Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

sult history, we shall find that the very reverse is the case the claim has often been made, but it has never been allowed by the great European powers: consequently, if it has never been allowed, but on the contrary strenuously resisted, with what propriety can we admit the scheme, which makes the Pope to be the last head of the secular beast, as being "the head of the state as well as of the church, the king of kings as well as bishop of bishops?"

When Pope Hildebrand excommunicated and deposed the Emperor Henry, that prince called an assembly, and asked their opinion respecting the pretended right of the Pope to depose an Emperor: upon which, all, both Germans and Italians, unanimously pronounced, that the Pope, instead of having power over the Emperor, owed him obedience.† So likewise, although the Emperor Frederic condescended to hold the Pope's stirrup, he first declared, that this was no mark of homage, but only a compliment paid to his holiness as the spiritual representative of Christ. The same Emperor, in order to shew his independence of the Pope, repudiated his wife by his own authority:§ and, when the Pope had

the beast, I must have it shewn to me that their claim has been allowed. Till this be done, we are only informed what the Popes have been styled by themselves and their flatterers, not what they really are and have been. Exactly the same remark applies to Mr. Sharpe's observations upon the same subject. The Pope may call himself Rector Orbis, and claim an authority over all the kings of the earth, so long as he pleases; but this alone will never prove that he is the ruler of the world, or that any such authority is allowed to him. (Append. to an Inquiry into the description of Babylon p. 11.) It is not unworthy of notice, that even the claim of temporal supremacy was not made by the Popes, till a considerable period after they had been declared supreme bead of the Church. The insolent Gregory the second, throughout his whole quarrel with Leo Isauricus respecting image-worship in the year 727, though he vehemently claimed the power of excommunicating even sovereign princes, presumed not to assert that he possessed any temporal supremacy over the Emperor. In one of his epistles to Leo," the limits of civil and ecclesiastical powers are defined by the Pontiff. To the former he appropriates the body; to the latter, the soul: the sword of justice is in the hands of the magistrate: the more formidable weapon of excommunication is entrusted to the clergy; and, in the exercise of their divine commission, a zealous son will not spare his offending father: the successors of St. Peter may lawfully chastise the kings of the earth." (Hist. of Decline and Fall, Vol. ix. p. 135.) Indeed several years afterwards, it is sufficiently manifest, that the Pope was a mere feudal vassal of Charlemagne, whom he acknowledged to be his rightful sovereign.

* At least never allowed with any continuance, and certainly never allowed by all the great powers at the same time.

+ Mod. Univ. Hist. Vol. xxix. p. 86.

Ibid. p. 118.

Ibid. p. 117.

presumed to assert that he bestowed upon him the Empire as a fief of the holy see, he published a manifesto, in which he openly gave the lie to all those who should dare to say, that he held his crown of any other than God himself, declaring that he would rather resign it altogether than suffer it to be debased in his possession.* In a similar manner, when Pope Innocent the third excommunicated and deposed the Emperor Philip, the German nobility of his party complained in a letter to the Pope, that his holiness had intermeddled in the election of a king of the Romans, contrary to the rights of the German princes and the duty of his own pontificate, which originally depended upon the imperial crown.† So again, when Pope Honorius threatened to excommunicate the Emperor Frederic the second on account of his expelling from their sees some bishops who were ereatures of the Pope, he was plainly informed, that the Emperors had always possessed an authority and sovereign jurisdiction over the ecclesiastical state, that his grand-father and father had maintained this jurisdiction in full force, and that he neither could nor would divest himself of it to the prejudice of the Empire and his successors. The Emperor Albert indeed was compelled by the exigencies of the times to own, that kings and emperors received the power of the temporal sword from the Pope but afterwards, when Pope John declared the imperial dignity to be a fief of the holy see, the Emperor Louis assembled all the learned men of Germany, both of the clergy and the laity, to give their opinion of the bull which contained such a claim. These all concluded, that it was unjust, unreasonable, and contrary to the Christian religion, as tending to abolish the sovereign power of princes; and the states of the Empire requested the Emperor to take care, that the imperial dignity should not be trampled upon, nor the Germanic liberty reduced to bondage. Finding however that the Popes still from time to time renewed their pretensions, the princes of the Empire, ecclesiastical as well as secu

* Mod. Univ. Hist. Vol. xxix. p. 120, 121.
Ibid. 186.

[ocr errors]

§ Ibid. p. 257.

+ Ibid. p. 168. Ibid. p. 294, 295, 296.

lar, at length enacted the famous constitution by which the Empire was declared to be for ever independent of the Pope.*

If from the Empire we pass to Hungary, we shall find, that the temporal supremacy of the Pope was in the year 1303 so steadily resisted in that country, that his holiness himself was excommunicated by the Hungarian bishops, in consequence of his having presumed to lay the city of Buda under an interdict, because his pretended right to dispose of the crown of that kingdom was resolutely denied.†

In our own country, when Pope Hildebrand summoned William the Conqueror to do homage for the kingdom of England, as a fief of the Roman see, William replied, that he held his crown only of God and his own sword; and, when the nuncio threatened him with the censures of the Church, he published an edict forbidding his subjects to acknowledge any Pope but such as he should approve, or to receive any order from Rome without his permission. England indeed submitted to the Pope in the disgraceful reign of king John; but in that of his successor the English agents at the council of Lyons protested against the act, and declared that John had no right without the consent of his barons to reduce the kingdom to so ignominious a servitude.§

As for France, when Boniface the eighth claimed a temporal superiority over Philip the Fair, the states of the kingdom formally disavowed the authority of the Pope, and maintained the independent sovereignty of that prince.

