The clergy and orthodox laity of our own day were as angry with Eachard's interpreter as their predecessors, nearly two centuries before, had been with Eachard himself.

He here inveighed against the dissolute lives of the secular clergy; the smallness of their tonsure, which, it is probable, maintained no longer any resemblance to the crown of thorns; their negligence in attending the exercise of their function; their mixing with the laity in the pleasures of gaming, hunting, dancing, and singing; and their openly living with concubines, by which it is commonly supposed he meant their wives.

Then a cry was raised to exclude all ecclesiastics from office, or at least to admit so large a portion of the laity into the Administration that Rome would be secularized and lose its distinctive character as an appanage for the head of the Church.

The growing infection of the uneducated or slightly educated masses of the Catholic laity with the virus of prevalent unbelief is arousing the attention of a few of our clergy to the need of coping with what is to them a new kind of difficulty.

For this purpose, Innocent first attempted to impose taxes at pleasure upon the clergy; and in the first year of this century, taking advantage of the popular frenzy for crusades, he sent collectors over all Europe, who levied, by his authority, the fortieth of all ecclesiastical revenues for the relief of the Holy Land, and received the voluntary contributions of the laity to a like amount [a].

And so of other abuses of the Church: he did not defy the Pope or deny his authority until it was plain that he sought to usurp the prerogatives of kings and secular rulers, and bring both the clergy and laity under his spiritual yoke.

For though, there are clear traces of Pantheistic speculation among the Priests, it can scarcely be contended that such speculations had the same influence on the cultured laity as the teaching of the Rishis had in ancient India.

On the day mentioned, the monks and laity within the borders all come together; they have singers and skilful musicians: they say their devotions with flowers and incense.

3. The Grand Sacriledge of the Church of Rome, in taking away the sacred Cup from the Laity at the Lords Table; by Dr. Featly D.D. Quarto.

The Society publish tracts in which the study of the Scriptures is enforced and their denial to the laity by Romanists assailed.

The synod also passed a vote, prohibiting the laity from wearing long hair [w].