should have no liberty to leave the kingdom, but must be sent unto the galleys. There was hardly any kind of deceit, and injustice, and troubles, in which these worthy ministers of Christ were not involved, and yet through rich mercy very few revolted; the far greater number of them escaped, either into England, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, &c. and some are now settled in New England. Such were the sufferings of hundreds of learned, pious, and useful ministers of Jesus Christ, and such were the character and spirit of their persecutors. How accurately is the conduct of such men pourtrayed by the Scripture. "They sleep not except they have done mischief, and their sleep is taken away, unless they cause some to fall; for they eat the bread of wickedness, and drink the wine of of violence." Let us for a moment follow the champions of the Catholic Church in their disgraceful career of injustice and cruelty. They seized and confiscated the property of the churches and consistories, pulled down the former, and even forbad men to pray in their own houses, or teach their own children any of the principles or duties of the Christian religion; some of them they took by force, and placed them in convents to make them Catholics; and if the little heretics were obstinate, they were punished to such extremity, that they died in consequence. Dragoons were quartered in their houses, who lived upon the unfortunate victims of their cruelty, and made free with such parts of their property as they pleased. They levied taxes and duties upon them, to build mass-houses and purchase priestly garments, &c. Their sick were refused admission to the hospitals, nor would they allow Protestant women any assistance in child-birth but from Roman Catholic midwives. In their dying moments, their apartments were forcibly entered by Romish Priests, who, in the most indecorous manner, worried them to change their religion; and if they refused, they denied them Christian burial, drew them through the streets on hurdles in the most ignominious manner, and cast them into the open fields, to be devoured by ravenous creatures. Some they sent to perish in prisons and dungeons, or to work in the galleys. In addition to all this, they forced some, by the most dreadful violence, to abjure their religion;

and having succeeded, they made them affirm, and even sign the most solemn declarations, that no constraint had been used, but that they had done it freely and of their own accord. "As for the rest of the Protestants," says Quick, "whom the violence of persecution and the cruel usages they endured had necessitated to abandon their estates, families, relations, and native country, it is hardly to be imagined to what dangers they were exposed. Never were orders more rigorous and severe, nor more strictly executed, than those given out against them; they doubled the guards at every post, in all cities, towns, highways, fords and ferries; they covered the country with soldiers; they armed the very peasants, that they might stop the reformed in their travel, or kill them upon the very spot; they forbad all officers of the customs to suffer any goods, moveables, merchandizes, or effects of theirs to pass out of the kingdom; they forgot nothing that might hinder the flight of these poor persecuted creatures, insomuch that they interrupted all commerce with neighbouring nations. By this means they quickly filled all the prisons in the kingdom: for the terror of the dragoons, the horror of seeing their consciences forced and their children taken away from them, and to be educated in anti-christian superstition and damnable idolatry, and of living for the future in a land where there was neither justice nor humanity for them, obliged every one to think with himself, and consult with others in whom they could confide, how to get out of France; and so they could but escape without polluting their consciences, many thousands of them were ready to, and did actually, leave their worldly possessions all behind them.

Pope Benedict XIV. intended to have canonized Innocent, from which he was dissuaded by the interference of the Jesuits, assisted by the influence of the Court of France.

On the 6th of October, 1689, Peter Ottobini, a native of Venice, was elevated to the Pontifical Chair, under the title of Alexander VIII., who condemned the four Propositions of the French Clergy, which were as strenuously maintained by the French government. He also condemned the opinions of the Jesuits, concerning philosophic sin. He died Feb. 1, 1691.

CHAPTER XXVI.

JANSENIST CONTROVERSY.

INNOCENT XII., a man of uncommon merit and eminent talents, whose name was Pignatelli, a native of Venice, and Archbishop of Naples, and who now succeeded to the Papal Chair, was unwearied in his endeavours to reform the corrupt manners of the Clergy, though he found that the entire accomplishment of the Herculean task, was a consummation which all his prudence and resolution were unable to effect. He was anxiously devoted to the interests of the poor, and the wealth which many of his predecessors had been accustomed to accumulate, or to bestow on worthless relatives, he devoted to the public benefit, employing it in the erection of hospitals, and other useful institutions, and particularly in the improvement of the ports of Anzio and Nettuno. Innocent died on the 27th of September, in the year 1700, at the advanced age of eighty-five, after presiding over the church about nine years.

