Spain and Rome without Calvinism, and relying upon municipal enthusiasm
only, would have been to throw away the sword and fight with the
scabbard.

But it is equally certain that those hot gospellers who had suffered so
much martyrdom and achieved so many miracles were fully aware of their
power and despotic in its exercise. Against the oligarchy of commercial
and juridical corporations they stood there the most terrible aristocracy
of all: the aristocracy of God's elect, predestined from all time and to
all eternity to take precedence of and to look down upon their inferior
and lost fellow creatures. It was inevitable that this aristocracy,
which had done so much, which had breathed into a new-born commonwealth
the breath of its life, should be intolerant, haughty, dogmatic.

The Church of Rome, which had been dethroned after inflicting such
exquisite tortures during its period of power, was not to raise its head.
Although so large a proportion of the inhabitants of the country were
secretly or openly attached to that faith, it was a penal offence to
participate openly in its rites and ceremonies. Religious equality,
except in the minds of a few individuals, was an unimaginable idea.
There was still one Church which arrogated to itself the sole possession
of truth, the Church of Geneva. Those who admitted the possibility of
other forms and creeds were either Atheists or, what was deemed worse
than Atheists, Papists, because Papists were assumed to be traitors also,
and desirous of selling the country to Spain. An undevout man in that
land and at that epoch was an almost unknown phenomenon. Religion was
as much a recognized necessity of existence as food or drink. It were
as easy to find people about without clothes as without religious
convictions.