An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📖

for some time both before and after that period,

the constitution of the church of Rome may be considered as the

most formidable combination that ever was formed against the

authority and security of civil government, as well as against

the liberty, reason, and happiness of mankind, which can flourish

only where civil government is able to protect them. In that

constitution, the grossest delusions of superstition were

supported in such a manner by the private interests of so great a

number of people, as put them out of all danger from any assault

of human reason; because, though human reason might, perhaps,

have been able to unveil, even to the eyes of the common people,

some of the delusions of superstition, it could never have

dissolved the ties of private interest. Had this constitution

been attacked by no other enemies but the feeble efforts of human

reason, it must have endured for ever. But that immense and

well-built fabric, which all the wisdom and virtue of man could

never have shaken, much less have overturned, was, by the natural

course of things, first weakened, and afterwards in part

destroyed; and is now likely, in the course of a few centuries

more, perhaps, to crumble into ruins altogether.

 

The gradual improvements of arts, manufactures, and commerce, the

same causes which destroyed the power of the great barons,

destroyed, in the same manner, through the greater part of

Europe, the whole temporal manufactures, and commerce, the

clergy, like the great barons, found something for which they

could exchange their rude produce, and thereby discovered the

means of spending their whole revenues upon their own persons,

without giving any considerable share of them to other people.

Their charity became gradually less extensive, their hospitality

less liberal, or less profuse. Their retainers became

consequently less numerous, and, by degrees, dwindled away

altogether. The clergy, too, like the great barons, wished to get

a better rent from their landed estates, in order to spend it, in

the same manner, upon the gratification of their own private

vanity and folly. But this increase of rent could be got only by

granting leases to their tenants, who thereby became, in a great

measure, independent of them. The ties of interest, which bound

the inferior ranks of people to the clergy, were in this manner

gradually broken and dissolved. They were even broken and

dissolved sooner than those which bound the same ranks of people

to the great barons ; because the benefices of the church being,

the greater part of them, much smaller than the estates of the

great barons, the possessor of each benefice was much sooner able

to spend the whole of its revenue upon his own person. During the

greater part of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the power

of the great barons was, through the greater part of Europe, in

full vigour. But the temporal power of the clergy, the absolute

command which they had once had over the great body of the people

was very much decayed. The power of the church was, by that time,

very nearly reduced, through the greater part of Europe, to what

arose from their spiritual authority ; and even that spiritual

authority was much weakened, when it ceased to he supported by

the charity and hospitality of the clergy. The inferior ranks of

people no longer looked upon that order as they had done before;

as the comforters of their distress, and the relievers of their

indigence. On the contrary, they were provoked and disgusted by

the vanity, luxury, and expense of the richer clergy, who

appeared to spend upon their own pleasures what had always before

been regarded as the patrimony of the poor.

 

In this situation of things, the sovereigns in the different

states of Europe endeavoured to recover the influence which they

had once had in the disposal of the great benefices of the

church; by procuring to the deans and chapters of each diocese

the restoration of their ancient right of electing the bishop ;

and to the monks of each abbacy that of electing the abbot. The

re-establishing this ancient order was the object of several

statutes enacted in England during the course of the fourteenth

century, particularly of what is called the statute of provisors

; and of the pragmatic sanction, established in France in the

fifteenth century. In order to render the election valid, it was

necessary that the sovereign should both consent to it before

hand, and afterwards approve of the person elected; and though

the election was still supposed to be free, he had, however all

the indirect means which his situation necessarily afforded him,

of influencing the clergy in his own dominions. Other

regulations, of a similar tendency, were established in other

parts of Europe. But the power of the pope, in the collation of

the great benefices of the church, seems, before the reformation,

to have been nowhere so effectually and so universally restrained

as in France and England. The concordat afterwards, in the

sixteenth century, gave to the kings of France the absolute right

of presenting to all the great, or what are called the

consistorial, benefices of the Gallican church.

 

Since the establishment of the pragmatic sanction and of the

concordat, the clergy of France have in general shewn less

respect to the decrees of the papal court, than the clergy of any

other catholic country. In all the disputes which their sovereign

has had with the pope, they have almost constantly taken part

with the former. This independency of the clergy of France upon

the court of Rome seems to be principally founded upon the

pragmatic sanction and the concordat. In the earlier periods of

the monarchy, the clergy of France appear to have been as much

devoted to the pope as those of any other country. When Robert,

the second prince of the Capetian race, was most unjustly

excommunicated by the court of Rome, his own servants, it is

said, threw the victuals which came from his table to the dogs,

and refused to taste any thing themselves which had been polluted

by the contact of a person in his situation. They were taught to

do so, it may very safely be presumed, by the clergy of his own

dominions.

