er on the province of the civil power produced
much more happiness than misery, while the ecclesiastical power was in
the hands of the only class that had studied history, philosophy, and
public law, and while the civil power was in the hands of savage chiefs,
who could not read their own grants and edicts. But a change took place.
Knowledge gradually spread among laymen. At the commencement of the
sixteenth century many of them were in every intellectual attainment
fully equal to the most enlightened of their spiritual pastors.
Thenceforward that dominion, which, during the dark ages, had been, in
spite of many abuses, a legitimate and salutary guardianship, became an
unjust and noxious tyranny.

From the time when the barbarians overran the Western Empire to the time
of the revival of letters, the influence of the Church of Rome had been
generally favourable to science to civilisation, and to good government.
But, during the last three centuries, to stunt the growth of the human
mind has been her chief object. Throughout Christendom, whatever advance
has been made in knowledge, in freedom, in wealth, and in the arts of
life, has been made in spite of her, and has everywhere been in inverse
proportion to her power. The loveliest and most fertile provinces
of Europe have, under her rule, been sunk in poverty, in political
servitude, and in intellectual torpor, while Protestant countries, once
proverbial for sterility and barbarism, have been turned by skill
and industry into gardens, and can boast of a long list of heroes and
statesmen, philosophers and poets. Whoever, knowing what Italy and
Scotland naturally are, and what, four hundred years ago, they actually
were, shall now compare the country round Rome with the country round
Edinburgh, will be able to form some judgment as to the tendency of
Papal domination. The descent of Spain, once the first among monarchies,
to the lowest depths of degradation, the elevation of Holland, in spite
of many natural disadvantages, to a position such as no commonwealth so
small has ever reached, teach the same lesson. Whoever passes in Germany
from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant principality, in Switzerland
from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant canton, in Ireland from a Roman
Catholic to a Protestant county, finds that he has passed from a lower
to a higher grade of civilisation. On the other side of the Atlantic the
same law prevails. The Protestants of the United States have lef