kind described by Milton, when there was war in heaven. Clement IX., of whose excellence every one speaks, distributed to his electors $600,000, said to be previously agreed upon. No wonder papal debts got so heavy. Well said Casimir Delavigne, "Les sept péchés mortels ont porté la tiare.”

About the middle of the seventeenth century, the whole character of the Jesuit order was changed. From ascetic monks they became prime ministers. From feeding beggars they began to confess princes. Their tenets also changed, so that sin was almost an impossibility. "The yoke of Christ," said one, "has become marvelously easy."

Just about this time Cornelius Jansè, afterward known as Jansenius, undertook a reform as elevating as the other was corrupting; as pure as the other was base. Well-nigh right in doctrine, quite right in practice, exalting the grace of God, abating the preposterous values assumed for works, imbued with the spirit of the Scriptures, he differed from Luther chiefly in this, that he regarded the Bible and the early fathers as giving the ground of practice and faith. Together with St. Cyran, the literary academy of Port Royal was established, where the Scriptures were translated, school books produced, and holy thoughts, from such minds as Pascal's, prepared for the whole people.

Popery must choose between these two rival sects. It did not take long. Rome quickly and infallibly perceived its affinities. The whole weight of the Church, wielded by Richelieu, was hurled against the Jansenists, then the only hope of the papal Church. Infallibility declared certain heresies to be taught by Jansenius's works. All his followers declared the contrary. But infallibility cannot argue, so the whole principle of toleration must be put down. Hence the rights granted to Protestants by the edict of Nantes were revoked, (1685,) and half a million of prosperous citizens of France exposed to the rapacity and violence of the Catholic soldiery: an act of perfidy impossible to Punic faith, comparatively easy for a Church capable of a general massacre of dissenters. Louis XIV. broke through every law, human and divine, to perpetrate this enormous crime, for the purpose of appeasing the head of the Church of Rome, who had contended fiercely with him, not for the amelioration of excessive taxes, not for lenity in arbi

trary and life-long imprisonments, not for any appearance of decency in the court of him who called himself "most Christian," but for the revenues of certain sees. The savage brings bloody scalps to please his brutal mistress; fires of persecution and most outrageous murder appropriately appear to placate his offended holiness. This was the condition and character of the Church seeking universal supremacy under the banners of all-victorious Louis XIV. If such be religion, how blessed it must be to be wicked!

Let us compare the history and position of Protestantism. From the days of Luther it had contended for a legal right to live. This it obtained, by force of arms wielded by the Smalkeldic League, at the peace of Passau, 1555. This was the first point gained in the contest for the right to think. Alas! so long trained to contention, Lutherans and Zwinglians could not tolerate each other. Favored by Maximilian II., severely tried by Rudolph II. and Matthias, Protestantism staked its every interest on the valor and wisdom of the Elector Palatine. In vain; the cause and occasion surpassed the man. Then Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, with a few thousand men, confronted the colossal Austrian power. Minor states rallied to his banner. The many weak opposed the one strong. But though Gustavus left his mangled body on the field of Lützen, the cause survived, and by the treaty of Westphalia, 1648, Protestants became equal before the law. Liberty of conscience was secured; the many little Protestant states escaped being swallowed up by Catholic Austria; and, best of all, the Protestant sects learned that they had a common cause. Together they wielded their arms at Blenheim against another threatening annihilation.

Space forbids our tracing the history of religion in the chief Protestant power that risked so much in that battle. There are dark pages in its history, as well as light. But Protestant intolerance, imprisonment, and infliction of death, only show the kind of education men had received from the papal Church. The bitterness of animosity, the length of its continuance, show how thoroughly the lesson had been taught. But already the chief faults of the Church were behind her. was more free from the savage brutality and crushing bigotry that men had put into God's religion. As surely as the Roman

Every year she

Church had in it seeds of death, producing a constant increase of a hundredfold, so surely had the opposing Church seeds of life for itself and all the world. For with all its faults, Protestantism held aloft an open Bible. The fountain of divine life and light was free for all. The stultifying assumptions of human infallibility were spurned. The unshackled mind leaped upward. No wonder if it leaped somewhat wildly. Every possible good for man lay in that open Bible. It was the one book of England and Scotland; it made iron men for the armies of the Commonwealth; it created the leaders of thought and action for coming time. This same regenerating word of God had free course in Holland and Germany. All its fruits Romanism opposed; with what energy is indicated in a remark of Pius V., that all the property of the Church, crosses and chalices not excepted, should be used in an expedition against England. Romanism opposed free government, general intelligence, right to think, progress in liberal arts, the free course of God's word, and Christ's reign; offering instead despotism without mitigation, fetters for the intellect, a Bible chained, a morality most loathsome, a surveillance unceasing, punishments most severe, death for attempted reforms, and the reign of the devil as the vicegerent of Christ.

