, perpetually sent from that endless mint
of superstition, and magnified by lying miracles, invented in
convents, operated on the astonished minds of the multitude; and every
prince has attained the eulogies of the monks, the only historians of
those ages, not in proportion to his civil and military virtues, but
to his devoted attachment towards their order, and his superstitious
reverence for Rome.
[FN [t] Append. to Bede, numb. 10. ex edit, 1722. Spellm. Conc. p.
108, 109. [u] Bede, lib. 5. c. 7.]

The sovereign pontiff, encouraged by this blindness and submissive
disposition of the people, advanced every day in his encroachments on
the independence of the English churches. Wilfrid, Bishop of
Lindisferne, the sole prelate of the Northumbrian kingdom, increased
this subjection in the eighth century, by his making an appeal to Rome
against the decisions of an English synod, which had abridged his
diocese by the erection of some new bishoprics [w]. Agatho, the pope,
readily embraced this precedent of an appeal to his court; and
Wilfrid, though the haughtiest and most luxurious prelate of his age
[x], having obtained with the people the character of sanctity, was
thus able to lay the foundation of this papal pretension.
[FN [w] See Appendix to Bede, numb. 19. Higden, lib. 5. [x] Eddius,
vita Vilfr. sec. 24, 60]

The great topic by which Wilfrid confounded the imaginations of men
was, that St. Peter, to whose custody the keys of heaven were
intrusted, would certainly refuse admittance to every one who should
be wanting in respect to his successor. This conceit, well suited to
vulgar conceptions, made great impression on the people during several
ages, and has not even at present lost all influence in the catholic
countries.

Had this abject superstition produced general peace and tranquillity,
it had made some atonement for the ill attending it; but besides the
usual avidity of men for power and riches, frivolous controversies in
theology were engendered by it, which were so much the more fatal, as
they admitted not, like the others, of any final determination from
established possession. The disputes excited in Britain were of the
most ridiculous kind, and entirely worthy of those ignorant and
barbarous ages. There were some intricacies, observed by all the
Christian churches, in adjusting the day of keeping Easter, which
depended on a complicated consideration of the course of the sun and
moon: and it happe