the pope and a general council together; which led Dean Swift to remark, that the church might as well be without an infallible head, ås not to know where to find him in a time of necessity.

If there can be any thing rational in absurdity and impiety, I should maintain that the opinion of those who believe the pope to be infallible, is the most rational of the three. A general council is composed of hundreds of individuals, who are all allowed to be fallible men when taken separately; and it is impossible to conceive that a hundred fallible men can make an infallible body; as well might we suppose that a hundred lies will make one truth. To add the pope to a general council, and make the two together infallible, is little better; it is still a compound of fallible materials; and amidst the jarring opinions of many fallible individuals, it is scarcely possible to come to any decision, without appealing to one as the ultimate judge. In point of fact, this one was the pope; and whatever persons might maintain as a speculative opinion, with regard to the seat of infallibility, which all believed to be somewhere in the church, for all practical purposes it was generally understood to rest with the

pope.

And if it be true that the pope is the successor of Peter, and the vicar of Christ; that he has all the authority with which Christ invested Peter as one of his accredited ambassadors; nay more, if it be true that he is the head of the church, (as PAX asserts,) which Peter never pretended to be;-then, without all doubt, if he be not infallible, he ought to be so; and he ought to be omniscient too; he ought to be able to search the reins and the heart, that he may give to every man according to his works. In short, it is a very cruel thing to make any man the head of the church, if he be not infallible, for without this he will commit great mistakes, which will issue in the ruin of himself and others.

I shall now proceed to give the opinion of popish writers on the subject of the pope's infallibility. It is maintained, in the decretals, that the pope can be judged by none; that his judgment, whether respecting faith, manners, or discipline, ought to be preferred to all things; (not excepting even the Bible, it seems ;) "that nothing is true except what he approves, and every thing which he condemns is false." "We can believe nothing," says Lewis Capsensis, "unless we believe, with a divine faith, that the pope is the successor of St. Peter, and infallible." "It depends upon the pope," says Baronius, "to ratify deand to alter them when ratified." The pope," says Bellarmine, "is absolutely above the Catholic church, and above a general council; so that he has no judge above him on earth."-See M'Culloch's Popery Condemned, with the references, p. 150, 151.

crees,

Bellarmine teaches, "that the pope, when he instructs the whole church in things concerning faith, cannot possibly err; and, whether he be heretic himself, or not, he can by no means define any thing heretical to be believed by the whole church." Another writer on this subject says, "the very doubt whether a council be greater than the pope seems to be absurd, because it would involve a contradiction, namely, that the supreme pontiff is not supreme."—" He cannot err, he cannot be deceived," says another; "it must be conceived, concerning him, that he knows all things." "O Rome," exclaims Cornelius Mussus, bishop of Bitonto, "to whom shall we go for divine counsels, unless to those per

46

sons to whose trust the dispensation of the divine mysteries has been committed? We are therefore to hear him who is to us instead of God, in things that concern God, as God himself. For my part, I freely confess, in things that belong to the mysteries of faith, I had rather believe one pope than a thousand Augustines, Jeromes, Gregories, not to speak of Richards, Scotuses, and Williamses: for I believe and know that the pope cannot err in matters of faith, because the authority and right of determining whatever relates to faith resides in the pope." The assembly of cardinals, prelates, and clergy of France, 1625, declare, "that his holiness is above the reach of calumny, and his faith out of the reach of error." In the theses of the Jesuits, in the college of Claremont, it was maintained, "that Christ hath so committed the government of his church to the popes, that he hath conferred on them the same infallibility which he had himself, as often as they speak ex cathedra; and therefore there is in the church of Rome an infallible judge of controversies of faith, even without a general council, whether in matters of right or fact." The learned writer of "Free Thoughts," from whose notes these extracts are taken, and who gives a host of authorities, asserts that the above has been the general doctrine of the Jesuits, though violently opposed by the Jansenists, and a great part of the Gallican church. Three or four councils have ascribed infallibility to the pope, particularly that of Florence, under pope Eugene, in opposition to the decisions of the council of Basil. The last council of Lateran, and that of Trent, may also, with good reason, be reckoned to have acknowledged this. But at the time of the last of these, the pope declared, that he would rather shed his blood than part with his rights, which had been established upon the doctrine of the church, and the blood of martyrs: and the legates were charged not to allow the council to make any decision on the point of infallibility, and they accordingly avowed they would rather lose their life than allow a thing so certain to be called in question. The bishop of Grenada maintained before the council, that the pope was a God on earth, and therefore he was not subject to a council" Free Thoughts, p. 200. PAX will see from this, that I was not mistaken when I called the pope the god of Papists.

