able only to the Pope and to their own superiors. Here in
England, the king could not send a commissioner to inspect a monastery,
nor even send a policeman to arrest a criminal who had taken shelter
within its walls. Archbishops and bishops, powerful as they were, found
their authority cease when they entered the gates of a Benedictine or
Dominican abbey.

So utterly have times changed, that with your utmost exertions you will
hardly be able to picture to yourselves the Catholic Church in the days
of its greatness. Our school-books tell us how the Emperor of Germany
held the stirrup for Pope Gregory the Seventh to mount his mule; how our
own English Henry Plantagenet walked barefoot through the streets of
Canterbury, and knelt in the Chapter House for the monks to flog him.
The first of these incidents, I was brought up to believe, proved the
Pope to be the Man of Sin. Anyhow, they are both facts, and not
romances; and you may form some notion from them how high in the world's
eyes the Church must have stood.

And be sure it did not achieve that proud position without deserving it.
The Teutonic and Latin princes were not credulous fools; and when they
submitted, it was to something stronger than themselves--stronger in
limb and muscle, or stronger in intellect and character.

So the Church was in its vigour: so the Church was _not_ at the opening
of the sixteenth century. Power--wealth--security--men are more than
mortal if they can resist the temptations to which too much of these
expose them. Nor were they the only enemies which undermined the
energies of the Catholic clergy. Churches exist in this world to remind
us of the eternal laws which we are bound to obey. So far as they do
this, they fulfil their end, and are honoured in fulfilling it. It would
have been better for all of us--it would be better for us now, could
Churches keep this their peculiar function steadily and singly before
them. Unfortunately, they have preferred in later times the speculative
side of things to the practical. They take up into their teaching
opinions and theories which are merely ephemeral; which would naturally
die out with the progress of knowledge; but, having received a spurious
sanctity, prolong their days unseasonably, and become first unmeaning,
and then occasions of superstition.

It matters little whether I say a paternoster in English or Latin, so
that what is present to my mind is the thought which the words express,
an