During this Pontificate, a controversy arose in the bosom of the Catholic Church in France, respecting the doctrines of Jansenism, which were propagated by Madame de la Mothe Guyon, a woman remarkable for the benevolence of her heart, the regularity of her manners, but of warm feelings, and vivid imagination.

Her religious sentiments made a great noise in the year 1697, and gave offence to many. Hence, after they had been accurately and attentively examined by several men of eminent piety and learning, they were at length pronounced erroneous and unsound, and, in the year 1697, were professedly confuted by the celebrated Bossuet. This gave rise to a controversy of still greater moment, between the Prelate last mentioned, and and Francis Salignac de Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambray, whose christian virtue and superior genius were beheld with

veneration in all the countries of Europe. Of these two disputants, who, in point of eloquence, were avowedly without either superiors or equals in France, the latter seemed disposed to favour the religious system of Madame Guyon. For when Bossuet desired his approbation of the book he had composed, in answer to the sentiments of that female mystic, Fenelon not only refused it, but openly declared that this pious woman had been treated with great partiality and injustice, and that the censures of her adversary were unmerited and groundless. Nor did the warm imagination of this amiable Prelate permit him to stop here, where the dictates of prudence ought to have set bounds to his zeal; for, in the year 1697, he published a book in which he adopted several of the tenets of Madame Guyon, and more especially that favourite doctrine of the mystics, which teaches that the love of the Supreme Being must be pure and disinterested; that is, exempt from all views of interest and all hope of reward. This doctrine Fenelon explained with a pathetic eloquence, and confirmed it by the authority of many of the most eminent and pious among the Romish doctors. Bossuet, whose leading passion was ambition, and who beheld with anxiety the rising fame and eminent talents of Fenelon as an obstacle to his glory, was highly exasperated by this opposition, and left no method unemployed which artifice and jealousy could suggest, to mortify a rival whom illustrious merit had rendered so formidable. For this purpose he threw himself at the feet of Lewis XIV., implored the succours of the Roman Pontiff, and by his importunities and stratagems obtained, at length, the condemnation of Fenelon's book. This condemnation was pronounced in the year 1699, by Innocent XII., who, in a public brief, declared that book unsound in general, and branded with more peculiar marks of disapprobation twenty-three propositions, specified by the congregation that had been appointed to examine it. The book, however, was condemned alone, without any mention of the author; and the conduct of Fenelon on this occasion was very remarkable. He declared publicly his entire acquiescence in the sentence by which his book had been condemned, and not only read that sentence to his people in the pulpit at Cam

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bray, but exhorted them to respect and obey the Papal decree. This step was differently interpreted by different persons, according to their notions of this great man, or their respective ways of thinking. Some considered it as an instance of true magnanimity, as the mark of a meek and gentle spirit, that preferred the peace of the Church to every private view of interest or glory. Others, less charitable, looked upon this submissive conduct as ignoble and pusillanimous; as denoting manifestly a want of integrity, inasmuch as it supposed that the Prelate in question condemned with his lips what in his heart he believed to be true. One thing, indeed, seems generally agreed on, and that is, Fenelon persisted, to the end of his days, in the sentiments which, in obedience to the order of the Pope, he retracted and condemned in a public manner.

The corruptions that had been complained of in preceding ages, both in the higher and inferior orders of the Romish Clergy, were rather increased than diminished at the close of this century, as the most impartial writers of that communion candidly confess. The Bishops were rarely indebted for their elevation, to their eminent learning or superior merit. The intercession of potent patrons, services rendered to men in power, connections of blood, and simoniacal practices, were, generally speaking, the steps to preferment; and what was still more deplorable, their promotion was sometimes owing to their vices. Their lives were such, as might be expected from persons who had risen in the Church, by such unseemly means; for had they been obliged by their profession, to give public examples of those vices which the holy laws of the Gospel so solemnly and expressly condemn, instead of exhibiting patterns of sanctity and virtue to their flock, they could not have conducted themselves otherwise than they did. Some indeed there were, who, sensible of the obligations of their profession, displayed a truly Christian zeal, in administering useful instruction, and exhibiting pious examples to their flock, and exerting their utmost vigour and activity, in opposing the vices of the sacred order in particular, and the licentiousness of the times in general. But these rare patrons of virtue and piety, were either ruined by the resentment and