We return, however, to the narrative of events. When the council met, in obedience to the papal mandate, it was found to consist almost entirely of the Italian and Spanish prelates. In the first session, there were pre sent only the Pope's legates, who presided, four arch bishops, and twenty-two bishops : yet this inconsider able number immediately declared themselves to be a general council, and proceeded to determine controver sies, and to enact laws for the benefit of the church. The subsequent sittings were better attended ; hut still 'he Italian and Spanish clergy formed by far the great t r part; and, even of these, some who were refractory, and who spoke of abuses and reformations, were awed into silence by the overbearing authority of the papal legates. The Protestant leaders had long ago declined the jurisdiction of the council : they would not allow it to be a synod properly convoked ; and far less would they acknowledge it as an oecumenical assembly of the Christian church. Every thing, of course, was trans acted according to the despotic will of the holy see. The case of St Peter, whom the Protestants have justly described as the most blundering of all the apostles, was introduced, and argued at large. In the eye of Catholic interpretation, St Peter was the shepherd, and the Chris tian world were the sheep :—" Silly animals," as Lainez, the general of the Jesuits, expressed it, 66 which have no part or choice whatever in conducting themselves." St Cyprian, too,(observed the general), compares the aposto lic see to the root,the head,the fountain, the sun ; shelving, by these comparisons, that the supreme jurisdiction resides in her alone ; and that it exists in others only by derivation and participation. And this is the meaning (con tinned he) of the ancient language, when it is said, that St Peter and the Pope possess the plenitude of power, while others do nothing more than participate in the cure. To the arguments of the general no effectual re ply was made. The authority of the Pope was confirm ed in all its extent and latitude. The French ambassa dor alone appears to have spoken in favour of the Pro testants, declaring that, so far from being the cause of the troubles which existed in France, they were the in jured party. He plainly stated, that abuses had crept into the church ; that reformations were necessary ; and that his most Christian majesty, and the whole French people, expected nothing less than certain very consi derable changes. And he requested, in the name of his master, that the council should not satisfy themselves with enacting laws, but that the Pope and the clergy should make use of their power, in order to carry them into execution. " If the Fathers," said he, " should ask, why France is not in peace ?—no other answer can be given, than that which Jehu gave to Joram of old, 1172at peace (can there be) so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many ?" But if the council were unwilling to reform abuses, or to acknowledge their existence, they were sufficient ly attentive to the security of their own rights and pri vileges. They enacted many statutes, the tendency of which was, to secure the ecclesiastical orders from all interference on the part of the civil powers. By the spirit, and even by the letter of these statutes, no cler gyman could be tried in any secular court. He was responsible, indeed, in matters of civil delinquency; but, with the exception of a few cases, peculiarly ag gravated, he was responsible only to the judicatories of the church. And, even in the excepted cases, it was determined that the trial of an ecclesiastic before the secular judge must be preceded by a declaration or per mission from the episcopal court. The property of the church is pronounced to be sacred : the clergy cannot be compelled to pay taxes, even under the name of loans or free gifts, whether those taxes, loans, or free gifts, apply to their patrimonial possessions, or to the goods belonging to the community. The mandatory letters, sentences, or citations, of the ecclesiastical judges, are to be executed without inquiry or delay. From the en actments now alluded to, as well as others of a similar description, which our limits prevent us from specifying, we may form some idea of the height to which sacerdotal presumption was carried in the sixteenth century, and of that independence upon the civil authorities to which the exertions of the Romish church were so long and so unjustly directed.
But while the council were at all pains to secure their own rights and privileges, they found it necessary to put forth a statute, " concerning the rule which should be held as supreme and decisive, in matters of faith." Au ordinance relative to this important particular, was im periously demanded by the progress of the Reforma tion; and it was chiefly with a view to ascertain the opi nion of the church with regard to it, that the council had been convened. Accordingly, at their fourth sitting, and when only forty-nine members were present, they promulgated their famous decree respecting the canon of scripture, and the value of the apostolical traditions; a decree which pronounces the apocryphal books to be of the same authority with those which are genuine, and which places the traditions of the fathers on a level with both ; an enactment which declares, that the Vulgate Version of the Sacred Scriptures, though not written, as its very title implies, either in the ancient language of the prophets, or in that of the apostles and evangelists, is nevertheless to be received and used throughout the church, as authentic and canonical. Of this notable de cree, the following is a short account. It is solemnly determined, " that the books to which the designation of afiocryfihal path been given, are of equal authority with those which were received by the Jcws and the primitive Christians into the sacred canon ; that the tra ditions handed down from the apostolic age, and pre served in the church, are entitled to as much regard as the doctrines and precepts which the inspired authors have committed to writing; and that the Latin transla tion of the Scriptures made or revised by St Jerome, and known by the name of the Vulgate Translation, shall be read in the churches, and appealed to in the schools, as authentic and canonical ;" and all persons who refuse to subscribe these tenets, are anathematized, and cut off from the communion of the church. Upon this decree, which has occupied so much attention, and been the topic of so much discussion since the era of the Reformation, we shall make only one or two additional remarks. First of all, when the council were employed in concocting it, they seem to have felt indignant that pedants and grammarians (flails maitres de grammaire) should pre sume to contend about the meaning of scripture with doctors in theology. And, secondly, while they pro
nounced the Vulgate Version to be authentic and cano nical, they appointed, at the same time, a committee of six persons, apparently the whole number present that were acquainted with the original languages, to revise and correct it.
