themselves of it to gain a supremacy over Sovereign Princes, and procured sentences of deposition to be pronounced against both, by two councils, held in the years 1102 and 1116.

The successors of Gregory VII. endeavoured to tread in his steps, and to maintain all his usurpations; for Victor III, who succeeded him, in a council convened by him åt Benevento, ratified the whole of them; and an anathema was denounced against any layman who should confer, and against any Ecclesiastics who should accept from them, any benefice in -the Church, by four councils; viz. one held at Rome in 1099, another in 1102, one at Vienne the same year, and another at the Lateran in 1116. The Popes having assumed the blasphemous and extravagant titles of Vicegerent of God, and Vicar of Christ, thought their power limited, as long as Kings and Emperors were not subject to them, even in temporals; and therefore, from the days of Gregory VII, they claimed a power of deposing Princes, of absolving subjects from their oaths of allegiance, and transferring their dominions to others.* This was easily accomplished, as there 'were, always, ambitious Princes ready, for their own ends, to invade and seize the territories of a deposed Sovereign, under a religious pretence, when they had the Pope's warrant for that purpose; and a Prince thus denounced by the Sovereign Pontiff, had less reason to dread the assaults of foreign enemies, than domestic treason from his own subjects, whom the Clergy could, and were bound by oath, to raise in rebellion against him.

It would exceed my circumscribed limits to enumerate and describe all the schisms which took place between rival Popes, after the usurpation of the supremacy by Gregory VII. A concise statement of a few of them, will suffice to shew its fatal effects. In the year 1080, the peace of Christendom was disturbed by the schism between Clement III, and Gre gory VII. In the year 1118, began the schism between Gregory VIII and Gelasius II; and the latter dying, it was continued between Gregory and Calixtus II, who was chosen in the room of Gelasius. The emperor sup

* By the fourth Lateran Council, the Pope is empowered and commanded to do so, and to extirpate heretics. Concil. apud Binium, tom XI, pp. 148, 149. The Councils of Constance and Basil state this to be among those councils which all Popes must swear to maintain, to the least tittle, even to the shedding of their blood." Usque ad unum apicem servare, usque ad animum et sanguinem defensare et prædicate. Concil. Const. Sess. 39. Basil. Sess. 37.

The observance of its decrees is strictly enjoined by the Council of Trent, which declares it to be a General Council, and pronounces one of its definitions to be the voice of the whole Church. Sess. 14, c. 5. The proceedings of the Council of Trent are recom mended to the Students in Divinity of Maynooth College, in the publication entituled Tractatus de Ecclesia Christi, written by a professor in that seminary.

ported Gregory, but the Kings of England and France were for Calixtus; though the English Clergy and Laity were divided in their opinions; but Calixtus, with the assistance of a powerful army, having taken his rival prisoner, put an end to the contest. After the death of Adrian IV, in the year 1159, a most grievous schism took place between Victor IV and Alexander III, which, for nineteen years, disturbed the peace of Europe. During this contest, in which some of the Cardinals chose one Pope, and some the other, Alexander insisted that canonization was the peculiar prerogative of the Roman See, and also that of conferring the regal dignity; which he presumed to bestow on Alphonso, King of Portugal; and yet he was afterwards condemned and deposed as an Anti-pope.

But the most grievous schism of all, was that which began in the year 1378, between Urban VI, and Clement VII, Urban kept his court at Rome, Clement at Avignon. The Germans, Hungarians, English, and some nations in Italy, supported the former, the Spaniards and French the latter. Urban created fifty-four Cardinals, and Clement thirty-six. This schism lasted about fifty years; or according to others, (who account the schism of Felix against Eugenius as part of it, because it sprung from it) seventy years; during all which time, except the interval between Clement and Felix IV, there were two opposite lines of succession to St. Peter's chair, derived from two antagonist infallible Pontiffs; till Felix, whom the council at Basil set up against Clement, on the earnest intreaty of the Emperor, surrendered his pretensions to the Popedom, and left Nicholas V, successor to the line of Urban, sole Pontiff in the Holy See. During the continuance of this schism, there were sometimes three competitors for the Popedom.

