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to invade and destroy the liberty of all others. This scheme has been eagerly pushed by the whole Papal power of late. Besides eulogistic lives of Gregory VII. and Innocent III., from the German and French press, (both, stars of the first magnitude in the celestial sphere of pontifical usurpation and arrogance,) we have witnessed a French translation of Professor Ranke's History of the Popes of Rome, distinguished for its infidelity, and the insidious attempt to make it subservient to present hopes and acts entertained by the subjects and soldiers of the Pope. Simultaneously appeared an article in the Dublin Review of the same tendency, evidently aiming, from the character of the former part of Ranke's History, which represents the reaction in favour of the Roman power immediately succeeding the Reformation,
ab altaris officio, donec per confessionem & condignos pœnitentiæ fructus, a summo Pontifice meruitdevotus absolvi. He obtained his wishes, as soon as the boon was applied for, and his lord, the pope, granted him at once, and in due form, the absolution from his oath which was desired, giving as a reason and justification, that the act was not voluntary — a very intelligible bonus to any hypocrisy for the good of the Papal Church. It is ludicrous to wonder at any instance of perjury under similar circumstances in any true, especially ecclesiastical, son of that Church. See Matth. Paris, Hist. Ang. Maj. under the year 1164, or Watts's edition, 1640, pp. 101-2.
