Trid. In the edition of this "Index," set forth by the Trent fathers, which was published in 1570 by Plantin at Antwerp, we find, accordingly, at page 69, this same article, but without a comment, viz. " praxis et taxa officina pœnitentiariæ Papæ." It should seem, therefore, that the fretence alleged, of their corruption by the Heretics, is an addition of a subsequent period, and not an allegation of the Trent Fathers. Probably it was added after the publication of Du Pinet's book; for we find it in the "Index," as published at Madrid, in folio, 1612, where it stands, at page 87, "praxis et taxa officinæ pœnitentiariæ Papæ ab Hæreticis depravata." We speak this from our own knowledge, having these several copies before us. Bayle has cited from an edition made at Geneva in 1667; of course by Protestants; and a transcript from those of Rome and Madrid. And even upon this statement, which is that of the Court of Rome itself, we leave it to our readers to say, whether there be not most clear evidence, that a Book of Rates, such as the Protestants have given in their translations, was really published from authority at Rome. We shall see also that it continued in use, and was publicly acted upon, long after the Reformation. For, laying aside the testimony of Richer, as alleged by Huddleston in his "Divine Truths vindicated in the Church of England," in the middle of the sixteenth century lived Espence or Espencæus, a learned Romanist, who wrote Commentaries on the Epistle of St. Paul to Titus; in which he reprobated, in the strongest terms, the corruptions of the Court of Rome, and particularly its venality. For which good deed his book was prohibited in the Appendix to the Index of the Trent Council. And, for what we know, the work itself may now be not easily to be met with. It has, however, been so often cited, and its contents recorded in so many books, that they cannot now be questioned; and we shall, below, give a very full extract, most irrefra gably decisive upon the point which we are now agitating.

Some years after the publication of this Commentary, Antoine du Pinet, native of Besançon, and a Protestant (for now we come to the Protestant witnesses), translated this book into French, and added notes.

* That is, "Appendix to the Index of the Council of Trent;" meaning, we apprehend, the one put out immediately after the holding of that Council. When prohibited by later decrees it is so stated.

+ See Mr. Granville Sharp's "Inquiry whether the Description of Babylon, in the Revelations, agrees with Rome."-Page 49.

See the Indices above cited, viz. Rome 1787, page 92; and Madrid 1612, page 28; where it is prohibited, "donec corrigatur." In the Low Countries it seems it was purged by omitting all these passages. See "Index Expurgatorius," &c, by Jusius Argentorati. 1609.

It appears sufficiently, from the extract given in Bayle, that he used very strong language; yet we do not find that he was arraigued as having acted unwarrantably in this, still less, that he was charged as having either forged or falsified any of the particulars which he professed to give to the world as true. His work contained the original Latin, as well as the translation; and to the Protestants, to whom he addressed it, he even made an apology for laying before them what, from its indecency, could not but shock their eyes. Printed, as it was, at Lyons, and circulated through France, it was suffered to pass as a true and genuine work. We do not even find it in the "Index" of Rome, unless it was supposed to be included in the general prohibition above cited. Thus matters went on in France, until the middle of the next century; when, in 1651, Lawrence Banck, a learned Swede, but professor in the university of Franeker in Holland, published a new edition of the original, collated with other old editions and a manuscript; so as to make it, in some respects, more complete. He added also explanatory notes.* This was followed, in 1664, by another edition at Bois-le-Duc; and the Protestants having continued all this time to upbraid the Court of Rome with the abominations contained in this book; some attempts were made by the Romanists to get rid of this stigma; but this was not done by pretending that the work was a mere forgery, as it is now said, but by charging the act, as well as the infamy of it, upon the particular Popes, or their officers; and declaring, that the Romish Church always looked upon those rates with horror. Such was the language of the Abbé Richard, in his Answer to Jurieu's Préjugés légitimes contre le Papisme. It appears too, that, about the same time, that is, in the year 1685, Pinet's work, or the original Book of Rates, it is not very clear which, was prohibited by the Archbishop of Paris in a pastoral letter.

