in good works, no form of godliness in their conditions: men are become effeminate, and women's beauty is counterfeited."" And before him TERTULLIAN saith: "O miserable we, who are now called Christians! Under the name of CHRIST, we live as heathens."x And without reciting of inany more writers, GREGORY NAZIANZEN speaketh thus of the pitiful state of his own time: "We" saith he "are in hatred among the heathen for our vices' sake; we are also become now a wonder, not only to angels and men, but even to all the ungodly."-In this case was the Church of God when the gospel first began to shine, and when the fury of tyrants was not as yet cooled, nor the sword taken off from the Christians' necks. Surely it is no new thing that men be but men, although they be called by the name of Christians! w CYPRIAN. De Lapsis. "Disciplinam quam Apostoli tradiderant, otium jam et pax longa corrupit." "Student augendo patrimonio singuli, et obliti quid credentes, aut sub Apostolis ante fecerunt, aut semper facere debent, insatiabili cupiditatis ardore ampliandis facultatibus incubant." "Non in sacerdotibus religio devota, non in ministri fides integra, non in operibus misericordia, non in moribus disciplina. Corrupta barba in viris, in feminis forma fucata." [It suited JEWELL's purpose to show that corruptions existed even in what we are accustomed to consider as the purest ages of the Church: and as there doubtless must have been ground for CYPRIAN'S complaints, it was fair to quote them. But we must not form our ideas of the time from such exaggerated invectives. The prudent caution of MOSHEIM should be borne in mind. "From such general accusations, or from commendations of the same stamp, there is little or no certain information to be derived; for they are generally dictated, and swelled into exaggeration, by a heated temper." Comm. de Rebus Christianor. Sec. III. § xxv. (*).] "O miseros nos, qui Christiani dicimur hoc tempore! Gentes agimus sub nomine CHRISTI." [To the remark in Note w it may be added with relation to GREGORY, that this passage was written under the influence of great excitement, and sense of personal injury; and that at all times his fervid oratory represents things in colours far higher than they really possessed. GREGORY, called from his birth-place, Nazianzum in Cappadocia, NAZIANZEN, was the son of the bishop of that place, born in 324. He was chosen Bishop of Constantinople, with circumstances very honourable to his reputation, in 379; but was compelled, by intrigue and opposition, to resign his see in 382. His works, consisting principally of Orations, Epistles, and poetical productions, were highly valued by his contemporaries and their immediate successors, and are among the most eloquent remains of Christian antiquity.] [This assertion applies to the days of CYPRIAN and TERTULLIAN: not to those of GREGORY NAZIANZEN, who wrote long after the esta CHAPTER VII. The Lives and Manners of the Heads and Members of the Church of Rome. Sect. 1. But will these men, I pray you, think nothing at all of themselves, whilst they so maliciously accuse us? And having leisure to behold so far off, and to see what is done both in Germany and in England, have they either forgotten, or can they not see, what is done at Rome? Or will they accuse us, their own life being such as no man is able to make mention thereof but with shame ?a Sect. 2. Our purpose here is, not to take in hand at this present to bring to light and open to the world those things which were meet rather to be hid and buried with the workers of them. It beseemeth neither our religion, nor our modesty, nor shamefastness. But yet he which giveth commandment that he should be called the Vicar of CHRIST, and the Head of the Church-who also heareth that such things be done in Rome, who seeth them, who suffereth them, (for we will go no further) may easily consider with himself what manner of things they be. blishment of Christianity, when prosperity was introducing corruption into the Church with rapid strides.] a [Several passages in the following sections contain charges which it was needful in JEWELL'S day to bring forward, that the whole mystery of iniquity which had so long worked in secrecy and uninterrupted security might be brought to light; but of a nature that must create unmixed disgust and pain to a modest eye. It could serve no good purpose now to repeat them; for the world knows what Rome was in its days of darkness and triumph, and even yet is: they are therefore omitted, and the gaps made by their omission marked with asterisks.] [In the close of this section JEWELL brings up the story of Pope Joan--a story, which, after the most thorough sifting that could be given by the learned, both Protestants and Romanists, yet remains of dubious authority, neither wholly unworthy of credit, nor yet fully established as true. The amount of it is this: that, in the ninth century, a woman, having disguised herself in male attire, for convenience of intercourse with her paramour, a monk, eloped with him; studied Sect. 3. What should we say any more of this? Their vicious and abominable life is now thoroughly known to the whole world. BERNARD writeth roundly and truly of the Bishop of Rome's house-yea, of the Bishop of Rome himself: "Thy palace," saith he, "taketh in good men, but it maketh none: naughty persons thrive there, and the good decay." And whosoever he were which wrote the Tripartite Work annexed to the Council of Lateran, he saith thus: "So excessive at this day is the riot as philosophy at Athens; taught it at Rome; and attained such eminence as to be chosen successor to Pope LEO IV. who died in 855. In this high station she continued her former lewd habits, and died in childbirth, in the streets of Rome, during a public procession. The story is marvellous: but the ignorance and corruption of the age to which it relates, were not less so. In the following century, SERGIUS III. and JOHN X. lived in open criminal intercourse with prostitutes; JOHN XI. was the son of SERGIUS III; and JOHN XII., raised to the Popedom in his boyhood, openly practised the most abominable vices. These things appear almost as incredible as the history of Pope Joan. One thing is certain-the story of a female Pope, with all its circumstances, received undisputed credence in the Church of Rome, until the use made of it by the Reformers aroused the attention of their adversaries.] c "Aula tua bonos recipit, non facit; mali ibi proficiunt, boni deficiunt." De Consideratione, ad Eugenium.