but of studious ease, modest worth, and christian philosophy."

Protestantism may justly lay claim to virtues; but it is not much honoured in its founders : Luther, the apostate monk, the approver of the massacre of the peasantry; Calvin, the splenetic doctor, who burnt Servetus; Henry VIII., the revisor of the Missal, and who put seventy-two thousand persons to a cruel death; these are the three Christs of protestantism.

THE REFORMATION.

BUT, putting the workman out of the question and considering only the work, there are truths which it would be unjust to deny. The reformation, by opening modern ages, separated them from the undefined interval which succeeded the termination of what are called the middle ages. It awakened ideas of ancient equality. It served to metamorphose a society exclusively military into a civil, rational, and industrious society. It gave birth to the modern property of capital; a moveable, progressive, and unlimited property, which opposes the limited, fixed, and despotic property of land. This is an immense benefit. But it is mixed up with much evil; and this evil historical impartiality will not permit us to pass over in silence.

Christianity commenced among the plebeian, poor, and ignorant classes of mankind. Jesus addressed himself to the lowly, and they rallied

round their master. Faith gradually ascended to the upper ranks, and at length found its way to the imperial throne. Christianity was thus catholic or universal. The religion styled catholic set out from the lowest, and finally reached the highest step of the social ladder. The popedom was only the tribunate of nations, when the political age of christianity arrived.

Protestantism followed an opposite course. It was first introduced among the heads of the body politic; among princes and nobles, priests and magistrates, scholars and men of letters, and it slowly descended to the inferior conditions of life. The impress of these two origins remains distinctly marked in the two communions.

The reformed communion has never been so popular as the catholic faith. Being of princely and patrician origin, it does not sympathise with the multitude. Protestantism is equitable and moral, punctual in the discharge of duty; but its charity partakes more of reason than of tenderness; it clothes the naked, but does not warm them in its bosom; it shelters the poor beneath its wings, but does not dwell and weep with them in their most abject haunts; it relieves but does not feel for misfortune. The monk and the priest are the companions of the poor man; poor like himself, they have for their companions the

bowels of Jesus Christ. Rags, straw, disease, and dungeons excite in them no disgust, no repugnance; charity imparts a perfume to indigence and misery. The catholic priest is the successor of the twelve lowly men who preached Christ raised from the dead; he blesses the body of the deceased beggar, as the sacred remains of a being beloved by God, and raised to eternal life. The protestant pastor forsakes the beggar on his death-bed; to him the grave is not an object of religious veneration; he has no faith in those expiatory prayers, by which a friend may deliver a suffering soul. In this world the minister does not rush into the midst of flames or pestilence; he reserves to his own family that affectionate care which the priest of Rome bestows on the great human family.

In a religious point of view, the reformation is leading insensibly to indifference, or the complete absence of faith; the reason is that the independence of the mind terminates in two gulfs, ---doubt and incredulity.

By a very natural reaction, the reformation at its birth rekindled the dying flame of catholic fanaticism. It may thus be regarded as the indirect cause of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the disturbances of the League, the assassination of Henry IV, the murders in Ireland, and of

VOL. I.