282, On the Suppression of Monasteries in England. [Sept 
one of the, evils of this system, that many of their particular yices were so 
immediately the result of their peculiar mode of life, that the imposition ofa 
stricter discipline was but tightening the cords which bound them to their errors. 
The exemption which, in the eleventh century, the Popes gaye then from the 
authority, of their Sovereigns, while it completed the mischief, held out induce- 
ment for the perpetual establishment of new orders of monks; insomuch that, 
in the council of Lateran, held in the year 1215, a decree was passed, by the 
adyice of Innocent IJI., to prevent any new monastic institutions, and several 
were entirely suppressed, The testimony which history bears to the dissolute . 
and abandoned lives of the monkish clergy, in the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- 
turies, renders it inconceivable how a system of belief which was connected 
with a practice so revolting and notorious, could for such a length of time 
have retained its sway over the human mind, even after the dawn of a better 
day was visible within it. The monkish apologists and historians strongly urge, 
and with an appearance of abstract justice, that little reliance is to be placed 
upon accounts collected (under a system of encouragement to informers), by 
the commissioners of Henry VIII., whose object was to find or make, a justifica- 
tion of that measure which it had been previously resolved to adopt. ‘This 
argument might haye much weight, if the sole evidence of the facts which that 
commission elicited rested with the servants of that capricious and tyrannical 
monarch ; but we cannot refuse to receive their narratives without at the same 
time making up our minds to reject a mass of concurrent testimony, of all 
descriptions: from the solemn declarations of councils and synods, and the 
consistent accounts of historians, down to the accidental and undesigning evi- 
dence of the ballad or romance. 
Such was the character of that body of men who were the ministers and 
teachers of a faith, in harmonious and cordial unison with such a practice ;—a 
faith which, (founded upon those pure and apostolic doctrines, whose sole 
authentic record was now concealed under the veil of the fargotten vulgate, 
and. carefully prohibited), had, in the corruptions of ages, been so disfigured 
and disguised, that it is impossible to trace the real religion of the Gospel 
in the popular belief of the times. Animpious system of polytheism, grafted 
on the language, apart from the spirit and principles of Christianity, had grown 
up beneath the fostering care of those who trafficked with spiritual things, and 
made a marketable commodity of immortal interests. 
- Yet; with all its corruptions, the Romish church, as it then existed (and 
principally through the instrumentality of the monastic institution, which was 
now become so important a part of its system, and so mighty an engine of its 
purposes), was the ark in which all that is pure in principle, sound in learning, 
and beautiful in morality, was preserved to us when the barbaric deluge came 
down upon the nations of Europe, and the darkness of ages brooded upon the 
face of the waters. “ It was,” says a writer of our own day and country, 
“the salt of the earth; the sole conservative principle by which Europe was 
“saved from the lowest and most brutal barbarism.” The ecclesiastical privi- 
leges, during those times, served as a check upon the despotism of kings. The 
union of the churches of Europe under the Holy See facilitated the intercourse 
of nations, and bound together the discordant elements of which the European 
population was composed; presenting one common point, round which, in 
those ages of turbulent faction and unrestrained violence, the passions of man 
niight rally for repose: while the pomp of the church ceremonies, and the 
Heendont of its worship, tended to keep alive a taste for the fine arts, and 
nitimately, at a later period, to produce their revival. = OS: Varah 
Not only was religion the means of preserying that purer taste, and ‘{how- 
ever unconsciously) ‘that better faith, which were one day to go ‘abroad 
among the nations; but she was also silently employed in fitting the mitds of 
men for their reception, when the time should arrive destined for theit’ tomul- 
gation. That reverence which the Romish church exacted for the objec s of its 
worship, however misapplied, had inclined the hearts of men to a devout 
régard for such system of religious faith as might at any time appeat to them the 
“ 
