it is distinguished from all separate and particular congregations."-What an ingenious mixture is there here of truth with error! Many of the individual propositions contained in this extract are true; but the catholicity of the Church is here confined to the Romish communion solely, by foisting in the Pope as the Vicar on earth of the Divine Invisible Head of the Church. Where the authority of the Pope therefore is denied, there it is implied that the true Church exists not at all; and out of the true Church no one can be saved. If our readers wish to see the proportion which the Church of Rome, falsely styled Catholic, bears to the Universal Church, in the number of its professors and the realms to which it extends, and over which it exercises spiritual domination, let them read the tract now before us-Christianography. They will there see the independance of the primitive Churches on that of Rome; they will see the perfect equality which subsists, among the different members of the Universal Church, sitting under the primeval authority which has been handed down by regular succession from the Apostles themselves, and the original planters and founders of their respective ecclesiastical establishments; they will remark that the Greek Church having under it four Patriarchs, 1. of Constantinople; 2 of Alexandria; 3. of Antioch, 4. of Jerusalem, whence the word of the Lord issued forth to all nations; "is of larger extent than the Romish Church in Europe, and more ancient; the Romish Church having received Christianity from them." We strongly recommend this tract to the public; it dissipates many of those vulgar errors which are so industriously disseminated by the Papists and their partizans, and it completely overturns their arrogant pretensions to catholicity. We beg to state that even so soon after the reformation as Pagit's time, the Papists inhabited somewhere above a fourth part" of Europe; the three remaining parts being nearly in the possession of the Protestants, Muscovives, and Greek Christians, with some Turks mingled among the Greeks, making one third with them, and some say much less; unquestionably the Romanists are fewer in number than they were when Pagitt wrote." In this little treatise you may see the Church of God not to be in Rome only, but to be Catholicke and dispersed over the face of the whole earth." "Few or none of the Churches doe acknowledge the Church of Rome for their mother, or have any dependance on her.

"Moreover, good Reader, search whether our religion or the Romish be found in the Holy Scriptures.And to this purpose I have heard related, that Sir Thomas Overbury, in his travell in France, entering into a Popish church, and being observed by the Priest to doe no reverence to the images, and to take no holy water at his entry, judging him to be a Pro

testant, sent his Confessor to him, to demand where his religion was before Luther, which message Sir Thomas having received, returned this answer: "Goe and tell thy master, that my religion was in the Holy Scripture, where his never was."

We beg leave, most respectfully, to thank the Society for what they have already done; and we understand that they are making further progress; being about to publish selections out of Fox's Book of Martyrs, Nichol's Defensio Ecclesia Anglicane, Pagitt's Treatise on the Church of the ancient Britons.

(N. B. This List will be continued)

OF THE LIBER TAXE CANCELLARIÆ ROMANÆ. THE mention of the Liber Taxe Cancellariæ Romana, which has been made in another part of our present number, is very likely to excite the curiosity of some, at least, of our readers: and we have thought it, on that account, a fit subject for a separate article. We shall proceed, therefore, to give what we flatter ourselves will prove to be authentic and satisfactory information respecting this celebrated book; the more so as chance has thrown in our way one of those very scarce translations of it, accompanied with comments, by which Protestants, in former days, endeavoured to make its contents both generally known and reprobated. The Book itself has shared the fate of many other famous things; which, (as some man, in a comedy, says of Alexander and Scipio,) "have had their day." Ingenious men, out of pure love of paradox, have asserted that Virgil did not write the Eneid, and that there never was such a man as Homer, nor such an incident as the Trojan war. We must not wonder, therefore, when we hear the genuineness of the Carons of the IVth Lateran Council called in question, or the assertion boldly made, that the "Liber Taxe" is nothing but a gross and impudent forgery of the Protestants. For, in this case, the Papists have a strong and power. ful motive for persuading the world that there never was any such book in the Romish Exchequer; and, of course, all sorts of means will be, and have been, resorted to, by them; in the first place, to accomplish the destruction of the copies of this precious document; and, in the next place, to combat or perplex, or remove, by all the arts that can be practised, the various evidences by which its authenticity may be proved. As to the first, our readers will perceive, from what we shall lay before them, that the complaint which is recorded in Bayle (Dict. Art. Banck. not. B), that the Papists were then, with great industry, procuring every copy which they could lay their hands on, for the purpose of destroying it; had been

made long before his time, and almost two centuries ago. The moment that the book was put into the Index Prohibitorius of the Court of Rome, not only no Papist could keep such a book in his possession, but it became one of those good works, by which the penances for sin might be bought off, to search after and get it, and bring it to the bishops or inquisitors, in order to its suppression. Thus it is clear, that the circumstance, that copies of the book itself are hardly now to be found, is no proof of its never having existed; nay, we will venture to assert, that it proves the direct contrary. For, if that which passed under the name of the Liber Taxe, and such a book certainly once existed, had been, as it is alleged, a mere forgery, and a gross and clumsy one to boot, it would have been for the interest of the Romish Church, by all means, to have preserved it; and by exposing and establishing the fraud, fairly to have fixed upon their adversaries all the guilt and all the infamy which they had endeavoured to heap upon her. The fact is, however, that the existence of such a book never was denied at Rome, nor in any of those Roman Catholic countries which paid the greatest deference to the Pope. In France alone, some feeble efforts were made, late in the seventeenth century, to deny that the book was ever put forth by proper authority. In this country, indeed, since the Reformation and very lately, so goodnatured and credulous have the Protestants been, that many of them have implicitly taken the words of the Romanists for all that they asserted concerning it. In this, as in so many instances, modern liberality has immediately given up, what it could not unanswerably prove at the moment, or would not take the pains to ascertain.* A very small portion of labour, however, might have sufficed to shew that what our ancestors had said of it was true; and that they had not themselves been guilty of fabrication, nor had too readily given credit to those who had.

