high prelates, the cardinals,
the great abbots, were occupied chiefly in maintaining their splendour
and luxury. The friars and the secular clergy, following their superiors
with shorter steps, indulged themselves in grosser pleasures; while
their spiritual powers, their supposed authority in this world and the
next, were turned to account to obtain from the laity the means for
their self-indulgence.

The Church forbade the eating of meat on fast days, but the Church was
ready with dispensations for those who could afford to pay for them. The
Church forbade marriage to the fourth degree of consanguinity, but
loving cousins, if they were rich and open-handed, could obtain the
Church's consent to their union. There were toll-gates for the priests
at every halting-place on the road of life--fees at weddings, fees at
funerals, fees whenever an excuse could be found to fasten them. Even
when a man was dead he was not safe from plunder, for a mortuary or
death present was exacted of his family.

And then those Bishop's Courts, of which I spoke just now: they were
founded for the discipline of morality--they were made the instruments
of the most detestable extortion. If an impatient layman spoke a
disrespectful word of the clergy, he was cited before the bishop's
commissary and fined. If he refused to pay, he was excommunicated, and
excommunication was a poisonous disease. When a poor wretch was under
the ban of the Church no tradesman might sell him clothes or food--no
friend might relieve him--no human voice might address him, under pain
of the same sentence; and if he died unreconciled, he died like a dog,
without the sacraments, and was refused Christian burial.

The records of some of these courts survive: a glance at their pages
will show the principles on which they were worked. When a layman
offended, the single object was to make him pay for it. The magistrates
could not protect him. If he resisted, and his friends supported him, so
much the better, for they were now all in the scrape together. The next
step would be to indict them in a body for heresy; and then, of course,
there was nothing for it but to give way, and compound for absolution by
money.

It was money--ever money. Even in case of real delinquency, it was
still money. Money, not charity, covered the multitude of sins.

I have told you that the clergy were exempt from secular jurisdiction.
They claimed to be amenable only to spiritual judges, and th