CHRISTIANITY had for a period of seven hundred years, glorified God, sanctified man, and given consolation to the earth, before any minister of the gospel ever thought of erecting himself into a temporal prince. This ambition sprung up in the eighth century, after the dissolution of the Roman empire, and the ravages of the barbarians, in the bosom of universal ignorance, and of troubles which overturned Europe, but in an especial manner rent and divided Italy. But the popes had scarcely obtained the exercise of a precarious civil power when, corrupted by functions so foreign to their apostolic ministry, unfaithful vicars of Christ and of the sovereign, they aspired to be no longer dependent, and speedily to rule. Menacing in the ninth century and dissolute in the tenth, the pontifical court had weakened itself by the publicity of its vices, when the stern Gregory VII. conceived the idea of a universal theocracy: an audacious enterprize, weakly sustained by most of the pontiffs of the twelfth century, but which Innocent III. realized at the opening of the thirteenth; this is the era of the greatest display of the spiritual and temporal supremacy of the bishops of Rome.—Their residence within the walls of Avignon in the fourteenth century, and the schism which was prolonged to the middle of the fifteenth, abated their power and even their ambition; after the year 1450, the popes no longer thought of any thing but the aggrandizement of their families. Julius II. came too late to attempt anew the subjugation of kings; his successors during the sixteenth century, to prevent being too much humbled themselves, had need of an address which those of the seventeenth did not inherit; and the foil of the temporal power of the popes has been only retarded, since the year 1700, by the wise conduct of two pontiffs and the little attention which the errors of others claimed.

The political revolutions which followed the dethronement of Augustulus; the elevation of Pepin to the throne of France, and of Charlemagne to the empire; the weakness of Louis le Debonnaire, and the partition of his states among his children; the imprudence of some kings who solicited against one another the thunders of the Vatican; the fabrication of the decretals; the propagation of a canonical jurisprudence contrary to the ancient laws of the church; the rivalry of two houses in Germany; the schemes of independence adopted, by some Italian cities; the crusades, the inquisition, and the innumerable multitude of monastic establishments: such were the causes which produced, confirmed, extended, and for so long a period sustained the temporal power of the popes, and favoured the abuse of their spiritual functions.

This power had for its effects the corruption of manners, the vices of the clergy, heresies, schisms, civil wars, eternal commotions, the deepest misery in the states immediately under the government of the popes, and the most terrible disasters to those which they aspired to rule. The popes of the first seven centuries generally set an example of the Christian and sacerdotal virtues: the generality of their successors have proved bad princes without being good bishops. We have rendered our homage to some: for instance, to a Gregory II. in the eighth century; a Leo IV. in the ninth; to Calixtus II. Honorius II. and Alexander III. in the twelfth; to Nicholas V. in the fifteenth; to Leo X. in the sixteenth; and to Benedict XIV. and Clement XIV. in the eighteenth. We would have been pleased in having much more opportunity to praise; but when we reflect on the confused mixture of the sacred ministry with political power, upon this amalgamation so calculated to deprave both of these heterogeneous elements, we are not astonished at finding much fewer good governors in the catalogue of popes than in the list of any other description of sovereigns.

All these bitter fruits of pontifical dominion have contributed to destroy it: eventually, so many abuses, excesses, and scandals, rendered Christian Europe justly indignant. But, causes more direct, and which we have in succession noted, have since the middle of the thirteenth century shaken the edifice of this intolerable tyranny: let it suffice that we here recall a few of them; the holy opposition of Louis IX. the firmness of Philip the Fair; the frenzy of Boniface VIII. the irregularities of the court of Avignon; the schism of the West; the pragmatic sanction of Charles VII. the restoration of letters; the invention of printing; the despotism of the popes of the fifteenth century; the ambitious designs of Sixtus IV. the crimes of Alexander VI. the ascendancy of Charles V. the progress of heresy in Germany, England, and other countries; the troubles in France under the son of Hemy II. the wise administration of Henry IV. the Edict of Nantes; the Four Articles of 1682; the dissensions arising from the formulary of Alexander VII. and the bull, ‘Unigenitus,’ of Clement XI.; lastly, the Quixotic enterprises of Benedict XIII., Clement XIII. and other pontiffs of the eighteenth century. No! the Papal power can never survive so much disgrace: its hour is come; and there remains no alternative to the popes, but to become, as they had been during the first seven centuries, humble pastors, edifying apostles: it is a destiny abundantly noble.

