Switzerland. Statistics. Conclusion. 

) 36. — Spirit of liberty in the Papal States. Pope's dread of it, - - 633 

} 37. — ^Puseyism in Oxford. Pleasing to the Pope, .... 634 

( 38-39. — ^Movement in Germany. Imposture of the Holy Coat at Treves in 

1844. Fearless expostulation of John Ronge. A new Church, 636 

{ 40-4U — ^Recent proceedings of the Jesuits in Switzerland, ... 639 

( 42. — ^Popish missions to the United States, d&c. Sums expended, - 641 

) 43. — Statistics of Popery in America, .----.- 642 

{ 44. — Designs of the Pope and his adherents in America, ... 643 

\ 46. — Statistics of Popery in Britain. Maynooth college, ... 644 

f 46. — ^Total of Romanists throughout the world. Popery w in its Dotage, 644 

} 47.— Concluding remarks. The Pope is anti-Christ Authors who have 

believed this, 646 

(48.— Probably some of God's people in the Romish Babylon. All exhorted 

to come oat of her, •••••.•• 647 



HISTORY OF EOMANISM 



BOOK I. 



POPSBT IN SMBSTO. 



IJBTJllT OOUniRKMi OV 



CHAPTER L 

CBsamAMiTT pmnumni amd papal. 

I Iw— Tab blefsed fixinder of Cbrutiamtjdiote to make hit adrailt 
among the lowly and the deapiaed. Thia waa agreeable to the spixil 
of that Holy Reli^on which he came to eatabliaL There waa a 
time when a multitude of hia followen, aatoniahed and convinced 
by the omnipotence diaplayed in his wondroua miracles, were dia> 
poaed to ** take him by force to make him a king,** but so &x firom 
encourajpng their design, the inspired historian tells us ^ that he 
departed again, into a mountain himself alone.'' (John vL, 15.) 
In reply to the inquiries of the Roman governor, he uttered thoae 
memorable words, ** m t kingdom is not of this world," and hia 
whole conduct firom the manger to the cross, and fix>m the cross to 
the mount of ascension, was in strict accordance with this char- 
acteriatic maxim of genuine Christianity. 

§ 2. — ^In selecting those whom he would send forth as the apostles 
of his faith, he went, not to the mansions of the great or to the 
palaces of kings, but to the humble walks of life, and chose firom 
the poor of thia world, those who, in prosecuting their mission, were 
destined, like their divine master, to be despised and rejected of 
noeiL In performing the work which their Lord had given them to 
do, the lowly but zealous fisherman of Galilee, and the courageous 
tent-maker of Tarsus, with their fidthfiil fellow-laborers, despising 
til earthly honors and worldly aggrandizement, were content to lay 
everv laurel at the foot of Christ s 'cross, and to ''count all thin^ 
but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, their 
Lord," for whom Uiey had ** suffered the loss of all things." (Phi- 
fippiana, iiL, 8.) 



26 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [bookl 

OoBtmt EOet of pcfwevUaa. 

§ 3. — ^A few centuries afterward, we find the professed successor 
of Peter the fisherman, dwelling in a magnificent palace, attended 
by troops of soldiers ready to avenge the slightest insult offered 
to his aignity, surrounded by all the ensigns of worldly greatness, 
with more than regal splendor, proudly claiming to be the sovereign 
ruler of the universal church, the Vicegerent of God upon earUi, 
whose decision is infallible and whose will is law. The contrast 
between these two pictures of Prunitive Christianity in the first 
century, and Papal Christianity in the seventh or eighth, is so 
amazing, that we are irresistibly led to the inquiry, can they be the 
same ? If one is a faithfiil picture of Christianity, can it be possible 
that the other is worthy ot the name ? 

Leaving the reader to answer this question for himself^ after ao 
companjring us in the present history, we proceed to remark that 
this transformation cannot be supposed to have taken place aU at 
once. The change from the lowliness of the one to the lordliness 
of the other, required ages to complete, and it was not till the lapse 
of more than five centunes from the death of the last of the apostles* 
that the transformation was entire. 

§ 4. — The apostle Paul tells us that even in his day **the mystery 
of iniquity ** had begun to work, and had it not been for the purify- 
ii^ influence of the fires of persecution kindled by the emperors 
oi pagan Rome, the advance of ecclesiastical corruption ana spir- 
itual despotism would probably have been far more rapid than it was 
—-and at an earlier period " the man of sin** have been ** revealed," 
even that ^ son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above 
all that is called Grod or that is worshipped ; so that he as Grod, 
sitteth in the temple of (^od, showing himself that he is God.** For 
three centuries after the ascension of Christ, his disciples were ex- 
posed, with but few and brief intermissions, to a succession of cruel 
and bitter persecutions and sufierings. The pampered wild beasts^ 
kept for the amusement of the Roman populace, fattened upon the 
bodies of the martyrs of Jesus in the ampnitheatres of Rome or of 
other cities of the empire, and hundreds of fires were fed by the 
living fi*ames of those who ^ loved not their lives unto the death.'' 
** They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were 
slain with the sword ; they wandered about in sheep skins and goat 
skins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented (of whom the world was 
not worthy); they wandered in deserts and in mountains, and in 
dens and caves of the earth.** 

Under such a state of things, there was of course but little 
inducement to the worldly mmded and ambitious, to seek admission 
to the church ; and if durmg a season of relaxation some such might 
creep within its pale, it required only the mandate of another em- 

* St John is supposed to have died about A. D. 100. **He lived," says Dr. 
Cave, ** till the time of the Emperor Trajap, about the beginning of whose reiffii, 
he departed this life, very aged, about the nixiety-eighth or ninety-ninth year of his 
â– ge, as is generally thought" See Cave's lives of the Apostles, page 104. 



our. L] POPERY IN EliBR YO^TO A. D. 606. 27 

Bov Fopaij profw lb« BiU*. B«CMHe pndicltd la It 

peror to kindle anew the fires of persecution in order to separate 
the dross from the gold. This opposition of the powers and poten* 
tates of the earth, constituted the most effectual barrier against the 
speedier progress of corruption in the church, and accordmg to the 
prediction of St. Paul, before ''the man of sin** could be revealed 
It was necessary that this let or hindrance should be removed. It 
can scarcely be doubted that the apostle referred to the continu- 
ance of persecuting pagan Rome, wnen he said, ** and now ye know 
what withholdeth, that he mi^ht be revealed in his time, for ^e 
mystery of iniquity doth already work, only he who now letteth will 
let until he be taken out of the way ; and then shall that wickbd 

U UBVBALED.'' 

§ 5. — ^It is an important fact that Popery is plainly a subject of 
prophetic prediction in the Sacred Scriptures, and thou£;h the 
alnx>st entire subversion of true Christianity, which occurred in the 
course of only a few centuries, mi^ht otherwise have a tendency to 
stagger our faith in its divine origin, yet when it is remembered 
that this creat antichristian Apostasy or '' falling away ^ (anoaraoia) 
happened in exact accordance with ** the scriptures of truth,'' the 
&ct serves to strengthen rather than to shake our faith in the divinity 
of our holy religion. Not long ago, the remark was made by a 
Roman Catholic, ** The Bible cannot be true without Holy Mother 
of Rome.'' He meant to say that the Pope gives it all its evidence 
and authority. " Very true," said a Protestant : ** for as the Holy 
Bible has predicted the rise, power, and calamities of Popery — ^if 
these predictions had not been fully manifested in the actual exists 
^ce and tremendous evils of Popery, the Bible would have wanted 
the fulfilment of its prophecies, and therefore would not have been 
true r The same tnought was recently suggested in an eloquent 
discourse by Professor Gaussen, of Geneva, before his Theological 
class. ** In pointing to the Pope," said he, ** we point to a miracle 
which calls upon ns to believe the Bible ! Considered in this view, 
the obduracy of the Romanists, like the obduracy of the Jews, 
wonderfiilly instructs the church, because it has been foretold ; and 
thus it is that the scandals of Rome are transformed into an eloquent 
argument The sovereign pontiff and the Romish hierarchy be- 
come, in this way, admirable supports of the truth." 

To prove that Popery is the subject of prophetic prediction, it 
would be easy to produce a multitude of passages, but we shall 
content ourselves tor the present with citing entire the fiill length 
portrait of the Romish Apostasy in the second epistle to the Thessa- 
lonians, chap, ii., v. 1, &c., and in first Timothy, chap, iv., v. 1, &c. 
"Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon 
shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor 
by letter as from us, as that the day of Chnst is at hand. Let no 
man deceive you by any means ; for that day shall not come, 
except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be re- 
vealed, the son of perdition ; wno opposeth and exalteth himself 



28 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book l 



iMptrad dMertpdoM of the Bomtoh Apostaqr. Tertulllni 

above all that is called God, or that is worshipped ; so that he» 
as Gody sitteth in the temple of Grod, showing himself that he is God. 
Remember ye not, that when I was yet with you I told you these 
things 7 And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be re- 
vealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work : 
only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. 
Ajdd then shall that wicked be revealed, whom the Liord shall 
consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the 
brightness of his coming : Even him whose coming is after the 
working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders, 
and witn all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish ; 
because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be 
saved." " Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times 
some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits^ 
and doctrines of devils ; speaking lies in hypocrisy, having thdr 
conscience seared with a hot iron ; forbidding to marry, and com* 
manding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be re- 
ceived with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the 
truth." How accurate is this inspired portrait of the great Apoh- 
TAST of Rome, although penned five or six centuries before its 
complete development 1 Aside from the accurate symbolical de* 
scriptions of the same power in the prophecies of Daniel and the 
Revelations, these two passages alone constitute a complete pro* 
phetical picture of the rapal anti-Christ, in which every feature, 
every lineament is drawn to the very life ; nor is this to be won- 
dered at, for it was sketched bv the pencil of Omniscience itsel£ 

It is obvious that the wicked power wluch in the former of these 
passages is the subject of the apostle's discourse, and denominated 
THE MAN OF SIN, had uot then been fully displayed, and that there 
existed some obstacle to a complete revelation of the mystery of 
miquity. The apostle uses a particular caution when hinting at it ; 
but the Thessalonians, he says, knew of it ; probably from the 
explanation he had given them verbally, when ne was with them. 
It can scarcely be questioned, that the hindrance or obstacle, refer- 
red to in these words, was the heathen or pa^an Roman govern- 
ment, which acted as a restraint upon the pride and domination of 
the clergy, through whom the man of sin ultimately arrived at his 
power and authority, as will afterwards appear. The extreme 
caution which the apostle manifests in speakmg of this restraint, 
renders it not improbable that it was something relating to the 
higher powers ; for we can easily conceive how improper it would 
have been to declare in plain terms, that the existing government 
of Rome shoidd come to an end. 

There is a remarkable passage in TertuUian's Apolo^, that may 
serve to justify the sense which Protestants put upon mese verses ; 
and since it was written long before the accomplishment of the pre- 
dictions, it deserves the more attention. " Christians,'' says he, " are 
under a particular necessity of praying for the empettMrs, and for 
the continued state of the empire ; because we kiK>w that dreadful 



OMF. L] POPERY IN EMBRYO.— TO A. D. 606. 29 



ammmpaor. Ktegdoai of the clogyi. 

power which hangs over the world, and the conclusion of the age^ 
which threatens the most horrible evUs^ is restrained by the continw 
once of the time appointed for the Roman empire. This is what we 
would not experience ; and while we pray that it may be deferred, 
we hereby show our good- will to tne perpetuity of the Roman 
state.*** From this extract it is very manifest that the ChristianSy 
even in Tertullian's time, a hundred and twenty years before the 
{mgan government of Rome came to its end, looked forward to that 
period as pregnant with calamity to the cause of Christ ; though it 
IS ]Ht>bable they did not accurately understand the manner in which 
the evils should be brought cm the church. And this, indeed, the 
event proved to be the case. For while the long and harassing 
persecutions, which were carried on by the pagan Roman emperorsy 
ecmtinued, and all secular advantages were on the side of Paganism, 
there was little encouragement for any one to embrace Christianity, 
who did not discern somewhat of its truth and excellence. 

§ 6d — ^Many of the errors, indeed, of several centuries, the fruit of 
nin philosophy, paved the way for the events which followed ; but 
the hindrance was not effectually removed, until Constantine the 
aoiperor, on professing himself a Christian, undertook to convert the 
kingdom of Christ into a kingdom of this world, by exalting the 
teachers of Christianity to the same state of affluence, grandeur, and 
influence in the empire, as had been enjoyed by pagan priests and 
secular officers in the state. The professed ministers of Jesus hav- 
ing now a wide field opened to tnem for gratifying their lust of 
power, wealth, and dignity, the connection l)etween the Christian 
fidth and the cross was at an end. What followed was the king- 
dom of the clergy, supplanting the kingdom of Jesus Christ. 

Every feature in the inspired description corresponds to that of 
a religious power, in the assumption of Divine authority. Divine 
honors, and Divine worship ; a power which should arrogate the 

Ererogatives of the Most High, having its seat in the temple or 
ouse of God, and which should be carried on by Satan's influence, 
with all deceit, hypocrisy, and tyranny ; and with this corresponds 
the figurative representation given of the same power, in the thir- 
teenth chapter oi Revelations. 

As many things in the Christian profession, before the reign of 
Constantine, made way for the kingdom of the clergy, so, after they 
were raised to stations of temporal dignity and power, it was not 
wholly at one stride that they arrived at the climax here depicted 
by the inspired apostle. Neither the corruption of Christianity, nor 
the reformation of its abuses, was effected in a day ; '* evil men and 
seducers waxed worse and worse.** 

In the sequel, it will appear, that when the bishops were once 
exalted to wealth, power, and authority, this exaltation was of itself 
the prolific source of every corrupt fruit Learning, eloquence, and 
influence, were chiefly exerted to maintain their own personal 

* Teitalliin's Apology, eh. zsdL 



aO HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book l 

Cluiit*iklnfilomiioCofthifworid. Effeetooriodnf lifhtofthltiBiportiiitpriiiclpto. 

dominion and popularity. Contests for pre-eminence over each 
other, became the succedaneum of the ancient contention for the 
faith, and its influence over the world. 

All the violent contentions, the assembling of councils, the perse- 
cutions alternately carried on by the difierent parties, were so many 
means of preparing the way for the assumption of spiritual tyranny* 
and the idolatry and superstition of the Roman hierarchy. In all 
these transactions, the substitution of human for divine authority ; 
contentions about words instead of the faith once deUvered to the 
saints ; pomp and splendor of worship, for the primitive simplicity ; 
and worldly power and dignity instead of the self-denied labors 
of love and bearing the cross ; — this baneful change operated ia 
darkening the human mind as to the real nature of true Christianityy 
until, in process of time, it was lost sight of. 

When Jesus Christ was interrogated by the Roman governor 
concemi^ his kingdom, he replied, '^ My kingdom is not of this 
world." This is a maxim of unspeakable importance in his reUgion ; 
and almost every corruption tiiat has arisen, and by which this 
heavenly institution has been debased, from time to time, may be 
traced, in one way or other, to a departure from that great and 
fundamental principle of the Christian Kingdom.*' 



CHAPTER IL 

RELIGION IN ALUANCE WITH THB STATE. 

§ 7. — It was owing to forgetfulness or disregard of the important 
principle, mentioned at the close of the last chapter, viz., that Christ's 
Kingdom is not of this world, that the emperor Constantine, soon 
after his remarkable, and as some suppose, miraculous conversion 
to Christianity in Uie year 312, took the religion of Christ to the 
unhallowed embraces of the state, assumed to unite in his own 
person the civil and ecclesiastical dominion, and claimed the power 
of convening councils and presiding in them, and of regulating the 
external afiairs of the church. The account of Constantine s con- 
version, which is related by Eusebius in his life of the Emperor, 
by whom the particulars were communicated to the historian, is as 
follows : (Eusebius, vita Const., lib. i., chap. 28., &c.) At the head of 
his army, Constantine was marching from France into Italy, op- 



* See Jooet's Ch. Hist, ch. iL, sect 4. 



our. n.] POPERY IN EMBRYO.— TO A. D. 606. 31 



mtnemloa tu m w t nkm. Inerww of dignitici in the ehuch 



pressed with anxiety as to the result of a battle with Maxentius, 
and looking for the aid of some deity to assure him of success, when 
he sudden^ beheld a luminous cross in the air, with the words 
inscribed thereon, ^ Bt this overcome/' Pondering on the event 
at niffht, he asserted that Jesus Christ appeared to nim in a vision, 
and directed him to make the svmbol of the cross his miUtary 
ensign. Different opinions have been entertained relative to the 
cre<ubility of this account Dr. Mihier receives it, though in evident 
inconsistency with his creed ; Mosheim supposes, witn the ancient 
writers, Sozomen and Rufinus, that the whole was a dream ; Gre- 

S)ry, Jones, Haweis, and others reject it altogether, and Professor 
ieseler, with his usual accuracy and good sense, reckons it am<nig 
^ the legends of the age, which had their origin in the feeling that 
the finau struggle was come between Pagamsm and Christianity.'' 
For my part, 1 have no hesitation in regarding the whole as a fable. 
It was not till many years after it was said to have occurred, that 
Constantine related the story to Eusebius, and in all probabiUty he 
did it then by the instigation of his superstitious mother Helena, the 
celebrated discoverer of the wood of the true cross (?) at Jerusalem, 
some 250 years after the total destruction of that city, and all that 
it contained, and the disappearance of the identity of its very foun- 
dations, under the ploughsnare of the Roman conqueror Vespasian. 
The subsequent lite of Constantine furnished no evidence that he 
was a peculiar favorite of Heaven ; and the results of his patronage 
of the church, eventually so disastrous to its purity and spirituality, 
are sufficient to prove that Grod would never work a miracle to 
accomplish such a purpose. 

§ 8. — Soon after Constantino's professed conversion to Christianity, 
he undertook to remodel the government of the church, so as to make 
it conform as much as possible to the government of the state. Hence 
the origin of the dignities of patriarchs, exarchs, archbishops, canons, 
prebendaries, &c., intended oy the Emperor to correspond with the 
different secular offices and dignities, connected with the civil ad- 
ministration of the empire. Taking these newly constituted digni* 
taries of the church into his own special favor, he loaded them with 
wealth and worldly honors, and richly endowed the churches over 
which they presided, thus fostering in those who professed to be the 
followers and ministers of HIM who was '* meek and lowly in 
heart," a spirit of worldly ambition, pride, and avarice. And thus 
was the let or hindrance to the progress of corruption, and the 
revelation of " the man of sin " spoken of by Saint Paul in the 
remarkable prediction, already referred to, in a great measure re- 
moved. 

From this time onward, the progress of priestly domination and 
^rranny was far more rapid than in any previous age. The lofty 
title of Patriarch was assumed by the bishops of Rome, Alexandria, 
Antioch, and Jerusalem, and also of Constantinople, after the re- 
moval of the seat of empire to that city, claiming, according to 
Bbgham {Antiquities^ B. II.9 chap. 17), ^ the right to ordain allthe 



82 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [booki. 

TlM &▼• patflUClialCt. »«rlUM* itf»««i»^n/Po-»t.fc «>i.—p^t^ 

metropolitans of their own diocese ; to call diocesan synods, and to 
preside over them ; to receive appeals from metropoUtan and pro- 
vincial synods ; to censure metropolitans and their suffi-agan bishops ; 
to pronounce absolution upon great criminals, and to be absolute 
and independent one of another/' 

In relation to these five patriarchates, the Romanists, as Coleman 
says {Christian Antiquities^ chap. 3, Sect. 5), are careful to say 
that " there were, at first, five patriarchs in the church ; that those of 
Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch were deservedly so called per se 
et ex naturd^ but that those of Constantinople and Jerusalem were 
by mere accident, per accidens^ graced with this title." The fieict that 
these patriarchs were absolute and independent of each other, shows 
that, up to this time, notwithstanding the proud pretensions of the 
bishop or patriarch of Rome, he was not as yet acknowledged as 
head of the universal church. 

§ 9. — The bishops of the three great cities of the Roman Empirey 
Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, according to the learned and acca> 
rate Gieseler, had the largest dioceses. Hence they were considered 
as the heads of the church, and in all general aflfairs, particular de- 
ference was paid to their opinion. Still, however, ereat stress was 
laid on the perfect equality of all bishops ; and each, in nis own diocese, 
was answerable only to God and his conscience. Nor were they 
likely to allow any peculiar authority to the supposed successor of 
Peter, inasmuch as they attributed to Peter no superiority over the 
other apostles. In the West, indeed, a certain regard was paid to 
the church of Rome as the largest, but by no means were any 
peculiar rights conceded to it over other churches. Of course, this 
would be still less the case in the East.* 

It is true that so early as before the conclusion of the second 
century, Victor, bishop of Rome, had attempted to lord it over his 
brethren of the East, oy forcing them, by his pretended laws and 
decrees, to follow the rule, which was observed by the Western 
churches, in relation to the time of keeping the paschal feast, to 
which, in later times, the name of Easter was applied. The Asi- 
atics did not observe this festival on the same day as the Western 
churches, and in order to make them conform to his wishes, Victor 
wrote an imperious letter to the churches in Asia, commanding them 
to observe it on the same day as he did. The Asiatics answered 
this lordly summons by the pen of Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, 
who declared, in their name, and that with great spirit and resolu- 
tion, that they would by ho means depart, in this matter, from the 
custom handed down to them by their ancestors. Upon this, the 
thunder of excommunication began to roar. Victor, exasperated 
by this resolute answer of the Asiatic bishops, broke communion 
with them, pronounced them unworthy of the name of his bretluren, 
and excluded them firom all fellowship with the church of Rome. 

* Gieieler's texUbook of ecclesiaatical histoiy, tnmslated from the Gennaa 
sditko by F. CqanmgiiMn. Vol L, pa^ 163. 



auv.a.J PQPEBT m EMBRTO^TO A. D. 000. 



Tliif ezcommunication, indeed, extended no further ; nor could it 
ent off the Anatic biahops fix>m conununion with the other churcheii» 
vhooe bifbope were &r from approving the conduct of Victor. The 
|BDttre— of thii Tioknt diwensKHH was stopped by the wise and 
â– MMerate renKmstrances, which Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, addressed 
to the Roman prelate upon this occasion, in which he showed him 
dhe imprudence and injustice of the step he had taken, and also by 
tk kmg letter which the Asiatic Christians wrote in their own 
jJQStificatioiL In conseauence therefore of this cessation of arms, 
die combatants retainea each their own customs, until the fourth 
eantnry, when the council of Nice abolished that of the Asiatics, and 
icndered the time of the celebration of ESaster the same through 
aD the Chzistian churches. ^ This whole aflair,'' remarks the learned 
llbdbeimv ^ fiumishes a striking arffument, among the multitude that 
BBsy be drawn from Ecclesiastical History, agamst the supremacy 
sad uniyersal authority of the bishop of Rome.*** 

f lOw-^Another proof equally conclusire, that the bishop of Rome 
was not acknowleoged as supreme head of the church, may be drawn 
from the dispute that arose between the imperious Stephen of Rome 
sad Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, in Africa, about Uie middle of the 
tkird century, relative to the validity of baptism administered by 
AmCics. As there was no express law which determined the man- 
•ar and fimn, according to which those who abandoned the heretical 
nets were to be received into the communion of the church, the 
rales practised in this matter were not the same in all Christian 
churches. Many of the oriental and African Christians placed re- 
canting heretics in the rank of catechumens, and admitted them, by 
hmtunty into the communion of the fiedthful ; while the ^eatest part 
of the European churches, considering the baptism of heretics as 
ralid, used no other forms* in their reception than the imposition 
dfkandSf accompanied with solemn prayer. Tliis diversity pre- 
vailed for a long time without kindling contentions or animosities. 
But, at length, charity waxed cold, and the fire of ecclesiastical 
• discord broke out In this century, the Asiatic Christians came to 
a determination in a point that was hitherto, in some measure, unde- 
cided ; and in more man one council established it as a law, that all 
heretics were to be rebsiptized before their admission to the commu- 
nion of the church.! When Stephen, bishop of Rome, was in- 
formed of this determination, he behaved with the most unchris- 
tian violence and arrogance toward the Asiatic Christians, broke 
communion with them, wd excluded them from the communion of 
the church of Rome. These haughty proceedings made no impres- 
sion upon Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, who, notwithstanding the 
menaces of the Roman pontiff, assembled a council on this occa- 
sion, and vrith the rest of the African bishops, adopted the opinion of 
the Asiatics, and gave notice thereof to the imperious Stephen. The 

^Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, Vol. I., page 206, note. 

t EoMbins, Ecdasiastica] History, B. VU., cl»p. 6, 7, page 273, 274. PhiL Editioo. 

8 



34 HUSrrORY OF ROMANISIL (: 



Bt CyprtaB. Bcawk of » hMihfli <m Hm giua f agM W of dM 



fiiiy of the latter was redoubled at this notification, and produced 
many threatenings and invectives against C3rprian9 who repUed, with 
ffreat force and resolution, and, in a second council held at Carthage, 
declared the baptism, administered by heretics, void of all efficacy 
and validity. Upon this, the choler of Stephen swelled beyond 
measure, and, by a decree fiill of invectives, which was received 
with contempt, he excommunicated the African bishops, whose 
moderation, on the one hand, and the death of their imperious anta^ 
gonist on the other, put an end to the violent controversy.* 

In relating these quarrels, of course, we express no opinion as to 
which party was right In all probability, the heretics, whose bap- 
tism they questioned, were in many cases nearer the truth than 
cither party. Our single object in relating the dispute is to show, 
that so late as the year 256, when the council of Carthage was held, 
the decisions of the bishop of Rome, when they conflicted with the 
views of other bishops, were not received as authority ; and that 
Saint Cyprian, as he is called by Romanists themselves, could 
reject his decrees with contempt without forfeiting his title to the 
honors of subsequent canonization. What greater proof could be 
required that the blasphemous dogma that the bishop of Rome is 
supreme head of the church, and vicegerent of Grod upon earth, had 
never yet been heard of 7 He was travelling step by step, towards, 
but he had not yet reached, nor did he attam, tul more than three 
centuries afterwards, that blasphemous eminence, when, according 
to the prediction of Paul, he ^ opposed and exalted himsdf above 
all that is called Grod or is .worshipped." 

He £BLr surpassed all his brethren in the ma^ficence and splen- 
dor of the church over which he presided ; in me riches of his reve- 
nues and possessions ; in the number and variety of his ministers ; 
in his cr^t with the people ; and in his sumptuous and splendid 
manner of Uving. Ammianus Marcellinus, a Roman historian, who 
lived during these times, adverting to this subject, says, ^ It was no 
wonder to see those who were ambitious of human greatness, con- 
tending with so much heat and animosity for that dignity, because 
when they had obtained it, they were sure to be enriched by the 
ofierings of the matrons, of appearing abroad in great splendor, of 
being admired for their costly coaches, and sumptuous feasts, 
outdoing sovereign princes in me expenses of their table.'' This 
led Proetextatus, a heathen, who was prsefect of the city, to say, 
** Make me Mshap of Rome, and FUbe a Christian too /"f 

These dazzling marks of human power, these ambiguous proofs 
of true greatness and felicity, had such a mighty influence upon 
the minds of the multitude, that the See of Rome became, in this 
century, a most seducing object of sacerdotal ambition. Hence it 
happened, that when a new pontifi* was to be elected by the sufirages 
of the presbyters and people, the city of Rome was generally agitated 



* Cyprian's Epistles, Izz., Ixxiii. 

t Ammisniui MarcellinuB, Liber xxviL, c^. 8. 



CBir. n.] POPERY IN EMBRYO^TO A. D. 606. a5 



Wm if §md hfftmwm rhral h Uba f § of Bwi. Indaniw of Mutto of Tonw Id th« £■ 



with dissensionsy tumults, and cabals, whose consequences were 
often deplorable and fatal. The intrigues and disturbances that 
prevailed in that cit^ in the year 366, when, upon the death of Libe- 
rius, another pontiff was to be chosen in his place, are a sufficient 
proof of what we have now advanced. Upon this occasion, one 
nction elected Damasus to that high dignity, while the opposite 

Crty chose Ursicinus, a deacon of the vacant church, to succeed 
berius. This double election gave rise to a dangerous schism, 
and to a sort of civil war within the city of Rome, which was carried 
on with the utmost barbarity and fury, and produced the most cruel 
massacres and desolations. 

In this disgraceful contest, which ended in the victory of Damasus^ 
according to the historian Socrates, great numbers were murdered 
on either side, no less than one hundred and thirty-seven persons 
being destroyed in the very church itsel£ Who does not perceive, 
in these wicked strifes and sanguinary struggles, a proof that now 
that which ** let " or hindered was ^ ts^en out of the way," the full 
revelation of the predicted ** man of sin ** was rapidly hastening 
onward f 

While such an example of worldly pride and domination was set 
by those who were looked up to as the heads of the church, it is not 
surprising that other bishops partook of the same spirit As an 
instance of their haughty bearing towards earthly kings and rulers, 
it is related of Martin, bishop of Tours, in France, that in the 
year 455, he was invited to dine with the Emperor Maximus. When 
the cup of wine was presented to the Emperor by the servant, he 
directed that it should be first offered to tne bishop, expecting, of 
course, that then he should receive it from the hand of Martin. 
Instead of this, however, Martin handed the cup to a priest of infe- 
rior rank who sat near him, thus by his rudeness intimating Uiat 
he r^arded him as of higher dignity than the Emperor.* Some 
time after this the queen asked her husband's consent that she might 
be allowed, in the character of a servant, to wait on the bishop at 
supper, and, strange to say, her request was granted. For this con- 
duct, according to the superstitious notions of the times, Sulpitius, 
the biographer of Martin, compares her to the queen of Sheba. A 
Roman Catholic historian, referring to this bishop, uses the follow- 
ing language : — ** The^reat St Martin, the glory and li^ht of Gaul, 
was a msciple of St l£lary. The utter extirpation of idolatry out 
of the diocese of Tours, and all that part of Gaul, was the firuit of his 
edifying piety, illustrious miracles^ zealous labors, and fervent ex- 
hortations and instructions. He was remarkable for his humility f 
charity, austerity, and all other heroic virtues."! Certainly tms 
historian, to say the least, must have had singular notions of what 
constitutes true Christian humiUty. 

* " Exspectans atque ambiens, at ab illius dextera poculum snmeret Sed BCar- 
tmiis ubi ebibit, patenun presbyteio sno tradidit, nullum scilicet exiBtimann dignio- 
rem, qui post se biberef^ 8idp. Sevenu de vita Mart, c, 20, (juoUd hy Oiemer. 

t Gahan's History of the Cmirch, page 168. 



CHAPTER ffl. 

STEPS TOWARDS PAPAL SUPREM ACT. 

§ 11. — Nothing could be more simple and unpretending than the 
form of church organization and government in primitive times. 
£ach church consisted of a company of beUevers in the Lord 
Jesus, united together in covenant relationship, for the worship of 
Grod, the maintenance of gospel doctrines, and the due administration 
of the ordinances appointed by Christ "Every church,'' says 
Waddington, an Episcopalian, " in the management of its internal 
afiairs, was essentially independent of every oMer/* The same histo- 
rian adds that " the churches formed a sort of federative body of 
independent religious communities^ dispersed through the greater 
part of the empire, in continual communication and in constant 
narmony with each other." (Wad. Ch. HisL^p. 43.) 

** The rulers of the church," says M osheim, a Lutheran, ** were 
called either presbyters (i. e. elders), or bishops^ which two titles are, 
in the New Testament, undoubtedly applied to the same order of 
men."* (Acts xx., 17, 28 ; Phil, i., 1), &c. (Mosheim^ voL u<,p. 90.) 
These were persons of eminent gravity, and such as had distin- 
guished themselves by their superior sanctity and merit " Let 
none," says the same learned author, " confound the bishops of this 
primitive and golden period of the church, with those of whom we 
read in the following ages. For, though they were both distinguished 
by the same name, yet they differed extremely, and that in many 
respects. A bishop, durine; the first and second century, was a 
person who had the care of one Christian assembly ^ which, at that 
time, was, generally speaking, small enough to be contained in a 
private house." Thus when writing to the Colossians, the apostle 
raul sends a salutation to Nymphas, and " the church which is in 
his house." (ch. iv., 1 5.) In the commencement of the epistle to the 
Philippians, he refers to the officers of these jprimitive churches,, 
when he directs his letter " to all the saints in Christ Jesus, which 
are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons/* (ch. i., 1.) 

( 12. — In process of time, however, the beautiAil simplicity of the 
primitive churches was abandoned ; the independence of each par- 
ticular church was lost, and as we have already seen, a variety of 
church dignitaries were created in the place of the primitive elders 
or bishops of the apostoUc age ; and as this change constituted the 

* This b now universally admitted by all denominations, Episcopalians as well 
SB others. Thus, in the tract " Episcopacy tested by Scripture," published \y the 
Protestant Episcopal Tract Society, New York (p. 12), the author, who is ac- 
knowledged to be one of their ablest advocates, remarks concerning the use of the 
title bishtip in the New Testament, '* That the name is there given to the middle 
order or presbyters ; and all that we read in the New Testament concerning * bishops,' 
including of course the words ' overseer ' and ' oversight,' which have the same 
derivation," says he, '* is to be regarded as pertaining to that middle grade," that 
is, to ^ presbyters or elders. 



OAF. nLl POPJSRY IN EMBRYO.— TO A. D. 606. 37 



OMlcff'i and IfodMtai*^ MeovtoTtlM oH MtMtte a ui govwuMM oftlM pifmltlTe eliiiich«. 



Ibimdation stone upon which the structure of papal assumption was 
aAerward reared, I shall relate, in the words of two distinguished 
Ittitorians, the account of this first step in this pernicious inno- 
Vition* 

It has been seen firom Dr. Mosheim and others, that according to 
New Testament usage, the title biihop belong^ to presbyters or 
eldenk Soon after the death of the apostles, however, this title 
hegBJH to be claimed exdusively b^ such as sought pre-emi- 
nence over their brethren in the ministry. The words in which 
Gieseler relates this chanffe,are as follows : ^ After the death of the 
i^stles, and the pupils o? the apostles, to whom the general direo 
tKm of the churches had always been concede, some one amongst 
the presbyters of each church was suffered giadually to take me 
lead in its afiairs. In the same irregular way the title of inlfntonog 
(bishop) was appropriated to the first presbyter. Hence the difier- 
cnt accounts 01 tne order of the first bishops in the church at Rome.''* 
llosheim's account of the gradual assumption of authority by these 
early bishops, and of the early loss of the primitive indep^deuOT of 
the churches, is as follows: ^The power and jurisdiction of the 
bishops were not long confined to their original narrow limits, but 
KKm extended themselves, and that by the following means. The 
bishops who lived in the cities, had, either by their own ministry or 
that of their presbyters, erected new churches in the neighboring 
towns and villages. These churches, continuing under the inspec- 
tion and ministry of the bishops, by whose labors and counsels they 
bad been engaged to embrace the gospel, grew imperceptibly into 
ecclesiastical provinces, which the Greeks afterwards called dioceses. 
The churches, in those early times, were entirely independent ; none 
of them subject to any foreira jurisdiction, but each one governed by 
its own rulers and its own Taws. For, though the churches founded 
by the apostles had this particular deference shown them, that they 
were consulted in difficult and doubtful cases ; yet they had no 
juridical authority, no sort of supremacy over the others, nor the 
least right to enact laws for them. Nothing, on the contrary, is 
more evident than the perfect equality that reigned among the 
primitive churches ; nor does there even appear in the first century, 
the smallest trace of that association of provincial churches, firom 
which councils and metropolitans derive their origin. 

"During great part of the second century, the Christian churches 
were independent of each other ; nor were they joined together by 
association, confederacy, or any other bonds but those of charity. 
Each Christian assembly was a little state, governed by its own 
laws, which were either enacted, or at least approved by the 
so<Hety. But, in process of time, all the Christian churches of a 
province were formed into one large ecclesiastical body^ which, 
like confederate states, assembled at certain times, in order to 
delibmite about the common interests of the whole. This institu- 

* Gieseler's Ecclesiastical Historv, Vol. i., page 65. 
4 



88 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. Lbooc l 

CooMqaeocM of the QritablUhmeat of Synods or Coancils. 

tion had its origin amon^ the Greeks, with whom nothing was more 
common than this confederacy of independent states, and the regular 
assemblies which met, in consequence thereof, at fixed times, and 
were composed of the deputies of each respective state. But 
these ecclesiastical associations were not long confined to the 
Greeks; their great utility was no sooner perceived, than they 
became universal, and were formed in all places where the gospel 
had been planted. To these assemblies in which the deputies or 
commissioners of several churches consulted together, the name of 
synods was appropriated by the Greeks, and that of councils by the 
Latins ; and the laws that were enacted in these general meetings, 
were called canons, i. e., rules. 

** These councils, of which we find not the smallest trace before the 
middle of the second century, changed the whole face of the church, 
and gave it a new form ; for by them the ancient privileges of the 
people were considerably diminished, and the power and authority 
of the bishops greatly augmented. The humiUty, indeed, and 
prudence of these pious prelates, prevented their assuming all at 
once, the power with wnich they were afterward invested. At 
their first appearance in these general councils, they acknowledged 
that they 'were no more than the delegates of their respective 
churches, and that they acted in the name, and by the appointment, 
of their people. But they soon changed this humble tone, imper- 
ceptibly extended the limits of their authority, turned their influence 
into dominion, and their counsels into laws ; and openly asserted, 
at length, that Christ had empowered them to prescribe to his 
people, authoritative rules of faith and manners, 

^Another effect of these councils was the gradual abolition of that 
perfect equality which reigned among all bishops in the primitive 
times. For the order and decency of these assemblies required 
that some one of the provincial bishops met in council, should be 
invested with a superior degree of power and authority ; and hence 
the rights of metropolitans derive their origin. In the mean time, 
the bounds of the church were enlarged, the custom of holding 
councils was followed wherever the sound of the gospel had 
reached ; and the universal church had now the appearance of one 
vast republic, formed by a combination of a great number of little 
states. This occasioned the creation of a new order of ecclesiastics, 
who were appointed in different parts of the world, as heads of the 
church, and whose office it was to preserve the consistence and 
union of that immense body, whose members were so widely dis- 
persed throughout the nations. Such was the nature and office of 
the patriarchSf among whom, at length, ambition being arrived at 
its most insolent period, formed a new dignity, investing the bishop 
of Roma, and his successors, with the title and authority of prince 
of the patriarchs. 

^ The Christian doctors had the good fortune to persuade the 
people that the ministers of the Christian church succeeded to the 
character, rights, and privileges of the Jewish priesthood ; and this 



our. m.] POPEBT IN £MBRTO.~TO A.D. 606. 80 



Papal Mf w cy mc wnMlilnd te iIm Iboith cmtuj. 



persuasion was a new source both of honors and profit to the sacred 
Older. This notion was propagated with industry, some time after 
the rrign of Adrian, when the second destruction of Jerusalem Ind 
extinguished anxnig the Jews all hopes of seeing their government 
restored to its former lustre, and their country arismg out of ruins. 
And accordingly the buAmif considered themselves as invested with 
a ruk and character inmilar to those of the high priest among the 
Jews, while the presbyters represented the priests, and the tkacons 
the levites. It is, indeed, highly probable, that thev who first intro- 
duced this absurd comparison of ofiGices so entirely distinct, did. it 
rather through ignorance and error, than through artifice or design. 
The notion, nowever, once introduced, product its natural efllects ; 
nd these dlects were pernicious. The errors to which it save rise 
were many ; and on)8 of its immediate consequences was tne estab- 
luhing a greater difference between the Christian pastors and their 
fktek^ than the genius of the ffospel seems to admit"* 

ilS.1 — ^It was lon^ after uiese innovations upon primitive sim- 
flwity, befinre the bishops of Rome enjoyed, or even claimed that 
niritaal sovereignty over other bishops, and over the universal 
onrch, which they afterwards demanded as a divine riffht Not- 
vithstsmdinff the pomp and splendor that surrounded me Roman 
See, in the ftnurth century it is remarked by the same historian firom 
whom we have just quoted, that the bishops of that city had not then 
acquired that pre-eminence of power and jurisdiction in the church 
wmch they afterwards enjoyed. In the ecclesiastical commonwealth, 
they were indeed the most eminent order of citizens as well as their 
brethren, and subject like them to the edicts and laws of the empe- 
rors. None of the bishops acknowledged that they derived their 
authority firom the permission and appointment of the bishop of 
Rome, or that they were created bishops by the favor of the apos- 
tolic see. On the contrary, they all maintained that they were the 
ambassadors and ministers of Jesus Christ, and that their authority 
was derived from above. It must, however, be observed, that even 
in this century, several of those steps were partly laid by which 
the bishops ot Rome mounted afterwards to the summit oi* eccle- 
siastical power and despotism. These steps were partly laid by 
the imprudence of the emperors, partly by the dexterity of the 
Roman prelates themselves, and partly by the inconsiderate zeal and 
precipitate judgment of certain bishops.t 

One of these steps was a decree of a somewhat obscure council 
held at Sardis, during the Arian controversy, in the year 347. 
Among other things enacted in this council, it was provided "that 
b the event of any bishop considering himself aggrieved by the 
sentence of the bishops of his province, he might apply to the bishop 
of Rome, who should write to the bishops in the neighborhood of the 
province of the aggrieved bishop, to rehear the cause ; and shouli^ 



* Moiheim, cent i., put 2, cent ii., part 2 
t See Dnpin de antiqna Eccleiue disciplini 



40 mSTORY OF ROMANISM. [bow l 

0te|M toward â– upremacy. Council of Sardit. Deeree of Valoitiiilaii. 

also, if it seemed desirable to do so, send some presbyters of his 
own church to assist at the rehearing." It is probable, indeed, as 
Richerius in his History of Councils observes, that this decree was 
only provisional, and intended for the security of the Eastern ortho- 
dox bishops against the Arians, and that the privilege conferred 
upon the bishop of Rome, was not meant to be given to the See of 
Rome, but only to the then bishop Julius, who is expressly men- 
tioned therein ; and consequently that it was only designed for the 
vCase then before the council. An attempt, however, was made, at 
the beginning of the fifth century, by Zosimus, bishop of Rome, to 
establish his authority in the African churches, by means of this 
decree, on the following occasion. Apiarius, a presbyter of the 
church of Sicca, in Africa, having been deposed by his bishop for 
gross immoralities, fled to Rome, A.D. 415, afid was received to 
communion by Zosimus, who forthwith sent legates into Africa, to 
the bishops there, demanding that Apiarius's cause should be heard 
over again ; asserting that the bishops of Rome had the privilege of 
requiring such rehearings conferred upon them in virtue of this 
decree of the Council oi Sardis. The African bishops, however, 
refused to acknowledge the authority of this decree, and afier a pro- 
tracted controversy, sent a final letter to the bishop of Rome, " in 
which they assert the independence of their own, and all other 
churches, and deny the pretended right of hearing appeals claimed 
by the bishop of Kome : and further exhort him not to receive into 
commimion persons who had been excommunicated by their own 
bishops, or to interfere in any way with the privileges of other 
churches."* 

§ 14. — A second step toward the papal supremacy, was a law 
enacted in the year 372, by the emperor Valentinian, which favored 
extremely the rise and ambition of the bishops of Rome, by empower- 
ing them to examine and judge other bishops. A few years afterward, 
the bishops assembled in council at Rome, without considering the 
dangerous power they entrusted to one of their number, and intent 
only upon the privilege it secured to them of exemption from the 
jurisdiction of secular judges, declared in the strongest terms their 
approbation of this law, and recommended that it should be imme- 
diately carried into effect, in an address which they presented to the 
emperor Gratian.f 

A third circumstance which contributed toward the rapidly 
increasing influence of the Roman bishops, was the custom which 
obtained somewhat extensively before the close of the fourth century, 
of referring to their decision in consequence of their claim to 
apostolic descent, all questions concerning the apostolic customs 
and doctrines. This gave them occasion to issue a vast number of 
didactic letters, generally called Decretals^ which soon assumed a 
tone of apostolic authority, and were held in high estimation in 

* See Hammond on the Six Councils — Oxford, 1843, p. 40. 
f See Dr. Maclaine's note in Mosbeim, i., p. 344. 



CEAP. m.] POPERY IN EMBRYO.— TO A. D. 606. 41 



OMBdl of ChalcadoD deeraei the cqaality of the biahope of Rome uid CoostmBtinople. 



the West, as flowing from apostolic tradition. " From this time 
forth, there was no controversy in the East in which each party did 
not seek to win the l>ishop of Rome, and through him the Western 
church, to its cause, vying with each other in flattery and servility. 
At the councils, his legates were always treated with the greatest 
deference, and at the council of Chalcedon, they, for the first time, 
presided."* 

The council of Chalcedon was held A. D. 451, and notwith- 
standing the pre-eminence assumed therein by the legate of the 
bishop of Rome, he had not power or influence to prevent the 
passage of a canon which proved extremely odious to his lordly 
master Leo, who has been sumamed the Great, and which resulted 
in a protracted and bitter controversy between the bishops of Rome 
and Constantinople who should be greatest. £ome years previous 
to this time, since the removal of the seat of empire to Constanti- 
nople, the ambition and assumption of the bishop of Constantinople 
had almost equalled that of Rome. He had l&telv usurped the 
spiritual government of the provinces of Asia Minor, Thrace, rontus, 
uid the eastern part of Illyricum, very much to the cha^in and 
dissatisfaction of Leo. This dissatisfaction was increased when, 
by the twenty-eighth canon of the council of Chalcedon, it was 
resolved, that the same rights and honors which had been con- 
ferred upon the bishop of Rome, were due to the bishop of Con- 
stantinople on account of the equal dignity and lustre of the two 
cities, in which these prelates exercised their authority. The same 
council confirmed also, by a solemn act, the bishop of Constantinople 
in the spiritual government of those provinces over which he had 
ambitiously usurped the jurisdiction. Leo opposed with vehe- 
mence the passing of these decrees, and his opposition was seconded 
by that oi several other prelates. But their efibrts were vain, as 
the emperors threw in their weight into the balance, and thus sup- 
ported the decisions of the Grecian bishops. 

In consequence then of the decrees of this famous council, the 
bishop of Constantinople began to contend obstinately for the supre- 
macy with the Roman pontifi*, and to crush the patnarchs of Alex- 
andria and Antioch, so as to make them feel the oppressive efiects 
of his pretended superiority. Elated with the favor and proximity 
of the unperial court, he cast a haughty eye on all sides where any 
objects were to be found on which he might exercise his ambition. 
After reducing under his jurisdiction these two patriarchs, as pre- 
lates only of the second order, he invaded the diocese of the Roman 
pontiS*, and spoiled him of several provinces. The two former pre- 
lates, though they struggled with vehemence, and raised consider- 
able tumults by their opposition, yet they struggled inefiectually, 
both for want of strength, and likewise on account of a variety 
of unfavorable circumstances. But the Roman pontifi*, far superior 
to them in wealth and power, contended also with more vigor and 

* Gieseler, Vol. i., page 360. 



42 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book l 

Annals of other biihops to Rome. Rererenee of the baibarian conqaeranL 

obstinacy^ and in his turn, gave a deadly wound to the usurped 
supremacy of the patriarch of Constantinople. Notwithstancung 
the redoubled eflforts of the latter, a variety of circumstances united 
in augmenting the power and authority of the Roman pontiff, though 
he had not, as yet, assumed the dignity of supreme lawgiver and 
judge of the whole Christian church. The bishops of Alexandria 
ana Antioch, unable to make head against the lordly prelate of 
Constantinople, often fled to the Roman pontiff for succor against 
his violence ; and the inferior order of bishops used the same method, 
when their rights were invaded by the prelates of Alexandria and 
Antioch. So that the bishop of Rome, by taking all these prelates 
alternately under his protection, daily added new degrees of influ- 
ence and authority to the Roman See, rendered it everywhere 
respected, and was thus imperceptibly establishing its supremacy. 
This was, evidently, another of the steps by which he was rapidly 
ascending to the summit of ghostly dominion.* 

§ 15. — ?)ne more circumstance is worthy of mention, as contributing 
in no small degree to the increase of the power and influence of the 
bishop of Rome, viz., the regard almost universally paid to him by 
the fierce and barbarous tribes, who now in quick succession poured 
in from the north, and conquered and ravaged Italy and the capital 
of the ancient empire. In the years 408, 409, and 410, the proud 
city of Rome was three times in succession subjected to a siege by 
the renowned Alaric, king of the Goths, who is distinguished by 
contemporary historians by the terrible epithets of the scourge of 
God and the destroyer of nations. At first he was bought off by 
the terrified inhabitants, but at length the city was taken and given 
up to be pillaged and sacked by the fierce Gothic soldiery, m the 
year 452, the ferocious Attila, kinc of the Huns, invaded the north 
of Italy, laid waste some of its fairest provinces, and was only 
prevented from marching to Rome and renewing the horrid cruelties 
and excesses of Alaric by an immense ransom, and the powerful 
influence of the Roman pontiff, Leo the Great, who, at the head of 
an embassy, waited on Attila, as he lay " encamped at the place 
where the slow-winding Mincius is lost in the foaming waves 
of the lake Benacus, and trampled with his Scythian cavalry the 
farms of Catullus and Virgil."t In the year 454, Rome was again 
taken and pillaged by Genseric, king oi the Vandals ; and in the 
year 476, the western empire was finally subverted, and Italy, with 
its renowned and time-honored capital, reduced under the dominion 
of the Gothic barbarians by the conquests of Odoacer, king of the 
Heruli, a tribe of Goths, and the deposition and banishment of 
Augustulus, the last of the western Roman emperors. 

§ 16. — These barbarous nations, these fierce and warlike Germans 
wh^, afler the defeat of the Romans, divided among them the west- 
em empire, bore, with the utmost patience and moderation, both 

* See Moflheim, Cent. v. Part 2, Chap. ii. 

t Oibbon'i Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. ii., p. 303. 



CHAP, m.] POPERY IN EMBRYO.— TO A. D. 606. 43 



BBtfhairllcs adopted at Eome. Opinkma oTBobertioa andHall 



the dominion and vices of the bishops and priests, because, upon 
their conversion to Christianity, they became naturally subject to 
their jurisdiction ; and still more, because they looked upon the 
ministers of Christ as invested with the same rights and privileges, 
which distinguished the priests of their fictitious deities. I\ or is it at 
all to be wondered at that these superstitious barbarians, accustomed 
as they were to regard with a feeling amounting almost to adora- 
tion, the high priests of their own heathen gods, should manifest a 
readiness to transfer that veneration to the hi^h priests of Rome, 
especially when they saw the multitude of heaUien rites that were 
already introduced mto Christian worship, and the willingness of 
the Roman pontifis, by still further increasing the number of these 
paran ceremonies, to accommodate their religion to the prejudices 
and inclinations of all. 

In ages of ignorance and credulity, remarks a celebrated Scottish 
historian, ** the ministers of religion are the objects of superstitious 
veneration. When the barbarians who overran the Roman empire 
first embraced the Christian faith, they found the clergy in possession 
of considerable power; and they naturally transierred to those 
new guides the profound submission and reverence, which they 
were accustomed to yield to the priests of that religion which they 
had just forsaken. They deemed their persons to be equally sacred 
with their fimction, and would have considered it as impious to subject 
them to the profane jurisdiction of the laity. The clergy were not 
blind to these advantages which the weakness of mankmd afforded 
them. They established courts, in which every question relating to 
their own character, their function, their property, was tried and 
pleaded, and obtained an almost total exemption from the authority 
of civil judges.*** Thus was a kind of mutual compromise effected 
between these barbarous heathen conquerors, and the bishop of 
Rome, and his clorgy. The former generally agreeing to accept 
the Christian name, and the latter tacitly consenting to conform 
as much as possible to their heathen rites and ceremonies of worship. 

The blind submission of these heathen tribes to the degenerate 
mmisters of Christianity, tended much to increase the wealth and 
consequently the power of the clergy. On this subject remarks the 
elegant historian of the middle ages, " The devotion of the con- 
quering nations, as it was still less enlightened than that of the 
subjects of the empire, so was it still more munificent. They left, 
mdeed, the worship of Hesus and Taranis in their forests ; but they 
retained the elementary principles of that, and of all barbarous 
idolatry, a superstitious reverence for the priesthood, a credulity that 
seemed to invite imposture, and a confidence in the efBcacv of gifts 
to expiate offences. Of this temper it is undeniable that the minis- 
ters of religion, influenced probably not so much by personal cove- 
tousness as by zeal for the interests of their order, took advantage. 
Many of the peculiar and prominent characteristics in the faith and 

^ Bobeitsoo'i Charies V., American editioii, page 84. 



44 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [: 

Sapremacjr claimed from divine ri^t 

discipline of those ages appear to have been either introduced, or 
sedulously promoted, for the purpose of sordid fraud. To those 
purposes conspired the veneration for relics, the worship of images, 
the idolatry ol saints and martyrs, the religious inviolability of sanc- 
tuaries, the consecration of cemeteries, but, above all, the doctrine of 
purgatory, and masses for the relief of the dead. A creed thus 
contrived, operating upon the minds of barbarians, lavish, though 
rapacious, and devout though dissolute, naturally caused a torrent 
of opulence to pour in upon the church."* 



CHAPTER IV. 

DIVINE RIGHT OF SUPREMACY CLAIMED AND DISPROVED. 

§ 17. — By general consent a kind of superiority of rank had long 
been conceded to the bishops of Rome, chiefly from the fact that 
that city was the first in rank and importance, and the ancient 
capital of the empire ; and upon the same ground it was that the 
council of Chalcedon, already referred to, " proceeding on the 
principle that the importance of a bishop depended alone on the 
political consequence of the city in which he livedo decreed the same 
rights to the bishop of Constantinople in the Eastern church, which 
the bishop of Rome enjoyed in the Westem.^f After the fall of the 
ancient capital, however, and its consequent diminution of political 
importance, as compared with the Eastern capital, the bishops of 
Rome found it necessary to assert with renewed earnestness, the 
pretensions which they had occasionally hinted at before, of their 
divine right of supremacy, in consequence of their claiming to be 
the successors of the apostle Peter, who, they now asserted, without 
a shadow of scriptural or historical proof, was the first bishop of 
Rome, and was constituted by Jesus Christ, supreme head of the 
church upon earth. 

§ 18. — ^As this is a fundamental point with the Romish church, J 

* Hallam's Middle Ages, chap, vii., pages 261, 262, American edition. 

f Gieseler, vol. 1., page 269. 

{ The views of Romanists on this point, so essential to their whole S3rstem, are 
explicitly set forth in the following translation from the Latin of an extract from 
the theology of Peter Dens, a standard work, prepared for the use of Romish 
Beminaries and students of theology. Mechlin edition, 1838. 

Omcerning (he Supreme Pcndff, (Noi, 90, 93, 94.) 

** What is the Supreme Pontiff 7 

** He is Christ's Vicar upon earth, and the visible head of his church. 



(SAP. IT.] POPERY IN EMBRYO.—TO A. D. 606. 45 



No proof that Peter wu bWiop of Rome. 



h may be well/ at this place, to make a short digression, for the 
purpose of examining the validity of this claim. £ relation to the 
first supposition^ that of Peter having been bishop of the church 
at Rome, there is no historical proof whatever. There is no men- 
tion in the New Testament that Peter ever was at Rome, and hence 
Scaliger, Salmasius, Spanheim, Adam Clarke, and many other 
learned writers, have denied that he ever visited that city. But 
wmosmg the Romanist tradition to be true, that he suffered death 
at Rome, in company with the apostle Paul, about A. D. 65, still, 
there is no proof whatever that he was bishop of Rome, or that he 
had any particular connection with the church or churches in that 
city, any more than Paul or any other of the apostles. Indeed, it 
would be much easier to prove that Paul was bishop of the church 
of Rome than that Peter was, for it is expressly mentioned in the 
New Testament, that Paul visited Rome, and that he remained 
there for " two whole years — ^preaching the kingdom of God, and 
teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ.** (Acts 
uviii., 30, 31.) ^w if Pope Peter was also at Rome, and more 
especially if he was there m the character of " supreme head of 
the church universal,** is it not most astonishing that Paul should 
take not the slightest notice of him, and that neither the Sacred 

"Chrigt institiited the church of the New Testament upon earth, not on the plan 
of an aristocratic or democratic government, but on the plan of a monarchical 
gl^vemment, yet tempered by that which is best in an aristocracy, as was said 
No. 81. Bat when Christ was about to withdraw his visible presence bv his 
ascension into heaven, he constituted his Vicar the visible head ot the churcn, he 
himself remaining the supreme, essential and visible head. 
" Who is called Supreme Ponti£^ and wherefore 7 

"The Roman Pontiff*, not only because he holds the highest honor and dignity 
in the church, but principally, because he has supreme and universal authority, 
power and jurisdiction over all bishops and the whole church. 
/'From whom does the Pope, legitimately elected, receive his power and juris- 
^on? 

** Atu. He receives it immediately from Christ as his Vicar, just as Peter re* 
onved it Nor is it any objection that the Pope is elected by cardinals ; for their 
dection is only an essential requisite, which bemg supplied, he receives power and 
jurisdiction immediately from Christ 
" From whom do the Bishops receive the power of jurisdiction 7 
" Ans. The French contend that they receive it immediately from Christ ; but 
it seems that it ought rather to be said that thev receive it immediately from the 
Roman Pontiff because the government of the church is monarchical," &c., &c. 
** What power has the Roman Pontiff 7 

** We reply with St Thomas, &c. : ' The Pope has flenitude of power di 
THE CHURCH ;' 80 that his power extends to all who are in the church, and to all 
thing! which pertain to the government of the church. 

** This is proved from what was said before : because the Roman Pontiff is the 
tme Vicar of Christ, the head of the whole church, the pastor and teacher ; there- 
fore," dtc. ** Hence it follows, that all the &ithfid, even bishops and patriarchs, 
are obliged to obey the Roman Pontiff; also, that he must be obeyed in all things 
mkiek concern the Christian rdigiony and therefore, in £uth and customs, in rites, 
ecclesiastical discipline," &c. ** Hence, the perverse device of the Qtiesnellites falis 
to the ground; namely, that the Pope is not to be obeyed^ except in those things which 
hs mifoms coirformMy to Sacred Scr^ure.^ 



46 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [boocl 



No prool' that Peter wm eooilitated by Christ â– upreme head of the Church. 

Scriptures nor any of the apostolic fathers should say one word 
in relation to his connection with the church in that city ? 

Look again, at the style in which Peter alludes to. himself in 
his epistles ; how different from that which has ever been adopted 
by his professed successors, the lordly Roman pontiffs, since the 
establishment of their supremacy ! If Peter really was, as Romanists 
contend, the first Pope of Rome, why do we not find him adopting 
a style something like the following : " We, Simon Peter, sovereisii 
pontiff of Rome, apostoUc vicar, and supreme head of the church l** 
&c., or something in the style of Pope Gregory's EncycUcal Letter 
of 1832, viz.: "Encyclical Letter of our most Holy Father, Popb 
Peter, by Divine Providence, the First of the name, addressed to 
all Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, and Bishops."* But instead 
of this, we read simply " Simon Peter, a servant and apostle to them 
that have obtained like precious faith." (2 Pet, i., 1.) 

§ 19. — The second supposition, viz. : that Peter was constituted 
by Christ, supreme head of the Church, is professedly derived from 
the following conversation between Christ and Peter, " When Jesus 
came into the coast of Cesarea PhiUppi, he asked his disciples, 
saying, who do men say that I, the Son of man, am ? and they 
said, some say that thou art Jo|^i the Baptist, some Elias, and 
others Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, but who 
say ye that I am ? And Simon Peter answered and said, thou art the 
Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto 
him, blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona, for flesh and blood hath not 
revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I 
say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will 
build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" 
(Matt xvi., 13, &c.) Now in reference to this passage, it is sufii- 
cient to remark that the rock nsTQa (petra), on which Christ prom- 
ised to build his church, was not, as Romanists maintain, the fallible 
mortal Peter, Jleri^g (Petros), who had made this confession, but the 
glorious and fundamental truth which this confession embodied, or 
the glorious and divine personage, who was the subject of it, 
** Thou art the Christ, the Son op the living God." The words 
in the Greek are " ^v e» nsn^g, xai em ravrtj rrj nsjQa,** " Thou art 
Peter, and upon this nerpa rock," which thou hast confessed, &c. 
So also the Latin Vulgate has *^T\ies Petrus (mas.), et super hanc 
petram (fem.), cedijicabo eccksiam meam.** The interpretation which 
Roman Catholic writers put upon this expression, is comparatively 
modem in its origin, and directly opposed to the opinions of some 
whom they regard as the most enlightened among the ancient 
fathers. In their authorized creed, Romanists solemnly profess to 
receive no interpretations of Scripture, except " according to the 
unanimous consent of the fathers." (Nisi juxta unanimem consen- 
8um patrum. Creed of Pope Pius.) To prove that in their inter- 

* Title of Pope Greffoiy's Letter, '* Encyclical Letter from our moet Holr 
Father, Pooe Gregory, toe Sixteenth of the name, addressed to all Patriaichi, Pxi- 
matea, Arcnbiahops, aiid Bishops." 



CHIP. !▼.] POPERY m EMBRYO.— TO A. D. 606. 47 



AtgiMttiMi Hilary, uid Bade qaottd. Other apoailee mora worthy than Pelar. 

pretation of this passage, they violate their own rule, many cita- 
tions from the fathers might be given. Let the following two 
suffice. The first is from Au^stine, the celebrated bishop of Hippo 
(on Matt, 13. ser.) "-De verbis Domini, tu es Petrus^ &c. " Tnou 
art Peter, and upon this rock which thou hast confessed, upon this, 
which thou hast acknowledged, saying, ' Thou art Christ, the Son 
of the living God,' I will build my church ; that is, upon myself^ the 
Son of the living God^ I will build my church,** &c. 

The other is from Hilary, another of the most celebrated fathers. 
(Can. 16, de fimdam. Eccles.) " Unum igitur hoc est immobile fun^ 
damentum^ &c. " This one foundation is immovable, that is, that 
one blessed rock of faithy confessed by the mouth of Peter, * Thou 
art the Son of the living God.' "— (De Trinit., 1. 6.) " Super hanc 
canfessionis petram ecclesuB cedificatio est/* ** The building of the 
church is upon this rock of confession." And again, " hcec fides^ 
&c " This faith is the foundation of the church ; this faith hath 
the keys of the kingdom of heaven : what this faith shall loose or 
bind is bound and loosed in heaven." 

So also the venerable Bede, who, though not reckoned among 
the fathers, was a writer of great renown in the eighth century, 
remarks on this passage as follows. " It is said unto him by a 
metaphor. Upon this rock, i. e., the Saviour, whom thou hast con- 
fessed, the church is builded." 

Whatever may be the weight attached to the authority of these 
writers, it is evident that if the promise referred to Peter, it failed 
of accomplishment ; for when Peter with oaths and curses denied 
his Lord, certainly the gates of hell did prevail against him, and if 
he, a fallible and peccable mortal, had been the foundation of the 
church ; when that fell, the church, the superstructure must have 
fallen with it. The fact is, that Christ alone is the supreme head 
as well as the foundation of the church, and he gave no special 
precedence or dignity to one of the apostles which he gave not to 
another. He established no earthly supreme head of the church, and 
his apostles ever acted toward each other in the spirit of the declara- 
tion of their Lord, " One is your master, even Christ, and all ye 

ARE brethren." 

§ 20. — If any one were worthy of the supremacy over the rest, 
and to be called " Prince of the apostles," there are at least three 
of their number who would be more worthy of the honor than 
Peter, viz. : either Paul, or James, or John. Paul was more worthy, 
for he publicly and deservedly rebuked Peter, and " withstood him 
to the lace, because he was to be blamed " (Gal. ii., 11), and certainly 
Paul could not have been inferior to Peter, for Paul himself declares 
that in nothing was he behind the very chiefest apostles." (2 Cor. 
xiL, 11.) James was more worthy than Peter, for he appears to 
have been bishop or pastor of the first church ever established, viz. : 
that at Jerusalem, and presided and announced the final decision in 
the council held at Jerusalem, in relation to the alleged necessity 
of circumcision. (Acts, chap, xv.) John was certainly more 



48 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book l 



p0tflr*t imiciiiftiy Mfieeiion. VtrloMt and eoafictiBf Itali of 

worthy of the supremacy than Peter, if any one were entitled to 
such a pre-eminence ; for John never denied his Lord, but Peter 
did ; John, ^ the beloved disciple," asked Jesus a question at the 
Supper, which Peter did not dare to ask. (John xiii., 23, 24.) John 
was standing near the cross, at the death of his Lord, and had the 
mother of Jesus confided to his care, while Peter was probably at 
a distance, weeping over his cowardly denial. (John xix., 25, &c.) 
John lived longer than Peter, was the last survivor of all the 
apostles, and penned more of the volume of Inspiration than either 
Peter, or any other of the twelve. 

§ 21. — But in relation to t?ie other supposition ; supposing that it 
could be proved, which we have shown it cannot, that Peter, 
during his life, was the suprem'e head of the church on earth, still 
it would be impossible to prove that this supremacy descended 
down from one generation to another, through the long line of 
popes, many of whom, as we shall show, in the progress of this 
work, were monsters of vice and impurity. There is no evidence 
that the apostles had the slightest expectation of any such regular 
line of descent. The New Testament does not say a single word 
about it, and even the Roman bishops themselves did not make the 
claim to have derived their power from Peter, till several centuries 
afler the apostolic age. 

Before leaving this subject, there is one absurdity which springs 
from this claim of the Romanists, that deserves to be mentioned. 
Most Roman Catholic authors reckon Linus the second bishop of 
Rome, or supreme head of the church ;* pope Linus, according to 

* We are not to snpDOse, however, that there is any uniformity among writers, 
or certainty as to the tnree or four supposed first successors of St Peter. Says 
Mr. Walch, the author of a compendious but learned history of the Popes, originauy 
published in German : ** If we may judge of the church of Rome, by the constitu- 
tion of other apostolic churches, she could have had no particular bishop, before the 
end of the first century. The ancient Ibts," he adds, ** are so contradictory that it 
would be impossible exactly to determine, either the succession of the bisnops, or 
their chronology. Some say that Clemens, of Rome, had been ordained }yr the 
apostle Peter, and was his immediate successor. Others place Linus and Cletua 
betwixt them. A third set name linus, but instead of Cletus, name Akaclstus, 
Ahekcletus, DACLETiirs. Lastly a fourth party states the succession thus : Peter, 
Linus, Cletus, Clemens, Anacletus." — WakWs Lives of the Popes, 

Amonff the eariy fathers, Tertullian, Rufinus, and Epiphanius, say Clemeni 
succeeded Peter. Jerome dechires that 'most of the Latin authors sup- 
posed the order to be Clement the successor of Peter,* But Irenaeus, Eusebius, 
Jerome, and Augustine, contradict the above authorities, and say Linus succeeded 
Peter ; Chrysostom seems to eo the same way. Bishop Pearson has proved that 
Linus died before Peter ; ana therefore, on the supposition that Peter was first 
bishop of Rome, Linus could not succeed him. Cabassute, the learned Popish 
historian of the councils, BajEy ' it is a very doxtbtful question concerning Linus, 
Cletus, and Clemens, as to which of them succeeded Peter."* Dr. Comber, a very 
learned divine of the church of England, says, < upon the whole matter there is no 
CBRTAiHTT who was the bishop of Rome, next to the apostles, and therefore the 
RoMAinsTs BUILD UPON uf n.L BOTTOM, when they lay so great weight on theif 



riBSONAL SUCCESSIOK.' " 



''The LIKE BLUHDER," remarks the same learned Episcopalian, '* there is 
sbout the next bishop of Rome. The fabulous Pontifical makes Cl^us succeed linosi 



CEAP.rr.] POPERY IN EMBRYO.— TO A. D. 606. 40 



Iv ateunlitjr. The apoatle John tabjeet to the Beeoiid Pope. 

them, having succeeded upon the martyrdom of pope Peter. Now, 
it is not denied by any, thiat the apostle John outlived Peter about 
thirty years. If then Peter was the supreme head of the church, 
and Linus was his successor in the supremacy, then of course the 
inspired apostle John must have been inferior to Linus in rank and 
dignity, and subject to him in precisely the same way as Roman 
Catholic bishops are now subject to their pope. Now when it is 
remembered that Linus, of whom we know scarcely anything more 
than his name, was not one of the apostles, it will be seen that this 
wpposition is directly at variance with the inspired declaration of 
Paul," God hath set some in the Church, first, apostles ; secondarily, 

ahets ; thirdly, teachers ; after that miracles ; then gifts of 
ngs, helps, governments, diversities of tongues." (1 Cor. xii., 
%.) To such strange absurdities does this doctrine of the papal 
ropremacy lead. Of course the same conclusion will follow, which- 
ever of the various theories is adopted, as to the supposed inune- 
diate successor of Peter.* 

Notwithstanding, however, the weakness of these pretensions, 
•fter the city of Rome had fallen from its ancient dimitv, into the 
power of the barbarians, and the superiority of its lordly bishop 
could no longer be quietly submitted to from the superiority of that 
<% to every other, the pontiffs renewed and reiterated this arro- 

^ giyes ns several Lives of Cletus, and Anacleiia, making them of several 
utioDs, and to have been popes at different times, putting Clement between them. 
Yet the aforesaid bishop of Chester [Pearson] proves these were only two hames 
of the SAME PERSON. And every one may see the folly of the Romish church, 
*l"ch venerates two several saints on two several days, one of which never had a 
^ ^ng, for Cleius is but the abbrevicUum cf Anacletus's name,^^ {Dr. Comber en 

^oirnn Forgeries in Councils,^^ part i., c. i.) 

Anucigt all the^e varying and opposing lists, this contradiction and con- 
''"ion worse confounded, now utterly baseless must be those pretensions, 
2[Mier made by the papists of Rome, or the semi-papists of Oxford, which are 
l^^ed upon a supposea ascertained, and unbroken descent from the apostles 7 
^ arguments to sustain them are lighter than air. Hence we are not surprised 
l|o hear that bright luminary of the British establishment, Archbishop Whately, 
vciare his solemn conviction, that ^* there is not a minister in all Christen- 

^ WHO IS ABLE to TRACE UP, WITH ANY APPROACH TO CERTAINTY, HIS OWH 

cnsmiAL PEDIGREE. The ultimate consequence must be," remarks the same 
ttcellent prelate, *' that any one who sincerely believes that his claim to the bene- 
fts of the ffospel covenant depends on his own minister's claim to the supposed 
iBcnunentai virtue of true ordination, and this again on apostolical succession, 
most be involved, in proportion as he reads, and inquires, and reflects, and reasons 
on the subject, in the most distressing doubt ancl perplexity. It is no wonder, 
therefore, that the advocates of this theory studiously disparage reasoning, depre- 
cate all exercise of the mind in reflection, decry appeals to evidence, and lament 
that even the power of reading should be imparted to the people. It is not without 
cause that they dread and lament * an age of too much light,' and wish to involve 
religion in a * solemn and awful gloom.' It is not wiwout cause that, having 
removed the Christian's confidence from a rock, to base it on sand, they forbid all 
prying curiosity to examine their foundation." ( Whately on the Kingdom of Christy 
Kuay ti, \ 30.) 

♦ Those who wish to see the ar^ment on this subject carried out in a masterly 
«my, are referred to the treatise of the learned Barrow, on the Pope's supremacy. 



50 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book l 

Another fierce eoateitketw«eBriTalbliho|M of Rome. 8 jmmachM and 



gant claim to supremacy from divine rights with an earnestness 
proportioned to tne danger that existed of sinking into a second 
ranK, from the rising political importance and splendor of the rival 
city of Constantinople. 



CHAPTER V. 

POPERT FULLY ESTABLISHED. THE MAN OF SIN REVEALED. 

§22. — ^In the course of the sixth century, the city of Rome thrice 
witnessed the disgraceful spectacle of rival pontiffs, with fierce 
hatred, bloodshed, and massacre, contending with each other for the 
spiritual throne. The first of these struggles occurred about the 
commencement of the century, " between Symmachus and Lau- 
rentius, who were on the same day elected to the pontificate by 
different parties, and whose dispute was at length decided by The- 
odoric, king of the Goths. Each of these ecclesiastics maintained 
obstinately the validity of his election ; they reciprocally accused 
each other of the most detestable crimes ; and to their mutual dis- 
honor, their accusations did not appear on either side entirely desti- 
tute of foundation. Three different councils, assembled at Rome^ 
endeavored to terminate this odious schism, but without success. 
A fourth was summoned by Theodoric, in 603, to examine the 
accusations brought against Symmachus, to whom this prince had, 
at the beginning of the schism, adjudged the papal chair. This 
council was held about the commencement of tnis century, and in 
it the Roman pontiff was acquitted of the crimes laid to his charge. 
But the adverse party refused to acquiesce in this decision, and tnis 
gave occasion to Ennodius, bishop of Ticinum, now Pavia, to draw 
up his adulatory apology for the council and Symmachus." It was 
on this occasion and in this apology, says Gicseler, that the asser- 
tion was first hazarded, that " the bishop of Rome was subject to no 
earthly tribunal. Not long afterward an attempt was made to give 
this principle a historical basis, by bringing forward forged acts of 
former pontiffs."* In subsequent ages, it will be seen that the popes 
not only declared themselves free from all subjection to every 
earthly tribunal, but boldly maintained that all earthly powers and 
potentates were subject to them. In this apology for Symmachus, 
the servile flatterer, Ennodius, styles the object ofhis flattery, ** Judge 

IN THE PLACE OP GoD, AND VICEGERENT OF THE MoST HiGH." This 

was the first time so far as is known, that this blasphemous title 

* Gieseler, vol. i., page 339, 



1.] FGRXT K EmrO— TO A.II. «IS. SI 



ftoli'^Nc* tbix be. ss Gk^L seaeA m tbe temple of God. sbowiw 
himsdf liza: be is God.^ (2 Tbes&. iu 4.) 

Aboot die Tior 590L tbere wis aDOibex- £sjTiice&I contest and 
the otT of Rome wxs agmin agnsted by tbe rii^ chdn^ of Boni&ce 
IL ind Dkecums. tiioogb liie premiiure desth of the latter Kidi 
pot I period to tbis dencal war. Bat tbe centurr did not dose 
whhoDt a soene alike da^^Taoe&L A prdateof tbe name of Vu*iKaSf 
intiigTied at oomt to procure tbe depositioD of tbe rri.^rii4r £)sbc^ 
Sflrenxs. Tbe latter was. in oonsequeDce, deprived o^ hi^ dignities 
ad huiisbed. He appealed to tbe emperor Justinian, who^inter^ 
fered in his behalf and cnoomaged him to return to Rome« with thi^ 
ifiosiye expectation of regaining his rights ; but the artifices of 
yigiiios prevailed — his antagonist was resigned to his power, and 
nnmediatelT confined by him m tbe islands ofPontus and Pandatanu 
^bere, in penury and affliction, be terminated his wretched exist* 
cnoe. 

§2S. — ^During tbe last few years of the sixth cmtury, the contest 
fcrsq)remacy between the bishops of Rome and Constantin^le 
nified with peater acrimony than at any precedinc period. The 
iwiop of Constantinople not only claimed an unrivalloa sovereignty 
over the eastern churches, but also maintained that his church was, 
in point of dimity, no way inferior to that of Rome. The Roman 
pontiffs beheld with impatience these pretensions, and wannly 
asserted the pre-eminence of their church, and its undoubtoil superi- 
ority over that of Constantinople. Gregory the Great distinguished 
iumself in this violent contest ; and the fiict that in a council held 
in 588, John, the faster^ bishop of Constantinople, assuineil the title 
ofunitersal bishop^ furnished Gregory with a mvorable opiH>rtimity 
of exerting his zeal. Supposing that the design of his rival was to 
obtam the supremacy over all Christian churches, Gregory opuosed 
his pretensions with the utmost vehemence, and in order to ostnotish, 
more firmly, his own authority, invented the fiction of the power of 
the keys, as committed to the successor of St. Peter, rather than to tho 
body of the bishops, according to the previous opinion, and, says Wad- 
dington, " He betrayed on many occasions a very ridiculous eager- 
ness to secure their honor. Consequently he was profuse in his distri- 
bution of certain keys, endowed, as he was not ashamed to assort, with 
supernatural qualities ; he even ventured to insult Anastasius, tho 

Etriarch of Antioch, by such a gift. * I have sent you (ho says), 
ys of the blessed apostle Peter, your guardian, which, when 
placed upon the sick, are wont to be resplendent with numerous 
miracles.' *Amatoris vestri, beati Petri apostoli, vobis clavos 
transmisi, quae super segi'os positas multis solent miraculis coruscaro.' 
We may attribute this absurdity to the basest superstition, or to tho 
most impudent hypocrisy ; and we would gladly have nrcforrod 
the more excusable motive, if the supposed advancement ot tho SoOf 



52 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book i. 

Letf-r of Saint Gregory, iboat the '* blasphemooa,'* ** infemal,** and ** diabolical ** titla. 

which was clearly concerned in these presents, did not rather lead 
us to the latter." {Wad. Ch, Hist. 143.) 

§ 24. — Besides these vain pretensions, Gregory wrote epistles to 
his own ambassador at Constantinople, to the patriarch John, and 
to the emperor Mauritius, in which in various passages he denounces 
the title of universal bishop as " vain," " execrable," " anti-Chris- 
tian," ** blasphemous," " infernal," and " diabolical." In his letter to 
the patharch of Constantinople, he pleads with him thus : " Disci- 
pulis Dominus dicit^ autem nolite vocari rabbit untLS enim Magister 
vester est, vos omnes fratres estis^^ &c. * Our Lord says unto his 
disciples, be not ye called rabbi, for one is your Master, and all ye 
are brethren.' What, therefore, most dear brother, are you, in tne 
terrible examination of the coming Judge, to say, who, generalis 
pater in mundo vocari appetis ? desire to be called, not father only, 
but the general father of the world ? 

" Beware of the sinful suggestions of the wicked. I beg, I entreat, 
and I beseech, with all possible suavity, that your brotherhood 
resist all these flatterers who ofier you this name of error, and that 
you refuse to be designated by so foolish and so proud an appella- 
tion. For I indeed say it with tears, and from the inward anguish 
of my bowels, that to my sins I attribute it, that my brother cannot 
to this day be brought to humility, who was made bishop for this 
end, that he might lead the minds of others to humility. It is 
written, * God resisteth the proud, and giveth erace to the humble :* 
and again it is said, *he is unclean before God, who exaJteth his heart ;' 
hence, it is written against the proud man, * Quid superbis, terra et 
cinis V * Earth and ashes, why art thou proud V 

** Perpends, rogo, quia in hac presumptione pax totius turbatur 
ecclesicB,*' &c. "Consider, I entreat you, that by this rash pre- 
sumption is the peace of the whole church disturbed, and the grace 
poured out in common upon all contradicted : in which you can 
mcrease only in proportion as you carefully decrease in self-esteem, 
and become the greater the more you restrain yourself from this 
name of proud and foolish usurpation ; love humility, therefore, my 
dearest brother, with your whole heart, by which concord among 
all the brethren and the unity of the holy universal church may be 
preserved. Truly, when Paul, the apostle, heard some say, * 1 am 
of Paul, I am of ApoUos, I am of Cephas,' he, vehemently abhorring 
this tearing asunder of the Lord's body, by whicli they, in some 
sense, united his members to other heads, cries out, Was Paul 
crucified for you, or were you baptized in the name of Paul ? li^ 
then, he would not suffer the members of the Lord's body to be, as 
it were, particularly subject to certain heads, beyond Christ, and 
they apostles too, what will you say to Christ the head of his 
universal holy church, in the trial of his last judgment, who endea- 
vor to subject all his members under the title oi universal? Whom, 
pray, do you propose to imitate by this perverse name, but him, 
who, despising the legions of angels, his companions, endeavored to 
break forth, and ascend to an elevation peculiar to himself, that he 



CHAP. ▼.] POPERY IN EMBRYO.— TO A. D. 606. M 

Gnfory say that A tniA niat would accefic it. Writes agmlBst It to tha Emperar 

mi^ht seem to be subject to none, and to be above all of them T 
Who also said, * I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne 
above the stars of heaven ; I will be like the Most Hi£[h !' For 
what are all your brother bishops of the universal church, but the 
stars of heaven, whose lives and preaching ^ive light amone the 
sins and errors of men, as in the darkness ofmght ? Above whom, 
when you thus desire to elevate yourself by this hajighty tttky and 
to tread down their name in comparison of yours, what dfo you say 
but I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars 
of heaven? 

^ Atque ut cuncta brevi singula locuiionis astringam/* &,c. And 
that I may sum up all in one word : the saints before the law, the 
saints under the law, and the saints under grace, the gospel — all 
these, making up the perfect body of our Lord, are constituted but 
members of the church ; none of them would ever have himself 
called UNIVERSAL. Let vour holiness then acknowledge how he 
must swell with pride, who covets to be called by this name, which 
DO true saint would presume to accept. Were not, as your brother- 
hood knows, my predecessors in the apostolical See, which I now 
serve by God's providence, called by the council of Chalcedon to 
this offered honor ? but none of them would ever allow himself to 
be named by such a title — ^none snatched at this rash name^ lest if 
he should seize on this singular glory of the pontificate^ he should 
teem to deny it to all his brethren. 

** Sed omnia qucB prtBdicta sunt^fiunt : rex superbicB prope est et 
fworf did nefas est, sacerdotum est prceparatus excitus (vel exercitus) 
ci qui cermce militant elationis*^ But all things which are foretold 
we come to pass ; the king of pride approaches, and O, horrid to 
teD ! the going forth of (or the army of the priests), is ready for him^ 
^ho fight with the neck of pride, though appointed to lead to 
humility."* 

§25. — In his letters to the emperor Mauritius, Gregory reite- 
rates the same sentiments. On account of their importance, the 
following extracts firom these letters are subjoined. "The care 
and principality of the whole church," says Gregory, " is committed 
to St. Peter ; and yet he is not called * universal apostle ' — though 
this holy man, John, my fellow priest, labors to be called * univer- 
sal bishop !' I am compelled to cry out, * O the corruption of time» 
and manners?' Behold the barbarians are become lords of all 
Europe : cities are destroyed, castles are beaten down, provinces* 
depopulated, there are no husbandmen to till the ground. Idolater* 
rage and domineer over Christians ; and yet priests, who ought to 
lie weeping upon the pavement, in sackcloth and ashes, covet name9 
of vanity, and glory in new and profane titles. 

" Do I, most religious sovereign, in this plead my own cause T 
Do I vindicate a wrong done to myself, and not maintain the cause 
rf Almighty God, and of the church universal ? Who is he wha 

• Epiat Greff., lib. iv., epist 88. 
5 



54 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. \book l 

Gregory places the bnuul or anti-Chriit upon him who murpf the title of tinl^ml Mahop^ 

presumes to usurp this new name against both the law of the gospel 
and of the canons T We know that many priests of the church of 
Constantinople have been not only heretics, but even the chief leaders 
of them. It, then, every one of that church assumes the name by 
which he makes himself the head of all good men ; the Catholic 
church, which God forbid should ever be the case, must needs be 
overthrown when he falls who is called Univeksal. But, feir from 
Christians be this hlasphemous name, by which all honor is taken 
from all other priests, while it is foolishly arrogated by one. This 
man (John), contemning obedience to the canons, should be humbled 
by the commands of our most pious sovereign. He should be 
chastised who does an injury to the holy Catholic church ! whose 
heart is puffed up, who seeks to please himself by a name of 
singularity, by which he would elevate himself above the Emperor I 
We are all scandalized at this. Let the author of this scandal 
reform himself, and all differences in the church will cease. I am 
the servant of all priests, so long as they live like themselves — ^but 
if any shall vainly set up his bristles, contrary to God Almighty* 
and to the canons of the fathers, I hope in God that he will never 
succeed in bringing my neck under his yoke — ^not even by force 
of arms." 

These urgent letters of Gregory appear to have been unavailing. 
The patriarch John, indeed, was soon afterward removed by death 
from his archiepiscopal dignity ; but Cynacus, who succeeded him 
as bishop of Constantinople, adopted the same pompous title as his 

Sredecessor. Having had occasion to despatch some agents to 
Lome, in the letter which he wrote to the Roman pontiff Gregory, 
he so much displeased him by assuming the appellation of " univer- 
sal bishop," that the latter withheld from the agents somewhat of 
the courtesy to which they considered themselves entitled, and, of 
course, complaint was made to the emperor Mauritius of the neglect 
which had been shown them. This circumstance extorted a letter 
from the Emperor at Constantinople to the bishop of Rome, in which 
he advises him to treat them, in future, in a more friendly manner 
and not to insist so far on punctilios of style, as to create a scandal 
about a title, and fall out about a few syllables. To this Gregory 
replies, " that the innovation in the style did not consist much in the 
quantity and alphabet ; but the bulk of the iniquity was weighty 
enough to sink and destroy all. And, therefore, I am bold to say,** 
says he, " that whoever adopts, or affects the title of universal bishop, 
has the pride and character of anti-Christ, and is in some manner 
his forerunner in this haughty quality of elevating himself above the 
rest of his order. And, indeed, both the one and the other seem to 
split upon the same rock ; for as pride makes anti-Christ strain 
HIS pretensions up to Godhead, so whoever is ambitious to be caUed 
the only or universal prelate, arrogates to himself a distinguished 
9ig>eriority, and rises, as it were, upon the ruins of the rest*** Let 

* £pist. Greg. 1. vL Ep. 80. 



CHAP, v.] POPERY IN EMBRYO.— TO A. D. 606. 55 



Pope Booiftce aoon after obtains thia very titlo for himself and succeiion. 



the reader ponder well the sentence last quoted, in this epistle of 

Gregory, confessedly one of the most eminent of the Roman bishops, 

and who has, by them, been canonized as Saiivt Gregory ; in which 

he places the brand of anti-Christ on whoever assumes this title, 

and then judge whether we are not justified in pronouncing the era 

of the papal supremacy, when only two years after Gregory's death, 

pope Boniface III. sought for and obtained the title of universal 

W8H0P, as the date of the full revelation of anti-Christ. We do 

bat repeat the opinion so emphatically expressed by Saint Gregory 

only a few years before the actual occurrence 01 this remarkable 

event in the history of Popery. Boniface, who succeeded to the 

Roman See in 605,was so far from having any scruples about adopting 

this "blasphemous TrrLE," that he actually apphed to the emperor 

Phocas, a cruel and bloodthirsty tyrant, who had made his way to 

the throne by assassinating his predecessor ; and earnestly solicited 

the title, with the privilege of handing it down to his successors. 

The profligate emperor who had a secret grudge against the bishop 

of Constantinople, granted the request of Boniface, and afler strictly 

fcrbiddin^ the former prelate to use the title, conferred it upon the 

latter in me year 606, and declared the church of Rome to be head 

over all other churches.* Thus was Paul's prediction accomplished, 

**THE man op sin " rcvcalcd, and that system of corrupted Christi- 

3nity and spiritual tyranny which is properly callea POPERY, 

felly developed and established in the world. The title of universal 

BISHOP, which was then obtained by Boniface, has been worn by all 

rocceedinff popes, and the claim of supremacy, which was then 

established, has ever since been maintained and defended by them, 

«nd still is, down to the present day. 

§26. — Henceforward the religion of Rome is properly styled 
Popery, or the religion of the pope. Previous to the year 606, 
there was properly no pope. It is true that in earlier ages the title 
of pope, which is derived from the Greek word nannag, fether, in its 
general and inoffensive sense, had been used as a frequent title of 
bishops, without distinction. Siricius, bishop of Rome, was probably 
the first who assumed the name as an official title, toward the close 
of the fourth century, and it was afterward claimed exclusively by 
the popes of Rome, as the appropriate designation of the sovereign 

Kntifis.f This arrogant claim has long since been quietly conceded 
other Christians, and the title has been exclusively enjoyed, 

♦ These facts are related by Baronius and other Romish historians. " Quo 
tempore intercesserunt qusdam odiorum fomenta inter eundem Phocam imperaio- 
rem atqne Cyriacom Constantinopolitanum. Hinc igitur in Cyriacum Phocas 
eiacerbataa in ejus odiom imperiali edicto sancivit, nomen universalis decere Ro- 
mannm tanfnm modo ecclesiam, tanquam qus caput esset omnrum ecclesiarum, 
soUque convenire Romano pontifici ; non autem episcopo Constantinopolitsuio, qui 
abi Olod osarpare prssumeret Quod quidem hunc Bonifacium papam tertium ab 
impenUare Phoca obtinui88e,cum Anastasius Bibliothecarius, turn Paulus diaconui 
tnuiuiit" Spondan, Ejntom, Baron, Annal. in annum 606. 

t See Coleman'B Chnstian Antiquities, page 76. 



56 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book l 

Fopcrj not Catholle. Callinc thiap by dMlr right i 



without dispute and without envy.* When we say, therefore, that 
previous to A. D. 606, there was no pope, we mean, of course, in 
the present exclusive sense of the word, as the supreme sovereign 
pontiff, and boaste4 head of the universal church. Till this time, 
notwithstanding the prior origin of many popish corruptions. Popery 
or the Roman Catholic religion in its present form, as a distinct and 
compacted system, had no existence. This is the epoch of its 
origin and birth. Papal supremacy then bound, and still binds 
its discordant elements into one, and should this claim be given up, 
the whole anti-Christian system would fall to pieces, like the por- 
tions of an arch, when the key-stone is removea. The historian is 
therefore fully justified in applying to this system, the distinctive 
ai^d appropriate terms, popish^ popery ^ and their cognates. In the 
words of that singular but forcible writer, John Rogers, when 
assi^ng his reasons for not employing the terms Catholic or Roman 
Catholic^ by which papists prefer to be designated, "We are far, 
very far from intending or wishing to hurt the feeling, or pain the 
mind of any member of the kirk of Rome ; but we intend to follow 
a plan scriptural and reasonable, and to write with grammatical and 
philosophical propriety. We desire not to be, and not to appear 
to be offensive or insulting ; but to be orderly, or to conform to 
method and rule. We desire not to ^ve displeasure or pain, but to 
have definitude or precision. We aim to be accurate or correct, 
and to employ words in their right and true meaning. We avoid 
using Catholic and Roman Catholic, on five grounds ; in order to 
be analogical, in order to be logical, in order to oppose papal 
bigotry, in order to oppose papal pride, and in order to oppose 
papal persecution.''t The word Catholic means universal, and 
since the Romish is not a universal church, it is evidently incorrect 
to call that communion the Holy Catholic church. To avoid 
this impropriety, some employ the terms Roman Catholic^ but here 
again is a manifest impropriety, as that cannot be universal in any 
sense, which is not absolutely so, and to apply the term Catholic or 
universal, to that which must be limited oy the adjective Roman, 
or any other word denoting speciality, is evidently a contradiction 
in terms. For these reasons tnis system will be designated in the 
present work, by the names, Romanism, Popery, &c., and the adjec- 
tives, Romish, Papal, &c., not as terms of reproach, but simply 
because they are more consistent with historical accuracy and 
truth, than any others which could be selected. If we occasionallv 
employ, therefore, the terms Catholic or Roman Catholic, we wish 

♦ Father Gahan, in his History of the Church (page 335), mentions, apparently 
with approbation, the following whimsicd derivation of the title Papa^ or Pope: 
^ Some writers say that the won! Papa comes from the initial letters of thete 
four words, PetruSy Apostolus, Princeps, Apostohrum (i. e., Peter the apostle, 
prince of the Apostles), which beuiflr abbreviated with a punctom or colon after each 
of the four initial letters, coalesced in progress of time into^the word P^^po, ~^^ 
out any intermediate punctuation." 

t See *' Anti-popopriestiao," by John Rogers, page 7& 



OAP. iL] POPERY IN EMBRYO.— TO A. D. 606. 57 



Ooonqoeaeei of th0 MtabUduMot of the papal Mipranaey. 



h to be distinctly understood that we do so, simply as a matter of 
courtesy or convenience, and not because we for a moment admit 
the propriety of the application of either of these terms to the anti- 
Christian system of Rome. 



CHAPTER VL 

FAPAL BUPRBMACT — THE ACTORS IN ITS ESTABLISHMENT — THE TYRANT 
PHOOAB THE SAINT GREGORY, AND THE POPE BONIFACE. 

§ 27. — The bestowment of the title of Universal Bishop by Pho- 
cas, the tyrant, upon Boniface IIL, bishop of Rome, the first of 
TBI POPES, and the consequent establishment of papal supremacy, 
Was the memorable event that embodied into a system and cemented 
into one the various false doctrines, corrupt practices, and vain and 
iQperstitious rites and ceremonies, which haa arisen in earlier a^es, 
to de&ce the beauty and mar the simplicity of Christian worship. 
Before this event, the bishop of Rome had no power to enforce his 
decisions upon other churches and bishops ; and, as we have al- 
ready seen, in many instances they might reject his decrees, with- 
out forfeiting their standing, as constituent portions of the so called 
Catholic church ; now they were compelled to submit to his man- 
dates, as the spiritual sovereign of the world, or be branded with 
the name of heretics. Before this, the false doctrines which arose, 
and the superstitious heathen ceremonies which were adopted into 
Christian worship, mi^ht be believed or practised in one church or 

Cvince and rejected in another ; so tnat the corruptions which 
long since towered to a greater height at Rome than any- 
where else, were still but partially diffused over the Christian 
world. Immediately upon the establishment of papal supremacy, 
the gigantic errors and corruptions of Rome were rendered binding 
upon all. Before this time, while there was no supreme earthly 
head to enforce uniformity, a variety of liturgies and forms of 
worship were adopted in different places, some of them in a greater 
and otners in a less degree conformable to the spirit of the New 
Testament ; now, by the sovereign decrees of his Holiness the 
Pope, all must be conformed to the standard of Rome. In the 
ages that preceded the establishment of papal supremacy, " we are 
not to think,** observes Mosheim, " that the same method of wor- 
ship was uniformly followed in every Christian society, for this was 
fiur from being the case. Every bishop, consulting his own private 
judgment, and taking into consideration the nature of the times, the 
genius of the country in which he lived, and the character and 



58 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book l 

Bktgnjihj of Phoeu the tjrant, who bolowed npoii the popee the title of UnlTennl Biehop. 

temper of those whom he was appointed to rule and instructy 
formed such a plan of divine worship as he thought the wisest and 
the best Hence that variety of liturgies which were in use, be- 
fore the bishop of Rome had usurped the supreme power in re- 
ligious matters, and persuaded the credulous and unthinkinsy that 
the model, both of doctrine and worship, was to be given by the 
mother church, and to be followed implicitly throughout the Chris- 
tian world." {Mosheim, vol. i. p. 385.) 

§ 28. — ^As it was owins to the decree of the emperor Phocas, 
constituting him supreme Universal Bishop and head of the universal 
church, that the proud prelate of Rome was thus enabled to tyrannize 
over the whole of Christendom, and mould and fashion the churches 
at his will, it may be necessary that we retrace our steps for four or 
five years, and relate with some minuteness the origin and charac- 
ter of the man who conferred on him this power, that we may see 
whether this doctrine, so essential to the very oxistence of Popery, 
viz. : the papal supremacy, come from heaven or of men. If I 
mistake not, we shall find that its origin is from beneath, and that 
the principal agent in establishing it, was one of the most guilty of 
the human race, approaching very near, if he did not alto^ther 
reach the idea of consummate or universal depravity, embodied in 
his great master, the devil. 

This Phocas was a native of Asia Minor, of obscure and unknown 
parentage, who entered the army of the emperor Mauritius as a 
common soldier. Having attained the rank ot a centurion, a petty 
officer, with the command of a hundred men, he happened in the 
year 602 to be with his company on the banks ol the Danube, 
when he headed a mutiny against the Emperor among his troops, 
caused himself to be tumultuously proclaimed leader of the insur- 
gents, and marched with them to Constantinople. " So obscure had 
been the former condition of Phocas," says Gibbon, "that the 
Emperor was quite ignorant of the name and character of his rival ; 
but as soon as he had learned that the centurion, though bold in 
sedition, was timid in the face of danger, ' Alas !' cried the prince, 
'if he is a coward, he will surely be a murderer.' " 

§ 29. — Upon the approach of rhocas to Constantinople, the unfor- 
tunate Mauritius, with his wife and nine children, escaped in a small 
bark to the Asiatic shore ; but the violence of the wind compelled 
him to land at the church of St. Autonomus, near Chalcedon, from 
whence he despatched Theodosius, his eldest son, to implore the 
gratitude and friendship of the Persian monarch. For himself, he 
refused to fly ; his body was tortured with sciatic pains, his mind 
was enfeebled by superstition ; he patiently awaited the event of 
the revolution, and addressed a fervent and public prayer to the 
Almighty, that the punishment of his sins might be inflicted in this 
world, rather than in a future life. The patriarch of Constanti- 
nople " consecrated the successful usurper in the church of St. John 
the Baptist. On the third day, amidst the acclamations of a thought- 
less people, Phocas made tus public eiitry in a chariot drawn by 



GBiP. yl] popery in EMBRYO.—TO a. D. 606. 59 

Cmd murder by Um tyrant, of MmorithM, his wife and fkmOy. 

four white horses ; the revolt of the troops was rewarded by a 
lavish donative, and the new sovereign, alter visiting the palace, 
beheld from his throne the games of the hippodrome. The ministers 
of death were despatched to Chalcedon : they dragged the Emperor 
from his sanctuary ; and the five sons of Mauritius were successively 
murdered before the eyes of their agonizing parent. At each stroke, 
which he felt in his heart, he found strength to rehearse a pious 
ejaculation, * Thou art just^ O Lord! and thy judgments are right' 
eousJ The tramc scene was finally closed by the execution of the 
Emperor himself, in the twentieth year of his reign, and the sixty- 
third year of his age. The bodies of the father and his five sons 
were cast into the sea, their heads were exposed at Constantinople 
to the insults or pity of the multitude, and it was not till some signs 
of putrefaction appeared, that Phocas connived at the private burial 
of these venerable remains." The flight of Theodosius, the son of 
the unfortunate Emperor, to the Persian court, had been intercepted 
by a rapid pursuit, or a deceitful message : he was beheaded at 
Nice, and the last hours of the young prince were soothed by the 
comforts of reUgion, and the consciousness of innocence. 

§ 30. — In the massacre of the imperial family, the usurper had 
spared the widow and three daughters of the late Emperor, but the 
suspicion or discovery of a conspiracy rekindled the fury of Phocas. 
These unfortunate females took refuge in one of the churches of the 
city, then regarded as an inviolable asylum. The patriarch, moved 
partly by compassion to the royal sufferers, partly by reverence 
for the place, would not permit them to be dragged by force from 
their asylum ; but defended them, whilst there, with gieat spirit and 
resolution. The tyrant, one of the most vindictive and inexorable 
of mankind, and who could therefore ill brook this spirited opposi- 
tion from the priest, thought it prudent then to dissemble his resent- 
nieiit, as it would have been exceedingly dangerous, in the begin- 
ning of his reign, to alarm the church. And he well knew how 
important, and even venerable a point it was accounted, to preserve 
inviolate the sacredness of such sanctuaries. He desisted, therefore, 
from using force, and, by means of the most solemn oaths and pro- 
mises of safety, prevailed at length upon the ladies to quit their 
a«ylum. In consequence of which, they soon after became the helpless 
victims of his fury. " A matron," says Gibbon, ** who commanded 
the respect and pity of mankind, the daughter, wife, and mother of 
emperors, was tortured like the vilest malefactor, and the empress 
Constantina, with three innocent daughters, was beheaded at Chal- 
cedon, on the same ground which had been stained with the blood 
of her husband and five sons ! The hippodrome, the sacred asylum 
of the pleasures and the liberty of the Komans, was polluted with 
heads and limbs and mangled bodies ; and the companions of Pho- 
cas were the most sensible that neither his favor nor their services, 
could protect them 
and Domitians 



lem from a tyrant, the worthy rival of the Caligulas 
of the first age of the empire.''* The imperial family 



* Decline axid Ftll, chap. zlvL 



eO HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [aooKi, 

Horrid bariMiities of PhocM. Btahop Gragory the Oiwt 

being now entirely cut oS, the bloodthirsty tyrant began to proceed 
with the same inexorable cruelty against all their friends, and all 
who had betrayed the least compassion for them, or had borne any 
civil or military employments in the late rei^. Thus, throughout 
the empire were men of the first rank and distinction either daily 
executed or publicly or privately massacred. Some were first inhu- 
manly tortured ; others had their hands and feet cut ofi^; and some 
were set up as marks for the raw soldiery to shoot at, in learning 
the exercise and use of the bow. The populace met with no better 
treatment than the nobility, great numbers of them being daily 
seized for speaking disrespectfully of the tyrant, and either knled by 
his guards on the spot, or tied up in sacks and thrown into the 
sea, or dragged to prison, which by that means was so crowded 
that they soon died, sufibcated with the stench and noisomeness of 
the place. 

Such, then, was the character of the monster in the shape of a 
man, as recorded by the pen of impartial history, by whose sover- 
eign decree pope Boniface was constituted Universal Bishop, and 
supreme head of the church on earth ; and such is the foundation, 
and the only foundation, upon which this lordly title rests, which 
has been claimed by all the successors of Boniface ; the Gregorys, 
the Innocents, and the Leos, down to the imbecile old man, Gregory 
XVI., who, in the nineteenth century, issues his mandates from the 
Vatican at Rome, demanding the unlimited submission and obedi- 
ence of the faithful in the Umted States, and all other nations of the 
earth. So much for the source of this usurped spiritual sovereignty. 
Whether any human power possessed the right thus to elevate a 
mortal to the station of Universal Bishop, supreme head and abso- 
lute monarch of Christ's church, and if so, whether so atrocious a 
villain, and so bloody a murderer, as this Phocas, possessed such 
a right, must be left to the common sense of the reader to decide. 

§ 31. — I have named the famous Romish bishop, Gregory thb 
Great, as he is called by papists, as one actor in establishing the 
papal supremacy. Notwitnstandin^ his artful epistle to Mauritius, 
m which he condemns the title of Universal Bishop, because it had 
been assumed by a rival, he is worthy of the honor in this affair of 
being placed side by side with Phocas, partly because no man before 
him had done so much in defence of the proud prerogatives of the 
Roman See, but chiefly because by the base and servile flatteries 
he bestowed upon that weak-minded but bloodthirsty tyrant, he 
paved the way for the success of Boniface, a few years later, in his 
application to Phocas, for the title of Universal Bishop. 

At the accession of Phocas, Gregory was still bishop of Rome, 
and with the hope, doubtless, that he should be more successful 
with this bloody tyrant than he had been with Mauritius, in caus- 
ing him to restrain the rising ^eatness and ambition of his rival 
patriarch at Constantinople, he immediately wrote to him a letter 
of congratulation, full of the vilest and most venal flatteries, so that 
it has been truly said, were we to learn the character of Phocas 



CHip.TL] POPERY IN EMBRYO.— TO A.D. 606. 61 

TIm nptnre of Sahu Gragory at Um â– ccfionof the nafderoiu tyrant. 

from this pontiff's letters, we should certainly conclude him to have 
been ''rather an angel than a man.'' 

$32. — It is humiliating in the extreme to record the deep tie- 
basement of such a man as Gregory, when he could so far descend 
from the dijenity of his high and holy calling, as to address this 
usurper, wime his hands were yet reeking With the blood of his 
slaughtered victims, in language like the following : '* Glory to God 
in the highest ; who, according as it is written, changes times and 
transfers kingdoms. And because he would have that made known 
to all men, which he hath vouchsafed to speak by his own prophets, 
saving, that the Most High rules in the kingdoms of men, and to 
whom he will he gives it He then goes on to observe that God^ 
in his incomprehensible providence, sometimes sends kings to afflict 
his people and punish them for their sins. This, says he, we have 
hown of late to our woful experience. Sometimes, on the other 
hand, God, in his mercy, raises good men to the throne, for the 
relief and exultation of his servants. Then applying this remark to 
existing circumstances, he adds : '' In the abundance of our exultap 
tion, on which account, we think ourselves the more speedily con- 
finned, rejoicing to find the gentleness of your piety equal to your 
imperial dimity.'' Then, breaking out into rapture, no longer to be 
restramed, he exclaims, ^Let the heavens rejoice and the earth be 
glad ; and, for your illustrious deeds, let the people of every realm 
Hitherto so vehemently afflicted, now be filled with gladness. May 
the necks of your enemies be subjected to the yoke of your supreme 
rule, and the hearts of your subjects, hitherto broken and depressed, 
be relieved by your clemency." Proceeding to paint their former 
uiiseries, he concludes with wishing that the commonwealth may 
long enjoy its present happiness. Thus, in language evidently 
torrowed from the inspired writers, and in which they anticipate 
the joy and gladness that should pervade universal nature at the 
birth of the Messiah, does this pope celebrate the march of the 
tyrant and usurper through seas of olood to the imperial throne. 

**As a subject and a Christian," says Gibbon (chap. xlvi.),"it was 
the duty of Gregory to acquiesce in the established government ; 
but the joyful applause with which he salutes the fortune of the 
assassin, has sullied, with indelible disgrace, the character of the 
saint The successor of the apostles might have inculcated with 
decent firmness the guilt of blood, and the necessity of repentance : 
he is content to celebrate the deliverance of the people, and the fall 
of the oppressor ; to rejoice that the piety and benignity of Phocas 
have been raised by rrovidence to the imperial throne ; to pray 
toat his hands may be strengthened against all his enemies ; and to 
express a wish, that after a long triumphant reign, he may be trans- 
ferred from a temporal to an everlasting kingdom." 

§33. — The unmeasured abuse wfth which this Saint Gregory 
loads the murdered Emperor, after his death, in his congratulatory 
letters to Phocas, naturally leads to an inquiry into the character 
of the unfortunate Mauritius. The fault with which he is princi- 



62 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book l 



Wicked dapllcity and hypocrtey of Saint Oragwy. 



pally accused by contemporary historians, and which, doubtless^ 
proved the cause of his untimely fate, was too much parsimony ; 
tha\i which no vice could render him more odious to the soldiery, 
who were, in those degenerate times of the empire, lazy, undisci- 
plined, debauched, rapacious, and seditious. As the government 
was become military, the affection of the army was the principal 
bulwark of the throne. It was ever consequently the interest of 
the reigning family to secure the fidelity of the legions as much as 
possible. This, in times so corrupt, when military discipline was 
extinct, was to be effected only by an unbounded indulgence, and 
by frequent largesses. These the prince was not in a condition to 
bestow, without laying exorbitant exactions on the people. For 
levying these, the army were, as long as they shared in the spoil, 
always ready to lend their assistance. Hence it happened, that, 
among the Emperors, the greatest oppressors of the people were 
commonly the greatest favorites of the army. The revolt of the 
legions, therefore, could be but a slender proof of mal-administrations. 
It was even, in many cases, an evidence of the contrary. 

