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" AND the rest of the men, which were not killed by these plagues, repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship daemons, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and wood, which can neither see, nor hear, nor walk. Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts" - Rev 9:20, 21
What would the voice of judgment from heaven be still unheeded? Would that astounding event, the political destruction of the Eastern third of Roman Christendom, by armies that bore onward with them from the Euphrates the false religion from the pit of the abyss, fail altogether to induce repentance and reformation in the remnant that was left? So indeed it was here declared in the Apocalyptic vision; and, at the same time, a catalogue of the sins of that remnant set in black array before the Evangelist. The representation however was one that would not be likely to strike upon his mind with effect so startling, as if no previous intimation had been given of their apostasy from their God and Saviour. Very early, we have seen, (viz. after the vision of the 6th Seal, which depicted the overthrow of Paganism, in the Roman Empire,) there had been foreshown to him by a significant figuration on the Apocalyptic temple scene, the then general abandonment of the Mediator Christ Jesus by the men of Roman Christendom; just as if other intercessors and mediators (for man must have some) had been substituted in his place: the first grand step to idolatry. And yet again, in the voice front the four horns of the golden altar, it seemed to have been not obscurely indicated that, down to the time of the loosing of the Euphratean woe, there would have been no return to the Saviour whom they had abandoned, in any of the four quarters of the Roman world; in its Western half as little as in its Eastern; no self application and saving use of His offered means of reconciliation. All this, we may suppose, might in a measure have prepared the Evangelist for what he now heard. And yet, even so, it must have seemed to him an astounding as well as awful announcement. "The rest of the men," a phrase including possibly the Christian remnant of the Greek Church, who though slain in their corporate political capacity, as the third part of men, still survived as individuals under the yoke of their Turkman conquerors, but doubtless chiefly and specially referring to the men of Western Christendom, "The rest of the men, which were not killed by these plagues, yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship daemons, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and wood, which can neither see, nor hear, nor walk: neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornications, nor of their thefts."
It is to the men of Western Christendom that I shall in the present Chapter confine myself, in the explanation of this passage. They constitute that division of the apostasy to which alone almost all that remains of the Apocalypse refers. Compared with the history and fate of her sister in the East, the case of the Western Church, as here represented, resembled that of apostatizing Judah after the fall of Israel. In the antitype, even as in the type, the treacherous Judah exhibited a guilt yet more unpardonable than even that of the backsliding Israel.
The announcement is twofold. 1st, it intimates the corruptions that had been in Western Christendom during the progress previously of the second woe, up to the fall of the Greek empire; for its asserted non-repentance in respect of them, after that catastrophe, implies the previous prevalence of the evils un-repented of 2ndly, it declares the continuance of the same corruptions afterwards. Under each of these divisions it is my duty to show, by historic facts, the truth of the prophecy. And,
Now, considering that the period is a long one through which we are called to trace them, and one of course of many changes, it seems to me that it may be well to preface our review on this head by a brief general view of the contemporaneous history of Western Europe. We shall be thus prepared for entering more intelligently into the particular and religious description of it, here distinctively set before us. I the rather give this larger and more general view of it, because the period itself, the " hour day month and year," from A.D. 1057 to 1453, in the course of which the Turkish woe gathered, advanced, receded, then gathered, and advanced again, until at length it fulfilled its destined work of destroying the Eastern or Greek empire, was one in many ways worthy of observation in the history of Christendom.
First, it is to be observed that, during this period of four centuries, the kingdoms that formed the constituency of what might now begin to be called the great western confederation of Europe, had been steadily, though slowly and interruptedly, recombining their political elements, consolidating their strength, and, ere the 15th century closed in, (up to which epoch I shall just for the present include in my review,) readjusting their territorial forms and limits, to some near resemblance of those of the original Gothic kingdoms that emerged out of the ruins of the Roman empire of the West: a form which in the main, I may add, they have retained ever since. In a series of wars against their Islamic conquerors, the Christian remnant in Spain had in the earlier half of the period re-conquered the greater part of the peninsula; confining the Moors for long afterwards within the straitened limits of the kingdom of Granada: until at length in the year 1492, under Ferdinand and Isabella, uniting their before divided strength, they conquered and expelled them altogether.
In the course of the same period the central Frank or French dynasty and kingdom had gradually, one by one, again subordinated to itself the principalities broken off from it, in its southern, western, northern, and eastern territory. In similar manner England, after the Normans' conquest of it under William, (Thogrul Beg's contemporary,) had become united in government throughout its whole length and breadth, and had attached also to its dominions Wales and Ireland. Thus alike aggrandized, there had begun between France and England that rivalry of above three centuries, which is one of the most marked features of their history in those middle ages: and in the prolonged wars of which, especially under the English Edwards and Henrys, they had, both the one and the other, developed, rather than exhausted, their national resources.
The great elective Germanic empire, so famous under its Henry the Fowler and
its Otho, of the 10th and 11th centuries, after a partial diminution of strength
and glory through its wars with the Romish bishops and Italian and Swiss republics,
in the 12th, 14th, and 15th centuries, had now at last, under the house of Austria,
assumed again an aspect of majesty and strength. It stretched east and north
at this time, so as to include on the one hand the kingdoms of Bohemia, and
in fine Hungary, on the other Saxony and Pomerania, even to the Baltic, in its
vast circuit. The added strength of the hereditary kingdom of Austria more than
compensated to it for what it had lost by the emancipation of Switzerland; and
moreover a nominal sovereignty still remained to it, and not a little of real
influence, over the Lombard principalities in Northern Italy.
