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tyranny; the bishops of Rome, not contented with the divine right of primacy over the whole church, in what related merely to seeing that the canons which were enacted by general councils, to which they had ever been subject, were properly obeyed, began to extend their right to the consciences of Christians, the nomination of bishops, and the making of laws, by an arbitrary issuing of bulls and anathemas, beyond the limits of their own diocese over the whole Christian world. The Church and the State became united, and the most extravagant notions of power and prerogative were, by degrees, usurped by the popes, or ignominiously granted by superstitious princes. The beneficence of Pepin and Charlemagne † is in every one's mind, and the writers against

This subject of the right of nomination to vacant bishoprics, is amply treated in Mr. Butler's Revolutions of the Germanic Empire. It will claim our attention in a subsequent part of the present work.

"The validity of these donations, and particularly those of Pepin, king of France, and of his son Charlemagne, is strongly insisted on by Ammirato, who attempts to shew, that the authority of the Popes extended far beyond the limits of Italy; but as he appears not to have distinguished between their temporal and their ecclesiastical power, little reliance is to be placed on his opinion. Ammir. Discorso come la Chiesa Romana sia cresciuta ne' beni temporali. Opusc. v. ii. p. 67. Those readers who are inclined to examine more particularly into this subject, may consult the Fasciculus rerum Expetendarum & Fugiendarum, tom, i. p. 124." Roscoe's Life of Leo the Tenth, (note) p. 11.

popery have swelled the ambitious demands of Pope Stephen, and the domineering spirit of Gregory, to a gigantic and terrific size. Every thing has been made to have issued from the avarice and pious frauds of the Popes, and little has been allowed for the gratitude or the weakness of the monarchs.

Yet the papal government, although founded on so singular a basis, and exercised with despotic authority, has been attended with some advantages peculiar to itself, and beneficial to its subjects. Whilst the choice of the sovereign, by the decision of a peculiar body of electors, on the one hand, preserves the people from those dissensions which frequently arise from the disputed right of hereditary claimants; on the other hand, it prevents those tumultuous debates which too frequently result from the violence of a popular election. By this system the dangers of a minority in the governor are avoided, and the sovereign assumes the command at a time of life, when it may be presumed that passion is subdued by reason, and experience matured into wisdom. The qualifications by which the pope is supposed to have merited the supreme authority, are also such as would be most likely to direct him in the best mode of exercising it. Humility, chastity, temperance, vigilance, and learning, are among the chief of these requisites; and although some of them have confessedly been too often dispensed with, yet few individuals have ascended

the pontifical throne without possessing more than a common share of intellectual endowments. Hence the Roman pontiffs have frequently displayed examples highly worthy of imitation, and have signalized themselves in an eminent degree, as patrons of science, of letters, and of art. Cultivating, as ecclesiastics, those studies which were prohibited or discouraged among the laity, they may in general be considered as superior to the age in which they have lived; and among the predecessors of Leo X. the philosopher may contemplate with approbation the eloquence and courage of Leo I., who preserved the city of Rome from the ravages of the barbarian Attila; the beneficence, candour, and pastoral attention of Gregory I., unjustly charged with being the adversary of liberal studies; the various acquirements of Silvester II., so extraordinary in the eyes of his contemporaries, as to cause him to be considered as a sorcerer; the industry, acuteness, and learning of Innocent III., of Gregory IX., of Innocent IV., and of Pius II.; and the munificence and love of literature so strikingly displayed in the character of Nicholas V.*

It is not necessary to trace. the power of the popes any further in this place ;t it will come

* Leo X. i. 15-17. The Rev. Dr. Milner has ably, but somewhat partially, summed up the virtues of the Popes, in his Second Letter to a Prebendary.

†There is a good account of the rise and decline of the Pope's temporal power in Mr. Butler's admirable Work on the Revolutions of the Germanic Empire.

under consideration en passant. In the eighth or ninth century, that power commenced, in the eighteenth, it was destroyed. It was granted in an age of superstition; it was taken away in one of military plunder, and political robbery: yet the Roman Catholic Religion remains the same, the primary power of the Pope as Head of the Church, the only power, in fact, independent of his lawful prerogatives as a temporal prince, to which he was ever properly entitled,* is still unimpaired in the mind and conscience of a pious Catholic; and the original doctrines of the church have remained unaltered, amidst the revolutions of ages, the depravity of the popes, the superstitions of the priesthood, the backslidings of the people, and the rancour of polemics. And it should not be overlooked, that it is a Portraiture of the Roman

"The Pope can never grant any dispensation, to the injury of any third person, and can never allow any one to do what is unjust, or to say what he knows to be false, whatever advantage might be expected from it." Encyclopedia Brit. Ed. 1810. Art. Pope.

In acknowledging him as the first pilot to steer the vessel, says Mr. O'Leary, we acknowledge a compass by which he is to direct his course. He is to preserve the vessel, but never to expose it to shipwreck. Any deviation from the laws of God, the rights of nature, or the faith of our fathers, would be the fatal rock on which the pope himself would split. In a word, the pope is our pastor; he may feed, but cannot poison us: we acknowledge no power in him either to alter our faith, or to corrupt our morals. F

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Catholic Religion, rather than of the Roman Catholic Court, that I have undertaken to give.

SECTION III.

Council of Nice.-The Arian Controversy.

IT was my wish and intention at the close of the last section to have noticed some other great traits of Catholic history; to have given a short account of the Greek schism, and then to have pursued my narrative of the progress of Catholicism to the fall of the Western Empire: the limits, however, to which I have necessarily confined myself, will not admit a detail, however important, so extensive in its nature, and so multifarious in its objects. I must, therefore, content myself with a reference to many of these circumstances when I come to other parts of my history, with which it will be found those events have an intimate connexion. I shall now notice the celebrated Council of Nice, and give some little account of the Arian controversy, and of the part which the bishop of Rome appears to have taken in those proceedings.

Once more I am compelled to claim the candour of my readers, on the grounds of the uncertainty of ecclesiastical history at this early period of the church. Few writers are agreed

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