under the protection of the temporal power, with which it had striven till that time. It made with kings this impious compact: "We will employ all the influence which we possess over the faithful, to establish in your favour arbitrary power; we will declare you kings by the grace of God; we will teach the doctrine of passive obedience; we will establish the Inquisition, by means of which you will have at your disposal a tribunal, which will not be subject to any local formalities; we will institute a new religious order; to which we will give the name of the Society of Jesus; this society shall establish a dogma diametrically opposite to that of Christianity, and it will undertake to make the interests of the rich and the powerful prevail over the interests of the poor in the eyes of God.
"We demand of you, in exchange for the services which we will render you, in exchange for the dependence in which we consent to place ourselves in respect to your temporal power, (whose origin is impious, since its rights have been primitively founded upon the law of the strongest,) and as a reward of our treason towards the poor, whose interest and privileges our divine master charged us to defend and promote, we require of you to preserve to us the property, which has been the fruit of the apostolic labours of the church militant; we require of you to be maintained in the enjoyment of the honourable and lucrative privileges which have been bequeathed to us by our predecessors."
This sacrilegious compact, which was entered into by the sacred college at the end of the fifteenth century, was executed, as to its principle clauses, at the commencement of the sixteenth.
It was at this epoch that Leo X. mounted the papal throne, an event very remarkable in the history of religion; and which, even to this day, has not sufficiently engaged the attention of Christian philosophers.
The first heads of the church were nominated by all the faithful; and the only motive which determined
