a take another wife, only he must allow the other a maintenance. Gelasius II. decreed, that, to distinguish the Catholics from the Manichees, believers should receive the sacrament in both kinds. Cardinal Quignonius, at the instance of pope Paul III. reformed the breviary ; and instead of legends, set Scriptures for the lessons. But pope Pius Quintus, who afterwards undertook to reform it also, prohibited that of Quignonius, and instead of the Scriptures, placed legends again, and so it continues. The Council of Constance cursed those who exhorted the people to do so. Sometimes mere enmity in one pope to his predecessor, has occasioned the reversing of his decrees, as in the instance of Stephen II. towards Formosus, who repealed his decrees. Romanus, as soon as he got into the chair, repealed the decrees of Stephen; and Theodorus renewed the acts of Formosus. And, yet, all these popes and councils, professed to be infallible, and all their canons must be received! b In the progress of Popery, the ecclesiastics of Rome, of whatever degree, were exalted to such a height of authority, as to be beyond the reach of the civil power; exempted from the jurisdiction of the secular power, so that whatever offence a clergyman was guilty of, he could not be tried by the civil magistrate. Bellarmine maintains this exemption, alledging as a reason for it, that secular princes are not the lawful superiors of the clergy, unless it be proved that the sheep are better than the shepherd, the sons than the fathers, and temporals than spirituals. Hence it has long passed as a maxim with them, that the rebellion of a clergyman against his prince is not a Bulla prefixa Breviar. Jussa Pii v. edit. b Protest. Fam. Piece, p. 9. c De Officio Christiani princip. lib. i. cap. 5. treason, because he is not his prince's subject. And this is a matter of faith with them, a necessary principle, exemplified in the quarrel between Henry II. and Becket. The king chastised the disorderly clergy, notwithstanding Becket's remonstrance against it, as being a violation of the privileges of the church. Becket resists, and dies in the quarrel, as history states: on which the pope brings his authority to bear on the king, who, by way of atonement for his fault, submitted to be stripped at Canterbury, and whipped by the monks! This power extended much farther. The Council of Lateran passed a deposition against heretical princes, or such as should be remiss in prosecuting those whom the church should mark out for heretics. The words of the Council are these:-" If the temporal governor, being required and admonished by the church, shall neglect to purge the country of heresy, let this be signified to the pope, that from henceforth he may declare his subjects free from their allegiance, and give away his land to be possessed by Catholics. a And this decree has been enforced in the actual deposition of many of the greatest princes in Europe. For instance, Pope Zachary I. deposed Childerick of France. Pope Innocent IV. deposed John, king of England, a Sub. Innocent III. an. 1215. Can, 3. de Heret. Pope Boniface VIII. deprived Philip the Fair." From this assumption of power, and the pretended infallibility of popes and councils, have resulted doctrines that have no foundation in the Holy Scriptures; but which are made to serve certain purposes, particularly the obtaining of wealth, and supporting a priestly domination over the rights of conscience: some of these we shall briefly notice. Transubstantiation is an article of faith in the Church of Rome. Pashas Radbert, a monk of Corbia, indistinctly taught it in the ninth century, (that is, A. D. 835,) not discerning the true sense of our Saviour's words, “This is my body." During the heat of a debate, at a synod held at Constantinople, A. D. 754, concerning images, it was declared, "That our Saviour had left no other image of himself than the Sacrament;" to which the Council of Nice, A. D. 787, replied, that "the Sacrament was not the image, but was the real body and blood of Jesus Christ." But this opinion was not fully adopted till the Council of Lateran, A. D. 1215, in which pope Innocent III. presided: at that time both transubstantiation and auricular confession were passed into articles of faith. On which occasion, to justify what he had done, he published in his bull, which is now part of the Canon law, the following decree :-" We declare and pronounce it, as necessary to salvation, that all mankind be subject to the Roman Pontiff."-Vide Dr. Chandler's Sermon, Nov. 5, 1714, p. 20. Pope Pius IV. in his Creed, article xvii. says, “I do also profess, that in the mass there is offered to God a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for the quick and the dead; and that, in the most holy sacrament of the eucharist, there is truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood, together with the soul and the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ; and that there is a conversion made of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood; which conversion the whole Catholic Church call Transubstantiation." The passage of Scripture used in proof of this point, is those words of our Saviour, “This is my body:" which, say the Catholics, clearly demonstrate that the same body which was born of the Virgin Mary, and is now in heaven, is in the sacrament. a The Roman church declares, that, on the priest's pronouncing these words, Hoc est corpus meum, "This is my body," the bread and wine in the eucharist are instantly transubstantiated into the natural body and blood of Christ; the species or accidents only of the bread and wine remaining. The Council of Florence decreed, "The priest, speaking in the name of Christ, makes this sacrament; for, by virtue of the very words themselves, the bread is changed into the body of Christ, and the wine into his blood; yet so that the whole Christ is contained under the species of bread, and the whole species of wine; also in every consecrated host and consecrated wine, when a separation is made there is whole Christ."-The Council of Trent decreed, "That if any one says, that a true and proper sacrifice is not offered to God at the mass; b a Catech. par. 2. c. 4. n. 26. up b C. Trid. Sess. 13. c. 4. Concil. Later. 4. Can. 1. or that to be offered is any thing else than Jesus Christ, given to be eaten, let him be anathema." The host consists of a wafer composed of the finest flour and wine. The priest, after consecrating the wafer, places it on the tongue of the communicant, while devoutly kneeling. The wafer seen and tasted is the accidents only of the bread and wine; there is the savour, colour, and quantity of bread and wine, without their substance; but under those accidents there is only the body and blood of Christ. The same sovereign worship which is due only to God, is given to the consecrated host; the people adore it, pray to it, d and whosoever holds it unlawful or idolatrous so to do, is accursed.e a b c The doctrine of transubstantiation involves in it this question, between the Romanists and the Protestants, namely, whether bread be flesh and bones; whether wine be human blood; whether a thin round wafer, an inch in diameter, is the real person of a man five or six feet high; and whether the same identical body can be wholly in heaven, and in a million of places on earth at the same time! This article of faith was recently put to a test, as singular in its nature, as it was successful in the result. The following relation was given by a person from the north of Ireland, as a fact within his personal knowledge:-A Roman Catholic gentleman was married to a Protestant lady. Both were in respectable circumstances, * Catech. Rom. n. 37 and 44. Abrid of Christ. Doc. c. 11. § Euchar. Conc. Trid. Sess. 13. de real. præs. c. 3. b Coucil. Trid. Sess. 13. c. 5. Missale Rom. Can. Missæ. d Brev. Rom. Hym. in F. Corp. Ch. Coucil. Trid. Sess. 13. Can. |