But it is more to our present purpose to consider the character 
which this very Saint Gregory gave of Mauritius, when in posses- 
sion of the imperial diadem. For if the former and latter accounts 
given by the pontiff cannot be rendered consistent, we must admit, 
that, first or last, his holiness made a sacrifice of truth to politics. 
Now it is certain that nothing can be more contradictory than those 
accounts. In some of his letters to that Emperor, we find the man 
whom he now treats as a perfect monster, extolled to the skies, as 
one of the most pious, most religious, most Christian princes that 
ever lived. In one of these letters, the Emperor's "pious zeal, 
solicitude, and vigilance for the preservation of the Christian faith,* 
are represented as " the glory of his reign, as a subject of joy, not 
to the pontiff only, but to all the world." In another, after the 
warmest expressions of gratitude, on account of the pious liberality 
and munificence of his imperial majesty, and after telling how 
much the priests, the poor, the strangers, and all the faithfm were 
indebted to his paternal care, he adds that for these reasons " all 
should pray for the preservation of his life, that Almiffhty Grod 
might grant to him a long and quiet reign, and that after nis death, 
as the reward of his piety, a happy race of his descendants might 
long flourish as sovereigns of the Roman empire."* 

Yet he no sooner hears (says Dr. Campbell) of the successful 
treason of Phocas in the barbarous murder of the sovereign family, 
an event, the mention of which, even at this distance, makes a humane 
person shudder with horror, than he exclaims with rapture, " Glory 
to God in the highest." He invites heaven and earth, men and 
angels, to join in the general triumph. How happy is he that the 

* ^ Unde actum est, ut simul omnes pro vita dominorum concorditer orarent, 
quatenus omnipotens Deus longa vobis et quieta tempora tribuat, et pietatis yestnD 
felicissimam sobolem din in Romana repubdica florere concedat" {Epist, Qng.^ 
Ifb. yiiL, epist 2.) 



cauLF. TL] POPERY IN EMBRYO.— TO A. D, 606. 63 



InTHM all the angeUi of beavra to r^Joiee In the saecen of Phocat. 



royal race is totally exterminated, from whom, but a little before, 
he told us, that he poured out incessant and tearful prayers {lachry' 
mabiliprece is one of his expressions), that they might, to the latest 
ages, flourish on the throne, for the felicity of the Roman common- 
wealth ! An honest heathen would, at least for some time, have 
avoided any intercourse or correspondence with such a ruffian as 
Phocas ; but this Christian bishop, before he had the regular and 
customary notice of his accession to the purple, is forward to con- 
gratulate him on the success of his crimes. His very crimes he 
canonizes (an easy matter for false religion to effect), and transforms 
into shining virtues, and the criminal himself into a second Messiah, 
he that should come for the salvation and comfort of God's people. 
And all this was purely that he might pre-engage the favor of the 
new Emperor, who (he well knew), entertained a secret grudge 
against the Constcmtinopolitan bishop, for his attachment to the 
preceding emperor Mauritius ; a grudge which, when he saw with 
what spirit the patriarch protected the empress dowager and her 
dau^ters, soon settled into implacable hatred.* 

"Does it not hence appear but too plain," inquires the learned 
historian of the popes,t " that Gregory, however conscientious, just, 
and religious in his principles and conduct, when he did not apprehend 
the dignity or interest oi his See to be concerned, acted upon very 
different notions and principles, when he apprehended they were 
concerned ? For how can we reconcile with conscience, justice, 
or religion, his bestowing on the worst of tyrants the highest, praises 
that can be bestowed on the best of princes ? His courting the 
fiivor of a cruel and wicked usurper, by painting and reviling, as an 
absolute tyrant, the excellent prince, whose crown he had usurped ? 
His ascribing (which I leave Baronius to excuse from blasphemy), 
to a particular Providence the revolt of a rebellious subject, and 
seizing the crown ; though he opened himself a way to it by the 
murder of his lawful sovereign, and his six children, all the male 
issue of the imperial family ? And finally, by his inviting all man- 
kind, nay, and the angels of heaven, to rejoice with him, and return 
thanks to God, for the good success of so wicked an attempt, per- 
haps the most wicked and cruel that is recorded in history ? Gre- 
S>ry had often declared that he was ready to sacrifice his life to 
e honor of his See ; but whether he did not sacrifice, on this occa- 
sion, what ought to have been dearer to him than his life, or even 
the honor of his See, I leave the world to judge ; and only observe 
here, that his reflecting in the manner he did on the memory of 
the unhappy Mauritius, was in him an instance of the utmost ingrati- 
tude, if what he himself formerly wrote, and frequently repeated, 
be true, viz, : That his tongue could not express the good he had 
received of the Almighty, and his lord tne Emperor; that he 
thought hinnself bound in gratitude to pray incessantly for the life 

* See Dt, Campbell's Lectures on Ecclesiastical History, lect zri. 
f &wer, in vita Greg, i., vol. ii., page 326. 



64 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [bookl 



Pope Booififie MMinblet a council, in which h» exociMfl hta newly obtained power. 

of his most pious and most Christian lord ; and that, in return for 
the goodness of his most religious lord to him, he could do no less 
than love the very ground on which he trod." 

§ 84. — Perhaps we may not be warranted in asserting (as Dr. 
Campbell seems to suppose), that Gregory, by these vile flatteries, 
intended to secure for himself the tiUe which had been assumed 
by his rival at the East. It is possible he would have been content 
could he have lived to see him deprived of it ; still, if he indulged 
such a wish in secret, consistency itself must have forbidden its 
utterance, when he had just before pronounced the assumption of 
such a title — the badge and the brand of anti-Christ rerhaps 
Gregory would have been more cautious in the expression of such 
an opinion, could he have foreseen that in so short a time it would 
be importunatelv sought and obtained by one of his own successors, 
and that upon the foreheads of these very successors in the boasted 
chair of St. Peter, would descend from generation to generaticm, 
the brand indelibly stamped by the hand of Saint Gregory— 

^WHOEVER ADOPTS OR AFFECTS THE TFTLE OF UNIVERSAL BISHOP, 
HATH THE PRIDE AND CHARACTER OF ANTI-ChRIST.** 

No sooner had Boniface obtained this title, says Bower, than he 
took upon him to exercise an answerable jurisdiction and power, 
to an extent at that time unknown and unheard of in the Catholic 
church. No sooner was the imperial edict of Phocas, vesting 
him with the title of Universal Bishop, and declaring him head oi 
the church, brought to Rome, than, assembling a council in the 
basilic of St. Peter, consisting of seventy-two oishops, thirty-four 
presbyters, and all the deacons and inferior clergy of that city, he 
acted there as if he had not been vested with the title alone, but 
with all the power of an Universal Bishop, with all the authority of 
a supreme head, or rather absolute monarch of the church. For 
by a decree, which he issued in that council, it was pronounced, 
declared, and defined, that no election of a bishop should thenceforth 
be deemed lawful and good, unless made by the people and clergy, 
approved by the prince, or lord of the citv, ana confirmed by the 
Pope^ interposing his authority, in the following terms : We will 
and command, * volumus et jubemus.' The imperial edict, therefore^ 
if we may so call the edict of an usurper and a tyrant, " was not, as 
popish writers pretend,** says Bower, " a bare confirmation of the 
primacy of the See of Rome ; but the grant of a new title, which 
the pope immediately improved into a power answering that title. 
And thus was the power of the pope as Universal Bishop, as head 
of the church, or, in other words, the papal supremacy, first intro- 
duced* It owed its original to the worst of men ; was procured by 
the basest means, by flattering a tyrant in his wickedness and 
tvranny, and was in itself, if we stand to the judgment of Gregory 
the Great, anti-Christian, heretical, blasphemous, diabolical."* 

* Bower, in vita Boni£Etc ilL 



65 



BOOK II. 



POPERY AT ITS BIRTH, A.D. 606. 



ITS DOCTBSSAL AXD BITUAL CHABACTEB AT THIS BFOCH. 



^WWW»»W»»^^^»<^<W«W^W^WX^i 



CHAPTER L 



tOmSH ERRORS TRACED TO THEIR ORIGIN. THEIR EARLY GROWTH NO 

ARGUMENT IN THEIR FAVOR. 

§ 1.— As we have now traced the gradual march of hierarchal 
Msumption to the period of the fall establishment of Popery, it is 
important to inquire what was its doctrinal and ritual character, at 
the time of its complete development and introduction to the world, 
onder the sanction and authority of its newly created sovereign and 
Universal Bishop ; and also to trace to their first origin such of the 
ttnscriptural doctrines and rites of the Romish church as were at that 
time embodied in the system of Popery ; and which, though all in- 
vented long after the death of the apostles, yet boast an earlier date 
^ the establishment of the papal supremacy. 

There is scarcely anything which strikes the mind of the carefal 
rtudent of ancient ecclesiastical history with greater surprise, than 
^ comparatively early period at which many of the corruptions 
^f Christianity, which are embodied in the Komish system, took 
4eir rise ; yet it is not to be supposed that when the first originat- 
ors of many of these unscriptural notions and practices, planted 
those germs of corruption, they anticipated or even imagined that 
they would ever grow into such a vast and hideous system of super- 
stition and error, as is that of Popery. Thus remarks a learned and 
sagacious writer, " Each of the great corruptions of later ages took 
its rise in a manner which it would be harsh to say was deserving 
of strong reprehension. Thus the secular domination exercised by 
the bishops, and at length exclusively by the bishop of Rome, may 
be traced very distinctly to the proper respect paid by the people 
to the disinterested wisdom oi their bishops in deciding their 
worldly diflferences. The worship of images, the invocation of 
saints, and the siiperstition of relics, were out expansions of the 
natural feelings ol veneration and affection cherished toward the 
memory of ^ those who had suflfered and died for the truth. And 
thus, in like manner, the errors and abuses of monkery all sprang 
by imperceptible augmentations firom sentiments perfectly natural 



66 fflSTORY OF ROMANISM. [boot n. 

Chillingworth's immortal aentiment, "The Bible only, is the religion of ProteBtanta.'* 

to the sincere and devout Christian in times of persecution, disorder, 
and general corruption of morals. The very abuses which make 
the twelfth century abhorrent on the page of history, were, in the 
fourth, fragrant with the practice and sufflrage of a blessed company 
of primitive confessors. The remembered saints, who had given 
their bodies to the flames, had also lent their voice and example to 
those unwise excesses which at length drove true religion from the 
earth. Untaught by experience, the ancient church surmised not 
of the occult tendencies of the course it pursued, nor should it be 
loaded with consequences which human sagacity could not well 
have foreseen."* 

§ 2. — At the epoch of the papal supremacy a gigantic system of 
error and superstition had sprung up, formed of the union of many 
errors in doctrine and practice, the successive growth of preceding 
centuries, but which were then cemented into a regular system, and 
rendered obligatory upon all. To understand the character of 
Popery at its oirth, it will be necessary to specify the principal of 
those errors, with the time and circumstances, so far as can be 
ascertained of their origin and growth. And if, in perusing the 
chapters devoted to this inquiry, the protestant reader shall some- 
times be startled to find at how early a date the germs of some of 
these errors were planted, let him remember that the origin of all 
of them is subsequent to the times of the apostles, and let him call 
to mind the immortal words of Chillingworth : ** The Bible, I say, 
the Bible only, is the religion of protestants ! Whatsoever else 
they believe beside it, and tne plain, irrefragable, indubitable conse^ 
quences of it, well may they hold it as a matter of opinion ; but as 
matter of faith and religion, neither can they, with coherence to 
their own grounds, believe it themselves, nor require the belief of it 
of others, without most high and most schismatical presumption. I 
for my part, after a long and (as I verily believe and hope), impar- 
tial search of the true way to eternal happiness^ do profess plainly, 
that I cannot find any rest for the sole of my foot, but upon tms 
rock only. 

" Traditive interpretations of Scripture are pretended ; but there 
are few or none to be found : no tradition, but only of Scripture, 
can derive itself from the fountain, but may be plainly proved either 
to have been brought in, in such an age after Christ, or that in such 
an age it was not in. In a word, there is no suflScient certainty but 
of Scripture only, for any considering man to build upon. This, 
therefore, and this only, I have reason to believe : this I will profess ; 
according to this I will live, and for this, if there be occasion, I will 
not only willingly, but even gladly, lose my life, though I should be 
sorry that Christians should take it from me."t 

§ 3. — Protestantism, as opposed to Popery, has been defined by 
Isaac Taylor, in his Ancient Christianity, as ** a refusal to ao 

* Natural History of Enthusiasm, page 181. 



\ 



* Natural History of Enthusiasm, pa^ 181. 

f Works of ChilliDgworth, Philadelphia edition, page 481. 



►.l] popery at its birth— a. D. 606. 67 



Giwt q m mk m , it thm Bibte osly Um ml* of fUth, or dM MM* ud tndltioo togvihar. 



KHOWLEDGB INITOTATIONB BEARING AN ' ABCERTAIITED DATE,^ and tO 

this definition we have no particular objection, inasmuch as the 
date of most, if not all of the popish innovations, both doctrinal and 
ritual, can be ascertained with considerable accuracy. Still we 
must be allowed to add, that should innovations be discovered, 
either in that or any other communion, the date of the admission of 
which is entirely unknown ; if they are contrary to the doctrine 
and spirit of the Bible, if they are not found in God's word ; that is 
to say, if they are innovations at all, then true Protestantism requires 
their unqualified rejection, just as much as if their date were as 
clearly ascertained as is the date of the papal supremacy, or the 
absurd dogma of transubstantiation. ^ The Bible, i sat, the Bible 
ONLY, IB THE BELiGioN OF PEOTESTANTs T Nor is it of any account 
in the estimation of the genuine protestant, how early a doctrine 
originated, if it is not found in the Bible. He learns from the New 
Testament itself^ that there were errors in the time of the apostles, 
ind that their pens were frequently employed in combating those 
errors. Hence if a doctrine be propounded for his acceptance, he 
asks, is it to be found in the inspired word? was it taught by the 
Lord Jesus Christ, and his apostles ? If thejr knew nothing of it, 
BO matter to him, whether it be discovered in the musty lolio of 
lome ancient visionary of the third or fourth century, or whether 
it spring from the fertile brain of some modem visionary of the 
nineteenth, if it is not found in the sacred Scriptures, it presents no 
valid claim to be received as an article of his relimous creed. More 
than this, we will add, that though Cyprian, or Jerome, or Augus- 
tine, or even the fathers of an earlier age, Tertullian, Ignatius, 01 
Irenaeus, could be plainly shown to teach the unscriptural doctrines 
and dogmas of Popery, which, however, is by no means admitted, 
still the consistent protestant would simply ask, is the doctrine to 
be found in the Bible ? was it taught by Christ and his apostles ? 
and if truth compelled an answer in the negative, he would esteem 
it of no greater authority as an article of his faith, than the vagaries 
of John of Munster, the dreams of Joanna Southcote, or the pre- 
tended revelations of Joe Smith, of Nauvoo. The Bible, and not as 
has recently been asserted, " the Bible and tradition,' but " the 
Bible only, is the religion op protestants." 

J 4. — The great question at issue between Popery and Protestant- 
ism, is this : Is the Bible only to be received as the rule of faith, or 
the Bible and tradition together ? Is no doctrine to be received as 
matter of faith, unless it is found in the Bible, or may a doc- 
trine be received upon the mere authority of tradition, when it 
is confessedly not to be found in the sacred Scriptures T The 
whole Christian world, both nominal and real, are divided by this 
question into two great divisions : the consistent and true-hearted 
protestant, standing upon this rock — ^'* The Bible, and the Biole 
OBTLY," can admit no doctrine upon the authority of tradition ; the 
papist and the Puseyite place tradition side by side with the Bible, and 
listen to its dictates with a reverence equal to, or even greatei than 



68 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book n. 

ProtMtuitfaBi r^eeti tnditkm m a rale of fitth. 

that which they pay to the sacred Scriptures themselves ; and he 
who receives a single doctrine upon the mere authority of tradition, 
let him be called by what name he will, by so doing, steps down 
from the protestant rock, passes over the line which separates Pro- 
testantism from Popery,* and can give no valid reason why he 
should not receive all the earlier doctrines and ceremonies of Ro- 
manism, upon the same authority. Hence to the protestant who 
understands his principles, it will constitute no argument in favor of 
the errors of Popery that the germs of many of them were planted 
at a period not more distant from the first establishment of Christi- 
anity, than is the age at which we live from the time when the 
pilgrim fathers landed on the shores of New England; We are not 
to suppose, however, that all the corrupt doctrines and practices of 
modem Popery had been invented at so early a period as the third 
or fourth, or even the seventh century. Thus, the absurd doctrine 
of transubstantiation was never dreamed of till two or three centu- 
ries later than the age of Gregory I. or Boniface III. ; the practice 
of selling indulgences had not then arisen, and the services of public 
worship were everywhere performed, not exclusively in Latin, as 
in after times, but in the vernacular languages of the various nations 
of Christendom ; still it must be confessed, that a large portion of 
these errors, including the enforced celibacy of the clergy, the prac- 
tice of monkery, the worship of saints and relics, &c., had sprung 
up amidst the darkness of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, and 
were extensively believed and practised, prior to their consolidation 
into a system, in consequence of the establishment of the papal 
supremacy. 

* It is not to be wondered at, that the professed advocates of Popery should claim 
a place for tradition equal, if not superior, in authority to the written word of God ; 
but it is truly lamentable to hear members and ministers of a Christian denomina- 
tion, which has heretofore won many laurels as one of the most successful defenders 
of Protestantism (which has been adorned, in past ag^es, by such men as a Jewell, a 
Chillinffworth, and a Leighton, and is now adorned by a Whately, a Macllvaine, 
and a Milnor), boldly advocating the popish doctrine, tnat not the Bible only^ but, 
in the words of Dr. Newman, ** these two thin^, the Bible and Catholic traditions^ 
form together, a united rule of fiiith." '* Catholic tradition," remarks this celebrated 
advocate of the Oxford theology, '* is a divine informer in religious things, it is the 
unwritten word ;'* and a^ain, ** Catholic tradition is a divine source of knowledge tn 
aU things relating tofaiSi.** The same sentiments are repeated in a still stronger 
form by Dr. Keble, another of the champions of this new theology : ** Tradition^* 
says he, *' is infallible, it is the unwritien vxird of Ood, and of necessity demands of 
us the same respect which his written word does, and precisely for the same reason, 
because it is his word." {See D*Aubigne on the Oxford Theology,) 



CHAPTER n. 

OEIOIir OF ROMISH EBR0S8 CONTINUED— CELIBACY OF THE 0LEKG7. 

§ 5. — One of the marks by which the great ** Apostasy,** pre- 
dicted by St Paul in the second epistle to Timothy, was to be 
known was ** forbidi>ino to marrt. (1 Tim. iv. 3.) The same 
apostle, in describing the qualifications of a bishop, says, ** This is a 
true saying, if a man desire the office of a bisnop, he desireth a 
good work. A bishop then must be blameless, the husband op 
ONE WIPE ; given to hospitality ; one thai ruleth xoell his own houses 
having his children in subjection, with all gravity ; for if a man 
know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of 
the church of God ?" (1 Tim. iii. 1, &c.) In describing to Titus 
the qualifications of the elders to be ordained in every city, he says, 
''If any be blameless, the husband op one wipe, having paith- 
ruL children (who are) not accused of riot or unruly. For a 
bishop must be blameless as the steward of Grod : a lover of hospi- 
tality,'' &C. (Titus i. 5, &c.) In these passages Paul is speciaUy 
describing the qualifications of an elder or bishop. In the words 
of the judicious Scott, the commentator, he ^ showed, very particu- 
lady, what maimer of persons these bishops or elders ought to be." 
Among other qualifications, it is said he ** must be," or ought to be, 
(Greek, 9et) — ** the husband of one wife/* Some have inferred from 
this text," says Dr. Scott, ** that stated pastors ouffht to be married 
as a prerequisite to their office, but this seems to do a mistake of a 
general permission^ connected with a restriction — for an express 
cmmancL It is, however, abundantly sufficient to prove that mar- 
riage is entirely consistent with the most sacred functions, and the 
most exemplary holiness, and to subvert the very basis of the anti- 
CHiisTiAN prohibition of marriage to the clergy, with all its con- 
current, and consequent, and incalculable mischiefs."* 

* See Scott on 1 Tim. iii. 2. Although, upon the whole, I am not disposed to 
find fault with the opinion of Dr. Scott, that this is a permission rather than a 
command ; yet, in order to show that others have thought differently, I will ven- 
ture (at tlie risk of hastening the diligence of some good bachelor ** bishop or 
eider" to become "the husl»nd of one wife") to cite tlie following from the re- 
cent valuable work of the Rev. Dr. Elliott on Romanism, volume i., page 399. 
"The terms made use of in these passages mean more than a bare permission to 
Qttrry, or a bare tolerance in office to those who are married. The words used 
denote duty or necessity. The impersonal verb ^<i, oportet, par est, necesse est^ it is 
itcoming, it is right, it is necessary. The expression of the apostle (1 Tim. iii. 2) 

is ^1 99W T99 crtnorow /iias yvwaiKOS awipa ttvai, for a bishop MTIST or OUGHT tO be the 

hshand of one wife. And, in Uie Epistle to Titus (ch. i., verse 7), the expression 
is similar, and means a bishop must, or ought to be blameless. The married state 
is here presented as that which is most becoming, pro^r, or indeed necessary for a 
man who presides over the fiock of Christ. And it is considered as needful a 
qoalification as temperance, blamelessness, aptitude to teach, and the like. And 
uK)Qgh a minister may be a ^ood one who is not married ; yet he is not so food, in 
general, as thoee who nave pious and intelligent wives and walk worthy their voca- 

6 



70 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book il 

Early lapentitioiit notioni on the merit of celibacy, and the diacredit of marrlafe. 

§ 6. — It is painful to reflect at how early a period, unscriptural 
notions, in relation to celibacy and marriage, be^an to prevail 
amonff the professed followers of Christ. Even in the time of 
Tertiulian, who flourished about the commencement of the third 
century, the notion had gained some strength that celibacy was 
highly meritorious, and that matrimony was a dishonor and a dis- 
credit. Hence, when dissuading from second marriages, this ear* 
liest of the Latin ecclesiastical writers, uses the following langua^: 
** May it not suffice thee to have fallen from that high rank of im- 
maculate virginity, by once marrying, and so descending to a se- 
cond stage of honor ? Must thou yet fall farther ; even to a third« 
to a fourth, and, perhaps, yet lower ?"*. . . . These unscriptural 
opinions were owing, in part, to the superstitious notions which 
began to prevail at a very early period, in relation to the influence 
of malignant demons. It was an almost general persuasion, says 
Mosheim, that they who took wives were, of all others, the most 
subject to their influence. And as it was of infinite importance to 
the interests of the church, that no impure or malevolent spirit en^ 
tered into the bodies of such as were appointed to govern or to 
instruct others ; so the people were desirous that the clergy should 
use their utmost efibrts to abstain from the pleasures of tne conju- 
al life.f The natural consequence of the prevalence of opinions 

e these was, that unmarried men began to be regarded as far 
more suitable for the office of the sacred ministry than such as had 



ik 



tion. We do not hear the apostle say, ^ Although bishopB and deacons are not 
to be prohibited from marrying, yet, whenever it can be done, it is well to prefiBr 
those who have professed virginity." No such language escapes the apostle. He 
represents a bishop to be one who has a wife and children, and who rules his 
house.*' I hope my unmarried brethren in the ministry will forgive me, if I cits 
vet another author to prove that Dr. Elliott, in this interpretation, stands not aknis. 
it is Isaac Taylor in nis Ancient Christianity, p. 626. '* Not one word is tliere," 
says he, " in these clerical epistles, of ' the merit of virginity,' not a hint that ce- 
libacy is at least a * seemly tning ' in those who minister at the altar ! The veiy 
contrary is what we find there. A bishop's and a deacon's qualifications for office 
are directly connected with their behavior as married men, and as fathers. So 
pointed is this assumed connexion^ that we might even consider the apostle^s rule ai 
amounting to a tacit exclusion of the unmarried from the sacerdotal office. If a 
man who does not " rule well " his family, is thereby proved to be unfit to assume 
the government of the church ; by implication then, those are to be judged unfit, 
or at least they are unproved as fit, who have no families to govern. — ^The meager, 
heartless, nerveless, frivolous, or abstracted and visionary coelebs — make him a 
bbhop ! the very last thing he is fit for : — let him rather trim the lamps and open 
the church doors, or brush cobwebs from the ceiling !— how should such a one be 
a &ther to the church !" Some may think that in this closing exclamation, Mr. 
Taylor writes a little too much con amore ; yet there is reason in his inquiry, and 
were it not for one or two brilliant exceptions, within the circle of my ministerial 
acquaintances, I should be almost disposed to yield an unqualified assent to his 
doctrine. 

* See Taylor's Ancient Christianity, Philadelphia edition, page 140. The au- 
thor takes this opportunity of acknowled^ng his indebtedness to this learned and 
industrious writer for some of the quotations from '* the fiEtthers," of which he has 
availed himself in the following pages. 

t See Mosheim, vol. i., page 262. 



CBiF. n.] POPERY AT ITS BIRTH.— A. D. 606. 71 



of AlezBBdite ramoumtea againti thaie notions. Femmie devoteei in the afe of Cyprian 



contracted the dejilement of matrimony. In a short time, second 
marriages were, by many, condemned in any case, and were re- 
garded as wholly inconsistent with the purity of the sacred office, 
and therefore entirely inadmissible in the clergy.* 

§ 7. — It is refreshing, amidst these dawnings of early corruption, 
to hear a cotemporary of Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, raising 
his voice in a **protestant style of remonstrance ** against this 
shocking &naticism, pointing it out as a characteristic of Antichrist, 
and of the apostasy of the latter days, that there should be those 
who would ^ forbid to marry and command to abstain from meats." 
*• What,** says he, ** may not self-command be preserved under the 
conditions of married life ? May not marriage be used, and yet 
omtinence be respected, without our attempting to sever that wmch 
the Lord hath joined? God allows every man, whether priest, 
deacon, or layman, to be the husband of one wife, and to use matri- 
mony without being liable to censurc^f This instance of good 
sense and scriptural reasoning, amidst the increasing corruption on 
this point, is the more remarkable as it stands alone — a single 
star amidst the surrounding darkness. ** So far as I know," says 
Bir. Taylor, ** Clement of Alexandria is the only extant writer, of 
the early ages, who adheres to common sense, and apostolical 
Christianity, through and through. Those who, at a later date, 
ventured to protest against the universal error, were instantly 
cursed and put down as heretics, by all the great divines of their 
times ; and were, in fact, deprived of the means of transmitting 
their opinions to be more equitably judged of by posterity ."J 

J 8. — In the time of Cyprian, the celebrated bishop of Carthage, 
who suffered martyrdom, A. D. 258, the vow of perpetual celibacy 
Was taken or enforced upon multitudes of young women, and his 
pen was frequently employed in reproving or correcting the numer- 
ous scandals and irregularities which naturally sprung from this 
fruitful source of illicit indulgence. Addressing this description of 
female devotees, he says in one of his epistles, ** Listen, then, to him 
who seeks your true welfare ; lest, cast off by the Lord, ye be 
widows before ye be married ; adulteresses, not to your husbands, 
but to Christ, and, after having been destined to the highest rewards. 
Ye undergo the severest punishments. For, consider, while the 
nundred-^ld produce is that of the martyrs, the sixty-fold is yours ; 
and as they (the martyrs) contemn the body and its delights, so 
should you. Great are the wages which await you (if faithful); the 
high reward of virtue, the great recompense to be conferred upon 
chastity. Not only shall your lot and portion (in the future life) be 
equal to that of the other sex, but ye shall be equal to the angels of 
God.'*^ 

* Gieseler, vol. i. page 106. 

t T*r Tiif fitaf yjfpaiKes awipa varo avoitj^Krai, Ka» Tlptvffvrtpos ,i| koy Acacores, gap Xaur«(, 
•wviA^vrMf /a/iM ¥pw/i<ire(.---Clem. Aleiaod. I. 552. 

(Ancient Chnstianity, p. 168. 
For a fuller account ol these disorders, see Cyprian in his reply to Pomponins. 



72 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book, m 



Oooaecniting and erowniof of Nuot. Prahlbitk» of marrUife aftar Ofdtnattoa. 

These female devotees have ever since been distinguished by the 
name of Nuns, in the Latin, Nonna, a word said to be of Egyptian 
origin, and to signify a virgin. In after ages a variety of ceremo* 
nies were observed, and still continue to be observed, upon a female 
taking upon herself the vow of perpetual chastity, or * taking the 
veil,' as it is now called. The first of the adjoining plates represents 
the crowning of professed nuns, with what is called * the crown of 
virginity,' during which ceremony the anthem is sung, Veni Sponsi 
Christiy &c., " Come, O spouse of Christ, and receive the crown.** 
In former times, it was customary to place a crown upon the heads 
of those who died virgins, and this custom is still observed in some 
popish countries. The other plate represents the reading, by the 
officiating priests, of the anathema against false nuns, a most awful 
curse against such as should violate their vows of virginity, and 
against all who should endeavor to seduce them from their vow, or 
should seize upon any portion of their wealth. {See Engraving^ 

§ 9. — But to return to our narrative. The next step in this per- 
nicious innovation, after the prohibition of second marriages to the 
clergy, was to forbid them to marry at all, after ordination, A 
decree to this effect was passed at a council held at Ancyra, in 
Galatia, A. D. 314. By this decree, all ministers were forbidden to 
marry after ordination, except in the case of those who at the time 
of their ordination, made an explicit profession of their intention to 
marry, as being in their case unavoidable. In such a case a license 
was granted to the candidate to marry, and securing him from 
future censures for so doing. If, however, a candidate for ordina- 
tion was already married, he was not obliged lo put away his wife, 
unless in the following singular exceptions, viz. : if he had married 
'*a widow, or a divorced person, or a harlot, or a slave, or an 
actress."* In either of these cases, the wife must be first put away 
as a condition of ordination. The fact that a widow, when married 
a second time, is here placed in the same category with a harlot or 
a slave, shows that at this time matrimony had grown so much into 
disrepute, that second marriages were considered a disgrace and a 
reproach. 

At the council of Nice, held A. D. 325, it is related by Socrates, 
the ecclesiastical historian, that a rule was proposed, riequirine all 
clergymen who had married before their ordination, to withdraw 
from their wives, or cease to cohabit with them ; and the color of 
the account leads us to suppose that this regulation, which, in 
respect to the church imiversal, was called " a new law," although 
not new to several of the churches, was near to have been carried, 
and probably would have been, had not the good sense and right 
feeling of one of the bishops present defeated the fanaticism of the 
others. Paplmutius, a bishop of the Thebais, a confessor, havinff 
lost an eye in the late persecution, and himself an ascetic, rose, and 

* Can. Apost. 17 : 'O x^P^* Xo^^wv, If U0i0\riiihtiv, fj Iraipap, fl oiV/riy, 1^ tup Iwl exiivflf, 



CHAP, n.] POPERY AT ITS BIRTH.— A. D. 606. 75 



Pofilkar prapoMd negatiTed at the Council of Nice. Chiysostom on the ten virgiju 

with spirit asserted the honor and purity of matrimony, and insisted 
upon the inexpediency of any such law, likely as it was to bring many 
into a snare. For a moment reason triumphed ; the proposal was 
dropped, nor anything farther attempted by the insane party, 
beyond the givuag a iresh sanction to the established rule or tradi- 
tion, that none should marry after ordination.* 

§ 10. — Notwithstanding this decision of the council, however, the 
most extravagant notions prevailed, relative to the suppposed sanc- 
tity and merit of virginity, even among the most eminent of the 
Nicene fathers.t As a lamentable proof of this fact, as also the early 
corruptions of the doctrine of salvation by "grace through the 
redemption that is in Christ Jesus," and the consequent danger of 
trusting to the most eminent of the early fathers in points of Chris- 
tian doctrine, the following extract is presented from an exposition 
of the parable of the ten virgins, from the pen of the celebrated and 
eloquent Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople. Among Protestant 
writers, the ** oil in the lamps " has generally been understood to 
B^fy the principle of divine grace in the heart, or that genuine 
piety which distinguishes true Christians from mere pretenders or 
professors. The explanation of Chrysostom is widely different : 
"Whatr says he, "hast thou not understood from the instance of 
the ten virgins, in the gospel, how that those who, although they 
were proficients in virginity, yet not possessing the [virtue of] alms- 
giving, were excluded from the nuptial banquet. Truly, I am 
whamed, and blush and weep when I hear of the foolish virgin. 
When I hear the very name, 1 blush to think of one who, after she 
kad reached such a point of virtue, after she* had gone through the 
training of virginity, after she had thus winged the body aloft 
toward heaven, after she had contended for the prize with the powers 
on high (the angels), after she had undergone tne toil, and had trod- 
den under foot the fires of pleasure, to hear such a one named, and 
justly named, a fool, because that, after having achieved the greater 
labors (of virtue), she should be wanting in the less 1 Now, the fire 
(of the lamps) is — ^Virginity, and the oil is — Almsgiving. And, in 
like manner as the flame, unless supplied with a stream of oil, disap- 
pears, so virginit)r, unless it have almsgiving, is extinguished. But 
now, who are the vendors of this oil ? The poor who, for receiving 
alms, sit about the doors of the church. And for how much is it to 
be bought ? — for what you will. I set no price upon it, lest, in 
doing so, I should exclude the indigent. For, so much as you have, 
make this purchase. Hast thou a penny ? — purchase heaven, 
f^yopaaow TOW ovffavov ; not, indeed, as if heaven were cheap ; but the 
Master is indulgent. Hast thou not even a penny? give a cup 
of cold water, for he hath said, &c. Heaven is on sale, and in the 

♦ Socrates Eccles. Hist., lib. i., c. 11. See Greek extract in Gieseler, vol. i., 
ptge 279, note 4. 

t Nicene/athers. This term is generally applied to Athanasins, Basil, Chrysostom, 
Gregory Nyssen, Gregory Nazianzen, Ambrose, and other eminent ecclesiastical 
writers who floarished aboat the time of the council of Nice. 



76 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [bookil 

A â– Crange ezpoiitioa. Vlifinlty and aluHglvtaf. 

market, and yet we mind it not ! Give a crust and take back para- 
dise ; give the least, and receive the greatest ; give the perishable, 
receive the imperishable ; give the corruptible, receive the incor- 
ruptible. If there were a fair, and plenty of provisions to be had, 
at the cheapest rate, — all to be bought for a song, — would ye not 
realize your means, and postpone other business, and secure to your- 
selves a share in such dealing ? Where, then, things corruptible are 
in view, do ye show such diligence, and where the incorruptible, 
such sluggishness, and such proneness to fall behind ? Give to the 
needy, so that, even if thou sayest nothing for thyself, a thousand 
tongues may speak in thy behalf; thy charities standing up and 
pleading for thee. Alms are the redemption of the soul, Ivr^w 
titvxfii BGTip eXetjfioovy^, And, in like manner, as there are set vases 
of water at the church gates, for washing the hands ; so are beggars 
sitting there, that thou mavest (by their means), wash the handb of 
thy soul. Hast thou washed thy palpable hands in water ; wash 
the hands of thy soul in almsgiving! 

§ 11. — *' But what is it which, after so many labors, these vir- 
gins hear ? — I know you not I which is nothing less than to say that 
virginity, vast treasure as it is, may be useless 1 Think of them 
(the foolish virgins), as shut out, after undergoing such labors, after 
reining in incontinence, after running a course of rivalry with the 
celestial orders, after spurning the interests of the present life, after 
sustaining the scorching heat, after having leapt the bound (in the 
gymnasium), after having winged their way from earth to heaven, 
after they had not broken the seal of the body (a phrase of much 
significance), and having obtained possession of tne form of vir- 
ginity (the eternal idea of divine purity), after having wrestled with 
angels, after trampling upon the imperative impulses of the body, 
after forgetting nature, after reaching, in the body, the perfections 
of the disembodied state, after having won, and held, the vast and 
unconquerable possession of virginity, after all this, then they hear 
— Depart from me, I know you not ! 

" Think then what the labor is which this course of life exacts ! 
and yet, even those who have undergone all this, may hear the 
words — Depart from me, I never knew you ! And see how great a 
virtue virginity is, seeing that she hath for her sister, — almsgiving ! 
having nothing that can ever be more arduous, but will be above 
all. Wherefore it was that these (foolish virgins) entered not in, 
because they had not, along with their virginity — almsgiving ! 
Thou hast then that efficacious mode of penance, almsgiving, which 
is able to break the chains of thy sins ; but thou hast also a way of 
penitence, more ready, by which thou mayest rid thyself of thy 
sins. Pray every hour !"* 

This extract is long, but valuable, on account of the proof that it 
furnishes, that, in what is called the Nicene age, the corruptions 
afterward embodied in the system of Popery had made the most 

* ChryBostom, Homily ill., on Repentuice. 



cm. n.] POPERY AT ITS BIRTH.— A. D. 606. 77 

BMm, bWwp of Eoom^ decfMi cellbaer. The Rhemtih Testament and Ite Popleh aiuMMalim. 

alarming progress. Paul had said three centuries before, ^the 
mystery ot iniquity doth already work," and now the leaven of cor- 
ruption was rapidly difiusing itself over the whole mass. 

J 12, — At length, toward the close of the fourth century, Siricius, 
who held the See of Rome from 385 to 398, issued his decrees, strictly 
enloining celibacy on the clergy, and several Western synocb 
echoed me mandates of Rome. As the bishop of Rome was not at 
this time regarded as the head of the church, these laws were of 
coarse not received as obligatory upon all, and in the East especi- 
ally, notwithstanding the superstitious veneration attached to celi- 
bacy, these decrees, accoroing to Gieseler (vol. i., p. 280), were 
rejected. 

Though the decrees of Siricius and his successors were gene- 
rally obeyed in Rome, and throughout Italy, yet large numbers 
of the French, German, Spanish, and English clergy continued, for 
several centuries longer, to avail themselves of that portion of their 
scriptural right whicn had been left them by the council of Nice, 
Dotwithstanmng the exertions of successive bishops and popes of 
Rome to induce them to yield up those rights and become their 
obedient vassals. How blind must be that prejudice which does 
not perceive, in this constant warfare of the proud prelates of 
Rome (both before and after the epoch of the papal supremacy) 
against Grod's own institution of matrimony, a plain mark of Anti- 
christ ; an evident proof that Popery, when fully developed, is that 
Apostasy predicted by St. Paul, when he described it as " forbidding 
TO MARRY !" In future centuries, we shall see the horrible vices, 
and almost universal corruption of morals among the popish clerjgy, 
which arose from thus setting aside the plain direction of inspira- 
tion — ^"a bishop must be the husband of one wife." 

§ 13. — The doctrine of the Romish church, forbidding the clergy 
to marry, is so evidently contrary to Scripture, that it is scarcely 
necessary to say a word in its refutation. The only wonder witn 
the bible Christian will be, where they can find even a shadow of 
an argument upon which to base so unnatural and antiscriptural a 
prohibition. The only appearance of argument offered by Komish 
writers is, that mentioned by the Jesuit annotators in the Rhemish 
Testament* in their note on Titus iii. 6. •* If the studious reader 
peruse all antiquity he shall find all notable bishops and priests of 
God's church to have been single, or continent from their wives if 
any were married before they came to the clergy. So were all 

* Rhemish Testament, — As I shall have future occaaion to refer to this popish 
yersioD of the New Testament, I would here remark, that it appeared in 1682, and 
was printed at Rheims, accompanied by copious notes by Romish authors. The 
Old Testament was translated like the Khemish Testament, not from the ori^rinal 
Greek and Hebrew, but from the Latin version, called the Vulgfate. It was 
printed at Douay, in France, in 1610, for which reason the Rhemish New and 
the DouAj Old Testament, now generally bound together, are called the Douay 
Bible. Tfhe popish doctrines of the notes to the Rhemish Testament, were ably 
coofoted in a work of Dr. William Folke, which appeared in the year 1617. 



78 fflSTORY Oi ROMANISM. [book n. 



It^omUh Tesument againit married clergy. The early reformers, Vigil antiiu and JoTtniao. 

the apostles after they followed Christ, as Jerome witnesseth, 
affirming that our Lord loved John specially for his virginity." In 
their note on 1 Tim. iii. 2, they sadly abuse those who, in the 
early ages, adopted the same opinion as that advocated by Taylor 
and Elliott in the extract quoted in the note on page 69 of this 
chapter. I must apologize for the grossness of the extract from 
these popish authors. It deserves quoting as a literary curiosity, 
and if at all, must be quoted as it is. The following are their 
words : — ^*' Certain bishops of Vigilantius' sect, whether upon false 
construction of this text, or through the filthiness of their fleshly 
lust, would take none to the clergy, except they would be married 
first, not believing, said Jerome {advers. Vigilant, cap. 1), that any 
single man liveth chastely ; showing how holily they live themselves, 
that suspect ill of every man, and will not give the Sacrament, of 
order, to the clergy, unless they see their wives have great bellies, 
and children wailing at their mothers' breasts. Our Protestants, 
X though they be of Vigilantlus'* sect, yet they are scarce to come so 
far, to command every priest to be married. Nevertheless they 
mislike them that will not marry, so much the worse, and they sus- 
pect ill of every single person in the Church, thinking the gift of 
chastity to be very rare among them, and they do not only make 
the state of marriage equal to chaste single lite, with the Heretic 
Jovinian,* but they are bold to say sometimes, that the bishop or 

* VigUantitLs and Jovinian. — ^These two early reformers who are spoken of 
80 contemptuously by these popish writers, though they lived as early as the fifth 
century, are, for their enlightened zeal in opposing the corruptions of Christianity, 
which were already rife in their age, worthy to be ranked with Wickliffe, or 
Luther, or Calvin. The principal heresy of Jovinian was, in the words of Jerome, 
" this shocking doctrine^ that a virgin is no better than a married woman." The 
emperor Honorius cruelly ordered nim to be whipped with scourges armed with 
lead, and banished to a desolate island, where he died about A. D. 406. VigiiaTi' 
tins flourished a few years later than Jovinian. He was a learned and eminent 
presbyter of a Christian church, and took up his pen to oppose the ^wing super* 
8tition. His book, which unfortunately has not survived the wreck of time, was 
directed against the institution of monkery — the celibacy of the clergy — praying 
for the dead, and to the martyrs — paying adoration to their relics — celebrating 
their vigils — and lighting up candles to them after the manner of the heathens. 
St Jerome, who is esteemed a luminary of the Catholic church, and who was a 
zealous advocate for all these superstitious rites, undertook the task of confuting 
Vigilantius, whom he styles " a most blasphemous heretic,'* and then proceeds to 
compare him to the hydra, to Cerberus, &c. of the Pagan mythology, and con- 
cludes with calling him the organ of the devil. The following short extract from 
Jerome's answer will satisfactorily explain the heresy of Vigilantius : — " That the 
honours paid to the rotten bones of the saints ana martyrs by adoring, kissing, 
wrapping them up in silk and vessels of gold, lodging them in their churches, and 
lighting up wax candles before them, alter the manner of the heathen, were the 
ensigns of idolatry — that the celibacy of the clergy icas a heresy^ and their vows of 
chastiiy the seminary of lewdness — ^*Dicit * * ♦ continentiam, haeresim ; pu- 
dicitiam, libidinis seminarium.' (Jerome contra Vigilaniium,)^4hBt to pray to the 
dead, or to desire the prayers of the dead, was superstitious, inasmuch as the 
souls of departed saints and martyrs were at present in some particular place from 
which they could not remove themselves at pleasure, so as to be everywhere pre- 
sent attending to the prayers of their votaries — ^that the sepulchres of the martyra 



CHAP, il] popery at its BIRTH.— A. D. 606. 79 



BaOj iamanom of Banried clergjrmeii. Peter, Ojrprian, Graffonr, Cacillue, NamidleiM, Ite. 

?rie8t may do his duty and charge better married than single.*' 
'hey add that the exposition given by them is " only agreeable to 
the practice of the whole Church, the definition of ancient councils, 
the doctrine of all the Fathers without exception, and the Apostle's 
tradition.** To this it is sufficient to reply that the apostle Peter 
was married, for the New Testament makes mention of his wife 
(Matt viii. 14), and there is no scriptural proof that any one of the 
apostles lived and died single, or declined to cohabit with their 
wives. In relation to the assertion that the clergy in the early ages 
of the church lived in celibacy, it will be sufficient to demon- 
rtrate its glaring falsity to cite the following few out of multitudes of 
instances that could easily be cited of married bishops and presby- 
ters in the first three or tour centuries. 

§ 14. — Valens, presbyter of Philippi, mentioned by Polycarp, was 
a married man.* 

Choeremon, bishop of Nilus, an exceedingly old man, was mar- 
ried. He fled with his wife to Arabia, in time of persecution, under 
Haximinus the tyrant, where they both perished together, as Euse- 
bius informs us.t 

Cyprian himself was also a married man, as Pagi, the annotator 
and corrector of Baronius, confesses. J 

Caecilius, the presbyter, through whose instrumentality Cyprian 
was converted to Christianity, was a married man.§ 

So also was Numidicus, another presbyter of Carthage, of whom 
Cyprian tells us the following remarkable story in his thirty-fiflh 
epistle, or, as some number it, the fortieth : " That in the Decian 

fersecution he saw his own wife, with many other martyrs, burned 
y his side ; while he himself lying half-burned, and covered with 

ODglit not to be worshipped, nor their heta and vigils to be observed — and, finally, 
thu the signs and wonders said to be wrought by their relics, and at their sepm- 
ehres, serv^ to no good end or purpose of religion." 

These were the sacrilegious tenets, as Jerome terms them, which he could not 
bear with patience, or without the utmost grief, and for which he declares Viffi- 
lantins '* a detestable heretic, venting his foul-mouthed blasphemies against me 
lelics of the martyrs, which were working daily siras and wonders." He tells 
him to " so into the churches of those martyrs, and he would be cleansed from the 
evil spirit which possessed him, and feel hunself burnt, not by those wax candles 
which so much offended him, but by invisible flames, which would force that 
demon that talked within him to confess himself to be the same who had per- 
som^ed a Mercury, perhaps, or a Bacchus, or some other of the heathen deities." 
(See Introductory discourse to Dr. Ckmyers MiddUtorCs free inquiry into the mira^ 
eulous powers of the early agesy pa^e 132.) This is a long note, but it is worthy 
of the room it occupies, as an evidence that in very early ages there were not 
wantinff fiuthful men to protest against the growing corruptions, and as a speci- 
men of the doctrine as well as the spirit of some of the boasted fathers ot the 
church, and consequently the danger of trusting to them as guides in relation to 
â– piritual matters. 

* Polycarp, Ep. ad Philip., n. 11. 

t Euseb. Eccl. Hist b. vi. c. 42. 

IPagi. Crit in Baron, ad ann. p. 248, n. 4. 
FoDtioB, Vit Cypr. 



80 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book n. 



Qiifoiy, bidaop of Naziannim, a huaband and a father. Wonhip of the VlfgiB Ifaiy. 

Stones, and left for dead, was found expiring by his daughter, who 
drew him out of the rubbish, and brought him to life again."* 

Gregory of Nazianzum, a notable bishop, was father of the other 
Gregory who succeeded him, as appears from the oration which the 
latter made in his favor. He says, ** That a good and diligent 
bishop serves in the ministry nothing the worse for being married* 
but rather the better, and with more ability to do good.** Of hiB 
mother he says, " That she was given to his father of God, and be- 
came not only his helper, but also his leader both by word and by 
deeds, training him to the best things ; and though in other thingtf 
it was -best for her to be subject to him, on account of the right of 
marriage, yet in religion and godliness she doubted not to become 
his leader and teacher.^f 

From the above well-authenticated instances of the marriage of 
the clergy in the earliest ages of the church, it is evident that 
Romanists are no more sustained by the example of primitive 
times than by the New Testament, in their antiscriptural and un- 
natural prohibition of marriage to the t;lergy.;|; 



CHAPTER III. 

ORIGIN OF ROMISH ERRORS COIVTINUED. WORSHIP OF THE VIRGIN MART. 

§ 15. — ^We have already seen the extravagant opinions that were 
entertained in the fourth century, as to the merit of virginity. 
Before exhibiting the natural result of such unscriptural notions in 
the almost deification of the Virgin Marv, we shall present yet 
another specimen of the manner in which the graces of rhetoric and 
the charms of eloquence were employed in that age to exalt to the 
very skies, those who had devotea themselves to a virgin life. It is 
from a tract of the eloquent Chrysostom or golden mouth. ** The 
virgin, when she goes abroad, should present herself as the bright 
specimen of all philosophy : and strike all with amazement, as if 
now an angel had descended from heaven ; or just as if one of the 
cherubim had appeared upon earth, and were turning the eyes of all 

* NumidicuB, presbyter uxorem adhsBrentem latere suo, concrematam simul 
cum cieteris, vel conservatam magia dixerim, laetns aspexit. — Cypr,, epist. 35 or 
40. 

t AXXa gat Cipx^y^i ytvtrat tpY<fi rt icat Xoyi^ wpog ra gpartcra — ii* Cavriit oyoinra r^f 

sfwtfitiatf ovK atvywofitvii ttapt^^tv iavrnv «ai ii6a9Ka\o¥,—Or€g, Noziamen^ in apUapk, 
Patrit. 

X See Elliott on Romanism, ii. 427. In addition to the above, Dr. Elliott cites 
a luge number of similar instances. 



CKir. m.] POPERY AT ITS BIRTH.-^A. D. 606. 81 

€ShijmamamtB fcacriprinn of the ■andlQr of a profaMcd viniB. Biogular Botkna about the Virgin Maiy. 

men upon hunseUl So should all those who look upon the virgin 
l>e thrown into admiration, and stupor, at the sight of her sanctity. 
And when she advances, she moves as through a desert ; or when 
she sits at church, it is with the profoundest silence, her eye catches 
nothing of the objects around her ; she sees neither women nor men, 
1>ut her spouse only ; and who shall not marvel at her ? who shall 
not be in ecstacv, in thus beholding the angelic life, embodied in a 
female form T And who is it that shall dare approach her? Where 
is the man who shall venture to touch this naming spirit ? Nay 
rather, all stand aloof^ willing or unwilling ; all are fixed in amaze* 
ment, as if there were before their eves a mass of incandescent and 
sparkling gold I Gold hath indeed bv nature its splendor ; but 
when saturate with fire, how admirable, nay even fearful is it I 
And thus, when a soul such as this occupies the body, not only shall 
the spectacle be wondered at by men, but even by angels." While 
sach were the opinions entertained and expressed of the ** angelic 
virtue " of virginity, we are not surprised to learn that it was 
regarded as the very height of presumption and impiety to doubt 
whether the Virgin Mary — aamo^ayo^— ever parted with this pre- 
cious jewel. 

§ 16. — About the middle of the fourth century, as appears firom cer- 
tain expressions in Epiphanius, Gregory Nyssen, and Augustine, an 
opinion arose that there were in the temple at Jerusalem, virgins 
consecrated to God, among whom Mary grew up in vows of per- 
petual virginity. Her marriage with Joseph, the first named of 
these writers speaks of as only formal, and Jerome describes him 
as an ascetic fi'om his youth.* The opinion was strenuously main- 
tained by them, and most of their cotemporaries, that Mary con- 
tinued a virgin till her death. Others, however, adopting the more 
natural interpretation of Matt, i., 25, and xiii., 55, 56, contended that 
she had afterward lived in a state of honorable matrimony with her 
husband, and that she had borne other children. Those who held 
this opinion, were enumerated among the heretics, and were called 
arUi-dico-marianiteSy or opposers of the purity of Mary. It would 
be amusing, if it were not painful, to notice the fanciful and puerile 
conceits of the writers of this age, when endeavoring to establish 
the notion of the perpetual virginity of Mary. They even employed 
arguments to prove that in some wonderful way she gave birth to 
the Saviour, without losing her virginity, and some of them under- 
took to show in what way this was accomplished. Thus, says 
Ambrose, commenting on Isaiah vii., 14, " Hbbc est virgo qua>. in 
utero concepit," &c., ** This is the virgin who hath conceived, and the 
virgin who hath brought forth a son. For the prophet not only 
saim that a virgin shaU conceive, but also that a virgin shall bring 
forth." Then in the fanciful manner of applying Scripture current 
in that age, he makes a reference to Ezekiel xliv., 1, 2, and asks '' but 

* See Gieseler, vol. !., page 273, note 13, for references and original qootap 
tioDs from the fttben Darned. 



82 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book n. 

Th« CollTildiaiui or early wonhippera of the Viifin. Pipieti ell each iwir. 

what is that gate of the sanctuary, that outward gate toward the 
East, through which no one shall enter, but the Lord Grod of Israel ? 
Is not Mary this gate, through whom the Redeemer hath entered 
into the world ? concerning whom it is written, quia Dominus per- 
transibit per earn, et erit cuzusa post partum, because a virgin hath 
conceived and brought forth." A similar fanciful allusion to this 
passage in Ezekiel, by Jerome, may be found in the note which I 
must be spared the task of translating.* 

§ 17. — When we observe, on the one hand, the earnest manner 
in which these fathers contend for the perpetual virginity of Mary* 
and on the other the extravagant honors attached to the virgin state, 
we need not be surprised that the notion soon became prevalent 
among some that ** tne mother of God," as she was now frequently 
denominated, was herself worthy of the honors of divine worship. 
Accordingly, about this time, we find that a sect sprang up, whose 
peculiar tenet it was, that the Virgin Mary should be adored in 
worship, and that religious honors should oe paid to her. They 
were called Collyridians, from collyridcR^ the cakes which they 
offered to the Virgin. However naturally this error might spring 
from the notions maintained by those who were regarded as the 
orthodox fathers of the church in this age, yet it is a proof that the 
Popery of the present day would even in that corrupt age have 
been regarded as heresy, that the members of this sect were branded 
by Epiphanius and others of the Nicene fathers as heretics. If one 
of them were now to arise from his grave, and pass through any of 
the Catholic countries of Europe, he would soon discover a wide- 
spread system of idolatrous worship of the Virgin, far more debas- 
ing than that which they condemned, because accompanied with 
the idolatrous use of images, a flagrant impiety with which these 
ancient heretics were not charged. 

§ 18. — In proof of this last assertion, I would refer to the fact, 
noticed by almost every modem traveller, that in Italy, Spain, 
Austria, and other popish countries of Europe, it is common to see 
images of the Virgin and child, not only in the churches, but also 
afHxed in conspicuous places by the road-side, to receive the hom- 
age and adoration of the passer-by. Some of these Romish idols 
are regarded with greater reverence than others, and are conse- 
quently visited by a greater number of votaries. Thus in England, 
the land of our fathers, previous to the glorious reformation from 

* Gieseler, vol. i., page 287, note 25. — ** Amhrosius Ep, 42, ad Siricium P. 
HfBC est virgo quae in utero concepit: virgo qus peperit filium. Sic enim 
scriptiim est : Ecce virgo in utero accimei, el panel flium ; non enim concep- 
tnram tantummodo virginem, sed et parituram virginem dixit Qu» autem est 
ilia ^rta sanctuarii, porta ilia exterior ad Orientem, qns manet clausa ; et nemOf 
inqait, pertransibU per eam^ nisi sdus Deus Israel (Ezech. xliv. 2)? Nonne hiBC 
porta quia Dominus pertransibii per earn, et erit clausa poet partum ; quia virgo 
concepit et genuit. Hteronymus adv. Pelagianos, lib. ii. (0pp. ed. Martian, T. 
rV. P. II. p. 612): SoluB enim Christus clausas portas vulvae virginalis apemit, 
qu» tamen clansn jugiter permanserunt. Hsc est porta orientalis clausa, per 
quam solus Pontifex ingreditnr et egreditur et nihilominQs semper clausa est" 



CHAF.m.] POPERY AT ITS BIRTH.— A. D. 606. 85 

Miuucla plsTinc tmiei to th« Virgin and child as though the Idols were conscious. 

Popery, there was a famous image of the Virgin at Walsingham, 
in the county of Norfolk, which was visited by thousands of devo- 
tees, from the most distant parts of the island, notwithstanding they 
had similar idols in their own neighborhoods, and perhaps in their" 
own dwellings, occupying the same place as the penates, or house- 
bold^gods of the ancient pagans of Greece and Rome. In Italy, 
where Popery is seen without disguise, each of these images is, by 
the common people, regarded as a distinct object of worship, and it 
is a very common sight to see a company of the Calabrese minstrels 
perforaiing their national devotional airs before them, especially 
about the time of Christmas, and pleasing themselves with the idea 
that the tunes are the same that were played by the shepherds at the 
incarnation of the Saviour, on the plains of Bethlehem. 

A recent traveller in Italy relates a fact which shows that images 
are looked upon as real objects of worship, and treated as though 
they were really conscious of the idolatrous honors paid to them, 
notwithstanding, in the expressive language of Scripture, " they 
have eyes but they see not, they have ears but they hear not. 
They that make them are like unto them ; so is every one that 
trusteth in them." (Psalm cxv., 5, &c.) In Rome, according to 
this traveller,* " it is a popular opinion that the Virgin Mary is very 
fond and an excellent judge of music. I received this information,** 
says he, " on a Christmas morning, when I was looking at two poor 
Calabrian pipers doing their utmost to please her and the infant in 
ter arms. They played for a full hour to one of her images 
^hich stands at the comer of a street. All the other statues of 
the Virgin which are placed in the streets are serenaded in the 
same manner every Christmas morning. On my inquiring into the 
Dieanmg of that ceremony, I was told the above-mentioned circum- 
itance of her character. My informer was a pilgrim, who stood 
listening with great devotion to the pipers. He told me at the same 
^e, that the Virgin's taste was too refined to have much satisfac- 
tion in the performance of these poor Calabrians, which was chiefly 
intended for the infant ; and he desired me to remark, that the tunes 
^re plain and simple, and such as might naturally be supposed 
^eeable to the ear of a child of his time of life" The accompa- 
nying engraving is a beautiful representation of such a scene as is 
described in the foregoing interesting extract from the work of Dr. 
Moore. (See Engraving.) 

§ 19. — Though many centuries elapsed before an idolatry so gross 
fts this was practised, even in apostate Rome, yet as early as the 
fifth century, many circumstances were tending toward this idola- 
trous reverence of the Virgin Mary. In the fifth century, a contro- 
versy arose relative to the title which it was proper to apply to her, 
which in its result tended, probably, more than anything else, to 
increase the superstitious veneration with which she had long been 
regarded. The occasion of this controversy was furnished by the 

* Dr. Moore, in his View of Society and Manners in Italy. 



86 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [bookil 



NeMorfan eontroveny on the title ** mother of God.'* FeMM In honor of the Yix^ 

presbyter Anastasius, a friend of Nestorius. This presbyter, in a 
public discourse, delivered, A. D. 428, declaimed warmly against 
the title of Beojonog^ or mother of God, which was now n'equently 
attributed to the Virgin Mary. He at the same time gave it as his 
opinion that she should rather be called XgiaToxoHoSy i. e., mother of 
(Jhristf since the Deity can neither be bom nor die, and of C9nse- 
quence the son of man alone could derive his birth from an earthly 
parent. Nestorius applauded these sentiments, and explained and 
defended them in several discourses. 

The result of the Nestorian controversy, as it was called, was that 
at the third general council, which was held at Ephesus, in 431, and at 
which Cyril, the powerful and imperious antagonist of Nestorius,. 
presided, the doctrine was condemned, and its defender branded as 
another Judas, deposed from his episcopal dimity, and sent into 
exile, where he finished his days in the deserts of Thebais in Egypt* 
This dispute, as is truly remarked by Gieseler, first led men to set 
the Virgin Mary above all other saints as " the mother of God." 
To those who reflect upon the natural tendency of an exciting con- 
troversy to drive men to extremes, it will not be matter of wonder 
that henceforward much more was said and done in honor of the 
^* blessed Virgin," " mother of God," and " ever a Virgin," than at 
any previous period. Among the images with which the mi^nifi- 
cent churches began now to be adorned, that of the Virgin Mary 
holding the child Jesus in her arms, in consequence of the Nesto- 
rian controversy, obtained the first and principal place. 

§ 20. — In the following century, two testivals were established in 
her honor, the festum purificationis, or festival of the " purification 
of the Blessed V irgin Mary," on the second of February (Candlemas 
day), and ihefestum annunciationis, the festival of the annunciation 
on the twenty-fifth day of March, which has been popularly called 
Lady Day.f Mosheim says, with appearance of reason, that the 
former festival was established with a design " to remedy the unea- 
siness of heathen converts, on account of the loss of their lupercalicL^ 
or feasts of the god Pan, which had formerly been observed in the 

* An amnsing anecdote is related concerning the £mperor Constantine Copro- 
nymuB, who liv^ more than three hundred years after Nestorins, which well iliuB- 
trates the unreasonable importance which was attached for ages to these vain dis- 
putes about mere words. It must be remembered that in this dispute both sides 
were strictly orthodox in the modem sense of the word. Both sides admitted that 
Jesus Christ is God as well as man ; that his human nature was bom of the Virgin, 
and that his divine nature existed from eternity ; both sides admitted the distinction 
between the two natures, and their union in the person of Christ Where then lay 
the difference ? It could be nowhere but in phraseology. Yet this notable ques- 
tion raised a conflagration in the church, and proved, in the East, the source of 
infinite mischief, hatred, violence, and persecution. The Emperor happened one 
day to ask the patriarch of Constantinople, " What harm woula there be in calling 
tiie Virgin Mary the mother of Christ ?" "Gorf preserve your majestVy^ answered 
the patnarch hastily, with great emotion, ^^from entertaininff stich a tkovght ! Do 
you not see how Nestorius is cmathemaLized for this by the whole church .'" " I only 
asked for my own information," replied the Emperor, evidently with some alaxm, 
** but let it go no farther.** 

f Bingham's Antiquities, vd. ix., page 170. 



our. rr.] POPERY AT ITS BIRTH.—A. D. 606. 87 



EgTpC the hlrth^aee of Mookerj, whsthcr beathm or ChrtttiBn. 



month of Februarv."* The latter served equally well as a substi- 
tute for the festival of the ancient heathen goddess, Cybele, to whom 
the 25th of February, or Lady Day, was formerly dedicated. There 
is indeed a strong resemblance, in many points, between the pagan 
worship of Cybele» and the popish worship of the Virgin. The same 
appellation of " queen of heaven,'' which is frequently applied by 
wpists to Mary, was generally applied by the ancient Romans to 
Cybele. 



CHAPTER IV. 

ORIGIN OF KOMI8H ERBOR8 CONTINUED— MONKEST. 

§ 21. — Monkery, like most of the characteristic marks of Anti* 
Christ, bears the most indubitable evidences of its heathen origin. 
«%ypt» the rank soil in which it sprang up, had long been the fruit- 
&r parent of a race of gloomy and misanthropic eremites. It was 
in that country that this morose discipline had its rise ; and it is 
observable, that Egypt has, in all times, as it were by an immu- 
table law, or disposition of nature, abounded with persons of a 
melancholy complexion, and produced, in proportion to its extent, 
more gloomy spirits than any other part of the world. It was 
here that the Essenes and the TherapeutsB, those dismal and gloomy 
•ects, dwelt principally, long before the coming of Christ ; as also 
many others of the Ascetic tribe, who, led by a certain melancholy 
turn of mind, and a delusive notion of rendering themselves more 
acceptable to the Deity by their austerities, witndrew themselves 
from human society, and from all the innocent pleasures and com- 
forts of life. Strabo, Arrian, Diodorus Siculus, Porphyry, as well 
as several of the fathers, especially Clement of Alexandria, and 
Augustine, have handed down incidental notices of the philosophy 
and manners of the Indian and Egyptian gymnosophists, such as 
are amply sufficient for the purpose of identifying the ancient, and 
the more recent — the Buddhist, and the Christian ascetic institute. 
These professors of a divine philosophy, like their Christian imita- 
tors, went nearly naked ; they occupied caverns or chinks in the 
rocks ; they abstained entirely from animal food ; they professed 
inviolable virginity ; they practised penance ; they passed the 
greater part of their time m mute meditation ; they imposed silence 
and absolute submission upon their disciples; they professed the 
doctrine, that the perfection of human nature consists in an annihi- 

* See Mosheim, cent vi., part 2, chapiter iv. 



88 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book n. 

Bawmblaiice between the pagan and Christian gymnoaophitta. Paul the hennit, Anthony, Hilarioa 

lation of the passions, and every affection which nature has im- 
planted, whether in the animal or the mental constitution : abnega- 
tion was, with them, the one point of wisdom and virtue, and a re- 
absorption of the human soul into the abyss of the divine mind, 
was tne happy end of the present system, to the pure and wise. 

§ 22. — Now, one might reasonably have supposed and expected, 
that a system of doctrine and practice such as this, if it were to 
come at all under the powerful influence of Christianity, must have 
admitted some extensive modifications ; but it was not so in fact : — 
a few phrases and another dialect, or slang, adopted, make almost 
all the difference which serves to distinguish the ancient gymno- 
sophist from the Christian anchoret The more rigid and he- 
roic of the Christian anchorets dispensed with all clothing except 
a rug, or a few palm-leaves round the loins. Most of them ab- 
stained from the use of water for ablution ; nor did they usually 
wash or change the garments they had once put on ; thus St An- 
thony bequeathed to Athanasius a skin in which his sacred person 
had been wrapped for half a century. They also allowed their 
beards and nails to grow, and sometimes became so hirsute, as to 
be actually mistaken for hysenas or bears. It need not be said that 
celibacy was the first law of this institute, and that an abstinence 
the most rigid was its second law. 

At what time precisely, the wilderness exchanged its pagan for a 
Christian tenantry, it is not easy to ascertain. In some instances, 
no doubt, the very individuals who had begun their course as hea- 
then gymnosophists, ended it as Christian anchorets. But oftener, 
probably, the deserted cell or cavern of the savage philosopher was 
taken possession of by one who, having, in the neighboring cities, 
received the knowledge of the gospel, betook himself to the angelic 
life in consequence of persecutions, or of disappointments in love 
or in business.* 

§ 23. — The most remarkable early instances of this gloomy 
fanaticism on record are those of Paul the hermit, who, during the 
persecution under Decius, about A. D. 250, betook himself to the 
solitary deserts of Egypt, where, for a space of more than ninety 
years, he lived a life more worthy of a savage animal than a human 
being. Anthony, an Egyptian, regarded as the founder of the 
monastic institution (because he first formed monks into organized 
bodies), who fixed his abode in the deserts of Egypt twenty or 
thirty years later than Paul, and died in the year 356, at the age of 
105 ; and Hilarion, a Syrian youth, who took up his abode on a 
sandy beach, between the sea and a morass, about eight miles from 
Gaza, in Palestine, where he persisted in a course of the most aus- 
tere penance for about forty-eight years. 

Influenced by these eminent examples, immense multitudes be- 
took themselves to the desert, and innumerable monasteries were 

* See Taylor's Ancient Christianity, page 426, &c., with references to ancient 
authorities. 



CHAP. IV.] POPERY AT ITS BIRTH.— A. D. 606. 89 

Ym Bomber of Uw mooki ia Efypt, Ice. 8l SymeoD, the celebrated pillar niat. 

fixed in Egypt, Ethiopia, Lybia, and Syria. Some of the Egyptian 
abbots are spoken of as having had five, seven, or even ten thousand 
monks under their personal direction ; and the Thebais, as well as 
certain spots in Arabia, are reported to havo been literally crowded 
with solitaries. Nearly a hundred thousand of all classes, it is 
said, were at one time to be found in Egypt. The western church 
probably could boast of no such swarms. This however is certain, 
that, although the enthusiasm might be at a lower ebb in one coun- 
try than in another, it actually affected the church universal, so far 
as the extant materials of ecclesiastical history enable us to .trace 
it3 rise and progress. In the west, Martin of Tours founded a 
monastery at Poictiers, and thus introduced monastic institutions 
into France. His monks were mostly of noble families, and sub- 
mitted to the greatest austerities both in food and raiment ; and 
such was the rapidity of their increase, that 2000 of them attended 
his fiineral. In other countries, they appear to have increased in 
equal proportion, and the progress of monkery has been said to 
have equalled the rapidity and universality of Christianity itself. 
Every province, and, in process of time, every city of the empire, 
was filled with their increasing multitudes. 

§ 24. — We may learn the character of this fanaticism from a 
eulogy on the monastic life, composed about the middle of the 
fourth century by Gregory Nazianzen. There were some of these 
men, he tells us, " who loaded themselves with iron chains in order 
to bear down their bodies— others who shut themselves up in cabins 
and appeared to nobody — some continued twenty days and twenty 
nights without eating, often practising the half of tne fast of our 
Lord—one individual is said to have abstained entirely from speak- 
ing, not praising God except in thought — and another passed whole 
years in a church, with extended hands, like an animated statue, 
yet never allowing himself to sleep."* 

One of the most renowned instances of monkish penance that is 
upon record is that of St. Symeon, as the papists are pleased to 
call him. He was a native of Syria, and devoted himself to the 
monkish life, in the virtues of which he is thought to have outstrip- 
ped all that preceded him. We are told that he lived six-and-thirty 
years on a pillar erected on the summit of a high mountain in Syria, 
from which he obtained the name of Symeon Stylites (from aivXog^ 
a pillar). From this pillar, it is said, he never descended except to 
take possession of another, which he did four times, having in the 
whole occupied five of them. On his last pillar, which was loftier 
than any of the former, being sixty feet high and three broad, he 
remained, according to report, fifteen years without intermission, 
summer and winter, day and night, exposed to all the inclemencies 
of the weather, in a climate subject to great and sudden changes, 
from the most sultry heat to piercing cold. It is said that he always 
flood ; the breadth of his pillar not permitting him to lie down. He 

* See Flenry's Ecdeci. Hist book xvi. chap. 61. 
7 



I 



90 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book n. 

A tcraBge method of lenriiig God. 1344 bowi. Bpoeloot moDuteriM â– wcud 

spent the day till three in the afternoon in meditation and prayer ; 
from that time till sunset he harangued the people who flocked to 
him from all countries, whom he then dismissed with his benedic- 
tion. He would on no account suffer females to come within his 
precincts — ^not even his own mother, who is said, through mortifi- 
cation and grief at being refused admittance, to have oied on the 
third day after her arrival. To show how indefatigable he was in 
whatever conduced to the glory of God, and the good of mankind, 
he spent much time daily m the exemplary exercise of bowing so 
low as to make his forehead strike his toes, and so frequently, that 
one who went to see him, as Theodoret, the ancient ecclesiastical 
historian, relates, counted no fewer than 1244 times — when, being 
more wearied in numbering than the saint was in bowing, he gave 
over the task of counting.* 

For such senseless and disgusting practices as these has this 
poor victim of superstition been enrolled among the calendar of 
saints, and down to the present day, whenever Romish writers 
refer to this famous pillar saint, they speak of him with the great- 
est reverence as Saint Symeon. 

§ 25. — Up to nearly the close of the fifth century, the monks had 
generally lived only in solitary retreats, and, regarded as they were 
as laymen^ they had entertained no thoughts of assuming any rank 
among the sacerdotal order. Now, however, they found them- 
selves in a condition to claim an eminent station among the pillars 
of the Christian community. The mistaken piety of many led 
them to erect spacious and commodious edifices for the accommo- 
dation of the monks and holy virgins, more resembling the palaces 
of princes than the rude cells of the primitive monks, and at the 
epoch of the papal supremacy, these monasteries were numerous 
and powerful, especially in the neighborhood of large cities. The 
monks who dwelt in these convents were called Coenobites, from two 
Greek words, signifying to live in common. 

When these spacious edifices were supplied with a numerous 
fraternity, governed by an ahhot of eminence and character, so 
called from a Syriac word signifying father, there often arose a 
jealousy between the abbot on the one hand, and the bishop on the 
other, 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 some- 
times 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 inconveniences, real or pretended, and might be independent 

* Those who wish to peruse a fuller account of these miserable euthusiasts, 
and the absurd legends of their wonderful miracles, may consult Theodoret's Ec- 
clesiastical History ; Jerom. Vita Pauli Erem. ; Middleton*s Free Inquiry into the 
miraculous powers, &c., p. 164-168 ; and Taylor's Ancient Christianity, p. 461, 
&c. 



CBAP.rr.] POPERY AT ITS BIRTH.— A. D. 606. 91 



MaalB rod ■bbottbteomgtha tool! of the pope. Gregory** iohamui •everity to a pour monk. 

of their rivals, they applied to Rome, one after another, for a release 
from this slavery, as tl^ey called it, by being taken under the pro- 
tection of St Peter. 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 
privil^es is obliged, in order to secure his privileges, to maintain 
the auSiority of me grantor. 
}26. — ^Very quicUy all the monasteries, great and small, abbeys, 

Eriories, and nunneries, were exempted from the jurisdiction of the 
ishops. The two last were inferior sorts of monasteries, and often 
subordinate to some abbey. Even the chapters of cathedrals, con- 
arting mostly of regulars, on the like pretexts, obtained exemption. 
FinajTv, whole orders, such as the Benedictines, who were estab- 
lished m the sixth century, and others, were exempted. This effec- 
tually procured a prodigious augmentation to the pontifical author- 
ial 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 
«s on the secular powers.* They made the cause of the pope their 
own, and represented him as a sort of god, to the ignorant multi- 
tude, over whom they had gained a prodigious ascendant by the 
notion that generally prevailed, of the sanctity of the monastic 
order. It is at the same time to be observed that this immunity of 
the monks was a fruitful source of licentiousness and disorder, and 
occasioned the greatest part of the vices with which they were 
afterward so justly charged. 

Previous to the elevation of Gregory I. to the See of Rome, he 

was himself abbot of a monastery, and exacted of the monks the 

strictest observance of the rules of poverty, chastity, and implicit 

obedience. An instance of superstitious, and, as it appears to us, 

inhuman severity toward one of them, is related by Gregory him- 

8elf,f and is worth recording as an illustration of the character of 

Gregory, and of the spirit of that superstitious age. The monk's 

name was Justus ; he had practised physic before entering the 

monastery, and had attended Gregory night and day during his 

long illness. Being himself taken ill, he discovered, at the point of 

death, to his brother, a layman, that he had three pieces of gold coin 

concealed in his cell. Some monks overheard him, and thereupon 

nunmaging his cell, found, after a long search, which nothing could 

escape, the three pieces concealed in a medicament, and brought 

them to Gregory. As, by the laws of the monastery, no monk was 

to possess anything whatever in private, the abbot, to bring the 

dying monk to a due sense of his crime, and, at the same time, to 

deter the rest, by his punishment, from following his example, 

strictly forbade the other monks to afford him any kind of comfort 

or relief in the agonies of death, or even to approach him. Not 

^ See Gimpbell'B Lectures on Ecclesiastical History, page 325. 
f Gngoij's Diak)gQe0, lib. iv., c 66. 



02 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [bookil 

llooaateries fotile in pretended eainta. 

satisfied with that inhuman severity, he required the brother of the 
unhappy monk to let him know that he died avoided, detested, and 
abhorred, by all his brethren. He did not even stop here, but 
exceeding all bounds, ordered the body of the deceased^ as soon as 
he expired, to be thrown on a dunghill, and with it the three pieces 
of gold, all the monks crying out, aloud, " Thy money perish with 
thee !" 

§ 27. — In an age so dark as that which gave birth to Popery, it 
might be expected that the newly established monastic institutions 
would produce hundreds of gloomy religionists, whom the credulous 
devotion of an ignorant and superstitious multitude would enshrine 
as saints. Such we find was actually the fact. In the sixth century, 
according to Mosheim, such as wished to enforce the duties of Chris- 
tianity, by exhibiting examples of piety and virtue to those for 
whom their instructions were designed, wrote for this purpose the 
Lives of the saints ; and there was a considerable number of biogra- 
phers, both among the Greeks and Latins. Ennodius, Eugippius, 
Cyril of Scythopolis, Dionysius the Little, Cogitosus, and others, 
^ are to be ranked in this class. But however pious the intentions of 
these biographers may have been, it must be acknowledged that 
they executed it in a most contemptible manner. No models of 
rational piety are to be found among those pretended worthies, 
whom they propose to Christians as objects of imitation. They 
amuse their readers with gigantic fables and trifling romances ; the 
examples they exhibit are those of certain delirious fanatics^ whom 
they call saints^ men of corrupt and perverted judgment, who 
oflTercd violence to reason and nature, by the horrors ofan extrava- 
gant austerity in their own conduct, and by the severity of those 
singular and inhuman rules which they prescribed to others. For 
by what means were these men sainted? By starving themselves 
with a frantic obstinacy, and bearing the useless hardships of hunger, 
thirst, and inclement seasons, with steadfastness and perseverance ; 
by running about the country like madmen, in tattered garments, 
and sometimes half naked, or shutting themselves up in a narrow 
space, where they continued motionless ; by standing for a long 
time in certain postures, with their eyes closed, in the enthusiastic 
expectation of divine light. All this was saintlike and glorious ; 
and the more that any ambitious fanatic departed from the dictates 
of reason and common sense, and counterfeited the wild gestures 
and the incoherent conduct of an idiot or a lunatic, the surer was 
his prospect of obtaining an eminent rank among the heroes and 
demigods of a corrupt and degenerate church.* 

* See Mosheim, centuiy vi., part 2, chap. iii. 



93 



CHAPTER V. 

ORIGIN OF KOMISH ERKORS CONTINUED— WORSHIP OF SAINTS AND 

RELICS, ETC. 

} 28. — The invocation of saints is another of the unscriptural 
practices of Popery, which boasts of an origin anterior to the papal 
supremacy. In modem times this idolatrous worship of created 
beings has grown to such a height in the Romish church, as well 
nigh to exclude altogether the worship of the Creator ; and who- 
ever wiU take the trouble to examine a popish book of devotion 
will see that there are many petitions offered to the saints for every 
one that is offered to the Deity. 

In all probability this practice grew up, by degrees, from the 
honors wnich, in the early ages, were paid to the martyrs ; and 
those who, in the third or fourth century, thus laid the foundation 
of this svstem of idolatry, little imagined the huge fabric of super- 
stition tnat would be erected thereon. Perhaps it would be too 
severe to pronounce an indiscriminate censure upon those early 
Christians, who, prompted by respect for the virtues of their mar- 
tyred brethren, were accustomed to assemble around their graves, 
to mourn over their loss, and to send up their supplications to the 
common God and Father of the martyred dead and the suffering 
living. In process of time, however, the due reverence with which 
these witnesses for Jesus had been regarded, increased to a kind of 
idolatrous veneration, and religious services performed over their 
sepulchres were regarded as possessing a peculiar sanctity and vir- 
tue. The growth of this idea was so rapid, that in the age of 
Constantine we find that stately churches were, in some instances, 
erected over their graves, and where this was impracticable, some 
relic, real or imaginary, of one of these saints was enshrined, with 
all due solemnity, in the magnificent buildings erected to their 
honor.* 

§ 29. — Fleury, the celebrated Roman Catholic ecclesiastical his- 
torian, relatesf that on one occasion, in the year 386, St. Ambrose, 
being about to consecrate a church at Milan, was prevented by the 
fact that he had no relics of martyrs to deposit in the altars, when 
** immediately his heart burned within him, in presage, as he felt, of 
what was to happen." The historian proceeds to tell us that God 
revealed to him, in a dream, the place where the bodies of St. Ger- 
vasius and St. Protasius were to be found. " Having discovered 
their sepulchres, two skeletons were discovered of more than or- 
dinary size, all their bones entire, a quantity of blood about, and 
their heads separated from their bodies. They arranged the bodies, 
putting every bone into its proper place, and they covered them 

^ EasebiuA-— de vita Constant, iii. 48. 

t Flenry's Ecdes. Hist, book xviii., chap. 48. 



94 mSTORY OF ROMANISM. [book n. 

DiaeoTery of bodies of Saints. Ceremony of depoiltiDg relict in the altnn of cbnrclMfti 

with cloths and laid them on litters. In this manner were they 
carried towards evening to the Basilica of St Fausta, where vigib 
were celebrated all night, and several that were possessed received 
imposition of hands. That day and the next, there was a great 
concourse of people, and then the old men recollected that they 
had formerly heard the names of these martyrs, and had read the 
inscription on their tomb. The next day the relics were transferred 
to the Basilica Ambrosiana," or church of St. Ambrose at Milan.* 
So general had the notion become that a church could not be con- 
secrated without relics, that it was decreed by a council at Con- 
stantinople, that those altars under which no relics were found 
should be demolished. 

The same necessity of relics to be deposited in the altar of 
Romish churches, in order to their due consecration, is contended 
for down to the present day. No matter how minute the particle 
of supposed holy dust of the saint to whom the church is to be dedi- 
cated ; — a tooth, a toe-nail, a hair, a drop of the bloody or a pre- 
served tear from the eye ; anything will do, so that it has been 
christened or declared genuine by his infallible holiness, the Pope. 
Upon the arrival of the duly authenticated relic, it is borne in so- 
lemn procession by priests in their robes to the altar in which it is 
to be deposited, and when arrived at its destination, it is placed by 
the hands of the bishop himself in the place prepared for its recep- 
tion. The first of the adjoining plates represents the procession of 
relics to the church, and the other the bishop in the act of closing 
up the sacred deposit within the altar. Before he does this he 
marks the sepulchre on the four sides with the sim of the cross. 
This is the consecration of the sepulchre. He then deposits the relic 
box with all possible veneration, which must be done bare-headed, 
the better to testify to the congregation the reverence attached to 
the ceremony. After this an anthem is repeated, during which, the 
celebrant, still without his mitre on, incenses the relics, and after- 
wards puts it on, takes the stone which is to be laid over the sepul- 
chre with his right hand, dips the thumb of the other in chrism, and 
makes the sign of the cross in the middle of the stone on the side 
that is to be towards the relics, in order to consecrate it on that 
side. Anthems and the Oremus immediately follow according to 
custom. After this the celebrant fixes the stone upon the sepul- 
chre, the masons make an end of the work, and the celebrant sanc- 
tifies it by the sign of the cross which is reverently to be made on 
the stone. {See Engraving,) 

§ 30. — To return to the origin of these superstitions. In Egypt, 
about the fourth and fifth centuries, another method was adopted of 
showing the reverence of Christians for the mortal relics of de- 

Earted saints. In that country, according to Gieseler, the Christians 
ej^ to embalm the bodies of reputed saints, a^d keep them in 
their houses. The communion with the martyrs being thus asso- 

* Fleuy's Ecdes. Hist, book zviii., ch^ 46. 



CBAT. T.] POPERY AT ITS BIRTH.— A. D. 606. 97 



broatfaiaf flUili. Qrafory Na Ki«nM n*« addraw to hit departed fluhec and to Qyprian. 

dated with the presence of their material remains, these were dug 

a from the graves and placed in the churches, especially under the 
an ; and the popular feeling having now a visible object to ex- 
cite it, became more extravagant and superstitious than ever. The 
opinion of the efficacy of the intercession of those who had died a 
martyr's death, was now united with the belief that it was possible 
to communicate with them directly ; a belief founded partly on the 
popular heathen notion that departed souls always lingered around 
the bodies they had once inhabited, and partly on the views enter- 
tained of the glorified state of the martyrs, a sort of omnipresence 
being ascribed to them. These notions may be traced to Origen, 
and nis followers were the first who apostropliized the martyrs in 
tbeir sermons, and besought their intercession. But though the 
orators were somewhat extravagant in this respect, they were far 
outdone by the poets, who soon took up this theme, and could find 
IM) expressions strong enough to describe the power and the glory 
of the martyrs. Christians were now but seldom called upon to 
address their prayers to God ; the usual mode being to pray only 
to some saint for his intercession. With this worship of the saints 
Were joined many of the customs of the heathen. Men chose their 
patron saints, and dedicated churches to their worship. The hea- 
then, whom the Christians used to reproach with worshipping dead 
Dien, found now ample opportunity of retort.* In proportion as 
nien felt the need of such intercession, they strove to increase the 
number of the intercessors. Martyrs, before unknown, according 
to the legends of those times, announced themselves in visions, 
others revealed the place of their burial, and the populace were 
disposed to regard every obscure grave as the burial-place of a 

ouutyr.t 
§ 31. — As specimens of the kind of invocations addressed to the 

•aints in the latter part of the fourth century, we may refer to the 
fcneral orations of the eloquent Gregory Nazianzen upon the mar- 
tyr Cyprian? bishop of Carthage, and upon his own father. At the 
close of the former, he addresses a prayer to St. Cyprian, in which 
he implores the assistance and protection of the glorified martyr 
**to aid him in the government of his flock.** In the latter he says, 
I do not doubt that my departed father, " being now much nearer 
to God, does a great deal more for his flock by his intercession than 
he did on earth by his teachmg." The celebrated Roman Catholic 
historian, Dupin, commenting upon this oration, which was de- 
livered about A. D. 381, remarks that, '* the church, in the time of 
St Gregory Nazianzen, believed that the martyrs and saints en- 
joyed already eternal happiness and the vision of God ; that they 
took care ot men upon earth ; that they interceded for them, and 
that it was very profitable to pray to them for the obtaining of 
spiritual and temporal favors.'';]; 

* See Gieeeler, vol. i., p. 283, with citationB of ancient aathoritieci. 

JSvlffidus SeveruSf de vita Martini., cap. xi. 
Dnpin's Uvesand writingB of the primitive &then, voL IL, p. 167. 



98 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book n. 

Epiphaniui in the fourth c«ntary oppoiet imagen In the churches ai contrary to Scripture. 

It should be observed, however, that in that age this idolatrous 
custom of the Romish church was but in its incipient state. There 
is a vast difference between the impassioned addresses of orators 
and poets to the spirits of the departed martyrs in the age of 
Gregory and Basil, and the regular liturgical prayers to the saints 
incorporated into the set forms of devotion in a later generation, 
and perpetuated in their worst forms of idolatry and creature wor- 
ship, down to the present time. 

9 32. — It is to be remembered too, that as yet the anti-Christian 
abomination of the worship of images had not yet arisen. " In the 
fourth century," says Gieseler, " the worship of images was still 
abominated as a heathen practice." A proof of this is furnished by 
a singular letter of Epiphanius to John of Jerusalem, written near 
the close of the century in which he writes as follows : " Having 
entered into a church in a village of Palestine, named Anablatha, 1 
found there a veil which was suspended at the door, and painted with 
a representation, whether of Jesus Christ or of some saint, for I do not 
recollect whose image it was, but seeing that in opposition to the 
authority of Scripture^ there was a human image in the ^church of 
Jesus Christ, I tore it in pieces, and gave order to those who had 
care of that church, to bury the corpse with the veil. And as they 
grumbled out some answer, that ' since he has chosen to tear the 
veil, he might as well find another,* I promised them one, and I 
now discharge that promise." 

From this letter we learn, not only that the worship, but the use 
of images in the churches was altogether condemned at this time. 
As the account given by Mosheim, of the progress of this and kindred 
degrading superstitions, from the age of the Nicene fathers, to the 
establishment of the papal supremacy, is so graphic, and so true, I 
shall present the reader with a condensation of his remarks. An 
enormous train of different superstitions, says he, were gradually 
substituted in the place of true religion and genuine piety. This 
odious revolution was owing to a variety of causes. *A ridiculous 
precipitation in receiving new opinions, a preposterous desire of 
imitating the pagan rites, and of blending them with the Christian 
worship, and, that idle propensity which the generality of man- 
kind have toward a gaudy and ostentatious religion, all contributed 
to establish the reign of superstition upon the ruins of Christianity. 
Accordingly, frequent pilgrimages were undertaken to Palestine, 
and to the tombs of the martyrs, as if there alone the sacred princi- 

?les of virtue, and the certain hope of salvation, were to be acquired, 
^he reins being once let loose to superstition, which knows no 
bounds, absurd notions and idle ceremonies multiplied every day. 
Quantities of dust and earth brought from Palestine, and other pjaces 
remarkable for their supposed sanctity, were handed about as the 
most powerful remedies against the violence of wicked spirits, and 
were sold and bought at enormous prices. 

§ 33. — The public processions and supplications, by which the pa- 
gans endeavored to appease their gods, were now adopted into the 



«HiF. v.] POPERY AT ITS BIRTH.— A. D. 606. 99 



BhaBcfml Inporitkns and lying wonden. Forged nlia and miracles 

Christian worship, and celebrated with great pomp and magnificence 
in several places. The virtues that had formerly been ascn&ed to the 
heathen temples, to their lustrations, to the statues of their gods and 
heroes, were now attributed to Christian churches, to holy water^ 
consecrated by certain forms of prayer, and to the images of holy 
men. And the same privileges that the former enjoyed under the 
darkness of Paganism, were conferred upon the latter under the 
light of the gospel, or rather imder that cloud of superstition that 
was obscuring its glory. It is true that as yet images were not 
very common ; nor were there any statues at all. But it is at the 
same time as imdoubtedly certain, as it is extravagant and mon- 
strous, that the 'Worship of the martyrs was modelled, by degrees, 
according to the religious services that were paid to the gods before 
the coming of Christ. 

§ 34. — Among other unhappy effects, these superstitious notions 
opened a wide door to the endless frauds of those odious impostors, 
who were so far destitute of all principle, as to enrich themselves by 
the ignorance and errors of the people. Rumors were artfully spread 
abroad of prodigies and miracles to be seen in certain places, a trick 
oiien practised by the heathen priests, and the design of these 
reports was to draw the populace, in multitudes, to these places, 
and to impose upon their credulity. These stratagems were gene- 
rally successful ; for the ignorance and slowness 01 apprehension of 
the people, to whom everything that is new and singular appears 
miraculous, rendered them easily the dupes of this abominable arti- 
fice. Nor was this all ; certain tombs were falsely given out for 
the sepulchres of saints and confessors ; the list of these saints was 
augmented with fictitious names, and even robbers were converted 
into martyrs. Some buried the bones of dead men in certain retired 
places, and then affirmed that they were divinely admonished by a 
dream, that the body of some friend of God lay there. Many, 
especially of the monks, travelled through the different provinces ; 
and not only sold, with the most frontless impudence, their fictitious 
relics, but also deceived the eyes of the multitude with ludicrous 
combats with evil spirits or genii. 

These shameful impostures and frauds have indeed been char- 
acteristic of Popery in all ages. One feature in the inspired descrip- 
tion of the man of sin, is that his coming should be with " signs and 
lying wonders, and all deceivableness of unrighteousness " (2 Thess., 
ii., 9, 10), and all history shows the fidelity of the picture. The 
popish writers themselves are forced to allow, that many both of 
their relics and their miracles have been forged by the crafl of 
priests, for the sake of money and lucre. Durantus, a zealous 
defender of all their ceremonies, gives several instances of the 
former ; particularly of the bones of a common thief, which had for 
some time been honored with an altar, and worshipped under the 
title of a saint* And for the latter, Lyra, in his comment on Bel 

* S. Martiniifl Altaie, quod in honorem Martjrrio exstructnm fuerat cnm ossa et 
retiqaims cnjiudam latronia esse deprehendLseet, submoTeri jussit. (^DwarU^ de 
M^., L L, c 26.) 

â–  . % 



100 mSTORT OF ROMANISM. [book n. 

Or. Middlelon't •ceoant of fictiUous ninti. Saint M oanl-Oncti. 

and the Dragon, observes that sometimes also m the church, very 
great cheats are put upon the people, by false miracles, contrived, 
or countenanced at least, by their priests, for some gain and tempo- 
ral advantage.* And what their own authors confess of some of 
their miracles, we may venture, without any breach of charity, to 
believe of them all ; nay, we cannot indeed believe anything else 
without impiety, and without supposing God to concur in an extra- 
ordinary manner, to the establishment of fraud, error, and supersti- 
tion in the world. 

§ 35. — Several ludicrous, but well authenticated instances of the^e 
fictitious saints are mentioned by the learned Dr. Conyers Middleton, 
in his letters from Rome. In one of these cas^b a mountain has 
been converted into a saint, by the corruption of the name of mount 
SoRACTE, near Rome, into S. Oracte, then S. Oreste, or Saint 
Oreste. This is mentioned also by Addison,t who adds that a 
monastery has been foimded in honor of this imaginary saint. This 
mistake is the less to be wondered at, because the Italians usually 
write the title of saint with the single letter S. (as S. Gregory), and 
thus in ages of darkness and ignorance, it was easy to transform 
mount Soracte, into Saint Orestes. Thus this holy mountain stands 
now under the protection of a patron, whose being and power is 
just as imaginary as that of the old guardian Apollo. 

Sancti custos Soractis Apollo— Vir. Mn, 9. 

No suspicion of this kind will appear extravagant to those who 
are at all acquainted with the historj' of Popery, which abounds 
with instances of the grossest forgeries, both of saints and relics, 
which, to the scandal of many even among themselves, have been 
imposed for genuine on the poor ignorant people. Even the learned 
M abillon, himself a Roman Catholic writer, speaks of some who 
promulgated the feimed histories of new found saints, and who even 
sometimes publishea the inscriptions of pagans for Christians.]; In 
the earlier ages of Christianity, the Christians often made free with 
the sepulchral stones of heathen monuments, which being ready cut 
to their hands, they converted to their own use ; and turning down- 
wards the side on which the old epitaph was engraved, used either 
to inscribe a new one on the other side, or leave it perhaps without 
any inscription at all, as they are often found in the catacombs of 
Rome. Now, this one custom has frequently been the occasion of 
ascribing martyrdom and saintship to persons and names of mere 
pagans. 

* AUquando fit in Ecclesia maxima deceptio popnli in miraculis fictis a sacer- 
dotibas, vel eia adhsrentibus propter lucram temporale, &c. {Nic. Lyr. in 
Dan, c. 14.) 

t Travels from Peaaio, &c., to Rome. 

I * * qui Banctomm recens absque certis nominibns inventomm fictas historias 
comminiscnntur ad confusionem verarum historiarum imo et qni paganorum 
inscriptiones aliqaando pro Christianis vulgant, &c. (^MabUl. Iter. lud.t 
page 226.) 



CHAP. ▼.] POPERY AT rrS BIRTH.— A. D. 606. 101 



Mm fidMMM Hints. Stttait Julia Etrodia, Saint Vlar. Saint cloak- Anphibolw. 

§ 36. — ^Mabillon gives a remarkable instance of it in an old stone, 
{bond on the grave of a Christian with this inscription : 

D. M. 

IVLIA EVODIA 

FILIA FECIT. 

MATRI. 

And because in the same grave there was found likewise a glass 
vial, or lacrymatory vessel, tinged with a reddish color, which they 
called bloo<C they regarded this circumstance as a certain proof of 
martyrdom, and Julia Evodia, though undoubtedly a heathen, was 
presently adopted both for saint and martyr, on the authority of an 
inscription that appears evidently to have been one of those above- 
mentioned, and borrowed from a heathen sepulchre. But whatever 
the party there buried might have been, whether heathen or Chris- 
tian : it is certain that it could not be Evodia herself, but her mother 
only, as the meaning of the Latin inscription is, that the daughter 
Julia Evodia raised this stone to her mother. 

The same author mentions some original papers which he found 
in the Barbarine library, giving a pleasant account of a negotiation 
between the Spaniards and pope Urban YIIL, in relation to a cer- 
tain Saint Viar. The Spaniards, it seems, have a saint, held in 
great reverence in some parts of Spain, called Viar ; for the farther 
encouragement of whose worship they solicited the pope to grant 
some special indulgences to his altars ; and upon the Pope's desir- 
ing; to be better acquainted first with his character, and the proofs 
which they had of his saintship, they produced a stone with these 
antique letters, S. VIAR, which the antiquaries readily saw to be a 
fragment of some Roman inscription, in memory of one who had 
been PrcEfectuS VIARum, or overseer over all the highways. 

But we have in England an instance still more ndiculous, of a 
fictitious saintship, in the case of a certain saint called Amphibolus ; 
who, according to our monkish historians, was bishop^of the Isle of 
Man, and fell martyr and disciple of Saint Alban. Yet the learned 
archbishop Usher* has given us good reasons to convince us that 
he owes the honor of his saintship to a mistaken passage in the old 
acts or legends of St. Alban, where the Amphibolus mentioned, 
and since reverenced as a saint and martyr, was nothing more than 
the cloak which Alban happened to have at the time of his execution ; 
being a word derived from the Greek, and signifying a roughs shag- 
gy cJoahf such as was worn by the monks in that age. Thus we 
see that Romanists can boast not only of a Saint Mount Oracte^ but 
also of a Saint Cloak Amphibolus. But this is not the climax of 
Rome's worse than pagan idolatry. They have not only a Saint 
Cloaks but also a Saint Handkerchiefs to which they actually ad- 
dress prayers. 

They pretend to show at Rome, says Dr. Middleton, two original 

* Usier. de Britan. ESccles. primord., c. 14, p. 689. 



102 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [boot n. 

BminI trae-image Vorooica. Blaipbeinoui prayer to the holy handkerchief 

impressions of our Saviour's face, on two different handkerchiefs ; the 
one, sent a present by himself to Agbarus, prince of Edessa, who 
by letter had desired a picture of him ; the other given by him at 
the time of his execution to a saint or holy woman, Veronica, upon 
a handkerchief, which she had lent him to wipe his face on that 
occasion ; both which handkerchiefs are preserved, as they affirm, 
and now kept with the utmost reverence ; the first in St. Sylves- 
ter's church, the second in St. Peter's, where in honor of this sacred 
relic, there is a fine altar built by pope Urban VIII., with the statue 
of Veronica herself, with the following inscription : 

SALVATORIS IMAGINEM VERONICE 

SVDARIO EXCEPTAM 

VT LOCI MAIESTAS DECENTER 

CVSTODIRET URBANVS VIU. 

PONT. MAX. 

MARMORfci'VM SIGNVM 

ET ALTARE ADDIDIT CONDITORIVM 

EXTRVXIT ET ORNAVIT. 

But notwithstanding the authority of pope Urban, and his inscrip- 
tion, this VERONICA (as Mabillon, one oi their own best authors, 
has shown), like Amphibolus, before-mentioned, was not any real 
person, but the name given to the picture itself by old writers, who 
mention it ; being formed by blundering and confounding the words 
VERA ICON, Latin for true image, the title inscribed perhaps, or 
given originally to the handkerchief by the first contrivers of the 
imposture. 

It is related by Bower, upon the authority of Mabillon, that pope 
Innocent III. composed a prayer in honor of this image, and 
granted a ten days' indulgence to all who should visit it, and that 
pope John XXII., more generous than Innocent, vouchsafed no less 
than ten thousand days' indulgence to every repetition of the fol- 
lowing blasphemous prayer : " Hail, holy face of our Redeemer, 

PRINTED UPON A CLOTH AS WHITE AS SNOW ; PURGE US FROM ALL SPOT 
OF VICE, AND JOIN US TO THE COMPANY OF THE BLESSED. . BrINO US TO 

OUR COUNTRY, O HAPPY FIGURE, there to see the pure face 
OF Christ."* 

Is it possible for impious idolatry to go beyond this ? and yet this 
prayer to the hohr handkerchief, says Middleton, is inserted in the 
popish book of offices, and ordered by the rubric to be addressed to 
It, and this absurd legend, and others like it, fabulous and childish 
as they appear to men of sense, are urged by crave authors in 
defence of their image worship, as certain proofs of its divine origin, 
and sufficient to confound all the impious opposers of itf 

§ 37. — To return to the origin of these lying wonders, Mosheim re- 
marks (vol. i., p. 371), that " the interests of virtue and true religion 

^' * Bower's Lives of the Popes. In vita Innoc. III. 

t Arin^. Rom. subt Tom. ii., lib. v., c. iv. Conformity of Ancient and Modem 
Ceremonies, page 168, referred to by Middleton, tU supra. 



N" 



# I 



CUP. r.] POPERY AT ITS BIRTH.-^ D. 606. 105 

dcdaraiUwfkU. Pntyliig it th* â– tpalehiii of 



nflered grieyously by two monstrous errors which were almost 
nnif ersalfy adopted in the fourth century, and became a source of 
iDnnmerable calamities and mischiefs in the succeeding aces. The 
fint of these maxims was, that it was an act of virtue to deceive and 
Si, when fry that means the interests of the church might be promoted ; 
and the second equally horrible, though in another point of view, 
was that errors in religion^ when maintained and atUusred to, after 
fnper admonition, were punishable with civil penalties and corporal 
Mures. The former of these erroneous maxims was now of a 
Jong standing ; it had been adopted for some ages past, and had 
prwiuced an incredible number of ridiculous fables, fictitious prodi- ' 
gies, and pious frauds, to the unspeakable detriment of that glorious 
caose in which they were employed. The other maxim, relating to 
tbe justice and expediency of punishing error, was introduced with 
those serene and peaceful times which the accession of Constantino 
to the imperial throne procured to the church. It was from that 
period approyed by many, enforced by several examples during the 
contests tnat arose with the priscillianists and donatists, confirmed 
and established by the authority of Augustine, and thus transmitted 
to tbe following ages." 

f 88. — ^In relation to the fiflh century, the same historian remarks : 
If before this time, the lustre of religion was clouded with super- 
ititiim, and its divine precepts adulterated with a mixture of human 
infentions, this evil, insteaa of diminishing, increased daily. The 
happy souls of departed Christians were invoked by numbers, and 
their aid implored by assiduous and fervent prayers ; while none 
stood up to censure or oppose this preposterous worship. The 
question, how the prayers of mortals ascended to the celestial 
spirits, a question which afterward produced much wrangling and 
many idle fancies, did not as yet occasion any difficulty. For the 
Christians of this century did not imagine that the souls of the 
saints were so entirely confined to the celestial mansions, as to be 
deprived of the privilege of visiting mortals, and travelling, when 
they pleased, through various countries. They were further ot 
opinion, that the places most frequented by departed spirits were 
those where the bodies they had formerly animated were interred ; 
and this opinion, which the Christians borrowed from the Greeks 
^d Romans, rendered the sepulchres of the saints the general ren- 
dezvous of suppliant multitudes. {See Engraving.) 

A singular and irresistible efficacy was also attributed to tfie 
kwiM of martyrs, and to the figure of the cross, in defeating the 
attempts of Satan, removing all sorts of calamities, and in healing 
not only the diseases of the body, but also those of the mind. We 
•hall not enter here into a particular account of the public suppli- 
cations, the holy pilgrimages, the superstitious services paid to de- 
parted souls, the multiplication of temples, altars, penitential gar- 
n^ents, and a multitude of other circumstances, that showed the de- 
cline of genuine piety, and the corrupt darkness that was eclipsing 



106 ' HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [boqi n. 

laerpMlng corraplkma in the tlxth centnnr. SopentiUon fA Oragoiy th« Great 

the lustre of primitive Christianity. As there were none in these 
times to hinder the Christians from retaining the opinions of their 
pagan ancestors concerning departed souls, heroes, demons, tem- 
ples, and such like matters, and even transferring them into their 
religious services ; and as, instead of entirely abolishing the rites 
and institutions of ancient times, these institutions were still ob- 
served with only some slight alterations ; all this swelled of ne- 
cessity the torrent of superstition, and deformed the beauty of the 
Christian religion and worship with those corrupt remains of Pa- 
ganism, which still subsist in the Romish church. 

§ 39. — In the sixth century, the public teachers seemed to aim at 
nothing else than to sink the multitude into the most opprobrious ignor- 
ance and superstition, to efface in their minds all sense of the beauty 
and excellence of genuine piety, and to substitute, in the place of re- 
ligious principles, a blina veneration for the clergy, and a stupid 
zeal for a senseless round of ridiculous rites and ceremonies. This, 
perhaps, will appear less surprising, when we consider that the 
olind led the blind; for the public ministers and teachers of relimon 
were for the most part grossly ignorant ; nay, almost as much so 
as the multitude whom they were appointed to instruct To be 
convinced of the truth of the dismal representation we have here 
given of the state of religion at this time, nothing more is necessary 
than to cast an eye upon the doctrines now taught concerning the 
worship of images and saints, the fire of purgatory , the efficacy of 
good works ; i. e., the observance of human rites and institutions, 
toward the attainment of salvation, the power of relics to heal the 
diseases of body and mind; and such like sordid and miserable 
fancies, which are inculcated in many of the superstitious produc- 
tions of this century, and particularly in the epistles and other 
writings of Gregory the Great. Nothing more ridiculous on the 
one hand, than the solemnity and liberality with which this super- 
stitious pontiff distributed the wonderworking relics ; and nothing 
more lamentable on the other, than the stupid eaffcmess and devo- 
tion with which the deluded multitude received them, and suffered 
themselves to be persuaded, that a portion of stinking oil, taken 
from the lamps which burned at the tombs of the martyrs, or the 
filings of a chain supposed to have been worn by a saint, had a 
supernatural efficacy to sanctify their possessors, and to defend 
them from all dangers botli of a temporal and spiritual nature. 

There was an incredible number of temples erected in honor of 
the saints, during the sixth century, both in the eastern and western 
provinces. The places set apart for public worship were already 
very numerous ; but it was now that Christians first began to con- 
sider these sacred edifices, as the means of purchasing the favor 
and protection of the saints, and to be persuaded that these de- 
parted spirits defended and guarded, against evils and calamities of 
every kind, the provinces, lands, cities, and villages, in which they 
were honored with temples. The number of these temples was 



â–¼.] POPERY AT rrS BIRTH.-^ D. 006. 107 



TlwlBy wilMit»qw|iiyihr>port ioBof tlwbodyof Bt.Pi»l Hto ri^atar tenv te np||r. 

almost equalled by that of the festiiralB, which were now observed 
in the Christian church, and many of which seem^ to have been 
instituted upon a pagan model.* 

§ 40^ — ^In order to show that the charge above referred to in re- 
lation to Gregory's superstitious regard to relics is not made with- 
out sufficient reason, I will present me reader with a translation of 
an epistle which he wrote to the empress Constantina, who was 
building a church at Constantinople in honor of St PavJ, and had 
written to Gregory to grant her either the head or some other part 
of the body of that Apostle, which was said to be at Rome, for 
the purpose of enshrining it in the church when completed. After 
a respectful allusion to the request of the empress, Gregory pro- 
ceeds— ^JIfq;or nuBstitia tenuity ^. Great sadness hath possessed 
me,, because you have enjoined upon me those things which I neither 
can or dare do ; for the bodies of the holy Apostles, Peter and 
Paul, are so resplendent with miracles and terrific prodigies in their 
own churches, that no one can approach them without ^at awe, 
even for the purpose of adoring them. When my predecessor, of 
happy memory, wished to change some silver ornament which was 
plaoed over the most holy body of St Peter, though at the distance 
of almost fifteen feet, a warning of no small terror appeared to 
him. Even I myself wished to make some alteration near the most 
holy body of St Paul, and it was necessary to dig rather deeply 
near his tomb. The Superior of the place found some bones which 
were not at all connected with that tomb ; and, having presumed 
to disturb and remove them to some other place, he was visited by 
certain fearful apparitions, and died suddenly. My predecessor, of 
holy memory, also undertook to^make some repairs near the tomb 
of St Lawrence : as they were digging, without knowing pre- 
cisely where the venerable body was placed, they happened to 
open his sepulchre. The monks and guardians who were at the 
work, only because they had seen the body of that martyr, though 
they did not presume so much as to touch it, all died within ten 
days ; to the end that no man might remain in life who had beheld 
the body of that just man. 

" Be it then known to you, that it is the custom of the Romans, 
when they give any relics, not to venture to touch any portion of 
the body ; only they put into a box a piece of linen (called bran" 
deum)j which is placed near the holy bodies ; then it is withdrawn, 
and shut up with due veneration in the church which is to be dedi- 
cated, and as many prodigies are then wrought by it as if the bodies 
themselves had been carried thither ; whence it happened, that in 
the time of St Leo (as we learn from our ancestors), when some 
Greeks doubted the virtue of such relics, that Pope called for a pair 
of scissors, and cut the Kneriy and blood flowed from the incision. 
And not at Rome only, but throughout the whole of the West, it is 
held sacrilegious to touch the bodies of the saints, nor does such 

* See Moebeim, Centuries iy., v., vi., fossim. 



108 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [boqkil 

Gregory conwnts to send the EmpreM aonie holy filings. Promotes {rilgrimv^ee, purgatory, itct 

temerity ever remain unpunished. For which reason we are much 
astonished at the custom of the Greeks to take away the bones of 
the saints, and we scarcely gave credit to it. But what shall I say 
respecting the bodies of the holy Apostles, when it is a known fact, 
that at the time of their martyrdom, a number of the faithful came 
from the East to claim them ? But when they had carried them 
out of the city, to the second milestone, ta a place called the Cata- 
combs, the whole multitude was unable to move them farther* — 
such a tempest of thunder and lightning terrified and dispersed 
them. The napkin, too, which you wished to be sent at the same 
time, is with the body and cannot be touched more than the body 
can be approached. 

