SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY. 327 



the favour of the monks ruled the land ; the poor 

 helots were only too glad to be permitted to raise their 

 miserable huts under the shadow of the castle or the 

 cloister, their secular and spiritual oppressors and 

 exploiters. Even to-day we suffer from the after- 

 math of these awful ages and conditions, in which 

 there was no question of care for science or higher 

 mental culture save in rare circumstances and in 

 secret. Ignorance, poverty, and superstition combined 

 with the immoral operation of the law of celibacy, 

 which had been introduced in the eleventh century, to 

 consolidate the ever-growing power of the Papacy. It 

 has been calculated that there were more than 

 10,000,000 victims of fanatical religious hatred during 

 this "Golden Age" of Papal domination; and how 

 many more million human victims must be put to the 

 account of celibacy, oral confession, and moral con- 

 straint, the most pernicious and accursed institutions 

 of the Papal despotism ! Unbelieving philosophers, 

 who have collected disproofs of the existence of God, 

 have overlooked one of the strongest arguments in 

 that sense — the fact that the Roman " vicar of Christ " 

 could for twelve centuries perpetrate with impunity 

 the most shameful and horrible deeds " in the name 

 of God." 



III. THE REFORMATION. 



The history of civilisation, which we are so fond of 

 calling " the history of the world," enters upon its 

 third period with the Reformation of the Christian 

 Church, just as its second period begins with the 

 founding of Christianity. With the Reformation 

 begins the new birth of fettered reason, the re- 

 awakening of science, which the iron hand of the 



