1572). For perfidy and atrocity
it has no equal in the annals of the world.

The desperate attempt in which the papacy had been engaged to put down
its opponents by instigating civil wars, massacres, and assassinations,
proved to be altogether abortive. Nor had the Council of Trent any
better result. Ostensibly summoned to correct, illustrate, and fix with
perspicacity the doctrine of the Church, to restore the vigor of
its discipline, and to reform the lives of its ministers, it was so
manipulated that a large majority of its members were Italians, and
under the influence of the pope. Hence the Protestants could not
possibly accept its decisions.

The issue of the Reformation was the acceptance by all the Protestant
Churches of the dogma that the Bible is a sufficient guide for every
Christian man. Tradition was rejected, and the right of private
interpretation assured. It was thought that the criterion of truth had
at length been obtained.

The authority thus imputed to the Scriptures was not restricted
to matters of a purely religious or moral kind; it extended over
philosophical facts and to the interpretation of Nature. Many went as
far as in the old times Epiphanius had done: he believed that the Bible
contained a complete system of mineralogy! The Reformers would tolerate
no science that was not in accordance with Genesis. Among them there
were many who maintained that religion and piety could never flourish
unless separated from learning and science. The fatal maxim that the
Bible contained the sum and substance of all knowledge, useful or
possible to man--a maxim employed with such pernicious effect of old by
Tertullian and by St. Augustine, and which had so often been enforced
by papal authority--was still strictly insisted upon. The leaders of
the Reformation, Luther and Melanchthon, were determined to banish
philosophy from the Church. Luther declared that the study of Aristotle
is wholly useless; his vilification of that Greek philosopher knew no
bounds. He is, says Luther, "truly a devil, a horrid calumniator, a
wicked sycophant, a prince of darkness, a real Apollyon, a beast, a
most horrid impostor on mankind, one in whom there is scarcely any
philosophy, a public and professed liar, a goat, a complete epicure,
this twice execrable Aristotle." The schoolmen were, so Luther said,
"locusts, caterpillars, frogs, lice." He entertained an abhorrence
for them. These opinions, though not so emphatically expr