sarcastically, as it is used with us at present; nor was it imagined to connect ideas incompatible with each other; but employed to denote an artifice not only innocent but commendable. The patrons of sacerdotal power had every advantage therefore: their tricks, when undiscovered, wrought powerfully in their favour; and when discovered, (such was the woful superstition of the times), were, on account of the supposed holy purpose to be effected by them, easily excused by all, and highly approved by many.

It is true, that now, since the restoration of letters, men's sentiments on these subjects are very much altered. Those graceless devices have been, for the most part, fully detected and exposed; insomuch, that all the learned and ingenuous part, even of Roman Catholics, quite ashamed of them, have long since abandoned their defence. But Rome may now laugh at a detection, which can never restore things to the state they were in before those frauds were employed. What has been at first produced solely by imposture, comes, through the slow but sure operation of time and immemorial custom, to acquire a stability totally independent of its origin. When that is the case, the discovery is not able to shake the fabric to which the imposture originally gave a being. Antiquity supplies the place of truth. Custom rules the world, and is the principal foundation of obedience in all the governments that are, and ever were, upon the earth. It is but one of a thousand that is capable of examining into the origin of things; the remaining nine hundred and ninety-nine have no reason to assign for their obedience but custom, or what they are wont to see exacted on the one hand, and complied with on the other. A set of customs gradually established, may, in like manner, be gradually abolished; but the discoveries of the learned (though not totally ineffective) have not a very sudden and a very sensible effect upon them.

I shall, in my next lecture, proceed to illustrate, in other instances, the particular attention which Rome invariably gave to the great object, POWER; and consider how far the very best of her pontiffs sacrificed every other consideration to its advancement.

LECTURE XVI.

I PROCEED in this lecture to illustrate, in other instances, the particular attention which Rome invariably gave to the great object, POWER. The proof that I am now to produce is different in kind from the former, but still corroborative of the same capital point in her policy, which was, to make every consideration of truth and right give place to her ambition.

For this purpose, I shall not recur to those pontiffs who were far from reaching even the low standard of virtue recommended in the latter part of the Julian maxim, aliis rebus pietatem colas. And that there were Popes, who, in no part of their conduct, showed that they either feared God or regarded men, all persons, Popish and Protestant, who have the least acquaintance with church history, will readily admit. But I shall recur to one who was thought, as much as any that ever sat in the papal chair, to mind the better part of the apophthegm, and was observant of piety, equity, and charity, in cases which did not interfere with the favourite pursuit; and shall clearly evince, that he was not a less rigid observer of the former part of it, regnandi gratia jus violandum est; that he did not hesitate at any means, falsehood and injustice, the prostitution of religion, and of the most sacred rights of humanity, when these could be rendered instrumental in promoting the primary papal object, Power.

The Pope I intend to produce as an example, is no other than Gregory I.; a man at present adored in the church of Rome as one of her most eminent saints, and respected as one of her most learned doctors. The Greeks, I know, were wont to style him (as it would seem) contemptuously, Gregory Dialogue, on account of some silly dialogues which he wrote. Yet even these are not inferior to some of the productions of their own approved authors in the same period. His pontificate commenced towards the end of the sixth century, and extended to the beginning of the seventh.

Who knows not the extraordinary zeal which this Pope manifested against the Constantinopolitan patriarch, who in

those days began to assume the title of universal bishop? For who is so great an enemy to the pride and ambition of others as the proud and ambitious! That a relentless jealousy was at the bottom of the violence which he showed on that occasion, there was no considerate and impartial person who did not discern then, and there is none of this character who does not discern still. It were unnecessary here to mention all the odious epithets by which he stigmatized that obnoxious appellation. Suffice it to observe, in general, that he maintained strenuously, that whoever assumed that heretical, blasphemous, and infernal title, (so he expressly terms it), was the follower of Lucifer, the forerunner and herald of Antichrist, and that it neither did nor could belong to any bishop whatever. He had nothing, it appears, of the prophetic spirit, else he would have spoken more cautiously of a title so soon afterwards assumed by some of his own successors. It must be owned, indeed, that in this conduct the Grecian patriarch was the precursor of the Romish. If, thereby, the Pope is rendered Antichrist, it is a deduction from Pope Gregory's reasoning, and not from mine.

