86 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



The scene shifts, for the time being, from the earth 

 to the heavens. The Church had barely recovered 

 from the blow struck at her authority on matters of 

 secular knowledge, when another dealt, and that 

 by an ecclesiastic, Copernicus, Canon of Frauenburg, 

 in Prussia. But before pursuing this, some reference 

 to the revolt against the Church of Rome, which is 

 the great event of the sixteenth century, is necessary, 

 if only to inquire whether the movement known as 

 the Reformation justified its name as freeing the 

 intellect from theological thraldom. Far-reaching 

 as were the areas which it covered and the effects 

 which it wrought, its quarrel with the Church of 

 Rome was not because of that Church's attitude to- 

 ward freedom of thought. On the Continent it was 

 a protest of nobler minds against the corruptions 

 fostered by the Papacy; in England, it was personal 

 and political in origin,, securing popular support by 

 its anti-sacerdotal character, and its appeal to na- 

 tional irritation against foreign control. But, both 

 here and abroad, it sought mending rather than end- 

 ing; " not to vary in any jot from the faith Catholic." 

 It disputed the claim of the Church to be the sole 

 interpreter of Scripture, and contended that such 

 interpretation was the right and duty of the indi- 

 vidual. But it would not admit the right of the 

 individual to call in question the authority of the 

 Bible itself: to that book alone must a man go for 

 knowledge of things temporal as of things spiritual. 

 So that the Reformation was but an exchange of 



