Then commerce spread, as in the trade of Italy and the Low Countries with the East.
A succession of discoveries and inventions in the physical world advanced society.
Gunpowder helped to overthrow feudalism.
Printing made the Reformation possible.
The Copernican theory had its practical result in the stimulation of discovery and commerce; its intellectual issue in the weakening of the church's cosmogony, and a discredit of the church's claim to real knowledge.
The growing wealth of the middle class gave freedom to England,—the merchants and cities were the strength of the Puritan and Parliamentary party.
A series of inventions has within the last century multiplied wealth—the use of canals, textile machinery, steam, electricity. This has created a new class of rich. It has improved the condition of the laboring man, not enough to satisfy him, but enough to strengthen him to demand more.
Thus, military force giving strength; its organization as feudalism, giving the chivalric virtues and training an upper class; commerce, discovery, invention, raising first the middle class and then the lower,—these forces, not on the surface ethical, have cooperated to realize the ideal.
Luther led a revolt which in its issue freed half Europe from the Roman court. He made the quarrel on a moral question. No man, he said, could sell a license from God to commit sin. If the Pope said otherwise, the Pope was a liar and no vicegerent of God. So he put in the forefront of the revolting forces a moral idea.
He showed that the spiritual life, with all its aspirations, struggles, and victories, was open to man without help from Pope or priesthood. He gave the German people the Bible in their own tongue. He taught by word and example that marriage was the rightful accompaniment of a life consecrated to God.