Of all sects of Christians, Roman Catholics should be the least inclined to upbraid the Church of England with schism; for the line of succession has been so often broken by it, that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to determine which of two or three Popes was the true successor of St. Peter, supposing that Apostle to have been Bishop of Rome. Platina, ap eminent historian of the Roman Catholic persuasion who wrote the lives of the Popes, in the 15th century, observes,*" the Papacy was come to that pitch, that he who exceeded, not in piety and learning, but in corruption and ambition, obtained that dignity; good men being rejected and oppressed; which custom, would to God, our age had not sometimes retained." It must be allowed, that there were contests for the Popedom, previous to the usurpation of Gregory VII, but they were of short continuance, as the Emperors speedily put an end to them, by the salutary control of

Plat, in vità Sylvestri III.

their supremacy; of which I gave unquestionable proofs in my first letter, page 216.

In my third letter, page 304, I gave copious extracts from the General Councils and Canon Law of the Romish Church. I shall now mention the Popes who were chiefly concerned in framing the latter. Gratian, a Monk of the 12th century, collected a body of decretals, called "Con'cordia discordantium Canonum;" and Alexander III, who gave it the sanction of law, was, as I have already stated, deposed, as a schismatic. The rest were Gregory LX, Boniface VIII, Clement V, and John XXII,* all sanguinary and ambitious, traitors to their Princes, and butchers of Christendom, by the destructive wars which they raised. Then come "the Clementines and Extravagants;" all those laws contained in a book called "Collectio diversarum Constitutionum et Literarum Romanorum Pontificum;" and in one called" Epistolæ Decretales Summorum Pontificum," in three volumes; also in another, called "Ecloga Bullarum & Motuum propriorum." We may add to these, the Summa Pontificum," the 7th book of the Decretals, and the Penitentiary Taxes of the Romish Chancery.t

The excellent Doctor Jeremiah Taylor, Bishop of Dromore, justly observes on this mass of blasphemous and discordant canons :-" That a Christian Bishop should impose, and a council of Christian Bishops and Priests should tie upon the consciences of men, such burdens which they can never reckɔn, never tell over, never know, never understand; and that they should do it then, when a Christian Emperor had given advice, that the decrees and canons should be reduced to a less number, and made to conform to the laws of God, is so sad a story, so unlike the spirit of Christ, and to Government Apostolical, that it represents the happiness of Christendom, that they are not obliged to such laws, and the unhappiness that would be upon them, if the Pope had the rule and real obligations of the consciences of Christendom."‡ How different are the sentiments of Doctors Troy and Milner, and the Plowdens on this subject? In my third letter, pp. 308, 309, I have quoted their own words, in which they insist that the Decretals and Ecclesiastical mandates of the Pope, are as infallible as General Councils, and that they are to be received as coming from

* He was the scandal and shame of human nature, and was deposed for his crimes, a catalogue of which would make a volume. It is truly ridiculous that the word holiness" should be applied to such monsters.

+ An edition of it, published in the year 1715 in London, was reprinted in 1809, and is to be found, in an octavo volume, entitled "Occasional Essays on various Subjects," printed by Robert Wilks, Chancery Lane, for John White, Fleet Street. See Prot. Adv. p. 457, and p. 474.

Of the power of the Church in canons and censures, p. 299.

Christ. Let the apologists for modern Popery reflect upon this. I shall now shew the reader some of the persecutions which were produced by the cruel and sanguinary canons of the Church, which I stated in my third letter, and which were fabricated by the Popes for the purpose of extending and maintaining their supremacy, by a system of terror. In my second letter, I enumerated some of the treasonable conspiracies, insurrections, civil wars and massacres which the ruthless ambition of Gregory, its founder occasioned. The persecution of the Waldenses, who suffered most severely, began in the year 1197, under Pope Alexander III; was continued under Innocent III, and lasted till the close of the 16th century. But the worst of all religious butcheries, was that of the Albigenses; of whom Innocent III, (presiding in the 4th Council of Lateran, in the year 1215,) caused a million to be extirpated, by massacres, tortures, burnings, and other violent deaths, and deprived their Sovereign, Raymond, Count of Thoulouse, of his crown. He persecuted the Paulini, (called in Italy Paterini, from pati to suffer); and he had 70,000 of them put to death, plundering, burning, and confiscating their property. The only charges against them were, their denying the prelates' power to grant indulgences, disbelieving the fire of purgatory, the miracles of the Church, transubstantiation, the worship of images and the Virgin Mary. His coadjutors in these barbarous cruelties were the infamous Italian spy Francis, and the Spanish assassin Dominic, who have been sainted!!!