The Duke or King of Bohemia was a feudatory of the empire, and one of the seven electors. In 1458 Podiebrand, a Bohemian, was made king; in 1471 Wladislaus son of the king of Poland, who also became king of Hungary. But for nearly the first half of the 15th century Hungary was essentially Austrian: and in 1516 on Wadislnus death, Bohemia and Hungary fell to a son of the Austrian prince; in 1529, finally, to Austria. Maximilian was elected emperor in 1493.
Finally, as regards Italy itself, Italy, the original seat of empire, and which still continued in a most singular manner to be the center and spring of the European politics, very various in the same chronological interval had been the political phases passing over it. In its northern districts, for the first two centuries and more, the Lombard cities had fulfilled their brilliant course of republican life, and republican factions: and both Pisa, and Genoa, and Venice, had successively or contemporaneously triumphed in the Mediterranean, and made their flags eminent in commerce and in war; then one and all, excepting Venice, subsided into small and not independent principalities. To the south, i. e. in Naples, after the meteor like rise and gradual fall of the chivalric Norman power in the 11th and 13th centuries, the right of sovereignty (still feudatory however to the Pope, so as under the Norman princes) had come to be alternately claimed and exercised by the royal branches of France and Spain; the fruitful germ of not far distant wars.
Once more, through central Italy, from sect to sea, the temporal sovereignty not of the kings, the republic, or the emperors, but of the Bishops of Rome, had been about the middle of this period firmly established: so that this division in central Italy was now fully recognized in the European polity as the Ecclesiastical State, or, its it was in part singularly called, the Patrimony of St. Peter. Amidst all which changes in Italian history, in the course of these four centuries, two results could not but strike the considerate mind that reflected on them: first, the perpetual abortiveness of every scheme to bind the whole country together in one great secular monarchy, like the other European kingdoms; secondly, the sustained ascendancy over all other Italian powers of the Roman See.
Thus, I say, had the states of the great European confederations of the West, in a political progression seldom interrupted, been gradually advancing in power; and assuming somewhat of the same form and relative importance that they have borne since. And during their various processes of change and fortune they had, one and all, been advancing also from a state of barbarism to comparative civilization. Chivalry, during its reign of two centuries, and with the Crusades from A.D. 1100 to A.D. 1300, as its most eminent field of display, had exercised an ameliorating influence of no little power on outward manners. Internal trade, and yet more maritime commerce, the latter increasing until it might almost be said to leave flourished, both to the north, in the German Sea and Baltic, and southward in the Mediterranean, specially with those countries of the East with which the Crusades had early anti intimately connected the Western merchants, this commerce, I say, had not only augmented the general opulence of the community, but prepared and led to civil liberty: so that many free towns and cities had come to be established for the benefit of trade; alike in Italy, on the Baltic coast, along the rivers of Germany, in England also, and Spain, and in a measure in France. And both in England and France, Spain anti Germany, feudal servitude, that relic of the Gothic anti Frankish conquests, had gradually disappeared before it.
Meantime also the intellectual energies had been awakened from their long comparative slumber. Universities had in the 12th and 13th centuries risen up in every country, and in every country been thronged with students; at Oxford and Cambridge, Paris and Montpellier, Bologna anti Padua, Salamanca and Prague. And although for some long time, notwithstanding the full course proposed of study in the arts, medicine, jurisprudence, theology, in consequence of the scholastic philosophy prevailing, it was only the intellectual exercise that profited, and but little real light of science accrued to the associated students, yet at length in the 14th century (a century illustrious as the era of Dante and Petrarch) a fairer literature, and larger range of study and of thought, opened before them.
Still more in the earlier half of the 15th, after the invention of printing, (an invention bearing date A.D. 1440,) and when the scholars of Greece, with their books and their learning, were fleeing westward, in numbers more and more, for refuge from the impending ruin of their empire under the Turkish woe, with the stores of ancient classic literature thus fully at length set before them, the Western literati all eagerly pursued the study of it. Their ardor was that which is natural to the human mind on some new and vast discovery.
Yet once more, throughout the greater part pf the period we speak of, religious zeal (if such it may be called) had been a feature in the character of these nations of the West, strongly marked and powerfully acting. The wars of the Crusades stand prominent on the military page of history, a similar and most remarkable memorial of it. And, as memorials of it of a very different kind, but in their way scarcely less remarkable, there rose up those magnificent ecclesiastical structures of the middle ages, which still excite the admiration of the beholder, in England, France, Italy, and Germany. Certainly in the minds of those who raised them religious zeal could not have been lukewarm.
But if it be asked, and it is to this point that the apocalyptic prophecy, like the rest of the books of inspiration, specially and ever directs the attention, if it be asked what was now the character of their religion, and whether advances had been made, during the progress of these four centuries, towards the recovery of those truths and of that moral purity of the religion of Jesus, which at their opening as we have seen, had been so greatly lost, the answer is altogether unsatisfactory.
Notwithstanding the advance in the various kingdoms of the West towards political power, civil liberty, wealth, civilization, notwithstanding the development of intellectual energy, the acquirements in literature, and widespread religious, or rather superstitious zeal, there is the indubitable testimony of the most authentic records of those middle ages to the fact, that the religion prevalent was the grossest superstition; and that it was accompanied by a grievous corruption of morals, as well as darkness of religious truth.