I do not suppose that Ravaillac, the assassin of Henry IV., was a divine of high authority in the church of Rome; but he possessed the genuine spirit of a bigotted Papist. He believed it lawful for any private person to kill the king, because he was too favourable to the heretics, and because he had been told that he intended to make war on the pope; "and to make war against the pope," said Ravaillac to his judges, "is to make war against God, seeing the pope is God, and God is the pope." Such language as this was encouraged in the church of Rome, at least no fault was found with it: the church itself, therefore, is implicated in the crime; for every church ought to be held responsible for the opinions and practices of her members, when they are not publicly disapproved or disavowed.

and

Bellarmine is allowed by Papists themselves, to be a standard authority in their church. What gives his testimony double force is, that he was a counsellor of the court of Rome, wrote under the pope's eye, taught controversy publicly in his university; and his books were published in Rome itself, and dedicated to the reigning pope; and in

stead of meeting with the smallest censure from that court, they were received with the highest approbation, and the dignity of cardinal conferred on him as a reward of his merit. Now, such was the devotion of this Bellarmine to the church of Rome, and such were his ideas of the infallibility of the pope, that he taught as follows: "He thinks not rightly of the church of Christ, who admits nothing but what he finds to be written, or done, in the ancient church; as if the church in latter times either ceased to be the church, or had not a power of explaining and declaring, appointing, and even commanding, whatever relates to faith and manners."-" It may be affirmed, in a good sense," says he, "that Christ gave to Peter the power of making sin to be no sin, and that which is no sin to be sin." And again, “ If the pope should command vice, and prohibit virtue, the church would be bound to believe vice to be good, and virtue to be evil, unless she should sin against conscience." The canons, with their glossaries, teach that the pope "hath a heavenly power, cœleste arbitrium, and therefore changes the nature of things, applying the essential attributes of the one to the other; that he can make something of nothing; and in those things that he wills, his will is instead of reason; nor is there any one that can say to him, What dost thou? for he can dispense with law; he can make justice injustice, by changing and correcting laws; and, in a word, that he hath a plenitude of power.

The popes have often been accused of putting themselves on a footing with Jesus Christ, as of equal authority with him; but this, impious as it is, comes short of the truth. The pope actually exalts himself above all that is called God. He assumes greater power; and his minions, such as Bellarmine, ascribe to him greater power than ever was ascribed to Jesus Christ. It was never said of the Saviour that he did, or that he could, make that which is sin to be no sin, or that he could make that to be no sin which is sin. The law of God, the eternal and immutable law of righteousness, was in his heart. He obeyed every precept of it himself; and he made atonement for every transgression in the room of all his people. But, had it been possible for any power in heaven or on earth to make that which is sin to be no sin, there was no occasion for either the obedience or the atonement of Christ. When I speak of what divine power cannot do, I must, of course, be understood as speaking of those things which are contrary to the infinite holiness of God. It derogates nothing from any of the divine perfections, nay, it is the glory of the character of God, that he cannot lie, that he cannot look upon iniquity. He cannot, therefore, make that which is sin to be no sin. But Bellarmine, an approved doctor in the Romish church, says the pope can do so. This accounts for the fact of my opponents pertinaciously maintaining that it never was a principle of their church, that a pope would grant indulgence or permission to commit sin; for that cannot be sin, be it murder or any thing else, which the pope grants permission to do.

It was quite usual with popish writers to address the pope as a God; and instead of finding fault with any of them for this impiety, he received their adulation as the sweetest incense. Angelus Politianus thus addresses Alexander VI.: “We rejoice to see you raised above all human things, and exalted even to divinity itself, seeing there is

nothing, except God, which is not put under you." And Clement VII, with his cardinals of Avignon, writing to King Charles VI., says, As there is but one God in the heavens, so there cannot, nor ought to be of right but one God on earth." Troisard, tom. 3, fol. 147. "It is evident," says the canon law, "that the pope, who was called God by Constantine, can neither be bound nor loosed by any secular power; for it is manifest that a God cannot be judged by men." See Free Thoughts, &c., with the references, p. 32, 33.

One should think it scarcely possible to go farther in impiety and blasphemy; yet the following seems to exceed any thing of the kind which I have seen. The devil hath passed so far in this mystery of iniquity, that one disputed in the schools, a little before Luther came, and somewhat after, whether the pope participated not in both natures, the divine and human, with Jesus Christ." Page 275, Du Piessis, who refers, on the margin, to Erasmus, in Epist. 2d Timothy, cap. 1. The church of Rome has, perhaps, to thank the reformation, and the light which accompanied it, for checking this error, so that it went no further than the schools. But for this, it would very likely have found its way into some of the public standards of the church; and the pope, frail and mortal as he was, would have accepted the compliment of possessing the divine as well as the human nature.