Once relieved from the burden of temporal affairs, and devoted to their evangelical ministry, they would be so much the less tempted to abuse their sacred office; as there exists to bound their spiritual authority, efficacious means which have been taught by experience. It would even be superfluous to revert to the decrees of the councils of Constance and Basle; or to the pragmatic sanction of 1439: the Four Articles of 1682 are sufficient.

The king of France, Henry IV. had given the example of another security against the pontifical enterprises, when, by his edict of Nantes, he permitted the free exercise of a religion which was not that of the state, and of which he had the happiness to acknowledge and abjure the errors. Toleration of all modes of adoring the Deity is a debt due from sovereigns to their subjects; the gospel which directs the preaching of truths and the enlightening those who are in error, forbids by this very act itself the persecuting of them; for persecution must rather confirm in heresy or extort hypocritical abjurations, which deprave morality and outrage religion. All the Christian kings who have harassed religious sects, have been in their turn disturbed by the popes, and obliged to resist them: St. Louis himself did not escape this just ordination of Providence. To know how far a prince yields to the yoke of the pontiffs; we have only to look to what degree he limits the consciences of his subjects; his own independence is to be measured by the religious liberty which he permits to them: it is necessary, if he wish not to be subjected himself, that he inflexibly refuse to priests, or to the prince of priests, the proscription of modes of worship which differ from the dominant church.

The liberty, or if you please, the toleration of these various professions, supposes in those who exercise them the perfect enjoyment of every right, civil and political, granted to other subjects; whence it follows, that legislation should altogether detach from the religious system the particular situation of individuals, and consequently the circumstances of births, marriages, divorces, burials, which tend to determine it. Here the ecclesiastical office is confined to exhorting the faithful to the observance of certain precepts, or to religious advice, and administering to them the rites of the church or the sacraments, instituted to sanctify the various periods of human life. It is to civil legislation, and to it alone, can belong the establishment of offices purely civil to verify these acts, to invest them with the forms it has prescribed, and which ought to ensure the public authenticity of them, and guarantee all their effects. Now such a legislation is in itself one of the firmest barriers against ecclesiastical usurpation, and the fatal influence which the head of the clergy would willingly exercise in the bosom of empires and of families.

The history of the first ages of Christianity would, perhaps, point out other preservatives against the pontifical ambition. It should be the endeavour to substitute the ancient laws of the church, in place of those of the middle age, framed to give a separate interest to the clerical body, and render it devoted to the court of Rome, in loosing it from all domestic and patriotic ties. We must avow that these delicate reformations should be matured by time, and carried into effect with circumspection: it is requisite that, induced by publish wish, and as it were enacted by public opinion, they should be previously agreed upon, and looked for with hope before being established. But, to submit to a regime purely civil all the circumstances which determine the personal state, to tolerate the various modes of worship which may desire peaceably to exist around the established one; to render to the articles of 1682 the most sacred authority; and, above all, to abolish for ever the temporal power of the popes; these four steps, as easy as they were salutary, have been but too long deferred: no obstacle, no fear, no anticipation, can advise to defer them; and without doubt they will for a long period be sufficient to prevent the principal abuses of the spiritual office.

Among these abuses, however, there are two that we conceive it our duty to point out more particularly: the one consists in excommunications, the other in the refusal of canonical investiture.

Although the Christian churches were only individual associations, they ought to possess the right of excluding from their bosom vicious or dissentient members, who, by their scandalous conduct or discord, disturbed the sacred harmony of those assemblies. From this so natural right, the exercise of which had for a long period been as gentle as it was secret, sprung up, in the middle ages those thundering anathemas, which shook thrones and overturned empires. It was no longer either vice or error which was excommunicated: the sacred thunder served only to avenge the temporal interests of the clergy and of the sovereign pontiff. Who can particularize the number of emperors, kings, and other princes who, from the eighth century to the eighteenth, have been struck by this, often formidable, arm? To confine ourselves to the very-christian kings of France, we may count, between Charlemagne and Louis the Just, twelve sovereigns who have suffered ecclesiastical censures: in the ninth century, Louis-le-Debonnaire and Charles the Bold; in the tenth, Robert; in the eleventh, Philip I.; in the twelfth, Louis VII. and Philip Augustus; in the sixteenth, Louis XII. Henry II. Henry III. and Henry IV. Now of all these excommunicated kings Henry the IV. alone could have been accused of heresy: the orthodoxy of the others was without reproach; there was no question but that of their political relations with Rome, and the independence claimed for their crown. But, the excessive, the profane use of these anathemas, brought them into such discredit, that in the present day it would be as ridiculous to fear them as it would be to renew them.