Gregory, when that title was first assumed at Constantinople, was quite indefatigable in his applications by letter, and by the intervention of his nuncios, with the patriarch himself, and with the emperor, to effect the suppression of it. But all was to no purpose. The matter could never be made appear to them as of that moment which Gregory was so immoderately solicitous to give it. They considered it only (like most of the titles then conferred on the potentates of the church) as a complimental and respectful manner of address, well befitting the bishop of the imperial city. Rome's remonstrances were accordingly made light of. The other patriarchs, particularly the Antiochian and the Alexandrian, Gregory endeavoured by all possible means, but to no purpose, to engage in the quarrel. The bishop of Alexandria, probably with a view to mollify his incensed brother at Rome, gave him a title which he thought would be deemed equivalent, calling him universal Pope. But his holiness had proceeded too far to be taken in by so simple a device, and therefore he did not hesitate to reject it with disdain, as being in the same

way derogatory with the other title to the whole episcopal order. He did more; for, in order to show how different a spirit he was of, he assumed, for the first time, (and herein he has been followed by his successors), this humble addition, the servant of the servants of God; servus servorum Dei. We have heard of people's making humility the subject of their vanity, and mortification the ground of their pride. The Pharisees were ostentatious of their dirty and disfigured faces when they fasted, and there are even some Christian sects who seem to make the Pharisees, in this respect, their pattern. The Pope always since, to this day, introduces his bulls with the modest title assumed by Gregory. One would expect from it, that they should consist only of entreaties and lowly petitions to those whom he acknowledges to be his superiors and his masters. Instead of this, ye find him commanding imperiously, even with menaces, denunciations, and curses. Is this like a servant to his masters? If we could consider the title, therefore, as any thing but words, we should pronounce the using it as a sort of refinement in the display of poweradding insult to tyranny, like those despots who, when they are inflicting tortures on their slave, mock him with the title of sovereign and lord.

About this time the emperor Mauricius, whom the Pope could by no arts prevail on to enter into his views, nay, whom he found rather favourable to the use of a title by which an honourable distinction was conferred on the bishop of the imperial residence, was first dethroned and then murdered by a centurion, one of his subjects and soldiers, who usurped his throne. The usurper Phocas (for that was his name) was a man stained with those vices which serve most to blacken human nature. Other tyrants have been cruel from policy, and through want of regard to justice and humanity; the cruelties of Phocas are not to be accounted for, but on the hypothesis of the most diabolical and disinterested malice. Witness the inhuman manner wherein he massacred five of his predecessor's children, all that were then in his power, before the eyes of the unhappy father, whom he reserved to the last, that he might be a spectator of the destruction of his family before his death. The slaughter of the brother,

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and of the only remaining son of the emperor Mauricius, with all the patricians of any name who adhered to his interest, the methods by which Phocas got the empress Constantina and her three daughters into his power, with the murder of whom he closed the bloody scene, manifest a mind totally corrupted, incapable of being wrought upon by any principle of religion, sense of justice, or sentiment of humanity.

Unluckily for the Constantinopolitan patriarch, the innocent consort of his late sovereign, with the three princesses her daughters, had taken refuge in one of the churches of the city. The prelate, moved partly by compassion to the royal sufferers, partly by the reverence of the place, would not permit them to be dragged by force from their asylum; but defended them, whilst there, with great spirit and resolution. The tyrant, one of the most vindictive and inexorable of mankind, and who could therefore ill brook this spirited opposition from the priest, thought it prudent then to dissemble his resentment, as it would have been exceedingly dangerous, in the beginning of his reign, to alarm the church. And he well knew how important, and even venerable, a point it was accounted, to preserve inviolate the sacredness of such sanctuaries. He desisted, therefore, from using force; and, by means of the most solemn oaths and promises of safety, prevailed at length upon the ladies to quit their asylum. In consequence of which, they soon after became the helpless victims of his fury, and suffered on the same spot whereon the late emperor, and five of his sons, had been murdered a short while before.

Now, what should we expect would be the reception which the accounts of this unnatural rebellion, the dethronement of Mauricius, the horrid butchery of the whole imperial family, the usurpation and coronation of such a sanguinary fiend as Phocas, would meet with at Rome, from a man so celebrated for piety, equity, and mildness of disposition, as Pope Gregory? Look into his letters of congratulation on the occasion, and. ye will find them stuffed with the most nauseous adulation. Were we to learn the character of Phocas only from St Gregory, we should conclude him to have been rather an angel than a man: But if we recur to facts-if we