power;

the reverfe

Pope but multiplication of titles is no proof of rather. Polyonymous, or many-titled, is a diftinction fit for the Byzantine history, and becomes none but orientals; while this blafphemous folly ferved but to provoke those who were already incenfed againft the trappings of that dignity he was, unhappily for his adherents, chofen to protect. Under fuch a fovereign, two centuries before, fuch language might have been endured; but what was deemed offenfive then, was now growing ridiculous. By him the doctrine of Suarez was approved; who in thefe days of controverfy and investigation had found out that kings, when in actual rebellion against their parent and fovereign the pope, might be affaffinated, and no harm done. The kings, however, were not of this mind; and their fubjects, who perhaps thought a parity of reafon might foon be talked of in their favour, willingly burned the book, and hastened to abet resistance, and free it from the name of rebellion. The Pope expreffed his refentment that the book should be fo treated. In vain! Suarez, a merry Spaniard, when he heard its fate, repeated Ovid's well known line, with happy change of one word only, and cried out,

Parve, nec invideo fine me liber ibis in ignem.

He died, however, a natural and happy death: in his last moments, preffing the hand of an attendant, "I had no notion," fays he, " it could "have been fo cafy." Theologians had indeed reason to congratulate themselves if they could obtain quiet difmiffion from a world, where it teemed impoffible for thinking men (if they would likewife be talking men) cither to live or die in peace. Du Pleffis' book, called Mysterium Iniquitatis, had been published in 1612, laying down all the crimes which popes could commit, or the papal power encourage. It was, however, condemned by the Sorbonnifts. Scioppius and Jofeph Scaliger had fhewn to what excess literary abuse could be carried, early in that century; but the aggreffor's lips were not closed from further invective till 1649, before which time torrents of black fcurrility rolled to the gulph of oblivion a large portion of talents and genius, which funk VOL. II.

Cc

funk of courfe, and lie there ftill ftruggling in vain through two long centuries against the weeds of offence and groffnefs which closely clafp them round. Some of their books were burned; and Bartolomeo Borghefe was jufily enough ftrangled, and then burned too at Paris, for feigning to be fon of Paul V., who had no children; and whose character was that of a lawyer and a scholar, a statesman and a divine. He canonized his contemporaneous faint, Carlo Borromeo, whofe virtues would compenfate for many wicked individuals of his perfuafion, and whofe acts of beneficence ftill live, recorded by the Lazaretto of Milan, a prodigious work, and one whose fame no invaders who fteal his filver ftatue, &c. can ever take away. It was, however, fupposed that the beatification of this excellent nobleman would take the edge off a new celebration fet on foot by George Duke of Saxony, who prepared for, and in his own perfon at length attended a fhowy jubilee to the memory of Martin Luther in 1617, after the grand congrefs of confederated princes at Nuremberg, called two or three years before. If this was intended, the failure of effect was obvious as deferved. Whatever was intended, Paul V. after beautifying his own capital, and interdicting that of the Venetians; after having received a real embaffy from Congo requefting miffionaries to Africa, and accepted the French king's mediation between Rome and Venice, died, and was fucceeded neither by Bellarmine nor Baronius, his old competitors for the chair, but by Cardinal Ludovifi, Archbishop of Bologna, who lived to enjoy his final exaltation but two years; and after canonizing St. Ignatius, founder of the Jefuits, and Xavier the Apoftle of the East, as he was fcarce unaptly called, * died likewife, and made way for Urban VIII., two hundred and thirty-third bifhop of the old fee, who first

It is, however, worth remarking, that Xavierus was beatified, on a report of his body's being found upon the island of Formofa uncorrupted; thus contrafling Pope, or Arbuthnot's celebrated epitaph upon Chartres; becaufe after daily, for many years, dedeferving to be accounted a faint, or holy man, for what he had really done: Xavier was at length registered as fuch-for what he could not do.