" But that your religious desire may not be wholly frustrated, I 
will hasten to send to you some part of those chains which St. Paul 
wore on his neck and hands, if indeed I shall succeed in getting off 
any filings from them. For since many continually solicit as a bless- 
ing that they may carry off from those chains some small portion 
of their filings, a priest stands by with a file ; and sometimes it hap- 
pens that some portions fall off from the chains instantly, and with- 
out delay ; while, at other times, the file is long drawn over the 
chains, and yet nothing is at last scraped off from them."* 

§ 41. — Besides the superstitious and idolatrous reverence of Gre- 
gory for relics, he labored hard in exalting the merit of piU 
gfimages to holy places ; encouraged the use, though he condemned 
the worship, of images in the churches ; introduced a more impos- 
ing method of administering the communion, with a magnificent 
assemblage of pompous ceremonies, which institution was called 
the Canon of the mass, and which, without doubt, tended a century 
or two later to the conception of the absurd doctrine of transub- 
stantiation ; he also seriously inculcated a belief in the pagan doctrine 
concerning the purification of departed souls by a certain kind of fire, 
which he called Purgatory, and which doctrine, as Gieselcr asserts, 
was first suggested by Augustine, the bishop of Hippo, towards 
the close of the fourth century.f A doctrine this which, conjoined 
widi the opinion afterwards invented of the efficacy of masses in 
delivering tormented souls from these fires, and the power of the 
Pope to grant indulgences, exempting the purchasers from a portion 
or from the whole of their merited period of suffering in ihem, was 
the origin of an almost inexhaustible source ©f wealth to the Pope 

♦ The original of this letter may be found in Gre^ry's epistles, Lib. iv., epist. 
30. The larger part of it is quoted in Latin by Gieseler, vol. i., p. 350, note 6. 
It is worthy of remark also, tnat Cardinitl Baronius, the great Roman Catholic 
annalist, cites this reply of Gregory to the Empress with considerable admiration, 
as though he really believed the extravagant stories related by Gregory of the 
pretended wonders wrought by these holy bones. Baronius attributes the request 
of the Empress to ecclesiastical ambition, as though she wished to elevate the See 
of Constantinople to a level with that of Rome, by obtaining for her church the 
head of so great an apostle. 

f See Gieseler, vol. i., page 352, note 14, with quotations from Augustine. 



dUF.n.] POPERY AT ITS BIRTH.— A. D. 606. 109 

Whh few czeepcioiM, Popery at its birth and Popery In its dotage, identleal. 



and the clergy, extorted from the credulity and the fears alike of 
the rich and the poor through long ages of superstition and night 

} 42. — From tne review which we have thus taken of the origin 
and progress of these various corruptions of Christianity, it appears 
that, with the exceptions of the belief in transubstantiation, the 
general worship of images, the practice of auricidar confession, 
the performance of worship in an unknown tongue, and a few 
mmor particulars, there is but Uttle difference between the cha- 
racteristic features of Popery at its birth in the seventh century, 
ud Popery in its dotage in the nineteenth. 

It is true that, as age after age rolled away, as old corruptions 
were strengthened and new ones added to the list, as " the man of 
an," in the course of a few centuries, trampled upon the thrones of 
numarchs, unsheathed the sword of persecution against the suffer- 
ing martyrs of Jesus, and reeled onward in the career of ages, 
* drunk with the blood of the saints," the title of anti-Christ oe- 
came more deeply branded on his shameless front : — and yet it is 
equally true that ropery, at its birth in 606, was charactenzed by 
every one of the predicted marks of the great Apostasy, as truly 
as it bears those marks at the present day. 

Then, as now, the apostate church of Rome had departed from 
the faith, ** giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils ; 
ipeaking lies in hypocrisy, having tneir conscience seared with a 
hot iron ; forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from 
meats." (1 Tim. iv., 1, 2.) Then, as now, that *• man of sin " was 
revealed, even " the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth 
himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped ; so that 
he» as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he 
i« God ;*• and his ** coming was after the forking of Satan, with 
all power, and signs and lying wonders." (2 Thess. ii., 3, 4, 9, 10.)- 



CHAPTER VI. 
araiKiNG resemblance between pagan and papal ceremonies.— 

THE LATTER DERIVED FROM THE FORMER. 

§ 43. — In tracing the origin of the corrupt doctrines and practices 
of the Romish church, we have had frequent occasion, in the pre- 
ceding chapters, to allude to the fact, that most of its anti-scriptural 
rites and ceremonies were adopted from the pagan worship of 
Greece, Rome, and other heathen nations. The scholar, familiar as 
he is with the classic descriptions of ancient mythology, when he 
directs his attention to the ceremonies of papal worship, cannot avoid 

8 



110 mSTORT OF ROMANISBL Ifootim 



Popith and pagan CMcmoolaa. Thfdr doM and Mriktag 

_L â–  -__-â–  â– -â– â– ^â– â– â– _ -â– _- _ BIT 

recognizing their close resemblance, if not their absolute identity. The 
temples of Jupiter, Diana, Venus,or Apollo, their " altars smoking with 
incense " (** thure calent Ar(Br VirgiL)^ their boys in sacred habits^ 
holding the incense box, and attending upon the priests {^^Da miki 
Thura^ Ptter." Ovid,), their holy water at the entrance of the temples 
(** Spargens rore kviJ* VirgiL), with their aspergilla or sprinkling 
brushes, their thuribula^ or vessels of incense, their ever-burning 
lamps before the statues of their deities (^vig\lemque sacraverat 
ignem.^^ Virgil), are irresistibly brought before his mind, whenever 
he visits a Koman Catholic place of worship, and witnesses pre* 
cisely the same things. 

If a Roman scholar of the age of the Caesars, who, previous to bit 
death, had formed some acquaintance with the religion of the 
despised Nazarenes, had in the seventh or eighth century arisen 
from his grave in the Campus Martins, and wandered into the spa- 
cious church of Constantino at Rome, which then stood on the spot 
now occupied by Saint Peter's, if he had there witnessed these 
institutions of Paganism, which were then and ever since have been 
incorporated with the worship of Rome, would he not have come 
to the conclusion that he had found his way into some temple dedi- 
cated to Diana, Venus, or Apollo, rather than into a Christian place 
of worship, where the successors of Peter the fisherman, or Paul the 
tentmaker, had met for the worship of Jesus of Nazareth ? It is 
impossible to conceive of a greater contrast than that which is pre* 
sented between the plain and simple rites of primitive apostolic 
Christian worship in the first century, and the pompous and impos- 
ing spectacle of papal worship, performed in some stately cathearal, 
adorned with its altars, pictures, images, and burning wax-lights, 
with all the array of holy water, smoking incense, tinkling bells, 
and priests and boys arrayed in gaudy colored vestments, as they 
were seen in the time of pope Boniface, of the seventh century, and 
as they are still seen, with but little change, after the lapse of twelve 
hundred years. 

§ 44. — The practice of thus accommodating the forms of Chris- 
tian worship to the prejudices of the heathen nations, was introduced 
in various places long before the establishment of Popery in 606 ; 
though, of course, as there was then no acknowledged earthly 
sovereign and head of the church, the observance of these heathen 
rites was not regarded as obligatory upon all, till enjoined by the 
newly established papal authority, in the seventh century. It is not 
unlikely that this policy, in its incipient stage, commenced by a mis- 
taken, but well-intended desire of some good men, like the apostle 
Paul, to " become all things to all men, that they might ** by ail 
means save some." Yet this apology can by no means be admitted 
as an excuse for the almost entire subversion of Christianity in the 
Romish communion,' by the adoption of these heathen rites, ceremo- 
nies, and superstitions. The ancient heathen nations had always 
been accustomed to a variety of imposing ceremonies in their reli- 
gious services, hence they looked with contempt upon the simplicity 



CKAP. tl] popery at its BIRTH.— A. D. 606. Ill 



Ibr th« iftaiMinn of pagu carcaicNiln dfeuted bj woridly policy. 



of Christian worship, destitute as it was of these pompous and mag- 
xiificeiit rites, and it was a step pregnant with disaster to the cause 
of genuine Christianity, when, as early as the third century some 
sulvocated the necessity of admitting a portion of the ancient cere- 
monies to which the people had been accustomed, for the purpose 
of rendering Christian worship more striking and captivating to the 
oatward senses. 

As a proof that Christianity began thus early to be corrupted, it 

18 related in the life of Gregory, bishop of New Cesarea, sumamed 

Thaumaturgus^ or wonder-worker, tnat when he perceived that 

the ignorant multitude persisted in their idolatry, on account of the 

pleasures and sensual gratifications which they enjoyed at the 

pigan festivals, he granted them a permission to indulge themselves 

m the like pleasures, in celebrating the memory of the holy martyrs, 

hoping, that, in process of time, they would return, of their own 

accora, to a more virtuous and regular course of Ufe." 

** This addition of external rites," says Mosheim, ^ was also de- 
signed to remove the opprobrious calumnies which the Jewish and 
pagan priests cast upon the Christians, on account of the simplicity 
of their worship, esteeming them little better than atheists, because 
they had no temples, altars, victims, priests, nor anything of that 
external pomp in which the vulgar are so prone to place the essence 
of religion. The rulers of the church adopted, therjefore, certain 
external ceremonies, that thus they might captivate the senses of 
the vulgar, and be able to refute the reproaches of their adversaries, 
thus obscuring the native lustre of the gospel, in order to extend its 
influence, and making it lose, in point of real excellence, what it 
gained in point of popular esteem.*** 

§ 45. — After the conversion of Constantine in the fourth century, 
when Christianity was taken under the protection of the state, this 
sinfiil conformity to the practices of Paganism increased to such a 
degree, that the beauty and simplicity of Christian worship were 
abnost entirely obscured, and by the time these corruptions were 
ripe for the establishment of the ropedom, Christianity — the Chris- 
tianity of the state — to judge from the institutions of its public 
worship— seemed but little else than a system of Christianized 
Paganism. 

Here we may apply that well known saying of Augustine, 
that the yoke under which the Jews formerly groaned, was more 
tolerable than that imposed upon many Christians in his time. The 
rites and institutions, by which the Greeks, Romans, and other na- 
tions, had formerly testified their religious veneration for fictitious 
deities, were now adopted, with some slight alterations, by Chris- 
tian bishops, and employed in the service of the true God. We 
have already mentioned the reasons alleged for this imitation, so 
jwroper to disgust all who have a just sense of the native beauty of 
genuine Christianity. These fervent heralds of the gospel, whose 

* Moiheim's Ecclefliastical History, vol. L, page 197, 



1 12 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book il 

Waddinfftoo quoted. Chrlitiaiiity pagtmixei. Dr. Cooyen MiddletOB*t â–¼Wt to Rmm. 

zeal outran their candor and ingenuity, imagined that the nations 
would receive Christianity with more facility, when they saw the 
rites and ceremonies to which they were accustomed, adopted, in 
the church, and the same worship paid to Christ and his martyrs, 
which they had formerly offered to their idol deities. Hence It 
happened, that in these times, the religion of the Greeks and 
Romans differed very little, in its external appearance, from that of 
the Christians. They had both a most pompous and splendid ritual. 
Gorgeous robes, mitres, tiaras, wax tapers, crosiers, processions, 
lustrations, images, gold and silver vases, and many such circum- 
stances of pageantry, were equally to be seen in the heathen tem- 
ples and the Christian churches.* 

In the words of a distinguished member of the establishment 
in Great Britain, Dean Waadington, ^ the copious transfusion of 
heathen ceremonies into Christian worship, which had taken place 
before the end of the fourth century, had, to a certain extent, 
paganized (if we may so express it) the outward form and aspect 
of religion, and these ceremonies became more general and more 
numerous, and, so far as the calamities of the times would permit, 
more splendid in the age which followed. To console the convert 
for the loss of his favorite festival, others of a different name, but 
similar description, were introduced ; and the simple and serious 
occupation of spiritual devotion was beginning to degenerate into a 
worship of parade and demonstration, or a mere scene of riotous 
festivity."t 

When pope Boniface was invested, by the emperor Phocas, 
with supreme authority over all the churches of the empire, in 
the way we have seen, he not only adopted all the pagan ceremo- 
nies that had previously, in various places, been incorporated into 
Christian worship, but speedily issued his sovereign decrees, enjoin- 
ing imiformity of worship, and thus rendered these heathen rites 
binding upon all who were desirous of continuing in fellowship with 
the Romish church, or, as it now was called, the Holy Catholic 
church. Thus incorporated, they became a constituent element of 
the anti-Christian Apostasy, and have so continued to the present 
day. 

9 46. — In the year 1729, a distinguished scholar and divine of 
the Episcopal church of England, the Rev. Conyers Middleton, 
D.D., visited the city of Rome, and has so skilfully traced ** the 
exact conformity of ropery and Paganism " in his celebrated " let- 
ter from Rome," to which I have already had occasion to refer, 
that I shall avail myself, in the present chapter, somewhat at length 
of that learned publication, in tracing the ceremonies of papal 
worship to their heathen originals. 

It is worthy of remark, that Dr. Middleton visited Rome not 
as a theologian, but as a classical scholar ; not so much for the 

* Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, cent, iv., part 2, chap. 4. 
f Waddington's History of the Church, page 118. 



CK17. ti.] POPERY AT ITS BIRTH.— A. D. 606. 118 



Lyliif woodon of Rone The leaping head and the ibantains of miUt. 

purpose of studying the Roman Catholic religion and worship, as 
lor the sake of studying the remains of ancient classic antiquity, 
and thus gratifying the taste which he had acquired at the English 
uniTersities, for the study of the poets, historians, and orators of 
ancient Rome ; — ^but that when he reached Rome, so exact did he 
find the resemblance between the temples, the images, and ceremo- 
nies of Popery, and those of Paganism, that he came to the just 
conclusion that he could in no way more effectually increase his 
fiimiliarity with the latter than by directing his attention to the 
former. But let us hear the doctor himself. 

** As for my own journey to this place,'* says he, " it was not any 
motive of devotion, which draws so many others hither, that oc- 
casioned it My zeal was not bent on visiting the holy thresholds 
of the apostles, and kissing the feet of their successor. I knew 
that their ecclesiastical antiquities were mostly fabulous and legend- 
ary ; supported by fictions and impostures, too eross to employ the 
attention of a man of sense. For should we allow that Peter had 
been at Rome, of which many learned men however have doubted, 
yet they had not any authentic monuments remaining of him ; any 
visible footsteps subsisting to demonstrate his residence among 
them : and should we ask them for any evidence of that kind, they 
would refer to the impression of his face on the wall of the dungeon 
in which he was confined, or to a fountain in the bottom of it, raised 
miraculously by him out of the rock, in order to baptize his fellow 

Erisoners ; or to tlie mark of our Saviour^sfeet in a stone, on which 
e appeared to him and stopped him as he was flying out of the 
city, from a persecution then raging. In memory of which, there 
was a church built on the spot called St. Mary aelle Piante, or of 
the marks of the feet ; which falling into decay, was supplied by a 
chapel, at the expense of Cardinal role. But the stone itself, more 
valuable, as the writers say, than any of the precious ones, being 
a perpetual monument and proof of the Christian religion (!) is 

r reserved with all due reverence in St. Sebastian's church ; where 
purchased a print of it, with several others of the same kind. Or 
they would appeal perhaps to the evidence of some miracle wrought 
at his execution ; as they do in the case of St. Paul in a church 
called * at the three Fountains ;' the place where he was beheaded : 
on which occasion, * instead of blood there issued only milk from his 
veins ; and his head when separated from his body, having made 
three jumps upon the ground, raised at each place a spring of living 
water, which retains still, as they would persuade us, the plain taste 
of milk ;' of all of which facts we have an account in Baronius, Ma- 
billon, and all their gravest authors ; and may see printed figures 
of them in the description of modem Rome ! ! 

**It was no part of my design to spend my time abroad in 
attending to ridiculous fictions of this kind; the chief pleasure 
which I proposed to myself, was to visit the genuine remains and 
venerable relics of Pagan Rome ; the authentic monuments of an- 

8 



114 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book xl 

Dr. Middletoii't reaaon for ridtliif Rone. Pagan antiqaitSea beat atndied throagh popioh cwi O Bk a. 

tiquity, that demonstrate the truth of those histories, which are the 
entertainment as well as the instruction of our younger years. 

*'As therefore my jzeneral studies had fumisned me with a com- 
petent knowledge of Roman history, as well as an inclination to 
search more particularly into some branches of its antiquities, so I 
had resolved to employ myself in inquiries of this sort ; and to 
lose as little time as possible in taking notice of the fopperies and 
ridiculous ceremonies of the present religion of the place. But I 
soon found myself mistaken ; for the whole form and outward 
dress of their worship seem so grossly idolatrous and extravagant, 
beyond what I had imagined, and made so strong an impression on 
me, that I could not help considering it with a peculiar regard ; espe- 
cially when the very reason, which I thought would have hindered 
me from any notice of it at all, was the chief cause that engaged 
me to pay so much attention to it ; for nothing, I found, concurred 
so much with my original intention of conversing with the ancients : 
or so much helped my imagination, to find myself wandering abcmt 
in old Heathen Rome, as to observe and attend to their religious 
worship ; all whose ceremonies appear plainly to have been copied 
from the rituals of primitive Paganism; as if handed down by an 
uninterrupted succession from tne priests of old, to the priests of 
new Rome ; whilst each of them readily explained, and called to 
mind some passages of a classic author, where the saim ceremony 
was described, as transacted in the same form and manner, and in 
the same place where I now saw it executed before my eyes ; so 
that as oft as I was present at any religious exercise in the churches, 
it was more natural to fancy myself looking on at some solemn act 
of idolatry in old Rome, than assisting at a worship instituted on 
the principles, and founded upon the plan of Christianity.** 

§ 47. — As a proof that these assertions are founded in truth, the 
following are presented as a few instances of the way in which 
heathen ceremonies and superstitions were transferred from Pagan 
to professedly Christian worship. The first is civen upon the 
authority of Mosheim, the others upon that of Dr. middleton, who 
refers to various classical authors amon^ the ancients, and to Mont- 
faucon, Polydore, Virgil, Plalina, Hospmian, Mabillon, &c., among 
the modems, for his authorities ; but those who wish to consult the 
original authorities, I must refer to the work of Dr. Middleton.* 

(1.) Worshipping toward the East, — Before the coming of Christ, 
all the eastern nations performed divine worship with their faces 
turned to that part of the heavens where the sun displays his rising 
beams. This custom was founded upon a general opmion that God, 
whose essence they looked upon to be lights and whom they consid- 
ered as circumscribed within certain limits, dwelt in that part of the 
firmament, from whence he sends forth the sun, the bright image of his 

* Dr. Ccmven Middleton's Letter from Rome, on the exact conformity between 
Popery and Paganism, London, 1761— ^sstm. 



CBir. n.] POPERY AT ITS BIRTHw— A. D. 606. 115 



Banlng oTIneenw • heathen eeK^nooy. 



benignity and glory. They who embraced the Christian religiwi, 
rejected, indeed, this gross error, but they retained the ancient and 
universal custom of worshipping toward the East, which sprung 
from it. Nor is that custom al^Iished even in our times, but stiU 
prevails in a great number of Christian churches.* 

(2.) The burning of incense.^-r-Mnny of our divines, says Dr. 
Mid<Ueton, have with much learning and solid reasoning, charged 
and effectually proved the crime of iddatry on the church of Rome; but 
these controversies where the charge is denied, and with much sub- 
tlety evaded, are not capable of giving that conviction which I imme* 
diately received from my senses ; the surest witness of the fact in all 
cases, and which no man can fail to be furnished with, who sees 
Popery as it is exercised in Italy, in the full pomp and display of 
its pageantry ; and practising all its arts and powers without caution 
or reserve. This similitude of the popish and pagan religion, 
seemed so evident and clear, and struck my imagination so forcibly, 
that I soon resolved to give myself the trouble of searching it to the 
bottom : and to explain and demonstrate the certainty of it, by com- 
paring together the principal and most obvious pait of each worship, 
which, as it was my first employment after I came to Rome, shall 
be the subject of my letter ; showing the source and origin of the 
popish ceremonies, and the exact conformity of them with those of 
their pagan ancestors. 

The very first thing that a stranger must necessarily take notice 
of, as soon as he enters their churches, is the use of incense or per- 
fiunes in their religious offices ; the first step which he takes within 
the door, will be sure to make him sensible of it, by the ofience that 
he will immediately receive from the smell as well as the smoke of 
this incense, with which the whole church continues filled for some 
time after every solemn service. A custom received directly from 
paganism ; and which presently called to my mind the old descrip- 
tions of the heathen temples and altars, which are never mentioned 
by the ancients, without the epithet of perfumed or incensed. 

— Thnricremis cum dona imponerit Aris. — ^Virg., Mn, iv., 463, 486. 

Sepe Jovem vidi cum jam sua mittere vellet 
FulmiDa, thure date sustinuisse manum. — Ovid. 

In some of their principal churches, where you have before you in 
one view, a great number of altars, and all of them smoking at once 
with streams of incense, how natural it is to imagine one's self trans- 
ported into the temple of some heathen deity, or that of the Paphian 
Venus described by Virgil : 

Her hundred altars there with garlands crown'd, 
And richest incense smoking, breathe around 
Sweet odors, &c. — Ma, i., 420. 

Under the pagan emperors, the use of incense for any purpose of 
religion was thought so contrary to the obligations of tlhristianityf 

<^ Mosbeim, cent ii., ptit 9, chap. iv. 



116 HISTORY OF ROBiANISM. [BoaKn. 

Um of holy water derlTod ftom Pifuilam. The Jeeuit La Cerda acknowledgea It. 

that in their persecutions, the very method of trying and convicting 
a Christian, was by requiring him only to throw the least grain oi 
it into the censer, or on the altar. Under the Christian emperors, 
on the other hand, it was looked upon as a rite so peculiarly heathen^ 
ish^ that the very places or houses where it could be proved to have 
been done, were, by a law of Theodosius, confiscated to the govern- 
ment 

In the old bas-reliefs, or pieces of sculpture, where any heathen 
sacrifice is represented, we never fail to see a boy in a sacred habit, 
which was always white, attending on the priest, with a little chest 
or box in his hands, in which this incense was kept for the use of the 
altar. And in the same manner still in the church of Rome, there 
is always a boy in surplice waiting on the priest at the altar, with 
the sacred utensils ; among the rest the Thuribulum or vessel of 
incense, which the priest, with many ridiculous motions and cross- 
ings, waves several times, as it is smoking, around and over the 
altar, in different parts of the service. 

(3.) The use of holy water, — The next thing in the Roman 
worship, that wil^ of course, strike the imagination, is the use the 
papists make of the holy water, for nobody ever goes in or out of a 
church, but is either sprinkled by the priest, who attends for that 
purpose on solemn days, or else serves himself with it from a vessel 
usually of marble, placed just at the door, not unlike to one of our 
baptismal fonts. Now this ceremony is so notoriously and directly 
transmitted to them from Paganism, that their own writers make not 
the least scruple to own it The Jesuit La Cerda, in his notes on a 
passaige of Virgil, where this practice is mentioned, says, ** Hence 
was derived the custom of the holy church, to provide purifying of 
holy water at the entrance of their churches.^ 

Aquaminarium or Amula, says the learned Montfaucon, was a 
vase of holy water, placed by the heathens at the entrance of their 
temples, to sprinkle themselves with. The same vessel was by the 
Greeks called Perrirranterion ; two of which, the one of gold, the 
other of silver, were given by Croesus to the temple of Apollo at 
Delphi ; and the custom of sprinkling themselves was so necessary 
a part of their religious offices, that the method of excommunication 
seems to have been by prohibiting to offenders the approach and use of 
the holy water pot. The very composition of this holy water was 
the same also among the heathens, as it is now among the papists, 
being nothing more than a mixture of salt with common water ; 
* Porro singulis diebus Dominicis sacerdos missse sacrum facturus, 
aquam sale adspersam, benedicendo revocare debet eaque populum 
aispergere' {Durant. de Rit., 1. 1, c. 21); and the form of the 
sprinkhng-brush, called by the ancients aspersorium or aspergillum^ 
which is much the same with what the priests now make use of, 
may be seen in the bas-reliefs, or ancient coins, wherever the insig- 
nia, or emblems of the pagan priesthood, are described, of whicn 
it is generally one. 

Flatina, in his lives of the popes, and other authors, ascribe the 



mi.iL] POPERY AT ITS BIRTH.— A. D. 606. 117 



J«dB Martyr ntys that it was iBTanted by drnmuoM. Festival of 8l Anthony. 

institution of holy water to pope Alexander I., who is said to have 
lived about the year of Christ 113 : but it could not have been intro- 
duced so early, since for some ages after, we Jind Hie primitive 
fathers speaking of it as a custom purely heathenish^ condemning it 
0$ impious and detestable. Justin Martyr says, ^ That it was in- 
vented by daemons in imitation of the true baptism signified by the 
piophets, that their votaries might also have their pretended purifi- 
cations by water" {ApoL 1, p. 91); and the emperor Julian, out of 
spite to the Christians, used to order their victuals in the markets to 
be sprinkled with holy water, on purpose either to starve, or force 
them to eat, what by their own principles they esteemed polluted. 
Thus we see what contrary notions the primitive and Romish 
church have of this ceremony ; the first condemns it as superstition, 
abominable and irreconcilable with Christianity ; the latter adopts 
it as highly edifying and applicable to the improvement of Christian 
piety ; the one looks upon it as the contrivance of the devil to delude 
mankind ; the other as the security of mankind against the delusions 
of the devil ! ! 

One of the most senseless and extraordinary uses to which the 
papists apply this holy water, is the sprinkling and blessing of horses^ 
mules, asses, rf^., on the festival of St. Anthony, observed annually 
on the 17th ol January. On that day the inhabitants of the city of 
Rome and vicinity send their horses, &c., decked with ribands, to 
the convent of St. Anthony, which is situated near the church of 
St Mary the Great. The priest, in his sacerdotal garments, stands 
at the church door, with a large sprinkling-brush in his hand, and as 
each animal is presented to him, he takes off his skull cap, mutters a 
few words, in Latin, intimating that through the merits ol the blessed 
Sl Anthony, they are to be preserved for the coming year from sick- 
ness and death) famine and danger, then dips his brush in a huge bucket 
of holy water, that stands by mm, and sprinkles them in the name of 
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost* The priest 

* In the preface to his letter from Rome, Dr. Middleton gives the following story 
from St. Jerome, as the most probable origin of this absurd custom. '* A citizen 
of Gaza, a Christian, who kept a stable of running horses for the Circensian games, 
WIS always beaten by his antagonist, an idolator, the master of the rival stable. 
For the idolator, by the help of certain charms, and diabolical imprecations, con- 
•tuitly damped the spirits of the Christian's horses, and added courage to his own. 
The Christian, thererore, in despair, a])plied himself to St. Hilarion, and implored 
his assistance ; but the saint was unwilling to enter into an afl&ir so frivolous and 
profiuie, till the Christian urged it as a necessary defence against these adversaries 
of God, whose insults were levelled not so much at him, as the Church of Christ. 
And his entreaties being seconded by the monks who were present, the saint ordered 
his eflJTtben jug, out of which he used to drink, to be filled with water and delivered 
^ the man, who presently sprinkled his stable, his horses, his charioteers, his 
chariot, and the very boundaries of the course with it Upon this the whole city 
wifl in wondrous expectation. The idolators derided what the Christian was doing, 
while tlie Christians took courac^, and assured themselves of victory ; till the 
signal being given for the race, tne Christian's horses seemed to fly, whilst the 
IdMator's were laboring behind and left quite out of sight ! so that the pagans 
themselves were obliged to cry out that their god Mamas was conquered tt last 
by Christ"— Page 17. 



118 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [books. 

Lodieroiia annual ceremony at Rome. Bprinkltaif of honei, aam, hc^ with holy 



receives a fee for sprinkling each animal, and Dr. Middleton re- 
marks that amongst the rest he had his own horses blessed at the 
expense of about eighteen pence '' as well to satisfy his own curi- 
osity, as to humor the coachman ; who was persuaded, as the com- 
mon people generally are, that some mischance would befall them 
within the year, if they wanted the benefit of this benediction.'' He 
adds, a revenue is thus provided, sufficient for the maintenance of 
forty or fifty of the lazy drones called monks. 

Sometimes the visitor at Rome will see a splendid equipage 
drive up, attended by outriders, in elegant livery, to have the honet 
thus sprinkled with holy water, all the people remaining uncov- 
ered till the absurd and disgusting ceremony is over. On one occa* 
sion a traveller observed a countryman, whose beast having re- 
ceived the holy water, set ofi* from the church door at a gallop^ but 
bad scarcely gone a hundred yards before the ungaimy animal 
tumbled down with him, and over its head he rolled into the dost. 
He soon, however, arose, and so did the horse, without either noem* 
ing to have sustained much injury. The priest looked on^^and 
though his blessing had failed, he was not out of countenance; 
while some of the bystanders said that but for it, the hone and 
his rider might have broken their necks. (See Engraving.) 

A recent writer, formerly a Romish priest, and who, thetefoie» 
knows whereof he affirms, writes as follows, in relation to this cere- 
mony, " If I could lead my readers on the 17th of January, to the 
church of St. Antoin in Rome, I am convinced they would not know 
whether they should laugh at the ridiculous religious perfonnancefl» 
or tveep over the heathenish practices of the church of Rome. He 
would see a priest in his sacerdotal garments, with a stole over hit 
neck, a brush in his right hand, and sprinkling the muleSy asses^ and 
horses, with holy water, and praying for them and with them, and 
Messing them in order to be preserved the whole year firom sick- 
ness and death, famine and danger, for the sake and merits of the 
holy Antony. All this is a grotesque scene, so grotesque that no 
American can have any idea of it, and heathen priests would never 
have thought of it. Add to that, the great mass of people, the 
kickings of the mules, the meetings of the lovers, the ncighings of 
the horses, the melodious voices of the asses, the shoutings of the 
multitude, and mockings of the protestants, who reside in Rome, 
and you have a spectacle, which would be new, entirely new^ not 
only for American protestants, but for the heathen themselves, and 
must be abominable in the eye of God. But enough ; the subject 
is too serious ; it is a religious exercise, practised by the priests of 
Rome, in the so-called metropolis of the Christian world, sanctioned 
by the self-styled infallible head of the church of Rome. All we catf 
say is : * Ichabod, thy glory is departed.' The priests of heathen 
Rome would be ashamed of such a religious display in the nine- 
teenth century.'** 

* See Papal Rome aa it b^ by Rev. L. Guatiniani, D. D., formerly a Romaa 
priest, now minister of the EyaDgelical Lutheran Church. 




>r|l<'m< »i Rcme, 



cnnn.] POraRY AT ITS HQtTBL-A. B. 006. . Ul 



UmdlH VP «aMI«i to tte du llM I 



(1) Ainmif wax canJBes in the day time* — ^No sooner U a man 
•dviDced a litde forward into their churchesy and begins to look 
about Um, but he wiQ find his eyes and attentiim attracted by a 
Mmber of ku^e and wax candles^ which are kept constantly bum* 
wa befixre the shrines and imaces of their saints. In the great 
£rche8 of Itedy, says Mabillon, they hang up lamps at every idtar ; 
a u^t which not only surprises a straiu^r by the novelty of it, but 
wufumish him with another proof and example of the conformity 
of the Romish with the pasan worship ; by recalling to his memory 
my passages of the heathen writers, wliere their perpetual lumps 
â– id candles are described as continually burning before the altara 
md statues of their deities. ' Centum aras posuit vigilemque sacr»> 
vent ignem.' Vvrg.^ JEn. iv., 200. 

Herodotus tells us of the Egyptians who first introduced the use 
of lamps into their temples. That they had a &mous yearly festival* 
eiDed firom the principia] ceremony of it, the lighting up of candles* 
kt thore is scarcelv a sinde festival at Rome, whioi might not for 
the same reason be called by the same name. The primitive 
vriters fireouentiv expose the folly and absurdity of this heathenish 
cartom. '^nqfi^A^ifpcanifZef to 6od^'' says Lactantius,^a«^ ike 
tmi m the dark ; and do they not deserve to pass for madmen^ who 
tjfir kpfq^i to the author and giver of light T* 

h the collections of old inscriptions, we may find instances of 
presoits and donations firom private persons, of lamps and candle- 
Hieks to the temples and altars of their gods. A piece of zeal which 
continues still the same in modem Home, wnere each church 
abounds with lamps of massive silver, and sometimes even of gold ; 
tk ^fts of princes, and other persons of distinction ; and it is sur- 

E' ng to see how great a number of this kind are perpetually 
re the altars of their principal saints, or miraculous images ; as 
8t Anthony of Padua, or the lady of Loretto ; as well as uie vast 
profusion of wax candles, with which their churches are illuminated 
on every great festival when the high altar covered with cold and 
ahrer plate, brought out of their treasuries, and stuck fulTof wax 
Gghts, disposed in beautiful figures, looks more like the rich side- 
board of some great prince, dressed out for a feast, than an altar to 
pty divine worship at 

(5.) Votive gifts and offerings. — But a stranger will not be more 
lorprised at the number of lamps or wax-lights, burning before their 
ihws, than at the number of offerings or votive gifts^ which are 
nioffing all around them, in consequence of vows made in the time 
of £mger, and in gratitude for deliverance and cures wrought in 
iickness or distress ; a practice so common among the heathens, 
^t no one custom of antiauity is so frequently mentioned by all 
Jbeir writers ; and many of their original donaria, or votive offer- 
^ are preserved to this day in the cabinets of the curious ; images 
oT metal, stone, or clay, as well as legs, arms, and other parts of 
^ body, which had formerly been hung up in their temples in tea- 
^ooony of some divine favor or cure efiected by their titular deity 



122 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book n. 



Votive ollisriiifi. Handi, feet, Itc, in wax. Coplee of heathen orifiBalfl. 

in that particular member. But tlie most common of all offerings 
were pictures representing the history of the miraculous cure or 
deliverance, voucnsafed upon the vow of the donor. 

Nunc dea, nunc succurre mihi ; nam posse 

Picta docet templis multa tabella tuis. — Tibul., £1. i., 3. 

Now, goddess, help, for thou canst help bestow ; 
As all these pictures round thy altars show. 

A friend of Diagoras, the philosopher, called the atheist, having 
found him once in a temple, as the story is told by Cicero, " Your 
says he, '' who think the gods take no notice of human aiSairs, do 
you not see here by this number of pictures, how many people, for 
the sake of their vows, have been saved in storms at sea, and got 
safe mto harbor?** "Yes," says Diagoras, ** I see how it is, for 
those are never painted who happen to be drowned.** The temples 
of Esculapius were more especially rich in those offerings, which 
Livy says were the price and pay for the cures he had wrought for 
the sick ; where they used always to hang up and expose to com- 
mon view, in tables of brass or marble, a catalogue of all the 
miraculous cures which he had performed for his votaries. A re- 
markable fragment of one of these tables is still remaining and pub- 
lished in Gruter's Collections, having been found in the ruins of a 
temple of that god, in the island of the Tiber at Rome : upon which 
the learned Roman Catholic writer, Montfaucon, makes this reflec- 
tion : that in it are either seen the wiles of the devil^ to deceive the cre- 
dulous ; or else the tricks of pagan priests suborning men to coun- 
terfeit diseases and miraculous cures. Why is not this as true of 
Popery as Paganism ? 

Now this piece of superstition had been found of old so beneficial 
to the priesthood, that it could not fail of being taken into the scheme 
of the Romish worship ; where it reigns at tins day in its full height 
and vigor, as in the ages of pagan idolatry ; and in so gross a man- 
ner, as to give scandal and ofience even to some of their own com- 
munion, rolydore Virgil, after having described this practice of the 
ancients, " in the same manner,** says he, " do we now ofier iip in 
our churches little images of wax ;. and as oft as any part of the 
body is hurt, as the hand or foot, &c., we presently make a vow to 
God, or one of his saints, to whom, upon our recovery, we make an 
offering of that hand or foot m wax ; which custom is now come to 
that extravagance, that we do the same for our cattle which we do 
for ourselves, and make offerings on account of our oxen, horses, 
sheep ; where a scrupulous man will question, in this we imitate 
the religion or the superstition of our ancestors.'* As oft as I have 
had the curiosity to look over those Donaria, or votive offeringSy 
banging round the shrines of their images, and consider the several 
stories of each, as they are either expressed in painting or related 
in writing, I have always found them to be mere copies, or verbal 
translations of the originals of heathenism ; for the vow is often said 
to have been divinely inspired, or expressly commanded ; and the 



CHAP, yl] popery at its BIRTIL-^ D. 606. 123 



Bsvlval or ol4 PifaB taipoMBm. WonMp of tdol« or langm, 

cure and deliverance to have been wrought either by the visible 
apparition, and immediate hand of the titular saint, or by the notice 
of a dream, or some other miraculous admonition from heaven. 
" There can be no doubt,** say their writers, " but that imaecs of our 
saints often work signal miracles, by procuring health to the iijfirm, 
and appearing to us often in dreams, to suggest something of great 
moment for our service.** 

And what is all this but a revival of the old impostures, and a re- 
petition of the same old stories of which the ancient inscriptions 
are full, with no difference than what the pagans ascribe to the 
imaginary help of their deities, the jpapists as foolishly impute to the 
fiivor of their saints ? Whether tne reflection of Father Montfau- 
con on the pagan priests, mentioned above, be not, in the very same 
case, as justly applicable to the Roman priests, I must leave to the 
judgment of my reader. 

(6.) Adoration of idols or images, — ^When a man is once en- 
gaged in reflections of this kind, imagining himself in some heathen 
temple, and expecting, as it were, some sacrifice or other piece of 
Paganism to ensue, he will not be long in suspense, before he sees 
the finishing act and last scene of genuine idolatry, in crowds of 
bigot votaries, prostrating themselves before some image of wood 
or stone^ and paying divine honors to an idol of their own erecting. 
Should they squabble with us here, about the meaning of the word 
idol, Jerome has determined it to the very case in question, telling 
08, that by idols are to be understood the images of the dead : * Idola 
intelligimus Imagines mortuorum.' (flier Com. in Isa., c. xxxvii.) 
And the worshippers of such images are used always in the style 
of the fathers, as terms synonymous and equivalent to heathens 
and pagans. As to the practice itself, it was condemned by many 
of the wisest heathens, and for several ages, even in pagan Rome, 
was thought impious and detestable : for Numa, we find, prohibited 
it to the old Romans, nor would suffer any images in their temples ; 
which constitution they observed religiously, says Plutarch, for the 
first hundred and seventy years of the city. But as image wor- 
ship was thought abominable even by some pagan princes, so by 
some of the Christian emperors it was forbidden on pain of death ; 
not because those images were the representations of demons or 
false gods, but because they were vain, senseless idols, the work 
of men's hands, and for that reason im worthy of any honor : and 
all the instances and overt acts of such worship, described and 
condemned by them, are exactly the same with what the papists 
practise at this day ; lighting up candles, burning incense, hanging 
up garlands, &c., as may be seen in the law of Theodosius before 
mentioned, which confiscates that house or land where any such 
act of Gentile superstition had been committed. Those princes 
who were influenced, we may suppose, in their constitutions of 
this sort, by the advice of their bishops, did not think Paganism 
abolished, till the adoration of images was utterly extirpated; 
which was reckoned always the principal of those Gentile rites. 



124 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [b(MK b. 

Pagaa hooei sml deoilfodi with ChriitiaD namai. The Paaiheoo dedicated to Muf and all dw niMi 

that agreeably to the sense of the purest ages of Christianity^ are 
never mentioned in the imperial laws without the epithets oi pro> 
fane, damnable, impious, &c. 

What opinion tnen can we have of the present practice of the 
church of Rome, but that by a change only of name, they have 
found means to retain the thing ; and by substituting their saints in 
the place of the old demigods, have but set up idols of their own, 
instead of those of their forefathers ? In which it is hard to say 
whether their assurance or their address is more to be admired, 
who have the face to make that the principal part of Christian 
worship, which the first Christians looked upon as the most criminal 
part even of Paganism, and have found means to extract gain and 
ereat revenues out of a practice which in primitive times would 
have cost a man both his life and estate. But our notion of the 
idolatry of modem Rome will be much heightened still and con- 
firmed, as oH as we follow them into those temples, and to those 
very altars which were built originally by their heathen ancestors, 
the old Romans, to the honor of their pagan deities, where we 
shall hardly see any other alteration than the shrine of some old 
hero filled by the meaner statue of some modem saint. Nay, they 
have not always, as I am well informed, given themselves the 
trouble of making even this change, but ?iave been content sometimes 
to take Up with the old image, just as they found it ; after baptizing 
it only, as it were, or consecrating it anew by the imposition of a 
Christian name. This their antiquaries do not scruple to put 
strangers in mind of in showing their churches ; and it was, I 
think, in that of St. Agnes where they showed me an antique of a 
young Bacchus, which, with a new name and a little change of 
drapery, stands now worshipped under the title of a female saint 

(7.) The Gods of the Pantheon turned into popish saints. — The 
noblest heathen temple now remaining in the world, is the Pantheon^ 
or Rotunda ; which, as the inscription over the portico informs us, 
having been impiously dedicated of old by Agrippa to Jove and all 
the ffods, was impiously reconsecrated by Pope Boniface IV., about 

A. D. 610, TO THE BLESSED VlRGIN AND ALL THE SaINTB. 

PANTHEON, &c. 

AB AGRIPPA AUGUSTI GENERO, 

IMPIE JOVI, C^TERISQ ; MENDACIBUS DHS, 

A. BONIFACIO nn. PONTIFICE, 
DEIPAR^ & S. S. CHRISTI MARTYRIBUS PIO 

DICATUM, &c. 

With this single alteration, it serves as exactly for all the pur- 
poses of the popish as it did for the pagan worship, for which it 
was built. For as in the old temple, every one might find the God 
of his country, and address himself to that deity, whose religion he 
was most devote4 to ; so it is the same thing now ; every one 
chooses the patron whom he likes best ; and one may see here 
different services going on at the same time at different altars, with 



oup. tl] popery at its BIRTH.— A. D. 606. 125 

BmAtm Idoli chaagad teto Chriiliaa MdnliL Bond gnds^ 

distinct coDCTegations round them, just as the inclinations of the 
people lead them to the worship of this or that particular Saint. 

And what better title can the new demigods show, to the 
adoration now paid them, than the old ones, whose shrines they 
have usurped ? Or how comes it to be less criminal to worship 
images, erected by the Pope, than those which Agrippa, or that 
which Nebuchadnezzar set up ? If there be any real difference, 
most people will, I dare say, be apt to determine in favor of the 
old possessors. For those heroes of antiquity were raised up into 
gods, and received divine honors, for some signal benefits, of which 
they had been the authors to mankind ; as the invention of arts 
and sciences ; or of something highly useful and necessary to life 
Whereas of the Romish saints, it is certain that many of them 
were never heard of, but in their own legends or fabulous histories ; 
and many more, instead of services done to mankind, owe all the 
honors now paid to them, to their vices or their errors ; whose 
merit, like that of Demetrius, (Acts xix., 23), was their skill of raising 
rebellions in defence of an idol, and throwing kingdoms into con- 
Yubions, for the sake of some gainful imposture. 

And as it is in the Pantheon, it is just the silme in all the other 
heathen temples, that still remain in Rome ; they have only pulled 
down one idol to set up another ; and changed rather the name 
than the object of their worship. Thus the little temple of Vesta, 
near the Tiber, mentioned by Horace, is now possessed by Madonna 
of the Sun ; that of Fortuna Virilis, by Mary the Egyptian ; that 
of Saturn, where the public treasure was anciently kept, by St. 
Adrian ; that of Romulus and Remus in the Via Sacra, by two 
other brothers, Cosmas and Damianus ; that of Antoninus Pius, by 
Laurence the saint ; but for my part, adds Dr. Middleton, I should 
sooner be tempted to prostrate myself before the statue of a Romu- 
lus or an Antonine, than that of a Laurence or a Damian ; and 
give divine honors rather with pagan Rome, to the founders of 
empires, than with popish Rome, to the founders of monasteries. . 

In reply to these observations of Dr. Middleton, some may 
mquire whether there is anything wrong in the change of a hea- 
then temple to a Christian place of worship, any more than in the 
change of theatres into churches, which is frequently done in the 
present day. To this objection we answer, that it is not to the 
change of the Pantheon into a Christian temple we object, but to 
the adoption of the pagan ceremonies into Christian worship, and 
the adoring the same images of heathen deities, under the names 
of Christian saints. 

(8.) Roctd gods and saints. — But their temples are not the only 
places where we see the proofs and overt acts of their superstition : 
the whole face of the country has the visible characters of^ Paganism 
upon it ; and wherever we look about us, we cannot but find, as 
P4u1 did in Athens (Acts xvii. 17), clear evidence of its being pos- 
•eased by a superstitious and idolatrous people. 

The old Romans, we know, had their gods^ who presided pecur 



126 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book xl 

Bcverenee of the {wptitB for these road godi Kteing the PvipePe W^ 

liarly over the roads^ streets, and highways^ called Viales, Semitales, 
Compitales : whose little temples or altars are decked with flowers, 
or whose statues at least, coarsely carved of wood or stone, were 
placed at convenient distances in the public ways, for the benefit 
of travellers, who used to step aside to pay their devotions to those 
rural shrines, and beg a prosperous journey and safety in their 
travels. 

Now this custom prevails still so generally in all popish coun- 
tries, but especially in Italy, that one can see no other difierence 
between the old and present superstition, than that of changing the 
name of the Deity, and christening as it were the old Hecate in 
triviis, by the new name of Maria in trivia ; by which title I have 
observed one of their churches dedicated in this city : and as the 
heathens used to paint over the ordinary statues of their gods with 
red or some such gay color, so I have oft observed the coarse 
images of those saints so daubed over with a gaudy red, as to 
resemble exactly the description of the god Pan in Virgil {Eclogue 
10). In passing along the road, it is common to see travellers on 
their knees before these rustic altars ; which none ever presume 
to approach without some act of reverence ; and those who are 
most in haste, or at a distance, are sure to pull ofi* their hats, at 
least, in token of respect : and I took notice that our postillion used 
to look back upon us to see how we behaved on such occasions, 
and seemed surprised at our passing so negligently before places 
esteemed so sacred. 

(9.) The Pope and the Pontifex Mazimus and kissing the Pop^$ 
toe. — In their very priesthood, they have contrived to keep up as 
near a resemblance as they could to that of pagan Rome : and the 
sovereign pontifi*, instead of deriving his succession from Peter, 
who, if ever he was at Rome, did not reside there at least in any 
worldly pomp or splendor, may with more reason and much better 
plea style himself the successor of the Pontifex Maximus, or chief 
priest of old Rome ; whose authority and dignity was the greatest 
m the republic ; and who was looked upon as the arbiter or judge 
of all things, civil as well as sacred, human as well as divine : 
whose power established almost with the foundation of the city, 
** was an omen," says Polydore Virgil, " and sure presage of priestly 
majesty, by which Kome was once again to reign as universaUy, as 
it had done before by the force of its arms." 

But of all the sovereign pontifis of pagan Rome, it is very re- 
markable that Caligula was the first who ever offered his foot to be 
kissed by any who approached him : which raised a general indig- 
nation through the city, to see themselves reduced to sutfer so great 
an indignity. Those who endeavored to excuse it, said that it 
was not done out of insolence, but vanity ; and for the sake of 
showing his golden slipper, set with jewels. Seneca declaims upon 
it as the last affront to liberty, and the introduction of a Persian 
slavery into the manners of Rome. Yet, this servile act, unworthy 
either to be imposed or complied with by man, is now the standing 



CEAP. TL] POPERY AT rrS BIRTH.— A. D. 606. 127 

FlfHi and popWi prociioiii, The jIayffUmiCM, or â– elf-whiyptn 

ceremonial of Christian Rome, and a necessary condition of access 
to the reigning Popes, though derived from no better origin than 
the frantic pride of a brutal pagan tyrant 

(10.) Processions of worshippers and self-whippers. — The de- 
icriptions of the religious pomps and processions of the heathens 
come so near to what we see on every festival of the Virgin or 
other Romish saint, that one can hardly help thinking those popish 
ones to be still regulated by the old ceremonial of pagaa. Rome. 
At these solemnities the chief magistrates used frequently to assist 
in robes of ceremony, attended by the priests in surplices, with 
wax candles in their hands, carrying upon a pageant or thensa the 
images of their gods, dressed out in their best clothes. These 
were usually followed by the principal youth of the place in white 
linen vestments or surplices, singing hymns in honor of the god 
whose festival they were celebrating, accompanied by crowds of 
all sorts, that were initiated in the same religion, all with flambeaux 
or wax candles in their hands. This is the account which Apuleius 
and other authors give us of a pagan procession ; and I may ap- 
peal to all who have been abroad, whether it might not pass quite 
as well for the description of a popish one. Toumeiort, in Us 
travels through Greece, reflects upon the Greek church for having 
retained and taken into their present worship many of the old rites 
of heathenism, and particularly that of carrying and dancing about 
the images of the saints in their processions to singing and music. 
The reflection is full as applicable to his own, as it is to the Greek 
church, and the practice itself is so far from living scandal in Italy, 
that the learned publisher of the Florentine Inscriptions takes occa- 
sion to show the conformity between them and the heathens, from 
this very instance of carrying about the pictures of their saints, as 
the pagans did those of their gods, in their sacred processions. 
(Inscrip, Antiq. Flor., 377.) 

In one of those processions made lately to St. Peter's in the 
time of Lent, I saw that ridiculous penance of the fiagellantes or 
tdf'whippers^ who march with whips in their hands, and lash them- 
selves as they go along on the bare back till it is all covered with 
blood ; in the same manner as the fanatical priests of Bellona or 
the Syrian Goddess, as well as the votaries of Isis, used to slash; 
and cut themselves of old, in order to please the goddess by the 
sacrifice of their own blood, which mad piece of discipline we find 
frequently mentioned and as oft ridiculed by the ancient writers. 

But the^ have another exercise of the same kind and in the same^ 
season of Lent, which, under the notion of penance, is still a more 
absurd mockery of all religion. When on a certain day appointed^ 
annually for this discipline, men of all conditions assemble them<^ 
selves towards the evening in one of the churches of the city, 
where the whips or lashes made of cords are provided and dis- 
tributed to every person present, and after they are all served, and 
a short office of devotion performed, the candles bein^ put out, 
opon the warning of a little oell, the whole company begin to strip 

9 



138 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book n. 

8ca«ea*f oplnkn of the lelf-whippera. Paf in and papal maodteaat 



and try the force of these whips on their own backs, for the space 
of near an hour ; during all which time the church becomes, as it 
were, the proper image of hell ; where nothing is heard but the 
noise of lashes and chains, mixed with the ^oans of those self-tor- 
mentors ; till satiated with their exercise mey are content to put 
on their clothes, and the candles being lighted again, upon the tink- 
ling of a second bell, they all appear in their proper dress. 

Seneca, alluding to the very same effects of fanaticism in pann 
Rome, says, ^ So great is the force of it on disordered minds, ual 
they try to appease the gods by such methods as an enraged man 
would hardly take to revenge himself. But, if there be any gods 
who desire to be worshipped after this manner, the^ do not deserve 
to be worshipped at all ; since the very worst of tyrants, though 
they have sometimes torn and tortured people's limbs, yet have 
never commanded men to torture themselves. 

(11.) Religious orders of monks, nuns, ^. — ^The great variety 
of their religious orders and societies of priests seems to have been 
formed upon the plan of the old colleges or firatemities of the Au- 
gurs, Pontifices, Selli, Fratres Arvales, &c. The vestal virgins 
might furnish the hint for the foundation of nunneries ; and I have 
observed something very like to the rules and austerities of the 
monastic life, in the character and manner of several priests of the 
heathens, who used to live by themselves retired from the world, 
near to the temple or oracle of the deity to whose particular ser- 
vice they were devoted ; as the Selli, the priests of Dodonsean Jove, 
or self-mortifying race. From the character of those Selli, or as 
others call them EUi, the monks of the pagan world, seated in the 
fruitful soil of Dodona, abounding, as Hesiod describes it, with 
everything that could make life easy and happy, and whither no 
man ever approached them without an offering in his hands, we 
may learn whence their successors of modem times have derived 
their peculiar skill or prescriptive right of choosing the richest part 
of every country for the place of their settlement. 

Whose groves the Selli, race austere, surround ; 

Their feet unwash'd, their slumbers on the ground.— Pope, II, xvii., 334. 

But above all, .in the old descriptions of the lazy mendicant 
priests among the heathens, who used to travel from house to house, 
with sacks on their backs, and, from an opinion of their sanctity, 
raise lar^e contributions of money, bread, wine, and all kinds of 
victuals for the support of their fraternity, we see the very picture 
of the begging friars, who are always about the streets in the same 
habit and on the same errand, and never fail to carry home with 
them a good sack full of provisions for the use of their convent. 

Cicero, in his book of laws, restrains this practice of begging or 
gathering alms to one particular order of priests, and that only on 
certain days ; because, as he says, it propagates superstition and 
impoverishes families. Which may let us see the policy of the 
church of Rome, in the great care that they have taken to multiply 



».n.] POPERT AT ITS BIRTEL-^ D. 606. 1S9 



jy»9miamtKf kUWMB Ttprnj oA rigiwiiM aclnoi rU dg i d umI d«taMM hf a Bnmanln AOtbor 



their begging orders. * Stipem sustulimus, usi earn quam ad paucot 
dies propriam Ids® matris excepimus* Implet enim superstitione 
•nimos, exbaurit domos.' {Cic. de Legib.^ I9 2, 9, 16.) 

f 48. — ^After canying out the comparison between Paganism 

and PoperVf in relation to their pretended miracles, lying signs and 

wonderSt wc. Dr. Middleton concludes his learned and most con- 

dusive letter as follows: — I could easily carry on this parallel, 

dnougfa many more instances of the pagan and ix>pish ceremonies, 

to show from what spring all that superstition nows, which we so 

justly charge them with, and how vain an attempt it must be to 

nsti^ by ue principles of Christianity, a worship formed upon 

die plan and after the very pattern ot pure heathenism. I snail 

not trouble myself with inquirmg at what time and in what manner 

those several corruptions were introduced into the church ; whether 

they were contrived by the intrigues and avarice of priests, who 

firand their advantage in reviving and propagating impostures, 

which had been of old so profitable to their predecessors; or 

whether the genius of Rome was so strongly turned to fanaticism 

and superstition that they were forced, in condescension to the 

humor of the people, to dress up their new religion to the modes 

and fopperies of the old. This, I know, is the principle by which 

their own writers defend themselves as oft as they are attacked on 

this head. 

Aringhus, a Roman Catholic writer, in his account of subter- 
raneous Rome, acknowledges this conformity between the pagan 
and popish rites, and defends the admission of the ceremonies of 
heathenism into the service of the church by the authority of their 
wiaest popes and governors ; " who found it necessary," he says, 
** in the conversion of the Gentiles, to dissemble and wink at many 
things and yield to the times, and not to use force against customs 
which the people are so obstinately fond of, nor to think of extir- 
pating at once everything that had the appearance of profdne.'^ It 
u by the same principles that the Jesuits defend the concessions 
which they make at this day to their proselytes in China ; who, 
where pure Christianity will not go down, never scruple to com- 
pound the matter between Jesus and Confucius, and prudently 
allow what the stiff old prophets so impoliticly condemned, a part- 
nership between God and Baal ; of which, though they have often 
heen accused at the court of Rome, yet I have never heard that 
their conduct has been censured. But this kind of reasoning, how 
plaiMible soever it may be, with regard to the first ages of Chris- 
tianity, or to nations just converted from Paganism, is so far from 
excusing the present heathenism of the church of Rome, that it 
w a direct condemnation of it ; since the necessity alleged for the 
practice, if ever it had any real force, has not, at least for many 
^ past, at all subsisted ; and their toleration of such practices 
•^ms now to be the readiest way to drive Christians back again 
^ heathenism. 
I have sufficiently made good what I first undertook to prove ; 

9 



180 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book a. 

This poUejr of eoDcUistiiif the heathen adofHed by Onforj the Oieftt. 

an exact conformity, or rather uniformity, of worship between 
Popery and Paganism. For since we see the present people of 
Rome worshippmg in the same temples, at the same altabs, 
sometimes the same images, and always with the same ceee- 
MONiEs as the old Romans, who can absolve them from the same 
SUPERSTITION AND IDOLATRY of which wc condciim their pagan 
ancestors ? 

Those who would wish to see this striking parallel between 
Popery and Paganism carried out yet farther, must consult the valu- 
able and masterly work to which I am indebted for most of these 
interesting particulars, with the full references and original quota- 
tions from various authorities, ancient as well as moderuy Roman 
Catholic as well as protestant. 

§ 49. — That this policy of conciliating the heathen nations by 
adopting their pagan ceremonies into Christian worship, had been 
adopted previous to the epoch of the papal supremacy, A. D. 606, is 
^abundantly evident from the instructions given by Gregory the 
Great, to Augustin, his missionary in Britain, and to Serenus, the 
bishop of Marseilles, in France, both of whom had written to the 
pontiff for advice. 

The account of Gregory's instructions to Augustin, as related by 
Bower, is as follows : ^ Not satisfied with directing Austin not to 
destroy, but to reserve for the worship of God, the profane places 
where the pagan Saxons had worshipped their idols, Gregory 
would have him treat the more profane usages^ rites, and ceremo- 
nies of the pagans in the same manner, that is, not to abolish, but to 
sanotify them, by chan^ng the end for which thev were instituted, 
and introduce them, thus sanctified, into the Christian worship. 
This he specifies in a particular ceremony. * Whereas it is a custom/ 
says he, ' among the Saxons to slay abundance of oxen, and sacri- 
fice them to the devil, you must not abolish that custom, but ap- 
point a dew festival to be kept either on the day of the consecration 
of the churches, or the birth-day of the saints, whose relics are 
deposited there, and on these days the Saxons may be allowed to 
make arbors round the temples changed into churches, to kill their 
oxen, and to feast, as they did while they were still pagans, only 
they shall offer their thanks and praises, not to the devil, but to God.' 
This advice, absolutely irreconcilable with the purity of the gospel- 
worship, the Pope founds on a pretended impossibility of wean- 
ing men at once from rites and ceremonies to wnich they have been 
long accustomed, and on the hopes of bringing the converts, in due 
time, by such an indulgence, to a better sense of their duty to God. 
Thus was the religion of the Saxons, our ancestors, so disfigured 
and corrupted with all the superstitions of Paganism, at its first 
being planted among them, that it scarce deserved the name of 
Christianity, but was rather a mixture of Christianity and Pagan- 
ism, or Christianity and Paganism moulded, as it were, into a third 
religion." 

The other instance was as foUows : " The Franks, who had settled 



our. yl] POPERT AT ITS BntTO— A. D. 606. 181 



ftv th« nlw of gndiyiBg the 



in tbe south of Gaul, now France, had been indulged, at the time 
of their conversion, in the use of images, and that indulgence 
lad insensibly brought them back to idolatry, for turning the images 
of Christ into idols, they paid them the same kind of worship or 
tdoraticm, after their conversion, which they had paid to their idols 
before their conversion. This Serenus could not bear, and, there- 
fore, to show his abhorrence of such abominations, and at the same 
time to prevent them in time to come, he caused all the images 
throughout his diocese to bepulled down, and to be cast out of the 
churches, and destroyed. Tnat wise and zealous prelate was, it 
seems, even then^ when the dangerous practice of settine up images 
was yet in its infancy, apprised of a truth, which aU have now 
learned by the experience of many ages^ — all, at least, who care to 
learn it, viz. : that imaobs cannot be allowed, and idolatry pre- 
VENTKD. However, this instance of his zeal for the purity of the 
Christian worship, was very iU received at Rome. And, indeed,^ 
Gregory acted therein consistently with himself for, having directed 
Austin, this very year, to introduce the pagan rites and usages into 
the church, he could not but blame Serenus for thus excludinff them, 
and he wrote to him accordingly, commending indeed his zetu in not 
suflfering to be worshipped tiuit which was made with hands, but at 
the same time blaming him for breaking them, ^ to prevent their being 
worshipped, since they served the ignorant in the room of books, . 
and instructed, by bemg seen, those who could not read.' But the 
reason on which the pope seems to have laid his chief stress, in 
censuring the conduct of Serenus, was, that, by breaking the images, 
and banishing them from the churches, he would prejudice the bar- 
barians (that is, the Franks), among whom he lived, against the 
Christian religion ; so that it was chiefly to gratify the pagans, who 
were converted, to facilitate the conversion of the others, and to 
adapt the Christian religion to their ideas and notions, that the use 
of images, and many other rites of the pagan worship, were allowed 
in the church. But how different was this method of converting 
the pagans from that which the apostles pursued, and their immedi- 
ate successors, nay, and all apostolic men for the three first centu- 
ries after Christ ? With them it was a principle not to sanctify, but 
utterly to abolish all pa^an rites, all superstitious practices what- 
ever, and introduce, in their room, a plamness and simplicity suited 
to the worship of God, in spirit and truth. Upon that principle 
images of no kind were suffered in the churches during the three 
first centuries, as is allowed by several Homan Catholic writers ; 
nay, it was not till the latter end of the fourth century, that the 
pa^an temples began to be converted into Christian churches. They 
nad all, till then, been either shut up, or pulled down, the bishops of 
those times thinking it a great profanation to worship God even in 
theplaces where worship had been paid to the devil."* 

The above remarkable instances of papal conformity to Pagan- 

* Bower's History of the Popes, in vita Gregory I. 



182 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book tl 

This timc-Mnrlng conlbnDity to Ptganlm, u mtij m the ptpaJ wapnmmcj. 

ism, related upon the unquestionable authority of Gregory's own 
epistles,* are a proof that this wicked policy had been thus early 
adopted, and though it is not perhaps absolutely certain that all the pa- 
gan ceremonies, above enumerated, were introduced into the Romish 
worship so early as 606, yet, without doubt, most of them were in use 
in the time of Boniface, and the others, not long after. The Pantheon, 
as we have seen, was consecrated to ** the vikgin and all the saints," 
within four or five years of the establishment of the papal supre- 
macy ; and on that occasion pope Boniface IV. employed the newly 
acquired papal authority, in enjoining upon all the faithful the 
observance of a festival in commemoration of that event, which is 
still celebrated with great ceremony in all popish countries, on the 
first of November, called the Feast of All Saints. Image worship, as 
we shall see, was not finally and fiiUy established till about the 
middle of the ninth centur}^ after a long contest between different 
, emperors, popes, and councils. The history and orimn of these 
pagan innovations upon Christian worship, has been given at con- 
siderable length, because it is believed that the most satisfactory 
mode is thereoy suggested of answering the question which so fire- 
quently presents itself to the candid and inquiring mind, when con- 
templating the heathen mummeries of papal worship. Can it be 
f)ssible that this is Christianity ? that this is the reli^on of the New 
estament ? of Jesus Christ and his apostles ? and if it is called by 
the name, whence did it become so corrupted ? so like the religion 
of pagan Greece and Rome ? The answer is no, this is not Cheib* 
TiANiTY, it is Paganism, under that venerated name,' and the trans- 
formation was effected by borrowing the temples, the idols, and the 
ceremonies of heathenism, to silence the scruples, and to win the 
suffrages of those who had no taste for a religion so puee, so spieit- 

UAL, AND so HOLY AS THE EELI6I0N OF ChEIST. 

* See Epist Greg., lib. ix., epist. 71, and lib. vii., epist 110. 



188 



BOOK III. 



POPERY ADVANCING-A.D.606-800. 



nOM THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SPIBITTJAL SUPREMACTy A. D. 606, 
TO THE popes' TEMPORAL SOVEREIGNTY, 766, AND TO THE 
CROWNING OF THE EMPEROR CHARLEMAGNE, 800. 



^^^^^^^^^^^^^^i^^^^i^^^^i^^ 



CHAPTER L 



61A0UAL INCREASE OF THE PAPAL POWER. DARKNESS, SUPERSTITIONf 

AND IGNORANCE OF THIS PERIOD. 

5 1. — That part of the above-named period extending from 
the establishment of the papal supremacy in 606 to the epoch 
of the Popes' temporal sovereignty, 756, possesses peculiar interest 
to the student of history. These two dates are those upon which 
writers on the prophecies, relative to Popery, have been chiefly 
divided as to the proper commencement of its existence as the 
little horn of Daniel (en. vii. 8). The most judicious writers, how- 
ever, have generally preferred the latter date, or some other noting 
the increase or confirmation of the Popes' temporal power, as 
Popery could not properly be called a horn till it was, like the 
other noms, a temporal sovereignty. 

It is not to be supposed that the various churches of the West, 
much less of the East, gave up without a struggle their ancient 
liberty and independence as soon as the decree oi a tyrant consti- 
tuted the Roman prelate Universal Bishop and supreme head of the 
church. The Popes, it is true, used all sorts of means to maintain 
and enlarge the authority and pre-eminence which they had ac- 

S Hired by a crant from the most odious tyrant that ever disgraced 
le annals of history. We find, however, in the most authentic ac- 
counts of the transactions of this century, that not only several 
emperors and prmces, but also whole nations, opposed the ambitious 
views of the bishops of Rome. Besides all this, multitudes of pri- 
vate persons expressed publicly, and without the least hesitation, 
their abhorrence of the vices, and particularly of the lordly am- 
bition of the Roman pontiffs ; and it is highly probable, that the 
Waldenses or Vaudois had already, in this century, retired into the 
valleys of Piedmont, that they might be more at their liberty to 
oppose the tyranny of those imperious prelates.* 

* See Antoine Leger's Histoire des Eglises VaadoiBes, livr. L, p. 16. 



134 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book m 



Etoetloo of popes confirmed by the Emperor. Poplih morality. No lUth with herrtkf 

§ 2. — The popes were still the subjects of the Roman emperors, 
and their election to the Popedom gave them no official authority 
till confirmed either by the Emperor himself or his viceroy in Italy, 
the exarch of Ravenna. This, of course, was nothing more than 
natural and just, that since this spiritual sovereignty was created 
by the Emperor it should be confirmed by the same authority. 
Sometimes when the popes elect were suspected of being opposed 
to the views of the Emperor, considerable difficulty was ex- 
perienced in obtaining the imperial confirmation of their election. 
Thus, upon the election of pope Severinus in 640, we learn from a 
letter of the monk Maximus, that the emperor Heraclius, at the 
instigation of the clergy of Constantinople, refused to confirm his 
election to the popedom till his legates had promised the Emperor 
to persuade the newly-elected pope to sign the Echthesis^ a decree 
of which we shall hear more in a future chapter ; but, adds the 
monk, though they complied with the Emperor's demand, they 
never intended to perform so sinful a promise. So that, as Bower 
remarks, '^ they did not, it seems, think it sinfiil to make a promise 
which they thought it sinfiil to perform."* A characteristic illus- 
tration of genuine popish morality I But why complain T Hera- 
clius, in the estimation of the Pope and his legates, was a heretic, 
and the votaries of Rome had already learned to act upon the prin- 
ciple, so shamelessly avowed seven or eight centuries later, in the 
council of Constance, that no faith is to be kept with heretics. 
The consequence of this delay was, that pope Severinus was not 
ordained till about a year and a half after nis election. 

§ 3. — In 686, pope Benedict II., according to the account of the 
Romish historian Anastasius, had sufficient influence with the 
emperor Constantine IV. to obtain from him a decree permitting 
the ordination of popes in future, immediately upon their election, 
without waiting for the confirmation of the Emperor or his deputy 
in Italy ; but in less than two ^ears, Justmian, who had succeeded 
his father in the empire, conceiving this to be a dangerous conces- 
sion, revoked the decree, and vested the power of confirming the 
election of future popes in the exarch of Italy, commonly called, 
from the place of his residence, the exarch of Ravenna. Two or 
three years later the Exarch made a profitable use of this privilege 
by unjustly extorting an enormous sum from pope Sergius, before 
consenting to confirm his election.! It had ever been the custom, 
at least since the decree of Phocas, to pay a certain sum into the im- 
perial treasury, when the election of a pope was confirmed, but in 
this case the Exarch demanded a much larger sum than usual. 
The circumstances were these : In the year 687, two candidates 
for the popedom, Theodore and Pascal, had been elected by rival 

• History of the Popes, vol. iii., p. 21. 

f Anastasius in vita Serous. This historian, generally called Anastasius BUh 
lioihecanusj lived in the ninth century. He was the librarian of tlie church of 
Rome and abbot of St Mary beyond the Tiber. He wrote Liber Pontificalia, In 
four volumes, folio, containing the lives of some of the popes. 



csap.l] popery ADyANCING^A.D. 606— 800. 185 

Priee of a Kst tn tbm ^hBir of St. Peter. The Pope appotnti Theodore archbishop of Canterbury. 

parties. A violent and disgraceful tumult ensued between the re- 
spective friends of each. The judges and magistrates of Rome in 
vain sought to bring the two ambitious priests to an agreement, 
and to induce one to yield to the other. Failing in this attempt, 
they formed a new. party, and proceeded to elect a third candidate 
named Sergius, and carrying him in triumph to the Lateran, forced 
the gates and put him in possession of the place. Upon this Theo- 
dore yielded ms claim and joined the party of Sergius. The other 
6ompetitor, Paschal, obstinately persisted in his claim. He had 
made a private agreement with tne Exarch to reward him with a 
bribe of thirty pounds of gold, upon condition that he should be 
chosen and confirmed as pope. Instead, therefore, of yielding to 
Sergius, he despatched a messenger in all haste to Ravenna, for the 
Exarch immediately to repair to nome and consummate his agree- 
ment Upon the arrival of the latter in the city, learning the dis- 
cooraginc; situation of Faschal's affairs, and concluding that he 
could make a better bargain with Sergius, he immediately acknow- 
ledged him as pope, but demanded the enormous sum of one Aun- 
ired pounds of^ gold before he would consent to confirm his elec- 
tion. In the end, though much against his will, Sergius was under 
the necessity of submitting to the exorbitant demand, though he 
had to pawn the very ornaments of the tomb of St. Peter before 
he could raise the sum necessary to secure the imperial signature 
to the decree confirming his election. The above is named, upon 
the authority of Anastasius, only as a specimen of the means fre- 
quently resorted to in order to supply the links in this boasted un- 
broken chain of holy apostolical succession ! It serves also as 
an illustration of the fact that the popes had not yet attained tem- 
poral sovereignty, but were still dependent for the spiritual power 
they wielded upon the emperors. 

§ 4. — The popes, however, were restless, under this odious re- 
straint ; they nad reached, by means of the emperors, the height of 
spiritual supremacy, and now they were anxious to knock away the 
ladder by which they had attained this eminence, render themselves 
independent of all earthly governments, and assume a rank among 
the temporal sovereigns of the earth, and they watched with eagle 
eaze for every opportunity of confirming and enlarging their power. 
One remarkable instance of this occurred in the appointment by the 
sole authority of the Pope, in 667, of Theodore, as archbishop of 
Canterbury, in consequence of the death of the prelate that had been 
appointed in England, while waiting at Rome for his ordination. 
To reconcile king Oswy to his assumption, he, the Pope, sent him a 
flattering letter, with a choice collection of his trumpery relics, and 
to his ** spiritual daughter," the queen, he sent a cross and golden 
key, enriched with a portion of the filings of Peter's noted chain. 
Theodore, after having his head shaved according to the Roman laWf 
was despatched to England, and forthwith acknowledged, in conse- 
quence of his having been chosen and ordained by the successor of 
St Peter, as the primate of all England. From that time to the 



136 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [bookiil 

Impoifnt mattegi of dtopate. EccJcriatical tonrore. DMferent wmy of Amrkig h— d> 

present, the archbishop of Canterbury has enjoyed a degree of power 
and authority in Great Britain, superior to that of any other eccle- 
siastic in the realnL 

§5. — As a specimen of the important matters of- disputation 
which in this age were regarded as of sufficient importance to 
divide the ignorant priests and monks into opposite and contending 
parties, may be mentioned, the famous dispute in England, relative 
to what was called the ecclesiastical tonsure. In plain English, the 
manner in which the priests should shone their heads I When the 
missionaries who came over to Britain from Rome, about the mid- 
dle of the seventh century, encountered the Scottish and Irish priests, 
they were horrified at the terrible discovery that the British derffy, 
instead of a circular tonsure on the occiput, were distingoished oy 
a tonsure on the forehead^ in the shape of a crescent I And this was 
the momentous cause of the fierce controversy that ensued between 
the two parties. " The grand question was,** says Bower, ** whether 
the hair of the priests and monks should be cupped or shaved on 
the fore part of the head, from ear to ear, in the lorm of a semicir- 
cle, or on the top of the head, in form of a circle, to imitate the 
crown of thorns which our Saviour wore, and of which it was 
thought to be an emblem. The Scots shaved the fore part of their 
heads, and the missionaries from Rome the top, calling that the ton- 
sure of St. Peter, as if it had been derived from that apostle. When, 
by whom, or on what occasion, the ecclesiastical tonsure, that is, 
the clipping or shaving the hair of the ecclesiastics, was first intro- 
duced, is not well known. But certain it is, that in the time of St 
Jerome, who flourished in the end of the fourth, and beginning of the 
fifth century, a Romish priest, with his shaven crown, woold have 
been taken for a priest of Isis or Serapis ; a shaven crown being 
then, as that father informs us, the characteristic or badge of those 

Eriests. As for the Christian priests, they were neither to shave their 
eads, as we learn of the same father, lest they should look too like the 
priests and votaries of Isis and Serapis; nor to suffer their hair to 

frow long, after the luxurious manner of the barbarians and sohfini^ 
ut to observe a decent mean between the two extremes ; that is, nibm 
explains it, to let the hair grow long enough to cover their skin. It 
was therefore probably the custom to cut their hair to a moderate 
degree, at their ordination, not by way of a religious mystery, bat 
merely for the sake of decency^ and that nothing else was ori§pnaliy 
meant by the ecclesiastical tonsure. However that be, the catting 
of the hair was, in process of time, improved into a mystery, and the 
heathenish ceremony of shaving the head not only adopted by the 
church, but looked upon as important enough to divide it." {See 
Engraving,) 

§6. — A curious illustration of the importance attached to this 
foolish custom of shavmg the head in a particular manner, is cov- 
nected with the ordination of Theodore above referred to, and is 
related upon the authority of the venerable Bede. In the year M7, 
Oswy and Egbert, the kings of Northumberland and Kent in Eng* 




^f& 



CHiP.L] POPERY ADVANCING.— A. D. 606— 800. 189 

Am uchMAop wmittaig to have hit head thaved. The Pope eneoanfoi appeale to 



land, despatched Wighard, a newly elected archbishop of Canter- 
bury to receive his ordination from the hands of the rope, with a 
present to St. Peter, of several valuable articles of silver and gold. 
Wighard, dying of the plague, which then raged at Rome, the rope 
resolved to embrace the favorable opportunity of advancing his 
power, by choosing an archbishop himself, instead of sending to the 
two kings, to request them, according to the previous custom, to 
elect a successor to Wighard. The FV:)pe soon after nominated an 
Eastern monk, named Theodore, and informed the {wo kings that 
be would proceed to his consecration, and despatch him to England 
Notwithstanding they were impatiently expecting his arrival, three 
months were permitted to elapse before his consecration, and what 
does the reader suppose was the all-important cause of this delay. 
Bisum teneatis, amid / The historian gravely informs us that he 
was tarrying at Rome till his hair was grown ! Theodore being 
an Eastern monk, had his head shaved all over, according to the 
custom of the East, and this was called the tonsure of St. Paul. 
The Pope deemed it necessary, therefore, to delay the consecration 
till his hair was grown all over, so that he might be shaven only on 
the top of his head, in the form of a crown. This was called the 
Roman tonsure, or the tonsure of St. Peter. It would hardly be 
deemed credible that so much importance should be attached to 
such puerile trifles, were not the fact confirmed by the continuance 
of this absurd and senseless heathen practice of shaving the top of 
the head among the priests of Rome, down to the present day. 

§ 7. — Another most effectual way which the popes took to in- 
crease their power and influence, in this period, was to encourage 
appeals from the decisions of other ecclesiastical courts to the apos- 
tolic See, by almost invariably deciding in favor of the appellant, 
whatever might be the just merits of the case. Thus in the very 
next year alter the appointment of Theodore to Canterbury, the 
same pope Vitalianus reversed the judgment of a synod consisting 
of all the bishops of the island of Crete, against one John, bishop of 
Lappa in that island, who had been found guilty of certain crimes, 
absolved the criminal, and imperiously commanded Paul, the pri- 
mate of Crete, to restore the deposed bishop to his office. 

The same thing happened a few years later, in the case of Wil- 
frid, bishop of York, who, according to the biographer of queen 
Etheldreda, the wife of Ecgfrid, king of Northumberland, had en- 
couraged that queen in a resolution she had formed, to refuse to the 
king the rights of a husband, and to take a vow of chastity, and 
retire into a monastery. Persisting in this resolution, in express 
opposition to the wishes of her husband, the king requested Wilfrid 
to use his influence with the queen, to bring her to a sense of her 
duty. Instead of this, however, he only confirmed her in her reso- 
lution, and the queen retired to a monastery in Scotland, where she 
received the veil at the hands of Wilfrid himself. The king, who 
loved his wife with the greatest tenderness, took a journey to Scot- 
land, to try and persuade4ier to return, but failing in this, he vented 



140 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book m. 

\mtMt am Eofliah btohom appeslt with nicceH to pope Agatha Fint fonn of • biihop*i oath 

his indignation against Wilfrid, caused him to be deposed from his 
bishopric, by Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, and banished 
him from the kingdom of Northumberland. Wilfricl appealed to the 
Pope, and was received by Agatho with the greatest respect and 
honor. The merit of appealing to the apostolic See, especially as 
he was the first British ecclesiastic who had, in this way, acknow- 
ledged the supremacy of the successor of St. Peter, was, in the eyes 
of the Pope, sufficient to cover a multitude of sins. Wilfrid was 
declared innocent and unjustly deposed, and ordered to be restored 
to his See, and the clergy, as well as the laity of England, were 
required to pay implicit obedience to this decision, the former, on 
pain of being deposed, and the latter of being for ever excluded from 
the Eucharist.* 

§ 8. — During the pontificate of pope Gregory II., the first 
instance was exhibited of a Roman pontiff requiring a solemn oath 
of allegiance and submission from his legates and bishops. It was 
in the case of the celebrated Winfrid or Boniface, who has been caUed 
the apostle of Germany. Boniface was a native of England,! ^^^ 
in the year 716, voluntarily went on a mission among the pagans of 
Grermany, and after laboring with zeal and success for severalyears ; 
repairing to Rome at the command of the Pope, he was ordained a 
bishop, and appointed by Gregory, his legate to all the inhabitants 
of Germany. Upon this occasion, the Pope required him to take 
the following oath at the tomb of St. Peter : 

" In the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, in the sev- 
enth year of our most pious emperor Leo, in the fourth of his son 
Constantinc, and in the seventh indiction, I, Boniface, by the grace 
of God, bishop, promise to you, blessed Peter, prince of the apostles, 
to blessed Gregory your vicar, and to his successors, by the undi- 
vided trinity. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and by this vour most 
sacred body, to maintain to the last, with the help of God, the 
purity and'fvoiity of the holy Catholic faith; to consent to nothing 
contrary to either ; to consult in all things the interest of your 
church, and in all things to concur with you, to whom power has 
been given of binding and loosing, with the above-mentioned vicar, 
and with his successors. If I shall hear of any bishops acting 
contrary to the canons, I shall not communicate, nor entertain any 
commerce with them, but reprove and retrieve them, if I can ; if I 
cannot, I shall acquaint therewith my lord the Pope. If I do not 
faithfully perform what I now promise, may I be found guilty at the 
tribunal of the eternal Judge, and incur the punishment inflicted by 
you on Ananias and Sapphira, who presumed to deceive and de- 
firaud you." 

When Boniface had taken this oath, he laid it written with his 
own hand on the pretended body of St. Peter, and said, ^ This is 

* Eddins' life of Wilfrid, chap, li., qaoted by Bower, vol. iii., page 69. 
f See Fleory's Ecclesiastical History, book zli., 36, dtc., and iJupin, 8th ceiw 
tniy, Bonifiue. 



CBAT. L] POPERT ADyANaNQ.~A. D. 60ft-«00. 141 



the oath which I have taken, and which I promise to keep.** How 
painfbl to think that so holy and self-denying a man as Boni&ce, 
Doth from his life and death, appears to have been, should have been 
thus blinded by superstitious reverence for the holy See, and espe- 
cially for the artful, unworthy, and ambitious GrejB[onr, who exacted 
from him this oath I We shall perceive that in mture ages the 
popes improved upon this oath, tfough all who read it must admit 
that it was a pretty fair specimen for a beginning. 

$ 9. — ^The popes of this age also strove to establish and confirm 
their power, oy punishing to the utmost of their ability, all who 
should presume to rebel against the authoritv of the apostolic See. 
An instance of this is given in the case of the cruel vengeance in- 
flicted by the Emperor, through the persuasions of pope Constantine, 
upon Felix and his associates. In the early part of the eighth cen- 
tury, Felix, archbishop elect of Ravenna, came to Rome to receive 
onUnation from the rope, having first, according to Anastasius, 
promised obedience ana subjection to the Roman See. Upon his 
return to Ravenna, bein^ encouraged by the people, Felix withdrew 
himself firom all subjection to Rome, and asserted the independence 
of his See. Of his motives for this step we are not informed. Per- 
haps, like Luther in after times, he had seen during his visit too 
much of the pretended successors of St Peter, to be willing longer 
to acknowledge their lofty assumptions. Be this as it may, the 
Pope was no sooner informed of tne conduct of Felix, than trans- 
ported with rage, he immediately wrote to the Emperor Justinian, 
entreating him to espouse the cause of the prince of the apostles, 
and demanding vengeance on the rebels against St. Peter. The 
Emperor, who at this time was desirous to oblige the Pope, imme- 
diately ordered one of his generals to repair to Ravenna, to seize on 
the archbishop, and the other rebels against St. Peter, and send 
them in chains to Constantinople, where all except the archbishop 
were soon after put to death, and the latter, after ha\L ' his eyes 
cruelly dug out of their sockets, was banished to Pontus. The 
popish historian, Anastasius, has the audacity to ascribe those 
tiorrid cruelties of the Pope and the Emperor, to (Jod and St. Peter. 
" And thus," says he, **by a just judgment of God, and by the sen- 
tence of St Peter, all were, in the end, deservedly cut off, who re- 
fused to pay the obedience that was due to the apostolic See." 

§ 10. — In addition to these various ways adopted by the popes of 
extending their power and influence, and of inspiring with terror 
of their authority, all who should presume to oppose them, they 
made the most extravagant claims to the reverence and homage of 
the people. About the commencement of the eighth century, the 
debasing custom originated, which has continued ever since, of 
kissing the pope's foot. The emperor Justinian is thought thus to 
have degraded himself upon the occasion of a visit oi pope Con- 
stantine, to the East, the very next year after he had been guilty of 
the cruelties just named, to the unfortunate bishop of Ravenna. As 
this visit of Constantine well illustrates the extravagant honors paid 



142 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book m. 

The emperor JiMllnian kiMOf the Pope*i foot. Character of this tyrant 

to the popes of this age, it may be well to give a brief account of it 
In the year 710, the Pope received an order from Justinian to 
repair to Constantinople as soon as convenient, and embarked on 
the 5th of October, for that city, accompanied by tviro bishops and a 
lar^e number of the inferior clergy. The Emperor addressed an 
order to all governors, judges, and magistrates ot the places through 
which he should pass, to pay to him preciselv the same honors as 
they would if he were the Emperor himselL At every place he 
touched at, he was received in a kind of triumph, amidst the joyful 
acclamations and homage of the people. On approaching Constan- 
tinople, he was met seven miles from the city, by Tiberius, the 
Emperor's son, the senate, the nobility, the chief citizens, and the 
patriarch Cyrus at the head of his clergy. Thus attended, and 
mounted, together with the chief persons of his retinue, on the Em- 
peror's own horses, richly caparisoned, he arrived at the palace 
assigned for his habitation. The Emperor, who was absent at the 
time of his arrival, as soon as he received the intelligence, appointed 
to meet the Pope at Nicomedia, and it was there that Anastasius 
informs us, ^ the most Christian Emperor** prostrated himself on 
the ground, with the crown on his head, kissed his feet, and then 
cordially embraced him. On the following Sunday Justinian re- 
ceived the sacrament at the hands of the Pope, begged his Holiness 
to intercede for him that God mi^ht forgive his sins, and renewed 
and confirmed all the privileges that had ever been granted to the 
Roman See.* 

§ 11. — It is unfortunate for the credit of the Romish church, that 
this '^ most Christian Emperor," as the popish historian calls him, 
like the other two sovereigns to whom that apostate church was 
indebted for her most valuable favors, Phocas and Irene, was one 
of the most bloodthirsty of tyrants, and the most abandoned of the 
human family. He delighted in nothing so much as in cruelty and 
revenge, in bloodshed and slaughter. After returning from Cher- 
sonesus, where, in consequence of his tyranny, he had been driven 
into banishment ; in consequence of supposing his dignity insulted by 
the inhabitants ojf Chersonesus, he despatched a fleet and army 
against them, with express orders to spare neither man, woman, nor 
child alive, whether guilty or innocent, and in consequence of this 
inhuman command, multitudes of people miserably perished by the 
flames, the rack, or the sea. On his return from banishment, when 
sailing on the Euxine, says Gibbon, ** his vessel was assaulted by a 
violent tempest, and one of his companions advised him to deserve 
the mercy of God, by a vow of eternal forgiveness, if he should be 
restored to the throne. * Of forgiveness ! (replied the intrepid tyrant), 
may I perish this instant — may the Almighty whelm me in the 
waves — ^if I consent to spare a single head of my enemies !' But 
never was vow more religiously performed than the sacred oath 
of revenge that he had sworn amidst the storm of the Euxine. The 

in Tit& Constantin. 



CRAP, l] POPERT ADyANCING.^A. D. 606—800. 143 



Gibten*! aoeouDt of thie eraelty and tyranny of thin wonhlppor of th* Pop*. 



two usurpers, who had in turn occupied his throne during his ban- 
ishment* were dragged into the hippodrome, the one from his prison, 
the other from the palace. Before their execution, Leontius and 
Apsimar were cast prostrate in chains beneath the throne of the 
Emperor, and Justinian, planting a foot on each of their necks, con- 
templated above an hour the chariot race, while the innocent people 
shouted, in the words of the psalmist, ' Thou shalt trample on the 
asp and basilisk, and on the Uon and dragon shalt thou set thy foot P 
The universal defection which he had once experienced might pro- 
voke him to repeat the wish of Caligula, that the Roman people had 
bat one head. Yet I shall presume to observe, that such a wish 
is unworthy of an ingenious tyrant, since his revenge and cruelty 
would have been extinguished by a single blow, instead of the slow 
variety of tortures which Justinian inflicted on the victims of his 
anger. His pleasures were inexhaustible: neither private virtue 
nor public service could expiate the guilt of active, or even passive 
obedience to an established government ; and, during the six years 
of his new reign, he considered the axe, the cord, and the rack, as 
the only instruments of royalty."* Such was the man whom Ro- 
mish historians do not blush to call '* the most Christian and ortho^ 
dox Emperor^" merely because he cruelly tortured, blinded, and 
murdered those who would not succumb to the papal anti-Christ, 
bowed down and kissed the feet of the haughty pontiff, and loaded 
with his imperial favors, the apostate churcn of which he was the 
head. 

§ 12. — It might be expected that an age which could yield itself so 
&r to the extravagant claims of the newly created spiritual monarch 
of the world must be one of the grossest ignorance and darkness. 
Such, we find, was the fact. " Nothing," says Mosheim, speaking 
of the century in which the Pope established his supremacy, " can 
equal the ignorance and darkness that reigned in this century ; the 
most impartial and accurate account of which will appear incredi- 
ble to those who are unacquainted with the productions of this bar- 
barous period. The greatest part of those who were looked upon 
as learned men, threw away their time in reading the marvellous 
lives of a parcel of fanatical saints, instead of employing it in the 
perusal of well chosen and excellent authors. The bishops in 
general were so illiterate, that few of that body were capable of 
composing the discourses which they delivered to the people. Such 
of them as were not totally destitute of genius, composed out of 
the writings of Augustine and Gregory a certain number of ir^'.pid 
homilies, which they divided between themselves and their stupid 
colleagues, that they might not be obliged, through incapacity, to 
discontinue preaching the doctrines of Christianity to their people." 
The want even of an acquaintance with the first rudiments of 
literature was so general among the higher ecclesiastics of those 
times, that it was scarcely deemed disgraceful to acknowledge it 

* Decline and Fall, voL ill., page 243. 



144 HISTORY OF ROMANISIL [book in. 

Orm IgnoraiiM of Om bWio|M of this period. BpedoMM of their nwomilin and **tlT lM 

In the acts of the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, many ex- 
amples occur where subscriptions are to be found in this form : 
** If Nf have subscribed by the hand of M^ because I cannot unite/* 
And ^ such a bishop having said that he could not write^ I whose 
name is underwritten have subscribed for him/** 

§ 13. — As a specimen of the reasoning of this dark age, I would 
refer to a writing which Holstenius, the librarian of the Vaticani 
where it was found, ascribed to pope Boniface IV. It is an attempt 
to show that monks are suitable for ministers, in opposition to some 
who maintained that they should be incapable of the sacerdotal 
office. Monks are there declared to be angels, and consequently 
proper ministers of the word. This is proved in the following 
way : — The cherubim had each six wings. Monks have also six 
wings ; the arms of their cassock two, its extremities two more, 
and the cowl forming the other two. Therefore monks are cheru- 
bim or angels, and suitable for ministers of the word ! Whether 
this curious specimen of reasoning proceeded, as the learned Roman 
Catholic Holstenius supposes, from the infallible pope Boniface, or 
whether, as others believe, it was the production oi some monk of 
that age, it may be equally appropriate as a specimen of early 
popish logicf As one instance and proof of the superstition of 
the age may be mentioned the object (according to the opinion of 
the learned popish annalist Baronius), of a visit to Rome paid by 
Mellitus, first bishop of London, in 610, to the Pope. Bede mforms 
us that he went to settle with the Pope some particular affairs of 
the English church. Baronius conjectures that he came to Rome 
to inquire of Boniface whether the consecration of the church oi 
Westminster, performed by St. Peter in person^ was to be rerarded 
as valid. For St. Peter was said to have come down from heaven 
for that very purpose, and who will dare dispute with Cardinal 
Baronius the truth of the wonderful prodigy, since it is actually 
attested by the very waterman who conveyea the apostle over the 
river Thames on his way from heaven to Westminster ? and upon 
his testimony was believed by the abbot Ealred, whom the Cardinal 
calls " a very credible historian ! ! **% 

§ 14. — As a specimen of the doctrine of this age, we may refer to a 
description of a good Christian from the pen of St. Eligius, as he 
is called, bishop of Noyon, in which, though there are some good 
exhortations, there is not the slightest mention of repentance for 
sin or faith in the Lord Jesus Christ ; and the principal stress is 
laid upon the lighting of candles in consecrated places, praying to 
the saints, and saying the creed and Lord's prayer. Let a man 
only abound in these services, and he could come to God, accord- 
ing to this saint, not as a suppliant to beg, but as a creditor to de- 
mand. '* Da, domine, quia dedi." Give, Lord^ because I have 

* White's Hampton Lectures, sennon ii. and notes, p. 6. 
f Holstein Collect Rom., p. 42, quoted and referred to by Bower — ^Vita Bonifiica 
IV. 
{ BaroniiiB, ad amram 610. 



GBAT. l] popery ADVANCINO-A. D. 606—800. I45 

liUD-fanatlBK. UakflniMlliiif dead bodies. Mahomet, the Mte prophet of Mccea. 

given /* Such was Popery then ; such is Popery still. We are 
not surprised to learn D-om his biographer, that this saint was a 
most zealous and persevering hunter for reUcs, and that ^* many 
bodies of holy martyrs, concealed from human knowledge for ages, 
were discovered by him and brought to light !** • Sanctorum mar- 

tyrum corpora, quae per tot sscma abdita patefacta proderen- 

tur.' This zealous, relic-hunting merit-monger was successful, if 
we may credit his biographer, m smelling out and unkennelling, 
among other bodies, the carcasses of St Quintin, St Crispin, St 
Lucian, &c. In those days of darkness and superstition it was an 
easy way, and one of which the bishops often availed themselves 
of filling their coffers by providing a supply of relics for sale, by 
pretendmg to a miraculous power in discovering the bodies of saints 
and martyrs. 

§ 15. — It was in the seventh century that the false prophet of 
Mecca commenced his career of conquest Fired by the spectacle 
which everywhere met his observation of the worship of idols in 
a thousand forms, not only on heathen but Christian ground, he 
avowed himself as the enemy of idolatry, and the champion of the 
divine unity. The limits as well as the design of this work will 
not permit a sketch of his remarkable history. After perusing the 
recital we have already given of the superstition, ignorance, and 
idolatry of popish Christianity at the era of the Popedom, the 

* The extract, or rather collection of sentences, from this discourse of St Eligios, 
quoted by Mosheim, Jortin, Robertson, Jones, &c., is as follows : — 

" Bonas Christianas est, qui ad eccle- '* He is a good Christian who goes 

oam frequenter venit, et oblationem, (juse frequently to church, and makes his ob- 

in altari Deo ofl^ratur, exhibit ; qui de lations at God's altar ; who never tastes 

fructibus suis non gustat, nisi prins of his own fruit until he has presented 

Deo aliquid ofSsni ; qui, quoties sancts some to God ; who, for many days be- 

•olenmitates adveniunt, ante dies plures fore the solemn festivals observes strict 

castitatem etiam cum propria uxore chastity, though he be married, that he 

CQstodit, ut secura conscientia Domini may approach the altar with a safe con- 

tkare aceedere poesit ; qui poetremo science ; lastly, who can repeat the 

•jrmbolum vel orationem Dominicam me- Creed and the Lord's Prayer. Redeem 

moriter tenet. Redimite animas vestras vour souls from punishment whilst you 

de pcena, dum habetis in potestate reme- have it in your power ; ofifer your free 

dia ; oblationes et decimas ecclesiis of- gifts and titnes ; contribute towards the 

feite, lamindria Sanctis locis, juxta quod luminaries in holy places ; repair fre- 

habetis, exhibite ; ad ecclesiam quoque quently to church, and humbly implore 

frequentius convenite, sanctorum patro- the protection of the saints. If you ob* 

cinia humiliter expetite ; quod si obser- serve these thin^, you may appear 

vaveritis, securi in die jndicii ante tri- boldly at God's tribunal in the day of 

bonal etemi judicis venientes dicetis ; judgment, and sa^ — Gfive, Lord, accord^ 

Doj Dominej quia dedimus, ing as tot have given.** 

By quoting, at large, frt>m the discourse of Eligius, frY>m various parts of whielr 
these sentences are extracted, I think that W^dington has shown (though all 
these sentences are found in the discourse), that Elifius has hardly been treated 
with fairness. Still, the flagrant contradiction of the doctrine of salvation b^ grace 
and not of debt, with which the extract closes, is sufficient to show that, in that 
dvk age, the doctrines of grace were most sadly perverted or obscured. See 
Waddington's Church History, p. 261, Mosheim, ii., 173, dtc. The original of 
the discourse ia found in Dacherii Spicilegium veter. Scriptor., Tom. y. 
10 



146 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book iil 



Origin of the Mooothelite, or one-mil eontroreny. 



reader will be prepared to admit the truth of the following state- 
ment of Mr. Taylor in his Ancient Christianity (page 365). " What 
Mahomet and his caliphs found in all directions, whither their cime- 
ters cut a path for them, was a superstition so abject, an idolatry so 
gross and shameless, church doctrines so arrogant, church practices 
so dissolute and so puerile, that the strong-minded Arabians felt 
themselves inspired anew as God's messengers to reprove the 
errors of the world, and authorized as God's avengers to punish 
apostate Christendom/' 



CHAPTER 11. 

HISTORY OP THE MONOTHELITE CONTROVERSY ^POPE HONORIUS CON- 
DEMNED AS A HERETIC BY THE SIXTH GENERAL COUNCIL, A.D. 680. 

§ 16. — The early part of the seventh century was signalized by 
the commencement of a remarkable controversy between those 
who maintained with the emperor Heraclius, and Sergius, patri- 
arch of Constantinople, the doctrine of one will and one operation 
in the nature of Christ ; and those who believed in two wills, the 
human and the divine, and two operations or distinct kinds of voli- 
tion, the one proceeding from his human, and the other from his 
divine will. This was called the Monothelite controversy, from two 
Greek words signifying one will. Upon this abstruse metaphysical 
point did this famous dispute arise, which threatened to rend into 
fragments the whole Christian world, and that notwithstanding 
both parties were confessedly orthodox in relation to their belie? 
both of the proper deity and humanity of the second person in the 
glorious Trinity. Our reason for introducing the history of this con- 
troversy in the present work is not because we attach any great 
importance to the opinion of either party, so long as both believed 
that Jesus Christ was properly divine, coequal and coetemal with 
the Father ; but on account of the part that was taken in it by the 
popes of Rome, and the light which is thus thrown upon the history 
of Komanism, and especially upon the infallibility (so much vaunted 
by Baronius, Bellarmine and other popish writers) of the boasted 
successors of St. Peter. 

§ 17. — In the year 634, Sergius, the patriarch of Constantinople, 
addressed a letter to pope Honorius at Rome, informing him of the 
opposition which the aoctrine of one will, which he styled " the 
doctrine of the fathers," had received from one Sophronius, at that 
time bishop of Jerusalem, and others ; and requesting the opinion 
of the Pope on the subject of the doctrine in dispute, and also his 



auF. n.] POPERY ADVANCING— A. D. 0(HI— 800. 147 

IWitenewltoith* JBdhAaK*. Pope Hooorlw â– pproret Om doctrine. Pope John eostenae It 

adyice as to the most effectual means of maintainmg the peace and 
tranquillity of the church. In the reply of Honorius, he stated that 
he entirely agreed with Sergius in opinion, that he acknowledged 
hU one wul in Christy and tluit none of the fathers had ever openly 
taught the doctrine of two wills. 

About the time of the death of pope Honorius, which took place 
A. D. 638, Serffius published and affixed to the doors of the church 
at Constantinople, in the name of the emperor Heraclius, the cele- 
brated edict upon the subject of the controversy called the Echihe^ 
fit, or exposition. This edict began with an orthodox profession 
of belief in the sacred Trinity. It acknowledged two distinct na- 
tures in one person of Christ ; but in reference to the will, and the 
r (rations of the wUl, it used the following language : — ** We ascribe 
the operations in Christ, the human as wdl as the divine, to the 
word incarnate. But whether they should be called two, or should 
be called one, we will suffer none to disptUeJ* Notwithstanding, 
bowever, this apparent profession of neutrality, the authors of the 
edict say towards the conclusion — ** We therefore confess, agreea- 
bly to tHe doctrine of the apostles, of the councils and of the fathers, 
bat one will in Christ,** — and it concludes by thundering anathemas 
igainst heretics, and requiring all to hold and profess the doctrine 
tbis declared and explained. 

§ 18. — Sergius died soon after publishing this edict, and was, in 
M, succeeded in the See of Constantinople by Pyrrhus, who as 
Kmbled a council, and confirmed the doctrine of the Echthesis as 
the genuine doctrine of the apostles and fathers. On the other 
hand, pope John IV., who differed entirely in opinion from his pre- 
decessor Honorius, assembled a council of the bishops of the West, 
in which the Echthesis was solemnly condemned and the doctrine 
of one will was anathematized as entirely repugnant to the Catholic 
&ith, and to the doctrine of the fathers. The Pope also caused a 
copy of the acts and decrees of this council to be immediately 
transmitted to Pyrrhus, signed by himself and the bishops who 
were present, hoping thereby to check the progress which the 
Monotnelite doctrine was making in the East. 

Instead of paying any regard to the authority of the Pope or 
his council, Pyrrhus immediately caused transcripts to be made of 
the two letters of pope Honorius to Sergius, in which Honorius 
expressed his belief of the doctrine of one will, and sent them to 
^11 the principal bishops in the East ; at the same time appealing 
to them whether pope Honorius had not approved by the authority 
of the apostolic See of the very doctrine which his successor 
John had condemned by the same authority. He wrote also a let- 
ter to the Pope, in which he expressed his astonishment that he 
•hould condemn a doctrine which his predecessor, Honorius, had 
received, taught, and approved. Pope John, perceiving that this 
disagreement in opinion between two of the boasted successors of 
St Peter was calculated to sap the very foundation of the papal 
authority, made an artful but lame attempt to explain away the 



148 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book m. 

Pope Theodore*! tudett proposal to the patriuch Paul. The AigitiTe patrtaich PjmluHb 

opinions of Honorius, but the fallacy of his sophistical reasoning is 
apparent, as we shall presently see, from the fact that in the sixth 
general council, held a few years later, these letters of Honorius 
were unanimously condemned as acknowledging and inculcating 
the Monothelite doctrine. 

§ 19. — Pope John was succeeded in the year 642 by Theodore, 
and about the same time Paul succeeded to the See of Constanti- 
nople, in the room of Pyrrhus, the Monothelite patriarch, who had 
abandoned his See and sought safety in flight, in consequence of the 
general suspicion that was entertained that he had been privy to 
the poisoning of the late emperor, Constantino III. In a letter 
which Theodore wrote to Paul, soon after his accession to the 
Popedom, he censures him for accepting the patriarchate till Pyr- 
rhus had been lawfully deposed, charges the latter with heresy in 
receiving the Monothelite doctrine and publishing the Echthesis 
(evidently, in the estimation of the Pope, a much greater crime than 
assassinating the Emperor) ; advises that a council should be im- 
mediately assembled, in which Pyrrhus might be judged, condemn- 
ed, and regularly deposed ; and closes his letter with the very modest 
proposal, that if there was likely to be any difficulty in the trial 
of ryrrhus at Constantinople, he should be despatched to Rome, 
that he might there be judged, deposed and condemned by the Pope 
and his council I The new patriarch Paul, as we may easily con- 
ceive, treated this proposal with the contempt it deservecl. He 
took not the slightest notice of it, continued to exercise his office, 
and instead of condemning the doctrine of Pyrrhus, he confirmed 
it in a council assembled for the purpose, and caused the Echthesis 
to be continued on the gates of the church, that all might know the 
doctrine that he inculcated and believed. 

§ 20. — The patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch, and many other 
bishops, took sides with Paul, and maintained the doctrine of one 
will. Others, however, as strongly opposed both the doctrine and 
the Echthesis. In the island of Cyprus, both were unanimously, 
condemned in a council of the bishops assembled for that purpose, 
and a long epistle was despatched to pope Theodore, bitterly com- 
plaining of Paul of Constantinople, for holding and promoting, to the 
utmost of his power, a doctrine, as they said, so plainly repufipiant 
to the repeatea ** decrees of St. Peter and his See." In the West, 
the Echthesis was universally condemned, and three of the principal 
bishops of Africa first anathematized Paul in their councils, and then 
wrote to the Pope, earnestly entreating him to cut oflT firom the 
communion of the church, not only Paul of Constantinople, but all 
who maintained that " impious doctrine,** unless, by a speedy re- 
pentance, they should repair the scandal they had caused. It was 
chiefly through the labors of a celebrated monk named Maximus, 
and tne result of a public disputation that he held with Pyrrhus, 
that the African bishops were thus brought to array themselves, 
with so much unanimity and so much earnestness, against the Mo- 
nothelite opinions. Maximus, who was a man of learning, for that 



OUKlL] POPERT ADVANCING-A. D. e06— 800. 140 



tlM wmmk Umi\mm. Fjnhm ntcnBlj azeommaBieattd bj Popafhootet. 

ag^ had, previous to withdrawing to a monastery, been priyate 
lecretary to the emperor Heraclius, at Constantinople, while Pyr 
rhiu was patriarch. Soon after commencing his laoors in Africa, 
the former secretary fell in with the fugitive patriarch, and both of 
them bringing to their aid talents and leammg of no mean order, 
each succeeded in drawing around himself a party attached to his 
own views. In consequence of the disturbance occasioned by these 
two opposite parties, tne Monothelites, headed by Pyrrhus, and the 
Dm ot Me k te S f headed by Maximus, the bishops proposed that the diffi- 
culty should be settled by a public dispute, before Gregory, the 
Evemor of the province. This proposal naving been agreed to by 
$ governor and the two disputants, the debate was hoiden in the 
presence of a large number of the bishops, nobility, and others, who 
had congregated from various parts to listen to them. Manuscript 
eopies of the debate in the original Greek, are still to be seen in the 
Vatican libn^, at Rome, under the following lengthy, but (me- 
nded title : ** The question concerning an ecclesiastical dogma, that 
was disputed before the most pious patrician Gregory, in an assem- 
bly of the most holy bishops, and the nobility, by Pyrrhus, patriarch 
of Constantinople, and the most reverend monk Maximus, in the 
month of July, the third indiction; Pyrrhus defending the new do^ 
ma of one will in Christ, wickedly introduced by himself and his 
predecessor Sergius, and Maximus maintaining the doctrine of the 
apostles and the fathers, as delivered to us from the beffinninff."* 

§21. — At the close of the disputation, Pyrrhus, who had been 
compelled to wander as an exile from his See at Constantinople, 
wishing probably to recommend himself to the favor of the Pope, 
and the other Western bishops, professed himself a convert to the 
doctrine of Maximus, proceeded in company with him to Rome, 
and upon there solemnly abjuring his heresy in the presence of the 
Pope, the clergy, and a vast multitude of the people, was received, 
with great pomp and ceremony, to the communion of the Roman 
church and publicly honored by the Pope, as the patriarch of Con- 
stantinople. The joy and exultation of the Pope was, however, of 
ihort duration ; it was soon changed into disappointment and chagrin, 
upon hearing that Pyrrhus had proceeded to Kavenna, and through 
tne persuasions of the exarch Plato, who had the power, if he 
chose, of advancing his interests at the court of the Emperor, had 
pblicly renounced his recent recantation, and placed himself at the 
nead of the Monothelite party in that city. 

Upon hearing this, the rage and exasperation of pope Theodore 
^as extreme. He immediately convened an assembly of the 
clergy in the old church of St. Peter's ; thundered forth the sentence 
^f excommunication against this new Judas, accompanied with the 
n^ost fearful anathemas, and calling, in the transport of his indigna- 

* The carious in such matters, may examine a Greek copy of the report of this 
^ ancient dispate, with the Latin translation in the opposite colamn, occupying 
P pages folio, at the end of the eighth volume of Baronios' Annals, of which there 
1* % copy in the Society Library, New York. 



150 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. 


[BOOCllI. 


Pope Theodoie*! impotent epiritaal thonden. 


The decree celled tlie TY^e. 

a 



tion, for the consecrated wine of the sacrament, mingled a portkin 
of it with the ink, and with the mixture, signed the sentence of 
excommunication, which was to consign the apostate Pyrrhus to 
the agonies of despair, and to the torments of the damned. 

§ 22. — In the mean time, with the hope of appeasing, in some 
measure, the wrath of the Pope, and the displeasure of the Western 
bishops, the patriarch Paul had caused the obnoxious decree, called 
the Echthesis^ to be removed from the gates of the church at Con- 
stantinople, and prevailed upon the Emperor to supply its place by 
another called the Type or formulary^ tne object of which, while it 
expressed no bias to either side of the disputed question, was strictly 
to forbid, under severe penalties, all disputes whatever, relative 
to the will or wills of Christ, and the mode of its or their operation. 
The Emperor, with reason, had become weary of these endless 
disputes and quarrels ; his object was peace, and for that reason he 
flattered himself that those who professed to be servants of the 
Prince of Peace, would readily comply with this edict. 

