worshipful personality shall retain his hold upon the affections of men. Those men of science and independent thought who went over to the Reformation, expecting encouragement and protection under it, were doomed to be disappointed. It was not a movement caused by the pressure of enlightenment. At that period, both Germany and England were far below Italy in their conditions of knowledge and learning. It was a rebellion caused by the oppression of evils, and a desire for change in the management of church matters only. Every one of the superstitions of the old church were transferred to the new one. The same, in fact a stricter literal adherence to the words of scripture in managing the affairs of life, and in deciding questions of science, were maintained, the same incessant watchfulness toward those men of learning who were threatening the “truths of scripture” in their scientific labors, and the same cruelties invoked for their suppression, and the extinction of heresy. No more intellectual freedom was permitted, except upon minor doctrinal points of beliefs, and upon these there began those controversies which soon broke up the movement into factions or creeds. The intention of the new church was to do away with those rituals and ceremonies, which had been adopted from paganism as a compromise in the second and third centuries, and to bring their church back as far as possible, to that simplicity which characterized the first teachings of Christianity. But the leaders of the Reformation never attempted nor had they any desire to bring back that entire freedom of thought and expression which existed in the early days. No one with immunity would be allowed to deny the doctrine of the Holy Trinity or the truth of Immaculate Conception, as the old Greek philosophers were wont to do. Such vital questions it was torture and death to adversely consider, Servetus being an early victim to such temerity. There were questions enough however within the limits of safe discussion, to set agoing those unending controversies which distinguished Protestantism to this day. The newly acquired privilege of discussing sacred affairs among laymen as well as others, were indulged in to such an extent that debate between the sects, in defense of their several interpretations of scriptural texts, monopolized in society its hours of intercourse and conversation. When their leaders were indulging in such discussion as the dialogue between Eve and the Serpent; whether the Serpent stood erect on his tail, or in its natural coil when it was addressing Eve; fixing the hour of this remarkable event; accounting for the manner in which Noah fed the animals in the ark; how fishes appeared before Adam to be named by him, and such troublesome problems, laymen were mostly engaged in the examination of those doctrinal points which were dividing the movement into sects. Questions that had been settled centuries before by authority in the old church were dragged forth