of the empire, and the seat of a long race of emperors, might fairly entitle its bishop to the highest place in a general council; but did it follow that his dictates were to govern the christian world? 66 L'éloignement de leurs maitres," the absence of the emperors, when Constantinople became the imperial residence, did indeed materially accelerate the bishop of Rome's advance to despotic power; and this circumstance is supposed to be alluded to by the apostle, when, in his description of the "man of sin," in his second epistle to the Thessalonians, he mentions an obstacle to his ambition that would be removed," He who now letteth will let (or hinder) until he be taken out of the way." Nor is it a little remarkable, that a very acute historian has alluded to this very circumstance, merely as matter of history, and without the least regard to the interpretation of prophecy. "The bishops of Rome (observes Machiavel) began to take upon them to exercise greater authority than they had formerly done ....The emperor of Rome being converted.... and quitting Rome, to hold his residence at Constantinople; the Roman empire... began to decline, but the church of Rome augmented as fast." "And so (adds bishop Newton, from whom the extract is borrowed) he proceeds to give an account how the Roman empire de

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clined, and the power of the church of Rome increased, first under the Goths, then under the Lombards, and afterwards by the calling in of the Franks."* "La décadence de l'empire dans notre occident," the decline of the empire in the west, did therefore very essentially contribute, as M. Peyran remarks, to that ascendancy which the pope acquired; and its "débris,”— the wreck of that empire-became the foundation of the pope's monarchy; as has heen already shewn in a former appendix, pp. 182-5.

P. 257. "Pie VI. et le pontife actuel.”—The bishop of Pignerol had said, in his address to the Vaudois, "De notre tems l'Europe entière rend hommage aux vertus des vénérables pontifes Pie VI. et Pie VII.," but it is obvious that the private virtues of these pontiffs can never be received as the credentials of the erroneous system of doctrine maintained by the church of Rome. On the contrary, the real, and where not real, the specious virtues of the leaders of that church, tend only to confirm the ignorant in error, and lull the indolent into security; and it is too probable, that the late bishop of Rome, Pius VII. who appears to have been so worthy a man, has done more injury to the world by re-establish

*On the Prophecies, vol. i. 475. 6.

ing the order of Jesuits, than many a worthless predecessor who stands recorded as a cruel persecutor.

When the same pontiff, in 1801, issued a bull for confirming Napoleon on the throne of the Bourbons, and excluding the late Louis XVII. he performed an act, which, it may be reasonably presumed, must occasion distrust of a pope's pretensions to infallibility in the breasts of all who are attached to the Bourbon dynasty. The late tremendous revolution in France, placed Roman pontiffs, princes, prelates, and the clergy of the church of Rome, in a situation in which the meek virtues of patience and forgiveness were particularly required; and if many of them exemplified those virtues, the reformed European states also improved the favourable opportunity for exemplifying the finest features of conduct; when, past animosities and atrocities being forgotten, the unhappy fugitives which the storm of that revolution had cast upon foreign shores, were received, cherished, and protected. England, which afforded an asylum to the protestants of France, at the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and during the persecution of Louis XIV. displayed the same generous feelings towards the persecuted members of the church of Rome, when a successor of the same name,-Louis XVI. was beheaded, and his

subjects were compelled to emigrate. Such noble conduct, like that of the good Samaritan, towards those of another country, well deserves a tribute of gratitude; a tribute that cannot be better paid by Roman catholics, than by official as well as private acts of respect and affection towards the Waldenses and protestant communities that exist but as the minority of the population in Roman catholic kingdoms. The pathetic wish of the moderator, in page 257, is worthy to be engraven upon the hearts of civil and ecclesiastical governorsthat the lessons taught in the school of adversity may not be forgotten.

P. 257. "A quoi bon nous parler," &c.This sentence appears to be intended, though not distinctly expressed, by M. Peyran, as the objection of a modern Roman catholic who detests the deeds of the persecutors of the Albigenses.

P. 263. Pope Felix II. assembled an Italian council, and excommunicated Acacius, bishop of Constantinople, for his alleged attachment to the doctrine of the Monophysites; but chiefly perhaps, on account of his strenuous resistance to the supremacy of the Roman pontiff. Acacius in his turn anathematized that pope, and ordered his name to be struck out of the dipticks, (or sacred registers containing the

names of bishops and martyrs),—a step approved by the emperor and the eastern churches, and which, whilst it led to a schism during twentyfive years between the eastern and western churches, affords one in addition to other proofs that the visible catholic church was not the seat of perfect unity; and that it did not, in the fifth century, allow that the pope was supreme head of the church.

But how much more gratifying is it amidst our researches, to find a noble act of charity recorded, than the bitter expressions of professed polemics! In the very same ceutury, the indiscreet zeal of a bishop having occasioned the destruction of one of the fire-temples of Susa, the magi raised a persecution against the christians in Persia, which eventually led to a war between Theodosius the younger and Varanes the Persian monarch. In order to redeem seven thousand Persians who had been taken prisoners, Acacius, bishop of Amida, sold the gold and silver plate that belonged to his church; liberated at that price the Persian captives; "supplied their wants with affectionate liberality; and dismissed them to their native country, to inform the king of the true spirit of the religion which he persecuted. The practice of benevolence in the midst of war (observes Gibbon, in relating this pleasing anec