ant ears the rights of subjects to
oppose and even depose their monarchs, or in the villages of Castile and
Leon, preaching before Catholic peasants the paramount duty of a good
Christian implicitly to obey the mandates of his king--wherever the
Jesuit was, or whatever he was doing, men universally felt that the
thing he had in hand was only auxiliary to some higher, some hidden
design. This stealth, and silence and power became at last so
intolerable that the Jesuits were banished from France, Spain, Portugal,
and other Catholic countries. But such was their vitality that, though
the order was abolished by a papal bull in 1773, they have been again
restored.

[Sidenote: Effects of change of opinion among the learned.] Though it is
sometimes said that Rome in this manner, by her admirable combinations
and irresistible movement, succeeded at last in checking the
Reformation, a full consideration of the state of affairs would lead us
to receive that assertion with very considerable restriction. She came
out of the conflict much less powerful than she had entered it. If we
attribute to her policy all that it can justly claim, we must also
attribute to causes over which she had no kind of control their rightful
influence. The Reformation had been, to no small extent, due to the rise
of criticism, which still continued its development, and was still
fruitful of results. Latin had fallen from its high estate; the modern
languages were in all directions expanding and improving; the
printing-press was not only giving Greek learning to the world, but
countless translations and commentaries. The doctrine successfully
established by Luther and his colleagues--the right of private
interpretation and judgment--was the practical carrying out of the
organic law of criticism to the highest affairs with which man can be
concerned--affairs of religion. The Reformation itself, philosophically
considered, really meant the casting off of authority, the installation
of individual inquiry and personal opinion. [Sidenote: Effects of
criticism on religion and literature.] If criticism, thus standing upon
the basis of the Holy Scriptures, had not hesitated to apply itself to
an examination of public faith, and, as the consequence thereof, had
laid down new rules for morality and the guidance of life, it was not to
be expected that it would hesitate to deal with minor things--that it
would spare the philosophy, the policy, the literature of antiq