1

At the same time other Papal letters of convocation were transmitted to all provincial Archbishops and chief Abbots of monasteries: charging them to communicate on the same with their subordinate Bishops and monastic officials, and also with all Deans, Chapters, Presbyters, and Convents; in order that they might be duly represented in the coming Council, and provision made for attention to their several interests, including the lay interests involved, as well as clerical. Thus it belonged prominently to the ecclesiastical body, through its two horns, or episcopal and monastic Heads, to give effect to the orders of the Pope, their Metropolitan, respecting the convention of the Council; and to make it to or for him.2-Finally, at the opening of the Council, in case of there being too small an attendance to make the Council respectable, and enable it to proceed to business,3 besides the repetition of the plans and procedure before mentioned, it was entrusted to one of the Clergy to preach a sermon, forthwith to be published and circulated, inviting the nations to attend to the call, and join the Council. So that in the whole preparatory process it was assigned to the Papal Clergy, as to the Apocalyptic Second Beast, or False Prophet, to say to them that dwelt on the earth that they should form an Image, or representative Council, to the Papal Anti-Christendom and Antichrist.

2. "It was given him to give breath to the Image of the Beast, so as that the Image of the Beast should speak."

It was the peculiarity of these General Councils, as him all the information that he might wish respecting the Council vivâ voce. Hard. vii. 11.

1 So Innocent III, in preparation for the 4th Lateran: "Injungatis autem vos, fratres Archiepiscopi et Episcopi, ex parte nostrâ, universis ecclesiarum Capitulis, non solùm cathedralium sed aliarum etiam, ut Præpositum, vel Decanum, aut alios viros idoneos, ad Concilium pro se mittant." Hard. vii. 7. See too Note 3, p. 187. And similar directions were sent to Abbots.

2 Such I conceive to be the force of the dative here :-viz. to do what they did agreeably to the will and pleasure of the Beast specified in the dative.

As at the first meeting at the Council of Trent.

4 So in the Sermon at the opening Session of the Tridentine Council. Dupin.

contrasted with either national Synods, or political Conventions on a larger scale,1 that on matters ecclesiastical, -i. e. on almost all the subjects on which Councils were called to pronounce (for the word was one that was construed to have a large meaning,)-the Clergy should alone vote, or have a voice. From early times the distinction of the orders of Laity and Clergy was observed in them. It was marked even in the sittings of the Councils. In that of Chalcedon, for example, held in the 5th century, while the Bishops sat on either side down the nave of the church of assembly, the lay members sate on the cross benches.2 In the Western Councils they sometimes stood.3 The number thus attendant was sometimes considerable. In the last Council, that of Trent, though the Bishops present were few, in comparison with former Councils, the number of lay deputies in attendance amounted, I think, to near a thousand. Their office was to suggest and counsel, in support of the several interests that they might have been deputed to maintain. This they did chiefly, I conceive, in the several preparatory Committees." But there were some that

1 We may contrast the practice at the meetings of German Diets, Spanish Cortes, or French or English Parliaments. In all of these, ecclesiastical dignitaries have attended as well as lay; and all not only alike joined in the discussion, but alike voted.

2 "Residentibus magnificentissimis Judicibus, (Greek aρxovтwv) et amplissimo Senatu, in medio ante cancellos sanctissimi altaris, et ex lævâ parte sedentibus sanctissimis Episcopis et Vicariis Leonis, Antistitis priscæ urbis Romæ, et Archiepiscopo Constantinopolitanæ civitatis, &c,-et dexterâ vero parte similiter considentibus Archiepiscopis Alexandriæ, &c." Hard. ii. 66.-See too the Ordo de Concilio celebrando of Isidore Mercator. Hard. i. 7.

3 In the account of the 2nd General Council of Lyons, after a notice of the Prelates and Abbots sitting, we read; "Stantibus inferiùs nunciis solennibus Franciæ, Alemanniæ, Angliæ, et Siciliæ regum, et aliorum multorum Principum, Baronum, Capitulorum, et Ecclesiarum procuratoribus." Hard. vii. 687.

