up gather experience in the ways of worldly wisdom. And since it is the infirmity of humanity, whatever may be the vigour of its first intentions, too often to weary in welldoing, provision was made to re-enforce the zeal of those becoming lukewarm to admonish the delinquent, by making each a spy on all the others, under oath to reveal everything to his superior. In that manner a control was exercised over the brotherhood in all parts of the world. In Europe they had, in a very short time, stealthily but largely engrossed public education; had mixed themselves with every public affair; were at the bottom of every intrigue, making their power felt through the control they exerted over sovereigns, ministers of state, and great court ladies, influencing the last through the spiritual means of the confessional, or by the more natural but equally effectual entanglements of requited love. Already they had recognized the agency of commerce in promoting and diffusing religious belief, and hence simultaneously became great missionaries and great merchants. With the Indies, East and West, they carried forward extensive commercial undertakings, and had depôts in various parts of Europe. In these operations they were necessarily absolved from their vows of poverty, and became immensely rich. South America they obtained a footing in Paraguay, and commenced their noble attempt at the civilization of the Indians, bringing them into communities, teaching them social usages, agricultural arts, and the benefits arising to themselves and the community from labour. They gave them a military organization, subdivided according to the European system, into the customary arms-infantry, cavalry, artillery; they supplied them with munitions of It was their hope that from this basis they should be able to spread the rule of the Church over America, as had been done in preceding ages over Europe. war. Causes of sion. In An intolerable apprehension of their invisible presence and unscrupulous agency made all Europe put their suppres them down at last. The amenities of exquisite courteousness, the artifices of infinite dissimulation, cannot for ever deceive. Men found, by bitter experience, that within the silken glove there was an iron hand. From their general in Rome, who was absolute commander of their persons and unchallengeable administrator of their prodigious wealth, down to the humblest missionary who was wearing away his life among the Andes, or on the banks of the Hoang-ho, or in the solitary prairies of Missouri, or under the blazing sun of Abyssinia -whether he was confessing the butterfly ladies of Paris, whispering devilish suggestions into the ear of the King of Spain, consoling the dying peasant in an Irish cabin, arguing with mandarins in the palace of the Emperor of China, stealing away the hearts of the rising generation in the lower schools and academies, extorting the admiration of learned societies by the profundity of his philosophy and the brilliancy of his scientific discoveries-whether he was to be seen in the exchanges and marts of the great capitals, supervising commercial operations on a scale which up to that time had been attempted by none but the Jews-whether he was held in an English jail as a suspected vagabond, or sitting on the throne of Francewhether he appeared as a great landed proprietor, the owner of countless leagues in the remote parts of India or South America, or whether he was mixing with crowds in the streets of London, and insinuating in Protestant ears the rights of subjects to oppose and even depose their monarchs, or in the villages of Castile and Leon, preaching before Catholic peasants the paramount duty of a good Christian implicitly to obey the mandates of his king-wherever the Jesuit was, or whatever he was doing, men universally felt that the thing he had in hand was only auxiliary to some higher, some hidden design. This stealth, and silence, and power became at last so intolerable that the Jesuits were banished from France, Spain, Portugal, and other Catholic countries. But such was their vitality that, though the order was abolished by a papal bull in 1773, they have been again restored. opinion Though it is sometimes said that Rome in this manner, by her admirable combinations and irresistible Effects of movement, succeeded at last in checking the change of Reformation, a full consideration of the state of affairs would lead us to receive that assertion learned. with very considerable restriction. She came out of the conflict much less powerful than she had entered it. If among the we attribute to her policy all that it can justly claim, we must also attribute to causes over which she had no kind of control their rightful influence. The Reformation had been, to no small extent, due to the rise of criticism, which still continued its development, and was still fruitful of results. Latin had fallen from its high estate; the modern languages were in all directions expanding and improving; the printing-press was not only giving Greek learning to the world, but countless translations and commentaries. The doctrine successfully established by Luther and his colleagues the right of private interpretation and judgment was the practical carrying out of the organic law of criticism to the highest affairs with which man can be concerned-affairs of religion. The Reformation itself, philosophically considered, really meant the casting off of authority, the installation of individual inquiry and personal opinion. If criticism, thus standing upon the basis of the Holy Scriptures, had not hesitated to apply itself to an examination of public faith, and, as the consequence thereof, had laid down new rules for morality and the