If we attempt to isolate the principle that lay at the basis of the wonderful social changes that now took place, we may recognize it without difficulty.  Heretofore each man had dedicated his services to his superior—­feudal or ecclesiastical; now he had resolved to gather the fruits of his exertions himself.  Individualism was becoming predominant, loyalty was declining into a sentiment.  We shall now see how it was with the Church.

Individualism.  Individualism rests on the principle that a man shall be his own master, that he shall have liberty to form his own opinions, freedom to carry into effect his resolves.  He is, therefore, ever brought into competition with his fellow-men.  His life is a display of energy.

To remove the stagnation of centuries front European life, to vivify suddenly what had hitherto been an inert mass, to impart to it individualism, was to bring it into conflict with the influences that had been oppressing it.  All through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries uneasy strugglings gave a premonition of what was coming.  In the early part of the sixteenth (1517), the battle was joined.  Individualism found its embodiment in a sturdy German monk, and therefore, perhaps necessarily, asserted its rights under theological forms.  There were some preliminary skirmishes about indulgences and other minor matters, but very soon the real cause of dispute came plainly into view.  Martin Luther refused to think as he was ordered to do by his ecclesiastical superiors at Rome; he asserted that he had an inalienable right to interpret the Bible for himself.

At her first glance, Rome saw nothing in Martin Luther but a vulgar, insubordinate, quarrelsome monk.  Could the Inquisition have laid hold of him, it would have speedily disposed of his affair; but, as the conflict went on, it was discovered that Martin was not standing alone.  Many thousands of men, as resolute as himself, were coming up to his support; and, while he carried on the combat with writings and words, they made good his propositions with the sword.

The reformation.  The vilification which was poured on Luther and his doings was so bitter as to be ludicrous.  It was declared that his father was not his mother’s husband, but an impish incubus, who had deluded her; that, after ten years’ struggling with his conscience, he had become an atheist; that he denied the immortality of the soul; that he had composed hymns in honor of drunkenness, a vice to which he was unceasingly addicted; that he blasphemed the Holy Scriptures, and particularly Moses; that he did not believe a word of what he preached; that he had called the Epistle of St. James a thing of straw; and, above all, that the Reformation was no work of his, but, in reality, was due to a certain astrological position of the stars.  It was, however, a vulgar saying among the Roman ecclesiastics that Erasmus laid the egg of the Reformation, and Luther hatched it.