Before the suppression of the Echthesis was known at Rome, 
however, the Pope, in compliance with the advice of the African 
bishops, previously mentioned, had excommunicated Paul with great 
solemnity as an incorrigible heretic, and had declared him, by the 
authority of St. Peter, divested of all ecclesiastical power and 
dignities. When the news of this rash and hasty step came to 
Constantinople, instead of submitting to the Pope's authority, the 
patriarch was so enraged, that he wreaked his vengeance upon the 
apocrisarii or ambassadors of the Pope, and imprisoned, and even 
whipt some of their retinue. The excommunication of Paul by the 
Pope, was regarded by the Emperor, and with a few exceptions, 
by all the bishops of the East, as of no authority, and he continued 
to enjoy the patriarchal dignity and ofBce till his death, and afler 
his decease, the former patriarch Pyrrhus became reconciled to the 
Emperor, and though excommunicated and cursed by the Pope, in 
the terrific manner we have seen, was, notwithstanding, reinstated 
by the Emperor in his former dignity, and received and acknow- 
ledged by tne bishops and people of the East as the lawful patri- 
arch of Constantinople. 

§ 23. — Upon the death of Theodore (A. D. 649), pope Martin was 
chosen as his successor in the same year, and upon sending to the 
Emperor to confirm his election (which was in this century invari- 
ably done upon the choice of a new pope), Constantine confirmed 
his election with more than usual promptitude, hoping thereby to 
secure his co-operation in the plan he had formed for the restoration 
of peace, by enjoining silence on the vexed question, in his edict 
called the Type, Instead of this, however, Martin immediately 
assembled a council at Rome, and condemned not only the Mono- 
thelite doctrine, and " the impious Echthesis^ but also " the most 
wicked Type, lately published against the Catholic church, by the 
most serene emperor Constantine, at the instigation of Paul, the 
pretended bishop of Constantinople." 



GBAT. n.] POPERY ADVANCING— AJ). 60^-800, 151 



ahikpifrai cBMCil PopeHooori ua oondaniMd tlMralB fw Untf 

Such an insult to the unperial authority, by one who, notwith- 
standing his high ecclesiastical dignity, was yet a subject of the 
Emperor, could not be suffered with impunity. By order of the 
emperor Constantine, Martin was taken prisoner and conveyed to 
Naxos, a small island in the Grecian Archipelago : afterward carried 
to the imperial court, and after a mock form of trial, accompanied 
with cruel insult and abuse, he was stripped of his sacerdotal gar- 
ments, condemned and degraded, and men sent into exile, on the 
inhospitable shores of Taurica Chersonesus, where he died in 656. 

5 24. — These resolute proceedings rendered Eusenius and Vi- 
talianus, the succeeding popes, more moderate and prudent than 
their predecessor had been ; especially the latter, who received 
Constans, upon his arrival at Rome in the year 663, with the highest 
marks of distinction and respect, and used the wisest precautions 
to prevent the flame of that unhappy controversy from breaking 
out a second time. And thus, for several years, it appeared to be 
extinguished ; but it was so only in appearance ; it was a lurking 
flame, which spread itself secretly, and gave reason to those who 
examined things with attention, to dread new combustions both in 
church and state. 

To prevent these, Constantine Pogonatus, the son of Constans, 
pursuant to the advice of Agatho, the Roman pontiff, summoned, in 
the year 680, the sixth general or cBcumenical council in which he 

Gitted the Monothelites and pope Honorius himself to be so- 
Jy condemned in presence of the Roman legates, who repre- 
lented Agatho in that assembly, and confirmed the sentence pro- 
nounced by the council, by the sanction of penal laws enacted 
against such as pretended to oppose it. 

§25. — The condemnation of pope Honorius for heresy by this gene- 
ral council is an event of so much importance, in the controversy 
with Rome, that we deem it worthy to place on record the language 
in which the decree of his condemnation, and that of others who 
also maintained the same doctrine, was couched. The writings on 
this subject having been read before the council from the pens of 
Sergius, former patriarch of Constantinople, Cyrus of Phasis, and 
Honorius, former pope of old Rome, they solemnly delivered their 
unanimous judgment in the following terms : — " Having examined 
the dogmatic letters that were written by Sergius, formerly bishop 
of this royal city, to Cyrus once of Phasis, and to Honorius, bishop 
of old Rome, and likewise the answer of the said Honorius to the 
letter of Sergius, we have found them quite repugnant to the doc- 
trine of the apostles, to the definitions of the councils, to the sense 
of the fathers, and entirely agreeable to the false doctrines of the 
heretics ; therefore we reject and accurse them as hurtful to the 
souL As we reject and accurse such impious dogmas, so we are 
all of opinion, that the names of those who taught and professed 
them ought to be banished from the church, that is, struck out of 
the Diptychs ; viz., the names of Sergius, formerly bishop of this 
royal city, who first wrote of this impious tenet, and Cyrus of 



152 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [wmk Uk 

Pope HoaoriM anathcmatiaed by the sixth general council, and his writings committed to the flames. 

Alexandria, of Pyrrhus, Paul, and Peter, who once held this See, 
and agreed in opinion with them, and likewise of Theodorus, for- 
merly bishop of Pharan; who have all been mentioned by the 
thrice blessed Agatho, in his letter to our most pious Lord and 
mighty Emperor, and have been anathematized by him, as holding 
opinions repugnant to the true faith. All these, and each of them, 
we too declare anathematized ; and with them we anathematize, 
and cast out of the holy Catholic Church, HonoHus^ pope of old 
Romey it appearing from his letter to Sergius, that ne entirely 
agreed in opinion with him, and confirmed his impious doctrine." 

In the same session of the council, the second letter of pope 
Honorius to Sergius was read, examined, and by a decree of the 
council, committed to the flames, with the other Monothelite writ^ 
ings ; and it is worthy of remark, that this decree passed unani- 
mously, without the slightest opposition, not even the legates of the 
Pope venturing to say a word in his behalf, so overwhelming and 
conclusive was the proof that pope Honorius had held and main- 
tained the very same doctrine as was now, by this council, acknow- 
ledged even by Romanists as the sixth general council^ solenmly 
condemned as heresy.* 

§ 26. — From the above account of this famous controversy, much 
li^ht is thrown upon the condition, the character, and the claims 
oi Popery during the seventh century. 

(1.) We learn that the popes of Rome were careful to seize 
every opportunity of advancmg their authority, and practically 
asserting that supremacy, as the spiritual sovereigns of the church, 
which they had claimed ever since the decree of Phocas in 606. 
We hear them thundering their anathemas at the heads of the 
other bishops, and excommunicating even the patriarchs of Constan- 
tinople, the most exalted in rank of all the dignitaries of the church 
in tliis century, if we except the Pope himself. In the decree of 

e:)pe Martin against the edict called the Type^ we have seen that 
aul is called '* the pretended bishop of Constantinople," because he 
had been excommunicated and deposed by the authority of pope 
Theodore, the predecessor of Martin. In the letter which pope 
Agatho sent to the Emperor by the hands of his legates to the 
council, we discover the first pretence of a claim, which has since 
been frequently asserted — the claim of absolute papal infallibility. 
After a long descant in praise of the See of St. reter, he aflirmed 
that the popes never had erred, and intimated that they never could 
err, and that their decisions ous^ht therefore to be received as the 
divine voice of St. Peter himself. We have already seen, how- 
ever, that the council, in the case of pope Honorius, very soon 
came to an entirely difierent decision. 

(2.) We learn, also, that notwithstanding these lofty assump- 

* Thoee who desire fuller information on this remarkable controversy, may find 
it in Hist Ckmcil. Cone, vi., Sesa. 12, 13; Baronins's Annals ad Ann. 681; 
Bower's lives of the Popes, ViL Theodore^ Martin^ Agatho. 



csAP.n.] POPERY ADVANCING— A. D. 60&-800. 158 

TlM ctiflMi 0^ papal MMmipdoa not ycC anived. Papal infallibility. Opinion of Bellarmine, kic 

tkms, the authority of the Pope was as yet by no means universally 
receivecU nor his decrees regarded as binding, especially in the 
East In proof of this, we need only recur to the fact that Paul 
aad Pyrrhus both exercised the office of patriarch, and were for 
Years acknowledged and regarded as such by the Emperor, the 
bishops, and people of the East, notwithstanding each of them had 
been solemnly excommunicated by the Pope. 

(3.) We see also that the popes had not yet learned to hurl 
thdr anathemas at the heads of emperors and kings. The election 
of a pope, at this time, was not regarded as valid till confirmed by 
a decree of the Emperor. Hence we are not surprised that the 
popes were too timid or too prudent to include ** the most serene 
emperor ** Heraclius or Constans in the same sentence of excommu- 
nication which they pronounced against Paul or Pyrrhus for merely 
executing the orders of their imperial masters, in preparing and 
publishing the obnoxious heretical decrees, the Echthesis, or the 
Type. The age of Theodore and of Martin was not the age of 
Gregory VIL, or of Innocent III. 

(^« ft is scarcely necessary to add that in the unanimous con- 
demnation of pope Uonorius by the sixth general council for heresy, 
we have a complete refutation of the claim so frequently urged by the 
Jesuits and otner advocates of Rome, of the infallibility of the 
Pope.* Till it is proved that two contraries can be exactly alike, 
this boasted claim of infalUbility must be abandoned. So evident 
is it that this fact is fatal to the papal infallibility, that Baronius, 
the Romish annalist, a strong advocate of the same, has labored 
hard, though without the semblance of reason, to show that the 
name of Uonorius was inserted in the decrees instead of that of 
some other person ; a supposition as weak and ridiculous as it is 
unfounded. The great body of Romish authors, and among the 
rest Dupin, candidly admit the heresv and condemnation of Ho- 
norius. The latter mstorian remarks, that " the council had as much 
reason to censure him as Sergius, Paul us, Peter, and the other pa- 
triarchs of Constantinople ;" and adds, in language yet more em- 
phatic, — ^ This will stand for certain, then, that Honorius was con^ 
demjiedj and justly too, as a heretic, by the sixth general 
council*'! 

* As it is not uncommon in the present day, in proiestant countries, to represent 
the doctrine of the infidlibility ot the Pope, as a protestant calumny, I will cite 
the opinion of one or two of their most celebrated advocates. 

1. Lewis Capsensis de Fid. Disput. 2, sect. 6, afl&rms : ^ We can believe nothing, 
if we do not believe with a divine fiuth that the Pope is the successor of Peter, 
and mrALLiBLE !" 

3. I shall quote the words of Cardinal BeUarmine, as they are very remarka- 
ble, in the original Latin (de Pont 4, 6). ** Si autem Papa erraret prsficiendo 
vitia, vel prohitendo virtutes, teneretur Ecclesia credere vitia esse bona et virtutes 
malas, nisi vellet contra conscientiam peccare." That is, ** But if the Pope should 
err, l^ enjoining vices or prohibiting virtues, the ChuitJi, unless she would sin 
against conscience, would be bound to believe vices to be good, ahd vietues 



EVIL.'* 



t Dnpin's Eccles. Hist, voL IL, p. 16. 



154 



CHAPTER IIL 

[MAGE WORSHIP. FBOM THE BEGINNING OF THE GREAT CONTROVBR8T 

ON THIS SUBJECT, TO THE DEATH OF THE EMPEROR LEO9 AND OF POPE 
GREGORY III., BOTH IN THE SAME YEAR, A. D. 741. 

§ 27. — We have already seen (page 98 above), that in the fourth 
century, the worship of images was abominated by the Christian 
church, and that even their admission into places of worship, for 
whatever object, was regarded by the most eminent bishops vnth 
abhorrence. ^ In opposition to the authority of Scripture, therk 

WAS A human image IN THE CHURCH OF JeSUS ChRIBT,'' WCPO tho 

words of Epiphanius, already quoted. 

*' It is an injury to God," says Justin Martyr, ^ to make an image 
of him in base wood or stone."* 

Augustine says that ^ God ousht to be worshipped without an 
image ; images serving only to bring the Deity into contempt^f 
The same bishop elsewhere asserts that ** it would be impious in a 
Christian to set up a corporeal image of God in a church ; and that 
he would be thereby guilty of the sacrilege condemned by St. Paul, 
of turning the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made 
like to corruptible man.";]; 

^ We Christians," says Origen, when writing against his infidel 
antagonist, ** have notmne to do with images, on account of the 
second commandment ; the first thing we teach those who come to 
us is, to despise idols and all images ; it being the peculiar charac- 
ter of the Christian religion to raise our minds above images, agree- 
ably to the law which God himself has given to mankind."! It 
would be easy to multiply such quotations as these, but it is unne- 
cessary. The testimony of these fathers is merely cited as historical 
evidence, as to the state of opinion on this subject in their day, not 
as matter of authority, because were their testimony in favor of the 
practice of this popish idolatry, as it is of some other popish corrup- 
tions, still their authority would weiffh nothing with genuine protest- 
ants, in favor of a practice so plainly opposed to the letter and the 
spirit of the Bible. 

§ 28. — Some of the fathers, as Tertullian, Clemens Alexandrinus, 
and Origen, carried their opposition to all sorts of images to such an 
extent, as to teach that the Scriptures forbid altogether the arts of 
statuary and painting.|| Now, while it is admitted that they were 
mistaken in tnis construction of the second commandment, for we 

♦ Justin's Apolo^nr* ii. jmge 44. 

f Augustine de Uivit. Dei., 1. vii., c. 5. 

i: Augustine, de fide, et symb., c. vii. 
I Origen against Celsus, 1. v., 7. 
I See Bower's History of the Popes, vol. iii., page 214, where several ertnicts 
are given from Tertullian, Clemens, and Origen, on this point 



.m.] POPERY ADVANCING— A. D. 606—800. 165 

OMaa*B â– Momt of the gradiul Introdnetloa of Image-wonhip into the Cbriittan ehureh. 

are only forbidden to make ^aven images for the purpose o{ bowing 
down to them and serving them (Exodus xx., 5), yet the fact itself 
of their expressing such an opinion, is the most conclusive proof 
possible, that they knew nothing whatever of the popish idolatry 
which sprung up a few centuries later, and which continues to 
characterize the church of Rome down to the present time. 

** The primitive Christians,** remarks Mr. Gibbon (who is more to 
be depended on in his facts, than his reasonings), ^ were possessed 
with an unconquerable repugnance to the use and abuse of images, 
and this aversion may be ascribed to their descent from the Jews, 
and their enmity to the Greeks. The Mosaic law had severely 
proscribed all representations of the Deity, and that precept was 
firmly established in the principles and practice of the chosen 
people. The wit of the Christian apologists was pointed against 
the foolish idolaters, who had bowed before the workmanship of 
their own hands ; the images of brass and marble, which, had they 
been endowed with sense and motion, should have started rather 
from the pedestal to adore the creative powers of the artist. The 
public religion of the Christians was uniformly simple and spiritual ; 
and the first notice of the use of pictures is in the censure of the 
council of Uliberis, three hundred years after the Christian era. 
Under the successors of Constantino, in the peace and luxury of the 
triumphant church, the more prudent bishops condescended to 
indulge a visible superstition, for the benefit of the multitude, and, 
after the ruin of Paganism, they were no longer restrained by the 
apprehension of an odious parallel. The first introduction of a 
symbolic worship was in the veneration of the cross, and of relics. 
The saints and martyrs, whose intercession was implored, were 
leated on the right hand of God ; but the gracious, and often super- 
natural favors, which, in the popular belief, were showered round 
their tombs, conveyed an unquestionable sanction of the devout 
]nlgrims, who visited, and touched, and kissed these lifeless remains, 
the memorials of their merits and sufferings. But a memorial, more 
interesting than the skull or the scandals of a departed worthy, is a 
&ithful copy of his person and features, delineated by the arts of 
painting or sculpture. At first the experiment was made with 
caution and scruple, and the venerable pictures were discreetly 
allowed to instruct the ignorant, to awaken the cold, and to gratify 
the prejudices of the heathen proselytes. By a slow, though inevi- 
table progression, the honors of the original were transferred to the 
copy, the devout Christian prayed before the image of a saint, and 
the pagan rites of genuflexion, luminaries, and incense, again stole 
mto the Catholic church."* 

§ 29. — About the beginning of the fifth century, the practice of 
ornamenting the churches with pictures had become very general, 
and thus the door was opened for that torrent of idolatry which 
flooded the churches, and in three or four centuries carried away 

* Gibbon's Decline and Fall, chap. xliz. 



166 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book m. 

Paaliaiu of Nolm adorns a church with piatiiMt kc The pennlirion of Graiory a daof eroua precedent 

almost eveiT vestige of spiritual Christian worship. Among others, 
Paulinus, a bishop of Nola, in Italy, about the year 431, erected in 
that city a magnificent church in honor of St. Felix, and as he him- 
self informs us, adorned it with pictures of martyrs, and various 
Scripture histories painted on the walls. This example, at that 
time rare, was imitated in various places, though not without con- 
siderable opposition, till in the sixth century, the dangerous practice 
of using not only paintings but images, became very general, both 
in the East and the West. 

§ 30. — Still it was the general opinion, even to the time of Gre- 
gory, that if used at all, they were to be used only as helps to the 
memory, or as books to instruct those who could not read, and that 
no sort of worship was to be paid them. That this was his opinion 
we have already seen from his epistle to Serenus, bishop oi Mar- 
seilles.* Thus it is evident that so late as the beginning of the 
seventh century, images were altogether forbidden to be worship- 
ped in any way. Of course the distinction invented by modem 
popish idolators, between sovereign or subordinate, absolute or 
relative, proper or improper worship — the worship of latria, dulia^ 
or hyperdulia—^i course, I say, these scholastic distinctions were 
not then invented, and were therefore unknown to Gregory. They 
never would have been thought o^ but for the necessity which 
papists found of inventing some way of warding off the charge of 
idolatry, so firequently and so justly alleged against them. The 
words of Gregory were, " adorari vero imagines omnibus modis 
devita," which the Roman CathoUc historian, Dupin, has translated, 
** that he must not allow images to be worshipped in any manner 
whatever.^-f 

The permission given by Gregory for the use of images in 
churches was a dangerous precedent. He mi^ht have anlicipated 
that if suffered at all they would not long continue to be regarded 
merely as books for the ignorant ; especially when, as soon after 
happened in this dark a^e, the most ridiculous stories began to be 
circulated relative to the marvellous prodigies and miraculous 
cures effected by the presence or the contact of these wondrous 
blocks of wood and of stone. The result that might naturally have 
been anticipated, came to pass. These images became idols ; the 
imorant multitude reverently kissed them, and " bowed themselves 
downT before them, and, by the commencement of the eighth century, 
a system of idol worship had sprung up almost all over the nomi- 
nally Christian world, scarcely less debasing than that which pre- 
vails at the present day in Italy and other popish countries of Eu- 
rope. In the year 713, pope Constantino issued an edict, in which 
ne pronounced those accursed who " deny that veneration to the 
holy images, which is appointed by the church" — * Sanctis imagini- 
bus venerationem constitutam ab ecclesia, qui negarent illam ipsam. 

§ 31. — ^In the year 726, commenced that famous controversy bc>- 

* See above, page 131. f Dapin, vol. v., p. 122. 



dup. m.] POPERY ADVANCING— A. D. 606—800. 167 



Tte emperor Leo, in 796, imam hit first deeree agftloit Imace-wonhip. 

tween the Emperor and the Pope upon the worship of images 
which for more than half a century arrayed against each other, 
Leo and Gregory, and their successors in the empire and the pope- 
dom, and which was only quelled by the full establishment of this 
idolatrous worship, by the decree of the second council of Nice, in 
787. ** In the beginning of the eighth century," says Gibbon, ** the 
Greeks were awakened by an apprehension that, under the mask 
of Christianity, they had restored the religion of their fathers: 
they heard, with grief and impatience, the name of idolators ; the 
incessant charge of the Jews and Mahometans, who derived from 
the law and the Koran an immortal hatred to graven images and 
all the relative worship." (Vol. iii., p. 273.) 

Leo, the emperor, observing from his palace in Constantinople 
the extensive prevalence of this idolatry, resolved to put a stop to 
the growing superstition, and make an attempt to restore the Chris- 
tian worship to its primitive purity. With this view he issued an 
edict forbidding in future any worship to be paid to images, but 
without ordering them to be demolished or removed. The date of 
this edict was A. D. 726, a year, as Bower has well remarked, 
"ever memorable in the ecclesiastical annals, for the dispute to 
which it gave occasion, and the unheard of disturbances which 
that dispute raised, both in the Church and the State.*" Anxious 
to preserve his subjects from idolatry, the Emperor, with all that 
frankness and sincerity which marked his character, publicly avow- 
ed his conviction of the idolatrous nature of the prevailing practice, 
and protested against the erection of images. Hitherto no coun- 
cils had sanctioned the evil, and precedents of antiquity were 
against it. But the scriptures, which ought to have had infinitely 
more weight upon the minds of men than either councils or pre- 
cedents, had expressly and pointedly condemned it ; yet, such deep 
root had the error at this time tiiken ; so pleasing was it with men 
to commute for the indulgence of their crimes by a routine of 
idolatrous ceremonies ; and, above all, so little ear had they to be- 
stow on what the word of God taught, that the subjects of Leo 
murmured against him as a tyrant and a persecutor. And in this 
they were encouraged by Germanus, the bishop of Constantinople, 
who, with equal zeal and ignorance, asserted that images had al- 
ways been used in the church, and declared his determination to 
oppose the Emperor : which, the more effectually to do, he wrote 
to Gregory II., then bishop of Rome, respecting the subject, who, 
by simuar reasonings, warmly supported the same cause. 

§ 32. — The first steps of the emperor Leo in the reformation, 
were moderate and cautious; he assembled a great council of 
senators and bishops, and enacted, with their consent, that all the 
ima^s should be removed from the sanctuary and altar to a proper 
bei^t in the churches, where they mieht be visible to the eyes, 
ana inaccessible to the superstition of me people. But it was im- 

* History of the Popes, v. ill., p. 199. 



158 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book iil 

Tumult and murder by the women of Constantinople at the removal of an image. 

possible on either side to check the rapid though adverse impulse 
of veneration and abhorrence : in their lofty position, the sacred 
images still edified their votaries and reproached the tyrant. He 
was himself provoked by resistance and invective ; and his own 
party accused him of an imperfect discharge of his duty, and 
urged, for his imitation, the example of the Jewish king, who had 
broken without scruple the brazen serpent of the temple. 

In the year 730, he issued an edict, enjoining the removal or de- 
struction of images, and having in vain labored to bring over Ger- 
manus, the bishop of Constantinople, to his views, he deposed him 
from his See, and put in his place Anastasius, who took part with 
the Emperor. There was, in the palace of Constantinople, a porch, 
which contained an image of the Saviour on the cross. Leo sent 
an officer to remove it. Some females, who were then present, en- 
treated that it might remain, but without effect. The officer mount- 
ed a ladder, and with an axe struck three blows on the face of the 
figure, when the women threw him down, by pulling away the lad- 
der, and murdered him on the spot. The image, however, was re- 
moved, and burnt, and a plain cross set up in its room. The women 
then proceeded to insult Anastasius for encouraging the profanation 
of holy things. An insurrection ensued — and, in order to quell it, 
the Emperor was obliged to put several persons to death. 

§ 33. — Pope Gregory, as soon as he heard of the appointment of 
Anastasius, an avowed enemy to the worship of images, as bishop 
of Constantinople, immediately declared him deposed from his dig- 
nitv, unless he should at once renounce his heresv, and favor images 
as his predecessor, Germanus, had done.* Both the letter and the 
edict of the Pope were, however, treated with silent contempt, and 
the new patriarch continued to exercise his office, and, by the di- 
rection of his master, Leo, to employ all his zeal in rootmg out the 
idolatry. 

The imperious pontiff was no more civil to the emperor Leo 
than to the patriarch. The Emperor had written him a letter, en- 
treating him not to oppose so commendable a work as the extirpa- 
tion of idolatry, and threatening him with the fate of pope Martin, 
who died in banishment, if he should continue obstinate and rebel- 
lious. The reply of Gregory is worthy of record as an illustration 
of the spirit of the man, and of the spirit of the times. ** During 
ten pure and fortunate years," says he, " we have tasted the annud 
comfort of your royal letters, subscribed in purple ink, with your 
own hand, the sacred pledges of your attachment to the orthodox 
creed of our fathers. How deplorable is the change ! How tre- 
mendous the scandal ! You now accuse the Catholics of idolatry ; 
and, by the accusation, you betray your own impiety and ignorance. 
To this ignorance we are compelled to adapt the grossness of our 
style and arguments : the first elements of holy letters are sufficient 
for your confusion ; and were you to enter a grammar-school, and 

* Fletiiy's Eccles. Hist, book zlii., 7. 



GBAF. m.] POPERY ADVANCINCU-A. D. 606—800. 159 

Fipt6f<iior7*fttaMBltlDgl«itcnotli«aB|MrorL60. The Pop* ** revered as a God upon earth.** 

avow yourself the enemy of our worship, the simple and pious 
children would be provoked to cast their horn-books at your head.** 

After this curious salutation, the Pope explains to him the dis- 
tinction between the idols of antiquity and the Christian images. 
The former were the fanciful representations of phantoms or 
demcmsy at a time when the true God had not manifested his per- 
ion in any visible likeness — the latter are the genuine forms of 
Christ, his mother, and his saints. To the impudent and inhuman 
Leo, more guilty than a heretic, he recommends peace, silence, and 
impUcit obedience to his spiritual guides of Constantinople and 
Rome. ** You assault us, O tyrant," thus he proceeds, •* with a 
carnal and military hand ; unarmed and nakea we can only im- 
plore the Christ, the prince of the heavenly host, that he will send 
unto you a devil, for the destruction of your body and the salva- 
ti<m of your soul. You declare, with foolish arrogance, * I will 
dispatch my orders to Rome ; I will break in pieces the images of 
St Peter ; and Gregory, Uke his predecessor Martin, shall be trans- 
ported in chains and in exile to the foot of the imperial throne.' 
Wcmld to God, that I might be permitted to tread in the footsteps 
of the holy Martin ; but may the fate of Constans serve as a 
warning to the persecutors of the church. After his just con- 
demnation by the bishops of Sicily, the tyrant was cut off, in the 
fiihiess of his sins, by a domestic servant ; the saint is still adored 
by the nations of Scythia, among whom he ended his banishment 
and his life. 

" But it is our duty to live for the edification and support of the 
faithful people, nor are we reduced to risk our safety on the event 
of a combat. Incapable as you are of defending your Roman sub- 
jects, the maritime situation of the city may perhaps expose it to 
your depredation ; but we can remove to the distance of four-and- 

twenty stadia, to the first fortress of the Lombards, and then 

you may pursue the winds. Are you ignorant that the popes are 
the bond of union between the East and the West ? The eyes of 
the nations are fixed on our humility ; and /Aey revere as a God 
mon earth the apostle Saint Peter, whose image you threaten to 
destroy. The remote and interior kingdoms of the West present 
their homage to Christ and his vicegerent^ and we now prepare to 
visit one of the most powerful monarchs, who desires to receive 
from our hands the sacrament of baptism. The Barbarians have 
submitted to the yoke of the gospel, while you alone are deaf to 
the voice of the shepherd. These pious Barbarians are kindled 
into rage ; they thirst to avenge the persecution of the east. 
Abandon your rash and fatal enterprise ; reflect, tremble, and repent. 
If you persist, we are innocent of the blood that will be spilt in the 
contest ; may it fall on your own head I"* 

§ 34. — Upon the news of Leo's decree reaching Rome, where 
the people were as mad upon their idols as they were at the East, 

* Act CoDc Nic, torn. viiL, p. 661, &c* 



160 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book m. 



^ â–  



Twnulii at Rome. HunM* eplstie to the Emperor of another tttccenor of Peter the fiahermaa. 

such was the indignation excited by it, that the Emperor's statues 
were immediately pulled down, and trodden under foot. All Italy 
was thrown into confusion ; attempts were made to elect another 
emperor, in the room of Leo, and the Pope encouraged these at- 
tempts. The Greek writers affirm that he prohibited the Italians 
from paying tribute any longer to Leo ; but, in the midst of these 
broils, while defending idolatry and exciting rebellion with all his 
might, Gregory was stopped short in his wicked career. " He was 
extremely insolent," says an impartial writer, " though he died with 
the character of a saint."* 

§ 35. — He was succeeded in his office, A. D. 731, by Gregory IIL, 
who entered with great spirit and energy into the measures of his 
predecessors. The reader cannot but be amused with the follow- 
mg extract of a letter which he addressed to the Emperor., imme- 
diately on his elevation : — ^ Because you are unlearned and igno- 
rant, we are obliged to write to you rude discourses, but full of sense 
and the word of God. We conjure you to quit your pride, and 
hear us with humility. You say that we adore stones, walls, and 
boards. It is not so, my lord ; but these symbols make us recollect 
the persons whose names they bear, and exalt our grovelling minds. 
We do not look upon them as gods ; but, if it be the image of Jesus, 
we say, * Lord, help us.' If it be the image of his mother, we 
say, * Pray to your bon to save us.' If it be of a martyr, we say, 
• St. Stephen, pray for us.' We might, as having the power of 
Saint'Peter, pronounce punishments against you ; but, as you have 
pronounced the curse upon yourself, let it stick to you. You write 
to us to assemble, a general council, of which there is no need. Do 
you cease to persecute images, and all will be quiet ; we fear not 
your threats." 

Few readers will think the style of this letter much calculated to 
conciliate the Emperor; and though it certainly does not equal 
the arrogance and blasphemy which are to be found among the 
pretensions of this wretched race of mortals in the Subsequent 
period of their history, it may strike some as exhibiting a tolerable 
advance towards them. It seems to have shut the door against all 
further intercourse between the parties ; for, in 732, Gregory, in a 
council, excommunicated all who should remove or speak con- 
temptuously of images ; and, Italy being now in a state of rebel- 
lion, Leo fitted out a fleet with a view of quashing the refractory 
conduct of his subjects, but it was wrecked in the Adriatic, the ob- 
ject of the expedition frustrated, and the design of vengeance on 
the Pope and the Romans for the present abandoned.f 

§ 36. — Pope Gregory, in order to revenge himself on the Em- 
peror for his continued and persevering opposition to images, ex- 
pended, in defiance of the royal edict, the whole wealth of the 
church on pictures and statues to adorn the churches at Rome. As 

♦ Walch's Com|»end. Hist, of the Popes, p. 101. 

t See Lect. on £ccle8. Hist, by Jones. Loodooy 1884. — ^Lect zzrii. 



SAP. IT.] POPERY ADVANCING— A.D. 606-^00. 161 

flH|ii|'iii|HMjii wl fhr Imifmrniihip Death of the Pope and the Emperor. Their raceenors. 

Leo was as much opposed to the worship of saints and relics as he 
was to images, the Pope, according to the account of the Romish 
lustorian, Anastasius, caused relics to be everywhere sought for, 
nd conyeyed firom all, parts of the world to Home, built a mag- 
nificent oratory for their reception and worship, and appointed a 
religious service to be performed to them, and monks to con- 
doct the seryice, maintained at the expense of the See. In these 
fimu works the Pope is said to have expended 73 pounds weight 
rf gdd, and 376 pounds of silver, at that time a most enormous 
mm.* But these hatreds and animosities were soon quieted in the 
itilliiess of the grave ; for in the year 741, both the emperor Leo 
and the pope Gregory were nearly at the same time called away 
from earth, to render up their account to a higher tribunal, leaving 
their strifes and contentions to be continued by their successors. 



CHAPTER IV. 

OOXTINUATION OP THE CONTROVERSY ON IMAGE-WORSHIP. FROBf THE" 

DEATH OF LEO AND GREGORY, A. D. 741, TO THE FINAL ESTABLISH«» 
MKNT OF THIS IDOLATRY, BY THE SECOND COUIVCIL OF NICE, A. D. 787* 

J 37. — The emperor Leo was succeeded by his son Constantine 
v., sumamed Copronymus^ and pope Gregory, by Zachary, a 
native of Greece. The new Emperor followed in the steps of his 
fitther, in endeavoring to extirpate the idolatrous worship of images, 
but the new Pope was too busily engaged, as we shall see in the 
next chapter, in his ambitious attempts to exalt the temporal gran- 
deur of the Roman See, and to elevate the popes of Rome to a rank 
among the princes of the earth, to concern himself much about any- 
thing connected with the ceremonies of religious worship. During 
hb pontificate, therefore, of about eleven years, the emperor Constan- 
tine suffered but little molestation in his commendable attempts to 
root out idolatry, except from a domestic usurper, Artabasdus, who, 
in his absence on an expedition against the Saracens, seized upon 
his throne, and endeavored to conciliate the superstitious populace, 
by reversing the edicts of Leo against images, ordering the idols to 
be restored to the churches, and forbidding any one in future to 

Iuestion the lawfidness of that idolatry upon pain of exilie or 
eath. The dominion of Artabasdus, was, however, but short- 
lived. At the end of a few months, he was defeated and taken by 
Constantino, who spared the life of the usurper, but caused the 
images he had set up to be immediately destroyed, and renewed the 

* Bower's Hist Popes, yd. iiL, p. 399. 
11 



162 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [bookql 



CooDcll at Coif ntfnopie coodeiniM imafe-wonhip— A. D. 754. 



former edicts against their worship and use, at the same time 
promising the people, at an early period, to refer the whole question 
of image- worship to the decision of a general council. 

§ 38. — In 754, during the pontificate of Stephen IL, the Emperor 
proceeded to redeem this pledge by convening a council at Hiera, 
opposite to Constantinople, consisting of 338 bishops, the largest 
number that had ever yet -assembled m one general council. This 
numerous council, after continuing their sessions from the 10th of 
February to the 17th August, with one voice condemned the use 
and the worship of images, as a custom borrowed of idolatrous 
nations, and entirely contrary to the practice of the purer ages of 
the church. On the nature of the heresy they express themselves 
in the following language. ^ Jesus Christ hath delivered us from 
idolatry, and hath taugnt us to adore him in spirit and in truth. 
But the devil, not being able to endure the beauty of the church, 
hath insensibly brought back idolatry, under the appearance of 
Christianity, persuading men to worship the creature, and to take 
for God a work to which they gave the name of Jesus Christ"* 

The decree of faith issued by this celebrated council was as 
follows : " The holy and oecumenical council, which it hath pleased 
our most orthodox emperors, Constantine and Leo, to assemble in 
the church of St. Mary ad Blachemas in the imperial city, adhering 
to the word of God, to the definitions of the six preceding councils, 
to the doctrine of the approved fathers, and the practice of the 
church in the earliest times, pronounce and declare, in the name of 
the Trinity, and with one heart and mind, that no images are to be 
WORSHIPPED ; that to worship them or any other crecUure^ is robbing 
God of the honor that is due to him alone, and relapsing into idola- 
try. Whoever, therefore, shall henceforth presume to worship 
images, to set them up in the churches, or in private houses, or to 
conceal them ; if a bishop, priest, or deacon, shall be degraded, and 
if a monk or layman, excommunicated and punished as guilty of a 
breach of God's express command, and of the imperial laws, that is, 
of the very severe laws issued by the Christian emperors against 
the worshippers of idols." 

This council is reckoned by the Greeks as the seventh general' 
council, but by the papists, on account of their decree against the 
worship of images, this claim is, of course, disallowed. Encouraged 
by the countenance and decrees of so numerous a council, Constan- 
tine proceeded to bum the images, and demolish the walls of the 
churches whicH were painted with the figures of Christ, of the 
Virgin, and the saints, with a promptness and resolution which 
showed that he was determined, if possible, to extirpate the last 
vestige of idolatry. 

§ 39. — Upon the death of Constantine V., in the year 775, he was 
succeeded by his son Leo IV., who adopted the sentiments of his 
father and grandfather, and imitated their zeal in the extirpaticm of 

* Flenry, bodi xliiL, chapter 7. 



€BAr. IT.] POPERY ADVANaNG— A. D. 606—800. X68 



Tte oBpran Imm. H«r wutanU eroeitiea. JustUled by poptafa wrficnL 



idolatry out of the Christian church. The wife of Leo was named 
Irene, a woman who has rendered her name infamous in the annals 
of crime. In the year 780, her husband, who had opposed her 
attempts to introduce the worship of images into the very palace, 
sudd^y died, as is supposed by man^, in consequence of poison, 
administered by the direction of his faithless and perfidious queen. 
Bower expresses his own opinion, that this woman, ^ so abandonedly 
wicked " ^ he describes her), caused poison to be administered to 
Leo, and Mosheim directly asserts that such was the fact For my 
own part, I think it very probable that this was the cause of the 
death of her husband, though I am not aware that it is directly 
asserted by any ancient author. There is no uncertainty, however, 
relative to her unnatural and bloody treatment of her son, the 
youthful emperor Constantine VI. 

Inspired bv a desire to occupy the throne now possessed by him, 
she caused him to be seized, and his eyes to be put out, to render 
him incapable of reigning, which, according to the testimony of 
Theophanes, was done ** with so much cruelty, that he immediately 
expired." Gibbon doubts whether immediate death was the conse- 
quence, but describes in vivid lan^age, the horrid cruelty of the 
unnatural mother. ** In the mind of Irene, ambition had stifled every 
sentiment of humanity and nature, and it was decreed in her bloody 
council, that Constantine should be rendered incapable of the throne, 
her emissaries assaulted the sleeping prince, and stabbed their dag- 
gers with such violence and precipitation into his eyes, as if they 
meant to execute a mortal sentence. The most bigoted ortho- 
doxv has justly execrated the unnatural mother, who may not 
easily be paralleled in the history of crimes. On earth, the crime 
of Irene was left five years unpunished, and if she could silence the 
voice of conscience, she neither heard nor regarded the reproaches 
of mankind."* 

^ 40. — Such was the flagitious character of the wretched woman, 
who was eventually the means of establishing the worship of images 
throughout the empire, and yet in consequence of this service which 
she rendered to the cause of idolatry, will it be credited that popish 
writers represent her as a pattern of piety, and even justify the 
horrid torture, or the murder of her son ? The following are the 
words of Cardinal Baronius, justifying this cruel and unnatural 
crime : ** Snares," says he, " were laid this year for the emperor 
Constantine, by his mother Irene, which he fell into the year follow- 
ing, and was deprived at the same time of his eyes and his life. An 
execrable crime indeed, had she not been prompted to it by zeal for 
justice. On that consideration she even deserved to be commend- 
ed for what she did (I )) In more ancient times, the hands of 
parents were armed by God's command, against their children 
-worshipping strange gods, and they who killed them were com- 
mended by JVIoses. Again says Baronius, " As Irene was supposed 

'* Decline and Fall, foL iii., p^fe 246. 



164 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. . [book m. 

The wicked Irene conveoee a council, which eeUbliahet idolatry, A. D. 787. 



to have done what she did (that is, to have deposed and murdered 
her son), for the sake of religion (I) and love of justice (! !) she was 
still thought by men of great sanctity worthy of praise and com- 
mendation."* This extract from a popish Cardinal, and one of the 
most celebrated writers of that communion, needs no comment. 
Well might Popery be called in the language of inspiration, ** the 
mother of harlots, and abominations op the earth." (Kev. xvii., 5.) 

§ 41. — In the year 784, this wicked woman wrote to pope Adrian, 
desiring his presence, or at least the presence of his legates, to a 
general council to be held at Nice, in support of the worship of 
images ; and Adrian in his reply testified his joy at the prospect of 
the restoration of the holy images to their place in the churches 
from which they had so long been banished. 

In the year 787, this famous council was convened, which papists 
reckon tJie seventh general council^ though it has no more right to be 
regarded as a general council, than the council convened by the 
Emperor in 754, which condemned the use of images. The num- 
ber of bishops who attended on this occasion, was 350, and the 
result of their deliberation was, as might be expected, in favor of 
images. It was decreed " That holy images of the cross should be 
consecrated, and put on the sacred vessels and vestments, and upon 
walls and boards, in private houses and in public ways. And espe- 
cially that there should be erected images of the Lord God, our 
Saviour Jesus Christ, of our blessed Lady, the mother of God, of 
the venerable angels, and of all the saints. And that whosoever 
should presume to think or teach otherwise, or to throw away any 
painted books, or the figure of the cross, or any image or picture, or 
any genuine relics of the martyrs, they should, if bishops or clergy- 
men, be deposed, or if monks or laymen, be excommunicated. They 
then pronounced anathemas upon all who should not rieceive images, 
or who should apply what the Scriptures say against idols to the 
holy images, or call them idols, or wilfully communicate with those 
who rejected and despised them, adding, according to custom, 
* Long live Constantino, and Irene, his mother — damnation to all 
heretics— damnation on the council that roared against venerable 
images — the holy Trinity hath deposed them.' "f 

§ 42. — Thus was the system of popish idolatry established by law, 
confirmed by a boasted general council, in direct opposition to both 
the letter and the spirit of the sacred Scriptures. In spite of all the 
fine-spun distinctions, and papistical apologies, to diminish the guilt 
of this idol worship, from that time to the present, idolatry has 
been stamped upon the forehead of the papal anti-Christ. The church 
of Rome, let her say what she will, is a church defiled and polluted 
by idolatry, and in this spiritual adultery, her members have almost 
universally participated. " Tell us not," says Isaac Taylor, ** how 
the few may possibly steer clear of the fatal errors, and avoid a 

* BaroDins* Annals, ann. 796. 

t PUtiDa's lives of the Popes, vit& Adrian L 



CHiP. ?.] POPERY ADVANCING— A. D. 606—800. 165 



PfOBi die Uimalts about iouf m in 730, tlie Emperor liad no power In Italy. 



gross idolatry, while admitting such practices. What will be their 
effect with the multitude ? The actual condition of the mass of the 
people in all countries where Popery has been unchecked, gives us 
a sufficient answer to this question ; nor do we scruple to condemn 
these practices as abominable idolatries. Tell us not how Fenelon 
or Pascal might extricate themselves from this impiety : what arc 
the frequenters of churches in Naples and Madrid ? nothing better 
than the grossest polttheists, and far less rationally religious than 
were their ancestors of the times of Numa and Pythagoras."* 



CHAPTER V. 

THE POPE finally BECOMES A TEMPORAL SOVEREIGN, A. D. 756. 

J 43. — ^The popes, although seizing every opportunity to exalt 
their own authority, had not, up to the commencement of the eighth 
century, ventured the attempt to excite rebellion against the ancient 
emperors, or to wield in their own hands, the sceptre of temporal 
sovereignty. In the present chapter we are to follow them, in their 
career of ambition, till they united the regal crown to the episcopal 
mitre, and took rank among the kings of the earth. 

We have already referred to the rebellious tumults, excited at 
Rome, and encouraged by pope Gregory II., when in 730, the edict 
of Leo was promulgated, enjoining the deptruction of images. From 
that time forward, till the coronation of Charlemagne in 800, the 
government of the city of Rome, and the surrounding territory, was 
administered only nominally, in the name of the emperors of the 
East, while the real power was vested in the popes, sustained as 
they were by the ignorant and superstitious multitudes. " After the 
prohibition of picture worship," says Gieseler, " the city of Rome 
was in a state of rebellion against the emperors, though without an 
absolute separation from the empire. From this they were with- 
held by fear of the Lombards, who, under Liutprand, were waiting 
only for a favorable opportunity to extend their sway over Rome, 
as well as the Exarchate, and whose purpose it was the great object 
of the popes to defeat^f 

In the year 734, the Emperor sent an arniy and a fleet to reduce 
to submission the Pope and the refractory Romans, and to enforce 
the execution of his decree against images, but as nearly all his 
vessels were lost at sea, the attempt was abandoned, and nrom this 

* Taylor's Ancient Christianity, page 328. 

j Gieader's Ecdeaiistical Histoiy, voL iL, page 14. 



166 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [wx m. 

Pope GMgory III. appllei to Charles Martel for help against the Lombards. 

time forward, says Bower, " the Emperor concerned himself no 
more with the affairs of the West, than the Pope with those of the 
East** The Exarch, or emperor's Viceroy, continued still to reside 
at Ravenna, but was not in a condition to cause the imperial edict 
against imsiges to be observed even in that city, much less to under- 
t^e anything against the Pope or the people of Rome, who had 
now wimdrawn themselves from subjection to the Emperor, and 
were governed by magistrates of their own election, " forming a 
kind of republic under tne Pope, not yet as their prince, but only as 
their head."* 

§ 44. — In the year 740, in consequence of the Pope refusing to 
deliver up two rebellious dukes, the subjects of Luitprand, king of 
the Lombards, that warlike monarch invaded and laid waste the 
territories of Rome. In their distress, their fear of the resentment of 
the Emperor forbidding them to apply to him for the assistance they 
urgently needed, they resolved to apply to the celebrated Charles 
Martel, the great hero of that age, wno had received that surname, 
which signifies hammer, in consequence of a celebrated victory 

fained over the Saracen forces, near Poictiers, in 732, by which 
e had probably saved his native country, France, from being sub- 
jected under the Mahometan rule. Charles was at this time mayor 
of the palace to the king of France, but wielded in his own person 
all the power of the kingdom. To him, therefore, pope Gregory IIL 
despatched the most urgent and pressing entreaties to hasten to his 
aid. " Shut not your ears, my most Christian son,** vn-ites Gregory, 
**shut not your ears to our prayers, lest the prince of the apostles 
should shut the gates of the kingdom of heaven upon you T The 
Pope had sent hinti his usual royal present of the keys of the tomb of 
St. Peter, with some filings of Peter's chain inserted, and appealing 
to these, he adds, in his letters, " I conjure you, by the sacred keys 
of the tomb of St. Peter, which I send yon, prefer not the friendship 
of the Lombard kings, to that regard you owe to the prince of 
the apostles !"t 

§ 45.— Whether it was, however, that the stem warrior did not at- 
tach much value to these wonder-working keys and filings, or whether 
he was unwilling to offend the king of the Lombards, it is certain 
that he turned a deaf ear to these pathetic appeals of the Pope ; 
till the latter, despairing of gaining his help by appealing to his 
piety or superstition, attacked him in a more vulnerable part, by 
appealing to his ambition. This Gregory did by proposing to 
Cnarles, that he and the Romans would renounce all allegiance to 
the Emperor, as an avowed heretic, and acknowledging him for 
their protector, confer upon him the consular dignity of Rome, upon 
condition that he should protect the Pope, the church, and the 
Roman people against the Lombards ; and, if necessity should 
arise, against the vengeance of their ancient master, the Emperor 

* Bower's History of the Popes, vol. iii., page 300. 
t Gregory m., Epist in Baraiiiu, ann. 740. 



aa.jn] POPERY ADVANCING— A. D. 606—800. 167 



Left in, Gregory m^ and Charles Murtel die In the Bame yew. Pepin of France. 

These proposals were more suited to the warlike and ambitious dis- 
position of Martel, and he immediately despatched his ambassadors 
to Rome to take the Pope under his protection, intending, doubtless, 
at an early period, to consummate the agreement. 

Pope Gregory, however, did not live to carry into elBTect his 
treascmable purpose, Charles Martel to profit by it, or the emperor 
Leo to hear of it They all three died in that year, 741, within a few 
weeks of each other. Before the death of Martel, his timely inter- 
ference had procured the Romans a brief respite from tneir in- 
vaders, for soon after the arrival of his messengers at Rome, the 
Lombard king retired with his troops to his own dominions, though 
he still retained the four cities he had taken belonging to the Roman 
dukedom. Upon the almost simultaneous death of these three 
noted individuals, the Emperor was succeeded by Constantine, the 
Pope by Zachary, and the mayor of the palace by his son Pepin, 
as the nominal mayor, but the real sovereign of France. 

5 46. — Pope Zachary was immediately ordained, without waiting 
for his election to be confirmed, either by the Emperor or his Italian 
representative, the Exarch ; the imperial power in Italy being at 
th^ time reduced to so low an ebb, tnat the Emperor had no power 
to resist this encroachment upon his right of confirming the Uni- 
versal Bishops — a right which his predecessors had claimed and 
enjoyed without interruption ever since the decree of Phocas had 
created that dignity. Soon after his ordination, pope Zachary 
visited in person the camp of Luitprand, the Lombard king, who, 
upon the death of Charles Martel, was preparing again to invade 
the territories of Rome, and had influence sufficient, by threaten- 
ing him with eternal damnation if he refused, and the favor of St. 
Peter if he complied, to prevail on him to deliver up the four cities 
he had taken ; which he accordingly did, declaring in the presence 
of alU that they no longer belonged to him, but to the Apostle St. 
Petevy without saying a word of the Emperor, who, if any one, 
was, without doubt, their rightfiil master and sovereign. 

§47. — A few years later, A. D. 751, Pepin, son of Martel, con- 
ceived the design of dethroning the feeble monarch, Childeric III., 
under whom he was acting as prime minister and viceroy. Though 
he possessed the power of the sovereign, yet he was still a subject, 
and determmed, if possible, to obtain the title of king as well as the 
authority. - Not deeming it prudent to depose the legitimate sove- 
reign without providing to satisfy the scruples of the timid or the 
superstitious, Pepin resolved to submit the case of conscience to 
pope Zachary ; viz., who best deserved to be called king ; he who 
was possessed of the title without the power, or he who possessed 
the power without the title. The situation of Zachary, exposed as 
be was, on the one hand, to the indignation of the Emperor, and on 
the other, to the attacks of the warlike Lombards, was such as to 
leave no doubt that he would give such an answer as would secure 
the favor and protection of &e powerful Pepin. Accordingly he 



168 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book m. 

Pepin, advised by the Pope, onirpe the throne of king Childeric. Lomborde eooqner Ravenna. 

gave, without hesitation, such an answer as the usurper desired ; 
viz., that he ought to be called king who possessed the power^ rather 
then he who, without regal power, possessed only the title.* The 
feeble Childeric was immediately deposed and confined to a 
monastery, and Pepin proclaimed king in his stead. He was 
crowned and anointed by Boniface, the Pope's legate, and two 
years after, in order to render his title as sacred as possible, the 
ceremony was performed again by pope Stephen, the successor of 
Zachary, on the occasion of a journey into France to obtain his 
succor against the Lombards. Upon the arrival of Stephen into 
Pepin's dominions on this occasion, he was received with the most 
extravagant honors. The king and queen, with their two sons, 
Charles and Carloman, the chief lords of the court, and most of the 
French nobility, went out three miles to meet him. Upon his ap- 
proach, Pepin dismounted from his horse and fell prostrate on the 
ground ; and, not suffering the Pope to dismount, lie attended him 
part of the way on foot, performing, according to the Romish his- 
torian, Anastasius, " the office of his groom or equerry .*'f 

§ 48. — In the year 753, Aistulphus, king of the Lombards, in- 
vaded the exarchate, and laid siege to the city of Ravenna. The 
city was bravely defended by Eutychius, the last of the exarchs, 
till his affairs were desperate, when he embarked on board a vessel 
vnth the remnant of his soldiers, and fled to his master, the Em- 
peror, to Constantinople. Thus ended the exarchate of Ravenna, 
and with it the splendor of that ancient city, in which for nearly 
two centuries the exarchs, as the viceroys of the emperors, had 
maintained the imperial power in -the West. 

. Elated by his conquest, Aistulphus despatched a messenger to 
Rome, demanding the submission of the inhabitants, asserting that 
as the exarchate was his by right of conquest, so also were all 
the cities and other places that had heretofore been subject to the 
exarchs in Italy ; that is, all Italian dominions of the Emperor. At 
the same time he threatened to march with his army to Home, and 
to put all the inhabitants to the sword, unless they acknowledged 
his government, and paid him a yearly tribute of a piece of gold 
for each person. 

§ 49. — In these perilous circumstances, Stephen ventured to in- 
form the Emperor, who was still nominally the sovereign of Rome, 
and solicit his succor. Constantine, however, was too busy in pur- 
suing his victories over the Saracens in the East to do more than 
send an ambassador to make the best terms he could with Aistul- 
phus. The ambassador John bore with him commands to the Pope 

* The oldest account of this is in Annalibus Loiselianus ad ann. 749 (751). 
See a quotation from this ancient writing in Gieseler, iii., 14, note 5. *' Zachariaa 
Papa, mandavit Pipino ut melins esset ulnm resem vocari qui potestaiem haberetj 
quant iUum qui sine regali wtestaU manebat. Per anctoritatem ergo apostolicam 
jnasit Pipinum regem fieri.'' 

t AnastasiuB de vUis PorUtfieum^ in Stephen 11. 



aAP.m.] POPERY ADVANCING— A. D. 606— 800. 169 

AiMlpkw, tlM Ijomlmnl kingt thmtena Rome. Pope Stephen appllee for niccor to king Pepin 

to unite his persuasions with his own, to induce the Lombard king 
to send a minister to Constantinople to treat of an accommodation, 
and in the mean time to forbear hostilities. This Aistulphus abso- 
lutely refused, and John was soon despatched to his master at Con- 
stantinople, to inform him that nothing but a powerfid army sent 
immediately into Italy, could save the remnant of the ancient 
Roman empire in that country. As another expedient, two abbots 
were sent to the camp of the conqueror, to plead with him the 
cause of St. Peter. The Ring admitted them to his presence, but 
only to reproach them for meddling in worldly affairs, and com- 
manded them to return immediately to their monasteries. Failing 
in this, the Pope tried processions, in which were solemnly carried 
the images ot the Virgin Mary, of St Peter, and St. Paul, and a 
host of other saints ; but these saints too, or their images, appeared 
deaf to their entreaties, and their condition was daily becoming 
more critical. 

5 50. — In this extremity, pope Stephen resolved to apply in per- 
son for succor to Pepin, king of France, whom we have already 
seen encouraged by the Pope in usurping the throne of his master, 
Childeric. Stephen, upon his arrival m France, was received 
with the highest honor, and ^ entertained as the visible successor of 
the apostles.** After a short delay, he recrossed the Alps, at the 
head of a victorious army, which was led by the Ring in person. 
The ambitious Pope, while an honored guest at the court of Pepin, 
anxious to see himself elevated to the rank of an earthly monarch, 
had been cunning enough to obtain from him a promise that he 
would restore the places that might be captured from Aistulphus 
(not to the Emperor, but) to be freely possessed by St, Peter and his 
successors. Aiier a feeble resistance to the arms of Pepin, the 
Lombards were compelled to submit, their Ring was besieged in 
his metropolis, Pavia, and as the price of peace was compelled to 
sign a treaty to deliver up to the Pope the exarchate, " with all the 
cities, castles, and territories thereto belonging, to be for ever held 
and possessed^ by the most holy pope Stephen and his successors 
in the Apostolic See of St. Peter." 

§ 51. — No sooner had Pepin returned into France, than Aistul- 
^us, who had signed this treaty, resolved not to fulfil it. The 
Pope had frequently reminded the Lombard kinc of the dishonesty 
and injustice of keeping those territories which oelonged, of right, 
to the Emperor ; and it was very natural for him to conclude, that 
if he had no right to keep what belonged to another, neither had 
king Pepin any right to bestow it, or pope Stephen to receive it ; 
and that of the three, he himself had as much right to it as any one 
of them. Aistulphus accordingly laid siege to Home, burning with 
rage against the rope ; first, for bringing the French to invade his 
dominions ; and second, for claiming me exarchate for himself, 
after having so frequently threatenea him with the venfi;eance of 
heaven for his injustice in not restoring that territory to nis '^ most 



170 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book m. 

Rage of king Atatalphat agmliut the Pope. The Pope's niffent letter to Pcpfai 

religious son, the Emperor,'* who alone had a right to it. He there- 
fore declared to the people that he came not as an enemy to thern^ 
but to the Pope, and that if they would deliver him up they should 
be treated with the greatest kindness, but if they refused to do this, 
that he would level the walls of the city with the ground, and 
leave none of them alive to tell the tale. 

§ 52. — The Pope immediately wrote an urgent letter, and sent it 
by an abbot named Fulrad, to his former protector, Pepin, in which 
he says, ** To defend the church, is, of all works, the most meritori- 
ous ; and that, to which is reserved the greatest reward in the 
world to come. God might himself have defended his church, or 
raised up others to ascertain and defend the just rights of his apos- 
tle St Peter. But it pleased him to choose you, my most excellent 
son, out of the whole human race, for that holy purpose. For it 
was in compliance with his divine inspiration and command that I 
applied to you, that I came into vour kingdom, that I exhorted you 
to espouse the cause of his beloved apostle, and your great pro- 
tector, St. Peter. You espoused bis cause accordingly ; and your 
zeal for his honor was qmckly rewarded vnth a signal and miracu- 
lous victory. But, my most excellent son, St Peter has not yet 
reaped the least advantage from so glorious a victory, though owing 
entirely to him. The perfidious and wicked Aistulphus has not yet 
yielded to him one foot of ground ; nay, unmindful of his oath, and 
actuated by the devil, he has bemm hostilities anew, and, bidding 
defiance both to you and St. Peter, threatens us, and the whole 
Roman people, with death and destruction, as the abbot Fulrad and 
his companions will inform you." The rest of the Pope's letter 
consists chiefly of repeated invectives against Aistulphus as a sworn 
enemy to St. Peter, and repeated commendations oi Pepin, his two 
sons, and the whole French nation, as the chief firiends and favorites 
of that apostle. In the end he puts Pepin, and likewise his two 
sons, in mind of the promise they had made to the door-keeper of 
heaven ; tells them, that the prince of the apostles himself kept the 
instrument of their donation; that it had been delivered into the 
apostle's own hands ; and that he held it tight to produce it, at the 
last day, for their punishment, if it was not executed ; and for their 
reward if it was ; and therefore conjures them by the living God, 
by the Virgin Mary, by all the angels of heaven, by St Peter and 
St. Paul, and the tremenddus day of judgment, to cause St Peter to 
be put in possession of all the places named in the donation ; and 
that without further delay, lest by excusing others they should them- 
selves become inexcusable ; and be, in th^ end, eternally damned.* 



* Codex CarolinuB, Epiat 7. This i^arcoQection of the epistles of the popes 
to Charles Martel (whom they style UtSiregvlui^^ Pepin, and Charlemagne, as far 
as the year 791, when it was formed Ijy the last of these princes. His original 
and authentic MS. (Bibliothece Cub^ularis) ift now in the imperial library of 
Vienna, and has been pablished by Lambediis^nd Muratori (Script Remm. itaL 
xm. ill., pars. 2, p. 76, dLc), See Gibbon, .?ioL ill., p. 281, note 2. 



CBAP. ▼.] POPERY ADVANCING— A.D. 606—800. 171 

A teller dram Bt. PMer In heaven to Pe]rtn, sent through the infallible poetmaiter, pope Stephen. 

§ 53. — As some time elapsed, and the Pope had received no in- 
telligence of the march of Pepin, Stephen began to fear that the im- 
pression produced by his letter on the mind of the King had not 
been sufficiently powerful to induce him to cross the Alps a second 
time, and as the city, unless relieved, could not sustain the siege 
much lon^r, he adopted the extraordinary expedient of pretending, 
by one oi those pious frauds which papists have always regarded 
as lawful and commendable, to have received a letter from St. 
Peter in heaven, beseeching the immediate interposition of the 
French on U:half of his successor and his See. This most singular 
document, as well as the last quoted letter of pope Stephen, has 
been preserved in the Codex Carolinus. The superscription is as 
follows : — ^ Simon Peter, a servant and apostle op Jesus Christ, 
to the three most excellent kings, Pepin, Charles, and Carloman ; 
to all the holy bishops, abbots, presbyters, and monks ; to all the 
dukes, counts, commanders of the French army, and to the whole 
people of France : Grace unto you, and peace be multiplied." The 
letter then proceeds thus : " I am the apostle Peter, to whom it 
was said. Thou art Peter, and upon this rock, &c.. Feed my sheep, 
&c. And to thee will I give the keys, &c. As this was all said to me 
in particular, all, who hearken to me and obey my exhortations, may 
persuade themselves, and firmly believe that their sins are forgiven 
them ; and that they will be admitted, cleansed from all guilt, into 
life everlasting. Hearken, therefore, to me, to me Peter the apos- 
tle and servant of Jesus Christ ; and since I have preferred you to 
all the nations of the earth, hasten, I beseech and conjure you, if 
you care to be cleansed from your sins, and to earn an eternal reward^ 
hasten to the relief of*^ my city, of my church, of the people com- 
mitted to my care, ready to fall into the hands of the wicked Lom- 
bards, their merciless enemies. It has pleased the Almighty that 
my body should rest in this city ; the body that has suffered tor the 
sake of Christ such exquisite torments : and can you, my most 
Christian sons, stand by unconcerned, and see it insulted by the 
most wicked of nations ? No, let it never be said, and it will, I 
hope, never be said, that I, the apostle of Jesus Christ, that my 
apostolic church, the foundation of the faith, that my flock, recom- 
mended to you by me and my vicar, have trusted in you, but trusted 
in vain. Our Lady, the Virgin Mary, mother of God, joins in 
earnestly entreating, nay, commands you to hasten, to run, to fly, to 
the relief of my favorite people, reduced almost to the last gasp, 
and calling in that extremity night and day upon her and upon me. 
The thrones and dominions, the principalities and the powers, and 
the whole multitude of heavenly hosts, entreat you, together with 
us, not to delay, but to come with all possible speed, and rescue my 
chosen flock from the jaws of the ravening wolves ready to devour 
them. My vicar might, in this extremity, have recurred, and not 
in vain, to other nations ; but with me the French are, and ever 
have been, the first, the best, the most deserving of all nations ; and 



172 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [boqkul 



P«pln afain eooquen AiHuli^iai. The Pope at length becomea a temporal aoTaceifD. 

I would not suffer the reward, the exceeding great reward, that is 
reserved, in this and the other world, for those, who shall deliver 
my people, to be earned by any other." In the rest of the letter 
St. reter is made to repeat all the Pope had said in his letters ; to 
court the favor and protection of the French with the most abject 
flattery ; to inveigh with as much unchristian resentment and ran- 
cor, as the Pope had inveighed, against " the most wicked nation of 
the Lombards ;'' and to entreat his most Christian sons over and 
over again to come, and with all possible speed, to the relief of his 
vicar and people, lest they should in the mean time lall into the 
hands of their implacable enemies ; and those, from whom they 
expected relief, incur the displeasure of the Almighty, and his; 
and be thereby excluded, notwithstanding all their other good 
works, from the kingdom of heaven, 

§ 64. — ^With this letter from Saint Peter in heaven, pope 
Stephen, the infallible postmaster, despatched a messenger, in all 
haste, to Pepin ; but he had, upon the receipt of his first letter, as- 
sembled all his forces anew ; and was, when he received this, 
within a day's march of the Alps. He pursued his march without 
delay ; and, having forced the passes of those mountains, advanced, 
never once halting till he reached Pavia, and laid, a second time, a 
close siege to that city, not doubting but he should thus oblige 
Aistulphus to retire from the siege of Home.* Pepin was not mis- 
taken in his calculations. Fearing that the French would make 
themselves masters of his metropolis and his kingdom, the Lpmbard 
king was compelled, before it was too late, once more to sue for 
peace, which was granted by the French king, upon the humiliating 
conditions that Aistulphus should execute literally the treaty of the 
former year, and convey at once the exarchate to the Pope, that he 
should deliver up also the city of Commachio, defray all the ex- 
penses of the war, and pay besides an annual tribute to France of 
twelve thousand solidi of gold. 

These terms being agreed and sworn to by Aistulphus, Pepui 
caused a new instrument to be drawn up, whereby he yielded 
all the places mentioned in the treaty, to be for ever held and pos^ 
sessed by St, Peter and his lawful successors in the See of Rome, 
This instrument, signed by himself, by his two sons, and by the 
chief barons of the kingdom, he delivered to the abbot Fulrad, ap- 
pointing him his commissary to receive, in the Pope's name, all the 
places mentioned in it With this character the Abbot, attended by 
the commissaries of Aistulphus, repaired immediately to Ravenna, 
and from thence to every city named in the instrument of donation, 
and having taken possession of them all in St. Peter's name and the 
Pope's, and everywhere received a sufficient number of hostages, 
he went, with all his hostages, immediately to Rome ; and there, 
laying the instrument of donation, and the keys of each city, on 
the tomb of St. Peter, put the Pope thereby at last in possession of 

* AnutasinB de vUis Pont, in Stephen n. See alao Baronlos ad Ann. 766. 



CHAP. T.] POPERY ADVANCfNG— A. D. 60ft— 800. 173 

The popMT temponl and iplritiud power both owing to uiorpen. Bower's History of the Popes. 

the SO long wished-for principality, and thus was the pope of Rome 
finally raised to the station of an earthly sovereign, and took rank 
among the kings of the earth. 

** And now," says Bower, to whose learned labors we have been 
indebted for many of the fiicts mentioned in this chapter, " that we 
have seen the temporal power united in the popes to the spiritual, 
the crown to the mitre, and the sword to the keys, I shall leave 
them for a while, with two short observations. First That as 
their spiritual power so also their temporal power was owing to 
a usurper; the one to Phocas, and the other to Pepin. Second, 
That as they most bitterly inveighed against the patriarchs of Con- 
stantinople as the forerunners of the anti-Christ for assuming the 
title of Universal Bishop, and yet laid hold of the first opportunity 
that ofiTered to assume that very title themselves ; so did they in- 
veigh against the Lombards as the most wicked of men, for usurp- 
ing the dominions of their ^ most religious sons,' the Emperors ; and 
yet they themselves usurped the dominions of their * most religious 
ions' just as soon as they had it in their power."* 

* Bower's Lives of the Popes, vol. iii., p. 381. The edition of Bower to which 
«e refer in the present work, is the original edition, in seven volumes quarto, 
"liriiited for the author," London, 1754. Since the present work has been in pro- 
gress, the author has learned with pleasure that an American edition of Bower's 
great work is in course of publication, in twenty-four numbers, under the editorial 
rapenrision of his learned and gifted friend, the Kev. Dr. Cox, of Brooklyn, which, 
by the economising improvements in modem printing, will be affi)rded in numbers 
complete for six dollars — a sum far less than the cost of a single volume of the 
origutal edition. The History of the Popes was the great work of the author's 
life, and is a stupendous monument of learning, industry, and historical research. 
Unable to controvert or to disprove his facts, which are related upon the most un- 
tjnestionable authority of standard, and generally contemporary historians, the 
papists have striven to blacken the character of Mr. Bower, just as Tertullus, the 
ontor of the Jews, when unable to meet the arguments of the apostle Paul, called 
him ** a pestilent fellow."* The only effect of these attacks, however, has been to 
establish the character of the work as one of unquestionable veracity and author- 
ity. "Die present author cannot but indulge the hope that the enterprise of the 
poblisbers of this cheap edition of Bower (Messrs. Griffith and Simon, of Phila* 
dcdphia) will be rewaraed with a sale commensurate with the sterling merits of 
the work. 

* Act! zxir. 5. 



174 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE CONFIKMATION AND INCREASE OF THE POPE's TEMPORAL POWER. 
TO THE CORONATION OF CHARLEMAGNE, A. D. 800. 

§ 55. — We are henceforth to contemplate the Pope, not simply as 
a professed Christian bishop, but as an earthly prince, exercising a 
temporal sovereignty over a rich and fertile country. In reference 
to the extent of these first fruits of the conquests of jPepin, now pos- 
sessed by the Pope, says Gibbon, " The ample measure of the exar- 
chate might comprise all the provinces of Italy, which had obeyed 
the Emperor and his vicegerent ; but its strict and proper limits 
were included in the territories of Ravenna, Bologna, and Ferrara, 
its inseparable dependency was the Pentapolis, which stretched along 
the Adriatic from Rimini to Ancona, and advanced into the midland 
country, as far as the ridges of the Appenine. The splendid dona- 
tion was granted in supreme and absolute dominion, and the world 
beheld, for the first time, a Christian bishop invested with the 
prerogatives of a temporal prince ; the choice of magistrates, the 
exercise of justice, the imposition of taxes, and the wealth of the 
palace of Ravenna."* 

§ 56. — These limits were subsequently much enlarged by succes- 
sive donations from the celebrated son and successor of Pepin. In 
the year 774, Charlemagne, in compliance with the entreaties of 
pope Adrian, advanced at the head of a numerous army into Italy, 
with the professed desim of protecting the holy See, from the at- 
tacks of Desiderius, at tnat time the king of the Lombards. Upon 
the approach of the French king to Rome, he was received by the 
Pope, as might be expected, with the highest marks of distinction. 
On the morning after his arrival, Adrian, with the whole body of 
his clergy, proceeded to the ancient church of St. Peter's, early m 
the morning, to await the arrival of Charlemagne, and conduct him 
in person, to the tomb of St. Peter. Arrived at the steps of the 
church, the king kneeled down and kissed each step of the sacred 
edifice, as he ascended. At the entry he was received by the Pope, 
in all the gorgeous attire of his pontifical robes, and led by him into 
the church, amidst the songs of the clergy and the people, who im- 
piously applied to this stem warrior that song which was originally 
applied to HIM who is the " Prince of peace," " Blessed is he that 
cometh in the name of the Lord." 

Charlemagne then solemnly confirmed the donation of the exar- 
chate, made by his father renin, to the Pope and his successors, 
ordered a new instrument to be drawn up, which he first si^ed 
himself^ and then ordered to be signed by all the bishops, abbots, 

'* DecHne and Fall, vol. ill., page 284. 



*. n.] VOPEMY ADYANCING-A. I>. 00&-x«00. 175 



oTPtqplft. CfemnMkli«Mikii««rL«iikM^ 



and Other dintingiiinhed men who had accompanied him to Rome ^ 
then kissing it with ^reat respect and devotion, as we are informed 
by Anastasius, ''he Taid it with his own hand on the body of St 
Peter.*** That the king of France, by this new donation, not only 
TOX>mi8ed to deiend the Pope's rights to all the places mentioned in 
Pepin's donation, but also added several other places, is generally 
a^eed by the ancient writers, though there is much diversity of 
opinion, as to what these new territories were. Returning n*om 
Itome to Pa via, the capital of the Lombard kingdom, Charlemagne 
besiesed and reduced that city, and captured and deposed from nis 
kiitf;dom, the last of the race of the Lombard kings, Desiderius, 
and confined the unfortunate prince for the rest of his life to a mon- 
astery. After thus conquering the Lombard kingdom, Charlemagne 
inmiediately took measures to |}ut the Pope in actual possession, 
which he had never yet fuUy enjoyed, of all the places named in the 
donaticm of Pepin. On a second visit of the kinff to Rome, in 781, 
he caused his son Carloman to be crowned and anointed by the 
Pope, king of Lombardy, and his son Lewis king of Aquitaine. 

§ 57. — In 787, Charlemagne again visited Italy for the purpose of 
defeating the jdans of the powerful duke of Benevento, wtio had 
coDspired with some of the Lombard princes to drive the French 
out of Italy. Upon the approach of tne King, the duke proffered 
lubmission and implored lorgiveness. Charlemagne was disposed 
to accept his submission, and cease further hostilities, but pope 
Adrian, concluding no doubt, that if any cities should be taken 
from the duke, St reter would doubtless reap the benefit, dissuaded 
the King from his purpose of forgiveness ; and to gratify his holi- 
sew, he entered the dominions of the duke, captured several of his 
cities, and laid waste the country with jSre and sword. The Pope 
was not disappointed. Charlemagne, before he returned to France, 
added to the dominions of the church, the five cities he had taken 
during this expedition, beside several of the places which had 
foraierly belonged to the Lombards. The Pope, instead of an 
humble minister of Christ, had already become an mtriguing worldly 
politician, and like most other sovereigns of that age, anxious chiefly 
for the enlargement of his dominions, and his own personal aggran- 
disement, and so that these objects mi^ht be accomplished, caring 
but very little about the humanity or tne justice of the means em- 
ployed. 

§ 58. — In the year 800, king Charlemagne having reduced under 
his sway nearly the whole of Europe, paid another visit to Rome, for 
the purpose of vindicating the cause of pope Leo III., who had been 
^aiiea, waylaid, and wounded by Pascal and Campule, two nephews 
^f the late pope Adrian, who were loth to part with that almost 
unbounded power which they had enjoyed during the pontificate of 
their uncle. They had not only offered themselves as his accusers, 

* Anastasiiis, i€ viti$ P<mLy in 



176 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book m. 



The Pope Jodgei aJl, and !â–  Jndfed by none. Chmrienagiie croimed Emperor, A. D. 9ML 

but attacked him in the public streets, and dra^^ed him half dead 
into the church of St. Mark. Upon the arrival ofme king at Rome in 
the month of November, he called together the whole body of the 
clergy and nobility of the city in the church of St. Peter, and after 
seating himself on the same throne with the Pope, informed the 
assembly of his horror at the late cruel attempt upon the life of his 
holiness, that he had come there for the purpose of informing him- 
self of the particulars of this horrid and unprecedented crime, and 
as the conspirators, with the design of diminishing their own guilt, 
had charged the Pope with various crimes, he had called them 
together to judge of the justice or injustice of these accusations. 

Upon the King*s pronouncing these words, says Anastasius, the 
archbishops, bishops, and abbots exclaimed with one voice, ** We 
dare not judge the apostolic See, the head of all churches. By that 
Sec and its vicar^ we are all judged^ and they by none T* The 
Pope, however, declared himself willing to justify himself by a 
solemn oath, and upon his doing so, Charlemagne and the assembly 
declared themselves satisfied ; the Pope was pronounced innocent, 
and upon the two conspirators was pronounced the sentence of 
death, which, at the intercession of Leo, was commuted to that of 
perpetual banishment from Italy. 

§ 59. — A few weeks after this event, viz. : on Christmas day, 800, 
Charlemagne was solemnly crowned and proclaimed Emperor, by 
the Pope, with the title of Carolus I., CiGSAR Augustus. The king 
was assisting at the celebration of mass in St Peter's church, when 
in the midst of the ecclesiastical ceremonies, and while he was yet 
on his knees, pope Leo advanced and placed an imperial crown on 
his head, amiast the shouts of the people, who immediately exclaim- 
ed, ** Long Ufe and victory to Charles Augustus, crowned by the 
HAND OF God ! — long live the great and pious Emperor of the Ro- 
mans."! The Emperor was then conducted by the Pope to a mag- 
nificent throne, presented with the imperial mantle, and saluted 
with the title of Augustus. From this time forward, the nominal 
sovereignty of the Eastern emperor in Rome, which had been 
merely a dead letter from the time of the dispute concerning images, 
in 730, was formally transferred to the new emperor of the Romans, 
although the principal power of administering the government of 
that city, was left by him where it had long been, in the hands of 
the Pope. 

§ 60. — Widely different opinions have existed among historians of 
learning and research, as to the nature of the temporal power exer- 
cised in the city of Rome by the popes, after the coronation of the 
etnperor Charlemagne, whether it was an independent or delegated 
power, and if the latter, in what sense, and how far the popes, in the 

* Anastasius, in vita Leo m. 

f Eginhard in Annal. — ^Efjrinhard, the celebrated biognpher of Charlemagne, 
WM a contemporary and fiivonte of that monarch. 



miP.TT.] POPERY ADVANCING— A. D. 606—800. 177 



The Fope*s tunporal powec; D«nid*s little horn, ud the three plucked op by the looCi. 

exercise of their temporal goremmenty were dependent upon Charle- 
magne and the emperors who succeeded him. Instead of adding 
another to these various opinions, I shall only quote the following 
opinion of the learned Mosheim, ^ That Charlemagne, in effect, 
preserved entire his supreme authority over the city of Rome and 
Its adjacent territory, has been demonstrated by several of the 
learned in the most ample and satisfactory manner, and confirmed 
by the most unexceptionable testimonies. On the other hand, 
we must acknowledge, ingenuously, that the power of the pontiff, 
both in the city of Rome and its annexed territory, was very great, 
and that he seemed to act with a princely authority. But the extent 
and the foundations of that authority are matters hid in the deepest 
obscurity, and have thereby j^ven occasion to endless disputes. 
After a careful examination of all the circumstances that can con- 
tribute toward the solution of this perplexed question, the most 
probable account of the matter seems to be this : that the Roman 
pontiff possessed the city of Rome and its territory as a feudal ten- 
ure, though charged with less marks of dependance than other fiefi 
generally are, on account of the lustre and dignity of a city which 
had been so long the capital of the empire.''* 

§ 60. — In the seventh chapter of Daniel, verses 8, &c., the papal 
power is represented as a ** little horn," or kingdom, coming up 
among the other ten horns or kingdoms into which the Roman empire 
was divided. Before this little horn, coming up after the other ten, 
and " diverse from the first," three of the others are plucked up by 
the roots, which signifies that the papal government should eventu- 
ally triumph over three of the states or governments out of the ten 
into which the ancient Roman empire was divided. Bishop Newton, 
in his learned work on the prophecies, supposes that these were the 
state of Rome, the exarchate of Ravenna, and the kingdom of the 
Lombards. Perhaps it may be doubted whether his assertion is 

Juite consistent with historical accuracy, that " in the year 774, the 
'ope, by the assistance of Charles the Great, became possessed of the 
kingdom of the Lombards."! It is true that Charlemagne, upon his 
conquest of Lombardy, enlarged the donation of Pepin, with some 
of the cities formerly belonging to the Lombards, but he caused his 
own son Carloman, to be crowned king of Lombardy, by the Pope, 
in the year 781, as we have already seen. (See above, page 175.) 
Indeed, while there is no uncertainty as to the/aci, there is much 
uncertainty as to the time when the papal government thus succes- 
sively triumphed over these three horns or governments. Whoever 
will examine a map of the papal states in Italy at the present day, 
will see that the Pope is now possessed of all the territory occupied 
by two of these governments, in the sixth and seventh centuries, 
and at least of a large part of that occupied by the third ; but it is 

^ Moeheim, vol. ii., page 229. 

t Newton's Dissertations on the Prophecies, page 617. 

12 



178 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book m. 

ClrcmnslancM of Um full establtehmeDt of the PapsI State aa Independeot and eoirweigB. 



more difficult to tell the precise time when these territories became 
all united under him as a sovereign and independent monarch. 

§ 61. — The origin and foundation of the sovereign state, called the 
Papal State, which is annexed to the See of Rome, says a late accurate 
writer, ** is one of the most obscure and intricate subjects in the 
history of modem Europe." This writer then proceeds to show in 
a minute and careful sketch of the papal power for more than four 
centuries after Charlemagne, that the popes, during all that time, 
though acknowledged as sovereigns, and exercising the rights of 
80vereifi;nty, and at some periods even claiming a sovereign power 
over all earthly kings and emperors, were yet, in the government 
of their own territories, nominally at least, dependent upon the em- 
perors of the West, till the time of Rudolph of Hapsburg, the ances- 
tor of the present reigning house of Austria. His account of the act 
of the Emperor, by wnich this nominal dependency was given up, is 
as follows : " Rudolph of Hapsburg, being elected emperor after a 
long interremum (A. D. 1273), was entirely engrossea by German 
affairs, and had little time to bestow upon the kingdom of Italy, 
which had ever proved a troublesome appendage oi the German 
crown, and he is said to have been ignorant of the geography of that 
country. Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily and Naples, was then 
the most powerful sovereign of Ital v, and had extended his authority 
by varions means over the North of Italy, where he had assumed Ahe 
title of Imperial Vicar. Rudolph resented this usurpation, and pope 
Nichdaa III., interfering between the two sovereigns, induced 
Charles to give up Tuscany and Bologna, as well as the senatorship 
of Rome, which he had also obtained. 

**At the same time the Pope urged Rudolph to define by a charter 
the dominions of the holy See, and to separate them for ever from 
those dependent on the empire, and he sent to Rudolph copies of the 
donations or charters of the former emperors. Rudolph, by letters 
patent, dated May, 1278, recognized the states of the church, as 
extending from Radicofani to Ceperano, near the Liris, on the firon- 
tiers of Naples, and as including the duchy of Spoleto, the march of 
Ancona, the exarchate of Ravenna, the county of Bertinoro, Bo- 
logna, and some other places. At the same time, Rudolph released 
the people of all those places from their oath of allegiance to the 
empire, giving up all rights over them, which might still remain in 
the imperial crown^ and acknowledging the sovereignty of the same 
to belong to the See of Rome. This charter was confirmed by the 
electors and princes of the empire. Rudolph's letter and charter are 
found in Raynaldus's * Annales' for the year 1278. This charter, 
important as a title, had little effect at the time. Rudolph gave up 
to the Pope a sovereignty, which was more nominal than real."* 

* See a learned article on the ** Papal States," in the valuable Cyclopedia, 
lately puUiahed in London, by the Society for the Difiusion of Useful Knowlec^, of 
which the celebrated Lord Brougham is president 



QUI. tl] popery ADVANCING— a, D. 606—800. 179 

RofMph** cliAiter, •Htbltehliif the independeiiM and deflnlnf th« Ibniti of the Papal State. 

The learned historian of the Italian republics, remarking on the 
same event, adds, ** from that period, 1278, the republics as well as 
the principalities, situated in the whole extent of what is now called 
the states of the church, held of the holy See, and not of the Em- 
peror."* 

Thus have we endeavored to trace the history of the papal 
power, till its full establishment as an independent temporal sove- 
reignty. If, in so doin^, we have related some events belonging to 
an age yet to pass unaer review, we shall readily be excused by 
the reader for placing in a connected view the successive occur- 
rences relating to the same subject 

* Sismondi's Italian Republica, page 96. See also Raynald's Annals ad Ann. 
1S99, and Gieseler, vol. ii., pace 2^6, note 10, where the followinff extract is ffiven 
from the original Latin of ICa£>lph*8 charter, establiahinff the in^pendence of the 
Fqial State, and defining its boundaries. " Ad has pertinet tota terra, que est a 
Ridioofiino usque Ceperanum, Marchia Anconitana, ducatus Spoletanus, term 
fomitiasg Mathildis, civitas Ravenns et Emilia, Bobium, Csesena, Forumpopnliy 
Fonunllvii, Faventia, Imola, Bononia, Ferraria, Comaculum, Adriam, atoue uabel- 
hm, Arminum, Urbinum, Monsfeltri, territorinm Bahiese, Comitatus Brioenorii, 
Eaichatus Ravenns, Pentaoolis, Massa Trabaria com adjacentibos terris et OOH 
nibos aliis ad Romanom Ecclesiam pertinentibus." 



/ 



181 



BOOK IV. 



FOPERT IN ITS 6L0RT.-THE WORLD'S 
MIDNIGHT.— A. D. 800—1073. 



mm THE OOBOHATIOH OF CHARLSMAOHS, â–². D. 800, TO THE BB0IRHDI6 OF TBI 
POHTIFICATB OF FOFE HELBEBRJkHD OS OSEOOST YIL, â–². D. 1073. 



#MMMW»^^M»^^MMfc<»^<MMMVM»# 



CHAPTER I. 



noora or the daskness or this period. — forged decretals.— re* 

VXIBNCE FOR MONKS, SAINTS, AND RELICS. WORSHIP OF THE VIRGIN. 

--rUROATORY. 

§ 1. — ^Thb period upon which we are now to enter, comprising 
the ninth and tenth centuries, with the greater part of the eleventh, 
ii the darkest in the annals of Christianity. It was a long ni^ht 
of almost universal darkness, ignorance, and superstition, with 
scarcely a ray of light to illuminate the gloom. This period has 
heeii appropriately designated by various historians as the ^ dark 
•ges," the ** iron age," the " leaden age," and the ** midnight of 
the world." The darkness was the most intense during the middle 
of this period, that is, during the whole of the tenth century ; yet the 
<lifference between the gloom of that and of the ninth and eleventh 
ee&turies, is no greater than the difference between the darkness of 
the hour of midnight, and that of the hour or two which precedes or 
feBows it During these centuries, it was rare for a layman of 
whatever rank to know how to sim h^ name. Still more extraor- 
^Kiarv was it to find one who had any tincture of learning. Even 
the Clergy were for a long period not very superior as a body to 
the uninstructed laity. An inconceivable cloud of imorance over- 
â– pfead the whole face of the church, hardly broken by a few glim- 
'"Bering lights, who owe almost the whole of their distinction to the 
'^I'roundmg darkness. In almost every council, the ignorance of the 
^lerg^ forms a subiect for reproach, and by one council held in 
^ it is asserted that scarcely a single person was to be found in 
^me itself, who knew the first elements of letters.* 

In the age of Charlemagne, it is related upon the authority of 

* Tinbosclii, Storia della LeteratiuA, Tom. iii., page 198. Halkm, page 400. 



182 fflSTORY OF ROMANISM. [book rr. 

Midnight darknets of thii period. The foif ed Deeretata. 

Mabillon, that not one priest in a thousand in Spain, could address 
a common letter of salutation to another. A few years later, king 
Alfred the Great, king of England, declared that he could not recol- 
lect a single priest South of the Thames, who understood the ordi- 
nary prayers, or could translate Latin into his mother tongue.* 
** Nothing," says Mosheim, ** could be more melancholy and deplor- 
able than the darkness that reigned in the Western world, during 
the tenth century, which, with jespect to learning and philosophy 
at least, may be called the iron age of the Latins." The cornip- 
tions of the clergy, according to the same historian, had reached the 
most enormous height in that dismal period of the church. For the 
most part, they were composed of a most worthless set of men, 
shamefully illiterate and stupid, ignorant more especially in reli- 
gious matters, equally enslaved to sensuality and superstition, and 
capable of the most abominable and flagitious deeds. This dismal 
degeneracy of the sacred order was, according to the most credi- 
ble accounts, principally owing to the pretended chiefs and rulers 
of the universal church, who indulged themselves in the commission 
of the most odious crimes, and abandoned themselves to the lawless 
impulse of the most licentious passions, without reluctance or re- 
morse, who confounded, in shoil, all difference between just and 
unjust, to satisfy their imperious ambition, and whose spiritual em- 
pire was such a diversified scene of iniquity and violence, as never 
was exhibited under any of those temporal tyrants, who have been 
the scourges of mankind.! 

§ 2. — As a proof of the priestly wickedness and knavery wluch 
could invent such an imposture, and the iterance and imbecility 
which could be duped by it, may be mentioned the forgery of the 
celebrated Fabe Decretals, and the Donation of Constantine, which 
appeared about the close of the eighth century, and bv which, 
during the whole of the three centuries of this midnight of the world, 
the arrogant pretensions of the pontiffs were estabushed and main- 
tained. The object of these decretals, as they were called, was to 
persuade the multitude that, in the first ages of the church, the bish- 
ops of Rome were possessed of the same spiritual majesty and 
authority as they now assumed. They consisted of a pretended 
collection of rescripts and decrees of various bishops of Rome, 
from the second to the fifth centuries, and other forged acts, pub- 
lished with great ostentation and parade, in the ninth century, with 
the name prefixed, of Isidore, bishop of Seville, to make the world 
believe they had been collected by that learned prelate, some two 
or three centuries before. 

The most important of these forged documents, by which the 
enormous power and assumption oi the popes, for so many ages 
was justified and sustained, was the pretended donation from the 

* See Hallam's Middle Ages, page 460. 
f See Moeheim, cent z., put 2. 



OAF. l] popery in its glory— world-midnight— 800-1073. 188 

Fret— dad donfttion of Ooiutwitine the Ormt, to pope SylvMior of Rome and Italy. 

emperor Constantine the Great, in the year 324, of the city of Rome 
ana all Italy, with the crown, the mitre, &c., to Sylvester, then 
bishop of Rome. The following extract from this pretended deed 
of donation will be sufficient to show the character of this bungling 
imposture. ** We attribute to the chair of St Peter all the imps* 
BLUL DIGNITY, GLORT, AND POWER. * * Moreover, WO give to 
Sylvester, and to his successors, our palace of Lateran, incontestably 
(me of the finest palaces on earth ; we give him our crown^ our 
mitre^ our diadem^ and all our imperial vestments ; we resign to 
him the imperial dignity. ♦ ♦ ♦ We give as a free gift to 
THE HOLT PONTIFF THE ciTT OF ROME, and all the Westcm cities of 
Italy, as well as the Western cities of the other countries. To make 
room for him, we abdicate our sovereignty over all these provin- 
ces ; and we withdraw from Rome, transferring the seat of our 
empire to Byzantium, since it is not just that a terrestrial em- 
peror SHALL RETAIN ANY POWER WHERE 6oD HAS PLACED THE HEAD 
OF RELIGION." 

§ 3. — This memorable donation was, near the close of the eighth 
century, introduced to the world, says the eloquent Gibbon, ^ bv 
an epistle of pope Adrian I. to the emperor Charlemagne, in which 
he exhorts him to imitate the liberality of the ^at Constantine. 
According to the legend, the first of the Christian emperors was 
healed of the leprosy, and purified in the waters of baptism, by St 
Sylvester, the Roman bishop ; and never was physician more glo- 
riously recompensed. His royal proselyte withdrew from his seat 
and patrimony of St Peter ; declared his resolution of founding a 
new capital in the east ; and resigned to the popes the free andper- 
ppiual sovereignty of Rome, Italy, and the provinces of the West 
This fiction was productive of the most beneficial efiects. The 
Greek princes were convicted of the guilt of usurpation ; and the 
revolt of pope Gre^ry was the claim of his lawful inheritance. 
The popes were delivered from their debt of gratitude : and the 
nominal ^ifts of the Carlovingians were no more than the just and 
irrevocable restitution of a scanty portion of the ecclesiastical state. 
The sovereignty of Rome no longer depended on the choice of a 
fickle people; and the successors of St. Peter and Constantino 
were invested with the purple and prerogatives of the Csesars. So 
deep was the ignorance and credulity of the times, that this most 
absurd of fables was received with equal reverence, in Greece and 
in France, and is still enrolled among the decrees of the canon 
law.* The emperors and the Romans were incapable of discern- 
ing a forgery that subverted their rights and freedom ; and the only 
opposition proceeded from a Sabine monastery, which, in the be- 

S'nning of the twelfth century, disputed the truth and validity of 
e donation of Constantino. In the revival of letters and liberty 

* In the year 1059, it was believed, or at least profsssed to be believed, by Pope 
Leo IX., Cardinal Peter Damia&us, 6ic, 



184 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book vr. 

Th« wortd deeelTed for if es by ttaew foif eriei of th« popot and their totria. 

this fictitious deed was transpierced by the pen of Laurentius Valla, 
an eloquent critic and a Roman patriot His contemporaries of the 
fifteen^ century were astonished at his sacrilegious boldness ; yet 
such is the silent and irresistible progress of reason, that before the 
end of the next age, the fable was rejected by the contempt of his- 
torians ; though by the same fortune which has attended the decre- 
tals and the Sibylline oracles, the edifice has subsisted after the 
foundations have been undermined." 

§ 4. — The fact is most astonishing that upon the strength of 
these documents, acknowledged now by Fleury,* and even by Baro- 
nius, as well as the great body of Roman Catholics, to be forgeries, 
the world should have quietly submitted for centuries of gloom and 
darkness, to the tyrannical usurpations of the haughty and aban- 
doned prelates of Rome. The labric erected upon these forged 
documents " has stood,** in the words of Hallam, *• after the founda- 
tion upon which it rested has crumbled beneath it ; for no one has 
pretended to deny for the last two centuries that the iniposture is 
too palpable for any but the most ignorant ages to credit f 

It cannot be doubted by any one who is not blinded by pre- 
judice, that whoever was the immediate author of these spurious 
documents, they were forged with the knowledge and consent of 
the Roman pontifis, since it is utterly incredible that these pontiffi 
should, for many ages, have constantly appealed, in support of their 
pretended rights and privileges, to acts and records that were only 
the fictions of private persons, and should, with such weak arms, 
have stood out* against monarchs and councils, who were unwilling 
to receive their yoke. " Acts of a private nature,** says Mosheim, 
** would have been useless here, and public deeds were necessary to 
accomplish the views of papal ambition. Such forgeries were then 
esteemed lawfiil, on account of their supposed tendency to promote 
the glory of God, and to advance the prosperity of the church ; and 
therefore it is not surprising that the good pontiffs should feel no 
remorse in imposing upon the world frauds and forgeries, that were 
designed to enrich the patrimony of St. Peter, and to aggrandize 
his successors in the apostolic See."I Nor will the reader be dis- 
posed to regard as uncharitable this opinion, who has perused the 
fretended letter of St. Peter, written in heaven, and sent to king 
^epin on earth, through the hands of the infallible postmaster, pope 
Stephen. (See above, page 171.) 

It is well remarked by Dr. Campbell of these forgeries of 
Constantino's donation and the decretal epistles of early bishops of 
Rome, that " they are such barefaced impostures, and so bunglmgly 
executed, that nothing less than the most profound darkness of those 
ages could account for their success. They are manifestly written 
in the barbarous dialect which obtained in the eighth and ninth 

* See a diasertatiaD of Fienry, prefixed to the sixteenth volame of his Ecdes. 
History. 
I Middle Ages, p. 274. 
i See Moeheim, vd. iL, p. 297, note. 



CHiP.i.] POPERY IN ITS GLOR^—WORLD-MIDNIGHT-^0-1073. 185 



l uii f HM * ▼WMftfon for monta. Th« great cardinal doctrinei of th«fi»pe] Ibrgottea. 

centuries, and exhibit those poor meek and humble teachers, who 
came immediately after the apostles, as blustering, swaggering, and 
dictating to the world in the authoritative tone of a Zachary or a 
Stephen."* 

§ & — Another proof of the ignorance and grovelling superstition 
of this dark period is- found in the^increasing reverence for the 
monastic life, and the extravagant veneration paid to those who 
embraced it In this age even km^s, dukes, and other noblemen, in 
many instances, abandoned their thrones, honors or treasures, and 
shut themselves up in monasteries ; and in other instances, where the 
attractions of wealth and grandeur were too strong to permit this 
sacrifice during Ufe, the victims of superstition, upon the approach 
of death, imagming that the holy frock of a monk would be a pass^ 
port to heaven, caused themselves, upon their death-beds, to be 
arrayed in the monastic habit, vainly hoping in this way to atone 
for the sins of an ungodly life. 

The cardinal and fimdamental doctrines of the gospel seemed 
to be almost entirely forgotten or unknown. The doctrines of 
native depravity, salvation by grace, through faith in the Lord 
Jesus, and holy obedience springing from that faith which works 
by love, constituted no part of the theology of this age. The 
essence of religion was then made to consist in the worship of images 
and saints, in searching for the mouldering bones of reputed holy 
men and women, and bestowing due reverence upon these sacred 
reUcs, and in loading with riches a set of ignorant and lazy monks. 
It was not enough to reverence departed saints, and to confide 
in their intercession and succors ; it was not enough to clothe 
them with an imaginary power of healing diseases, working mira- 
cles, and delivering from all sorts of calamities and dangers ; their 
bones, their clothes, the apparel and furniture they had possessed 
during their lives, the very ground which they had touched, or in 
which their putrified carcasses were laid, were treated with a stu- 

id veneration, and supposed to retain the marvellous virtue of 

aling all disorders both of body and mind, and of defending such 
as possessed them against all the assaults and devices of Satan. 
The consequence of this wretched notion was, that every one was 
eager to provide himself with these salutary remedies, for which 
purpose great numbers undertook fatiguing and perilous voyages, 
and subjected themselves to all sorts of hardships ; while others 
made use of this delusion to accumulate their riches, and to impose 
upon the miserable multitude by the most impious and shocking 
inventions. 

§ 6. — ^As the demand for relics was prodigious and universal, 
the clergy employed all their dexterity to satisfy these demands, 
and were far from being nice in the methods they used for that 
end. The bodies of the saints were sought by fasting and prayer, 
instituted by the priest in order to obtain a divine answer, and an( 

* Campbell's Leot oo Becks. Hist, p. 369. 



ne 



186 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book vr. 



puskm for holy taiemmm. Spariom bones. MaltipHwittoa of 



infallible direction, and this pretended direction never failed to ao* 
complish their desires ; the holy carcass was always fouiid, and that 
always in consequence, as they impiously gave out, of the sugges- 
tion and inspiration of God himselt. Each discovery of this emA 
was attended with excessive demonstrations of joy, and animated 
the zeal of these devout seekers to enrich the church still more and 
more with this new kind of treasure. Many travelled with this 
view into the eastern provinces, and frequented the places which 
Christ and his disciples had honored with their presence, that with 
the bones and other sacred remains of the first heralds of the gos- 
pel, they might comfort dejected minds, calm trembling consciences, 
save sinking states, and defend their inhabitants from all sorts of 
calamities. Nor did these pious travellers return home empty; 
the craft, dexteritv, and knavery of the Greeks found a rich prey 
in the stupid credulity of the Latin relic hunters, and made a pro- 
fitable commerce of this new devotion. The latter paid considera- 
ble sums for legs and arms, skulls and jaw-bones, several of which 
were pagan, and some not human, and other things that were sup- 
posed to have belonged to the primitive worthies of the Christian 
church ; and thus the Latin churches came to the possession of 
those celebrated relics of St Mark, St. James, St Bartholomew, 
Cyprian, Pantaleon, and others, which they show at this day with 
so much ostentation. *' The ardor with which relics were sought 
in the tenth century," observes Mosheim, ''sui*passes almost all 
credibility ; it had seized all ranks and orders among the people, 
and was grown into a sort of fanaticism and frenzy ; and, if the 
monks are to be believed, the Supreme Being interposed, in aa 
especial and extraordinarv manner, to discover to doating old wives 
and bare-headed friars the places where the bones or carcasses of 
the saints lay dispersed or interred." * 

§ 7. — In connection with this insane passion for relics, it may be 
remarked that these dark ages were equally distinguished by the 
multiplication of nei^ saints and the invention of the most absurd 
legends of the wonders performed by them during their lives. In the 
ninth century, the idolatrous custom became very general of ad- 
dressing prayers almost exclusively to the saints, leaving them to pre- 
sent the petitions of the suppliant to Grod, nor did any dare to enter- 
tain the smallest hopes of nnding the Deity propitious, before they 
bad assured themselves of the protection and intercession of some 
one or other of the saintly order. Hence it was that every church, 
and indeed every private Christian, had their particular patron 
among the saints, from an apprehension that their spiritual interests 
would be but indifferently managed bv those who were already 
employed about the souls of others ; for they judged, in this re- 
spect, of the saints as they did of mortals, whose capacity is too 
hmitc^d to comprehend a vast variety of objects. This notion ren- 
dered it necessary to multiply prodigiously the number of the saints^ 

* Moiheim, vd. IL, p. 40^ 



OAF. L] POPERY IN ITS GLORY— WORLDuMIDNIGHT— 800-1074. 187 



lives of wiiiti. Nceanlty of cheekinf the incrMie of ninli, 

and to create daily new patrons for the deluded people ; and this 
was done with the utmost zeal. The priests and monks set their 
mvention at work, and peopled at discretion the invisible world 
with imaginary protectors. They dispelled the thick darkness 
which covered the pretended spiritual exploits of many holy men; 
and they invented ooth names and histories of saints that never 
existed, that they mi^ht not be at a loss to furnish the credulous 
and wretched mmtitude with objects proper to perpetuate their su- 
perstition and to nourish their confidence. Many chose their own 
guides, and committed their spiritual interests either to phantoms of 
their own creation, or to distracted fanatics, whom they esteemed 
as saints, for no other reason than their having lived like madmen. 

§ 8. — ^In consequence of this prodigious mcrease of saints, it 
was thought necessary to write the lives of these celestial patrons, 
in order to procure for them the veneration and confidence of a de- 
luded multitude ; and here lying wonders were invented, and all 
the resources of forgery and fable exhausted, to celebrate exploits 
which had never been performed, and to perpetuate the memory 
of holy persons who had never existed. We have yet extant a 
prodigious quantity of these trifling legends, the greatest part of 
which were undoubtedly forged after tne time of Charlemagne by 
the monastic writers, who had both the inclination and leisure to 
edify the church by these pious fi-auds. The same impostors who 
peopled the celestial regions with fictitious saints, employed also 
their fruitfiil inventions in embellishing with false miracles, and 
various other impertinent fongeries, the history of those who had 
been really martyrs or confessors in the cause of Christ. The 
churches that were dedicated to the saints were perpetually crowd- 
ed with supplicants, who flocked to them with rich presents, in 
order to obtain succor under the afflictions they sufiTcred, or deliver- 
ance from the dangers which they had reason to apprehend. And 
it was esteemed also a high honor to be the more immediate 
ministers of these tutelary mediators, who, as it is likewise proper 
to observe, were esteemed and frequented in proportion to their an- 
tiquity, and to the number and importance of the pretended mira- 
cles that had rendered their lives illustrious. This latter circum- 
stance oflfered a strong temptation to such as were employed by 
the various churches in writing the lives of their tutelar saints, to 
supply by invention the defects of truth, and to embellish their le- 
gends with fictitious prodigies, in order to swell the fame of their 
respective patrons. 

f 9. — The ecclesiastical councils found it necessary at length to 
set limits to the licentious superstition of the deluded multitude, who, 
with a view to have still more friends at court, for such were their 
gross notions of things, were daily adding new saints to the list of 
ueir celestial mediators. They accordingly declared, by a solemn 
decree, that no departed Christian should be consiaered as a 
member of the samtly order before the bishop in a provincial 
council, and in presence of the people, had pronounced him 



188 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book it. 

GuoBlsatkm or nlot-making a prerogatlTe of the Pope. The feaat of All Balnte eitaliHehe4 In 83ib 

^ - -■ - ■ ■ - — I IMWIJ I ■ -■— ■- -^UJ— ■, 

worthy of that distinguished honor.* This remedy, feeble and 
illusory as it was, contributed in some measure to restrain the 
fanatical temerity of the saint-makers ; but, in its consequences, 
it was the occasion of a new accession of power to the 
Roman pontiff. Even so early as the ninth century many were of 
opinion, that it was proper and expedient, though not absolutely ne- 
cessary, that the decisions of bisnops and councils should be con- 
firmed by the consent and authority of the Roman pontiff) whom 
they considered as the supreme and universal bishop ; and ** this 
will not appear surprising," says Mosheim, ** to any who reflect 
upon the enormous strides which the bishops of Rome made toward 
unbounded dominion in this barbarous and superstitious age, whose 
corruption and darkness were peculiarly favorable to their am- 
bitious pretensions." In the year 993, the Pope assumed and ex- 
ercised ahne^ for the first time, the right of creating one of these 
tutelary deities in the person of a Saint Udalric, who, with all the 
formalities of a solemn canonization, was enrolled in the number 
of the saints by pope John XV., and thus became entitled to the 
worship and veneration of the superstitious multitude. In the 
twelfth century, pope Alexander III. placed canonization or saivir 
making in the number of the more important acts of authority 
which the sovereign pontiff by his peculiar prerogative, was alone 
entitled to exercise. 

§ 10. — The consequence of the increase of saints was, of course, 
a vast increase oi festivals or saints* days^ as well as of the cere- 
monies of worship. The carcasses of the saints transported firom 
foreign countries, or discovered at home by the industry and dili- 
gence of pious or designing priests, not only obliged the rulers of 
the church to augment the number of festivals or holidays already 
established, but also to diversify the ceremonies in such a manner, 
that each might have his peculiar worship. And as the authority 
and credit of the clergy depended much upon the high notion which 
was generally entertained of the virtue and merit of the saints they 
had canonized, and presented to the multitude as objects of religi- 
ous veneration, it was necessary to amuse and surprise the people 
by a variety of pompous and «triking ceremonies, by images and 
such like inventions, in order to keep up and nourish their stupid 
admiration for the saintly tribe. Hence the splendor and ma^mfi- 
cence that were lavished upon the churches in this century, and the 
prodigious number of costly pictures and images with which they 
were adorned ; hence the stately altars, which were enriched with 
the noblest inventions of paintmg and sculpture, and illuminated 
with innumerable tapers at noon day ; hence the multitude of pro- 
cessions, the gorgeous and splendid garments of the priests, and 
the masses that were celebrated in honor of the saints. In the year 
835, the feast of All Saints was established by pope Gregory IV., 

* MabilloD, Act Sanctor. Ord. Benedict!, Saec. v., Prefl p. 44. 



CBAP.i.] POPERY IN rrS GLORY-^WORLD-MIDNIGHT— 800-1078. 189 

Wonliip of thm qvMO of hMTcs. The Eomrf, Lying logwii, 

according to M abillon, though other authors ascribe the establish- 
ment of wis festival to pope Boniface IV. 

$ 1 1.*— -Amon^ the multitude of saints, it is not to be supposed that 
"the queen of heaven" was neglected. Her idolatrous worship, 
amidst the gloom of the dark ages, received, in the tenth and 
eleventh centuries, new accessions of solemnity and superstition. 
The rosary of the Virgin was probably invented in the tenth cen- 
tury. This is a string of beads consisting of one hundred and fifty, 
which make so many Aves^ or hail Marys^ every ten beads being 
divided by one something larger, which signifies a Pater, or Lord's 
prayer. Before repeating the rosary, it is necessary for the person 
to take it and cross himself, and then to repeat the creed, after 
which he repeats a prayer to the Virgin for every small bead, and 
a prayer to God for every large one. Thus it is seen that ten 
prayers are ofiered to the V irgin for every one offered to God ; and 
sucn continues to be the custom, as we learn fi*om ^ the Garden of 
the Soul," and other popish books of devotion, down to the present 
time.* In the chaplets, more commonly used, there are only fifty 
Aoe Mariasj and five Pater nosters. 

Referring to the worship of the Vir^n in the dark ages, says the 
calm and philosophic Hallam, ** It is difficult to conceive the stupid 
absurdity and the disgusting profaneness of those stories which 
were invented by the monks to do her honor." He then gives, 
upon the authority of Le Grand D'Aussy, the following few speci- 
mens, to confirm his assertions, ** lest they should appear to the 
reader harsh and extravagant." The titles are my own. 

(1.) The robber saved from hanging.—^ There was a man whose 
occupation was highway robbery ; but, whenever he set out on any 
such expedition, he was careful to address a prayer to the Virgin. 
Taken at last, he was sentenced to be hanged. While the cord was 
round his neck, he made his usual prayer, nor was it ineflfectual. 
The Virgin supported his feet " with her white hands," and thus 
kept him alive two days, to the no small surprise of the executioner, 
who attempted to complete his work with strokes of a sword. But 
the same invisible hand turned aside the weapon, and the execu- 
tioner was compelled to release his victim, acbiowledging the 
miracle. The thief retired into a monastery, which is always the 
termination of these deliverances." 

(2.) The wicked monk admitted to heaven. — *^ At the monastery of 
St Peter, near Cologne, lived a monk perfectly dissolute and irreli- 
gious, but very devout toward the apostle. Unluckily, he died 
suddenly without confession. The fiends came as usual to seize his 
aouL St Peter, vexed at losing so faithfiil a votary, besought God 
to admit the monk into paradise. His prayer was refused, and 

* See *^ the Roeaij of the blessed Virgrin" in ** the Craiden of the Soul,'* pa^je 
396. The edition of this work, to which I shall again have occasion to refer, is 
that pabUahed at New York, 1844, *« with the approbation of the Right Rev. Dr. 
HagiJtt." 



190 mSTORY QP RQlfANISM. [looc it. 

Tte Tiffin*! fhvor to her wonhippm u4 tkkniB. Wmn of PufMaqr. 

though the whole body of saints, apostles, angels, and martyn 
joined at his request to make interest, it was of no avail. In this 
extremity he had recourse to the mother of Grod. * Fair lady,' said 
he, * my monk is lost if you do not interfere for him ; but what is 
impossible for us, will be but sport to you, if you please to assist us. 
Your Son, if you but speak a word, must vield, since it is in your 
power to command him.' The queen mother assented, and, follow- 
ed by all the virgins, moved toward her Son. He who had him* 
self given the precept, 'Honor thy father and thy mother,' no 
sooner saw his own parent approach, than he rose to receive her* 
and, taking her by the hand, mquired her wishes. The rest may 
be easily conjectured. Compare the gross stupidity, or rather tfaie 
atrocious impiety of this tale, with the pure theism of the Arabian 
Nights, and judge whether the Deity was better worshipped at Co- 
logne or at Bagdad." 

