inhabited the members of this curious sect.  Among the sufferers of this century one name must not be forgotten:  it is that of Ceccus Asculanus.  This man was an Aristotelian philosopher, an astrologer, a mathematician, and a physician.  “This unhappy man, having performed some experiments in mechanics that seemed miraculous to the vulgar, and having also offended many, and among the rest his master [the Duke of Calabria], by giving out some predictions which were said to have been fulfilled, was universally supposed to deal with infernal spirits, and burned for it by the inquisitors, at Florence, in the year 1337” (p. 355).  There seems no green spot on which to rest the eye in this weary stretch of blood and fire.

CENTURY XV.

In this fifteenth century the knell of the Church rang out; it is memorable evermore in history for the discovery of the New World, and the consequent practical demonstration of the falsehood of the whole theory of the patristic and ecclesiastical theology.  In the flood only “Noah and his three sons, with their wives, were saved in an ark.  Of these sons, Sham remained in Asia and repeopled it.  Ham peopled Africa; Japhet, Europe.  As the fathers were not acquainted with the existence of America, they did not provide an ancestor for its people” ("Conflict between Religion and Science,” Dr. Draper, p. 63).  Lactantius, indeed, inveighed against the folly of those who believed in the existence of the antipodes, and Augustine maintained that it was impossible there should be people living on the other side of the earth.  Besides, “in the day of judgment, men on the other side of a globe could not see the Lord descending through the air” (Ibid, p. 64).  Clearly there was no other side, theologically; only Columbus sailed there.  Another fatal blow was struck at the Church by the invention of the printing press, about A.D. 1440, an invention which made knowledge possible for the many, and by diffusion of knowledge made heresy likewise certain.  It is not for me, however, to trace here the progress of heretic thought; that brighter task is for another pen; mine only to turn over the bloodstained and black pages of the Church.  One name stands out in the list of the pontiffs of this century, which is almost unparalleled in its infamy; it is that of Roderic Borgia, Pope Alexander VI.  Foully vicious, cruel, and bloodthirsty, he is startlingly bad, even for a pope.  Among his children are found the names of Caesar and Lucretia Borgia, names whose very mention recalls a list of horrible crimes.  Alexander died A.D. 1503, from swallowing, by mistake, a poison which he and his son Caesar had prepared for others.  Turning to the heretics, we see great lives cut short by the terrible blows of the inquisition:—­Savanarola, the brave Italian preacher, the reformer monk, tortured and burned A.D. 1498; John Huss, the enemy of the papacy, burned A.D. 1415, in direct violation of the