ones.

men were sometimes chosen, but not wicked Their temper mitigated as their influence diminished, though the spirit of their Church remained the same; and in consequence the hostile feeling wherewith Englishmen were wont to regard them has altogether ceased. It is to the doctrines and to the spirit of the Romish Church that we are irreconcileably opposed, not to the Pope as its head. His effigy, therefore, no longer appears in our November holyday; and Guy Faux...while I am penning this sentence, figures without a companion, at an auto-da-fè in every town and village throughout England, as the representative of the Joint Stock Gunpowder Company for which he was agent and inspector.

Upon such persons as the later Popes, when they are really religious men, the effect of their situation must be truly pitiable. If they never at any time feel a doubt concerning the validity of the bills which they draw upon the other world,.. if they are quite confident that the inexhaustible Treasury of Merits is at their absolute disposal, and that the gate of heaven of heaven opens or shuts as they turn the key,..still something like the Methodistic feeling of assurance must be necessary to support them under a sense of the fearful discrepancy between the character with

which the Romish world invests them, and that in which they appear to their own souls. The Pope of Tibet may in entire simplicity believe himself to be what all around him assure him that he is, because from childhood he has been trained and treated in that capacity, and so secluded from all intercourse with the world, that he supposes all men acknowledge his divinity.

But the Dalai-Lama of Rome knows that his pretensions are disputed by half Christendom, and denied by it upon the authority of those very Scriptures which he produces as the charter of his power. I speak of those who were sincere believers, as well as inoffensive and gentle-hearted men. But as John Wilkes by his own avowal was never a Wilkite, so I may be permitted to doubt whether some of the best Popes were really Papists. It is notorious what the worst were; and not the worst alone, but some of those whom even Protestant historians continue at this day to favour or to flatter. But for the Thundering Popes, the Hildebrands, the Innocents, the Johns, and the Borgias, their vices were aggravated by the tremendous situation wherein they were placed. Some of these men notoriously believed the whole of revealed religion to be a fable, they had good apparent cause for this opinion, when

they played the part of impostors in it themselves, and the daring impiety of their unbelief displayed itself not more in the blasphemy of their claims, than in the desperate flagitiousness of their lives. Nicholas the Fifth's truism* that they who do not believe in God, stand in no fear of him, was never more plainly exemplified than in the conduct of his immediate predecessors.†

Some of the Popes have been charged with offences of which they were innocent. Silvester, for example, was no magician; and it

* Lenfant, C. de Basle, ii. 284.

† All writers of that age were not so cautious as Olivier de la Marche, who says, when speaking of the Council of Basil, singulierement fust creé iceluy Concile à l'encontre et à la reformation de Pape Eugene; et publiquement luy mirent avant a l'encontre de sa vie et de sa personne plusieurs cas tels et de tels gestes que je n'en veux escrire ne ramentevoir, mais je laisse reciter et escrire a ceux qui plus sagement sçavent coucher et mettre en souvenir, ou ramentevance chose de tel poix et de telle efficace: car à toucher à la fame et au renom de si sainte et haute personne en Chrestienté comme nostre Sainct Pere le Pape, l'entendement se doit arrester de frayeur, la langue doit barbusser de crainte, l'encre seicher, le papier fendre, et la plume pleyer par doute dangereux et plain de peril d'encourir, ou encherir au danger d'inobedience et de faute, a l'encontre des commandemens et ordonnances de nostre sainte et salutaire mere et ressourse l'Eglise triumphante.-L. i. c. vi. p. 160. Lovain, 1645.

CC

may be doubted whether John XII. actually drank the Devil's health; for if he did, it was

*

extremely ungrateful in the Devil to knock him on the head. But John XXIII. denied none of the crimes† for which he was deposed; he assented to and ratified" of his certain knowledge" the sentence in which they were enumerated, and I think, Sir, you cannot but recollect what the catalogue contained. Yet, after this public conviction, with all his fresh and flagrant infamy upon him, his successor made him a Bishop and a Cardinal, appointed him Dean of the Sacred College, and gave him a place next to himself in all public ceremonies. The ashes of Hus and of Jerome were cast into the Rhine, but the remains of this man were

*This was by no means the worst offence for which he was deposed. Having reinstated himself by force, he began to cut off hands and noses, and to cut out tongues, when he was cut off himself, being caught in bed with a Roman Lady, and knocked in the head. The Devil is said to have struck the fatal blow; but it is well observed, in the Universal History, that the authors who say this have not mentioned whether be appeared in the form of the lady's husband. (vol. ix. 543. folio edition.) The husband, however, and not the Devil, is mentioned by Illescas, t. i. ff. 160. Barcelona, 1606.

Lenfant, C. of Constance, i. 309.

F. Maimbourg calls the submission of this monster to his

honoured by Cosmo de' Medici with sumptuous obsequies! In what unequal balances, Sir, have you weighed the Popes and the Reformers! What double weights and measures have you used when Dunstan or Luther, Becket or Cranmer, a head of the English or of the Romish Church is in the scale! When you hint at the failings of certain Popes, who but must admire the edifying tenderness of your expressions! "It is not denied," you say, "that a few of them in the long list were stained with vice." A few, Sir, and stained only! In what part of their characters is the white spot to be found? Were you thinking, when this delicate phraseology was penned, of those who flourished under favour of Theodora and Marozia? of those who contended for the chair of St. Peter during the long schism, when their actions were noted by each other? or of their successors who lived in the broader day-light of the fifteenth century? Sir, there have been so many of them so bad, that the boldest and best-armed advocates of your cause, conscious of what Muratori calls

sentence so christian, so heroical an action, and so worthy of a holy penitent, that even if he had committed greater crimes, it was enough to have cancelled the remembrance of them, and procured him a crown of immortal glory!"-Lenfant, C. of Constance, i. 310.