the majority, by supernatural means, to give their votes on the side of truth, leaving the unfortunate minority to flounder on in error. According to this strange scheme, bishops were to be assembled from all parts of Christendom, and were to be set to work to argue the matter in hand, each, according to appearance, exercising his rational faculties, while in reality that was the case with the minority only, the majority being influenced and guided by the Holy Spirit. Surely this is not the way in which God deals with his creatures. Can it for a moment be doubted, that, whenever He has revealed his will, he has accompanied his revelation with such proofs as are satisfactory and conclusive to our rational and moral faculties? But it may be said that all the bishops were really left in the first instance to the exercise of their natural faculties; but that, after a time spent in debate, the Almighty interfered, and, by his Holy Spirit, led the majority into the path of infallible truth. But this is only substituting one absurdity for another. The infallibility of the Pope is perfectly intelligible, and involves none of the difficulties and absurdities which belong to the notion of the infallibility of a general council. There would be no other difficulty than that of ascertaining whether an individual lawfully filled the chair of St. Peter, and obedience to his behests would be the duty of all Christians.

To the doctrine of infallibility, whether existing in a general council, in a Pope and council, or in the Pope alone, is to be traced all the frightful persecutions for infidelity, heresy and schism which have given to ecclesiastical history the appearance of having been

written in characters of blood. First and foremost in the list of Christian persecutors stands the Church of Rome, to which belongs the guilt of all the horrid tortures inflicted on her victims within the walls of the inquisition; and consummated by Jews, infidels, and heretics being roasted alive, in the presence of assembled multitudes, who were so far deluded as to believe that those were doing God service by their inhuman and unchristian persecutions. That church is answerable in a great degree for the barbarities of the Spaniards inflicted on the unoffending Indians in America, and altogether for the fires of Smithfield in our own country. But although Popery holds the first place in the history of Christian persecution, it must be admitted that Protestantism was not slow to follow her example. Though the early reformers did not in so many words set up a claim of infallibility, they undoubtedly assumed it in fact by the persecution of those who differed with them in doctrine; for what can be conceived more absurd than punishing any one for professing a doctrine which we do not certainly know to be false? Supposing you were to ask any one who persecuted another for what he called heresy, whether he was certain that the obnoxious doctrine was false, it is evident that nothing short of an affirmative answer could justify him, even in his own judgment. It is well known that Luther and Calvin, and many others of the reformers, made no scruple of persecuting heretics; and the burning of Servetus by Calvin was attended by circumstances of peculiar atrocity. Even Socinus, who found refuge in Poland, and who would not have been tolerated in any Protestant nation, was himself a persecutor of

David, who deviated more widely than himself from the general opinions of the Christian world. In our country we hear enough, and perhaps more than enough, of the persecutions of bloody Mary; but I suspect that comparatively few are aware that two persons were burned alive for heresy in the reign of Elizabeth, and two in that of James the First. A most touching appeal was made to Elizabeth on behalf of these heretics, as they were called, by Fox, the author of the Martyrology, to whom the queen was so much attached as to be in the habit of calling him Father Fox, but it was made in vain. That able and politic, but heartless and tyrannical sovereign, was deaf to the voice of reason and compassion; and the unhappy sufferers endured the dreadful punishment of being burned alive.

But imprisonment, tortures, and death, for errors real or supposed in religion, are far from being the whole of the evils inflicted on the human race by the Church of Rome. If the views of Christianity taken in this work be correct, religious liberty and the right of private judgment are the inalienable rights of every Christian. The spiritual authority of the Church of Rome is in direct opposition to these rights, and therefore can only be lawfully exercised over those who voluntarily consent to obey it. When a man chooses to part with his liberty, and to submit to the will of another, he has no right to complain of the exercise of authority over him to which he has voluntarily submitted himself. To that extent the authority of the Church of Rome, or of any other church, may be held lawful. But the pretended successors of St. Peter have been far from confining themselves to

merely spiritual matters; and by degrees they assumed a power above that of all the princes and states in the world. One of the principal steps by which the church advanced its temporal power was by getting into its hands very large landed possessions. These were no doubt sometimes voluntarily bestowed, with a sincere desire to forward the cause of religion; but probably much more frequently extorted by the fears excited by the clergy as to the future world, and by the hope of atoning for a life of violence, oppression and cruelty, by giving their property to the service of religion. The extent to which, in this country, these donations were made to the church, after a time, was felt to be a great grievance. "The feudal services," says Blackstone, "ordained for the defence of the kingdom, were every day visibly withdrawn; the circulation of landed property from man to man began to stagnate; and the lords were curtailed of the fruits of their seignories, their escheats, wardships, reliefs, and the like*." These evils were felt to be intolerable; and they gave occasion to the various Acts of Parliament in our statute book to restrain what is technically called "alienation in mortmain." Those who feel disposed to become acquainted with the cunning, and often successful devices by which the ecclesiastics sought to evade these salutary laws, may satisfy their curiosity by a perusal of the elegant pages of the great commentator on the laws of England.

The see of Rome, however, was far from confining itself to the accumulation of landed property in the hands of the clergy as a means of advancing its power.

* Blackstone's Commentaries, Book ii. chap. 18.

The pope, as the vicar of Christ, claimed an authority beyond the control of the civil power; and a succession of ambitious and able pontiffs, a Gregory, an Innocent, and a Boniface, set up successfully a power above the sovereigns of the world. The humiliation of the emperor Henry IV. before the haughty Gregory VII., and the surrender of his crown by our dastard monarch John to the legate of Innocent III., are well-known historical facts. The papal usurpations of temporal power were carried to their highest point by Boniface VIII., who boldly claimed the whole authority of what was called the holy Roman empire*. Such audacious and unfounded presumption, however, could not long be endured even in that calamitous period of human history, that time of violence and brute force which is called the middle ages. "Boniface," says Hume, "was among the last of the sovereign pontiffs that exercised an authority over the temporal jurisdiction of princes; and these exorbitant pretensions which he had been tempted to assume from the successful example of his predecessors, but of which the season was now past, involved him in so many calamities, and were attended with so unfortunate a catastrophe, that they have been secretly abandoned, though never

* "Lorsqu'en 1298, Albert d'Autriche se révolta contre Adolphe de Nassau, se fit couronner roi des Romains à sa place, et le vainquit peu après dans un combat où Adolphe fut tué, Boniface non seulement refusa de le reconnoître, mais il le traita comme un traitre et un rebelle; et mettant la couronne sur sa propre tête, il saisit une épée, et s'écria, "C'est moi qui suis César, c'est moi qui suis l'empereur, c'est moi qui défendrai les droits de l'empire."-Sismondi's Républiques Italiennes, chap. xxiv. tome iv.

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