ra,
and had received in the process sundry divinely inspired words and
phrases to clear the meaning. Both these innovators were dealt
with promptly: Carlstadt was, for this and other troublesome ideas,
suppressed with the applause of the Protestant Church; and the book of
Maes was placed by the older Church on the Index.

But as we now look back over the Revival of Learning, the Age of
Discovery, and the Reformation, we can see clearly that powerful as the
older Church then was, and powerful as the Reformed Church was to be,
there was at work something far more mighty than either or than both;
and this was a great law of nature--the law of evolution through
differentiation. Obedient to this law there now began to arise, both
within the Church and without it, a new body of scholars--not so much
theologians as searchers for truth by scientific methods. Some, like
Cusa, were ecclesiastics; some, like Valla, Erasmus, and the Scaligers,
were not such in any real sense; but whether in holy orders, really,
nominally, or not at all, they were, first of all, literary and
scientific investigators.

During the sixteenth century a strong impulse was given to more thorough
research by several very remarkable triumphs of the critical method
as developed by this new class of men, and two of these ought here to
receive attention on account of their influence upon the whole after
course of human thought.

For many centuries the Decretals bearing the great name of Isidore had
been cherished as among the most valued muniments of the Church. They
contained what claimed to be a mass of canons, letters of popes, decrees
of councils, and the like, from the days of the apostles down to the
eighth century--all supporting at important points the doctrine, the
discipline, the ceremonial, and various high claims of the Church and
its hierarchy.

But in the fifteenth century that sturdy German thinker, Cardinal
Nicholas of Cusa, insisted on examining these documents and on applying
to them the same thorough research and patient thought which led him,
even before Copernicus, to detect the error of the Ptolemaic astronomy.

As a result, he avowed his scepticism regarding this pious literature;
other close thinkers followed him in investigating it, and it was
soon found a tissue of absurd anachronisms, with endless clashing and
confusion of events and persons.

For a time heroic attempts were made by Church authorities to cover up
these facts.