and branch by their imperial arms. The full power of imperial pagan Rome was exerted by their emperors in destroying the churches, burning Bibles, and in subjecting Christians to martyrdom, but all in vain. These atrocities called forth the moral power of Christianity, and spread far and wide its pervading influence.

In the fourth century, under the Emperor Constantine, Christianity became the religion of the State, and wealth and honors were showered upon the clergy. By the imperial edicts of Constantine paganism was suppressed and the power of the Christian Church established. The clergy were the chief recipients of the wealth and influence conferred by royalty. From this fatal union of Church and State arose by degrees the Roman hierarchy, with a power, wealth, and dominion far surpassing that of the ancient commonwealth. The Christian society, according to the learned French minister Guizot in his able work on civilization, at first a simple association, where the most talented became teacher and preacher, in the fourth century, by the union of Church and State, passed under the rule of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, organized into a regular aristocratic government with extensive revenues and authority. The precise period of this change, says Guizot, from the simplicity of the early Christians

to this artificial and aspiring organization, cannot be ascertained. The union of Church and State made wealth and power leading objects of ambitious bishops and priests, and hence arose the Catholic and Arian persecutions, and these rival creeds became in succession the religion of the State under Constantine, and his successors. These unprincipled persecutions were destructive of the true spirit of Christianity.

In the fifth century came the overthrow of the Roman Empire by the Teutonic tribes, who poured like a tornado from the north, upon the corrupt and decaying Romans. Into this unenlightened mass Christianity was infused age after age. The natural result of this state of things was the superiority of the church over the ignorant and superstitious princes and people of Europe during the middle ages, as illustrated by the Crusades, by the papal interdict of kingdoms, and dethronment of kings. The Church bore the ark of the covenant, and by uniting the Christian nations of Europe, she brought civilization and the remains of ancient knowledge through the wilderness of the dark ages. The knowledge of the Byzantine Empire conveyed to Europe by the returning Crusaders in the 12th and 13th centuries, the amelioration of the feudal system of lawless violence by chivalry and the laborious studies of pious and learned Catholic

Priests, had greatly improved the condition of European society, prior to the invention of the art of printing in the fifteenth century.

Anterior to the invention of the printing press, the slow and expensive process of chirography was the only mode of multiplying books in Europe; and in the fifteenth century, when printing was introduced, the body of the people of that continent were unacquainted with reading and writing, ignorant, and subject to the exacting and debasing superstitions of the papal hierarchy. The Popes saw that their doctrines reposed on anti-Christian traditions, and that a knowledge of the scriptures and general education were likely to destroy their hold on human credulity. From this cause arose the papal mandates confining the reading of the Bible to the Priests, and the establishment of the Inquisition to suppress by its fires and tortures the speaking or publishing of sentiments disagreeable to the holy office; hence the performance of service in an unknown tongue, and other mystic arts concealing religion from the mass of the people, and making the clergy the popular channels of divine mercy. On the revival of letters many of the Catholic clergy devoted themselves to the study of the Bible, and they saw how widely the hierarchal church had departed from the simplicity and purity of the Gospal. Wickliffe, Jerome,

Huss, Luther, Calvin and others successively discovered and unfolded the peaceful, the benign and republican doctrines of the Gospel. They made known the great truth that all men are born to a common inheritence of freedom and equality before God, and that faith in Jesus Christ and repentance of sin were the means of salvation. To purify the church of its erroneous reliance on the priesthood, instead of the Saviour, on the purchase of the remission of sins by papal indulgences, instead of divine grace, repentance and faith, they sought to enlighten the people by diffusing the knowledge of the Bible among them. With this view, Wickliffe in the fourteenth century translated the Bible into the English language, but by the hierarchal influence in the reign of Henry the 5th, by a law of England, it was enacted that the reading of the Bible in the native language was a felony subjecting offenders to loss of life and property. In 1408 the Arch Bishop of Canterbury forbade unauthorized persons to translate even texts of scripture. William Tyndale, an English subject, for printing the New Testament in English at Antwerp, was condemned to the stake as a heretic by the Emperor at the instance of Henry the 8th of England. The venders of the English Testaments, published by Tyndale, were severely and ignominiously punished in England.

These laws dictated by ignorant and bigotted priests and monks, exhibited a like practical ferocity and injustice in the fifteenth century, in the pretended trial and condemnation of Joan of Arc, as a sorceress and heretic at Rouen. The same

blind fanatical spirit of intolerance and persecution, has, in all ages, sought to establish itself by perpetuating the ignorance of the people. From the reformation in the sixteenth century, the Pope has steadily resisted the publication, or use of books, except such as his holiness, or his inquisitors, should authorize. The celebrated council of Trent, in the sixteenth century, pursuant to papal instructions, in the fourth rule of the Index of prohibited books, thus decreed :-"Inasmuch as it is manifest from experience, that if the Holy Bible, translated into the vulgar tongue, be indiscriminately allowed to every one, the temerity of men will cause more evil than good to arise from it, it is on this point referred to the judgment of the Bishops or inquisitors, who may, by the advice of the Priest or confessor, permit the reading of the Bible, translated into the vulgar tongue by Catholic authors, to those persons whose faith and piety they apprehend will be augmented, and not injured by it; and this permission they must have in writing. But if any one shall have the presumption to read or possess it without such written permission, he shall