Uncle

is; but I forget sometimes. Field! you must pray for John! you must! I cannot die and leave him in his sins, his delusion: he does not think it is sin, but I know it. Pray! pray! dear Uncle: don't be discouraged-do not fear he will be undeceived some time; he will repent, I know! The Lord is just, and I will pray in heaven, and I will tell Nelly to, but you must. It says in the Bible, the prayer of a righteous man;' and oh! I am not righteous! I should not have married

him; it was an unequal yoke, and I have borne the burden; but I loved him so much! Uncle Field, I did not keep myself from idols. Pray! I shall be dead, but he lives. Pray for him, and, if you will, for the little child--because -I am dying. Dear Nelly!”

"Are you blotting my letter, young man?" said Parson Field, at my elbow, as I deciphered the last broken, trembling line, of Ada's story. "Here I have been five minutes, and you did not hear me!" I really had blotted the letter!

I.

II.

III.

Its

Before doing so, it may be proper to premise, that we have not been educated to any overweening estimate of the claims of the Catholic Church. On the contrary, our studies, observations, and general habits of thought, have led us into convictions decidedly and utterly hostile to its theories of government as well as to its creeds. It seems to us a singular mixture of fanaticism, tyranny, cunning and devout religion. We are sensible, too, of its many means of influence, and of the vast prestige with which it addresses itself both to the imagination and reason of men. venerable age, connecting it with the most ancient and splendid civilizations, Oriental, Grecian, Roman, and feudal; but, surviving them all, amid the fiercest tempests of time, as the pyramids have triumphed over the sand-storms of the desert, where the hundred-gated cities are laid in ruins,-its marvelous organization, combining the solidest strength with the most flexile activity, conciliating the wildest fanatical zeal with the coolest intellectual cunning, adapting it to every age, nation, and exigency, and enabling it to pursue its designs with continuous and varied forces;-its imposing ceremonies and pantomimes, which seem like mummery to the stranger, but to the initiated are signs of the mighty conquests it has achieved over the mythologies, the rites, and the persecutions of antiquity, as well as promises of the consoling grace which will again sustain it, should the hand of the enemy drive it once more into the catacombs and the caves; its luxurious, yet discriminating, patronage of art, which has preserved to us so

much of all that is best in art, in the touching music, the lovely paintings, and the sublime cathedrals of the middle-age; and, above all, the unquestionable ability of its priests, with the long line of noble and beautiful spirits, Abelards, Pascals, and Fenelons, who have illustrated history, by their culture, their piety and their geniusthese are elements of greatness and power, which it would be folly as well as blindness in any one to overlook or deride. But, as we are convinced, also, that there are influences stronger than these, the influences of truth,-of the soul of man,-of the spirit of the age, in its present developments,-of the providence of God, which has established a moral order in history, we are not dismayed by the amount of its ecclesiastical pretension, nor disheartened by any seeming facility or splendr inits temporary successes.

Least of all, shall we allow ourselves to be betrayed, by the chronic terrors of Protestants, into an unjust judgment of Catholics, and the consequent perpetration of political wrong. We are too familiar with the history of religious controversy to be hurried away by the furious zeal of agitators, who regard it as their special mission to arouse the world to a proper dread of the abuses of Popery. They are sincere, we have no doubt; but it is the sincerity of partisans, not of judges. They have worked their impatience of error up to that inflammatory pitch, where conviction becomes passion. Of tolerable selfcomplacency and quietude, in other respects, they are apt to be shaken out of their shoes when the subject of the "Scarlet Woman" is broached. It has all the effect upon them-we say it with reverence of the red-rag upon some imperious turkey, who, straightway, loses his solemn port and dignity, and rushes wildly to the battle.

Even the more temperate polemics. on the Protestant side of this controversy, do not always restrain their ardor at judgment-heat. Having convinced themselves that Rome-not ecclesiasticism in general, but the particular branch of it called Rome-is the great Anti-Christ of Scripture, they incontinently belabor her with every variety of Scriptural reprobation. All the mon

strous types of apocalyptic zoology, the beasts with seven heads and ten horns, the red and black horses, the eagles, the calves, and the fiery flying serpents, are made to find in her their living resemblance, while she is loudly proclaimed to be the man of perdition,

the mother of harlots,-the mystic Babylon, who makes the nations "drunk with the wine of the wrath of her fornications."*