Stripped of all temporal power, and become the subject of one of the princes of Europe, will the pope excommunicate his own sovereign? Such audacity or extravagance is not by any means probable. It is true that past ages offer examples of it; but, at the present time, too just an idea is formed of such anathemas; it would now be regarded but as a seditious libel, a public instigation to revolt, an insult on the majesty of the sovereign and of the laws, a penal though an impotent attempt.

Will the sovereign under whom the pope shall live, permit him to excommunicate foreign princes, whether allies or enemies? we cannot imagine such an imprudence. We have, no doubt, beheld monarchs thus direct against their rivals those spiritual arms which were soon after turned against themselves: but experience has sufficed to deter them from a description of warfare as uncertain as it is ungenerous. Besides, where shall we now find a nation, a mob even, ignorant enough not to be aware that they are only expressive of pontifical caprice or spleen, or a puerile regret for some foolish prerogative?

In fine, will the sovereign of the pope permit his other subjects, magistrates, public officers, or private individuals, to be struck by ecclesiastical censures? we will never suppose it. In a regulated state every condemnation is pronounced in the name of the prince, by the officers specially appointed for this description of judicial functions; and no public censure should emanate from an authority foreign to his.—Let us add, that from the moment the church becomes incorporated with the state, it ceases to be a distinct association: Christianity becomes an institution recognized by the laws: and the acts of the religious ‘regime,’ from the time they require publicity, belong to the general administration. Thenceforward if it belong to the bishops, the pope, or the councils, to condemn dogmatical errors, without the intervention of the sovereign, at least their persons remain under his protection, and ought not to be officially marked out or disgraced, but agreeable to the forms prescribed by him.

It now remains for us to speak of canonical institution.

That each newly elected bishop should pay homage to the head of the church, is an act of communion with the Holy See extremely commendable. That the nominator of this bishop should be expressly approved by the pope, is a practice calculated to draw closer the ties which ought to connect the first pastor with all the others. That the pope should even profit of this circumstance to examine the qualifications of the elected, and to remonstrate against an improper choice, is also a security of the honour of the clergy and the discreet administration of the dioceses; it is also a means of enlightening the religion of the prince, and providing against surprise or error. But, that the pope should refuse investiture to a prelate whom the sovereign thinks irreproachable, or that, from considerations foreign to the person of the individual elected, from motives merely political, or, because of certain differences between the sovereign and the pope, the latter should persevere in with-holding all canonical investiture; so criminal an abuse of a respectable office authorizes a reversion to the ancient privilege of nomination. We have collected, in concluding the tenth chapter, the principles professed on this head by the advocate general Talon at the close of the seven-, teenth century; about which time Bossuet traced the origin of bulls of investiture and acknowledged their novelty.³²⁸

These two authorities, Talon and Bossuet, might suffice; but it may not be useless to establish on this important point a chronological series of facts and of evidence.

We read in the Acts of the Apostles³²⁹ that the bishops are appointed by the Holy Ghost to rule the church of God: neither this verse of Scripture, nor any other sacred text, makes mention of the pope as a universal pastor by whom all the rest are to be ordained. We should vainly seek for the slightest vestige of a bull of ordination, granted by the sovereign pontiff to the bishops of the earlier ages: for example, to St. Cyprian, St. Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Ambrose, or St. Augustine. St. Cyprian, on the contrary, having adopted an erroneous opinion, was scarcely in communion with the pope. The Council of Nice³³⁰ directs that each diocesan bishop may be confirmed by his metropolitan or archbishop; a regulation which leaves no pretext for supposing that the bishop of Rome had, in this respect, any function to perform. Three popes of the fifth century, Zosimus, Leo the Great, and Gelasius, have spoken of the installation of prelates, claiming for the metropolitan, and for him alone, the right of investiture. Zosimus³³¹ says, that the Apostolic See itself ought to respect this prerogative of the metropolitans. That a bishop should be required by the people, elected by the clergy, consecrated by the bishops of the province, under the presidency of the metropolitan, is all that is insisted on by Leo I.³³² and lastly, Gelasius³³³ decides, that when the metropolitan is dead, it belongs to the provincial bishops to confirm and consecrate his successors. A council of Toledo in 681,³³⁴ confers the same right on the bishop of the metropolis; and this doctrine was so well established in Spain, that before the thirteenth century, the bishops of this kingdom had never applied to the pope for bulls of investiture or confirmation.

