and superstition, but to guard and protect those divine precepts which had been delivered by Christ to his Apostles; and that the Pope, whom they acknowledge to be Head Bishop, because subordination is requisite in every well-regulated society, is bound to govern according to the canons of the church, as laid down by its representatives, the bishops and superior order of the clergy, assembled in general council. Catholics never follow an arbitrary doctrine as Catholics. The boundaries are prescribed, and the Pope cannot remove them.If this mode of governing, then, be DESPOTISM, the British Constitution, instead of being a system of mild and equitable rule, is the very essence of autocrasy. Under the influence of this spiritual bondage, the people enjoyed the national blessings of annual Parliaments, uncorrupt senators, upright judges, few laws, and little want of lawyers; short wars, and those generally redounding to the honour of the English name; the expences defrayed by an annual levy, and, of course, no loans, no sinking fund, nor permanent taxes entailed on posterity. Standing armies wholly unknown to the people; but the peace of the country confided to the civil power. No sinecurists, nor pensioners, nor courtly time-servers; but a nobility bred to deeds of arms and feats of chivalry, and cherishing a love of freedom and independence; with a brave and hardy peasantry, enured to toil, and fired with their country's love. Thus, in those dark ages, the arms of England were respected by the neighbouring states, our warlike kings were looked upon as the first in military renown, and by their skill and the courage of the people, the kingdom of France was conquered, and became an appendage to the crown. To this enviable state of affairs must be added a clergy independent of the Crown, being chosen free, according to the first article of the Great Charter, and thus forming a barrier between ministers and the people. Learned and disinterested, to them we owe the progress and cultivation of the sciences and classical literature. They provided hospitals for the sick, and seminaries for poor children Out of their tythes, they provided for the poor, and built and repaired churches; so that the farmer and tradesman in those days were burthened neither with poor nor church rates. The monks, aye the lazy monks, let their farms at easy rents, and made allowances for unfavourable seasons, by which means abundance and population increased, and many villages were erected around their monasteries, filled with a happy and contented people. These are FACTS selected from the page of history, and exhibit a striking contrast to the situation of the same island at this period of political wisdom and spiritual knowledge. ENGLAND UNDER THE FIRST ROYAL POPE. Having delineated the position of the country in the darkest ages of European history, I must now reverse the picture, and exhibit the first fruits derived from the casting off that spiritual bondage under which our forefathers so long groaned, and the present generation of English Protestants so vehemently abuse. The unnatural wars between the two houses of York and Lancaster for the sovereignty of these realms, in which the father was often found in arms against the son, and brother against brother, unhappily impaired the moral and religious principles of the people, which were further corrupted by the pernicious doctrines of the Lollards or Wickliffites, so that when our eighth Henry came to wield the sceptre, a general decay of religious integrity and love of freedom had seized every branch of society, and corruption began to raise its hydra head. Henry was of polished manners for the age he lived in, and excelled in all manly exercises; but he was also vain of his accomplishments, and of a haughty and imperious temper. The first part his love of justice and religion, that he scorned the base suggestions of interest and revenge, and nobly resolved to preserve the character he was invested with, by refusing his consent to so irreligious a measure. Baffled in his pursuits, and unable any longer to bridle his lustful appetite, Henry, in his rage, resolved to wreak his vengeance on the Pope, and accordingly, in the month of January, 1534, he called a Parliament, composed of men who, through interest or fear, were servilely disposed to obey his imperious dictates. From this era we may date the origin of Parliamentary cor den Club was perfectly right in asserting, that "it was not till the Sovereign found it expedient, for the gratification of a criminal ambition, that the duration of Parliament was extended." For Henry finding the members ready to comply with his arbitrary will, by confirming the dissolution of his first marriage with Catharine, and sanctioning his second with Anne, he prorogued the Parliament to meet again in November, in which month it accordingly assem of his reign was spent in useless and, neice to the Emperor, yet such was expensive wars, as well as wasteful and extravagant shew and pageantry; the latter was one continued scene of rapine, sacrilege, blood-shed, and oppression. For seventeen years Henry lived in conjugal affection with Catharine of Arragon, who had borne him several children, when he became enamoured with Anne Boleyn, one of the queen's maids of honour, and as he could not obtain the gratification of his libidinous desires without marrying the object of his lust, in the phrenzy of his passion he resolved to obtain a divorce from his lawful wife. With this view, great pains were taken to prepare the nation for so serious aruption, and the Birmingham Hampmatter, and the king pretended a scruple of conscience, because Catharine had been previously married to his brother Arthur, although it was well known to Henry that the marriage had never been consummated, from the sickly constitution and premature death of the former prince. But this Being a subject of spiritual import, and as Henry still acknowledged the Pope to be the Head of the Church, it was necessary to get his sanction to divore Catharine, and indulge the scru pulous monarch with a young bed-bled, and conferred upon the king the fellow. Accordingly, able agents were sent to the capital of the Christian world for the management of the cause, and every