—[BERNARD CLAREVALLENSIS (or of Clairvaux, so called from an abbey which he founded, ruled, and raised to eminence,) was a man of no ordinary cast. As a monk, he attained the pinnacle of fame and power: for having founded the abbey of Citeaux at the age of twenty-three, and that of Clairvaux almost immediately after, and established a new discipline, subsequently known as the Cistercian order; he lived to see a pope, six cardinals, and thirty bishops, from among the inmates of his own abbey, and one hundred and sixty convents founded under the regulations of his order. As a preacher and moralist he obtained a very great reputation; and deservedly, for he was far beyond his age in all respects. His fervent piety, and copious, though loose and rambling, eloquence, make his productions useful even yet; which can be said of few of those of his contemporaries. As a divine, he possessed almost unlimited power. His counsels were solicited and revered by popes and kings, and implicitly obeyed by prelates. His opposition sufficed to quell the rising influence of Abelard, and to procure his condemnation as a heretic; and to stifle the Petrobusians and Apostolics, two classes of rude forerunners of the Reformation while his efforts set on foot the second Crusade, which he preached in France and Germany with success scarcely inferior to that of Peter the Hermit, the apostle of the first. : He died at Clairvaux, in 1153, in the sixty-third year of his age.] well in the prelates and bishops, as also in the clerks [clergy] and priests, that it is horrible to be told.”a But these things be not only grown in ure, [practice] and so by custom and continuance of time well allowed, as all the rest of their doings in manner be; but they are now waxen old, and rotten ripe. For who hath not heard * what JOHN CASA, Archbishop of Beneventum, the Pope's legate at Venice, wrote in the commendation of a most abominable filthiness; and how he set forth with most loathsome words, and wicked eloquence, the matter which ought not once to proceed out of any body's mouth? To whose ears hath it not come, that ALPHONZO DIAZ, a Spaniard, being purposely sent from Rome into Germany, so shamefully and devilishly murdered his own brother, JUAN DIAZ, a most innocent, and a most godly man, only because he had embraced the gospel of JESUS CHRIST, and would not return again to Rome ?f d "Tantus hodie est luxus, non tantum in clericis et sacerdotibus, sed etiam in prælatis et episcopis, ut horribile sit auditu." [A Legate is a prelate commissioned (legatus) by the Pope for the discharge of some special embassy at a foreign court.] f [The narrative of this crying villany is given more in full, from SLEIDAN, in JEWELL'S Defence, p. 355. "One Juan Diaz, a Spaniard, and a Doctor of the Sorbonne in Paris, after that God had given him grace to understand the truth of the gospel, departed thence, and came into Germany, and rested at Neuburg, in the dominion of Otho Henry, Count Palatine. His brother Alphonso Diaz, being then in Rome, and understanding hereof, immediately took horses, and with all speed came into Germany, minding to withdraw his brother from his purpose. Finding him constant and steadfast, and not likely any ways to be removed, in the end he feigned himself, by the weight of his reasons to be persuaded to the same religion; and desired him to return with him into Italy, for that he should do more good there, than he could in Germany. But seeing him for sundry causes firmly bent to stay there, he took his leave, and departed thence, and exhorted him to continue constant in the truth, and came to Augsburg, six German miles from Neuburg. The next day, as having forgotten some special matter he had to say to his brother, he returned back again from thence to Neuburg, and by the way bought a carpenter's axe; and entering into the town upon the 27th of March, he came to his brother's lodgings at the break of the day, and himself watching beneath, sent up his servant with the axe to do the deed. The servant after he had called forth Juan Diaz, and had delivered him a letter from his brother Alphonso, and saw him turn towards the light to read the same, came suddenly behind him, and struck him in the head with his axe, and leaving it sticking in the wound, came away, together with Alphonso, his master."] I Sect. 4. But it may chance to this they will say, These things may sometimes happen in the best governed commonwealths, yea, and against the magistrates' wills; and besides, there be good laws made to punish such. grant it be so. But by what good laws, I would know, have these great mischiefs been punished amongst them? ** Diaz, after he had murdered his own brother, was delivered, by the Pope's means, to the end he might not be punished by good laws. John Casa, the Archbishop of Beneventum, is yet alive, yea, and liveth at Rome, even in the eye and sight of the most Holy Father. * * They have killed infinite numbers of our brethren, only because they believed truly and sincerely in JESUS CHRIST. But of that great and foul number of harlots, fornicators, adulterers, what one have they at any time— I say not, put to death-but either excommunicated, or once attached? Why? Voluptuousness, and other more abominable practices, are they not counted sins at Rome? Or, if they be sin, ought CHRIST's Vicar, Peter's successor, the Most Holy Father, so lightly and slily to bear them, as though they were no sin; and that in the city of Rome, and in the principal tower of holiness ?h O holy Scribes and Pharisees, which never knew this kind of holiness! Oh, what a holiness, what a catholic faith is this! Peter did not thus teach at Rome: Paul did not so live at Rome: * they suffered no common adulterers and wicked murderers to go unpunished. They did not receive them into their familiarity, into their council, into their household, nor yet into the company of Christian men. Sect. 5. These men ought not, therefore, so unreasonably to triumph against our living. It had been more wisdom for them, either first to have proved good their own life before the world, or at the least to have cloaked it a little more cunningly. For we do use still the old and ancient laws, and (as much as men may do, in the manners used at these days, all things being so wholly corrupt,) we diligently and honestly put in execution the [These are ordinary titles of the Pope.] |