state of the Church should be reformed there, and false doctrines and errors should be taken away.

Thus the Council of Trent was continued, to which place the Pope sent his Legate and two Nuncios to preside in his name, with orders to begin the session on the 1st day of May, 1551, which was yet nevertheless prorogued to the 1st of September following. The Elector of Saxony and the Duke of Wirtemberg, both Protestants, with some Imperial cities, resolved to send their deputies thither, and made them demand of the Emperor's Ambassador a letter of safe-conduct, in the same form that the Council of Basil had given it to the Bohemians, with an intermission till their divines should be arrived. This demand was not without some difficulty; but the question having been agitated at Rome, they thought good to agree that they should have a safe-conduct in general terms, without delaying upon that account the decision of the chief matters; and before the expediting of this safe-conduct, they had determined the principal points touching the Eucharist, viz. transubstantiation, the real presence, the adoration of the host, the concomitance, the custom of the Fete Dieu, the reservation of the Sacrament, and the necessity of auricular confession before the communion. They agreed only with the Ambassador of the Emperor, that they should delay the decision of these four questions; Whether it was necessary to salvation, that all should receive the Sacrament in both kinds? Whether he that received in one, took less than he that received in both? Whether the Church was in an error, when she ordained that the Priests only should receive in both? Whether the eucharist ought always to be given to little children? which was already a mere fallacy, as if the Protestants had nothing to propose but only about those four questions.

When the Protestant deputies were arrived, they openly complained of the form of safe-conduct, and they demanded one in form of that of Basil to the Bohemians; but they were refused. They demanded that they might be heard in full Council, but they would not; and they obtained with great difficulty to be heard in a congregation in the house of the Legate. In

the congregation they demanded, on behalf of their masters, 1st, That the article of the superiority of the Council above the Pope, decided in the Councils of Constance and Basil, might be laid down for a foundation. 2nd, That the Pope, since he was a party in this affair, should not preside in the Council, but that he should submit to it both himself and his See, to be judged there. 3rd, That he should for this effect absolve the Bishops of the oaths that he had given them. 4th, That all matters which had been already decided, should be judged of again, after their divines had been heard, since they could not till then have come to the Council, not having had safe-conduct. 5th, That they should defer all judgment till they came. 6th, That they should judge according to the word of God, and the common belief of all Christian nations. But the Prelates would not hear these propositions, and the Legate, who consulted the Pope upon all matters, and more especially upon these, had already thus vehemently explained himself, "that they had much rather lose their lives, than relax any thing of the authority of the Holy See." Some days after, the divines of Wirtemberg and those of Strasburg arrived at Trent, and presented their confession, demanding that it should be examined, and offering themselves to explain and defend it; but this was to no purpose; for the Pope had expressly forbidden his Legate to permit that they should enter upon any public conference, either viva voce or by writing, in the matters of religion. Thus things were carried on in this Council.

But while affairs were managed after this manner, the Pope, who for some time before had been discontented with the Emperor, had made his treaty with King Henry II.; and the King, on his side, had also very secretly treated with Maurice, the Elector of Saxony, for the liberty of Germany, so that matters were all on a sudden ready for a war; and the news being come to Trent, the Pope presently separated the assembly, giving orders to his Nuncio to give notice of it every where, and to suspend the Council till another time. This war freed Germany from its slavery under Charles; he was forced to set all the Princes at liberty whom he kept prisoner; and, in fine, to make the

peace which was concluded at Passau, the last day of July, 1552. By this peace it was concluded, that the Emperor should call, within six months, the General Assembly of the Empire, there to provide means for the accommodating of the differences of religion, and that, notwithstanding, no person should be disquieted upon that occasion; and thus the Interim of the Emperor was abolished.

