dom is said to have belonged to the clergy. It is easy to conceive what powerful means such a body must have possessed for controuling the Government as well as the people. The mere circumstance, that so vast a proportion of the national wealth had become the unalienable property of a society distinct in its habits and interests from the rest of the country, must of itself have bestowed on the clergy a political preponderance extremely dangerous; and this preponderance would be wonderfully increased, particularly in the darker ages, by the awful influence of the spiritual character. The State was constrained to court the friendship of the Hierarchy, which could be so useful an ally, and so formidable an enemy; and which, in fact, was sometimes an overmatch for the most powerful princes. Besides, from the learning, as well as the wealth, of the clergy, the great offices of the State were, in those times, monopolized by the prelates; and the temporal Lords, and even the Kings, became interested in the prosperity of a Church, which held forth such splendid dignities to be enjoyed by their sons and brothers. When these circumstances are considered, we cannot wonder at the result. We cannot wonder that persons of the most unworthy character, but of powerful families, should sometimes find their way to the highest ecclesiastical preferments: We cannot wonder, that, in this intimate connexion, kings and priests were sometimes infected with each other's vices; that kings were inflamed with the bigotry of priests, and priests with the pride of kings; that they sometimes united in a dreadful league against the rights and liberties of the people; and that the selfishness and cruelty of worldly ambition sometimes disgraced the transactions of the mitred chiefs: We cannot wonder, in short, that the clergy, like other men, were corrupted by wealth and dominion-exorbitant wealth and the transcendent power of spiritual dominion: We cannot wonder that they sometimes stooped to improper arts for securing this proudest of all supremacies; that they regarded heretics and reformers, as the disturbers of the world, as the common enemies of Church and State,-and exerted against them that jealous and merciless hostility, with which great wealth and dominion always are, and (where so many are eager for their plunder), al-* ways must be guarded.

This is the true secret of the terrible intolerance and merciless persecutions of the Catholics of old-Not that their bigotry was worse, but that their wealth was greater;—not that their doctrines were more immoral or absurd, but that their possessions were more precious, and their power of maintaining them proportionably more irresistible. This is the plain and natural M

VOL. XXVII. NO. 53.

account of those enormities which have unquestionably disgrac ed the Roman Catholic far beyond any other Christian church, -but which would have equally disgraced any other church in the same situation. But no other Christian church has been placed in the same, or nearly in the same situation ;-no other Christian church has been exposed to the same, or nearly the same temptations, or possessed the same or nearly the same opportunities to execute the dictates of spiritual intolerance, and spiritual ambition. We know, however, what Knox thought it his duty to do, if he had only possessed the power; and we know it from his own repeated declarations deliberately recorded by himself. We know also, that the reformed Church of Scotland, in its primitive purity, asserted the same lofty pretensions as the Roman hierarchy. For in a solemn remonstrance addressed by the first reformers in 1559 to the nobility of Scotland, this memorable declaration remains for the edification of posterity;- Ye may perchance contemn and despise the excommunication of the Church (now by God's mighty power erected among us) as a thing of no force; but yet doubt we nothing, but that our Church and the true ministers of the same, have the same power which our master Christ Jesus granted to his apostles in these words, "whose sins ye shall forgive shall be forgiven, and "whose sins ye retain shall be retained." (History, p. 133.) And the very same superhuman authority is to this day asserted by the Protestant Church of England; for to every young gentleman who is admitted to the priesthood, the bishop, in the very act of ordination, addresses the same verba solennia of awful import, but with a most emphatic variation of the pronoun from the plural to the singular number;" whose sins thou forgivest they are forgiven; and whose sins thou retainest they are retained. To this day also the ecclesiastical constitutions and canons of the same Church denounce excommunication, not against her own clergy alone, but against every person who dis approves of this formula of ordination; and enjoin that he shall not be restored without the Archbishop's permission, and a public revocation of his wicked error.'

We do not believe that the temporalities of the established Church of England are sufficient to render her formidable to Government, more especially when we consider how great a proportion of the population have withdrawn from her communion. Whatever, therefore, may be the case with the ecclesiastical constitutions and canons, it must be imputed to the civil government alone, if any traces of religious intolerance remain in the statute book; and indeed we cannot but persuade ourselves that the statute book will soon be purified completely from these re lics of barbarous times. We should imagine also, that the

Church would consult her real dignity, if she erased from her standards those lofty pretensions and disregarded anathemas, so discordant with that pure and humble and benevolent piety which is the general spirit of her admirable liturgy. But the Church has a right to judge for herself; and, if she still think proper to retain these pretensions and anathemas, they will cer tairly be valuable, both as a historical document, and, moreover, as a constant warning, fairly and honestly published by herself, of what may be expected as soon as the Church and State shall be as much identified, or as soon as the Church shall be as powerful as in the days of old.

That a Protestant church, when it happens unfortunately to be backed by the civil Government, can persecute as stoutly as the Roman Antichrist himself, is but too well exemplified in the History of Scotland. In the reigns of Charles the Second and of his brother, a Protestant prelacy, in alliance with a Protestant administration, outstript the wishes of these arbitrary monarchs in the persecution of their Protestant countrymen. It is needless to weary ourselves or our readers with disgusting details, which the curious in martyrology may find in various publications. Every body knows, that the martyrdoms were both numerous and cruel; but perhaps the comparative mildness of the Catholic Church of Scotland is not so generally known. Knox has investigated the matter with commendable diligence, but has not been able to muster more than eighteen martyrs who perished by the hand of the executioner, from the year 1500, when heresy first began, till 1559, when the Catholics had no longer the power to persecute. The names of these persons, with several interesting particulars concerning some of them, will be found in pages 6, 19, 22, 40 and 62 of Knox's history. It is indeed a horrid list; but far short of the numbers who, during the twenty-two years immediately previous to the Revolution, were capitally executed in Scotland, for the wicked error' of separation from the worship of the Protestant Episcopal Church.

