spiritual powers. "In every country there was a dual government:--1.
That of a local kind, represented by a temporal sovereign. 2. That of a
foreign kind, acknowledging the authority of the Pope. This Roman
influence was, in the nature of things, superior to the local; it
expressed the sovereign will of one man over all the nations of the
continent conjointly, and gathered overwhelming power from its
compactness and unity. The local influence was necessarily of a feeble
nature, since it was commonly weakened by the rivalries of conterminous
states and the dissensions dexterously provoked by its competitor. On
not a single occasion could the various European states form a coalition
against their common antagonist. Whenever a question arose, they were
skilfully taken in detail, and commonly mastered. The ostensible object
of papal intrusion was to secure for the different peoples, moral
well-being; the real object was to obtain large revenues and give
support to large bodies of ecclesiastics. The revenues thus abstracted
were not unfrequently many times greater than those passing into the
treasury of the local power. Thus, on the occasion of Innocent IV.
demanding provision to be made for three hundred additional Italian
clergy by the Church of England, and that one of his nephews, a mere
boy, should have a stall in Lincoln Cathedral, it was found that the sum
already annually abstracted by foreign ecclesiastics from England was
thrice that which went into the coffers of the king. While thus the
higher clergy secured every political appointment worth having, and
abbots vied with counts in the herds of slaves they possessed--some, it
is said, owned not fewer than twenty thousand--begging friars pervaded
society in all directions, picking up a share of what still remained to
the poor. There was a vast body of non-producers, living in idleness and
owning a foreign allegiance, who were subsisting on the fruits of the
toil of the labourers" ("Conflict between Religion and Science," Draper,
pp. 266, 267).