d Christianity might
have been distorted into a cruel and licentious superstition, more
noxious, not only than Popery, but even than Islamism.

About a hundred years after the rising of the Council of Constance, that
great change emphatically called the Reformation began. The fulness
of time was now come. The clergy were no longer the sole or the chief
depositories of knowledge The invention of printing had furnished the
assailants of the Church with a mighty weapon which had been wanting
to their predecessors. The study of the ancient writers, the rapid
development of the powers of the modern languages, the unprecedented
activity which was displayed in every department of literature, the
political state of Europe, the vices of the Roman court, the exactions
of the Roman chancery, the jealousy with which the wealth and privileges
of the clergy were naturally regarded by laymen, the jealousy with which
the Italian ascendency was naturally regarded by men born on our side of
the Alps, all these things gave to the teachers of the new theology an
advantage which they perfectly understood how to use.

Those who hold that the influence of the Church of Rome in the dark
ages was, on the whole, beneficial to mankind, may yet with perfect
consistency regard the Reformation as an inestimable blessing. The
leading strings, which preserve and uphold the infant, would impede the
fullgrown man. And so the very means by which the human mind is, in one
stage of its progress, supported and propelled, may, in another stage,
be mere hindrances. There is a season in the life both of an individual
and of a society, at which submission and faith, such as at a later
period would be justly called servility and credulity, are useful
qualities. The child who teachably and undoubtingly listens to the
instructions of his elders is likely to improve rapidly. But the man who
should receive with childlike docility every assertion and dogma uttered
by another man no wiser than himself would become contemptible. It is
the same with communities. The childhood of the European nations
was passed under the tutelage of the clergy. The ascendancy of the
sacerdotal order was long the ascendancy which naturally and properly
belongs to intellectual superiority. The priests, with all their faults,
were by far the wisest portion of society. It was, therefore, on the
whole, good that they should be respected and obeyed. The encroachments
of the ecclesiastical pow