Many authors fix the origin of this pretension of tbe pope in the pontificate of Alexander III, 1159, 118-1.

Potestas sane vel confirm&tio pertiaebit per singulas provincias ad metropolitanum episcopum.

See a like regulation in the twelfth canon of the Council of Laodicea.

“We may easily suppose,” they add, “that the metropolitans of Germany, and especially those who are also electors of the empire, have borne with much unwillingness this great diminution of their rights, with respect to the confirmation of the new bishops, elected in their respective provinces; and the grievances drawn up at Constance under the emperor Sigismund, by the deputies of the provinces of Germany, and laid before the Council of Constance afterwards, by deputies of the same nation, as Galdart relates, clearly evinces: [here follows what we read in the 3d chapter]: Every time that it becomes necessary to proceed to an election, after it shall have been terminated, let it be examined according to legal form by the immediate superior; and, if found canonical, let it be confirmed; and let not the sovereign pontiff be allowed in any way to attempt any the smallest thing to the contrary, unless that the elected be immediately subject to him; in which case he may intimate his prohibition; or, unless they have acted in some way contrary to the regular forms: in such case, as he is bound to the observance of the law, so is it allowable to him when any thing is done contrary to that law, or attempted to be done, to reform it, and even correct and punish the transgressors. We have before proved, that this latter power belongs to the sovereign pontiff of common right. Although the council of Constance in the 36th session, to prevent the peace of the church being disturbed, ratified the confirmation of bishopricks, made by popes whom it deposed shortly after; and, although it directed the expediting and signing in its name the bulls which had never been given to bishops who had abdicated, or who were driven from their sees; it, nevertheless, thought seriously at the same time of reducing the confirmation of bishops to the terms of the ancient law, since, in the decree of the 40th session, by which it prescribed to the pope who was about to be elected, by way of salutary caution, many points of the great-est importance, to which in the sequel a better form was to have been given, it inserted in the 5th article that of the confirmation of electors. But what the council of Constance only premeditated, we know that the council of Basle carried more fully into effect: for, after having annulled the reservation as well general as particular, it only allowed, that in cases where the church or the commonweal might suffer damage, the sovereign pontiff might be resorted to for the confirma* tion of canonical elections; adding, that if the confirmation was refused at Rome, the new election should devolve on the chapters. For the rest, it clearly directs, that the elections be made without impediment; and confirmed after examination, agreeable to the disposition of the common law. The grievances of Mayence, drawn up after the council of Basle in 1440, and reported in Scakenburg under the term ‘project of a concordat’ are entirely in unison with these complaints; they explain the meaning of these words ‘according to the disposition of the common law,’ when they assert, that according to common right, the privilege of confirming elections should be restored to the immediate superior: the election being terminated, they say, the decree of “election ought to be presented to the immediate superior” to whom belongs the right of confirmation; this superior ought, in this matter, examine with care the form of the election, the merits of the elected, and every other circumstance relating thereto; so that if the election ought to be affirmed, it maybe so judicially. The father of the diocesan synod of Freisingen in Bavaria adopted, in the same year 1440, these projects of the States of the Empire, &c.

It is nevertheless to the eleventh century we may trace up in many churches the custom of an oath, by which each newly elected prelate bound himself “to defend the domains of St. Peter against every aggressor; to preserve, augment, and extend, the rights, honours, privileges, and powers, of the lord pope and his successors; to observe, and with all his power cause to be observed, the decrees, ordonances, reservations, provisions, and directions whatever, emanating from the court of Rome; to persecute and combat heretics and schismatics to the utmost extremity, with all who will not render to the sovereign pontiff all the obedience which the sovereign pontiff pleases to exact.”

