t state of degradation, and _nothing_ was done to elevate
their minds or to better their condition. For it is to the clergy,
that the common people have always to look as their natural and
bounden teachers; it is to the clergy, that a low state of cultivation
among the poorer classes is the most dishonourable. During this
period, however, the opportunity was presented to the people of
becoming better acquainted with the Scriptures, through several
translations of them into the Polish language, not only by the
different Protestant denominations, but also by the Romanists
themselves. Indeed, with the exceptions above mentioned, all the
translations of the Bible extant in the Polish language are from the
sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth century.[18]

We meet also, among the productions of the literature of this period,
a few catechisms and postillac, written expressly for the instruction
of the common people by some eminent Lutheran and reformed Polish
ministers. But the want of means for acquiring even the most
elementary information, was so great, that only a very few among the
lower classes were able to read them. The doctrines of the Reformers,
which every where else were favoured principally by the middle and
lower classes, in Poland found their chief support among the nobility.
Comparatively few of the people adhered to them. There was a time,
between 1550 and 1650, when half the senate,[19] and even more than
half of the nobility, consisted of Lutherans and Calvinists. In the
year 1570, these two denominations, together with the Bohemian
Brethren, formed a union of their churches by the treaty of Sendomir
for external or political purposes. In 1573, by another treaty known
under the name of _pax dissidentium_, they were acknowledged by the
state and the king, and all the rights of the Catholics were granted
to the members of these three denominations, and also to the Greeks
and Armenians. The want, however, of an accurate determination of
their mutual relation to each other, occasioned repeatedly in the
course of the following century bloody dissensions. The Protestants
succeeded, nevertheless, in maintaining their rights, until the years
1717 and 1718, when their number having gradually yet considerably
diminished, they were deprived of their suffrages in the diet. Their
adversaries went still further; and, after struggling against
oppression of all sorts, the dissidents had at length, in 1736, to be