I might fill a volume with examples, but at present I shall give only that of England, in the reign of John, in the thirteenth century, as related by Hume, vol. 2d, chap. 4th. A king more wicked than John, perhaps, never sat on the throne of England. He disgusted the whole nation by his cruelties and debaucheries. It was not the least of his crimes, and perhaps not the greatest, that he murdered his nephew, Arthur, duke of Brittany, with his own hand, for which he was detested by his subjects. There was, however, nothing in this, or in his other crimes, which gave any offence to the holy see,-nothing that rendered him unworthy of her communion, or called forth the disapprobation of the pope. 66 But on the occasion of a disputed election to the see of Canterbury, the pope thought proper to nominate a creature of his own to that high office; and because the king would not consent to this, he let loose upon him, and upon the kingdom, all the terrors of an interdict and excommunication. It is amusing to observe how the pope tried to cajole the king into compliance before he threatened him; he tried the cunning of the serpent before he had recourse to the roaring of the lion. INNOCENT," for such was the name of the pope, "sensible that this flagrant usurpation would be highly resented by the court of England, wrote John a mollifying letter; sent him four golden rings, set with precious stones; and endeavoured to enhance the value of the present, by informing him of the many mysteries implied in it. He begged him to consider seriously the form of the rings, their number, their matter, and their colour. Their form, he said, being round, shadowed out eternity, which had neither beginning nor end; and he ought thence to learn his duty of aspiring from earthly objects to heavenly, from things temporal to things eternal. The number four, being a square, denoted steadiness of mind, not to be subverted either by adversity or prosperity, fixed for ever on the firm basis of the four cardinal virtues. Gold, which is the matter, being the most precious of metals, signified wisdom, which is the most valuable of all accomplishments, and justly preferred by Solomon to riches, power, and all exterior attainments. The blue colour of the sapphire represented faith; the verdure of the emerald, hope; the redness of the ruby, charity; and the splendour of the topaz, good works. By these conceits INNOCENT endeavoured to repay JOHN for one of the most important prerogatives of his crown which he had ravished from him." John, instead of being mollified, was transported with rage; and refusing to yield to the will of his ghostly father, the dreadful sentence was pronounced against him. The sentence of interdict was at that time the great instrument of vengeance and policy employed by the court of Rome; was denounced against sovereigns for the lightest offences; and made the guilt of one person involve the ruin of millions, even in their spiritual and eternal welfare. The execution of it was calculated, in the highest degree, to strike the senses, and to operate with irresistible force on the minds of the people. The nation was of a sudden deprived of all exterior exercise of its religion. The altars were despoiled of their ornaments: the crosses, the relics, the images, the statues of the saints, were laid on the ground; and as if the air itself were profaned, and might pollute them by its contact, the priests carefully covered them up, even from their own approach and veneration. The use of bells entirely ceased in all the churches: the bells themselves were removed from the steeples, and laid on the ground, with other sacred utensils. Mass was celebrated with shut doors, and none but the priests were admitted to that holy institution. The laity partook of no religious rite, except baptism to new born infants, and the communion of the dying. The dead were not interred in consecrated ground: they were thrown into ditches, or buried in common fields; and their obsequies were not attended with prayers or any hallowed ceremony. Marriage was celebrated in the churchyards; and that every action in life might bear the marks of this dreadful situation, the people were prohibited the use of meat, as in lent, or times of the highest penance; were debarred from all pleasures and entertainments; and were forbidden even to salute each other, or so much as to shave their beards, and give any decent attention to their person and apparel. Every circumstance carried symptoms of the deepest distress, and of the most immediate apprehension of divine vengeance and indignation. "The king that he might oppose his temporal to their spiritual terrors, immediately, from his own authority, confiscated the estates of all the clergy who obeyed the interdict."