when earnest minds are standing in doubt whether the new
wine can be placed in the old bottles.

The movement, which was beginning to be felt in every branch of life and
thought in the twelfth century, was still more manifest in the course of
the thirteenth, an age, which, whether viewed in its great men or great
deeds, its movements political, ecclesiastical, or intellectual, is the
most remarkable of the middle ages, and one of the most memorable in
history.(282) The activity of speculation is evidenced by the increasing
alarm which alleged heresy like the Albigensian was causing, and by the
establishment of the system of ecclesiastical police(283) which developed
into the inquisition. About the middle of the century, the influence of
free thought in religion is supposed to have made its appearance, in a
work which originated with one of the newly created mendicant orders. A
book which had appeared at the beginning of the century, entitled "the
Everlasting Gospel," was now edited with an introduction by some person of
influence in the Franciscan order.(284) The idea conveyed was, that, as
there are three Persons in the Godhead, so there must be three
dispensations; that of the Father which ended at the coming of Christ,
that of the Son which was then about to conclude, and that of the Spirit,
of which the religious ideal of the Franciscans was the embodiment.

The work caused immense alarm, and was condemned by the council of
Arles,(285) on the ground that it assumed that Christianity was imperfect,
and was to be replaced by a superior revelation developing from natural
causes. It is doubtful whether the book was really intended to be
sceptical. More probably it was mystical. Claiming to be founded on an
apocalyptic idea,(286) it was a revival of the Chiliasm which haunted the
Christians of Asia Minor in the early centuries; perhaps also it was the
utterance of the spiritual yearning which marked the rise of the
Franciscan order, and a protest against the worldliness of the times. It
was connected too with the longings for political deliverance from the
temporal dominion of the Popedom which were now beginning to be felt. In
these latter aspects the idea, so far from being false, was an advance.
Christianity from time to time admits a progress, but from within rather
than from without; a deeper spiritual appreciation of old truths rather
than a reception of new ones. The demand for progress becomes a ground for
alarm