ordered, denounced and counter-denounced, how must the timid among the flock have trembled, and the unbelieving sneered! The refractory archbishops opened a congress at Ems, to which they sent representatives, and the resolutions taken by those able men, to whom the archbishops committed the discussions for the maintenance and defence of their original canonical and imperial chartered rights, is known to the world by the name of the Ems punctation. It determined that the pope possesses no jurisdiction in the Catholic church of Germany, nor any rank or primacy; all bishops having been placed on an equal footing by their divine Master, who bestowed upon all his apostles the powers to bind and to loose, and their successors, continuing in this brotherly equality, during the first ages. Every appeal to Rome was, therefore, henceforth forbidden; all connexion between German monasteries and foreign superiors abrogated; commands from them, the pope, and his cardinal college, were declared no longer binding ; and full power was conceded to the bishops to make annual ecclesiastical laws, to dispense with religious vows, and to annul the obligation connected with ordination; papal bulls and mandates were reduced to a conditional validity, depending on their being acceded to and confirmed by the bishop; and, finally, the papal nuncio was pronounced a mere ambassador, or agent, from Rome; and, as such, to be regarded as neither empowered nor entitled to interfere with the ecclesiastical arrangements of the German dioceses. As a natural sequence to the cessation of Romish dispensations, the pope was declared incompetent to make clerical appointments, or to bestow German benefices, either on natives or foreigners. These resolutions, adopted under the highest ecclesiastical and civil authority of the empire, must be regarded as having laid the first foundation stone of a German Catholic church, and had the building been then suffered to proceed, Germany would have been spared many years of suffering and evil broil, of hypocrisy and infidelity, of spiritual oppression and brutalising superstition, which have kept her even

to the present hour (with few intervals of equivocal calm) “like a troubled sea, which cannot rest, and whose waters continually throw up the mire and dirt" of hierarchal deception and despotism, or the foam of rationalism and avowed infidelity, between whose equally false and equally dangerous pretensions, millions of souls, tossed to and fro, now clinging to one and now to another human authority, "perish for lack of knowledge."

The calling of church councils was even at that early period contemplated by the archbishops, which should decide on the further steps requisite to ensure the entire emancipation of the German churches from their foreign master. But he saw the danger which threatened him, and, unhappily for Germany, succeeded in warding off the impending blow, by the old familiar weapon of internal dissension, stirred up by hierarchal jealousy and official pride. Some German bishops felt offended at not having been called to take part in the Ems congress: others preferred subjection to a distant superior, to bowing before their own archbishops, and chose rather to aid the pope in regaining his ascendancy, than to see those whom they had hitherto deemed little above themselves, at once converted into the ecclesiastical chiefs of Germany. Individual clerical interests thus clashed with the execution of one grand and general design; and the emperor was himself involved in difficulties, by the imprudent rashness with which he had hurried on reform in his own dominions, and both conspired to enable the Roman hierarchy to raise a shout of triumph over the overthrow of the scheme for elevating the German Catholic church; a scheme which the violent anti-hierarchal movement in Rome's near vicinity, fostered by Joseph's brother, Leopold, Duke of Tuscany, the total casting off of priest rule by Naples, and the outbreak of the French revolution, all conspired to facilitate, but which fell, crushed, and apparently annihilated, by the widely-spread and well-concentrated ramifications of papal influence. But the triumph, though complete, over Rome's open opponents, was powerless against the awakened

spirit which was at once the cause and effect of the late attempt, and the blow, though warded off for the moment, was rather postponed than escaped.

The French revolution burst in full fury upon Europe, tearing down, in its devastating career of a few months, the ecclesiastical no less than the political barriers which it had taken ages to erect around both throne and altar; and Germany was doomed to drink to the dregs that cup of suffering which the Almighty, by the hands of those unconscious ministers of his vengeance, put into the hands of many nations. The Emperor Leopold, worn out by the harassments of a Turkish war, and still more by the disappointment of seeing his best intentions misunderstood and misrepresented, died in 1790, and although the accession of his brother, Leopold II., to the vacant throne, opened the fairest prospects for Germany, since he possessed the spirit of his predecessor, united to more sagacity and moderation, yet his reign was unhappily too short to do more than evince what might have been expected from him. One of the first acts of his government was a decree (issued November, 1790), affording increased freedom of conscience to the Hungarian Protestants, and expressly stating that they should on no occasion be compelled to assist at Roman Catholic processions or festivals, and debarring all landed proprietors and masters of families from interfering in any degree with the religious observances of their vassals or domestics. This able and estimable prince died the 1st of March, 1792, and was succeeded by his son, Francis II., whose various fortunes and sad reverses are familiar to every one at all acquainted with modern history, but which we must pass over in silence, in order to confine our notice entirely to what regards the church.

