under the imperial banners. These opinions, crude for the most part as
they were, they brought back to their own country; and a curiosity was
roused which prepared the mind for the reception of the great truths
which were quickening the other nations of Europe. Men of higher
education, on their return to Spain, found the means of disseminating
these truths. Secret societies were established; meetings were held;
and, with the same secrecy as in the days of the early Christians, the
Gospel was preached and explained to the growing congregation of the
faithful. The greatest difficulty was the want of books. The enterprise
of a few self-devoted proselytes at length overcame this difficulty.

A Castilian version of the Bible had been printed in Germany. Various
Protestant publications, whether originating in the Castilian or
translated into that language, appeared in the same country. A copy, now
and then, in the possession of some private individual, had found its
way, without detection, across the Pyrenees. These instances were rare,
when a Spaniard named Juan Hernandez, resident in Geneva, where he
followed the business of a corrector of the press, undertook, from no
other motive but zeal for the truth, to introduce a larger supply of the
forbidden fruit into his native land.

With great adroitness, he evaded the vigilance of the custom-house
officers, and the more vigilant spies of the Inquisition, and in the end
succeeded in landing two large casks filled with prohibited works, which
were quickly distributed among the members of the infant church. Other
intrepid converts followed the example of Hernandez, and with similar
success; so that, with the aid of books and spiritual teachers, the
number of the faithful multiplied daily throughout the country.[434]
Among this number was a much larger proportion, it was observed, of
persons of rank and education than is usually found in like cases; owing
doubtless to the circumstance that it was this class of persons who had
most frequented the countries where the Lutheran doctrines were taught.
Thus the Reformed Church grew and prospered, not indeed as it had
prospered in the freer atmospheres of Germany and Britain, but as well
as it could possibly do under the blighting influence of the
Inquisition; like some tender plant, which, nurtured in the shade, waits
only for a more genial season for its full expansion. That season was
not in reserve for it in Spain.

It may seem s