out flogging themselves to the glory
of God, fell also under the merciless hands of the inquisitors, as did
also the Knights Templars in France. A new body, known as the Dancers,
started up in A.D. 1373, and spread through Flanders; but the priests
prayed them away by exorcising the dancing devils that, they said,
inhabited the members of this curious sect. Among the sufferers of this
century one name must not be forgotten: it is that of Ceccus Asculanus.
This man was an Aristotelian philosopher, an astrologer, a
mathematician, and a physician. "This unhappy man, having performed some
experiments in mechanics that seemed miraculous to the vulgar, and
having also offended many, and among the rest his master [the Duke of
Calabria], by giving out some predictions which were said to have been
fulfilled, was universally supposed to deal with infernal spirits, and
burned for it by the inquisitors, at Florence, in the year 1337" (p.
355). There seems no green spot on which to rest the eye in this weary
stretch of blood and fire.

CENTURY XV.

In this fifteenth century the knell of the Church rang out; it is
memorable evermore in history for the discovery of the New World, and
the consequent practical demonstration of the falsehood of the whole
theory of the patristic and ecclesiastical theology. In the flood only
"Noah and his three sons, with their wives, were saved in an ark. Of
these sons, Sham remained in Asia and repeopled it. Ham peopled Africa;
Japhet, Europe. As the fathers were not acquainted with the existence of
America, they did not provide an ancestor for its people" ("Conflict
between Religion and Science," Dr. Draper, p. 63). Lactantius, indeed,
inveighed against the folly of those who believed in the existence of
the antipodes, and Augustine maintained that it was impossible there
should be people living on the other side of the earth. Besides, "in the
day of judgment, men on the other side of a globe could not see the Lord
descending through the air" (Ibid, p. 64). Clearly there was no other
side, theologically; only Columbus sailed there. Another fatal blow was
struck at the Church by the invention of the printing press, about A.D.
1440, an invention which made knowledge possible for the many, and by
diffusion of knowledge made heresy likewise certain. It is not for me,
however, to trace here the progress of heretic thought; that brighter
task is for another pen; mine only to turn over the bloodstained a