What were the reproaches which its adversaries constantly fulminated against the Reformation? Which of its results did they cast, so to speak, in its teeth to reduce it to silence? Two principal ones: 1_st_, the multiplicity of sects, the boundless license of the understanding, the destruction of all spiritual authority, and the dissolution of the religious society as a whole; 2_nd_, tyranny and persecution. 'You provoke license,' said they to the reformers; 'you produce it; and when it appears, you wish to restrain and repress it. And how do you repress it? By the harshest and most violent measures. You also persecute heresy, and by virtue of an illegitimate authority.' Survey and sum up all the great attacks directed against the Reformation, severing the purely dogmatical questions, and these are the two fundamental upbraidings to which it will be found they always reduce themselves. The reformed party was greatly embarrassed at these accusations. When the multiplicity of sects was objected to it, instead of avowing the fact, and asserting the legitimacy of their free development, it anathematised sectarians, deplored their appearance, and denied them. Was it taxed with persecution? It defended itself with some perplexity; it alleged necessity; and had, as it said, the right to repress and punish error, for it was in possession of the truth. Its dogmas and institutions were alone legitimate; and if the Roman church had no authority to punish the reformers, it was because it was in the wrong as against them. And when it was not its enemies, but its own offspring, that upbraided the dominant party in the Reformation with its persecutions, when the sectarians, whom it anathematised, said to it, 'We only do what you have done; we only separate ourselves as you have separated yourselves,' it was still more puzzled to find an answer, and very frequently only replied by additional rigour. {208}