n writers constantly condemned the democratic
literature that arose in the second age of the Reformation. For the
Swiss reformers were bolder than the Germans in mixing up their cause
with politics. Zurich and Geneva were Republics, and the spirit of their
governments influenced both Zwingli and Calvin.

Zwingli indeed did not shrink from the mediaeval doctrine that evil
magistrates must be cashiered; but he was killed too early to act either
deeply or permanently on the political character of Protestantism.
Calvin, although a Republican, judged that the people are unfit to
govern themselves, and declared the popular assembly an abuse that ought
to be abolished. He desired an aristocracy of the elect, armed with the
means of punishing not only crime but vice and error. For he thought
that the severity of the mediaeval laws was insufficient for the need of
the times; and he favoured the most irresistible weapon which the
inquisitorial procedure put into the hand of the Government, the right
of subjecting prisoners to intolerable torture, not because they were
guilty, but because their guilt could not be proved. His teaching,
though not calculated to promote popular institutions, was so adverse to
the authority of the surrounding monarchs, that he softened down the
expression of his political views in the French edition of his
_Institutes_.

The direct political influence of the Reformation effected less than has
been supposed. Most States were strong enough to control it. Some, by
intense exertion, shut out the pouring flood. Others, with consummate
skill, diverted it to their own uses. The Polish Government alone at
that time left it to its course. Scotland was the only kingdom in which
the Reformation triumphed over the resistance of the State; and Ireland
was the only instance where it failed, in spite of Government support.
But in almost every other case, both the princes that spread their
canvas to the gale and those that faced it, employed the zeal, the
alarm, the passions it aroused as instruments for the increase of power.
Nations eagerly invested their rulers with every prerogative needed to
preserve their faith, and all the care to keep Church and State asunder,
and to prevent the confusion of their powers, which had been the work of
ages, was renounced in the intensity of the crisis. Atrocious deeds were
done, in which religious passion was often the instrument, but policy
was the motive.

Fanaticism displa