4 INTRODUCTION. This disagreement of the Roman doctors about the nature and extent of papal authority is a shrewd prejudice against it. If a man should sue for a piece of land, and his advocates, the notablest [that] couldbe had, and well paid, could not findwhere it lies, how it is butted and bounded, from whom it was conveyed to him, one would be very apt to suspect his title. If God had instituted such an office, it is highly probable we might satisfactorily know what the nature and use of it were; the patents and charters for it would declare it. Yet for resolution in this great case we are left to seek, they not having either the will, or the courage, or the power to determine it. This insuperable problem has baffled all their infallible methods of deciding controversies; their traditions blundering, their synods clash- ing, their divines wrangling endlessly, about what kind ofthing the pope is, and what power he rightly may claim. " There is," says a great divine among them, " so much contro- versy about the plenitude of ecclesiastical power, and to what things it may extend itself, that few things in that matter are secure."' This is a plain argument of the impotency of the pope's power in judging and deciding controversies, or of his cause in this matter, that he cannot define a point so nearly concerning him, and which he so much desires an agreement in; that he cannot settle his own claim out of doubt; that all his authority cannot secure itself from contest. So indeed it is, that no spells can allay some spirits; and where interests are irreconcilable, opinions will be so. Some points are so tough and so touchy that nobody dare meddle with them, fearing that their resolution will fail of success and sub- mission. Hence, even the anathematizing definers of Trent (the boldest undertakers to decide controversies that ever were) waived this point, the legates of the pope being enjoined " to advertise, That they should not, for any cause whatever, come to dispute about the pope's authority."' It was indeed wisely done of them to decline this question, their authority not being strong enough to bear theweight of a decision in favour of the Roman see (against which theycould do nothing) according to its pretences, as appears by one clear instance; for whereas that council took upon it incidentally to enact, that anyprince should be excommunicate, and deprived of the dominion of any city or place where he should permit a duel to be fought, the prelates of Tanta est inter doctores controversia de plenitudine ecclesiasticce potestatis, et ad qum se extendat, ut pauta sint in ea materia secura, &c.Almain. de Auct. Eccl., cap. iii. 2 di avertire, Che non si venga mai per qual causa si sia alla disputadell auto- ritadi papa. Concil. Trid., lib. ii. p. 159.
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