In the sixteenth century a consciousness of justice, truth, and liberty was awakening throughout Christendom, and men were beginning to protest everywhere, particularly in Geneva, at the lamentable perversions of social and religious life imposed by popery in times gone by. But the expiring Middle Ages rose energetically against this awakening which was to condemn them to be reckoned among the dead. The object of the struggle going on was to secure the triumph of the Reformation—or, as others expressed it, the triumph of progress and civilization. This struggle is the supreme interest of history. The intrigues of courts, and even the battles of armies, which are more pleasing to certain minds, are trifles in comparison with these mighty movements of humanity. Nevertheless, if they had their grandeur and their necessity, they had their danger also. To preserve the ship, launched into the open sea, from striking upon the treacherous shoals of disorder and libertinage, it was necessary that the Lord should command it. At the time when mankind were breaking the secular chains of popery and the fantastic institutions of feudalism, it was necessary they should cleave to the sovereign Master, who alone gives the breath of life to individuals and to nations. If England has so long enjoyed the precious fruits of liberty, and if France has not yet been able to secure them, it is because the former welcomed the Reformation and the latter rejected it. One of the great evils springing out of popery was the blunting of the moral sense; and the revival of the sixteenth century was a moral revival. In catholicism there were sincere men; but everything was good in their eyes, provided they attained an end which they believed to be glorious. And hence, strange to say, pretended preservers of order easily became assassins. [Sidenote: Meditated Coup-D’-État.]