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were of iron and his nails of brass; which devoured, brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with his feet, which had a wound by a sword and did live, his deadly wound was healed. These horns were in the west; but the body of the beast was in the eastern part of the empire. Therefore, we shall now see how the dragon gave him (the Pope) his power and his seat, and great authority.

In the year 533, the Pope or bishop of Rome, whose look was more stout than his fellows,' was declared Head of all the Churches, by the emperor Justinian. The circumstances of a transaction, so pregnant with the most momentous results to the Christian world, are to be found at large in the Annals of Baronius, the chief Romish Ecclesiastical historian.

Justinian being about to commence the Vandal war, an enterprize of great difficulty, was anxious previously to settle the religious disputes of his capital. The Nestorian heresy had formed a considerable number of partizans, who conscious of the Emperor's hostility to their opinions, had appealed to the Bishop of Rome. To counteract the representations of Cyrus and Eulogius, the Nestorian deputies, the Emperor sent two distinguished prelates, Hypatius, Bishop of Ephesus, and Demetrius, Bishop of Philippi, in the character of envoys, to Rome, says Mr. Croly.

Justinian had been remarkable for taking an unkingly share in the dubious theology of the time: he felt the passions of a disputant; and to his latest day enjoyed the triumphs of con troversy with the delight of a zealot, as he sometimes did with the fury of a persecuter. On this occasion, whether through anxiety, to purchase the suffrage of the Roman Bishop, the patriarch of the west, whose opinions influenced a large portion of Christendom; or to give irresistable weight, to the verdict "which was to be pronounced in his own favor; he decided the precedency which had been contested by the Bishops of Constantinople from the foundation of the city; and in the fullest and most unequivocal form declared the Bishop of Rome the

Chief of the whole Ecclesiastical Body of the Empire.His letter was couched in, these terms:-Justinian, Pious, fortunate, renowned, triumphant Emperor, Consul &c. to John the most holy Arch-bishop of our city of Rome, and patriarch. Rendering honor to the apostolic chair, and your holiness, as has been always our wish, and honoring your blessedness as a father; we have to bring, to the knowledge of your holiness all matters relating to the state of the church.-It having been at all times our great desire to preserve the unity of your apostolic chair, and the constitution of the holy churches which has obtained hitherto and still obtains: Therefore we have made no delay in subjugating and uniting to your holiness all the priests of the whole east.

For this reason we have thought fit to bring to your notice the present matters of disturbance; though they are manifest and unquestionable, and always firmly held and declared by the whole priesthood, according to the doctrine of your apostolic chair. For we cannot suffer that any thing which relates to the state of the church, however manifest and unquestionable should be moved without the knowledge of your holiness, who are the "head of all the holy churches." The authenticity of the title,receives unanswerable proof from the edicts in the Justinian Code. But the yoke sat uneasily on the bishop of Constantinople; and on the death of Justinian, the supremacy was utterly denied. The Greek who wore the mitre in the imperial city of the east, must have looked with contempt upon a pontiff, whose city had lost the honors of the imperial residence, and whose person was in the power of the barbarians. T‹wards the close of the sixth century, John, Bishop of Constant nople, surnamed for his austerities, the Faster, named a council, and resumed the ancient title of the Bishop of Constantinople or new Rome, "the Universal bishop." The Roman bishop, Gregory the Great, indignant at the usurpation, and either hurried away by the violence of controversy; or, in that day of monstrous ignorance, unacquainted with his own dis

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tinctions, furiously denounced John, calling him a usurper aiming at supremacy over the whole church," and declaring, with unconscious truth, that whoever claimed such supremacy was Antichrist. The accession of Phocas, at length, decided the question. He had ascended the throne of the East, by the murder of the Emperor Mauritius. The insecurity of his title, rendered him anxious to obtain the sanction of the patriarch of the west. The conditions were easily settled. The usurper received the benediction, of the Bishop of Rome;→→ and the Bishop thus vindicated from his rival patriarch, in 606, kept the gorgeous title that had been conferred on him by Justinian, almost a century before. He was, thenceforth, Universal Bishop, head of the churches of Christendom, without a competitor. That Phocas repressed the claim of the Bishop of Constantinople is beyond a doubt. But the highest authorities among the civilians and annalists of Rome spurn the idea that Phocas was the founder of the supremacy of Rome. They ascend to Justinian as the only source; and rightly date the title from the memorable year 533. The Pope, now Universal Bishop, his boundless ambition prompted him to grasp at universal empire.

