The Latin moralists effected, what (strange to think!) the New Testament alone could not do.
In the fifteenth century, when Constantinople was taken by the Turks, learned Greeks were driven out to Italy and to other parts of the West, and the Roman Catholic world began to read the old Greek literature.

All historians agree, that the enlightenment of mind hence arising was a prime mover of religious Reformation; and learned Protestants of Germany have even believed, that the overthrow of Popish error and establishment of purer truth would have been brought about more equably and profoundly, if Luther had never lived, and the passions of the vulgar had never been stimulated against the externals of Romanism.
At any rate, it gradually opened upon me, that the free cultivation of the _understanding_, which Latin and Greek literature had imparted to Europe and our freer public life, were chief causes of our religious superiority to Greek, Armenian, and Syrian Christians.

As the Greeks in Constantinople under a centralized despotism retained no free intellect, and therefore the works of their fathers did their souls no good; so in Europe, just in proportion to the freedom of learning, has been the force of the result.

In Spain and Italy the study of miscellaneous science and independent thought were nearly extinguished; in France and Austria they were crippled; in Protestant countries they have been freest.

And then we impute all their effects to the Bible![9] I at length saw how untenable is the argument drawn from the inward history of Christianity in favour of its superhuman origin.