has created science in all its branches.  This has stimulated critical and historical curiosity.  This has substituted sound for false methods of inquiry, the love of truth for attachment to venerable delusion.  This has sustained the unconquerable soul of man in its persistent effort after liberty and its revolt against the tyranny of priests and princes.  At present, civilization seems threatened by more potent foes than the Roman Church, nor is it likely that these foes will seek a coalition with Catholicism.

As a final remark upon this topic, it should be pointed out that Protestantism, in spite of the shortcomings I have indicated, has, on the whole, been more favorable to intellectual progress than Catholicism.  For Protestantism was never altogether oblivious of its origin in revolt against unjust spiritual domination, while Catholicism has steadily maintained its conservative attitude of self-defense by repression.  This suffices to explain another point insisted on by Lord Macaulay—­namely, that those nations in which Protestantism took root have steadily advanced, while the decay of Southern Europe can be mainly ascribed to the Catholic Revival.  The one group of nations have made progress, not indeed because they were Protestants, but because they were more obedient to the Divine Mind, more in sympathy with the vital principle of movement, more open to rationalism.  The other group of nations have declined, because Catholicism after the year 1530, wilfully separated itself from truth and liberty and living force, and obstinately persisted in serving the false deities of an antiquated religion.

VIII.

Few periods in history illustrate the law of reaction and retrogression, to which all processes of civil progress are subject, more plainly and more sadly than the one with which I have been dealing in these volumes.  The Renaissance in Italy started with the fascination of a golden dream; and like the music of a dream, it floated over Europe.  But the force which had stimulated humanity to this delightful reawakening of senses and intelligence, stirred also the slumbering religious conscience, and a yearning after personal emancipation.  Protestantism arose like a stern reality, plunging the nations into confused and deadly conflict, arousing antagonisms in established orders, unleashing cupidities and passions which had lurked within the breasts of manifold adventurers.  The fifteenth century closed to a solemn symphony.  After the middle of the sixteenth, discord sounded from every quarter of the Occidental world.  Italy lay trampled on and dying.  Spain reared her dragon’s crest of menacing ambition and remorseless fanaticism.  France was torn by factions and devoured by vicious favorites of corrupt kings.  Germany heaved like a huge ocean in the grip of a tumultuous gyrating cyclone.  England passed through a complex revolution, the issue of which, under the sway of three Tudor monarchs,