sion, and that his barons, not himself, were now the rulers of England. He therefore, as a fief of the Roman see, complained to the Pope, and entreated his interference. Innocent, but too willing to oblige so faithful a servant, immediately issued a bull of excommunication against his rebellious subjects, annulled the whole charter, and forbad the king to consider himself bound by it.*

The barons, on their part, paid no attention to the bull. Langton received orders to pronounce their excommunication; but this he refused to do, and was, in consequence, suspended by the Pope's legate. Under this suspension that courageous and high-minded prelate continued till after the death of both the Pope

and the King, when he was reinstated in 1216. the primacy, and afterwards became the principal agent in obtaining for the barons, from Henry III., the full confirmation of Magna Charta.

Nothing was now wanting to render the Pope's power supreme in England: though successfully resisted till the end of the Noru.an conquest, and the restoration of the Saxon line, yet the weakness of one monarch, and the worthlessnesss of another, at length brought the Church and kingdom of England prostrate at the feet of St. Peter. Great dissatisfaction was

*Matthew Paris. + Vide Blackstone's Com. b. iv. c. 8.

expressed at this her degraded state of subjection; but it was in vain to oppose a power that wielded all the wealth of Europe, and which held an irresistible sway over the minds of the great mass of the people. Each successive Pope seemed to be advancing to greater degrees of arrogance and aggression,-so that what appeared impossible to Gregory VII., in the eleventh century, was a matter of no difficulty to Innocent III., in the thirteenth. As temporal lord, the Pope now acknowledged no superior, and no equal-he was the fountain of all honour, power, and rule-king of kings, and lord of lords. "As a spiritual character, he sat in the temple of God, asserting himself to be God, immaculate, infallible, uncontrollable." He declared himself to be the "bridegroom of the Church, which was his bride: and that for a dowry, the fulness of spiritual and a large extent of temporal things were given him and he even permitted others to say of him, that they had received from his fulness-that he was a mediator between God and man-and that the pontifical dignity was before and superior to the imperial authority."* Pride and tyranny had never before so powerful a representative as Innocent, under whose pontificate the gross errors of transubstantiation, auricular confession, pur

gatory, the sacrifice of the mass, merit of works, necessity of celibacy, intercession and invocation of saints, &c. became more and more interwoven with the Romish system of theology. And that these monstrous departures from the truth might neither be detected nor exposed, this same Pope, in his decretal epistles, prohibited the reading of the Gospels, Epistles, and Psalms, by the laity, in their vernacular tongue.

Such was the man under whose jurisdiction the Church of England had at last fallen-such were the means by which that Church, after a successful struggle against the encroachments of Rome from the days of Augustine, became overwhelmed and buried in the flood of popish corruption; for with her independence departed also her purity of worship and doctrine; and the Church of England, once the glory of Christendom, and the bulwark of that sound "faith once delivered to the saints," became identified in the main points of doctrine and discipline with the Church of Rome. No longer was she to be recognised as the plain, pure, and simple fabric, which an Apostle had erected, and saints and martyrs had beautified. She lay buried under the overwhelming weight of Popery! Perranzabuloe-St. Piran in the sand!!

CHAPTER V.

"The course of Christianity and the Christian Church may not unaptly be likened to a mighty river, which filled a wide channel, and bore along with its waters mud, and gravel, and weeds, till it met a great rock in the middle of its stream. By some means or other, the water flows purely, and separated from the filth, in a deeper and narrower course on one side of the rock, and the refuse of the dirt and troubled waters goes off on the other side in a broader current, and then cries out, We are the river.-Coleridge's Table Talk, vol. i.

THE tyranny of Papal Rome, under which the most powerful states of Europe had so long groaned, was fast approaching a crisis—the measure of iniquity was nearly filled up, and it was evident that clouds were gathering in the west, portentous of the coming storm. "Surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee, O Lord! the remainder of wrath shalt Thou restrain !"

The long career of wickedness by which Popery had advanced to its present power was

drawing to a close, and the political troubles and animosities it had stirred up among its obsequious subjects in many of the more powerful states, were beginning to show signs of a reaction, which the increasing corruption and despotism of the Pope were tending rapidly to augment.

Pope Boniface VIII., who succeeded to the pontificate A. D. 1294, was disposed to outstrip all his predecessors in priestly 1294. arrogance and depravity, "He was born

to be the plague both of Church and State, a disturber of the repose of nations, and his attempts to extend and confirm the despotism of the Roman Pontiffs were carried to a length that approached to frenzy. From the moment that he entered upon his new dignity, he laid claim to a supreme and irresistible dominion over all the powers of the earth, both spiritual and temporal, terrified kingdoms and empires with the thunder of his bulls, called princes and sovereign states before his tribunal to decide their quarrels," and, in a word, "exhibited to the Church and to Europe a lively image of the tyrannical administration of Gregory VII., whom he perhaps surpassed in arrogance."* This was seen in one of his earliest acts; for he first showed himself in public, "girt with a

*Mosheim's Eccl. Hist. vol. iii. p. 186.