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By slow degrees, the students of the humanities, as they were called, polished scholars, learned lessons of freedom from Grecian and Roman example; but they hid their patriotism in a dead language, and forfeited the claim to higher influence and enduring fame by suppressing truth, and yielding independence to the interests of priests and princes.

Human enfranchisement could not advance securely but through the people; for whom philosophy was included in religion, and religion veiled in symbols. There had ever been within the Catholic church men who preferred truth to forms, justice to despotic force. "Dominion," said Wycliffe, "belongs to grace," meaning, as I believe, that the feudal government, which rested on the sword, should yield to a government resting on moral principles. And he knew the right method to hasten the coming revolution. "Truth," he asserted with wisest benevolence, "truth shines more brightly the more widely it is diffused;" and, catching the plebeian language that lived on the lips of the multitude, he gave England the Bible in the vulgar tongue. A timely death could alone place him beyond persecution; his bones were disinterred and burnt, and his ashes thrown on the waters of the Avon. But his fame brightens as time advances; when America traces the lineage of her intellectual freedom, she acknowledges the benefactions of Wycliffe.

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In the next century, a kindred spirit emerged in Bohemia, and tyranny, quickened by the nearer approach of danger, summoned John Huss to its tribunal, set on his head a huge paper mitre begrimed with hobgoblins, permitted the bishops to strip him and curse him, and consigned one of the gentlest and purest of our race to the flames. 'Holy simplicity!" exclaimed he, as a peasant piled fagots on the fire; still preserving faith in humanity, though its noblest instincts could be so perverted; and, perceiving the only mode through which reform could prevail, he gave as a last counsel to his multitude of followers: "Put not your trust in princes." Of the descendants of his Bohemian disciples, a few certainly came to us by way of Holland; his example was for all.

Years are as days in the providence of God and in the progress of the race. After long waiting, an Augustine monk

at Wittenberg, who loathed the lewd corruptions of the Roman court and the deceptions of a coarse superstition, brooded in his cell over the sins of his age and the method of rescuing conscience from the dominion of forms, till he discovered a cure for these vices in the simple idea of justification by faith alone. With this principle, easily intelligible to the universal mind, and spreading, like an epidemic, widely and rapidly—a principle strong enough to dislodge every superstition, to overturn every tyranny, to enfranchise, convert, and save the world -he broke the wand of papal supremacy, scattered the lazars of the monasteries, and drove the penance of fasts and the terrors of purgatory, masses for the dead and indulgences for the living, into the paradise of fools. That his principle contained a democratic revolution Luther saw clearly; he acknowledged that "the rulers and the lawyers needed a reformer;" but he "could not hope that they would soon get a wise one," and in a stormy age, leaving to futurity its office, accepted shelter from feudal sovereigns. "It is a heathenish doctrine," such was his compromise with princes, "that a wicked ruler may be deposed." "Do not pipe to the populace, for it anyhow delights in running mad." "God lets rogues rule for the people's sin." "A crazy populace is a desperate, cursed thing; a tyrant is the right clog to tie on that dog's neck." And yet, adds Luther, "I have no word of comfort for the usurers and scoundrels among the aristocracy, whose vices make the common people esteem the whole aristocracy to be out and out worthless." And he praised the printing-press as the noblest gift of human genius. He forbade priests and bishops to make laws how men shall believe; for, said he, "man's authority stretches neither to heaven nor to the soul." Nor did he leave Truth to droop in a cloister or wither in a palace, but carried her forth in her freedom to the multitude; and, when tyrants ordered the German peasantry to deliver up their Saxon New Testament, "No," cried Luther, "not a single leaf." He pointed out the path in which civilization should travel, though he could not go on to the end of the journey.

In pursuing the history of our country, we shall hereafter meet in the Lutheran kingdom of Prussia, of which the dynasty

had become Calvinistic, at one time an ally, at another a neutral friend. The direct influence of Lutheranism on America was inconsiderable. New Sweden alone had the faith and the politics of the German reformer.

As the New World sheltered neither bishops nor princes, in respect to political opinion, the Anglican church in Virginia was but an enfranchisement from popery, favoring humanity and freedom. The inhabitants of Virginia were conformists after the pattern of Sandys and of Southampton rather than of Whitgift and Laud. Of themselves they asked no questions about the surplice, and never wore the badge of nonresisting obedience.

The meaner and more ignoble the party, the more general and comprehensive are its principles; for none but principles of universal freedom can reach the meanest condition. The serf defends the widest philanthropy; for that alone can break his bondage. The plebeian sect of Anabaptists, "the scum of the reformation," with greater consistency than Luther, applied the doctrine of the reformation to the social relations of life, and threatened an end to kingcraft, spiritual dominion, tithes, and vassalage. The party was trodden under foot, with foul reproaches and most arrogant scorn; and its history is written in the blood of myriads of the German peasantry; but its principles, safe in their immortality, escaped with Roger Williams to Providence; and his colony is the witness that, naturally, the paths of the Baptists were paths of freedom, pleasantness, and peace.

