Not that it did not sometimes betray itself. It is a Roman dignitary who is credited with the famous remark about the profit brought in by ‘this fable of Christ’; and everybody remembers how horrified poor Luther was in Rome when he heard the priests at Mass saying _panis es, panis manebis_,--‘bread thou art, and bread thou shalt remain.’ The open licentiousness of many Church dignitaries of those days is too notorious for special mention. ‘Private judgment’ may be a primary human right and a duty owing by reason to itself of the highest order; but to cast off in its favour an inveterate obedience to authority, is a psychological problem surrounded with the greatest difficulty and danger, and unless when under the control of an adequately strong judgment and will, may cause much wreckage of faith and conduct. I do not think that Buchanan suffered much in this way--certainly not so much as many others among the leaders and supporters of the Reformation; while any damage he sustained was amply compensated by his gains. Knox and other Reformers--I speak of Scotland--were driven by the violence of the recoil involved in their assault on the Catholic and Feudal system into extreme positions, necessarily harmful to themselves, and bequeathing legacies of disadvantage to their successors. They needed, through polemical necessities, an authority equal to that of Rome, which they had overthrown, and this drove them into placing Scripture in a position which the speculative and historical criticism of the last two centuries has made highly uncomfortable for many people of intelligence, including Broad Churchmen, whom it has driven into crypto-scepticism, and Evangelicals and Ritualists, whom it has moulded into wilful believers. Their denunciation and destruction of ‘idolatry’ and every rite ‘not appointed in the Word,’ with the necessity they lay under of maintaining a high standard of Biblical morality as a proof that Antinomian licence was not the necessary result of Justification by Faith, engaged them in a war against Art, Literature, and Natural Beauty and Pleasure, which, while it stamped the national consciousness with a grave, deep, and serious habit of regarding life, which is of the greatest value, produced also an immense amount, not yet exorcised, of official Pharisaism, popular hypocrisy, and practical pessimism, with all its miserable consequences. These were unfortunate results of the great rebellion against authority and claim of ‘private judgment,’ apparently suggested, in part at least, by self-defence; while the Nicene and Predestinarian dogmas were put forward with an emphasis and detail which would not be attempted in the present day, but were very seasonable in times when immaculate and even strained orthodoxy was both weapon and armour in a degree that does not prevail now.