iastical influence had been affected,
for its essential intention was to enable the pious to cultivate their
devotional feeling without the intervention of the clergy. Such a work,
if written in the present day, would have found an apt and popular title
in "Every Man his own Priest." There is no reason for supposing that the
condition to which man had at that time been brought, as the general
result of Italian Christianity, was one of intense selfishness, as has
been asserted; the celebrity of this book was rather dependent on a
profound distrust everywhere felt in the clergy, both as regards morals
and intellect. And why should we be surprised that such should be the
case with the laity, when in all directions the clergy themselves were
giving proof that they could not trust their own strength? They could
not conceal their dread at the incoming of Greek; they could not speak
without horror of the influence of Hebrew; they were loud in their
protestations against the study of pagan philosophy, and held up to the
derision and condemnation of the world science denounced by them as
profane. [Sidenote: Danger to the unity of the Church.] They foresaw
that that fictitious unity of which they had boasted was drawing to an
end; that men would become acquainted with the existence and history of
churches more ancient, and, therefore, more venerable than the Roman,
and, like it, asserting an authenticity upon unimpeachable proofs. But
once let sects with such an impressive prestige be introduced to the
knowledge of the West, once let the appearance of inviolate unity be
taken from the Latin Church, and nothing could prevent a spontaneous
decomposition forthwith occurring in it. It must break up into sects,
which, in their turn, must break up, in process of time, into smaller
and smaller divisions, and, through this means, the European must emerge
at last into individual liberty of thought. The compelling hand of
ecclesiastical tyranny must be removed, and universal toleration ensue.
Nor were such anticipations mere idle suspicions, for such was the
course that events actually took. Scarcely had the Reformation occurred
when sectarian subdivisions made their appearance, and in modern times
we see that an anarchy of sects is the inevitable harbinger of
individual liberty of thought.

[Sidenote: Higher requirements in evidence.] As we have just said, it
was impossible to look in any direction on the latter half of the
fifteenth cent