by
a studied philosophy of crime and so thorough a perversion of the moral
sense that the like of it had not been since the Stoics reformed the
morality of paganism.

The clergy, who had in so many ways served the cause of freedom during
the prolonged strife against feudalism and slavery, were associated now
with the interest of royalty. Attempts had been made to reform the
Church on the Constitutional model; they had failed, but they had united
the hierarchy and the crown against the system of divided power as
against a common enemy. Strong kings were able to bring the spirituality
under subjection in France and Spain, in Sicily and in England. The
absolute monarchy of France was built up in the two following centuries
by twelve political cardinals. The kings of Spain obtained the same
effect almost at a single stroke by reviving and appropriating to their
own use the tribunal of the Inquisition, which had been growing
obsolete, but now served to arm them with terrors which effectually made
them despotic. One generation beheld the change all over Europe, from
the anarchy of the days of the Roses to the passionate submission, the
gratified acquiescence in tyranny that marks the reign of Henry VIII.
and the kings of his time.

The tide was running fast when the Reformation began at Wittenberg, and
it was to be expected that Luther's influence would stem the flood of
absolutism. For he was confronted everywhere by the compact alliance of
the Church with the State; and great part of his country was governed by
hostile potentates who were prelates of the Court of Rome. He had,
indeed, more to fear from temporal than from spiritual foes. The leading
German bishops wished that the Protestant demands should be conceded;
and the Pope himself vainly urged on the Emperor a conciliatory policy.
But Charles V. had outlawed Luther, and attempted to waylay him; and the
Dukes of Bavaria were active in beheading and burning his disciples,
whilst the democracy of the towns generally took his side. But the dread
of revolution was the deepest of his political sentiments; and the gloss
by which the Guelphic divines had got over the passive obedience of the
apostolic age was characteristic of that mediaeval method of
interpretation which he rejected. He swerved for a moment in his later
years; but the substance of his political teaching was eminently
conservative, the Lutheran States became the stronghold of rigid
immobility, and Luthera