"present forms" of these courts. This indicates that some time The had elapsed since the establishment of the original lists. interval between 1514 and the date of the publication of the Tractatus is certainly none too much to afford time for these changes.

At any rate, Silber's edition and that in the Tractatus are both genuine and of authority; and so they must have been essentially the same: Du Mont's edition, as it agrees with the latter of course did with the former, and must have been taken from an authentic source. That source could not have been the Tractatus itsel, for otherwise he would have published the supplementary treatise; so that little doubt can exist that his "Exemplar" was really the edition of Silber, as he claims, and as the officials of Bois-le-Duc certify.

Our argument though informally, meets every point urged by Bishop England against the authenticity of the Tax-Book, with a single exception. This is, that it must be a forgery because it has been denounced by the Church by having been placed upon the Prohibitory Index. It is very true that a Tax-Book is there inserted. But what Tax-Book? It is denounced "cum ab hereThis insertion ticis depravata-when corrupted by heretics."

can be found in no index earlier than 1570;-after the publication of the lists of the German princes, of Pinet, and of Musculus. These might be considered as corrupted, on many grounds -their accompanying matter if nothing more--and were certainly put forth by heretics. But the editions sanctioned by Leo X. and Gregory XIV. do not come under this category; nor does that of Du Mont, which we have shown to agree with them. The only edition which we find specifically mentioned in the various Indices we have examined, is that of Banck. This is specified in the Index put forth at Rome in 1819, now before us.

How much weight is to be given to the authority of this, will easily appear by a slight inspection of its contents, which, as Coleridge says, one might fancy to be the "muster-roll of the hostile armies of Michael and Satan, printed promiscuously, or extracted at hap-hazard, only that the extracts from the former appear someWe will not take the Index as put forth what more numerous." in the dark ages, but that published at Rome in the nineteeth year of this nineteenth century.

If, as Milton says, "books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a progeny of life in them," the noblest of them all will find their peers on the pages of the Prohibitory Index. Scarcely a score of lines from the name of Banck, appears that of BACON, a man whom the world has long since acquitted of presumption for prefixing to his works the lofty words "these are the meditations of Francis of Verulam, which that posterity should be His with a name appears aware of he deemed for their benefit."

special prohibition of the magnificent treatise on the Dignity and Advancement of Learning. A little beyond, we find the name of MILTON, with a prohibition of Paradise Lost, unless corrected. We would like to see a copy of Paradise Lost, or Lycidas, or the Areopagitica, or the Preface to the Second Book on the Prelaty, after it had been "corrected" by some wily Jesuit, or lean Franciscan, or oily Dominican. KEPLER and COPERNICUS are there. GROTIUS is there, with a prohibition of not merely his theological works, but of his great treastise de Juris Belli et Pacis. WALTON'S Polygott is prohibited, out of charity, we suppose, to the wild Arabs, Ethiopians, and Syrians, who might otherwise be corrupted by the perusal of their own ancient versions of the Scriptures. But why go on, when everybody knows that an insertion in the Prohibitory Index, proves only that the Congregation who framed it, wished a particular book not to circulate, and it proves nothing at all more? It does not touch the question of forgery or authenticity. And even if such an insertion did convey the judgment of the framers of the Index, that the book was spurious, it is quite supposable that they might have been as ignorant as Bishop England himself on the matter, and have supposed a genuine production of their own Church to have been an arrant forgery. It would seem as though the Bishop wished to furnish future rhetoricians with specimens of the various forms of false reasoning enumerated by Aristotle; and as he had before given examples of conclusions correctly drawn from false premises, he now wished to furnish an incorrect conclusion deduced from a true premise.

If we have been successful in proving the genuineness of the Tax-Book in question, and vindicating it from the charge of having been forged by Protestants, and so may bring it forward as a witness whose testimony is to be received, it still remains to inquire whether it supports the charge, whose sole proof rests upon it. Does this Tax-Book prove that the Roman Church has licensed the commission of sin, upon the payment of a certain sum of money?

Although the affirmative of this question has been tacitly assumed on both sides, we answer, most unhesitatingly that it does not. Upon the very face of it, it does no such thing. We have given the articles which, if any, must sustain this charge, and we do affirm that from beginning to end there is no permission, nor hint of permission, for the commission of any crime, or of any act which any Protestant considers forbidden by the divine law.

The only possible exception to this statement is the dispensations which are mentioned for marrying within the second degree of affinity-say with the sister of a deceased wife-which a small portion of the Protestant Church consider unlawful. But it must be remembered that the Roman Church does not consider these as mala in se, but merely prohibits them on the ground of good

order, and by her own authority. Now the power which prohibits may, for good reasons permit an act in particular instances. In the present case the Church of Rome has always been extremely loth to remit her general rule, and has usually done so only in cases of public concern, as where, for instance, a disputed succession could be settled by the intermarriage of claimants within the canonical degree of affinity or consanguinity.