Nor do I see how the whole could be better characterized than by that brief descriptive clause in the prediction before us, which speaks of the men that were not slain by the second woe as worshipping demons, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and wood; and of their fornications also, and sorceries, and thefts, and murders. Let us now, in respect of each of these points, examine and verify by historic fact.
And first, as to the character of the religious worship prevalent through this long middle age, up to the time of the fall of Constantinople. It is described in the opening clause of the verses before us, as that of "demons, and of idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and wood." In which statement it is the word demons that first demands notice. And, used as the term was in St. Johns time, in the current literature of the Roman world, to Signify those fictions of men's fancy the heathen gods, and adopted as that use had been in the Holy Scriptures, at the same time that the more frequent New Testament application of it to the spirits that possessed demoniacs suggested the fearful fact of living evil spirits acting, though unsuspected, in the heathen system, I say, since such was the double use of the term in the apostles time, what could he reasonably infer from the declaration here made but this; that there would have prevailed through the times referred to, and been established in the professing belt apostatized Church of Western Christendom, a system of demonolatry, the counterpart (albeit under the Christian name) of that of heathen Greece or Rome: a fact for which (as already observed) the early Apocalyptic notice of the abandonment of Christ's mediatorship and propitiation would have prepared him. More particularly that it world be one in which imaginary beings world be the objects worshipped, and for the most part the spirits of dead men deified; that they would be characterized in their worshippers fancy by about as much, or as little, of moral virtue as the gods of the heathen heaven before them; that they would be supposed to fulfill to their suppliants, just like the latter, the offices of mediators and guardian spirits; that this, false as it was and antichristian, the system would as truly be an emanation from hell as its precursor, and one in which malignant evil spirits, would as truly be the suggesters, actors, and deceivers.
Such, I say, would, as it seems to me, appear to be the intent of the predictive clause under discussion, construed according to the recognized scriptural meanings of the word demon. And of the fulfillment of the prophetic declaration, thus far, what well informed Protestant is ignorant? The Decrees of the 7th General Council, a Council already some tinge since noticed by me, as authorizing and establishing the worship of the saints and their images, were fully in force throughout the period I speak of and this by necessity more and more superseded all spiritual worship of the one true God, through the one and only true Mediator Jesus Christ.
The parallel between the deified dead men of heathenism, and those deified dead men of apostate Christendom, especially as believed in and worshipped through the middle ages, held in respect of character, (often flagitious character,) and offices, as well as of origin. Nor must I omit to observe on the similarity of worship, as in neither case confined to the abstractions of mental contemplation, but offered through the medium (as the prophecy further added, and as was sure to follow) of visible images: or on the similar variety, in respect of material and value, in the idols of either system; and the consequent adaptation of the Christian, as of the Pagan idolatry, to the circumstances of every rank in society. " Idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and wood." The fact in this point, as in every other, answered precisely to the prophecy. And thus houses as well as churches, the street corners and the highways, the cabins of the poor and the palaces of the rich, had severally their images of suitable material: and before them, through the tunes spoken of, high and low, rich anti poor, lairs and ecclesiastics, did all, in contempt of Gods command, just as their pagan forefathers alike bow down and worship.
If, in connection with this its superstition and idolatry, the morals meanwhile of Western Europe be inquired of, the answer is given in another emphatic word that we find in the predictive statement before us; which tells of "their fornications. "He who is at all acquainted with the history of the middle ages, must be aware of the wide spread licentiousness then prevailing, most of all with the clergy. Historians and poets, ballads and acts of councils, alike testify to the fact. It may perhaps be intimated by the juxtaposition and intimate association of the words in the prophetic clause, that this licentiousness was not only the accompaniment, but in a measure the effect, of the demon worshipping superstition prevalent. And certainly in many ways (I might almost say in every way) immorality and vice were fostered by it. The notions entertained of the character of some even of the most eminent of the saints worshipped, just as of those of the heathen deities in ancient times, acted as an incentive, rather than preventive, to sins of impurity. The system of indulgences, (one formed on the notion of their saints supererogatory merits,) according to which sins of this class might at a very cheap rate be atoned for and pardoned, confirmed men in the light notions prevailing of their guilt and evil. And the very pilgrimages to one and another of their saints shrines, which were enjoined so frequently in the middle ages, as one kind of penance for sin and means to its remission, being enjoined on multitudes of both sexes at the same time and to the same place, were notoriously the occasion of immorality on the largest scale. Further, the compulsory celibacy of the clergy, a rule enforced under the strongest penalties throughout the Romish Church, from the time of Gregory VII, downward, as also that of the monks and nuns, involved the depravation, as it was sure to do, both among and around them, alike of the outward morals and of the heart: add to which the fact of the regular Episcopal licensing of fornication among the priesthood, already noted with reference to an earlier age; and which continued through these four centuries, indeed, it will appear, still later. Once more the practice of auricular confession, a practice recommended and fostered, we have seen, by the Popes from early times, but which was for the first time authoritatively enjoined, as an integral and necessary part of the Romish religion, in the 4th Lateran Council, A.D. 1215, that "damnable system of the confessional," as it has been called in its late exposure? I say this practice of auricular confession, besides its other appalling evils, made the tainting of the female mind an integral part of Romish priest craft, and gave consecration to the communing of impurity.
