it marks the complete establishment of civil and ecclesiastical despotism, by the surrender of all those states, with their rights and liberties, to the dominion and controul of the French monarch, under the direction of the Roman pontiff. When therefore the curtain at last falls upon this sad tragedy, it seems as if the night of ignorance and tyranny had closed upon the nations for ever.

The attentive reader cannot fail to remark, that these events give a very different representation of the principles of the church of Rome, from that which is offered to us by its modern advocates, and especially by that respectable body the English catholics. It becomes, therefore, a proper, and even a necessary, subject of enquiry, whether these are the true interpreters of the principles of the church to which they belong, or whether we are to seek for their interpretation in the recorded acts and authentic documents of the church itself. They represent the authority of the church of Rome as merely spiritual, and extending only to its voluntary subjects, and assert that the natural rights of men, and the authority of civil governments, are equally beyond its controul: yet it must be remarked, on the one hand, that the church of Rome allows of no private interpretation of its dogmas, where the church has decided; and on the other, that the history of its proceedings by no means justifies their representations. The church may not indeed, in future, ever be able to

resume that authority by which it has heretofore trampled on the rights both of subjects and their rulers; but should it ever again be in a situation to act as its own interpreter of its own claims, it is scarcely to be supposed that it would then recognize the limits which either individuals or bodies in its communion had attempted to place to the exercise of its sovereign will. We are, therefore, under the necessity, as far as it may be desirable for us to become acquainted with the claims of the church of Rome, to seek them, not from private opinions, but from its own authoritative and deliberate acts.

We are also bound to consider, that the dogmas of the church of Rome are not subjects of mere speculation. She has always claimed a divine right of imposing them on the minds of men, and has, at different times, attained to a power of enforcing these claims, unexampled in the history of mankind. With those religious dogmas by which she still subjugates the souls of her votaries, we, who after two centuries of conflict have withdrawn from her domination, have no concern, any further than she is amenable for them to the bar of reason and truth; but, besides the controul which she exercises over those of her own communion, she has ever maintained certain rights towards those whom she is pleased to designate as heretics, and has often exercised those rights with a severity, for which no authority is to be

found, except in her own traditions. We have, therefore, on our part, a right to demand a renunciation of those claims, as public and authoritative as the exercise of them has ever been, or to guard ourselves against their repetition, by such prudential and cautionary measures, as the circumstances of the times may require.

The crusades against the Albigenses seem to present one of those occasions by which the rights, claimed by the Roman church towards heretics, may be most fully and accurately ascertained. They were her exclusive and deliberate act. The church of Rome had been then, according to its own principles, established for nearly twelve hundred years. It professed to have been endowed with miraculous powers, and to be guided by the teachings of the infallible spirit of God. All the temporal authorities had submitted to its domination and were ready to execute its orders. If therefore there is any period in which we should seek for its genuine and authentic principles, it must be under the unclouded dominion of Innocent III. Nor can the opponents of all reformation possibly desire any thing more, than to restore that golden age of the church. Should they say, that, civilization and philosophy having then made but small progress, we are to charge the cruelties which were committed against the heretics to th ignorance and barbarism of the times, we would reply, that all these cruelties were

prompted, encouraged, and sanctioned, by Rome itself, and that an infallible church cannot require the lights of philosophy to instruct her in her duties towards heretics. To an impartial inquirer it would seem rather strange, that under the spiritual illumination afforded by this church to the nations, heresies should have arisen which required such severe measures for their extirpation, and that with all the powers of heaven and earth on its side, the church could not trust itself in the field of reason and argument against them. But certain it is, that heresies did arise, and that the church of Rome felt itself called upon to shew to that age, and to all succeeding ones, the full extent of the power, with which it was invested by heaven, for their suppression and extirpation.

The dogma on which all these transactions were founded is that the church possesses the right to extirpate heresy, and to use all the means which she may judge necessary for that purpose-and to those who are not acquainted with the subtle distinctions of the Roman casuists, this dogma seems to possess all the claims to authority which the church ever makes necessary for an article of faith. It was on this dogma that Innocent III and his legates preached the crusade against the heretics, and promised to those who engaged in it, the full remission of all sins; it was on this dogma that they excommunicated the civil powers by whom they were, or supposed to be, protected,

1

and disposed of their dominions to those who assisted in this spiritual warfare. This dogma was repeatedly avowed by provincial councils, and finally ratified by an oecumenical or general council, the fourth of Lateran.1 It was received by the tacit-nay by the cordial and triumphant assent of the universal church, and had also the sanction of the civil authorities, who received from the church the spoils of the deposed and persecuted princes. We can therefore conceive of nothing which should be still necessary to constitute this dogma an article of faith, and hold ourselves justified in considering the church of Rome to claim, as of divine authority, the right to extirpate heresy, and for that purpose, if she judge it necessary, to exterminate heretics.

1 This council not only determined the spiritual power of the church over heretics, but defined the application of that power to temporal princes. Cap. iii, "Si dominus temporalis requisitus et monitus ab Ecclesia, terram suam purgare neglexerit ab hæretica fœditate, per Metropolitanos et cæteros provinciales Episcopos vinculo excommunicationis innodetur; et si satisfacere contempserit infra annum, significetur hoc Summ. Pontifici, et extunc ipse vassalos ab ejus fidelitate denunciet absolutos, et terram exponet Catholicis occupandam, qui eam, hæreticis exterminatis (id est, ex vi vocis expulsis), sine ullo contradictione possideant, salva jure Domini principalis, dummodo super hoc ipse nullum præstet obstaculum, eadem nihilominus lege servata, circa eos qui non habent Dominos principales."-See Delahogue, Tract. de Ecclesia Christi, p. 202. The author adds, “Nonnulli critici dubitant de authenticitate hujus canonis." "And well they do; for without this doubt, the cause of the Romish church is lost irrevocably. The count of Toulouse and the Albigenses however felt its authenticity. The parenthesis (vi vocis expulsis) does not belong to the original article, but is a gloss of the learned author, by which he would insinnate that the heretics were only to be banished: a miserable attempt to pervert the plainest language and the most notorious facts.