ing of all which is, that, according to the law of the papacy as it was then understood and acted on by infallible popes, the people of England were not entitled to have any share in the affairs of their own government, for the reason that, if they did, the power of the papacy would be weakened and the law of God violated! And such was the inevitable and log. ical result of the doctrine of divine right as understood and announced by Innocent III., and such remains to-day its inevitable and logical result as understood and re-announced by Pius IX. What was the law of the papacy then is its law yet. Admit the law to exist, and its consequences can not be escaped-they inevitably follow, as effect follows cause. Streams do not more certainly find their way to the sea than it follows, from the recognition of the divine right of kings and popes, that they become the sovereign masters of the world, and all mankind their slaves.

WYCLIFFE AND THE LOLLARDS.

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CHAPTER XVI.

Religious Persecution antedates Protestantism.-Lucius III. and Innocent III. persecute the Waldenses and Albigenses.-The Fourth Lateran Council.The Third Canon provides for extirpating Heretics, and taking away their Country.-Law of the Church.-Acted upon in the Fifteenth Century by Innocent VIII.-The Practice of Innocent III. under it.—Persecution made a Religious Duty.-Reformation in Germany.—Luther and the Pope.-Henry VIII. and the Pope quarrel about Supremacy, not Faith.— Protestants do not assist Him.-The Pope releases his Subjects from their Allegiance. Their Adherents persecute each Other.-More and Fisher. Henry VIII. always a Roman Catholic in Faith.-He persecutes Reformers and Papists.-Edward VI. the first Protestant King.-He does not persecute Papists.-Gives the Crown to Lady Jane Grey.-Mary, the Rightful Heir, proclaimed Queen. Her Promise to the Reformers that they should not be disturbed in their Religion.-She refuses to be bound by her Promise.-The Teachings of Rome.-Mary's Measures all Papal.Her Persecution of Protestants.—Her Marriage to Philip of Spain.—The Result of the League between Pope Paul III. and Charles V.—Cardinal Pole.-Dictates Policy of the English Government.-Persecutions continue.-Hooper, Latimer, and Ridley.-Elizabeth.—She persecutes both Papists and Protestants. Is educated in the School of Rome. - Only seeks to substitute Imperial Protestantism for Imperial Romanism.

Ir was impossible, in the very nature of things, that the condition of affairs portrayed in the last chapter could long exist in England without some material change. The barons had placed themselves between the people and the king, and were the representatives of principles of civil polity which they could not now surrender without an abandonment of the best interests of the country and their own honThe Lollards, under the lead of Wycliffe, were similarly situated, as it regarded the principles of religious belief and the affairs of the Church. Upon one point they agreed; that is, the necessity for reform. The barons were laboring to reform the State; the Lollards, the Church. The barons were not ready to concede that the king was the State; nor were the Lollards ready to concede that the pope was the

or.

Church. Such concessions on the part of both of them would have given to absolutism a perfect triumph over all the ancient liberties, and would have left England completely subdued. She would then have been, in fact, a fief of the Holy See, with no claim whatever to an independent national existence. With her Parliament constituted as it then was, subordinated to the king, and with the king subordinated to the pope, the people would have borne the same relations to the papacy that the people of the Papal States did—that of entire dependence. The pope, as a thorough politician, could see all this, and therefore left no possible means unemployed to hold both the barons and the Lollards in subjection. For, whatever else he may have seen, it must have been appar ent to him that, unless the reform sought for by each was speedily checked, they would both ultimately reach some common point of union which would make them strong enough to materially weaken both the papal and the kingly power. As the controversy waxed warmer and warmer, the respective parties became more earnest and aggressive; the barons more determined not to yield; the Lollards more resolved upon Church reform; and the pope and the king more resolved upon keeping the Church and the State so united that their combined power would be sufficient to suppress all free inquiry, and to keep the people in a condi tion of vassalage.