It happens, unfortunately for the Church, that it is not difficult to give plausibility to these views, and, to some extent, a justification of reactionary hatreds, from the records of history. Ecclesiastical annals, (and the same is true, perhaps, of all other annals,) tried by the standard of existing opinions, are so full of whatever is insolent in assumption, corrupt in morals, cunning and treacherous in fraud, and detestable in tyranny, that a mere tyro, with a case to make out, might draw pictures from them that would frighten a college of cardinals, and much more a conclave of credulous zealots. Dip into these annals anywhere, but especially into what relates to the doings from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries, and how much wickedness of every kind you meet! What audacity, licentiousness, superstition, ignorance, fraud, uproar, and cruel ferocity of persecution! The dread power of the Papacy, as it is described in the popular histories, seems to bestride those ages, like a gigantic spectre of the Brocken. It rises before us as something awful, mysterious, and desolating. Removed, as we are by many generations, from the scenes of its action, we still see the flash of its lightnings, and still hear the roar of its thunders, as the bolts fall swift and terrible about the heads of emperors and kings. In its quietest times, our eyes are haunted with visions of bloodyhands; the air is sultry with a feeling of oppression; and the soul, in its recoil from the gloom and sorrow that darkens and sobs around it, loses sense of the true proportions of things, and fancies that all was evil then, and nothing good.

But, take up any party or principle, in an unfriendly spirit, to

trace its affinities among the parties and principles of former times, and immediately you may place it in disreputable company. Thus, you may illustrate monarchy by the excesses of the Oriental kings or the Roman Cesars; you may make aristocracy responsible for the nobles of the middle ages; and democracy for the peasant-wars and French revolutions of a later day. A person, opposed to the Church of England, might say that it is still an unrepealed canon with her that papists and dissenters may be choked to death for their errors. Another, opposed to Calvinism, would show Calvin, Beza, and Melancthon urging the incremation of Servetus. A third would tell us of the Huguenots roasting papal priests, while they were themselves singed with the fires of St. Bartholomew; or of the Scotch parliament, with eight thousand Scotchmen dead at the hands of the Stuarts, decreeing death against the profession of Episcopacy; or, of the good Puritans, flying to the wilderness to escape and to establish spiritual despotism. In short, no sect or party can look with entire complacency upon the deeds of its ancestors, and no sect or party has a right to interpret the great lessons of history in a narrow, sectarian spirit.

Now, it seems to us, that the Catholics are criticised too entirely in this one-sided way. Their opponents, drawing a drag-net through the impure streams of the middle-ages, bespatter them with all the rubbish that the cast

brings up. It is forgotten that those ages were ages, in many respects, of the grossest barbarism and blindness; that anarchy and outrage reigned everywhere; that opinion was unformed and authorities at war; and that if the conduct of the hierarchy, stretching across such long periods of general violence, exhibits much that is rapacious, cruel, and malignant, it was often redeemed by the valuable services which the same hierarchy rendered to the cause of learning, of art, of social discipline, of popular progress, and European unity. The representations, therefore, which dwell upon the evils of those times exclusively, are violent daubs or grotesque caricatures, and not historical pictures.

They remind us of certain galleries in Italy, where the walls teem with fagots, stakes, gridirons, broiling martyrs, and a horrible array of distorted human anatomy, unrelieved by one sweet face or a single smiling landscape.

We have no disposition to palliate the horrid deeds of ancient churchmen, nor to disguise the lessons of history, but we think that, at this late day, ecclesiastical battles might be fought with other weapons than those the illustrious Molly Seagrim used when she drove her neighbors out of the sacred enclosure with thigh-bones, skulls and bits of old tombstone. History is only instructive when it is read in the light of philosophy. We cannot properly use its events as isolated facts, nor judge of the characters it presents us by the standards of modern opinion. Every age and nation must be viewed in its peculiar relations. Every age and nation has its own methods and its own ideas. The boy is not the man; the man of the ninth century is not the man of the nineteenth; and the etiquette of the court of Queen Victoria cannot be applied to the court of Queen Pomare. That which might have been good government, in one time and place, would be very bad government in another time and place, and a course of conduct which seems simply impudent and senile in Gregory XVI., may have been exalted and beneficial in Gregory VII.

These remarks, common-place as they are, have an important bearing upon the particular question before us-the temporal power of the Popes-which is commonly treated as if the tenth and eleventh centuries could be revived, and old Hildebrand-true son of fire as he was named-start again from the grave where he has rested nearly a thousand years. But this is a grave mistake. That power, as we shall show, is no longer a present terror, but a simple historical phenomenon. It had its origin in the inevitable circumstances and necessities of society, at a particular stage of its progress, and, having served its ends, sometimes salutary and sometimes quite otherwise, it has been dismissed by a kind Providence to the limbo of things not wanted on earth.

This proposition we now proceed very succinctly to illustrate, by reference to a few prominent historical facts, on the origin and culmination of the papal power:

1. The foundation of every temporal

or spiritual enormity, into which the Church was destined to run, was laid in the opinion, which early obtained, that Christ had founded an external institution, to be the medium of the new and divine life. It was not only an unavoidable inference from this, in logic, that such a body should be supreme in its moral authority, but it was also an unavoidable practical deduction that the administrators of its ordinances should become among the most wealthy and powerful personages in secular society.

