ant, and immense progress in liberty and
activity of thought, and tended towards the emancipation of the human
spirit. It accomplished more than it knew; more, perhaps, than it would
have desired. It did not attack temporal absolutism; but the collision
between temporal absolutism and spiritual freedom was bound to come, and
did come.

Spiritual movement in European history has always been ahead of temporal
movement. The Church began as a very loose society, without a
properly-constituted government. Then it placed itself under an
aristocratic control of bishops and councils. Then it came under the
monarchical rule of the Popes; and finally a revolution broke out
against absolutism in spiritual affairs. The ecclesiastical and civil
societies have undergone the same vicissitudes; but the ecclesiastical
society has always been the first to be changed.

We are now in possession of one of the great facts of modern society,
the liberty of the human spirit. At the same time we see political
centralisation prevailing nearly everywhere. In the seventeenth century
the two principles were for the first time to be opposed.

_VIII.--The Political Revolt_

Their first shock was in England, for England was a country of
exceptional conditions both civil and religious. The Reformation there
had in part been the work of the kings themselves, and was incomplete;
the Reformers remained militant, and denounced the bishops as they had
formerly denounced the Pope. Moreover, the aspirations after civil
liberty that were stirred up by the emancipation of thought had means of
action in the old institution of the country--the charter, the
Parliament, the laws, the precedents. Similar aspirations in Continental
countries had no such means of action, and led to nothing.

Two national desires coincided in England at this epoch--the desire for
religious revolution and liberty, and the desire for political liberty
and the overthrow of despotism. The two sets of reformers joined forces.
For the political party, civil freedom was the end; for the religious
party, it was only a means; but throughout the conflict the political
party took the lead, and the others followed. It was not until 1688 that
the reformers finally attained their aim in the abolition of absolute
power spiritual and temporal; and the accession of William of Orange in
that year brought England into the great struggle that was raging on the
Continent between the principle of d