If it be asked, again, how a system of religion could be admitted and believed in, so monstrous, and so opposed, not to the spirit of the Bible only, but even to the moral sense of the natural conscience, we may remind the reader, first, that the religion of the Bible was then almost unknown; next, that the complacency of the natural corruption in a religion in many ways so suited to it, was sure with the larger number to dull the moral sense, and still the misgivings of conscience. But, besides this, he who would understand the general credence yielded to it, must never forget the lying sorceries with which, as here also pre-intimated, the priests in those dark ages supported it. Just as in every country where heathen idolatry has been established the priesthood have, alike in ancient and in modern times, hall their magical deceits wherewith to work on the credulity of a superstitious people, so it was in those middle ages with the priests of the Romish Church; and indeed subsequently also, in proportion as the ignorance prevailing might allow of the practice.
Who that is acquainted with its history knows not of the impostures through which miracles were, through all this long period, assumed to have been wrought, whether by the priests themselves directly, or yet more by the relics or images of saints, the priests puppets: images "which could neither see, nor hear, nor walk;" but which were yet very many of theta asserted, and believed, to be possest of human senses, and to exercise the power of making the lame to walk, restoring sight to the blind, and hearing to the deaf: and the saints indeed were on this account canonized, as it was called, by the Pope; in other words deified? Who knows not of the pretended but lying visions related by priests of what was passing in purgatory; and of the asserted effect of the masses, prayers, and indulgences purchased for their relief, on the souls suffering in it? "It must not be supposed," says Mr. Hallam, "that these absurdities were produced by ignorance. In most cases they were the work of deliberate imposture." They were the sorceries, whereby to stupefy and to charm, specified both here and elsewhere in the Apocalypse, as one of the deadly unrepented sins of Papal Rome that great city which is spiritually called Egypt and Babylon; and which was indeed, though under a Christian name, the very representative in this respect, as well as others, of heathen Egypt and heathen Babylon before it.
But wherefore did the priesthood and the monks, the bishops and the popes, thus with one consent deceive? Another of the characteristic words in the clause we are considering points out the master motive; "They repented not of their thefts." No doubt ambition and pride operated with most in the ecclesiastical higher stations, indeed with more than the high ones in the priesthood; and again, with many, a dark, blind superstition: but the love of money, that root of all evil, operated with all. Hence the value fraudulently assigned to relics: of which ( just as in the time of Gregory I, and even before it,) the demand and the supply were incessant through the dark ages in Western Christendom! Hence the exaltation of this and that saints miracle working merit, in order to draw deluded votaries to make their pecuniary offerings at the shrine; and the canonization of new saints, and dedication of new images, when the interest of the old was partially worn out. Hence the invention and sale of indulgences, first by the bishops, alike to clergy and people; afterwards, in the 12th century, by the popes as a papal monopoly: through the which indulgences, in virtue of a sufficient money payment, not the ecclesiastical penance only, due to sin, but even that of purgatory, was now declared to be remitted
Hence the prescription of pilgrimages, as an act of pennance, to shrines of smaller note or greater, and to be performed on a larger scale or less, individually or inmultitudes; above all, of pilgrimage to Rome, on the gigantic scale of the Jubilee. The which latter institution, first invented and promulgated by Pope Boniface VIII, in the year 1300, as in lieu of crusades to Jerusalem, was responded to eagerly by all of Western Europe; the enactment being that each 100th year, and afterwards each 50th, then each 33rd, in virtue of a pilgrimage to Rome, and visitation of its churches, every sin was to be cancelled to the pilgrim and his salvation assured.
Hence, after his death, the tales to suviving relatives of the efficacy of the mass for the dead, and of the indulgences bought by survivors, to free the soul from purgatory. To which might be added, within the church itself, the long established system of the sale and purchase of ecclesiastical dignities from Rome: and the episcopal licences of fornication, regularily granted to the priesthood century after century, as we have seen, at a money price. But indeed, on this subject, having once began, where shall it end?
There is yet another heavy charge against Western Christiandom, during "the hour, and day, and month, and year" in the predictive verse before us; the charge of murders. Need I explain to the reader, how exactly how exactly this answers also to the facts ofthe ecclesiastical history of Western Europe during the latter half of these four centuries? He will also be aware, no doubt, how from early in the 12th century a few, congregationally or individually, began to teach more openly, what had never indeed been altogether untestified, a purer doctrine: a doctrine derived not from priestly legends, or from the schools, not from the decrees of Popes or Councils, or from any books of human literature, but from a book, now all but forgotten, if not unknown, not by the laity only, but by most too both of honks and of the clergy, the Book of the Holy Scriptures. The moral excellence and innocence of these Waldenses is, for the most part, confessed even by their enemies.
And with written authority for their doctrines so unquestionable, with the internal evidence of its own excellence confirming, and the innocence of their lives recommending it,it might surely have been hoped, that not the general attention only, but the general favour, would have been conciliated towards it and them; the partial opening, and almost rediscovery to the French laity, of the Book of God hailed with joy; and s foundation laid, in its knowledge and study, for a real and general amelioration of morals. Instead of this, what read we? The book itself was quickly denounced by both Pope and priesthood, and partially suppressed. And against them the cry of heretics was raised; and their extermination forthwith, and long after, urged as one of the most meritorious of religious duties. First, in the 3rd Lateran Council, A.D. 1179, anathema was declared against certain dissentients and heretics of cognate character; then against the Waldenses themselves, in papal Bulls of the years 1183, 1207, 1208. Again, in a decree of the 4th Lateran Council, held A.D. 1216, a Crusade, as it was called, was proclaimed against them: and "plenary absolution promised, to such as should perish in the holy war, of all sins committed from the day of their birth to that of their death." "And never," says Sismondi,"l had the cross been taken up with more unanimous consent: " and never, we may add, was the merciless spirit of murder exhibited more awfully in all its horrors. It was accompanied and followed by the Inquisition;
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an institution assignable to Dominic, or rather Gregory IX, as its earthly author, but evidently and originally the invention of hell: that horrid tribunal which carried on its inquest after heresy unseen, but with the power of the secular arm, the Princes of the West, supporting it, "into all the individualities and privacies of domestic life. The same spirit was manifested on the attempts at a revival of religion in England from 1360 to 1380, by Wicliff; and in Bohemia, some thirty or forty years after; on its revival by Huss and Jerome.
