Rome was seen riding in the Revelation of St. A. D. 606. 10. Circumstances thus concurring to favour This favours the pope's their assumption of power, the prelates of the pretensions. Latin church forgat the sacred character of their office, and began to exercise authority over the the nobles and monarchs of Europe. 66 At councils they pretended to pass sentence upon kings, as well as to determine upon matters of penance and the kings, who knew but little of their privileges," did not think of disputing their authority in these matters. "The popes, supposing very reasonably, that they had as much, or rather more authority than other Bishops, presently undertook to regulate the differences between crowned heads; not by way of mediation or intercession only, but by authority, which was in effect to dispose of their crowns." As his own power increased, the pope was enabled to curtail that of other Bishops, and not only to divest the emperors of all ecclesiastical authority, but to interfere as he chose in their civil affairs. gance con writers. 11. It would detain us too long from the His arrosubject of this history, to cite the numerous demned by instances of papal arrogance and insolence re- Roman corded by Fleury, Du Pin, and other Romish historians. Gregory the seventh was the first pope who asserted his supremacy over all temporal rulers. He pretended generally, that the 1 Fleury, 3rd Diss. sec. 10. 2 Nicolas I. obliged the emperor, Louis II. to perform the functions of a groom, and to hold the bridle of his horse while he dismounted. Clement V. on one occasion, while he was at dinner, ordered Dandolo, the Venetian ambassador, to be chained under the table like a dog. These are fair specimens of the manner in which the proud pontiffs of Rome frequently exercised their usurped dominion in those days of darkness and credulity. CHAP. II. CENT. Decretals of Isidore: protested against by French and other foreign prelates. church might dispose of crowns and judge of sovereigns; and in particular, that all Christian princes were vassals of the church of Rome; also, that they were bound to pay tribute and take an oath of allegiance to her. Gregory, however, notwithstanding the odious expedients to which he resorted for the purpose, did not fully accomplish the object of his ambition. Though he did not scruple to flatter the base tyrant and parricide, Phocas, in the most fulsome and blasphemous strains, yet he did not obtain his acknowledgment of him as universal head of the church of Christ. But the usurper conferred this title on Boniface IV., Gregory's successor, in terms as ample as the most grasping ambition could desire and from that period, the year 606, till the Reformation, the means which the Bishops of Rome have used to consolidate their power, have been as nefarious as those by which it was acquired. 12. Of all the instruments ever invented for such a purpose, one of the most iniquitous was, The decretals of Isidore." "In order to gain credit to this new ecclesiastical system, so different from the ancient rules of churchgovernment, and to support the haughty pre 1 See the proofs of this assumption given by Fleury, Hist. Lib. lxiii. n. 11. This writer boldly declares, that the pope is neither impeccable nor absolute monarch even in the church, whether as to temporals or spirituals. And his remarks upon their gross abuse of the power they assumed to depose kings, and absolve their subjects from their allegiance, well deserve to be remembered. "If a monarch has committed an offence for which he deserves excommunication, this can deprive him only of the privileges of the public means of grace." But yet for all this, his subjects should be altogether as obedient to him as they were before, in every thing that is not contrary to the law of God."-Third Diss. s. 18, "The Deposing of Kings." Fourth Diss. s. 13. tensions of the pontiffs to supremacy and independence, it was necessary to produce the authority of ancient deeds, to stop the mouths of such as were disposed to set bounds to their usurpations. The Bishops of Rome were aware of this; and as those means were deemed the most lawful that tended best to the accomplishment of their purposes, they employed some of their most ingenious and zealous partisans in forging conventions, acts of councils, epistles, and the like records, by which it might appear, that, in the first ages of the church, the Roman pontiffs were clothed with the same spiritual majesty and supreme authority which they now assumed. Among these fictitious supports of the papal dignity, the famous Decretal Epistles, as they are called, said to have been written by the pontiffs of the primitive time, deserve chiefly to be stigmatised. They were the productions of an obscure author, who fraudulently prefixed to them the name of Isidore, Bishop of Seville, to make the world believe that they had been collected by this illustrious and learned prelate. Some of them had appeared in the eighth century, but they were now entirely drawn from their obscurity, and produced, with an air of ostentation and triumph, to demonstrate the supremacy of the Roman pontiffs. The decisions of a certain Roman council, which is said to have been holden during the pontificate of Sylvester, were likewise alleged in behalf of the same cause; but this council had not been heard of before the present century, and the accounts now given of it proceeded from the same source with the decretals, and were equally authentic. Be that as it may, the decrees of this pretended council contributed much to enrich and aggrandize the Roman pon CENT. 1X. CHAP. tiffs, and exalt them above all human authority and jurisdiction."" These decretals, it is said, were forged in about the eighth or ninth century,2 but some writers give them a still earlier date; and the doctrine that they inculcated was too acceptable to the ambitious popes not to be supported with the whole weight of their authority: but there were many Bishops of the French and Latin churches who possessed too much discernment to be imposed upon by so manifest a fraud, and whose spirits were too independent tamely to bow to the yoke thus forged for their necks. The French prelates were especially distinguished for their indignation at this insult offered to their understandings, and for their zeal in resisting this and similar impious attempts to bring them under servile subjection to the Bishop of Rome. The Abbé Fleury has shown, to the satisfaction of every ingenuous mind, that 1 Mosheim's Ecc. Hist. Cent. 9th, c. 2. sec. 8. 2 This is acknowledged even by Baronius, in his Annals of the year 865. Also by Cardinal Bona, who thus describes them in the third chapter of his first book of Liturgies." It has long been observed, by the learned, that the Decretal Epistles were all forged by some Spaniard, under the name of Isidore, whoever he was, towards the end of the seventh century; they were forged with a pious fraud, out of the sentences of the Old Canons, and of the Civil Laws, and of the Holy Fathers, who flourished in the fourth century; they are, for the most part, full of vile chronological mistakes, and are almost all written in the same style and character of writing. Riculphus, Bishop of Mentz, first brought them out of Spain into France, from whence they were disseminated over all other countries, and were commonly believed." This testimony is important, though the Cardinal was mistaken if he supposed that the Decretals were published under the name of Isidore; for that "would have spoiled the whole plot." It was pretended that they were the genuine writings of the former Bishops of Rome whose names are prefixed to them.-Geddes' Dissertation on the Papal Supremacy, pp. the pretended decretals of Isidore are utterly unworthy of credit. The same assertion is made respecting every other authority on which the popes founded their claim to universal dominion and irresponsible power, both in church and state.1 But in our indignation at the wrong hereby inflicted upon man, we must not lose sight of the dishonour done to God. It was the climax of those "pious frauds" which had been practised on the church, from time to time, ever since the third or fourth centuries. Having no scriptural authority for the papal supremacy, and devoid of authentic tradition or history in support of its assumption, these decretals were invented to supply the desideratum; and to question their authenticity, was for many ages deemed a more atrocious heresy than the rejection of the Word of God. There is but one Supreme in the church and in the world; and His dominion is righteousness and peace, truth and love. But the endeavour to maintain such a usurpation as that of Rome by frauds like the decretals, was to slander the Name, and therefore the religion, of Jesus: for it was to declare to the world, that He had delegated His authority over the universal church to one, whose rule has ever been maintained by falsehood, violence, and extortion. No wonder then that the holy and merciful Jesus has been classed with the Arabian impostor, and reproached for all the miseries brought by the papacy on mankind. Many, viewing the Christian religion only under the disguise of such impious frauds, have treated with scorn that hallowed name, "which is above every name," and rejected 1 Fleury, Diss. 3, 4, on Ecc. Hist. CENT. IX. |