The Life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim, known by the name of Paracelsus

TnE dawn of the sixteenth century called into existence a new era of thought, and was the beginning of the most stupendous and important accomplishments of those times — the reformation of the Church. The world awoke again from its long sleep in mental torpitude during the Middle Ages, and shaking off the incubus of Papal suppression, it breathed freely once more. As the shadows of night fly at the approach of the day, so clerical fanaticism, superstition, and bigotry began to fade away, because Luther, in the name of the Supreme Power of the Universe, spoke again the Divine command: “Let there be light! “The sun of truth began again to rise in the East, and although his light may afterwards have been obscured by the mists and vapours rising from fields on which dogmas and superstitions were undergoing the process of putrefaction, nevertheless it was penetrating enough to extend its beneficial influence over the subsequent hours of that day. It shone through the murky atmosphere of sectarian bigotry, and sent its rays into doubting minds. Free thought and free investigation, having shaken off the chains with which they were bound down for centuries by the enemies of religious liberty, broke the door of their dungeon, and rose again to heaven to drink from the fountain of truth. Free inquiry took the place of blind credulity; reason rose victorious out of its struggle with blind belief in clerical authority. Spirits that had been bound to cold and dead forms were set free, and began to expand and take their natural shapes; and truths that had been monopolised and held captive for centuries by an exclusive caste of priests, became the common property of all that were able to grasp them.