but used by the Catholics to bring about the massacre of
seventy thousand Huguenots; Henry IV of France was probably a Huguenot
in genuine feeling, but a political trimmer, a daring and brilliant
soldier, a frenzied devotee of women, religion giving him small
concern, and his change from Huguenotism to Catholicism a circumstance
as trifling as the exchange of his hunter's paraphernalia for court
apparel; Queen Elizabeth was as nearly devoid of religious instincts as
is possible for a woman, though her purposes and position in politics
drove her to the Protestant cause; William of Orange was born a
Protestant, reared a Catholic, first in the household of the Regent of
the Low countries, and afterward at the court of Charles V, suffered
revulsion of sentiment under the unthinkable atrocities of the
Inquisition as carried on in the Netherlands, till at last he became a
Protestant of the most pronounced and honest type.

In Prince William's time, modern Europe was in the alembic, a
circumstance which makes his epoch so engrossing to the student of
modern history. Protestantism became a new political, social,
intellectual, and religious order. Even apart from his religious
significance, Martin Luther is the marked figure of the sixteenth
century. Columbus discovered a New World; Luther peopled it with civil
and religious forces. Puritanism was the flower of that earlier-day
Protestantism. Besides, the Walloons settled New Amsterdam; the
Huguenots, the Carolinas; the Anglicans, Virginia; the Lutherans, New
Sweden. From the standpoint of statesmanship, Luther was shaping
peoples for a New World, and was the commanding personality of those
stormy years in which, like a warrior who never knew fatigue, he fought
the battles of the living God. Unquestionably, the Reformation meant
liberty in conscience, intellect and citizenship, which are the
quintessence of modern civilization. In those years, during which
William the Silent was a prodigious force, Protestantism was troubling
the waters. New religious ideas must ultimate in new political
institutions, of which the Dutch Republic was a sort of first draft,
and the United States of America an edited and perfected draft.

Protestantism was in justifiable revolt against Roman Catholicism, a
foe to progress and liberty in religion, then and now, and now not less
than then. It was intolerance run mad, whose method was the
Inquisition. One can not say a good word for this s