 

The claim of collating to the great benefices of the church, a

claim in defence of which the court of Rome had frequently

shaken, and sometimes overturned, the thrones of some of the

greatest sovereigns in Christendom, was in this manner either

restrained or modified, or given up altogether, in many different

parts of Europe, even before the time of the reformation. As the

clergy had now less influence over the people, so the state had

more influence over the clergy. The clergy, therefore, had both

less power, and less inclination, to disturb the state.

 

The authority of the church of Rome was in this state of

declension, when the disputes which gave birth to the reformation

began in Germany, and soon spread themselves through every part

of Europe. The new doctrines were everywhere received with a high

degree of popular favour. They were propagated with all that

enthusiastic zeal which commonly animates the spirit of party,

when it attacks established authority. The teachers of those

doctrines, though perhaps, in other respects, not more learned

than many of the divines who defended the established church,

seem in general to have been better acquainted with

ecclesiastical history, and with the origin and progress of that

system of opinions upon which the authority of the church was

established ; and they had thereby the advantage in almost every

dispute. The austerity of their manners gave them authority with

the common people, who contrasted the strict regularity of their

conduct with the disorderly lives of the greater part of their

own clergy. They possessed, too, in a much higher degree than

their adversaries, all the arts of popularity and of gaining

proselytes; arts which the lofty and dignified sons of the church

had long neglected, as being to them in a great measure useless.

The reason of the new doctrines recommended them to some, their

novelty to many; the hatred and contempt of the established

clergy to a still greater number: but the zealous, passionate,

and fanatical, though frequently coarse and rustic eloquence,

with which they were almost everywhere inculcated, recommended

them to by far the greatest number.

 

The success of the new doctrines was almost everywhere so great,

that the princes, who at that time happened to be on bad terms

with the court of Rome, were, by means of them, easily enabled,

in their own dominions, to overturn the church, which having lost

the respect and veneration of the inferior ranks of people, could

make scarce any resistance. The court of Rome had disobliged some

of the smaller princes in the northern parts of Germany, whom it

had probably considered as too insignificant to be worth the

managing. They universally, therefore, established the

reformation in their own dominions. The tyranny of Christiern

II., and of Troll archbishop of Upsal, enabled Gustavus Vasa to

expel them both from Sweden. The pope favoured the tyrant and the

archbishop, and Gustavus Vasa found no difficulty in establishing

the reformation in Sweden. Christiern II. was afterwards deposed

from the throne of Denmark, where his conduct had rendered him as

odious as in Sweden. The pope, however, was still disposed to

favour him; and Frederic of Holstein, who had mounted the throne

in his stead, revenged himself, by following the example of

Gustavus Vasa. The magistrates of Berne and Zurich, who had no

particular quarrel with the pope, established with great ease the

reformation in their respective cantons, where just before some

of the clergy had, by an imposture somewhat grosser than

ordinary, rendered the whole order both odious and contemptible.

 

In this critical situation of its affairs the papal court was at

sufficient pains to cultivate the friendship of the powerful

sovereigns of France and Spain, of whom the latter was at that

time emperor of Germany. With their assistance, it was enabled,

though not without great difficulty, and much bloodshed, either

to suppress altogether, or to obstruct very much, the progress of

the reformation in their dominions. It was well enough inclined,

too, to be complaisant to the king of England. But from the

circumstances of the times, it could not be so without giving

offence to a still greater sovereign, Charles V., king of Spain

and emperor of Germany. Henry VIII., accordingly, though he did

not embrace himself the greater part of the doctrines of the

reformation, was yet enabled, by their general prevalence, to

suppress all the monasteries, and to abolish the authority of the

church of Rome in his dominions. That he should go so far,

though he went no further, gave some satisfaction to the patrons

of the reformation, who, having got possession of the government

in the reign of his son and successor completed, without any

difficulty, the work which Henry VIII. had begun.

 

In some countries, as in Scotland, where the government was weak,

unpopular, and not very firmly established, the reformation was

strong enough to overturn, not only the church, but the state

likewise, for attempting to support the church.

 

Among the followers of the reformation, dispersed in all the

different countries of Europe, there was no general tribunal,

which, like that of the court of Rome, or an oecumenical council,

could settle all disputes among them, and, with irresistible

authority, prescribe to all of them the precise limits of

orthodoxy. When the followers of the reformation in one country,

therefore, happened to differ from their brethren in another, as

they had no common judge to appeal to, the dispute could never be

decided; and many such disputes arose among them. Those

concerning the government of the church, and the right of

conferring ecclesiastical benefices, were perhaps the