give a final decision to this intricate and knotty controversy.*

LIII. There was scarcely any change introduced into the ritual of the Romish church during this century, Canonizaif we except an edict of Urban VIII. for diminish- tions. ing the number of holidays, which was issued out in the year 1643; we shall therefore conclude this account with a list of the saints added to the calendar by the Romant pontiffs during the period now before us.

In the year 1601, Clement VIII. raised to that spiritual dignity Raymond of Pennafort, the famous compiler of the Decretals; in 1608, Frances Pontiani, a Benedictine nun; and, in 1610, the eminent and illustrious Charles Borromeo, bishop of Milan, so justly celebrated for his exemplary piety, and almost unparalleled liberality and beneficence. Gregory XV. conferred, in the year 1622, the honour of saintship on Theresa, a native of Avila in Spain, and a nun of the Carmelite order.

Urban VIII. in the year 1623, conferred the same ghostly honours on Philip Neri, the founder of the order entitled Fathers of the Oratory, in Italy; on Ignatius Loyola, the parent of the Jesuits; and on his chief disciple Francis Xavier, the Jesuitical apostle of the Indians.

Alexander VII. canonized, in the year 1658, Thomas de Villanova, a Spanish monk, of the order of St. Augustin; and, in 1665, Francis de Sales, bishop of Geneva.

Clement X. added to this ghostly list, in the year 1670, Pedro de Alcantara, a Franciscan monk; and Maria Magdalena Pactii, a Florentine nun of the Carmelite order; and in the year 1671, Rose, an American virgin, of the third order of Dominic, and Lewis Bertrand, a Dominican monk.

Under the pontificate of Innocent XII. saintship was conferred upon Cajetan of Vicenza, a regular clerk of the

x This book, which was published at Rome in 4to. in the year 1696, is entitled Nodus Prædestinationis dissolutus. The letters of the French bishops, with the answer of the Roman pontiff, are to be found in Du Plessis D'Argentre's Collectio judiciorum de novis erroribus, tom. iii. p. ii. p. 394, and Natalis Alexander's Theologia Dogmatica et Moralis, p. 877. The letters of the bishops are remarkable in this respect, that they contain sharp animadversions against the Jesuits and their discipline. The prelates express, in the strongest terms, their abborrence of the doctrine of philosophical sin, which has rendered the Jesuits so deservedly infamous, and their detestation of the methods of propagating Christianity employed by the missionaries of that order in China. Nay, to express their aversion to the doctrine of Sfondrati, they say, that his opinions are still more erroneous and pernicious than even those of the Molinists. The doctrine of this cardinal has been accurately represented and compared with that of Augustine by the learned Basnage, in his Histoire de l'Eglise. livr. xii. c. iii. § xi. p. 713.

y The Bull issued out by Urban VIII. for diminishing the number of the holydays cebrated in the church of Rome, may be seen in the Nouvelle Bibliotheque, tom. xv. p. 88.

order of Theatins, for whom that honour had been designed twenty years before, by Clement X. who died at the time the canonization was to have been performed; John of Leon, a hermit of St. Augustin; Paschal Baylonios, a Franciscan monk of the kingdom of Arragon; and John de Dieu, a Portuguese, and one of the order of the brethren of hospitality, all of whom had been marked for a place in the calendar, by Alexander VIII.were solemnly canonized, in the year 1691, by Innocent XII.

The state

church.

CHAPTER II.

HISTORY OF THE GREEK AND ORIENTAL CHURCHES.

I. THE history of the Greek and eastern Christians, faithfully and accurately composed, would, no of the Greek doubt, furnish us with a variety of entertaining and useful records; but the events that happen, and the transactions that are carried on in these distant regions, are very rarely transmitted to us genuine and uncorrupted. The spirit of religious party, and the pious frauds it often engenders, want of proper information, and undistinguishing credulity, have introduced a fabulous mixture into the accounts we have of the state of the Christian religion in the east; and this consideration has engaged us to treat in a more concise manner, than would otherwise have been expedient, this particular branch of ecclesiastical history.

