Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 77 LECTURE XV. ON THE REFORMATION AND THE WARS OF RELIGION. To have emancipated the human mind from the errors of Papal Rome, is but one of the many triumphs of the Reformation. In almost every part of the Christian world, that great religious enfranchisement was followed by civil liberty, as at once its offspring and its guardian. But in France it was otherwise; and I proceed to inquire, how it happened that the protest made by so large a part of the French people against the tyranny of the Roman Church, was not followed by any effectual resistance to the despotism of the reigning dynasty ? To render the answer to that question intelligible, it is necessary that I should indicate some of the principal steps of the progress of the Reformation in that kingdom ; and if that preface should appear disproportionately long, I would bespeak your indulgence till it shall appear, what are the uses to which it is to be at length applied. For the Protestant Reformers of the 16th century has been claimed a spiritual lineage, ascending, in unbroken succession, though the Moravians, the disciples of Huss and of Wicliff, the Albigenses, and the Paulicians, until it reaches the primitive ages of Christianity. For another race of Reformers has been traced a different genealogy, ascending through Savonarola, Gerson,D'Ailly,and Bernard of Clairvaux, until it reaches the Fathers of many ancient synods, who clung with passionate fondness to the Church which they endeavoured at once to purify and to maintain. To subdue the first of these generations of men by terror, and the second by blandishments, had, during many ages, been the office of the Papacy, when a new and irresistible power interposed as the arbiter in that protracted strife. The human mind, aroused from the slumber of centuries... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.