h proceeded the impulse which drove
Protestantism back, we find, at best, a very slow progress, and on the
whole a retrogression. Compare Denmark and Portugal. When Luther began
to preach, the superiority of the Portuguese was unquestionable. At
present, the superiority of the Danes is no less so. Compare Edinburgh
and Florence. Edinburgh has owed less to climate, to soil, and to the
fostering care of rulers than any capital, Protestant or Catholic. In
all these respects, Florence has been singularly happy. Yet whoever
knows what Florence and Edinburgh were in the generation preceding the
Reformation, and what they are now, will acknowledge that some great
cause has, during the last three centuries, operated to raise one part
of the European family, and to depress the other. Compare the history of
England and that of Spain during the last century. In arms, arts,
sciences, letters, commerce, agriculture, the contrast is most striking.
The distinction is not confined to this side of the Atlantic. The
colonies planted by England in America have immeasurably outgrown in
power those planted by Spain. Yet we have no reason to believe that, at
the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Castilian was in any
respect inferior to the Englishman. Our firm belief is, that the North
owes its great civilization and prosperity chiefly to the moral effect
of the Protestant Reformation, and that the decay of the Southern
countries of Europe is to be mainly ascribed to the great Catholic
revival.

About a hundred years after the final settlement of the boundary line
between Protestantism and Catholicism, began to appear the signs of the
fourth great peril of the Church of Rome. The storm which was now rising
against her was of a very different kind from those which had preceded
it. Those who had formerly attacked her had questioned only a part of
her doctrines. A school was now growing up which rejected the whole. The
Albigenses, the Lollards, the Lutherans, the Calvinists, had a positive
religious system, and were strongly attached to it. The creed of the new
sectaries was altogether negative. They took one of their premises from
the Protestants, and one from the Catholics. From the latter they
borrowed the principle, that Catholicism was the only pure and genuine
Christianity. With the former, they held that some parts of the Catholic
system were contrary to reason. The conclusion was obvious. Two
propositions, each of which separately