uity. And
so, indeed, it went on, comparing classical authors with classical
authors, the fathers with the fathers, often the same writer with
himself. Contradictions were pointed out, errors exposed, weakness
detected, and new views offered of almost everything within the range of
literature.

[Sidenote: The Bible.] From this burning ordeal one book alone came out
unscathed. It was the Bible. It spontaneously vindicated for itself what
Wiclif in the former times, and Luther more lately, had claimed for it.
And not only did it hold its ground, but it truly became incalculably
more powerful than ever it had been before. The press multiplied it in
every language without end, until there was scarcely a cottage in
reformed Europe that did not possess a copy.

But if criticism was thus the stimulating principle that had given life
to the Reformation, it had no little to do with its pause; and this is
the influence over which Rome had no kind of control, and to which I
have made allusion. The phases through which the Reformation passed were
dependent on the coincident advances of learning. First it relied on the
Scriptures, which were to the last its surest support; then it included
the Fathers. [Sidenote: Decline of the value of patristic learning.]
But, from a more intimate study of the latter, many erudite Protestants
were gradually brought back to the ancient fold. Among such may be
mentioned Erasmus, who by degrees became alienated from the Reformers,
and subsequently Grotius, the publication of whose treatise, "De jure
belli et pacis," 1625, really constituted an epoch in the political
system of Europe. This great man had gradually become averse to the
Reformation, believing that, all things considered, it had done more
harm than good; he had concluded that it was better to throw differences
into oblivion for the sake of peace, and to enforce silence on one's own
opinions, rather than to expect that the Church should be compelled to
accommodate herself to them. If such men as Erasmus, Casaubon, and
Grotius had been brought to this dilemma by their profound philosophical
meditations, their conclusion was confirmed among the less reflecting by
the unhappy intolerance of the new as well as the old Church. [Sidenote:
Moral effects of persecutions.] Men asked what was the difference
between the vindictiveness with which Rome dealt with Antonio de
Dominis, at once an ecclesiastic and a natural philosopher, who, having
gone