28. The wickedness of the Christian world in the dark ages and during the progress of the "Reformation" was such that the author of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," in closing his famous sixteenth chapter which deals with the persecution of the Christians during the first three centuries of our era, can say, and his arraignment cannot be successfully contradicted: "We conclude this chapter by a melancholy truth which obtrudes itself on the reluctant mind; that even admitting without hesitation or inquiry, all that history has recorded, or devotion has feigned, on the subject of martyrdom, it must still be acknowledged, that the Christians, in course of their intestine dissensions, have inflicted far greater severities on each other, than they had experienced from the zeal of infidels. During the ages of ignorance which followed the subversion of the Roman Empire in the west, the bishops of the imperial city extended their dominion over the laity as well as the clergy of the Latin church. The fabric of superstition which they had erected, and which might long have defied the feeble efforts of reason, was at length assaulted by a crowd of daring fanatics, who from the twelfth to the sixteenth century assumed the popular character of reformers. The church of Rome defended by violence the empire which she had acquired by fraud; a system of peace and benevolence was soon disgraced by proscriptions, war, massacres and the institution of the holy office (the Inquisition). And as the reformers were animated by the love of civil as well as of religious freedom, the Catholic princes connected their own interest with that of the clergy, and enforced by fire and the sword the terrors of spiritual censurers. In the Netherlands alone more than one hundred thousand of the subjects of Charles V. are said to have suffered by the hand of the executioner; and this extraordinary number is attested by Grotius (See Grotius Annal. de Rebus Belgiers). * * * If we are obliged to submit our belief to the authority of Grotius, it must be allowed, that the number of Protestants who were executed in a single province and a single reign, far exceed that of the primitive martyrs in the space of three centuries, and of the Roman Empire." "Decline and Fall," vol. i, ch. xvi. CHAPTER VI. THE TESTIMONY OF PROPHECY TO THE APOSTASY.