expedient which casuistry and intrigue could devise was put in practice to ensure success. But, notwithstanding Protestants accuse the Roman Pontiffs of being mercenary despots, governed by the worst passions, and stained with the blackest crimes, the then reigning Pope, Clement VII, who was at that time a prisoner in the walls of his own castle of St. Angelo, to which he was driven by the arms of a Catholic Emperor, Charles V, proved himself the protector of female innocence and Virtue, and the enemy of wanton cruelty and injustice. Although an opportunity was now offered him of seeking revenge on his imperial foe, in the person of Catharine, who was title of the only supreme Head on earth of the Church of England. About this time the doctrines of evangelical liberty were spreading fast upon the Continent, and new apostles and new religions springing up daily, if the wild and incongruous creeds of the Anabaptists, the Sacramentarians, the Confessionists, and the Extravagantes, divided into upwards of fifty branches, and the blasphemous dogmas of Calvin, were deserving of such a name. But, although Henry had despoiled the Pope of his spiritual power in these realms, he was resolted that his subjects should not enjoy any of that liberty of conscience which we hear so much of in these days, and therefore he assumed an authority over the religious opinions of his people: more absolute and despotic than was ever claimed by any Roman Pontiff or Pope Boniface could not persuade the Catholics of his time to believe that he was lord paramount of all the kingdoms of the earth; nor dissuade the King of France from writing the fol have your Madness know, that we ac Council since the establishment of Popery. With the consent of his obsequious Parliament, in the 34th and 35th year of his reign, an act was passed, by which it was decreed, that "Nothing shall be taught or main-lowing letter to him: We would tained contrary to the king's instructions. And if any spiritual person preach, or maintain, any thing contrary to the king's instructions or determinations, made, or to be made, and shall be thereof convicted, he shall for his first offence recant, for his second abjure and bear a faggot, and for his third shall be adjudged a heretic and be burned, and lose all his goods and chattels." By this unparelleled stretch of spiritual power, the conscience of every individual of the realm became subject to the fluctuating will of an inexorable despot; for had his caprice urged him to preach the doctrine of the Alcoran one week, and that of Judaism the next, all and every one of his subjects must have submitted to the same, or, of course, been liable to the penalties inflicted by this sweeping and undefinable statute. John persuade the members of his church Locke says, that the Pope "has not to what he lists; nor enjoin it them only power to persuade the members on pain of eternal fire.'' Henry, of his church to whatever he lists, however, being invested with the either as purely religious, or as in power of the state as well as that of order thereunto; but also can enjoin the church, began soon to display the it them, on pain of eternal fire."-authority of his Popeship, by conThe celebrated Father O'Leary, in re-signing those whom he could not perply to this assertion of the Protestant suade into a compliance with his arbiphilosopher, wittily observes, that, trary notions in matters of religion to "doubtless, he(the Pope) can persuade the pains of temporal fire and faggot. me to kill my mother, and enjoin it Accordingly, we find it stated by me on pain of fire.-He can persuade Protestant writers, that no less than me that I eat my victuals with the big forty-four persons suffered during the toe of my left foot; or, that John last fifteen years of his reign for proLocke's mother was a virgin when she fessing the principles of Protestantwas delivered of the author of the ism; while, within the same space of Essay on Human Understanding.'-time, sixty Catholics were put to Still the Pope could not persuade the death for denying his spiritual supreEnglish Catholics to give their bene- macy. Nor was this sacrifice of hufices to Italian incumbents, in the time man blood the only evil attendant on of Richard II, nor dissuade a Catho- this great change of affairs. In delic Parliament from introducing a pre-claring himself the sole head on earth munire against the provisions obtained at the Court of Rome; an evident proof that they knew the distinction between the Church and the Court, of the English church, Henry did not intend that it should be an empty title, but that it should be the means of enriching his exhausted coffers, and fur the king's intention in this visitation was to find a pretence for abolishing monasteries, we may naturally conclude, that the reports of these com nish him with the necessary ends to continue his prodigal and vainly expensive mode of living. He had cast his eye upon the revenues of the clergy, which promised him a rich har-missioners are very little to be relied vest to feed his sensual and rapacious on." The king, however, was satisfiappetite. The suppression of reli- ed with them, and his servile Parliagious houses was proposed to his ment was directed, in 1536, to pass an privy-council, who, knowing no will act for the suppression of all religious by that of their despotic master, as- houses, whose annual value did not sured him that on the strength of his amount to more than two hundred supremacy he might carry his design pounds. -No less than ten thousand into execution. As there was some innocent victims were stripped of their fear of popular commotion, if a work property and good name, and became of such magnitude were begun too destitute of subsistence by this act of precipitately, much pains were taken, a corrupt Parliament, to gratify the through the means of corrupt and desires of a lewd tyrant, without hireling agents, to poison the minds benefiting the people they were apof the people by inflammatory and un- pointed to represent. The seizure of founded insinuations against the mothe lesser houses were soon followed nastic institution in general, the by that of the greater, although the monks and clergy being represented very act which legalized the suppresas a horde of lazy drones, ravenous sion of the former specified, that rewolves, and cormorants, the enemies ligion was well kept and observed in both of government and the people.