worship of the Romish church. But the new patriarch ruined, by his intemperate zeal, imprudence, and arrogance, the cause in which he had embarked, and occasioned the total subversion of the Roman pontiff's authority and jurisdiction, which had really been established upon solid foundations. For he began his ministry with the most inconsiderate acts of violence and despotism. Following the spirit of the Spanish inquisition, he employed formidable threatenings and cruel tortures to convert the Abyssinians; the greatest part of whom, together with their priests and ministers, held the religion of their ancestors in the highest veneration, and were willing to part with their lives and fortunes rather than forsake it. He also ordered those to be rebaptized, who, in compliance ⚫ with the orders of the emperor, had embraced the faith of Rome, as if their former religion had been nothing more than a system of paganism. This the Abyssinian clergy looked upon as a shocking insult upon the religious discipline of their ancestors, as even more provoking than the violence and barbarities practised against those who refused to submit to the papal yoke. Nor did the insolent patriarch rest satisfied with these arbitrary and despotic proceedings in the church; he excited tumults and factions in the state, and, with an unparalleled spirit of rebellion and arrogance, encroached upon the prerogatives of the throne, and attempted to give law to the emperor himself. Hence arose civil commotions, conspiracies, and seditions, which excited in a little time the indignation of the emperor, and the hatred of the people against the Jesuits, and produced at length, in the year 1631, a public declaration from the throne, by which the Abyssinian monarch annulled the orders he had formerly given in favour of popery, and left his subjects at liberty either to persevere in the doctrine of their ancestors, or to embrace the faith of Rome. This rational declaration was mild and indulgent

It The reader will recollect, that the Abyssinians differ but very little from the Copts in Egypt, and acknowledge the patriarch of Alexandria as their spiritual chief. They receive the Old and New Testament, the three first Councils, the Nicene Creed, and the Apostolical Constitutions. Their first conversion to Christianity is attributed by some to the famous prime minister of their queen Candace, mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles; it is, however, probable, that the general conversion of that great empire was not perfected before the fourth century, when Frumentius, ordained bishop of Axuma by Athanasius, exercised his ministry among them with the most astonishing success. They were esteemed a pure church before they fell into the errors of Eutyches and Dioscorus; and even since that period they are still a purer church than that of Rome.

toward the Jesuits, considering the treatment their insolence and presumption had so justly deserved; but in the following reign much severer measures were employed against them. Basilides the son of Segued, who succeeded his father in the year 1632, no sooner ascended the throne than he thought it expedient to rid his dominions of these troublesome and despotic guests; and accordingly, in the year 1634, he banished from the territories of Ethiopia the patriarch Mendez, with all the Jesuits and Europeans that belonged to his retinue, and treated the Roman Catholic missionaries with excessive rigour and severity." From this period the very name of Rome, its religion, and its pontiff, were objects of the highest aversion among the Abyssinians, who guarded their frontiers with the greatest vigilance and the strictest attention, lest any Jesuit or Romish missionary should steal into their territories in disguise, and excite new tumults and commotions in the kingdom. The Roman pontiffs indeed made more than one attempt to recover the authority they had lost by the ill success and misconduct of the Jesuits. They began by sending two Capuchin monks to repair their loss; but these unfortunate wretches were no sooner discovered than they were stoned to death. They afterward employed more artful and clandestine methods of reviving the missions, and had recourse to the influence and intercession of Lewis XIV. king of France, to procure admission for their emissaries into the Abyssinian empire ;" but, as far as we

u See Ludolfii Histor. Ethiopica, lib. iii. cap. xii. Geddes's Church History of Ethiopia, p. 233. La Croze, Histoire du Christianisme de l'Ethiopie, p. 79. Lobo Voyage d'Abyssinie, p. 116, 130, 144, with the additions of Le Grand, p. 173, and the fourth Dissertation that is subjoined to the second volume. In this dissertation Le Grand, himself a Roman catholic, makes the following remark upon the conduct of the patriarch Mendez; "It were to be wished," says he," that the patriarch had never intermeddled in such a variety of affairs," by which mitigated expression the author means his ambitious attempts to govern in the cabinet as well as in the church, "nor carried his authority to such a height as to behave in Ethiopia as if he had been in a country where the inquisition was established; for by this conduct he set all the people against him, and excited in them such an aversion to the Roman catholics in general, and to the Jesuits in particular, as nothing has been hitherto able to diminish, and which subsists in its full force to this day." The third book of La Croze's History, which relates to the progress and ruin of this mission, is translated by Mr. Lockman into English, and inserted in The Travels of the Jesuits, vol. i. p. 308, &c. as also is Poncet's Voyage, mentioned in the following note.

