vagant claims. Moreover the Crusading movement was at its height; and the Crusades were a source of such allabsorbing interest that little else was thought of, much less done.

It was not till the voice of Abelard made itself heard that men became conscious of the resentment and indignation that had been so long smouldering within their breasts. Now for the first time they began in earnest to search out and investigate the condition of the Church, which, though its claims were higher than ever, was in even a more deplorable state than in the time of Gerbert. There was actually a schism in the Chair of St. Peter itself. Two popes each professed to be the lineal successors of the Apostle. Alexander the Third and Victor the Fourth were supported by different factions; and for eighteen years, from 1159 to 1177, there was presented the unedifying spectacle of two contending heads of Christendom interchanging threats and curses, and denouncing each other as Antichrist.

The condition of the clergy was scarcely less open to reproach. With very few exceptions the members alike of the higher and lower ranks of the clergy were sunk in sensuality and vice of every description. The only use they made of their holy office was to employ it as a cloak and cover for their unmentionable sins. Things were coming to such a pass that it became difficult for the laity any longer to hold their peace. Murmurings and protests were beginning to be openly uttered. The Church saw her danger. She could not shut her eyes to the fact that intrinsically her power was weakened, if not absolutely departed. But she was not daunted. If her intrinsic glory had forsaken her, she would seek extrinsic aid. If her infallibility were no longer believed in, she would not stoop to argue the recusants into re-belief, but would torture and burn them into silence and submission.

Thus was commenced a diabolical system of barbarity and cruelty, accompanied with rigid surveillance and espionage, which was soon to be organised into the infernal institution of unhappy fame calling itself by the name of The Inquisition.

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CHAPTER III.

SERVETUS.

THE paganisation and degradation of Christianity effected by the Catholic Church, a brief account of which has been related in the last two chapters, gave rise at last to open rebellion and revolt. In the thirteenth century we are met with the Albigensian revolt, in the fourteenth with that of Wickliffe and the Lollards. But the Church, with the paramount power and absolute authority that still belonged to her, was able to quench these schisms almost as soon as they began to make themselves heard; and John Huss, one of the principal Lollard leaders, was unscrupulously burnt to death as an example and warning to all future heretics.

But though the fire had apparently been thus victoriously extinguished, the ashes were still smouldering; and it required but a very little matter to set it alight again— a draught of air accidentally let in, or a pair of bellows deliberately applied, as the case might be, would very quickly rekindle it into flames. And in the sixteenth century the Reformation breaks in upon us in its full strength and youthful ardour, under the leadership of Martin Luther and John Calvin.

When Luther first lifted up his voice against the iniquity of purchasing indulgences for sin, it is probable that he himself was little conscious of the enormous dimensions his protest was so shortly to assume. The success of any cause, whether religious or political, may be likened

to the successful raising of a tree or plant-it is not enough that the seed be pure and good and abundantly scattered abroad, but it also requires the soil to be properly adapted and carefully prepared. The secret of Luther's success lay in the fact that he was eminently the outgrowth of the period in which he lived; he was the man of his time, the product of his age. Gifted though he undoubtedly was, in no other century, we imagine, would the seed of his doctrine have borne such abundant fruit as in the earlier half of the sixteenth. Doubt and discontent were in the very air, and Luther was but the spokesman able to put the half-uttered thoughts of others into eloquent language.

We have such deep admiration for the Reformation; we believe it has performed so important a part in the history of European civilisation; we are so conscious of it being the germ out of which reason and experimental science grew, to the displacement of ignorance and servile submission to authority, that it is painful to us to be obliged to devote a chapter to the exposure of the greatest blot upon it that has as yet happened, and to give a detailed account of cruelty and bigotry as great as was ever displayed under the blackest phase of Catholic Christianity. Yet, as in a treatise of this description the story of Michael Servetus, part mystic, part pantheist, certainly deserves some little notice, we must put our scruples on one side, and proceed to the relation of the history of the man who was cruelly done to death by the vindictiveness and bigotry of the early Reformer, John Calvin.'

1 'I am more deeply scandalised,' says Gibbon, at the single execution of Servetus, than at the hecatombs which have blazed at the auto-de-fés of Spain and Portugal. The zeal of Calvin seems to have been envenomed by personal malice and perhaps envy. He accused his adversary before their common enemies, the judges of Vienne, and betrayed, for his destruction, the sacred trust of a private correspondence. The deed of cruelty was not varnished by the pretence of danger to the Church or State. In his passage through Geneva, Servetus was a harmless stranger who neither preached nor made proselytes.

Both the date and place of the birth of Servetus are somewhat uncertain. According to some authorities he was born at Tudela, in the kingdom of Navarre; according to others he was born at Villaneuva, in the kingdom of Arragon. The most probable date of his birth lies somewhere between the years 1508 and 1512. Of his parents we know scarcely anything save that they seem to have come of gentle blood, and that his mother's maiden name was Revés, an alias that was not unfrequently assumed in after-life by her son. In all probability the profession of his father was that of a notary.

Servetus seems to have been originally destined by his parents for the Church, and, in accordance with this view, was placed for his education in one of the convents at or near his native town. At twelve or fourteen years of age he appears to have entered the University of Saragossa, which at that time took rank as the most eminent university in Spain. At Saragossa he remained some four or five years studying with industry, and distinguishing himself by his proficiency in classics, philosophy, and as much of science as was then capable of being learnt. Religious doubts most probably assailed him early, for before he had left college we find that he has renounced all intention of the Church as a means of livelihood, and intends to devote himself instead to the hereditary profession of his family, namely, that of law. His father does not seem to have combated this intentional change of profession in his son, but sent him to Toulouse, in which school Servetus was duly entered as student of law, and where he remained about three years. Ultimately he became neither lawyer nor priest, but physician.

The natural bent of his mind, however, was certainly

A Catholic inquisitor yields the same obedience which he requires, but Calvin violated the golden rule of doing as he would be done by; a rule which is to be found in a moral treatise of Isocrates, four hundred years before the publication of the Gospel.'