(3.) The licentious nuUf 4^. — ** It is unnecessary to multiply in* 
stances of this kind. In one tale the Virmi takes the shape of a 
nun, who had eloped from the convent, and performs her duties ten 
years, till, tired of a libertine life, she returns unsuspected. This 
was in consideration of her having never omitted to say an Ave as 
she passed the Vir^'s image. In another, a gentleman, in love 
with a handsome widow, consents, at the instigation of a sorcerer* 
to renounce God and the saints, but cannot be persuaded to give up 
the Virgin, well knowing that if he kept her his friend, he should 
obtain pardon through her means. Accordingly, she inspired his 
mistress with so much passion, that he ^married her within a few 
days." 

^ These tales," adds the historian, ** it may be said, were the pro* 
duction of ignorant men, and circulated among the populace. Cer- 
tainly they would have excited contempt and indignation in the 
more enlightened clergy. But I am concerned wiUi the general 
character of religious notions among the people : and for this it is 
better to take such popular compositions, adapted to what the laity 
already believed, than the writings of comparatively learned and 
reflecting men. However, stories of the same cast are frequent in 
the monkish historians. Matthew Paris, one of the most respectac 
ble of that class, and no friend to the covetousness or relaxed lives 
of the priesthood, tells of a knight who was on the point of being 
damned for frequenting tournaments, but saved by a donation he 
had formerly made to the Virgin, p. 290."* 

$ 12. — In this dark age, also, the fears of purgatory ^ of that fire 
that was to destroy the remaining impurities of departed souls, 
were also carried to the greatest height, and exceeded by far the 
terrifying apprehensions oi infernal torments ; for the deluded priestp 
ridden multitude hoped to avoid the latter easily, by dying enriched 
with the prayers of the clergy, or covered with the merits and 
mediation of the saints ; while from the pains of purgatory they 

« Hallun's Ifiddls Ages, pages 406, 466. 



CHAP.!.] POPERY IN ITS GLORY— WORLD-MIDNIGHT— 800-1078. 191 



Podirml of AU-floQlc Oro« fiedon ftom which il origloatod. 

knew there was no exemption. The clergy, therefore, finding these 
superstitious terrors admirably adapted to increase their authority^ 
and promote their interest, used every method to augment them, 
and by the most pathetic discourses, accompanied with monstrous 
fables and fictitious miracles, they labored to establish the doctrine 
of purgatoiTy and also to make it appear that they had a mighty in- 
fluence in that formidable region. 

In the year 093, the famous annual festival of all souls was estab- 
lished, rrevious to this time, it had been customary on certain 
days, in many places, to put up prayers for the souls that were con- 
fined in purgatory ; but these prayers were madf by each religious 
society, only for its own members, firiends, and patrons. The occa- 
sion of the establishment of this festival was as follows : A certain 
Sicilian monk made known to Odilo, abbot of Clugni, that when 
walking near Mount Etna, in Sicilv, he had seen the flames 
vomited forth through the open door of hell, in which the reprobates 
were suflfering torment for tneir sins, and that he heard the devils 
wailing most hideously, ^plangentium quod anim® damnatorum 
eriperentur de manibus eorum, per orationes Cluniacensium oran- 
tium indefesse pro defimctorum requie," that is, ** the devils 
bowled, because the wailing souls of the condemned were snatched 
from their grasp, by the prayers of the monks of Clugny, praying 
without cessation for the repose of the dead." In consequence of this 
monstrous imposition, as we team from Mabillon, a Romish author, 
this festival was established by Odilo,* and though at the first, only 
observed by the congregation of Clugni, was afterward, by order of 
the Pope, enjoined upon all the Latin churches. The fact is worthy 
of notice, mentioned by Mosheim (ii., 417), that in a treatise upon 
festivals, by one of the later popes, Benedict XVL, entitled •* De 
festis Jesu Christi, Marise et Sanctorum," the cunning author was 
** artful enough to observe a profound silence with respect to the 
superstitious and dbhonorable origin of this anniversary festival. 
This," he adds, ^ is not the only mark of prudence and cunning to be 
found in the works of that famous pontiff." 

^ See Mabillon, Acta SS. Ord. Bened. Sec. vi., part i., pa^ 684, where the 
reader will find the Life of Odilo, with the decree he iitaed lor the institation of 
this 



192 



CHAPTER n. 

PROOFS OP THE DAKKNEBB OF THIS PERIOD . CONTINUED.^-OKIGIN AND 

FINAL EBTABLI8HMENT OP TRANBUBSTANTIATION. ^PERSECUTION OF 

BERENGER, ITS FAMOUS OPPOSER. ^POPISH MIRACLES IN ITS PROOF. 

^ 13. — Another evidence of the gross darkness of this midnight 
of the world, is seen in the invention and open advocacy of that 
absurd dogma, which more than any other doctrine of Popery, is an 
insult to common sense, transubstantiation. This, in the language 
of the Romish authors, *' consists in the transmutation of the bread 
and wine in the communion, into the body and blood, and by con- 
nexion and concomitance, into the soul and divinity of our Lord. 
The whole substance of the sacramental elements is, according to 
this chimera, changed into the true, real, numerical, and integral 
Emmanuel, God and man, who was bom of Mary, existed in the 
world, suffered on the cross, and remains immortal and glorious in 
heaven.* The host, therefore, under the form of bread, contains 
the Mediator's total and identical body, soul, and Deity. Nothing 
of the substance of bread and wine remains after consecration. All, 
except the accidents, is transformed into the Messiah, in his god- 
head, with all its perfections, and in his manhood with all its com- 
ponent parts, soul, body, blood, bones, flesh, nerves, muscles, veins 
and sinews.f Our Lord, according to the same absurdity, is not 
only whole in the whole, but also whole in every part The whole 
God and man is comprehended in every crumb of the bread, and 
in every drop of the wine. He is entire in the bread, and entire in 
the wine, and in every particle of each element. He is entire with- 
out division, in countless hosts, or numberless altars. He is entire 
in heaven, and at the same time, entire on the earth. The whole is 
equal to a part, and a part equal to the whole.;]; The same sub- 
stance may, at the same time, be in many places, and many sub- 
stances in the same place.§ This sacrament, in consequence of 

* Credimns panem converti in earn caroem, qus in cracejpependit (Lairfranc^ 
943.) Sint qaatuor ilia, caro, sanguis, anima, et Divinitas Christi. {Labbey zz., 
619.) Domini corpus quod natum ex virgine in coelis sedetad dextram Patri8,hoc 
Sacramento continent Divinitatem et totam humanam naturam complectitur. {Cat. 
Trid., 122, 125.) 

i Continetur totum corpus Christi, scilicet, ossa, nervi et alia. (Aquin, iii. 2, 76, 
c. 1.) Comprehendens camem, ossa, nervos, &c. (DenSj 5, 276.) 

1 Non solus sub toto, sed totus sub qualibet parte. (Canisius, 4, 468. Bin, 9, 
880. Crabb, 2, 946.) 

Ubi pars est corporis, est totum. (Criberty 3, 331.) Christus totus et integer 
â– nb qualibet particula divisionis perseverat. (CanisiuSy 4, 818.) 

Totus et mteger Christus sub pajiis specie et sub quavis ipsius speciei parte, 
item, sub vini specie et sub ejus partibus, existit. (Laob. 20, 32.) 

{ Idem corpus sit simul in pluribus locis. (Fabery 1, 128. Padoy 1, 630.) Poe- 
sunt esse duo corpora quanta et plura in eodem spatio. {Faber, 1, 136.) Corpus 
noQ ezpellat pneezistens corpus. (Faber, 1, 137.) 



. iL] POPERY IN ITS GLORY— WORLD-MIDNIGHT— 800-1078. m 



Earttaft trace or tkli ab«wi 



these manifold contradictions, is, says Ragusa, * a display of Al- 
mighw power f while Faber calls transubstantiation * the greatest 
miracle of omnipotence.' "* ^ A person," says the learned E^dgar, 
in his Variations of Popery, ** feels humbled in haying to oppose 
such inconsistency, and scarcely knows whether to weep over the 
imbecility of his own species, or to vent his bursting indignation 
sgiinst the impostors, wno, lost to a]l sense of shame, obtruded this 
mass of contradictions on mdn. History, in all its ample fdios, 
disfdays, in the deceiving and the deceived, no equal instance of 
assurance and credulity.*^ 

§ 14« — ^The first faint txIbjiM which the page of ecclesiastical his* 

Imry unfolds of the doctrinS^ tnmsmutation of the elements, and 

probably the hint upon which in the following century, Paschasius 

ooilt his preposterous theory, was the language of the council of 

Constantinople, in 754, which decided against the worship of images. 

This council, reckoned by the Greeks, to be the seventh general 

coonciU ** in opposing the worship of images,'' says the learned arch- 

Usbop TiUotson, ''did arrae thus: 'That our Lord having left 

no other image of Idmself but the sacrament, in which the sub* 

stance of bread, &'c, is the image of his body, we ought to make no 

other image of our Lord.* But the second council of' Nice, in 787, 

ieing reeoteed to support the itmige-worship^ did, on the contrary, 

^laie that the sacrament, after consecration, is not the image and 

ntittfpe of Christ's body and blood, but is properly ^M body and 

iLooD. Cardinal Bellarmin^ tells the same,** adds Tillotson, ^ but 

evidently with a quibble, • None of the ancients,' saith he, * who 

wrote of heresies, hath put this " error " (of the corporal presence), 

m his catalogue, nor did any of them dispute about this ** error ^ for 

the first six hundred years.'^ True," replies the archbishop, to this 

singular argument, ** True, for as this doctrine of transubstantiation 

Was 710^ in being during the first six hundred years and more^ as I 

have shown, there could be no dispute against it.''^ 

S 15. — *' The state of the Latin communion at the time," says Ed- 
gar, ^ was perhaps the chief reason of the origin, progress, and final 
establishment of transubstantiation. Philosophy seemed to have 
taken its departure from Christendom, and to have left mankind to 
grovel in a night of ignorance, unenlightened with a single ray of 
learning. Cimmerian clouds overspread the literary horizon, and 
quenched the sun of science. Immorality kept pace with imorance, 
wid extended itself to the priesthood and to tne people. The flood- 
gates of moral pollution seemed to have set wide open, and inunda- 
tions of all impurity poured on the Christian world through the 
Roman hierarchy. The enormity of the clergy was faithfully 

. * Hoc flacramentnm continet miraculuin maxhnam, quod pertinet ad omnipoten- 
^^^QL (Fa/»er, 1, 126.) Divina omnipotentia oetenditur. {Ragus in CaninuM^At 

t See Edgar's Variations, pace 347. 

iBellarmuie De Encharistia, lib. i. 
TiUotsoo on Tnuuabttantiatioo, Ser. xzvL, psgs 18i. 

18 



194 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [bogcpl 

PaKhMiiM advoeatM TrinwibtnnUattop. KalMnm KUnnii opyoMi tL 

copied by the laity. Both sunk into equal degeneracy, and the 
popedom appeared one vast, deep, frightful, overflowing ocean of 
corruption, horror, and contamination. Ignorance and unmorality 
are the parents of error and superstition. The mind void of inform 
mation, and the heart destitute of sanctity, are prepared to embrace 
any fabrication or absurdity. Such was the mingled mass of dark- 
ness, depravity, and superstition, which produced the portentous 
monster of transubstantiation. Paschasius Radbert, in the ninth 
century, seems to have been the father of the deformity, which he 
hatched in his melancholy cell." {Edgar^ 369.) 

It was in the early part of the ninth century, that this Paschasius, 
who was a Benedictine monk, and afterward abbot of Corbie, in 
France, began to advocate the doctrine of a real change in the 
elements. In 831, he published a treatise ** Concerning the Body 
and Blopd of Christ,'' which he presented fifteen years after, care- 
fully revised and augmented, to Charles the Bald, king of France. 
The doctrine advanced by Paschasius may be expressed by the two 
following propositions : rHrst^ That after the consecration of the 
bread and wine in the Lord^s supper^ nothing remained of these sym^ 
bok but the outwand figure^ under which the body and blood of Christ 
were locally present. Secondly^ That the body and blood of Christy 
thus present in the eucharist^ was the same body that was bom of the 
Virgin^ that suffered on the cross^ and was raised from the dead. 
This new doctrine, especially the second proposition, excited the 
astonishment of many. Accordingly,^it was opposed by Rabanus, 
Heribald, and others, though not in the same manner, nor upon the 
same principles. Charles the Bald, upon this occasion, ordered the 
famous Bertram and Johannes Scotus, of Ireland, to draw up a 
clear and rational explication of that doctrine which Paschasius had 
so eeregiously corrupted. In this controversy the parties were as 
much divided amone themselves, as they were at variance with 
their adversaries. The opinions of Bertram are very confused, 
although he maintained that bread and wine, as symbols and signs, 
represented the body and blood of Christ. Scotus, however, main- 
tained uniformly that the bread and wine were the signs and symbols 
of the absent body and blood of Christ. All the oiner theologians 
seemed to have no fixed opinions on these points. One thing is 
certain, however, that none of them were properly inducted into the 
then unknown doctrine of transubstantiation, as the worship of the 
elements was not mentioned, much less contended for, by any of the 
disputants. It was an extravagance of superstition too gross for 
even the ninth century^ though it is openly and unblushingly advo- 
cated and practised by popiim priests in the nineteenth. 

§ 16. — The language of^ Rabanus Maurus, archbishop of Mentz, 
the most famous opposer of this newly invented dogma, written in 
reply to Paschasius, in 847, is so decisive a proof that in that age 
this absurd dogma was regarded as a novelty, that it is worthy of 
especial notice. " Some persons," says he, •* of late, not entertaining 
a sound opinion respecting the sacrament of the body and blood of 



^ 



'• B.] POPBRY IN ITS GLORY— WORLD^lODNIGHT-SOO-Km. igft 



Pop* Lao op p otM itt4 



our Lord, hatb aotuallt ventueed to declare that this 10 thb 

IDIXTICAL BODY AMD BLOOD OF OUE LoED JesUB ChEIBT ; THE IDEIfTl* 
GAL BODT, to wit, WHICH WAB BOEN OF THE VlEOIN MaEY, IN WHICH 
ChEIHT 8UPFBEED ON THE CROSS, AND IN WHICH HE AROSE FROM THE 
WMAJK ThUI error WE HAVE OFFOSED WITH ALL OUR MIGHT."* The 

tpeBtioii of ^Siercarianism (from stercuSf dung), arose immediately 
ootof these disputes. Paschasius maintained '* that bread and wine 
in the sacrament are not under the same laws with our other food, 
M they pass into our flesh and substance without any evacuation.'^ 
Bertram aflirmed that ** the bread and wine are under the same 
kw8 with all other food." Some supposed that the bread and wine 
were annihilated, or that they have a perpetual being, or else are 
ehanged into flesh and blood, and not into humors or excrements to 
be Toided*t Such were the foolish questions and childish absurdi* 
ties which occupied the jpens of the gravest divines of this doomy 
ate^ and which the professed immutability of the ** holy Catholic 
onrch'' prevents them from renouncing even in the present day* 
amidit the light and intelligence of a brignter and happier age. 

f 17d — ^It was long, even in this dark period, before so monstrous 
Uk abrardi^ as transubstantiation was generally received. In the 
]mr 1M59 JBerenger, of Tours, in France, and afterward archdeacon 
of Anffiers, one 0? the most learned and exemplary men of his time, 
foUicly maintained the doctrine of Johannes Scotus, opposed 
warmly the monstrous opinions of Paschasius Radbert, which were 
adapted to captivate a superstitious multitude by exciting their 
astonishment, and persevered with a noble obstinacy, in teaching 
that the bread and wine were not changed into the body and blood 
of Christ in the eucharist, but preserved their natural and essential 
quaUties, and were no more ihsji figures and external symbols of 
ue body and blood of the divine Saviour. This wise and rational 
doctrine was no sooner published, than it was opposed by certain 
doctors in France and Germany ; but the Roman pontifi*, Leo IX., 
attacked it with peculiar vehemence and fury, in the year 1050, and 
in two councils, the one assembled at Rome, and the other at Ver- 
celli, had the doctrine of Berenger. solemnly condemned, and the 
book of Scotus, from which it was drawn, committed to the flames. 
This example was followed by the council of Paris, whicl)^ was 
summoned the very same year, by king Henry I., and in which 
Berenger and his numerous adherents, were menaced with all sorts 
of evils, both spiritual and temporal. These threats were executed, 
in part, against Berenger, whom Henry deprived of all his revenues, 
but neither threatenin^s, nor fines, nor synodical decrees, could 
shake the firmness of his mind, or engage Urn to renounce the doc- 
trine he had embraced. 

In the year 1054, two difierent councils assembled at Tours, to 
examine the doctrine held by Berenger, at one of which the famous 

^ Raton. Manr. Epist ad. Heribald, c. 33. 

t See Dupin's Ecdeaiastica] History, cent ix., chap. 7. 



IM mSTORY OP ROMANISM. [book w 

Tentted «t Clw monk Hlldebnuid and pope Nlehola>, Berengor la oompelled to reaoiine* hto iotMam, 

Hiidebrand, who was afterward pontiff, under the title of Gregory 
VIL, appeared in the character of legate, and opposed the new 
doctrine of Berenger with the utmost vehemence. Berenger was 
also present at this assembly, and overpowered with threats, rather 
than convinced by reason and argument, he not only abandoned his 
opinions, but, if we may believe his adversaries, towhofee testimony 
we are confined in this matter, abjured them solemnly, and in con- 
sequence of this humbling step, made his peace with the church. 
The abjuration of Berenger, who had not firmness and faith enough 
to face death in defence of the truth, was not sincere, for as soon as 
the danger was past, he taught anew, though with greater circum- 
spection, the same doctrine that he had just professed to renounce. 

§ 18. — Upon the news of Berenger's defection reaching the ears 
of pope Nicholas II., the exasperated pontiff summoned him to 
Rome, A.D. 1059, and terrified him in such a manner in the council 
held there the following year, that he declared his readiness to 
embrace and adhere to the doctrines which that venerable assembly 
should think proper to impose upon h'.s faith. Humbert was accor- 
dingly appointed unanimously by Nicholas and the council, to draw 
up a confession of faith for Berenger, who signed it publicly, and 
confirmed his adherence to it by a solemn oath. In this confes- 
sion, there was, among other tenets equally absurd, the following 
declaration, that ** the bread and wine, after consecration, were not 
only a sacramenty but also the real body and blood of Jesus Christ, 
and that this body and blood were handled by the priests^ and bruised 
by the teeth of the faithful, * fidelium dentibus attriti,' and not in a 
sacramental sense, but in reality and tmth, as other sensible objects 
are." This doctrine was so monstrously nonsensical, and was such 
an impudent insult upon the very first principles of reason, that it 
could have nothing alluring to a man of Berengcr's acute and philo- 
sophical turn, nor could it possibly become the object of his serious 
belief, as appeared soon alter this odious act of dissimulation ; for 
no sooner was he returned into France, than taking refuge in the 
countenance and protection of his ancient patrons, he expressed the 
utmost detestation and abhorrence of the doctrines he had been 
obliged to profess at Rome, abjured them solemnly, both in his dis- 
cour^ and in his writings, and returned zealously to the profession 
and defence of his former, which had always been his real opinion. 

In the year 1078, under the popedom of Gregory VIL, in a coun- 
cil held at Rome, Berenger was again called on to draw up a new 
confession of faith, and to renounce that which had been composed 
by Humbert, though it had been solemnly approved and confirmed 
by Nicholas IL, and a Roman council. In consequence of the 
threats and compulsion of his enemies, Berenger confirmed by an 
oath, ^ that the bread laid upon the altar, became, after consecration^ 
the true body of Christ, which was bom of the Virgin, suffered an 
the &OSS, and now sits on the right hand of the Father ; and that the 
wine placed on the altar became, after consecration^ the true blood 



CHAF.n.] POPERY IN rrS GLORY— WORLD-MIDNIGHT— 800-1073. 197 



ofBcreofer. Fourth ooonett of Laltnn. The poiooood hon. 

which fiowed from the side of Christ.^* Berenger had no sooner gol 
oat of the hands of his enemies, than he maintained his true senti* 
ments, wrote a book in their defence, retreated to the isle of St 
Cosine, near Tours, and bitteriy repented of his dissimulation and 
want of firmness ; until death, in 1088, put an end to his persecutions 
and hb life.f 

§ 19. — Yet notwithstanding the death of the able but too timid 
opposer of this monstrous doctrine, it was not till the year 1215, in 
tbe fourth council of Lateran, that this most characteristic and ap- 
propriate child of the dark ages was duly decreed to be a doctrine 
of the church. Pope Innocent III. having heard with pleasure the 
word iransubstantiiUion, which began to be applied to this subject 
for the first time, about the year 1100, inserted the word in the de- 
cree which he had prepared for the action of the council, and from 
that time the doctrine has always been thus designated. '^ It is 
' certain," says Dupin, ^ that these canons were not made by the 
council, but by Innocent III., who presented them to the council 
ready drawn up, and ordered them to be read ; and the prelates 
did not enter into any debate upon them, but that their silence was 
taken for an approbation.'' Tte decree on transubstantiation is as 

^ The absurdity of this monstrous profxwition is well illustrated by the foUowing 
w«Q known anecdote. If literally true, it shows also, what I am well persuaded 
ni, tiiat the priests do not themselves believe the donna which, to increase their 
own authority and dignity, they impose upon the silly multitude. Whether true 
ID all its particulars or not, it may serve as an illustration of the glarin|r absurdity 
of tianawDwtantiation. I will venture to say that there is not a priest in the land 
who would have faitli enough to submit to such a test of his sinceri^. 

" A protestant lady entered the matrimonial state with a Roman Uatholic gen^ 
tenan, on condition that he would never use any attempts, in his intercourse with 
her, to induce her to embrace his religion. Accordingly, after their marriage, he 
abitaliied from conversing with her on those religious topics which he knew would 
be diaagreeaUe to her. He employed the Roman priest, however, to instil his 
popish notions into her mind. But she remained unmoved, iparticularly on the 
doctrine of transubstantiation. At length the husband fell ul, and during his 
afflictioii, was recommended by the priest to receive the holy sacrament The wife 
was requested to prepare the wafer for the solemnity, by the next day. She did so, 
SDd on presenting it to the priest, said, * This, sir, you wiah me to understand, 

** ' Moat certainly, my dear madam, there can be no doubt of it.' 

** ' Then, sir, it will not be possible, after the consecration, for it to do any 
hann to the worthy partakers ; for, says our Lord, * my flesh is meat indeed, and 
Bj blood is drink inoeed,* and ' he that eateth me shall live by me.' 

** * Assuredly, the holy sacrament can do no harm to the worthy receivers, bat, 
ao hr from it, must communicate ffreat good.' 

*'Tbe ceremony was proceeded m, and the wafer was duly consecrated; 
the priest was ahcxit to take and eat the host, but the lady be^^ed pardon for 
inlemipting him, adding, ' I mixed a little arsenic with the wafer, sir, but as it is 
BOW changed into the real body of Christ, it cannot, of course, do you any harm.' 
The principles of the priest, however, were not sufficiently firm to enable him to 
sat it Confused, ashamed, and irritated, he left the house, and never more ven- 
tond to enforce on the lady the doctrine of transubstantiation.' " 

t See Elliott onRomankm, vol. L, page 278. AlsoDapin and Mosbeim, cent iz. 



198 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [bookit. 

Pretended miraclce to eUabliA the belief In the wftr Gtd. 

follows : ** The body ancl blood of Christ are contained really in 
the sacrament of the altar, under the species of bread and wine ; 
the bread beins^ transubstantiated into the body of Jesus Christ, and 
the wine into his blood, by the power of (Jod." * Cujus corpus et 
sanguis in sacramento altaris sub speciebus panis et vini veraciter 
continentur ; transubstantiatis pane in corpus, et vino in sanguinem 
potestate divin^.' {Condi Lateran^ ix., cap. 1.) 

§ 20. — The means by which the popular belief in the wccfer God 
was estabUshed by artful monks and priests, were worthy of the 
doctrine itself. If we are to believe the wondrous legends of those 
dark ages, which, however, have been reiterated in a thousand 
forms in subsequent centuries, the most marvellous miracles were 
frequently wrought to testify the reality of the wonderful transmu- 
tation effected by those to whom it was given to " create their 
Creator." Some of them attested upon oath, swearing by their 
sacred vestments, that they had seen the blood trickle in drops, as 
it does from a human body, from the consecrated wafer, held in the 
hands of the priests ; and others that they had received still more 
ocular demonstration of the reality of the change of the jbread into 
the body of Christ, inasmuch as they had actually seen it thus 
changed into the Saviour himself, sitting in the form of a little boy 
vpon the altar /* 

To prove that this statement is not made without abundant 
evidence, we will transcribe some few of these pretended miracles, 
related upon the testimony of celebrated and accredited Roman 
Catholic authors. There is a collection of no less than seventy- 
three pretended miracles of animals reverencing the consecrated 
Wafer, collected by a certain Jesuit priest named Father Toussain 
Bridoul. In the preface to the work, the Jesuit compiler says, 
** Wherefore without troubling myself to confute these hare-brained 
people, who turn a deaf ear to all that the holy fathers have said 
about it (the holy sacrament) ; and having renounced their reason, 
I have resolved to send them to the school of the beasts, who have 
shown a particular inclination (not without a superior conduct) for 
the honor and defence of this truth.** The following few instances 
are transcribed, to which I have taken the liberty of affixing ap- 
propriate titles. 

(1.) The wafer turned into a little boy in Hie bee hive. — " Petrus Cluniac, lib, 1, 
cop. 1, reports, That a certain peasant of Auvergne, a province in France, per- 
ceivingr that his bees were likely to die, to prevent this misfortune, was advised, 
•Her he had received the communion, to keep the hostjj and to blow it into one of 
his hives ; and, on a sudden, all the bees came forth out of their hives, and ranking 
themselves in good order, lifted the host up from the ground, and carrying it in 
upon their wings, placed it among the combs. (!) After this the man went 

* Among the many prodigies of this kind gravely related as fietcts by Romish 
authors, the celebrated Cardinal Bellarmine mentions, with several other miracles, 
one in which instead of the wafer, ** Christ loas seen in the form cf a chUd.^^ (He 
Eueharistiaf Lib. iii., c. 8.) 

t Host. The term by which the papists designate the consecrated wafer, de- 
rived from the Latin word Hostia^ which sigmfies an animal for sacrifice^ a victim. 



CBAP. n.] POPERY IN ITS GLORY— WORLD-MIDNIGHT— 800-1073. 190 



Boly htm wonhip the ks»L A§§9t and hones kneel lo It The Jew*e dug and hie maater*e nam, 

out aboot his basiness, and at his return, found that this advice had succeeded 
contrary to his exoectation, for all his bees were dead. Nay, when he lifted np 
the hive, he saw tnat the host (or wafer) was turned into a fair child among iht 
h im apo mb s ; (/ /) and being much astonished at this change, and seeing that this 
infimt seemed to be dead, he took it in his hands, intending to bury it privately in 
the church, but when he came to do it, he found nothing in his hands ; for the in- 
fimt waa vanished away. This thing happened in the county of Clermont, which, 
hr this irreverence, was, a while iSter, chastised by divers calamities, which lo 
i&fpeofiied those parts, that they became like a wilderness. From which it ap- 
pears, that bees honor the holy host divers ways, by lifting it from the earth, and 
etrryingit into their hives, as it were, in procession." 

(9.) Tke holy bees who built a popish chavel, — ^*' Caesarius, lib, 9, cap, 8, reports, 
Ttnt a certain woman, having received tne communion unworthily, carri^ the 
host to her hives, for to enrich the stock of bees : and afterwards coming again to 
see the success, she perceived that the bees, acknowledging their God m the sa- 
cmment, "had, with admirable artifice, erected to him a c&pel of wax, with its 
doors, windows, bells, and vestry ; (I) and within it a chalice where they laid the 
holy body of Jesus Christ (! !) Sne could no longer conceal this wonder. The 
priest, being advertised of it, came thither in procession, and he himself heiud har- 
monious music, which* the bees made, flying round about the sacrament ; and hav- 
mg taken it out, he brought it back to the church full of comfort, certifying, that 
he had seen and heard our Lord acknowledged and praised by those litUe crea- 



(3.) The holy asses who knelt before the v>afsr idol, — '* P. Orlandi, in his History 
of the Society, torn, 1, lib, 2, No, 27, says. That, in the sixteenth century, within 
the Venetian territories, a priest carrying the holy host, without pomp or train, to 
a sick person, he met, out of the town, asses going to their pasture ; who, perceiv* 
ing by a certain sentiment, what it was which the priest carried, they divided 
themselves into two companies on each side of the way, and /el/ on their knees. (/) 
Whereupon the priest, with his clerk, all amazed, passed between those peaceable 
beasts, which then rose up, as if they would maae a pompous show in honor of 
their Creator ; followed the priest as far as the sick man's house, where they 
wailed at the door till the priest came out from it, and did not leave him till he 
hsd given them his blessing. (! !) Father Simon Rodriguez, one of the first com* 
psnioDS of St Ignatius, who then travelled in Italy, informed himself carefully of 
this matter, which happened a little while befbre our first fathers came into Italy, 
and found that all happened as has been told." 

(4.) Tlte Jew's dng who worshipped the host, and bit his master's nose of for 
iesbvying it. — ^ Nicholas de Laghi, in his book of the miracles of the holy sacra^ 
nent, says. That a Jew blaspheming the holy sacrament dared to say, that if the 
Christians would give it to his dog, he would eat it up, without showing any re- 
gud to their God. The Christians beins very angry at this outrageous speech, 
and trusting in the Divine Providence, hada mind to bring it to a triiu : so, spread- 
ing a napkin on the table, tiiey laid on many hosts, among which one only was 
consecrated. The hungry dog being put upon the same table, began to eat them 
aU, but coming to that which luid been consecrated, without touching it, he kneeled 
down befbre it, (!) and afterwards fell with rage upon his master, <»tchinff him so 
closely l^ the nose, that he took it quite away with his teeth." (! !) — " The same 
which St Matthew warns such like blasphemers, saying, * Give not that which is 
holy unto dogs, lest they turn again and rend you.* " 

(5.) Si. Anihonvj of Padua, compelling a horse to kneel before the wcfer Ctod,~^ 
** Bt Anthony of Pacfua, disputing one day with one of the most obstinate heretics 
that denied the truth of the holy sacrament, drove him to such a plunge, that he 
desired the saint to prove this truth by some miracle. St Anthony accepted the 
oooditiQn, and said he would work miracles upon his mule. Upon this, the heretic 
kept her three days without eating and drmking; and the third day,, the saint, 
having said mass, took up the host, and made him oring forth the hungry mule, to 
whom he spoke tiius : — ^m the name of the Lord, I command thee to come and do 
levenoce to thy Creator, and confound the malice of heretics. (!) While the 



SOO HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book it. 

TIm unbeUevUig Jew fdchet bknd ftom the wafer. 

mhst made this discouree to the mule, the heretic sifted out oats to make the mole 
eat ; but the beast having more understanding than his master, kneeled before the 
host, adoring it as its Creator and Lord. (! !) This miracle comforted all the faith* 
idl, and enraged the heretics ; except him that disputed with the saint, who waa 
eonverted to Uie Catholic fiuth.'''" 

In addition to the above marvellous prodigies, I will transcribe 
another pretended miracle of a somewhat different kind, but in- 
tended to prove the same unscriptural and absurd doctrine ; that 
the consecrated wafer is transubstantiated into the very body and 
blood of Christ This instance is related by Friar Leon, and was 
first published at Paris in 1633, with the approbation of two popish 
doctors of theology, and has been reprinted no longer ago than 
the year 1821. It will be seen that the pretended time of its oc- 
currence is before the end of the century in which the monstrous 
doctrine was first established as an article of faith by pope Innocent 
III., in the council of Lateran. 

(6.) The unbelieving Jew fetches blood from the wafers which turns into the boif 
tf Christ dying on the cross, and trfterwards turns back again into a wafer, — **■ In 
toe year of our Lord, 1290, in the reign of Philip the Fair of France, a poor 
woman who had pledged her best gown with a Jew for thirty pence, saw the eve 
of Easter day arrive without the means of redeeming the pledge. Wishing to 
receive the sacrament on that day, she went and besought the Jew to let herhave 
the ffown for that occasion, that she might appear decent at church. The Jew 
said, lie would not only consent to give her back the gown, but would also fcn^riire 
her the money lent, provided she would bring him the host, which she would 
receive at the altar. The woman, instigated by the same fiend as Judas, promised, 
for thirty pence, to deliver into the hands of a Jew the same Lord as the traitorous 
disciple had sold for thirty pieces of silver. 

The next morning she went to church, received the sacrament, and feigning 
devotion, she concealed the host in her handkerchief; went to the Jew's hooae, 
and delivered it into his hands. No sooner l^id the Jew received it, than he took 
a penknife, and laying the host upon the table, stabbed it several times, and bdiold 
blood gushed out m>m the wounds in great abundance. (I) 

The Jew, no way moved by this spectacle, now enaeavored to pierce the host 
with a nail, by dint of repeated blowr with a hammer, and again blood rushed out. 
Becoming more daring, he now seized the host, and hung it upon a stake, to inflict 
upon it as many lashes, with a scourge, as the body of Christ received fitnn the 
Jews of old. 

Then, snatching the host from the stake, he threw it into the fire ; and, to his 
astonishment, saw it moving unhurt in the midst of the fiames. (! !) 

Driven now to desperation, he seized a large knife, and endeavored to cut the 
host to pieces, but in vain. And as if to omit no one of the su^rings endured br 
Jesus on the cross, he seized the host again, hung it in the vilest place in dis 
house, and pierced it with the point of a spear, and again blood issued from the 
wound. Lastly, he threw the host into a cauldron of boiling water, and, instandy, 
the water was turned into blood ; and lo ! the host was seen rising out of the 
water in the form of a crucifix, and Jesus Christ was again seen^lying on the 
cross. (!!!) 

The Jew having crucified the Lord cfresK, now hid himself in the darkest cel- 
lar of the house ; and a woman having entered the house, beheld the afi^cttng 
picture of the passion of our Lord agam exhibited on earth. Moved with fear, 
she fell on her knees, and made on her forehead the sign of the cross, when, in a 

^ This instance is also related by Cardinal Bellarmine. De Encharistia, Lib. 
ifi., c. 8, ut supra. 



CEAF. il] popery in its GLORY— WORLD-MIDNIGHT— 800-1073. 201 

CannUwliMD. Reuou of fNiplstt why the koH does not k)ok like ** raw and bloody flcth.** 

moment, the body of Jesus Christ, which was suspended on the cross over the 
euddron, tnmed into the host again, and jumped into a dish which the woman 
held in her hand. (!) The woman took it to the priest, told the story I have re- 
peated to you, and the Jew was seized, sent to prison, and burnt alive. 

The penknife with which the host was pierced, the blood that flowed from the 
WDUids, the cauldron and the dish, are all preserved, as an ihfallible fboof or 

TK» MIRACLE." 

§ 21. — The evident object of these pretended miracles is to prove 
the real transmutation oi the wafer into the real living body, blood, 
soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ .Now, if this transmu- 
tation were really effected, and this real living body and soul were 
chewed between the teeth and swallowed, is it not plain that those 
who partook of the horrible banquet would be guilty of cannihaU 
ism ? The manducation of the sacramental elements, if transub- 
stantiation be true, makes the communicant the rankest cannibal. 
The patron of the corporeal presence, according to his own sys- 
tem, devours human flesh and blood : and, to show the refinement 
of his laste, indulges in all the luxury of cannibalism. He rivals 
the polite Indian, who eats the quivering limbs and drinks the flow- 
ing gore of the enem^. The papist even exceeds the Indian in 
groMoess. The canmbals of America or New Zealand swallow 
only the mangled remains of an enemy, and would shudder at the 
idea of devouring any other human nesh. But the partizans of 
Romanism glut uiemselves with the flesh and blood of a friend. 
The Indian only eats the dead, while the papist, with more shock- 
ing ferocity, devours the living. The Indian eats man of mortal 
mould on earth. The papist devours God-man, as he exists exalted, 
immortal, and glorious m heaven. It is true that Romish writers 
have exercised a great deal of ingenuity in endeavoring to gild 
over the rank cannibalism of Popery. Admitting the horror that 
would be excited by feeding on raw human flesh and blood in their 
own proper forms, these writers endeavor to disguise, as well as 
they can, the grossness and inhumanity of eating that which, not- 
withstanding its species or form, they admit to be a living human 
body. A few extracts illustrative of these attempts will be given. 
Thus Aimon represents *' the taste and figure of bread and wine as 
lemaining in the sacrament, to prevent the horror of the communi- 
eant.** Similar statements are found in Lanfranc. According to 
this author, ^ the species remain, kst the spectator should be horrified 
at ike sight of raw and bloody fi^sh. (/) The nature of Jesus is 
concealed and received for salvation, without the horror which 
might be excited by blood.''* Huto acknowledges that '* few would 
approach the communion, if blooa should appear in the cup^ and the 

^ Propter snmentium horrorem, sapor panis et vini remanet et fignra. (Aimonf 
m Dock. 1. 42.) 

Reservatu ipeamm remm speciebas, et quibusdam aliis qnalitatibus, ne percipi- 
entea cmda et cmenta horrerent {Larrfranc, 244.) 

Christ! natnra contegitnr, et sine crooris horrore a digne snmentibns in salotem 
accipitiir. (Jjonfranc, 248.) 



202 mSTDRY OF ROMANISM. [book it. 

Shocking ezpreMloiui of Roaunlflli to gild orw the Miinflwlim oflranMibfltaatiatioo. 



Jlesh should appear red as in Vie shambks"* Even hunger itself 
would be disgusted at such bloody food. Durand admits, that 
^ human infirmity, unaccustomed to eat man's fleshy would, if the 
substance were seen, refuse participation/'f Aquinas avows ** the 
horror of swallowing human Jlesh and bloodJ'X ** The smell, the 
species, and the taste of bread and wine remain," says the sainted 
Bernard, '* to conceal flesh and blood, which, if offered without dis* 
guise as meat and drink, might horrify human weakness."^ Ac- 
cording to Alcuin in Pithou, •* Almighty God causes the prior form 
to continue in condescension to the Iraifty of man, who is unused to 
swallow raw Jlesh and blood.*'\\ According to the Trentine Cate- 
chism, '' the Lord's body and blood are administered under the 
species of bread and wine, on account of man's horror of eating 
and drinking human Jlesh and hlood.^% These descriptions are 
shocking, and calculated, in some measure, to awaken the horror 
which they portray.** 

§ 22.— After the reader has examined these disgusting attempts 
of Romish writers to palliate the cannibalism of transubstantiation, 
let him cast his eye once more over the lying legends of pretended 
miracles in proof of it, selected above from hundreds of similar 
ones, gravely related by popish authors as facts, and then let him 
decide whether a religion can be from God, which utters such 
enormities, and requires such outrageous falsehoods to sustain it 

O anti-Christ ! anti-Chbist ! truly and unerringly was thy 
picture drawn by the pen of inspiration, when it was declared 
thy coming should be ''after the working of Satan, with all 
power, and signs, and lying wonders tmd with all deceivableness 
of unrighteousness in them that perish. Mother of harlots, and 
abominations of the earth r Yet, like Babylon of old, ** thine 
end shall come, and the measure of thy covetousness !" thy abomi- 
nations are not always to last, nor thy lying wonders to deceive the 
nations for ever. For the same unerring Spirit that drew thy por- 
trait hath also predicted thy fall ; when the mighty angel shall cry 
with a strong voice, '' Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen. 
Come out of h^r, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, 

* Si cruor in calico fieret manifestus et si in macello Christi mberet sua caio» 
rams in terns ille qui hoc non abhorreret {Hugo, de corp, 70.) 

f Fragilitas hnmana, qoie snis camibos non consuevit vesci, ipso visa nihil 
haariat, quod horreat (Durand, in LanfranCj 100.) 

t Non est consuetum hominibus, horribilem camem hominis comedere et san- 
guinem bibere. (Aquin IIL 76, V. P, 367.) 

J Odor, species, sapor, pondus remanent, ut horror penitus tollatur, no humana 
nnitas escum camis et potnm sanguinis in sumptione horreret (Benuand^ 
1682.) 

II Consulens omnipotens Deus infirmitati nostrae, qui non habemus usum come- 
dere carnem crudam et sanguinem bibere fecit ut in pristina remanens fonna ilia 
duo munera. (Alcuin in Pithouj 467.) 

IT A communi hominum natura maxime abhorreat hnmanae camis esca, aut 
sanguinis potione vesci, sapientissime fecit, ut sanctissimum corpus et sanffuis sab 
earam rerum specie panis et vini nobis administraretur. (Cat, TVid, 1SI9.} 

** See Edgar's Variations, 387. 



n.] POPERY IN ITS GIX)RY— WORLD-MIDNIGHT— 800-1073. 208 



Craaion of tiM Creator. Horrible blaephemlea of « pope and a cazdiii4l. 

and that ye receive not of her plagues ! For her sins have reached 
unto heaven and God hath remembered her iniquities. Rejoice 
over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets ; for God 
hath aveuTCd you on her ! And in her was found the blood of pro- 
phets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the eartn.'** 

§ 23. — The doctrine which requires such pious frauds as above 
related, to gain it credence, is so gross an outrage upon common 
sense, that no arguments are necessary to disprove itf Its very 
statement is its refutation. But it has been the source of incal<;u- 
lable worldly gain to the anti-Christian clergy, whom it elevates to 
the blasphemous dignity of Creators of their Creator, and 
hence the secret of its success. It is almost impossible to quote 
the horrible impiety of pope Urban and cardinal Biel, without 
shuddering. 

** The hands of the pontiff," said Urban in a great Roman Coun- 
cil, ** are raised to an eminence granted to none of the angels^ of 
CRSATIN6 God the Creator of all things, and of ofiering him 
up for the salvation of the whole world.** •* This prerogative,** 
adds the same authority, '^ as it elevates the Pope above angels, 
renders pontifical submission to kings an execration.** To all this 
the Sacred Synod, with the utmost unanimity, responded, Amen.:|: 
Cardinal Biel extends this power to all priests. ^ He that created 
me^ says the cardinal, " cave me, if it be lawful to tell, to create 
himself.** This power, biel shows, exalts the clergy, not only 
above emperors and angels, but which is a higher elevation, above 
Lady Mary herself. " Her ladyship,** says the cardinal, " once 

♦ 3 Thc«8. ii. 9, 10 ; Jer. li. 13 ; Rev. xvii. 5— xviii. 4, 5, 6, 24. 

t On BQch a subject as this it is lawful to imitate the satirical and ironical nxxle 
of disputation adopted by the prophet Elijah, in his contest with the idolatrous 
priests of Baal. (1 Eangs, xviii. 27.) The foUowing is translated from a satirical 
poem of George Buchiman, and sets in vivid and striking light the folly and im- 
piety of this idolatry. ** A baker and a painter once contended, which of them 
could produce the best specimen of his art ; — whether the former would excel with 
his oven, or the latter with his colors. The painter boasted that he had made a 
god ; the baker replied, It is I who make the true body of God, thou only canst 
produce an image or representation of it. The painter said, thv god is alwavs 
consumed by men*s teeth ; thine, rejoined the baker, is corroded by worms. The 
painter affirmed, that one of his making would endure entire for many years, while 
an innumerable quantity of the baker's would be often devoured in an hour. But 
you, said the baker, can scarcely paint one god in a year, while I can produce ten 
thousand in a day. 

Stop, said a priest, and contend no more with words to no purpose ; neither of 
your gods can do anything without me ; and seeing it is I that make each of 
them a god, both shall be subservient to me : for the picture shall beg for me, and 
the bread be eaten by me.'' 

X Dicens, nimis execrabile videri, ut manus, que in tantam eminentiam excre- 
â–¼erunt, quod nulU angelorum concessum est, ut Deum cuncta creantem suo signa- ' 
cttlo creent, et enndem ipsum pro salute totius mundi, Dei Patris obtutibus oflferant. 
Et ab omnibns acclamatum est "* Fiat, fiat" {Haveden, ad Ann. 1099, P. 268. 
IM. 12, 960. Brwf 2, 636.) 



204 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book rr. 

Wonhip of the wafer God in the nineteenth eentnry. 

conceived the Son of God and the Redeemer of the world ; while 
the priest daily calls into existence the same Deitt."* 

If the fact were not beyond dispute, the assertion would be in- 
credible that this impious and idolatrous doctrine of the dark ages 
is still held in the nineteenth century, and in enlightened America 
too If Yet such is the fact, and whoever wishes to see a Romish 
priest create his wafer God by pronouncing a few mystic Latin 
words,| and the silly multitude woi;9hip this bit of bread, as the 
priest holds it up before them, has^ly to visit a Roman Catholic 
church during the performance of nrass. {See Frontispiece.) 

This worsnip of the wafer Gk>d is a stupid and grovelling 
idolatry, of which even an ancient worshipper of Jupiter or Venus, 
or a modem votary of Juggernaut or Vishnu, would be ashamed. 
While most of the rites and ceremoijies of Popery can be traced to 
their heathen origin, this alone is t(k) extravagant to find a parallel 

* Qui creavit me, si fas est dicere, dedit mihi creare se. Semel concepit Dei 
filitiin, eundem Dei filiom advocant quotidle corporaliter. {Bidf Lect 4. See 
Edgar, 383.) 

f As a proof that this monstrons doctrine of the dark ages is taught in all its 
grossness in the nmeteenth century, the following few questions and answers aiB 
transcribed from Butler's Catechism, a popular B^man Catholic manual in almost 
universal use among papists wherever the English language is used. 

On the Blessed Eucharist, 

Q. What is the blessed Eucharist ? A. The body and blood, soul and divinify 
of Jesus Christ, under the appearance of bread and wine? 

Q. What do you mean by the appearances of bread and wine 7 A. The taste, 
color, and form of bread luid wine, which still remain, after the bread and wine 
are changed into the body and blood of Christ. 

Q. Are both the body and blood of Christ under the appearance of bread, and 
under the appearance of wine 7 A. Yes ; Christ is whole and entire, true €hd^ 
and true Man, under the appearance of each. 

Q. Did Christ give power to the priests of his church to change bread and 
wine into his body and olood 7 A. Yes ; when he said to his apostles at his last 
supper : Do this for a commemoration for me, Luke xxii. 19. 

Q. Why did Christ give to the priests of his church so great a power ? A. 
That his children, throuffhout all aees and nations, might have a most acceptable 
sacrifice to oflfer to their Heavenly Father — and the most precious food to nourish 
their souls. 

Q. What is the sacrifice of the New Law / A. The Mass. 

Q. What is the Mass 7 A. The sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ, 
which are really present under the appearances of bread and wine ; and are of- 
fered to God by the priest for the living and the dead. 

Q. Is the M^ a oifi^rent sacrifice from that of the Cross 7 A. No ; because the 
same Christ, who once ofifered himself a bleedin^r victim to his Heavenly Father 
on the cross, continues to ofifer himself in an unbloody manner, by the hands of 
his priests, on our altars. 

Q. At what part of the Mass are the bread and wine changed into the body 
aad blood of Christ 7 A. At the consecration. 

Q. How are we to be penetrated with a lively faith 7 A. By firmly believing 
that the blessed Eucharist is Jesus Christ himself, true God ahd true Mav, 

HU VERT flesh AND BLOOD, WITH HIS SOUL AHD DIVIHITT. 

I Hoc est corpus meum (this is my bodv), from which is doubtless derived 
the cant phimse, Hocus pocus^ used by pretended coi\jurors. 



. n.] POPERY IN ITS GLORY— WORLD-MIDNIGHT— 800-1073. 205 



wone tlun Mm beothm who never devoared dM gods thejr woniiipped 

eren in the temples of paganism itself. *^ As to that celebrated act 
of popish idolatry/' says Dr. Middleton, " the adoration of the host, 
I must confess that I cannot find the least resemblance of it in any 
part of the pagan worship : and as oft as I have been standing at 
mass, and seen the whole congregation prostrate on the ground, in 
the humblest posture of adoring, at the elevation of this consecrated 
piece of bread ; I could not help reflecting on a passage of TuUy, 
where, speaking of the absurdity of the heathens in the choice of 
their goas, he says, ' Was any man ever so mad as to take that 
which he feeds upon for a god V Ecquem tam amentem esse putas, 

?ai illud, quo vescatur, Deum credat esse ? {Cic. de not. Dear. 3.) 
'his was an extravagance left for Popery alone ; and what an old 
Roman could not but think too gross, even for Egyptian idolatry 
to swallow, is now become the principal part of worship, and the 
distinguishing article of faith in the creed of modem Rome.*** No 
wonder that the old Arabian philosopher, Avefroes, when brought 
into contact with this worse than heathenish superstition, exclaimed, 
with surprise and disgust, '^ I have travelled over the world, and 
seen many people, but none so selfish and ridiculous as Christians, 
who devour the God they worship /" 

After reading the particulars above narrated, and especially the 
horribly blasphemous language of pope Urban and cardinal Biel, 
let the reader remember that the besotted votaries of Rome not 
(mly receive this doctrine as an article of faith themselves, but pro- 
nounce a most awful curse upon all the world beside, who refuse to 
believe it I The following are the very words of the canons of 
the celebrated council of Trent, passed in 1551, pronouncing the 
awful anathema, and thus consigning to eternal damnation {if they 
could) the whole protestant world, and all else who refuse to be- 
lieve this monstrous doctrine. The following are extracts from the 
original Latin of the words of the council, with a faithful English 
translation. 

** Sancta hsc sjrnodns declarat, per " This holy conncil declareth — That 

coDsecrationein panis et vini conversuh by the consecration of the bread and 

nem fieri totius substantioi panis in sub^ wine, there is effected a conversion of ike 

stantiam corporis Christi Domini nostri, whole substance of the bread into the sub' 

et totius substantia vini, in substantiam stance cf the body of Christ our Lord^ 

sanguinis ejus : ^ns conversio con- and cf the wine into the substance (f hit 

Tenienter et propne a sancta catholica blood ; which conversion is fitly and 

ecclesia transubstantiatio est appellata." properly termed by the holy Cathc^c 

church, Trajisubstantiation" 

The council then proceed to enact the canons and curses, of 
which the following are the first, second, and third. 

" Canon /. Si quis negaverit in sane- 1. '* If any one shall deny that in the 

tiwimc eacharistiae sacramento contine- most holy sacrament of the eucharist, 

ri vere, realiter, et substantialiter, corpus there are contained, truly, reallyj and 

it sanguinem una cum anima et Divnii- substantially^ the body and blood, together 

* Dr. Middleton's letter from Rome, p. 179. 



206 



'^ 



HISTORY or ROMANISM. 



[book IV* 



The cones of Trent apon all who reftiee to believe the dogma of Tranenhetantlation. 



TATE Domini nostri Jesu Christi, ac tnih the Maul and divihitt of our Lord 

proinde totom Christum; sed dixerit Jesus Christ; or say that he is in it only 

tantummodo esse in eo ut in signo, vel as in a sien, or figure, or hj^hj^ y'^y^ 

figure, aut virtute ; ttTANAraEMA cticc IT LET lUM T " 
SIT.'^ 



BE ACCURSED I 



^ Canon IL Si quis dixerit in sacro- 
sancto eucharistias sacramento, remanere 
substantiam panis et vini una cum cor- 

g)re et sanguine Domini nostri Jesu 
hristi, negaveritque mirabilem illam et 
singuUrem conversionem iotius substan^ 
tut panis in corpus, et totius substantuc 
vim in sanguinem, manentibus dumtaxat 
speciebus panis et vini: quam quidem 
conversionem catholica ecclesia aptissi- 
me 7Va7t^«to7i<ionei7tappellat; O* AN- 
ATHEMA SIT." 



2. ^ If any one shall say that in the 
sacmment of the eucharist, the sub- 
stance of the bread and wine remams 
together with the body and blood of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, and shall deny the 
wonderful and singular conversion of 
the whoiQ substance cf the bread into his 
body, and the whole substance cf the vtne 
into his blood, the appearances only of 
bread and wine remaining, which con- 
version the catholic churah most mro> 
perly terms Transubstantiation, O* L^T 
HIM BE ACCURSED I 



** Canon IIL Si quis ne^verit in 8. *' If any one shall deny, that in the 

venerebile sacramento eucharistis, sub adorable sacrament of the eucharist, 

unaquaque specie, et sub singulis c^up- whole Christ is contained in each dement 

que speciei partOms, separetione facta, or species, and in the separate farts 

totum Chnstum contineri ; O* AN- of each element or species, a separation 

ATHEMA SIT."* being made, IT LOT HIM BE AC- 

CraSED." 

§ 24. — Let it be remembered that (hese awful curses were pro- 
nounced by the last general council of the Romish church ever 
assembled ; that, of course, they have never been repealed ; but 
stand down to the year 1845 in flaming characters upon the statute 
book of Rome, an enduring monument of her bigoted intolerance 
and hatred of all who refuse to yield up their common sense and 
reason at the bidding of a corrupt priesthood, whose evident object 
it is to exalt themselves not only above the common herd of the 
laity, but in their own language, " to an eminence granted to none 
of the angels'* — by proclaiming themselves as the ** Creators op 
THE Creator." In these awful anathemas, of course, are included 
our Baxters, our Bunyans, our Flavels, our Paysons, and all the 
holy and devoted men who have honored the protestant ranks, not 
only in the past, but in the present generation. There have been 
periods, as we have already seen, when the anathemas of Rome 
were something more tlian an idle breath of air, when they could 
kindle the fires of martyrdom, and fill the dungeons of the inquisi- 
tion with the tortured and helpless victims oi popish bigotry and 
cruelty. Blessed#be God ! those periods, we trust, are past. God 
forbid that they should ever return I The spirit of Popery remains 
unchanged. God forbid that the power to make these curses 
effectual (at least by the aid of *' the secular arm ") should ever 
again return to deluge the world with blood ! 

* Concil Trident, sess. xiii., cap. 4. 



907 



CHAPTER IIL 

nOOPB OF THS DASKNB88 OF THIS PERIOD CONTINUED. — ^BAPTISM OF 

BELLS, AND FESTIVAL OF THE ASSES. 

§ 25y — ^Another of the profane and senseless mummeries of Popery, 
which sprung up in mis dark age, and which has been han- 
ded down to the present time, was the consecration or bmtism 
ofBells^ Cardinal Baronius says this custom was first introduced 
hj pope John XIII., who died in 072 ; who gave the name of John 
the Baptist, to the great bell of the Lateran church at Rome.* The 
reason why the name of some saint is given to the bell at its bap- 
tism, says Cardinal Bona, is ^ in order that the people may think 
themselves called to divine service, by the voice of the saint whoso 
name the bell bears.'^t The following was inscribed upon the con- 
secrated bells : 

« Cdo Tenim Deoni ; plebemvoco; et eQOgregoCienim; 
DiYos adoio ; feeltk dooeo ; defanctos pkno; 
Ptatem damoiies foga** 

that is, ^I adore the true God; I call the people; I collect the 
priests ; I worship the saints ; I teach the festivals ; I deplore the 
dead ; I drive away pestilence and devils." 

This senseless custom of the dark ages, of consecrating and bap- 
tizing bells, has been ever since observed by papists, and still is, 
down to the present time. In a letter of an English traveller, 
inserted in the London Magazine for 1780, there is an interesting 
account of a peiformance of this ceremony at Naples, in Italy. On 
that occasion a nobleman was godfather to the bell, and a lady of 
quality was godmother. Most of the prayers said on the occasion, 
ended with the following words, * that thou wouldst be pleased to 
rinse, purify, sanctify, and consecrate these bells with thy heavenly 
benediction.' * Ut hoc tintinnabulum ccelesti benedictione perfundere, 
purificare, sancxtificare, et consecrare dignareris.' The following 
were the words of consecration : * Let the sign be consecrated and 
sanctified, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost' * Consecretur et sanctificetur simum istud, in nomine 
Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.' The bishop, then turn- 
ing to the people, said, the bell's name is Mary. He had previously 
demanded of the godfather and godmother what name they would 
have put upon the bell, and the lady gave it this name. 

§ 26. — A more recent eye-witness of this ceremony in the city of 
Montreal, Canada, describes it as follows : '* The two bells were sus- 
pended firom a temporary erection of wood in the centre of the church, 
in the vacant space round them, a table and chairs were placed foi 

f Bona. Rer. Liturg., Lib. ii., cap. 32. 
• Bsiomas' AnnalB, ann. 968. 



208 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book it. 



Bftptinn of Bell*. Spooaore. An expenaiwe dnm for the MI. 
■ _^ — . 

the principal performers. The candles on the altar at the upper end 
of the church, were lighted in readiness for the exliibition, and in a 
short time a door on the left of the altar opened, and forth came the 
procession. At the head of it were two boys dressed in white, 
carrying two immense candles, each of whigh, with the candlestick, 
might probably measure seven or ei^ht feet. After them came the 
priests, some in gorgeous silken rooes, some in white, others in 
olack, and some flaring with bright colors and gold ; other boys 
also in white followed, one of whom bore a silver vase with water, 
and another a small vessel of oil. Some of the priests in black took 
their seats near the altar, the rest came forward to the bells ; the 
lare[e candles were placed upon the table, and beside them the vase 
and the vessel of oil. One of the priests, an old man dressed in 
white, then got up into the pulpit at the side of the church, to 
address the people ; after which, descendmg from the pulpit, he put 
on a robe of various bright colors, and proceeded to the ceremoniaL 
After chantmg a hymn, ne read Latin prayers over the water in the 
basin, and thus, I suppose, consecrated it ; another of the priests 
then carried the basin to the bells, and the first dipped a pretty large 
brush in the water, and with it made the form ot a cross upon tne 
bell, pronouncing the form of words used on such occasions* ' In 
nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti ;' a third priest. wit|i 
another brush completed his work, making cross after. cross, «im1 
then carefully brushing the intermediate places till the bell was 
wetted all over ; the second bell was crossed and recrossed in the 
same manner, and immediately large clean towels were prodoeedf 
and the bells were carefully wiped dry. Returning to the taUe, 
singing and reading of prayers succeeded, and the oil was next 
blessed and made holy ; the principal priest then dipped his finger 
in the oil, and made the sign of the cross on one place on each bell, 
carefully wiping the place with cotton wool ; he then repeated it on 
a great many places on the bells, both inside and outside, carefully 
wiping them as before with cotton. During the singing which fol- 
lowed, one of the boys went out and brought in a silver censer with 
red coals in it ; a small box of incense stood on the table, out of 
which the priest took a spoonful and threw it on the coals, reading 
prayers over it as before ; the incense smoked up and perfumed the 
air ; then, after waving the censer with great solemnity three times, 
he carried it first to the one bell and then to the other, holding it 
under them till they were filled with smoke."* {See Engraving.) 

§ 27. — It is regarded as a very great honor to stand godfather or 
godmother to one of these baptized bells, and rich presents are 
made on these occasions. On another occasion of the kind, which 
took place in the same city only a year or two ago, according to 
the public journals of that city, the velvet and gold cloth in which 
the noly bell was dressed, cost no less a sum than two thousand dol- 
lars. This is understood to be the gift of those who are honored 

* M^Gravin's Protestant, vol. i., page 620. 




KumuLi Ovrcuuiii] uf llie Biptun nl' B' Ui 



oup. m.] POPERY IN ITS GLORY— WORLD-MIDNIGHT— «Oa-l 073. 21 1 

ar«MI«tD«Mia. ScsmIm aod clUldMini 



with the office of sponsors. Within a few weeks this absurd and 
senseless mummery has been performed in Marlborough street 
Romish chapel, Dublin. An eye-witness describes the ceremony 
in the Dublin Warder, in the following lively style : •* On our en- 
trance," says he, '^ we beheld the bell occupying the outer railed-in 
place opposite the altar, and elevated on a raised platform covered 
with Bome red stuff. Its upper periphery was garlanded with festoons 
of fading flowers, while a boquet in an earthenware vase was 
perched in the wood-work of the bell, and seemed to look with 
vegetable vanity on the idol of copper and tin beneath. Some 
thirty or forty priests in vestments were exceedingly busy, bustling 
here and there, to urge on the pageant, and encircled that venerable 
prelate. Doctor Murray, the lord archbishop of Dublin, whom they 
placed on a supposed throne, raised four or five steps firom the floor. 
After placing a ^Ided mitre on his head, and a gold embroidered 
robe on his woulders, they saluted him with several fantastic genu- 
flexions, and then brought him a silver censer, and stooping under 
the raised platform, whereon the bell reposed, disappeared, and, I 
presume, were employed for some minutes in worshipping and 
luinigating the interior of the bell 1 1 After this, four or five priests 
preceded by youn^ boys, robed in red gowns, bearing lighted can- 
dles, perambulated around the bell, and then one of the priests, 
wielding a black-haired brush, dipped it in water, and wet tne bell 
profusely ; then arose a lugubrious chant from all the priests, the 
organ occasionally drowning all accompaniment in its sonorous 
diapason. Doctor Murray was now conducted from his throne, and 
came near the bell, and after reciting certain prayers, a napkin was 
luuidcd him, wherewith he wiped part of the bell. This was the 
signal for about a dozen of napkins, which, in the fists of as many 
pnests, began to rub, and scrub, and curry, and wipe the bell on all 
parts of its surface. While this was going on, the organ choir were 
chanting instrumental and vocal exhortations to the bell, to bear 
Vl patiently. And when the brawny arms and lusty fists of those 
priests had well dried the bell, Doctor Murray was again conducted 
in pontificalibus near the bell, and a small phial of ointment being 
handed to him, he dipped his thumb into it, and rubbed it to various 
parts of the periphery of the bell, crossing it, the priests, orcan, and 
choir, meanwhile chanting out triumphant vociferations at wnat they 
supposed to be its consecration.'' 

In reading the above accounts of the performance of these 
profane and idolatrous ceremonies in churches called Christian^ and 
in the nineteenth century, one can hardly help imagining himself 
carried back some seven or eight centuries, to the gloom of the dark 
ages, when Popery was in its glory ; or living in a heathen land, 
and perusing the account of some imposing ceremony in the idol 
temples of Bramha, Gaudama, or Juggernaut 

§28. — We carmot better close these remarks on the baptism of the 
bells, than by the following antique and curious account of the same 

14 



212 fflSTORY OP ROMANISM. [book it. 



Carious and antiqae Aceotint of the mummery of bell-baptiam, (Vom old Philip Stobbet— 1506. 

ceremony, which is valuable, not only for the information it affords, 
and the piquancy of its style, but also as a choice historical relic. 
It is taken from an old work, written in 1585, by Philip Stubbes, 
entitled " The Theatre of the Pope's Monarchic.'^ 

*^ The order and manner of christening of belles, with Rmicu- 
LOUS ceremonies used therein by the papists. — When they are 
disposed to christen any bell, first of all there is wamying thereof 
giuen in the church a good while before the day appointed, which 
day being come the people flock thicke and tliree-iold to see the 
commedie played. The godfathers and godmothers also, being 
warned before the church wardens, are present in all the best ap- 
parrel that they haue. Besides whom you shall haue 2 or 3 others 
present, eury one striuing and contending who shall bee godfathers 
and godmothers to the bell, supposing it a wonderful preierment, a 
mirracilous promotion, and singular credit so to be. Thus all things 
made readie, the bishop in all his masking geare commeth forth like 
a coniuring iugler, and hauing made holy water with salt and other 
fibbersause he sprinkleth all things with the same as a thing of un- 
speakable force. And although it is at noone days, yet must he 
haue his tapers burning round about on eury side ; and then kneel- 
ing down hee very solemnly desireth the people to pray, that (Sod 
would vouchsafe to grannt to this bell a blessed and happie Chris- 
tendom, and with all a lustie sound to driue away diuels and to pre- 
uaile against all kinde of peril and tempests whatsoeuer. This 
prayer ended, the bishop anoynteth the bell in eury place with oyle, 
and chrisme, mumblying to himselfe certaine coniurations and exor- 
cismes, which no man heareth but he alone, and yet do all men 
understande it as well as hee. Then commandeth hee the godfathers 
and godmothers to giue the name to the bell, which being giuen, he 
pourcth on water three or four seueral times, anoynting it with oyle, 
and chrisme, as before, for what cause I know not, except it bee 
either to make his bellie soluble, his ioynts nimble or his colour fare. 
This done, he putteth on the Bell a white linnen chrisome, command- 
ing the godfatners and godmothers to pull it up from the grounde by 
ropes and engines made for that purpose. Thene fall they downe 
before this new christtened bell, all prostrate upon their knees, and 
offer uppe to this idol, gifts of gold, siluer, frankensence, myrh and 
mayne other things, eury one striuing who shall giue most. These 
sacrifices and offerings to the Dieuell ended, the Bell is hanged uppe 
in the steeple with great applause of the people, ^uery one reioycing 
that the bell hath receiued such a happie christendome. For ioy 
whereof they celebrate a feast to Bacchus, spending all that day 
and peraduenture 2 or 3 dayes after in danncing and ryotting, in 
feasting and banketting, in swilling and drinking, like filthie epicures, 
tyll they being as drunken as swyne, vomit and disgorge their 
stinking stomaches, worse than any dogges. And thus endeth this 
satyre together with the plaies, enterludes, Pageants, office, and 
ceremonies of this suffragan Bishop. 



CHAP, m.] POPERY IN ITS GLORY— WORLD-MIDNIGHT— 800-1073. 21 S 



The popWi FmUtsI oifhm Am. Ode ■anf by the pricats in hoDor ofthe •■. 

** Now whether there bee anything here, either prouable by the 
woorde of God, or by the example of» the primitiue Apostolical 
churche, or any particular member of the same euer since the be- 
ginning of the world, I referre it to the judgment of the wyse and 
leamei" 

§ 29. — ^Another proof of the grovelling and worse than senseless 
superstition of this dark period of the world, was a festival called 
the Feast of the Ass. This absurd festival was celebrated in several 
of the Roman Catholic churches of this age, in commemoration of 
the Virgin Mary's flight into Egypt, which was supposed to have 
been made on an ass. Among other places, this Feast was regu- 
larly celebrated at Beauvais, on every 14th of January. Were not 
the fact established upon the most indubitable authority, it could be 
scarcely credited that such disgusting ceremonies were performed 
in places of worship called Christian. The following account of 
this festival is given by the learned Townley, in his ** Illustrations 
of Biblical Literature,^ upon the unquestionable authority of the 
writers cited at the foot of the page. A beautiful young woman 
was chosen, richly attired, and a young infant placed in her arms, 
to represent the Yirg'm Mary and the infant Jesus. She then 
mounted an ass richlv caparisoned, and rode in procession, followed 
by the bishop and clergy, from the cathedral to the church of St. 
Stephen, where she was placed near the altar, and high mass com- 
menced. Instead, however, of the usual responses by the people, 
they were taught to imitate the braying of the ass ; and at the con- 
clusion of the service the priest, instead of the usual words with 
which he dismissed the people, brayed three times, and the people 
hrayed or imitated the sounds hinham^ hinham^ hinham ! During 
the ceremony the following ludicrous composition, half Latin, hall 
French, was sung by the priests and the people, with great vocife- 
ration, in praise of tne ass : 

TRANSLATION. 

** Orientis partibus '' From the country of the East 

Adventavit asinus ; Came this strong and handsome beast ; 

Palcher et fortissimas, This able ass beyond compare, 

Sarcinis aptissimus. Heavy loads and packs to bear. 

Hez, Sire Asnes, car chantez ; Now, Signior Ass, a noble bray ; 

Belle boache rechignez ; That beauteous mouth at large disnlay; 

Vons aurez du foin assez Abundant food our hay-lofts yiela, 

Et de r avoine a plantez. And oats abundant load the neld. 

Lentus erat pedibus, True it is, his pace is slow, 

Nisi foret baiculus ; Till he feels the quick'ning blow ; 

Et eum in clunibus Till he feels the ur&ring g^, 

Pungeret aculeus. On his buttock wellbestow'd. 
mz. Sire Asnes, &c. Now, Signior Ass, &c. 

Hie in collibus Sichem, He was bom on Shechem's hill ; 

Jam nutrituB sub Ruben ; In Reuben's vales he fed his fill ; 

Transiit per Jordanem, He drank of Jordan's sacred stream, 

Saliit in Bethlehem. And gamboled in BethleheuL 
Hez, Sire Asnes, &c. Now, Signior Ass, &c. 



214 



HISTORY OF ROMANISM. 



[Boocnr, 



A bnyiaf oiateh In hooor of the an, ^ Am reprutntaHvet^ tkt fru§U, aad tha paoptow 



Eece ma^is auribus ! 
SubjogaliB filius ; 
Asinus egregius, 
' Asinornm dominus I 
Hez, Sire Asnes, dtc. 

Saltu vincit hinnuloe, 
Damas et capreoloe, 
Super drome«larioe 
Velox Madianeos. 
Hez, Sire Asnes, dtc. 

Aamm de Arabia, 
Thos et myrrham de Saba, 
Tulit in ecclesia 
Virtus asinaria. 
Hez, Sire Asnes, &c. 

Dum trahit vehicula 
Multa cum sarcinula, 
mine mandibula 
Dura terit pabula. 
Hez, Sire Asnes, &c. 

Cum aristis bordenm 
Comedit et carduum ; 
Triticum A palea 
Semgat in area 
Hez, Sire Asnes, &c 

Amen, dicas, asine,* 
Jam satur de ^ramine : 
Amen, amen, itera ; 
Aspemare vetera. 



See that broad, majestic ear ! 
Bom he is the poke to wear ; 
All his fellows ne surpasses ! 
He's the very lord t>f asses ! 
Now, Signior Ass, dtc. 

In leaping he excels the &wn. 
The deer, the colts upon the lawn ', 
Less swift the dromedaries ran, 
Boasted of in Midian. 
Now, Signior Ass, &c. 

Gold, from Araby the blest, 
Seba myrrh, of mvrrh the best, 
To the church this ass did bring ; 
•We his sturdy labors sing. 
Now, Sigmor Ass, d&c 

While he draws his loaded wain. 
Or many a pack, he don't complain ; 
With his jaws, a noble pair. 
He doth craunch his homely fiue. 
Now, Signior Ass, &c. 

Th6 bearded barley and its stem. 
And thistles, yield his fill of them ; 
He assists to separate. 
When it's tluesh'd, the chaff firom wheat 
Now, Signior Ass, &c. 

Amen ! bray, most honor'd ass, 
Sated now with grain and grass ; 
Amen repeat. Amen reply. 
And disregard antiquity, 'f 



Hsz va! hez va! hez va hez! 
BiALX Sire Ashes car allez; 
Belle bouche car chantez."| 

The learned Edgar closes the account which he gives of this 
ridiculous mummery, in the following caustic style : " The worship 
C/Oncluded with a brayino-match between the clergy and laity, in 
honor of the ass. The officiating priest turned to the people, and in 
a fine treble voice, and with great devotion, brayed three times like 
an asSf whose representative he was ; while the people, imitating his 
example in thanking God, brayed three times in concert. Shades 
of Montanus, Southcott, and Swedenborg, hide your diminished 
heads ! Attempt not to vie with the extravagancy of Romanism. 
Your wildest ravings, your loudest nonsense, your most eccentric 
aberrations have been outrivalled by an infallible church r§ 

The final chorus, as given by Du Cange, is certainly an imitation 
of asinine braying; and when performed by the whole congrega- 
tion must have produced a most inharmonious symphony. 

* Here he is made to bend his knees. | Du Cange, Glossariom, v., Fesliciii, 

{Literary Panorama, vol. ii., pp. 685-688 ; and vol. vii., pp. 716-718. 
Edgar's Variations, page 19. 



CHAP. IV.] POPERY IN rrS GLORY— WORLD-MIDNIGHT— 800-1073. 215 

AttMipai to mpgnm th« Fwt of the Am. PiofllgBie popes and elei|y. 

There is another translation of this sacred ode, sung by these dig" 
nified priests to the ass, which exhibits the ludicrousness of the cere- 
mony in a more striking light, than even the translation above givea. 
At the risk of provoking a smile, which in such a case may be 
allowable, I will transcribe the first four stanzas. 

TBAKSLATIQH. 

** The Abb did come firom Eastern climes! The Ass was bom and bied with kmgean* 

Heigh-ho ! my Assy ! Heigh-ho ! my Assy ! 

He's fiur and fit for the pack at all times ! And now the Lord of Asses appears, 

Sinff, father Ass, and yoa shall have grass, Grin, fiither Ass, and yon shaU get giasa. 

And hay, and straw too, in plenty ! And straw, and hay too, in plenty. 

The Ass is slow, and Uzy too ; The Ass excels the hind at leap, 

Heigfa-ho, my Assy ! Heigh-ho ! my Assy ! 

Bat the whip and spur will make him go, And faster than hound or hare can trot, 

ffing, fiither Ass, and you shall get grass. Bray, father Ass, and you shall get graas. 

Ana hay, and straw too, in plenty. And straw, and hay too, in plenty.'^ 

Attempts were made, at various times, to suppress or to regulate 
these sottish superstitions, by Mauritius, bishop of Paris, Odo of 
Sens, Grosseteste of Lincoln in England, and otners. By the latter 
prelate, on accoilnt of its licentiousness, it was abolished in Lincoln 
cathedral, where it had been annually observed on the Feast of the 
Circumcision.* On the continent, however, it continued for centuries 
to be celebrated, and was officially permitted by the acts of the 
chapter of Sens, in France, so late as 1517. Still later permissions 
are found, as we learn from Tilliot and the other authorities already 
cited, till at length, unable to stand against the light of the glorious 
reformation, this senseless and disgusting popish festival ceased, 
toward the end of the sixteenth century.f 



CHAPTER IV. 

PROFLIGATE POPES AND CLERGY OF THIS PERIOD. 

§ 30. — The present chapter will be devoted chiefly to a sketch 
of the profligate lives of several of the popes of this gloomy period, 
related not merely upon the testimony of protestant writers, out by 
the standard authors of that apostate church, of which each of 
these monsters of vice was, successively, the crowned and anointed 
head. It would hardly be desirable to stir the black pool of filth 

* Tilliot, Memoires pour servir k V histoire de la F^te des Fooz, p. 36-89. Lan- 

one et Geneve, 1761, 12mo. 

f ninatiatiofia of Biblical Literature, by Rev. James Townley, D. D., vd. i.,p. 649. 



216 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [whsk it. 

Links in the AWy apoiloUe raceoflrion. Horrible bvbarittei of pope John vni. 

composed of the lives of these '* successors of the apostles,** were 
it not to show the value of the lofty claims now so boldly put forth 
by the votaries of Rome, and all who trace their succession through 
the same polluted channel, to be exclusively the '* Holt Apostolio 
Church ;" connected by an unbroken series of links with the apos- 
tle Peter himself; by the uninterrupted chain of ** apostolic succes- 
sion," from pope Peter in the first century, through the Johns and 
the Benedicts and the Alexanders, down to the popes and prelates 
of the nineteenth. Let us proceed then to sketch tne character of 
a few of these holy links in this chain as related by the pen of im- 
partial history. 

§ 31. — John VIII. — This pope was enriched with a great num- 
ber of costly presents by the emperor Charles the Bald, in return 
for the services of the Pope in causing him to be elected Eniperor. 
Upon the death of Louis II., a fierce and bloody contention for the 
empire ensued among the descendants of Charlemagne. Through 
the favor of the Pope, however, Charles, the grandson of Charle- 
magne, was successful. Advancing to Rome, at the invitation of 
the Pontiff, he was crowned by him with ffreat solemnity in the 
church of St. Peter on Christmas day, 875, the same day on which 
his celebrated ancestor had been crowned in the same place, 
seventy-five years before, by pope Leo III. It is worthy of re- 
mark that the artful Pope spoke of this coronation as giving to 
Charles a right to the empire, thus insinuating that he had the 
power of conferring the empire, and from this time forward the 
popes claimed the right of confirming the election of an emperor.* 
In a sentence pronounced by pope John upon a certain bishop 
Formosus, is the following expression : — ^** He has conspired with 
his accomplices against the safety of the republic, and our beloved 
son Charles, whom we have chosen and consecrated Emperor.^ 
This Pope was a monster of blood and cruelty. He commended 
the unnatural barbarity of Athanasius, bishop of Naples, who put 
out the eyes of his own brother, Sergius, duke of the same city, 
and sent him in that state to the Pope, to answer to a charge of 
t^bellion against the Holy See. He applied to Athanasius the 
words of the Saviour, " he that loveth father or mother" (the Pope 
adds " brother ") " more than me, is not worthy of me," and pro- 
mised to send him as a recompense for so meritorious an act, a 
handsome pecuniary reward. J It soon appeared, however, that 
the bishop had more regard to himself than to the Pope in this 
unnatural act, for he soon seized upon the brother's vacant dukedom, 
and in his turn was excommunicated by the Pope. Subdued by 
the terror of the spiritual thunder, the refractory bishop and duke 
sent to implore absolution of the Pope, but the blood-thirsty pontiff 
sent him a reply, that the only terms upon which he would grant 

* Siffonius de reg. Italis, lib. vi. 
f Epist. Joann., 319. 
X m, 66. 



CBAP. !▼.] POPERY IN ITS GLORY— WORLD-MIDNIGHT— 800-1073. 217 

Pope SetgiiM IIL the fuber of pope John XL, the bwtard ton of the harlot M arosla. 

him absolution were, that he should deliver to his vengeance several 
men, of whose names he sent him a list, and that he should ctU the 
throats of the rest, ' jugulatis aliis/ of the Pope's Saracen enemies 
in the presence of his legates.* Such was the cruel spirit of this 
professed disciple of the Prince of Peace, and link in the unbroken 
chain of a]K)stolical succession ! 

§ 32. — Sergius IIL — About the commencement of the tenth cen- 
tury, the singular spectacle was presented in Rome of almost the 
whole power and influence being concentrated in the hands of three 
notorious and abandoned prostitutes, Theodora and her two daugh* 
ters, Marozia and Theodora. This extraordinary state of things 
arose from the almost unbounded influence of the Tuscan party in 
Rome, and the adulterous commerce of these wicked women with the 
powerful heads of this party. Marozia cohabited with Albert or 
Adalbert, one of the powerful counts of Tuscany, and had a son 
by him named Alberic. Pope Sergius IIL, who was raised to the 
papacy in 904, also cohabited with this woman, and by his Holiness 
she had another son named John, who afterward ascended the 
papal throne, through the influence of his licentious mother. Even 
Baronius, the popish annalist, confesses that pope Sergius was ** the 
ilave of every vice, and the most wicked of men."t Among other 
horrid acts, Platina relates that pope Sergius rescinded the acts of 
pope Formosus, compelled those wnom he had ordained to be reoT' 
dainedf dragged his dead body from the sepulchre, beheaded him as 
though he were alive, and then threw him into the Tiber 1% 

^ 33. — John X. — This infamous Pope was the paramour of the 
harlot Theodora. While a deacon ot the church at Ravenna, he 
used frequently to visit Rome, and possessing a comely person, as 
we are informed by Luitprand, a contemporary historian, being 
seen by Theodora she fell passionately in love with him, and en- 
ffaffed him in a criminal intrigue. He was afterwards chosen 
bisnop of Ravenna, and upon the death of pope Lando, in 914, 
this snameless woman, for the purpose of facilitating her adulterous 
intercourse with her favorite paramour, *• as she could not live at 
the distance of two hundred miles from her lover,"§ had influence 
suflicient to cause him to be raised to the papal throne. Mosheim 
says the paramour of pope John was the elder harlot Theodora, 
but his translator. Dr. Maclaine, agrees with the Romish historian 
Fleury (who admits these disgraceful facts), in the more probable 
opinion that it was the younger Theodora, the sister of Marozia.|| 

§ 34. — John XI. — This Pope was the bastard son of his Holiness 
pope Sergius IIL, who, as we have seen, was one of the favored 
lovers of the notorious Marozia. The death of pope Stephen in 
931, presented to the ambition of Marozia, says Mosheim (ii., 302), 

* Epiit. Joann., 394. 

f Btionius, ad Ann. 908. 

t Platina's Lives of the Popes, vita SergU ni. 

Laitprand, Lib. ii., cap. 13. 

1 Moabeim u., 891, and Fteniy's Ecctoaiastical History, booklhr. 



218 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book rr. 



Horrible IkentiouMieM of pope John XII. 



** an object worthy of its grasp, and accordingly she raised to the 
papal dignity John XL, who was the fruit of her lawless amour8 
with one of the pretended successors of St. Peter, whose adulter- 
ous commerce gave an infallible guide to the Roman church." 

^ 35, — John All. — This monster of wickedness was a nephew 
of John the bastardy the last named Pope, and through the influence 
of the dominant Tuscan party in Rome, was raised to the popedom 
at the age of eighteen years. His tyranny and debaucheries were 
80 abominable, that upon the complaint of the people of Rome, the 
emperor Otho caused him to be solemnly tried and deposed. Upon 
the Emperor's ambassadors coming to that city they carried back 
to their master an account of the notorious scandals of which the 
Pope was guilty ; that ** he carried on in the eyes of the whole city 
a criminal commerce with one Rainera, the widow of one of his 
soldiers, and had presented her with crosses and chalices of ffold 
belonging to the church of St. Peter ; that another of his concubmes 
named Stephania, had lately died in giving birth to one of the 
Pope's bastards ; that he had changed the Lateran palace, once the 
abode of saints, into a brothel, and there cohabited with his own 
father's concubine, who was a sister of Stephania, and that he had 
forced married women, widows, and virgins to comply with hit 
impure desires, who had come from other countries to visit the 
tombs of the apostles at Rome." Upon the arrival of Otho, pope 
John fled from the city. Several bishops and others testified to the 
Emperor the above enormities, besides several other ofiences. The 
Emperor summoned him to appear, saying in the letter he addressed 
to him, '* You are charged with such obscenities as would make us 
blush were they said of a stage-player. I shall mention to you a 
few of the crimes that are laid to your charge ; for it would require 
a whole day to enumerate them all. Know, then, that you are 
accused, not by some few, but by all the clergy as well as the laity, 
of murder J perjury ^ sacrilege^ and incest with your own two sisters^ 
&c., &c. We therefore earnestly entreat you to come and clear 
yourself from these imputations," &c. To this letter his Holiness 
returned the following laconic answer: — ^**John, servant of the 
servants of God, to all bishops. We hear that you want to 
make another pope. If that is your design, I excommunicate 
you all in the name of the Almighty, ttiat you may not have it 
in your power to ordain any other, or even to celebrate mass ! I T 
Regardless of this threat, however, the Emperor and council de- 
posed ** this monster without one single virtue to atone for his many 
vices," as he was called by the bishops in council, and proceeded 
to elect a successor. Still, be it remembered, this " monster " John 
XII. is reckoned in the regular line of the popes. The next of the 
name is called John the Thirteenth, and he is therefore an essential 
necessary link in the boasted chain of holy apostolical buccbs- 
BioN ! No sooner had the emperor Otho left Rome, than several 
of the licentious women of the city with whom pope John had 
been accustomed to spend the greater portion of his time, in con- 



CEAP. IT.] POPERY IN ITS GLORY— WORUX-MIDNIGHT— 800-1073. 210 

CtwAUm of pops JohB ZIL Cardfaial BaronSiM^i tdrntetna of these enomldM. 

oert with several persons of rank, conspired to murder the new 
Pope, and to restore John to his See. The former was fortunate 
enough to make his escape to the Emperor then at Camerino, and 
the latter was brought back in triumph to the Lateran palace. 
Upon his return, pope John seized upon several of the clergy who 
were opposed to him, and inflicted on them the most horrible tor- 
tares. Otger, bishop of Spire, was whipped by his command till 
he was almost deaa; another, cardinal John, was mutilated by 
having his right hand cut off, and Azo by the loss of his tongue, 
nose, and two fingers. But these horrible enormities were not 
permitted to continue long. Shortly after his return to the city, 
the Pope was caught in bed with a married woman, and killed on 
the spot, as some authors say, by the Devil, but probably by the 
husband in disguise.* 

§ S6.-2— But decency demands that we should draw a veil over 
the further debaucheries and incests of these boasted successors of 
the prince of the apostles, and their shameless female associates in 
guilt and pollution. Historical fidelity demanded so much of the 
truth to be made known, and certainly the reader will conclude 
here is enough for a specimen. So conclusive is the evidence of 
the historical accuracy of these disgraceful facts, that popish 
writers are constrained to admit their truth. We have already 
referred to the celebrated Fleury, but shall cite the following re- 
markable language of Cardinal Baronius, one of the most powerfiil 
champions of popery, in reference to these events. 



"Quae tanc facies sancts Ecclesis "O! what was then the face of the 

Romans ! qaam fsdiBsima cum Rome holy Roman church ! how filthy, when 

fkmiDarentar potentissimaB sqne et sor^ the vilest and most powerful prostitutes 

SUsnmiB meretrices ! quarun arbitrio ruled in the court of Rome ! by whoee 

mutaientnr aedes, darentur Episcopi, et arbitrary sway dioceses were made and 

qood aaditu horrendum et infandom est, unmade, bishops were consecrated, and 

mtruderentur in Sedem Petri earum — which is inexpressibly horrible to be 

AHASsn FBEUDO-FOiTTiFicss, qul uoQ Biut mentioned ! — false popes, their para- 

nki ad consignanda tantum tempora in hours, were thrust into the chair of 

catalogo Romanorum Pontificum scripti. St. Peter, who, in being numbered as 

Quia enim a scortis huJiLsmodi intm- popes, serve no purpose except to fill up 

•OS sine lege legitimes dicere possit Ro- the catalogues of the popes of Rome, 

maooa fiiisee Fonti^cea ? Sic vindica^ For who can say that persons thrust into 

veiat omnia sibi libdm, ssDCulari poten- the popedom without anjr law by harlots 

tk fi«Ca, iDMUuens, Batio febcita domi- <£ mis sort, were legitimate popes of 

juns." Rome ? In this manner, lust, support- 
ed by secular power, excited to frenzy, 
in the ra^ for domination, ruled m all 

In another passage. Cardinal Baronius, the celebrated annalist of 
the Romish church, expresses his feelings in reference to the horri- 

* Bower, vita John XIL The above particulars in the life of this vicious Pope 
are related by Bower, upon the incontestible authority of Luitprand, bishop of 
Cremona, an authentic contemporary historian. His work is frequently referred 
to by the cautious and learned Gieseler. Hist, rerum in Europa svo temp, gesta- 
ncm, JM. tL tit Muratori Rer, Ital, StcripL 



220 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book it. 



The holy See, aecoidiaf to Baronlni, ** withoat spot,'* yet ** blackened with perpetual infamy.* 



biy flagitious lives of these popes, and the See which they dishon- 
ored, in the following remarkable language : 

*' Est plane, ut vix aliquis credat, im- " It is evident that one can scarcely 

mo, nee vix quidem sit credlturus, nisi believe, withoat ocular evidence, tchat 

Buis inspiciat ipse oculis, manibusque uniDorthy, base, execrable^ and abominable 

contrectAt, quamindigna,quamqueturpia things the holy, apostolical See, wkiek is 

atque deformia execraiida, insuper, et thb fivot ufoh which the whole Ca- 

abominanda sit coacta pali sacrosancta tholic chubch revolves, was forced to 

apostolica sedes is cujus cjiBDIke uki- endure, when the princes of this age, 

VERSA ecclesia Cathouca vertitur, although Christian, yet arrogated to 

cum Principes ssculae hujus quantumli- themselves the election of the Roman 

bet Christiani, hac tamen ex parte dl- pontiff. Alas, the shame ! Alas, the 

cendi tyranni ssvissimi arrogaverunt sibi grief! what monsters HORRmLE to b»- 

tyranmce electionem Romanorum pon- hold, were then, by them, intruded on 

tificum. Quot tunc ah eis, proh pudor ! the holy See, which angels revere ! what 

proh dolor ! in eandem Sedem Angelis evils ensued ! what tragedies did they 

reverendam visu horrenda intrusa sunt perpetrate ! with what pollutions was 

MOiTSTRA ? quot ex ois oborta sunt mala, this See, though itself without spot or 

consummatsB tragcedis ? quibus tunc u)rinkle, then stained ! with what coi^ 

ipsam sine macula et sine ruga contigit ruptions infected ! with what filthiness 

aspergi sordibus, putoribus mfici, inqui- defiled ! and by these things blackeksd 

nati spurcitiis, ex bisque ferfetua in- with ferfetual infamy.^ 

FAMIA. DEMIGRARI !" 

How the above assertions can be reconciled, that ** the holy See 
itself" can be "without spot or wrinkle," and yet "blackened 
with perpetual infamy," must be left for popish casuists to explain. 

" Who can say," asks Baronius, " that persons thrust into the 
popedom, by harlots of this sort, were legitimate popes of Rome V* 
Certainly, we answer, they have evidenUy no more claim to the 
character of bishops or ministers of Christ, than their scarcely more 
wicked master, Beelzebub himself. But then, what becomes of the 
boasted uninterrupted apostolical succession ? What, indeed I 
After reading the above brief recitals of but a few instances of 
papal profligacy, presented in this age, the reader will be prepared 
to acknowledge the justice of the remark of Mosheim, in reference 
to the tenth century : " The history of the Roman pontiffs that lived 
in this century," says he, " is a history of so many monsters, and 
NOT OF MEN, and exhibits a horrible series of the most flagi- 
tious, tremendous, and complicated crimes, as all writers, even 
those of the Romish communion, unanimously confess." (Vol. ii., 390.) 

§ 37. — It would be amusing, were it not painful to witness the 
lame attempts of Roman Catholic writers to reconcile the horrible 
profligacy of many of their popes, with their views in relation to 
apostolical succession, and papal infallibility. Father Gahan, in his 
history of the church, already referred to. which is probably the 
most accessible and popular work of its kind, among the multitude 
of Romanists, after faintly admitting (page 279), that " some unwor- 
thy popes " who had been " thrust into the apostolic chair," by the 

* Baronius Annal., ad Ann. 900, &c. The former of the above passages from 
the Annalist, is cited by Southey, in his VindicisB Anglicans, page 389. Lon- 
don, 1826. 




our. IT.] POPERY IN ITS GLORT— WORUVMIDNIGHT— 800-.1078. 831 



ihtKfWHf^wmimatmkMlhtfio, AmnlMr mob hw, poy Beatdlct g. 



intrigues of ''three women of scandalous lives," had ''disgraced 
their hi^ station, by the immorality of their lives,'' proceeds to 
remark as foUows : " Christ promised infallibility," says he, " to the 
great body of her pastors, in their public doctrine, but he has no- 
where promised them impeccability in their conduct ' 60,' said 
lie to tfaiem, ' teach all nations : Bmtixe and teach them to observe 
all that I have ordained, and / tmil he with you! &c. In virtue of 
this promise, he is always with the pastors of his church, to guaran- 
tee them /rom oil error in the doctrine of faiths but not to exempt then^ 
from alttice; for he did not say, as the great Bossuet observes, '/ 
wiU he with you pbactising all that I have commanded, but / will 
k unih ye tbaching.' Hence, to show that the mark of the true 
frith was attached to the profession of the public doctrine, and not 
to the innocence of their morals, he said to the faithful who are 

tiOght, ' DO ALL THAT THEY BAY, AND NOT WHAT THEY DO."(l 1)* I 

suppose that most of my readers have heard the old anecdote of the 
dnnking and fox-hunting English parson, who used to admonish 
his ccmffreffation that they must dotu he taid^ and not as he did ; but 
probably few of them ever imi^ined, before reading the above pre- 
cious specimen ofpa]>al reasomns that the parson was indebted for 
his maxim to the Saviour himselL 

§ 88. — ^Among the popes of the eleventh century, while there were 
lome whose lives were decent, there were others, worthy rivals in 
profligacy to their predecessors of the tenth. I shall add, howeverr 
tmt one to this disgraceful list, Benedict IX., on account of his pre- 
eminence in vice. He was a son of Alberic, count of Tuscany, and 
was placed on the papal throne, through the money and the influ- 
ence of his father, at the age of eighteen years, A. D. 1033. His 
vicious life can only find a parallel in that of the most debauched 
of the Roman emperors, Helio^abalus, Commodus, or Caligula. 
The Romans, shocked at his daifv public debaucheries, more than 
<Hice expelled him from the city, but by means of the emperors, or 
some other powerful friends, he was as often restored. Finding 
himself at length an object of public abhorrence, on account of his 
flagitious crimes, he finally sold the popedom to his successor, 
Gregory VI., and betook himself to a private life, rioting without 
control in all manner of uncleanliness. One of his successors in the 
papal chair, Desiderius, or Victor III., describes pope Benedict as 
" abandoned to all manner of vice. A successor of Simon the sor- 
CEEER, and NOT OF Simon the APosTLE.^f No doubt this opinion is 
correct, but again we ask, what becomes of the uninterrupted apos- 
tolical SUCCESSION ? 

§ 39. — It might, of course, be expected that the examples thus 
set by the occupants of the vaunted Holy See, the boasted suc- 
cessors of St Peter, would be imitated by the inferior orders of 
clergy, who were taught to regard the popes as their spiritual 



^ Gmhan^B History of the Church, page 280. 
t Desid. Dialog., lib. iii. 



222 mSTORT OF ROICANIBM. [aooKir. 

UoaatlowBen of tte iafflrior etafgjr. Ooncobtoai of th» )fdttm iiniifaMing to th«lr iwwwfc 

soverei^ and head, as the vicegerents of God upon earth. Ae- 
cordingtVy we find that a universal corruption of morals had in- 
vaded the monks and the clergy. ^ The houses of the priests and 
monks," says the abbot Alredus, ^ were brothels for harlots, and 
filled with assemblies of bufibons ; where in, gambling, dancing, and 
music, amid every nameless crime, the donations of royalty, and 
the benevolence of princes, the price of precious blood, were most 
prodigally squandered."* 

^ Atto's language on this topic," says Edgar, ^ is equally striking. 
He represents some of the clergy as sold in such a degree to their 
lusts, that they kept filthy harlots in their houses. These, in a pub* 
lie manner, lived, bedded, and boarded with their consecrated para* 
mours. Fascinated with their wanton allurements, the abanaoned 
cler^ conferred on the partners of their guilt, the superintendence 
of their family and all their domestic concerns. These courtezani^ 
during the lives of their companions in iniquity, managed their 
households : and, at their death, inherited their property. The 
ecclesiastical alms and revenues, in this manner, descended to the 
accomplices of vile prostitution.! The hirelings of pollution were 
adom^, the church wasted, and the poor oppressed by men who 
professed to be the patrons of purity, the guardians of truth, and 
the protectors of the wretched and the needy. 

§ 40. — ** Damian represents the guilty mistress as confessing to the 
guilty priest.;^ This presented another absurdity and an aggravation 
of the crime. The formality of confessing what the father confessor 
knew, and receiving forgiveness froAi a partner in sin, was an insult 
on common sense, and presented one of the many ridiculous scenet 
which have been exhibited on the theatre of the world. Confession 
and absolution in this way were, after all, very convenient* The 
fair penitent had not far to go for pardon, nor for an opportunity 
of repeating the fault, which mi&[ht qualify her for anotner course 
of confession and remission. Her spiritual father could spare her 
blushes ; and his memory could supply any deficiency of recollec- 
tion in the enumeration of her sins. This mode of remission wa« 
attended with another advantage, which was a great improvement 
on the old plan. The confessor, in the penance which he pi'e* 
scribed on these occasions, exemplified the virtues of compassion 
and charity. Christian commiseration and sympathy took place 
of rigor and strictness. The holy father indeed could not be severe 
on so dear a friend ; and the lady could not refuse to be kind again 
to such an indulgent father. Damian, however, in his want of 

* << Fuisse clericorom domoe prostibula meretricam conciliabulum histrionimi, 
ubi ales, saltos, cantus, patrimonia re^m, eleemosyns principam profligarentur, 
imo pretiosi sangamia pretium, et alia mfanda.'' (^Alredus, cap/ ii.) 

f Quod dicere padet. Quidem in tant& libidlne mancipantnr, nt obacoBiias 
meretriculas sua simul in domo secum habitare, uno cibum sumere, ac pabliee 
deeere permittant Unde meretrices ornantur, ecclesiaB vestantur, panperes tri- 
bukntur. (AUo^ Ep. 9. Dacheryj i. 439.) 

I Lea coupables se confesaent k leare complices, qui ne leur imposent point ds 
penitences convenaUes. (Damian in Bruy, 2, 366. Oiamwny X. \ S.) 



FT.] PCmSRY IN rre GUmT—WORLD-miDNIGHT— 800-1078. 328 



optnly p wcti w * . BcfuiM m ft l«i ertiM la m pttat tlua 



charity and liberality, saw the transaction in a different lieht ; and 
complained in bitterness of this laxity of discipline, and Uie insult 
OD ecclesiastical jurisdiction and on rational piety. This adultery 
and fornication of the clergy degenerated, in many instances, into 
incest and other abominations of the grossest kind. Some priests, 
according to the council of Mentz in 888, ' had sons by their own 
â– stars.'* Some of the earher councils, through fear of scandal, de- 
prived the clergy of all female company, except a mother, a sister, 
or an aunt, who, it was reckoned, was bevond all suspicion. But 
the means intended for prevention were the occasion of more ao- 
camulated scandal and more heinous criminidity. The interdicticm 
wai the introduction to incestuous and unnatural prostitution." 
{Edgar, 516, 17.) 

§ 41. — In the tenth and eleventh centuries, concubinage was 
openly practised by the clergy, and it was regarded by popes and 
prelates as a far less crime to Keep a concubine than to marry a wife. 
* Any person, clergyman or layman, according to the council of 
Toledo in its seventeenth canon, who has not a wife but a concu- 
bine, ia not to be repelled from the communion, if he be content 
with one.t And his holiness pope Leo, the vicar-general of God, 
confirmed, in the kindest manner and with the utmost courtesy, the 
council of Toledo and the act of the Spanish prelacy.;^ Such was 
the hopeful decision of a Spanish council and a Roman pontiff: 
but, rioiculous as it is, this is not all. The enactment of the coun- 
cil and the Pope has been inserted in the Romish body of the Canon 
X*aw edited by Gratian and Pithou. Gratian's compilation indeed 
"vras a private production, un authenticated by any pope. But 
iHthou published by the command of Gregory XIII., and his work 
^X)ntains the acknowledged Canon Law of the Romish church. 
Sis edition is accredited by pontifical authority, and recognized 
"Ehrough popish Christendom. Fornication therefore is sanctioned 
ly a Spanish council, a Roman pontiff, and the canon law. Forni- 
cation, in this manner, was, in the clergy, not only tolerated but 
^so preferred to matrimony. Many of the popish casuists raised 
"Mhoredom above wedlock in the clergy. Costerus admits that a 
clergyman sins, if he commit fornication ; but more heinously if he 
marry. Concubinage, the Jesuit grants, is sinful ; but less aggra- 
vated, he maintains, than marriage. Costerus was followed by 
Tighius and Hosius. Campeggio proceeded to still greater ex- 
travagancy. He represented a priest who became a husband, as 
committing a more grievous transgression than if he should keep 
many domestic harlots.§ An ecclesiastic, rather than marry, 

* Quidam sacerdotum cam propriis sororibos concambentes, filioe ex eis gene- 

nisent {Bin. 7, 137. Labh. 11, 686.) 
f Christiano habere licitam est unam tantam aut uxorem, aut certe loco nxoris 

coocabinam. (Pi/Aou, 47. (HanrumyV, b, Dachery, l^ b'iS, Canisius, 2, lllJ) 
t Confirmatum videtur auctoritate Leonis Paps. (Bin. 1, 737.) 
f Gravius peccat, si contnUiat matrimouium. (Cost.^ c. 16.) 
Quod sacerdotes fiaat mariti, multo esse gravius peccatum quam se pluriiniB 



224 fflSTORY OF ROMANISM. [booe rr. 



Amhlit all thia pfofligacy, the power and inflaenee of the popes Increaeed. Canaea of thia. 

should, according to this precious divine, keep a seraglio. The 
clergyman, he affirms, who perpetrates whoredom, acts firom a per- 
suasion of its rectitude or legality ; while the other knows and 




this abandoned profligacy of popes and priests, their power, and 
wealth, and influence, should have gone on steadily increasing till it 
reached its culminating point during the pontificate of the im- 
perious Hildebrand, who ascended the papal throne under the title 
of Gregory VII., A. D. 1073. 

This strange fact is accounted for in the general ignorance of 
the bible, the supposed authority of the forged decretals, and 
the awful terror of excommunication and interdict. During these 
dark ages, the Scriptures were almost entirely unknown, not only 
among the laity, but even among the great majority of the clergy. 
Those of the priests who had some acquaintance with the sacred 
books labored hard to conceal from the eyes of the people a volume 
which so plainly condemned their vicious lives and their anti-scrip- 
tural doctrines and ceremonies. This, it is well known, has ever 
been the policy of popish priests, and down to the present day in 
countries where Popery generally prevails, multitudes of otherwise 
well educated people are ignorant even of the existence of the 

bible.t 

§ 43.— ^During these dark ages, it is to be remembered, the forged 
decretals, and the spurious donation of the emperor Constantvne^ 
were universally received as genuine, and constantly appealed to in 
proof of the assumptions of the popes. On this point, in addition 
to what has already been said in a former chapter (see above, page 
182, &c.), I shall quote a paragraph from the celebrated work of 
the learned John Daille on " the right use of the fathers." Speak- 
ing of various early forgeries, says he, " I shall plac6 in this rank 
the so much vaunted deed of the donation of Constantine, which 

doni meretrices alunt. Nam illos habere persuasnm quasi recte faciant, hos aatem 
Bcire et peccatum agnoscere. (Campeggio, in Sleidan, 96.) 

* See Edgar, 620. 

f A remarkable and unexceptionable proof of this assertion is found in the 
recent work of George Borrow, entitled " the Bible in Spain." On one occasion, 
he says, " I asked a boy whether he or his parents were acquainted with the 
Scripture and ever read it ; he did not, however, seem to understand me. I must 
here observe that the bov was fifteen years of age, that he was in many respects 
very intelligent, and had some knowledge of the lAtin language ; nevertheless, 
he knew not the Scripture, even by name, and I have no doubt, from what I sub- 
sequently observed, that at least two-thirds of his countrymen are on that im- 
portant point no wiser than himself. At the doors of village inns, at ihe hearths 
of the rustics, in the fields where they labor, at the stone fountain by the way-side, 
where they water their cattle, I have questioned the lower classes of the children 
of Portugal about the Scripture, the Bible, the Old and New Testament, and in no 
one instance have they known what I was alluding to, or could return me a 
national answer, though on all other matters their repfies were sensible enough." 



CHAP. IT.] POPERY IN ITS GLORY— WORLD-MIDNIGHT— 800-1073. 225 

Foiftd deereuls. DaUI6 on the fiith«n. MjrsterioiM tenrora of ezeommonicatlon and Interdict. 

has for so long a time been accounted as a most valid and authentic 
evidence, and has also been inserted in the decrees, and so pertina- 
ciously maintained by the bishop of Agobio, against the objections 
of Laurentius Valla. Certainly those very men, who at this day 
maintain the donation, do notwithstanding disclaim this evidence as 
a piece of forgery."* 

In reference to the decretal epistles^ Daille remarks, " Of the 
same nature are the epistles attributed to the first popes, as Clemens, 
Anacletus, Euaristus, Alexander, Sixtus, Telesphorus, Hyginus, 
Kus, Anicetus, and others, down to the times of Siricius (that is to 
say, to the year of our Saviour 386), which the world read, under 
these venerable titles, at the least for eight hundred years together ; 
and by which have been decided, to the advantage of the church 
of Rome, very many controversies, and especially the most im- 
portant of all the rest, that of the Pope's monarchy. This shows 
plain enough the motive (shall I call it such ?), or rather the purposed 
design of the trafficker that first circulated them. The greatest 
part of these are accounted forged by men of learning ; for indeed 
their forgery appears clear enough from their barbarous style, the 
errors met with at every step in the computation of times and his- 
tory, the pieces they are patched up of, stolen here and there out 
of different authors, whose books we have at this day to show ; and 
also by the general silence of all the writers of the first eight cen- 
turies, among whom there is not one word mentioned of them." 

§ 44. — When, in addition to these facts, we call to mind the im- 
mense power wielded by the popes and clergy, in consequence of the 
mysterious terror attached to the thunders of excommunication and 
interdict J we shall no longer be at a loss to account for the growth 
of papal power and assumption during this midnight of the world. 
During the dark ages, excommunication received that infernal 
power which dissolved all connexions, and the unfortunate or 
guilty victim of this horrid sentence was regarded as on a level 
with the beasts. Thte king, the ruler, the husband, the father, nay, 
even the man, forfeited all their rights, all their advantages, the 
claims of nature and the privileges of society, and was to be shun- 
ned like a man infected with the leprosy, by his servants, his friends 
or his family. Two attendants only were willing to remain with 
Robert, king of France, who was excommunicated by pope Gre- 

fory v., and these threw all the meats that passed his table into the 
re. Indeed, the mere intercourse with a proscribed person incur- 
red what was called the lesser excommunication, or privation of 
the sacraments, and required penitence and absolution. Every- 
where the excommunicated were debarred of a regular sepulture, 
which has, through the superstition of consecrating ourial-grounds, 

* Daill^ on the right use of the fathers, Philad., pases 46, 47. 

At the time when I)ailI6 wrote this valuable work, A. D. 1631, we see from the 
above sentence there were some who still contended for the genuineness of this 
flporioos grant The arguments of Ijiurentius Valla have since been universally 
'^~'-^-^ as conclnaiye, and the point ia conceded by Romaniata themselvea. 



22» HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book it. 

The Iroo sfe of the woild was the goldw ■§• of Poporj. 

been treated as belonging to ecclesiastical control. But as excom- 
municationy which attacxed only one and perhaps a hardened sin- 
ner, was not always efficacious, the church had recourse to a more 
comprehensive punishment. For the offence of a nobleman, she 
put a county, for that of a prince, his entire kingdom, under an tn^ 
terdictj or suspension of religious offices. No stretch of her tyran 
ny was perhaps so oul^rageous as this. During an interdict, the 
churches were closed, the bells silent, the dead unburied, no rite but 
those of baptism and extreme unction performed. The penalty 
fell upon those who had neither partaken nor could have preventecl 
the offence ; and the offence was often but a private dispute, in 
which the pride of a pope or bishop had been wounded. This was 
the mainspring of the machinery that the clergy set in motion, the 
lever by which they moved the world. From the moment that 
these interdicts and excommunications had been tried, the powers 
of the earth might be said to have existed only by sufferance.* 
During the pontificates of Gregory VII., Innocent III., and their 
successors, while Popery sat on the throne of the earth and wielded 
the sceptre of the world, we shall see that these spiritual weapons 
were employed with tremendous effect 

§ 46. — It is a fact worthy of attentive observation, that the 
iron age of the world was the golden age of Popery. Its anti- 
Christian doctrines were never more extensively and implicitly re- 
ceived than during these dark ages ; its superstitious rites never 
more reverently performed ; its contemptible festivals never more 

Senerally observed ; its corrupt and licentious clergy never more 
evoutly honored and munificently enriched ; and its haughty and 
imperious popes never attained a loftier elevation of worldly dig- 
nity than during this intellectual and moral midnight of the world. 
Hence it is not to be wondered at that the Roman Catholic his- 
torian, Dupin, and others, should refer in terms of the highest com- 
placency to this aee. Speaking of the tenth century, which was 
the darkest part of this moral midnight, Dupin remarks. ^ In this 
century there was no controversy relating to the doctrine of faith, 
or points of divinity, because there were no heretics, or persons 
who refined upon matters of religion, and dived into our mysteries. 
However, there were some clergymen in England who would needs 
maintain that the bread and wine upon the altar continued in the 
same nature after the consecration, and that they were only the 
figure of the body and blood of Jesus Christ. This error was re- 
futed by a miracle wrought by Odo, archbishop of Canterbury, 
who made the body of Jesus Christ appear visibly in the celebra- 
tion of the holy mysteries, and made some drops of blood flow out 
of the consecrated bread when it was broken. St. Dunstan like- 
wise refuted that error very strenuously in his discourses. In fine, 
there was no council held in this century that disputed any point 

^ For a fuller account of these apiritual weapons, see HaUam's Middle Agjas 
(chap, vii.) ; Moeheim, ii., 210, note ; and Umne's Hist of England, chap. zL 



CHAP. T.] POPERY IN ITS GLORY— WORLD-MIDNIGHT— 800-1073. 237 

taportni l«Mm derircd ttam the himatj of Popery in the dark igee. Popery in E^aad. 

of doctrine or discipline, which shows us that there was no error 
of fidth that was ot any consequence, or made any noise in the 
church."* Father Gahan re-echoes the same sentiments. "TWs 
age," says he, ** was indeed happy in this respect, that no consider-^ 
able heresy arose, or was broached in it, for which reason there 
was no occasion for general councils, nor for so many ecclesiastical 
writers, as in the foregoing ages.**! 

