VI.

CHAP. continue to be the same, if we profess the same religion; I say, whoever is of that opinion, let him first persuade the Duke of Savoy and the Commonwealth of Genoa to restore all Liguria (that is, all that is now the river of Genoa) and Piedmont to the Pope; because Arithpertus, King of the Lombards, gave the same to St. Peter, and the Bishops of Rome : let the Duke of Mantua and the other Princes of Italy restore Mantua, and all the other towns that belonged to the Exarchate; because Pepin heretofore granted them to the Pope and his successors: let the most Catholic King put his kingdom of Corsica, and Sardinia, and even Sicily itself, into the Pope's possession; because Ludovicus Pius granted and dedicated those kingdoms to the church: let our Catholic countrymen, and their neighbours of Germany and France, engage their persons and their fortunes in a war upon the Holy Land, as their ancestors used to do: and let the Catholics of this time make voyages to the Grand Signior and the Emperors of Persia to affront them, and to draw the honour of martyrdom upon themselves, as some of the primitive Christians did to the Heathen Emperors: let all this be done, or else let it be confessed, that the religion and piety of all ages is not obliged to produce the same fruit and effects; and that we may very well retrench the privileges which our ancestors granted to churchmen, in a time when they were found to be the best props and supporters of the peace and security of kingdoms, and paid themselves and exacted from others, in point of conscience, the most entire and sincere obedience to the laws established, and were very rarely prosecuted, but for their signal piety and integrity. I say, that the wisdom of Christian States

and

VI

and Princes may now very justly revoke the privi- CHAP. leges that were granted to those men in those times, upon their too sad experience, that the successors of those men do not retain the virtue and sincerity of their predecessors; but that, instead thereof, they disturb the quiet and peace of kingdoms, dispose the subjects to irreverence towards their Princes and their laws, and then to rebellion against them; and that, upon pretence of paying obedience to a foreign spiritual jurisdiction, they withdraw that submission to the temporal, without which the foundations of government must be dissolved.

CHAP. VII.

Farnese.

Paul III. A. D. 1534. to Pius V. A. D. 1566. From the calling, to the conclusion, of the Council of Trent.

Paul III. HAVING done with Clement, we proceed in the disquisition of the reign of his successor Paul the Third.

We might indeed now discontinue the method we have hitherto pursued in the examination and survey of the lives of the successive Popes; since, as it doth appear, (by the instances given before,) that from the time of St. Peter to this last successor of his, there hath not been one half a century of years in which it hath not been sufficiently evinced, that the successors of St. Peter either did not challenge or assume to themselves that power and authority which is now claimed by divine right, and as established by Christ himself; or, that they were opposed and contradicted in the point by considerable parts of the Christian Church, which rejects it from being a Catholic verity; so also it will not be denied by any man, but that, since the time of Clement the Seventh, so many great kingdoms and dominions and nations have renounced that subjection, that (being added to those who had either never acknowledged or formerly withdrawn themselves from it) the Ro

man

VII.

man Church at present is deprived of the force of its CHAP. common and vulgar argument, by which it prevails over too many, from the number and multitude of its communion, and doth not now contain or comprehend near the third part of the Christian Church.

I shall choose however to prosecute the order that I observed before, in view of the several actions and attempts of those who have succeeded, and have still continued the same pretences; by which as great mischiefs have befallen the Christian world as heretofore. And it cannot but be convinced, by the experience it hath had since that time in the foul practice and proceedings in the conclaves, how little our Saviour hath to do in the election of his own Vicar, and how much the two crowns of France and Spain; for the power of all other Catholic Princes serves to no other purpose than to crown the triumphs of one of those factions. And as they are pleased to make it an argument of the presence of the Holy Ghost in those elections, because, at the entering into the conclave, (notwithstanding all the brigues and corrupt public interpositions,) nobody had yet ever named or foreseen who would come out Pope; so it is in truth a shrewd argument of the absence of the Holy Ghost from those conventions, because so many men are able to foresee and foretell who shall not be elected Popes; since no man hath yet, from the time we are speaking of, ever been chosen Pope who hath by name been excluded by either of the two crowns: so that if the Holy Ghost be not totally excluded, (as many believe it to be,) it is at least limited and restrained from its voluntary and free operation; of which it will be impossible to avoid saying more hereafter.

Paul

СНАР..
VII.

Council

not assem

effectual

during his reign.

Paul the Third had been forty years Cardinal, and was sixty-six years of age, when he was chosen Pope; of Trent which, together with the opinion of his gravity, and called: but austerity of his nature, contributed very much to his bled to any election. Besides which, the iniquity of that time, purpose and the depraved manners of the Court of Rome, gave occasion to so universal a scandal, that both the Emperor and King of France, and all other Catholic Princes, had called loudly upon Clement for a General Council; and threatened, if he should defer the calling of it, (for he still promised to do it though he never meant it,) that they would call a National Council themselves in their own dominions; which those of the reformed religion (who were now very considerable both in Princes and people) more desired, as being more equal, and like to produce a more reasonable reformation. Cardinal Farnese (who was now Paul the Third) had also the skill in that time to express a great bitterness against the excesses and corruptions in the Church, and to declare, that nothing was so necessary for Christianity as a General Council. And as all those Princes continued as importunate for it with him upon his election as they had been before, so they had no doubt but that he would, to satisfy his own discretion and conscience, as well as to comply with their advice and desires, make haste to give that general satisfaction. And, in a short time after he was chosen, he issued out his letters of Convocation directed to the Emperor, to whom he much more inclined than to France, and appointed the Council to assemble in Trent.

Paul had all the ambition and pride and passion of his predecessor Clement, with a stubbornness that was inflexible either by threats or importunity; and

he