sary to show that it had been taught with authority in the Roman Church, when it would follow at once that that Church was not infallible. Now it is contended that the popes, in teaching this maligned doctrine, were only the champions of what are recognized as the just rights of subjects, their defenders against the tyranny of royal oppressors.

In ages when brute force was everywhere supreme, and when despots held sway, many of whom were wicked enough to be capable of rivalling the enormities of the worst of the Roman emperors, was it not the safety of the world that the Church could not be silenced? When others crouched in fear and choked down their grief and indignation, one old man, feeble in this world's strength, but strong in the authority of Him in whose name he spoke, had courage to tell the evildoer how his actions were judged of in the sight of God, and could successfully threaten him, if he did not reform, with the loss of the power which he misused. It is amusing,' exclaim the Romish advocates, that Protestants should affect to be shocked at the claim of the popes to release subjects from their oaths of allegiance to unworthy sovereigns. One would be tempted to think that Protestants themselves believed these oaths to be chains which no human power could undo, and which in no change of circumstances cease to be binding. Why, just the reverse is the case. The deed of those who rose in arms against their king, and sent him to public execution, finds now many an approver and defender; and those who condemn it repudiate absolutely the slavish principles of the divines of the Restoration. If concerning this there be difference of opinion, Protestants, at least, are nearly unanimous in counting it a glorious revolution when another king was driven from his throne in violation of the most solemn of oaths. The large majority of the clergy of those days, loud as they had been shortly before in condemning the rebellious doctrines of the Puritans, when they had tasted a little of oppression themselves, scrupled not to treat their old oaths of allegiance as no longer binding, and to take new ones to monarchs of their own choosing. These principles have spread over Europe. In the year 1848 there was scarcely a

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throne whose occupant was not dispossessed. We do not pretend to be in the least shocked at any of these changes of government; yet is it satisfactory that people should make themselves judge and jury in their own cause, and depose their sovereign when they please? What is an oath worth if he who takes it regards it as binding only so long as he himself may choose to observe it? Were it not infinitely better that there should be a recognized arbiter over all, who should hear all complaints of misgovernment, and decide whether it had reached such a point as would justify resistance and warrant subjects in withholding their sworn allegiance? Such an arbiter, it is said, was the pope in the middle ages, by the common consent of European nations. However little a prince might relish the pope's interference with himself he seldom objected to his interference with his neighbour; and often the king whose deposition by the pope is now said to have been an act of tyrannical usurpation, had been himself ready to profit by the pope's gift to him of another sovereign's dominions. This shows that the pope's authority was then recognized as legitimate. But, in particular, it was then part of the common law of Christendom that he who ruled over a Christian nation must himself be a Christian: neither a heathen nor a heretic. And the pope was evidently discharging an office which specially belonged to him if he declared whether or not a sovereign had fallen into heresy, and whether or not he had accordingly incurred the forfeiture of his crown. Thus, then, we who admit that cases may occur when subjects may lawfully depose their sovereigns, and treat the oaths they have taken to them as no longer binding, are called on to admit also that it would be an advantage that there should be an authority competent to decide whether in any case withdrawal of allegiance would be justified. And so we are told that we ought to be ashamed of the outcry we have raised against the exercise of the deposing power by the medieval popes, such an outcry not being justifiable unless we adopt the Caroline doctrines of passive obedience and non-resistance; the exercise of the deposing power having been perfectly legitimate according to the political constitution of Europe at the time, and that constitution

which gave a common head to all Christian nations being really preferable to the international anarchy of the present time.

Such is the defence made for the extravagant pretensions in secular matters of the popes of the middle ages. I postpone for a time the consideration of the two questions whether, in point of fact, the European nations did really concede the supremacy over temporal princes which the popes claimed to exercise; and whether it would have been advantageous to them to have conceded it; because it is necessary first to point out that Roman apologists mislead us if they would have us believe that it was on any such voluntary concession that the pope rested his claims. He did not claim the right because nations had given it to him; but nations often yielded it to him because they believed his assertion that God had given it to him. The consent of peoples would, of course, affect the prudence of exercising the right, but not the right itself. The late pope might believe that he had the power to depose the emperor of Germany or of Russia, but he knew that if he did so he would only ruin his own adherents in these countries if they obeyed his deposition of their sovereign. In this way the consent of peoples is necessary to the prudent exercise of the deposing power; but the popes never admitted that it was the consent of peoples which gave them their power. It is in this sense that we are to understand language used by Pio Nono, in which he spoke of the 'right' of deposing sovereigns as exercised by his predecessors, and stated that their authority in accordance with public right which was then vigorous, and with the acquiescence of all Christian nations, extended so far as to pass judgment even in civil affairs on the acts of princes and nations. That we are here to understand the acquiescence of Christian nations not as giving the right, but as constituting that happy state of things which made its exercise possible and prudent, is evident from the language used by his predecessors.

