sions, for it is a new Tridentine Church, devised by the Roman Bishops; at Trent. It is most certain, that the first eight general Councils inculcated no doctrines, that are not received and recognized by the Protestant Established Church; and it is equally certain, that the Emperors presided in, and held complete control over them; which is acknowledged by the learned Cardinal Cusanus, who lived in the 15th century, and admits, that they enjoyed a complete supremacy in the first eight general Councils. -De concordia, lib. iii. chap. 16.-He also said, "It becomes not any man to say, that the most sacred Emperors, who, for the public good, did make many constitutions concerning the election of Bishops, collation of benefices, and regulation of religion, could err."-Idem, lib. ii. c. 46. When Italy was wrested from the Grecian Emperors, by the treason of the Bishop of Rome, whe procured Charlemagne to be erected Emperor of the West, in the year 800; that Monarch and his successors maintained a complete supremacy in the Church till the year 1078; and a full power to nominate both Popes and Bishops was confirmed to them by different general Councils; to Charlemagne in the year 800, in a Council held at the Lateran, by Pope Adrian.-Gratian, in decret. dist. 63, c. Adrian. 22. -When Otho I was raised to the Imperial Throne, in the year 964, he was empowered to do the like, in a Council convened at the Lateran, under Pope John XXII. and the decree for that purpose is to be seen in Luitprandus, lib. vi. cap. 21, and in Gratian, cap. xxiii. dist. 63.

While the Emperors maintained that salutary control over the Church, which the British Monarchs do, its doctrines remained pure, and answered the purposes of its Divine Founder. They knew that religion mingles with the warmest affections of the heart, and has a material influence on the civil duties, and on the moral and political principles of men; and therefore they prevented the Popes from framing or inculcating any doctrines whatsoever, without their consent. As I mean, in my next letter, to give an account of Gregory VII.'s usurpation of the supremacy in the year 1073, I shall briefly relate here, the incidents which enabled him to accomplish it. Before the reign of Constantine the Great, the first Christian Emperor, the Churches, being considered unlawful assemblies, could not receive any property by legacy or otherwise, any more than the community of the Jews. But Constantine the Great, in the year 321, published an edict, by which he allowed all persons to leave whatever property they chose to the Church, particularly to the See of Rome; in consequence of which it acquired immense wealth. L. 4. c. Th. de episc. et clericis.-In the year 725, Leo, Emperor of Constantinople, published an edict against the worship of images, which he justly considered as a vestige of pagan idolatry. The violent opposition which Pope Gregory II. gave to this decree

raised the indignation of the Emperor, and produced a quarrel between him and the Pope; who, in consequence, incited the people of Italy to rebel, and to renounce their allegiance to Leo. Cardinal Baronius, the Pope's own historian, acknowledges" that Gregory II. caused the Romans and Italians to revolt entirely from their obedience to the Emperor." An. 730. -The Cardinal said also, applauding this infamous breach of duty and allegiance in the Pope, that, "he left a worthy example to posterity, that heretical Princes should not be suffered to reign in the Church of Christ, if, being warned, they were found pertinacious." Annals anno 730 Sigonius, "de regno Italiæ," a Popish historian, acknowledges, that the only crime of the Emperor was, his prohibiting the Worship of Images : "eo uno crimine, quod imaginibus se inimicum præbuerat." Gregory, dreading the resentment of the Emperor, who was preparing an armament to punish him for his treason, applied to the Court of France; and the following incident tended to crown his wishes :-Pepin, Mayor of the Palace, had recently usurped the French throne, after having deposed his liege Sovereign, Childerick III. He was therefore as desirous of the Pope's spiritual gifts, to cloak the deformity of so base an action, with the broad mantle of religion, as Gregory was of his arms. The Pope, at his instance, absolved the French people from their oaths of allegiance to Childerick, and procured Pepin to be crowned and anointed by the Archbishop of Mentz. In return for this, Pepin not only protected Gregory against the Greek Emperor, but conquered and expelled the Lombards, who had lately seized the Exarchate of Ravenna, the Marquisate of Ancona, and the Dukedom of Urbino, and had even threatened Rome; and he invested the Pope with the sovereignty of these territories. This laid the foundation of that immense power, which the Roman Pontiffs afterwards acquired, and maintained, till Buonaparté, another Usurper of the French throne, deprived the Pope of these dominions, after the Pontiff had placed the Crown on his head, and varnished over his usurpation with a shew of sanctity.

The following incident, as Guicciardini observes (chap. 4.) contributed materially to the establishment of the Papal supremacy. On the removal of the seat of empire to Constantinople, the authority of the Emperors decayed in consequence of their absence, which increased the power of the Popes; for then they had no superior at Rome; and their immense wealth, which enabled them to rival the pomp and splendour of Sovereign Princes, conduced very much to exalt them in the opinion, not only of the inhabitants of Rome, but of all Italy, and prompted them with a criminal ambition of renouncing their allegiance to the Grecian Emperor.

On the separation of Italy from the Constantinopolitan Empire, Char

lemagne, the first Emperor of the West, was indebted to Pope Leo III. in the year 800, for his election, which took place at Rome.

Machiavel observes on this: "Rome began to have an Emperor of the West again, and though the Popes used to be confirmed by the Emperors, before that time; the Emperor now, on the contrary, was obliged to be beholden to the Pope for his election: by which the empire began to lose its power and dignity, and the Church to advance itself, and extend its authority, daily, more and more, over temporal Princes." History of Florence, lib. i. MELANCTHON.

CONSISTENCY.

