The champions of Protestantism are much given to glorify the
Reformation of the sixteenth century as the emancipation of Reason;
but it may be doubted if their contention has any solid ground; while
there is a good deal of evidence to show, that aspirations after
intellectual freedom had nothing whatever to do with the movement.
Dante, who struck the Papacy as hard blows as Wicliff; Wicliff himself
and Luther himself, when they began their work; were far enough from
any intention of meddling with even the most irrational of the dogmas
of mediæval Supernaturalism. From Wicliff to Socinus, or even to
Münzer, Rothmann, and John of Leyden, I fail to find a trace of any
desire to set reason free. The most that can be discovered is a
proposal to change masters. From being the slave of the Papacy the
intellect was to become the serf of the Bible; or, to speak more
accurately, of somebody's interpretation of the Bible, which, rapidly
shifting its attitude from the humility of a private judgment to the
arrogant Cæsaro-papistry of a state-enforced creed, had no more
hesitation about forcibly extinguishing opponent private judgments and
judges, than had the old-fashioned Pontiff-papistry.

It was the iniquities, and not the irrationalities, of the Papal
system that lay at the bottom of the revolt of the laity; which was,
essentially, an attempt to shake off the intolerable burden of certain
practical deductions from a Supernaturalism in which everybody, in
principle, acquiesced. What was the gain to intellectual freedom of
abolishing transubstantiation, image worship, indulgences,
ecclesiastical infallibility; if consubstantiation, real-unreal
presence mystifications, the bibliolatry, the "inner-light"
pretensions, and the demonology, which are fruits of the same
supernaturalistic tree, remained in enjoyment of the spiritual and
temporal support of a new infallibility? One does not free a prisoner