e are the subjects treated in the first two chapters on "The Church
and the Nations," and on the Papacy in connection with the universality
of Catholicism, as contrasted with the national and political dependence
of heresy. The two following chapters pursue the topic farther in a
general historical retrospect, which increases in interest and
importance as it proceeds from the social to the religious purpose and
influence of the Papacy, and from the past to the present time. The
third chapter, "The Churches and Civil Liberty," examines the effects of
Protestantism on civil society. The fourth, entitled "The Churches
without a Pope," considers the actual theological and religious fruits
of separation from the visible Head of the Church.

The independence of the Church, through that of her Supreme Pontiff, is
as nearly connected with political as with religious liberty, since the
ecclesiastical system which rejects the Pope logically leads to
arbitrary power. Throughout the north of Europe--in Sweden and Denmark,
in Mecklenburg and Pomerania, in Prussia, Saxony, and Brunswick--the
power which the Reformation gave to the State introduced an unmitigated
despotism. Every security was removed which protected the people
against the abuse of the sovereign power, and the lower against the
oppression of the upper class. The crown became, sooner or later,
despotic; the peasantry, by a long series of enactments, extending to
the end of the seventeenth century, was reduced to servitude; the
population grew scanty, and much of the land went out of cultivation.
All this is related by the Protestant historians and divines, not in the
tone of reluctant admission, but with patriotic indignation,
commensurate with the horrors of the truth. In all these countries
Lutheran unity subsisted. If Calvinism had ever succeeded in obtaining
an equal predominance in the Netherlands, the power of the House of
Orange would have become as despotic as that of the Danish or the
Prussian sovereigns. But its triumph was impeded by sects, and by the
presence of a large Catholic minority, destitute indeed of political
rights or religious freedom, but for that very reason removed from the
conflicts of parties, and therefore an element of conservatism, and a
natural ally of those who resisted the ambition of the Stadtholders. The
absence of religious unity baffled their attempts to establish arbitrary
power on the victory of Calvinism, and upheld, in conjunctio