Much, however, as is due to Vargas; to Father Paul we are most indebted for the true picture, which he has drawn of it. He, indeed, it is, who has clearly demonstrated, that the Spirit which guided it, did not descend from Heaven, but was conveyed to it from Rome by the ordinary couriers :-that this Council so wished for by good men for the purpose of healing schism, caused greater derangement in the Church than before, and brought the Bishops into greater servitude to the Pope, instead of conferring on them their rightful authority, which he had usurped.-How admirably he illustrates the incompetence of the Council, its subserviency to the Pope, and the tyrannical exercise of the legatine powers. The Legates proposed, (Legatis proponentibus) regulated, and decided, and the Legates only; with a total disregard for every other individual, however respectable for their station, or character. When terrible controversies arose between the regular and secular clergy, on the subject of preaching, and reading lectures, with what point does he prove them to have been questions of "PROFIT, and not of opinion." And on those controversies becoming stormy, in what a fine vein of humour, does he expose the underplot of the scene; when he lets us into the secret, that the Pope desired the Fathers to condemn the aggressors to dire punishment, that he might have the merit of remitting it. This he shews, in one instance, particularly in the fifth session, where one Bishop was so incensed with another, that he seized him by the beard, and plucked out some of the hair. The punishment awarded was exile; but the Pope sent him to his Bishopric ! And if he condemns the INDEX EXPURGAtorius, and the use of an unknown tongue in the service of the Church, he assigns his reasons; that the former advanced papal authority by depriving men of knowledge, stultifying them under pretence of making them religious: while the latter shut them out from the light of the Gospel, as St. Paul proved in his first Epistle, Cor. chap. xiv. To celibacy, he was not more indulgent, because from it sprang, as he said, the best inquisitors, from their being strangers to the sympathies of parental, and conjugal love; and because for the same reason, to it was to be ascribed the abject dependance of the Clergy on the papal See. In a word, it is to the manly, intrepid, Protestant-like spirit of this Venetian Monk, that we are indebted for the justest view, that can be formed of the ambition, and avarice, as well as of the ignorance, and corruption of the Tridentine Fathers ;-a view, which impresses us with the truth, that there existed among them a large infusion of human policy, and passion, mingled with but a scanty share of religion, and morals; and that chicane, Y intrigue, and contention prevailed in a greater proportion in that assembly, than in the ordinary Parliaments, and Congresses of politicians, and of mere men of the world. One observation alone remains to be made in conclusion, that neither was the Church, (in capite, vel in membris,) reformed; nor justice done to the Protestants. The German Protestant Divines it is true, appeared manfully at Trent. They appealed to the Embassadors, and presented the Legates with their Confession of Faith. But they were dismissed in silence, and their Confession, instead of being read to the Council, was thrown aside; and yet this is doing justice to the Protestants. Can this be what is called by a Romish Bishop of the present day;-a dispassionate examination of the Protestant cause by the Council of Trent? No: never was cause more unjustly condemned, nor tried before a more corrupt, and iniquitous judge, and jury. LEARNED MEN. It were tedious to particularize the illustrious characters, which adorned the Age of the Reformation. Xavier, indeed, the missionary to the Indies, may deserve to be mentioned; but if Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, be associated with him, it is solely for the purpose of referring to the period, when the Papal Janizaries were first formed. But there were two others of an opposite cast |