This race of vehement men was followed by another generation of _Epigonen_. At the end of the century German Protestantism appeared in most of the provinces to be secure from outward dangers. Then the ecclesiastics became too self-sufficient and fond of power--the failings of a privileged order. Influential counsellors of weak princes, and rulers of public opinion, they themselves persecuted other believers with the weapons of the old Church. They sometimes called down the civil power upon heretics; and the populace stormed the houses of the Reformers in Leipzig; at Dresden a courtly ecclesiastic was executed on account of heresy, though perhaps there may also have been political reasons. Thus this new life threw deep shadows over the souls of the people. In Roman Catholic territories also, a vigorous and extraordinary life was roused. The Roman Catholic Church gave birth to a new discipline of the mind, a mode of human culture distinctly opposed to Protestantism. Even in the old Church a greater depth of inward life was attained. A new system of rapturous excitement and self-denial, with high duties and an exalted ideal, was offered to satisfy the needs of the souls of the faithful. In Spain and Italy this new religious zeal was aroused, full of resignation and self-sacrifice, full of great talent, eagerness for combat, and glowing enthusiasm, and rich in manly vigour. But it was not a faith for Germans. It demanded the annihilation of free individuality, a rending from all the ties of the world, fanatical devotion, and an unconditional subjection of the individual to a great community. Each one had to make an offering of his life for a great aim, without criticism or scruple. Whilst Protestantism formed a higher standard, and imposed on each individual, the duty of seeking independently by an effort of his own mind, the key to divine and human knowledge, the new Catholicism grasped his whole being with an iron hand. Protestantism was, notwithstanding all the loyalty of the Reformers, essentially democratic; the new Catholicism concentrated all the powers of men, of which it demanded the most unhesitating submission, in a spiritual tyranny, under the dominion of the head of the Church, and afterwards under that of the State.