The Huguenot Bartholomew Dupuy and his descendants

4 RISE AND PROGRESS OF HUGUENOTS.
introd . the foundations— the three corner-stones as it
were—of the Reformation had been separately
and independently laid in each country, and
the fabric had begun to rise from those three
points of labor, then the news circulating
between the separate bands of workers began
to animate and to accelerate the progress of
each, until the walls were joined and the
structure completed stood imposingly before
the eyes of the world. The workmen who separately
laid the foundations and finally completed
the structure in unison, were French,
German, and Swiss; and Martin Luther was
the greatest of them all, and became their
foreman. But that the work first began in
France there is no question.
Reforma- The secds of the Reformation were not a
Begins ^oi'^igu importation to her soil, but there the
inFrance.first sowcr of any country began to scatter
the first seeds, and there they first germinated.
And the reason for it was that no other
country had been so long and so well prepared
for the change, though the Reformation there
met with the bitterest opposition, and was
longer obtaining legal toleration. In no other
country did it occasion more bloodshed and
awful civil wars, and did state administration,
court intrigue, partisan politics, and desire
for reputation, exercise greater influence
against its progress and fortunes. The beginning
of its rise there was also different from
in a small
that in Germany, where it began
city. In France it began at the most influential
center of the whole country— in its very
metropolis and in the great University of
Paris, the second institution in authority in
all Roman Christendom. In that institution,
the seeds of the Reformation were first sown,