Luther finished his mission in the heart of Germany under the safeguard of princes. In Geneva, a republic on the confines of France, Italy, and Germany, Calvin, the great refugee from France, appealing to the people for support, carried forward and organized the reform.

The political character of Calvinism, which, with one consent and with instinctive judgment, the monarchs of that day, except that of Prussia, feared as republicanism, and which Charles II. declared a religion unfit for a gentleman, is expressed in a single word-predestination. Did a proud aristocracy trace its lineage through generations of a high-born ancestry, the republican reformer, with a loftier pride, invaded

the invisible world, and from the book of life brought down the record of the noblest rank, decreed from all eternity by the King of kings. His converts defied the opposing world as a world of reprobates, whom God had despised and rejected. To them the senses were a totally depraved foundation, on which neither truth nor goodness could rest. They went forth in confidence that men who were kindling with the same exalted instincts would listen to their voice, and be effectually "called into the brunt of the battle" by their side. And, standing serenely amid the crumbling fabrics of centuries of superstitions, they had faith in one another; and the martyrdoms of Cambray, the fires of Smithfield, the surrender of benefices by two thousand non-conforming Presbyterians, attest their perseverance.

Such was the system which, for a century and a half, assumed the guardianship of liberty for the English world. "A wicked tyrant is better than a wicked war,” said Luther, preaching non-resistance; and Cranmer echoed back: "God's people are called to render obedience to governors, although they be wicked or wrong-doers, and in no case to resist." English Calvinism reserved the right of resisting tyranny. To advance intellectual freedom, Calvinism denied, absolutely denied, the sacrament of ordination, thus breaking up the great monopoly of priestcraft, and knowing no master, mediator, or teacher but the eternal reason. "Kindle the fire before my face," said Jerome, meekly, as he resigned himself to his fate; to quench the fires of persecution forever, Calvinism resisted with fire and blood, and, shouldering the musket, proved, as a foot-soldier, that, on the field of battle, the invention of gunpowder had levelled the plebeian and the knight. To restrain absolute monarchy in France, in Scotland, in England, it allied itself with the party of the past, the decaying feudal aristocracy, which it was sure to outlive; for protection against feudal aristocracy, it infused itself into the mercantile class and the inferior gentry; to secure a life in the public mind, in Geneva, in Scotland, wherever it gained dominion, it invoked intelligence for the people, and in every parish planted the common school.

In an age of commerce, to stamp its influence on the New

World, it went on board the fleet of Winthrop, and was wafted to the bay of Massachusetts. Is it denied that events follow principles, that mind rules the world? The institutions of Massachusetts were the exact counterpart of its religious system. Calvinism claimed heaven for the elect; Massachusetts gave franchises to the members of the visible church, and inexorably disfranchised churchmen, royalists, and all world's people. Calvinism overthrew priestcraft; in Massachusetts, none but the magistrate could marry; the brethren could ordain. Calvinism saw in goodness infinite joy, in evil infinite woe, and, recognising no other abiding distinctions, opposed secretly but surely hereditary monarchy, aristocracy, and bondage; Massachusetts owned no king but the king of heaven, no aristocracy but of the redeemed, no bondage but the hopeless, infinite, and eternal bondage of sin. Calvinism invoked intelligence against satan, the great enemy of the human race; and the farmers and seamen of Massachusetts nourished its college with gifts of corn and strings of wampum, and wherever there were families, built the free school. Calvinism, in its zeal against Rome, reverenced the bible even to idolatry; and, in Massachusetts, the songs of Deborah and David were sung without change; hostile Algonkins, like the Canaanites, were exterminated or enslaved; and wretched innocents were hanged, because it was written, "The witch shall die."

"Do not stand still with Luther and Calvin," said Robinson, the father of the pilgrims, confident in human advancement. From Luther to Calvin there was progress; from Geneva to New England there was more. Calvinism, as a political power, in an age when politics were controlled by religious sects; Calvinism, such as it existed, in opposition to prelacy and feudalism, could not continue in a world where there was no prelacy to combat, no aristocracy to overthrow. It therefore received developments which were imprinted on institutions. It migrated to the Connecticut; and there, forgetting its foes, it put off its armor of religious pride. "You go to receive your reward," was said to Hooker on his deathbed. "I go to receive mercy," was his reply. For predestination Connecticut substituted benevolence. It hanged no Quakers, it mutilated no heretics. Its early legislation is the

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