w These projects are mentioned by Cerri, in his Etat Present de l'Eglise Romaine, p. 217. Le Grand, in his Supplement to Lobo's Itinerarium Æthiopicum, tom. i. p. 181.

Father Lobo, who resided nine years in Ethiopia, has given an elegant and lively, though simple and succinct description of that vast empire, in his Itinerarium Ethiopicum. This itinerary was translated into French by M. Le Grand, and enriched by him with several rurious anecdotes and dissertations. Hence Dr. Mosheim sometimes quotes the Itinerarium under the title of Voyage d'Abissinie, referring to Le Grand's French translation of it.

have learnt, these attempts have hitherto proved unsuccessful, nor have the pontiffs or their votaries been as yet able to calm the resentment of that exasperated nation, or to conquer its reluctance against the worship and jurisdiction of the church of Rome.*

thoi y loses

XVIII. Hitherto we have confined our views to the external state and condition of the church of Rome, and to the good or ill success that attended its en- The papalau-deavours to extend its dominion in the different ground. parts of the world. It will be now proper to change the scene, to consider this church in its internal constitution, and to pass in review its polity, discipline, institutions, and doctrine. Its ancient form of government still remained; but its pontiffs and bishops lost, in many places, no small part of that extensive authority they had so long enjoyed. The halcyon days were now over, in which the papal clergy excited with impunity seditious tumults in the state, intermeddled openly in the transactions of government, struck terror into the hearts of sovereigns and subjects by

The reader who would know what credit is to be given to what the Jesuits say of the attachment and veneration which the Asiatic and African Christians express for the church of Rome, will do well to compare the relations of Le Grand, who was a Roman catholic, and no enemy to the Jesuits, and who drew his relations from the most authentic records, with those of Poncet, a French physician, who went into Ethiopia in the year 1698, accompanied by father Bredevent, a Jesuit, who died during the voyage. comparison will convince every ingenuous and impartial inquirer, that the accounts of the Jesuits are not to be trusted to, and that they surpass ancient Carthage itself in the art of deceiving. Poncet's Voyage is published in the fourth volume of the Jesuitical work, entitled Lettres Curieusus et Edifiantes des Missions Etrangeres.

This

x Lafitau and Reboulet, who have composed each a Life of pope Clement XI. tell us that the emperor of Abyssinia desired the Roman pontiff, in the year 1703, to send to his court missionaries and legates to instruct him and his people, and to receive their submission to the see of Rome. These biographers go still further, and assert that this monarch actually embraced the communion of Rome in the year 1712. But these assertions are idle fictions, forged by the Jesuits and their creatures. It is well known, on the contrary, that so lately as a very few years ago, the edict prohibiting all Europeans to enter into Ethiopia, was still in force, and was executed with the greatest severity. Even the Turks are included in this prohibition; and what is still more remarkable, the Egyptian Monophysites, who have once entered within the Abyssinian territories, are not allowed to return into their own country. All these facts are confirmed by a modern writer of the most unquestionable authority, the learned and worthy M. Maillet, the French consul-general in Egypt, and ambassador from Lewis XIV. to the emperor of Abyssinia, in his Description d' l'Egypte, part i. p. 325, which was published at Paris in 4to. in the year 1735. See also Le Grand's Supplement to Lobo's Itinerarium, which was published in the year 1728. This last mentioned author, after relating all the attempts that have been made in our times, by the French nation and the Roman pontiffs, to introduce Romish priests into Abyssinia, adds, that all such attempts must appear vain and chimerical to all those who have any knowledge of the empire of Abyssinia, and of the spirit and character of its inhabitants; his words are; Toutes ces enterprises paroitront chimeriques a ceux qui connoitront l'Abissinie et les Abissins. It is highly probable that the new mission which is preparing at Rome for the empire of Abyssinia, will prove a new instance of the solidity of M. Le Grand's reflection.

