gods and government of the Romans. Byzantium, Rome, and the Empire
effected them rapidly, and as it were instinctively by themselves when,
wearied with, and blushing at, polytheism, they rose at the voice of
Constantine against their gods, and swept away, like an angry tempest,
those temples, those ideas and forms of worship, to which the people
still clung, but which the superior portion of human thought had already
abandoned. The Civilisation of Constantine and Charlemagne grew old in
its turn, and the beliefs which for eighteen centuries had supported
altars and thrones, menaced the religious world, as well as the
political world, with a catastrophe which rarely leaves power standing
when faith is staggered. Monarchical Europe was the handiwork of
catholicism; politics were fashioned after the image of the Church;
authority was founded on a mystery. Rights came to it from on high, and
power, like faith, was reputed divine. The obedience of the people was
consecrated to it, and from that very reason inquiry was a blasphemy,
and servitude a virtue. The spirit of philosophy, which had silently
revolted against this for three centuries, as a doctrine which the
scandals, tyrannies, and crimes of the two powers belied daily, refused
any longer to recognise a divine title in those authorities which deny
reason and subjugate a people. So long as catholicism had been the sole
legal doctrine in Europe, these murmuring revolts of mind had not
overset empires. They had been punished by the hands of rulers.
Dungeons, punishments, inquisitions, fire, and faggot, had intimidated
reason, and preserved erect the two-fold dogma on which the two
governments reposed.

But printing, that unceasing outpouring of the human mind, was to the
people a second revelation. Employed at first exclusively for the
Church, for the propagation of ruling ideas, it had begun to sap them.
The dogmata of temporal power, and spiritual power, incessantly assailed