On the completion of his studies at home, he repaired, thirsting for deeper draughts of knowledge, to Paris; and became one of the most devoted scholars of Abailard; whose rationalist invasions of the domain of theological doctrine,--by which the supreme authority of the Church in matters of faith was threatened,--accorded with Arnold's tone of mind. In fact, he soon arrived, by the line of argument which the lessons of his master and his own feelings led him to adopt, at the firm persuasion that he alone had hit upon the true plan for reforming, not only the political, but the religious abuses of the age; and, moreover, that none but he could carry that plan out. Under this hallucination, which the fumes of pagan principles of statesmanship and rationalist principles of Christianity, fermenting together, had hatched in his brain, he returned, after a few years' stay at Paris, to Brescia; not failing to visit, at his passage of the Alps, the Waldenses, and other sects, with whose tenets he secretly sympathized. On his arrival at Brescia, he opened his career by a series of pulpit philippics against the temporal government of the Prince Bishop, and the immoral lives of the clergy. With fiery eloquence, that told all the more by reason of the sanctity of the preacher's exterior--a precaution which he took so well that even St. Bernard admitted its success--Arnold opposed the doctrines and practice of Holy Writ to the vices and luxuries which he denounced; affirming that the corruption of the Church was caused by her having overstepped the boundaries of her domain. That she had done so, was proved, he said, by the wealth and political power which she had acquired, contrary to the spirit and example of apostolic times; to whose simplicity she must return if she was to be reformed as she ought to be, and as, for the good of society, it was indispensable she should be. Of course, this line of argument received all that applause which it never fails to do whenever urged. For the reformation of the Church, by reducing her to the poverty of the apostolic ages, involves,--besides such purely spiritual advantages as are set forth at large in the plan,--others of a material kind, which, if not usually paraded with the first, are not the less kept steadily in view. For instance, that those who carry out the reforms in question will be sure to get well paid for their pains; seeing that the transaction necessarily passes so much money and goods through their fingers, as well to private, as public profit. And, then, there is the secret satisfaction naturally felt above all by the rich and lax, at seeing the clergy, by means of this very reformation, deprived of much formidable influence--such as wealth always bestows on its possessors--and which is surely as necessary to the Church as to any other public corporation, to the end that she may carry out efficiently the affairs of her vast mission; keep up her dignity amid