the extension of knowledge, and the blessings of civilized and Christian life, among distant and degraded regions, which, in the present day, have increased to so much strength, and which constitute the brightest features in the aspect of our times. It is scarcely necessary to add, that the secular interests of the European nations have been any thing but injured by the change of sentiment to which we have been adverting. Their people became more intelligent and active; commerce was prosecuted with new vigour; and the nations themselves became more affluent and powerful.

CHAPTER III.

OF THE EFFECT WHICH THE REFORMATION HAS PRODUCED ON DOMESTIC HAPPINESS, AND, IN GENERAL, ON THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIAL LIFE.

IN prefixing to the preceding chapter the title which it bears, we are not to be understood as affirming that the effects of the Reformation which it records have no bearing on the happiness of domestic or social life; nor, in prefixing to this chapter the title which stands before it, do we mean to say, that the advantages resulting from the Reformation which we are about to record, have no relation to the public welfare. All that is intended by these titles is to intimate the more immediate bearing of the events and changes detailed in their respective chapters; for the truth is, that whereinsoever the Reformation benefited domestic society, in that also, though less directly, it did good to the national community: and whereinsoever it benefited the public interests of the state, it, at the same time, conferred important benefit on social life.

In considering the effect which the Reformation has produced on social happiness, it will be obvious to every person of reflection, that the influence which it has sent forth on the morality of social life, is en

titled to prominent regard. In a preceding part of our Essay, this subject has been adverted to; but there is yet a remark or two respecting it, to which we request the attention of our readers. Excellent is the poet's sentiment when he affirms, that

"The only amaranthine flower on earth

Is virtue."

True Christian virtue is the dignity and happiness of individual man; nor is it less so of man in his social state. Destitute of this celestial gift, man is a weed, and a community of such men is a garden of weeds. If society is not, in the first place, in some degree virtuous, it cannot be happy; and it will be found, that the comfort and happiness of social life bear an exact proportion to the degree of virtuous feeling by which it is pervaded. We know that it will constitute the glory of the celestial world, and be one great source of its felicity, that it will be characterized by the entire and everlasting absence of moral evil; and, therefore, it will be according to the approaches which are made by human society on the earth to the purity of heaven, that it will advance towards its dignity, and participate its happiness.

We have seen, from the preceding details, that numerous institutions existed, and were cherished, under the papacy, which shed a most baleful influence over, the morals of both public and private life; and that, in effecting their overthrow, the Reformation has done incalculable good to mankind. But it must not be forgotten, that, even although those institu

tions had not existed, the Popish system itself, inasmuch as it is a system of most debasing superstition, did naturally tend to incapacitate and inspire men with distaste for the practice of social virtue. No truth has more largely obtained the confirmation of experience than this-that superstition is hostile to morality, and that, exactly in proportion to its progress, does it become, in a moral point of view, the bane of society. Now, the superstition which, in the ages before Luther, was prevalent in what was called the Christian world, was distinguished by every feature of darkness and debasement. Awfully was the glory of our divine religion obscured and trampled in the dust, when its sublime doctrines were transformed into idle and contemptible theories, its simple but majestic ritual exchanged for an immense and burdensome train of puerile and ridiculous observances, and its pure and virtuous injunctions-whose object is to rescue man from the bondage of vice, and to fit him for the employments of the celestial state-supplanted by human commandments, whose whole tendency was to enfeeble the mind, and to deprave the heart! In what a fearful state of degradation and delusion must the human soul have been, when loading the body with iron chains, continuing days and nights without eating, refraining from the use of speech, remaining motionless like statues, and standing on lofty pillars for years together, were adopted as methods of pleasing God! It could not have happened otherwise than that the mind, by devoting its whole regard to such senseless and degrading super

stitions, should have become enfeebled and contracted in all its energies, and utterly disqualified for the momentous duties of social life.

If, in addition to the baneful tendency of such a superstition as this, we consider the extreme corruption of domestic manners that prevailed among the various orders of the pontifical clergy, and the influence which their example could not but exert on the ignorant multitude, we shall no longer be surprised at the absence, in those ages, of all that is ennobling to the human character, and of all that is excellent and charm

ing in human society. "For some years," says the Popish Doctor Bellarmine," before the Lutheran and Calvinistic heresies were published, there was not (as contemporary authors testify) any severity in ecclesiastical judicatories, any discipline with regard to morals, any knowledge of sacred literature, any reverence for divine things; there was not almost any religion remaining." "The modern and unhappy clergy," says a German bishop, who wrote about the commencement of the Reformation," addict themselves to temporal things; being destitute of divine light, they love themselves, neglect the love of God and their neighbour; they are worse than worldly men, whom they destroy together with themselves. They are addicted to pleasures and infamous practices, and neglect the salvation of the souls of Christ's faithful people. By the lives of such wicked clergymen, the seculars come to be disobedient and irreverent towards the church; they are seduced by blind guides, who, O shame! are ignorant, proud, covetous, hypocrites, simoniacal, luxu