But it is equally certain that those hot gospellers who had suffered so much martyrdom and achieved so many miracles were fully aware of their power and despotic in its exercise.  Against the oligarchy of commercial and juridical corporations they stood there the most terrible aristocracy of all:  the aristocracy of God’s elect, predestined from all time and to all eternity to take precedence of and to look down upon their inferior and lost fellow creatures.  It was inevitable that this aristocracy, which had done so much, which had breathed into a new-born commonwealth the breath of its life, should be intolerant, haughty, dogmatic.

The Church of Rome, which had been dethroned after inflicting such exquisite tortures during its period of power, was not to raise its head.  Although so large a proportion of the inhabitants of the country were secretly or openly attached to that faith, it was a penal offence to participate openly in its rites and ceremonies.  Religious equality, except in the minds of a few individuals, was an unimaginable idea.  There was still one Church which arrogated to itself the sole possession of truth, the Church of Geneva.  Those who admitted the possibility of other forms and creeds were either Atheists or, what was deemed worse than Atheists, Papists, because Papists were assumed to be traitors also, and desirous of selling the country to Spain.  An undevout man in that land and at that epoch was an almost unknown phenomenon.  Religion was as much a recognized necessity of existence as food or drink.  It were as easy to find people about without clothes as without religious convictions.

The Advocate, who had always adhered to the humble spirit of his ancestral device, “Nil scire tutissima fedes,” and almost alone among his fellow citizens (save those immediate apostles and pupils of his who became involved in his fate) in favour of religious toleration, began to be suspected of treason and Papacy because, had he been able to give the law, it was thought he would have permitted such horrors as the public exercise of the Roman Catholic religion.

The hissings and screamings of the vulgar against him as he moved forward on his stedfast course he heeded less than those of geese on a common.  But there was coming a time when this proud and scornful statesman, conscious of the superiority conferred by great talents and unparalleled experience, would find it less easy to treat the voice of slanderers, whether idiots or powerful and intellectual enemies, with contempt.

CHAPTER VIII.