I PROLOGUE 15 



Church or the Low Church zealots, and paid the 

 penalty of being called coward, time-server and 

 traitor, by both. Yet really there is a good deal 

 in his pathetic remonstrance that lie does not see 

 why he is bound to become a martyr for that in 

 which he does not believe ; and a fair consideration 

 of the circumstances and the consequences of the 

 Protestant reformation seems to me to go a long 

 way towards justifying the course he adopted. 



Few men had better means of being acquainted 

 with the condition of Europe ; none could be more 

 competent to gauge the intellectual shallowness 

 and self-contradiction of the Protestant criticism 

 of Catholic doctrine ; and to estimate, at its proper 

 value, the fond imagination that the waters let 

 out by the Renascence would come to rest amidst 

 the blind alleys of the new ecclesiasticism. The 

 bastard, whilom poor student and monk, become 

 the familiar of bishops and princes, at home in all 

 grades of society, could not fail to be aware of the 

 gravity of the social position, of the dangers 

 imminent from the profligacy and indifference of 

 the ruling classes, no less than from the anarchical 

 tendencies of the people who groaned under 

 their oppression. The wanderer who had lived 

 in Germany, in France, in England, in Italy, and 

 who counted many of the best and most influen- 

 tial men in each country among his friends, was 

 not likely to estimate wrongly the enormous 

 forces which were still at the command of the 

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