Before dismissing the subject of the present chapter, I would 
embrace the opportimity of recording a truth which it behoves 
every protestant, and especially every American protestant, well 
to remember — a truth, written in burning characters upon the dark 
back-ground of the world's midnight, evident as the lines of forked 
ligfatnmg upon a dark and cloudy sky — ^it is this : Ignorance anb^ 

DAlUfEBB ASE THE NATIVE ELEMENT OF PoPERT. It8 MOST FLOUBIBH- 
no DATS WERE IN THE MIDNIGHT Of^ THE WORLD. ThE GREATEST 
BLOW THAT ANTI-ChRISTIAN SYSTEM EVER RECEnrED WAS THE RE- 
VIVAL OF LETTERS AND THE INVENTION OF PRINTING. ThE GOLDEN 
AGE OF POPERT WAS THE IRON AGE OF THE WORLD, AND ITS UNIVERSAIr 
RSiGN WOULD BE THE IRON AGE RESTORED ! 



CHAPTER V. 

POPXET IN ENGLAND, PRIOR TO THE CONaUEST. AUGUSTIN THE MIS- 
SIONARY, AND DUNSTA.V THE MONK. 

} 46. — Before proceeding to give a biographical sketch of the 
celebrated Hildebrand or Gregory VII., under whom the assump- 
tions of the papacy reached their climax, we shall present a concise 
account of the most remarkable events connected with the estab- 
lishment of Popery in Great Britain, and its subsequent history, to 
the Norman conquest It was under the auspices of the first 
Gregory, bishop of Rome, that the monk Augustin, with his associ- 
ates, arrived in England, near the close of the sixth century, to pro- 
pagate among the rude and hardy Saxons, not the simple and un- 
corrupted TOspel of Christ, but the religion of Rome, already cor- 
rupted, as the reader of the foregoing pages is aware, by the intro- 
duction of a variety of pagan ceremonies, and false and unscriptural 
dogmas. A much purer form of the Christian religion and worship 
was already observed in the mountains of Wales and other parts oi 
the island, received, as is supposed by some, from the apostle Paul 

* Dnran's Ecclesiastical History, cent. x. 
t Gahan's Histmy of the Church, p. 279. 

15 



228 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book it. 

PiiiiiitlT« Welih Ghrisdana. KeeeptkmoftlwiBOBk Aagnidn,by UngBlhielbfft. 

himself, and by others, from Joseph of Arimathea, who were said to 
have visited Britain ; or as is supposed by others, with more probar 
bility, from some primitive British-bom disciples, who probably 
heard and received the true gospel from the lips of St Paul, while 
a prisoner at Rome, and returning to their native island, dissemi- 
nated its saving truths among their countrymen. These primitive 
disciples had been driven by the fierce and barbarous invaders of 
the island, chiefly to the mountainous districts of Wales, and notr 
withstanding the zeal of Augustin and other emissaries of Rome, 
steadily refused to admit the authority, or to receive the doctrines or 
the rites of that corrupt and apostate church. 

§ 47. — It was in the year 596, that Aumistin, and the other Ro« 
man missionaries, landed in the county of Kent, and despatched one 
of their interpreters to acquaint king Ethelbert with the news and 
design of their coming. After a few days' deliberation, Ethelbert 
went into the island, and appointed a conference to be held in the 
open air. The missionaries advanced in orderly procession, carry- 
ing before them a silver cross, and singing a hymn. The king com- 
manded them to sit down, and to him and his earls they disclosed 
their mission. Ethelbert answered with a steady and not unfriendly 
judgment ; " Your words and promises are fair, but they are new 
and uncertain. I cannot, therefore, abandon the rites which, in 
common with all the nations of the Angles, I have hitherto observed. 
But as you come so far to communicate to us what you believe to 
be most excellent, we will not molest you. We will receive you 
hospitably, and supply you with what you need ; nor do we forbid 
any one to join your society whom you can persuade to prefer it" 
He gave them a mansion at Canterbury, his metropolis, for their 
residence, and allowed them to preach as they pleased. The labors 
of these zealous emissaries of Kome were so successful, that the 
King himself, and vast multitudes of his subjects, were persuaded to 
be baptized, and ten thousand are said to have submitted to that 
rite on the following Christmas day, thus exchanging with the same 
ease as they would exchange one garment for another, the ancient 
Paganism of their Saxon ancestors, for the Christianized Paganism 
of Rome. 

§ 48. — Lest the attachments of the islanders to their pagan cere- 
monies might prove an obstacle to their nominal profession of 
Christianity, Gregory, as before mentioned (see above, page 130), 
wrote to Augustin, now raised to the dignity of archbishop, direct- 
ing him, as we are informed by the venerable Bede, not to destroy 
the heathen tempks of the Anglo-Saxons, but only to remove the 
images of their gods, to wash the walls with holy-water^ to erect 
altarSy and deposit relics in them, and so convert them into Christian 
churches : and this, not only to save the expense of building new ones, 
but that the people might be more easily prevailed upon to frequent 
those places of worship to which they had been accustomed. He 
directs him further to accommodate the Christian worship, as much 
as possible, to those of the heathen, that the people might not be so 



▼.] F0RK7 ra ITS GUMtT--W<MIUMIIlNaGHT--«M»~iaP]3. S99 



mnch staided mt the change; aiidv in particular, he adviaes him to 
allow the Chriatian oonTcrts, on certain festiTals, to kill and eat a 
neat nnmber of oxen to the dory of God» as they had fonneily 
ooiie to the honor of the deviL In the cootk of the seventh centuiy^ 
mouaaieiiesv in great abondance, were fiMmded in all parts of Eqg* 
land, and rich endowments bequeathed them. To encourage per- 
SGOs to adopt the monastic life, the impious doctrine now b^nn to 
be hioachedy that ''as soon as any person put on the habit of a 
monkt all the sins of his fonner fife were forgiven him.* This 
cninaged many princes and great men, who have as many sins as 
theu* infericMTB, to put on the cowl, and end their days in monasteries, 
hi &ct, superstition, in various forms, made rapid strides in En^and 
in the seventh coiturv ; amonj^ which may be mentioned a ndicu* 
loos Tenraation for relics, in which theder^yof the church of Rome 
had tor some time been driving a gainful trade — a traffic which 
never can be carried cm, except between knaves and fools. Few 
persona, in those days, thought themselves safe from the machina- 
tiotts of the devil, unless they carried the relics of some saint about 
them ; and no church could be dedicated without a decent quantity 
of this sacred trumpery. Stories of dreams, visions, and miracles, 
were propagated by tlie clergy, vrithout a blush, and believed with- 
out a doubt by the laity. Extraordinary watchinffs, festings, sjmI 
other arts of tormenting the body, in order to save the soul, became 
frequent and fashionable ; and it began to be believed tluit a pil- 
grimage to Rome was the most direct road to heaven.* 

§ 49. — ^During the eighth century in England, no less than in 
Italy, ignorance and superstition advanced with rapid strides. The 
cleigy became more knavish and rapacious, and the laity more 
abject and stupid than at any fonner period. Of this, the trade in 
reucs alone anbrds abundant proof. The monks were daily making 
discoveries, as they pretended, of the precious remains of some 
departed saint, which they soon converted into gold and silver. In 
this traffic they had all the opportunities they could desire of impos- 
ing counterfeit wares upon their customers, seeing it was no easy 
matter for the laity to distinguish the tooth or the toe-nail of a saints 
from that of a sinner^ after it had been some centuries in the grave. 
The place where the body of Albanus, the protomnrtyr of Britain, 
lay, is said to have been revealed to OfTa, king of Mercia, in vision, 
A. D. 794 ! The body was accordingly taken up, with all imagi- 
nable pomp and ceremony, in the presence of three bishops, and a 
vast number of people of all ranks, and lodged in a rich shrine, 
adorned with gold and precious stones. To do the greater honor 
to the memory of the holy martyr, king Offa built a stately monas- 
tery at the place where his body was lound, which he called by his 

^ Bede, Epist ad E^^bert Spclman, Concil, Tom. i., p. 99, as cited by William 
Jonea, the venerable continuator of Russell's Modern Europe, to whose lectures 
CO Ecclesiastical History I am indebted for many of the facts relative to the pro- 
gress (rf Popery in Britain. See Lect. zzx.-zzziv. London, 1834. 



230 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. jMXwrr. 

Canning of the Pope to raise a tiibate in England. An arehUahop of the eehool of lin<lefcrB«i 

. - - - - I ■ — ^ 

name, St. Alban's, and in which he deposited his remains, enriching 
it with many lands and privileges. As to the character of Offa, the 
monarch to whom the clergy were indebted for this ridiculous piece 
of pious fraud, it may sumce to say, that his life was disgraced by 
the commission of not a few very horrible crimes ; to atone for 
which he made a pilgrimage to Rome, where he lavished his money 
upon the Pope and me clergy, to procure the pardon of his sins. In 
particular, he made a grant of three hundred and sixty-five mancus- 
ses (pieces of money of the value of 13*. 4d. each), being one for 
each day in the year, to be disposed of by the Pope to certain chari- 
table and pious uses. The Roman pontiff consented to become his 
almoner ; out cunningly contrived to convert it into an annual tax 
upon the English nation, and in the most imperious manner, demand- 
ed it as a lawful tribute, and mark of subjection of the kingdom of 
England to the church of Rome. So early and so rapidly did the 
proud pontiffs of Rome strive to extend their dominion over the 
nations of the earth. 

§ 50. — We have already seen in the case of Theodore (see above, 

Eage 135), how artfully the Pope contrived to extend and strengthen 
is power in England, by appointing a creature of his own to the 
dignity of archbishop of Canterbury, and we shall soon see that 
these lordly prelates were ready enough to imitate the pride and 
presumption of those to whom they were origuially indebted for 
therr dignity. In 934, the See of Canterbury was filled by a pre- 
late of the name of Odo, who acted the primate with a very high 
hand, of which the following is a fair specimen. He issued a pas* 
toral letter to the clergy and people of his province (commonly 
called the Constitutions oi Odo), in which he addresses them in this 
magisterial style : " I strictly command and charge that no man 
presume to lay any tax on the possessions of the clergy, who are 
the sons of God, and the sons of God ought to be free from all taxes 
in every kingdom. If any man dares to disobey the discipline of 
the church in this particular, he is more wicked and impudent^an 
the soldiers who crucified Christ. / command the King, the princes, 
and all in authority, to obey, with great humility, the archbishops, 
and bishops, for they have the keys of the kingdom of heaven,** &c 
If this Odo had lived a century or two later, we might have well 
supposed that he had stolen an arrow from the quiver of the impe- 
rious Hildebrand. 

§ 51. — Of all the primates of England, none has obtained greater 
notoriety than the celebrated Saint Dunstan, so famous, or rather 
so infamous for his zeal in the cause of priestly celibacy, and for his 

Eretendcd wonderful miracles. Dunstan, we are informed, was 
om in the year of our Lord, 925, near Glastonbury, and was de- 
scended from a respectable family who resided there. He was put 
to school, and his parents encouraged his application to learning, in 
which he is said to have made wonderful proficiency, such as 
evinced superior abilities. Having run with rapidity through the 
com*se of his studies, he obtained an introduction into the ecclesias- 



CH4F.Y.] POPERY IN rrS GLORY— WORLD-MTONIGHT— 800-1073. 281 



i*s prataBded nUiiclei. Polling the deriJ*! noae with red hot tonfi. Glutonburx abbcgr. 

tical establishment at the celebrated abbey of GlastonburVy where 
he continued his application to learning with commendable diligence, 
so that he seems to have attained all the knowledge that was within 
his reach. Having, by the persuasions of an uncle, embraced the 
monkish life, he made with his own hands a subterraneous cave, or 
cell, adjoining the church wall of Glastonbury. It was five feet 
long, and two and a half wide, and nearly of a sufiicient height for a 
man to stand upright in the excavation. Its only wall was its door, 
which "covered the whole, and in this a small aperture to admit light 
and air. One of the legendarv tales which have been used to exalt 
hb fame, shows the arts by which he gained it In tKis cave Dun- 
stan slept, studied, prayed, and meditated, and sometimes exercised 
himself in working on metals. One night all the neighborhood was 
alarmed by the most terrific bowlings, which seemed to issue firom 
his abode. In the morning, the people flocked to inquire the cause ; 
he told them the devil had intruded his head into his window to 
tempt him while he was heating his work — ^that he had seized him 
5y the nose^ with his red hot tongs, and that the noise was Satan's 
roaring at the pain ; and such was the credulity of the age, that the 
simple people believed him, and venerated the recluse for this 
amazing exploit I 

§ 52. — ^In 941, the fame of Dunstan's sanctity and miracles was 
sach that the Kin^ bestowed upon him the rich abbey of Glaston- 
bury, the most ancient, and down to the time of king Henry VIII., 
the most celebrated monastic institution of the kingdom ; and per- 
mitted him to make free use of the royal treasury to rebuild and to 
adorn it. While Dunstan was abbot of this monastery, he filled it 
with Benedictine monks, to which order he belonged, and of which 
he was a most active and zealous patron. On an adjoining page is 
a correct and beautiful view of the remains of Glastonbury abbey, 
the scene of many of his legendary miradles, which is situated in 
Somersetshire, England, and which continues to be an object of 
deep interest to travellers and antiquaries. We learn from an accu- 
rate writer,* that the foundation plot upon which this vast fabric 
and its immense range of offices were erected, included a space of 
not less than sixty acres, and was surrounded on all sides by a lofty 
wall of wrought freestone. The principal building, the great 
abbey church, consisted of a nave of two hundred and twenty feet 
in length, aud forty-five in breadth ; a choir of one hundred and 
fifty-five feet ; and a transept of nearly one hundred and sixty feet ; 
and with the chapel of St. Joseph of Arimathea, which stood at the 
West end, one hundred and ten feet in length, by twenty-four in 
breadth, its extreme length measured the vast extent of five hun- 
dred and thirty feet Adjoining the church on the south side, was 
a noble cloister, forming a square of two hundred and twenty feet. 
The church contained five chapels, St. Edgar's, St. Mary's, St. An- 
drew's, the chapel of our Lady of Loretto, and the chapel of the 

* CoUinson, in his history of Somersetshire.* 



232 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book n. 

Dnnauui'i penecatioa of the married clergy. Bilracalooe Imifee ipeaklof to reproTO the guilt of aiatrtaDQiij 

holy Sepulchre. St. Joseph's chapel, which is the prominent object 
in the engraving, is still pretty entire, excepting the roof and floor, 
and must be adinired for the richness of the finishing, as well as for 
the great elegance of the design. The communication with the 
church was by a spacious portal. There are doors also to the 
North and South ; one is ornamented with flower- work, the other 
with very elaborate flourishes and figures. The arches of the 
windows are semi-circular, and adomea with the lozenge, xigzag, 
and embattled mouldings ; underneath appears a series of compart- 
ments of interlaced semi-circular arches, springing from dender 
shafts, and also ornamented with zigzag mouldings, and in their 
spandrils are roses, crescents, and stars. Altogether this is one of 
the most remarkable remains of antiquity in the world. {See £b- 
graving,) 

§ 53. — In 960, the former abbot of Glastonbunr was made arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, and assured of the favor of king Edgar» pre- 
pared to execute the grand design which he had lon^ mecQtated-* 
of compelling the secular t^anons to put away their wives, and 
become monks ; or of driving them out, and introducing Benedictine 
monks in their room. With this view he procured tne promotion 
of his intimate friend, Oswald, to the See of Worcester, and of 
Ethelwald to that of Winchester ; two prelates who were them- 
selves monks, and animated with the most ardent zeal for the 
advancement of their order. This trio of bishops, the three great 
champions of the monks, and enemies of the married clergy, now 
proceeded by every possible method of fraud or force, to (frive the 
married clergy out of all the monasteries, or compel them to put 
away their wives and children. Rather than consent to the latter, 
by far the greatest number chose to become beggars and yagabonds, 
for which the monkish historians give them the most opprobrious 
names. To countenance these cruel, tyrannical proceedings, Doi^ 
Stan and his associates held up the married clergy as monsters of > 
wickedness for cohabiting with their wives, magnified celibacy sit: 
the only state becoming the sanctity of the i^acerdotal oflioe, aai 
propagated a thousand lies of miracles and visions to its honor* 
Among other popish contrivances, hollow crosses or images 
constructed sufliciently large to conceal a monk, which, ' 
appealed to by Dunstan, miraculously spoke in a human voice, j&oA\.: 
declared in the hearing of the gaping and astonished multitudes, tiht- *' 
horrible guilt of those who claimed to be priests, and yet chose abft - 
to be husbands and fathers. 

§ 54. — In the year 969, a commission was granted by king Edgai, 
who appears to have been an obedient tool of Dunstan, to tne throe 

f)relates, to expel the married canons out of all the cathedrals and 
arffer monasteries, promising to assist them in the execution of it 
with all his power. On this occasion he made a flaming speech, in 
which he painted the manners of the married clergy in the most 
odious colors, calling upon them to exert all their power in conjunc- 
tion with him, to exterminate those abominable wretches who kept 



. T.] FOPERT IN nS GLORY— WORLD-mDNIGHT-aoO-lOTS. 9S5 

kit. DgMh of 8L PiMMM 

wives. In the ocnclusion of his speech he thus addressed Dunstan:'' I 
know, O holy &ther Dunstan ! that you have not encouraged those 
criminal practices of the clergy. You have reasoned, entreated, 
threatened. FVom words it is now time to come to blows. All the 
power of the crown is at your command. Your brethren, the ven- 
erable Ethelwald, and the most reverend Oswald, will assist you. 
To YOU three I commit the execution of this important worL Strike 
boldly ; drive those irregular livers out of the church of Christ, and 
introauce others who will live according to rule." And yet this 
fiuious champion for chastity had, some time before the delivery 
of this harangue, ravished a nun, a young lady of noble birth, ana 
great beauty, at which his holy father confessor was so much offend- 
ed, that he enjoined him, by way of penance, not to wear his crown 
for seven vears ; to build a nunnery, and to persecute the married 
ekrgy with all his might — a strange way of making atonement for 
his own libertinism, by depriving others of their natural rights and 
liberties. 

$ 55. — ^At length this famous Saint Dunstan died in the year 988, 
and England was relieved of one of the most cunning and success- 
ful impostors, and obedient tools of Rome, the world ever saw. 
When it is mentioned that Dunstan pretended to many other mira- 
cles, about equal in probability and absurdity to that already men- 
tkmed, of pulling the devil's nose with his red hot tongs, this judg- 
ment will not be regarded as unduly severe. As, however, Dunstan 
was mainly instrumental in restoring and promotiDg the monastic 
institutions, the grateful monks, who were almost the only historians 
of those dark ages, have loaded him with the most extravagant 
praises, and represented him as the /greatest miracle-monger and 
highest favorite of heaven, that ever lived. To say nothing of his 
many conflicts with the devil, in which we are told he often bela- 
bored that enemy of mankind most severely, the following short 
rtory, which is related with great exultation by his biographer, will 
give some idea of the astonishing impiety ana impudence of those 
monks, and of the no less astonishing blindness and credulity of 
those unhappy times. " The most admirable, the most inestimable 
&ther Dunstan,*' says his biographer, " whose perfections exceeded 
all human imagination, was admitted to behold the mother of God, 
and his own mother, in eternal glory ; for before his death he was 
carried up into heaven, to be present at the nuptials of his own 
mother with the Eternal King, which were celebrated by the angels 
with the most sweet and joyous songs. When the angels reproached 
him for his silence on this great occasion, so honorable to his mo- 
ther, he excused himself on account of his being unacquainted with 
those sweet and heavenly strains ; but being a little instructed by 
the angels, he broke out into this melodious song ; ' O King and 
Ruler of nations, &c."' The original author of this impious fiction 
was Dunstan himself, who, upon his pretended return from this 
celestial visit, summoned a monk to commit the heavenly song to 
writing from Dunstan's lips, and the morning after, all the monks 



SS6 HISTORY OF EOMANISM. [book it. 

Canqoflrt of England, by William ofNonnandjr— A. D. 1008. 

were commanded to learn and to sing it, while Dunstan loudly de-> 
Glared the truth of the vision. 

In the year 1066, an event occurred, which constitutes an impor- 
tant epoch, both in the civil and ecclesiastical historv of England. 
That event was the conquest by William of Normandy. The con- 
sequences upon Popery in England, of this memorable revolution, as 
they belong chiefly to the succeeding period, must be reserved for a 
future chapter. 



387 



BOOK V. 



POPERT THE WORLD'S DESPOT. 



nan the Accsasum of fqfb gbegobt th., a. d. 1073, to the death or 

BONIFACE VHL, A. D. 1303. 



■»»«MWM*^^*»>MMMM^W«rfMM^X»» 



CHAPTER L 

THE LIFE AND KEIGN OF POPE BILDEBBAKD OB OBEGOBT YU, 

( 1. — One of the most extraordinary characters on the page of 
historvy and probably the most conspicuous person in the history of 
tbe eleventh century, was the famous monk Hildebrand, now 
reverenced by papists as Saint Gregory VII., who ascended the 
papal throne in 1073; and who carried the assumptions of the 
papacy to a height never before known, claimed supreme dominion 
over all the governments of the world, and attempted to bring all 
emperors, kings, and other earthly rulers, under his authority as his 
Tassals and dependents. This artful and ambitious monk had suc- 
ceeded in obtaining an almost unlimited influence at Rome long be- 
fore his election to the pontificate, and the attempts of the three or 
four popes who preceded him, to exercise their haughty sway over 
tbe sovereigns of the earth, is to be attributed chiefly to his influence 
and counsels. So early as previous to the accession of pope Victor 
IL in 1055, the authority ot Hildebrand was such that he was em- 
powered by the people and clergy of Rome to go to Germany, and 
to select by his own unaided judgment, in their name, a successor 
to the preceding Pope, Leo IX., by performing which trust to the 
satisfaction of all, he greatly increased his own popularity and 
power. 

During the reign of Victor, a complaint was received from the 
emperor Henry III., that Ferdinand of Spain had assumed the title 
of Emperor, and begging that unless he would immediately re« 
linquish the title, Ferdinand might be excommunicated, and his 
kmgdom put under an interdict. Hildebrand saw at once that 
this would be a favorable opportunity of advancing the scheme he 
had doubtless already formed of reducing all earthly sovereigns to 
subjection to the papal power, and accordingly persuaded the Pope 
to dispatch legates into Spain, threatening Ferdinand with the thun- 
ders of excommunication and interdict unless he immediately obeyed 



288 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book t. 

Hildebrand and the Pope penuade Robert of Normandy to acknowledge himaelf a vaaeal of Rome. 

the papal mandates and renounced a title which had been conferred 
by tne Holy See only on Henry. The terrified prince was glad to 
maintain his peace with the spiritual tyrants of Rome, by submis- 
sive obedience to his commands. 

§ 2. — A few years later, Hildebrand and pope Nicholas H., who 
was elected in 1059, had the address to prevail upon Robert Guiscard, 
the famous Norman conqueror, in consideration of the Pope's con- 
firming to him certain territories he had conquered, and to which 
neither Nicholas nor Robert had a particle of right, to own himself 
a vassal of the Holy See, and to take an oath of allegiance to the 
Pope, which is transcribed by Cardinal Baronius, from a volume in 
the Vatican library, in the following terms : — ** I, Robert, by the 
grace of God and St. Peter, duke of Apulia and Calabria, and mture 
duke of Sicily, promise to pay to St. reter, to you, pope Nicholas, 
my lord, to your successors, or to your and their nuncios, twelve 
deniers, money of Pavia, for each yoke of oxen, as an acknowledg- 
ment for all the lands that I myself hold and possess, or have mven 
to be held and possessed by any of the Ultramontanes ; ana this 
sum shall be yearly paid on Easter Sunday by me, my heirs and 
successors, to yqu, pope Nicholas, my lord, and to your suc- 
cessors. So help me God, and these his holy (Jospels." When 
Robert had taken this oath, the Pope acknowledged him for law- 
fiil duke of Apulia and Calabria, confirmed to him and his suc- 
cessors for ever the possession of those provinces, promised to con- 
firm to him in like manner the possession of Sicily, as soon as he 
should reduce that island, and putting a standard in his right hand, 
declared him vassal of the apostolical See, and standard-bearer of 
the holy church. From this time Robert styled himself • dux 
Apuliae and Calabrifle and futurus Siciliae.'* 

§ 3. — Soon after the election of pope Nicholas, and probably by 
the advice of Hildebrand, an important decree was issued rela- 
tive to the manner of the election of future popes. Before his time, 
there had been no settled rules accurately defining the electors of 
the popes, but they had been chosen by the whole Roman clergy, 
nobility, burgesses, and assembly of the people. The consequence 
of such a confused and iarring multitude uniting in the election 
was, that animosities and tumults, sometimes accompanied with 
bloodshed, frequently occurred in consequence of the collisions of 
the different contending factions ; each parly striving to secure the 
election of its own favorite candidate to the honor of being the suc^ 
cessor of St Peter and t?ie vicar of God upon earth. To prevent 
these disorders in future, as well as to enhance the power of the 
higher clergy at Rome, Nicholas issued his decree that the poweir 
01 electing a pope should be henceforth vested in the cardinal 
bishops {cardinales episcopi)^ and the cardinal clerks or presbyters 
{cardinales ckrici). By the cardinal bishops we are to understand 
the seven bishops, who belonged to the city and territory of Rome, 

* Leo Ostiens., 1. ii., c. 16. 



aup.l.] PQPERT THB WOBIJyS DEBFOT--^ D. 1073-1303. SS9 



whom Nicholas calls, in the same edict, ammrovinciaks episccpif 
and by the eardimal clerks^ the ministers ot twenty-eight Roman 
parishes or pioTincial churches. These were to constitute in future 
the college of electors, and were henceforward called the colkge of 
Cardiiuuif in a new and unusual sense of the term, which is pio- 
periy the origin of that dignity in its modem sense. 

It was customary for biuiops in these ages, to be consecrated by 
the metropolitan, but (in the swelling and bombastic language of 
the papal edict), ^ Since the apostolic See cannot be under the 
jurisdiction of any superior or metropolitan, the cardinal biskops 
must necessarily supply the place of a metropolitan, and fix tne 
elected pontiff on the summit of apostouc exaltation and em* 
riBE.** All the rest of the cleivy, of whatever order or rank they 
might be, were, together with the people, expressly excluded from 
the r^t of voting in the election of the pontiii^ though they virere 
allowed what is called a negative suflSrage, and their consent was 
required to what the others had done. In consequence of this new 
r^olation, the cardinals acted the principal port in the creation of 
the new pcmtiff ; though they suflfered for a long time much oppo- 
sition botn from the sacerdotal orders and the Roman citizens, who 
were constantly either reclaiming their ancient rights, or abusing 
the privilege they yet retained oi confirming the election of every 
new pope by their approbation and consent In the following cen- 
tury there was an end put to all these disputes by Alexander III., 
who was so fortunate as to finish and complete what Nicholas had 
only begun, and who, just one hundred years after the decree of 
Nicholas, transferred and confined to the college of cardinals the 
sole rii^ht of electing the popes, and deprived the body of the peo- 
ple and the rest of the clergy of the right of vetoing the choice of 
the cardinals left them by the decree of pope Nicholas. To ap- 
pease the tumults occasioned by these acts, the popes, at various 
times, added other individuals to the college of Cardinals, and in 
subsequent ages, an admission to this high order of purpled pre- 
lates, the obtaining of a cardinal's hat, was regarded, next to the 
papal chair, as the highest object of Romish sacerdotal ambition, 
and moreover a necessary step to all aspirants to the dignity of 
sovereign pontifi^ as no one but a cardinal can be elected pope.f 

§ 4. — At length in the year 1073, Hildebrand was himself chosen 
' Pope, and assumed the title of Gregory VIL, and his election was 
confirmed by the emperor Henry I v., to whom ambassadors had 
been sent for that purpose. This prince indeed had soon reason to 
repent of the consent lie had given to an election which became so 
prejudicial to his own authority, so fatal to the interests and liber- 
ties of the church, and so detrimental, in general, to the sovereignty 

* " Qnia sedes apontolica super se metropolitanam habere non potest ; cardi- 
Dales episcopi metropolitani vice procul dubio fuDjorantur, qui electum antistatem 
ad apoetolici colminis apicem provebant" (Edict ofNichokUj in Baluziia iv., 02.) 

f See a learned dissertation on Cardinals in Moaheim, cent zL, part iL 



240 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [boqkt. 

laonUnale ambition of Gregory VII. Hii piano Or onlvonnl mmglm 

and independence of kingdoms and empires. Hildebrand was a 
man of uncommon genius, whose ambition in forming the most 
arduous projects was equsdled by his dexterity in bringing them 
into execution ; sagacious, crafty, and intrepid, nothing could 
escape his penetration, defeat his stratagems, or daunt his courage ; 
haughty and arrogant beyond all measure ; obstinate, impetuous, 
and intractable ; he looked up to the summit of universal empire 
with a wishful eye, and labored up the steep ascent with uninter- 
rupted ardor, and invincible perseverance ; void of all principle, 
and destitute of every pious and virtuous feeling, he suffered little 
restraint in his audacious pursuits, from the dictates of religicm or 
the remonstrances of conscience. Such was the character of 
Hildebrand, and his conduct was every way suitable to it ; for no 
sooner did he find himself in the papal chair, than he displayed to 
the world the most odious marks of his tyrannic ambition. Not 
contented to enlarge the jurisdiction, and to augment the opulence 
of the See of Rome, he labored indefatigably to render the univeF- 
sal church subject to the despotic government and the arbitrary 
power of the pontiff alone, to dissolve the jurisdiction which hum 
and emperors had hitherto exercised over the various orders of the 
clergy, and to exclude them from all part in the management or 
distribution of the revenues of the church. Nay, this outrageous 
pontiff went still farther, and impiously attempted to submit to his 
jurisdiction the emperors, kings, and princes of the earth, and to 
render their dominions tributary to the See of Rome. 

§ 5. — The views of Hildebrand, or Hellbrandy as from his insaxKC 
ambition he has been appropriately styled, were not confined to 
the erection of an absolute and universal monarchy in the church ; 
they aimed also at the establishment of a civil monarchy equally ex- 
tensive and despotic ; and this aspiring pontiff, after having drawn 
up a system of ecclesiastical canons for the government of the 
cnurch, would have introduced also a new code of political laws, 
had he been permitted to execute the plan he had formed. His 
purpose was, says Mosheim, to enga^ in the bonds of fidelity and 
allegiance to St Peter, i. e., to the Roman pontiffs, all the kings 
and princes of the earth, and to establish at Rome an annual assem- 
bly of bishops, by whom the contests that might arise between 
kingdoms or sovereign states were to be decided, the rights and 
pretensions of princes to be examined, and the fate of nations and' 
empires to be determined. The imperious pontiff did not wholly 
succeed in his ambitious views, for had his success been equal to 
his plan, all the kingdoms of Europe would have been this dav 
tributary to the Roman See, and its princes, the soldiers or vassals 
of St. Peter, in the person of his pretended vicar upon earth. But 
though his most important projects were ineffectual, yet many of 
his attempts were crowned with a favorable issue ; for from the 
time of his pontificate the face of Europe underwent a considerable 
change, and the prerogatives of the emperors and other sovereign 
princes were much diminished. It was particularly under the ad- 



4 



GHAF. I.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT-^. D. 1073-1303. 241 

Fopt Oretory*> conteit wllh Hewy IV. Dlipate aboat liiVMtitiireiL 

ministration of Gregory, that the emperors were deprived of the 
privilege of ratifying, by their consent, the election of the Roman 
pontiff; a privilege of no small importance, and which they never 
recovered. {Mosh.^ ii., 484.) 

§ 6. — The contest which Gregory carried on for several years 
with the unfortunate emperoPHenry IV. affords an instructive com- 
ment upon the deep-laid plans oi this most imperious and am- 
bitious pope. Soon after nis election, Gregory was informed that 
Solomon, king of Hungary, dethroned by his brother Geysa, had 
fled to Henry for protection, and renewed the homage of Hungary 
to the empire. Gregory, who favored Geysa, exclaimed against 
this act of submission ; and said in a letter to Solomon, *' You 
ought to know, that the kingdom of Hungary belongs to the Roman 
church ; and learn that you will incur the indignation of the Holy 
See, if you do not acknowledge that you hold your dominions of 
the Pope, and not of the Emperor r This presumptuous declaration, 
and the neglect it met witn, brought the quarrel between the em- 
pire and the church to a crisis. It was directed to Solomon, but 
mtended for Henry. And if Gregory could not succeed in one 
way, he was resolved that he would in another : he therefore re- 
sumed the claim of investitures, for which he had a more plausible 
pretence ; and as that dispute and its consequences merit particular 
attention we shall relate briefly the origin and history of this 
protracted quarrel between the rope and tne emperors. 

§ 7. — The investiture of bishops and abbots commenced, un- 
doubtedly, at that period of time when the European emperors, 
kings, and princes, made grants to the clergy of certain territories, 
lands, forests, castles, &c. According to the laws of those times, 
laws which still remain in force, none were considered as lawful 
possessors of the lands or tenements which they derived from the 
emperors or other princes, before they repaired to court, took the 
oath of allegiance to their respective sovereigns as the suprerfie 
proprietors, and received from their hands a solemn mark by which 
the property of their respective grants was transferred to them. 
Such was the manner in which the nobility, and those who had dis- 
tinguished themselves by military exploits, were confirmed in the 
g)sscssions which they owed to the liberality of their sovereigns. 
ut the custom of investing the bishops and abbots with the ring 
and the crosier, which are the ensigns of the sacred function, is of 
a much more recent date, and was then first introduced, when the 
European emperors and princes assumed to themselves the power 
of conferring on whom they pleased the bishoprics and abbeys that 
became vacant in their dominions ; nay, even of selling them to the 
highest bidder. 

This power, then, being once usurped by the kings and princes 
of Europe, they at first confirmed the bishops and abbots in their 
dignities and possessions, with the same forms and ceremonies that 
were used in investing the counts, knights, and others, in their 
feudal tenures, even by written contracts, and the ceremony of 



242 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book t. 



Ceremoiiy of loTMCiiig btahoiM with ttie itag uid erarier. 



presenting them with a wand or bough. And this custom of tn- 
vesting the clergy and the laity with the same ceremonies would 
have undoubtedly continued, had not the clergy^ to whom the right 
of electing bishops and abbots originally belonged^ eluded artfully 
the usurpation of the emperors and other princes by the following 
stratagem. When a bishop or abb<K died, they wno looked upon 
themselves as authorized to fill up the vacancy, elected immediately 
some one of their order in the place of the deceased, and were 
careful to have him consecrated without delay. The consecration 
being thus performed, the prince, who had proposed to himself the 
profit of selling the vacant benefice, or the pleasure of conferring 
It upon some of his favorites, was obliged to desist from his pur* 
pose, and to consent to the election, which the ceremony of conse- 
cration rendered irrevocable. No sooner did the emperors and 
princes perceive this artful management, than they turned their at- 
tention to the most suitable means of rendering it ineffectual, and 
of preserving the valuable privilege they had usurped. For this 
purpose they ordered, that as soon as a bishop expired, his ring and 
clrosier should be transmitted to the prince to whose jurisdiction his 
diocese was subject, * For it was oy the solenm delivery of the 
ring and crosier of the deceased to the new bishop that his election 
was irrevocably confirmed, and this ceremony was an essential part 
of his consecration ; so that when these two badges of the episco* 
pal dignity were in the hands of the sovereign, the clergy could 
not consecrate the person whom their suffrages had appointed to 
fill the vacancy. 

Thus their stratagem was defeated, as every election that was 
not confirmed by the ceremony of consecration might be lawfully 
annulled and rejected ; nor was the bishop qualified to exercise 
any of the episcopal fiinctions before the performance of that im^ 

Eortant ceremony. As soon therefore as a bishop drew his last 
reath, the magistrate of the city in which he had resided, or the 
government of the province, seized upon his ring and crosier^ and 
sent them to court.* The emperor or prince conferred the vacant 
See upon the person whom he had chosen by delivering to him these 
two badges of the episcopal office, after which the new bishop, 
thus invested by his sovereign, repaired to his metropolitan, to 
whom it belonged to perform the ceremony of consecration, and 
deUvered to him the ring and crosier which he had received from 
his prince, that he might receive it again from his hands, and be 

* " Nee multo post annulas cnm virga pastorali Bremensis episcopi ad anlam 
regiam translata. Eo siquidem tempore ecclesia liberam electionem non habe- 
bflint . . . sed cum qoilibet antistes viam universs carnis ingressus fuisset, moz 
capitanei civitatis illius amiulum et virgam pastoralem ad Palatium transmittebant, 
sicque regia auctoritate, communicato cum aulicis consilio, orbats plebi idoneum 
constitnemit pnesulem . . . Poet paucos vero dies rursum annulus et virga pas- 
toral is Bambenbergensis episcopi Domino imperatori transmissa est Quo andito, 
multi nobiles ad aulam regiam confluebant, qui alteram harum prece vel pretio 
sibi comparare tentabant." {Ebbo's Lite of Otho, bishop of Bamberg, Lib. i., 
} 8, 9, in Actis Sanctor. mensis Juiii^ torn, i., p. 426.) 



<Xtf. lJ FOFERT the WORUra DESPOT-^ D. 1073-1808. S4S 



laar tafWittniL Brw— — nte lM —d <tp w tiw — pgror Biy ly. 



thu8 doably confirmed in his sacred functi<HL It appears therefinm 
bom this account, that each new bishop and abbot received twice 
the ring and the crosier; once firom the nands of the sovereign* and 
ODoe mm those of the metropolitan bishop, by whom they were 
consecrated.* 

§ 8. — Consideriiur the character of Gregory VII., it is no wodp 
der that he could ul brook this conduct of the emperors in thus se* 
curing to themselves the ri|;ht of confirming the election of bishops 
by the ceremony of investing them virith me ring and the crosier. 
Accordingly, we find that in 1075, Gregory assembled a council at 
Ron^ in which he excommunicated certain fevorites of Henryt 
and pronounced a fi>rmal ^ anathema, or curse, against whoever 
received the investiture of a bishopric or abbacy firom the hands of 
a layman, as also against those oy whom the investiture should he 
ferformedT This ctecree was doubtless aimed chiefly at the Em- 
peror, who strenuously insisted on his asserted right of investiture, 
\riiich his predecessors had enjoyed. As Henry continued to di»» 
regard the Pope's decree, Gregory sent two legates to sununon 
him to appear before him as a delinquent, because he still con- 
tinued to bestow investitures, notvirithstanding the apostolic decree 
to the contrary ; adding, that tf he should fau to yield obedience to 
As churchy he must expect to oe excommunicated and dethkoned, 
hoensed at that arrogant message firom one whom he considered as 
ids vassal, Henry dismissed the legates with very little ceremony, 
and convoked an assembly of all the German princes and dignified 
ecclesiastics at Worms; where, after mature deliberation, they 
ccmcluded, that Gregory having usurped the chair of St. Peter by 
indirect means, infected the church of God with many novelties 
and abuses, and deviated from his duty to his sovereign in several 
Scandalous attempts, the Emperor, by that supreme authority de- 
rived firom his predecessors, ought to divest him of his dignity, 
and appoint anotner in his place. 

§ 9. — Henry immediately dispatched an ambassador to Rome 
^vith a formal deprivation of Gregory ; who, in his turn, convoked 
a. council, at which were present a hundred and ten bishops, who 
Unanimously agreed, that the Pope had just cause to depose Henry, 
to dissolve the oath of allegiance which the princes and states had 
taken in his favor, and to prohibit them from holding any cor- 
respondence with him on pain of excommunication. And that sen- 
tence was immediately mlminated against the Emperor and his 
adherents. ** In the name of Almighty God, and by your author- 
ity,** said Gregory, alluding to the members of the council, " I pro- 
hibit Henry, the son of our emperor Henry, fi-om governing the 
Teutonic kingdom and Italy ; / release all Christians from their oath 
of allegiance to him ; and / strictly forbid all persons from serving 
or attending him as king/* Thus, says Hallam, Gregory VII. ob- 

* For a full and learned dissertation on the subject of investitures, see Mosheim, 
,Tol. ii., pp. 494-^3, with references to, and quotations from, original authorities. 



344 HISTORY OF ROBfANISM. [bookt. 

The Etoperor BUndt thiee dajr* at the gate <^ the Pope*t palace, befote he Is admitted to hia p t e wac ie. 

tained the glory of leaving all his predecessors behind, and as- 
tonishing mankind by an act of audacity and ambition which the 
most emulous of his successors could hardly surpass. 

The first impulses of Henry's mind on hearing this denunciation 
were indignation and resentment. But, like other inexperienced 
and misguided sovereigns, he had formed an erroneous calculation 
of his own resources. A conspiracy long prepared, of which the 
dukes of Swabia and Carinthia were the chiefs, began to manifest 
itself; some were alienated by his vices, and others jealous of his 
&mily ; the rebellious Saxons took courage ; the bishops, intimidated 
by excommunications, withdrew from his side ; and he suddenly 
found himself almost insulated in the midst of his dominions, m 
this desertion he had recourse, through panic, to a miserable ex- 
pedient. He crossed the Alps with the avowed determination of 
submitting, and seeking absolution from the Pope. Gregory was 
at Canossa, a fortress near Keggio, belonging to his fidthful ad- 
herent, the countess Matilda. (A. D. 1077.) It was in a winter 'of 
unusual severity. The Emperor was admitted, without hiAguardfl^ 
into an outer court of the castle, and three successive dajB r^ 
mained, from morning till evening, in a woollen shirt anaidtk 
naked feet, while Gregory, shut up with the tender and loiflbag 
countess, refused to admit him to his presence. {See EngtamnM 

At length, after continuing for three days in the cold moni^ 
of January, barefoot and fasting, the humbled Emperor was id-* 
mitted into the palace, and allowed the superlative honor of Uising 
the Papers toe I The haughty pontiff condescended to gnial him 
absolution, but only upon condition of appearing on a celrtaia dqr 
to learn the Pope's decision, whether or no he should be restoredlU). 
his kingdom, until which time the Pope forbad him to wear tbe orte- 
ments or to exercise the functions of royalty. Intoxicated with 
his triumph, Gregory now regarded himself as lord and master of 
all the crowned heads of Christendom, and boasted in his lettbCB. 
that it was his duty " to pull down the pride of kinqa P- 

§ 10. — The pusillanimous conduct of the Emperor excited Ibe 
indignation of a large portion of the nobility and other subjects of 
the empire, and they would probably have deposed him in reality, 
if he had not softened their resentment by violating his promise to 
the imperious pontiff, and immediately resuming the title and the 
ensigns of royalty. The princes of Lombardy especially could 
never forgive either the abject humility of Henry, or the haughty 
insolence of Gregory. A bloody war ensued between the domestic 
German enemies of Henry, headed by Rodolph, duke of Swabia, 
whom, in consequence of the Pope's sentence of deposition, they 
had crowned as Emperor at Mentz, on the one side ; and the Lom- 
bard princes who, impelled by compassion for the humbled monarch, 
and indignation against the lordly Pope, had rallied round the Em- 
peror, on the other. As the result ot this war appeared extremely 
doubtful for a time, Gregory assumed an appearance of neutrality, 
affected to be displeased that Rodolph had been consecrated as Em- 




TM LillHun Miiir)' IV. .Unur ft 



C8AP. l] popery the WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. 247 

■Mfjidraeti his •ubotarioau) the Pope. Gregory exepmmunlcatei him a eecond tiiiM. 

peror without his order, and avowed his intention of acknowledging 
that one of the competitors who should be most submissive to the 
Holy See. Henry had already learned too much of the character 
of pope Gregory to place much dependence on his generosity, and 
therefore, with renewed courage and energy, he marched against 
his enemies, and defeated them in several engagements, till Gregory, 
seeing no hopes of submission, thundered out a second sentence of 
excommunication against him, confirming at the same time the 
dection of Rodolph, to whom he sent a golden crown, on which 
the following well known verse, equally haughty and puerile, was 
written: 

Petra dedi Petro, petms diadema Rodolpho, 

This donation was also accompanied with a prophetic anathema 
against Henry, so wild and extravagant, as to make one doubt 
mether it was dictated by enthusiasm or priestcraft. After de* 
priving him of strength in combat, and condemning him never to be 
victorious, it concludes with the following remarkable apostrophe 
to St. Peter and St. Paul : '^ Make all men sensible that, as 

TOU OAN BIND AND LOOSE EVERYTHING IN HEAVEN, YOU CAN ALSO UPON 
lABTH TAKE FROM, OR GIVE TO, EVERY ONE ACCORDING TO HIS DESERTS, 

DfPIRES, KINGDOMS, PRINCIPAUTIES LET THE KINGS AND PRINCES OF 

THE AGE THEN INSTANTLY FEEL YOUR POWER, THAT THEY MAY NOT 
DARE TO DESPISE THE ORDERS OF YOUR CHURCH ; LET YOUR JUSTICE 
IB SO SPEEDILY EXECUTED UPON HeNRY, THAT NOBODY MAY DOUBT 
BUT THAT HE FALLS BY YOUR MEANS, AND NOT BY CHANCE." ThuS 

had Popery now assumed the character of Despot of the world. 

5 11. — Before proceeding to relate a few other proofs of pope 
Gregory's determination to reduce all the kingdoms of the world 
and their sovereigns under his absolute sway, we will dismiss the 
case of Henry, by briefly relating the sequel of his remarkable life. 
With the hopes of shielding himself from the effects of this second 
excommunication, the Emperor assembled a council at Brixen, in 
the Tyrol, which resolved that Hildebrand, by his misconduct and 
rebellion, had rendered himself unworthy of the pontifical throne, 
and elected in his stead, Guibert, archbishop of Ravenna, who 
assumed the name of Clement III., and was at length consecrated 
at Rome, but is not reckoned by Romanists in the line of popes. 
Notwithstanding the temporary triumph of Henry over the papal 
tyranny, he at last became its victim. After the death of Gregory, 
the succeeding pope. Urban II., and Paschal II., unable to forrive 
or forget his rebellion against the holy See, seduced two sons of the 
'Brfortunate emperor, first Conrad, and afterward Henry, to take up 
^^s against their father. Paschal, who was a worthy successor 
of Hildebrand, after the death of Conrad, excited the young Henry 
to rebel against his father, under pretence of defending the cause of 
the orthodox ; alleging that he was bound to take upon himself the 
reins of government, as he could neither acknowledge a king nor a 

16 



248 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book â–¼. 

Papa] cruelty to Henry IV. Uimatiirml condiiet of hie wmt, 

father that was excommunicated.* In vain did the Emperor use 
every paternal remonstrance to dissuade his son from proceeding to 
extremities : the breach became wider and wider, and both pre- 

f)ared for the decision of the sword. But the son, dreading his 
ather*s military superiority, and confiding in his tenderness, made 
use of a stratagem equally base and effectual. He threw himself 
unexpectedly at the Emperor's feet, and begged pardon for his qn- 
dutiftd behavior, which he imputed to the advice of evil counsellors. 
In consequence of this submission, he was immediately taken into 
favor, and the Emperor dismissed his army. The ungrateful youth 
now bared his perfidious heart: he ordered his father to be confined; 
while he assembled a diet of his own confederates, at which the 
Pope's legate presided, and repeated the sentence of excommuni- 
cation against the emperor Henry IV., who was instantly deposed, 
and the parricidous usurper, Henry V., proclaimed Emperor in 
his stead. 

§ 12. — Upon the perpetration of this unnatural act, two worthy 
servants of the church, the archbishops of Mentz and Cologne, very 
readily undertook the grateful office of waiting upon the old Em- 
peror, and demanding his crown and other regalia. The unfortu- 
nate monarch besought them not to become abettors of those who 
had ungratefiilly conspired his ruin, but finding them inexorable, he 
retired and put on his royal ornaments ; then returning to the 
apartment he had left, and seating himself on a chair of state, he 
renewed his remonstrance in these words : " Here are the marks of 
that royalty, with which we were invested by God and the princes 
of the empire : if you disregard the wrath of heaven, and the eter- 
nal reproach of mankind, so much as to lay violent hands on your 
sovereign, you may strip us of them. We are not in a condition to 
defend ourselves." This speech had no more effect than the former 
upon the unfeeling prelates, who instantly snatched the crown from 
his head ; and, dragging him from his chair, pulled ofl' his royal 
robes by force. While they were thus employed, Henry exclaimed, 
** Great God !" — the tears trickling down his venerable cheeks— 
**thou art the God of vengeance, and wilt repay this outrage, I 
have sinned, I own, and merited such shame by the follies of my 
youth ; but thou wilt not fail to punish those traitors, for their per- 
jury, insolence, and ingratitude." To such a degree of wretched- 
ness was this unhappy prince reduced by the barbarity of his son, 
that, destitute of the common necessaries of life, he entreated the 
bishop of Spire, who owed his office to him, to grant him a canoni- 
cate for his subsistence, representing that he was capable of per- 
forming the office of" chanter or reader !" Being denied that hum- 
ble request, he shed a flood of tears, and turnine to those who were 
present, said with a deep sigh, " My dear friends, at least have pity 
on my condition, for I am touched by the hand of the Lord T The 

* Dithmar. Hist Bell, inter Imp. et Sacerdot 



aup. n.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1078-1808. 249 



Pope Grafocy dalou Spain ■• belonginf to 8l Peter. 



hand of man, at least, was heavy upon him, for he was not only in 
want, but under confinement. 

After the death of the unfortunate and deeply afiSicted old man, 
which occurred soon after, his unnatural son, Henry V., was de- 

Cved enough to gratify the papal vengeance still mrther, by the 
barous and hypocritical act ot digging up the dead body of his 
poor old father, from consecrated ground in the cathedral of Spire, 
and causing it to be cast with indignity into a cave at Spire. Such 
is popish morality, and such is the terrible vengeance which anti- 
Cmristian Rome, in those days of her glory, exhibited toward such 
as resisted her authority, or disobeyed her mandates I* 



CHAPTER II. 

UPS op GREGORY VII. CONTINUED. OTHER INSTANCES OP HIS TY- 
RANNY AND USURPATION. 

§13. — The life of Hildebrand abounds with instances of his 
haughty insolence and tyranny, over earthly sovereigns and nations, 
almost equalling in atrocity the above related history of his conduct 
toward Henry IV. We shall proceed to mention a few of these as 
related by Bower, upon the authorities cited at the foot of the page. 

Not satisfied with pulling down and setting up princes, kings, 
and emperors, at his pleasure, Gregory, as King of Kings, mo* 
narch of the world, and sole lord, both spiritual and temporal, 
over the whole earth, claimed the sovereignty of all the kingdoms 
of Europe, as having once belonged to St. Peter, whose right was 
unaUenable. Thus, oeing informed in the very beginning of his 
pontificate that count Evulus, a man of wealth and power, had 
ibnned a design of recovering the countries, which the Moors had 
aeized in Spain, and was levying forces with that view, he sent car- 
dinal Hugn, sumamed the White, to let him know that Spain be- 
longed to St. Peter before it was conquered by the Moors ; that 
though the infidels had subdued that country, and held it for a long 
course of years, the right of St. Peter still subsisted, there being no 
prescription against that apostle or his church, and that he, as 
supreme lord of the whole kingdom, not only approved of the count's 
de8^;n, but granted him all the places he should recover from the 
barbarians, upon condition that he held them of St. Peter and his 
See. In the letter which he wrote at this time, addressed to all 
who were disposed to join in driving the Saracens out of Spain, he 

* See Russell's Modem Europe, Part L, Letter 23. 



d 



250 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [bcwt 

^— ■— ^— ^— ^^-^— — ^^^— ^^— — ■— — .^ 

Olaiiui Peter-pence in France. Claimi Hunfury alio, ■• belmighi| to the holf In. 

forbids any to enter that country, who is not resolved to hold of St 
Peter what acquisitions he may make, as he had rather it should 
remain in the hands of the infidels, than that the holy Roman and 
universal church should be robbed of her undoubted right by her 
own children ;* that is, that he had rather Christians in Spain should 
continue under the oppressive yoke of those infidels, than be rescued 
from it by a prince, who did not pay homage, as a vassal, to the 
apostolic See. This letter, dated the last of April, 1073, and con- 
sequently written a few days after his election, shows what sentir 
ments Gregory brought with him to the pontifical chair. Four 
years after he wrote again to the kings and princes of Spain, re- 
newing his claim to their respective kingdoms and principalities, as 
having belonged to his See when the Saracens seized them, and 
requinng those, who held them, to pay the tribute they owed to 
St. Peter as their sovereign lord.f 

§ 14. — With reference to the kingdom of France, Gregory pre- 
tended that formerly each house in that kingdom paid at least a penny 
a year to St. Peter, as their father and pastor, and that this sum was, 
by order of Charlemagne, collected yearly at Puy in Velai, at Aix 
la Chapelle, and at St. Giles. For this custom the Pope quotes 
a statute of that Emperor, lodged, as he says, in the archives of St 
Peter's church. But as that statute is to be found nowhere else, it 
is universally looked upon as a forgery, and by some even thousfat 
to have been forged by Gregory himself. However, he ordered ms 
legates in France to exact that sum, and insist upon its bein^ paid 
by all, as a token of their subjection to St. Peter and his See. J 

The legitimate sovereign of Hungary, Solomon, bei^ driven 
from his throne by Geisa, his cousin, had recourse to the Emperory 
whose sister he had married, and was by him restored to his king^ 
dom, upon condition that he should hold it of him as his feudatory. 
This Gregory no sooner understood than he wrote to Solomon, 
claiming the kingdom of Hungary as belonmng to St Peter, to 
whom he pretended it had been given by Stephen, the first Christiaii 
king of the country. The elders of your country, said he, in his 
letter to the king, will inform you that the kingdom of Hungary is 
the property of the holy Roman church, * sancta^ Romanae ecclesisB 
proprium est ;' that king Stephen, upon his conversion, ofiered it to 
St Peter, and that the emperor Henry, of holy memory, bavins 
conquered the country, sent the lance and the crown, the ensigns oi 
royalty, to the body of St Peter. If it be true therefore that you 
have agreed to hold your kingdom of the king of the Germans, and 
not of St Peter, you will soon feel the effects of the apostle's just 
indignation, for we, who are his servants and ministers, cannot 
tamely suffer the honor that is due to him, to be taken from him 
and given to others.§ Solomon was again driven out by Greisa, 

* Gregorii, lib. i., epist. 7. 
t Gregorii, lib. iv., epist 28. 

iChregorii, lib. viii., epist. 26. 
Gregorii, lib. ii., epist 13. 



Cttip. n.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. 261 

The Pope elaimsOonlea and BanHnSaai the potriiDony of St Peter. DalmatU and Ruaela. 

which Gregory construed into a judgment for the injustice he had 
done to St Peter, telling the usurper that the prince of the apostles 
had given the kii^dom to him, as Solomon had forfeited all right to 
it by rebelling against the holy Roman church, and paying that 
homage to the king of Germany, which was due to none but her and 
her founder.* Geisa, thus countenanced by the Pope in his usurpa- 
tion, held the kingdom of Germany until the hour of his death, which 
happened in 1077. He was succeeded by Ladislaus, who, to avoid 
the disturbances which he was sensible the Pope would raise and 
foment among his subjects, if he held not his kingdom of him, imme- 
diately acknowkdged himself for his vassal, declaring that he owed 
his power to God, and under him to none but St. Peter, whose com- 
mands he should ever readily obey, when signified to him by his 
successors in the apostolic See. 

§ 16. — The two islands of Corsica and Sardinia he claimed as 
the patrimonv of St. Peter, pretending that they had been formerly 

E'ven, nobody knows when nor by whom, to the apostolic See. 
ence he no sooner heard that the Christians had gained consider- 
able advantages in Corsica over the Saracens, and recovered 
gteat part of that island, than he sent a legate to govern the coun- 
tries, which they had recovered, as the demesnes of his See, to en- 
courage them in so laudable an undertaking, and assure them that 
he would assist them, to the utmost of his power, with men as well 
as with money, till they had reduced the whole island, provided 
they engaged to restore it to its lawful owners St Peter.'\ 

m order to subject Dalmatia to the Roman See, Gregory confer- 
red the title of king upon Demetrius, duke of that country, obliging 
him, on that occasion, to swear allegiance to him and his successors 
in the See of St. Peter. That oath the Pope's legate required upon 
delivering to the duke, in the Pope's name, a standard, a sword, a 
•ceptre, and a royal diadem. The new king at the same time 
promised to pay yearly on Easter-day two hundred pieces of silver 
to the holy pope Gregory, and his successors lawfully elected as 
lapreme lords of the kingdom of Dalmatia ; to assist them, when 
required, to the utmost of ms power ; to receive, entertain, and obey 
their legates ; to reveal no secrets that they should trust him with, 
but to behave on all occasions, as became a true son of the holy 
Roman church, and a faithful vassal of the apostolic See.;]; 

Demetrius was at that time king of Russia, and his son coming 
to Rome to visit the tombs of the apostles, Gregory made him 
partner with his father ui the kingdom, requiring him on that occa- 
sion, to take an oath of fealty to St. Peter, and his successors. This 
step the Pope pretended to have taken at the request of the son, 
who, he said, had applied to him, being desirous to receive the king- 
dom from St Peter, and to hold it as a gift of that apostle. The 

^ Gregorii, lib. ii., epist. 2. 
f Gregorij, lib. v., epist 24. 
{ fiuon. ad An. 1076 



202 mSTCAY OF ROMANISIL [i 



Pope added in his letter to the King, that he had com|died with tb 
requett of his son, not doubting but it woold be approved of by fain 
and all the lords of his kingooin, since the prince of the apostle 
would thenceforth look upon their country smi defend it as his aumJ 
The despotic views of this lordly pontiff were attended witi 
less success in England, than in any other countrv. William tb 
Conqueror was a prince of great spirit and resolution, extremdt] 
jealous of his rights, and tenacious of the prerogatives he enjovac 
as a sovereign and independent monarch, and accordingly, wfaa 
Gregory wrote him a letter demanding the arrears of me Peter 

Sencef and at the same time summoning him to do homage for th 
ngdom of England, as a fief of the apostolic See, William grantee 
the former, but refused the latter, with a bold obstinacy, d^arinj 
that he held his kingdom of his God only, and his own swonLf 

( 16. — Mr. Bower relates similar instances of Gregory's haug^t] 
assumption toward the sovereigns of Denmark, Poland, Saxony, m 
well as various principalities of Italy, who were compelled by tb 
spiritual tyrant to acknowledge themselves as his vassals, but the 
aoove are certainly iiufiicient to demonstrate the all-grasping amU 
tion of this pontiff, and his settled plan of reducing all kingdoms intx 
one vast monarchy, of which the prince of the apostles should b 
the sovereign and head. 

" Gregory was," remarks the same historian, " to do him joi 
tico, a man of most extraordinary parts, of most uncommon abili 
ties, both natural and acquired, and would have had at least, m 
ffood a claim to the surname of Great, as either Gregory or Leo 
had he not, led bv an ambition the world never heard of before 
grossly misapplied those great talents to the most wicked purposes 
to the establishing of an uncontrolled tyranny over mankind, of 
makinff himself the sole lord, spiritual and temporal, over the whdc 
earth, becoming by that means sole disposer, not only of all eccleai- 
asticol dignities and preferments, but ot Empires, States, and King 
doms. That he haa nothing less in his view, sufficiently appe^ 
from his whole conduct, from his letters, and from a famous piece 
entitle Dictatus Papa^, containing his maxims.'*}; This piece, whicl 
is found in the 55th letter of the second book of Gregory's epistles 
contains his twenty-seven celebrated propositions, among which an 
the following : 

The Roman pontiff alone should of right be styled UNivaisAi 
BisHor. 

'^ Qregorii, lib. ii., epist 74. 

t For the letter of Willmm, see Collier*8 Ecclesiastical HistOT, in die Gq1Is& 
tion of Records, at the end of the first Tolome, p. 713, No. 19. ^ HnbeitiM lentv 
taus,** sajrt king William, to the audacious pontifi^ ** admonnit me, qoatenm uhisi 
succeaaoribut tnis fidelitatem iacerem, et oe peconia, aaam ante coeo o rea 
•cdeaiam mittere solebant, melius cogitarem. Unam aomiai, altemm nan 
Fidelitatem latere nolui nee volo," £c, 

t Bow«r, in Tita Greg. Vn. 



OUB. B.] PORRT THE WORLDS DESPOT— A. D. lOTS-lSOS. 8M 



No man ought to live In the same house with penims excomma* 
mealed by the Pope. 

The Pope alone can wear the unperial ornaments. 

All princes are to kiss his foot, and pay that mark of distmction 
to fam alone. 

It is lawful for him to depose emperors. 

No general council is to oe assembled without his order. 

His judgment no man can reverse, but he can reverse all other 
jadsmeiits. 

Ue is to be iudged by no man. 

No man shall presume to condemn the person that appeak to the 
^KWtolicSee. 

The Roman church has never erred, nor will she ever err, ac- 
eofdmg to Scripture. 

He can depose and restore bishops without assembling a synod. 

The Pope can absolve subjects from the oath of allegiance which 
they have taken to a bad prince. 

1 17^ — ^The genuineness of these dictates of Hildtibrandf as they 
are called, is testified by several of the most famous of the Roman 
Catholic writers, Harduin, Baronius, Lupus and others. Cardinal 
Baronius (An. 1076) not only admits the genuineness of these sen> 
fences, but says that the same doctrine was received in the Romish 
ehnrch down to his day (about 1609). His words are, '^Istas 
hactenus in ecclesiae catholicae usu receptas fuisse.'' Lupus, 
another Romish writer, has given an ample commentary on them, 
tfbd regards them as both authentic and sacred.* Whether, how- 
ever, they were written in this present form by Grecory, or were 
extracted by some other author from his epistles, as IVfosheim seems 
to suppose, is a matter of but small importance. The whole life 
of that haughtv and imperious spiritual and temporal despot, is a 
proof that he believed and acted upon these principles. In the 
epistles of Gregory, he more than once undertakes a labored de- 
fence of the doctrine that all earthly governments, nations, sove* 
reigns and rulers are subject to the rope, and after referring to 
several instances in which he asserts this subjection had been pre- 
viously recognized and acted upon, he proceeds to prove it by the 
followinj? reasons : 

(1.) The apostolic See has received of our Saviour the power of 
judging spintual matters, and consequently that of judging tem- 
poral concerns, which is a power of an inferior degree. 

(2.) When our Saviour said to St. Peter, Feed my sheep, when 
he granted him the power of loosing and binding, he did not except 
kii^ 

(3.) The episcopal dignity is of divine institution ; the royal is 
the invention of men, and owes its origin to pride and ambition. 
As bishops therefore are above kings as well as above all other 
men, they may judge them as well as other men«t 

* Lopus — ^Nots et DissertatioDeB in Concilia, torn, iv., p. 164. 
t Greg, ei^st, Lib. iL, epist 10, 11, 19. 



254 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [ 

The qmnnical doctrines of Hildebrand adrucmted in the nineteenth ecBtniy. 

Many popish writers of eminence have advocated these doc- 
trines. Thus Bellarmine asserts that though Christ exercised no 
temporal power himself, yet he vested St Peter, the prince of the 
apostles and his successors, with all temporal as well as spiritual 
power, leaving him and them at full liberty to exert it, when tnoueht 
expedient and necessary for the good of his church. Probably 
amidst the Fight and intelligence of the nmeteenth century it is not 
thought expedient for the good of the church to advocate or prac- 
tise these doctrines of the infallible pope Gregory, at least in the 
United States. Yet it ought to be known, that so late as the year 
1819, a volume appeared, from the pen of an Italian Catholic, De 
Maistre^ which has since often been reprinted, advocating to the 
fiillest extent the doctrines of pope Gregory, maintaining that kings 
are but delegates of the Holy See ; that the Roman pontiffs have 
power to depose them at will, and even prescribing a form of peti- 
tion which nations should address to his holiness, when they wish 
their sovereign to be dethroned. It is worthy to be known also by 
Americans, that this spiritual despot who maintained the right of the 
Roman See to trample at will upon the governments of the earth 
is enrolled in the Roman Catholic calendar as a Saint, and as 
such reverenced and honored, even in the land of Washington, 
with all due worship on a day annually set apart for that purpose. 
In an edition of that standard popish book of devotion, called ** the 
Garden of the Soul,** now lying before me, published in New York, 
1844, •* with the approbation of the Right Reverend Dr. Hughes, 
bishop of New York," in the calendar of the saints* days, I find the 
twenty-fifth of May designated as the day set apart in honor of 
Saint Gregory VII !* 

§ 18. — We have now traced the march of priestly and popish 
usurpation firom the earliest attempts of ambitious ecclesiastics to 
domineer over their brethren, and to usurp the prerogatives of HIM 
who has said, " one is your master, even Christ, and all ye are 
brethren.** We have seen the gradual steps by which the power 
of ambitious prelates in general, and of the bishop of Rome in 
particular, was increased, till the spiritual supremacy of the Pope 
was established in the early part of the seventh century. We have 
followed these haughty tyrants in their career of ambition, till a 
century and a half later they united the crown to the mitre, the 
sceptre to the crosier, and took their place among the temporal 
sovereigns of the world, till at last in the eleventh century they 
reached the cUmax of their power and usurpation, under the reign 
of Saint Gregory VII. We cannot better close the present chap- 
ter than by quoting from the learned Deylingius the following 
eleven propositions m relation to the rise of this power ; which he 
has sustained, beyond contradiction, by a vast amount of erudition 
and research in a disquisition occupying 117 pages. The reader 
will perceive, that though quoted in the language of another, these 

* See also the Acta Sanctonun, Antwerp, ad <L zzv. Mali, 



GXiP. n.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. 255 ^ 



The tearaad DeyUnghM^ aeeovnt of the gradvel rite of the popee* tyranBical power. 



propositions constitute a comprehensive summary of the historical 
account, which we have ^ven in the preceding pages, of the gra- 
dual and successive steps by which the despotic power of the popes 
was eventually establisned. 

** Proposition 1. Christ did not institute in his church any sacred 
dominion, and much less a monarchical government, such as the 
Roman prelates during a long period have claimed and usurped. 

**2. m the beginning, all the ministers of the church were equal; 
and bishops before the second century, after the birth of Christ, 
were not exalted above presbyters ; nor did they arrogate to them- 
selves any peculiar duties or privileges of the sacred office. 

** 3. Although the government and the jurisdiction of the church 
at that period were not in bishops alone, but the presbyters and 
deacons, with the whole assembly, participated in the rule and de- 
termination of affairs ; yet the authority of the prelates gradually 
and rapidly obtained a large increase. 

^ 4. All bishops then were equal, nor had the Roman bishop or 
any other the least right or precedence over his brethren. 

•* 6. In the third century after the Saviour, metropolitans arose ; 
who were placed in the principal city of the province, so that the 
other prelates in the same province by degrees became subject to 
their jurisdiction. 

**6. Whatever prerogatives of bishops, and distinction of au- 
thority and power, then were admitted, were derived solely from 
ike dignity of the city where they presided. 

** 7. Although the metropolitan dignity was supreme after the 
council of Nice (in 325), yet there were three chiefs, the Roman, 
Alexandrian, and the Antiochian, each of whom ruled his own dio- 
cese unrestricted, and neither of them possessed any right or power 
more than the others. 

** 8. In the fourth century of the Christian church, the Roman 
pontiff was not patriarch of all Western Europe, much less was he 
head and monarch of the whole church ; but only a particular pre- 
late, not superior to other metropolitans, exarchs, or primates. 

** 9. After the peace granted to the churches by Constantine, the 
luxury and pomp of the bishops greatly increased ; and especially 
the ambition, authority, and power of the Roman prelate were ex- 
tended, so that they could not be restrained within the limits of the 
suburban cities ; but by various artifices, they continually became 
more amplified. 

** 10. At length the Roman prelates, not content with having ob- 
tained the primacy of order among the other hierarchs, endeavored 
to establish their authority in both divisions of the empire. After 
long and severe strife with the Constantinopolitan patriarch, by the 
parricide of Phocas, they obtained the title of Universal Bishop ; 
and extended their jurisdiction, but could not grasp domination over 
all the church, because they were opposed by the authority of em- 
perors and councils. 

^11. Finally, in the eleventh century after Christ, the power of 



256 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [sookt. 

_ -- '-' — 

Bprlakliiif with aahet on Adk-WedMidaj. 

the Roman pontiff, by the ferocity of pope Gregory VII., was car- 
ried to its utmost extent ; and the nominal Christian church, through 
the debasement of the imperial and royal prerogatives, were forced 
to submit their necks to the yoke of the despotic court of Rome."* 



CHAPTER m. 

POPE URBAN AND THE CRUSADES. 

§ 19. — Upon the death of pope Gregory, which took place at Sar 
lemum, in 1085, the faction which supported his measures proceeded 
to the election of a successor, who assumed the title of Victor UL, 
while Clement III., who, as we have already remarked, had been 
elected by the Emperor's party at the council of Brixen, was ac- 
knowledged as pope by a great part of Italy, and continued to main- 
tain his pretensions to the papal throne till his death, in 1100, that 
is, during the whole of the pontificates of Victor III. and Urban IL 
Thus, as in many other instances, both in earlier and later times, 
were there rival competitors for the popedom, hurling defiance and 
anathemas at each other, and each at the same time claiming to be 
the vicegerent of God upon earth, and the infallible and authoritative 
interpreter of the will of God to man. 

During the pontificate of Urban, in the year 1091, it was enacted 
in a council held at Benevento, among other superstitious ceremo- 
nies, that on the Wednesday which was the first day of the fast of 
Lent, the faithful laymen as well as clerks, women as well as men, 
should have their heads sprinkled with ashes, " a ceremony," says 
Bower, " that is observed to this day.^f Ash- Wednesday, so called 
from the ceremony of giving the ashes, is the fortieth day be- 
fore Easter Sunday, and the Romish fast of Lent continues 
during the whole of this interval. The asnes used at this ceremony 
must DC made from the branches of the olive or palm that was 
** blessed " (to use the unmeaning language of Popery), on the Palm 
Sunday of the preceding year. The priest blesses the ashes by 
making on them the sign of the cross, and perfuming them witn 
incense. The ashes are first laid on the head of the oflSciating 
priest in the form of a cross, by another priest. After he has re- 
ceived the ashes himself, he then gives them to his assistants and 
the other clergy present, after which the congregation, women as 
well as men, one after another, approach the altar, kneel before the 
priest, and receive this '' mark of the beast " on their foreheads. 
{See Engraving.) 

* Deylingii Obseivationiim Sacnmun, pan L, ezercit. 6. 
t Bower, in vita Uriwn IL 



GBAF. HL] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. 259 



ly of ioeeMlBff • cnm. Ooanella of Plaeantia and Clermont, in 1008. 

The Other eDfi;raving represents the popish custom of incensing a 
new cross. All crosses designed for public places, for hish roads 
and cross ways, as they are seen in popish countries, and for the 
tops of Romish chapels, where one is always placed, are conse- 
crated with much ceremony. Candles are first lighted at the foot 
of the cross, after which the celebrant, having on his pontifical orna- 
ments, sits down before the cross, and makes a discourse to the 
people upon its excellence ; after which prayers%nd anthems fol- 
low. Then he sprinkles and afterward incenses the cross, as repre- 
sented in the engraving ; which being performed, candles are set 
upon the top of each arm of the cross. In the engraving, two of 
the attendants are seen with the candles lighted and prepared, when 
the childish and unmeaning ceremony is over, to affix them on the 
two arms of the cross. How long the candles remain there, before 
the piece of wood is regarded as sufficiently holy for its contem- 
plated destination, I am unable to say. 

§ 20. — ^Pope Urban, though inferior in ability and courage to the 
imperious Hildebrand, was yet fiilly equal to mm in pride and arro- 

Since. At a council held at Placentia, in 1095, he confirmed all 
e laws and anathemas enacted by Gregory, to terrify and to crush 
the rebels to the holy See, and at the council of Clermont, held in 
November of the same year, Urban proceeded a step further than 
even Gregory had done, by enacting a decree forbidding the bish- 
ops and the rest of the clergy to take the oath of allegiance to their 
respective kings or governments. * Ne episcopus vel sacerdos reci 
yel alicui laico in manibus ligiam fidelitatem faciunt.' The council 
of Clermont, just mentioned, has become celebrated in history from 
the fact that through the persuasions of Peter the hermit, pope Urban 
resolved, on this occasion, upon the commencement of those expe- 
ditions to the holy land called the Crusades. 

The object of these holy wars, which occupy so conspicuous a 
figure in tne history of the period of which we are now treating, was 
.the recovery of the city of Jerusalem, and the holy sepulchre, from 
the hands of the Turkish infidels, by whom it had been taken in the 
year 1065. For centuries past, the practice had prevailed of mak- 
ing pilgrimages to Jerusalem. In the tenth century, this custom 
had much increased, and had become almost universal, from a j^en- 
eral belief which prevailed of the near approach of the end of the 
"^orld, arising firom a misinterpretation of Rev., chap, xx., 2-5. 
Toward the conclusion of the century, crowds of men and women 
flocked from all parts of Europe, to Jerusalem, in the frantic hope 
^f expiating their sins by the long and painful journey to the Holy 
l^d. When the dreaded epoch assimed by these misguided indi- 
viduals, for the end of the world, had passed by, the current of 
pilgrimages still continued to flow on in the direction it had taken, 
*aa that too in spite of the heavy tax of a piece of gold per head 
W upon the pilgrims, and the orutal cruelties and indignities to 
^hich they were often exposed, from the barbarians and infidel 
^querors of the holy city. Thus it appears that among the causes 
which eventually gave birth to the Crusades, was the wide-spread 



260 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book â–¼. 

Popolv and wide ■pmd panic of the end of the worid, in the year 1€00. 

delusion of the immediate coDflagration of the world, in the year 
one thousand of the Christian era.* 

* The language in which Moeheim relates the e^cts of this wide-spread delnsioiiy 
is so striking, and the lesson it teaches so important, viz. : the foll^ of attempting 
to be wise above what is written, or to fathom what God has wisely conc^ed, 
viz. : the time of the end of the world, that I shall embrace the opportonity of 
qootinff it in the present note. Speaking of the darkness of the tenth centoiy, 
when mis opinion was propagated, he says, '' That the whole Christian world wm 
covered at this time, with a thick and gloomy veil of sufierstition, is evident from 
a prodigious number of testimonies and examples which it is needless to mention. 
Tnis horrible cloud, which hid almost every ray of truth from the eyes of the mul- 
titude, furnished a favorable opportunity to the priests and monks of propagating 
many absurd and ridiculous opmions, which dishonored so frequently the Latin 
church, and produced from time to time such violent agitations. None occasioned 
such a universal panic, nor such dreadful impressions of terror and dismay, as the 
notion that now prevailed, of the immediate approach of the day of jud^ent. 
Hence prodigious numbers of people abandoned all their civil connexions, ana their 
parental relations, and giving over to the churches or monasteries all their lands, 
treasures, and worldly erocts, repaired with the utmost precipitation to Palestine, 
where they imagined that Christ would descend from heaven to judge the world. 
Others devoted themselves by a solemn and voluntary oath to the service of the 
churches, convents, and priesthbod, whose slaves they became, in the most rigor- 
ous sense of that word, performing daily their heavy tasks ; and all this from a 
notion that the Supreme Judge would diminish the severity of their sentence, and 
look upon them with a more favorable and propitious eye, on account of their hay- 
ing made themselves the slaves of his ministers. When an eclipse of the sun or 
moon happened to be visible, the cities were deserted, and their miserable inhabit- 
ants fled for refuge to hollow caverns, and hid themselves among the craggy 
rocks, and under me bending summits of steep mountains. The opulent attempted 
to bribe the Deity, and the saintly tribe, by rich donations conferred upon the 
sacerdotal and monastic orders, who were looked upon as the immediate vicege- 
rents of heaven. In many places, temples, palaces, and noble edifices, both puuic 
and private, were sufl^red to decay, nay, were deliberately pulled down, from a 
notion that they were no longer of any use, since the final dissolution of all tMngs 
was at hand. In a word, no language is sufficient to express the confusion and 
despair that tormented the minds of miserable mortals upon this occasion. This 
general delusion was indeed opposed and combated by the discerning few, who 
endeavored to dispel these groundless terrors, and to emce the notion from which 
they arose, in the minds of the people. But their attempts were ineflfectual ; nor 
could the dreadful apprehensions ot the superstitious multitude be entirely removed 
before the conclusion of this century." As an undeniable evidence, roth of the 
existence of this panic, and of its profitable results to its artful propagators and 
fomenters, may be mentioned the fact that almost all the donations that were made 
to the church about this time, assi^ as the cause of the donation, and the motive 
of the donor, the fact that the end of the world was just now at hand, and that 
therefore, of course, tlie property would be no longer of value. They ^nerally 
commenced with these words : '' Appropirupiante mundi termino, d-c. i. e., the 
end cf the world being now at handy <f«. {Mosheim, ii., page 410.) Similar panics 
to the above, originating from the presumption of ignorant and visionary men, who 
have predicted the day and the hour, or at least the year of the world's conflamp> 
tion, are not peculiar to the dark ages. They have been produced to a more linuted 
extent in different countries and m various ages of the world, but in no one in- 
stance on record has the delusion been so universal as amid the gloom of this mid' 
night of the world. The extent to which such infatuations have prevailed, has in* 
variabfy been proportioned to the decree of the darkness and ignorance existing in 
the field of their propagation. Amid the enlightenment of the nineteenth centmy, 
there is but little danger of delusions of this kind shaking the universal foundatknM 
of society as they did in the tenth, or, if they exist at all, extending beyond the very 
Mxxow circle of the credalous and unenlightened portion of the commnnity. 



cbav.hl] popery THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. 261 



Peter tlie iMnilt moiM ikoa Mertue, and eng agee pope Urbui to miction a Cnmde. 



Of many thousands who passed into Asia, says a recent histo- 
rian of the Crusades,'*^ a few isolated individuals only returned ; but 
these every day, as they passed through the different countries of 
Europe, on their journey back, spread indignation and horror by 
their account of the dreadful sufierings of the Christians in Judea. 
Various letters are reported as having been sent by the emperors of 
the East, to the different princes of Europe, soliciting aid to repel 
the encroachments of the infidel ; and if but a very small portion of 
the crimes and cruelty attributed to the Turks by these epistles, were 
believed bv the Christians, it is not at all astonishing that wrath and 
horror took possession of every chivalrous bosom. The lightning 
of the crusade was in the people's hearts, and it wanted but one 
dectric touch to make it flash forth upon the world. 

§ 21. — At this time a man, of whose early days we have no 
anthentic knowledge, but that he was bom at Amiens, and from a 
sddier had become a priest, after living for some time a hermit, 
became seized with the desire of visiting Jerusalem. Peter the 
hermit was, according to all accounts, small in stature and mean in 
per8<m ; but his eyes possessed a peculiar fire and intelligence, and 
his eloquence was powerfiil and flowing. Peter accomplished in 
safety his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, paid the piece of gold demanded 
at the gates, and took up his lodging in the house of one of the 

C' >U8 Christians of the holy city. Here his first emotion seems to 
ve been indignant horror at the barbarous and sacrilegious bru- 
taUty of the Turks. The venerable prelate of Tyre represents 
him as conferring eagerly with his host upon the enormous cru- 
elties of the infidels, even before visiting the general objects of 
devotion. Doubtless the ardent, passionate, enthusiastic mind of 
Peter had been wrought upon at every step he took in the holy 
land, by the miserable state of his brethren, till his feelings and 
imagination became excited to almost frantic vehemence. 

upon the return of Peter to Italy, he immediately sought the pon- 
tiff Urban, and laid before him such a touching recital of the suffer- 
mg pilCTims in the holy land, as brought tears firom his eyes ; the 
general scheme of the crusade was sanctioned instantly, by his 
authority ; and, promising his quick and active concurrence, he sent 
the pilgrim to preach the deliverance of the holy land, through all 
the countries of Europe. Peter wanted neither zeal nor activity — 
from town to town, from province to province, from country to 
country, he spread the cry of vengeance on the Turks, and deliver- 
ance to Jerusalem ! The warlike spirit of the people was at its 
height ; the genius of chivalry was in the vigor of its early youth ; 
the enthusiasm of religion had now a great and terrible object be- 
hre it, and all the gates of the human heart were open to the elo- 
quence of the preacher. That eloquence was not exerted in vain ; 
nations arose at his word, and grasped the spear, and it only want- 
ed some one to direct and point the great enterprise that was 

* James, in his History of Chivalry and the Cnuades. 



262 HISTORY OF ROMANISBL [boqkt. 

Pope Urban*! eloqneiit qwieli, uiffng the people to engage to the Oraeadee. 

already determined, and this was accomplished by the eloquence 
and zeal of pope Urban, at the council of Clermont 

§22. — The following account of the address which the Pope 
delivered on this occasion, is derived from the relation given by 
Robert the monk, who was present. After having completed 
the other business of the council, and which occupied the delibera- 
tions of seven days, pope Urban came forth from the church into 
one of the public squares, as no public building was large enough to 
hold the immense concourse of people, and addressing me multitude 
as the peculiarly favored of God, in the eifts of courage, strength, 
and the true faith, he began to depict in glowing terms the miseries 
of the Christian pilgrims in the holy land. He told them that their 
brethren there were trampled under the feet of the infidels, to whom 
God had not panted the light of his Holy Spirit — ^that fire, plunder, 
and the sword, had desolated the fair plains of Palestine — ^that her 
children were led away captive, or enslaved, or died under tortures 
too horrible to recount — ^that the Christian females were subjected 
to the impure passions of the pagans, and that Grod's own altar, the 
symbols of salvation, and the precious relics of the saints, were all 
desecrated bv the gross and filthy abomination of a race of heathens. 
To whom, then, he asked — ^to whom did it belong to punish such 
crimes, to wipe away such impurities, to destroy the oppressoiw 
and to raise up the oppressed 7 To whom, if not to those who heard 
him, who had received from God strength, and power, and great- 
ness of soul ; whose ancestors had been the prop of Christendom, 
and whose kings had put a barrier to the progress of infidels T 
** Think !" he cried, " of the sepulchre of Christ, our Saviour, pos- 
sessed by the foul heathen ! — ^think of all the sacred places dishon- 
ored by their sacrilegious impurities ! That land, too, the Redeemer 
of the human race rendered illustrious by his advent, honored by 
his residence, consecrated by his passion, re-purchased by his death, 
signalized by his sepulture. That royal city, Jerusalem — ^situated 
in the centre of the world — held captive by infidels, who denv the 
God that honored her — ^now calls on you and prays for her deliver- 
ance. From you — from you, above all people, she looks for comfort, 
and she hopes for aid ; since God has ^ranted to you, beyond other 
nations, glory and might in arms. Tsie, then, the road before you 
in expiation of your sins^ and go, assured that, after the honor of 
this world shall have passed away, imperishable glory shall await 
you even in the kingdom of heaven !" 

§ 23. — At this point in the oration of the Pope, loud shouts are 
said to have burst simultaneously from the assembled multitude, as 
if impelled by inspiration, "/if is the will of God! It is the will of 
Oodr — words regarded as so remarkable, that they were employed 
as the signal of rendezvous, and the watchword of battle in their 
future adventures. Skilfully seizing upon this simultaneous burst 
of enthusiasm, and turning it to good account, the pontiff proceeded, 
as soon as silence was obtained, " Brethren, if the Lord G<>d had not 
been in your souls, you would not all have pronounced the same 



auF. HL] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 107a-l303. 268 



Tk« C*iiiMduB NMilTcd on. Ocngfal cnihnilttiin of the people, mad dcrire to cngafe in thwn. 

words ; or, rather, God himself pronounced them by your lips, for 
he it was that put them in your hearts. Be they, then, your war- 
cry in the combat, for those words came forth from God. Let the 
army of the Lord, when it rushes upon his enemies, shout but that 
one cry, *God wills it! God wills itP** Then exhorting them to 
engage in this holy crusade, he exclaimed, ^ Let the rich assist the 
poor, and bring with them, at their own charge, those who can 
bear arms to the field. Still, let not priests nor clerks, to whatever 
place they may belong, set out on this journey, without the permis- 
ficMi of their bishop ; nor the layman undertake it without the bless- 
ing of his pastor, for to such as do, their journey shall be fruitless. 
Let whoever is inclined to devote himself to the cause of God, make 
it a solenm enga^ment and bear the cross of the Lord either on his 
breast or on his brow till he set out; and let him who is ready to 
b^[in bis march place the holy emblem on his shoulders, in mem- 
ory of that precept of the Saviour — ^* He who does not take up his 
crow and follow me, is not worthy of me.' "♦ 

When Urban had concluded his oration, the vast multitude pros- 
trated themselves before him, and repeated, after one of the cardi- 
nals, the general confession of sins ; upon which the Pope pronouno 
td absolution of their sins, and bestowed on them his benediction. 
The people then returned to their homes, to prepare immediately 
for the expedition to the holy land, to which they had thus solemnly 
devoted themselves. 

§ 24. — ^** As soon as the council of Clermont was concluded," says 
Guibert of Nogent, another cotemporary writer and eye-witness of 
these scenes, " a great rumor spread through the whole of France, 
and as fame brought the news of the orders of the pontiJBT to any 
one, he went instantly to solicit his neighbors and his relations to 
enga^ with him in the way of God, for so they designated the pur- 
posed expedition. The counts Palestine were already full of the 
desire to undertake this journey, and all the knights of an inferior 
order felt the same zeal. The poor themselves soon caught the 
flame so ardently, that no one paused to think of the smallness of 
his wealth, or to consider whether he ought to yield his house, and 
his fields, and his vines ; but each one set about selling his property, 
at as low a price as if he had been held in some horrible captivity, 
and sought to pay his ransom without loss of time. At this period, 
too, there existed a general dearth. The rich even felt the want of 
com ; and many, with everything to buy, had nothing, or next to 
nothing, wherewithal to purchase what they needed. The poor 
tried to nourish themselves with the wild herbs of the earth ; and, 
as bread was very dear, sought on all sides food heretofore un- 
known, to supply the place oi com. The wealthy and powerful 
"were not exempt ; but finding themselves menaced with the famine 
which spread around them, and beholding every day the terrible 
wants of the poor, they contracted their expenses, and lived with 

* Sobeitns Monachns, lib. i., as cited in James' Histoiy of Chivaliy and the 
Cniaades, chap. ilL See alao Mill's History of the CroMuies. 



2d4 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book y. 



6oibeit*a account of the molUtodei that enfaged in the Cniiadei. 



the most narrow parsimony, lest they should squander the riches 
that now became so necessary. 

" The ever insatiable misers rejoiced in days so favorable to their 
covetousness ; and casting their eyes upon the bushels of grain 
which they had hoarded long before, calculated each day the profits 
of their avarice. Thus some struggled with every misery and 
want, while others revelled in the hopes of fresh acquisitions. No 
sooner, however, had Christ inspired, as I have said, innumerable 
bodies to seek a voluntary exile, than the money which had been 
hoarded so long, was spread forth in a moment ; and that which 
was horribly dear while all the world was in repose, was on a sud- 
den sold for nothing, as soon as every one began to hasten toward 
their destined journey. Each man hurried to conclude his affairs, 
and, astonishing to relate, we then saw — so sudden was the diminu- 
tion in the value of everything — ^we then saw seven sheep sold for 
five deniers. The dearth of grain, also, was instantly changed into 
abundance, and every one, occupied solely in amassing money for 
his journey, sold everything that he could, not according to its real 
worth, but according to the value set upon it by the buyer. 

" In the mean whue, the greater part of those who had not deter- 
mined upon the journey, joked and laughed at those who were thus 
selling their goods for whatever they could get ; and prophesied 
that their voyage would be miserable, and their return worse. Such 
was ever the language of one day ; but the next — suddenly seized 
with the same desire as the rest — those who had been most forward 
to mock, abandoned everything for a few crowns, and set out with 
those whom they had laughed at, but a day before. Who shall tell 
the children and the infirm, that, animated with the same spirit^ 
hastened to the war ? Who shall count the old men and the young 
maids who hurried forward to the fight ? — ^not with the hope o? 
aiding, but for the crown of martyrdom to be w6n amid the swords 
of the infidels. * You, warriors,' they cried, * you shall vanquish by 
the spear and brand ; but let us, at least, conquer Christ by our 
sufferings.' At the same time, one might see a thousand things 
springing from the same spirit, which were both laughable and 
astonishing : the poor shoeing their oxen, as we shoe horses, and 
harnessing them to two-wheeled carts, in which they placed their 
scanty provisions and their young children ; and proceeding on- 
ward, while the babes, at each town or castle they saw, demanded 
eagerly whether that was Jerusalem."* 

§ 25. — The history and exploits of the vast multitudes who ad- 
vanced like clouds of locusts, over Hungary, Thrace, and Asia, 
under the fanatical Peter the hermit, or the more disciplined troops 
that were led to the scene of conflict, by Godfrey of Bouillon, Bald- 
win, Raimond, and other leaders in successive expeditions, of the 
taking of Jerusalem in 1099, and the establishment of a Christian 
kingdom in that city, are too well known, and besides, are too re- 



* Goibert of Nogent, see James, chap. iv. 



GKAP. m.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. 265 



Mkfi of the Cva mA m. Enriched the clergy. Introduced vast quantUiea of pretended relies. 

motely connected with the history of Romanism, to demand a place 

in the present work. Whatever were the motives which prompted 

Urban 11. and other pontiffs to engage in these holy wars, whether 

of superstition, of poUcy, of avarice, or ambition, there can be no 

doubt that they tended vastly to increase the influence and authority 

of the Roman pontiffs ; they also contributed, in various ways, to 

enrich the churches and monasteries with daily accessions of wealth, 

and to open new sources of opulence to all the sacerdotal orders. 

For they who assumed the cross disposed of their possessions, as if 

they were at the point of death, on account of the imminent and 

innumerable dangers they were to be exposed to in their passage 

to the holy land, and the opposition they were to encounter there 

upon their arrival. They, therefore^ for the most part made their 

wills before their departure, and left a considerable part of their 

possessions to the priests and monks, in order to obtain, by these 

pious legacies, the favor and protection of the Deity. Nor were 

these the only pernicious effects of these holy expeditions. For 

while whole legions of bishops and abbots girded the sword to their 

thigh, and went as generals, volunteers, or chaplains into Palestine, 

the priests and monks who had lived under their jurisdiction, and 

Were more or less awed by their authority, threw off all restraint, 

lived the most lawless and profligate lives, and abandoning them- 

rives to all sorts of licentiousness, committed the most flagitious 

and extravagant excesses without reluctance or remorse. 

J 26. — Another effect of the expeditions to the holy land, was 
the introduction of vast quantities of old bones of saints and other 
Imputed relics. The inhabitants of the country were aware of the 
passion of the crusaders for these articles, and strove to make the 
gullibility of Christians as large a source of profit as possible to 
themselves. Upon their return from Palestine, after the taking of 
Jerusalem, they brought with them a vast number of pretended relics, 
which they bought at a high price from the cunning Greeks and 
Syrians, and which they considered as the noblest spoils that 
could crown their return from the holy land. These they com- 
Qutted to the custody of the clergy in the churches and monas- 
teries, or ordered them to be most carefully preserved in their fami- 
lies from generation to generation. 

Among others of these pretended relics, Matthew Paris relates 
that the Dominican friars brought a white stone in which they 
asserted Jesus Christ had left the impression of his feet. A hand- 
kerchief said to have been Christ's is worshipped at Bezancon, 
which was brought by the crusaders from the holy land ; and the 
Genoese pretend to have received from Baldwin, second king of 
Jenisalem, the very dish in which the paschal lamb was served up 
^ Christ and his disciples, at the last supper, though this famous 
dish excites the laughter of even father Labat in his travels in Spain 
Italy.* The Greeks and Syrians, whose avarice and firaud 

* Labtt, Voyages en Espagne et en Italie. Tom 11., p. 63. 

17 



• • 



266 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. Iboqk t. 

Popery la England. William of Mona M^ F 

were excessive, imposed upon the credulity of the simple and 
ignorant Latins, and often sold them fictitious relics at enonnoui 
prices. The sacred treasures of musty bones and rags which 
the French, German, and other European nations preserved for- 
merly with so much care, and show '' even in our times with such 
pious ostentation,** says Moshcim (ii., 441), ^ are certainly not more 
ancient than these holy wars, but were then purchased at a high 
rate from these cunning traders in superstition.** There are other 
incidents in the life of pope Urban, which are worthy of relatioDy as 
exhibiting the pomp and pride of the popes in this age of the world* 
but as they are chiefly connected witn the history of Popery in 
England, the relation of them will be deferred to the next chapter, 
which is to be devoted to that department of our subject. 



CHAPTER IV. 

POPEBT IN ENGLAND AFTER THE CONaUEST. ARCHBISHOPS ANSBLM 

AND THOMAS A BECKET. 

§ 27. — The successors of Hildebrand, as we have seen, were by 
no means slow to copy the example left by him of tyrannizing over 
the sovereigns and governments of the earth. As several of the 
most remarkable instances of papal assumption, during the eleventh 
and two following centuries, occurred in Great Britain, we shall 
again invite the attention of the reader for a chapter or two to the 
history of affairs in that island. About the middle of the eleventh 
century, a most important revolution occurred in the government 
of England. William, duke of Normandy, afterwards surnamed 
the Conqueror, had long looked with a greedy eye upon England. 
Before undertaking its conquest, however, William tnought it pru- 
dent to secure the powerful alliance of the Pope, who, says Hume, 
in his History of England, " had a mighty influence over the an- 
cient barons, no less devout in their religious principles than valor- 
ous in their military enterprises. It was a sufficient motive to 
Alexander II., the reigning rope, for embracing William*s quarrel, 
that he alone had made an appeal to his tribunal, but there were 
other advantages which that pontiff foresaw must result from the 
conquest of England by the Normans. That kingdom maintained 
still a considerable independence in its ecclesiastieai administration, 
and forming a world within itself, entirely separated from the rest 
of Europe, it had hitherto proved inaccessible to those exorbitant 
claims which supported the grandeur of the papacy. Alexander 
therefore hoped that the French and Norman barons, if successful 



\ 



ciiF.iT.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. 267 

A riif wHk oo« of 8c Peter*! haixt. King William** resistance to prteatly iiaaxiwtiQa. 

in their enterprise, might import into that country a more devoted 
rcYerence for the Holy See. He, therefore, declared immediately 
in &vor of William's claim, pronounced the legitimate king Harold 
a penured usurper, denounced excommunication against him and 
his adherents, and the more to encourage the duke of Normandy in 
his enterprise, sent him a consecrated banner, and a ring with one 
of a. Petef's hairs (!) in it*** 

J 28. — Upon the accession of Gregory VH., that imperious pon- 
tiff wrote to king William, requiring tnm to fulfil his promise of 
doing homage for the kingdom of England to the See of Rome, 
and to send him over that tribute which his predecessors had been 
accustomed to pay to the vicar of Christ (meaning Peter^s Pence^ 
a charitable donation of the Saxon princes, which the court of 
Rome construed into a badge of subjection acknowledged by the 
kingdom). William coolly replied, that the money should be remitted 
as formerly, but that he neither had promised to do homage to 
Rome, nor entertained any thoughts of imposing that servitude on 
his kingdom. Nay, he went so far as to refuse tne English bishops 
liberty to attend a general council, which Gregory had summoned 
sgainst his enemies. The following anecdote shows, in a still 
strooger light, the contempt of this prince for ecclesiastical do- 
minion. CMo, bishop of Bayeux, the king's maternal brother, whom 
he had created earl of Kent, and intrusted with a great share of 
power, had amassed immense riches ; and, agreeable to the usual 
progress of human wishes, he began to regard his present eminence 
as only a step to future grandeur. He aspired at nothing less than 
the papacy, and had resolved to transmit all his wealth to Italy, and 
80 thither in person, accompanied by several noblemen, whom he 
had persuaded to follow his example, in hopes of establishments 
under the future pope. William, from whom this object had been 
carefully concealed, was no sooner informed of it than he accused 
Odo of treason, and ordered him to be arrested ; but nobody would 
lay hands on the bishop. The king himself was therefore obliged 
to seize him ; and when Odo insisted, that, as a prelate, he was ex- 
empted from all temporal jurisdiction, William boldly replied, " / 
arrest not the bishop, I ai-rest the earl r and accordingly sent him 
prisoner into Normandy, where he was detained in custody, during 
this whole reign, notwithstanding the remonstrances and menaces 
of Gregory. 

The fact is, that the haughty Pope found it a more difficult 
matter to break down the proud spirit of these sturdy Normans, 
than of any of the monarchs whom he aimed to reduce to his sway. 
In the following reign, William Rufus, the son and successor of the 
Conqueror, upon the death of Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, 
in 1089, refused for five years to appoint a successor, and kept the 
temporalities of the archbishopric in his own hands. During this 
interval the bishops and clergy tried various methods to prevail 

* Hmne's History of England, p. 43 ; one vol. edition, London. 



868 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book y. 

ABMim eiocted mrchbWiop of Canterbonr. Hit qaannl wtth IIm ffl^g 

upon the king to appoint a primate, in vain. At one time, when 
they presented a petition, that he would give them leave to issue a 
iform of prayer, to be used in all the churches of England — ^that 
Grod would move the heart of the king to choose an archbishop, he 
returned this careless answer: — ^You may pray as you please ; I 
will do as I please J* 

§ 29. — At length, in a fit of sickness, the king consented to the 
election of Anselm, who soon after requested permission to go to 
Rome to receive his pall, orrobe of office, from the Pope. Angry 
at this request, William summoned a council to consider of it, 
which, after due deliberation, returned for an answer, that ^ unless 
he yielded obedience to the king, and retracted his submission to 
pope Urban, they would not acknowledge or obey him as their pri- 
mate." On hearing this sentence, the archbishop lifted up his eyes 
and hands to heaven, and with great solemnity, appealed to Sl 
Peter, whose vicar he declared he was determined to obey, rather 
than the king ; and upon the bishops declining to repoi-t his words, 
he rushed into the council, and pronounced them before the king 
and his nobility. 

This was the time of schism mentioned in a previous chapter, 
between the two rival popes, Urban and Clement, and king Wil- 
liam hoping to conquer the obstinacy of Anselm by violence, had 
recourse to stratagem, and privately dispatched two of his chap- 
lains to Rome, with an ofier to Urban, of acknowledging him as 
Pope, if he would consent to the deposition of Anselm, and send a 
pall to the King, to be bestowed on whom he pleased. Urban, 
transported with joy at the accession of so powerful a prince, 
promised everything, and sent Walter, bishop of Alba, his legate, 
mto England with a pall. The legate passed through Canterbury, 
without seeing the archbishop; and arriving at court, prevailed 
upon the King to issue a proclamation, commanding all his subjects 
to acknowledge Urban II. as lawful Pope. But nor sooner had the 
King performed his engagements, and began to speak of proceeding 
to the deposition of the archbishop, and demanded the pall, that he 
might give it to the prelate who should be chosen in his room, than 
the legate changed his tone, and with a perfidiousness characteristic 
of Popery, declared plainly, that the rope would not consent to 
the deposition of so great a saint, and so dutiful a son of the church 
of Rome : and moreover, that he had received orders to deliver 
the pall to Anselm ; which he accordingly performed, with great 
pomp, in the cathedral church of Canterbury. 

§ 30. — During the absence of Anselm on a visit to Rome, the 
King seized all his estates and revenues, but the most extraordinary 
honors were paid to the Archbishop on his arrival in that city. 
The Pope addressed him in a long speech before the whole court, 
in which he lavished the highest encomiums upon him, called him 
the pope of another world, and commanded all the English who 
should come to Rome to kiss his toe. He further promised to sup- 
port him with all his power, in his disputes with the king of Eng- 



CHIP. XT.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1075-1303. 260 



paid to AhmIm at Boom bj the Pope. Henrj I. •ueceede William Roftn. 



land, to whom he wrote a letter, commanding him to restore all 
that he had taken from Anselm. While at Rome, the Archbishop 
was present at a papal council, held in 1098, in which it was de- 
clarea by pope Urban, that the king of England deserved to be ex* 
communicated for his conduct towards Anselm ; but, at the request 
of that prelate, the execution of the sentence was postponed. At 
this council, the famous canon against lay-investitures was con- 
firmed, denouncing excommunication against all laymen who pre- 
somed to grant investitures of any ecclesiastical benefices, and 
against all clergymen who accepted of such investitures, or did 
nomage to temporal princes. The reason assigned for this canon 
by the Pope, as related by one who was present in the council, and 
heard his speech, is horrid and impious in the highest degree. ** It 
b execrable," said his holiness, ** to see those hands which create 
Ood^ the Creator of all things — a power never granted to angels — 
and offer Him in sacrifice to the Father, for the redemption of the 
whole world — put between the hands of a prince, stained with 
blood, and polluted day and night with obscene contacts !" To 
which all the fathers of the council responded, " Amen ! — Amen T 
**At these transactions," said Eadmer, ^I was present, and all these 
things I saw and heard." 

J 81. — ^William Rufiis was succeeded on the throne of England 
in 1100 by Henry I., whose reign extended to the long period of 
five-and-thirty years. He was the youngest son of William the 
Conqueror, and got the reins of government into his hands by sup- 
riantinc his elder brother Robert ; but, having supceeded, he set 
himself with all his might to conciliate all those who were likely 
cither to support or disturb him in the possession of the prize he 
had obtained, and especially the Pope and court of Rome. With 
a view to this, he recalled the archbishop of Canterbury from his 
exile ; and accordingly Anselm landed at Dover on the 23d Sep- 
tember, A. D. 1100. A few days after, he was introduced to the 
King, at Salisbury, who received him with every possible mark of 
affection and respect. But the cordiality was of short continuance. 
The King was far from being of an amiable character : Anselm, 
too, was the same unbending prelate still ; and the instant he was 
called upon to do homage to the King for the temporalities of his 
See, he met it with aflat refusal, and produced the canon of the late 
council of Rome in vindication of his conduct, at the same time 
declaring, that, if the King insisted on his pretensions to the homage 
pf the clergy, he could hold no communion with him, and would 
immediately leave the kingdom. This threw the King into great 
perplexity ; for, on the one hand, he was very reluctant to resi^ 
the right of bestowing ecclesiastical benefices, and of receiving the 
homage of the prelates, and, on the other, he dreaded the departure 
of the Archbishop, who might take part with his brother Kobert, 
^n in Normandy, and preparing to assert his right to the throne 
^ England. In this critical conjuncture, the King proposed, or 
^^r begged, a truce, till both parties could send ambassadors to 



370 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book t. 



Pops PMcal*! lofty pretenaioot. AnaeliD*! oppoAloii to tlie wUl of the 

the Pope, to know his final determination ; to which Anselm, at the 
solicitations of the nobility, consented. 

§ 32. — In due time the messengers who had been despatched to 
Rome returned with letters from pope Pascal II., who had suc- 
ceeded Urban, in which his holiness asserted in the strongest terms, 
that the church and all its revenues belonged to St Peter and his 
successors ; and that emperors, kings, and princes had no right to 
confer the investiture of benefices on the clergy, or to demand 
homage from them. This he endeavored to prove by several texts 
of Scripture, most grossly misapplied, and by other arguments, 
which are either blasphemous or nonsensical, of which take this 
specimen : — *^ How abominable is it for a son to beget his father, 
and a man to create his Gk>d? and are not priests your fathers and 
your Gods ?* The effect of this curious piece of papal reasoning 
was not precisely such as his holiness anticipated. The King was 
rather irritated than convinced by it. For, the first time Anselm 
appeared at court, Henry, in a somewhat peremptory tone, required 
him to do homage to him for the revenues of his See, and to con- 
secrate certain bishops and abbots, according to ancient custom, or 
to quit the kingdom ; adding, " I will suffer no subject to live in my 
dominions who refuses to do me homage." The Archbishop boldly 
replied, ^ I am prohibited by the canons of the council of Kome to 
do what you require. I will not leave the kingdom, but stay in my 
province, and perform my duty ; and kt me see who dares to dome 
an injury ;** on saying which, he abruptly quitted the court, and 
returned to Canterbury. 

The King had suffered so much from the opposition and ob- 
stinacy of Anselm, that upon the death of that prelate, which took 
place in 1109, he was in no haste to appoint a successor, but kept 
the See of Canterbury vacant no less than five years. At lengto, 
after a warm contest between the monks of the cathedral and the 
prelates of the province, Radulphus, bishop of Rochester, was 
elected primate, 26th April, 1114. As all this had been done 
without consulting the Pope, the latter was not a little enraged, and 
wrote a long letter to the King and bishops, in which many texts of 
Scripture are quoted to prove that no business of any importance 
ought to be transacted in any nation of Europe without the know- 
ledge and direction of the Pope ; it also contained the strongest ex- 
S)ressions of resentment against the King and prelates of England 
or their late neglect of the Holy See, with threats of excommunu 
cation if they did not behave in a more dutiful manner in time to 
come. The King was not a little offended with the insolent strain 
of this epistle, and sent the bishop of Exeter to Rome to expostu- 
late with the Pope on that and some other subjects. 

One of the most specious and successful arts employed by the 
court of Rome to subject the several churches of Europe to her 
dominion, was that of sending legates into all countries, with com- 

* Eadmer, p. 61. 



CEAP. IT.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 107^-1303. 271 

MatfOMl coaneOiL Oudlnml Cmna, the P<^*f legate to England, delected In groeB UeeniioiMDeM 

missions to hold national councils, in the name and by the authority 
of the Pope. Hitherto the kings of England had successfully re** 
sisted this ; but the policy of Kome was still upon the watch to 
seize the first favorable opportunity for renewing these attempts. 
Such an opportunity presented itself at this time, when the king of 
England was engaged in a dangerous war upon the continent, and 
stood in need of the favor of the court of Kome ; and it was not 
neglected. 

% 33. — ^Honorius II., who then filled the papal chair, granted a 
commission, April 13th, 1126, to John de Crema, a cardinal priest, 
to be his legate in England and Scotland.* The Legate, in passing 
through France, waited on kin^ Henry, then in Normandy, and at 
length, with much difficulty, obtained his permission to pass over 
into England, where he gratified his pride and avarice, with little 
regard to decency. Among other things, he presided in a national 
council at Westminster, on the 9th of September, in which both 
the archbishops, twenty bishops, forty abbots, and an innumerable 
multitude both of the clergy and people were present. In this 
council no fewer than seventeen canons were made, in the name 
and by the authority of the Pope alone ! In these canons there 
was Utile new, except the edicts enjoining the strictest celibacy to 
the clergy of every order. At the conclusion of the council, the 
legate-%ummoned the archbishops of Canterbury and York to re- 
pair immediately to Rome to plead the cause about the preroga- 
tives of their respective Sees, which was depending before the 
Pope. To such a height had the usurpations of Rome, and the in- 
solence of the papal legates, then arrived ! 

hi the night which succeeded the conclusion of this council, 
an incident occurred which made a prodigious noise throughout 
England, and brought no little scandal on the Roman clergy. John 
de Crema, the Pope's legate, who had declaimed with great warmth 
in the council, the day before, in honor of immaculate chastity, and 
inveighed, with no less vehemence, against the horrid impurity of 
the married clergy, was actually detected in bed with a common 
prostitute ! The detection was so undeniable, and soon became so 

ffublic, that the Legate was both ashamed and afraid to show his 
^ce; but sneaked out of England with all possible secrecy and 
precipitation.t This incident gave a temporary triumph to the 
niarned clergy, who had probably been the detectors, and thus 
J^ndered the canon of the late council against them abortive and 
contemptible. 
\ 34. — Yet so intent was the court of Rome on makmg good its 

* Spelman, Concil., t. ii., Pp* 32, 33. 

t R. Hoveden, p. 274 ; H. KDyghton, col. 2382 ; Chron. Homingford, 1. i., c. 
j^' J. Brompt, col. 1016 ; Hen. Hunt., 1. vii., p. 219. It is remarkable, savB 
^* Home, referring to this disgraceful occurrence, that the last cited author, H. 
^jn^tiDgdon, who was a clergyman, makes an apology for using such freedoai 
^ the fishers of the church, but says that the fact was notorious, and ought not 
^ lie concealed. (Hist of Eng., p. 68.) 



