who had crawled in with the hides of cattle upon their backs, the king's tent itself was guarded by priests under the robes of the familiar creatures of the camp. They assumed the uniform of his guard. They lurked under the scullcap of his Calvinist chaplains. If he meditated, his hand fell on books which were formed to meet his meditations. He found one day an enumeration of the religious persuasions of the French people laid before him, so that he might conclude that it would be wiser if he conformed to the belief of the majority of his subjects. Who can picture the triumph with which the priests led Henry IV., king of Navarre, hereditary protector of the reformed faith, as a captive in chains to Rheims, where they anointed his head with the venerable oil which a canonized martyr two centuries before had blessed? If the monarch, as he stood on the platform and vowed obedience to the pope before that vast congregation, could have looked forward to his death-could have looked forward to the weak and bloody reigns of his children-might he not have cast back the baubles which bought him? The royal carriage, some twenty years after, on its way to court, was stopped, and it was said that the king was killed. A Jesuit priest was the murderer; but when the deed was done, what matter was it that the Jesuit died in the most protracted tortures? It was with a complacency that Sully himself thought suspicious that the legate acquiesced in the edict of Nantes, which in another reign he knew he could easily revoke. The allowances which were made to protestants in the life of Henry IV., like pensions which had been given to cast-off favorites, were recalled as soon as his successor was firm upon the throne. The concessions which the pope made to the apostate monarch were withdrawn as soon as the man who had been duped by them had been removed to his sudden grave.

It would be difficult to overrate the assistance which catholicism received from the civil government of the day. It looked round for pall-bearers who might carry it decently to its grave, when suppliant monarchs sprang up on all sides who carried it back in triumph to its palace. Had Henry IV. retained his ancient faith, would France have remained with her idols? Did not the cautious bigotry of Charles V. retain in their sockets the loosened joints of Austria and southern Germany? A catholic king curbed wavering Poland into vassalage, while the temporal power of the popes themselves

alone kept Venice and Naples from revolt. Had the chain which bound the established church to the established governments of Europe been severed, catholicism would have been brought to the ground. It was no longer supported by the mass of the people in France or in Germany, except in the instance of the insurrectionary citizens of Paris and of the larger towns. The nobility were inclined to reformation, perhaps from opposition to their princes; and even the French nobles themselves were in a great degree protestants. But wherever there was an established government, there also were found Jesuit and Dominican priests, creeping around it in that calm subservience which gradually cemented them together. The ruling powers became persuaded that without such sanctions they could not stand, and by a solemn alliance linked their safety to their own. The consquencee was, that protestantism throughout Europe became not only a schism but a sedition; and the man who braved the censures of the priest, found that he would have to meet the penalties of the inquisition.

The divisions among the protestants, also, may be cited as a cause of the reverses which were sustained by the reformed faith from the time its unity was broken. We have hesitated to place them among the primary causes of that event, because it may be said that the ecclesiastical stream is not the less vigorous from its division into various channels, and because, also, when charity among those branches is maintained, and when the cardinal doctrines of the faith are preached in all, as much effect may be produced as if they moved on together in sluggish union. But there is a point in which the bearing of the disunion of the protestants upon their subsequent disasters deserves a more prominent notice. Though the catholics were united as far as forms were concerned in a union which admitted of no dissent, they left some of the most prominent articles of faith in mystical indecision, and admitted, consequently, within their ranks speculatists whose views were in extreme opposition, provided they fell in with the ordinary course of their ritual. The protestant creed, on the other hand, included all the articles of faith; and while it left matters of form to the option of the disciple himself, they presented to him dogmas from which it was heterodox to dissent. It was very difficult to say what were the precise tenets of the hierarchy on original sin, on election, on justification, or on the operations of the Spirit, though

