cils were convened by the sole authority of the Emperors, and we also see with what an humble style then the Bishops of Rome wrote concerning these Synods. Pope Leo writes thus to the Emperor Marcion, Epist. 44-"We were in hopes that your clemency would condescend so far as to defer the Council, but since you resolve it shall be kept, we send thither Paschasius." "Has not the Roman Church (says Pope Stephen* to another Emperor,) sent her Legate to the Council, when you commanded it." 66 We do offer these things to your piety," says Pope Adrian to the Emperor Basil, with all humility-" Veluti præsentis genibus advoluti et coram vestigia pedum volutando." It is quite evident, then, that there was a decided difference, for the Council of Trent was convoked by the sole authority of Pope Paul III., and though many Romish writers, as Cusanus and Gabinelli, allow, that in primitive times they were called by the Emperors-yet now the favourers of the Church of Rome assert, that Councils not called by the Pope are all "illegitimate, bastard, void, and of no effect." Let us further see whether the Bishop of Rome was qualified to call an Ecumenical Council, or had the power "de jure et de facto," to convene such a general assembly. And here space cannot, I feel, be allowed me to enter at large into the question, whether by the ancient canons he could claim any higher power or title than what was conceded to him as a primacy of order and precedence, as the patriarch of the metropolitan city of the civilized world. Protestants maintain, and are prepared to prove that he was allowed no power to convene or controul his equals in the patriarchal dignity, nor had he a negative voice on any of the proceedings of assembled Synods.

Supposing that the Latin Patriarch had a power to summon the Clergy of his own Patriarchate (without the concurrence of the Civil Power, which is far from evident,) to meet in Council, yet he had no authority to summon his equals, the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch, or Alexandria. And some of the Popish doctors were so sensible of this, that at the beginning of the Trent Conventicle, Stanislaus Onchovius, a zealous Romanist, wrote to Hosius, the Cardinal Legate, that it would greatly conduce to their reputation and interest, if the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Antioch could be called to the Council, for the Greeks and Armenians depended on them; nor could he well see how the Catholic Church could be Ecumenical without them. Hosius

Opera, p. 373." Now here was a glaring difference between the ancient Councils and this Synod. They had the consent of the four Patriarchs; here three of them, with all their Suffragan Bishops, were overlooked; and the fourth had the confidence to designate his Provincial Synod an Ecumenical Council, just as if, in the time of the Saxon Heptarchy, the King of Mercia, should

* Epist. Stephen. Post. Concil. 8.

convene the States under him, and style his Convention the Parliament of England.

But this Synod was not only called by an improper person, and in an imperfect manner, but it was also convened in an improper place. And Paul III. was wisely careful to attend to the advice of his predecessor, when he told him, that nothing tended so much to the mastering of a Council as the choice of a place to hold it in.* Now Trent, just on the borders of Italy, was not so far from Rome as to be out of the controul of the Vatican. A courier in a day or two, could convey the determinations of the Pontiffs to their tools, the Legates; it was sufficiently near to Italy to allow a Corps de Reserve of forty Apulian and Sicilian Bishops to be sent to throw in their votes, when occasion required. Trent was certainly out of the Ecclesiastical States, and it bore a better appearance to have it there than at Bologna or Mantua. But subject as it was, to the Cardinal of Trent, and he subject to the Pope, what greater freedom of deliberation was there, than if it was held in the Lateran. Why was not Germany chosen, where the debatable doctrines were rife, and whither Protestants might have some confidence in going; or why not France, under the protection of the eldest son of the Church. But no: these countries were too far from the centre of intrigue-from the Machiavelian metropolis, to allow the spirit that was to preside over the Council to be sent, day after day, in a cloak-bag. And, therefore, had not the Protestants, with the fate of John Huss, and Jerome of Prague before their eyes, had they not good reason for hesitating to proceed to a place so deservedly suspected; and could not they cite the authority of the Popes of Rome, viz.-Nicholas I. and Innocent III. and IV., who assert, that no man is bound to appear in a place where he has just reason to fear the multitude.

