the presence of a power whose natural right could not even reach to plausibility amid the scenes of political rivalry, was an element of perplexity in every dispute, and either became the victim of revenge, or the idol of victory, according to the fortunes of friend and foe. The world had still its Cæsar—not an empty and vain-glorious name, but a might resident in a manwho combined, in an unusual degree, all the several features which had served to perpetuate the name of him who made Rome his slave. Charles V. was great by a multiplication of little glories, rather than by the blaze of startling genius. He had ambition more than enough-cunning, a match for popes' prudence, that would have set a protestant canton on its feet, and, for a long time, a resolute bravery that would have adorned a Luther or helped a Jesuit. If we would estimate aright his historical glory, we must take into account the vastness and variety of the dominions he ruled, as well as the extraordinary movements of the age in which he lived. In the noon of his prosperity, but in a definite apprehension of coming disasters, he demanded a conference of the church for the removal of abuses and the settlement of matters of faith. He very soon perceived, however, that this demand, so unpleasant to the pope, and promising so little actual advantage to himself, was chiefly to be used as a threat to enforce his temporal sovereignty so far as it was in collision with the pope; and accordingly, the project of a general council was retained for many years to play the main part in imperial diplomacy. Sometimes the emperor winced under the turbulent activity of the power which Charlemagne had been powerful enough to foster and extend. At other times, seizing the tide of fortune at its flood, he dared to insult the Chair which he professed to venerate. At all times he chose to treat the popedom as he would treat any dukedom in his empire, or every monarch who sued to him for peace.

But another aspect of the times demands our instant consideration. The rapid extension of polite learning contributed, in no slight degree, to the seriousness and dignity of the universal demand for a council. Men paused in their pursuits to inquire and judge the reason of the faith that was in them;' and at the time when the council was assembled and actually deliberating on the more abstruse questions of faith, or the more unmanageable matters of ecclesiastical discipline, the breathless expectation which pervaded alike cloister and hall: shows how deeply men yearned for a certainty which had hitherto eluded their search. And what shall we say of the prelates and the pope, in reference to the contemplated event? The former, together with mitred abbots, were exclusively eligible to full membership in the council-and this, of itself,

would seem to promise an increase of the episcopal authority. Deeply anxious to recover the dignity so seriously endangered by scriptural protest and wide-spread secession, they very generally favoured the scheme, and, indeed, the very appeal to a Council they persisted in regarding as itself a positive gain to their order, so far as it recognised in that order the source of infallible and final decisions. How far this last opinion was justified by the result will presently appear.

With regard to the feeling of the popes, we can only say that they seem to have inherited in succession the general alarm; but they speedily recovered their self-possession, and proceeded to conceal such feelings under an appearance of candour and of favour to the project. For a time it served their turn as a blind, and as a means of crossing and confusing the movements of rival states. And when at last they could no longer use it as a plaything, they bent all energy, talent, perseverance, and toil, as to a crisis in which the fate of the popedom was involved. As of old, when it was no longer feasible to maintain an open refusal, she stooped, but she stooped to conquer. The necessities and demands of the age were too imperious to be superciliously ignored; but as she accepted the unwelcome challenge, the papacy resolved to win by fair means or foul, and at every hazard.

So early as 1521, Leo X. formally recognised not the demand of the reformers, but the endorsement of that demand by the princes of the empire. But death interrupted his preparations, and interposed a delay of twenty-four years. Under his two immediate successors, public fear, trouble, and discord, threw back, from its early prominence, the cry for a council. Adrian VI. was good enough to lament, and sufficiently honest to avow, the many abominations which existed near the Holy See;' and though he had been preceptor to the emperor, he was sufficiently impartial to be worthy of the confidence of every party in Europe; but he soon found himself in a position for which his simple and straightforward character was ill-adapted, and surrounded by conflicting interests which bound him hand and foot. Giulio de Medici, the cousin of Leo X., and the most active and skilful servant of Leo's court, gave every promise of ability to cope with the growing perplexities of the office to which he was promoted by the name of Clement VII. But his political relations with the emperor, whom he had long and greatly served, became complicated when the family pride of the great house from which he sprang first led him to sue for imperial help, and then to the magnanimous but futile defiance of imperial power. While he plunged into open war with the emperor, by invading Upper Italy, it was hardly to be expected

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that Ferdinand, who administered for his brother in Germany, should continue very solicitous to enforce the papal wishes on the Protestants of Germany. The only permanent effects of the rupture between Clement and Charles were the establishment of the emperor's supremacy from the Alps to the Mediterranean,' and the legalized existence of the German church. 'Clement was, indeed, the most ill-starred pope that ever sat on the throne.'

Under his successor, Paul III., the demand for a council was renewed, and this time with success; an issue mainly owing to the determined attitude of the emperor, who secretly wished his name to be associated with what he fondly imagined would prove the settlement of religious discussion in Europe. 'A council,' said he; a council we must have, and I charge myself with the execution of its decrees.' It met at last: the hope of years; it laboured artfully and long, and when it ceased, it proved the curse of ages. The circumstances in which it met were such as to disparage the meanest of its results. Then how much more to silence for ever the pretensions of infallible authority!

