Notwithstanding the remote position of Spain, under the imperial sceptre of Charles she was brought too closely into contact with the other states of Europe not to feel the shock of the great religious reform which was shaking those states to their foundations. Her most intimate relations, indeed, were with those very countries in which the seeds of the Reformation were first planted. It was no uncommon thing for Spaniards, in the sixteenth century, to be indebted for some portion of their instruction to German universities. Men of learning, who accompanied the emperor, became familiar with the religious doctrines so widely circulated in Germany and Flanders. The troops gathered the same doctrines from the Lutheran soldiers, who occasionally served with them under the imperial banners. These opinions, crude for the most part as they were, they brought back to their own country; and a curiosity was roused which prepared the mind for the reception of the great truths which were quickening the other nations of Europe. Men of higher education, on their return to Spain, found the means of disseminating these truths. Secret societies were established; meetings were held; and, with the same secrecy as in the days of the early Christians, the Gospel was preached and explained to the growing congregation of the faithful. The greatest difficulty was the want of books. The enterprise of a few self-devoted proselytes at length overcame this difficulty. A Castilian version of the Bible had been printed in Germany. Various Protestant publications, whether originating in the Castilian or translated into that language, appeared in the same country. A copy, now and then, in the possession of some private individual, had found its way, without detection, across the Pyrenees. These instances were rare, when a Spaniard named Juan Hernandez, resident in Geneva, where he followed the business of a corrector of the press, undertook, from no other motive but zeal for the truth, to introduce a larger supply of the forbidden fruit into his native land.