—" And, in order to distress the clergy in the tenderest point, and at the same time expose them to reproach and ridicule, he threw into prison all their concubines, and required high fines as the price of their liberty." This state of things continued for some years; for though the people hated their king, it does not appear that they were in love with the pope, or that they wished his plans of ambition to succeed so as to enslave their country. The interdict, therefore, not producing the desired effect upon England, the pope at last issued the sentence of excommunication. Then, indeed, JOHN began to feel the misery of his situation. No civil or military officer would serve under an excommunicated king. Bishops and barons left the kingdom; and the wretched monarch was left without support. Still, however, he kept his place; and the pope had recourse to the next step in the gradation of papal penances, "which was to absolve his subjects from their oaths of fidelity and allegiance, and to declare every one excommunicated who had any commerce with him in public or in private, at his table, in his council, or even in private conversation. And this sentence was accordingly, with all imaginable solemnity, pronounced against him." Here is a striking instance of the pope not only granting permission to commit sin, but actually commanding it. He required the people of England to violate their oaths of allegiance, not because the king had violated his oath to them, but because he refused to surrender his independence to the pope, who had no just right to such a surrender. "But as JOHN still persevered in his contumacy, there remained nothing but the sentence of deposition; which, though intimately connected with the former, had been distinguished from it by the artifice of the court of Rome; and INNOCENT determined to dart this last thunderbolt against the refractory monarch. But as a sentence of this kind required an armed force to execute it, the pontiff, casting his eyes around, fixed at last on Philip, king of France, as the person into whose powerful hand he could most properly intrust that weapon, the ultimate resource of his ghostly authority. And he offered the mo narch, besides the remission of all his sins, and endless spiritual benefits, the property and possession of the kingdom of England as the reward of his labours.' And, truly, these fine promises were all the reward that Philip got; for after raising a great army, and collecting 1700 vessels, at a monstrous expense, for the invasion of England, JOHN, reduced to despair, was moved at last to make his submission, and to deliver up his kingdom into the hands of his ghostly father, to be for ever after at his disposal. Then the pope by his legate, told Philip to dismiss his army, and let England alone, because John "had now come to a just sense of his guilt; had returned to obedience under the apostolic see, and even consented to do homage to the pope for his dominions; and having thus made his kingdom a part of St. Peter's patrimony, had rendered it impossible for any Christian prince, without the most manifest and most flagrant impiety, to attack him." Thus the pope swindled kings out of their wealth, and kingdoms out of their independence, by means of his sentence of excommunication. The following is the form of this sentence, as used on ordinary occasions. The original Latin may be seen in the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, ART. Excom. "In name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and of our blessed and most holy lady Mary; also by the power of the angels, archangels, &c. WE separate M. and N. from the bosom of the holy mother church, and condemn them with the anathema of a perpetual malediction. And may they be cursed in the city, cursed in the field, cursed be their barn, and cursed be their store, cursed be the fruit of their womb and the fruit of their land, cursed be their coming in and going out. Let them be cursed in the house, and fugitives in the field: and let all the curses come upon them which the Lord by Moses threatened to bring on the people who forsook the divine law; and let them be anathema maranatha, that is, let them perish at the second coming of the Lord. Let no Christian say an Ave to them. Let no priest presume to celebrate mass with them, or give them the holy communion. Let them be buried with the burial of an ass, and be dung upon the face of the earth. And as these lights are this day cast out of our hands and extinguished, so let their light be put out for ever, unless they repent, and by amendment and condign penance, make satisfaction to the church of God which they have injured." There were, however, extraordinary occasions, and extraordinary offenders, who required extraordinary forms of cursing. I believe the most masterly piece of the kind extant, is that which is given in my fifth number. Queen Elizabeth of England was a great eyesore to the pope, insomuch that he made a special act of cursing and excommunication on her account, which is as follows: "The damnation and excommunication of Elizabeth, queen of England, and her adherents, with an addition of other punishments. PIUS, bishop, servant of the servants of God, ad perpetuam rei memoriam. He that reigneth on high, to whom is given all power in heaven and in earth, committed one holy catholic and apostolic church (out of which there is no salvation) to one alone upon earth, namely, to Peter, the prince of the apostles, and to Peter's successor, the bishop of Rome, to be governed in fulness of power. Him alone he made prince over all people, and all kingdoms, to pluck up, to destroy, scatter, consume, plant, and build, that he may contain the faithful that are knit together with the band of charity in the unity of the spirit, and present them spotless and unblameable to their Saviour. "1. In discharge of which function, we, which are by God's goodness called to the government of the said church, do spare no pains, labouring with all earnestness, that unity, and the Catholic religion, (which the Author thereof hath, for the trial of his children's faith, and for our amendment, suffered to be punished with so great afflictions,) might be preserved uncorrupt. But the number of the ungodly hath gotten such power, there is now no place left in the whole world which they have not essayed to corrupt with their most wicked doctrines; amongst others, ELIZABETH, the pretended queen of England, a slave of wickedness, lending thereunto her helping hand, with whom, as in a sanctuary, the most pernicious of all men have found a refuge. This very woman, having seized on the kingdom, and monstrously usurping the place of supreme head of the church in all England, and the chief authority and jurisdiction thereof, hath again brought back the said kingdom into miserable destruction, which was then newly reduced to the Catholic faith and good fruits. 