George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[153] rested only on the chosen. Lutheranism was, there-

chap. VI.} 1754.

fore, not a political party; it included prince, and noble, and peasant. Calvinism was revolutionary; wherever it came, it created division; its symbol, as set upon the ‘Institutes’ of its teacher, was a flaming sword. By the side of the eternal mountains, and the perennial snows, and the arrowy rivers of Switzerland, it established a religion without a prelate, a government without a king. Fortified by its faith in fixed decrees, it kept possession of its homes among the Alps. It grew powerful in France, and invigorated, between the feudal nobility and the crown, the long contest, which did not end, till the subjection of the nobility, through the central despotism, prepared the ruin of that despotism, by promoting the equality of the commons. It entered Holland, inspiring an industrious nation with heroic enthusiasm; enfranchising and uniting provinces; and making burghers, and weavers, and artisans, victors over the highest orders of Spanish chivalry, over the power of the inquisition, and the pretended majesty of kings. It penetrated Scotland: and while its whirlwind bore along persuasion among glens and mountains, it shrunk from no danger, and hesitated at no ambition; it nerved its rugged but hearty envoy to resist the flatteries of the beautiful Queen Mary; it assumed the education of her only son; it divided the nobility; it penetrated the masses, overturned the ancient ecclesiastical establishment, planted the free parochial school, and gave a living energy to the principle of liberty in a people. It infused itself into England, and placed its plebeian sympathies in daring resistance to the courtly hierarchy: dissenting from dissent; longing to introduce the reign of righteousness,