[Sidenote: Effects of change of opinion among the learned.] Though it is sometimes said that Rome in this manner, by her admirable combinations and irresistible movement, succeeded at last in checking the Reformation, a full consideration of the state of affairs would lead us to receive that assertion with very considerable restriction. She came out of the conflict much less powerful than she had entered it. If we attribute to her policy all that it can justly claim, we must also attribute to causes over which she had no kind of control their rightful influence. The Reformation had been, to no small extent, due to the rise of criticism, which still continued its development, and was still fruitful of results. Latin had fallen from its high estate; the modern languages were in all directions expanding and improving; the printing-press was not only giving Greek learning to the world, but countless translations and commentaries. The doctrine successfully established by Luther and his colleagues--the right of private interpretation and judgment--was the practical carrying out of the organic law of criticism to the highest affairs with which man can be concerned--affairs of religion. The Reformation itself, philosophically considered, really meant the casting off of authority, the installation of individual inquiry and personal opinion. [Sidenote: Effects of criticism on religion and literature.] If criticism, thus standing upon the basis of the Holy Scriptures, had not hesitated to apply itself to an examination of public faith, and, as the consequence thereof, had laid down new rules for morality and the guidance of life, it was not to be expected that it would hesitate to deal with minor things--that it would spare the philosophy, the policy, the literature of antiquity. And so, indeed, it went on, comparing classical authors with classical authors, the fathers with the fathers, often the same writer with himself. Contradictions were pointed out, errors exposed, weakness detected, and new views offered of almost everything within the range of literature. [Sidenote: The Bible.] From this burning ordeal one book alone came out unscathed. It was the Bible. It spontaneously vindicated for itself what Wiclif in the former times, and Luther more lately, had claimed for it. And not only did it hold its ground, but it truly became incalculably more powerful than ever it had been before. The press multiplied it in every language without end, until there was scarcely a cottage in reformed Europe that did not possess a copy.