This oath, who can believe it? has been taken by bishops whose sovereigns were not catholic princes.

How are we to conceive that sovereigns, catholic or not, could have allowed their subjects to enter into engagements so opposed to the good order of society at large:—it was complained of in Hungary, in Tuscany, and in the kingdom of Naples; and the prelates of Germany placed restrictions on this formula. But it is in itself so revolting, and besides so foreign to the discipline of the ten first centuries of the church, that we cannot believe they mean seriously to allege it as a proof of the necessity of bulls of investiture.

Some French authors have observed how the public and notorious dissensions between pope Innocent XI. and Louis XIV. seemed to present a favorable opportunity for re-establishing the ancient discipline, and for terminating this shameful subjection, which drew after it the obligation of soliciting and obtaining pontifical bulls for consistorial benefices. By so doing, there would not only remain in the kingdom immense sums of money, now sent every year to Rome, but the bishops would again enter into their ancient rights, and the clergy, as well regular as secular, would be in consequence better governed.—On the Government of the Church translated from the Latin of Febronius, vol. i. c. 4. s. 3.—For original see Appendix B.

Another formula was introduced in the thirteenth century, to wit, that by which the prelates were termed “bishops.... by the grace of the Holy Apostolic See.” An archbishop of Nicosia first employed it in 1251, and was followed in it by many of his brethren. The French bishops did not adopt it till a later period; and some suppressed it as incorrect, abusive, and novel: Bossuet termed himself ‘bishop by the divine permission.’

At the close of the fourteenth century, when the Castilians had withdrawn from their obedience to Peter de Lune, Henry III. king of Castile, commanded the archbishops to invest the bishops.³³⁵ —The king of France did the same, when, at the same period, the Gallican church refused to recognize any of the three contending popes. In 1587 the bishop of Constance was consecrated, installed, and put into full possession of his office ten years before tbe bulls from Rome were received; this is attested by the pleadings of the advocate-general Servin, wherein the right of dispensing with these bulls is proved by the ancient discipline of the church. This was, as we have seen, the doctrine of the French bishops consulted by the court of Portugal;³³⁶ it was that of Simond, of Peter de Marca, of Thomassin, and of Talon and Bossuet.

Simond³³⁷ observes, that before the fifteenth century, when Gaul was subject to the Romans, the bishops, elected by the people and the clergy, were invested only by the metripolitan.

De Macra,³³⁸ desires they may banish from Christian schools, the novel and unheard-of doctrine, unknown to the twelve first centurics, which inculcates the belief that the bishops receive their authority from the pope; he is of opinion, that many circumstances may fully authorize the bishops to dispense with the modern custom of appointments termed canonical, and the reverting to natural and divine right, without any respect to the forms introduced by the new law; and father Thomassin³³⁹ assures us that, notwithstanding the efforts he has made to discover in antiquity some vestiges of this institution, he has found, on the contrary, that the ancient bishops, and especially those of the East, ascended their sees without the popes having been made acquainted with it. Lastly, in 1718, the council of Regency consulted the Sorbonne on this point, which decided, that, circumstances or occasion requiring, it might restore to their ancient privileges of investing, without pontifical bulls, the prelates legitimately elected. This is surely enough to demonstrate that these bulls are in no wise necessary, and that, at least, they may be considered as obtained, when they are refused from motives foreign to the personal qualifications of the elected.

The historical details of this feeble and too hasty essay, rather glanced at than fully developed, expose slightly, at least, the dangers of the temporal sovereignty of the pope, and the limits which ought to confine his spiritual authority. These limits had need to be assigned by a victorious hand, capable of setting bounds to all subaltern ambition, and unaccustomed to suffer any restrictions to be put on the progress of civilization, the diffusion of knowledge, and the glory of a great empire. The abolition of the terrestrial power of the pontiffs, is one of the greatest benefits Europe can be indebted for to a Hero. The destiny of a new founder of the Western Empire is, to repair the errors of Charlemagne, to surpass him in wisdom, and therefore in power; to govern and consolidate the States which Charles knew only how to conquer and rule; in fine, to render eternal the glory of an august reign, in securing, by energetical establishments, the prosperity of succeeding sceptres.³⁴⁰