The Bohemians were cruelly persecuted, as heretics, by Papal mandates, issued by Urban VI, Martin V, and Pius II, in the 14th and 15th centuries. Pope Martin V, in his epistle to Alexander Duke of Lithuania, who had received the Bohemians into his protection, writes thus: If thou hast been any ways induced to promise to defend them, know, that thou couldst not pledge thy fidelity to heretics, the violators of the holy faith; and that thou mortally offendest, if thou dost observe it." Spondan. ad. an. 1422. 1. p. 779. Urban VI. declared the same to Winceslaus, King of the Romans and Bohemians, and that any compact entered into with heretics, even though confirmed by oath, was null and void. (Bulla Urbani sexti in biblioth. D. R. Cotton, & Crackenthorp. defens. Eccle. Ang. cap. 83. p. 626.) John Huss and Jerome of Prague were burnt by the Council of Constance, A.D. 1414, as heretics, notwithstanding the safe conduct granted by the Emperor Sigismund to the former, and by the members of that synod to the latter. Luther would have shared the same fate at Worms, but for the firmness of Charles V, who would not suffer his safe conduct to him to be violated. That Emperor, though he acted right in this instance, was a grievous persecutor, for Grotius, an author of undoubted veracity, says, that not less than 100,000 persons perished by VOL. I. [Prot. Adv. July, 1813.]

4 A

the hands of the executioner, as heretics, by the orders of that Emperor (Annals, lib. 1.) Father Paul states them at 50,000.

It is well known, that in the rise of the reformation in Scotland, Cardinal Beaton had many persons burnt and banished for heresy; and that nothing but fight saved, from his sanguinary fury, Buchanan himself, whose genius, notwithstanding his political errors, did honour to his country, and to the age in which he lived. Beaton (or Bethune) presented to the King a roll of 360 of the chief nobility and Barons, whom he suspected of, and meant to have tried for heresy; and the Earl of Arran was first person in that black roll.*

Queen Mary gave her subjects the strongest assurance in Council, that she would permit every person to follow the dictates of his conscience in matters of religion; and yet, when firmly established on her throne, she promoted the burning of her Protestant subjects as heretics, and had the law enjoining it re-enacted. In the massacre of St. Bartholomew, planned with all the coolness of deliberation, 100,000 Protestants were butchered, and as soon as it was known at Rome, Pope Gregory XIII testified his approbation of it, in the most public manner, by calling a consistory at St. Mark's, where "he, in a speech, expressed great joy on the occasion, praised the perpetrators of that massacre, decreed that they should return thanks to the Almighty for so signal an advantage obtained for the Holy See, and that a jubilee should be published all over Christendom." When the Duke of Alva was leaving the Low Countries, of which he had been governor but five years, he boasted, that in that short space, he had dis

The reader will find all this in Spotswood's, in Keith's Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, in Drummond, in Buchanan, in Sadler's Letters and Negotiations, and in Lesley de rebus gest. Scot."

The Earl of Aran assured Sir Ralph Sadler, that he saw that bloody roll, Sadler's Letters, &c. p. 101.

Drummond, in his History of Scotland, p. 330, tells us, that the Clergy worked on the avarice of the King, to persuade him to second their sanguinary designs, by telling him that he might add to his income 100,000 crowns, by annexing the lands of convicted heretics to those of the crown; but should that scheme fail, the Clergy offered to advance him 50,000 crowns, annually, out of their own estates, and more, if his necessities required it. By the 3d Lateran Council, cap. 27, by the 3d Canon of the 4th Lateran Council, apud Binium, tom XI. p. 148, and by the Council of Constance, Sess. 45, tom. VII, p. 1121, the goods of all heretics are confiscated. Mr. Swinburne, a Roman Catholic gentleman, in his tour through Spain, in the years 1775 and 1776, published in 1807, says of the inquisition in Granada ;-" So late as the year 1726, the inquisition, with the sanction of Government, seized upon 360 families, accused of secret Mahometanism, and confiscated all their effects, which have been estimated at 12 millions of crowns; of which no account was given. They were dispersed in different parts of Spain. How much is that country obliged to Cardinal Bourbon !

+ Thuanus, lib 5. sec. 4.