Thus, during the latter half of the four centuries that we speak of, whether under the name of Petrorussians, Catharists, Waldenses, Albigenses, Wickliffites, Lollards, Hussites, Bohemians, Thaborites, not dissentient heretics only, but disciples of Christ the most genuine, if dissentient from the Romish Church, were marked out as sheep for the slaughter. Popes and councils, priests and people, the secular powers and the spiritual, all united in the war cry: and racks and gibbets, fire and sword, were deemed the fit weapons to use against them. Murder was one in the black catalogue of the sins, during this period, of Papal Christendom. Such were the prominent characteristics of what was then called religion in in Western Europe: and so did idolitry mark it, togeather with sorceries, fornications, theft, murders for its concomitants, just as described in this brief but most significant predictive clause, through the "hour, day, month, and year," up to the fall of the Greek Empire.
The devotees to chivalry and romance, indeed would paint these middle ages as the ages of faith: and the lovers alike of mysticism and ritualism as periods of the illumination and Perfection of the Church But the religious cotemplated by the majority of such describers, is obviously the imaginative and the external; not that which the Bible alone recognizes of heart cleansing practical godliness. And the generalizing inductive process by which some, from a series of carefully selected extracts out of the voluminous scholastic and mystic writers, with more or less of moral beauty in them, and more or less of religious truth, would infer such a religion as, the spirit of the urge, carries its own refutation with it! On this point appeal must be made to the facts of history. And these are as directly against the representations alluded to, as they accord in every iota with the wonderful predictive statement now before us.
Nor, as the prophecy further intimated, did the terror of the fall of Constantinople induce either reformation or repentance. Of these not a sign is discoverable in the acts, or history, either of the ruling powers or body corporate of Western Christendom. Rather there is to be perceived, in respect of the sins here reprobated, fresh authorization and fresh addition. And so we come to show,
Thus, first, as to the established demonolatry. It was in 1460 that the Dominican Alain de la Roche, in hyper duleia of the Virgin Mary, revived in the Christian world the use of the rosary first invented by Dominic the mechanical devotion of which, with its 15 bead told decads of Aves and Pater Nesters intermingling, embraced alike by high and low, laics and ecclesiastics, became soon the rage in Christendom; and, consecrated by Papal sanction, still continues. It was in 1746 that Pope Sixtus the IVth, in support of the same favorite branch of demonolatry, gave sanction to an annual festival in honour of the Virgins immaculate conception ; condemning and excommunicating its impugners: a dogma this not only palpably false, absurd, and unscriptural, but which had hitherto, since first it was agitated, some 300 years before, by the Franciscans, been left even by Popes and Councils undetermined. Further the system of canonization was still continued, and, by mere Papal fiat, added to the old. For example, in 1460 the enthusiast Catharine of Sienna was canonized by Pope Pius II; in 1482 Bonaventura the blasphemer, by Sixtus IV; and in 1494, by Alexander VI, the more respectable name of Archbishop Anselm. Alexander's Bull, in language more heathen than Christian, avows it to be the Popes duly thus to choose out, and to hold up the illustrious dead, as their merits claim, for adoration and worship.
Again, with the increasing demonolatry, both sorceries and thefts increased also. Rosaries were for sale; and blasphemous visions and lying miracles were, with the most solemn asseverations, urged by Alain and his fraternity in promotion of the sale. Indulgences invited the devout to the celebration of the immaculate conception; the rites of which were to bring gains, as usual, to the priests that celebrated them, and rob the poor worshipper. Each act of canonization was a recognition of the new saints miracle working, whereby to draw devotees and offerings to the local shrine. Nor did Rome accord the canonization without first itself receiving payment. In similar consideration for himself and his capital, Pius 11 (Pope from 1464 to 1471) reduced the jubilee cycle for pilgrimages to Rome from one of 33 to one of 25 years; thereby accelerating the return of that absurd but most lucrative ceremony" For those who could not go on pilgrimages to the saints shrines, relics were farmed, and indulgences also, all through this half century ; and the country overrun by the hawkers that farmed them.
With the latter, as the 16th century opened; the name of Tetzel is infamously associated: (of whom more a little later:) and, connected as this was with the legends invented and preached to promote the sale, it may be considered as the crowning example, at this epoch, of the union of thefts and sorceries in the Papal system.
Meanwhile impurity had advanced also; chiefly among the priesthood. The Popes led the way. So Innocent VIII, elected in 1484 to be the Holy Father of Christendom; whose character is told in the well known allusive epigram So Alexander VI, his successor: who at the close of the 15th century stood before the world a monster, notorious to all, of impurity, as of every other vice. Rome throughout copied his example. "Most of the ecclesiastics," says the historian Infessura, "had their mistresses; and all the convents of the capital were houses of ill fame." And, as at Rome, so in the provinces. In many places the priests paid the bishop a tax for the woman with whom he lived, anti for every child he hall by tier: (so established and unblushing was the custom, now of above six centuries duration:) and Erasmus tells of a German bishop publicly declaring, at a grand entertainment that 11,000 priests had come to him for that purpose. Could the confessional but add to the mischief? The leprosy affected Christendom.