A

It is very true that in the citations which we have made from Schlegel Saurin, Merle, DAubigné, and in other writers, too numerous for quotation, a price is said to have been fixed for the commission of the enormities mentioned. But there is no such thing in the Tax-Book which they bring forward in proof-that whose authenticity we have been laboring to establish. The charge is only sustained by a translation either wilfully false or shamefully careless. Crimes are in no single case permitted. They are always spoken of as past. Absolution (not permission) is granted to one "qui false deposuit," "carnaliter cognovit," "bibit aliquem potum" "fœtum destruxit," and so on. The very word "absolution" used to designate the thing granted, is enough to show any one at all conversant with the technology of the Roman Church, that reference could only be intended to past acts. dispensation grants permission to perform some act otherwise forbidden; but neither an absolution nor an indulgence gives permission to do any act, good, bad, or indifferent. Absolution can only be granted after confession and presumed repentance for a crime, and is supposed to remit the inherent and essential guilt which attaches to the sinner in consequence of it; but does not do away with the necessity of a temporal punishment. Hence, absolution is almost always accompanied by the infliction of penance. This temporal punishment, according to the Catholic the ory, is committed to the discretion of the Church, who may remit it, either in whole or in part, for reasons which appear to her to be valid. This remission of temporal punishment, whether to be endured here by way of discipline and penances, or hereafter in purgatory, is technically called an indulgence. Such, and such only, were the indulgences hawked about by Tetzel, which gave the first impulse to the Reformation. An absolution for a sin, or an indulgence in respect to its temporal penalty, we repeat, is not at all a permission to commit it; on the contrary, as both presume contrition and amendment, they are an implied prohibition

of it.

Here we would particularly advert to the extract from the translator of Saurin, given in a note on a previous page, as exhibiting a greater amount of misrepresentation than we remember ever to have elsewhere seen within so small a compass. It will be recollected that the articles there cited are referred to the TaxBook published at Rome in 1514. Not one of them occurs in

that book. And even in Pinet's book, from which they are taken, they do not relate to future but to past acts. They are absolutions for what has been committed, not permissions for future commission. The provision which is set down as the crowning ing act of wickedness, "Take notice partcularly," etc., occurs neither in the edition of Silber nor in that of Pinet; but is found in the Paris edition of 1520, whence it is separately inserted by Du Mont in his copy, with a reference to its origin, and also in the supplementary treatise in the Tractatus. But it does not occur in the connexion in which Mr. Robertson places it. It refers not to the crimes which he has just enumerated, but to marriages within the prohibited degrees. It is not even part of the Taxes of the Penitentiary, to which alone these could belong, but belongs to and is part of the taxes of the Chancery, which had no more to do with the crimes and absolutions referred to, than a custom-house has with the crime of murder. The context is as follows: A dispensation for marriage within the second degree, must be compounded for with the Datary in a large sum, according to the quality of the persons. "Et nota diligenter quod hujusmodi gratias et dispensationes non concedantur pauperibus, quia non sunt, ideo non possunt consolari." To say nothing of the extremely doubtful rendering of quia non sunt "for not having wherewith to pay," the notice must refer to what has gone before, and can only be intended to place additional obstacles in the way of the marriages specified, by prohibiting them to the common people.

But it is further asserted that although these taxes may not be the price for which permission to commit the given acts is formally granted, yet as they were the price, publicly announced and universally known, at which pardons were to be obtained for them, after commission, their practical effect was a permission. Now if these taxes were the price of absolution, the quid pro quo for which it was granted, so that a man had only to pay the price and receive his absolution, we grant that such might be the case. But we deny that even this was the design of the taxes. We deny that they were in any case the price paid for absolution, or the condition upon which it was bestowed. This we intend to make evident by setting forth the true relation which the Penitentiary bore to the crimes over which it had jurisdiction, and the real de sign of its taxes.

Upon these points the taxes of the Chancery throw great light on those of the Penitentiary. It is evident, from the constitution of these tribunals that the taxes of each bore the same relation to the matters to which they refer. A moment's consideration will show that the taxes of the Chancery were not the price of the grants made by that tribunal. Take for example the subject of Benefices. It is well known that to the Roman see was reserved

the power of filling all vacancies occurring in any primacy, archbishopric, bishopric, or monastery, of which the annual value exceeded two hundred florins. Furthermore, any vacancy, of whatever amount, occurring in eight specified months of the year, hence called "apostolic months," was in like manner reserved. And in addition to these general reservations, a great number of special ones were also made. Every person who received a grant of one of the benefices so reserved was obliged to pay into the papal treasury a certain sum, usually set down as the income of the first year, hence called annates. Some idea of the productiveness of these annates throughout Christendom may be formed from the example of a single kingdom. The volume of the Tractatus before quoted contains a list of the benefices in the kingdom of France which were absolutely reserved, and the sums payable for each. This list occupies eleven folio columns, and the whole amount is between seven and eight millions of florins. This, it must be borne in mind only includes the benefices absolutely reserved, and does not include those reserved as falling vacant in the "apostolic months." Besides these, enormous sums were continually raised upon various pretexts, by means of tithes, general indulgences, jubilees, and the like. The sums thus gathered into Rome from all Christendom were immense. Italy, Spain, and England, were undoubtedly as productive as France; Germany was considerably more so. These benefices were the main channels through which flowed towards Rome that great current of gold, which impoverished every other nation; and to check which became one of the paramount objects of policy with every sovereign in Europe, and which finally gave rise to the French Pragmatic Sanction, and the German Concordate. These sums, and not the petty amounts named in the Tax-Book, were the consideration for which the benefices were granted.

A comparison of a few items will show the disproportion between these rates. By the Tax-Book of the Chancery provisionary letters for a vacant archbishopric are charged 24 grossi; in the list the French archbishoprics are rated to pay 6,000, 9,000, and 12,000 florins respectively. A bishopric in the Tax-Book is set down at 20 grossi; in the list they must pay from 300 to 9,000 florins. A monastery is in the Tax-Book set down at 16 grossi; in the list these are rated from a few florins up to 12,000. Again; a large sum, sometimes amounting to thousands of crowns, was demanded for the archiepiscopal pallium; the taxes for this, as set down in the Tax-Book under several distinct specifications, amount to just 40 grossi.

Sums so disproportionate were, of course, paid for entirely dif ferent purposes. The taxes of the Chancery were simply the fees paid to the different officials of that court for preparing, auRules of Chancery, II.

2 Ib. IX.

3 Ib. III.-VIII,