The combat is ever renewed.

Liberty, often crushed, rises again and again from her native earth with redoubled energy.

At last, in the 16th century, a new and more powerful spirit, the genius of religious freedom, comes to participate in the great conflict.
Arbitrary power, incarnated in the second Charlemagne, assails the new combination with unscrupulous, unforgiving fierceness.

Venerable civic magistrates; haltered, grovel in sackcloth and ashes; innocent, religious reformers burn in holocausts.

By the middle of the century, the battle rages more fiercely than ever.