THE WEAI.TU OK NATIONS.

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the greatest sovereigns in Christendom, was in this mannercither restrained or modified, or given up altogether, inmany different parts of Europe , even before the time of thereformation. As the clergy had now no less influence overthe people, so the state had more influence over the clergy.The clergy therefore had both less power and less inclina-tion to disturb the state.

The authority of the church of Rome was in this state ofdeclension, when the disputes which gave birth to the refor-mation began in Germany , and soon spread themselvesthrough every part of Europe . The new doctrines wereeverywhere received with a high degree of popular favour.They were propagated with all that enthusiastic zeal whichcommonly animates the spirit of party, when it attacks es-tablished authority. The teachers of those doctrines, thoughperhaps in other respects not more learned than many of thedivines who defended the established church, seem in gene-ral to have been better acquainted with ecclesiastical history,and with the origin and progress of that system of opinionsupon which the authority of the church was established, andthey had thereby some advantage in almost every dispute.The austerity of their manners gave them authority with thecommon people, who contrasted the strict regularity of theirconduct with the disorderly lives of the greater part of theirown clergy. They possessed too, in a much higher degreethan their adversaries, all the arts of popularity and of gain-ing proselytes, arts which the lofty and dignified sons of thechurch had long neglected, as being to them in a great mea-sure useless. The reason of the new doctrines recommendedthem to some, their novelty to many; the hatred and con-tempt of the established clergy to a still greater number :but the zealous, passionate, and fanatical, though frequentlycoarse and rustic, eloquence with which they were almosteverywhere inculcated, recommended them to by far thegreatest number.

The success of the new doctrines was almost everywhereso great, that the princes who at that time happened to be onbad terms with the court of Rome, were by means of themeasily enabled, in their own dominions, to overturn thechurch, which, having lost the respect and veneration of theinferior ranks of people, could make scarce any resistance.The court of Rome had disobliged some of the smallerprinces in the northern parts of Germany , whom it had pro-