the thunder of their anathemas, and, imposing burdensome contributions on the credulous multitude, filled their coffers by notorious acts of tyranny and oppression. The pope himself, though still honoured with the same pompous titles and denominations, found nevertheless frequently, by a mortifying and painful experience, that these titles had lost a considerable part of their former signification, and that the energy of these denominations diminished from day to day. For now almost all the princes and states of Europe had adopted that important maxim that had been formerly peculiar to the French nation; "That the power of the Roman pontiff is entirely confined to matters of a religious and spiritual nature, and cannot, under any pretext whatsoever, extend to civil transactions or worldly affairs." In the schools indeed, and colleges of Roman Catholic countries, and in the writings of the Romish priests and doctors, the majesty of the pope was still exalted in the most emphatic terms, and his prerogatives displayed with all imaginable pomp. The Jesuits also, who have been always ambitious of a distinguished place among the asserters of the power and pre-eminence of the Roman see, and who gave themselves out for the pope's most obsequious creatures, raised their voices, in this ignoble cause, even above those of the schools and colleges. Nay, even in the courts of sovereign princes, very flattering terms and high sounding phrases were sometimes used, to express the dignity and authority of the head of the church. But as it happens in other cases, that men's actions are frequently very different from their language, so was this observation particularly verified in the case of Rome's holy father. He was extolled in words, by those who despised him most in reality; and when any dispute arose between him and the princes of his communion, the latter respected his authority no further than they found expedient for their own purposes, and measured the extent of his prerogatives and jurisdiction, not by the slavish adulation of the colleges and the Jesuits, but by a regard to their own interests and independence.

XIX. This the Roman pontiffs learned, by a disagreeable The rupture experienee, as often as they endeavoured, during between Paul this century, to resume their former pretensions, to interpose their authority in civil affairs, and encroach upon the jurisdiction of sovereign states. The

V. and the Ve

netians

conduct of Paul V. and the consequences that followed it, furnish a striking example that abundantly verifies this observation. This haughty and arrogant pontiff laid the republic of Venice under an interdict in the year 1606. The reasons alleged for this insolent proceeding, were the prosecution of two ecclesiastics for capital crimes; as also two wise edicts, one of which prohibited the erection of any more religious edifices in the Venetian territories, without the knowledge and consent of the senate; and the other the alienation of any lay possessions or estates in favour of the clergy, without the express approbation of the republic. The Venetian senate received this papal insult with dignity, and conducted themselves under it with becoming resolution and fortitude. Their first step was to prevent their clergy from executing the interdict, by an act prohibiting that cessation of public worship, and that suspension of the sacraments, which the pope had commanded in this imperious mandate. Their next step was equally vigorous; for they banished from their territories the Jesuits and Capuchin friars, who obeyed the orders of the pope, in opposition to their express commands. In the process of this controversy they employed their ablestpens, and particularly that of the learned and ingenious Paul Sarpi of the order of Servites, to demonstrate on the one hand, the justice of their cause, and to determine, on the other, after an accurate and impartial inquiry, the true limits of the Roman pontiff's jurisdiction and authority. The arguments of these writers were so strong and urgent, that Baronius, and the other learned advocates whom the pope had employed in supporting his pretensions and defending his measures, struggled in vain against their irresistible evidence. In the mean time all things tended toward a rupture, and Paul V. was gathering together his forces in order to make war upon the Venetians, when Henry IV. king of France, interposed as mediator,' and concluded a peace between the contending parties, on conditions not very honourable to the ambitious pontiff. For

IF y It must be observed here, that it was at the request of the pope, and not of the Venetians, that Henry IV. interposed as mediator. The Venetians had nothing to fear. Their cause was considered as the common cause of all the sovereign states of Italy; and the dukes of Urbino, Modena, and Savoy, had already offered their troops and services to the republic. But the rash pontiff, perceiving the storm that was gathering against him, took refuge in the French monarch's intercession.

z Beside De Thou and other historians, see Daniel Histoire de la France, tom. x. p. 385. Heidegger's Historia Papatus Period, vii. sect. ccxx. p. 322. Jo. Wolfg. Jaegeri.