The new politick lights of modern Romes church-government: or The new Gospel according to Cardinal Palavicini revealed by him in his history of the Council of Trent. Englished out of French.

ARTICLE III. The Spaniards are not favourable to the Cardinals, nor other Officers of the Roman Court.

THE Spanish Bishops being for the most part great Lords & very con∣siderable either for the great Extent of their Dioceses, or by reason of their great revenues through their high birth and il∣lustrious families, or through their great learning, hardly could endure the pre∣eminence of the Cardinals, and above all few of those Bishops could ever hope to arrive at that dignity, and it was no lesse unsufferable to them to see themselves sub∣jected so much as they are to the Pope's Officers, and be Dependants of the Roman Tribunals; wherefore they thought it would be exceeding good for the Church to bring back the Cardinals to their first rank and to restore those rights to the Bishops, which they enjoyed anciently; and for this purpose they had a mind to disable the Cardinals to possesse Bishopricks, and oblige them to reside at Rome, and rule the parishes where∣of they are the Titulary Parsons or Priests, and withall they would have taken away dispensations, whereby persons or causes are

exempted from the Bishops Jurisdiction, and thereby make the Bishops in their Di∣oceses as so many Popes, onde fossero à guisa di Papa nelle loco Diocesi, which would have much diminished the splen∣dour of the Roman Court and sapped the foundation of the Church.