on those subjects, as on all others, the doctrines of the reformed churches were clear enough. Were there ever, within the bounds of a protestant church, differences so startling as those which existed between the Jesuits and Dominicans with regard to the solemn topics of man's responsibility and God's limits? It was an easy thing to submit to the routine of mass and of penance, if the devotee was allowed to frame his creed according to his own speculations. The consequence was, that while the apparent unity of the church was unbroken, there sprang up within her limits, from time to time, sects whose doctrines diametrically differed, and yet who underwent the most extreme privations for the support of their common head. While one flank was campaigning over the domains of infidelity, and, by its wide Arminianism and brilliant polish, was enlisting in its ranks the philosopher and the man of the world, another was exploring the extremities of China or of Brazil and bringing heathen to the fold. Pizarro conquered and christened, while Faber, by the influence of his mild persuasion, brought the courtly unbeliever to the faith. The church availed herself of every nerve that vibrated in her frame. If there was a man who had been turned from a life of blood by some strange interference which filled him with remorse whose cravings could never be satisfied, she made use of his conversion as the means of temporal advancement. If such a man chanced to be possessed of qualities calculated to attach to him a band of disciples who would chime in with his tone and ring its changes, she exalted him to the merit of a confessor, and cast her holy blessings over the new band as they levelled hill with valley to prepare her path. What could have been more wise than the establishment of monasteries, where women of noble birth and spirit could exert that influence which the customs of society might otherwise have diverted? They placed their hands on the oar and, with a vigor which often outstripped that of their more powerful companions, compelled the boat over rocks and through narrows. The protestants, as they plumed themselves at the commencement on their opposition to monastic establishments, were barred from the use of such assistance except in its feeblest form. We have alluded already so fully to the extraordinary support that was given to the hierarchy by the Jesuits, that at present they can only be mentioned as an illustration of the benefit which the

church received from its monastic foundations. Had Loyola been bred a protestant, he might have started a sect; but it would have been for a sect alone that he would have labored, and not for the church in general. His extravagances would have been too great to have admitted of an active communion with any of the reformed beliefs, and the influence which celibacy and confession gave him he could never have wielded. Who can tell what martyrs and saints might not have been developed among the anabaptists, if they had bestowed their vigor in the formation of an eleemosynary society? As it was, the protestant strength was wasted in domestic feuds or in the erection of new persuasions, whilst their cause itself was suffering from enervation.

It is, however, on the superficial reform which took place in the church of Rome herself that the chief cause may be rested of the check which was given to the progress of the reformed faith. It was not until the Lutheran doctrines had acquired a head-way that they attracted the active opposition of the papal court. Admirably constituted as was the church for the enforcement of its unity, its powers of ecclesiastical supervision had become numb from the long suspension they had suffered. The pope was more accustomed to direct the balance of nations than to interfere in the niceties of faith. Who is there that can look back without regret to the period that preceded the reformation — to the period when, after the night that had so long hung over Europe, some rays of dawn were appearing-when he sees that one after another the prelates that filled the arch-episcopal chair left names laden with the most fearful stains, and dominions stamped with the grossest crimes which ambition could devise for their acquisition? Each town, or each province, that was added to the papal dominions, bore on its face the marks of the bloody clutch that tore it from its lawful prince. Romagna, the most lovely plain in Italy, was at one time the stage of the outrages of rival tribes of banditti, whose incursions were fomented by rival pontiffs. The vatican was engaged in a continual carnival of crime. pope found his family hovering around him as he mounted the throne; and as legitimately he could lend them no support, his attention was directed during his life-time to glutting them with the spoils which he wrung from Christendom. Rome became a city of office-holders. The popes found that the only way to reward their adherents was to

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create for them offices whose emoluments were to be derived from the fees which were paid for the administration of the most solemn sacraments; and it is said that at one time the blue-book exceeded the catalogue of the library of the vatican. An orator in the council of Basel, who is quoted in the book before us, advocated, in conformity with the views of the council, the extension of the temporal sovereignty of the pope, and concluded with remarking, as we think rather ludicrously, that it was fitting that the holy father should have descendants who should defend him against the encroachments of his children in the faith. We believe that the system of celibacy, enforced as it was, and violated as it was, in the middle ages, was the cause of half the corruption and all the disgrace which accrued to Christendom before the reformation. The pope, who carried into office a family of children, born either before or after his vows bound him to celibacy, found himself obliged to prostitute his sacred station to their support. His office and its emoluments could not descend. His acquired estate must on his death escheat. Over all Europe he looked for tribute, and Italy he fomented into domestic war in order to snatch in the turmoil a patrimony for his descendants. Where could a stronger picture be given of the misery of the system, than when Alexander VI., having given all he possessed, his name, his treasure, his conscience, to his son, found himself driven to the wall of his episcopal palace and dogged by the assassin when the son asked for more? Cæsar Borgia murdered the pope's favorite before his face, and the assembled cardinals stood by in silence while the blood stained the flannel pontificals of their chief. The snow-white fleece became scarlet, and who dared to interfere? They had reached their appointed time; and when the father sank weary to his grave, another murder and another revolution attested the weakness of Cæsar Borgia.

It was such a scene that Luther came to reform. Old men in the faith, who hoped to receive its final sacraments, lifted up their heads and blessed him as he came. They were unable to believe that schism would follow. They only looked for purification. Prelates like Contarini and Pole refused to enter into those measures of persecution which the more violent devised. Had not servants of the church, they might have reasoned, arisen in the most orthodox times, who labored to reform the temporal disadvantages into which she