would not bear examination. As the great foundations of the hierarchy were in the people's ignorance, superstition, and credulity, when these are removed, the whole fabric falls to pieces.

Now it is remarkable, that in all the heresies which sprang up in the different parts of Europe, since the revival of letters, church power seems to have been the principal object struck at; whereas, in ancient times, it was only incidentally affected. This will appear manifest to one who considers the accusations brought against Waldo of Lyons, or at least his followers, Wicliff of England, Huss of Bohemia, Luther of Germany, and Zuinglius of Switzerland; and compares them with those brought against the heresiarchs of the primitive ages, such as Arius, Pelagius, Nestorius, Eutychius, in none of whom was there any direct or pointed aim against ecclesiastics. In those early times, indeed, church power, far from being grown up to such an enormous pitch as it arrived at afterwards, was but in its nonage; nor were churchmen themselves become obnoxious to universal odium, by their laziness and arrogance, as well as by the immorality of their lives. This difference of circumstance gave a taint to the modern sects, which plainly distinguished them from the ancient, and contributed not a little to the virulence which their disputes excited in their adversaries. The wounds given to these were the deeper, and the more apt to fester, inasmuch as they awaked in their breasts a consciousness that they were not unmerited. Those antagonists saw but too clearly, that the majority, even of their friends, who would not admit the conclusions drawn by the reformers, (as they call themselves, or heretics as their enemies called them), agreed but too much with them in their premises—a reflection which could not fail to gall them exceedingly.

The usurpation and tyranny of ecclesiastical superiors, the ignorance in which they kept the people, were at first almost the only topics. From this they proceeded to censure practical abuses in ceremonies and discipline. The third and last step of their progress was to expose errors in doctrine. these, indeed, when once they were propounded for discussion to the public, they laid the principal stress of their cause :

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These they considered as the source of every thing else that was amiss. But it was not with them that they began. The shameful incontinence and debauchery of the clergy were the occasion, that, very early and very generally, the canons which enjoin celibacy became the subject of offence and clamour. The absurdity of reading the scriptures to the people, and performing the public offices of religion, in a language which they do not understand, it required but a small share of knowledge, or rather of reflection and common sense, to enable them to discover. The manifest inconsistency of the practice which had been introduced, had gradually spread, and was at last become universal, of administering the eucharist to the people in one kind only, the bread-the inconsistency of this, I say, with the express words of the institution, recorded in no fewer than four books of scripture; the exorbitant power and immunities, which, through the criminal as well as weak indulgence of the secular powers, clergymen had obtained, and of which they made so bad a use, afforded matter of loud and universal outcry.

For some centuries before Luther's days, these, and the like corruptions, had been the subject of complaint and murmur in various places; but, from the time of Wicliff's preaching in England, and sending abroad his sentiments to the world in Latin tracts, which was near a century and a half before the Reformation, men's attention was roused to such topics, and people grew bolder every day in speaking out their opinions. What they had ventured only to mutter, as it were, in a whisper before, they did not hesitate to proclaim in the most public manner. Ye know the influence which Wicliff's doctrine had even in the remote kingdom of Bohemia, and the unhappy fate (I mean to outward appearance) of his two famous disciples, John Huss and Jerom of Prague. I do not say, that in all things they adhered to the opinions of the celebrated English doctor. But as, in what relates to the corruptions of the church and of the clergy, the exorbitance and abuse of ecclesiastic power, they were evidently his followers; so by his writings and example they were emboldened to give an open testimony to the truth in their native country, and to seal it with their blood in Constance.

This, though it be not considered as the era of the Reformation, for it happened about a century before the public remonstrances of Luther, is justly regarded as having paved the way for it. Wicliff had left a seed of reformation in England, which it was not in the power of the combined rulers, both spiritual and temporal, to destroy. The martyrdom of Huss and Jerom by the Romish sanhedrim at Constance, confederated with the imperial authority basely prostituted in violation of plighted faith, through the accursed casuistry of those bloody and deceitful men, proved, as in primitive times, the means of promoting, and not of obstructing, the cause. In short, men were now arrived at such a measure of knowledge, as rendered the methods employed to keep their minds in subjection, formerly so successful, perfectly ridiculous. The clergy had lost that veneration and respect from the people, which mere external trappings, and arrogant pretensions, had once been found sufficient to secure to them. Nay, so much were the sentiments of many of the laity changed in regard to those articles, that the spiritual denunciations and curses (when unaided by the secular arm) which would have made their forefathers tremble, served only to make them smile.

