forced not only to receive Langton, but to make the Pope the Lord Paramount of his kingdom, and to do homage to him for it; which he did in the hope of regaining the attachment of his subjects. But attachment or confidence, once really lost, are not easily recovered; neither did he pursue the means to regain them. When he was forced at length to confirm the Charter, which, singularly enough, was brought to light by Langton, what was the conduct of Rome? It declared the Charter void, and absolved the King from his oath, and afterwards excommunicated the Barons who insisted on the observation, and Langton himself, for not permitting the excommunication to be denounced.

The conduct of the Archbishop in the whole of this business appears to have been that of a great and good man. That he should have agreed to the clause in Magna Charta, which forbids the alienation of lands in mortmain, a clause the most objectionable to Rome, was equally to the honour of his patriotism. and of his sagacity, which perceived that this was, in that state of things, the only check to prevent the whole property of the kingdom from being a fee-farm to the Popes, and this was perhaps the most that the debased and bigoted spirit of the times would admit of; if indeed the idea of asserting the independence of his See on Rome had occurred to him, which it does not seem to have done.

Enough has now been said to prove, that the Romish religion, as such, and more especially the See of Rome, was absolutely inimical to the confirmation of Magna Charta, and that the confirmation was merely

the result of one of those providential combinations of events, which astonishingly contribute to mark epochs in the revolution of human transactions.

The excommunication of the Barons gave the nation a disgust to the Romish, clergy, whose tergiversation shewed it to be the servile instrument of Rome; and thus prepared the public mind, by fixing its attention on the conduct of the church, and comparing it even with the little then known of Christian principle, to receive with avidity that discovery of Wickliff*, for such, alas! in those days, it might too

* Wickliff, in this respect, nobly led the way, and, it may be collected from the following passage in Walsingham, that, in the disputation at Oxford, the Romish divines were very ready, as usual, to condemn him, and very unable to confute him.

Qui nec ipsis dominis regnique principibus se obtemperare de voverant, donec excessus ipsius Heresiarchæ punivissent juxta mandata Papalia, a facie cujusdam, nec nobilis militis-Ludovici de Clifforde pomposè vetantis, ne præsumerent aliquid contra ipsuin Johannem sententialiter definire, tanto timore concussi sunt ut cornibus, eos carere putares, factos velut homo non audiens, et non habens in ore suo redargutiones.-P. 205. ed. Camden.

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They, who had vowed that, until they had punished the Heresiarch according to the Papal mandates, they would not yield to the Lords or Princes of the kingdom, nor to the noble and martial Lewis de Clifford's injunctions not to proceed to definitive sentence against the said John, were so struck with terror, that they seemed to have been deprived of their faculties, and as a man that heareth not, in whose mouth there is no answer to refute his adversary."

The truth is, that Wickliff could not, in his principal positions, be refuted; and whether he maintained all that is laid to his charge, may, at least, be doubted, as the representations of his enemies. One of the charges exhibited against his tenets,

justly have been termed, that the Gospel gave no authority to the supremacy of the Popes, or the usurpations and abuses of power they had so fatally exercised.

Happily for England, the Barons firmly retained the privileges asserted by Magna Charta, and new barriers were opposed to the depredations and intrusions of Rome by a Prince, who, in the crusades, had learned, from a nearer view, to estimate its policy more truly; Edward I. In this he was imitated by his successors, till the deadly blow to the Papal supremacy, as to England, was given by Henry VIII.; a blow, which not all his fiery zeal for the doctrines of the Romish church could expiate. And, indeed, how could it? He thereby made the clergy of that church amenable to the laws of their country only; and, what was still worse, made a Papal interdict impossible to be carried into effect!

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It remains to be observed, that these disputes were carried on between parties who agreed as to faith, and that, therefore, it does not follow, that, the one Romish party having rescued from the other somėwhat in favour of general rights, a Romish party should be equally zealous in joining a party of a

in the Council of Constance, is, that he asserted that God should obey the devil. Now, from the whole of Wickliff's doctrine, it is pretty evident, that part of the assertion made by him miscarried somewhere on its way to the Council, and that Wickliff's assertion was, more probably, that if God was to confirm ALL the decrees of the Popes, he must obey the devil, which he might say upon the general principle that all evil is of the devil.

different religious persuasion, in the maintenance of those rights, should they, in any respect, militate against the favourite tenets and prejudices of their

own.

During the whole of this period, the Canon above quoted was followed with unrelenting cruelty; and even towards the end of it, one of the Censurers on Erasmus's Commentary on the New Testament, by the Faculty of Theology in Paris, begins as thus:-"Whereas it is a Catholic principle, and to be held faithfully, that it is not only lawful, but a duty to inflict death on obstinate heretics, when it can be done without endangering the state, &c. *”. ›

Hence, also, the Bull of Deposition against Queen Elizabeth. As to this, it has been observed “that the Bull of Pope Pius the Fifth contains not a word about the subjects rising in arms and murdering her," though it is admitted that it was a Bull of Excommunication.

I am not casuist enough to perceive clearly the value of the distinction. That the consequence was at least risked, is sufficiently clear, even from the adage that a deposed monarchis seldom long-lived; nor is it easily to be imagined, that Pius could expect her to be deposed without a recourse to arms. The conduct of Felton is at least a proof how it was liable to be understood, and how it would probably have been further carried

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* Cum sit Catholicum, et fide tenendum, non solum licere; sed oportere hæreticos pertinaces extremo supplicio punire, quando citra jacturam atque periculum reipublicæ id fieri potest, &c.-Tit. xxii. Cens. 2.

into effect, had Elizabeth been a character of less sagacity and firmness. The concluding words of the Bull, as given by Holingshed, are these; the whole I have not within my reach; but thus much is abundantly sufficient.

"We by our injunction strictly forbid all and every of the nobility, subjects, and people, and others aforesaid, to dare to obey her intimations, commands, or laws, and include all, who shall so dare, in the same anathema with her. All those who have in whatsoever manner taken an oath of allegiance to her, we declare perpetually absolved from every tie whatsoever of her power over them, and of their fidelity and obedience to her*, &c."

It is very true. Here is not a word of rising in arms, or murdering Elizabeth. Her subjects are only required upon pain of eternal damnation to disobey her in all things whatsoever, and to depose her. Of course in the most harmless and tranquil manner in the world, without bloodshed or battery.

The bull therefore had nothing of miching mallicho in it, and meant no mischief! As innocent in its purpose, as Campion and his accomplices were pure in their loyalty to Elizabeth. She is my lawful Queen,

"Præcipimus et interdicimus universis et singulis proceribus, subditis, et populis, et aliis prædictis, ne illi," (Elizabethæ) "ejusve monitis mandatis et legibus audeant obedire: qui secus egerint eos simili anathematis sententiâ innodamus. Omnes, qui illi quomodocunque juraverunt, a juramento hujusmodi, ac omni prorsus dominii fidelitatis et obsequii debito, perpetuo absolutos declaramus, &c."