272 fflSTORY OP ROMANISM. [book â–¼ 



CnMl measarw •gmiiMt the murrtod clergy. ThePope/tfvef IielcBdiokiagHtfij 

right to the character of anti-Christ by prohibiting marriagey thal^ 
in the following year (1127), a national synod was convened at 
Westminster, on the 17th May, in the canons of which the marriage 
of the clergy is styled " the plague of the church,'* and all digni- 
taries are commanded to exert their most zealous efforts to root it 
out. The wives of priests and canons were not only to be sepa- 
rated from them, but to be banished out of the parish ; and if they 
ever after conversed with their husbands, they were to be seized hv 
the ministers of the church, and subjected to ecclesiastical disci- 
pline, or reduced to servitude, at the discretion of the bishop ; and 
if any persons, great or small, attempted to deliver these unhappy 
victims out of the hands of the ministers of the church, they were 
to be excommunicated. Such were the violent and cruel measures 
necessary to be employed in order to compel the clergy to do vio- 
lence to the laws of nature, and by breaking up all the domestic 
relations, to render them the more willing, subservient, and devoted 
tools of Rome. 

In the year 1156, which was the year after the accession of 
Henry II. to the throne of England, that monarch inadvertently 
contributed to exalt the power and pretensions of the Pope, under 
which he and his successors so severely smarted, by accepting a 

Sant of the kingdom of Ireland, from pope Adrian lY. Little was 
enry aware of what he was doing in this instance ; for the solicit- 
ing, or even accepting this grant, was a plain and virtual acknow- 
ledgment, that the Pope had a right to deprive the Irish princes of 
their dominions, and bestow them upon whom he pleased ; and in 
the body of the grant, his holiness takes care to mention this ac- 
knowledgment. " For it is undeniable," says he, " and your majesty 
acknowledges it, that all islands on which Christ, the sun of righte- 
ousness, hath shined, and which have received the Christian laithi 
belong of right to St. Peter, and the most holy Roman church.''* 

§ 35. — Shortly after this, at the instigation of the popish priests, 
king Henry was prevailed upon to disgrace his reign by tne first 
instances of death for heresy that ever occurred in England from 
the landing of the emissaries of Rome on her shores. There ex- 
isted, at that dark period, when " all the world wondered after the 
beast," a numerous body of the disciples of Christ, who took the 
New Testament for their guidance and direction in all the affairs of 
religion, rejecting doctrines and commandments of men. Their 
appeal was from the decisions of councils, and the authority of 
popes, cardinals, and prelates, to the law and the testimony — ^the 
words of Christ and his holy apostles. Egbert, a monkish writer 
of that age, speaking of them, says, that he had often disputed with 
these heretics, whom he terms cathari, or puritans ; " a sort of peo- 
le," he adds, " who are very pernicious to the catholic faith, whicl^ 
ike moths, they corrupt and destroy. They are armed," says hci 
'*unth the words of Scripture which in any way seem to favor their 

* M. Paris, Hbt p. 67. 



E 



CHAP. !▼.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. 278 



Pint butaneM of death for herefj in EoflaBd. 



tentimentSy and with these they know how to defend their errors, 
and to oppose the catholic truth. They are increased to ^reat mul- 
titudes throughout all countries, to the great danger of the church 
(of Rome) ; tor their words eat like a canker, and, like a flying 
leprosy, run every way, infecting the precious members of Christ.'** 
These people went under different names in different countries ; 
but their faith was substantially one and the same. They invaria- 
bly protested against the corruptions of the church of Rome ; such 
as the doctrine of purgatory, offering alms for the dead, and cele- 
bratin^masses, the ringing of bells, and praying for the dead, &c., 
4c Throughout the whole of the twelfth century, they were ex- 
posed to severe persecution; and in the year 1159, a company of 
them, amounting to thirty in number, partly men and partly women, 
all of whom spoke the German language, made their appearance in 
England, hoping, no doubt, to find an asylum here from the rage of 
bigotry and intolerance to which they were exposed in their own 
country. They appear to have constituted a small Christian church, 
in their native place ; and their pastor, whose name was Gerard, 
Was a person of some learning and talent. They are said to have 
been tne disciples of Arnold, of Brescia. Taking up their resi- 
dence in the neighborhood of Oxford, they were not long in attract- 
i^ notice, by the strangeness of their language, and the sin^arity 
oitheir religious practices. Thev were, consequently, taken up, 
and brought before a council of the clergy at Oxford. When in- 
terrogated as to who and what they were, their leader answered in 
their name, thjit they were Christians, and believed the doctrines 
of the apostles. On a more particular inquiry, it was found that 
they denied several of the received doctrines of the Catholic 
church ; such as purgatory, prayers for the dead, and the invoca- 
tion of saints : and refusing to abandon these *' danmable heresies," 
as the clergy were pleased to call them, they were condemned as 
incorrigible heretics, and delivered to the civil magistrates to be pun- 
iahed. The King, at the instigation of the clergy, commanded 
them to be branded with a red-hot iron on the forehead ; to be 
whipped through the streets of Oxford ; and, having their clothes 
cut short by the mrdles, to be turned into the open fields ; all per- 
•OM being forbidden to afford them either shelter or relief, under 
the severest penalties. This cruel sentence was executed in its ut- 
|noBt rigor ; and taking place in the depth of winter, they all per- 
*«hed through cold and famine ! Would that, as these instances of 
g>pi8h persecution were the first that had ever been witnessed in 
Eiijland, they had also been the last ! then we might be spared the 
^f, painful though necessary, of tracing the blood-red footsteps 
rf the Babylonish ** mother of harlots " (Rev. xvii., 5), as she has 
^led on in the career of ages over the fair fields of Britain, 
"drank with the blood of the saints." 
§ 86. — A disagreement occurred A. D. 1161, between king Henry 

* Senn. I. in Bib. Patmm, p. 898, Cdogne edit 



274 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book y. 

Two kiogi lead the Pope'i hone. Quarrel betwoea king Henry and Thomas a Beckil. 

11. of England, and Louis VIL of France, which would proba- 
bly have resulted in a war, had it not been for the mediation 
and authority of pope Alexander III., at that time residing in 
France, having been driven from Rome by the successfiil rival- 
pope, Victor 1 V. " That we may form an idea,** says Hume, " of 
the authority possessed by the Roman pontiffs during those ages, it 
may be proper to observe, that the two kings had, the year before« 
met the Pope at the castle of Toici, on the Loire ; and they gave 
him such marks of respect, that they both dismounted to receive 
him, and holding, each of them, one of the reins of his bridle^ 
walked on foot by his side, and conducted him in that submissive 
manner into the castle."* In relating this circumstance. Cardinal 
Baronius is in ecstasies of delight ; ** a spectacle this,*' says he, ^ to 
(rod, to angels, and to men ; and such as had never before been ex« 
hibited in the world l^f {See Engraving.) 

§ 37. — The submissive homage of king Henry on tins occasion did 
not prevent pope Alexander from engaging in a warm dispute 
with him soon after, which was occasioned by the arrogance of 
Thomas . a Becket, archbishop of Canterbury. In the year 1 168^ 
the hostilities commenced between the Sovereign and the Priaiate. 
Various instances of the most scandalous impunity of atrocioos 
crimes, perpetrated by the clergy, had recently occurred. Some 
of these had reached the King's ears, before he returned to En^^ 
land, and he was greatly incensed at them.' One abominable hoK 
stance brought the Kin^ and Becket into direct collision on thie 
point A clergyman in Worcester had debauched the daughter of - 
a respectable man, and, for her sake, had murdered the father. The* 
King demanded that he should be brought before his tribunalf to 
answer for the horrible act Becket resisted this, and save hiqp 
into the custody of his Bishop, that he might not be delivered te. 
the King's justice. The King, who had seen repeated instances o£ r 
the clergy permitting their offending brethren to escape with uii»;' 
punity, and as their crimes, instead of being repressed, became 
daily more flagrant, was the more intent upon accomplishing his 
important object He justly imputed these atrocities to the es* 
emption of the clergy Irom trial before the secular courts, while 
the ecclesiastical tribunals, to whom they were subject, had no 
power to inflict capital, or, indeed, any adequate pimishment With 
a view to redress this crying evil, king Henry summoned a great 
council at Westminster, which he opened with an excellent speecht 
in which he complained of the mischiefs occasioned by the thefts, 
robberies, and even murders committed by the clergy, who were 
suffered to so unpunished ; and he concluded with requiring, that 
the Archbishop and the other bishops would consent that when a 
clergyman was degraded for any crime, he should be immediately 
delivered up to the civil power, that he might be punished for the 

*Histoiy of England, reign of Henry n., An. 1161. 
f Baromos's Annals, Ann. 1160. 




liFDCToici, inFni 



csaf.it.] popery the WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. 2T7 

Beekcc wwmn to obey tkc CnwiitntiOM of CUicDdoa. The Pope •IwulTes him ftom hie oetk. 



crimey according to the laws of the land. Becket, at first, refuaed 
to comply with this reasonable demand, but in the following year 
he solemnly swore to obey the ** Constitutions of Clarendon,*' by 
which all clergymen guilty of criminal offences were rendered 
amenable to the civil law. 

As it was with manifest reluctance that Becket had sworn to 
obey those hated Constitutions, so he soon began to give indications 
of his repentance, by extraordinary acts of mortification, and by 
refraining fix>m performing the sacred offices of his function. He 
^spatched a special messenger to the Pope, apprising him of what 
W been done. The Isttter sent him a bull, releasing him from the 
ligation of his oath^ and enjoining him to resume the autie&.of 
his sacred office. But though this bull reconciled his conscience to 
the violation of his oath, it did not dispel his fears of the King's in- 
flation — ^to avoid which, he determined to retire privately out 
oitbe kingdom. With this intention he went down to Romney, 
Accompanied by two of his friends, and there embarked for Fr^ce ; 
tut bemg twice put back by contrary winds, he landed, and re- 
^ed to Canterbury. About the same time the King's officers 
^ame to that city with orders to seize his possessions and revenues ; 
hot on his showing himself, they retired, without executing their 
^fders. Conscious that he had transgressed those laws wmch he 
*W sworn to observe, by attempting to leave the kingdom without 

{ermission, he waited upon the King at Woodstock, who received 
. im without any other expression of displeasure than merely ask- 
^ him if he had left England because he thought it too little to 
<^ntain them both. 

§ 38. — Soon after this interview, fresh misunderstandings arose 
between the King and the Primate, who publicly protected the clergy 
from those punishments which their crimes deserved, and flatly re- 
fused to obey a summons to attend the King's court. Henry was 
*o much enraged at these daring insults on the laws and the royal 
^thority, that he determined to call him to account before his peers, 
in a parliament which he summoned to meet at Northampton, on 
Ae 17th October, 1164. This parliament was unusually full, the 
^hole nation being now deeply interested in the issue oi this con- 
f^st between the crown and the mitre. On the first day, the King 
^ Person accused the Archbishop of contumacy, in reiusing to at- 
IJ^Qa his court when he was summoned ; against which accusation, 
*^)^ing made only a very weak defence, he was unanimously found 
S^Jlly by the bishops, as well as by the temporal barons, and all his 
^?ods and chattels were declared to be forfeited. Many of the 
?f^hops waited upon Becket, and earnestly entreated him to resign 
• '^ office, assuring him that if he did not he would be tried for per- 
^^^y and high treason. Becket, however, was made of sterner 
•^Uff— he reproached them bitterly for deserting him in his contest 
^T^'-tJiarged tnem not to presume to sit in judgment upon their Pri- 
^^te — and declared, that though he should be burnt alive, he would 
^^t abandon his station, nor forsake his flock 1 Having celebrated 



278 HISTORY OF ROM ANISlf. [book t. 

BoldncM, olMtinacy, ud rabdlioo of BeektL 

mass, he set out from his residence, dressed in his pontifical robeip 
with a consecrated host in one hand ; and when he approached the 
hall where the King and parliament sat, he took the cross from the 
bearer, and carried it in the other hand. When the King was in- 
formed of the posture in which Becket was advancing, he retired 
hastily into an inner room, commanding all the bishops and barons 
to follow him. Here he complained of the insufferable annoyance 
of Becket ; and was answered by the barons, ^ That he had always 
been a vain and obstinate man, and ought never to have been raised 
to so high a station ; that he had been guilty of high treason, both 
against the King and the kingdom ; and they demanded that he 
should be immediately punished as a traitor." The clamors of 
the barons against Becket became so loud and vehement, that the 
archbishop of York, fearing they would proceed to acts of violence^ 
hastily retired, that he might not be a spectator of the tragical 
scene. The bishop of Exeter went into tne great hall, where the 
Primate sat almost alone, and, falling at his feet, conjured him to 
take pity on himself and on his brethren, and preserve them aD 
from destruction, by complying with the king's wUl. But, with a 
stem countenance, he commanded them to begone. 

§ 39. — The bishops, apprehensive of incurrmg the indignation of 
the Pope if they orocceaed to sit in judgment on their Primate, and 
of the King and oarons if they refused, begged that they might be 
allowed to hold a private consultation, which was granted. After 
deliberating some time, they agreed to renounce all subjection to 
Becket as their Primate ; to prosecute him for penury before the 
Pope ; and, if possible, to procure his deposition. This resolution 
they reported to the King and barons, who, not knowing that 
Becket had already obtained a bull from the Pope, absolving him 
from his oath, too rashly gave their consent ; and the bishops went 
into the hall in a body, and intimated their resolutions to the Arch- 
bishop. The latter not deigning to give them any answer, except 
" I hear," a profound silence ensued. In the mean time the King 
and barons came to a resolution, that if the Primate did not give in 
his accounts without delay, they would declare him guilty of peijury 
and treason, and deputed certain barons to communicate this reso- 
lution. The earl of Leicester, who was at the head of these 
barons, addressing himself to Becket, said, ^ The King commands 
you to come immediately, and give in your accounts, or else hear 
your sentence.*' " My sentence !" exclaimed Becket, starting on 
his feet, " No ! my son, hear me first. I was given to the church 
free, and discharged from all claims when I was elected arch^ 
bishop of Canterbury, and therefore I never will render any ao 
count. Besides, my son, neither law nor reason permits sons to 
judge their father. I decline the jurisdiction of the King and 
barons, and appeal to God, and my lord the Pope, by whom alon^ 
I am to be jucfged. For you, my brethren and fellow bishops, I 
summon you to appear before the Pope, to be judged by him for 
having obeyed man rather than God. I put myself, the church of 



citf.T.] POTERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. 270 



dMlh. Pratended mindet at bto ihrin*. 



Canterbury, and all that belongs to it, under the protection of God 
and the Pope ; and under their protection I depart hence.'' Having 
aid this, he walked out of the hall in great state, leaving the 
spectators so much disconcerted by his boldness, that not an indi- 
ndoai had the courage to stop him. 

§ 40. — The tragical result of this controversy is well known. The 
haughty but courageous Primate was assassinated December 20th, 
1171, by four genuemen of kin^ Henry's court, in consequence of 
a passionate exclamation they had heard drop from the lips of 
their royal master, and was soon after his death canonizea as a 
saint of the very highest rank. Endless were the panegvrics pro- 
nounced on his virtues ; and the miracles wrought by his relics, 
according to the popish historians, were more numerous, more non- 
aenaical, and more impudently attested, than those which ever filled 
the legend of any saint or martyr. His shrine not only restored 
dead men to life ; it also restored cows, dogs, and horses. Presents 
were sent, and pilgrimages performed, from all parts of Christen- 
dom, in order to obtain nis intercession with Heaven : and it was 
computed that, in one year, above a hundred thousand pilgrims ar- 
rived at Canterbury, and paid their devotions at his tomb.* 

The following quaint verse in relation to the throngs of pilgrims 
that came to pay their devotions at the shrine of St. Thomas a 
Becket, in Canterbury Cathedral, is from Chaucer, one of the most 
ancient of our English poets, who was bom about a century and a 
half after the death and canonization of the saint. 

" And specially from every shire's end 
Of En^le-land to Canterbury they wend, 
The holy blissful martyr for to seek, 
That them hath holpen when that they were sick." 



CHAPTER V. 

POPEET IN ENGLAND CONTINUED— POPE INNOCENT AND KING JOHN. 

§ 41. — The most remarkable exhibition of priestly tyranny and 
successful papal arrogance that has ever occurred in Great Britain, 
and perhaps in the world, was that which signalized the pontificate 
of Innocent III., a pope that carried out the policy of Hildebrand 
to an unprecedented extent in his treatment of the kingdom of 
England, and its weak and contemptible king John, in the early 
part of the thirteenth century. It is justly remarked by the his- 

* RuBsell's Modem Europe, i., 168. 



260 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book t 

The Pope and the Kinf compared to the Sun and the Moon. Impertinent iDterferenee of IimoMBt IB» 

torian of the middle ages, that ** the pontificate of Innocent III. may 
De regarded as the meridian or noonday of papal usurpation.** In, 
each of the three leading objects which Rome had pursued — ^name- 
ly, independent sovereignty, supremacy o^«r the Christian church, 
and control over the princes of the earth — it was the fortune of 
this pontiff to conquer. The maxims of Gregory VII. were now 
matured by more than a hundred years, and the right of trampling 
upon the necks of kings had been received, at least among church- 
men, as an inherent attribute of the papacy. " As the sun and the 
moon are placed in^the firmament, says the pontiff, " the greater 
as the light of the day, and the lesser of the night ; thus are there 
two powers in the church — the pontifical, which, as having the 
charge of souls, is the greater ; and the royal, which is the less, 
and to which the bodies of men only are intrusted."* Intoxicated 
with these conceptions, the result of successful ambition, he thought 
no quarrel of princes beyond the sphere of his jurisdiction. On 
every side the thunders of Rome broke over the heads of princes. 
At his pleasure, he would place a kmgdom under an interdict, and 
instantly public worship is suspended, and the dead lie unburied. 
If the clergy complain to him that the people, cut off from the 
offices of religion, refuse to pay tithes, ana go to hear the sectarieSt 
he consents that divine service shall be performed with closed doorSy 
but denies them the rites of sepulture.f 

§ 42. — Pope Innocent commenced his course of lordly arrogance 
towards England almost as soon as he ascended the papal throne, 
and during the reign of Richard Cocur de Lion, the predecessor of 
John. In order to counteract the influence of the monks of Can- 
terbury in the election of the primates, and to place future elections 
more under the royal influence, king Richard authorized the erec- 
tion of an episcopal palace at Lambeth, intending to remove the 
place of election in future from Canterbury to that place. The 
suspicious monks, jealous of the exclusive right which they had 
claimed of electing the archbishops of Canterbury, secretly dis- 
patched a messenger to pope Innocent at Rome, from whom they 
obtained a bull, addressed to the archbishop Hubert, who was him- 
self in favor of the change, commanding him, within thirty days, to 
demolish the works at Lambeth, and threatening him with suspen- 
sion from his oflice in case of disobedience ; for, says the insolent 
Pope, " it is not fit that any man should have any authority who 
does not revere and obey the apostolic See."J 

The King was enraged at the conduct of the monks in apply- 
ing to Rome without his permission, and the Archbishop dispatcned 
his agents to Rome, who were admitted to an audience of the 
Pope on one day, and the monks of Canterbury were permitted 
to reply on the next. The result of these proceedings was, that 

* Vita Innocentii III., St. Marc, torn, v., p. 325. This life of pope Innocent 
WBB written by a contemporary, 
f Hallam's Middle Ages, chap. vii. 
I Gervas. Chron., col. 1602, &c. 



mt.%] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. 281 



AeFopi oitei the iroriB of Lambeth Palace to be demolldied. The Klof obliged to obej 

the Pope confirmed his former sentence against the Archbishop, 
which ne intimated to him by a bull, dated November 20th, threat- 
eoing him with the highest censure of the church, if he did not im- 
mediately demolish the works at Lambeth. His Holiness, at tbo 
same time, directed another bull to the King, commanding him, m 
a magisterial tone, to see the sentence of the apostolic See exe- 
cuted ; and telline him further, that if he presumed to oppose its 
execution, he womd soon convince him, by the severity of his pun- 
ishment, how hard it was ^ to kick against the pricks !" In another 
bull, which he addressed to the King, dictated^if possible, in a still 
higher strain, he commands him immediately to restore to the 
monb of Canterbury all their possessions ; for " he would not en- 
dure the least contempt of himself, or of God, whose place he held 
ifon earth ; but would punish, without delay, and without respect of 
pemms, every one who presumed to disobey his commands, in order 
to convince the whole world that he was determined to act in a royal 
MAMNEB."* These bulls had the desired effect ; the King and the 
Archbishop, terrified at the thunders of Rome, submitted to the 
commands of the Pope, and the pertinacious monks had the satis- 
&ction of seeing the obnoxious buildings razed to the foundation in 
the months of January and February, 1199, a short time before the 
death of king Richard, which took place on the 6th of April, of the 
same year. 

§ 43. — In the course of the following century, however, consider- 
able progress was made in the erection of the venerable and remark- 
able pile of buildings, so well known to visitors in London as Lambeth 
Palace, and which possesses such painful interest to the protcstant 
descendants of British martyrs, on account of that single melan- 
choly room called Lollard's Tower, where many of the noblest ol 
their protcstant forefathers, victims of popish oppression and cruelty, 
breathed their sighs to the cold stone walls and iron-barred doors , 
sent up their prayers to the God of the oppressed ; held sweet com- 
munion with that Saviour for whose cause they were languishing 
in chains, and in many instances left behind them the now time- 
worn memorials of their suffering, in rude inscriptions upon its walls. 
Lambeth Palace exhibits specimens of the architecture of differ- 
ent ages. The venerable apartment called the Chapel, and the 
crypt beneath, were probably built by archbishop Boniface, as early 
as 1262. It is seventy-five feet in length, twenty- five in breadth, 
and thirty feet in height, and is divided in the middle by a richly 
ornamented screen. There is another magnificent and more spa- 
cious apartment built at a later period, called the Great Hall. It 
stands on the right of the principal court-yard, and is built of fine 
red brick, the walls being supported by stone buttresses, and also 
coped with stone, and surmounted by large balls or orbs. The 
length of this noble room is ninety-three feet, its breadth thirty-eight, 
and its height fifty. The roof, which is of oak and elaborately 

* Gervas. Chron., cd. 1616-1624. 



282 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [mok â–¼. 



Lanbeth Palace and Lollard's tower. CoanueocenMnt of Uag JohB** 4|iiair«l with popa 

carved, is particularly splendid and imposing. The jGkita^hQuacb 
which forms the principal entry to the Palace, and is the propiiD0itt. 
object in the engraving, was erected by Cardinal Mortont about t^i^. 
year 1490, and is a very beautiful and magnificent structure. .^It 
consists of two lofiy towers, from the summits of which is one of 
the finest views in the neighborhood of the metropolis. 

But of all the parts of this venerable and imposing pile, thiere js 
a single contracted room, cold, dark and dreary, twelve feet by â–  
nine, with two holes called windows, fourteen inches by seveiit 
measured on the outside, but enlarging, by a funnel-shaped cavity - 
through thick, stone walls, to about double the size on the inside^: 
which possesses a deeper and more tender interest than any, or than. 
all the rest. I need not add, it is Lollard's Tower. This gloomy 
apartment was erected by Archbishop Chichely, m the early part of 
the fifteenth century, as a place of confinement for the unhappy he- 
retics from whom it derives its name. Under the tower is an apartp 
ment of somewhat singular appearance, called the post roorn^ from 
a large post in the middle of it, by which its flat roof is partly sup- 
ported. The prison in which the poor Lollards were confined is at 
the top of the tower, and is reached by a very narrow windine 
staircase. Its single doorway, which is so narrow as only to admit 
one person at a time, is strongly barricaded by both an outer and 
an inner door of oak, each three inches and a half thick, and thickly 
studded with iron. Both the walls and roof of the chamber are 
lined with oaken planks an inch and a half thick ; and eight large 
iron rings still remain fastened to the wood, the melancholy memo- 
rials of the barbarous popish tyranny whose victims formerly pined 
in this dismal prison-house. Many names, and fragments oi sen- 
tences, are rudely cut out on various parts of the walls. {See En- 
graving,) 

§ 44. — To return to the thread of our history. A few years after the 
accession of king John the brother of Richard, the violent dispute be- 
tween him and pope Innocent commenced, which has renaered so 
memorable the history of the reign of that weak and contemptible 
sovereign. The occasion of it was as follows. After the death of 
Hubert, archbishop of Canterbury in 1205, a contest arose between 
two individuals who each claimed to have been elected to that dig- 
nity by the monks. The bishops who had not been consulted m 
either, formed a third party, and dispatched their agents to Rome 
to protest against both elections. Pope Innocent, to whom nothing 
could be more grateful than these clashing claims and appeals, de- 
cided against both elections, declared the See of Canterbury vacant, 
and resolved, like one of his predecessors, six centuries before (see 
above, page 135), to raise a creature of his own to the dignity of 
primate of England. 

To give this assumption at least a semblance of regularity, 
however slight, the Pope sent for some monks of Canterbury, four- 
teen in numoer, who happened at that time to be in Rome as agents 
for the bishop of Norwich, one of the rejected competitors, and 



. T.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. 285 



^ the Pope*! orderit appointed archbishop or Canterbury. King John's useiesi angw. 

commanded them, under penalty of excommunication, immediately 
to choose for their archbishop, cardinal Stephen Langton. The 
monks in vain protested that they were incompetent to elect an arch- 
bishop without the consent of the whole convent, and that they had 
been entrusted with no such authority; but the Pope hastily and 
sternly replied that his authority was sufficient to supply all defects. 
They urged, too, that before leaving England, they had solemnly 
sworn to the King that they would acknowledge no person for pn- 
mate except the bishop of Norwich, who was a personal favorite of 
the sovereign. This obstacle, however, was soon removed by the 

tlenitude of papal authority, which had long since assumed the 
lasphemous power of annulling the laws of God, and sanction- 
ing the most deliberate perjury by absolving from the obligation of 
oaths. Having, therefore, removed this obstacle by absolving them 
from their solemn oath to king John, the monks at length overcome 
by the menaces and authority of the Pope, proceeded, with the 
angle exception of Elias de Brantefield, to comply with his de- 
mands and elected Langton archbishop, who was consecrated by 
the Pope himself on the 37th of June, 1207. 

§ 45. — Pope Innocent, well aware that this flagrant usurpation 
would be highly resented by the court of England, wrote to John a 
mollifying letter, accompanied by four golden rings set with precious 
rtones, and endeavored to enhance the value of the present by in- 
forming him of the mysteries implied in it. Their round /onw, he 
said, shadowed forth eternity without beginning or end, and should 
teach him to aspire from temporal to eternal things ; their number^ 
four, being a square, denoted steadiness of mind ; their matter, gold, 
the most precious of metals signified wisdom. The blue color of 
the sapphire, represented Faith ; the green of the emerald, Hope ; 
the redness of the ruby, Charity ; and the splendor of the topaz, 
p)d works.* King Jolin, who, like most weak minds, was fond 
both of trinkets and flattery, was much gratified by this papal pre- 
sent, but his satisfaction only continued during his ignorance of the 
^eans by which the artful Pope had sought to deprive him of what 
he regarded as one of the most valuable prerogatives of his crown. 
A few days after the reception of the present, the Pope's bull ar- 
rived announcing the election and consecration of cardinal Langton, 
^'hich threw the King into a violent rage against both the Pope and 
the monks of Canterbury. As these last were most within his 
''^ach, they felt the first eflbcts of his indignation. lie dispatched 
^^'0 officers, with a company of armed men, to Canterbury, who 
took possession of the convent of the Holy Trinity, banished the 
*^onks out of the kingdom, and seized all their estate. 

John next wrote a spirited and angry letter to the Pope, in 
^hicn he accused him of injustice and presumption, in raising a 
stranger to the highest dignity in the kingdom, without his know- 
'^ge. He reproached the Pope and court of Rome with ingrati- 

* Rymer, vol. i., p. 139. Matth. Paris, p. 166. 
18 



886 mSTORY OF ROMANISM. [boot v. 

Pope Innocent layi England under an Interdict. Terrific conaequcncee <^ that acatw c a. 

tude, in behaving as they had done towards a country from which 
they derived more money than from all the other kingdoms on this 
side the Alps. He declared that he was determined to sacrifice his 
life in defence of the rights of his crown ; and that, if his Holiness 
did not immediately repair the injury he had done him, he would 
break off all communication with Rome. This letter, though 
written in a strain very becoming a king of England, was quite 
intolerable to the pride of the haughty pontiff, who had been long 
accustomed to trample on the majesty oi kings. Innocent was not 
tardy in returning an answer, in which, after many expressions of 
displeasure and resentment, he plainly tells the King, that if he per- 
sisted in this dispute, he would plunge himself into inextricable 
difficulties, and at length be crushed by him, before whom every 
knee must bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and 
things under the earth.* 

§ 46. — These letters might be regarded in the light of a formal de- 
claration of war between the Pope and the king of England ; but 
the contest was very unequal. The former had now attained that 
extravagant height of power which made the greatest monarchs 
tremble upon their thrones ; and the latter had sunk very low in 
both his reputation and authority, having before this time lost his 
foreign dominions by his indolence, and the esteem and affection of 
his subjects at home by his follies and his crimes. Indeed, the Pope 
was not ignorant of the advantage he possessed in the contest ; and 
consequently, without delay, he laid all the dominions of king John 
under an interdict ; and this sentence was published in England, at 
the Pope's command, March 23d, a. d. 1208, by the bishops of Lon- 
don, Ely, and Worcester, though the King endeavored to deter 
them from it by the most dreadful threats. 

The consequences of this terrific sentence are thus described 
by Mr. Hume : " The execution," says he, " was calculated to 
strike the senses in the highest degree, and to operate with irresisti- 
ble force on the superstitious minds of the people. The nation was, 
of a sudden, deprived of all exterior exercise of its religion ; the 
altars were despoiled of their ornaments ; the crosses, the relics, 
the images, the statues of the saints, were laid on the ground ; and 
as if the air itself were profaned, and might pollute them by its 
contact, the priests carefully covered them up, even from their own 
approach and veneration. The use of bells entirely ceased in all 
the churches ; the bells themselves were removed from the steeples, 
and laid on the around with the other sacred utensils. Mass was 
celebrated with closed doors, and none but the priests were admit- 
ted to that holy institution. The laity partook of no religious rite, 
except the communion to the dying ; the dead were not interred in 
consecrated ground ; they were thrown into ditches, or buried in 
common fields, and their obsequies were not attended with prayers 
or any hallowed ceremony. Marriage was celebrated in the 

* Matt. Paris, pp. 166, 167. 



CHIP. ▼.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. 287 

Kfeif John «zcoiimia]iicated. DepoMd, and hia subjecu absolved ftom their allegiance. 

churchyard, and that every action in life mieht bear the marks of 
this dreadful situation, the people were prohibited the use of meat, 
as in Lent, or times of the highest penance ; were debarred from 
all pleasures and entertainments, and were forbidden even to salute 
each other, or so much as to shave their beards, and give any de- 
cent attention to their apparel. Every circumstance carried symp- 
toms of the deepest distress, and of the most immediate apprehen- 
rion of divine vengeance and indignation."* 

When this interdict had continued about two years, the Pope 
proceeded a step further, and pronounced the awful sentence of cx- 
cmnmunication against king John, which he commanded the bishops 
of London, Ely, and Worcester, his most obsequious tools, to pub- 
lish in England. These prelates, who then resided on the continent, 
sent copied of the sentence, and of the Pope's commands to publish 
it in their churches, to the bishops and clergy who remained in 
England. But such was their dread of the royal indignation, that 
none of them had the courage to execute these commands. Geof- 
frey, archdeacon of Norwich, one of the King's judges, when sit- 
ting on the bench in the Exchequer, at Westminster, declared to 
the other judges, that the King was excommunicated, and that he 
did not think it lawful for him to act any longer in his name ; for 
which declaration he was thrown into prison, where he soon died.f 
§47. — In the year 1211, the Pope sent two legates into England, 
whose names were Pandulph and Durand. These legates were 
admitted to an audience, at a parliament which was held at North- 
ampton, when a most violent altercation took place between them 
ana the King. Pandulph plainly told the Kinff, even in the face of 
his parliament, that he was bound to obey the rope in temporals as 
Well as in spirituals ! and when John refused to submit to the will of 
his Holiness without reserve, the Legate, with shameless effrontery, 
published the sentence of excommunication against him, with a 
loud voice, absolving all his subjects from their oaths of allegiance, 
degraded him from his royal dignity, and declared that neither he 
iior any of his posterity should ever reign in England.^ This was 
certamly carrying clerical insolence to the height of extravagance. 
But in those unhappy times the meanest agents of the Pope insulted 
the greatest princes with impunity. 
On the return of the legates to Rome, in the following year, 
ppe Innocent solemnly ratified all their proceedings against the 
ing of England ; and finding that all the success which he ex- 
pected firom them had not ensued, he proceeded to more violent 
rneasures ; he pronounced with great solemnity a sentence of deposi- 
tion against king John, and of excommunication against all who 
muld obey him, or have any connection with him,^ When these 
^tences were known in England, they began to excite the super- 

* Hnme's Hist of England, p. 110. 

t Matt Paris, pp. 168, 169. 

I AnnaL Monast Barton, apud Rerom Anglican. Script, t i., pp. 166, 166. 

i kitt Paris, p. 161. 



I 



/ • ^ 



288 mSTORY OF ROMANISM. [book t. 

The Pope offers England to king PhUip of France. Kinf Jolui*a degrading MibmlakMi. 

stitious fears of some of the barons, who were at the same time 
much dissatisfied with the prince, for his imprudent, illegal, and 
oppressive government John, having received intimations of this 
from various quarters, became not a little alarmed, and began to 
stagger in his resolution. 

5 48. — To render the sentence of deposition against king John 
eflfectual, the Pope appointed Philip, king of France, to put it in 
execution, and promised him the pardon of all his sins^ and the 
kingdom of England for his reward — a temptation which that 
prince had neither the wisdom nor virtue to resht. Blinded by his 
ambition, he commanded a large army to assemble at Rouen, and 
prepared a fleet of seventeen hundred vessels, to convey them to 
England. All these preparations, however, only served to promote 
the purposes of the court of Rome ; for as soon as John was suffi- 
ciently intimidated by his dread of the French army, and his sus- 
picions of his own subjects, to induce him to make an ignominious 
surrender of his crown and kingdom to the Pope, the French king 
was obliged to abandon his enterprise against England, to avoS 
the thunders of the church, the dreadful efiects of which he had 
before his eyes. 

The trembling John now implored the protection of Rome, 
' whatever submission it might cost. The Legate assured him that 
the supreme pontiff would require nothing which was not abso- 
lutely necessary either to the honor of the church or the safety of 
the King himself. He proposed, therefore, to withdraw the excom- 
munication immediately, on condition of John's promising to receive 
Langton as archbishop, whose promotion to the primacy had been 
the occasion of all this furious contest, with all the bishops and cler- 
gy who acknowledged him, and to indemnify them for all the damage 
they had sustained. To all this the king of England consented ; but 
the consummation of ignominy was yet to come. Under the spe- 
cious pretext of securing England from attacks by Philip, it was 
suggested to John to surrender his kingdoms to the Pope, as to a 
lord-paramount — to swear fealty to him — to receive the British 
islands back as fiefs of the holy See ; and to pay an annual tribute 
for them of 700 marks of silver for England, and 300 for Ireland. 
On the 12th of May, 1213, John performed all the degrading cere- 
monials of resignation, homage and fealty. On his knees he hum- 
bly offered his kingdoms to the Pope, and put them into the hands 
of the Legato, Pandulph, who retained them for five days. He of- 
fered his tribute, which the Legate threw down and trampled on, 
but afterwards condescended to gather up again ! 

In the engraving, which is a representation of this scene, the 
humbled monarch is s^en on his knees before the Pope's legate,ii« 
who has just received the crown from the hands of the King, and* 
is trampling upon the gold, with the gift of which John accom — 
panied his submission. Some of the barons of En&;land are look— 
mg on, grieved and indignant alike at the degradation of thei^" 
weak-minded sovereign, and the haughty and contemptuous inso-^ 
lence of the triumphant priest. {See Engravijig.) 



n*:^. Oi 




CHAP. T.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. 291 

—^^ — — I 

Dec4 of Kmoder of EDglud to tb« Pope. Haughty inaolence of the ptpal legate. 

The nuncio immediately went to France, to announce to Philip, 
that he must no longer molest a prince who was a penitent son and 
a faithful vassal of me Holy See, nor presume to molest a kingdom 
which was now part of the patrimony of St Peter. 

§ 49. — The lan^ua^e of the deed of surrender which king John 
delivered to Pandulpti, and which had doubtless been dictated to 
him by the haughty legate, is so remarkable, that I shall subjoin a 
copy of it, as a monument of the unbounded arrogance and tyranny 
of the apostate church of Rome, and of the heads of that false 
church, tne pretended successors of St. Peter, and disciples of him 
vho said, ** my kingdom is not of this world." The follow- 
ing are the words of this document : — " I, John, by the grace of 
God, king of England, &c., freely grant unto God, and the 

HOLY APOSTLES, PeTER AND PaUL, AND TO THE HOLY RoMAN CHURCH, 
OUl MOTHER, AND UNTO THE LORD, POPE InNOCENT, AND TO HIS CATHO- 
LIC SUCCESSORS, THE WHOLE KINGDOM OF EnGLAND, AND THE WHOLE 

KINGDOM OF Ireland, with all the rights and all the appurtenances 
of the same, for the remission of our sins, and of all our venera- 
tion, both for the living and the dead, that from this time forward 
^e may receive and hold them of him, and of the Roman church, 
^ second after him, &c. We have sworn, and do swear, unto the 
Mud lord, pope Innocent, and to his catholic successors, and to the 
Roman church, a liege homage, in the presence of Pandulphus. If 
^e can be in the presence of the lord pope, we will do the same ; 
^d to this we oblige our heirs and successors for ever, &c. And 
for the sign of this our perpetual obligation and concession, we will 
^d ordain, that out of our proper and especial revenues from the 
•^d kingdoms, for all our service and custom which we ought to 
J^pder, the Roman church receive a thousand marks sterling yearly, 
^thout diminuton of St. Peter's-pence ; that is, five hundred marks 
^t the feast of St. Michael, and five hundred at Easter, &c. And 

'^ We, or any of our successors, presume to ATTEMPT AGAINST 
'"fiESE THINGS, LET HIM FORFEIT HIS RIGHT TO THE KINGDOM, &C." 

Matthew Paris tells us, that, on delivering this letter, the King 

P'^ced a sum of money at the feet of Pandulph, the Pope's legate, 

^hich the former trode upon with his foot, in token of the subjection 

V the country to the Roman See, " randulphus pecuniam, quam in 

^f cem subjectionis rex contulerat, sub pede suo conculcavit archie- 

P*scope dolente et reclamante." 

^§ 50 — King John having made this ignoble submission to the 

^ill of pope Innocent, he was soon after absolved from the sentence 

S excommunication by the new primate, Langton, who imme- 

^*^tely came to England, and took possession of his See of Can- 

^rtury, and after a short interval, upon the King's sending to In- 

^^cent a large sum of money, and renewing his promise of obedi- 

^^ce, his Holiness gave a commission to his legate in England to 

^^move the interdict, which was accordingly done in St Paul's ca- 

^edral, on the 29th of June, 1214. 

Henceforward king John conducted himself as an obedient vas- 



J 



292 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book t. 



Innocent eiconununleatei the baroof of Enf land. Popery at p r e aen t feeble, eontraated with tha 

sal of HIS SOVEREIGN LORD THE PoPE, who, ill retUTD, condescended, 
in all the future quarrels of John with his barons, to spread over 
the humbled monarch the shield of his apostolic protection. The 
violent disputes that arose, after John's submission to the Pope, be- 
tween him and the barons of England, are familiar to every reader 
of English history. In the council of Lateran, in 1215, pope Inno- 
cent hurled the thunders of excommunication at these sturdy barons, 
and in a letter written to certain ecclesiastics soon after, he alludes 
to this event in the following pompous language : — ^ We will have 
you to know that in the general council we have excommunicated 
and anathematized, m the name of the Father, and of the Son, and 
of the Holy Ghost, in the name of the holy apostles Peter and Paul* 
and in our own name, the barons of Endand, with their partizans 
and abettors, for persecuting John, the illustrious king of England, 
who has taken the cross^ and is a vassal of the Roman chuech, 
and for striving to deprive him of a kingdom that is known to 
BELONG TO THE RoMAN CHURCH.'** Thcsc barous, howcvcr, were 
less terrified by the spiritual thunders of Innocent than their weak- 
minded King had been, and, as is well known, pursued their object 
with a steady aim, till they finally extorted from the King that char- 
ter of English liberty, Magna Charta. 

Before dismissing the subject of the present chapter, I will re- 
mind the reader that one of the proudest boasts of ropery is, that 
it is unchangeable. Hence, there can be no possible doubt that the 

{principles of Rome are the same now as they were in the days of 
nnocent and John, those days of darkness, when she reigned 
Despot of the World ; and tne only reason why her sovereim 
pontiffs do not now renew their claim to reign as universal monarchs 
with all the nations at their feet, is that they are destitute of the 
power to enforce such claims. Should the present imbecile and 
contemptible occupantf of the throne of Hildebrand only breathe 
the thought of ever renewing such pretensions, he would be pointed 
at with scorn, as the laughing-stock of the world. Thanks to God, 
the dark ages are passed ! Popery has still the same mind and 
heart, but it is quaking with the decrepitude of age. The strong 
men have bowed themselves, the keepers of the house are trem- 
bling. Its power to tyrannize is gone ! — ^gone, if the protestant 
world is faitnful, never, never to return ! 

♦ Matthew Paris, p. 192. 

f Pope Gregory XVI.— A. D. 1845. 



293 



CHAPTER VI. 

MORE INSTANCES OF PAPAL DESPOTISM. POPES ADRIAN IV.y ALEXAN- 
DER III., AND INNOCE.VT III. 

{ 51. — The extravagant pretensions of the pontiffs of this age 
to the supreme dominion of the world, and to an authority over all 
emperors, kings, and governments, were maintained without inter- 
ru^on by the whole line of popes, from Hildebrand to Boni&ce 
Vni., who died in 1303, that is, from the latter part of the eleventh 
through all the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They inculcated 
and acted upon that pernicious and extravagant maxim, ^ That 
Tu BISHOP OF Rome is the supreme lord of the universe, and 

THAT neither PRINCES NOR BISHOPS, CIVIL GOVERNORS NOR ECCLE- 
•U8TICAL RULERS, HAVE ANY LAWFUL POWER IN CHURCH AND STATE 
WT WHAT THEY DERIVE FROM HIM." 

We have already shown in the history of Popery in England, as 
given in the last two chapters, a specimen of the manner m which 
two of the most famous of the successors of Hildebrand claimed 
ttHl exercised this monstrous power in the affairs of our father 
land. We shall now proceed to relate the acts of the most cele- 
brated of these spiritual tyrants, during this noontide of their 
power in other parts of the world. 

After the death of pope Urban, the originator of the crusades, 
which took place in 1098, there was no pontiff of much importance 
in history, till the accession of pope Adrian IV., by birth an Eng- 
lishman, which occurred in 1154. During his pontificate the an- 
cient contest between the Pope and the empire was renewed. 
Frederic I., sumamed Barbarossa, was no sooner seated on the im- 
perial throne, than he publicly declared his resolution to maintain 
the dignity and privileges of the Roman empire in general, and 
more particularly to render it respectable in Italy ; nor was he 
at all studious to conceal the design he had formed of reducing the 
overgrown power and opulence of the pontiffs and clergy within 
narrower limits. Adrian perceived the danger that threatened the 
majesty of the church, and the authority of the clergy, and pre- 
pared iiimself for defending both with vigor and constancy. The 
first occasion of trying their strength was offered at the coronation 
of the Emperor at Rome, in the year 1155, when the pontiff in- 
sisted upon Frederic's performiing the office of equerry, and hold- 
ing the stirrup to his Holiness. After some objection, Frederic sub- 
mitted to lead the Pope's white mule, though with an ill grace, for, 
mistaking the stirrup, he apologised by remarking that he had 
never learned the trade of a groom. For many years this act of 
constrained humiliation galled the proud spirit of the Emperor, and 
led him to seize everv opportunity in ms power to humble the 
overgrown power of the popes. 



aup.u] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. 297 

TnntanccM of the deqwtitin of pope Innocent IIL towards rarloaa sovereigni. 

literally trampling under foot the crown of its contemptible sove- 
reim John. Innocent ascended the papal throne in the year 1198, 
â„¢ continued to claim and to exercise universal sovereignty for 
the first sixteen years of the thirteenth century. The very day 
^r his consecration, he compelled the prefect of the city of Home 
^d other magistrates to take that oath of allegiance to him as their 
'awfiil sovereign, which they had formerly taken to the Emperor. 
He soon after compelled several cities of Tuscany who threw them- 
^Ives upon his protection, to swear that they would receive no 
^e as emperor unless he was acknowledged as such by the Pope, 
f his was in consequence of the different claims that were at that 
"'He set up to the empire by Otho, duke of Brunswick, and Philip, 
^'uke of Swabia. He compelled Philip, by threatening him with 
^^communication and interdict if he refused, to liberate the arch- 
bishop of Salerno, confined in prison on a charge of treason. In 
Jhe same year he excommunicated Alphonsus, king of Galicia and 
I^eon, for refusing to dismiss his wife Tarsia, daughter of Sanctius, 
kitig of Portugal, whom Innocent pronounced to be within the de- 
gi'ees of affinity forbidden by the church ; and threatened her father, 
Sanctius himself, with the same spiritual thunders, unless he should 
promptly pay up the yearly tribute which his father, Alphonso, had 
promised to the successors of St. Peter, upon receiving the title of 
king from pope Alexander.* 

§ 54. — Innocent soon after conferred the title of King upon Prem- 
islaus, duke of Bohemia, in consequence of his forsaking the party 
^f Philip, who aspired to the empire, and joining that of Otho, who 
W this time was supported by the Pope. The next year, 1201, the 
lordly pontiff issued his anathemas against Philip IL, king of France, 
^^ laid his kingdom under an interdict, till he compelled him to 
receive back Ingelburga, his wife, whom he had put away, and taken 
^ her stead Mary, daughter of the duke of Bohemia. In this instance, 
doubtless, king Philip was compelled by the terrors of excommuni- 
cation and interdict, to perform an act of justice ; but our object in 
^^lating these instances of papal authority over the kings of the 
,^^, is not so much to examine the guilt or innocence of those who 
^^x^ the subjects of them, as to illustrate the enormous and over- 
^^own power of the popes during this period, 
m , I'he following year, Calo-Johannes, a descendant of the ancient 
^^gs of Bulgaria, having expelled the Greeks from that country, 
,^^ote a submissive letter to pope Innocent, beseeching his Holiness 
?? %end him a crown. With this the Pope complied, and sent Leo, 
^^ legate, with a crown and other ensigns of royalty, into Bulgaria. 
"^^^r the king had taken an oath of ^^ perpetual obedience tolnno- 
?^^< and his successors, lawfully elected^ he was solemnly crowned 
^ the Legate, who on this occasion, to show the entire vassalage 
^^ the kingdom of Bulraria to the apostolic See, pretended to grant, 
^ the Pope's name, tne privilege of coining money, a right which 

* Epiflt Inxioc. m., L. i. ep. 91, 92. Bower, vi., 187. 



SM HISTORY OF ROMANISIL [wm â–¼ 

Pfllcr, kiaf of AmflOB, and Ike t mpm Oiho lake an oath of allopaBce to pofe 



had always been regarded as inherent in the crown of all kings and 
emperors. 

$55. — In the year 1204, Peter IL, king of Arragon, travelled ex- 
pressly to Rome, to enjoy the honor of being crowned by the Pope 
himself He was received with honors suitable to his rank, and, 
on the 11th November, solemnly crowned by the Pope, who, with 
his own hand, placed the crown upon his head, after extracting firom 
him the following extraordinary oath: ** I, Peter, king of Arragoni- 
ans, profess and promise to be ever faithful and obedient to my 
LORD, POPE Innocent, to his Catholic successors, and the Roman 
church, and faithfully to preserve my kingdom in his obedience, 
defending the Catholic faith, and persecuting heretical pravity. 
I shall maintain the liberty and immunity of the churches,* and 
defend their rights. I shall strive to promote peace and justice 
throughout my dominions. So help me (jod, and these his holy 
gospels." The King, thus crowned, returned with the Pope to the 
church of St Peter, and there laying his crown and his sceptre 
upon the altar of that saint, he received a sword from his Holii^ss, 
and in return made his kingdom tributary to the apostolic See* 
binding himself, his heirs, and successors for ever, to pay yearly to 
Innocent and his successors, two hundred and fifty pieces of gold. 
This grant was signed by the King, and is dated as we read it in 
the Acts of Innocent, at St. Peter's, the 11th of November, the 
eighth year of king Peter's reign, and of our Lord, 1204.* 

§ 66. — A few years later, upon the death of Phihp, the competitor 
of Otho in the empire, the latter was solemnly crowned anew at Kome, 
upon the invitation of pope Innocent. The legates whom Innocent 
sent to Germany to tender this invitation to 0?ho, were charged by 
their master with the form of an oath, to be taken by the Emperor, 
before setting out for Rome. This oath was accordingly taken at 
Spire, on the 22d of March, 1208. The form of the oath was as 
follows : " I promise to honor and obey pope Innocent as my pre- 
decessors have honored and obeyed him. The elections of bishops 
shall be free, and the vacant Sees shall be filled by such as have 
been elected by the whole chapter, or by a majority. Appeals to 
Rome shall be made freely, and freely pursued. I promise to sup- 
press and abolish the abuse that has obtained of seizins; the effects 
of deceased bishops, and the revenue of vacant Sees. I promise to 
EXTIRPATE all HERESIES, to rcstorc to the Roman church all her 
possessions, whether granted to her by my predecessors, or by 
others, particularly the march of Ancona, the dukedom of Spoleti, 
and the territories of the countess Matilda, and inviolately maintain 
all the rights and privileges enjoyed by the apostolic See in the 
kingdom of Sicily ."f 

Upon Innocent receiving intelligence that Otho had taken the 
prescribed oath, he caused a copy of it to be lodged in the archives 



'*' Acta Innocentii. — ^Bower, vi., 192, 193. 
t Acta Innocentii et Epist., 189. 



•.¥IlJ popery the WORLD'S DESPOT—A. D. 1073-1303. 299 



Tk« WaltaMHk Tanimonj of Evarvtoiu, a lealoui papiit, to their charaeter. 

^i^— »^— ^— ^-^^— ^— ^-^^— ^«^^-^^^^^^^— ^^^^^^^^— ^^^^^— ^i^^— 

of the Roman church, as a pattern of the oath to be taken by all 
future emperors. He then wrote a letter to Otho, mviting him to 
receive the crown from his hands, and commending him for his filial 
submission and obedience to the holy See. Otho, after some delay, 
accepted the invitation, and was solemnly crowned by the Pope, 
in the church of St Peter's, on the 17th of September, 1209. Thus 
we perceive that Popery maintained in the thirteenth century, as it 
had in the twelfth, its character of despot of the world. 



CHAPTER Vn. 

THE WALDEN8ES AND ALBI6ENSES. 

§ 57. — The spiritual tyrants who thus domineered over the sove- 
reigns and governments of the earth, could not brook the idea that 
any should be found so daring as to refuse obedience to their man- 
dates, or to question the right by which they claimed thus not only 
to ** lord it over God's heritage, but also to reduce the whole world 
to their sovereign sway. Hence it is not difiicult to account for the 
bitter and unrelenting hostility with which the popes of this period 
pursued and persecuted the harmless and interesting people, who, 
under the name of Cathari (i. e. puritans), Gazari, raulicians or 
Publicans, Petrobrussians, poor men of Lyons, Lombards, Albi- 
genses, Waldenses, Vaudois, &c., offered a noble resistance to the 
usurped tyranny of the self-styled successors of St. Peter, and pretend- 
ed vicars of Christ upon earth. The testimony given by Evervinus, a 
zealous papist, in a letter he wrote to the celebrated Bernard, abbot 
of Clairvaux, at the beginning of the twelfth century, relative to the 
doctrine and manners of these heretics is exceedingly valuable. 
The following is the substance of this letter : " There have lately 
been," says he, " some heretics discovered among us, near Cologne, 
of whom some have, with satisfaction, returned again to the church. 
One that was a bishop among them, and his companions, openly 
opposed us, in the assembly of the clergy and laity, the lord arch- 
bishop himself being present, with many of the nobility, maintaining 
their heresy from the words of Christ and his apostles. But, finding 
that they made no impression, they desired that a day might be 
fixed, upon which they might bring along wi.th them men skilful in 
their faith, promising to return to the church, provided their teach- 
ers were unable to answer their opponents; but that otherwise, 
they would rather die than depart from their judgment Upon this 
declaration, having been admonished to repent, and three days 
allowed them for that purpose, they were seized by the peopkf in 



800 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book t. 



The morality and hollneai of the Waldmuea tettided by their peneeoton. 

their excess of zeal, and committed to the flames ! And, what if 
most astonishing, they came to the stake and endured the torment 
not only with patience, but even with joy. In this case, O holy 
father, were I present with you, I should be glad to ask you, how 
these members of Satan could persist in their heresy with such con- 
stancy and courage as is rarely to be found among the most reli- 
gious in the faith of Christ ?" He then proceeds, " Their heresy is 
this : they say that the church (of Christ) is only among themselves, 
because they alone follow the ways of Christ, and imitate the 
apostles, — not seeking secular gains, possessing no property, follow- 
ing the example of Christ, who was himself poor, nor permitted his 
disciples to possess anything. Whereas, say they to us, * ye join 
house to house, and field to field, seeking the things of this world, — 
yea, even your monks and regular canons possess all these things.' 
They represent themselves as the poor of Christ's flock, who have 
no certain abode, fleeing from one city to another, like sheep in the 
midst of wolves, enduring persecution with the apostles and martyrs: 
though strict in their manner of life — abstemious^ laborious^ devout^ 
and holy, and seeking only what is needful for bodily subsistence, 
living as men who are not of the world. But you, they say, lovers 
of the world, have peace with the world, because ye are in it 
False apostles, who adulterate the word of God, seeking their ovm 
things, have misled you and yom- ancestors. Whereas, we and our 
fathers, having been bom and brought up in the apostolic doctrine, 
have continued in the grace of Chnst, and shall continue so to the 
end. * By their fruits ye shall know them,' saith Christ ; * and our 
fruits are, walking in the footsteps of Christ.' They affirm that 

THE APOSTOLIC DIGNITY IS CORRUPTED BY ENGAGING ITSELF IN SECULAR 
AFFAIRS, WHILE IT fllTS IN St. PeTER's CHAIR. ThcV do nOt hold 

with the baptism of infants, alleging that passage of the gospel — 
* He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved.' They place no 
confidence in the intercession of saints ; and all things observed in 
the church, which have not been established by Christ himself, or 
his apostles, they pronounce to be superstitious. They do not 
admit of any purgatory fire after death, contending, that the souls 
of men, as soon as they depart out of the bodies, do enter into rest 
or punishment ; proving it from the words of Solomon, * Which 
way soever the tree falls, whether to the South or to the North, 
there it lies ;* by which means they make void all the prayers and 
oblations of the faithful for the deceased. 

** We, therefore, beseech you, holy father, to employ your care 
and watchfulness against these manifold mischiefs ; and that you 
would be pleased to direct your pen against those wild beasts of 
the roads ; not thinking it sufficient to answer us, that the tower of 
David, to which we may betake ourselves for refuge, is sufficiently 
fortified with bulwarks — that a thousand bucklers hang on the waifs 
of it, all shields of mighty men. For we desire, father, for the sake 
of us simple ones, and who are slow of understanding, that you 
.would be pleased, by your study, to gather all these arms into one 



CKAP. yiL] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. 801 

Testtmooy of Bemud, Clanditti, and Thoaniv, relative to the doetrinea of the Waldenaea. 

place, that they might be the more readily found, and more powerful 
to resist these monsters. I must inform you also, that those of them 
who have returned to our church, tell us that they had great num- 
bers of their persuasion, scattered almost everywhere ; and that 
amongst them were many of our clergy and monks. And, as for 
those who were burnt, they, in the defence they made of themselves 
told us that this heresy had been concealed from the time of the 
martyrs ; and that it had existed in Greece and other countries." 
(Quoted by Jones, lect. xl.) 

§ 58. — Bernard, though he immediately commenced a strenuous op- 
position to these rebeb against the Pope, is yet compelled by truth 
to give the following testimony to their irreproachable life and man- 
ners. " If," says he, " you ask them of their faith, nothing can be 
more Christian-like ; if you observe their conversation, nothing can 
be more blameless, and what they speak they make good by their 
actions. You may see a man for the testimony of his faith frequent 
the church, honor the elders, offer his gift, make his confession, 
receive the sacrament What more like a Christian ? As to life 
and manners, he circumvents no man, over-reaches no man, does 
violence to no man. He fasts much and eats not the bread of idle- 
ness ; but works with his hands for his support."* Other Roman 
CathoUc writers give the same testimony to tne irreproachable lives 
and morals of the Waldenses. Thus Claudius, archbishop of Turin, 
writes, '* their heresy excepted, they generally live a purer life than 
other Christians." And again, "in their lives they are perfect, 
irreproachable, and without reproach amone men, addicting them- 
selves, with all their might, to the service of God." This testimony 
is the more valuable from the fact that the prelate who wrote it, 
notwithstanding the acknowledged excellent (J^racters of these 
heretics, joined in hunting and persecuting them ^o death, because 
they would neither submit to the absurdities and impieties of Rome, 
flor acknowledge the usurped authority of the popes. The sum and 
^bstance of their offence is mentioned by Cassini, a Franciscan 
friar, where he says " that all the error* of these Waldenses con- 
sisted in this, that they denied the church of Rome to be the holy 
Mother church, and would not obey her traditions." 

§ 59. — Thuanus, a celebrated Roman Catholic historian, enume- 
*^tes their heresy more at length ; he says they were charged with 
^hese tenets, viz. : " that the church of Rome, because it renounced 
the true faith of Christ, was the whore of BABVi^g N, and t he 
l^rren tree which Christ himself cursed, and commanded lo be' 
fucked up ; that consequently no obedience was to be paid to the 
Pope, or to the bishops who maintain her errors ; that a monastic 
life was the sink and dungeon of the church, the vows of which 
[relating to celibacy] were vain, and served only to promote the 
vUe love of boys [or uncleanness] ; that the orders of the priest- 
hood were marks of the great beast mentioned in the Apocalypse ; 

* Beniaid on the Cantides, Sermo Ixr. '* Si fidem interroges," &c. Perrin, vL 



302 fflSTORY OF ROMANISM. [book t. 

Bloody decree of pope Alexander III , agobut the heretical Waldenaea. 

that the fire of purgatory, the solemn mass, the consecration days 
of churches, the worship of saints, and propitiations for the deaid, 
were the devices of Satan. Beside these principal and authentic 
heads of their doctrine, others were pretended, relating to marriage, 
the resurrection, the state of the soul after death, and meats."* The 
chief offence of these heretics, m the eyes of the spiritual tyrants of 
Rome, doubtless was, that they regarded the Pope as anti-Christ, 
and the apostate church of Rome, as " the Babylonish harlot," and 
this in the eyes of the popes was an unpardonable sin; Hence they 
spared no efforts to blacken their characters, and to exterminate 
from the earth, those who were infinitely purer in doctrine, and 
holier m life, than their tyrannical and powerful persecutors. While, 
therefore, Evervinus and Thuanus, and even Bernard, are compelled 
to confess the purity of their life and manners, the popes, in their 
persecuting edicts, not only strove to excite all to unite in extermi- 
nating them from the earth, but also to blacken their memory with 
charges of the most enormous crimes. 

§ 60. — Hence in the decree issued by pope Alexander III., in the 
third council of Lateran, in 1179, he labors not only to excite all in 
exterminating these Iieretics, but also loads them with the most false 
and infamous charges. The following is an extract from this edict* 
as quoted by bishop Hughes, in his controversy with Mr. Brecken- 
ridge (page 189). The emphasising is my own. ** As the blessed 
Leo says, although ecclesiastical discipline, content with the sacer- 
dotal judgment, does not exact bloody vengeance ; yet, it is assisted 
by the constitution of Catholic princes, in order that men, whik they 
fear that corporal punishment may be inflicted on them, may often 
seek a salutary remedy. On this account because in Gascon y, Albi, 
in the parts of Thoulouse, and in other regions, the accursed perverse- 
ness of the hereticfi variously denominated Cathari, or Patarenas, or 
Publicans, or distinguished by sundry names, has so prevailed, that 
they now no longer exercise their wickedness in private, but pub- 
licly manifest their errors, and seduce into their communion the sim- 
ple and infirm. We therefore subject to a curse, both themselves 
and their defenders and harborers, and, under a curse, we prohibit 
all persons from admitting them into their houses, or receiving them 
upon their lands, or cherishing them, or exercising any trade with 
them. But if they die in their sin, let them not receive Christian 
burial, under pretence of any privilege granted by us, or any other 
pretext whatever ; and let no offering be made for them." 

§ 61. — ^It is observable that the persons alluded to in the above 
portion of this ferocious edict, are not accused of any other crime 
than that of heresy. In the next paragraph, various other subjects 
of papal fury are enumerated, who are charged with various crimes. 
** As to the Brabantians, Navarii, Basculi, Coterelli, and Triaverdinii, 
who exercise such cruelty toward the Christians, that they pay no 
respect to churches or monasteries, spare neither widows nor vir^ 

* Thuani Historia, lib. vi., sect. 16, and lib. zxvii. 



mtt.vL] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. S03 

Paptl ptoail— of bidolgMMe, to all wlio ihall engage in batchering the Waldentea. 



gioi^ neither old Dor young, neither sex nor age, but after the 
numner of the pagans, destroy and desolate everything, we in like 
Aiazmer, decree that such persons as shall protect, or retain, or en- 
coarafe them in districts in which they commit these excesses, be 
publicly denounced in the churches on Sundays and festival days, 
and that they be considered as bound by the same censure and pen^ 
atty as the aforesaid heretics^ and be excluded from the communion 
of the church, until they shall have abjured that pestiferous consocia- 
tion and heresy. But let all persons who are implicated with them 
in any crime (alluding to their vassals), know that they are released 
£rom the obligation of fealty, homage, and subjection to them, so 
long as they continue in so great iniquity.** Probably the result of 
accurate inquiry would show that these accusations against the 
classes of people named in this extract, were false ; but whether 
they were or not, is little to our present purpose, as they are made 
against other people than those first mentioned. It is plain that in 
this decree the Cathari, or Puritans (another name lor the Wal- 
denses), mentioned in the extract first quoted, are accused of no 
other offence than heresy^ and yet the same promises of indulgence 
are given to those who take up arms against the one class as the 
other.^ The promises are in the following words : " We likewise, 
from the mercy of God, and relying upon the authority of the blessed 
apostle, Peter and Paul, relax two years of enjoined penance to those 
&ithful Christians, who, by the council of the bishops or other pre- 
lates, shall take up arms to subdue them by fighting against them : 
or, if such Christians shall spend a longer time in the business, we 
leave it to the discretion of the bishops to grant them a longer 
indulgence. As for those who shall fail to obey the admonition of 
the bishop to this effect, we inhibit them from a participation 
of the body and blood of the Lord, Meanwhile, those, who in the 
ardor of faith shall undertake the just labor of subduing them, we 
receive into the protection of the church ; granting to them the 
same privileges of^ security in property and in person, as are grant- 
td to those who visit the holy sepulchreJ^ {Ldbb, ConciL Sacrosan.f 
yol. X., pages 1522, 1523.) 

* See Hughes and Breckenridge Controversy, pages 175, 179. Mr. Hughes 
Quotes both of tlie above extracts for the purpose of convicting Mr. Brcckenridge 
Of duplicity, because he did not quote the second, when the object of Mr. Brecken- 
Hdge was to show the persecutions carried on, not against the persons named in 
tkie second extract, but a^inst those named in the first. Mr. Hughes then, with- 
out drawing any distinction between the two classes, coolly inquires, " I wonder 
^'hether men of such a stamp would not be reduced to the penitentiary, if they 
^lommitted such crimes in our day and in our own country." Thus endeavoring 
V> brand with infamv those simple and holy people, whose characters even Romish 
Viistorians are forced to confess were pure and irreproachable. The coolness with 
'^hich this popish bishop, in the free United States, and in the nineteenth century, 
muenka about consigning such to the penitenliarv, betrays the malignance of a Saint 
JDominic, or Montfort, against all who, like tne poor, persecuted VValdenses, or 
Cathari, are guilty of the crime of heresy, and shows that he wants nothing but the 
fower to consign to the ** penitentiary," or to the cells of the Inquisition, the here* 
tics of the United States. 



304 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book t. 

Wuldmaet barnt Bloody edict of pofw Laciiu Uln afaimt th* heratfe^ 

-• ■ ■ — . 

There can be little doubt that the Crying offence of all these 
classes of heretics, notwithstanding the popes endeavored to blacken 
their memory, by " speaking all manner of evil against them falsely,** 
was that which is named by Thuanus, the Romish historian, alreaidy 
cited, " because they inveighed too vehemently against the toeahlif 
pride, and vices of the popes, and alienated the people from their 
obedience to them. * Pope Alexander III., the author of the above 
persecuting edict, was succeeded in 1181, by pope Lucius III. Twa 
years before this, Peter Waldo, who, with his followers, had been 
anathematized by pope Alexander, died in Bohemia. Some suppose 
these dissenters from the corruptions of Rome, though they had 
existed centuries before, derived from Waldo, the name of Walden- 
ses, which in after ages almost superseded the various other names 
by which they had long been known. Through the preaching of 
Waldo, many had renounced the corruptions o? Popery, and were 
in consequence exposed to the vengeance of Rome. Thirty-five 
were burned together in one fire at the city of Bingen, and eighteen 
in the city of Mentz. The bishops of both Mentz and Strasbure 
breathed nothing but vengeance and slaughter against them ; ana 
in the latter city, where Waldo himself is said to have narrowly 
escaped apprehension, eighty persons were committed to the flames. 

§63. — To show that tne apostate church of Rome is responsible 
for these horrid butcheries, we will quote a few passages from a 
decree of the supreme head of that church, pope Lucius III., issued 
in 1184. This bloody edict commences as follows: "To abolish 
the malignity of diverse heresies, which are lately sprung up in most 
parts of the world, it is but fitting that the power committed to the 
church should be awakened, that by concurring assistance of the 
imperial strength, both the insolence and mal-pertness of the here- 
tics, in their lalse designs, may be crushed, and the truth of the 
CathoHc simplicity shining forth in the holy church, may demon- 
strate her pure and free from the execrableness of their false doc- 
trines. Wherefore we, being supported by the presence and power 
of OUR MOST DEAR SON, FREDERICK, the most iUustrious cmpcror of 
the Romans, always increaser of the empire, with the common ad- 
vice and counsel of our brethren, and other patriarchs, archbishops, 
and many princes, who, from several parts of the world, are met 
together, do set themselves against these heretics,. who have got 
different names from the several false doctrines which they profess, 
by the sanction of this present decree, and by our apostolical author- 
ity, according to the tenor of these presents, we condemn all man-' 
ner of heresy, by what name soever it may be denominated. More 
particularly, we declare all Catharists, Paterines, and those who 
call themselves the Poor of Lyons; the Passagines, Josephites, 
Amoldists, to be under a perpetual anathema. And because some, 
under a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof, as the 
apostle saith, assume to themselves the authority of preaching ; 

* Thuani Historia sui Temp., lib. vi. 



. TO.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 107^-1308. S05 

heieciei to the Mcolar judfc. Crael edicts of the emperor Frederick II., to oblife the Fopt 

whereas the same apostle saith, * How shall they preach, except 

they be sent T' — ^we therefore conclude, under the same sentence of 

a perpetual anathema, all those who either being forbid, or not sent, 

do notwithstanding presume to preach publicly or privately, without 

any authority received from the apostolic See, or from the bishops of 

their respective dioceses. As for any layman, who shall be found 

guilty, either publicly or privately, of any of the aforesaid crimes 

(that is, preaching or speaking improperly of the sacraments), unless 

by abjuring his heresy, and making satisfaction, he immediately 

return to the orthodox faith, we decree him to be left to the sentence 

of the secular judge, to receive condign punishment, dLCCording to the 

quality of the oflFence.** 

The meaning of leavmg these poor victims of popish cruelty "to 
the sentence of the secular iud^e, was well understood to be equiva- 
lent to a sentence of death, often in the most horrid form of torture 
and lingering agony ; as it was well understood by secular princes, 
that they would themselves suffer from the vengeance of the church, 
if they should fail to execute, to the very letter, the oath imposed 
upon them by the Pope, " to extirpate heresies out of the lands of 
their jurisdiction.'' We shall soon see a notable instance of papal 
vengeance against one of these secular judges, Count Raimond of 
'fhoolouse, for neglecting to comply with the mandates of the Pope, 
to slaughter and exterminate thousands of his peaceful subjects, 
^ho were accused of the crime of heresy. 

§ 64. — Before relating this account, however, it may be well to 
'^cord a specimen of the manner in which these secular judges 
^d princes understood their duty to their holy mother, the church. 
h consists of extracts from the decrees of the emperor Frederick 
U. against heretics, issued on the occasion of his coronation at 
Rome, to oblige the Pope, who officiated in that ceremony. '* The 
care of the imperial government," says his majesty, " committed to 
**s from heaven, and over which we preside, demands the material 
sword, which is given to us separately from the priesthood, against 
the enemies of the faith, and for the extirpation of heretical pravity, 
that we should pursue with judgment and justice those vipers and 
perfidious children, who insult the Lord and his church, as if they 
Would tear out the very bowels of their mother. We shall not 
8upFEt THESE WRETCHES TO LIVE, who infcct the world by their 
reducing doctrines, and who, being themselves corrupted, more 
grievously taint the flock of the faithful." 

t a second edict, after comparing them to " ravenous wolves, 
^ders, serpents," &c., the Emperor proceeds to accuse the heretics 
^J the most savage cruelty to themselves ; " since," in the words 
<>t the edict, ** besides the loss of their immortal souls, they expose 
their bodies to a cruel death, being prodigal of their lives, and tear- 
k88 of destruction, which, by acknowledging the true faith they 
''^ight escape, and, which is horrible to express, their survivors are 
^ terrified by their example. Against such enemies to God and 
Qum, we cannot contain our indignation, nor refuse to punish them 

19 



806 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book? 

BwnlogmUve. The priest the Jndfe, and the Ung ihe hngBHi 

with the sword of just venffeance, but shall pursue them with so 
much the greater vigor, as they appear to spread wider the crimed 
of their superstition, to the most evident injury of the ChnstiaD 
faith and the church of Rome, which is adjudged to be the head of 
all churches." 

By the same edict, it is enjoined that strict inquiry be made aftei 
these heretics, and that after examination by the prelates, if any 
be found to err in a single point from the Catholic faith, they are, 
in case of persevering in their error, condemned to suffer death iy 
the JlameSy and to be burned alive in public vieWf while all are for 
bidden, under pain of the imperial indignation, to intercede in thmi 
behalf The Emperor also by these decrees, so pleasing to iJbi 
popes, declares infamous, and puts under the ban of the empire all 
who shall in any way receive, defend, or favor these heretics.^ 
From this speciihen of the spirit of the secular powers in that agi 
of popish triumph, it will be easily understood what was likely U 
be the fate of those who were delivered up by the priests for pm 
ishment to ** the sentence of the secular judges." The arrange 
ment by which the priests delivered up their victims to the veo 

Stance of the secular powers, under the hypocritical pretence thtt 
e church abhorred tiie shedding of blooa, * ecclesia abhorrel i 
sanguine,' was an arrangement by which, in the words of Dr. Joi< 
tin, ^ the priest was the judse, and the king was the hangmaii«*i 
But we shall proceed in the allowing chapter to a narrative whid 
well illustrates the manner in which those princes were treatec 
who hesitated to perform the office of hangman for the Pope an 
his minions. 

* See Limborch's History of the Inquisition, vol. i., chap. ziL, where the dl 
crees from which I have quoted above are recorded at length, 
t Jortin's ReniarkB on Eccles. Histoiy, vol. iii., p. 303. 



807 



CHAPTER Vni. 

fOn innocent's bloody crusade against the ALBIGENSESy UNDER 
HU LEGATE, THE FEROCIOUS ABBOT OF CITEAUX, AND SIMON, EARL 
OP MONTFORT. 

J 66. — About the close of the thirteenth century, in consequence 
of the increase of the heretical Waldenses or Albigenses, particu- 
Ittly in the south of France, the Pope's legates, Guy and Keinier, 
were dispatched from Rome for the purpose of extirpating these 
heresies, and armed with papal authority, committed to the flames 
a large number of them at Nevers, in 1198 and following years.* 
These efforts, however, were attended with so little success, that 
pope Innocent TIL, whom we have already had more than one oc- 
casion to name, found it necessary to resort to more vigorous mea- 
iores. He proclaimed a Crusade against these unonending and 
defenceless people, and dispatched an army of priests throughout 
all Europe, to exhort all to engage in this holy war against the 
enemies of his Holiness, the Pope, and of the Holy Cathohc church. 
As these papal emissaries traversed the kingdoms of Europe, we 
•K informea by the learned Archbishop Usher, that they had one 
ivorite text This was Psalm xciv., 16, " Who will rise up for me 
fi^ainst the evil doers f or who will stand up for me against the 
^kers of iniquity V^ and the application of tneir sermons was 
generally as uniform as their texts. " You see, most, dear brethren, 
how great the wickedness of the heretics is, and how much mis- 
chief they do in the world. You see, also, how tenderly, and by 
'tow many pious methods the church labors to reclaim them. But 
^th them they all prove ineffectual, and they fly to the secular 
power for their defence. Therefore, our holy mother, the church, 
^ugh with great reluctance and grief, calls together against them 
^e Christian army. If then you have any zeal for the faith ; if 
you are touched with anv concern for the glory of God ; if you 
"^ould reap the benefit oi this great indulgence, come and receive 
^^ sign of the cross, and join yourselves to the army of the cruci- 
fied Saviour." 

h 66. — ^The reigning count of Thoulouse, the province of France 

"^here these rebels against the papal authority chiefly abounded, 

^^as Raimond VI., a man who nad either too much policy or too 

**^och humanity willingly to engage in this war of extermination 

^^ainst his unoffending subjects. In the year 1207, Raimond was 

^^uired by Peter of Castlenau, a legate of the Pope, to sign a 

^aty with other neighboring princes to engage in tne extermina- 

^on of these heretics. But the Count was by no means inclined tc 

purchase, by the renunciation of his rights, the entrance into his 

* History of Lan^piedoc, book zzi. 



308 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [bookt 



Count Ralmond ttKommanicBtMl for refaaing to baleher hto nibJectB. Fierce letter of the Po|ie to hka. 

States of a hostile army, who were to pillage or put to death all 
those of his vassals whom the Romish clergy should fix upon as 
the victims of their cruelty. He therefore refused his consent ; 
and Castlenau, in his wrath, excommunicated him, laid his country 
uader an interdict, and wrote to the Pope to ratify what he had 
done.* 

§ 67. — Few things could be more grateful to pope Innocent, than 
what had now taken place. He appears to have sought for an oppor- 
tunity to commence hostilities, being well aware that his agents 
were insufficient to destroy such a formidable phalanx of heresy 
by ordinary means. To confirm the sentence of excommunicaticHi 
pronounced by his legate, he wrote to Count Raimond with his 
own hand, on the 29th of May, 1207, and thus his letter com- 
menced : — ** If we could open your heart we should find, and would 
point out to you, the detestable abominations that you have commit- 
ted ; but as it is harder than the rock, it is in vain to strike it with 
the sword of salvation ; we cannot penetrate it Pestilential man ! 
what pride has seized your heart, and what is your folly, to refiise 
peace with your neighbors, and to brave the divine laws by protect- 
ing the enemies of the faith ? If you do not fear eternal flames, 
ought you not to oread the temporal chastisements which you have 
merited by so many crimes ?"! 

Terrified by the fulminations of the Vatican, Count Raimond 
saw no alternative but to sign the peace with his enemies, which 
he accordingly did, engaging to exterminate the heretics from his 
territories, reter of Castlenau, however, very soon iudeed that 
he did not proceed in the work with adequate zeal; he merefore 
went to seek him, reproached him to his face with Ms negligence, 
which he termed baseness, treated him as a perjured person, as a 
favorer of heretics and a tyrant, and again excommunicated him. 
This violent scene appears to have taken place at St. Gilles, where 
the Count had given a meeting to the two legates. Raimond was 
excessively provoked, and threatened to make Castlenau pay for 
his insolence with his life. They parted without a reconcuiation, 
and came to sleep, on the night of the 14th January, 1208, at a lit- 
tle inn on the bank of the Rhone, which river they intended to pass 
on the next day. One of Count Raimond's friends either followed 
them or accidentally met them there ; and on the morning of the 
15th^ after mass, this gentleman entered into a dispute with Peter 
of Castlenau respecting heresy and its punishment. The Legate 
had never spared the most insulting epithets to the advocates of 
toleration, and the gentleman, irritated by his language not less 
than by the quarrel with his lord, drew his poniard, struck the Le- 
gate in his side, and killed him.;^ 

* Hist of Languedoc, book xxi., chap. 28 ; Iimocentii Epist, lib. z., ep. 69. 
Cited by Sismondi in his valuable history of France, to whom, and to Jonea in hia 
Lect on Eccles. Hist., I am chiefly indebted for the fiu^ts in relation to the cru- 
sades against the Albigenses. 

f Innocentii III., lib. x., ep. 69. 

I Petri ValliB Cem., cap. yiiL, p. 663. 



GBAF. tol] popery the WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1808. 809 



UmttaihwUkhmeaea, J|^ with whieh the ddndcd papiitt engage to tli« 

§ 68. — The intelligence of this murder roused the Pope to the high- 
est pitch of fiiry. He instantly published a bull, addressed to all the 
counts, barons, and knights of the four provinces of the southern 
part of France, in which he declared that it was the devil who had 
instigated the Count of Thoulouse against the Holv See. He laid 
under an interdict all places which should afford a refuge to the 
murderers of Castlenau ; he demanded that Raimond of Thoulouse 
riiould be publicly anathematized in all churches, adding, that ** as 
following the canonical sanctions of the holy fathers, we must not 
observe faith towards those who keep not faith towards God^ or who 
are separated from the communion of the faithful : we discharge, 
by apostolical authority, all those who believe themselves bound 
towards this Count by any oath either of allegiance or fidelity ; we 
permit every catholic man, saving the right of his principal lord, to 
pursue his person, to occupy and retain his territories, especially 
for the purpose of exterminatmg heresy/'* 

This first bull was speedily followed by other letters equally 
fulminating, addressed to all who were capable of assisting in 
the destruction of the Count of Thoulouse. In particular, the rope 
wrote to the king of France, Philip Augustus, exhorting him to 
carry on in person this sacred war of extermhiation against here- 
tics. ** We exhort you,** said his Holiness, " that you would endea^ 
â–¼or to destroy that wicked heresy of the Albigenses, and to do this 
with more vigor than you would towards the Saracens themselves : 
persecute them with a strong hand ; deprive them of their lands 
and possessions : banish them and put Roman Catholics in their 
room.** The legates and the monks at the same time received 
powers from Rome to publish a crusade among the people, offer- 
ing to those who should en^a^e in this holy war of plunder and 
extermination against the Albigenses, the utmost extent ofindul- 

ftfice which his predecessors had ever granted to those who la- 
ored for the deliverance of the Holy Land. The people from all 
parts of Europe hastened to enrol themselves in this new army, 
actuated by superstition and their passion for wars and adventures. 
They were immediately placed under the protection of the Holy 
See, freed from the payment of the interest of their debts, and ex- 
empted from the jurisdiction of all tribunals ; whilst the war which 
they were to carry on, almost at their own doors, and that withoot 
danger or expense, was to expiate all the vices and crimes of a 
whole life. 

Transported with joy, these infatuated and deluded mortals 
received the pardons and indulgences offered them, and so much 
the more readily that, far from regarding the task in which they 
were to be engaged Jis painful or dangerous, they would willingly 
have undertaken it for the pleasure alone of doing it. War was 
their passion, and pity for the vanquished had never disturbed their 
repose. In this holy war they could, without remorse, as well as 

* Petri Vallis, p. 664. 



310 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book t. 

FleDBry abiolatioo for all who should engage in batchering heretics. Terror and alarm of ItatmnBi 

— - 

without restraint from their officers, pillage all the property, mas- 
sacre all the men, and abuse the women and children. Never be- 
fore had there been so popular a crusade ! Arnold Amalric, the 
abbot of Citeaux, distinguished himself, with his whole congrega- 
tion, by his zeal in preaching up this war of extermination ; and 
the convents of his order, wnich was that of the Bcrnardins, of 
which there were seven or eight hundred in France, Italy, and Ger- 
many, appropriated the crusade against the Albigenses as their 
special province. In the name of the Pope and of the apostles St 
reter and St. Paul, they promised, to all who should lose their 
lives in this holy expedition, plenary absolution of all sins conunitted 
from the day of their birth to that of their deatn. 

§ 69. — Raimond was overwhelmed with terror and alarm at these 
vast preparations, and with his nephew Roger, count of Beriers, 
waited on the legate Arnold, the leader of the crusades, to avert, if 
possible, the storm that was impending over them. The haughty 
abbot received them with extreme insolence, declared that he 
could do nothing for them, and that if they wished to obtain any 
mitigation of the measures adopted against them, they must ad- 
dress themselves to the Pope. The count of Beziers instantly per- 
ceived that nothing was to be expected from negotiation* and that 
there remained no alternative but to fortify sQl their principe] 
towns, and prepare valiantly for their defence. His uncfey count 
Raimond, overwhelmed with terror, declared himself ready to 
submit to anything ; to be himself the executor of the violence of 
the papal partv against his own subjects ; and to make war against 
his family rather than draw the crusades into his states. Ambas- 
sadors from Raimond to the Bope were received with apparent in- 
dulgence. It was required of them that their master should make 
common cause with the crusaders ; that he should assist them in 
exterminating the heretics ; and that he. should surrender to them 
seven of his principal castles, as a pledge of his sincerity. On 
these conditions the Pope not only gave count Raimond the hope 
of absolution, but promised him his entire favor. All this, how- 
ever, was hollow and deceitful ; pope Innocent was far from par- 
doning Raimond in his heart, for, at the moment of promising this, 
he wrote to the ecclesiastics who were conducting the crusade, 
thus : " We counsel you, with the apostle Paul, to employ guile 
with regard to this Count, for in this case it ought to be called pru- 
dence. We must attack separately those who are separated irom 
unity : leave for a time the count of Thoulouse, employing toward 
him a wise dissimulation, that the other heretics may be the more 
easily defeated, and that afterwards we may crush him when he 
shall be left alone."* Such were the means that this crafty and ty- 
rannical Pope thought fit to employ in order to crush those who 
hesitated to imbrue their hands in the blood of such as he chose to 
brand with the name of heretics. 

* Innocentii III., Epist, lib. zi., ep. 332. 




Cam XilniBd'i difndinf Pim 






Tm.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1803. 818 



laimond*a dcgndtaif peninee. Whipped on his naked ahoalden by die Pope*i I«f att. 

70. — In the spring of the year 1209, the crusading army began 
•e put in motion ; the campaign was limited to forty days. 
e authors have computed it at three, and others at five hun- 
. thousand men; and this immense body precipitated them- 
38 upon Languedoc. When count Raimona learned that these 
ble bands of fanatics were about to move, and that they were 
lirected towards his states, he was struck with terror, for he 

placed himself in their power, and consented to purchase his 
lution fi'om the hands of the Pope's legate, by the most humili- 
l concessions. He was ordered to repair to the church that he 
It receive absolution firom the Pope's legate. But before this 

granted, he was compelled to take a solemn oath upon the 
[Nis Domini, that is the consecrated host, and upon the relics of 
saints, that he would obey the Pope and the holy Roman church 
ong as he lived, that he would pursue the Albigenses with fire 

noordj till they were totally extirpated, and subjected to obe- 
ice to the Pope. Having taken this oath at the door of the 
rchf he was ordered by tne Legate to strip himself naked, and 
ibly submit to the penance imposed on him for the death of the 
k Peter Castlenau. Count Raimond protested against this hu- 
iting penance, solemnly asserting that he had not been privy to 
murder of the monk. But his protestations were in vain ; the 

army of the crusaders was at his gates, and he had no re* 
ce but unqualified submission to the popish tyrants who now 

him in their grasp. On the 18th of June, therefore, the Count 
ving stripped himself naked from head to foot," says Bower, 
th only a linen cloth around his waist for decency's sake, the 
ate threw a priest's stok around his neck, and leading him by 
to the church nine times around the pretended martyr^s grave," 
nflicted the discipline of the church upon the naked shoulders 
3e humbled prince with the bundle of rods that he held in his 
L The Legate, at length, granted him the dear-bought absolu- 

after obliging him to renew all the oaths he had taken relative 
be extirpation of heretics, obedience to the Pope, &c., with the 
tion of another, in which he promised inviolably to maintain all 
rights, privileges, immunities, and liberties of the church and 
gy.* {See Engraving.) 

.fter perusing the above account of the punishment of Count 
mond, for retusinff to join with these popish bloodhounds, in the 
irmination of the heretics, the reader will be prepared to appre- 
e the assertion sometimes made by papists, even in our own day, 
: that the Catholic church has never persecuted (/ /) but that the 
Jtics who have suffered death for their opinions, have suffered 
>rding to the laws of the countries where they resided, 
.fler Uie submission of his uncle Roger, the viscount of Beziers, 
>rding to the old chronicle of Thoulouse, applied to the Pope's 

EIiBtory of the Popes, in vita Innocentii m. Petri VaUis, History of Langofr- 
bodc zzL, p. 163. 



314 HmOftY OF ROifJLNBBL [looKf. 



legate, and oflfered to make some hiimniating conrfinni, but 
angrily repelled^ be prepared to deiend triimielf to the best of his 
ability. Ue had chiefly calculated on the <lefenoe ct his two great 
cities, Beziers and Carcassone, and he had dirided between them 
his principal forces. After visiting Beziersy to aasore himself that 
the place was well supplied with everything necesary for the 
defence of their lives, he retired to Carcassune, a city biult ufoa a 
rock, and partly surrounded by the river Aude, and whose two 
suburbs were themselves surrounded by walls and ditches, and 
there shut himself up. About the middle of July, 1209, the crusad- 
ing army arrived under the walls of Beziers, in three bodies. They 
had been preceded by the bishop of the place, who, after havinjg; 
visited the Legate, and deUvered to him a list of those amongst his 
flock whom he suspected of heresy, and whom he wished to see 
consigned to the flames, returned into the city to represent to his 
flock the dangers to which they were exposed, exhorting them to 
surrender their heretical fellow-citizens to the avengers of their faith, 
rather than draw upon themselves and their children, the wrath of 
heaven and the church. ** Tell the Lec^ate," retried the citizens^ 
whogi he had assembled in the cathedrafof St Nicaise, ** that omr 
city is good and strong — ^that our Lord will not &il to succor us ia 
our great necessities, and that rather than commit the baseness de* 
manded of us, we would eat our own children." NevertheleOy 
there was no heart so bold as not to tremble, when the crusaders 
were encamped under their walls ; ^ and so great was the assem- 
blage of tents and pavilions," says one of their historians, ** that it 
appeared as if all the world was collected there ; at which those of 
the city began to be greatly astonished, for they thought they were 
only fables which their bishop had come to tell them and advise 
them."* 

§ 71. — The citizens of Beziers, though astonished, were not dis- 
couraged. Whilst their enemies were still occupied in tracing their 
camp, they made a sally and attacked them unawares. But the crusa- 
ders were still more terrible for their fanaticism and boldness, than for 
their numbers ; they repulsed the citizens with great loss. After 
this, they entered the city, and found themselves masters of it, 
before they had even formed their plan of attack. The knights 
learning that they had triumphed without fighting, applied to the 
pope's legate, Arnold Amalric, to know how they should distinguish 
the Catholics from the heretics ; to which he made this reply-^ 

** KILL THEM ALL ; THE LORD WILL KNOW WELL THOSE THAT AKB HI8 P 
* TUEZ LE8 TOUS, DIEU CONNOIT CEUX aUI 80NT A LUI P 

Though the stated population of Beziers was not over fifteen 
thousand persons, yet the influx of the people from the surrounding 
districts, especially women and children, was so large, that no less 
than sixty thousand persons were in the city when it was taken, 
and in this vast number, not one person was spared alive. The ter- 

* Petri VallensiB, Cera. HiBt Albig., cap. zv., p. 670. 



BAT. inn.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1308. 816 

iMtf Uaou—iMJ klltod. VU« traacbery of the Lcfmie towmid the coont of Boiem. 

ified and defenceless women with their babes, as well as many of 
be meoy took refuge in the churches, but they afforded no protec- 
L<m from these blood-thirsty popish zealots. Thousands were slain 
1 the churches, and the blood of the murdered victims, slain by 
he HOLT WABRiORs, drcnchcd the very altars, and flowed in crimson 
orrents through the streets. When the crusaders had massacred 
he last living creature in Beziers, and had pillaged the houses of all 
hey thought worth carrying off, they set nre to the city, in every 
Art at once, and reduced it to a vast funeral pile. Not a house 
emained standii^,not one human being was left alive. The Pope's 
^gate, perhaps, teeling some shame for the butchery which he nad 
ordered, in his letter to Innocent III., reduces it to nfteen thousand, 
though Velly, M ezeray, and other historians make it amount to 
lixty thousand.* 

§ 72. — Roger, the young count of Beziers, shut himself up in the 
other chief city of his dominions, Carcassone, which was much better 
fortified than Beziers, and defended it to the utmost, against the 
attacks of the ferocious abbot of Citeaux, the papal legate. The 
crusaders had many times endeavored to storm the city, but with- 
out success, and not seeing, as they had been taught to expect, a 
miracle wrought in their favor, the perfidious abbot, seeing some 
tokens of discouragement, resorted to a mean and dishonorable trick 
to get his adversary in his power. The Legate insinuated himself 
into the graces of one of the oflicers of his army, telling him that it 
lay in his power to render the church a signal instance of kindness, 
>Qd that if he would undertake it, beside the rewards he should 
receive in heaven, he should be amply recompensed on earth. The 
object was to get access to the earl of Beziers, professing himself 
to be his kinsman and firiend,. assuring him that he had something to 
^communicate of the last importance to his interests ; and having 
Aug far succeeded, he was to prevail upon him to accompany him 
to the Legate, for the purpose of negotiating a peace, under a pled^ 
^t he should be safely conducted back again to the city. The 
officer played his part so dexterously, that the Earl imprudently 
c<J«i«ented to accompany him. At their interview, the latter suh- 
knitted to the Legate the propriety of exercising a little more lenity 
^ moderation toward his subjects, as a procedure that might have 
^ happiest tendency in reclaiming the Albigenses into the pale of 
^ church of Rome. The Legate replied that the inhabitants of 
Carcassone might exercise their own pleasure ; but that it was now 
'Necessary for the Earl to trouble himself any further about them, 
^ be was himself a prisoner until Carcassone was taken, and tug 
•objects had better learned their duty ! The Earl was not a little 
^Dished at this information ; he protested that he was betrayed, 
•'^ that faith was violated : for that the gentleman, by whose en- 
^ties he had been prevailed upon to meet the Legate, nad pledged 

* ** Sohante mille babitans passerent par le fil de I'epte. VeUy, iii., 441 
^yfiittiiifiaidiisdeaoiiaiitemilleaperBQiuiM.'' Mezeray, ii., 609. £dgar, 226 



i 



816 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [boost. 



EKspe of th* people of CareaMOoe flrom the poptab 



himself by oaths and execrations to conduct him back in safety to 
Carcassone. But appeals, remonstrances, or ^treaties, were of no 
avail ; Roger was looked upon as a heretic, and it was already the 
doctrine of Rome that no faith should be kept with heretics ; in spita 
of his appeals, therefore, he was committed to the custody of the 
duke of Burgundy, ^ and, having been thrown into prison, died soon 
after, not without exciting strong suspicions of being poisoned." 
Pope Innocent III., indeed, admits in one of his epistles, that this 
young and brave earl or count of Beziers died a violent death.* 

§ 73. — No sooner had the inhabitants of Carcassone received tht 
mtelligence of the Earl's confinement, than they burst into tears, and 
were seized with such terror, that they thought of nothing bal 
how to escape the danger they were placed in ; but, blockaifed as 
they were on all sides, and the trenches filled with men, all humaa 
probability of escape vanished fi*om their eyes. A report, however, 
was circulated, that there was a vault or subterraneous passage 
somewhere in the city, which led to the castle of Cabaret, a aistanoe 
of about three leagues from Carcassone, and that if the mouth or 
entry thereof could be found. Providence had provided for them a 
way of escape. All the inhabitants of the city, except those wbe 
kept watch upon the ramparts, immediately commenced the 8earcl^ 
and success rewarded their labor. The entrance of the cavern was 
found, and at the beginning of the night they all beran their journey 
through it, carrying with them only as much food as was deemed 
necessary to serve them for a few days. ^ It was a dismal and 
sorrowful sight,** says our historian, ** to witness their removal and 
departure, accompanied with sighs, tears, and lamentations, at the 
thoughts of quitting their habitations and all their worldly posses- 
sions, and betaking themselves to the uncertain event of saving them* 
selves by flight : parents leading their children, and the more robust 
supporting decrepit old persons ; and especially to hear the affect* 
ing lamentations of the women." They, however, arrived the fiil» 
lowing day at the castle, fi*om whence they dispersed themselves 
through different parts of the country, some proceeding to Arragon, 
some to Catalonia, others to Thoulouse, and the cities belonging to 
their party, wherever God in his providence opened a door tor their 
admission. 

The awful silence which reigned in the solitary city, excited no 
little surprise on the following day, among the pilgrims. At first 
they suspected a stratagem to draw them into an ambuscade ; but 
on mounting the walls and entering the town, they cried out, ** the 
Albigenses have fled !** The Legate issued a proclamation, that no 
person should seize or carry off any of the plunder — that it should 
all be carried to the great church of Carcassone, whence it was 
disposed of for the benefit of the pilgrims, and the proceeds distrib- 
uted among them in rewards according to their deserts. 

The limits of this work will not allow of the detail of the sangui- 

^ Innoeentii m. Epist, lib. z., 6 epist, 212. 



. Tin.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1803. 319 



cradqroflfoDtfcrt. The monkith hMotian of the AlbigeoMi. 

nary slaughter of the helpless Albigenses, and the perfidious strata- 

gems* by which they were entrapped to their ruin, by the bloody 
imon de Montfort and the monks, who conducted two or three 
equally destructive expeditions against the Albigenses, in the few 
succeeding years, till they were almost entirely exterminated. Two 
or three more instances of their ferocious cruelty and zeal on behalf 
of Popery, can only be mentioned. In the year 1210, Montfort 
caused Count Raymond VL, to be a^ain excommunicated, when 
the unfortunate prince, overcome by this unrelenting persecution, 
and from his superstition, attaching a greater importance to the papal 
thunders than they deserved, burst into tears. The monks of 
Citeaux were meanwhile busily engaged in raising a fi-esh army of 
crusaders in the North of France, and no sooner was Montfort join- 
ed by them than he gave full scope to his cruelty. Attacking Uie 
castles in the Lauraguais and Menerbois, he caused all such of their 
inhabitants as fell into his hands, to be hanged on gibbets. Having 
invested that of Brom, and taken it by assault on the third day, he 
selected more than a hundred wretched inhabitants, and, having 
tarn out their eyes and cut off their noses, sent them, under the 
{toidance of a one-eyed man, to the castle of Cabaret, to intimate to 
garrison of that fortress the fate which awaited them. Some of 
fortresses he found deserted, and then sent out his soldiers 
Xo destroy the vines and the olive-trees in the surrounding country. 
§ 74. — The castle of Menerbe, seated on a steep rock, surrounded 
ty precipices, not far from Narbonne, was reputed to be the strong- 
place in the South of France. Guiard, its possessor, was vassal 
the viscounts of Carcassone, and one of the bravest knights of 
*he province. In the month of June, 1210, the crusaders appeared 
^Defore this fortress. The inhabitants, many of whom had adopted 
"^he doctrines of the Albigenses, defended themselves with great 
"^alor for seven weeks : but when, owing to the heat of the season, 
"^vater began to fail, they desired to capitulate ; and Guiard himself 
"^Â¥ent to the camp of the crusaders, and settled with Montfort the 
-^conditions for the surrender of the place. They were proceeding 

* The cotemporary historian of the Albigenses, to whom Sismondi so frequently 
^Sefera in that portion of his history relating to the Albigenses, Petrus Vallensts 
Cemensis, or as he was called by the French, Pierre ae Vaux Cemay, was a 
^xypish monk, who accompanied the crusaders, and was an eye-witness of the 
cruelties he describes, and which he relates with so much delight Referring to 
the papal legate and the inhuman butcheries of Montfort, after relating some of 
their cruel statagems, this monkish historian expresses his rapture in the following 
language. " How great was the mercy of Grod, for every one must see that the 
pilgrims could have done nothing without the Legate, nor the Legate without the 
pilgrims. In reality the pilgrims would have had but small success against such 
numerous enemies, if the Legate had not treated with them beforehand. It was, 
then, by a dispensation of the Divine mercy, that whilst the Legate, by a pious 
frauds cajoled and enclosed in his nets, the enemies of the faith, who were assembled 
at Narbonne, Count Montfort and the pilgrims who had arrived from France, could 
past into Agenois, there to crush their enemies, or rather those of Christ O nous 
RAUD OF THE LBGATB ! O FiSTT FULL OF DSCBTT !" {Petri VoXL Ctm. Albigen^ 
cap. Izzviii., p. 648.) 



818 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book ^ 

Borribl«enMltyorih«papiftolotlietiilublUDtiorMeiMfbe. 140 bwnt Ia om iM 

to execute them when the Pope's legate, who had been absent, 
returned to the camp, and Montfort declared that the terms agreed 
upon could not be considered as binding, till they had received hii 
assent "At these words,** says Peter de Vaux-Cemay, **the 
abbot was sorely grieved. He desired in fact that all the enemies 
of Christ should be put to death, but he would not take it upon him* 
self to condemn them, on account of his quality of monk and priest* 
He thought, however, that he might stir up some quarrel during the 
negotiation, avail himself of it to break tne capitulation, and cause 
all the inhabitants to be put to the sword. To this end he required 
of Montfort, on one part, and Guiard on the other, the terms (m which 
they had agreed. Finding, as he expected, some difference in the 
statements, Montfort declared, in the name of the Legate, that the 
negotiation was broken off. The lord of Menerbe offered to accept 
the capitulation as drawn up by Montfort, one of the articles of 
which provided that heretics themselves, if they became ctrnverti^ 
should have their lives spared, and be allowed to quit the castle* 
When the capitulation was read in the council of war, " Robert de 
Mauvoisin,** says the monk of Vaux-Cemay, ''a nobleman, and 
entirely devoted to the Catholic faith, cried that the pilgrims would 
never consent to that ; that it was not to show mercy to the heretics^ 
but to put them to death, that they had taken the cross ; but abbot 
Arnold replied : * Be easy, for I beUeve there will be but very few 
converted. ** In this sanguinary hope the Legate was not disap 
pointed. 

The crusaders took possession of the castle on the 22d of July : 
they entered, singing Te Deum, and preceded by the crucifix and 
the standards of Montfort The heretics were meanwhile assembled, 
the men in one house, the women in another, and there, on their 
knees resigned to their fate, they prepared themselves by prayer 
for the worst that could befal them. The abbot of Vaux-Cemayt 
in fulfilment of the capitulation, began to preach to them the Catho> 
lie faith ; but they interrupted him with the unanimous cry : ^ We 
will have none ot your faith ; we have renounced the church of 
Rome ; your labor is in vain ; for neither death nor Ufe shall make 
us renounce the opinions we have embraced." The abbot then 
went to the assembly of women, but he found them equally resolute^ 
and still more enthusiastic in their declarations. Montfort' also went 
to them both. He had previously caused a prodigious pile of dry 
wood to be made. ** Be converted to the CatnoUc hathT said he to 
the assembled AJbigenses, ^or mount this pile." None of them 
wavered. Fire was set to the wood, and the pile was soon wrapt 
in one tremendous blaze. The heretics were then taken to the spoi 
liriiere, after commending their souls to that God in whose cause 
they sufllered martyrdom, they voluntarily threw themselves inls 
the flames, to the number of more than (Nue hundred and forty.* 

* Pwri YaDeBBt Cen. Hist Alhicais., chapi xxmL« pace S6S. Hat cf 
C«Bdoc book ziL, page 1S3. 



^ 



CHAP. Tin.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. 319 



Th» laktaf of Lavanr. Th« hereticf barat, in the words of the popish historian, * with the utmost Jojr. 

§ 75. — In May, 1211, Montfort succeeded, after a hard siege, in 
talung Lavaur. When the breach in the ^vall was effected, and the 
crusaders were about to enter and begin the massacre, according 
to their usual custom, the bishops, the abbot of Cordieu, and all the 
priests, clothed in their pontifical habits, giving themselves up to the 
joy of seeing the carnage begin, sang Veni Creator. The knights 
mounted the breach ; resistance was impossible ; and the only care 
of Simon de Montfort was to prevent the crusaders from instantly 
falling upon the inhabitants, and to beseech them rather to make pris- 
(mers, that the priests of the living God might not be deprived of 
their promised joys. " Very soon," says their own monkish histo- 
rian, ** they dragged out of the castle Aimery, lord of Montreal, and 
other knights, to the number of eichty. The noble count [Montfort") 
immediately ordered them to be hanged upon the gallows; but as 
toon as Aimery, the stoutest among them, was hanged, the gallows 
fell, for, in their great haste, they had not fixed it well in the earth. 
The count, seeing that this would produce great delay, ordered the 
rest to be massacred ; and the pilgrims, receiving the order with 
the CTeatest avidity, very soon massacred them all on the spot. 
The lady of the castle, who was sister of Aimery, and an execrable 
heretic, was, by the count's order, thrown into a pit, which was 
then filled up with stones. Afterward our pilgrims collected the 
innumerable heretics which the castle contained, and burned them 
with the utmost joy. ^ 

§ 76. — Immediately on the taking of Lavaur, open hostilities com- 
menced between Simon de Montfort and the Count of Thoulouse. 
The first place belonging to this count, before which the crusaders 
presented themselves, was the castle of Montjoyre, which being aban- 
doned, was set fire to, and then rased from top to bottom by the 
soldiers of the church. The castle of Cassoro afforded them more 
satisfaction, as it furnished human victims for their sacrifices. It 
Was surrendered on capitulation, and ** the pilgrims, seizing near 
aixty heretics, burned them with infinite joy." This is the language 
iavariably employed by Petrus Vallensis, the monkish historian, 
Mrho was the witness and panegyrist of the crusade.* 

It was natural that Count Raimond should feel reluctant to coun- 
tenance or aid these cruel persecutors of his subjects and friends. 
Me continued, therefore, as long as he lived, to be an object of 
popish persecution. He was, nevertheless, most scrupulous in the 
observance of all the practices of the Catholic religion ; so that, 
^hen under excommunication, he would continue for a long time 
on his knees in prayer at the doors of the churches, which he durst 
not enter. Hence it is evident that his offence was not heresy on 
his own part, but simply his refusal to engage in the cruel massa- 
cres and extermination of his subjects, at the command of the 
spiritual tyrants of the Romish church. 

* ** Cmn ingenti gaadio," are the historian's words. Petri Vail. Cera. AlbirauL, 
cap. lii., II. 698. Beraardi Gnidonis, vita Imiocentii III., p. 482. This laat ii&iiiMi 
n that roar himdrod heietica were burned at Lavaur. 



i 



H 



320 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [boos t. 

The cruMdei sfilnst th« AlUgenaei^ a proof that Jtomanlm clalma the rf^ lo cxiirpale berHf. 

§ 77. — *^ The crusades against the Albigenses present one of those 
occasions by which the rights claimed by the Romish church 
toward heretics may be most fully and accurately ascertained. 
They were her exclusive and deliberate act The church of Rome 
had been then, according to its own principles, established nearly 
twelve hundred years. It professed to have been endowed with 
miraculous powers, and to be guided by the teachings of the infalli- 
ble spirit of God. All the temporal authorities had submitted to its 
domination, and were ready to execute its orders. If^ therefore^ 
there is any period in which we should peek for its genuine and 
authentic principles, it must be under the unclouded dominion of 
Innocent III. Nor can the opponents of all reformation possibly 
desire anything more than to restore that golden age of the church. 
Should they say that civilisation and philosophy having then made 
but little progress, we are to charge the cruelties which were com- 
mitted against the heretics to the ignorance and barbarism of the 
times, we would reply that all these cruelties were prompted^ encouT' 
aged^ and sanctioned by Rome itself, and that an infallible church 
cannot require the lights of philosophy to instruct her in her duties 
toward heretics. To an impartial inquirer, it would seem rather 
strange. that, under the spiritual illumination afforded by the church 
to the nations, heresies should have arisen, and that with all the 
powers of heaven and earth on its side, the church could not trust 
itself in the field of reason and argument against them. But certain 
it is that heresies did arise, and that the church of Rome felt itself 
called upon to show to that age, and to all succeeding ones, the full 
extent of the power with which it was invested by heaven for their 
suppression and extirpation. The dogma on which all these trans- 
actions were founded is — that the church possesses the right to eztir* 
pate heresy, and to use all the means which she may judge neces- 
sary for that purpose. It was on this dogma that Innocent III. and 
his legates preached the crusade against the heretics, and promised 
to those engaged in it, the full remission of all sins ; it was on this 
dogma that they excommunicated the civil powers by whom they 
were, or were supposed to be protected, and disposed of their do- 
minions to those who assisted in this spiritual warfare. 

"This dogma was repeatedly avowed by provincial councilsp 
and finally ratified by a general council, the fourth of Lateran. It 
was received by the tacit, nay, by the cordial and triumphant 
assent of the universal church, and had also the sanction of the 
civil authorities, who received from the church the spoils of the 
deposed and persecuted princes. We can, therefore, conceive of 
nothing which should be still necessary to constitute this dogma an 
article of faith, and hold ourselves justified in considering the church 
of Rome to claim, as of divine authority, the right to extirpate 
heresy, and for this purpose, if she judge it necessary, to extirpate 
the heretics. Nor has this principle, which was evidently avowed 
and acted upon at the period of these crusades, been ever rs- 
nounced by any authentic or official act of that church ; on the con« 



auf.iiiL] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. 821 

yirf^ l WDiflB t oaltaa alio daiiMd. Dinvmred by indlvidiul p«— »»i^, bat withoat aathoilly. 

truy, the church has, during the six hundred years which followed 

these events, invariably, as far as occasions have served, avowed 

the same principles, and perpetrated or stimulated the same deeds. 

