History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, Vol. II

persecution has been continually triumphant. Persecution extirpated Christianity from Japan; it crushed the fair promise of the Albigenses A religious sect in 12th-13th century France targeted by the Albigensian Crusade.; it rooted out every vestige of Protestantism from Spain. France is still ostensibly, and was long in truth, the leading champion of Catholicity The quality of being Catholic; the universal church., but the essential Catholicity of France was mainly due to the massacre of St. Bartholomew and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes A 1598 decree granting religious rights to French Protestants, revoked in 1685.. England is justly esteemed the chief pillar of Protestantism, yet the English people remained long poised indecisively between the two creeds till the skillful policy and the coercive laws of Elizabeth determined its vacillations. At the Reformation almost every government prohibited one or other religion; and whereas the members of the State religion formed at first but a doubtful and wavering majority, and sometimes not even a majority, a few generations produced substantial unanimity; and since the policy of coercion has been generally abandoned, and the freest scope been given for discussion, the relative position of Protestants and Catholics has not been perceptibly changed.

Before such broad and patent facts as these, the few exceptions that may be adduced can have no great weight, and even those exceptions, when carefully examined, will often be found far less real than is supposed. Thus, for example, the case of Ireland is continually cited. The Irish Catholics, we are told, were subject at first to a system of open plunder,