precursor of Antichrist. These words of the celebrated Abbot of Clairvaux
are more creditable to his zeal than to his charity. Abelard's disciple
Arnold of Brescia attended him at the Council, and shared in the
condemnations which St. Bernard so freely bestowed. Arnold's stormy and
eventful life as a religious and political reformer was ended at Rome in
1155, where he was strangled and burnt by order of the Emperor Frederick,
his ashes being cast into the Tiber lest they should be venerated as
relics by his followers. St. Bernard described him as a man having the
head of a dove and the tail of a scorpion. Abelard was condemned to
perpetual silence, and found a last refuge in the monastery of Cluny. Side
by side in the graveyard of the Paraclete Convent the bodies of Abelard
and Heloise lie, whose earthly lives, though lighted by love and cheered
by religion, were clouded with overmuch sorrow, and await the time when
all theological questions will be solved and doubts and difficulties
raised by earthly mists and human frailties will be swept away, and we
shall "know even as also we are known."




CHAPTER II.

FANATICS AND FREE-THINKERS.

Quirinus Kuhlmann--John Tennhart--Jeremiah Felbinger--Simon Morin--
Liszinski--John Toland--Thomas Woolston--John Biddle--Johann Lyser--
Bernardino Ochino--Samuel Friedrich Willenberg.


The nympholepts of old were curious and unhappy beings who, while