Finally, there was a notable persistence in the murders of Christ's saints. Of insulated cases I will notice only that of the Dominican Savanarola; an enthusiast, but one of the wisest and worthiest of the ape: who, on preaching at Florence against the vices of Rome, and predicting, what his soul longed for, an approaching theocracy under the Lord Jesus, in place of the then corrupt government, was in 1498 seized by the Papal emissaries, and burnt at the stake. More early in the half century, and on a scale of magnitude such as to force the worlds attention to them, anti-heretical crusades had been proclaimed and carried on. The Bohemians and Waldenses were the victims.
Against the former Paul the 2nd urged the crusade. Elected Pope himself in the year 14614, because as a Venetian he seemed the fittest of the Cardinals to direct the energies of Christendom against its dreaded foe the Turks, he actually diverted the Hungarian King from warring against thorn to warring against these Bohemian Hussites; and promised him the crown of Bohemia as his guerdon. Fiercely, but in this case vainly, the war raged seven years. Then the old policy was resorted to, to conquer by dividing. The Calixtines, the less decided and spiritual of the dissentients, were incited against the Taborites, the more spiritual: from the remnant of which latter there had already, indeed since the year 1457, sprung a distinct church, under the name of the United Brethren. And the civil persecution thus arising proved to this little remnant more bitter, and more murderous, than all they had suffered in common with the rest from external war.
In the war against the Waldenses of Piedmont, in the years 1477 and 1488, by Popes Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII, the same spirit presided. Having commented on the heresies of the Vaudois, Pope Innocent commanded all archbishops, bishops, and vicars to obey his inquisitor, and engage the people to take up arms, with a view to so holy and necessary an extermination ; granting indulgences to all that would make the crusade against them, and authority to apply to their own use whatever property they might seize. It was then that 18,000 regular troops burst upon the valleys. And, had not a feeling of compunction visited the sovereign, Philip of Savoy, the work of destruction would probably have been complete. Then too was accomplished the actual extirpation of the Christians of Val Louise in the High Dauphiny. "Having retired," says the historian, "into the caverns of the highest mountains, the French kings lieutenant commanded a great quantity of wood to be laid at the entrance of those caverns, to burn or smoke them out. And some were slain in attempting to .escape. Some threw themselves headlong on the rocks below: some were smothered. There were afterwards found within the caverns 400 infants stifled in the arms of their dead mothers. It is believed that 3000 persons perished in all, oil that occasion, in the valley. "May not the blood well curdle at the recital of such atrocities?
Once more, it was in 1478 that that reform, as it was called, of the Inquisition took place, the Pope and King of Spain combining in the arrangement, whereby it was rendered an instrument of persecution and murder far more perfect than before. In the first year alone 2000 were burnt as victims. These furnished to it its prelibation of blood. Each year others followed. It is Llorentes computation from official documents, that from this its reorganization, to the commencement of the Reformation in 1517, there were 13,000 persons burnt by it for heresy, besides 8700 burnt in effigy, and 169,000 condemned to penances What it was prepared to do, with the torture and the stake, on the outbreak of the Reformation, who knows not?
Thus have we historic proof, in respect of the latter half of the 15th century, following the fall of Constantinople, as well as in respect of the four centuries that preceded it, of the fulfillment of every particular in the prophetic statement before us. "The rest of the men, who were not killed by these plagues, yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and wood neither repented they of their sorceries, nor of their fornications, nor of their thefts, nor of their murders. "Let me earnestly request my readers to pause and reconsider the perfect coincidence between this plain unsymbolic prophecy, in all its many plain but most characteristic details, and the religious history and character of Papal Christendom, during the four centuries of the progress of the Euphratean Turks to the destruction of the Eastern Empire, and the half century following.
Let him consider the coincidence not merely as in itself perfect, but as furnishing a corroboration, the value of which cannot be; too highly estimated, to our previous explanation of the preceding symbolic prophecies; about which symbols there might seem to some more ground for doubt and hesitation. Let him remember moreover that my historic proof as to the Papal idolatry, sorceries, fornications, thefts, murders, has been fetched, not from obscure questionable sources, but from records the most authentic: indeed very chiefly from the Papacy's own writers, and own Decrees either of Councils or of Popes. As to its idolatry I must, in conclusion, add that of the Turkman himself, after his storming of Constantinople: a testimony drawn up so precisely in the language of the Apocalyptic passage before us, as well as at the precise epoch prefigured, that one might almost believe it to have been copied thence, did one not know the impossibility of the thing. It was on the 2nd of August, A.D.1469, that Mahomet the 2nd had published in all the mosques of his empire the vow following. " I Mahomet, son of Amurath, . . emperor of emperors and prince of princes, from the rising to the setting sun, promise to the only God, Creator of all things, by my vow and by my oath, that I will not give sleep to my eyes, that I will eat no delicates, that I will not seek out what is pleasant, that I will not touch what is beautiful, nor turn my face from the West to the East, till I overthrow, and trample tinder the feet of my horses, the gods of the nations, those gods of wood, of brass, of silver, of gold, or of painting, which the disciples of Christ have made with their hands."