To quote the words of our author:

Mutual distrust, intrigues, misapprehensions, and quarrels of all sorts; acts of violence, and acts of baseness, together with the most inextricable mingling of interests, views, and passions, all manifestly and grossly human; such was the chaos from which the council was to emerge; such was the basis on which the seat was to be constructed from which God himself was to be considered as about to speak.

... It had lost its charm before it met. Twenty-five years of delays had proved superabundantly to some, that Rome did not wish for the council, never had seriously wished for it, and could not have any wish for it; to others, that the princes who had most called for it, really cared very little about it; to the Protestants, that no concession whatever would be made to them; to the Roman Catholics, that small abuses would be amended, and the great ones preserved; to all, in fine, that it would not be the church's council, but the pope's council.'

The Council assembled on the 13th of March, 1545. Two legates (both of whom became popes) arrived at the city in the mountains, and initiated, by an indulgence for which they had no papal sanction, the confederation that was to determine the enslavement of Europe. If we were disposed to cavil at the titleœcumenical' which thenceforth was assigned to the council, we might ask, how stood the representation of the Catholic world at Trent? The answer without comment is, that at the first session there were twenty-five bishops; at the close, about two hundred and fifty, but in the average, not more than fifty. Well might Paul IV. exclaim, 'What madness to have sent three score bishops from among the least capable

to a small city amongst the mountains, there to decide so many, things.' He, it is true, contrasts with complacency this assembly of incapables with the astute courtiers of Rome; but, with our author, we feel a preference for the sham council in the Tyrol over the sacred college, which ever and anon resuscitates the popedom in the person of some political adept, or some manageable puppet. Amidst incredible difficulties, the council pursued its chequered way; but when many of the prelates, emboldened by practice in the liberty of discussion, directed their harangues to the corruptions in discipline and administration, the pope was weary and afraid. Characteristically enough, the council had been summoned under the sanction of two bulls, one secret, the other for the purposes of inauguration. The unopened bull was a reserve for any emergency that might arise, and furnished the legates with authority to translate the council to some more suitable locality; such a transfer being undoubtedly equivalent to suspension.

The

With his usual caution, the pope desired the legates to await, but as soon as possible to seize, a pretext for the publication and enforcement of this unopened bull. Such pretext was found or fabricated, in the appearance of a pestilence in the city, and with exultation the ministers of Paul broke the seals of the document, which relieved them for a while from the pressure of unexampled, though it would seem not unexpected, perplexity. The special occasion of embarrassment was the presentation to the council (and unfair transmission to the pope) of a memorial which aspired to the settlement of questions deeply affecting the rights, and even the very existence of the popedom. Two questions of unequal importance, though nearly related, served to complicate and madden every debate, and at last to arrest the council in its course. more embarrassing one respected the right of the legates to the exclusive initiation of matters for discussion; the other pertained to the divine right of episcopacy! As this question was generally connected with another, on the residence of diocesans, it acquired pre-eminent importance, as a point of union between dogma and discipline. Residence was the disciplinary subject of debate; and, granting the obligation of residence, did that obligation arise from the direct command of God, or from the authority of the papal archiepiscopate? Do the bishops date their authority as co-ordinate (though subordinate) with the pope's? or are their functions merely a matter of papal regulation? If the latter, what could be the use of a council? and if the former, what meant the virtual presidency and veto of the pope? This was, indeed, a vital question; by the major part of the council it was wisely held paramount to every

doctrine, and indispensable to the arrangement of a disciplinary code. At the present juncture, it broke the axle-tree of the council's progress, and throughout it must be regarded as a sphinx proposing its insoluble riddle; the pope and the bishop being alike not only incompetent, but hardly impudent enough, to attempt an approximate answer; and though it was so fundamentally important in the constructive measures of the council, its intricacy held good as an apology for its non-solution, and it passed, with other lumber, from that turbulent sea, as a waif and stray to the custody and disposal of the pope. The translation was voted, but far from unanimously, and thus there happened not merely a suspension, but an open division. Fourteen men, who in their own sphere lauded the duty of passive obedience to the church, defied the majority of the council, and the anathemas of the pope. The majority passed with Del Monte (afterwards Julius III.) to Bologna. The minority remained at Trent, and the minority won the day. We must pass by the mazy interval between the secession of the majority under Del Monte, and the resumption of the council under the same individual as pope, in the city of Trent. Paul was dead. The idol of the Romans, and the difficulty of the world, Julius III., who had headed the translated majority, found himself obliged by the circumstances of his election to yield a reluctant consent to the re-assembling of the council at Trent. He was no novice, however, in the task which now devolved upon his administration. His legateship had put into his hands, so far as mortal could have, all the threads of the affair; and his subtlety and discernment were making amends for his first humiliation, when the disasters that befel the emperor gave an excuse for that relief which he naturally needed, and, with a better apology, he contrived a more graceful suspension. During the continuance of that suspension, there is one fact which merits more than a bare statement from us.

The nest of the Reformation, Geneva, was the object, not only of the hatred and fear, but also of the direct conspiracy of the pope. In the conduct of that conspiracy this pope sought to harmonize other conflicting interests that their joint power might be available for a brief crusade against the republic of the faith. But his efforts directly tended in their result to protect the home of Calvin, and to postpone the much desired overthrow of the temple which Jehovah had built on the shores of the Genevese lake.

At length, after the death of two succeeding popes, after the celebrated colloquy of Poissy, after many envenomed disputes as to whether the council was to be regarded as de novo, or