The Reformation of the sixteenth century is the greatest event of modern times. It has remodelled everything in Protestant countries; and has modified almost everything in Roman Catholic countries—religious and moral doctrines, ecclesiastical and civil institutions, the arts and sciences, in such sort that it is impossible to advance a step in the investigation of an idea, or a fact whatsoever, without meeting this immense work face to face. The Reformation marks the starting-point of a new world: God alone knows its development and its end. It is important to examine how, in the first years of the sixteenth century, it arose out of the intellectual wants and the general conscience, of mankind. It was at the same time the expression of a profound state of uneasiness, the means of a mighty improvement, and the pledge of a progress towards a better future. The Papacy, without doubt, had rendered more than one service to Christianity in the barbarous ages. It would be unjust to refuse it the honour of having served as a centre of European unity, and of having often made right prevail over brute force. But gradually as the peoples advanced, Rome became less capable of leading them, and when she dared to erect herself as an impassable barrier before the double action of the spirit of God and the spirit of man, she received a wound which, notwithstanding vain appearances, widens from generation to generation. In matters of belief and of worship, Roman Catholicism had admitted, by ignorance or by design, many of the Pagan elements. Without denying the fundamental dogmas of Christianity, it had disfigured and mutilated them to the extent of rendering them difficult of recognition. It was the world, to say sooth, which, forcing _en masse_ the doors of the Christian church, had borne in with it its demigods under the name of saints, its rites, its feasts, its consecrated spots, its lustral water, its sacerdotal system; everything, in fine, to the very insignia of its priests; so much so that polytheism survived itself, in great measure, under the garb of the religion of Christ. This mass of errors and of superstitions had naturally extended itself during the long darkness of the Middle Age. Peoples and priests had each lent their hand. Out of the false traditions of Catholicism some new falsehood was seen to rise from time to time, and it is easy to mark in the history of the Church the date of all the great changes that Christianity has undergone. The most devoted defenders of the papal throne confess that the corruption was extreme at the outset of the sixteenth century. “Some years before the appearance of the Calvinist and Lutheran heresy,” says Bellarmine, “there existed scarcely any severity in the ecclesiastical laws, purity in manners, learning in sacred literature, respect for holy things, or religion.”[1]