The nineteenth century opened with fearful and ever-increasing political storms. Napoleon, though born of the revolution, perceived, with his usual penetration, the hopeless instability of such a career as France had lately pursued, passing at once from the grossest superstition to the wildest atheism, and

thence retracing her steps, through the various grades of Deism and moral philosophy, in which the recognition of the being of God and of the soul's immortality were made the guardian principles of an equally frigid and stunted morality; and he resolved on giving back to France fixed religious dogmas, and appointed ecclesiastical forms, which, originating in merely political motives, naturally produced politico-ecclesiastical institutions. Convinced that, in furtherance of those views, a certain degree of connexion with the pope would be useful to him, Buonaparte entered into negociations with Pius VII. (raised to the papal chair in March, 1800), which ended, July, 1801, in a concordat between France and the papal see, by which the greater proportion of the church lands in France became the property of the state, which undertook the support of the clergy. The bishops were to be nominated by the first consul; but the Romish church, as being that to which the majority of the nation belonged, was to be protected, the pope to be recognised as its ecclesiastical head, and the confirmation of the nominated bishops to rest with his holiness; but the publication of any bull he might issue to depend on the sanction of government, notwithstanding this and many other humbling clauses in this agreement. Although the same document secured to French Protestants the full and unhindered exercise of their religion, and a perfect equality of civil rights with their Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, still after all the dangers suffered and dreaded by the Roman see, the pope rejoiced and gave thanks with well simulated piety for the boon; rightly foreseeing how easily priestly skill and Jesuit craft (who more than any other of Adam's race may lay claim to the proverb, "give room for my finger and I will get in my whole hand") would contrive to elicit great hierarchal advantages even from so unpromising an order of things. Meanwhile, important political changes were preparing for Germany which should powerfully influence the ecclesiastical position of both Protestantism and Romanism, and Napoleon was immediately instrumental in stripping the latter of almost

all its outward splendour. War continued its unintermitted horrors, and victory still waited on the French arms. Moreau's success were followed by the peace of Luneville (February, 1801), by which the archbishopric of Salzburg was made over to the grand duke of Tuscany, and the left bank of the Rhine being added to France, the hereditary princes, thus dispossessed, were indemnified for their losses, by being put in possession of the ecclesiastical territories lying on the right bank, and of the imperial free cities.

The arbiters, or rather commissioners, appointed to adjust these contending claims, and, which held its sittings from August, 1802, to March, 1803, decided on secularising all ecclesiastical sovereignties in Germany, imposing on the temporal powers, with which they become respectively incorporated, the duty of supporting divine worship, public instruction, and other institutions of general utility.

In this division of booty, a great many petty princes obtained very considerable accessions to their dominions, and, of course, entertained a proportionate reverence for the French prowess and policy through which they had acquired them. Of the forty-eight imperial free cities then existing, only Lübeck, Hamburg, Bremen, Frankfort, Augsburg and Würnburg, were left in possession of their ancient privileges. All these changes inflicted a most severe blow on the Roman hierarchy in Germany, and, it is specially deserving of notice, that the secularisation of ecclesiastical principalities, far from being the suggestion of Protestant princes (as the advocates of priestly domination in our day boldly assert, in defiance of the plainest historical evidence), was, in fact, brought about by Roman Catholic princes, who, themselves, not only gladly took share in the spoil, but held fast their acquisitions. When, in 1806, the Emperor Francis was compelled to lay aside the ancient title of Emperor of Germany, and content himself with that of Emperor of Austria, the German empire may be said to have virtually ceased to exist; and, whilst its political unity lay torn and bleeding at a usurper's feet, its