- the latter. "Within the space of four The public mind being thus prepared, years," says the Rev. Mr. Reeve, in Henry appointed a special commission his History of the Christian Church, to visit and reform abuses; but their "the sacrilegious hand of Henry immediate object was to collect matter overturned the most venerable monuof accusation for the dissolution of the ments of religion, which British, lesser convents. Severe was the en- Saxon, Norman, and English piety quiry of its members, and great was had erected in England and Wales. their disappointment, when they found By the advice of Cromwell, his vicarthemselves unable to discover the general. he ordered the sacred roofs slightest hold for a serious accusation to be taken down, and the walls reagainst the cloistered inhabitants of duced into heaps of ruins, lest the forthese abodes of piety. Recourse was mer possessors might attempt to creep therefore had to bribery and corrup- back again. The abbey lands he tion; the intent of their commission either sold or exchanged for others, or must be fulfilled, and if real crimes distributed amongst his favourites, the cannot be proved, imaginary ones partners of his guilt. By the seizure must be created to supply their place. of church property Henry added one For this iniquitous end, says a learned hundred and sixty thousand pounds historian, friars were encouraged to to his annual revenue. The people give false witness against their bre- murmured; but when they were told, thren; lewd men were employed to that this addition of wealth to the allure spotless nuns into vice; calum-public treasury would enable Governnies, collected from idle reports, or ment to defray all the exigencies of the libels of wicked accusers, were regard-state without the aid of taxes, they sied as grounds of proof." During times of faction, especially of the religious kind," says Mr. Hume, no equity is to be expected from adversasaries; and, as it is well known that 66 lently acquiesced. They soon found themselves deceived. The imposition of new taxes, added to the old, raised great discontents, without the least hope of relief from a despotic tyrant. to them by Magna Charta, which in the very first chapter declares, that the English church shall be free, and that she shall for ever enjoy all her whole rights and liberties inviolable.' Heury, at his coronation, had bound himself, by a solemn oath, to maintain those rights and liberties.The monasteries, therefore, had as legal and as full a title to their pro and not having forfeited that title by any thing they had done, they retained an equal claim to protection with the rest of their fellow-subjects. Henry, by seizing and demolishing them in the manner he did, shamefully violated not only his oath, but the very palladium of English liberty, and thereby let his subjects know, that none of their rights were safe against the invasion of his arbitrary domination."-Henry, with all his plunder, was not possessed of riches, any more than the people were of freedom and happiness; and it is not a little remarkable, that in his time, as well as in our own, the value of the national coin, according to Sir Richard Baker, was obliged to be enhanced, to prevent its being taken out of the kingdom. An angel, which before passed for seven shillings, was raised to seven shillings and sixpence; every ounce of gold, which hitherto fetched forty shillings, was advanced to forty five, and other coins accordingly. From the monasteries the poor had hitherto been supplied with food and other comfortable helps; those being destroyed, the number and distress of indigent families began to multiply; assessments upon the parishes, hitherto unknown, then became necessary for their support. The growing sums of those assessments, at this distant period, evidently prove, that the nation is now paying dear for the sacri-perty, as the civil power could give, legious rapine, committed in the days of Henry VIII. Guided by reason, and convinced by facts, Protestant writers candidly allow, that the dissolution of religious houses was not only a scandal to religion, but also a detriment to the state. To the abbies," says Mr. Collier, "we are indebted for most of our best bistorians, both in church and state; the youth there had their education with little charge to their parents; the nobility and gentry had a charitable way of providing for their younger children.' Similar testimonies, in favour of these monastic foundations, may be seen more at large in Sir WilLiam Dugdale, Sir Henry Spelman, Doctor Heylin, Mr. Fuller, Mr. Tanner, and others. The testimony of these grave authors carries great weight in this matter; their Protestant profession leaves no room for suspecting them of partiality, or of unsiacerity in their defence of a Catholic cause. Nothing but a sincere regard for truth could have induced those authors to treat the subject in the manner they have done. Sound policy never would have doomed to destruction so many noble foundations, from whence the public derived such valua ble advantages. Their establishmention to the present moment. stood upon the same constitutional ground as that of all other corporate bodies in the nation, solemnly recognised and sanctioned through a long succession of ages by king and parliament. Their institution, as the same Mr. Collier remarks, was principally designed to revive the piety of -the ancient Christians.' The perma-nency of that institution was secured ORTHOD. JOUR. VOL. 1V. I have been thus particular in stating the causes and effects which occasioned an entire change in the affairs of our country, because from this period we must date the source of all the evils which have affected the naIt is al lowed by the sensible and intelligent advocates for Parliamentary reform, that corruption in the senate began its career in the reign of this avaricious and remorseless monarch; and it is exultingly stated by all the bigoted and intolerant writers against Popery, that by Henry's rejecting the spiritual supremacy of the Pope and assumingit to himself, the death-blow was given 30 |