d of Europe had risen up against the
domination of Rome. The first insurrection broke out in the south of
France. The energy of Innocent the Third, the zeal of the young orders
of Francis and Dominic, and the ferocity of the Crusaders whom the
priesthood let loose on an unwarlike population, crushed the Albigensian
churches. The second reformation had its origin in England, and spread
to Bohemia. The Council of Constance, by removing some ecclesiastical
disorders which had given scandal to Christendom, and the princes
of Europe, by unsparingly using fire and sword against the heretics,
succeeded in arresting and turning back the movement. Nor is this
much to be lamented. The sympathies of a Protestant, it is true, will
naturally be on the side of the Albigensians and of the Lollards. Yet an
enlightened and temperate Protestant will perhaps be disposed to doubt
whether the success, either of the Albigensians or of the Lollards,
would, on the whole, have promoted the happiness and virtue of mankind.
Corrupt as the Church of Rome was, there is reason to believe that, if
that Church had been overthrown in the twelfth or even in the fourteenth
century, the vacant space would have been occupied by some system more
corrupt still. There was then, through the greater part of Europe, very
little knowledge; and that little was confined to the clergy. Not one
man in five hundred could have spelled his way through a psalm. Books
were few and costly. The art of printing was unknown. Copies of the
Bible, inferior in beauty and clearness to those which every cottager
may now command, sold for prices which many priests could not afford
to give. It was obviously impossible that the laity should search the
Scriptures for themselves. It is probable therefore, that, as soon as
they had put off one spiritual yoke, they would have put on another,
and that the power lately exercised by the clergy of the Church of
Rome would have passed to a far worse class of teachers. The sixteenth
century was comparatively a time of light. Yet even in the sixteenth
century a considerable number of those who quitted the old religion
followed the first confident and plausible guide who offered himself,
and were soon led into errors far more serious than those which they had
renounced. Thus Matthias and Kniperdoling, apostles of lust, robbery,
and murder, were able for a time to rule great cities. In a darker age
such false prophets might have founded empires; an