After all, it may be said, perhaps, that too much importance has been attached to this book: for that which it is adduced to prove is what nobody can deny. Who, indeed, will be so hardy as to pretend that there has not been carried on, for centuries, at the court of Rome, a most scandalous traffic in indulgences? What else was it that gave the first impulse to the Reformation? Was it not against that flagrant abuse, that Luther first raised his voice; and could he have obtained so readily so many followers, would he ever have been heard at all, or could he have been heard with so much favour, if the abuse, against which he was declaiming, had not existed in a most glaring, and most scandalous degree? Still, however,

* This has been the case, particularly with the editor of Guthrie's Geography, whe has struck out the mention of it from the later editions.

it must be owned that the putting forth a regular tariff of the sums to bo paid upon procuring absolution for any given sin, was an act of such direct approbation of all these abuses, such an encouragement to men to commit crimes, when they were told, from authority, that they might be pardoned at a stipulated rate, that we must not wonder that the Protestants should lay hold of this circumstance, as proving, beyond all contradiction, not only the existence, but the scandalous nature, of this traffic; and that they should, not without reason, cast upon the Papal See, the strong imputation of being the great" custom-house of sin."

We shall proceed, in the first place, to give such account as is recorded of the book; first premising an observation or two: but referring our readers to the very pointed and clear reasoning which we shall extract from our English editor and commentator in the early part of the seventeenth century. What was then established and enforced by direct challenge at that early period, is not to be shaken by the naked and unsupported contradiction of any man or set of men, in these days. Indeed, we believe we may safely defy any of these advocates of the See of Rome to shew where this book was ever disclaimed from authority, or where, in any formal writing or printed book, any doubt of its authenticity was expressed, until long after the clamour raised against it by the Protestants had made even the Court, which practised such things, ashamed, or rather sorry, that it had divulged them. The testimony of Espencæus, or Espence, a most respectable writer, contemporary with the Council of Trent, and a Romish Bishop, is, of itself, the most unanswerable evidence.

It may appear, indeed, to some, that the rates are wonderfully low; but to this it may be answered, that, three or four centuries ago, the sums could not be deemed so inconsiderable as they now appear. It may be added, as has been said, that, "as this was such a ware as cost the Pope nothing, he might well afford it good cheap." But the reader will also see that the tax, thus set down, was not, in every instance, the whole that was exacted. Some offences required the personal appearance of the party at Rome; and, for others, it is provided that "insuper," over and above, he must compound with the Datary; "componendum cun Datario." [See Bayle, Art." Parthasius," note c.]-It has also been argued from hence, as by Mr. Lingard, in his General Vindication*, that these were only fees to the officers for their trouble, and he confounds them wilfully or ignorantly, with the Regula Guria Cancellaria,† which are

* Page 67, or page 176, of the Tracts. For an answer to this gentleman see M. k Mesurier's Supplement to the Reply.

+ What these were the reader may see in L'Enfant's History of the Council of Constance, Vol. II. page 173, and Appendix, page 415, such as they were issued by

totally different matter. The least inspection of these will shew, that they could have formed no basis for such an interpolation or corruption as is charged upon the Protestants. It has also been answered, and, as it appears to us, satisfactorily, that granting that the sums thus taxed were only fees to the officers, how does that prove that this scandalous traffic in indulgences had no existence? We have a custom-house, where fees, regularly imposed, are paid to the officers. Does this prove that there is no custom-house? However, there is no sufficient reason for supposing these to be mere fees to the officers. They were undoubtedly to be accounted for to the Pope's Chancery, from whence the instrument, containing the Indulgence, issued, and where it was to be accounted for. In Dr. Hales's Survey of the Modern State of the Church of Rome, pp. 182 and 218, may be seen how the trade still continues, or lately continued to be carried on, in the dominions of his Catholic Majesty.

According to L'Advocat (a Romanist and Doctor of the Sorbonne) in his Dictionnaire Historique, Art. Sixtus IV. the first publication of this book in 1471, is attributed to that Pope; it is there called indeed "Regulæ Cancellaria," but L'Advocat evidently means the "Liber Taxæ;" for he adds, "translated by Du Pinet in 1564; and, in the article PINET, he describes his book as "Notes sur LA TAXE de la Chancellerie Romaine, 1564." The subsequent editions, which are chiefly spoken of and referred to by the Protestants, are those printed at Rome in 1514, and at Paris in 1520. There is also mention made of editions at Cologne in 1515 and 1523, and some at Venice; as, also, one of later date, even so late as 1625, at Paris; which last edition, Drelincourt, a French Protestant Minister, in his Answer to the Romish Bishop of Belley, averred to be in his possession, as well as that of 1520; and that, having collated them he found them agree. All these, and more, are editions of the book put forth by the Papists themselves. And that such a book existed, is proved by the very Indices which prohibit it. And the terms of the prohibition are material, because they are such as could not have been used in the case of a book which was a mere forgery. Indeed, wherever such a forgery is condemned, it is so noted to be (as we could shew) in precise terms. We have now before us the Index Prohibitorius of Rome, published in the year 1787; -" Sanctissimi D. N. Pii Sexti Jussu Editus." And there, at page 210, we find, "praxis et taxa officine panitentiaria Papa. CUM AB HERETICIS SIT DEPRAVATA." — App. Ind.

Martin, V. in 1418; that is, several years before the Liber Tara was published. The one bears no reference to the other.

VOL. I. [Prot. Adv. June, 1813]. 3 Q