2. For having by strong hand inhibited the exercise of the true religion, which MARY, lawful qucen, of famous memory, had by the help of this see restored, after it had been formerly overthrown by HENRY the Eighth, a revolter therefrom; and following and embracing the errors of heretics, she hath removed the royal council, consisting of the English nobility, and filled it with obscure men being heretics; oppressed the embracers of the Catholic faith; placed unpious preachers, ministers of iniquity; abolished the sacrifice of the mass, prayers, fastings, choice of meats, unmarried life, and the Catholic rites and ceremonies; commanded books to be read in the whole realm, containing manifest heresy; and impious mysteries and institutions by herself entertained, and observed according to the prescript of CALVIN, to be likewise observed by her subjects; presuming to throw bishops, parsons of churches, and other Catholic priests, out of their churches and benefices, and to bestow them and other church livings upon heretics, and to determine of church causes; prohibited the prelates, clergy, and people to acknowledge the church of Rome, or obey the precepts and canonical sanctions thereof; compelled most of them to condescend to her wicked laws, and to abjure the authority and obedience of the bishop of Rome, and to acknowledge her to be sole lady in temporal and spiritual matters, and this by oath; imposed penalties and punishments upon those who obeyed not, and exacted them of those who persevered in the unity of the faith and obedience aforesaid; cast the Catholic prelates and rectors of churches in prison, where many of them being spent with long languishing and sorrow, miserably ended their lives. All which things, seeing they are manifest and notorious to all nations, and by the gravest testimony of very many so substantially proved, that there is no place at all left for excuse, defence, or evasion. "3. We, seeing that impieties and wicked actions are multiplied one upon another; and moreover, that the persecution of the faithful, and affliction for religion, groweth every day heavier and heavier, through the instigation and means of the said ELIZABETH; because we understand her mind to be so hardened and indurate, that she hath not only condemned the godly requests and admonitions of Catholic princes, concerning her healing and conversion, but also hath not so much as permitted the nuncios of this see, to cross the seas unto England; and strained of necessity to betake ourselves to the weapons of justice against her, not being able to mitigate our sorrow, that we are drawn to take punishment upon one, to whose ancestors the whole state of Christendom hath been so much bounden. Being therefore supported by his authority, whose pleasure it was to place us (though unable for so great a burden) in this supreme throne of justice, we do, out of the fulness of our apostolic power, declare the foresaid ELIZABETH, being a heretic, and a favourer of heretics, and her adherents in the matters aforesaid, to have incurred the sentence of anathema, and to be cut off from the unity of the body of Christ. "§ 4. And, moreover, we do declare her to be deprived of her pretended title to the kingdom aforesaid, and of all dominion, dignity, and privilege whatsoever. "§ 5. And also the nobility, subjects, and people of the said kingdom, and all others, who have in any sort sworn unto her, to be for ever absolved from any such oath, and all manner of duty, of dominion, allegiance, and obedience; as we also do, by authority of these presents, absolve them, and to deprive the same ELIZABETH of her pretended title to the kingdom, and all other things abovesaid. And we do command and interdict all and every the noblemen, subjects, people, and others aforesaid, that they presume not to obey her monitions, mandates, and laws: And those who do the contrary, we do innodate with the like sentence of anathema.' not room. 6. Regards merely the publication of this bull, for which I have It is dated at Rome, at St. Peter's, May 5th, 1570, and the fifth year of Pope Pius V. The bull itself in Latin and English, with a commentary by Bishop Barlow, forms a quarto volume, entitled "Brutum Fulmen." CHAPTER XXI. THIS IS A REFLECTIONS ON THE POPE'S INTERFERENCE IN THE AFFAIRS OF ENGLAND. SATURDAY, December 5th, 1818. My last number concluded with the "damnation and excommunication," of Queen Elizabeth, by Pope Pius V. One of the first things that will strike the reader, on perusing this document, is the unparalleled insolence of the ghostly father. Elizabeth and her kingdom did not choose to have any thing to do with him; and what right had he to issue his anathemas against them? King John had, indeed, made a gift of the kingdom to the pope about two hundred and fifty years before. But as John had presumed to give away what was not his own; (for even, at that early period, the people of England understood |