laws or magistrates. The pope or the emperor may shine as lofty titles, as splendid images; but they are unable to command, and no one is willing to obey.' But, during this period of Turkish aggression, had not the religious dissensions of Christendom been decently composed, there was imminent danger that Europe would have been Mohammedanized. A bitter experience of past ages, as well as of the present, had taught it that the Roman Church was utterly powerless against such attacks. Safety was to be looked for, not in any celestial aid, but in physical knowledge and pecuniary resources, carried out in the organization of armies and fleets. Had her authority been derived from the source she pretended, she should have found an all-sufficient protection in prayerindeed, not even that should have been required. Men discovered at last that her Litanies and her miracles were equally of no use, and that she must trust, like any other human tyranny, to cannon and the sword.

Effect of the

The Turkish aggression led to the staying of the democratic outbreak in the bosom of the Church-the Turkish in- abstaining for a season from any farther sapping rasion. of the papal autocracy. It was necessary that ecclesiastical disputes, if they could not be ended, should, at all events, be kept for a time in abeyance, and so indeed they were, until the pent-up dissensions burst forth in "the Reformation." And thus, as we have related, by Mohammedan knowledge in the West, papal Christianity was well-nigh brought to ruin; thus, by a strange paradox, the Mohammedan sword in the East gave it for a little longer a renewed lease of political power, though never again of life.

To Nicolas V., a learned and able pope, the catastrophe of Constantinople was the death-blow. He had been the Nicolas V. a intimate friend of Cosmo de Medici, and from patron of art. him had imbibed a taste for letters and art, but, like his patron, he had no love for liberty. It was thus through commerce that the papacy first learned to turn to art. The ensuing development of Europe was really based on the commerce of upper Italy, and not upon the Church. The statesmen of Florence were the inventors of the balance of power. A lover of literature, Nicolas was the

founder of the Vatican Library. He clearly perceived the only course in which the Roman system could be directed; that it was unfit for, and, indeed, incompatible with science, but might be brought into unison with art. Its influence upon the reason was gone, but the senses yet remained for it. In continuing his policy, the Gradual rise succeeding popes acted with wisdom. They of the fine arts. gratified the genius of their institutions, of their country, and their age. In the abundant leisure of monasteries, the monks had found occupation in the illumination of manuscripts. From the execution of miniatures they gradually rose to an undertaking of greater works. In that manner painting had originated in Italy in the twelfth century. Sculpture, at first merged in architecture, had extricated herself from that bondage in the fourteenth. The mendicant orders, acquiring wealth, became munificent patrons. From caligraphic illustrations to the grand works of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle is a prodigious advance, yet it took but a short time to accomplish it.

I have now completed the history of the European Age of Faith as far as is necessary for the purposes of this book. It embraces a period of more than a Review of the thousand years, counting from the reign of Con- Age of Faith. stantine. It remains to consider the intellectual peculiarity that marks the whole period-to review briefly the agents that exerted an influence upon it and conducted it to its close.

Faith.

Philosophically, the most remarkable peculiarity is the employment of a false logic, a total misconcep- Philosophical tion of the nature of evidence. It is illustrated peculiarities by miracle-proofs, trial by battle, ordeal tests, of the Age of and a universal belief in supernatural agency even for objectless purposes. On the principles of this logic, if the authenticity of a thing or the proof of a statement be required, it is supposed to be furnished by an astounding illustration of something else. If the character of a princess is assailed, she offers a champion; he proves victorious, and therefore she was not frail. If a The character national assembly, after a long discussion, can- of its logic. not decide whether children should inherit the property of their father during the lifetime of their grandfather,"

66

an equal number of equal combatants is chosen for each side; they fight; the champions of the children prevail, and therefore the law is fixed in their favour. A relic of some martyr is bought at a great price; no one seeks to criticize the channel through which it has come, but every one asks, Can it work a miracle? A vast institution demands the implicit obedience of all men. It justifies its claim, not by the history of the past, but by promises and threats of the future. A decrepit crone is suspected of witchcraft. She is stripped naked and thrown into the nearest pond if she sinks, she is innocent; if she swims, she is in commerce with the Devil. In all such cases the intrinsic peculiarity of the logic is obvious enough; it shows a complete misconception of the nature of evidence. Yet this ratiocination governed Europe for a thousand Its adoption years, giving birth to those marvellous and of superna- supernatural explanations of physical phenomena and events upon which we now look back with unfeigned surprise, half disbelieving that it was possible for our ancestors to have credited such things. Against this preposterous logic the Mohammedans and Jews struck the first blows. We have already The Jews and heard what Algazzali the Arabian says respectstroy super- ing the enchanter who would prove that three are more than ten by changing a stick into a serpent. The circumstances under which the Jewish physicians acted we shall consider presently.

turalism.

