THE REFORMATION. 625 



In thus failing to recognize the fact that things were coming to that 

 condition in which the elements of certainty and absolute philosophical 

 truth would be shortly attained, the popes committed the Church to an 

 irreparable error. They periled her authenticity in an unequal conflict. 

 It might do for a little time to deny and denounce the globular figure of 

 the earth, but the demonstration of the truth came irresistibly at last ; 

 and so with the doctrines of the antipodes, the daily rotation on an axis, 

 <ind the annual translation round the sun. It enhanced the folly of these 

 proceedings that they were, in reality, insincere. Of the great ecclesias- 

 tics there probably were none who did not privately admit the truth of 

 what was thus condemned. When the bark Vittoria, of Magellan's 

 squadron, made the first voyage of circumnavigation round the globe, it 

 was a high Church dignitary, Cardinal Contarini, who gave the true ex- 

 planation of the circumstance, then first remarked, of the loss of one 

 whole day in her reckoning. Such insincerity, and the issue of these 

 and other like questions, could end in no other way they sapped the 

 prestige of the Church. How different would it have been if she had 

 taken the lead, and directed the human mind in the channels through 

 which it was destined to pass, instead of opposing herself as an obstacle! 

 She might have guided, but she could not resist. 



It is to be remarked that the men who, from the twelfth to the six- 

 teenth century, distinguished themselves in precipitating the The Reforma- 

 result, were mostly ecclesiastics. Roger Bacon may be taken tion< 

 as the type of them all. Their labors had no little connection with 

 the Eeformation which was headed by Luther. Though we are accus- 

 tomed to regard this with the most profound interest, a more philosoph- 

 ical view of the state of things may perhaps suggest that it is, in real- 

 ity, only one act of a great drama. We should not mistake an episode 

 for the main event. The Reformation soon reached its full expression 

 in dividing Christendom. Geographically it culminated in 1648, at the 

 treaty of Westphalia. By the philosopher it will ever be contemplated 

 with unalloyed satisfaction, for it asserted as its chief doctrine the right 

 of the human mind to judge for itself, a doctrine so unspeakably precious 

 as to make of no account the inconveniences which arise in its practical 

 application from the continual multiplication of sects. 



In the history of the European, from the time of the Emperor Con- 

 stantine to the eighteenth century, the ecclesiastical element i n fl ue nce of 

 so greatly preponderates as to constitute its almost essential the Christian 

 feature ; and, after all, it is impossible to do justice to the ropean civffi- 

 effects which ensued on the establishment of Christianity, zation - 

 and its adoption by the white man as his religion. The civil law exert- 

 ed an exterior power in human relations ; this produced an interior and 

 moral change. The idea of an ultimate accountability for personal deeds, 



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