of life.

It was not possible that a people so well advanced in the elements of
civilization should long remain insensible to the great religious reform
which, having risen on their borders, was now rapidly spreading over
Christendom. Besides the contiguity of the Netherlands to Germany, their
commerce with other countries had introduced them to Protestantism as it
existed there. The foreign residents, and the Swiss and German
mercenaries quartered in the provinces, had imported along with them
these same principles of the Reformation; and lastly the Flemish nobles,
who, at that time, were much in the fashion of going abroad to study in
Geneva, returned from that stronghold of Calvin well fortified with the
doctrines of the great Reformer.[386] Thus the seeds of the Reformation,
whether in the Lutheran or the Calvinistic form, were scattered wide
over the land, and took root in a congenial soil. The phlegmatic
temperament of the northern provinces, especially, disposed them to
receive a religion which addressed itself so exclusively to the reason,
while they were less open to the influences of Catholicism, which, with
its gorgeous accessories, appealing to the passions, is better suited to
the lively sensibilities and kindling imaginations of the south.

It is not to be supposed that Charles the Fifth could long remain
insensible to this alarming defection of his subjects in the
Netherlands; nor that the man whose life was passed in battling with the
Lutherans of Germany could patiently submit to see their detested heresy
taking root in his own dominions. He dreaded this innovation no less in
a temporal than in a spiritual view. Experience had shown that freedom
of speculation in affairs of religion naturally led to free inquiry into
political abuses; that the work of the reformer was never accomplished
so long as anything remained to reform, in state as well as in church.
Charles, with the instinct of Spanish despotism, sought a remedy in one
of those acts of arbitrary power in which he indulged without scruple
when the occasion called for them.

In March, 1520, he published the first of his barbarous edicts for the
suppression of the new faith. It was followed by several others of the
same tenor, repeated at intervals throughout his reign. The last
appeared in September, 1550.[387] As this in a manner suspended those
that had preceded it, to which, however, it substantially conformed, and
as it became the basis of