in his age of that doctrine to which mankind sooner or later will be brought to look for the regeneration of mankind, which teaches that the true interests of the christian religion and of civil liberty are identical. That great doctrine is embodied in all the preachings and teachings of Savonarola. He never spoke nor wrote in the discharge of his high functions, that it did not seem to be a part of his apostolic mission so to speak and write that his words and writings might tend to make men such as their Maker would have them to be,-good and happy, free from all slavery, from that of sin, of despotism, and of gold. He died on the scaffold in defence of the holiness of religion, and of the rights of the poor against the rich oppressors of his country, the 23rd of May, 1498, about twenty years before Luther's efforts against the abuses of the Church and the vital doctrines of it came into operation.

In the reigns of Edward the Third, Henry the Second, John, and Henry the Seventh, events had taken place in England that had left the seeds of schism in the Church. In 1342, in the reign of Edward the Third, disagreements occurred between the latter and the court of Rome, which well nigh led to a separation. The frequent missions of a pecuniary kind of the agents of the Pontiff into England in former reigns, and the disposal of Church livings both in England and in Ireland to foreign ecclesiastics, had been at times the occasion of remonstrances and complaints on the part of the clergy; some new representations of the latter on this subject, were taken advantage of by the king to defeat all commissions for similar objects, and nearly all papal ecclesiastical appointments in his dominions.

From the teachings of the Apostles, and the councils of the Church presided over by its pontiffs, the Catholic believes the fundamental doctrines of his religion have proceeded, and these cannot be added to nor taken away from, to the consummation of all things. It is not from the court of Rome, nor from the temporal power of him who rules it, they proceed; and if that court ceased to exist, and if that temporal power were taken away, it is a matter of faith that the Church would still subsist in its integrity.

The spiritual power of the Church, says Bossuet, is independent of all the kings of the earth. What a blessing would

it be for Christendom, if entire faith had been put, and continued so to be, in that axiom.

The origin of the Reformation in England is, however, to be largely attributed to lust and avarice, and in Germany to resentment and ambition. There were mingled with the motives of its prime movers in the latter country, incidents of an old date and provocations of a new one, which had a mighty influence on the great revolt which commenced in 1515. At so early a period as the separation of the Western empire from that of Rome, the popes had been obliged to keep a strong hand upon some of the Eastern Churches, and to plunge into an arduous contest with some of the European princes respecting the nomination and investiture of bishops, the presentation to abbeys and priories.

These circumstances, embittering the minds of unsubmissive men, were among the many causes of the schism in the East, and of grave disorders, jealousies, and animosities in some continental countries, especially in Germany, centuries before the era of the Reformation. But the events that the Council of Constance gave birth to in 1415 and 1416, A. D., the trials and executions of John Huss and Jerome of Prague, nourished a religious flame in Bohemia and other parts of Germany, which for one hundred years we find breaking out at short intervals in various places on various pretexts and under various leaders, now smouldering for a brief season, now issuing forth in flame, and furnishing ample proof that the fate of Huss and his companion had sunk deep into the minds and hearts of the people of Germany, and produced the very opposite effects that were expected from these measures of severity. They had not intimidated boldness, nor reformed error, nor reclaimed impiety; they had exasperated many and disgusted all. At the expiration of a century, they furnished Luther with a motive for making war on the power and authority of Rome, in the persons of its agents charged with the publication of Papal bulls in Germany. "Les foudres et les feux du concile de Constance n'empecheront pas, qu'elle ne renaisse de cendres de Jean Huss, et de Jerome de Prague, en la personne de Luther."*

* Varilla Revolut. en mat. de Relig. Tom. 1. p. 2.

Charles the Fifth could have checked (humanly speaking) Luther in his career, without employing measures of extreme severity, had it suited his policy to have done so; but for thirty years he allowed the Reformation to take its course, and when he would have stopped it he could not. The Duchy of Milan was of more importance to him than the Church of Rome. Philip the Second thought more of the latter than of his Dutch dominions. He desired to put down the Reformation in the Low Countries by measures of inordinate severity, and he could not; but he practised horrors enough in the attempt to bring on an insurrection, and the frightful executions of his forty-eight Calvinist subjects in the Low Countries, only tended to root the persecuted religion in the soil, and to lose the latter to the crown of Spain.

While Catholics denounce innovations and innovators, it behoves them to reflect with profound humility on the state of religion which had led to those innovations, or furnished a pretext for them; to deplore the evils of luxury and rapacity, which prevailed in the court of Rome at that period; the negligence of pastors, the laxity of discipline, the secularization of the spirit of religion and of the professors and the ministers of it. No Catholic can or ought to deny that some of the clergy of that period had grievously suffered in character from connection with the state; that many of the members of the monastic orders had ceased to live in accordance with their Vows; that in various places ecclesiastical government greatly needed a reform, and that several of the religious orders required to be brought back to the original intentions of their founders, to a new sense of the piety, self-denial, humility, and poverty which early characterized them, and to make the Church of God what it was in primitive times.