So likewise, when Gregory the seventh claimed the same superiority over the different kingdoms of Spain, Don Alonso and the other sovereigns unanimously declared, that they were independent princes, and would own no superior upon earth.T

Thus it appears, when we descend to facts, upon what very slender grounds Bp. Newton makes the Pope

Mod. Univ. Hist. Vol. xxix. p. 311.
Smollett's Hist. of England, Vol. i. P. 418.

Mod. Univ. Hist. Vol. xxxix. p. 174.

Ibid. Vol. 11. p. 69.

+ Ibid. Vol. xlii. p. 32.

Ibid. Vol. xxiii. p. 385.

to be the last head of the secular beast, "the head of the state as well as of the church, the king of kings as well as the bishop of bishops."

Nor is this the only objection to which the system of Bp. Newton is liable. In a prophecy of Daniel already considered, four great beasts, or universal empires, are described as rising successively out of the sea. The last of them, like the apocalyptic beast now under consideration, is said to have ten horns, to be exceeding terrible, and to be different from those which preceded it. Hence I collect, that the fourth beast of Daniel, and the first beast of St. John, are designed to symbolize the same power. No doubt however is entertained, that Daniel's fourth beast is the Roman empire: it follows therefore, agreeably to Bp. Newton's original proposition, that St. John's first beast is the Roman empire likewise at some period or other of its existence. Now this fourth beast of Daniel is said to have a little horn, springing up among his ten larger horns; which little horn has been shewn to be the Papacy. If then the little horn be the Papacy, and if Daniel's fourth beast be not the Papacy, but the Roman empire out of which the Papacy sprung; St. John's first beast, being the same as Daniel's fourth beast, must assuredly be the Roman empire likewise, and therefore cannot be the Papacy. To me, I must be free to confess, it is a matter of no small wonder, that the first beast of St. John should ever have been thought to symbolize the Papacy: for, if this beast be the same as Daniel's fourth beast, a point maintained even by Bp. Newton himself, he certainly cannot be likewise the same as only the little horn of that very identical beast. The reason is manifest: such a supposition as this does in fact make Daniel's fourth beast precisely the same as his own little horn; a supposition to the full as unwarrantable, as to conclude that he is the same as any one of his other ten horns.* Yet does Bp. Newton, not regarding

* Such a supposition cannot be better confuted than in the following passage. "Si Malvenda et Lessio fides habeatur, bestia hæc Johannis decacornis et septiceps nihil aliud erit quam cornu illud parvulum bestiæ quartæ Danielis : et proinde decem cornua apud Danielem non erunt cornua bestiæ, sed parvi istius corniculi, quod tamen post illa decem exortum est, septemque capita apud Johannem ejusdem corniculi capita erunt. Quo quid absurdius? Certè si bestia illa quarta Romanum

this manifest violation of symbolical analogy and figurative propriety, adopt the inconsistent scheme of typifying the Papacy both by the eleventh horn of a beast, and by the identical beast himself to whom that eleventh horn belongs.*

The seven-headed and ten-horned apocalyptic beast then is the same as the fourth and ten-horned beast of Daniel in other words, he is the Roman empire; which, according to the sure declaration of prophecy, is the last universal empire with which the Church shall be concerned. Daniel does not mention the seven heads of this beast, nor does he specially define his form; he only observes, that he was dreadful, terrible, and strong, and that he was diverse from all the beasts that were before him but St. John amply supplies this deficiency, by informing us, that he had not only the ten horns no

est imperium, sunt hæc cornua ipsius bestiæ, h. e. Romani statûs, vel reges provinciarum, in quas imperium illud dividendum est." Downham: apud Pol. Synop. in loc.

* It was observed to me with his usual acuteness by the present Bp. of St. Asaph, in a conversation upon this very subject, that it is impossible for one of the borns of a symbolical beast to mean the same thing as the symbolical beast himself. A bead, importing as it does a form of government, must necessarily be in some sort identified with the beast or empire over which it presides, because they jointly form only a single body politic: but a born, importing one of the kingdoms which have sprung out of an empire, can never be identified with the whole empire, of which it constitutes only a single part. Hence St. John does not say, that the six first beads of the beast are respectively the same as the beast himself; because such an observation would have been plainly superfluous, the empire under all its six beads being in an undivided state, and therefore of course universally subject to its six successive forms of government: but he specially observes, that the last bead should be the beast himself; because, although the empire previous to the rise of this last bead had branched out into ten borns, yet this last mighty bead should at its first rise so completely swallow up most of the ten separate borns, as to become, like each of its six predecessors, the whole beast, however unexpected such an event might be after the division of the empire. A power may indeed be symbolized both by the little horn of one beast, and by the whole body of another distinct beast, as is the case with the spiritual kingdom of the Papacy expanding into a spiritual empire: but it certainly cannot be symbolized both by the bern of a beast and by the very identical beast to rehom that born is attached.

Mr. Bicheno adopts and states the commonly received interpretation in such a manner as to make it plainly confute itself. "What is here (Dan. vii. 8.) represented under the emblem of a born of the fourth beast is the same tyranny which is shewn to John (Rev. xiii. 1—10.) as a beast. In this all our best commentators are agreed. Nor let it seem strange, that what is here prefigured by a born of the fourth beast, the Ro man dominion, should be represented in another vision as a beast with seven beads and ten borns." (Signs of the times, Part I. p. 13.) To me, I must confess, such a mode of exposition appears very strange. The ten-borned beast of Daniel is manifestly the tenborned beast of St. John: how then can the little born, which sprung up long after the rise of the beast, be the beast himself; and how can the apocalyptic beast, six of whose heads according to Mr. Bicheno's own plan are secular heads, symbolize nothing except the ecclesiastical Roman power?

« AnteriorContinuar »