Such is the well known decree of the Tridentine coun cil, with regard to the rule of faith. It had passed with some difficulty, and not without considerable argumen tation, even among the small number of members who were present. No sooner, however, was this famous decree promulgated, than the pope, representing him self as superior to the council, and ultimate in decision, confirmed it by his apostolical authority, prohibiting at the same time all Christians, in communion with the holy see, from writing notes or comments upon it. They were not even allowed to illustrate or to defend it, with out the permission of the sovereign pontiff.
Having confirmed the decree respecting the rule of faith, as well as the other acts of the council, the next slip, on the part of the pope, was to procure the formal and implicit acknowledgment of the whole, by the dif ferent nations of Europe. The Venetians, with a duti ful submission to the supreme ecclesiastical authority, readily acquiesced. The Poles likewise expressed their willingness to abide by the decisions of the council. The Spaniards, too, manifested a considerable promptitude of comprehension and compliance; though in some pro vinces the Tridentine decrees Were received cer tain murmurings, doubts, enquiries, and It Iv'as thought that the episcopal order was too much reduced, and the powers of the papacy extended too far. Among the German Catholics, there Ivcre many N% 110 objected. But the most refractory of all the papal sub jects were the French. No commanding attitude on the part of the holy see, no stratagem of ecclesiastical dex terity on the part of its devoted agents, could induce the Gallican church to accept of the Tridentine decisions. They specified no fewer than twenty-three articles which, as they affirmed, were directly opposite, even in the very letter of the enactments, to the ancient usages of the realm ; and they pronounced them to be equally de structive of civil and of religious liberty. In all which particulars," says the celebrated Pasquicr, alluding to certain portions of the twenty-three articles, a we have found such a repugnance and contravention to our ancient liberties, that we can never be induced to receive this council. For, first of all, it takes away from the bishops the power of reforming the churches which are situated within their own dioceses ; and grants them only such a measure of power as the holy see shall think proper to allot them; a procedure which we believe to be utterly irreconcileable with the ancient canons approved of by the Gallican church. And besides this, the council seems desirous of establishing a new empire over kings, princes, barons, and every civil jurisdiction ; which, in plain language, is to introduce old abuses which we have long ago reformed. Whereas, I can demonstrate, that our national privileges, and the liberties of the Gal ilean church, are such as the authority of neither pope nor council can abrogate, being founded on the broad and sacred reason of things (aur one saincte ct gene rale.) By the admission of such decrees, (continues he), instead of securing order, we should bring in disorder, and introduce at the same time a monarchy, a thing which we have never hitherto beheld, into the middle Qf our own. Wisely, then, has this council never been received in France, by which, with a single stroke of the pen, the pope would acquire more authority than he has been able to do since the commencement of our common Christianity. I have no intention, (observes the same writer), to depreciate the good Fathers of Trent ; but I cannot help wishing that their zeal and devotion had been accompanied with a little more wis dom and discretion; and that in guarding the pretended privileges of the holy see, they had not furnished its real enemies with the fittest weapons to overthrow it." From the short account which we have just given of the Council of Trent, our readers will easily perceive, that it was by no means likely to put any effectual stop to the progress of the Reformation. It was considered by the patrons of the new opinions, as the exertion of a power which felt itself to be unstable. Its authoritative decisions were ridiculed by the Protestants, and even the Catholics have ceased to regard and to observe them with their wonted veneration. The revolutionary spirit appeared, by indications not to be questioned, in many of the kingdoms of Europe. In England, the changes were both numerous and radical. The reformations of ifenry V1H. were pr. less effectual than hasty and tumul tuous. lie was declared by his parliament to be " the supreme head, on cal th, of the church of England ;" and he proceeded, not only to secure the property be longing to the monasteries which he had suppressed, but tJ fabricate, with all his royal diligence and skill, a suitable creed for the English people. History may re ( ord him as the first layman who took to himself, in the ecclesiastical sense of the expression, the title of su preme head of the church. The rough reformations of were succeeded by the more deliberate and steady measures pursued by the government, during the mino rity of Edward VI. The Bible, which had been trans lated into English, was allowed to be more generally read; a new liturgy was composed; and the service was performed in the vernacular tongue. The persecutions under Mary, in the course of which the virtuous Ridley, and the aged Latimer, were put to death, terminated with the reign of that infatuated princess. Elizabeth, her successor, openly avowed and protected the new re ligion. The sacred scriptures, together with the liturgy and the homilies, were freely circulated. The efforts of Spain and of Rome to restore the dominion of the papacy, were crushed by the defeat cf the celebrated armada ; the Scottish Catholics in the interest of their beautiful and unfortunate queen, were no less unsuccessful ; the parliament united with the sovereign and her ministers ; a very great majority of the nation supported the mea sures of the executive ; and the reign of Elizabeth, though its full brightness is shaded by some acts of cru elty, must ever be regarded as that illustrious period, when truth and genuine Christianity secured for them selves a place, and established their abode among the English people.