as finally swept away by other errors which
came following in its footsteps.

You are already familiar with the great religious revolution of the
sixteenth century, which spread like a tornado over Northern Europe and
threatened, if that were possible, to engulf the bark of Peter. More than
half of Germany followed the new Gospel of Martin Luther. Switzerland
submitted to the doctrines of Zuinglius. The faith was lost in Sweden
through the influence of its king, Gustavus Vasa. Denmark conformed to the
new creed through the intrigues of King Christian II. Catholicity was also
crushed out in Norway, England and Scotland. Calvinism in the sixteenth
century and Voltaireism in the eighteenth had gained such a foothold in
France that the faith of that glorious Catholic nation twice trembled in
the balance. Ireland alone, of all the nations of Northern Europe,
remained faithful to the ancient Church.

Let us now calmly survey the field after the din and smoke of battle have
passed away. Let us examine the condition of the old Church after having
passed through those deadly conflicts. We see her numerically stronger
today than at any previous period of her history. The losses she sustained
in the old world are more than compensated by her acquisitions in the new.
She has already recovered a good portion of the ground wrested from her in
the sixteenth century. She numbers now about three hundred million
adherents. She exists today not an effete institution, but in all the
integrity and fulness of life, with her organism unimpaired, more united,
more compact and more vigorous than ever she was before.

The so-called Reformation of the sixteenth century bears many points of
resemblance to the great Arian heresy. Both schisms originated with
Priests impatient of the yoke of the Gospel, fond of novelty and ambitious
for notoriety. Both were nursed and sustained by the reigning Powers, and
were augmented by large accessions of proselytes. Both spread for awhile
with the irresistible force of a violent hurricane, till its fury was
spent. Both subsequently became subdivided into various bodies. The
extinction of Protestantism would complete the parallel.

In this connection a remark of De Maistre is worth quoting: "If
Protestantism bears always the same name, though its belief has been
perpetually shifting, it is because its name is purely negative and means
only the denial of Catholicity, so that the less it believes, and the more