Af soon as the wars against the Albigenses were terminated, the 

Inquisition was brought mto full and constant action, and has always 

heen encoura^;ed and supported by the Romish church to the utmost 

of its power, m everyplace where it could obtain an establishment. 

The civil authorities, finding by experience that some of the claims 

of the church were more prejudicisu than useful to themselves, have 

denied to it the right of deposing sovereigns, and of freeing subjects 

fifom their allegiance ; but the church itself has never generally and 

explicitly renounced this claim, and lon^ after the Reformation in 

Germany, continued to exercise it. And, notwithstanding the pro- 

fessionii made by modem Catholics, history does not furnish an in'- 

ttance of any body of the profession interposing its protest against 

tkeperseculion of heretics oy the church of Rome. 

f 78. — *^ Another right most certainly claimed and exercised by 
the Roman See throughout its whole history, is that of dissolving oaths. 
History {Sismondts Hist, of the Italian Republics) furnishes in- 
•tances of this as a recognized, undisputed, and every-day practice 
k almost every pontificate. One instance may serve for an illus- 
tration among a multitude of others. There were certain reforms 
in the pontifical government, which were required by the leading 
persons in the church, but which they never could obtain from the 
popes themselves. The cardinals, therefore, when they were going 
to elect a new pope, were accustomed to bind themselves by the 
t^ost solemn oaths, that whoever of them should be elected, would 
^n^ant those reforms. And, invariably, as soon as the Pope was 
c^hosen, he released himself from this oath, on the ground of its being 
Oontrary to the interests of the church. The power of releasing 
^om the obligation of oaths was also extended during these cru- 
sades, especially to freeing the subjects of heretical princes from 
"^heir oaths of allegiance, and it was especially sanctioned by the 
^^ouncil of Lateran. This practice has, however, become so ob- 
^iioxious in modem times, that the right has been indignantly dis- 
^3wned by most of the advocates of the Roman Catholic church. 
"^Vhatever may be the opinions of many private individuals or 
^)odies in the church of Rome, we doubt their authority to make 
^uch declarations, as members of a church which prohibits the right 
^>f private judgment where the church has determined/'* The fol- 
lowing remarks and citations from the elegant and accurate histo- 
3rian of the middle ages, are sufficient to set this matter for ever at 
Test. *• But the most important and mischievous species of dispen- 
sations," says Mr. Hallam (page 293), " was from the observance 
o{ promissory oaths. Two principles are laid down in the decretals ; 
that an oath disadvantageous to the church is not binding ; and that 
one extorted by force was of slight obligation, and might be annull- 

* See the able introductory essay to that portion of Sismondi's History of France, 
itlitiiig to the peisecution df the Waldenses, poUiahed in 1826. 



822 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book t. 

Uqjiut rianden of the AlliigeiiMfl. If true, the Pope had no right to invade their eountry and batcher then. 

ed by ecclesiastical authority.* As the first of these maxims gave 
the most unlimited privilege to the popes of breaking all faith of 
treaties which thwarted their interest or passion, a privilege which 
they continually exercised, so the second was equally convenient 
to princes, weary of observing engagements toward their subjects 
or neighbors. They declaimed with a bad grace against the abso- 
lution of their people fi-om allegiance, by an authority to which they 
did not scruple to repair in order to bolster up their own perjuries. 
§ 79. — Some of the Romish writers have pot scrupled to utter the 
most unfounded calumnies against the character of the Albigenses ; 
but as has been well remarked, " No tale of falsehood can be so artfully 
framed as not to contain within itself its own confutation. This is 
manifestly the case with the stories fabricated respecting the Albi- 
genses. Supposing, however, that the Albigenses had been all that 
uie Catholic writers represent, upon what ground could the Roman 
church make a war of extermination against them? The sovereigns 
of those countries did not seek her aid to suppress the seditions of 
their subjects, nor even to regulate their faith. The interference 
was not only without the authority, but absolutely against their con- 
sent, and was resisted by them in a war of twentyyears' continu- 
ance. If they refer to the authority of the king of France, as liege 
lord, he had not in that capacity the right of interference with the 
internal affairs of his feudatories ; and he had, in fact, no share in 
these transactions, any further than to come in at the close of the 
contest, and reap the fruits of the victory. We are, therefore, from 
every point brought to the same conclusion: that the chuech 

CLAIMS A DIVINE RIGHT TO EXTIRPATE HERESY AND EXTERMINATE HERE- 
TICS, WITH OR WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE SOVEREIGNS IN WHOSE 
DOMINIONS THEY MAY BE FOUND."f 

* Juramentum contra utilitatem ecclesiaBticam pnestitum non tenet Decretal., 
1. ii., 24, c. 27, et Sext, 1. i., tit. 11, c. 1. A jnramento per metum eztorto ecclo> 
sia solet absolvere, et ejus transgressores ut peccantes mortaliter non punientar. 
Eodem lib. et tit., c. 15. 

Take one instance oat of many. Piccinino, the famous condottiere of the 
fifteenth century, had promised not to attack Francis Sforza, at that time engaged 
against the Pope. Eugenius IV. (the same excellent person who had annuU^ the 
compactata with the Hussites, releasing those who had sworn to them, and who 
afterward made the king of Hungary break his treaty with Amurath II.), absolTes 
him from this promise, on the express ground that a treaty disadvantageous to the 
church ought not to be kept. (Sismandif t ix., p. 196.) The church, in that age, 
was synonymous with the papal territories in Italy. 

It was in conformity to tnis sweeping principle of ecclesiastical utility, that 
Urban VI. made the following solemn ana general declaration against keeping 
faith with heretics. ^ Attendentes quod hujusmodi confcederationes, coUigaticuies, 
et ligae seu conventiones facts cum hujusmodi hsreticis seu schismaticis poeU 
qoam tales eflfecti erant, sunt temeraris ; illicits, et ipso jure nulle (etsi forte 
ante ipsorum lapsum in schisma, seu hsresin initiae, seu facte fuissent), etiam ri 
forent juramento vel fide datA firmats, aut confirmatione apostolic& vel qn&cunqne 
finnitate silk roborats, postquam tales, ut praemittitur, sunt effecti.' (^Rymer, t 
vii., p. 352.) 

f See Indx>daction to Sismondi, lU supra. 



CHAPTER IX. 

BSTABUSHinBNT OF THE MENDICANT ORDERS. SAINT DOMINIC AND 

BAINT FRANCIS. 

§ 80. — ^We have already endeavored to trace the origin and pro- 
gress of monkery up to the epoch of the establishment of papal su- 
premacy.* We have also seen how, in subsequent ages, the vari- 
008 monastic orders had degenerated from their primitive severity 
of discipline, and simplicity of character, till the convents exhibited 
to the world the most shocking spectacles of licentiousness, avarice, 
bposture, and almost every description of vice. It is admitted, 
by Roman Catholic writers, that even in the best monasteries, scarce 
A vestige of religicxi was apparent, and the inordinate desire of 
wealth, the root of evils, the wicked step-mother of monks, ' malam 
Dumachorum novercam,' reigned with undisputed sway.f Were 
We disposed to soil our page with the disgusting details of monkish 
pofli^cy and Ucentiousness, it would be easy to gather testimonies 
uom Komish authors themselves, to prove that in spite of their vows 
of poverty and chastity, the main object of the vast body of the 
nu)nks of the middle ages, was not only the accumulation of un- 
bounded wealth, but the gratification of their lawless passions 
either with equally vicious nuns, or with other victims of their 
•eductive arts. 

} 81. — In contrast with the vicious lives of these monks, shone 
^th the more lustre, the primitive characters, the chaste, and pa- 
rent, and modest deportment of the teachers of the Waldensian 
^tics^ who were so cruelly persecuted and abused. Some 
of these dissenters from Popery in this age maintained that volun- 
^y poverty was the leading and essential quality in a servant of 
Christ, obliged their doctors to imitate the simplicity of the apos- 
^es, reproached the church with its overgrown opulence, and the 
^ces and corruptions of the clergy, that flowed from thence as 
from their natural source, and by this commendation of poverty 
^ contempt of riches, acquired a high degree of respect, and 
^ed a prodigious ascendant over the minds of the multitude, 
ftobably the extreme views in relation to voluntary poverty held 
oy some of the Waldenses originated in their disgust and abhor- 
'^ce at the contrast between the professions and the practices of 
"^ monks. However this may be, some of the shrewdest of the 

Eopeg, fearful of the effect of the contrast between the vicious 
ves of the sleek, and lazy, and well-fed monks, and the holy lives 
^ the poor, and humble, and persecuted heretics, soon perceived 

* See above, book ii., chap iv., page 87-92. 

t ^ Vix institute religionis apparuisse vestigia, in pnestantioribas monasteriis, 
ndioem maloram, malam monachorum novercam, proprietatum concnpiscentiam.*' 
(BanmuM, Armaly ad Ann. 943.) 

20 



824 HISTORY OF ROMANISIL . [bookt. 



InoocMt IIL «rtaMMM« th« Mondkaat ofd«n. iv«— fc*«^»»« aad 

the necessity of establishing an order of men, who, by the austeritj 
of their manners, their contempt of riches, and the external gravity 
and sanctity of their conduct and maxims, might resemble the doc- 
tors, who had gained such reputation to the heretical sects, and 
who might be so far above the allurements of worldly profit and 
pleasure, as not to be seduced by the promises or threats of kings 
and princes, from the performance of the duties they owed totne 
church, or from persevering in their subordination to the Roman 
pontifis. 

( 62. — Innocent IIL, about the commencement of the thirteenth 
century, was the first of the popes who perceived the necessity of 
instituting such an order ; and accordingly, he gave such monastic 
societies as made a profession of poverty, the most distinguishing 
marks of his protection and favor. Thev were also encourage? 
and patronizea hy the succeeding pontifis, when experience bad 
demonstrated their public and extensive usefiilness. But when it 
became generally known, that they had such a peculiar place in the 
esteem and protection of the rulers of the church, their number 
grew to such an enormous and unwieldy multitude, and swarmed 
so prodigiously in all the European provinces, that thev became a 
burden, not only to the people but to the church itself This in* 
convenience, however, was remedied by pope Gregory X. in a 

funeral council which he assembled at Lyons, in the year 127SL 
or here all the religious orders that had sprung up after the coon* 
cU held at Rome, in the year 121 5, under the pontificate of Inno* 
cent III., were suppressed, and the *' extravagant multitude of men* 
dicants," as Gregory called them, were reduced to a smaller num- 
ber, and confined to the four following societies, or denominations, 
viz., the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Carmelites, and the her- 
mits of St Augustin.* 

§ 83. — Of these mendicant orders, the Dominicans and the Fran- 
ciscans, commenced about the year 1207, were by far the most con- 
siderable and numerous, so called from their founders, Dominic and 
Francis, of whose lives, as related by tl)eir disciples and admirers, 
we shall proceed to give a brief sketch. The former of these 
saints has become famous (or infamous) in history, firom the fact 
that he was the inventor, or at least, the first inquisitor-general of 
the horrible tribunal called the holy Inquisition. Being employed, 
says Dr. Southey, against the Albigenses, Saint Dominic (as he 
stands in the Romish Calendar) invented the Inquisition to acceler- 
ate the efiect of his sermons. His invention was readily approved 
at Rome, and he himself nominated inquisitor-general. The pain- 
fill detail of his crimes may well be spared ; suflice it to say, that 

* " Importnna potentium inhiatio Religionnm moltiplicationem extorrit, Tsmrn 
etiam aliquonun presumptnosa temeritas diversorom ordinum, precipue Mendi- 
cantinm .... efihenatam multitudinem adinvenit .... Hinc ordiiies Mendicantes 
post dictum concilium adinventoe .... ])er])etU9B prohitritioni subjicimoB." (Can' 
cU, Lugd, n., Ann, 1374. Can. xxiii., in Jo. Hardoini ConetKu, torn. viL, pw 
716. Mofiheim, iiL, 188.) 



CIAP. nc] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1808. 925 



WooisHU minelai of 8mimt Doaninlc, th* Ibonder of tlie laqoWlloa. 



ID one day four-score persons were beheaded, and four hundred 
burnt alive, by this man's order and in his sight St. Dominic is 
tlie only saint in whom no solitary speck of goodness can be dis- 
covered. To impose privations and pain was the pleasure of his 
unnatural hear^ and cruelty was in him an appetite and a passion. 
No other human being has ever been the occasion of so much 
misery. The few traits of character which can be gleaned from 
the lying volumes of his biographers are all of the darkest colors. 
If his disciples have preserved few personal facts concerning their 
master, they have made ample amends in the catalogue of his 
miracles. Let the reader have patience to peruse a few of these 
tales, not copied from protestant, and therefore suspected authors, 
lNit^^Y>m the Dominican historians themselves^ ana every one of 
them authorized by the Inquisition.* 

§ 84. — Among the vast multitude of their ridiculous and fabu 
kms stories, these disciples of Dominic relate that the mother 
of their master dreamed that she brought forth a dog, holding a 
burning torch in his mouth, wherewith he fired the world. Earth- 
quakes and meteors announced his nativity to the earth and the air, 
md two or three suns and moons extraordinary were hung out for 
an illumination in heaven. The Virgin Mary received him in her 
arms as he sprung to birth. When a sucking babe he regularly oft- 
served fast days, and would get out of bed and lie upon the ground 
as a penance. (!) His manhood was as portentous as his infancy. 
He fed multitudes miraculously, and performed the miracle of Cana 
with great success. Once, when he fell in with a troop of pil^ims, 
of different countries, the curse which had been inflicted at Babel 
was suspended for him, and all were enabled to speak one lan- 
^age. (!) Travelling with a single companion, ne entered a 
monastery in a lonely place, to pass the night ; he awoke at matins, 
and hearing yells and lamentations instead of prayers, went out 
and discovered that he was among a brotherhood of devils. Domi- 
nic punished them upon the spot with a cruel sermon, and then re- 
turned to rest. At morning the convent had disappeared, and he 
and his comrade found themselves in a wilderness. (! !) He had 
one day an obstinate battle with the flesh : the quarrel took place 
in a wood ; and, finding it necessary to call in help, he stripped him- 
self, and commanded the ants and the wasps to come to his assist- 
ance : even against these auxiliaries the contest was continued for 
three hours before the soul could win the victory. He used to be 
red-hot with divine love ; sometimes blazing like a sun ; some- 
times glowing like a furnace ; at times it blanched his garments, 
and imbued them with a glory resembling that of Christ in the 
Transfigurauon. Once it sprouted out six wings, like a seraph ; 
and once the fervor of his piety made him sweat blood. (! ! !) 

^ See an able article on the Inquisition, from the pen of the late poet-laureate 
sf Engkiid, Robert Southey, LL.D., in the Quarterly Review for December, 1811. 



S26 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book i 

Mwrelloas Dominican mincica of the Vlifia and Iha Boniy. 

( 85. — The Dominicans were the ffreat champions of the Virgin 
and according to their writers, Saint Dominic was her peculiar favor 
ite. In reference to the Rosary ^ which among them was especially i 
favorite instrument of devotion to their great patroness, they relate 
many wonderful miracles, among which the following are speci* 
mens. (For Rosary^ arms of Inquisition^ 4^., see Engraving!) 

(I.) The bead palace in Paradise. — A knight to whom Dominic presented i 
rosary, arrived at such a perfection of piety, that his eyes were opened, and hi 
saw an an^l take every bead as he dropped it, and carry it to the Qneen of Heft 
ven, who unmediately magnified it, ana ouilt with the whole string a paJmce npoi 
a moontain in Paradise ! 

(2.) The ffreaching head, — A damsel, by name Alexandra, induced by Dominie^ 
preaching, used the rosary ; but her heart followed too much after the thinn ol 
this worla. Two young men, who were rivals for her, fought, and both fdl h 
the combat ; and their relations, in revenge, cut off her head, and threw it ink 
a well. The devil immediately seized her soul, to which it seems he had a deai 
title— but, for the sake of the rosary, the Vir^n interfered, rescued the soul od 
of his hands, and gave it permission to remain in the head at the bottom of tin 
well, till it should nave an opportunity of confessing and being absolved. Aftei 
some davs this was revealed to Dominic, who went to the well, and told Aleno 
dra, in Ciod's name, to come up : the bloody head obeyed, perched on the well-eida 
confessed its sins, received absolution, took the wafer, and continued to edify tfai 
people for two days, when the soul departed to pass a fortnight in purgatory on iti 
way to heaven. 

(3.) The Virgin^s raised arm, — ^When Dominic entered Thoulouse, after one ol 
his interviews with the Virgin, all the bells of the city rang to welcome him, wfr 
touched by human hands ! But the heretics [ Albi^nses] neither heeded this, na 
regarded his earnest exhortations to them, to abjure their errors, and make mc 
of the rosary. To punish their obstinacy a dreadful tempest of thunder and 
lightning set the whole firmament in a blaze ; the earth shook, and tlie howling of 
anright^ animals was mingled with the shrieks and groans of the terrified mnlti' 
tude. They crowded to the church, where Dominic wbb preaching, as to ai 
asylum. " Citizens of Thoulouse," said he, " I see before me a hundred and fiffcj 
angels, sent by Christ and his mother to punish you ! This tempest is the voksc 
of the right hand of God." There was an image of the Vii^riii in the church 
who raised her arm in a threatening attitude as he spoke. ^ Irear me !" he god 
tinned, ** that arm shall not bo withdrawn till you appease her by reciting tfai 
rosary." New outcries now arose : the devils yelled because of the torment thii 
inflicted on them. The terrified Thoulousians prayed and scourged themselves 
and told their beads with such good efiect, that the storm at length ceased. Donii> 
nic, satisfied with their repentance, gave the word, and down fell the arm of tin 
image ! 

(4.) Dominican friars and nuns nestlins under the VirgirCs wing, — ^In one of 
his visits to heaven, Dominic was carriea before the throne of Christ, where hi 
beheld many religionists of both sexes, but none of his own order. This ac 
afflicted him, that he began to lament aloud, and inquired why they did not appeal 
in bliss. Christ, upon this, laying his hand upon the Virgin's shoulder, said, " 1 
have committed your order [the Dominicans] to my mothers care ; " and she, lift 
ing up her robe, discovered an innumerable multitude of DominicanB, friars anc 
nuns, nestled under it ! 

(5.) The love of the Virgin for Saint Dominic. — ^The next of these fodisl 
leinends is almost too impious to be repeated. The Dominicans — ^the inquisitors— 
teU us that '* the Virgin appeared to Dominic in a cave near Thoulouse ; that she 
called him her son and her nusband ; that she took him in her arms, and bared hei 
breasts to him, that he might drink tlieir nectar ! She told him that, were she i 
mortal, she could not live without him, so excessive was her love ; even now, im 
mortal as she was, she should die for him, did not the Almighty support her, ma hi 



\ 




ikvaMlo, MiHn'orA'atl JuMia, (HiTr> unil lutricr.:. 



\i 



-I â–  

i" 
T. 



â– rt 



I 



' ' .1 
d i I 



«*?. XX.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. 829 



^^_^ Safait Fraadt th» (bander at th» FreBclMaiu, the Seraphic Order. 

M done at the Cnicifixion ! At another visit, she espoused him ; and the saints, 
udthe Redeemer himself, came down to witness the marriage ceremony ! 

It u impossible to transcribe these atrocious blasphemies without shuddering at 
tbe guilt of those who invented them ; and when it is remembered that these are 
tbe men who have persecuted and martyred so many thousands for conscience' 
nte, it eeems as if human wickedness could not be carried fiuther. ** Blessed," 
adaims Dr. Southey, '* be the dav of Martin Luther's birth !— it should be a 
6iti?al only second to that of the Nativity."* 

J 86. — The founder of the other of these celebrated mendicant 
era was the son of a rich merchant of Assissi, in Italy. Accord- 
ing to a valuable and more recent work of the able and learned 
author just referred to, he derived his name of Francesco from his 
fiuniliar knowledge of the French tongue, which was at that time 
a rare accomplishment for an Italian ; and Hercules is not better 
known in classical fable, than he became in Romish mythology, by 
the name of Saint Francis. In his youth, it is certain, that he 
was actuated by delirious piety ; but the web of his history is in- 
terwoven with such inextricable falsehoods, that it is not possible to 
decide whether, in riper years, he became madman or impostor ; 
nor whether at last he was the accomplice of his associates, or the 
^ctim. Having infected a few kindred spirits with his first enthu- 
nasm, he obtained the Pope's consent to institute an order of Friars 
Minorite ; so, in his humility, he called them ; they are better 
known by the name of Franciscans, after their founder, in honor 
of whom they have likewise civen themselves the modest appella- 
tion of the Seraphic Order— having in their blasphemous fables 
installed him above the Seraphim, upon the throne from which 
Lucifer fell! 

§ 87. — Previous attempts had been made to enlist, in the service 

of the papal church, some of those fervent spirits, whose united 

hostility all its strength would have been insufficient to withstand ; 

out these had been attended with little effect, and projects of this 

kind were discouraged, as rather injurious than hopeful, till Francis 

presented himself. His entire devotion to the rope, his ardent 

*<|oration of the Virgin Mary, as the great Goddess of the Romish 

f^th, the strangeness, and perhaps the very extravagance of the 

JJjstitute which he proposed, obtained a favorable acceptance for 

"^ proposals. Seclusion for the purpose of religious meditation, 

^^s the object of the earlier religious orders ; his followers were 

^ go into the streets and highways to exhort the people. The 

If^^iiks were justly reproached for luxury, and had become invidious 

.?r their wealth ; the friars were bound to the severest rule of 

.'^ ; they went barefoot, and renounced, not only for themselves 

J^^i^idually, but collectively also, all possessions whatever, trusting 

^ daily charity for their daily bread. It was objected to him that 

Let not the reader suppose (as Romanists assert in relation to everything they 
^^Ud rather keep secret) that these are protestant forgeries. These mfracles 
1^1^ IS above related (with the exception of the titles) in the prayer-book of the 
''~' order of Rconan Catholics. 



880 HISTORY OF ROBIANISlf. [boqkv 



laerMM of Fniwiiew flten. TIm boly ttigmmg or wmada of Bitat 

no community, established upon such a principle, could subaisl 
without a miracle : he referred to the lilies in the text, for'Bcrip< 
tural authority ; to the birds, for an example ; and the maiTelloui 
increase of the order was soon admitted as fuU proof of the inspir- 
ation of its founder. In less than ten years, the delegates alone tG 
its General Chapter exceeded five thousand in number ; and by ai 
enumeration in the early part of the eighteenth century, when the 
Reformation must have diminished their amount at least one-third 

* 

it was found that even then there were 26,000 Franciscan nuns in 
900 nunneries, and 115,000 Franciscan friars in 7000 conventi; 
besides very many nunneries, which, being under the immediate 
jurisdiction of the ordinary, and not of the order, were not included 
in the returns. 

( 86. — The miracles ascribed to Saint Francis were no less ex- 
travagant than those related of the head of the rival order. ^ The 
wildest romance," says Dr. Southey, *^ contains nothing more ex- 
travagant than the legends of St. Dominic : yet even these were 
outdone by the more atrocious effirontery of the Franciscans. They 
held up their founder, even during his life, as the perfect pattern of 
our Lord and Saviour ; and, to authenticate the parallel, they ex- 
hiUted him with a wound in his side^ and four naib in his handi 
and feetf fixed there^ they affirmed^ by Christ himself^ who had 
visibly appeared for the purpose of thus rendering the conformity 
between them complete ! whether he consented to the villainy, 
or was in such a state of moral and physical imbecility, as to have 
been the dupe or the victim of those about him ; and whether it 
was committed with the connivance of the papal court, or only in 
certain knowledge that that court would sanction it when done, 
though it might not deem it prudent to be consenting before the 

fact, are questions which it is now impossible to resolve. 

Sanctioned, however , the horrible imposture was by that church which 
calls itself infallible ; a day for its perpetual commemoration was 
appointed in the Romish Calendar ;* and a large volume was com- 
posed, entitled the Book of the Conformities between the lives of 
the blessed and seraphic Father Francis and our Lord ! 

Jealous of these conformities, the Dominicans followed their 
rivals in the path of blasphemy. . . . They declared that the five 
wounds had been impressed also upon St Dominic ; but that, in 
his consummate humility, he had prayed and obtained that this sig- 
nal mark of Divine grace might never be made public while he 
lived.f 

5 89. — The two orders of Dominic and Francis, though engaged 
in the same work of hunting and persecuting the enemies of the 

* The day set apart by the Romish church to commemorate this abominable 
imposture, is September 17th. See Calendar in '* Garden of the Soid," published 
with approbation of Bishop Hughes, New York, 1844. It is the same in any 
Romish Calendar. See True Piety, St Joseph's Manual, dtc. The words <OT»- 
•ita September 17th are, " The holy stigmas (Latin for wounds) (f St. /Voncts." 

t See Sonthey's Book of the Church, chap, xi., fifth edition, London, 1841. 



our. z.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT-^. D. 1073-1808. SSI 

Iln40B«i tiiiMMii ■ c qwU id bj tlM Maadkuit Ordcra. Fourth couBdl of LaMtn. 

papal churchy and both professing an equal zeal in the service of 
the Pope, soon began most cordially to hate each other, and to 
assume an attitude of fierce hostility and rivalry. Yet they ob- 
tained, for a time, a prodigious influence amon^ the people, pro- 
duced partly by their enthusiasm, partly by their appearance of 
sanctity and devotion, but chiefly by the implicit faith with which 
their enormous fables were received. Multitudes of the people 
were unwilling to receive the sacraments from any other hands 
than those of the mendicants, to whose churches they crowded to 
perform their devotions, while living, and were extremely desirous 
to deposit there also their remains after death ; all which occasion- 
ed grievous cdmplaints among the ordinary priests, to whom the 
cure of souls was committed, and who considered themselves as 
the spiritual guides of the multitude. Nor did the influence and 
credit of the mendicants end here ; for we find, in the history^ of 
succeeding ages, that they were employed not only in spiritual 
matters, but also in temporal and political afifairs of the greatest 
oonaequence ; in composing the difierences of princes, concluding 
treaties of peace, concerting alliances, presiding in cabinet coun- 
cilfl» governing courts, levymg taxes, and other occupations, no.t 
only remote from, but absolutely inconsistent with the monastic 
chiuracter and profession. During three centuries, these two fra- 
ternities governed, with an almost universal and absolute sway, 
both state and church, filled the most eminent posts, ecclesiastical 
and civil, taught in the universities and churches with an authority, 
before which all opposition was silent, and maintained the pretended 
majesty and prerogatives of the Roman pontiffs against kings, 
princes, bishops, and heretics, with incredible ardor and equal 
mccess. (Mosheim^ cent xiii., part 2. Waddington^ chap, xix.) 



CHAPTER X. 

^*HB FOURTH COUNCIL OF LATERAN DECREES THE EXTERMINATION OF 
HERETICS, TRAN8UB8TANTIATI0N, AND AURICULAR CONFESSION. 

( 90. — In the year 1215 was held at Rome, under the pontificate 
K)( Innocent III., the twelfth general council^ and fourth of Lateran. 
On many accounts — the character of the Pope who presided, the 
number of ecclesiastics who were present, the doctrines that were 
then first made articles of faith, the tyrannical and sanguinary cha- 
racter of its decrees in relation to the extermination of heretics, 
&C., — this council may be regarded as one of the most memorable 
in the history of Romanism. The number of church dignitaries 



882 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [: 

laaoeoat and tlie eoandl give the dominjont of Ralmond lo th« popWi bmehar of lieretiGi^ 

— — 

present on this occasion, in addition to the Pope, was seventy me- 
tropolitans, four hundred bishops, and eight hundred and twelve 
abbots, priors, &c., besides several princes, imperial ambassa- 
dors, &c. 

One of the most remarkable acts of this council, or rather of 
Pope Innocent, who was the sovereira dictator of all that was done 
in it, and which we mention first, oecause of its connection with 
matters already related, was the bestowment of the dominions of 
Raimond VL, the unfortunate count of Thoulouse, upon that obe- 
dient son of the Pope, the earl of Montfort, the bloodthirsty butcher 
of the Albigenses, as a reward for the service that he had ren- 
dered the church of Rome, in slaughtering such countless mul- 
titudes of the heretics and rebels agamst the Holy See. The per- 
secuted Raimond travelled to Rome for the purpose of averting, if 
possible, this additional misfortune, and promised to give whatever 
satisfaction the Pope and the council might require. But his ex- 
ertions were all in vain. " His dominions, says Bower, "were ad- 
judged to count Montfort as a reward for his zeal in the destruction 
of tne innocent Albigenses, and Montfort henceforth assumed the 
title of count of Thoulouse, and continued to persecute the poor 
Albigenses with fire and sword, though he could never entirely 
suppress them. Thus did the Pope and council, not only with tlie 
consent, but with the concurrence of princes, usurp an absolute 
power in temporals as well as in spirituals."* 

The excommunication of the barons of England in this councUy 
and the haughty letter of pope Innocent in relation to them, have 
already been related in a preceding chapter. (See above, page 292.) 

§ 91. — But the fourth council of Lateran is most noted for its 
famous (or infamous) decree relative to the extirpation of heretics^ 
and the thunders that were to be hurled at princes, and the punish- 
ment to be inflicted on them in case they should refuse to join in. 
this piousj but bloody work. The following is a literal translaticm. 
of the most important portion of this decree, translated firom the 
Latin orimnal as found in the summa conciliorum of Caranxa^ a 
celebrated Romanist author. The third chapter begins thus : ** Wi 

EXCOMMUNICATE AND ANATHEMATIZE EVERT HERESY EXTOLLING IT* 
SELF AGAINST THIS HOLY, ORTHODOX, CaTHOLIC FAITH WHICH WB 

BEFORE EXPOUNDED, Condemning all heretics by what names soever 
called. And being condemned, let them be left to the secular 
POWER, or to their bailifls, to be punished by due animadversion. 
And let the secular powers be warned, and induced^ and if need be 
condemned by ecclesiastical censure, what oflices soever they are 
in, that as they desire to be reputed and taken for believers, so they 

publicly TAKE AN OATH FOR THE DEFENCE OF THE FAITH, THAT THBT 
WILL STUDY IN GOOD EARNEST TO EXTERMINATE, TO THEIR UTMOST 
POWER, FROM THE LANDS SUBJECT TO THEIR JURISDICTION, ALL HERK- 

TI08 DBNOTED BY THE CHURCH ; ' Pro dcfcnsione fidei prsBstat jura- 

* Lives of 'iie Popes, in vita Lmoc IIL 



. X.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. 888 

of Um Pope and coanell wwrnnandlnt prtaeeii iind«r heavy penaJtlea, to exterminate beredec 

mentum, quod de terns sua^ jurisdictionis subjectos universos hsre* 
ticofl ab Ecclesia denotatos, bona fide pro viribus exterminare stude- 
bunt ;' so that every one, that is henceforth taken into any power^ 
either spiritual or temporal shall be bound to confirm this cnapter 
by his oath.** , , , ^ But if the temporal lord^ required and warned 
by the church, shall neglect to purge his territory of this heretical 
fUh^ let him by the Metropolitan and Comprovincial Bishops be 
tied by the bond of excommunication ; and if he scorn to satisfy 
within a year, let that be signified to the Pope, that he may denounce 
his vassals thenceforth absolved from his fideutt (or allegiance), 
and may expose his country to be seized on by Catholics, who, the 
heretics being excommunicated^ may possess it without any contra^ 
OctioUf and may keep it in the purity of faith, saving the right of 
the principal lord, so be it he himself put no obstacle hereto, nor 
oppose any impediment ; the same law notwithstanding being kept 
aoout them that have no principal lord."* . . . ^ And the Catho- 
lics that taking the badge of the cross shall gird themselves for the eX" 
terminating rf heretics^ shall enjoy that indulgence, and oe fortified 
with that holy privilege which is granted to them that go to the help 
of the holy land.'' ..." And we decree to subject to excommu- 
nication the believers and receivers, defenders and favorers of here* 
ticSf firmly ordaining, that when any such person is noted by ex- 
communication, if he disdain to satisfy within a year, let him be, 
ipso jure, made infamous." 

I make no comment on the above outrajgeous decree of pope 
binocent and the twelfth general council united (fhe highest kgis* 
Uuive authority in the Romish church), nor is it needed. The 
history of the persecuted Raimond, hunted, excommunicated, ana- 
thematized, and finally deposed, for no other reason except that 
be did not ifte sufiicient diligence in executing the Pope's commands 
•* to exterminate, to the utmost of his power, all heretics from the 
lands subject to his jurisdiction," together with that of the slaugh- 
tered Albigenses, is an eloquent sermon on the above text. 

§ 92. — In this general council also, by the twenty-first canon, the 
practice of auriculae confession was for the first time authorita- 
l^^ely enjoined upon the faithful of both sexes at least once a year. 
They were also commanded, under severe penalties in case of neg- 
'pct, to receive the eucharist at Easter, unless a paiticular dispensa- 
^O excusing from this duty should be granted to them. The sacra- 
''^t was generally taken immediately after confession. Fleury, the 

.* Ai this is the moet important part of the decree, and it is a common device 

^f&oniiiiigtfl to deny the accuracy of translations, we subjoin the original of the 

^^^^ remarkable paragraph. ^ Si dominus temporalis requisitns et monitus ab 

^^^Ma, terram suam purgare neglezerit ab hsretica fcBditate, per MetropoUtanos 

rf^teroa Episcopos vmculo excommunicationis innodetur ; et si satisfacere con- 

^^^l8erit infra annum, significetur hoc Summo Pontifici, et extunc ipse vassalos 

^ ejus fidelitate denunciet absolutes, et terram exponet Catholicis occupandam 

S^eim, bereticis exterminatis, sine ulla contradictione possideant, salvo jure 

^Quni principalis, dummodo super hoc ipse nullum prsstet obataculum^ eadem 

^iloauiiiis lege servata, circa eoa qui non habent Dominoa p ri nci p alea.* 



884 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book â–¼. 



Prteidj MliHtmHm of fenalw â– ! 



Romish historian, says, *^ this is the first canon^ so far as I know, 
which imposes the general obligation of sacramental confession f 
and from this admission, it is eas^ for any one to calculate tbe 
date of this modem popish innovation.* 

The horrible disorders, seductions, adulteries, and abominatkHis 
of every kind that have sprung from this practice of auricular 
confession, especially in Spain and other popish countries, are 
fiimiliar to all acquainted with the history of Popery for ibe six 
centuries that have transpired since the fourth council of Lateran. 
The details of individual facts on this subject are hardlv fit to meet 
the public eye, though multitudes of them might easily be cited, de- 
rived not merely from the testimony of protestants, but from the 
admissions of papists themselves, and from the numerous, though 
ineffectual laws that have been passed to restrain the practice of 
priestly solicitation of females at confession. Nor can this be mat* 
ter of surprise. The evil is inherent in the system. Let any per- 
son of common sense examine the list of subjects, and the ques- 
tions for examination of conscience in any popish book of devotioiiy 
but more especially (if he understands Latin) the directions to 
young priests in Dens and other standard works for the study of 
popish theology ;t then let him remember that the subjects of these 

* From the following extract from Butler's Roman Catholic catinrJiiinn, it will 
be seen that this law, passed so late as 1216, is made one of the ** six oommaod- 
ments of the church," and is placed upon a level with the ** ten commandmenti 
of God." 

Lessor xx. — On the Precepts cfthe Church.~^Q. Are there any other eommtmi 
ments besides the ten commancunents of God ? Ans, There are the oonmiBiiS- 
ments or precepts of the Church, which are chiefly six. 

Q. Say the six commandments of the church? Ans, 1, To hear Mass on 
Sundays, and all holy days of obligation. 2. To &8t and abstain on the days 
commanded. 3. To confess our sins at least once a year. 4. To Bscsm 

WORTHILY THE BLESSED EUCHARIST AT EaSTER, OR WITHQI THB TDIB AP- 
POINTED. 6. To contribute to the support of our pastors. 6. Not to aolemnne 
marriage at the forbidden times, nor to marry uenaoB within the foiiitdden d»-> 
grees of kindred, or otherwise prohibited by the church, nor clandestinely. 

t The following extracts from the '* Moral Theology of Peter Dens, as pfepaied 
for the use of Romish Seminaries and Students of Thedogy,*^ are transcribedL 
from the Mechlin edition, printed no longer bjpo than 1838. I dare not stir tiie 
scum of this pool of filth by translating a sin^fo paraj|[raph from the Latin. Let 
the learned reader rememlier that in confession it is tne duty of the priest to 
question and to cross-question, in every variety of form, the female penitents in 
relation to the sins described in the following extracts : — 

De modo CONTRA NATURAM. — ^^ Quinta species luxuria contra natnram eoB^ 
mittitur qvando quidam copula masctUi fit in vase femintR naturali, sed indMo 
modo, V. g. stando, ant dum vir succumbit, vel a retro feminam cognoscit, aieat 
equi congrediuntur, quamvis in vase femineo. 

** Poesunt autem hi modi inducere peccatum mortale juxta periculum perdendi 
semen, e6 qu6d scilicet semen viri communiter non possit apte efiUndi luqae in 
â– atricem femins. 

** £t quamvis fort^ conju^s dicant qu6d periculum dilif^nter Draecaveaiit, flli 
interim lascivi modi k gravi veniali excusari non debent, nisi forte propter impo- 
tentiam, v. g. ob curvitatem uxoris, nequeat servari naturalis situs et modus, qui 
est ut mulier succumbat viro." (Vol. iv.. No. 296.) 

Modus sive situs invertitur, ut servetur debitum vas ad copnlam a natnm cadi* 



. z.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. 886 



The fiMiftMloml, • tehool of Ucentfcwwiw, fadnetloB, and ■doltwy 

beastly inquiries are often young, beautiful, and interesting fe- 
males ; and that the questioners are men, often young and vigorous, 
burning with the fires of passion, in some instances almost wrought 
up to phrenzy bv a vow of celibacy which they would be glad to 
snake off, and tnen he will cease to wonder that the confessional 
has so often been turned into a school of licentiousness, seduction 
and adultery. 

( 93. — A single fact will be sufficient to show the awfiil extent in 
popish countries of this crime of illicit intercourse with females at 

fiitom, V. g. si fiat accedendo a pnspoBtere, a latere, stando, sedendo, vel si vir sit 
•HccnmbiM. ModoB is mortalis est, si inde suboriatur periculom pollutionis respecta 
•Iteriiia, sive qnando periculnm eet, ne semen peraatur, proat sepe accidit, dam 
tetos exercetnr stando, sedendo, aut viro Buccumbente : si absit et Bufficienter 
(BBcaveatiir istiid periculnm, ex communi sententia id non est mortale : est antem 
fooale ez gravioribiu, com sit invereio ordinis natnne ; estque eeneratim modaa 
iBe Bine causa taliter coeundi graviter a Cor^essariis reprehendendus : Bi tamen 
sb jurtam rationem sitom natunJem coDJuges immntent, secladaturqae dictum peri 
fohun, nullum est peccatum. 

Quoad tactuB libidinoBos, quos conjugati exercent er|fa corpus alterutrius, ii 
•QDt mortaliter mali, si fiant cum pollutione alteriuB, vel ejus penculo. 

8i absit periculnm pollutionis, et ordinentur ad copulam, tunc vel ad earn ne- 
cesMurii sunt, et sic non sunt peccaminoBi, vel non sunt ad eam necesBarii et erunt 
Yenialiter mali, quia boUub causa voluptatis haberi supponuntur. 

Bi tactuB illi, secluso pollutionis periculo, non referantur ad copulam, non ita 

Qonveniunt Auctores ; decent plerique, quod si Bint adeo infames, ut nequidem ex 

^opols intuitu excusentur a gravi peccato, eoe esse mortaliter malos, si vero sint 

teetns oidinarii, nee diu in eis Bistatur, decent plurimi contra eoedem esse tantum 

%aDtaliter maloe ; quia voluptas ilia non quaeritur extra limites Matrimonii. 

QyesL An uxor possit se tactibus excitare ad Beminationem, si a copula conjugali 
letraxerit, maritus, poBtquam ipse seminaverit, sed antequam seminaverit uxor ? 

IZesp. Plurimi negant ; eo quod, cum vir se retraxerit, actus sit completus, 
adeoque ilia seminatio mulieris foret peccatum pollutionis : alii vero affirmant : 
^nia ista excitatio spectat ad actus conjugalis complementum et perfeciionem : 
«xcipiunt tamen casum, ubi periculnm est ne semen ad extra profundatur. 

ife Bestialiiate, — Ad hoc crimen reducitur congressus carnalis cum d»mone 
is corpore assumpto : quod scelus aggravatur per circumstantiam contra reliffio- 
nem, quatenus includit societatem cum dsmone ; ide6que gravis est et gravusi- 
Bom peccatum contra naturam : consideranda est etiam forma corporis vel bomi- 
JHB, vel bestis, in qua apparet d»mon ; item repraesentatio persons Virginia, mo- 
ifadis^ iic Veriim plerumque praesumendum est, talia aolum fieri per fortem 
imagmationem, quft decipiuntur homines. 

lAe following instruction is given (vol. iv.. No. 287) to the priest when examin- 
ing a young girl (puella) : — ^^ Confessarius prudens omnem evadet invidiam hAc 
BBetbodo : dum puella confitetur se esse fomicatam, confessarius petat, an prima 
vice, i|n4 simile peccatum commisit, expoeuerit circumstantiam amissas vir^itatia. 
Si respondeat categoric^, ita, vel non, cessat difficultas ; et quidem si jam sint 
primas vices statim reponet, jam fuisse primas vices, ade6que soliim ei dici debet, 
st CQOteratur de ilia circumstantia, et eam confiteatur : si taceat, instruatur, iUam 
QicurostaDtiam tutiiia semel exprimendam, adedaue si id nunquam fecerit, jam 
dssaper (Meat et se accuset." See the first and last of these citations in a Sy- 
nopsis of this popiah Theology, edited b^ Rev. Dr. Berg, of Philadelphia. The 
mmainder, with enough similar ones to ml a volume, may be found in the fourtii 
ind sixth volumes of Dens' Latin work. I regard the work of Dr. Berg, which is 
a timoalation of enough of Dens' Theology to show the true character of Popery, 
is a work of immense value. The filthy extracts of this pooish diviae, on toe 
sii^ect of this note, the Doctor has wisely left in the original Latin. 



886 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book â–¼. 



Pil a n ly MiieiiatUm In Spain. Inquiry hiuhed ap on nceoont of tlM ImiWM naafaer of crimtnnli 



confession. About 1560, a bull was issued by pope Pius IV., direct- 
ing the Inquisition to inquire into the prevalence of this crime, 
which begins as follows : — ^^ Whereas certain ecclesiastics, in the 
kingdoms of Spain, and in the cities and diocesses thereof^ having 
the cure of souls, or exercising such cure for others, or otherwise 
deputed to hear the confessions of penitents, have broken out into 
such heinous acts of iniquity, as to abuse the sacrament of penance 
in the very act of hearing the confessions, nor fqaring to injure the 
same sacrament, and him who instituted it, our Lord God and 
Saviour Jesus Christ, by enticing and provoking , or trying to entice 
and provoke, femaks to lewd actions, at the very time when they were 
making their confessions,** 4^., 4^. 

Upon the publication of this bull in Spain, the Inquisition issued 
an edict requiring all females who had been thus abused by the; 
priests at the confessional, and all who were privy to such acts, to 

five information, within thirty days, to the holy tribunal ; and very 
eavy censures were attached to those who should neglect or de- 
spise this injunction. When this edict was first publisned, such a 
considerable number of females went to the palace of the inquisi- 
tor, in the single city of Seville, to reveal the conduct of their in- 
fiunous confessors, that twenty notaries, and as many inquisitors, 
were appointed to minute down their several informations against 
them ; but these being found insufficient to receive the depositions 
of so many witnesses, and the inquisitors bein^ thus overwhelmed, 
as it were, with the pressure of such affairs, thirty days more were 
allowed for taking the accusations, and this lapse of time also 
proving inadequate to the intended purpose, a similar period was 
granted not only for a third but a fourth time. Maids and matr<ms 
of every rank and station crowded to the Inquisition. Modesty, 
shame, and a desire of concealing the facts from their husbancb, 
induced many to go veiled. But the multitude of depositions, and 
the odium which the discovery threw on auricular confession, and 
the popish priesthood, caused the Inquisition to quash the prosecu- 
tions, and to consign the depositions to oblivion.* And thus for 
fear of the disgrace that would be brought upon an apostate church 
and its vicious and corrupt priesthood, these abominable crimes 
were hushed up, and their vile perpetrators permitted, with their 
hands all defilea as they were with the filth of unhallowed lust, to 
minister at the altar, and to enjoy still, in the words of pope Urban, 
** the eminence granted to none of the angels, of creating (rod, the 
Creator of all things.** Well was it for these priests that they did 
nothing worse than to pollute the confessional with their filthy lusts ; 
had they been guilty of the crime, so much more horrible, in the 
estimation of papists, of denying that the bit of bread consecrated 
by hands like theirs was the eternal God, the Lord Christ, with ^ his 
body, soul, and divinity," they would not have slipped through the 
hands of these holy inquisitors so easily. For this latter crime, 
hcmdreds of heretics had, within a few years, been burned alive by 

* Gonstly, 185 ; Lloreiite, 866 ; Limborch, 111; Edgar, 629; Da Costa, l^ 117« 



UF. z.] FOFERT THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1308. 387 



— tg cf hatKUA dtcHM TrtMobUMtltloa. F«wt of Corpoa ChrittL 

>IH8h butchers at Smithfield, and the fires kindled by the bloody 
[mrjf were scarcely extinguished in England, when the events i 
ive just related occurred in Spain. Such is popish morality, and 
ich is popish justice. 

§ 94. — It was in this council also, that the absurd dogma of tran- 
Astaniiaiion* was first enjoined as an article of faith by pope 
iDOcent, who himself stamped upon that doctrine the name by 
hich it has ever since been designated. Since the da^s of Inno- 
mt, what multitudes of holy men and women have expired amidst 
le flames of martyrdom, because they refused assent to this out* 
ige upon common sense, first established as an article of faith in 
le year 1215. The reader, familiar with the days of bloody 
aeen Mary of England, need not be told that a belief in this dogma 
'BB then generally made the test question by popish persecutors, 
p6n the denial ot which the martyrs of that age were consigned 
^ the flames. 

In the words of the learned Archbishop Tillotson, this doctrine 
r Transubstantiation ^ has been, in the church of Rome, the great 
nming article ; and as absurd and unreasonable as it is, more 
hristians have been murdered for the denial of it, than perhaps for 
n the other articles of their religion.? What protestant will not 
(in in the pious exclamation of this excellent prelate and powerful 
pponent of Popery. '' O blessed Saviour I tnou best friend and 
reatest lover of mankind, who can imagine that thou didst ever 
ttend that men should kill one another, for not being able to 
slieve contrary to their senses ? for being unwilling to think that 
IDU shouldst make one of the most horrid and baroarous things 
lat can be imagined, a main duty and principal mystery of thy 
sli^on ? for not flattering the pride and presumption of the priest 
)ko says he can make God^ and for not complying with the folly and 
tupidity of the people who are made to believe that they can eat 

§ 96. — The worship of the Host or wafer was a natural result of 
le monstrous doctrine of Transubstantiation as established at this 
ouncil of Lateran. Accordmgly, we find that this idolatry was 
ocm grafted upon that popish innovation. From the Roman canon 
iw we learn that pope Honorius, who succeeded Innocent III., 
hortly after the council, ordered that the priests, at a certain part 
f the mass service, should elevate the consecrated wafer, and at 
be same instant the people should prostrate themselves before it in 
rorship. {See Frontispiece,) 

About fifty years after the council — that is, in the year 1264 — 
hat celebrated festival, still observed with so much pomp and 
larade in popish countries, called the Feast of Corpus Christie or 
iody of Christy was established by pope Urban IV. In this feast, . 
he wafer idol is carried through the streets in procession, amidst 

* For the historical account of the origin of this doctrine, see above, Book 
w^ Chap. 3, pp. 192—206. 
\ Tillotsoii on Tmnaiihiitantiation, p. 277. 



338 inSTORY OF ROMANISM. [book y. 

Proeearion of Coqnu Chiiici in Romui Catholic countrica 

scones of merriment, rejoicing and illumination, and upon its 
approach all fall down on their knees and worship it till it has 
passed by. The cause of the establishment of this festival of the 
noly sacrament, as it was also called, was as follows. A certain 
fanatical woman named Juliana declared that as often as she ad- 
dressed herself to God, or to the saints in prayer, she saw the full 
moon with a small defect or breach in it ; and that, having long 
studied to find out the simification of this strange app^urance, she 
was inwardly informed by the spirit, that the moon signified the 
church, and that the defect or breach was the want oi an annuil 
festival in honor of the holy sacrament. Few gave attenti(m or 
credit to this pretended vision, whose circumstances were extremely 
equivocal anu absurd, and which would have come to nothing, had 
it not been supported by Robert, bishop of Liege, who, in the year 
1246, published an order for the celebration of this festival through- 
out the whole province, notwithstanding the opposition he knew 
would be made to a proposal founded only on an idle dream. After 
the death of Juliana, one of her friends and companionsy whoiB 
name was Eve, took up her name with uncommon zeal, and hid 
credit enough with Urban IV. to enrage him to publish, in the jMr 
1264, a solemn edict, by which the festival in question was imposed 
upon all the Christian churches, without exception* Diesteinn% a 
prior of the Benedictine monks, relates a miracle^ as one cause 
the establishment of this senseless, idolatrous festival. He tellf 
that a certain priest having some doubts of the real presenoe 
Christ in the sacrament, blood flowed from the consecrated wtftr 
into the cup or chalice^ and also upon the corporate or linen doth 
upon which the host and the chalice are placed. The corporale^ 
having been brought, all bloody as it was, to Urban, the prior tflUr 
us that the Pope was convinced of the miracle, and thereupcm Bpr 
pointed the solemnity of Corpus Christi to be annually celebrated.* 

§ 96. — In all Roman Catholic countries, special honors are paid to 
the wafer idol, as it is borne through the streets either on the festival 
of Corpus Christi, or on any other occasion. In Spain, when a; 
priest carries the consecrated wafer to a dying man, a person with 
a small bell accompanies him. At the sound of the bell, all wbo 
hear it are obliged to fall on their knees, and to remain in that pos* 
ture till they hear it no longer. 

** Its sound operates like magic on the Spaniards. In the midstof 
a gay, noisy party, the word, * Sa MajestacT {his Majesty f the term 
they apply to the host) will bring every one upon his knees until the 
tinkling dies in the distance. Are you at dinner ? vou must leave 
the table ; in bed? you must, at least, sit up. But tne most prepos- 
terous eficct of this custom is to be seen at the theatres. On the 
approach of the host to any military guard, the drum beats, the 
men are drawn out, and, as soon as the priest can be seen, they 
bend the right knee and invert the firelocks, placing the point of the 

* Diestemus, Commen. ad annum 1496 — quoted by Bower vi., 296. 



. X.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. 841 

VIolfliice to a imiiger in Borne for not bowing the knee to the Idol. 

bayonet on the ground. As an officer^s guard is always stationed 
At the door of a Spanish theatre, I have often laughed m my sleeve 
<Lt the effect of the chamade both upon the actors and the company. 
•Dim, Diosj {A God^ A God^ resounds from all parts of the house, 
AQd every one falls that moment upon his knees. The actors' rant- 
ing, or the rattling of the castanets in the fandango^ is hushed for a 
feiir minutes, till tne sound of the bell growing fainter and fainter, 
the amusement is resumed, and the devout performers are once 
more upon their legs, anxious to make amends for the inter- 
ruption,"* 

At such a time as this, wo be to the man, in any Popish country, 
'^vfao refuses to bend the knee, or at least to take off his hat in honor 
of the^ idol. Says Professor S. F. B. Morse, in a work published 
some few years a^o, and who witnessed the celebration of the fes- 
tival of Corpus Christi at Rome, " I was a stranger in Rome, and 
recovering from the debility of a slight fever ; I was walking for 
air and gentle exercise in the Corpo, on the day of the celebration 
of the Corpus Domini. From the houses on each side of the street 
"^Hreie hung rich tapestries and gold embroidered damasks, and 
toward me slowly advanced a long procession, decked out with all 
the heathenish paraphernalia of this self-styled church. In a part 
of the procession a lofty baldichino, or canopy, borne by men, was 
held above the idol, the host, before which, as it passed, all heads 
"Were uncovered, and every knee bent but mine. Ignorant of the 
customs of heathenism, I turned my back to the procession, and 
close to the side of the houses in the crowd (as I supposed unob- 
served), I was noting in my tablets the order of the assemblage. I 
J^as suddenly aroused from my occupation, and staggered by a 
Wovr upon the head from the gun and bayonet of a soldier, wmch 
•t'Uck off my hat far into the crowd. Upon recovering from the 
'«ock, the soldier, with the expression of a demon, and his mouth 
Pouring forth a torrent of Italian oaths, in which il diavolo had a 
P^'ominent place, stood with his bayonet against my breast. I could 
''^^ke no resistance ; I could only ask him why he struck me, and 
''^Ocive in answer his fresh volley of unintelligible imprecations, 
I^Hich having delivered, he resumed his place in the guard of honor^ 
y the side of the officiating Cardinal.^'f Such is the manner in 
^^*>ich those who refuse to bow the knee to idols are treated in 
Impish countries, and such is the way, should Popery become gen- 
?^^ly prevalent and powerful in the united States, that such would 
^^ treated here.J (-See Engraving,) 

* Doblada's Letters from Spain, p. 13. 
^ t Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the United States — ^by Saml. F. 
'^. Morse, Prof, in the University of New York ; p. 172. 

(In Cincinnati, papists have already become sufficiently daring to insult Amer- 
ictn citizens, and knock off their hats unless they render proper homage to the 
popish processions, which are already beginning to make the *' Queen City of the 
West'* resemble some of the popish cities of Europe. I have before me a letter of 
the Honorable Alexander Duncan, at that time a Senator of the State of Ohio, 
d^ed January 10th, 1836, giving an account of such an insnlt o&red to him in 



843 



CHAPTER XL 

CX)NTESTS BETWEEN THE POPES AND THE EMPEROR FREDERICK 

6UELPH8 AND OHIBEUNE8. 

§ 97. — Pope Innocent III. lived but a few months after the coun* 
cil of Lateran. He died on the 16th of July, 1216, and was suc- 
ceeded by Honorius III. During his pontificate, the Isle of Man, 
a small island lying between England and Ireland, now a possession 
of Great Britain, but then an independent kingdom, was ceded by 
its king, Reginald, to pope Honorius, as a fief of the Roman churchy 
and the instrument oi donation was delivered into the hand of Pan* 
dulph, the same Legate of the Pope as received the submission of 
kin^ John. The Legate immediately restored the island to Regi- 
nald, as a gift of the apostolic See, upon his binding himself and 
heirs to pay a yearly tribute to the Pope, as an acknowledgment of 
his vassalage, rrobably this was done in accordance with the claim 
of the popes, that all islands belonged to St. Peter, though one mo- 
tive of this petty sovereign, in thus making himself a vassal of the 
Pope, might be the powerful protector which he should thereby 
secure against the innovations of the king of England, or other 
neighboring sovereigns. 

§ 98. — In the year 1220, the emperor Frederick II., after making 
several concessions to the demands of the pope Honorius, was 
solemnly crowned by him in Rome, upon which occasion, to gratify 
his Holiness, he published the sanguinary laws against heretics that 
have been quoted in a previous chapter. While at Rome, the Em- 
peror also, at the request of the Pope, made a solemn vow to go in 
person on another crusade to the Holy land, and received the cross 
at the hands of Cardinal Hugotin, though for his tardiness for fulfil- 
ling this vow, he excited the anger of Honorius, and still more of 
pope Gregory IX., who succeeded Honorius in the year 1227. 
Indeed almost immediately after his consecration, Gregory wrote a 
menacing letter to the Emperor, threatening him with the thunders 
of the church, if he did not immediately set out on his expedition to 
the Holy land. 

the public streets of that city, because he did not take off his hat in revere n ce of 
a popish foreign bishop, in a procession to consecrate a Romish chapel. On the 
arrival of the procession opposite to where he stood, he was requested to uncover 
his head immediately. The Senator replied that he was in a public street, and 
however much he might respect the forms of the Roman Catholic religion, it iQ 
comported with his dignity as an American citizen to ofier such homage to any 
man. On saying this, he was instantly surrounded by several papists, his hat 
forcibly torn from his head, his clothes torn, and his person abused and beaten. 
Several other Americans on the same occasion, who had the hardihood to stand 
with their hats in the presence of this popish bishop and hid idoUtroua proceasioiiy 
were treated with the same insult and barbarity as Dr. Duncan.— (iSee the 
cf Senator Duncan in the Cincinnati Journal^ January 23d, 1836i} 



CHAP. XL] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1075-1303. 848 



Pnderick*! mieeeH in Pal«rtiiia. Foj^ Gresory IX. makei wmr on the empira in hfai 

Notwithstanding these threats, however, the Emperor put off his 
voyage from time to time, under various pretexts, and aid not set 
out until the year 1228, when, after having been excommunicated 
on account of his delay, by the incensed pontiff, Gregory IX., he 
followed with a small train of attendants, the troops who expected 
with most anxious impatience, his arrival in Palestine. No sooner 
did he land in that disputed kingdom, than instead of carrying on the 
war with vigor, he turned all his thoughts toward peace, and with* 
out consulting the other princes and chiefs of the crusade, concluded 
in the vear 1229, a treaty of peace, or rather a truce of ten years, 
with Melic Camel, sultan of Egypt. The principal thing stipulated 
in this treaty was, that Frederick should be put in possession of the 
city and kingdom of Jerusalem ; this condition was immediately 
executed ; and the Emperor, entering into the citv with great pomp, 
and accompanied bv a numerous train, placed the crown upon his 
Ittad with nis own hands, and having thus settled matters in Pales- 
tine, he returned without delay into Italy, to appease the discords 
ipd commotions which the vindictive and ambitious pontiff had ex- 
cited there in his absence. So that in reality, notwithstanding all 
the reproaches that were cast upon the Emperor by the Pope and 
Ui creatures, this expedition was by far the most successful of anv 
that had been yet undertaken against the infidels in the Holy land. 
\ 99. — The pretended vicar of Christ, forgetting, or rather unwil- 
ling to persuade himself, that his master^s kingdom was not of this 
^Bvrldj made war upon the Emperor in Apulia during his absence, 
and used his utmost efforts to arm against him all the European 
powers. Frederick, having received information of these perfidious 
snd violent proceedings, returned into Europe in the year 1229, 
defeated the papal army, retook the places he nad lost in Sicily and 
in Italy, and in the year following made his peace with the pontiff, 
fiom whom he received a public and solemn absolution. This 
peace, however, was of but short duration, nor was it possible for 
the Emperor to bear the insolent proceedings, and the imperious 
temper of Gregory. He, therefore, broke all measures with that 
headstrong pontifll, distressed the states of Lombardy that were in 
alliance with the See of Rome, seized upon the island of Sardinia, 
which Gregory looked upon as part of his spiritual patrimony, and 
erected it into a kingdom for his son Entius. These, with other 
ateps that were equally provoking to the avarice and ambition of 
Gregory, drew the thunder of the Vatican anew upon the Emperor's 
hea^ in the year 1239. Frederick was excommunicated publiclv, 
with all the circumstances of severity that vindictive rage could 
invent, and was charged with the most flagitious crimes, and the 
most impious blasphemies, by the exasperated pontiff, who sent a 
copy of this terrible accusation to all tne courts of Europe. The 
Emperor, on the other hand, defended his injured reputation by 
•oienm declarations in writing, while, by his victorious arms, he 
aveiified himself of his adversaries, maintained his ^ound, and re- 
daora the pontiff to the greatest straits. To get rid of these diffi- 

31 



844 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book t» 



UnttofpopeGreforylX. fanoctnt IV. excommanicalWBddepoiei Hi u ¥■§■!■ tltuwwMnin ofLffc 

culties, the latter convened, in the year 1240, a general council at 
Rome, with a view to depose Frederick, by the unanimous suffi-ani 
of the cardinals and prelates, that were to compose that assemUy. 
But the Emperor disconcerted that audacious project, by defeating^ 
in the year 1241, a Genoese fleet, on board of which the greatest 
part of these prelates were embarked, and by seizing, with all their 
treasures, these reverend fathers, who were all committed to close 
confinement. Thus were the designs of Gregory frustrated, and 
shortly afterward this restless and imperious pontm died, and was 
succeeded by Celestine IV., who, however, only occupied the papal 
throne eighteen days, before he was removed by death, and made 
way for mnocent I V ., who was chosen to the vacant See in 124S. 

§ 100. — Upon the accession of Innocent, who had always professed 
great friendsnip for Frederick, the friends of the Emperor congrato* 
lated him upon the election of one who would be likely to prove so 
favorable to his interests ; but having more penetration than those 
about him, he sagely replied, " I see little reason to rejoice. The 
Cardinal was my friend, out the Pope will be my enemy .'' Innocent 
soon proved the justice of this conjecture. He ambitiously attempt- 
ed to negotiate a peace for Italy, but not being able to obtain firom 
Frederick his exorbitant demands, and in fear for the safety of lus 
own person, he fled into France, assembled a general council, and 
deposed the Emperor. '' I declare," said he^ '' Frederick IL attainted 
and convicted ot sacrilege and heresy, excommunicated and dethron- 
ed ; and I order the electors to choose another emperor, reserving 
to myself the disposal of the kingdom of Sicily." Frederick was at 
Turin when he received the news of his deposition, and behaved ill 
a manner that seemed to border upon weakness. He called for the 
casket in which the imperial ornaments were kept ; and opening ity 
and taking the crown in his hand, " Innocent," cried he, ** has not yet 
deprived me of thee : thou art still mine ! and before I part with 
thee, much blood shall be spilt,"* 

§ 101. — The council at wnich the Emperor was deposed, was held 
at Lyons in France, in 1245, and is reckoned the thirteenth general 
council. The sentence of pope Innocent, says Bower, ** deprived 
him of the empire, of all his other kingdoms, dignities, and dommionSf 
and absolved his subjects from their allegiance^ forbidding them^ on 
pain of excommunication^ to lend him any assistance whatever/^f It 
IS related also, that in this council the cardinals were distinguished 
by pope Innocent with the red hat, a distinction which has ever 
since been regarded as the peculiar badge of that ecclesiastical dig- 
nity, second in rank only to that of the sovereign pontifil 

Frederick not only refused to submit to the rope's decree of de- 
position, but also punished as rebels those who snould regard the 
mterdict laid upon his kingdom, and should, in consequence thereof^ 
refuse to perform funeral or other services of religion* In this oon* 



* M. Puis, Hist Major. — ^Russell i., page 196. 
t See lives of the Popes, in vitA InnoKseDt IV. 



CKAF. XL] POPERY THE WORLD*S DESPOT-^ D. 1073-lSOS. S4i 



omMBbiperar. Qurrd ortlMPop«wlthFratefck*ftMB 



test, the party of the Emperor was called the Ghibelinesj and those 
who sided with the Pope, the Gttelphs. Frederick did not live to 
cany on this contest Icmg ; he died in the year 1250, as is generally 
thoug^ of a fever, thougn some supposed him to have suffered from 
the Sfects of a dose of poison secretly administered. 

Innocent IV. was in France, when he heard of his death, and 
returning thence in the beginning of the spring of 1251, he wrote to 
all the towns to celebrate the deliverance of the church ; ffave bound- 
less expression to his joy, and made his entry into Milan, and the 
principal cities of Lombardy, with all the pomp of a triumph. He 
supposed that the republicans of Italy had fought only for him, 
aim that he alone would henceforth be obeyed by them ; of this he 
soon made them too sensible. He treated the Milanese with arro- 
gance, and threatened to excommunicate them for not having re- 
spected some ecclesiastical immunity. It was the moment in whidi 
the republic, like a warrior reposing himself after battle, beran to 
fed its wounds. It had made immense sacrifices for the duelph 
party ; it had emptied the treasury, obtained patriotic gifts ftook 
every dtizen who had anjrthing to spare ; pledged its revenues, and 
kiaded itself with debt to the extent of its credit. The ingratitude 
of die Pope, at a moment of universal sufiering, deeply ofiended the 
Ifihmese ; and the influence of the Ghibelines in a city, where, till then, 
they had been treated as enemies, might be dated from that period.* 
Innocent soon found that though his most formidable antagonist was 
dead, there were many surviving of the party which had acknow- 
ledged him as its chief, and after some further contests with the 
dubelines, who continued to offer a steady resistance to the over- 
bearing tyranny of the Pope, he died about four years after Fred- 
erick, m the year 1254. 

§ 102. — ^The immediate successors of Innocent IV. were Alexander, 
Urban and Clement, each fourth of the name. Alexander suc- 
ceeded in 1254, Urban in 1261, and Clement in 1265. The pontifi- 
cates of the two latter were distinguished chiefly by the fierce con- 
tests between the Guelphs, the party of the Pope, and the Ghibe- 
lines, the adherents of the family of the deceased emperor Frederick, 
especially in the kingdom of the two Sicilies. At the accession of 
Urban IV. in 1261, Manfred the son of the emperor Frederick, and 

irittce his father's death), the chief of the Ghibeline party, was 
iraily established upon the throne of the Two Sicilies. The Pope 
saw with great uneasiness his growing power, and the consequent 
increasing influence of his faction. Feared even in Rome and the 
neighboring provinces, master in Tuscany, and making daily pro- 
gress in Lomoardy, Manfred seemed on the point of making the 
whole peninsula a single monarchy ; and it was no longer witn the 
arms of his German or Italian friends that the Pope could hope to 
subdue him. 
The thunders of excommunication, and even the severe sentence 

* Sismoiidi's Itdian RepaUies, chapter hr. 



846 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [boost. 

TIm Popt IbtImi Oharici of A^)oa to Bake war iqno Manfivd. ThtPopa'aeamteMMakvaiai. 

of deposition, had already been tried against the refiractory Man- 
fred, but since the successful resistance of his father FrederiCy 
the terror produced by these spiritual weapons had evidently begim 
to diminish. It was deemed necessary, therefore, by the Fope to 
call in the aid of more substantial weapons than those forgcdi by 
spiritual despotism, and before which the superstitious multitude had 
so often trembled. Accordingly, Urban addressed himself to the brave 
and powerful Charles, Count of Anjou, brother to the king of France 
and sovereign in right of his wife of the county of Provence ; and 
offered to his ambition the splendid prize of the crown of the two Sici- 
lies, upon condition of his subduing the rebellious Ghibeline, Manfred. 
§ 103. — Charles had already signalized himself in war ; he was, like 
his brother, a bii^oted papist, and still more fanatical and bitter toward 
the enemies of the church, against whom he abandoned himaelf 
without restraint to his harsh and pitiless character. His religious 
zeal, however, did not interfere with his policy ; his interest set 
limits to his subjection to the church ; he knew how to manage 
those whom he wished to gain ; and he could flatter, at his need, 
the public passions, restrain his anger, and preserve in his language 
a moderation which was not in his heart. Avarice appeared hiv 
ruling passion ; but it was only the means of serving his ambiticMi, 
which was unbounded. He accepted the offer of the Pope. His . 
wife Beatrice, ambitious of the title of Queen, borne by her three 
sisters, pawned all her jewels to aid in levying an army of dOfiOO 
men, which she led herself through Lombardy. The Count had 

E receded her. Having gone by sea to Rome, with 1000 knights, 
e made his entry into that city on the 24th of May, 1265. 
A new pope, like his predecessor a Frenchman, named Clement 
IV., had succeeded Urban, and was not less favorable to Charles of 
Anjou. He caused him to be elected senator of Rome, and at the 
hands of four of his most distinguished cardinals, conferred on him 
the investiture of the kingdom of Sicily. 

The crafty and ambitious Pope, however, took care to clog this 
ift with conditions, which in effect rendered the count of Anjou, in 
the event of his success, a tributary and a vassal of the Holy See. 
Among other articles, there was one in which Charles engaged to 
take an oath of fealty to the Pope, and to do homage to Clement 
and his successors on the papal throne ; by another article, the 
clergy of the kingdom were to be exempted from all accountability 
to the secular tribunals, in criminal as well as in civil cases ; by 
another, the King was to pay the Pope an annual sum of eight thou- 
sand ounces of gold, and to present his Holiness with a fair and 
goad white horse, ' unum palafrsenum pulchrum et bonum ; and by 
another article the King eng;iged to keep one thousand horsemen 
constantly ready for war, witn arms and equipments, to be em- 
ployed by the Pope in the -Hb/y FTar, or in the defence of the church. 
Upon Charles assenting to these articles of agreement — in which 
it will be seen that the Pope took good care of his own interests — 
he was proclaimed at Rome king of Sicily on the 29th of May, 1205» 



£ 



cur. XI.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. 847 

MHiA«dkitl«tflBtaltl«,raAMedbailal, aadcMilnioaditch. Murder of the yovthM Cteiadta 

and solemnly crowned, with his wife Beatrice, on the 16th of 
January following. 

§ 104. — The victory which Charles soon obtained over Manfred, 
and the death of the latter on the field of battle, restored the ascend- 
ency of the Guelph party, the adherents of the Pope, in Italy. The 
body of Manfred, by order of the Pope's legates, was forbidden, on 
account of his dying while under a sentence of excommunication, 
to be buried in consecrated ground, and was therefore thrown into 
a ditch. Charles exercised his dominion in Sicily with cruelty and 
^gor, and oppressed the Sicilians, as their conqueror, with intolera- 
ble burdens. One act of the tyranny of this obedient vassal of the 
Pope deserves to be recorded as a specimen of his vindictiveness 
ana cruelty. It was about the end of the year 1267 that the young 
Conradin, grandson of Frederic and nephew of Manfred, aged onlv 
lixteen years, in compliance with the invitation which had been pri- 
vately sent him by many of the Sicilian barons, to come and take 
possession of his paternal and hereditary kingdom, arrived at 
verona, with 10,000 cavalry, to claim the inheritance of which tl^ 
popes had despoiled his family. All the Ghibelines and brave cap- 
tains, who had distinguished themselves in the service of his grand- 
finher and uncle, hastened to join him, and to aid him with their 
swords and counsel. Conradin entered the kingdom of his fathers, 
and met Charles of Anjou in the plain of TagUacozzo, on the 23d 
of Auffust, 1368. A desperate battle ensued ; victory long remained 
doubtful. Conradin, forced at length to fly, was arrested, forty-five 
miles from Tagliacozzo, as he was about to embark for Sicily. He 
was brought to Charles, who, without pity for his youth, esteem for 
his courage, or respect for his just rignt, exacted, from the iniqui- 
tous judges, before whom he subjected him to the mockery of a 
trial, a sentence of death : and this interesting and unfortunate 
young prince was beheaded in the market-place at Naples, on the 
26th of October, 1268. Thus by this series of usurpations, oppres- 
sions and cruelties, undertaken by order of the popes, was the pre- 
ponderance of the papal party once more estaolished throughout 
Italy and Sicily.* 

$ 105. — The inhabitants of Sicily, though always distinguished 
for their zealous adherence to the Romish faith, submitted with 
impatience to the foreign yoke imposed on them through the influ- 
ence of the Pope. Oppressed by the victorious French soldiery 
wluch Charles of Anjou nad brought with him into that island, they 
Sffhed for a return of the mild rule of their ancient race of sove- 
retffns, and had formed the desim of expelling their oppressors, 
and establishing upon the throne Don Pedro, king of Arragon, the 
son-in-law of Manfred, and husband of Constance, who was a 
daughter of Manfred, and consequently a granddaughter of Fred- 
erick U. But, says Sismondi, '* Sicily was destined to be delivered 
by a sudden and popular explosion, which took place at Palermo 

* ^ Sismoiidi's Italian RepnUtes, chap. hr. 



348 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book â–¼. 

The BleiltaB Twpcn. Oouneil of Ljrooa. Eimtlkm of Piopt in 



on the 30th of March, 1282. It was excited by a French soldier, 
who treated rudely the person of a young bride, as she was pro- 
ceeding to the church of Montreal, with her betrothed husbano, to 
receive the nuptial benediction. The indignation of her relations 
and friends was communicated with the rapidity of lightniiuz to 
the whole population of Palermo. At that moment the bells oi the 
churches were ringing for vespers : the people answered by the 
cry, * To arms— death to the French T The French were at- 
tacked furiously on all sides, and in a few hours more than 4000 of 
that hated nation were destroyed. Thus the Sicilian vemers over- 
threw the tyranny of Charles of Anjou and the Guelpns ; sepa- 
rated the kingdom of Sicily from that of Naples ; and transferred 
the crown of the former to Don Pedro of Arragon, who was c<xi- 
sidered the heir to the house of Hohenstaufen.** 

§ 106. — The pontificate of Gregory X., who succeeded Clement 
IV. in 1271, is distinguished chiefly by the fourteenth general cownr 
cilj which was held at Lyons in 1274, in which the two principal 
subjects of deliberation were (1), the relief of the Christians in 
Palestine, and the preservation of the conouests of former cru- 
saders, and (2) the reunion of the Greek and Latin churches, which 
had for a long time been alienated from each other. Ambassadors 
were sent to it from the Greek emperor at Constantinople, and arti- 
cles of concord and union between the Greek and the Latin 
churches were agreed upon and adopted, and a euloffjr was pro- 
nounced upon the emperor Michael Palaeologus, and nis son An- 
dronicus, by the Pope, in the fourth session of the council, as the 
chief authors and promoters of this union. During the sessions of 
the council, the Pope and cardinals prevailed upon the archbishop9y 
bishops, and abbots, to grant the tenth part of their income for toe 
relief of the Christians in Palestine for the space of six years. But 
the most memorable act of this council was the law relative to the 
mode of electing a new pope, by which the cardinals were required 
to be shut up together in conclave during the election. The doors 
were to be caremlly watched and guarded, so as to prevent all im- 
proper ingress or egress, and everything examined that was car- 
ried in, lest it should be calculated to influence the election. If the 
election were not over in three days, they were to be allowed but 
one dish for dinner ; and if protracted a fortnight longer, they were, 
after that, to be confined altogether to bread, wine, and water, and 
a majority of two thirds of the cardinals was required to make a 
lawful election. This famous law, though with some modifications, 
has been continued in force to the present time. 

§ 107. — Some time before this, the Pope had sent a letter of re- 
monstrance and warning to Henry, bishop of Liege, in relation to 
his vicious life. Of this letter the followm^ is an extract. ** We 
hear," says the Pope, "with great concern, £at you are abandoned 
to incontinence and simony, and are the father of many children, 
some bom before and some after your promotion to the episcopal 
dignity. You have taken an abbess oi the order of St Benecuct 



XL] VOPEMY TBB WOUJyS DBaBPOT— A. D. lOTS-lSOS. S49 



for your c<»cabiiie, and bave boosted, at a public entertainment, of 
your having had fourte^i children in the space of two-and-twenty 
months. (!) To some of your children you have given benelBces, 
and even trusted them, though under age, with the cure of souls. 
Others you have married advantageously at the expense of your 
bishopric In one of your houses, called the park, you keep a nun, 
and when you visit her you leave all your attenduits at the gate. 
The abbess of a monastery in your diocese dying, you annulled the 
canonical election of another, and named in her room the daughter 
of a count whose son has married one of your daughters ; and it is 
said that the new abbess has been delivered of a child by you." 
One would have thought thai these charges were sufficient to ren- 
der the mitred criminal worthy of immediate deposition, but the 
Pope only exhorted him to lead a different life, and warned him that 
umless he should reform his mamters, he should he obliged to pro* 
oeed against him. As he continued, however, to persevere in his 
course of open and shameless vice, he was compelled by the Pope, 
during the sessions of the council, to resign his bishopric This 
notorious specimen of ecclesiastical profligacy was at last killed by 
some nobleman, whose female relative he had dishonored, and (as 
we are informed by the historian) left behind, at his death, no less 
than sixty-five illegitimate children I* While it is not denied that 
in this instance, the horribly vicious man who disgraced the episco* 
pal office was, ultimately^ deposed for his crimes ; yet it affords a 
lamentable and striking illustration of the state of morals among 
the Romish clergy of that age, that a bishop could retain his office 
while engaged in such a course of open and notorious profligacy, 
long enough to warrant him in making the shameless boast at a 
pumic entertainment, mentioned in the above letter of the Pope. 

$ 108.— Gregory X., though of a much milder character than 
Hildebrand or Iimocent III., yet did not hesitate, when occasion 
offered, of acting upon the odious maxim of these two popes — ^that 
the pope of Rome is lord of the world, and possesses an authority 
over all earthly princes and potentates. Thus, for instance, in the 
year 1271, when the empire was claimed by Alphonsus of Castile, 
to whose pretensions the Pope was opposed,! he wrote an imperi* 
Oos letter to the German princes, commanding them to elect an em- 

^ CSbncfl., torn, zi., p. 922 ; Magnum Chroo. Belgie. ; Bower, yi., 396. 

f See the letten d[ the Pope to AlphonsuB, in the Annab of Raynaldns, tbt 
eonlinnator of Baronias, ad Ann. 1274. As the great work of Barontui and 
BLaynaldna has already been, and will yet be, freqaently referred to, and is a work 
of great weight and authority among Romanists, I would remark in this place, 
that cardinal Baionius was bom in 1638, made a Cardinal by pope Clement vHI. 
fai 1696, who also appointed him librarian of the Apostolic See. U{x>n the death 
of Clement in 1606, he came near beinff chosen pope, as he had thirty votes of 
the cardinals in his &vor. He undertook his Annals when 30 years of age, and 
after collecting and digesting materials, published the first volume in 16fo, and 
ftm twelfth, which condudes with the year 1198, was published in the year of his 
teth 1607. Bazonius left materials for three more volumes, which were used by 
EaynakLos in his conrtnnarton of the work, from 1196 to 1634 




850 mSTORY OF ROMANISM. [bookt. 

Under pope Nicholas IIL, the pepel itatee become entirely Independent of the eoiplM. 

peror without delay, and assuring them that unless they immediately 
complied with his wishes he would save them the trouble by choos- 
ing one for them.* This threat was effectual, and Rudolph of Haps- 
burg was elected. 

§ 109. — Pope Greffory died in 1276, and after Innocent V., 
Adrian V. and John XaL, whose united reigns amounted to but a 
little over a year, was succeeded by the famous cardinal Tohn 
Cajetan, who was elected Pope in November, 1277, and took the 
name of Nicholas III. It was under this Pope, as has already been 
mentioned, in the chapter on the temporal power of the popes (see 
page 178), that the last tie of the dependence of the popes upcm 
the empire for their temporal sovereignty was broken. The cir- 
cumstances were these : — The chancellor of the empire had caused 
homage to be done to his imperial master, Rudolph, in the cities of 
Bologna, Ravenna, Urbino, &c., belonsin^ to the states of the 
church. The Pope thinking the time had come to break off this 
nominal dependency on the empire, remonstrated, and Rudolph at 
once yielded to his wishes. Tne Pope then forwarded copies of 
all the grants (both pretended and real) of former emperors, and 
accompanied them with a new form of donation which he wished 
Rudolph to grant. The Emperor, knowing that he was chiefly in- 
debted to pope Gregory, one of the predecessors of Nicholas, for 
his own elevation, and that he needed the powerful support of the 
Pope against his own enemies, complied immediately with his re* 
quest, and granted the document confirming all former grants, as- 
signing the limits of the papal territory, and releasing for ever the 
Pope and his successors from all dependence for their dominion 
upon the empire.f 

§ 1 10. — ^Nicholas III., who had thus augmented the authority of the 
Roman pontiffs, and placed their temporal sovereignty on a securer 
basis than ever before, died in the year 1281, and was succeeded 
by Martin IV., a pope who was inferior in arrogance and ambition 
to but few of his predecessors. As evidence o? this may be men- 
tioned his excommunication of the emperor of Constantinople^ 
Michael Palseologus, in 1281, for pretended heresy and schism, and 
for having broken the peace concluded between the Latin and 
Greek churches at the council of Lyons, a few years before, and 
also his excommunication the following year, of Don Pedro, king of 
Arragon, whose kingdom he also placed under an interdict, on ac- 
count of his opposition to Charles of Anjou, whom, as we have seen, 

* pFBDcepit principibus Alemannis electoribas, ut de Romanonim rege, sicot 
sua ab antiqua et approbata consuetudine intereiut, providerent, infra tempus eis 
td hoc de Papa Gregorio statutum : alias ipse de consensu Caidinalium RoaUmi 
imperii providere vellet desolationi. (Urstisii German Histor.y ii., 93. Oietder, 
it., 234.) 

f Raynaldi Annal. ad Ann. 1279. Also, Annales veteres Mntinensiom (inMu- 
latorii Script Rer. Ital.) : De anno 1277 : ** Rodolphus Rex Romanonim donavit 
Civitatem jBononias et Comitatum RomandiolsB PapaB Nicholas m., et sic Ec- 
clesia Romana facta fail domina Ularum civitatum et terrarum.** 



auKZL] VOPESLY THE WORLDS DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1308. 851 



llMkliif orAmfoa. The Mntcnee dlHcgard«d. Pops CdMtiDe the iMnrit 

E^pes Urban and Clement had aided in usurping the sovereignty of 
dly. Bat the terrors of these spiritual thunders had, for some 
years past, been gradually diminishing, and but little regard was 
paid by Don Pedro to the sentence of the Pope. Martin, therefore, 
proceeded to issue on the 22d of March, 1283, his papal bull, de- 
pocing him from his kingdom of Arragon, absolving his subjecis 
Dom their allegiance, and forbidding them on pain of excommuni- 
cation to obey nim, or to give him the title of King, and granting 
his kingdom to any prince who would seize it ; out of so little 
account was all this regarded by the king of Arragon, that we are 
iofoiined he was accustomed to call himself, by way of derision of 
the Pope's sentence, ^ Don Pedro, a gentleman of Arragon, the 
fiitber of two kings, and lord of the sea."* 

Tlie*fiict is, that the long period of successful papal usurpation 
and tyranny was now rapidly drawing to a close. The gloom and 
darimess which had so long brooded over the world, was in many 
placea beginning to disappear, }>efore the glimmering light of 
mcreasing intelligence, and returning common sense. The mon- 
itious and tyrannical doctrines of Gregory VII. and Innocent III. 
had almost had their day, and emperors and kings had well niffh 
ceased to tremble at the nod of the spiritual tyrant of Rome, or like 
Henry of Germany, or John of Englaud, humbly to sue for the 
priyilege of kissing his foot, or prostrate to kneel at the feet of his 
hegatef and accept their crowns from his hands, to be worn as 
his yanals and tributaries. The period of papal usurpation intro- 
duced by Hildebrand, was rapidly drawing to a close, and in nine 
vears after the death of pope Martin, which took place in 1285, the 
MMSi of the popes properly belonging to this period, ascended the 
]Nipal throne. 

9 111. Honorius IV., Nicholas IV. and Celestine V., successively 
<xx:upied the chair of St Peter during these nine years. Of the 
^wo former it is sufficient to say that, in their efforts to maintain 
^the papal authority, they trod in the steps of their predecessors. 
^he last named was a venerable old man of irreproachable morals, 
"who had lived for years the life of a hermit. The circumstances of 
lui election were as singular as the fact of a holy man bemg elected 
"was rare. After the death of pope Nicholas, the cardinals, who 
were divided into two opposing parties, had spent more than two 
years in the vain attempt to agree upon a successor ; when one of 
them, after mentioning this hermit, inquired '* why should we not 
put an end to our divisions and elect him ?^ and in a sudden burst of 
enthusiasm the proposal was unanimously adopted ; and the old 
hermit, much against his will, was persuaded to leave his retreat, 
and assumed the name of Celestine V. But it was an uncommon 
thing to see a man in the chair of St Peter, who had even the repu- 
tation of sanctity, and the austerity of his manners was a tacit 
reproach upon the corruption of the Roman court, and more espe- 

* Villani, lib. vii., cap. 86, quoted by Bower, â–¼!., p. 323. 



852 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [book â–¼. 



A g^oi mam for Pops ! Penaa4ed to iwiga, aa nnwofthy of the oAco. Timmf of DinMhw VIB 

cisdly upon the luxury of the cardinals, and rendered him extremely 
disagreeable to a degenerate and licentious clergy ; and this dislike 
was so heightened by the whole course of his administratioii« 
which showed that he had more at heart the reformation and purity 
of the churchy than the increase of its opulence and the propagatioa 
of its authority, that he was almost universally considered as unwor- 
thy of the pontificate. Hence it was, that several of the cardinals^ 
and particularly Benedict Cajetan, who succeeded him, advised him 
to abdicate the papacy, which he had accepted with such reluctance, 
and they had the ^easure of seeing their advice followed with the 
utmost facility. The good man resigned his dignity the fourth 
month after his election, and died in the year 1296, in tne castle of 
Fumone, where his tyrannic and suspicious successor kept him in 
captivity, that he might not be engaged, by the soUcitations of his 
friends, to attempt the recovery of his abdicated honors. 

§ 112. — Cardinal Benedict Cajetan, after thus persuading the kact- 
fensive old man to resign, was himself, as he had anticipated, ele- 
vated to the popedom in the month of December, 1294, and assonied 
the name of Boniface YIII. The effi>rts of Boniface to exercise 
the despotism of Hildebrand were carried to a length that amounted 
almost to a phrenzy. But these insane attempts were behind the 
age ; it was half a century too late, and his mad sallies of ambition 
and passion resembled only the convulsive struj^gles of an expiring 
man. They were, in fact, the death-throes of papal tyranny ana 
despotism. His most famous struggle, which is all we shall relate^ 
was with Philip the Fair, king of France, on account of the levies 
made by that prince on the enormous revenues of the deny, to 
aid in supporting the expenses of the state. With the hope ofstop- 
ping these exactions, the Pope issued a bull, known by the initial 
words Clericus laicoSf absolutely forbidding the clergy of every 
kingdom to pay, under whatever pretext of voluntary grant, gift, or 
loan, any sort of tribute to their government without his especial 
permission. Though France was not particularly named, the kins; 
understood himself to be intended, and took his revenge by a prohi- 
bition to export money from the kingdom. This produced angry 
remonstrances on the part of Boniface ; but the GaUican choral 
adhered so faithfully to the crown, and showed indeed so nruieh wil- 
lingness to be spoiled of their money, that he could not • insiat tqpon 
the most reasonable propositions of his bull, and uhimately allowed 
that the French clergy mi^ht assist their sovereign by voluntary 
contributions, though not by way of tax. For a very few yeara 
after these circumstances, the Pope and king of France appeared 
reconciled to each other. 

§ 113. — In the first year of the fourteenth century, however, a 
teirible storm broke out on the following occasion. A certain 
bishop of Pamiers was sent by the Pope as his nuncio, and had the 
insolence to threaten the King with deposition, unless be complied 
with the demands of his Holiness, in whom, he asserted, was vest^ 



.] POiCRT THB WQSLira DESPOT— iL D. 107S-130S. SSS 



att pawoTf baik sfirUmal and temparmi ;* in conseqaeiice of wUch 
bebaTior, Philip considering him as his own subject, was proYokAd 
to put him Doder arrest with a view to institute a criminal proceM* 
Boniface, incensed beyond measure at this violation of ecclesiastical 
and kgaline privil^es, published several bulls addressed to the 
kflig and dergy of France, charging the former with a variety of 
o fa ic ea , some of them not at all c(xiceniing the church, and com- 
manding the latter to attend a council which he had summoned to 
meet at Rome. In one of these instruments he declares in concise 
smd clear terms that the king was subject to him in temporal as weU 
as spiritual matters. Philip replied by a short letter in the rudest 
hnpiage, and ordered the rope's bulls to be publicly burnt at Paris. 
Determined, however, to show the real strength of his oppositiont be 
â– ommoned representatives firom the three orders of his kingdom. 
This is comuMMily reckcMied the first assembly of the States-Gen- 
eral A. D. 1908. The nobility and comm(N[is disclaimed with firm- 
neas the temporal authority of the Pope, and conveyed their senti- 
ments to Rome through letters addressed to the coll^[e of cardinals. 
The clergy endeavored to steer a middle course, and were reluc- 
tant to enter into an engagement not to obey the Pope's summons, 
dHHigh they did not hesitate unequivocally to deny his temporal 
jariadiction. 
§ 114. — Boniface opened his council at Rome, and notwithstand- 

3r the king's absolute prohibition, many French prelates held them- 
ves bound to be present. In this assembly Boniface promulgated 
kis famous constitution, denominated Unam Sanctam. This is one 
of the most remarkable documents ever issued by the popes. 
It maintains that the church is one body, and has one head (the 
Pope). Under its command are two swords, the one spiritual and 
the other temporal. But I will let the decree speak for itselfl 

''Uteiqaeestinpotestrnteecclesisispir- Either sword is in the power of the 

Itoslis scilicet gladios et roaterialis. Sed church, that is to say, the spiritual and 

ii qoidem pro ecclesi^ ille vero ab ec- the material. The former is to he used 

»lesi4 ezercendas: ille sacerdotis, is (y the church, but the latter fir the 

^ana legum ac militum, sed ad nu- church. The one in the hand of the 

ItUM BT PATERTiAif SACERDOTIS. Opor- priost, the Other in the hand of kings and 

let aotem gladium esse sub ^ladio, soldiers, but at the will ahd PLSiiSuaB 

%t temporalem auctoritatem spiritual! or the priest. It is rifl^t that the tern* 

^â– bfici potestati. Porro subesse Ro- poral swoid and authority be subject to 

aujN) poHTiFia OMHi HUMANE CREA- the Spiritual power. Moreovxx wx db- 

^oaJB declaramus, digqctts, defihimus, glare, sat, defihx, ahd prosouiicb 

VT VSOSTTIICIAMUS OMlfDIO ESSE D£ KECE9- THAT EVERT HXrMAll BBIRO SSOOLD BX 

SRATX fidel" {Extrav., lib. i., tit 8, c. subject to the Romar POBTirr, to bx 

1.) AR ARTICLE OF RBCESSABT FAITH. 

Another bull issued by the Pope at this time, commands all 
persons of whatever rank, to appear when personally cited before 
the audience or apostolical tribunal of Rome : " since such is our 
pleasure, who, by divine permission, bulb the wobld." 

^ Raynald Annd., ad Ann. ISOa 



354 mSTORY OF ROMANISM. [book w^ 

DtiUiofBoiiifafeeVIlL Decline oftliepoirfrofpapMylhai this 



§ 115. — As Philip treated the bulls of the Pope with neglect and 
contempt, Boniface issued a bull of excommunication agamst himy 
and made an offer of the crown of France to the emperor Albert L 
This prince, however, felt no eagerness to realize the liberal prom- 
ises of Boniface, who was on the point of issuing a bull, absolving 
the subjects of Philip from their allegiance, and declaring his for- 
feiture, when a very unexpected circumstance interrupted aU his pro- 
jects. In the assembly of the states at Paris, king Philip preferred 
virulent charges against the Pope, denying him to have been legiti- 
mately elected,* imputing to him various heresies, and ultimately 
appealing to a general council and lawful head of the church. 
Without waiting, however, to mature this scheme of a general 
council, Philip succeeded in a bold and singular attempt' Nogaret, 
a minister who had taken an active share in all the proceed- 
ings against Boniface, was secretly dispatched into Italy, and, join- 
ing with some of the Colonna family, proscribed as GhibelinB, and 
rancorously persecuted by the Pope, arrested him at Anagnia, a 
town in the neighborhood of Rome, to which he had gone without 
guards. This violent action was not, one would imagine, calculated 
to place the King in an advantageous light ; yet it led accidentally 
to a favorable termination of his dispute. Boniface was soon res- 
cued by the inhabitants of Anagnia ; but rage brought on a fever, 
which ended in his death. 

§ 116. — ** The sensible decline of the papacy,** says Hallam, "is 
to be dated from the pontificate of Boniface VIIL, who had strained 
its authority to a higher pitch than any of his predecessors. There 
is a spell wrought by uninterrupted good fortune, which captivates 
men's understanding, and persuades them, against reasoning and 
analog, that violent power is immortal and irresistible. The spell 
is broken by the first change of success. Imprisoned, insulted, de- 
prived eventually of life by the violence of Philip, a prince excom- 
municated, and who had gone all lengths in defying and despising 
the papal jurisdiction, Boniface had every claim to oe aven^^ by 
the inheritors of the same spiritual dominion. When Benedict XL, 
the successor of Boniface, perhaps learning wisdom from the fete 
of his predecessor, rescinded his bulls, and admitted Philip the 
Fair to communion, vidthout insisting on any concessions, he acted 
perhaps prudently, but gave a fatal dIow to the temporal authority 

of Rome.^t 

With the death of Boniface we close the present divisicm in our 
History of Romanism. In taking leave of the centuries during 
which Popery reigned Despot of me World, we are not to suppose 
that the popes subsequent to Boniface VIIL, ever discarded, or 
indeed that the Romish church either at that time, or at any subse- 
quent period* has formally renounced the doctrine, which the popes 

* The reason for thb charge, which was also preferred bjr the powerful fiunily 
of the Colonna at Rome, against Boniface, waa that the resignation of pope Celtti* 
tine was not valid or legal, and was eflfected by means of Boniface. 

f Hallam's Middle .^^(es, chap. vii. 



I 



\ XL] F(H>ERY THE WORLD'S D£SPOT— A. D. 1073-1303. BU 

- - • 

iBd aMhufMlile In iu prlneiplaL What Popery te, and what It haa ban 

of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries used to justify their usurpa- 
ticms. By no means. The memory of Saint Gregory VIL, to 
papists, is as fragrant as ever. Popery is unchanged and unchanoe- 
ABLK. It is not, tnerefore, to' be supposed that the successors of Boni- 
fiice had renounced the right of deposing kings and ruUng the nations 
with a rod of iron, because theperiod of Popery the World's Despot 
is said to close with that pontiff but only that by the successful oppo- 
sition of Philip of France, to this haughty and imperious Pope, this 
aasumption of universal dominion over the whole earth received 
such a check, that future pontiffs were deterred from carrying the 
doctrines of Gregory VIL into practice with the same boldness or 
to the same extent as Hildebrand himself or his successors and 
imitators of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 

In future periods we shall discover evidences that this doctrine 
was by no means abandoned, as in the instance of pope Pius Y., 
and Elizabeth of England, and others ; but we shall see that in 
fiiture periods the power of the pontiffs became so sensibly dimin- 
ished, tnat in order to carry into effect their maledictions against 
the sovereigns of the earth, the knife of the assassin or the torch of 
the incendiary were needed in addition to the spiritual fulminations 
(rf'the Vatican. 

In closing our account of this most memorable period in the his- 
tory of Romanism, extending from Gregory VII., to Boniface VIIL, 
the more than two centuries during which Popery sat on the throne 
of the earth, and reigned Despot of the World, we cannot do better 
than borrow the words of the eloquent Hallam. ^ Five centuries 
have now elapsed, during every one of which the authority of the 
Roman See has successively declined. Slowly and silently reced- 
ing from their claims to temporal power, the pontiffs hardly pro- 
tect their dilapidated citadel from the revolutionary concussions of 
modem times, the rapacity of governments, and the growing averse- 
Qess to ecclesiastical influence. But, if thus bearded by unmannerly 
and threatening innovation, they should occasionally forget that 
cautious policy which necessity has prescribed ; if they should 
attempt (an unavailing expedient !) to revive institutions which can 
be no longer operative, or principles that have died away, their 
defensive efforts will not be unnatural, nor ought to excite either 
indication or alarm. A calm, comprehensive study of ecclesias- 
tical history, not in such scraps and fragments as the ordinary par- 
tisans of our ephemeral literature obtrude upon us, is perhaps the 
l^est antidote to extravagant apprehensions. Those who know 

WHAT ROME HAS ONCE BEEN, ARE BEST ABLE TO APPRECIATE WHAT BHB 
IS ; THOSE WHO HAVE SEEN THE THUNDERBOLT IN THE HANDS OF THE 
GrBGORIES and THE InNOCENTS, WILL HARDLY BE INTIMIDATED AT THB 
SALLIES OP DECREPrrUDE, THE IMPOTENT DART OF PrIAM AMID THB 

crackuno ruins op Trot T* 

* History of Middle Ages, page 804 



856 



CHAPTER XIL 

PUBOATORT, INDULGENCES, AND ROMIBH JUBILBB8. 

§ 117. — The establishment by Boniface VIII. of the Romish Ja 
bilee, a periodical festival at which indulgefices were granted to 
all who should visit, during the Jubilee year, the churches of St 
Peter and St. Paul at Rome, presents us with a suitable opportunity 
of tracing the orioiiv of indulgences ; or of the power claimed 
by the popes, for certain pecuniary or other considerations, of re-> 
initting the temporal penalties annexed to sin in this life, and of 
shortenini^ or remitting altogether the period of mstkrins in the 
flames oi the imaginary /^ur^atory, to which the souls of the de> 
parted were to be consigned after death. It is a part of the faith 
of Romanists, that a satisfaction in the place of these punishments 
has been instituted in what they call the sacrament of penance, and 
that the Pope has the power of remitting that satis&ction. This 
act of remission is called an indulgence ; it is partial or complete, 
as the indulgence is for a stated time or plenary, and the conditions 
of repentance and restitution are in strictness annexed to it 
Throi^h this doctrine the popes were, in fact, invested with a vast 
controlover the human conscience, even in the moderate exercise 
of their power, because it was a power which overstepped the 
limits of the visible world. But when they proceeded, as, accord- 
ing to Dean Waddin^ton, " they did proceed flagitiously to abuse 
it, and when, through the progress of that abuse, people were 
taught to believe, that perfect absolution from all the penalties of 
sin could be procured from a human being ; and procured too, not 
through fervent prayer and deep and earnest contrition, but by miU' 
tary service^ or by pilgrimage^ or even by gold — ^it was then that 
the evil was carried so far, as to leave the historian doubtful whe- 
ther anything be anywhere recorded more astonishing than the 
wickedness of the clergy, except the credulity of the vmgar."* 

§ 118. — That this pretended power of granting indulgences was 
unknovm to the ancients, is evident from the writings of Romish 
authors themselves. Thus in the work of Alphonsus against here- 
sies, under the title of indulgences he makes the following candid 
admission, " Among all the matters of which we treat in this w<»rkt 
there is no one which the Scriptures less plainly teach, and of which 
the ancient writers say less." While we assent fully to the truth of 
this remark, for the plain reason that there can be no quantity less 
than nothing at all, we cannot agree with the remark which fol- 
lows — ** nevertheless indulj^ences are not on this account to be de- 
spised, because the use of them seems to have been late received 
in the church." Alphonsus then proceeds to a remark, the truth of 

* Waddington's Chuich Histoiy, p. 629. 



CBAF. zn.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1308. 857 

inMiODeai vakBOwn to tlie aoeleats. CoafMwd bjr Roauoitot BuUiom. Fiction ct P«rg«iofy 

which cannot be doubted in relation to the doctrines of his own 
church — ^ There are many things of which the ancient writers 
were altogether ignorant, that are known to those who lived in a 
later age ' posterioribus."* After thus plainly speaking out the 
troth, he proceeds to inquire — ^" what is there so wonderful then, 
that, in relation to indulgences, it should happen that among the an- 
cients there should be no mention of them ? Although,'' he adds, 

^THE TESTIMONY OF THE SACRED ScRIPTURES MAT BE WANTING IN 
FAVOB OF INDULGENCES, YET HE WHO DESPISES THEM IS DESERVEDLY 

AooouNTED A HERETIC,*' &c. Lct the reader mark this extract 
wdl» as it declares, without disguise, what is the doctrine of Popery, 
ill distinction from the grand protestant principle. — * The bible and 
TBM BIBLE only.' — Ou accouut of its importance the original of this 
extract is given in the note.* 

A similar testimony to the novelty of popish indulgences is 
giyen by Polydore Virgil, another famous Romish author, who, 
â– fker stating that Boniface VIII. was the first who introduced the 
Jubilee and granted indulgences, ' pcenarum remissionem,' to those 
'mho visited the thresholds of the apDstles, then adds in words which 
are worthy of special attention, ^ and then the use of pardons, which 
ikey call indulgences, began to be famous, which pardons, for what 
cause, or by what authority they were brought in, or what they are 
good for, much troubles our modem divines to show.''t 

** If we could have any certainty concerning the orisrin of induh 
gences^ says Cardinal Cajetan, *' it would help us mucn in the dis- 
(^sition of*^ the truth of Purgatory : but we have not by writing 
any authority either of the holy Scriptures, or ancient doctors, 
Greek or Latin, which afford us the least knowledge thereof." J 

§110. — The truth is, that Romish indulgences, such as were 
granted in the days of Boniface VIIL, and in the time of the crusades. 
Were dependent for all their supposed importance upon the fiction of 
Purgatory. The comparatively triflmg penances enjoined in this 
Ufe, remitted by indulgences, were looked upon as of small account. 
tt was the pretended power of the popes to remit hundreds or thou- 
ftands of years of the tortures of purgatory, or, as in the case of a 
[lerson who should die immediately after receiving plenary indul- 

^ Inter onines res de qnilraB in hoc opere dispotamtiB, nulla est quam minus 
mpefte tacRB liters prodiderint, et de qua minus vetusti Scriptores dixerint . . . 
ii8i|ne tamen hac occasione sunt condemnande indolgentiiB quod earum usus in 
•edesia videatur sero receptus : quoniam multa sunt posterioribus nota, qusa 
fetQ«ti illi Scrii)tore8 prorsus ignoraverunt. . . . Quid ergo mirum si ad hunc 
modom continent de indulgentiis, ut apud priscos nulla sit de els mentio ? . . . 
Etsi pfo indulgentiarum approbatione sacns ocripture testimonium apertum deait, 
tunen qui contemnit, hiereticus merito censeatur, &c^ (Alfhons, de Casito, Ad» 
wr. Haares., lib. 8, IndtdgerUiay as cited in the Cripplegate lectures.) 

i Ac ita venUsrum quas indvigeraias vocant jam turn usut eekiris esMe Wfil, 
que qua de causa, quave ex auctoritate inducts fuerint, aut quantum valere Tide- 
Mtor, noetri recentioree thedogi ea de re egregie laborant (JPolydor YirgH^ d^ 
tmenL Btrum, lib. 8, cap. 1.) 

I De Ortu hidulgehtiarum si certitude habere posset, Terittti indiganda 
InieC, d^. iOget, de Indulg, Opuic., torn. 1, tract 16, cap. 1.) 



358 HISTORY OF ROMANISM. [boqkt. 

Puigitory eitabliahed the Imporuace of Indaliancea. Origtai of the paifBtodui flstfok 

gence, to send the soul at once to heaven, without stopping at all 
at these purifying, but tormenting fires — it was this that gave to 
indulfi;ences all their importance, and that enabled those who thus 
blasphemously pretended to this power over the invisible world, to 
videld such a tremendous influence over the ignorant and supersti- 
tious, and not only to enhance their authority, but to enrich their 
coffers at the expense of the deluded and terror-stricken multitude. 

Now, as it is impossible for the source to rise higher than the 
fountain, the invention of indulgences must be subsequent to that of 
purgatory, and as the latter can boast no higher origin than the age 
of Gregory, about the close of the sixth century,* or at the very ear- 
liest, the time of Augustine, who died in 430, of course the doctrine 
of indulgences must be of still more recent date. 

§ 120. — Augustine, according to the learned £dgar,t seems to have 
been the first Christian author, who entertained the idea of purify- 
ing the soul while the body lay in the tomb. The African Saint, 
though, in some instances, he evinced judgment and piety, die- 
played, on many occasions, unqualified and blaring inconsistency. 
His opinions on purgatorian punishment exhibit many instances of 
fickleness and incongruity. He declares, in many places, against 
any intermediate state after death between heaven and hell. He 
rejects, in emphatical language, *' the idea of a third place, as un* 
known to Christians and foreign to revelation.'' He acknowledges 
only two habitations, the one of eternal glory and the other of end- 
less misery. Man, he avers, *' will appear in the last day of the 
world as he was in the last day of his life, and will be judged in the 
same state in which he had died.";]; 

But, notwithstanding this unequivocal language, Augustine is, at 
other times, full of doubt and difficulty. The subject, he grants, 
and with truth, is one that he could never clearly understand. He 
admits the salvation of some by the fire mentioned by the Apostle. 
This, however, he sometimes interprets to signify temporal tribula^ 
tion before death, and sometimes the general connagration after the 
resurrection. He generally extends this ordeal to all men without 
any exception : and he conjectures, in a few instances, that this fire 
may, as a temporary purification, be applied to some in the interval 
between death and the general judgment. This interpretation, 
however, he offers as a mere hypothetical speculation. He cannot 
tell whether the temporary punishment is " here or will be hereafter ; 
or whether it is here that it may not be hereafter." The idea, he 

* Gabriel Biel, on the Canon of the Mass, lect. 67, saith, " We most confess, 
that before the time of Gre^ry (Anno 596), the use of indulgences was very little 
if at all known, bat now me practice of them is grown frequent." Dicendnm 
quod ante tempore B. Gregorii, modicus vel nuUus fuit usus Indulgentiarum, nunc 
autem crebrescit usus earum. (G. Biel, lect. 67.) 

f See Edgar's Variations, ch. xvi. passim. 

I In quo enim quemque invenerit suus novissimus dies, in hoc eum comprehei^ 
det mundl novissimus dies ; quoniam qualis in die isto quisque moritor, talis in di9 
iUo judicabitur. (Augustin, ad Hesych,, 2, 743.) 



MMf. zn.] POPERY THE WORLD'S DESPOT— A. D. 1073-1803. S59 

■ — '-'^ — 

imftaiBe*t tad O wf wj r't otneare hlnta relative to Piugmtorj. IneooriilaBt wtth <HMMlfn. 

gnatSf is a supposition without any proof, and ** unsupported by any* 
canonical authority.'' He would not, however, ** contradict the pre- 
wmption, because it mi^ht perhaps be the truth.'** 

Augustine's doubts show, to a demonstration, the novelty of the 
porgatorian chimera. His conjectural statements and his cUfficurity 
ot decision afford decided proof, that this dogma, in his day, was no 
•iticle of faith. The saint would never have made an acknow- 
ledged doctrine of the church a subject of hesitation and inquiry. 
Be would not have represented a received opinion as destitute of 
eaiomcal authority: much less would he have acknowledged a 
Wven and a hell, and, at the same time, in direct unambiguous 
Iniguage, disavowed a third or middle place. Purgatorv, mere- 
fbce» in the beginning of the fifth century, was no tenet of theology, 
ix^^istine seems to have been the connecting link between the ex- 
^dtamm and reception of this theory. The fiction, after his day, was, 
(wing to circumstances, slowly and after several ages admitted into 
ftcmianism. 

The innovation, however, notwithstanding the authority of Au- 
IMtine and the Vandalism of the age, made uow progress. A loose 
liidi indetennined idea of temporary punishment andatonement after 
iaath, floated at random through the minds of men. The super- 
â– lilKm, congenial with the human soul, especially when destitute of 
Piligious and literary attainments, continued, in gradual and tardy 
advances, to receive new accessions. The notion, in this crude and 
faidiffested state, and augmenting by continual accumulations, pro- 
oaeaed to the popedom of Gregory m the end of the sixth century. 

( 121. — Gregory, like Augustine, spoke on this theme with striking 

indecision. The Koman pontiff and the Afi"ican saint, discoursing 

en venial firailty and posthumous atonement, wrote with hesitation 

ittd inconsistency. In his annotations on Job, Gregory disclaims 

111 intermediate state of propitiation. " Mercy, if once a fault con- 

'lign to punishment, will not, says the pontiff afterward return to 

MidcnL A holv or a malignant spirit seizes the soul, departing at 

^eath firom the body, and detains it for ever witho