Such are the principles by which the Reformation has triumphed. Its great organs desired that men's hearts should be 'cleansed of all foul infection.' It is a singular delusion of those writers who, seeing things otherwise than they are, ascribe this divine work to vile interests and base passions. According to them, its causes were jealousy of the Augustine monks, the ambition of princes, the greed of nobles, and the carnal passions of priests, which, however, as we have seen, had but too free scope during the middle ages. A searching glance into the souls of the Reformers lays bare to us the cause of the revival. If the writers of whom I have spoken were right, the Reformation ought not to have waited until Luther for its accomplishment; for there had existed for ages in christendom ambitious princes, greedy nobles, jealous monks, and impure priests. But what was really a new thing was to find men who, like the reformers, opened their hearts to the light of the Holy Spirit, believed in the Word of God, found Jesus Christ, esteemed everything in comparison with him as loss, lived the life of God, and desired that 'all hiding-places should be laid open,' and men's hearts cleansed of all hypocrisy. Such were the true sources of the Reformation. The adversaries of the Gospel understood the danger incurred by the Church of Rome from the principles professed by Calvin; and hence they called him wicked and profane, and, as he says, 'heaped upon his head a world of abuse.' They said that he ought to be expelled from the Church. Then the student, 'cast down but not destroyed,' retiring to his chamber, would exclaim: 'If I am at war with such masters, I am not, however, at war with thy Church, O God! Why should I hesitate to separate from these false teachers whom the apostles call thy enemies?[37]... When cursed by the unrighteous priests of their day, did not thy prophets remain in the true unity of thy children? Encouraged by their example, I will resist those who oppress us, and neither their threats nor their denunciations shall shake me.'[38] [Sidenote: PHASES OF CALVIN'S CONVERSION.]