If the laws against heretics, who were to our forefathers what the anarchists are to us, were oppressive, some of the blame should surely be apportioned to the laymen who sat in the mixed assemblies in which they were made. “Almost all Europe, for many centuries, was deluged in bloodshed at the direct instigation or with the full approval of the ecclesiastical authorities.” It is in this disingenuous way that Lecky refers to the operations of the Public Law of Europe against the Albigenses or Manichæans of Provence, and probably to the wars of Italian independence and the Thirty Years War. Until the thirteenth century he assures us that practically no persecutions (prosecutions) against heretics occurred. It was then that the Public Law of Europe began to be trampled on by sectarians who adopted and propagated Gnostic, Paulician, Manichæan, and other subversive theories, imported from the East by Semitic-Islamic settlers in the fair lands of Provence. Spain and Italy, the countries in which the Public Law of Europe was maintained, were the only ones who were spared the horrors of civil religious wars. They were saved by inquisitions, it will be retorted. Without seeking to defend the system, we may be permitted to inquire whether it were not preferable, at that time, to execute some ringleaders of religious revolt (30,000 in three centuries is a fair estimate), than to deluge whole countries in blood for many decades, about controversies which not one in a million could possibly grasp? Lecky the rationalist assures us that “the overwhelming majority of the human race, necessarily, accept their opinions from authority. Avowedly like Catholics, or unconsciously like Protestants. They have neither time nor opportunity (nor capacity) to examine for themselves” (_History of Rationalism_, I, 101). Does any one seriously believe that the Camisards were fighting for predestination and infant damnation, which have been shelved recently by Presbyterians in the United States? In England, France, Germany, everywhere, greed and political ambition were the incentives; the passions of ignorant masses were merely used as a means. Back of both, and behind all, we descry secret societies, the true pandemoniums, where these revolts are organized, and whence Mammon, “the least-erected spirit that fell,” Moloch, “horrid king besmeared with blood,” Belial, and all that crew, described by Milton, are sent forth to execute the behests of the eternal enmity between “the serpent’s seed and the seed of the woman.” In this unholy struggle “all the bonds of cohesion on which political organization depended were weakened or destroyed,” writes Lecky. “The spirit of private judgment had descended to those totally incapable of self-government, and lashed their passions into the wildest fury” (_History of Rationalism_, p. 239). Voltaire is even less complimentary. He describes the Hussites as “wild beasts whom the severity of the emperor had roused to furor.”