How far such a man as St. Bernard was in his day a Nonconformist, would be an interesting subject to discuss. Champion of orthodoxy as he was, and maker of Popes, his position was far more like that of the Puritan in the Anglican Church of King James than at first sight appears. But the discussion of this question would lead us too far out of the direct line of our argument. What hard work St. Francis had to wring recognition for himself and his tattered mendicant company from Pope Innocent III., great and far-seeing man as he was, is well known to all students of Mediæval history. And yet St. Francis and holy poverty for the time saved the Church. Though the mendicant orders soon grew fearfully corrupt, and made the Reformation doubly imperative, yet their brief career of purity and power added, it is not too much to say, two centuries to the life of the Roman system, and staved off the Ecclesiastical Revolution till the Western nations were full-grown, and were strong enough to use nobly the freedom which they might win. The life of the Church has been cherished, and its influence has been fed in all ages, by men who drew fresh ideas, fresh inspiration, from the life of the Saviour as set forth in the Divine Word. And the Mediæval Church had room for them. There was nothing out of tune with its professed organization in this direct appeal to the fountain head of truth. It could include its Nonconformists, and find room and work for them; though it had but a dim eye to distinguish between its Nonconformists and its heretics, and was prone to harry the last with fearful brutality,--a brutality which would be blankly incomprehensible, for they were often far from brutal men who exercised it, but for the idea which filled the minds of Churchmen, that heresy was the spawn of hell. When the Catholic Church, like the Anglican in after ages, was unable to comprehend its Nonconformists, could only cast out its Luthers, as Anglicanism cast out its Barrowes, its Robinsons, its Baxters, its Whitfields, it ceased to be Catholic and became Roman, and all the living energy of the Church, and all its promise, passed over to the opposite side.