But

Julius, by abandoning himself to pleasures and amusements, no less unbecoming his age than his character, having contracted such habits of dissipation that any serious occupation, especially if attended with difficulty, became an intolerable burden to him, had long resisted the solicitations of his nephew to hold a Consistory, because he expected there a violent opposition to his schemes in favour of that young man. when all the pretexts which he could invent for eluding this request were exhausted, and, at the same time, his indolent aversion to business continued to grow upon him, he feigned indisposition rather than yield to his nephew's importunity; and that he might give the deceit a greater colour of probability, he not only confined himself to his apartment, but changed his usual diet and manner of life. By persisting too long in acting this ridiculous part, he contracted a real disease of which he died in a few days, leaving his infamous minion the Cardinal de Monte to bear his name, and to disgrace the dignity which he had conferred upon him. His death, in 1555, was lamented by none, although he had then held the Papal See about five years.

Marcellus Cervino, Cardinal of Santo Croce, being elected Pope in room of Julius, he, in imitation of Adrian, did not change his name on being exalted to the Papal Chair. As he equalled that Pontiff in purity of intention, while he excelled him much in the arts of government, and still more in knowledge of the state and genius of the Papal Court, as he had capacity to discern what reformation it needed, as well as what it could bear; such regulations were expected from his virtue and wisdom, as would have removed many of its grossest and most flagrant corruptions, and have contributed towards reconciling to the Church such as, from indignation at these enor

mities, had abandoned its communion. Too good for his age and station, corrupted and abandoned as both had now become, he resolved, unlike other Pontiffs, not to pervert his sacred office to the aggrandizement of his family; and there. fore immediately wrote to his brother that neither he nor any of his family should come to Rome. But this excellent Pontiff was only shewn to the Church and then snatched away. The confinement in the Conclave had impaired his health, and the fatigue of tedious ceremonies upon his accession, together with too intense and conscientious application of mind to the schemes of improvement which he meditated, exhausted so entirely the vigour of his feeble constitution, that he sickened on the twelfth, and died on the twentieth day, after his election, April 30th, 1555.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE INQUISITION.

CARDINAL Caraffa, who took the name of Paul IV., was the next occupant of the Papal Chair. The Roman Courtiers, from the known austerity of his character, anticipated a severe and violent Pontificate. Paul, however, commenced his career by ordering his coronation to be conducted with greater pomp and magnificence than usual; and when he was asked in what manner he chose to live, he haughtily replied, "as becomes a great Prince." He used great pomp in his first consistory, when he gave audience to the Ambassadors of Mary, Queen of England, who came to tender her obedience to the Papal See, on which occasion he gave the title of a Kingdom to Ireland. He maintained with undiminished rigour the pretensions of

the Church of Rome. When, in 1558, Sir Edward Karne notified the accession of Elizabeth to the English throne, he answered that " England was held in fee of the Apostolic See; that the Queen, being illegitimate, could not succeed; that she was presumptuous in assuming the crown without his consent; but that if she renounced her pretensions, and submitted her case entirely to him, he would do every thing that could be done consistently by the Apostolic See." He never talked, says Father Paul, "with Ambassadors, without thundering in their ears, that he was superior to all Princes, that he could admit none of them on a footing of familiarity with himself, that it was in his power to change kingdoms, and that he was the successor of those who deposed Kings and Emperors."

In furtherance of these views, he made an ordinance which he caused all the Cardinals to sign, by which he renewed all the censures and punishments denounced by his predecessors against the heretics, and declared that all the Prelates, Princes, Kings and Emperors, fallen into heresy, ought to be held fallen from and deprived of all their benefices, estates, kingdoms, or empires, without any other declaration; that they could not be re-established by any authority, not even by that of the Apostolic See; and that their goods should be given to the first possessor. He quarrelled at the same time with Ferdinand, maintaining that the resignation of Charles in his favour, could not be done but by his hands; and that in that case, it belonged to him to make whom he should please Emperor. Notwithstanding, two things fell out, that gave him a great deal of grief; the one, that Mary Queen of England being dead, Elizabeth succeeded her; and that the Emperor Ferdinand, having proposed to the Protestants in the Diet of Augsburg, which was held in the month of February, 1559, to seek and put an end to the differences of religion, by the way of a Council, the Protestants had declared to him, as they had often done, that they could have no hopes of any accommodation by the way of a Council of the Pope's. That they would submit themselves to a free, general, and Christian Council, not called by the Pope, but by the Emperor and Christian Kings, where the Pope should hold his place, not