NONCONFORMITY. 369 



Passing over that period during which ecclesiastical power through- 

 out Europe was rising to its climax, we come, in the twelfth century, 

 to dissenters of more advanced types ; who, with or without differences 

 of doctrine, rebelled against the then-existing church government. 

 Such sects as the Arnoldists in Italy, the Petrobrusians, Caputiati and 

 Waldenses in France, and afterwai'd the Stedingers in Germany and 

 the Apostolicals in Italy, are examples ; severally characterized by 

 assertion of individual freedom, alike in judgment and action. Ordina- 

 rily holding doctrines called heretical, the promulgation of which was 

 itself a tacit denial of ecclesiastical authority (though a denial habitu- 

 ally based on submission to an alleged higher authority), sects of this 

 kind went on increasing in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 

 There were the Lollards in England ; the Fraticelli in Italy ; the Tabor- 

 ites, Bohemian Brethren, Moravians and Hussites, in Bohemia : all 

 setting themselves against church-discipline. And then the rebellious 

 movement of the reformation, as carried forward by the Lutherans in 

 Germany, the Zwinglians and Calvinists in Switzerland, the Hugue- 

 nots in France, the Anabaptists and Presbyterians in England, exhib- 

 ited, along with repudiation of various established doctrines, ceremo- 

 nies, and usages, a more pronounced anti-sacerdotalism. Characterized 

 in common by opposition to Episcopacy, protestant or catholic, we see 

 first of all in the government by presbyters, adopted by sundry of 

 these dissenting bodies, a step toward freedom of judgment and prac- 

 tice in religious matters, accompanied by denial of priestly inspiration. 

 And then in the subsequent rise of the Independents, taking for their 

 distinctive principle the right of each congregation to govei'n itself, 

 we see a further advance in that anti-sacerdotal movement which 

 reached its extreme in the next century with the Quakers ; who, going 

 directly to the fountain head of the creed, and carrying out more con- 

 sistently than usual the professed right of private judgment, repudi- 

 ated the entire paraphernalia of ecclesiasticism. 



It is true that the histories of these various non-conforming bodies, 

 not excluding even the Society of Friends, show us the re-growth of 

 a coercive rule, allied to that against which there had been rebellion. 

 Of religious revolutions, as of political revolutions, it is true that in 

 the absence of differences of character and culture greater than can be 

 expected in the same society at the same time, they are followed by 

 gradually established forms of rule only in some degree better than 

 those diverged from. In his assumption of infallibility, and his meas- 

 ures for enforcing conformity, Calvin was a pope comparable with any 

 who issued bulls from the Vatican. The discipline of the Scottish 

 Presbyterians was as despotic, as rigorous, and as relentless as any 

 which Catholicism had enforced. The Puritans of New England were 

 as positive in their dogmas, and as severe in their persecutions, as were 

 the ecclesiastics of the church they left behind. Some of these dis- 

 senting bodies, indeed, as the Wesleyans, have developed organizations 

 VOL. sxvui. — 24 



