Matters appeared to be going wrong with the Church, in spite of the recent bloody triumphs of the Inquisition; and the clergy and laity were not slow to notice the turn events were taking. Martin Luther, a young Augustinian monk, in particular, took advantage of the unsettled state of the mind of Europe to make a furious onslaught against the Pope and the Church. Having been told by Cajetan that he must “believe that one single drop of Christ’s blood is sufficient to redeem the whole human race, and the remaining quantity that was shed in the garden and on the cross was left as a legacy to the Pope, to be a treasure from which indulgences were to be drawn,” this young priest declared he never would accept such a doctrine, and commenced forthwith to preach openly against the sale of indulgences, declaring that the Church must stand or fall on the Bible, which taught no such doctrine. The orthodox clergy, on the contrary, declared that the Bible derived its authority from the Church, and not the Church from the Bible, and demanded that Luther should be arrested for heresy. In 1520 the Pope excommunicated the bold monk, who, in return, defiantly burnt the Papal bull, for which he was ordered to appear before the Imperial Diet at Worms, when he deliberately refused to retract. The views of the reformer quickly spread through Switzerland and Germany, Pope Leo thundering forth his anathemas upon all who joined the dangerous movement, until, at length, after many bloody wars and horrible massacres, such as the slaughter of the Huguenots, etc., the Reformation was firmly established, and the Bible became, to the Reformed Church, the only guide to morals and duty. At first, the Pope sullenly submitted to what appeared to be the inevitable; but soon it became apparent that, in order to keep any authority at all over the people, some plan would have to be adopted to curtail the growing influence of the Reformed Church. Accordingly, Pope Paul III., in 1540, established the Society of Jesus, the members of which order were sent abroad all over Europe for the purpose of secretly undermining the influence of the Reformers. Three years afterwards, as if to counteract the evil designs of the Jesuits, there appeared on the scene the celebrated work of Copernicus, which was destined for ever to demolish the geocentric theory of Ptolemy, and to establish the heliocentric philosophy, which taught that the sun was the centre of our system, and that all the planets, including our earth, revolved in regular order round it, and which, of course, called forth a volley of abuse from the Vatican, the theory being declared heretical and its author anathematised. The effect of all this was to cause quite a revolution in thought among the learned of Europe, which gave rise to another schism in the Church, departure being this time from the ranks of the Reformers.