Such was the ample discussion which this subject met with in France and other places on the continent; all, most assuredly, tending completely to overthrow the pretence set up, in these times, that this Book of Rates was a mere forgery of the Protestants. In England it does not appear to have excited so much notice. It had never been printed here under the authority of the Popes, and probably very few copies indeed could have got over to this country. It was not, however, unknown, and is, occacasionally, we believe, referred to in the Popish controversy. But the book itself, or parts of it, as we are enabled to state, was translated into

It should be observed that, in the "Index" of Rome 1787, this book of Banck's is prohibited simply, and without any comment or the slightest intimation that it is a fabrication. Page 21.

English, and given, with observations of considerable length, in the year 1625, being a jubilee year, to which, indeed, allusion is made in the titlepage. We shall subjoin pretty large extracts from it; both on account of its being so scarce a book, and, also, because it shews no small degree of ability in the editor, who, though he does not give his name. was probably known at the time, as there are two copies of commendatory verses in Latin prefixed, one of them with the subscription "amoris ergo posuit, G. F." Besides, the reference made to the original, as being in the library of an English divine, must have furnished a clue for discovery. That both the translation and the translator should be so little known, we must ascribe to the "wilie Jesuites," as they are called; who, doubtless, took no less pains to suppress the translation, than they used to do away every trace of the original. Indeed our copy seems, with difficulty, to have escaped their hands; for it is defective, having some pages wanting at the end, and the title-page being supplied in manuscript and evidently by a hand of one near that age. It has, on the first leaf,

A Preparative to the Jubilee at Rome or the Rates of the Pope's Custom-House. Sent to the Pope as a New Yeare's Guift from England, this Yeare of Jubile, 1625."

Then comes a second title-page, as follows:

"The Rates of the Pope's Custom-House, or certaine select Sections and principall Heades of that strange Romish State-Booke, called the Taxe or Rates of the Apostolical Chamber and Chancerie, and also of the holy Penitentiary Apostolicall at Rome. Written long ago, and compiled in the Consistorie and Courte of Rome and published by the Pope's Authoritie, first at Rome, afterwards at Paris, and sent up and down the world; and, of late Times craftilie suppressed by the wilie Jesuites, but now brought to light againe and presented to the World new, out of one of the Bookes printed by themselves, and is yet to be seene in the Librarie of an English Divine.-Job, 20, 27. The Heavens shall revile bis • iniquitie.'"

Next follows an Index of the Heads of the Chapters; and an Adver tisement, to which we particularly beg the attention of our readers, as it will shew how the case stood here, near two hundred years ago; and how, even while the book itself was reprinting in France (for there was, as the reader will recollect, an edition printed there in 1625), the wilie Jesuites, as our author calls them, were endeavouring to persuade the good Protestants, as well as Papists, out of their senses.

"To the English reader, whether Protestant or Papist, be be a true Catholique, or a Romane.

An Advertisement to help his understanding in the reading of this strange book.

"I hope the learned will give me leave to informe the lesse skilfullreaders, (such, especially, as have beene unacquainted in the Pope's proceedings and Romish markets) in some particulars, wherein otherwise they can hardly satisfie themselves. As, first, it will be objected by them that maintaine their owne religion, or, rather, Romish faction, by such tricks, that all this is but counterfeit, and falsely fathered upon them, to their disgrace. But, hereto, I answer; first, the originall booke in Latine, out of which this is taken and translated is their owne, and none of ours, and printed amongst themselves at Paris, more than an hundredth yeares agoe, being first made, and printed at Rome, in the dayes of Pope Leo the Tenth, and the booke itself remaines in a publique library ready ever to be shewed for the justification of our sincere dealing herein, and the satisfaction of all such as shall make doubt thereof.