Saracens de

naturalism.

It will not be useless to devote a little space to this belief in the supernatural. It offers an opportunity of showing how false notions may become universal, embody themselves in law and practical life, and wonderful to be said, how they may, without anything being done to destroy them, vanish from sight of themselves, like nightspectres before the day. At present we only encounter them among the lowest peasant grades, or among those who have been purposely kept in the most abject state of ignorance. Less than a century ago the clergy of Spain wished to have the Opera prohibited, because that ungodly entertainment had given rise to a want of rain; but now, in a country so intellectually backward as that--a witch was burnt there so lately as A.D. 1781-such an attempt

would call up sly wit, and make the rabble of Madrid suspect that the archbishop was smarting under the rivalry of the prima donna, and that he was furbishing up the rusty ecclesiastical enginery to sustain his cause.

clergy, the

In the day of their power the ecclesiastical profession were the supporters of this delusion. They Respective infound it suitable to their interests, and, by dint fluence of the of at first persuading others to believe, they at lawyers, and last, by habit, came to believe in it themselves, physicians. The Mohammedans and Jews were the first to assail it philosophically and by sarcasm, but its final ruin was brought about by the action of the two other professions, the legal and the medical. The lawyers, whose advent to power is seen in the history of Philip the Fair, and whose rise from that time was very rapid, were obliged to introduce the true methods of evidence; the physicians, from their pursuits, were perpetually led to the material explanation of natural phenomena in contradistinction to the mystical. It is to the honour of both these professions that they never sought for a perpetuation of power by schemes of vast organization, never attempted to delude mankind by stupendous impostures, never compelled them to desist from the expression of their thoughts, and even from thinking, by alliances with civil power. Far from being the determined antagonists of human knowledge, they uniformly fostered it, and, in its trials, defended it. The lawyers were hated because they replaced supernatural logic by philosophical logic; the physicians, because they broke down the profitable but mendacious system of miracle-cures.

Yet the Church is not without excuse. In all her varied history it was impossible to disentangle her Position of from the principles which at the beginning had the Church. entered into her political organization. For good or evil, right or wrong, her necessity required that she should put herself forth as the possessor of all knowledge within the reach of human intellect-the infallible arbitress of every question that should arise among men. Doubtless it was a splendid imposture, capable for a time of yielding great results, but sooner or later certain to be unmasked. Early discovering the antagonism of science, which could

not fail, in due season, to subject her pretensions to investigation, she lent herself to a systematic delusion of the illiterate, and thereby tried to put off that fatal day when creeds engendered in the darkness would have to be examined in the light, enforcing her attempt with an unsparing, often with a bloody hand. It was for this reason that, when the inevitable time of trial came, no intellectual defence could be made in her behalf, and hence there only remained a recourse to physical and political compulsion. But such a compulsion, under such circumstances, is not only a testimony to the intrinsic weakness of that for which it is invoked, it is also a token that they who resort to it have lost all faith in any inherent power of the system they are supporting, and that, in truth, it is fast coming to an end.

She could not

extricate her If from her

false position.

Successive or

The reader will remark, from the incidents connected with supernatural delusions now to be related, der in super- that they follow a law of continuous variation, the particular embodiment they assumed changing with the condition of the human mind at each epoch under examination. For ages they are implicitly believed in by all classes; then, to a few, but the number perpetually decreasing, they become an idle story of bare-faced imposture. At last humanity wakens from its delusion-its dream. The final rejection of the whole, in spite of the wonderful amount of testimony which for ages had accumulated, occurs spontaneously the moment that psychical development has reached a certain point. There can be no more striking illustration of the definite advancement of the human mind. The boy who is terror-stricken in a dark room insensibly dismisses his idle fears as he grows up to be a man.

Oriental

Clemens Romanus and Anastasius Sinaita, speaking of Simon Magus, say that he could make himself invisible; that he formed a man out of air; that Simon Magus. he could pass bodily through mountains without being obstructed thereby; that he could fly and sit unharmed in flames; that he constructed animated statues and selfmoving furniture, and not only changed his countenance into the similitude of many other men, but that his whole body could be transformed into the shape of a goat, a sheep,