Divested of its bewildering verbiage, the sum and substance of this extraordinary passage is this, that the supreme judge of princes should be the pope, and that he should have the power of employing the armed forces of Christendom to execute his sentence against any prince that should dare to prove refractory. And, as a preliminary measure, before preaching up a crusade against the offender as an excommunicated person, an Interdict, which may serve to goad innocent and unoffending subjects to madness, and drive them in desperation to rebel against their prince, and so compel him to succumb to Rome-this we are told is " a measure of mercy, an appeal, on its divine side, to Providence; on its human side, to all the generous feelings of the heart."

Every reader of English history, knows that Innocent III., finding the Interdict ineffectual, proceeded to depose John, and absolve his subjects from their allegiance. This author's view of that transaction, I apprehend, is rather an uncommon one for a member of the English church to take:

The excommunication had now been in force for three years, and John yet made light of it. There was one final measure to be tried, and Innocent had now paused long enough before having recourse to it. Let us not imagine that this was hesitation from indecision or fear. This forbearance of punishment is a peculiar feature of the papal government, and was never more remarkably displayed than by those popes who were most able to inflict it. They manifest a divine patience worthy of the highest power, the representative of that righteous Judge, who is

"strong and patient, and provoked every day." They move as under the awful consciousness that their acts will be ratified in heaven.-p. 66.

It would be impossible for me to enter into any exposure here of the treatment which facts have received at this author's hands. Nor, indeed, can it be very necessary. But, my object in quoting these passages at all, is to show the manner in which the most extravagant assumptions of the papal see are justified and defended by Mr. Newman's party. Having stated that John was deposed, the biographer proceeds in the following strain:

The deposition of a sovereign for misgovernment is always a violent measure; and the deposition of John, though all England concurred, and all Christian princes approved, was still a revolution. Revolutions have no rules; but this was as far as possible effected in course of law, and by the only authority that could pretend to any right herein. The pope was then held to be the executive of the law of nations. We are quite familiar with such powers as wielded by secular congresses in modern Europe; and the living generation has seen an assembly of diplomatists dispose of provinces and peoples, pronounce the dechéance of some monarchs, and replace them by others with lavish liberality and uncontrolled power. · In the times we write of, monarchy by right Divine had never been heard of; nay, rather, as Gregory VII. said, “The empire seemed to have been founded by the devil," while the priesthood was of God. But John had not even hereditary right to plead; he was but a successful usurper: and those who consider the necessity of the case to have justified the measure of 1688, will vindicate the right of the nation in 1213, to call to the throne a grand daughter of Henry II. in place of a prince who was overturning the laws and religion of his realm.—p. 67.

It is rather a new thing for Englishmen, lay or clerical, to endeavour to propagate the infamous doctrine of the Jesuits, that the Pope has a right to depose princes and absolve their subjects from their allegiance—a doctrine which very many Roman catholics regard with abhorrence. But is it through ignorance or a wish to mislead, that this author represents the Revolution of 1688, as a similar transaction to the deposition of John by the pope-and the pope's offering the crown of England to the French monarch, as an act of the English nation?

A little further on this author says―

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Nothing is more painful to the historian than the air of apology which the necessity of commenting on acts of past times is apt to assume. It does not need that one have a Catholic bias, but only that one have not the anti-catholic bias, to see that such acts of popes as the one in question are no far-fetched, high-flown usurpations, but only the natural, inevitable results of a public and established Christianity. It is simply an error against the truth of history to speak of the deposition and subjection of John, as has been done, as an extraordinary transaction." Not only had it, in practice, as much precedent as the nature of the case admitted, but it was the legitimate and consequential application to the particular case of the general principles of the Church which all catholics allow, and whose operation in that direction has now ceased, only because Christendom has ceased to be. Indeed, our sentiments on this matter are part of the great moral heresy of modern times. Power, according to the modern doctrine, is founded on the moral law. All power which spurns at, or which would emancipate itself from, the moral law, in fact abdicates becomes noxious to a society of which morality is the rule, and must be put down by that society.—pp. 69, 70.

Bishop Jeremy Taylor,-who, whatever he was ten years ago, must now be content to pass for a modern heretic,-observes, in his "Dissuasive against Popery," that "the order of Jesuits is a great enemy to monarchy, by subjecting the dignity of princes to the pope, by making the pope the supreme monarch of Christians; but they also teach, that it is a catholic doctrine, the doctrine of the church." Now is not this precisely the position which this author is endeavouring to maintain? The deposition of princes, and the absolving their subjects from their allegiance, are, it seems, "no far-fetched, high-flown usurpations, but only the natural, inevitable results of a public and established Christianity." The deposition of John "was the legitimate and consequential application to the particular case, of the general principles of the church which all catholics allow, and whose operation in that direction has now ceased only because Christendom has ceased to be." This I take to be simple and unmixed Jesuitism; and I must beg my reader to observe, that I do not mean to use that term here as an opprobrium. Indeed it is certain that the author of Langton's Life would take it as no small compliment, to be considered an admirer, if not a disciple of those whom he reckons "the flower of the church." I use the word

* In another part of this volume, speaking of the Cistercians, he says: "As the flower of the church, they attracted the concentrated enmity of the bad. Like the Jesuits now-a-days, they bore the burden of the world's hatred."-p. 44.

Jesuitism here, simply to signify the particular school of Romish theologians under which this party must be ranged, as advocates of the seditious impieties of Sà and Mariana. And, indeed, continually through these Lives, there are passages written in such a tone of enmity against kings and royalty, as can be traced to no other source than the schools of "the most noble and glorious company of St. Ignatius." But, be that as it may, if Mr. Newman's party choose to maintain, that doctrines so utterly subversive of government and dangerous to society, are principles "which all catholics allow," (certainly not all Roman catholics,) they must not be surprised if "catholic principles" should come to signify something bordering on disloyalty to the sovereign, and disaffection to the government. How can any set of men be trusted, who speak of such conduct as Innocent the Third's, as only the natural, inevitable results of a public and established Christianity?" And really, it is most earnestly to be hoped that some, who have too long hesitated to disclaim connexion with this party, and by their silence have led people (although they themselves may not be aware of the fact,) to reckon them among its friends, may be induced, before it be too late, to consider the character of the movement with which they have been suffering themselves to be associated in the public mind. One passage more will suffice to put the political principles of this party beyond question. The passage I refer to is that in which the author

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