With the commencement of his power, began the dark ages, and the creation of a multitude of festivals, adopting the forms of the Pagan rites; the building of a vast number of churches, in honor of the saints and for the worship of saints and images. The scriptures were universally suppressed; and a sullen and benighted ignorance of science and literature pervaded the world.

The universal ignorance had reached the clergy; and the Pope had become more a warrior and a statesman than a priest, and found he could rise to dominion without the writings of either Prophets or Apostles, and the scriptures died out of the world's memory, and the most foolish legends and old-wives fables usurped their place. Thus Popery went on, adding superstition to superstition; the Pope in the mean time adding

power to power. In the fantastic madness of ambition, ignorance and wickedness, he assumed the attributes of the Diety, proclaimed himself infallible, the remitter of sins, Lord of the gates of heaven and hell, vicar of God, the image of God on earth, and the fountain of sanctity to man. He made saints, he wrought pretended miracles; he was worshipped with incense, he styled himself king of kings, and lord of lords. He sent forth his oracular voice to the sovereigns of the earth, he claimed tribute of all nations, he took away and gave diadems, and commanded them who wore them to come and kiss the dust at his footstool.

Thus the temple of idolatry and ignorance had been built in. a fearful, long night, of more than six hundred years; which had been filling up with the strange works of darkness, the forms of ancient heathenism, the rites of the barbarian conquerors of the western empire, and the smoke from the bottomless pit, in the eastern part of the Christian world; by the Saracens first, and afterwards the Turks.

But the still more monstrous inventions of Monkish dreams; the embodyings and accumulations of absurdities, of the wild and extravagant vagaries of luxurious, ignorant, idle and wicked priests had overspread the world, both civil and ecclesiastic. But in the twelfth century, the little congregations of pious Christians, in the vallies of the Alps, had translated the Holy Scriptures; and indeed this was the true era of the Reformation. Wickliffe, Luther, and the other great reformers, were but the successors of these shining lights and benefactors of mankind. But in the mean time, the Divine Art of Printing came in to aid their heaven-directed efforts to dispel the moral and intellectual darkness that pervaded the human mind, by the pestilential vapors and pestiferous smoke of kings-craft and priests-craft, the hateful progeny of Aristocracy. Copies of the Holy Books could now be multiplied at will. Learning revived; readers became numerous. The light of the gospel suddenly broke in, and showed the fearful and portentous a

bominations of the hidden works of dishonesty, which had now arrived to the most frightful maturity. Thousands and tens of thousands shrank at the sight, and turned to the living God.

But all this came like a thunder-clap to the ears of Rome: The most furious schemes of persecution were established against all who dared to read the Bible. The gospel was trodden underfoot, and destroyod. Its preachers and readers were proscribed and exterminated, by fire and faggot, by the sword, the dungeon and torture. 2 Tim. iii, 13. But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being decieved. In the year 1198. Popery had arrived to the full measure of fiend-like turpitude in wickedness, and this year gave origin and birth to the Inquisition. A history of the first foundation of this truly hellish tribunal is all I shall attempt at present.

CHAPTER XIV.

OF THE RISE OF THE INQUISITION.

It absolutely seems as if all the malignity, wiles, and eunning of earth and hell had been concentrated and united in this one point to produce this diabolical court. And as they are at no loss for names, and full of names of blasphemy,' they call it by the title of the "Holy Office."

The narrative which fixes the date of the Inquisition is given at length in the history of Languedoc by the Benedictines, Vich and Vaisette. The following are principal points relative to its rise. The Archbishop of Auch having informed Innocent III, almost as soon as he ascended the chair of St. Peter, of the progress of the Vaudois, (the Waldenses) in Gascony and the neighboring provinces of France, he, on the 11th of April, 198, wrote to him to drive them out of his. diocess, and if it were necessary, to call on the force of the princes and people. On the 21st of April, he wrote a circular letter to the Archbishops of Aix, Lyons etc. to announce

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