226 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, the subversion of the Roman empire in the west, the XVI • ... ' bishops of the imperial city extended their dominion over the laity as well as clergy of the Latin church. The fabric of superstition which they had erected, and which might long have defied the feeble efforts of rea- son, was at length assaulted by a crowd of daring fana- tics, who, from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, assumed the popular character of reformers. The church of Rome defended by violence the empire which she had acquired by fraud ; a system of peace and benevolence was soon disgraced by proscriptions, wars, massacres, and the institution of the holy office. And as the reformers were animated by the love of civil, as well as of religious freedom, the catholic princes connected their own interest with that of the clergy, and enforced by fire and the sword the terrors of spi- ritual censures. In the Netherlands alone, more than one hundred thousand of the subjects of Charles the fifth are said to have suffered by the hand of the exe- cutioner ; and this extraordinary number is attested by Grotius, a man of genius and learning, who preserved his moderation amidst the fury of contending sects, and who composed the annals of his own age and country, at a time when the invention of printing had facilitated the means of intelligence, and increased the danger of detection. If we are obliged to submit our belief to the authority of Grotius, it must be allowed, that the number of protestants who were executed in a single province and a single reign, far exceeded that of the primitive martyrs in the space of three centuries, and of the Roman emjnre. But if the improbability of the fact itself should prevail over the weight of evi- dence ; if Grotius should be convicted of exacrgeratine the merit and sufferings of the reformers ; we shall be
- Grot. Annal. de Rebus Belgicis, 1. i. p. 12. edit. fol.
Fra. Paolo (Istoria del ConcilioTridentino, 1. iii.) reduces the number of Belgic martyrs to fifty thousand. In learning and moderation, Fra. Paolo was not inferior to Grotius. The priority of time gives some advantage to the evidence of the former, which he loses on the other hand by the distance of Venice from the Netherlands.
