The Reformation, in all the lands that it reached, in all the lands where it played a great part, whether as conqueror, or as conquered, resulted in general, constant, and immense progress in liberty and activity of thought, and tended towards the emancipation of the human spirit.  It accomplished more than it knew; more, perhaps, than it would have desired.  It did not attack temporal absolutism; but the collision between temporal absolutism and spiritual freedom was bound to come, and did come.

Spiritual movement in European history has always been ahead of temporal movement.  The Church began as a very loose society, without a properly-constituted government.  Then it placed itself under an aristocratic control of bishops and councils.  Then it came under the monarchical rule of the Popes; and finally a revolution broke out against absolutism in spiritual affairs.  The ecclesiastical and civil societies have undergone the same vicissitudes; but the ecclesiastical society has always been the first to be changed.

We are now in possession of one of the great facts of modern society, the liberty of the human spirit.  At the same time we see political centralisation prevailing nearly everywhere.  In the seventeenth century the two principles were for the first time to be opposed.

VIII.—­The Political Revolt

Their first shock was in England, for England was a country of exceptional conditions both civil and religious.  The Reformation there had in part been the work of the kings themselves, and was incomplete; the Reformers remained militant, and denounced the bishops as they had formerly denounced the Pope.  Moreover, the aspirations after civil liberty that were stirred up by the emancipation of thought had means of action in the old institution of the country—­the charter, the Parliament, the laws, the precedents.  Similar aspirations in Continental countries had no such means of action, and led to nothing.

Two national desires coincided in England at this epoch—­the desire for religious revolution and liberty, and the desire for political liberty and the overthrow of despotism.  The two sets of reformers joined forces.  For the political party, civil freedom was the end; for the religious party, it was only a means; but throughout the conflict the political party took the lead, and the others followed.  It was not until 1688 that the reformers finally attained their aim in the abolition of absolute power spiritual and temporal; and the accession of William of Orange in that year brought England into the great struggle that was raging on the Continent between the principle of despotism and the principle of freedom.

England differed from other European countries in that the essential diversity of European civilisation was more pronounced there than anywhere else.  Elsewhere, one element prevailed over the others until it was overthrown; in England, even if one element was dominant, the others were strong and important.  Elizabeth had to be far more wary with her nobles and commons than Louis XIV. with his.  For this reason, Europe lagged behind England in civil freedom.  But there was another reason—­the influence of France.