Take the first great case of the deposition of a prince—that of the Emperor Henry, by Gregory VII. Gregory did not appeal to the consent of peoples, but to the blessed Peter, whom he addressed in these words :-'Since it hath pleased

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thee that the people of Christ, specially entrusted to thee, should obey me in thy stead; since by thy grace power is given to me to bind and loose in heaven and in earth, therefore relying on this trust for the honour and defence of thy Church, and in behalf of Almighty God, I deny to Henry the government of the whole nation of Germany and Italy, and I release all Christians from the bond of the oath which they have made to him, and I forbid anyone to serve him as if he were a king.' These principles were acted on and improved by Gregory's successors. Innocent III. applied to himself the words of God spoken to Jeremiah, and declared that God had ordained the pope, as Christ's vicar, 'to have power over all nations and kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, to destroy, to build, and to plant.' It was this pope who found the papal power in the first chapter of Genesis; that power being the sun which God hath appointed to rule the day, that is in spiritual things; while the imperial power was but that lesser light which he hath appointed to rule in the night, that is in carnal things. It would be too long to tell how commentators worked out this analogy, as, for instance, that the spiritual power shines by its own light; the temporal derives its authority from the spiritual, which commands subjects to be obedient for conscience' sake. Nay, it was supposed possible to determine thus the exact proportion between the two powers, though unhappily the theologians, who invoked the aid of the unfamiliar sciences of astronomy and arithmetic, went so far astray in their calculations as to do gross injustice to the papal claims. The gloss on this decretal of Innocent computes that as the earth is seven times greater than the moon, and the sun eight times greater than the earth, so it follows (I do not exactly see how) that the papal dignity is forty-seven times greater than the imperial.* Later popes still further developed the theories of Gregory and Innocent. Boniface VIII., for instance, in the preamble of a Bull giving away the island of Sardinia, commences, 'Being set above kings and princes by a divine pre-eminence of power, we dispose of them as we think fit.' But the fullest statement of his

Decret. Greg. lib. i., tit. 33, c. 6.

doctrine concerning his supremacy is in his celebrated Bull Unam Sanctam.' In this he lays down that there is but one Catholic Church, and of that Church but one head, namely Christ, and Christ's vicar, Peter, and his successor. In Peter's power are two swords, the spiritual and the temporal, each of which is therefore in the power of the Church. [I may say, in passing, that one of the most used texts in this controversy was that which relates to Peter's words on the night of our Lord's betrayal, 'here are two swords,' on which it was remarked that our Lord's reply was not 'that is too much,' but 'it is enough.'] One of these swords must be subject to the other: the temporal to the spiritual. If, therefore, the earthly power err, the spiritual will judge it; but if the spiritual err God only can set it right. This authority, not human, but divine, was given by the divine lips to Peter, and confirmed to him and his successors. 'Therefore whoso resists this power resists the ordinance of God, unless, like a Manichæan, he pretends that there are two first principles, which we declare to be heretical and false. Moreover, we declare, affirm, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary to salvation that every human creature should be subject to the Roman pontiff.'

Enough has been quoted to show what a misrepresentation it is when Roman apologists wish to produce an impression that the medieval popes exercised a dominion lawful because granted to them by the public consent of the time. It was not on this consent that the popes themselves based it. The consent, indeed, was by no means, at any time, universal. Naturally, when the pope made a present of one man's territory to another, he who received the gift and he at whose expense it was made were apt to hold different opinions as to the pope's power to confer it. But if the consent were ever so general, it was given only because belief was given to the pope's assertion that a man would forfeit his eternal salvation by denying his claim. If that claim were really unfounded, no subsequent consent could legalize it. As well might a man who presents a forged cheque at a banker's maintain that he has a just claim to the money he receives because the banker's clerks have freely and voluntarily