Persons of a better mould, who are disposed by nature to sincerity and the virtues connected with it, when they find themselves unawares engaged in a system of deceit, feel that the foundation of their faith is shaken. Mr. Blanco White has shown us that this is no imaginary case. I could tell you too of Priests in a Romish country where they had no Inquisition to fear, whose practice it was to disabuse, as they called it, those of their parishioners in whom they had any confidence. You have brought a charge, Sir, of insincerity against the Ministers of the Church of England, which has been repelled by one eminently worthy of the high station in that Church whereto he has been called. Are you as able on your part to rebut the assertion, that in those countries where the Romish religion has most hold upon the people, infidelity is common among the Clergy?... Would it surprize you, Sir, to meet with it at Naples, at Loretto, and in Rome itself? Do you think that none of the Popes have suspected their own infallibility, and the purity of the Church over which they presided? Or that they who grant indulgencies, and they who sell them, have as much faith in the article as those by whom it is purchased?

You are equally astonished at a supposition

that Dunstan's successors would have maintained their power by unrelenting severity. This appears so strange to you that you cannot bring to your recollection even a single fact which supports it; and you declare that, till you perused the Book of the Church, you never found this charge, or any thing like it, made or insinuated. Indeed, Sir! Has history been so silent? Or was there ever such a system of unrelenting severity pursued century after century, as that by which the Romish Church upheld its power, wherever it was opposed, till the Reformation delivered part of Europe from its inhuman and intolerable yoke? By some strange misapprehension you have persuaded yourself that an imputation of cruelty against the Romish priesthood,... that priesthood which preached up the crusade against the Albigenses, and established the Inquisition, ..might be disposed of* by quoting in reply the eulogium of a Protestant historian upon the government of certain ecclesiastical states during the dark ages! an eulogium relating wholly to their policy, and the management of their temporal concerns!

* Page 73.

INVESTITURES.

CONCERNING the subject of Investitures we appear to differ less in opinion than upon matters of fact. You suppose me to be aware that monarchs had usurped the exclusive right of nominating to vacant sees: whereas the received opinion among* English antiquaries and historians is, that bishoprics were originally donatives, as being of the King's foundation, till they were made elective by Henry I. from whom the right of nomination, which Blackstone calls" that antient prerogative of the crown," was wrested. The usurpation was

* Gibson's Codex, 104.

+ Book iv. c. viii.

In a letter which Nicolas Clemangis addressed to Gregory XIII. on his election to the Popedom, this is plainly stated. "The burden with which you are charged," says the honest counsellor, " is so much the heavier because you and your predecessors have taken upon yourselves many charges from which the Lord and the Church had exempted you. In making yourselves the masters of elections to benefices, of collations, dispensations, and all which was formerly done by the Archdeacons and Patrons, you have infinitely increased the account which you will have to render. True it is that if you acquit yourself faithfully of your administration, there is no empire upon earth which can approach the glory of your servitude. But if you make your dignity subservient to your profit,

on the part of the Popes. A pretext was indeed afforded them by the scandalous sale of benefices, by the unworthy manner in which, when not sold, they were frequently bestowed; and by the practice of keeping sees vacant, that their revenues might be enjoyed by the crown. Having this valid cause for interfering, the Popes carried their interference beyond all reasonable bounds. For their ambition knew no bounds; and I must remind you, Sir, that the same Pope who began the dispute on this point with the Norman Kings, called upon William the Conqueror to do fealty for the Crown of England.

That Pope was the imperious Hildebrand, the firebrand of his age. But according to the Titular Bishop Milner,*

equitable judges, who are possessed of the genuine spirit of Christianity, pronounce that he has acquired glory to himself for time and eternity, by extirpating that system of simony, and that wide

to pomp, to haughtiness; if you love better to command than to serve, you will become in fact the vilest of all slaves. You will be the servant not of the servants of God, but of cupidity, of avarice, of pride, of ambition, which are the servants of the Devil,...in a word, of as many masters as there are vices."L'Enfant, Hist. du Concile de Pise, i. p. 65.

* Page 16.

spreading incontinency which undermined the sanctity of the Church at the time in which he lived." Few authors have ever calculated so confidently on the ignorance of their readers as Dr. Milner. His own erudition indeed is "neither as deep as a well, nor as wide as a church door." But he knows, and cannot but know, that simony was never carried on so openly and scandalously as by the Popes themselves, after they had thus succeeded in their claim to the right of investiture. Instead of extirpating it, they transplanted it to Rome, into their own hot-bed, and it flourished accordingly. All persons who have the slightest acquaintance with ecclesiastical history, know that this was one of the most notorious and crying abuses of the Papal Church till the time of the Reformation. And you, Sir, who affirm that the main object of the Popes in asserting their claims, was generally commendable," you yourself are conscious that by succeeding in those claims they increased the evil† which

* Page 78.

*

+ ""Tis incredible," says Paul the Englishman," how many mischiefs the sale of offices has done to the Church. From thence have proceeded worthless, ignorant, scandalous, ambitious, and violent Bishops. The other benefices have been disposed of to all manner of persons indifferently,... to pimps, cooks,