BOOK I. prudent sovereign receive men who preached such doctrines? CHAP. XII. There needed no more to cause all the missionaries to be driven from China. ? 149. 4. The celibacy of the priests. Convents. It was for the purpose of more firmly securing the attachment of churchmen that the celibacy of the clergy was invented. A priest, a prelate, already bound to the see of Rome by his functions and his hopes, is further detached from his country, by the celibacy he is obliged to observe. He is not connected with civil society by a family: his grand interests are all centred in the church; and, provided he has the pope's favour, he has no further concern: in what country soever he was born, Rome is his refuge, the centre of his adopted country. Everybody knows that the religious orders are a sort of papal militia, spread over the face of the earth, to support and advance the interests of their monarch. This is doubtless a strange abuse-a subversion of the first laws. of society. But this is not all: if the prelates were married, they might enrich the state with a number of good citizens; rich benefices affording them the means of giving their legitimate children a suitable education. But what a multitude of men are there in convents, consecrated to idleness under the cloak of devotion! Equally useless to society in peace and war, they neither serve it by their labour in necessary professions, nor by their courage in arms: yet they enjoy immense revenues; and the people are obliged, by the sweat of their brow, to furnish support for these swarms of sluggards. What should we think of a husbandman who pro[70] tected useless hornets, to devour the honey of his bees ?** It is not the fault of the fanatic preachers of overstrained sanctity, if all their devotees do not imitate the celibacy of the monks. How happened it that princes could suffer them publicly to extol, as the most sublime virtue, a practice equally repugnant to nature, and pernicious to society? Among the Romans, laws were made to diminish the number of those who lived in celibacy, and to favour marriage:† but superstition soon attacked such just and wise regulations; and the Christian emperors, persuaded by churchmen, thought themselves obliged to abrogate them. Several of the fathers of the church have censured those laws against celibacy-doubtless, says a great man,§ with a laudable zeal for the things of another life; but with very little knowledge of the affairs of this. This great man lived in the church of Rome: he did not dare to assert, in direct terms, that voluntary celibacy is to be condemned even with respect to con *This reflection has no relation to the religious houses in which literature is cultivated. Establishments that afford to learned men a peaceful retreat, and that leisure and tranquillity required in deep scientific research, are always laudable, and may become very †The Papia-Poppaan law. The president de Montesquieu, in his Spirit of Laws. OF PIETY AND RELIGION. BOOK I. science and the things of another life:-but it is certainly a mous pre tensions of The enormous and dangerous pretensions of the clergy 150. are also another consequence of this system, which places 5. Enorevery thing relating to religion beyond the reach of the civil power. In the first place, the ecclesiastics, under pre- the clergy. tence of the holiness of their functions, have raised themselves above all the other citizens, even the principal magis- Pre-emitrates: and, contrary to the express injunctions of their nence. master, who said to his apostles, seek not the first places at feasts, they have almost everywhere arrogated to themselves the first rank. Their head, in the Roman church, obliges sovereigns to kiss his feet; emperors have held the bridle of his horse; and if bishops or even simple priests do not at present raise themselves above their prince, it is because the times will not permit it: they have not always been so modest; and one of their writers has had the assurance to assert, that a priest is as much above a king as a man is above a beast.* How many authors, better known and more esteemed than the one just quoted, have taken a pleasure in praising and extolling that silly speech attributed to the emperor [71] Theodosius the First-Ambrose has taught me the great difference there is between the empire and the priesthood! We have already observed that ecclesiastics ought to be honoured: but modesty, and even humility, should characterize them and does it become them to forget it in their own conduct, while they preach it to others? I would not mention a vain ceremonial, were it not attended with very material consequences, from the pride with which it inspires many priests, and the impressions it may make on the minds of the people. It is essentially necessary to good order, that subjects should behold none in society so respectable as their sovereign, and, next to him, those on whom he has devolved a part of his authority. Immunities. Ecclesiastics have not stopped in so fair a path. Not con-3 151. 6. Intented with rendering themselves independent with respect to dependence. their functions,-by the aid of the court of Rome, they have even attempted to withdraw themselves entirely, and in every respect, from all subjection to the political authority. There have been times when an ecclesiastic could not be brought before a secular tribunal for any crime whatsoever.† The †The congregation of Immunities Tantum sacerdos præstat regi, quantum homo bestia. Stanislaus Orichovius. has decided that the cognisance of causes against ecclesiastics, even for Vide Tribbechov. Exerc. 1, ad Baron. Annal. Sect 2, et Thomas. Nat. ad. Lancell. the crime of high treason, exclusively 143 BOOK I. CHAP. XII. canon law declares expressly, It is indecent for laymen to judge a churchman.* The popes Paul III., Pius V., and Urban VIII., excommunicated all lay judges who should presume to undertake the trial of ecclesiastics. Even the bishops of France have not been afraid to say on several occasions, that they did not depend on any temporal prince; and, in 1656, the general assembly of the French clergy had the assurance to use the following expressions-" The decree of council having been read, was disapproved by the assembly, because it leaves the king judge over the bishops, and seems to subject their immunities to his judges." There are decrees of the popes that excommunicate whoever imprisons a bishop. According to the principles of the church of Rome, a prince has not the power of punishing an ecclesiastic with death, though a rebel or a malefactor; he must first apply to the ecclesiastical power; and the latter will, if it thinks proper, deliver up the culprit to the secular arm, after having degraded him. History affords us a thousand belongs to the spiritual court:-"Cog- Indecorum est laicos homines viros See the Statement of Facts on the In the year 1725, a parish priest, ful to subject the ministers of God to the decisions of the temporal power." In these pretensions he was sanctioned by the approbation of the pope's nuncio and the court of Rome. But the