It is well known that the pope claimed authority, not only over the church, but also over all the civil powers in Christendom; nay, he pretended that the property of the whole globe was vested in him, so that he could dispose of islands and continents at his pleasure. It is said, that some of the Papists in Ireland have of late began to doubt his infallibility, because he gave that kingdom to England; but if he could by any means give England to Ireland, I doubt not he would be, in the esteem of Irish Papists, as infallible as ever. "It is a thing most manifest," says a popish writer, "that his holiness hath universal power over all, not only in his own states, and over his own vassals, but also in those of other princes, and in all the world; but as to the laity, the jurisdiction is of two sorts, spiritual and temporal; as to the spiritual, every one grants that he hath supreme power as head. Considering, therefore, those things that are of positive institution, (de jure positivo,) his holiness can not only interpret, and dispense with them, but he can revoke them entirely. It is not quite the same with such as are of jure divino; these he cannot revoke, he can only explain." Tesoro Politico, con licenza de superiori, 1602, p. 20. Bellarmine teaches that "the pope has the chief power of disposing of the temporal affairs of all Christians, in order to their spiritual good." Lib. V. cap. 6. "And on account of the wickedness of the times, not only usefully, but even necessarily, some temporal principalities are granted to the pope and to the other bishops." Lib. V. cap. 9. "It would be altogether expedient, if it could be brought to pass without injustice and warlike strife, that all the provinces of the world were ruled, even in political matters, by one chief king." Lib. I. cap. 9. "It is not repugnant to the gospel, if in any manner it might be, that the same should be high priest of the whole world, and also emperor of the whole world." Lib. V. cap. 10. It would seem as if the pope had nothing less than this in view, and that he was actually grasping at the empire of the whole world, when his hand was paralyzed by the reformation.

I could easily show, from a work above quoted, (Tesoro Politico,) numerous authentic instances of princes holding their dominions under the pope, who claimed a right to dispose of them at his pleasure. Indeed, to deny that the pope had such power, was declared to be heresy. Thus BONIFACE addresses a letter to Philip le Bel, in these terms, "Boniface, bishop, and servant of the servants of God, to Philip, king of France: fear God and keep his commandments: we would have you to know that you are subject to us, both in things spiritual and temporal, and we declare all those to be heretics who believe the contrary. Given at our palace of Lateran, the 5th of December, the seventh year of our pontificate." In another to the same, he says, "God hath established us over kings and kingdoms, to pluck up, to overthrow, to destroy, to scatter, to build, and to plant, in his name, and by his doctrine. Do not allow yourself to be persuaded that you have not a superior, and that you are not subject to the head of the ecclesiastical hierarchy; he that thinks thus is a fool; and he that obstinately maintains it is an infidel, separated from the flock of the good Shepherd."

The pope thus being acknowledged to have all power on earth, was not yet content. He must have power in heaven too; he professed to open and shut its gates at his pleasure; and he impiously pretended to have the heavenly powers at his command, though only for the purpose of gratifying his own avarice and revenge. The pope was the proprietor of some alum works; for the holy father, it seems, could condescend to be a chemist and a manufacturer. One of the workmen made his elopement, came to Britain, and revealed the secrets of the trade. The pope sent after him the following curses, in the form of an excommunication, which my readers may contrast with the doctrines of Jesus Christ,-Bless and curse not.

"By the authority of God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and of the holy canons; and of the immaculate Virgin Mary, the mother and patroness of our Saviour; and of all the celestial virtues, angels, archangels, thrones, dominions, powers, cherubims, and seraphims; and of all the holy patriarchs and prophets; and of all the apostles and evangelists; and of the holy innocents, who, in the sight of the Holy Lamb, are found worthy to sing the new song; of the holy martyrs and holy confessors; and of the holy virgins, and of all the saints, together with all the holy elect of God, we excommunicate and anathematize this thief, or this malefactor, N from the thresholds of the holy church of Almighty God, we sequester him, that he may be tormented, disposed, and delivered over, with Dathan and Abiram, and with those who say unto the Lord God, Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways; and as fire is quenched with water, so let his light be put out for ever, unless he shall repent and make satisfaction. Amen.

and

"May God the Father, who created man, curse him. May God the Son, who suffered for us, curse him. May the Holy Ghost, who was given to us in baptism, curse him. May the holy cross, which Christ for our salvation triumphantly ascended, curse him. May the holy and eternal Virgin Mary curse him. May St. Michael, the advocate of holy souls, curse him. May St. John, the chief forerunner and baptist of Christ, curse him. May St. Peter, St. Paul, and St.