eme magistrate, who unites these
powers, receives the appellation of prince or prelate, is not
material: the superior weight which temporal interests commonly bear
in the apprehensions of men above spiritual, renders the civil part of
his character most prevalent; and in time prevents those gross
impostures and bigoted persecutions, which, in all false religions,
are the chief foundation of clerical authority. But during the
progress of ecclesiastical usurpations, the state, by the resistance
of the civil magistrate, is naturally thrown into convulsions; and it
behoves the prince, both for his own interest and for that of the
public, to provide, in time, sufficient barriers against so dangerous
and insidious a rival. This precaution had hitherto been much
neglected in England, as well as in other Catholic countries; and
affairs at last seemed to have come to a dangerous crisis: a sovereign
of the greatest abilities was now on the throne: a prelate of the most
inflexible and intrepid character was possessed of the primacy: the
contending powers appeared to be armed with their full force, and it
was natural to expect some extraordinary event to result from their
conflict.

Among their other inventions to obtain money, the clergy had
inculcated the necessity of penance as an atonement for sin; and
having again introduced the practice of paying them large sums as a
commutation, or species of atonement, for the remission of those
penances, the sins of the people, by these means, had become a revenue
to the priests; and the king computed that, by this invention alone,
they levied more money upon his subjects than flowed, by all the funds
and taxes, into the royal exchequer [k] That he might ease the people
of so heavy and arbitrary an imposition, Henry required that a civil
officer of his appointment should be present in all ecclesiastical
courts, and should, for the future, give his consent to every
composition which was made with sinners for their spiritual offences.
[FN [k] Fitz-Steph. p. 32.]

The ecclesiastics, in that age, had renounced all immediate
subordination to the magistrate: they openly pretended to an
exemption, in criminal accusations, from a trial before courts of
justice; and were gradually introducing a like exemption in civil
causes: spiritual penalties alone could be inflicted on their
offences; and as the clergy had extremely multiplied in England, and
many of them were consequently of very low cha