The Greek church, whose wretched situation was mentioned in the history of the preceding century, continued, during the present one, in the same deplorable state of ignorance and decay, destitute of the means of acquiring or promoting solid and useful knowledge. This account is however to be considered as taken from a general view of that church; for several of its members may be alleged as exceptions from this general character of ignorance,

z The diplomas of the pontiffs, relative to all these canonizations, may be seen in Justus Fontaninus's Codex Constitutionum, quas summi Pontifices ediderunt in solemni Canonizatione sanctorum, p. 260, published in folio at Rome, in the year 1729. As they contain the particular reasons which occasioned the elevation of these persons to a place in the calendar, and the peculiar kind of merit on which each of these ghostly promotions was founded, they offer abundant matter for reflection and censure to a judicious reader. Nor would it be labour ill employed to inquire, without prejudice or partiality, into the justice, piety, and truth of what the popes allege in these diplomas, as the reasons inducing them to confer saintship on the persons therein mentioned.

superstition, and corruption. Among that multitude of Greeks who travelled into Sicily, Venice, Rome, England, Holland, and Germany, or carry on trade in their own country, or fill honourable and important posts in the court of the Turkish emperor, there are undoubtedly several who are exempt from this reproach of ignorance and stupidity, of superstition and profligacy, and who make a figure by their opulence and credit." But nothing can be more rooted and invincible than the aversion the Greeks in general discover to the Latin or Romish church; an aversion which neither promises nor threatenings, artifice nor violence, have been able to conquer, or even to temper or diminish, and which has continued inflexible and unrelenting amidst the most zealous efforts of the Roman pontiffs, and the various means employed by their numerous missionaries to gain over this people to their communion and jurisdiction. It is true indeed that the Latin doctors have

a I have been led to these remarks by the complaints of Alexander Helladius, and others, who see things in the light in which he has placed them. There is still extant a book published in Latin by this author, in the year 1714, entitled The present state of the Greek Church, in which he throws out the bitterest reproaches upon seve ral authors of eminent merit and learning, who have given accounts of that church, and maintains that his brethren of the Greek communion are much more pious, learned, wise, and opulent, than they are commonly supposed to be. Instead of envying the Greeks the merit and felicity which this panegyrist supposes them possessed of, we sincerely wish them much greater degrees of both. But we observe, at the same time, that from the very accounts given by Helladius, it would be easy to prove, that the state of the Greeks is not a whit better than it is generally supposed to be; though it may be granted that the same ignorance, superstition, and immorality, do not abound alike in all places, nor among all persons. See what we have remarked on

this subject in the accounts we have given of the eastern church during the sixteenth century.

b The Jesuit Tarillon has given an ample relation of the numerous missions in Greece and the other provinces of the Ottoman empire, and of the present state of these missions, in his letter to Pontchartraine, Sur l'etat present des Missions des Peres Jesuites dans la Greece, which is published in the Nouveaux Memoires des Missions de la Compagnie de Jesus, tom. i. p. 1125. For an account of the state of the Romish religion in the Islands of the Archipelago, see the letter of the Jesuit Xavier Portier, in the Lettres edifiantes et curieuses ecrites des Missions Etrangeres, tom. x. p. 328. These accounts are, it is true, somewhat embellished, in order to advance the glory of the Jesuits; but the exaggerations of these missionaries may be easily corrected by the accounts of other writers, who, in our times, have treated this branch of ecclesiastical history. See, above all others, R. Simon's, under the fictitious name of Sanicse, Bibliotheque Critique, tom. i. c. xxiii. p. 340, and especially p. 346, where the author confirms a remarkable fact, which we have mentioned above upon the authority of Urban Cerri, viz. that amidst the general dislike which the Greeks have of the Romish church, none carry this dislike to such a high degree of antipathy and aversion, as those very Greeks who have been educated at Rome, or in other schools and seminaries belonging to its spiritual jurisdiction. "Ils sont," says father Simon, "les premiers a crier contre et a medire du Pape et des Latins. Ces Pelerins Orientaux qui viennent chez nous fourbent et abusent de notre credulite pour acheter un benefice et tourmenter les missionaires Latins," &c. We have still more recent and ample testimonies of the invincible hatred of the Greeks toward the Latins, in the Preface to Cowell's Account of the present Greek Church, printed at Cambridge, in the year 1723.

founded churches in some of the islands of the Archipelago; but these congregations are poor and inconsiderable; nor will either the Greeks or their masters, the Turks, permit the Romish missionaries to extend further their spiritual jurisdiction.

Cyrillus Lu

car.

of a union

between the Greek and

es entirely

dispelled.