befowed

bestowed the title of your Eminence on cardinals; and who, like his anti-predeceffor, quarrelled with the Venetians, but made a lefs honourable termination of his differences with them, than did Paul V. This was a Florentine Pope, a belles-lettres man, a man of elegant more. than elevated sentiments; so pleasing a poet, so polite a scholar, that he obtained the appellation of the Attick Bee: yet was he forced to fuffer the inquifition to condemn his ingenious countryman Galileo, because he would openly maintain what Copernicus had quietly afferted and taught that the fun was stationary, not the earth; in contradiction to the Ptolomaan hypothefis, which was fuppofed more confonant to holy writ. Bellarmine probably recollecting what our aftrono mer willingly forgot, how Boniface, bishop of Mentz, had been excommunicated by Pope Zachary, A. D. 745, for teaching the sphæricity of the earth, begged of Galileo to be quiet, when he first broached to him the new hypothefis, urging that although Copernicus had taught the mathematicks at Rome, he had more prudence than to broach these difputable opinions there; and added the impoffibility of his protecting him. But fcire tuum nihil eft, &c. as Perfius fays; and Galileo would not be restrained; he therefore had to abjure formally in the metropolis of Italy, the notions which Copernicus taught peaceably in a hanfeatick town of Polish Pruffia, without the comfort of thinking or making any one elfe think thofe notions original. Having heard of Metius's new invented glaffes however, he fet himfelf for the remainder of his days to endeavour by their means at more certain intelligence of thefe planetary motions, till lofing his fight, and his lady betraying his manufcrips to her confeffor after that accident, the papers were all burned, and Galileo began to think of turning the pendulum to common use, which he had till then kept for aftronomical purposes. At a prodigiously advanced age, death ftopt his further projects, and left his fon Vincent to bring them to perfection; but he had the good fense to study at Venice, not at Rome. There Innocent the tenth, called the Pamphili Pope, began to reign on death of Barberini, whofe

Cc 2

whose family was cruelly perfecuted by Donna Olimpia, widow to the deceased brother of the new elected fovereign, who did nothing without her confent, proving to us, that Fuller's quaint remark was not ill founded, where he says, that the church stood more in need of a falique law than the ftate did, as it was often governed by the distaff.

It was not very often that its delicacy had been more infulted by females, than in the year 1650, under this pontificate, when a lady openly governed and difpofed of all employments civil, military, and ecclefiaftical, to the no small shame of the Romish court, and triumph of those profeffing purer morality. Among those boasted princes, he who is perhaps the most deservedly gloried in by us who protest against the innovations and abuses of papal power, must be the subject of the next chapter's Retrospection.

CHAP.

FRO

CHAP. X.

SWEDEN, GERMANY, FRANCE, AND AMERICA,

DOWN TO 1650.

ROM warmer climates and a fteadier funshine, we turn the retroSpective tube away, and watch the corufcations of a brilliant meteor, that blazed along the northern hemisphere. Our chapter laft but two, page 150, announced the birth of truly great Guftavus, furnamed Adolphus, fon to the King of Sweden by a fecond bed. The house of Austria treated his first appearance on the horizon with contempt, called him a cold aurora borealis, a chief of fnow, whofe fame would foon diffolve and melt away under more tepid influence. They learned to change their haftily-formed opinion, when afterwards his very fword was faid to be enchanted; and the compacted troops he led to war, were deemed invulnerable by their foes. He had been deftined early as a husband for our Elizabeth, daughter to James the first; but Maria Eleanora, of Brandenburgh, was his wife, and Charles IX. his gallant father; fretted by the lofs of Calmaria after his long fruitless war with Denmark, he died content at last in 1611, leaving the world to abler hands, he faid: when after lofing his fon by Mary, fifter to the luckless Palatine, Gustavus Adolphus afcended to the throne: a character fo prematurely wife, fo early warlike, he feemed to have fprung, like Pallas armed for fight, out of his parent's head. All excellence was, in a manner, expected from this youth, and he refolved not to disappoint men's hopes. "I will, if the ftates make me king," cried he at fifteen years of age, "acquit myself with courage, and with magnanimity, and the reformed religion I'll protect till the laft moment of my life fo honoured." His firft care was to exalt Count Oxenstiern to be prime minifter, and in this cafe the voice of honeft

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friendship