Thus stood matters, in regard to religion, throughout Europe, about the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century. Nothing could be more evident to men of discernment, than that Christendom was ripe for a revolution in its ecclesiastical polity, and seemed only to wait for a favourable occasion. Such an occasion the avarice of Pope Leo X., and the impiety as well as indiscretion of his ministers and agents, soon furnished. The use that was made of that occasion, and the effects produced by it, I shall briefly consider in my next lecture.

LECTURE XXVIII.

In spite of all the endeavours, so assiduously used by Rome, to shut out the light of the understanding, and to keep men's minds in bondage; in spite of all her affected mysteriousness in religious offices, and even in the lessons she gives publicly from the word of God, by employing a language unknown to the vulgar; in spite of her prohibitions with regard to books, and her inquisitions into heresy; it was impossible for her so to exclude the dawn of truth, now rising on the world after a long and dreary night of superstition and ignorance, as to prevent the discovery both of the weakness of her empire,

and of the badness of the foundation on which it stands. Men were become at length pretty generally disposed to listen to those who declaimed against their spiritual guides, whose faults they could not now avoid perceiving. They no longer entertained for them the blind veneration wherewith they had formerly been affected. Nay, they seemed to be running fast into the opposite extreme, that of entertaining for their ecclesiastical superiors an immoderate aversion and contempt. The pride, the avarice, the ambition, the laziness, and the sensuality of the clergy, were never-failing topics of satire every-where.

If things had not been in this train when Luther began his public declamations against the validity of indulgences, and other powers which Rome had usurped over the Christian people, converting their ignorance and brutishness into useful engines for filling her coffers, that great reformer had never been so successful amongst all ranks and degrees of people as he evidently proved. But, as the knowledge and personal experience of the much greater part of his hearers perfectly confirmed the severest of his censures, he found no difficulty in fixing their attention, and in exposing, to the conviction of many, the total want of support from scripture, reason, and antiquity, of the arrogant claims to dominion which had been raised by their spiritual guides. It is indeed manifest, that when Luther first assumed the character of reformer, he had

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no intention, nor even idea, of proceeding so far as he afterwards found himself under a necessity of going. He first struck only at the abuse which had proved the immediate handle of examining the papal prerogatives. And though from the beginning he did not ascribe to the Pope that omnipotence which has not very decently been attributed to him by the canonists, he was, on the other hand, far from disputing his primacy, or even his supremacy, in any sense short of absolute despotism.

It has often been objected to him and his followers, under which denomination the Romanists are wont to include all protestants, that he himself appealed to the Pope from the judgment of his antagonists; that he declared repeatedly that he would be determined by his judgment; and yet, when his holiness interposed, and gave judgment on the question in debate, he did not depart, in the smallest circumstance, from the doctrine he had maintained in direct contradiction to that judgment. The truth, I believe, is,-When Luther declared his submission to Rome, he spoke sincerely, though unadvisedly; he flattered himself, that the reasons which had influenced his opinion were exceedingly plain, and could not fail to influence the Pontiff's, when examined seriously. I do not question, that he was then willing to impute the scandals and abuses committed in preaching the indulgences, more to the instruments employed than to the employer; and persuaded himself, that when the Pope should be informed of the whole, he could not avoid being ashamed of the conduct of his agents, and would justify Luther, so far, at least, as either to recall or to qualify the powers which had been given in relation to indulgences, and to pronounce no censure on the principles which, on this subject, had been maintained by that appellant. Perhaps he even thought that, through the superintendency of Providence, (for at that time he seems to have entertained no sentiments hostile to the monarchical form of church government), such a scandal would be prevented as the public justification of a doctrine of the most pernicious tendency, disseminated by many of the monks on this occasion.