And so the 15th century closed in. Wretched, I play say hopelessly wretched, seemed the state of the Church at that epoch: hopeless to the reflective and philanthropic statesman or ecclesiastic; hopeless almost to the real Christian. And more especially for this reason: because it was not the mere fact of the present existence of moral and religious corruption that met the eye in the gloomy prospect, grievous though this was, and such as to force confession from every quarter: but there was the fearful superadded fact, also, that remedies such as human wisdom could suggest, had, during the long period of the accumulation of these corruptions, been tried one after another, and failed; yea, the Christian might think within himself, and the efforts also of really Christian reformists, his brethren before him. Indeed the fact of the trial and failure of these various remedies seems to me so important to the right appreciation of the hopelessness of things at the epoch before the Reformation, that I cannot feel it right to conclude this historical chapter without a brief notice of them. I speak particularly of those remedies which, before the face of Christendom, human policy had suggested and tries! for the amelioration of the corruptions of the Church ; in so far as they affected that which alone human policy concerns itself with, the well being of the social system.
It is to be remembered then that at the commencement of the four and a half centuries we have been reviewing, the prestige had already begun to pass away from the minds of the more intelligent, tinder which Charlemagne and his successors in the kingdoms of the West had considered it their policy to accord political power, and privileges almost indefinitely great, alike to the priesthood and hierarchy of their respective states, and to the Bishops of Rome; as if the best and only means of softening and civilizing the minds of the semi barbarous population under their sway. Proud, ambitious, idle, covetous, it had come to be understood that the great object with both the priesthood in general, and with the hierarchy heading them, was not the religious improvement of the community, but their own aggrandizement. Moreover the morals of these ecclesiastics were seen to be as corrupt, for the most part, or even more so, than of those whom they should have reformed. And thus the cry had now risen up against them, and it waxed louder and louder through the 12th century, as constituting almost the chief cause, instead of the chief cure, of the prevalent immorality and irreligion.
It was when this impression was rife and strong, (being early in the 13th century,) and when the ecclesiastical power, and even Papacy itself, might seem to have been jeoparded by it, that there arose the two mendicant order of monks, the Dominicans and Franciscans; acknowledging, as if to meet the emergency of the case, the general corruption of the clergy, asserting that their wealth had caused their corruption, and issuing forth from Rome, themselves bound by a vow of poverty, as the heaven sent reformers of Christendom. The revival of preaching by them, a portion of the ministerial office almost abandoned at this time by the established clergy, was well suited to increase the hope and expectation of good from their mission. It was possible, men thought, that what the Franciscans declared might be true; and that they were the fulfillment of the prefigurative vision of the Apocalyptic angel, that flew abroad having the everlasting Gospel to preach to every nation under heaven. For near two centuries did the popular enthusiasm, in every country of the West, set in towards these mendicant Friars, as well as the Papal favour.
The parochial clergy complained in vain of the neglect now continually shown to their order, and the desertion of their ministrations. The confidence of the public rested on the mendicant Friars, as alone exhibiting to the world an image of primitive simplicity and self denial, alone acting out moreover the part of evangelists, and consequently as alone the true ministers of Jesus Christ. At length however it was seen, and Wicliff most of all men helped forward the conviction, that covetousness might lurk even under the guise of poverty, ambition under that of humility. The lying fables and ridiculous superstitions, that formed the subject. matter of their preaching, were unmasked; their intellectual emptiness and frivolity, their hatred of learning, their quarrelsomeness, proselytism of the ignorant youth,* and, against those whom they deemed heretics, their bigot cruelty. The result of their influence and preaching was seen to be anything rather than the reformation of the community. In England the reaction was such that their very name became offensive, and warrants were issued for their arrest. But to rid themselves of this more recent evil proved to the men of Christendom as difficult as deliverance from the old. The Pope, the supreme Head of Christendom, was found to be their patron; as indeed of almost all the corruptions under which it laboured. And against the Pope who could contend?
Then were the eyes of all that wished for an amelioration of things directed to a General Council as the panacea; a Council not such as former ones, mere mouthpieces of the Popes, but free and independent. The cry for it waxed louder and louder during the celebrated 40, or 50 years schism, from 1377 to 1424 A.D: when rival Popes were all anathematizing each other from Rome, from Avignon, or from Sicily; and the scandal of such a disunion in the visible Church was palpable and offensive. So the memorable Council of Constance was assembled A.D. 1114: and, with a view to the necessary power for remedying the evils in the church and Christendom, the great principle was asserted, that Popes themselves were inferior in authority, and subject, to a General Council. But, as to any real moral or religious reformation from it, the expectations so highly universally raised ended, like those before, in disappointment. In the matter of Huss and Jerome, (to which I have had occasion already to allude,) the Council exhibited itself as the ready copartner with Popes and clergy, in acts of falsehood, treachery, and oppression the most infamous. The reformation of the church attempted by it proved to be insufficient, and only external. And even in respect of this, the new Pope, almost as soon as elected, found means of thwarting its intentions, and showing its impotency. Yet more in the subsequent General Councils of Ferrara and Florence, held about the middle of the 15th century, the very principle of the subordination of Popes to Councils, from which so much had been hoped, was formally renounced. The Council of Basle indeed reasserted it, but was at last worsted in the struggle by the Popes. Eneas Sylvius, its most celebrated advocate, having been made Pope, issued his own solemn Bull in retractation of it. The secular powers, wearied with the ineffectual struggle, showed themselves less and less careful for the most part to reassert it. As the 15th century drew towards a close, the old clerical dogma had manifestly risen into re-ascendancy, that the Pope, as in Gods place on earth, could not err, and by earthly powers might not be controlled.
