summit, and was even
beginning insensibly to decline, by reason of the immeasurable avarice
and extortions of the court of Rome, which disgusted the clergy as
well as laity, in every kingdom of Europe. England itself, though
sunk in the deepest abyss of ignorance and superstition, had seriously
entertained thoughts of shaking off the papal yoke [n]; and the Roman
pontiff was obliged to think of new expedients for riveting it faster
upon the Christian world. For this purpose, Gregory IX. published his
decretals [o], which are a collection of forgeries, favourable to the
court of Rome, and consist of the supposed decrees of popes in the
first centuries. But these forgeries are so gross, and confound so
palpably all language, history, chronology, and antiquities, matters
more stubborn than any speculative truths whatsoever, that even that
church, which is not startled at the most monstrous contradictions and
absurdities, has been obliged to abandon them to the critics. But in
the dark period of the thirteenth century they passed for undisputed
and authentic; and men, entangled in the mazes of this false
literature, joined to the philosophy, equally false, of the times, had
nothing wherewithal to defend themselves, but some small remains of
common sense, which passed for profaneness and impiety, and the
indelible regard to self-interest, which, as it was the sole motive in
the priests for framing these impostures, served also, in some degree,
to protect the laity against them.
[FN [n] M. Paris, p. 421. [o] Trivet, p. 191.]

Another expedient, devised by the church of Rome, in this period, for
securing her power, was the institution of new religious orders,
chiefly the Dominicans and Franciscans, who proceeded with all the
zeal and success that attend novelties; were better qualified to gain
the populace than the old orders, now become rich and indolent;
maintained a perpetual rivalship with each other in promoting their
gainful superstitions; and acquired a great dominion over the minds,
and, consequently, over the purses of men, by pretending a desire of
poverty and a contempt for riches. The quarrels which arose between
these orders, lying still under the control of the sovereign pontiff,
never disturbed the peace of the church, and served only as a spur to
their industry in promoting the common cause; and though the
Dominicans lost some popularity by their denial of the immaculate
conception, a point in which the