council of Lucerne firmly supported the rights of sovereignty, and, without engaging with the bishop in a controversy which would have been derogatory to their dignity, answered him-"Your lordship quotes various passages from the writings of the fathers, which we, on our side, might also quote in our own favour, if it were necessary, or if there was question of deciding the contest by dint of quotation. But let your lordship rest assured that we have a right to summon before us a priest, our natural subject, who encroaches on our prerogatives-to point out to him his error to exhort him to a reform of his conduct and, in consequence of his obstinate disobedience, after repeated citations, to banish him from our dominions. We have not the least doubt that this right belongs to us; and we are determined to defend it. And indeed it ought not to be proposed to any sovereign to appear as party in a contest with a refractory subject like him-to refer the cause to the decision of a third party, whoever he be--and run the risk of being condemned to tolerate in the state a person of such character, with what dignity soever he might be invested," &c. The bishop of Constance had proceeded so far as to assert, in his letter to the canton, dated December 18th, 1725, that BOOK I. examples of bishops who remained unpunished, or were but slightly chastised, for crimes for which nobles of the highest CHAP. XII. rank forfeited their lives. John de Braganza, king of Portugal, justly inflicted the penalty of death on those noblemen who had conspired his destruction: but he did not dare to put to death the archbishop of Braga, the author of that detestable plot.* For an entire body of men, numerous and powerful, to stand beyond the reach of the public authority, and be dependent on a foreign court, is an entire subversion of order in the republic, and a manifest diminution of the sovereignty. This is a mortal stab given to society, whose very essence it is, that every citizen should be subject to the public authority. Indeed the immunity which the clergy arrogate to themselves in this respect, is so inimical to the natural and necessary rights of a nation, that the king himself has not the power of granting it. But churchmen will tell us they derive this immunity from God himself; but till they have furnished some proof of their pretensions, let us adhere to this certain principle, that God desires the safety of states, and not that which will only be productive of disorder and destruction to them. ty of church The same immunity is claimed for the possessions of the ? 152. church. The state might, no doubt, exempt those posses- 7. Immunisions from every species of tax at a time when they were possessions. scarcely sufficient for the support of the ecclesiastics; but, for that favour, these men ought to be indebted to the public authority alone, which has always a right to revoke it, whenever the welfare of the state makes it necessary. It being one of the fundamental and essential laws of every society, that, in case of necessity, the wealth of all the members ought [73] to contribute proportionally to the common necessities-the prince himself cannot, of his own authority, grant a total exemption to a very numerous and rich body, without being guilty of extreme injustice to the rest of his subjects, on whom, in consequence of that exemption, the whole weight of the burden will fall. The possessions of the church are so far from being entitled to an exemption on account of their being consecrated to God, that, on the contrary, it is for that very reason they ought to be taken the first for the use and safety of the state. For nothing is more agreeable to the common Father of mankind than to save a state from ruin. God himself having no need of anything, the consecration of wealth to him is but a dedication of it to such uses as shall be agreeable to him. Besides, a great part of the revenues of the church, by the "churchmen, as soon as they have fore." Memorial on the Dispute between received holy orders, ceased to be natu- the Pope and the Canton of Lucerne, ral subjects, and are thus released from p. 65. the bondage in which they lived be *Revolutions of Portugal. CHAP. XII. BOOK I. confession of the clergy themselves, is destined for the poor. When the state is in necessity, it is doubtless the first and principal pauper, and the most worthy of assistance. We may extend this principle even to the most common cases, and safely assert that to supply a part of the current expenses of the state from the revenues of the church, and thus take so much from the weight of the people's burden, is really giving a part of those revenues to the poor, according to their original destination. But it is really contrary to religion and the intentions of the founders to waste in pomp, luxury, and epicurism, those revenues that ought to be consecrated to the relief of the poor.* 153. 8. Excom of men in office. Not satisfied, however, with rendering themselves indemunication pendent, the ecclesiastics undertook to bring mankind under their dominion; and indeed they had reason to despise the stupid mortals who suffered them to proceed in their plan. Excommunication was a formidable weapon among ignorant and superstitious men, who neither knew how to keep it within its proper bounds, nor to distinguish between the use and the abuse of it. Hence arose disorders which have prevailed in some protestant countries. Churchmen have presumed, by their own authority alone, to excommunicate men in high employments, magistrates whose functions were daily useful to society-and have boldly asserted that those officers of the state, being struck with the thunders of the church, could no longer discharge the duties of their posts. What a perversion of order and reason! What! shall not a nation be allowed to intrust its affairs, its happiness, its repose and safety, to the hands of those whom it deems the most skilful and the most worthy of that trust? Shall the power of a churchman, whenever he pleases, deprive the state of its wisest conductors, of its firmest supports, and rob the prince of his most faithful servants? So absurd a pretension has been condemned by princes, and even by prelates, respectable for their character and judgment. We read in the 171st letter of Ives de Chartres, to the Archbishop of Sens, that the royal capitularies (conformably to the thirteenth canon of the [74] twelfth council of Toledo, held in the year 681) enjoined the priests to admit to their conversation all those whom the king's majesty had received into favour, or entertained at his table, though they had been excommunicated by them, or by others, in order that the church might not appear to reject or condemn those whom the king was pleased to employ in his service.* 154. sovereigns The excommunications pronounced against the sovereigns 9. And of themselves, and accompanied with the absolution of their themselves. subjects from their oaths of allegiance, put the finishing stroke to this enormous abuse; and it is almost incredible *See Letters on the Pretensions of the Clergy. |