of the gospels and the Hebrew poetry, that standards of
morality were raised and ethical tastes purified thereby, is certain.
But the same cause had several effects that were either morally
indifferent or positively bad. The one chiefly noticed by
contemporaries was the pullulation of new sects. Each man, as Luther
complained, interpreted the Holy Book according to his own brain and
crazy reason. The old saying that the Bible was the book of heretics,
came true. It was in vain for the Reformers to insist that none but
the ministers (_i.e._ themselves) had the right to interpret Scripture.
It was in vain for the governments to forbid, as the Scotch statute
expressed it, "any to dispute or hold opinions on the Bible";
[Sidenote: 1550] discordant clamor of would-be expounders arose, some
learned, others ignorant, others fantastic, and all pig-headed and
intolerant.

There can be no doubt that the Bible, in proportion to the amount of
inerrancy attributed to it, became a stumbling-block in the path of
progress, scientific, social and even moral. It was quoted against
Copernicus as it was against Darwin. Rational biblical criticism was
regarded by Luther, except when he was the critic, as a cause of
vehement suspicion of atheism. Some texts buttressed the horrible and
cruel superstition of witchcraft. The examples of the wars of Israel
and the text, "compel them to enter in," seemed to support the duty of
intolerance. Social reformers, like {574} Vives, in their struggle to
abolish poverty, were confronted with the maxim, mistaken as an eternal
verity, that the poor are always with us. Finally the great moral
lapse of many of the Protestants, the permission of polygamy, was
supported by biblical texts.

[Sidenote: The classics]

Next to the Bible the sixteenth century revered the classics. Most of
the great Latin authors had been printed prior to 1500, the most
important exception being the _Annals_ of Tacitus, of which the _editio
princeps_ was in 1515. Between the years 1478 and 1500, the following
Greek works had been published, and in this order: Aesop, Homer,
Isocrates, Theocritus, the Anthology, four plays of Euripides,
Aristotle, Theognis, and nine plays of Aristophanes. Follow the dates
of the _editiones principes_ of the other principal Greek writers:

1502: Thucydides, Sophocles, Herodotus.
1503: Euripides (eighteen plays), Xenophon's _Hellenica_.
1504: Demosthenes.
1509: Plutarch's _