pope and an english monarch) still further extended the respective dominions of the confederates. William had pretended some colour of personal right to the english crown, but papal hypocrisy flung the only shadow wherein his great-grandson waded through the blood of "a people, who, being always confined to their own island, had never given any reason of complaint to any of their neighbours."

"The Irish had, by precedent missions from the Britains, been imperfectly converted to christianity; and what the Pope regarded as the surest mark of their imperfect conversion, they followed the doctrines of their first teachers, and had never acknowledged any subjection to the see of Rome. Adrian, therefore, in the year 1156, issued a bull in favour of Henry; in which, after premising, that that prince had ever shown an anxious care to enlarge the church of God on earth, and to increase the number of his saints and elect in heaven; he represents his design of subduing Ireland as derived from the same pious motives; He considers his care of applying previously for the apostolic sanction as a sure earnest of success and victory; and having established it as a point incontestible, that all christian kingdoms belong to the patrimony of St. Peter, he acknowledges it to be his own duty to sow among them the seeds of the gospel, which might in the last day fructify to their eternal salvation: He exhorts the King to invade Ireland, in order to extirpate the vice and wickedness of the natives, and oblige them to pay yearly from every house, a penny to the see of Rome: He gives him

entire right and authority over the island, commands all the inhabitants to obey him as their sovereign, and invests with full power all such godly instruments as he should think proper to employ in an enterprize, thus calculated for the glory of God and the salvation of the souls of men."

Religious hypocrisy was the weapon which Henry borrowed from the Roman arsenal for his wicked enterprize- it was soon made the instrument of his severe affliction. His personal friendship had lavished on the notorious Becket every favour which royal power could bestow. During the many years of their intimacy Becket contrived to impose on the most crafty prince of his age the delusion that his bounty was returned with unbounded gratitude and attachment. But the moment that Henry had crowned the long list of accumulated benefits with the see of Canterbury, the summit of all the dignity and wealth which he could confer on a subject, the impostor, determining to trample on the authority which had raised him to his unmerited elevation, and to torture the heart in which, false as it was, he well knew there had never been any sentiment concerning him but those of confidence and affection, threw away the, now useless, mask of friendship and loyalty, and assumed one of religious sanctity, more suited to his new profession.* "Without consulting the King,

* It was not until after he was nominated by Henry to the Archbishoprick of Canterbury, that Becket qualified himself for the office by receiving clerical ordination.

he immediately returned into his hands the commission of chancellor; pretending, that he must henceforth detach himself from secular affairs, and be solely employed in the exercise of his sacred function; but in reality, that he might break off all connexions with Henry, and apprise him, that Becket, as primate of England, was now become entirely a new personage. He maintained, only in his retinue and attendants, his ancient pomp and lustre, which was useful to strike the vulgar: in his own person he affected the greatest austerity, and most rigid mortification, which, he was sensible, would have an equal or a greater tendency to the same end. He wore sackcloth next his skin, which, by his affected care to conceal it, was necessarily the more remarked by all the world he changed it so seldom, that it was filled with dirt and vermin: his usual diet was bread; his drink water, which he rendered unpalatable by the mixture of unsavoury herbs: he tore his back with the frequent discipline which he inflicted on it he daily on his knees washed, in imitation of our Saviour, the feet of thirteen beggars, whom he afterwards dismissed with presents: he gained the affections of the monks by his frequent charities to the convents and hospitals: every one who made profession of sanctity was admitted to his conversation, and returned full of panegyrics on the humility, as well as the piety and mortification, of the holy primate he seemed to be perpetually employed in reciting prayers and pious lectures, or in perusing religious discourses: his aspect wore the appearance

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of seriousness, and mental recollection, and secret devotion and all men of penetration plainly saw, that he was meditating some great design, and that the ambition and ostentation of his character had turned itself towards a new and more dangerous object."

The bitter cup of humiliation, which the perfidious priest compelled his royal benefactor to drain to the last dregs, is too well known to require citation. The consummate villainy of his hypocrisy and ingratitude deserved and received from "the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth" the highest reward wherewith she professes to recompense the most abject devotion of her slaves, and the signal infamy of Saint Thomas à Becket stands emblazoned "red as scarlet" in the rubrick honours of the Latin calendar.

But papal hypocrisy is not confined to professions of religious zeal and of humanity- -excessive humility is also one of her regular cants. The hands which arrogated the unlimited dominion, temporal and spiritual, of the entire globe, and which did actually distribute vast portions of both hemispheres among the tyrants of the earth, were the hands of "the servant of the servants of God," which publicly washed the feet of beggars- -and the arm, whose thunders fulminated monarchs from their thrones, wielded only. "the seal of the fisherman."*

* In the insolent letter, already cited, wherein Pope Gregory prays for a devil to be sent to the emperor Leo, his holiness declares that "the eyes of the nations are fixed on our humility."

But I must here terminate a discussion in which my unwillingness to weary my reader has yielded to the necessity of fully showing that tyranny and hypocrisy are equally and signally characteristic of the papacy, and that, consequently, the yoke and the mask are its equally appropriate symbols.

THE FOURTH SEAL.

THE subversion of the latin empire, and the establishment of the papal dominion over the kingdoms that arose out of its ruins, having been effected by two agencies, in character totally dissimilar, and separated by a considerable interval of time, are kept distinctly separated in the second and third seals.* The attention of the prophet is next directed to the no less memorable and important history of the church in the eastern division of Constantine's dominions.

The rise of the popedom in Europe was contemporaneous with that of another religious power in Asia, which speedily dismembered, and ultimately overturned, the Greek empire. The Mahometan and

* The latin empire was finally extinguished by a tribe of Scythian savages, called Heruli, commanded by Odoacer, in 476- -the establishment of the papal supremacy may be dated in 606, when the emperor Phocus transferred to the bishop of Rome the title and authority of universal bishop of the christian church, which had been conferred by a general council on the patriarch of Constantinople.