sed, not
by amendment of life, but by penances, servility to the monks, and an
abject and illiberal devotion.[*] The reverence for the clergy had
been carried to such a height, that, wherever a person appeared in a
sacerdotal habit, though on the highway, the people flocked around him,
and, showing him all marks of profound respect, received every word he
uttered as the most sacred oracle.[**] Even the military virtues,
so inherent in all the Saxon tribes, began to be neglected; and the
nobility, preferring the security and sloth of the cloister to the
tumults and glory of war, valued themselves chiefly on endowing
monasteries, of which they assumed the government.[***] The several
kings too, being extremely impoverished by continual benefactions to the
church, to which the states of their kingdoms had weakly assented, could
bestow no rewards on valor or military services, and retained not even
sufficient influence to support their government.[****]

[* These abuses were common to all the European
churches; but the priests in Italy, Spain, and Gaul, made
some atonement for them by other advantages which they
rendered society. For several ages, they were almost all
Romans, or, in other words, the ancient natives; and they
preserved the Roman language and laws, with some remains of
the former civility. But the priests in the Heptarchy, after
the first missionaries, were wholly Saxons, and almost as
ignorant and Barbarous as the laity. They contributed,
therefore, little to no improvement of society in knowledge
or the arts.]

[** Bede, lib. iii. cap. 26.]

[*** Bede, lib. v. cap. 23. Bedae Epist. ad
Egbert.]

[**** Bedse Epist. ad Egbert.]

Another inconvenience which attended this corrupt species of
Christianity, was the superstitious attachment to Rome, and the gradual
subjection of the kingdom to a foreign jurisdiction. The Britons, having
never acknowledged any subordination to the Roman pontiff, had conducted
all ecclesiastical government by their domestic synods and councils;[*]
but the Saxons, receiving their religion from Roman monks, were taught
at the same time a profound reverence for that see, and were naturally
led to regard it as the capital of their religion. Pilgrimages to Rome
were represented as the most meritorious acts of devotion. Not only
noblemen and ladies of rank undertook this tedious journey,[**] but
kings themsel