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: THE KEFOBMATICXN. CHAPTER L INTRODUCTION : THE GEIJERAI, CHARACTER OF TH REFORMATION. The four most prominent events of modern history are the invasion of the barbarians, which blended the German and Roman elements of civilization, and subjected the new nations to the influence of Christianity; the crusades, which broke up the stagnation of European society, and by inflicting a blow upon the feudal system opened a path for the centralization of the nations and governments of Europe; the Reformation, in which religion was purified and the human mind emancipated from sacerdotal authority ; and the French Revolution, a tremendous struggle for political equality. The Reformation, like these other great social convulsions, was long in preparation. Of the French Revolution, the last upon the list of historical epochs of capital importance, De Tocqueville observes: " It was least of all a fortuitous event. It is true that it took the world by surprise; and yet it was only the completion of travail most prolonged, the sadden and violent termination of a work on whicu ten generations had been laboring."l The method of Providence in history is never magical. In proportion to the magnitude of the catastrophe are the length of time and the variety of agencies which are employed in produeing it. Events, because they are unexpected and startling, are not to be ascribed merely to some proximate antecedent. The Protestant movement is often looked upon as hardly less preternatural and astonishing than would be the rising of the sun at midnight. But the more it is examined, the less does it wear this marvelous aspect. In truth, never was a historical crisis more elaborately prepared, and this through a train of causes which reach back into the remote past. Nor is it the fact that such even... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.