54 EXORBITANT CLAIMS OF THE POPE. taxes, from being judged or punished for their misdemeanours and crimes? Who ever claimed a power to dispose of all things one way or other, either directly or indirectly to disposeeven of kingdoms, to judge sovereign princes, and to condemn them, to depose them from their authority, absolving their subjects from all allegiance to them, and exposing their kingdom to rapine? To whom but a pope were ever ascribed prerogatives like those of judging all men, andhimself being liable to no judgment, no account, no reproof or blame? so that, as a papal canon assures us, "Si papa suæ," &c. (Grat. Dist. xl. cap. 6), " Let a pope be so bad as, by his negligence and maladministration, to carry with him innumerable people to hell, yet no mortal man whatever must presume here to reprove his faults; because he being to judge all men is himself to be judged of no man, except he be caught swerving from the faith;" which is a case they will hardly suffer a man to suppose possible. To whombut to apope was such power attributed byhis followers, and admitted by himself, that he could hear those words applied to him, "All power is given to thee in heaven and in earth?" Concil. Lat. sub Leone X. seas. xi. p. 133 (in Or. Archiep. Patrac.) Such power the popes are wont to challenge, and when occasion serves do not fail to execute, as successors of St Peter;' to whom therefore, consequently, they ascribe it, and sometimes in express terms, as in that brave apostrophe of Pope Gregory VII. (the spirit of which pope has possessed his successors generally), " Go to, there- fore," said he, directing his speech to St Peter and St Paul, "most holy princes of the apostles, and what I have said confirm by your authority, that now at length all men may understand whether ye can bind and loose; that alsoye can take away and give on earth empires, kingdoms, and whatever mortal men can have I "2 Now, if the assumingand exercising such powers be not that xc ra- xupreúery and xarsovargsrv, that exalting one's self, that being called rabbi, father, master, which our Lord prohibits, what is so? what, then, can those words signify? what could our Lord mean? The authority, therefore, which they assign to St Peter, and as- sume to themselves from him, is voided by those declarations and precepts of our Lord; the which it can hardly be well conceived that our Lord would have proposed if he had designed to constitute St Peter in such a supremacy over his disciples and church. 7. Surveying particulars, we shall not find any peculiar administra- i Hac itaque fiducia fretus, &c.--Excommun. Henrici R., in Cone. Rom. iii. sub Greg. VII., apud Bin., tom. vii. p. 484. 2 Agite apostolorum sanctissimi principes, &c. Plat. in Greg. VIL, in Conc. Rom. vi., apud Bin., p. 491. H
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