Pius in the severe virtues of his sacred profession. As was the
head, such were the members. The change in the spirit of the
Catholic world may be traced in every walk of literature and of
art. It will be at once perceived by every person who compares
the poem of Tasso with that of Ariosto, or the monuments Of
Sixtus the Fifth with those of Leo the Tenth.

But it was not on moral influence alone that the Catholic Church
relied. The civil sword in Spain and Italy was unsparingly
employed in her support. The Inquisition was armed with new
powers and inspired with a new energy. If Protestantism, or the
semblance of Protestantism, showed itself in any quarter, it was
instantly met, not by petty, teasing persecution, but by
persecution of that sort which bows down and crushes all but a
very few select spirits. Whoever was suspected of heresy,
whatever his rank, his learning, or his reputation, knew that he
must purge himself to the satisfaction of a severe and vigilant
tribunal, or die by fire. Heretical books were sought out and
destroyed with similar rigour. Works which were once in every
house were so effectually suppressed that no copy of them is now
to be found in the most extensive libraries. One book in
particular, entitled Of the Benefits of the Death of Christ, had
this fate. It was written in Tuscan, was many times reprinted,
and was eagerly read in every part of Italy. But the inquisitors
detected in it the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith
alone. They proscribed it; and it is now as hopelessly lost as
the second decade of Livy.

Thus, while the Protestant reformation proceeded rapidly at one
extremity of Europe, the Catholic revival went on as rapidly at