"This evidence is true, and dare abide the test; yet for further cleering of the truth, take one more, against which the very enemies shall not except. Know, therefore, (good reader) that, howsoever this ungedly booke pest currant, and relisht well enough in Rome and Italy; yet, when it came into France, it tasted not so well, but contrariwise, was so harsh and unpleasant, nay, so loathsome and odious to thein, who had any sense of sin, or sparks of God's feare in them, as (though they were otherwisa Papists) yet they cried, shame upon this booke and the makers, and patrons of it: amongst whom, Claudius Espencæus, a doctor of Sorbonne, one of the most learned of that time, noble by his blood, but more by his learning and good life, a bishop before hee dyed, and designed to be a cardinall, (but, as one writes, he was too good, as John de la Casa was too bad, and so both of them mist the red hat); Espenceus, I say, was both so honest, and so hardy, as, not only publikely in the pulpit, but even in private, to reprove this shamelesse strumpet, by laying open to the world's view, the vilenesse and villany of this booke: whose very words, because they speak home to the point, and containe a most excel, lent and irrefragable evidence for the truth and the true Church, and worthy to be kept as a never-dying witnesse against the Whore of Babylon, and her spirituall abominations, I hold well worthy to bee heere inserted; the rather, seeing, since the Jesuites prevailed to abuse the world, those worthy Commentaries of Espencæus, that formerly were so frequent in learned men's hands, are now so sought and snatcht up every where and burnt, by those wily inquisitors, as they are now very hard to

Thuanus Hist. Lib. 16. Ad An. 1555.

"

come by. Thus then speakes this Popish, yet honest, Bishop, in his learned Commentaries upon Titus, having cryed out upon the horrible abuses reigning in the Court of Rome, especially the setting to sale of all sorts of sins; he proceedeth, and saith :-(Ipsa verba Espencæi.*)" Ficta sint hæc, et in odium Romane sedis ab hæreticis jactata, si non quod ait et conqueritur ille velut PROSTAT, et IN QUESTU PRO MERETRICE SEDET, liber palam ac publice hic impressus hodieque ut olim venalis, Taxa Camera ceu Cancellaria Apostolica inscriptus," &c.-(In English)-Let all this bee held faigned, and falsely charged upon us by the Lutherans, were it not that the booke itself, being come from Rome, is openly set to sale, and, as the poet saith, even like a strumpet offers itselfe to all that will but pay the price, being here publikely imprinted, and every where ven. dible, as well at this day as in former times, and beares this shamelesse title, The Taxe or the Rates of the Chamber, and Chancerie Apostolicall. A booke, wherein (if thou couldest not) thou mightest learn to sinne; and he, that is so minded, may come to the knowledge of more wickednesse, than was yet ever discovered in all the summists, and summaries of vices that bee in the world: and for all those sinnes, there is offered to all that will pay for it, absolution for what they have done; and, to many, license for what they shall doe. I spare to name them, for the very names of some of them are enough to make an honest heart to tremble. It's more than marvell, that in the time of this dangerous scisme, when so many fall dayly from the church, so shamefull a booke should not bee suppressed, which is no better than a very index, pointing men the way to the most foule and hatefull sinnes; so as, I am persuaded, there was never set out in Germany, Switzerland, nor among any of our enemies that be fallen from us, any booke that ever bred more scandall, or did more hurt to the Romane Church.

"And yet, so farre is it from being supprest at Rome, by our great statesmen there, as contrariwise, the licences and impunities for these abominations, are, for the most part, daily renewed and confirmed in the commissions, and faculties of those Nuncioes or Legats that bee sente from thence to us, who have power not only to legitimate all kinds of bastards, of never so damnable copulations, and to give leave even for adulterers to marry, but to dispence even with forgery, symony, perjury, robbery, schisme, heresie, and not onely to absolve them from the sinne, but to enable them to be capable of benefices, dignities, and honours: nay, to absolve murderers, (and one book excepts not so much as the villaine that shall wilfully kill his owne father or mother, wife or childe) nay

Comment, in Tit. Cap. 1 Digress. 1.