4 In the Papal Letters of invitation to the 4th Lateran, addressed to the Latin Kings of Constantinople and Cyprus, they were requested, if unable to attend in person, to send "nuntios speciales, viros idoneos, per quos tuæ nobis aperias beneplacitum voluntatis." The Archbishops too were to send to the Council of Lyons, "nuntios providos et fideles, qui vice ipsorum utile nobis consilium largiantur." Hard. vii. 9, 377.-In Sir F. Palgrave's second Report of Public Records, there is noticed a Letter of Leo X to Henry VIII, charging him to send him some learned men to attend the then proximate 8th Session of the 5th Lateran Council in 1516, to advise with on the projected Reformation of the Calendar.

5 These preparatory Committees were chiefly famous at the Councils of Basle, Constance, and Trent.

VOL. III.

were privileged to attend not the preparatory Committees only, and the masses and solemn services that introduced the Sessional, but the deliberations of the Sessional itself. In regard of these, however, when a question was to be decided,—at least an ecclesiastical question, we read that they were excluded, as not having a voice. Such is expressly declared to have been the received custom in the General Councils of the West: and it was forcibly dwelt on by the famous Cardinal Julian Cæsarini, at the time of the Council of Basle, in order to overcome the then Pope's scruples about sanctioning it. It was the Clergy alone that had a voice. What the majority of their voices affirmed became a Canon of the Council: and the Council was said to speak it.3-So exactly was the prediction fulfilled; "It was given to the lambpersonating Beast, or False Prophet, to give breath to the Image of the Beast, so that the Image of the Beast should speak."

And here seems to be the place for shewing that this professedly representative Council of Papal Anti-Christendom was in fact the representative of the Papal Antichrist;—this Image of the Beast, the image rather of that which, from its complete ruling over the Beast, is put by the Angel for it, viz. of its eighth Head. during the darkness of the middle ages such was the Papal influence, especially over the hierarchy and clergy, both secular and monastic,-deriving as they did from

For,

1 So in the account of the 8th Session of the last Lateran Council, Hard. ix. 1719: Exclusis, de more, de loco Concilii omnibus non habentibus voces definitivas; remanentibus in suis subselliis Prælatis post Cardinales, mitratis, et sacris vestibus indutis."-After which withdrawal of the laity attendant, the account proceeds to say that the Schedule of certain proposed Decrees on matters of faith was read and voted on.

2 See Waddington, p. 569. He combats the Pope's fear of the temporalities of the Church being interfered with by the Council, from the circumstance of the comparative paucity of laymen that might be expected to attend its sittings, and their exclusion from voting in questions strictly ecclesiastical.

3 Ferrario observes, ii. 431; "Erano chiamati Atti i colloqui, le discussioni, le dispute, è tutto che si faceva è diceva. Quando parlava un vescovo, usavan di scrivere, La Santa Sinodo disse.'" He means, of course, when the Bishop's proposal was affirmed by the majority. So in the Extract from the Roman Council of Symmachus, given in my Note 2, p. 133; Quo recitato, et ab omnibus consonâ voce conprobato, sancta Synodus dixit, Hæc ab omnibus teneantur."

the Roman See their sacerdotal authority, and bound to it from the eighth century by an oath of fealty,'—that whatever the Pope wished, that they voted, and that consequently they made the Image speak. So, for example, at the most famous General Council of the middle age, the fourth Lateran, at which above 1000 Bishops and Abbots attended, and Ambassadors also from most of the Christian Courts,-thus presenting the appearance of a representation of all the ten Western Kingdoms,the seventy Canons dictated by the Pope were at once obsequiously assented to by the assembled Prelates:2 and the Council's voice, thus palpably the mere echo of his, was immediately afterwards received and subscribed to by the lay ambassadors. After this as light advanced, and when in consequence partial risings resulted in the spirit not of princes and people only, but even of some of the clergy, not indeed against Papal heresy, but against Papal oppression, misrule, and avarice,3-when Councils were thus no longer so manageable as before, and consequently no longer in favour as before with the Roman See, yet by its strong remaining influence over the great majority of the assembled Prelates, and its adroit use of its admitted prerogatives,—first of convening, with the determination of time and place, then, in person or

1 See suprà p. 171.

5

2 Waddington, p. 347.

3 This important distinction is well noticed in Dean Waddington's account of the Council of Constance, p. 561.

4 It was the freedom of the discussions at Constance and Basle that first alarmed the Popes. Their reluctance to hold the Council of Trent is well known. See Waddington, pp. 557, 558.

