Paul III. who reigned from 1534 to the end of the year 1549, confirmed the excommunication of Henry, convoked the council of Trent, approved the new institution of the Jesuits, and was the first author of the bull, “In cœnâ Domini”. Those who appeal from the decrees of the pope to a general council, those who favour the appellants, those who say that a general council is superior to a sovereign pontiff; those who, without consent from Rome, exact from the clergy contributions for the necessities of the state; the civil tribunals which presume to try bishops, priests, those who are only tonsured, or monks; chancellor, vice-chancellors, presidents, counsellors, and, attorney-generals, who decide ecclesiastical causes: all those, in fine, who do not admit the omnipotence of the Holy See and the absolute independence of the clergy, are anathematized by this bull, which, published for the first time on holy Thursday, of the year 1536, was to be so published annually on the same day: it is on this account, therefore, denominated: In coena Domini; for the practice of thus publishing it every year at Rome was established in despite of the just remonstrances of sovereigns.
We shall here render homage to certain cardinals and prelates who addressed to Paul III. some very judicious, though very useless remonstrances.³⁰⁴³⁰⁵
“You are aware,” they say, “that your predecessors were “willing to be flattered. It was unnecessary to de− “sire it, they would have been sufficiently so without “exacting it; for adulation follows princes as a sha− “dows follows a body, and to this day the throne is “difficult of access to uncompromising truth. But, “in order to secure themselves the better from its “intrusion, your predecessors surrounded them− “selves with skilful doctors, whom they commanded “not to teach duties, but to justify caprices. The “talents of these doctors were to be exercised, “in discovering every thing to be lawful which pre− “sented itself as agreeable. For instance they have “declared the sovereign pontiff absolute master of “the benefices of Christendom; and, as a lord has “the right of selling his domains, that so, they con− “clude, the head of the church can never be guilty “of simony, and that in affairs relating to benefices, “simony can only exist when the seller is not pope. “By this, and similar reasoning, they have arrived “at the sweeping conclusion they were to demon− “strate, to wit, that, that which is pleasing to the “pope is always lawful to him. Behold, holy fa− “ther, the remonstrating cardinals add, behold the “indubitable source from whence have issued as “from the wooden horse, all the abuses, and all the “plagues which have afflicted the church of God.”