There remained yet another remedy, from which the more intellectual spirits of the 15th century hoped highly I mean the light of literature, which had now at length broken on the long intellectual night preceding; and which the contemporaneous invention of printing, and flight of the Greek literati, with their literary treasures, into the kingdoms of Western Europe, had combined, as was be fore said, to accelerate. Nor indeed was its effect on the established religion, and the church, small or unimportant. From Dante in its earlier twilight to Erasmus, some two centuries after, at the day dawn, the effect was more and more to expose, in the light of common sense and intellectual truth, alike the corrupt morals of the clergy, and the absurdity and falsehood of much of the long received system of superstition. And it was not merely the laity that felt the influence. By the higher and more educated of the ecclesiastics it was felt also; especially in Italy, that cradle of the newborn classic literature of Europe. But in what spirit? And to what practical result? Was it so as to induce a purer faith, and an abandonment of the superstitions and corruptions thus exposed to view? Far from it. The faith of the gospel of Jesus classic literature professed not to teach, nor indeed itself knew. This lay hid in the Bible: a book still little known; and, where known, by the mere classic enthusiast despised.
Literature without the Bible could make infidels; it could not make Christians. Such was its effect then. As to the superstitions established, false as they were now felt to be, the selfish interests involved in their retention on the clergys port, and on the laitys the penalties of heresy, forbade their abandonment. Nor did the new philosophy make objection. It professed nit the martyrs spirit;: nor had it any more the wish than the power to arouse the conscience, or turn the heart to repentance. Thus the superstitions of the Romish apostasy were in outward rite and form persisted in as before: while the current conversational language, and even the writings of high ecclesiastics, evidenced their unbelief in them; the fashion having arisen to give them, as much as possible, a classic and a heathen turn. Instead of its reforming the church, the effect on the great glass of the ministering priesthood, of this boasted march of literature and intellect, was only to add to their other corruptions a more unblushing profaneness and hypocrisy.
Above all, this was the case at Rome. The character that has been given of the last Pope of the 15th century, was in a measure applicable also to the literary cardinals anti hierarchy of Rome gathered round him. It was an atheistic priesthood; and its hypocrisy deliberate, systematic, avowed, and unblushing, before the face of God and man.
Such was the approved futility and failure of each human scheme and effort at amelioration of the corruptions of the church; amelioration of them, I mean, in so far as they shocked the public mind, and palpably affected the public weal. As the 16th century opened, there were indeed still many proficient in literature that looked for a change, though a change they knew not what, as the result of the literary and intellectual development in progress. Nor had the hopes from an independent Council been altogether abandoned. In fact a Council with this pretension had gathered just at this time at Pisa; disavowed by the Pope and the rest of Christendom, but with a few cardinals and the French king supporting it. Its feebleness was however manifest. The hopes that centered round it were but the shadows of what, a century before, had attended and watched around the gathering at Constance. On the whole, the evils of the church seemed to be beyond the reach of human remedial policy or power. And with many of the more reflective, doubtless, the suspicion had arisen that the disease must needs be deeper seated, as well as the remedy more powerful and searching, than any yet suggested. In effect such was the very case. It was apostasy from their God and Saviour which constituted the essence of the disease that hall so long afflicted Christendom. And remedy there could be none but the republication of his own gospel of grace, and with the power of his own Spirit accompanying it.
Nor let it be forgotten, finally, though this is not the place to dwell on it, that some there had been, and were, that understood this truth of the case, both as regarded the disease and the remedy. The off scouring perhaps of men, but the beloved of God, they answered to the 144,000, that had been prefigured in vision as the " called, and chosen, and faithful," which would as a body remain indestructible before Him: the most of these being indeed only Gods secret ones: but some, bolder and more discerning, his witnesses in an apostate world; and with a view imprest on and avowed by them, respecting, the existing corruptions, precisely similar to that which is here exprest by their representative St. John. Of these last many and earnest had been the efforts, (as I have already just hinted, and must in my chapter on the Witnesses notice again more at large,) to make the gospel of the grace of the Lord Jesus known among men. And many too and earnest had been their prayers; and high doubtless at times their hopes, through these dark ages, that He, whom to know was light anti life, would at length signally interfere for his own cause and church: But time went on, and he appeared not ; the first watch of the night, the second watch, the third watch. Their strength was spent. Their hopes waxed fainter. Persecuted, proscribed, wasted, scattered, their enemies seemed to have all but prevailed against them: and not against them only, but against the cause clearer to them than themselves; the cause of truth, the cause of Jesus. When the Bohemian remnant in 1495, 1497 sent into each part of Christendom, to see if there were any beside themselves to testify for Jesus, they found none It seemed almost as if he had forgotten them; and the promise had become a dead letter, that the gates of hell should not prevail against them. But could it be so? Oh no! Just at this crisis of extremity the truth of the promise was to be made signally manifest. The very next vision in the Apocalyptic drama, that of the descent pf the covenant Angel, and of the raising and ascension of his two witnesses from their apparent state of death, (for the vision is plainly continuous up to this latter figuration, and the whole included under the latter half of the sixth Trumpet,)I say the very next Apocalyptic vision represented to St. John that same glorious intervention of the Lord Jesus, which had been so long looked and prayed for. The next scene in the drama of European history is that of the REFORMATION.