THE HIERARCHICAL DESPOTISM. LECTURES ON THE MIXTURE OF CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTICAL POWER IN THE GOVERNMENTS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. IN ILLUSTRATION OF THE NATURE AND PROGRESS BY REV. GEORGE B. CHEEVER. NEW YORK : PUBLISHED BY SAXTON & MILES, BOSTON SAXTON, PEIRCE & CO. 1844. INTRODUCTION. THE following argument has been suggested and called forth by an ingenious lecture of Bishop Hughes on the Mixture of Civil and Ecclesiastical Power in the Governments of the Middle Ages. Under this plausible and captivating title the reader finds a bold, unflinching apology for the Papacy, with the startling proposition that it is to the Despotism of the Papacy in the middle ages that we owe the preservation of Christianity, and the possession of all our civil freedom. I do not give the words, but the amount of his assertions. The lecture was exceedingly able in point of style and scholarship, and mingled with very plausible admissions as to the errors of the Papacy; which circumstances render it so much the more important to put the affirmations of the Lecturer in their true light, and especially to show that the Romish Church, instead of disavowing the union of Church and State, constitutes in herself the very essence of such union. Her HEART in Italy is such a union; the Pope's temporal sovereignty constitutes the left ventricle, his spiritual supremacy the right; and through these two systems pours the life-blood of the Romish Church to the world's extremities. It is equally necessary to set in their proper light the astounding positions of Bishop Hughes as to the affirmed Republicanism INTRODUCTION. of Popery, and to tow that in all ages the Romish Church has Been the enemy both of civil and religious liberty. Whether Bop Hughes expected to be believed in his singular assertions by any but the members of his own communion we know not; but ours is not the country, wor this the age, when such postions can be assumed for a moment without question. They are so startlingly and sweepingly opposed to all historic truth, that as hearers of Bishop Hughes lecture, we really felt tempted to question whether he was not playing the satirist with the assumed ignorance and credulity of his audience; whether he was not trying the experiment how far he might enjoy a practical joke on the capacity of their faith in the assertions of the Priesthood. As the very first step in his lecture, he asserted that it was not the genius of the Romish Church to conceal anything of her doctrines or her history! The late freaks enacted with the school-books in this city afford an admirable commentary on this declaration. The reader will see that the course we have taken in these lectures on such a subject as that announced by Bishop Hughes, is very different from that which we should have pursued had we taken up that subject on its civil rather than its ecclesiastical side. Bishop Hughes having taken his stand-point in the Papacy, we were compelled to take ours there also, and to show that the Papacy, as the example, by eminence, of the Mixture of Civil and Ecclesiastical Power in the Governments of the Middle Ages, was the most perfect and terrific DESPOTISM the world ever saw. HIERARCHICAL DESPOTISM. FIRST LECTURE. NATURE OF THE ARGUMENT. In all speculations on Ecclesiastical History there is no way to criticise correctly, but by placing ourselves first in the light of Christianity at its beginning. We cannot begin with the Fathers, but in the New Testament, in order to a proper judgment of any portion of the history of the Church that has passed since. It is like tracing a mountain torrent from its source in a living rock. You may stand at that source, and follow the stream a little while in its purity. Mark now the rills, as you pass along, that run into it. At first they are small, and much like the original fountain in their clearness. Sometimes there seems to be a silver cascade coming out of the heavens; such seemed at first the fond veneration of the martyrs, and afterwards the cherished remembrance of the Virgin Mary, both of these things to become a torrent of dark idolatry. As you come down from the air of the mountain into the |