The sixteenth century was marked not only by intensely earnest religious
inquiries, but by great civil and social disorders,--showing a
transition period of society from the slaveries and discomforts of the
feudal ages to the liberty and comforts of highly civilized life. In
the midst of religious enthusiasm we see tumults, insurrections,
terrible animosities, and cruel intolerance. War was associated with
inhuman atrocities, and the acceptance of the reformed faith was
followed by bitter and heartless persecution. The feudal system had
received a shock from standing armies and the invention of gunpowder and
the central authority of kings, but it was not demolished. The nobles
still continued to enjoy their social and political distinctions, the
peasantry were ground down by unequal laws, and the nobles were as
arrogant and quarrelsome as the people were oppressed by unjust
distinctions. They were still followed by their armed retainers, and had
almost unlimited jurisdiction in their respective governments. Even the
higher clergy gloried in feudal inequalities, and were selected from the
noble classes. The people were not powerful enough to make combinations
and extort their rights, unless they followed the standards of military
chieftains, arrayed perhaps against the crown and against the
parliaments. We see no popular, independent political movements; even
the people, like all classes above them, were firm and enthusiastic in
their religious convictions.

The commanding intellect at that time in Europe was John Calvin (a
Frenchman, but a citizen of Geneva), whom we have already seen to be a
man of marvellous precocity of genius and astonishing logical powers,
combined with the most exhaustive erudition on all theological subjects.
His admirers claim a distinct and logical connection between his
theology and civil liberty itself. I confess I cannot see this. There
was nothing democratic about Calvin. He ruled indeed at Geneva as