C

II. Under the pontificate of Urban VIII. great hopes were entertained of softening the antipathy of the The story of Greeks against the Latin church, and of engaging them and the other Christians of the east, to embrace the communion of Rome, and acknowledge the supremacy and jurisdiction of its pontiff. This was the chief object that excited the ambitious zeal and employed the assiduous labour and activity of Urban, who The bopes called to his assistance such ecclesiastics as were most eminent for their acquaintance with Greek Latin church and oriental learning, and with the tempers, manners, and characters of the Christians in those distant regions, that they might suggest the shortest and most effectual method of bringing them and their churches under the Roman yoke. The wisest of these counsellors advised the pontiff to lay it down for a preliminary in this difficult negotiation that the Greek and eastern Christians were to be indulged in almost every point that had hitherto been refused them by the Romish missionaries, and that no alteration was to be introduced, either into their ritual or doctrine; that their ceremonies were to be tolerated, since they did not concern the essence of religion; and that their doctrine was to be explained and understood in such a manner, as might give it a near and striking resemblance of the doctrine and institutions of the church of Rome. In defence of this method of proceeding, it was judiciously observed, that the Greeks would be much more tractable and obsequious, were they told by the missionaries that it was not meant to convert them; that they had always been Roman catholics in reality, though not in profession; and that the popes had no intention of persuading them to abandon the doctrine of their ancestors, but only desired that they would understand it in its true and genuine sense. This plan gave rise to a variety of laborious productions, in which there was more learning than probity, and more dexterity than candour and good faith. Such were the treatises published by Leo Allatius, Morinus, Clement Gala

e See the Life of Morinus, which is prefixed to his Antiquitates Eccles. Orient. p. 37.

nus, Lucas Holstenius, Abraham Echellensis," and others, who pretended to demonstrate, that there was little or no difference between the religion of the Greeks, Armenians, and Nestorians, and that of the church of Rome, a few ceremonies excepted, together with some unusual phrases and terms that are peculiar to the Christians of the east.

This design of bringing, by artful compliances, the Greek and eastern churches under the jurisdiction of Rome was opposed by many; but by none with more resolution and zeal than by Cyrillus Lucar, patriarch of Constantinople, a man of extensive learning and knowledge of the world, who had travelled through a great part of Europe, and was well acquainted with the doctrine and discipline both of the protestant and Romish churches. This prelate declared openly, and indeed with more courage than pru dence, that he had a strong propensity to the religious sentiments of the English and Dutch churches, and had conceived the design of reforming the doctrine and ritual of the Greeks, and bringing them nearer to the purity and simplicity of the gospel. This was sufficient to render the venerable patriarch odious to the friends of Rome. And accordingly the Jesuits, seconded by the credit and influence of the French ambassador, and assisted by the treacherous stratagems of some perfidious Greeks, continued to perplex and persecute the good man in various ways, and at length accomplished his ruin; for, by the help of false witnesses, they obtained an accusation of treason against him; in consequence of which he was put to death, in the year 1638, by order of the emperor. He was suc

d The book of Leo Allatius De Concordia Ecclesia Orientalis et Occidentalis, is well known, and deservedly looked upon, by the most learned men among the protestants, as the work of a disingenuous and insidious writer. The Græcia Orthodoxa of the same author, which was published at Rome in the year 1652, in 4to. and contains a compilation from all the books of the Grecian doctors that were well affected to the Latin church, is still extant. We have nothing of Lucas Holstenius, who was superior to Allatius in learning and sagacity, upon this subject, except two posthumous dissertations, De ministro et forma sacramenti confirmationis apud Græcos, which were published at Rome in the year 1666. The treatises of Morinus De pænitentia et ordinationibus, are known to all the learned, and seem expressly composed to make the world believe, that there is a striking uniformity of sentiment between the Greek and Latin churches on these two important points, when, laying aside the difference that scholastic terms and peculiar modes of expression may appear to occasion, we attend to the meaning that is annexed to these terms by the members of the two communions. Galanus, in a long and laborious work, published at Rome in the year 1650, has endeavoured to prove, that the Armenians differ very little from the Latins in their religious opinions; and Abraham Echellensis has attempted to convince us in several treatises, and more especially in his Animadversiones ad Hebed. Jesu Catalogum librorum Chaldaicorum, that all Chris tians throughout Africa and Asia have the same system of doctrine that is received among the Latins.

e The Confession of Faith, drawn up by Cyrillus Lucar, was published in Holland VOL III 70