the terror with which the Puritan viewed these proofs of a new
energy in the powers of ill found a wider sphere of action as he saw
their new activity and success in the religious and political world
about him. At the opening of Elizabeth's reign every Protestant had
looked forward to a world-wide triumph of the Gospel. If Italy and
Spain clung blindly to the Papacy, elsewhere, alike on the Danube or the
Rhine, on the Elbe or the Seine, the nations of Europe seemed to have
risen in irreconcileable revolt against Rome. But the prospect of such a
triumph had long since disappeared. At the crisis of the struggle a
Catholic reaction had succeeded in holding Protestantism at bay, and
after years of fierce combat Rome had begun definitely to win ground.
The peaceful victories of the Jesuits were backed by the arms of Spain,
and Europe was gradually regained till the policy of Philip the Second
was able to aim its blows at the last strongholds of Calvinism in the
west. Philip was undoubtedly worsted in the strife. England was saved by
its defeat of the Armada. The United Provinces of the Netherlands rose
into a great power as well through their own dogged heroism as through
the genius of William the Silent. At a moment too when all hope seemed
gone France was rescued from the grasp of the Catholic League by the
unconquerable energy of Henry of Navarre. But even in its defeat
Catholicism gained ground. England alone remained unaffected by its
efforts. In the Low Countries the Reformation was finally driven from
the Walloon Provinces, from Brabant, and from Flanders. In France Henry
the Fourth found himself compelled to purchase Paris by a mass; and the
conversion of the king was the beginning of a quiet breaking-up of the
Huguenot party. Nobles and scholars alike forsook the cause of heresy,
and though Calvinism remained dominant south of the Loire, it lost all
hope of winning France as a whole to its side.

[Sidenote: Puritan intolerance.]

At Elizabeth's death therefore the temper of every earnest Protestant,
in England as elsewhere, was that of a man who after cherishing the hope
of a crowning victory is forced to look on at a crushing and
irremediable defeat. The dream of a Reformation of the universal Church
was utterly at an end. Though the fierce strife of religions seemed for
a while to have died down, the borders of Protestantism were narrowing
every day, nor was there a sign that the triumph of the Papacy was
arreste