guidance of life, it was not to be expected that it would hesitate to deal with minor things-that it would spare the philosophy, the policy, the literature of antiquity. And so, indeed, it went on, comparing classical authors with classical authors, the fathers with the fathers, often the same writer with himself. Contradictions were pointed out, errors exposed, weakness detected, and new views offered of almost everything within the range of literature. From this burning ordeal one book alone came out unscathed. It was the Bible. It spontaneously vindicated for itself what Wiclif in the former times, and Luther more lately, had claimed for it. And not only did it hold its ground, but it truly became incalculably more powerful than ever it had been before. The press multiplied it in every language without end, until there was scarcely a cottage in reformed Europe that did not possess a copy. Effects of criticism on religion and literature. The Bible. But if criticism was thus the stimulating principle that had given life to the Reformation, it had no little to do with its pause; and this is the influence over which Rome learning. had no kind of control, and to which I have made allusion. The phases through which the Reformation passed were dependent on the coincident advances of learning. First it relied on the Scriptures, which were to the last its surest support; then it included the Fathers. But, from a more intimate study of the latter, many erudite Pro- Decline of the testants were gradually brought back to the value of ancient fold. Among such may be mentioned patristic Erasmus, who by degrees became alienated from the Reformers, and subsequently Grotius, the publication of whose treatise, "De jure belli et pacis," 1625, really constituted an epoch in the political system of Europe. This great man had gradually become averse to the Reformation, believing that, all things considered, it had done. more harm than good; he had concluded that it was better to throw differences into oblivion for the sake of peace, and to enforce silence on one's own opinions, rather than to expect that the Church should be compelled to accommodate herself to them. If such men as Erasmus, Casaubon, and Grotius had been brought to this dilemma by their profound philosophical meditations, their conclusion was confirmed among the less reflecting by the unhappy intolerance of the new as well as the old Church Men asked what was the difference between the vindictiveness with which Rome dealt with of persecuAntonio de Dominis, at once an ecclesiastic and tions. a natural philosopher, who, having gone over to Protestantism and then seceded, imprudently visited Rome, was there arrested, and dying, his body was dug up and burnt, and the rigour of Calvin, who seized Servetus, the author of the "Christianismi Restitutio," and in part the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, when he happened to pass through Geneva, and committed him to the flames. Criticism had thus, in its earlier stage, produced wellmarked results. As it developed it lost none of End of paits power. It had enthroned patristic theology; tristicism. now it wrenched from its hand the sceptre. In the works of Daillé it showed that the fathers are of no kind of usethey are too contradictory of one another; even Jeremy Taylor speaks of their authority and reputation as clean gone for ever. In a few years they had sunk into desue Moral effects tude, a neglect shared by many classical authors, whose opinions were now only quoted with a respectful smile. The admiration for antiquity was diminishing under the effect of searching examination. Books were beginning to appear, turning the old historians into ridicule for their The burning credulity. The death of Servetus was not without advantage to the world. There was not a by Calvin. pious or thoughtful man in all reformed Europe of Servetus who was not shocked when the circumstances under which that unhappy physician had been brought to the stake at Geneva by John Calvin were made known. For two hours he was roasted in the flames of a slow fire, begging for the love of God that they would put on more wood, or do something to end his torture. Men asked, with amazement and indignation, if the atrocities of the Inquisition were again to be revived. On all sides they began to inquire how far it is lawful to inflict the punishment of death for difference of opinion. It opened their eyes to the fact that, after all they had done, the state of civilization in which they were living was still characterized by its intolerance. In 1546 the Venetian ambassador at the court of Charles V. reported to his government that in Holland and Friesland more than thirty thousand persons had suffered death at the hands of justice for Anabaptist errors. From such an unpromising state of things toleration could only emerge with difficulty. It was the offspring, not of charity, but of the checked animosities of evermultiplying sects, and the detected impossibility of their coercing one another. The history of the Reformation does not close, as many European authors have imagined, in a balanced and final distribution of the north and south between the Protestant and the Catholic. The Reformation continued in America. The predestined issue of sectarian differences and dissensions is individual liberty of thought. So long as there was one vast, overshadowing, intolerant corporation, every man must bring his understanding to its measure, and think only as it instructed him to do. As soon as dissent. ing confessions gathered sufficient military power to maintain their right of existence as soon as from them, in turn, incessant offshoots were put forth, toleration became not |