and Baxter and Howe, who owed
their greatness to the study of the Scriptures,--at last put into every
hand, and scattered far and wide, even to India and China. Can anybody
doubt the marvellous progress of Protestant nations in consequence of
the translation and circulation of the Scriptures? How these are bound
up with their national life, and all their social habits, and all their
religious aspirations; how they have elevated the people, ten hundred
millions of times more than the boasted Renaissance which sprang from
apostate and infidel and Pagan Italy, when she dug up the buried
statues of Greece and Rome, and revived the literature and arts which
soften, but do not save!--for private judgment and religious liberty
mean nothing more and nothing less than the unrestricted perusal of the
Scriptures as the guide of life.

This right of private judgment, on which Luther was among the first to
insist, and of which certainly he was the first great champion in
Europe, was in that age a very bold idea, as well as original. It
flattered as well as stimulated the intellect of the people, and gave
them dignity; it gave to the Reformation its popular character; it
appealed to the mind and heart of Christendom. It gave consolation to
the peasantry of Europe; for no family was too poor to possess a Bible,
the greatest possible boon and treasure,--read and pondered in the
evening, after hard labors and bitter insults; read aloud to the family
circle, with its inexhaustible store of moral wealth, its beautiful and
touching narratives, its glorious poetry, its awful prophecies, its
supernal counsels, its consoling and emancipating truths,--so tender and
yet so exalting, raising the soul above the grim trials of toil and
poverty into the realms of seraphic peace and boundless joy. The Bible
even gave hope to heretics. All sects and parties could take shelter
under it; all could stand on the broad platform of religion, and survey
from it the wonders and glories of God. At last men might even differ
on important points of doctrine and worship, and yet be Protestants.
Religious liberty became as wide in its application as the unity of the
Church. It might create sects, but those sects would be all united as to
the value of the Scriptures and their cardinal declarations. On this
broad basis John Milton could shake hands with John Knox, and John Locke
with Richard Baxter, and Oliver Cromwell with Queen Elizabeth, and Lord
Bacon with Will