But there is a still stronger reason why the Protestants might not appear at the Council of Trent; their Judge was a prejudiced party. In every Court of Law that professes to distribute evenhanded justice, a Judge who may be supposed to have the remotest personal interest in the matter to be tried, is considered incompetent to take his part in the trial, and is excluded; and in the gloss upon the Canon Law it is expressly said—that the Pope cannot be Judge and party in any cause, but ought to choose an arbitrator. Now the Pope was both party and Judge at Trent: he was not only an interested person against the Protestants, but, by the accusing voice of Europe, and by the demands of the Princes, he was to go on trial himself; for the desire of Christendom for more than 200 years was to have a Reformation, not only in "Membris" but in " Capite." No wonder then, that the Protestants, by the Declaration at Smalcald, 1539, refused to be

* John XXIII. left this advice to his successors: "The place of a Council is all and in all. I will not have it in a place where the Emperor has the upper hand. -Nanclerus, vol. i. genera. 48.

judged by the Council, because the Council ought, in the first instance, beginning at the head, have cleared the fountain before it undertook to clear the stream; because the Pope was not only a party, but had already prejudged their doctrine. And if he, as he did, ruled and controuled in all matters in the Council, who could doubt as to what judgment he would pass. Moreover this refusal of the Protestants was justifiable by the example of primitive times. The Catholic Bishops, the defenders of Athanasius, rejected the Council of Tyre, because they said. Theognis and Eusebius were his judges: and that God*—“ sui inimicum neque testem neque judicem vult." Chrysostom refused to appear before Theophilus, because he seemed guilty of the crimes laid to his charge, and was his enemy. "Quod contra omnes canones et leges est." And Pope Nicholas I. and Celestine III. acknowledge, that, "ipsa ratio dictat quia suspecti et inimici judices non debuere"-Celest. Extrav. de appell. canon secundo requiris. But even in later times of papal usurpation, monks, the sworn recruits, the regular troops of the Pope, claimed a right of appeal from his judgment; and Paul Langries, in his Chronicles, Anno 1328, tells how Ceceno, a friar, appealed from the sentence of Martin V., though in a matter of so little moment, as to whose property was the bread that the Franciscans eat. And the Archbishop of Cologne, when excommunicated by Paul III. refused, says Sleidan, the Pope as his Judge, because for a long time he had been accused of heresy and idolatry: wherefore he appealed from his sentence to a lawful Council of Germany; wherein he protested that as soon as it was called, he would accuse the Pope, and prosecute him accordingly. Now that the Pope, who ruled the Trent Synod by his Legates, was a party who had already prejudged and condemned the Protestants, appears, from this fact, that the Ghostly Father, who ought to be the centre of peace and good will-whose arguments ought to have been accompanied with prayers and tears, instead of being enforced with gunpowder and cold iron; that he, before the assembling of the Council, wrote a letter to the Swiss Cantons, stating that he had made a league with the Emperor to put down the Protestants, and that he intends for that purpose to raise all the forces of his Ecclesiastical States. Here is surely a fair and impartial head of the Christian Church! He mediates a Council to determine on the doctrines of the Protestants, but before he goes to council he goes to war-this is with a vengeance proceeding to hang a man first in order that he may be the easier tried hereafter.

But not only was this Council not Ecumenical, unduly summoned, convened in an improper place, and presided over by

* Athanasius. Apol. 2.

+ Epist. ad Innocent.

Sleidan's Commentaries.

A copy of the Letter is in the Bishop of Venice's Library. See Reflections on Council of Trent, by H. C. De Luzency. London, 1677.

an improper person, but it was also vicious, irregular, and unlawful in its proceedings when assembled.

The Councils of the Primitive Church, to whose decisions Protestants bow, all made the rule of their decisions the Holy Scripture. It was laid before them in the midst of their meeting with all possible solemnity: and Bellarmine* acknowledges, that the Council of Nice drew its conclusions out of the Scripture; and Richerius,† a doctor of the Sorbonne, not only asserts this to have been the custom, but he tells us the reason of it, viz. "that all things were to be examined by the standard of the Gospel."Now the Council of Trent set up a new rule to regulate their proceedings, to judge controversies, and in order to find a pretext for condemning Protestants as heretics, in their fourth session, declared that tradition was of equal authority with Scripture. Protestants conceive that they are borne out by the testimony of ecclesiastical history, in holding that every Council that in after times receded from making the Scriptures of God the standard by which doctrine was to be tried, has departed from the simplicity of truth, and brought misery and mischief into the Christian Church; and we still maintain, that had the Council of Trent taken Scripture for its rule, and had reformed thereby what was run to riot in doctrine, worship, polity, and discipline, we should now see real religion, and all its blessed fruits, pervade Europe; nay, by this time the world had been evangelized, and the Saviour's name been hailed with joy by every nation and on every shore.