Now comes the conflict. There, at the east, on that rising ground beyond the river Nebel, are sixty-five thousand men. Away to the south the village and marsh of Lutzingen makes strong their left flank. Palisades and intrenchments make strong the line. Away to the north the masonry houses of Blenheim are filled with the soldiers of their right flank. Here are fifty-two thousand men; they must go down this broken and difficult descent, through the river, up that ascent of ground; must force those intrenchments, take those cannon, scatter those superior numbers. Fearful odds against the attacking party.

But God's interests are at stake. Let us invoke his aid. It is done, by command of the chief, at the head of every regiment. Forward!-We cannot trace the difficult progress; the thrice repeated repulse; enough that complete success at length crowned the arms of freedom and religion.

Theirs was no barren victory. It is not to be accounted complete because of standards, cannon, or other trophies taken,

nor because of that great army not twenty thousand could ever be gathered again; but because the vast despotic schemes of Louis were foiled; because England could enjoy and propagate her liberal constitution; because American colonies were not brought under the yoke that was being put on Europe; because Holland could still be free: and when England forgot her duty in 1775, Holland was able to render essential aid to the American cause.

The further spread of French literature and theories of social science by the fostering patronage of despotic power was hereby checked, and better thought, truer science, and purer morals were helped by the prestige of the dominant power.

In religion the effect was no less evident. Almost immediately after the battle three of the five great powers that determined the policy of Europe were anti-Papal. As soon as 1709 • the papal see lost its umpireship among the Catholic powers. By the peace of Utrecht, Sicily and Sardinia, fiefs of the papal crown, were assigned to other sovereignties without the pope being even consulted. Soon after, in his immediate neighborhood, the temporal power of the pope was annihilated. In 1799 the pope's very palace was plundered, his ring torn from his hand, food and clothes denied him, and he himself led away to prison in contempt, with scarce a friend on earth to strike a blow for his deliverance, or utter a protest against his wrongs. Antichrist fell nine days from his attempted usurpation of heaven to his place in hell. Popery fell a century from its usurped height of religious and political power, to a depth from which there is no reascension.

Protestantism found itself the leading moral and political power. The world's commerce was coming into its hands. The world's riches were pouring into its lap. One who was mastering the rudiments of walking at the time of the battle of Blenheim, afterward carried the banner of free grace and a pure life over myriads of miles. The reformation of England under Wesley was the result. The reformation of the world by his doctrine is yet to follow.

Let none despair of the triumph of God's cause. In the time of its darkness he shines forth; in the time of its weakness his arm is not shortened. Though men despaired of the world's conversion when, government, philosophy, and even religion

opposed it, and hence interpreted the Scriptures in favor of a personal reign of Christ, they should now take heart, put greater trust in God, and, with government, philosophy, and religion as allies, declare that the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.

ART. V.-THE NICODEMITES OF THE SIXTEENTH

CENTURY.

PERIODS of great civil commotion are wont to develop at least three classes of characters, each easily distinguished from the others. On the one hand are seen the lovers of novelty or friends of reform, whose motives are not always above the suspicion, whether just or otherwise, that they are not less influenced by their restless instability than by a desire to ameliorate the condition of their fellow-men. On the other, stand the avowed opponents of change, whom native temperament or interest, or both, render averse to any alteration in the existing regime: lovers of order, they style themselves; but with them order is a cold, lifeless thing, which denies the possibility or expediency of attempting to introduce any improvement, while it tolerates the slow but sure progress of that degeneration which is innate in every corrupt system. And between the two there is a large and intelligent class of persons who, while they sympathize completely with neither of the extremes, see much that is excellent in each. The veneration for antiquity professed by one side, and the necessity of reform which is the pass-word of the other, are both accepted; and thus these moderates might be mistaken for adherents of either dogma, but for the fact that they neither believe that ancient abuses ought to be maintained at any risk, nor that reforms ought to be purchased at any cost.

As it is in civil, so is it also in those great religious movements, which, if they produce a less immediate and sensible effect upon the external constitution of human society, are far more lasting in their results, and tend ultimately to renovate