6 Originally it was the Christian Emperor's admitted prerogative to convene General Councils. Constantine, having divided the administration of the Church into external and internal, and reserved to himself the external, relating to the outward state and discipline of the Church, did in this character call and preside in the first General Council, that of Nice. (Euseb. Vit. Const. c. 44.) The prerogative devolved on, and was exercised by, his successors on the throne of Constantinople.-But in Western Christendom, after its separation from the Eastern Roman Empire, and indeed before that separation was fully effected, it was claimed by and for the Popes, as their own. Thus in the Roman Council already alluded to, which was convened by King Theodoric against Symmachus, the assembled deputies "suggesserunt ipsum qui dicebatur impetitus debuisse synodum convocare."-Subsequently Popes Pelagius II, Nicholas I, and in fine Gregory VII, asserted the Papal prerogative of convocation. And notwithstanding that Charlemagne and some of the German Emperors up to Gregory's time contested it with them, it was finally conceded by the Western Princes; and in fact every General Council of the West convened by a Papal Præceptum.

through its legates, of presiding, (for, in case of the Pope being unrepresented in it, the Image, just like either Beast that constituted it, was considered headless and illegitimate,) then of proposing the subjects of debate, then of adjourning, suspending, removing,' or, if need were, of even dissolving the Council,-I say through the adroit exercise of these various influential Papal prerogatives, from the first Lateran Council in 1123 down to that of Trent, the Western General Councils, while professing to be the representation and image of Western Christendom, were to every the most important intent and purpose, (above all on questions of faith and heresy,) the representation and image rather of the Papal mind. Indeed sometimes the Papal confirmation was formally called for, as at Trent, ere the Council's decrees should be promulgated. Thus, I repeat, that which was professedly the Image of the whole Beast, or body of Western Christendom, was virtually the Image of the Beast's ruling Head, the Papal Antichrist. And hence one notable ios, or act of jugglery, accomplished by the Pope and Papal Hierarchy that spoke through it: viz. to make the world believe that its voice was the voice of their own representatives; and so, as in a selfassented act, obligatory on themselves.5 Much more

24

3

1 Prerogatives used most adroitly in the councils of Basle and of Trent. Pope Martin continued to press the immediate dissolution of the Council. It was in vain objected that matters of great importance remained to be settled. .... His Bull (of dissolution) released the fathers from their unsuccessful labours. The Council of Constance had ceased to exist." Wadd. p. 563.

3 With full understanding of all this, the Protestant powers in 1560, when invited to attend the Council of Trent on its third convocation, asserted in the spirit of the 21st English Article, that the Prerogative of convening a General Council attached to the Emperor, not the Pope. And they demanded, in order to its being a free Council, 1st. that the convocation should not be by the Pope; 2. that the Pope should not preside; 3. that the Bishops attending should be exempted from their oath of allegiance to the Pope; 4. that the Holy Scriptures should be the ground of decision.-But to none of these requisitions would the Romanists consent: and so the Protestants declined attendance.

4 Compare the second extract from Sir J. Graham, p. 188, Note 2.-When it was proposed to worship Rome as a goddess by the provincial cities, Augustus allowed it with the proviso that his own worship should be added. Similar was the Papal favor to Councils General. So Gregory II. confessed. See Gibb. ix. 135. 5 On the first Trentine Session the Papal Legates declined discussing the question, whether it should be called a Council representing the universal Church; because of the removal that might result of that happy ambiguity which, as it was, attached to the term church. In order to increase the authority of the