But there were other disparities between this and the ancient Councils-It did not resemble them in its numbers.

At the Council of Nice 300 fathers attended-600 at Chalcedon: but how many more, suppose you, were the Doctors of this Synod, when they presumed to decree for Christendom, that the Apocrypha was of divine authority, that tradition was to be received with as much deference and respect as the Scriptures of God, that the Vulgate was a perfect translation ?-Perhaps one thousand-or say five hundred-or one hundred. No:-three Cardinals, five Archbishops, and thirty five Bishops, with a few mendicant Friars and ten Jesuits was the mighty number that decreed upon the very principal and cardinal points on which the whole controversy between the Protestants and the Romanists hinged: this was the grand pannel of Prelates that condemned Protestantism without a hearing.‡

It has been said that the paucity of numbers in the Synod, was made up by the extraordinary merit of its members- the quality compensating for the quantity. But Pope Paul IV. on this subject may be considered of good authority, when he told Cardinal Bellay, it was a great weakness in his predecessors to send to the Council of Trent, three score bishops, very short in their learning, "de manco habile" and forty very ordinary Divines, quaranta dottori de meno sufficienti" Ill Concil. de Trent, p. 408.-Memoirs de Cardinal Bellay, p. 155.

Nor did the number increase much as the Synod grew older; in the 8th session, 11th Nov. 1547, there were but forty-three bishops and eight archbishops; and Father Paul says, that in the sixth year after opening the Council, the presidents and princes being reckoned, the number did not exceed sixty-four. It is true, that in the 25th session, eighteen years after the convening of the Council, the number was much greater, but this never can compensate for the defects in the earlier sessions, when the decrees inimical to Protestants were enacted. But not only was there nullity in the paucity of numbers, but in the character of its constituents; mostly Italians or Spaniards, none from North Germany, none from England, Sweden, Denmark, Poland or Russia; but one or two from France it was more like a convention of the national churches of Spain and Italy, than an Ecumenical Council, and so it was considered by Henry III. of France; for, to the great offence of the Spanish prelates, he directed his letter to the Synod, as to the CONVENTION at Trent; and in the protestation of the King of France which bears date 1551, he says, that being engaged in wars he was not bound to send his Bishops to Trent, forasmuch as they could not have free and safe access, and because the Council as such was never reported a general one, but rather a Privy Council, in which there was a greater respect paid to private interest than to public utility.*

Henry VIII. of England, still while within the pale of the Church of Rome, and while acknowledged as the defender of its faith, protested against the meeting at Trent, and that not because he was an enemy to Councils, for he said he was willing to submit to one lawfully called, and would send his Bishops to it. But, indeed, in other respects, this assembly bore little similarity to the ancient Councils; and it would be an extreme indignity to the memory of the sacred Fathers who assisted at the primitive Synods of the Church, to compare them with the first Prelates. These Tridentine judges were creatures of the Popemany of them pensioners on his bounty. What would a Nicene, or Chalcedon Father have said, if he heard the exclamation of the forty Apulian bishops, who formed the Papal army of reserve -"nil aliud sumus præterquam creaturæ et muncipia sanctissimi Patris ?" Indeed, it was not alone the poor shadowy Apulian prelates that were the bondsmen of the Vatican, but every bishop there was under oath to be obedient to the Papal See; and we may see a specimen of the despotism under which these Fathers,

Vide Libellum de Statu Ecclesiæ Gallican. in Schismate.

† See Sleidan's Comment. lib. 11.

Ferrier, the French Ambassador, said openly before the Council-ibi nullum legibus locum nullum antiquorum conciliorum nullum libertatis vestigium -Pius quartus relinquat-Thuanus, page 54.

Pope Pius, says Onuphrius, spent a great sum of money in the celebration of this Council; considering that he gave liberal allowances for diet and maintenance to the poor bishops and priests, and to all the officers of the Council. Onuphrius in vita Pii IV.

§ Milinæus de Concil. Trident--Num: 21.

H