to succeed ultimately; but for a time at any rate they were a serious hindrance to the advance of knowledge. The learned Jesuit Canisius, in a striking letter written to the Duke of Bavaria in 1581, printed in Reusch's great history of the Index, pointed out the futility of such measures. Repression by Edicts and Indexes could never succeed, construction was needed as well as destruction, and good authors must be provided to take the place of bad. A revival of Catholic scholarship, such as Canisius advocated, marked the close of the sixteenth century, a revival in which his own Order played a prominent part. Rome became again a centre of Christian learning; and the Annals of Baronius were worthy to stand by the Centuries of Magdeburg: New editions of the Fathers were prepared. In 1587 appeared the Roman edition of the Septuagint, and both Sixtus V and Clement VIII endeavoured to improve the text of the Vulgate. Historical scholarship ceased to be the monopoly of one party. The Jesuits were the equals in learning of their adversaries and their educational system was immeasurably superior. Protestantism in Germany was torn asunder by petty feuds; and by sheer force of superior ability and unremitting labour Catholicism was restored, first in the Rhine lands and then on the Danube. The story of this work, the success of which drove Protestantism to desperation and assisted to provoke the Thirty Years' War, is beyond our scope. It is sufficient to notice here that it was the fruit of that new Catholicism which emerged triumphant from the Council of Trent. Saintliness of life and the beauty of holiness were again exhibited to the world in a Carlo Borromeo and a Filippo Neri; while Protestantism was too often sinking into a time-serving Erastianism or developing an arid scholasticism of its own which quenched the springs of religious life.
Increased centralisation in government and strict definition of dogma made Catholicism after Trent a far more powerful fighting force than it had ever been before, but it was only at the price of drawing in its borders and limiting its sympathies. There is a curious likeness in essence, though in forms of expression they are poles asunder, between Puritanism in England and the movement of which Caraffa and Ignatius are the typical representatives in the Roman Church. Both alike sub-ordinate the wider interests of humanity to the supposed requirements of religious faith. The sacred was rigidly marked off from the profane; and the culture of the world and its wisdom were banned and avoided as evil in themselves. The world was given up as hopeless, and the attempt to separate its evil from its good was abandoned. The work which Clement of Alexandria and Origen had begun for the ancient Church, and Thomas Aquinas and the great Schoolmen had achieved for the Church of the Middle Ages, was not done anew for the modern world. The true Renaissance was not absorbed into the circle of ecclesiastical ideas; and the medieval conception of Catholicity was limited rather than widened. The modern world, if not actually hostile to the Church,
