troubles which agitated Europe on the occasion of Luther. Every one enthusiastically sided with one party or the other. Some remained in the Roman communion; others embraced protestantism. The former conceived for their communion more zeal than they had previously cherished; the latter were all ardour for their new faith. One cannot calculate the numbers, who, according to the testimony of Coeffeteau, relinquished christianity on witnessing so many disputes."

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If it be said that, within a given time, the free investigation of religious truth introduced, as a deduction or corollary, the free investigation of political truth; if it be said, with Voltaire, was not till after Luther's time that the laity dogmatized;" I readily admit it. But these consequences were brought about by the natural progress of civilization; and we had no need of the horrors of the League, the massacres in Ireland and Scotland, the murders of the German peasantry, the civil wars of Switzerland, and the thirty years' war. These torrents of blood, instead of accelerating the advance of the human mind, have checked its progress for the space of two centuries. The horrors of 1793 will retard, for an incalculable period, the emancipation of mankind. The reformation originated

simply in the haughty rage of a monk and the avidity of princes. The changes which had taken place in laws and manners during a century preceding the reformation led of necessity to changes in religious worship. Luther came at the right time; and that is all. He is an example of that reputation which chance and circumstances sometimes confer on men of ordinary ability. I may here quote another judicious remark of Bayle's. Wickliffe, and several others, had not less talent or less merit than Luther; but they attempted the cure of the disease before it reached its crisis."

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Berington, in his “ Literary History of the Middle Ages," says, as I have stated, that all necessary reforms would have been obtained without the infliction of so many misfortunes. Alluding to England, he says: "It is pleasing to recollect that, without civil or religious strife, and without those seeds of animosity being engendered, which no time is likely to eradicate, we should have seen abuses corrected; ignorance dispelled; rights maintained; learning restored; the arts keeping possession of our temples; and, in our own country, these noble edifices, the monuments of the generous piety of our ancestors, preserved from destruction, and made the asylums not of monkish indolence,

but of studious ease, modest worth, and christian philosophy."

Protestantism may justly lay claim to virtues ; but it is not much honoured in its founders: Luther, the apostate monk, the approver of the massacre of the peasantry; Calvin, the splenetic doctor, who burnt Servetus; Henry VIII., the revisor of the Missal, and who put seventy-two thousand persons to a cruel death; these are the three Christs of protestantism.

THE REFORMATION.

BUT, putting the workman out of the question and considering only the work, there are truths which it would be unjust to deny. The reformation, by opening modern ages, separated them from the undefined interval which succeeded the termination of what are called the middle ages. It awakened ideas of ancient equality. It served to metamorphose a society exclusively military into a civil, rational, and industrious society. It gave birth to the modern property of capital; a moveable, progressive, and unlimited property, which opposes the limited, fixed, and despotic property of land. This is an immense benefit. But it is mixed up with much evil; and this evil historical impartiality will not permit us to pass over in silence.

Christianity commenced among the plebeian, poor, and ignorant classes of mankind. Jesus addressed himself to the lowly, and they rallied