Such was the cruelty of a Protestant Church, when in alliance with a profligate and tyrannical administration. On the other hand, if the Church is destitute of political power, and if the State remembers its duty and dignity so far, that it scorns to be the tool of a particular sect, but reigns the common and impartial guardian of all the subjects, then, whether the church is Protestant or Catholic, and however intolerant her pretensions may be, she will gradually acquire those habits of forbearance and general charity, which become those who are the ministers, hot of the Old Testament only, but of the New. This also has been sufficiently exemplified in the history of Scotland, even al

though the State has not quite fulfilled the condition which is supposed. The Church of John Knox, that breathed out threatenings and slaughter,' first against the Catholics, and afterwards with not less fury against the Episcopals, has been happily converted by a better light; she now sees, without apprehension or jealousy, the sectaries admitted by law as freely as her own disciples to every honour and emolument of the State; and she has even addressed the Throne in behalf of the injured Catholics of a sister kingdom. She wants many things indeed which, in the opinon of many, are essential to an Established Church. Her Ministers have no representative in either House of Parliament; not even an elective franchise from their benefices, along with the lay electors: there are no dignities to reward her Ministers, and no Bishops to superintend them. They are merely a parochial clergy with moderate revenues, and not likely, we think, to be much corrupted by better revenues than we fear they have any chance of obtaining. And there is still another strange anomaly which deserves to be mentioned: -The ecclesiastical courts are composed, in pretty nearly an equal proportion, of clerical and of lay members.-Yet, notwithstanding all these disadvantages, we have great pride and satisfaction in declaring, that we know not where to look for a Church, which better answers all the good purposes of an Establishment,-which is so completely free from the reproach of allowing to any individual a plurality of pastoral charges, or which maintains a more careful, but not inquisitorial, vigilance over the pastoral fidelity and morals of its clergy.

ART. IX. A General View of the Progress of Metaphysical, Ethical, and Political Philosophy, since the revival of Letters in Europe. By DUGALD STEWART, Esq. 4to. pp. 166. [Prefixed to the Supplement of the ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA, Edinburgh, 1816.]

HISTORY,' says Lord Bacon, is Natural, Civil or Ecclesiastical, or Literary; whereof the three first I allow as extant, the fourth I note as deficient. For no mán hath propounded to himself the general state of learning, to be describ ed and represented from age to age, as many have done the works of nature, and the state civil and ecclesiastical; without which the history of the world seemeth to me to be as the statue of Polyphemus with his eye out; that part being wanting which doth most show the spirit and life of the person. And yet I am not ignorant, that in divers particular sciences,

as of the Jurisconsults, the Mathematicians, the Rhetoricians, the Philosophers, there are set down some small memorials of the schools, of authors of books; so likewise some barren relations touching the invention of arts or usages. But a just story of learning, containing the antiquities and originals of knowledges, and their sects, their inventions, their traditions, ⚫ their divers administrations and managings, their oppositions, 'decays, depressions, oblivions, removes, with the CAUSES and OCCASIONS of them, and all other events concerning learning throughout the ages of the world, I may truly affim to be wanting. The USE and END of which work I do not so much ⚫ design for curiosity, or satisfaction of those who are lovers of learning, but chiefly for a more serious and grave purpose, which is this, in few words, "that it will make learned men "wise in the use and administration of learning. -Advancement of Learning, Book I.

Though there are passages in the writings of Lord Bacon more splendid than the above, few, probably, better display

The Latin book De Augmentis, a translation from the published and unpublished English composition of Lord Bacon, made by men of eminent talent, and under his own inspection, may be considered, in respect to the matter, as a second original; but whereever we possess his own diction, we should be unwilling to quote the inadequate expression in which any other man labours to do it justice. In the following instances, however, the Latin version contains passages of which his original English is not preserved.

Ante omnia autem id agi volumus (quod Civilis Historiæ decus est et quasi anima) ut cum eventis causæ copulentur, videlicet ut memorentur naturæ regionum: et populorum, indolesque apta et 'habilis, aut inepta et inhabilis ad disciplinas diversas, accidentia tem'porum, quæ scientiis adversa fuerint aut propitia; zeli et mixturæ religionum, malitiæ et favores legum, virtutes denique insignes et 'efficacia quorundam virorum ad scientias promovendas,-et similia. At hæc omnia ita tractari præcipimus ut non criticorum more in laude et censurâ tempus teratur, sed plane historicè res ipsæ narrentur, judicium parcius interponatur.

De modo hujusmodi historiæ conficiendæ, monemus ut per singulas annorum centurias libri præcipui qui per ea temporis spatia conscripti sunt in consilium adhibeantur, ut ex eorum non perlectione (id enim infinitum esset) sed degustatione, et observatione argumenti, styli, methodi, genius illius temporis literarius, velut incantatione quadam, a mortuis evocetur.

*Quod ad usum attinet, hæc eo spectant non ut honor literarum et pompa per tot circumfusas imagines celebretur, nec quia, pro flagrantissimo quo literas prosequimur amore, omnia quæ ad earum

quoque modo pertinent usque ad curiositatem inquirere et