Secret

imprisonment, slow torture, strangulation, starvation, and private a a ination, were the deeds thought just by those who profe ed to be “ me engers of peace and goodwill to mev.” In the 15th century the decay of the Church, and the progre of education, led to general skepticism in Italy; while among Teutonic nations the rule of Italian foreign prelates became intolerable. The “ Holy Alliance” completed the schism by its St Bartholomew ma acre in 1572. There was much in the Church at which our Teutonic ‘ancestors had always marvelled. They had regarded a common Teligion as part of that unity of the Commune which was based on the family, They had always striven to exalt the parental and Marriage tie; and the father and mother had always been ranked, ‘among them, above the bachelor and the maiden. A Church which extolled celibacy, and which brought strife into the home, which ‘isolated men and women in conventual establishments, and which _ placed her own interests above those of their country, was strange to them. Buckle says that “far from civilising the people it was ‘itself dragged down to their own level. Its only effect was to satisfy the aspirations of those cultivated enough to receive it: for the ma "it was but a substitution of names.