a revolt against
_false_ sovereigns; the painful but indispensable first preparative
for _true_ sovereigns getting place among us! This is worth explaining
a little.

Let us remark, therefore, in the first place, that this of 'private
judgment' is, at bottom, not a new thing in the world, but only new at
that epoch of the world. There is nothing generically new or peculiar
in the Reformation; it was a return to Truth and Reality in opposition
to Falsehood and Semblance, as all kinds of Improvement and genuine
Teaching are and have been. Liberty of private judgment, if we will
consider it, must at all times have existed in the world. Dante had
not put-out his eyes, or tied shackles on himself; he was at home in
that Catholicism of his, a free-seeing soul in it, if many a poor
Hogstraten, Tetzel and Dr. Eck had now become slaves in it. Liberty of
judgment? No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, could ever
compel the soul of a man to believe or to disbelieve: it is his own
indefeasible light, that judgment of his; he will reign, and believe
there, by the grace of God alone! The sorriest sophistical Bellarmine,
preaching sightless faith and passive obedience, must first, by some
kind of _conviction_, have abdicated his right to be convinced. His
'private judgment' indicated that, as the advisablest step _he_ could
take. The right of private judgment will subsist, in full force,
wherever true men subsist. A true man _believes_ with his whole
judgment, with all the illumination and discernment that is in him,
and has always so believed. A false man, only struggling to 'believe
that he believes,' will naturally manage it in some other way.
Protestantism said to this latter, Woe! and to the former, Well done!
At bottom, it was no new saying; it was a return to all old sayings
that ever had been said. Be genuine, be sincere: that was, once more,
the meaning of it. Mahomet believed with his whole mind; Odin with his
whole mind,--he, and all _true_ Followers of Odinism. They, by their
private judgment, had 'judged'--_so_.

And now, I venture to assert, that the exercise of private judgment,
faithfully gone about, does by no means necessarily end in selfish
independence, isolation; but rather ends necessarily in the opposite
of that. It is not honest inquiry that makes anarchy; but it is error,
insincerity, half-belief and untruth that make it. A man protesting
against error is on the way towards uniting himself with all m