their
power and despotic in its exercise. Against the oligarchy of commercial
and juridical corporations they stood there the most terrible aristocracy
of all: the aristocracy of God's elect, predestined from all time and to
all eternity to take precedence of and to look down upon their inferior
and lost fellow creatures. It was inevitable that this aristocracy, which
had done so much, which had breathed into a new-born commonwealth the
breath of its life, should be intolerant, haughty, dogmatic.

The Church of Rome, which had been dethroned after inflicting such
exquisite tortures during its period of power, was not to raise its head.
Although so large a proportion of the inhabitants of the country were
secretly or openly attached to that faith, it was a penal offence to
participate openly in its rites and ceremonies. Religious equality,
except in the minds of a few individuals, was an unimaginable idea. There
was still one Church which arrogated to itself the sole possession of
truth, the Church of Geneva. Those who admitted the possibility of other
forms and creeds were either Atheists or, what was deemed worse than
Atheists, Papists, because Papists were assumed to be traitors also, and
desirous of selling the country to Spain. An undevout man in that land
and at that epoch was an almost unknown phenomenon. Religion was as much
a recognized necessity of existence as food or drink. It were as easy to
find people about without clothes as without religious convictions.

The Advocate, who had always adhered to the humble spirit of his
ancestral device, "Nil scire tutissima fedes," and almost alone among his
fellow citizens (save those immediate apostles and pupils of his who
became involved in his fate) in favour of religious toleration, began to
be suspected of treason and Papacy because, had he been able to give the
law, it was thought he would have permitted such horrors as the public
exercise of the Roman Catholic religion.

The hissings and screamings of the vulgar against him as he moved forward
on his stedfast course he heeded less than those of geese on a common.
But there was coming a time when this proud and scornful statesman,
conscious of the superiority conferred by great talents and unparalleled
experience, would find it less easy to treat the voice of slanderers,
whether idiots or powerful and intellectual enemies, with contempt.

CHAPTER VIII.

Schism in the Church a Public Fact--Struggle f