It was an issue between power and right-the former rep resented by the pope and the king, the latter by the people, in civil affairs under the lead of the barons, and in the affairs of the Church under the lead of the Lollards. As in all such controversies, power has invariably resorted to force to keep itself in place, so it did in this. This force, however, did not proceed exclusively from the King and Government of England, inasmuch as by this time the influences of the combined opposition had become too great for open resistance by the king and Parliament. But as the pope had assumed to himself the divine prerogative of governing the country, both in its civil and ecclesiastical policy, and held the king in complete subjugation, the Church was relied on as furnishing, through its ecclesiastical organization, whatsoever was necessary in that direction to accomplish

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the desired end. The pope's recognized right of dictation to the king made him responsible for the oppressive measures resorted to by the latter; while his position as the infallible head of the Church made him equally responsible for the oppressive measures of the Church. It is manifestly true that the principles of Magna Charta would have gone into immediate effect in England but for the interference of the pope; for if he had not intervened between the king and the people by employing the authority of the Church to release the king from the obligation of his oath, the barons, backed by the people, would have been able to hold him to his promise. And thus we find all the measures of compulsion employed against the barons and the Lollards traceable directly to the papacy, and made effectual, as far as they could be, by means of the immense number of foreign ecclesiastics scattered throughout the kingdom, who, as the emissaries of the pope, dictated to the king whatsoever measures were necessary to keep the people in check. And hence we find also that a measure of ecclesiastical policy was adopted, and made a part of the canon law of· the Church, during the pontificate of Innocent III., which makes the papacy immediately and directly responsible for all the force and persecution employed, not only in England, but elsewhere, to keep the people in subjugation, and repress reform both in State and Church. In the year 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council was held in Rome, under the direct personal guidance of Innocent III., to whom, as already shown, King John surrendered the crown of England. This is conceded to have been the twelfth Ecumenical Council, and its enactments are, consequently, regarded as part of the canon law, equally binding upon the faithful at all times, as much so now as when they were originally passed. In one canon adopted by this council certain heresies were condemned; in another, heretics were excommunicated; and in another, it was provided that they should be exterminated.

Here we reach a point of vast importance to the present times, and ground on which it is necessary and right that we should tread with great caution, so as not to mis

lead

012

alleged

selves or others. For if it be true that what is here constitutes a part of the law of the Roman Church,

having, by the action of a general council and the assent of a pope, the impress of infallibility stamped upon it, then it will not do to say, as the papal writers do, that persecution arose out of Protestantism and was of Protestant growth; for it must be observed that at the time referred to there was no such thing as Protestantism known. Wycliffe, who has been properly called the "Morning-star of the Reformation," was not born till the year 1324, and therefore the Lollards, who were his followers in England, had not arisen. The Waldenses, or Vaudois, had been excommunicated for heresy by Lucius III., who was pope from the year 1181 to 1185; and they were afterward condemned for teaching, contrary to the practice of the Roman Church, that the unworthiness of the clergy rendered them incapable of their ministry.(') Pope Innocent III. inaugurated measures of his own accord in the year 1198-the first of his pontificate-to extirpate the Albigenses. The next year he ordered their estates to be confiscated. He ordered the abbots and monks not only to preach against them, but to "excite the princes and people to extirpate them, and to form a crusade against them." Raymond, Count of Toulouse, a leader among the Albigenses, caused one of these missionaries to be assassinated, for which he was required to retract his errors, and to deliver up several of his towns to the pope as the price of his absolution-which was granted him. After this was done, as the crusaders had no further contest with Raymond, they turned their arms against the town of Béziers, where the Albigenses were fortified, besieged, took, and burned the town, and put all the inhabitants "to the edge of the sword."() The particular heresies, therefore, with which the Church had to deal during the pontificate of Innocent III. were those of the Waldenses and the Albigenses; and, consequently, it is to these that the decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council were specially directed. All this antedated the existence of the Lollards and the birth of Protestantism; but when Protestantism began subsequently to arise, the law of the Church was already prepared to visit upon the Protestants the same measure of pontifical vengeance as had been Ibid., pp. 150, 151.

(1) Du Pin, vol. xi., p. 147.