The list of books which came into condemnation under such Protestant censorship during the centuries in question was very much more considerable than the aggregate of all the lists of the Indexes issued in Rome or issued under the authority of the Roman Church. The censorship policy of the Protestants was more spasmodic, and may be admitted to have been directed on the whole by a less wholesome, dignified, and honourable purpose. It represented very much more largely the spirit of faction or of personal grievance, while the political censorship was, of necessity, influenced by the action of the party which happened for the moment to be in control or of the minister who had for the time the ear of the ruler. While in form this Protestant censorship may, therefore, be considered as less defensible than that of the Church of Rome, it may be contended that in fact it has proved on the whole much less serious in its effect upon intellectual activities. In nearly all of the Protestant States, the attempts on the part of the divines to exclude religious and theological literature which was not in accord with their own dogmas and opinion, were given up in the century succeeding the Reformation. The censorship action of the State has, as we know, continued in certain divisions of literature to the present day, but even under this political censorship, it cannot be contended that literature has been seriously repressed or even largely influenced. It is not practicable, under the conditions obtaining in modern States and with the active intercourse between the residents of such States, to repress any literary productions for which a circle of readers is waiting. The books condemned and prohibited in Berlin come into print in Leipsic, or if the Imperial authority is sufficient to control conditions in Leipsic, are produced without difficulty in Amsterdam or Leyden. It is impossible to prevent the books so printed from finding their way back even into the territory in which their production and distribution has been absolutely forbidden.