name, was by birth a Spaniard, of the noble family of Guzman, and inventor of that horrid engine of civil and ecclesiastical tyranny, the inquisition, which was first brought into action against the Albigenses.

P. 53. "Le pape devenu insensiblement d'évéque de Rome.......évêque universel," &c.-Mosheim observes,* in reference to the growing ascendancy of the Pope in the 5th century, a period when the contest for supremacy ran high,—“The patriarch of Constantinople....elated with the favour and proximity of the imperial court.... on the one hand reduced under his jurisdiction the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch, as prelates only of the second order...... None of the bishops found the occurrences of the times so favourable to his ambition as the Roman pontiff. Notwithstanding the redoubled efforts of the bishop of Constantinople, a variety of circumstances united in augmenting his power and authority, though he had not, as yet, assumed the dignity of supreme lawgiver and judge of the whole christian church. The bishops of Alexandria and Antioch, unable to make head against the prelate of Constantinople, fled often to the Roman pontiff for succour against his violence; and the inferior

* Vol. ii. pp. 27, 28, 29.

order of bishops used the same method when their rights were invaded by the prelates of Alexandria and Antioch. So that the bishop of Rome, by taking all these prelates alternately under his protection, daily added new degrees of influence and authority to the Roman see."

Ecclesiastical writers have largely descanted on the contest between the bishops of Rome and Constantinople; each of whom arrogated to himself superiority, not only among, but even over other churches.

It is worthy of particular notice in the history of this ambitious claim to sacerdotal sovereignty, that Pope Gregory I. so warmly declaimed against assuming the title of œcumenical or universal bishop, (which the Greek emperors gave to the bishop of Constantinople) as to declare that in his opinion the man who should assume that title would be the antichrist whose appearance is foretold in the Scriptures; —and yet, within a few years, a successor of Gregory I., namely, Boniface III., actually obtained this title from the tyrant Phocas, who, by the murder of his sovereign, Mauritius; had reached the summit of power. That supremacy in the christian church, which has been since abused by the introduction and establishment of numerous errors, having been conferred on the pope by the usurper in the year 606, many

of the most judicious interpreters of prophecy consider this to be the era from which we should date the 1260 years, described by Daniel and St. John,† as a gloomy period, during which faithful witnesses should endure persecution.

P. 54. "L'église d'Afrique, qui s'était opposée à sa suprématie au commencement du 5TM. siècle, a disparu aux yeux des hommes, chargée, comme on le prétend à Rome, des jugemens de Dieu, et de l'indignation de St. Pierre, pour avoir résisté à ses successeurs."—" Among all the prelates who ruled the church of Rome during this century, (the 5th), there was none who asserted, with such vigour and success, the authority and pretensions of the Roman pontiff as LEO, commonly surnamed the GREAT. It must be, however, observed, that neither he, nor the other promoters of that cause, were able to overcome all the obstacles that were laid in their way, nor the various checks which were given to their ambition. Many examples might be alleged in proof of this point, particularly the case of the Africans, whom no threats nor promises could engage to submit the decision of their controversies, and the determination of their causes, to the Roman tribunal."+

Dan, xii. 7. † Revel. xi. 3. † Mosheim's Ecc. His. II. 29.

N

That annihilation, so to speak, of the African church, to which M. Peyran alludes, by which all obstacles to the ambition of the pope from that quarter were removed, took place under the Vandals and the Saracens. Genseric the ferocious king of the Vandals, Hunneric "his inglorious son," and other monarchs of the same race, who were Arians, persecuted the Trinitarian christians of Africa with unrelenting violence. "At the command of Hunneric," observes Gibbon,* "four hundred and sixtysix orthodox bishops assembled at Carthage. Of these forty-six were sent into Corsica to cut timber for the royal navy; and three hundred and two were banished to the different parts of Africa....deprived of all the temporal and spiritual comforts of life. The hardships of ten years' exile must have reduced their numbers; and if they had complied with the law of Thrasimund, which prohibited any episcopal consecrations, the orthodox church of Africa must have expired with the lives of its actual members. They disobeyed, and their disobedience was punished by a second exile of two hundred and twenty bishops into Sardinia; where they languished fifteen years, till the accession of Hilderic."

• Vol. vi. 283, 4.

If the Vandals diminished, the Saracens almost destroyed that venerable church in which Cyprian, Augustine, and other illustrious men, had shone with a splendor that not only gave light to their respective dioceses, but diffused beams of knowledge, that, both then and in afterages, irradiated nearly the whole of christendom.

To what an extent the christian religion must have declined in Africa, in common with other christian countries, beneath the baleful influence of the Koran, propagated by the sword, we may judge from one brief passage in the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."* "In the ten years of the administration of Omar, the Saracens reduced to his obedience thirty-six thousand cities or castles, destroyed four thousand churches...... and edified fourteen hundred mosques for the exercise of the religion of Mahomet." How justly, then, might a cloud of destructive locusts be adopted as the prophetic emblem, (according to the opinion of judicious commentators on the 9th chapter of St. John's "Revelation"), to designate the hordes of Saracens that rushed from the deserts of Arabia, to desolate the fair fields of the civilized and the christian world.

* Vol. ix. 361.