the contrary, and this in spite of the rigorous doctrine established by the canonists, and affirmed by the Council of Trent. The dispensation system was in the eyes of Protestants the root of endless evil. That "where a doctrine fails it can be supplied by the Pope's power led in practice to general demoralisation and the rule of the purse. Nearly one hundred and fifty years after Luther published his treatise on the "Babylonian Captivity of the Church," Jeremy Taylor wrote with just severity of the current Roman casuistry that its doctrines
"legitimate adulterous and incestuous marriages, and disannul lawful contracts: they give leave to a spouse to break his or her vow and promise; and to children to disobey their parents, and, perhaps, to break their mother's heart, or to undo a family. No words can bind your faith, because you can be dispensed with; and if you swear you will not procure a dispensation, you can as well be dispensed with for that perjury as the other; and you cannot be tied so fast but the pope can unloose you. So that there is no certainty in your promise to God, or faith to men; in judicatories to magistrates, or in contracts with merchants; in the duty of children to their parents, of husbands to their wives, or wives to their contracted husbands; of a catholic to a heretic; and last of all, a subject to his prince cannot be bound