"Who shall grant me," cried St. Bernard, "to see, before I die, the Church of God such as she was in primitive times?" He did not live to see that happy change. On the contrary, the evils went on augmenting. "From the period of the Council of Vienna," says Bossuet, a great prelate, charged by the Pope with the preparation of the matters which ought to be treated of there, "laid it down as the basis of the work of that holy Assembly, that it was essential to reform the Church in its chief and in its members.

The grand schism which arose a little later caused more than ever the same sentiment to be expressed, not only by individual doctors of the Church,-a Gersen and a Daillé, and other great men of their time, but also by Councils, and especially in the Council of Pisa and in that of Constance.* It is well known what happened at the Council of Basle, where the reformation was unfortunately deferred, and the Church replunged into new dissensions. The Cardinal Julien represented to Pope Eugenius IV. the disorders of the clergy, especially those of Germany. Those disorders (said he) excite the hatred of the people against the whole ecclesiastical order; and if they are not corrected, care is to be taken that the laity do not fall on the clergy in the manner of the Hussites, as they loudly menace us. dicted, that if the clergy of Germany were not promptly reformed, that when the Bohemian heresy should have been smothered, another would arise still more dangerous; for the clergy (said he), it will be affirmed, are incorrigible, and have no wish that a remedy should be applied to their disorders," &c......." The little of respect left for the sacred office of the priesthood will end in being lost. The whole blame of those disorders will be cast on the court of Rome, which will be regarded as the cause of all existing evils."

He pre

66

......"I see (continued he) that the axe is laid to the root; the tree bends, and, instead of supporting it whilst it could be done, we help to cast it down. God has taken away the perception of our perils, as He is accustomed to do with those whom He intends to punish. The flames are kindled before us, and we run on till we rush into the midst of them."

"It is thus," says Bossuett in the fifteenth age, “the greatest man of his age deplored the evils, and foresaw the sad consequences of them, and seemed to predict those which Luther was about to bring on the Christian world, commencing with Germany; and he was not deceived when he imagined, that reform being contemned, and the hatred against the clergy redoubled, an enemy was about to be produced, more formidable to the Church than the Bohemian one. It is evident, then, that great abuses had crept into some of the religious houses and episcopal

Histoire des Variations, Vol. i. Liv. 1. p. 2.

+ Ibid. p. 4.

palaces, and that those of cardinals were not exempt from them.

The acquisition of great wealth, the worldly cares which the extensive possession of landed property brought with it, the cupidity excited in the breasts of princes by the reputed riches of the Church; the consequent attempts to discredit the clergy, to lessen their influence, to hurt their authority, to defame, and then to plunder them, followed in return by acts unworthy of the clerical character to defeat such attempts, - acts sometimes of violence, sometimes of intrigue; at other times of misapplication of spiritual powerall these things were evils of which the existence was well known in Rome, and especially to Paul III., of the removal of which there is incontestable evidence that there was, on his part, a sincere desire and a firm intention to enter on the undertaking.

There is a very remarkable treatise in the author's pos session, printed at Cologne, in small 4to, in 1538, consisting of thirteen pages of matter in the Latin tongue. The title is, "Concilium delectorum Cardinalium et aliorum Prelatorum, de emenda Ecclesiæ S. D. N. D. Paulo ipso juvente, conscriptum et exhibitum Anno 1538."

It purports to be a representation of the abuses in matters of religion which required reform, the result of an enquiry instituted by Pope Paul III. It bears the signatures of Gaspar. Card. Contarenus. Johannes Petrus. Card. Theatinus Jacobus Card. Sodeletus. Reginaldus Card. Anglicus. Freder. Archiepis. Solernitanus. Hier. Arch. Brundusinus. I. Mathæus Epis. Veronensis. Gregor. Abbas S. Georgii Venet. Frater Thomas Mag. Sac. Palatii.*

Their report or representation treats of the various abuses requiring reformation, and the remedies proposed for them, which are specified in twenty-eight articles, preceded by a preamble of three pages. Sarpi gives the names of the subscribers in full.

The state of religion previously to the Council of Trent, is set forth more clearly in this representation of the abuses that time and the negligence of pastors had introduced, not only into religious houses but into the Court of Rome, than in any other document illustrative of the condition of the Church at that period. The substance of the several arti

*Hist. du Concile de Trente. Liv. i. p. 78.