2. The conversion of Constantine added prodigiously to the temporalities of the Church, but, most of all, by conferring judicial and civil jurisdiction upon the bishops. His successors pursued the same policy, with some exceptions, and anybody who will read the Theodosian and Justinian codes, will see that the clergy, long before the fifth century, were in the possession of large patrimonies, were joined in the civil and financial administration of the provinces, were judges in the courts allowed to decree temporal penalties, and often took part in the imperial councils.

3. In the distribution of ecclesiastical rank, following generally the political divisions of the Empire, the preeminence fell, of course, to the See of the imperial city, the foremost city of the world. Its local position, fortified by old renown and the traditions of St. Peter's special favor, made it a center of attraction and reverence to the faithful everywhere, but particularly to the churches among the barbarians, which its zeal had planted, and which were ever eager to testify their respect and submission to the venerable mother.

4. When the Empire was transferred to the East-an event that ought to have diminished the importance of the Roman Church-it happened that the distractions of the times turned that event into an occasion of its increasing power. The Emperors, absorbed in their eastern troubles, left the Church almost the only authority in the western provinces. Their representatives, the miserable exarchs, for the most part plunderers and despots, could not rival the priests in the affections of the people. As the imperial authority grew weaker, therefore, the authority of the Roman Bishop grew stronger. The senate, as well as the populace, came to regard him as their true head; so that

the Emperor, no longer able to control his affairs, and glad of the assistance of so eminent and influential a lieutenant, readily confirmed the powers which necessity, no less than general consent, had conferred.

5. When, finally, the Popes threw off the reins of the Emperors, and invited the King of the Franks to protect them from the savage incursions of the Lombards, it was clear that the Emperors. were too weak to defend and retain the Italian provinces, and the exigency absolutely required an extraordinary intervention. The policy of Stephen II. and Adrian I., then, which gave great extension to the temporal sovereignity of the Popes, was quite inevitable under the circumstances. They stepped in to save society at a time when there was nobody else in a position, or having the will, to do so; and Pepin and Charlemagne, as the actual conquerors of the Lombards, when they confirmed, by solemn grants, the possessions of St. Peter, gave the only constitutional sanction, known to the laws of the epoch, to what was held by the more legitimate title of ability, virtue, service, and the tacit consent of the people.

6. In the midst of the turbulent and almost anarchical feudal society, the Pope appeared, not only as a Prince among princes, but as a Prince superior to all princes, by virtue of his peculiar ecclesiastical eminence. He was naturally resorted to as an umpire in the settlement of disputes, and large fiefs were added to his jurisdiction, either to propitiate his favor or as a reward for distinguished services. As the laws of the Roman empire, moreover, had been principally retained in the monarchies which succeeded it, all the immunities and privileges of the clergy were preserved, and even extended, and their intimate association with the temporal power enlarged.

7. The Holy See, at once the center of religion and learning, was also the only authority of any kind universally acknowledged. The Princes, at war perpetually amongst themselves, each in turn invoked its aid against the encroachments of his neighbors. They were all equally solicitous to secure its favor, even to the extent of consenting to do homage for their kingdoms, as if they were held from the Pope. were the Popes, whose conduct ex

Nor

hibited a singular mixture of zealous piety and worldly ambition, backward in accepting a vassalage tendered alike from motives of interest and devotion. In proof of the state of feeling, we may mention that, when the crusades came on, sovereigns and soldiers alike, regarding the Popes as the natural leaders of the great religious wars, often placed their persons and properties under their protection. Political affairs were arranged in the Pope's presence, treaties concluded, routes of march selected, and questions of precedence decided.

8. The right to depose princes, however, grew more directly out of the power of excommunication, which the Church had asserted from the earliest times. At first, this ban worked only a forfeiture of ecclesiastical rights, but after the sovereigns took the Church in hand, civil disabilities were attached to its infliction. The unhappy person who incurred it, was not only shut out of the assemblies of the faithful, and banished their society, but he was declared civilly dead, and his dignities, rights, and possessions, fell away from him, like leaves from a tree smitten by the lightning. All the legislation of the princes concurred in giving validity to ecclesiastical laws, and in confirming the jurisdiction of bishops by civic penalties. When the Popes, therefore, insisting upon the impartiality of God's judgments, which could make no distinction between peasant and prince, applied the same ban to sovereigns which they applied to serfs, they exercised a power to which the sovereigns themselves had consented, and whose legitimacy they never questioned as to its general grounds, and only as to the justice of its application in the particular case.

Thus, innumerable circumstances in the political relations, the external events, and the moral opinions of the time, prepared the way for those tremendous assertions of supreme temporal sovereignty, which were begun by Gregory VII., in his deposition of Henry, and continued with vigor, for two or three centuries, by his successors. They are circumstances which do not wholly acquit the Popes of the charge of usurpation, but which yet show that their conduct was not, as it is often represented to have been, utterly indefensible.