To the Editor of the Protestant Advocate.

SIR; I am a clergyman, in a very humble situation, but I hope that I have those principles of honour, and conscience, about me, which would not disgrace persons of the highest rank. I have ever admired, though in lowly station, that loftiness of spirit which will not stoop to inconsistency. The Author of our Nature gave us the passion of Pride, to preserve us from such degradation; and when it is so employed, it ceases to be a sin. You may, therefore, judge, Sir, how much I have been shocked, at what I have read in the public prints concerning the Chancellors of the two Universities. I would sooner, had I been Chancellor of either of them, suffered the last extremity, than have presented a Petition to the House of Lords, in the prayer of which I could not "willingly and ex animo" join ; especially considering, that the Chancellor is, and must be deemed a party in every petition; for no petition, from either University, can be received, either by the King or Parliament, unless it be drawn up and presented in the name of the Chancellor, &c. Had I been Lord Grenville, I would have acted thus; -I would have protested against the insertion of my official designation; I would have refused to be the carrier of a document which did not meet my ideas of propriety;-and if nothing else would avail to relieve me from the painful task of seeming to ask for that, which, in my judg. ment, ought not to be granted, I would have resigned my office of Chancellor of Oxford, and have left the University to elect another who could act more cordially with its members. The Chancellor of Cambridge (as I gather from the Newspapers,) seems neither to have declared himself for, or against the Petition which he presented. have been right in a personage of such elevated rank as the Duke of Gloucester; but I could not have done so. With me, doubt, is once to be resolv'd;" and however courtesy might induce me to act în the ordinary affairs of life; yet, in a case of such vital impor

This may

once to be in

tance to my country-before I could have presented a Petition such as that from Cambridge-I must have been actuated by something more powerful than dead neutrality. As to the High Steward of the University of Cambridge-the Newspapers inform us, that he complained of the want of due notice of the day on which the propriety of petitioning was to be discussed. The Master of Trinity College, however, the Bishop of Bristol, proved, that longer notice than usual was given; and I am persuaded, that had the previous notice been longer still, the majority in favour of the Petition would only have been the greater. Of Lord Hardwick I could say much; but I refrain; the regard which I have for one nearly connected with him, (his chief secretary in Ireland,) represses every emotion of political resentment. Mephibosheth was saved for Jonathan's sake; and betwixt that gentleman and myself there was once a confidential intimacy somewhat resembling that which arose out of the oath between David and the Son of Saul.

Dec. 12, 1812.

I am, Mr. Editor, Yours, &c.

A CLERGYMAN.

PETITION OF THE LONDON CLERGY.

We have received a copy of the Petition of THE CLERGY OF LONDON, in their corporate capacity, to the House of Lords; presented by their Diocesan, the Lord Bishop of London. A similar Petition, mutatis mutandis, was presented to the House of Commons, by Sir William Curtis, Bart. one of the Members of Parliament for the City of London. We are happy to give this document a place in our miscellany; and happier still shall we be, to find the highly-respectable Clergy of this great metropolis, as individuals, co-operating with us in resisting the efforts, and exposing the artifices of the Romanists; and adorning, by their learned labours, the pages of the PROTESTANT ADVOCATE; the Editor of which has had the honour to call the London Clergy his brethren for the space of nearly thirty two years.

To the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of the Kingdom of Great Britain

and Ireland in Parliament assembled.

The humble Petition of the London Clergy, incorporated by the title of the President and Fellows of Sion College, within the City of London.

SHEWETH,-That your Petitioners, having witnessed the efforts repeatedly made of late years, to procure further indulgences for persons

professing the Roman Catholic religion, cannot but contemplate with great solicitude the probability of those efforts being speedily renewed.

That your Petitioners, therefore, regard it as their bounden duty, humbly to express their most serious apprehension of the dangers likely to arise from the removal of those restrictions and disabilities, to which the Roman Catholics are now subject, and from enabling them to hold offices of the highest trust and authority, and even to sit in the imperial Parliament, to legislate for a Protestant Church and State.

That your Petitioners, while they are the firm advocates of religious toleration, as recognized by the laws of this country, and desirous that its blessing may continue, cannot but feel alarmed at the evils to be apprehended from depriving the Established Church of that mild ascendancy which it now enjoys; and they cannot but deprecate the adoption of measures which would, as they conceive, be a departure, in a leading and important instance, from the acknowledged principles of our Constitution.

That your Petitioners are humbly of opinion, that the restrictions and disabilities now subsisting with respect to the Roman Catholics are not in themselves either oppressive or unjust, and that they continue to be no less indispensably requisite than heretofore, for the maintenance and security of the Church Establishment against those whose principles, when carried into effect, have ever been found incompatible with true Christian toleration, and subversive of civil and religious liberty.

That, in stating this, their humble opinion, your Petitioners cannot but recollect, that the safeguards of which they deprecate the removal, have been proved by long experience to be necessary; that they were established by our ancestors, at a period when our laws and liberties were fixed on a solid basis, and the crown of these dominions was limited by the Act of Settlement to the Protestant Succession.

Your Petitioners therefore most humbly pray, that your Lordships will, in your wisdom, continue to preserve those safeguards, which, under Divine Providence, have been the firm support of our national Constitution in Church and State, and of the title of our revered Monarch and his august family to the throne of of this United Kingdom.

Given at Sion College, under our common seal, this 29th day of Novem ber, in the year of our Lord 1812.

TO THE PUBLIC.

It is true that we stand pledged, in some degree, to print the following anonymous letter: yet, it is really so poor, so con