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   Title: History of the Christian Church, Volume VII. Modern
   Christianity. The German Reformation.
   Creator(s): Schaff, Philip (1819-1893)
   Print Basis: Second edition, revised
   CCEL Subjects: All; History;
   LC Call no: BR145.S3
   LC Subjects:

   Christianity

   History
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   This volume constitutes the first part of

   THE HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION

   by Philip Schaff

   It is included as Volume VII in the 8-volume

   HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH

   Volume VIII in this series, on the Swiss

   Reformation, completes the 2-volume unit

   on he The History of the Reformation

   HISTORY

   of the

   CHRISTIAN CHURCH [1]

   by

   PHILIP SCHAFF

   professor of church history in the union theological seminary

   new york

   Christianus sum: Christiani nihil a me alienum puto

   VOLUME VII.

   MODERN CHRISTIANITY

   THE GERMAN REFORMATION

   This is a reproduction of the Second Edition, Revised
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   [1] Schaff, Philip, History of the Christian Church, (Oak Harbor, WA:
   Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1997. This material has been carefully
   compared, corrected, and emended (according to the 1910 edition of
   Charles Scribner's Sons) by The Electronic Bible Society, Dallas, TX,
   1998.
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   PREFACE.

   I publish the history of the Reformation in advance of the concluding
   volume on the Middle Ages, which will follow in due time.

   The Reformation was a republication of primitive Christianity, and the
   inauguration of modern Christianity. This makes it, next to the
   Apostolic age, the most important and interesting portion of church
   history. The Luther and Zwingli celebrations of 1883 and 1884 have
   revived its memories, and largely increased its literature; while
   scholars of the Roman Church have attempted, with great ability, an
   ultramontane reconstruction of the history of Germany and Europe during
   the period of the Reformation. The Cultur-Kampf is still going on. The
   theological battles of the sixteenth century are being fought over
   again in modern thought, with a slow but steady approach to a better
   understanding and filial settlement. Protestantism with its freedom can
   afford to be fair and just to Romanism, which is chained to its
   traditions. The dogma of papal infallibility is fatal to freedom of
   investigation. Facts must control dogmas, and not dogmas facts. Truth,
   the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, is the aim of the
   historian; but truth should be told in love (Eph. 4:15).

   The signs of the times point to a new era in the ever onward March of
   Christ's kingdom. God alone foreknows the future, and sees the end from
   the beginning. We poor mortals know only "in part," and see "in a
   mirror, darkly." But, as the plans of Providence unfold themselves, the
   prospect widens, old prejudices melt away, and hope and charity expand
   with our vision. The historian must be impartial, without being neutral
   or indifferent. He must follow the footsteps of Divine Providence,
   which shapes our ends, and guides all human events in the interest of
   truth, righteousness, and peace.

   I have collected much material for a comprehensive history of the
   Reformation, in the libraries of Europe, during several summer visits
   (thirteen in all), and digested it at home. I have studied the Luther
   literature in Berlin, the Zwingli literature in Zuerich, the
   Calvinistic literature in Geneva and Paris, the English and Scotch
   Reformation in London, Oxford, and Edinburgh. Two years ago I
   revisited, with great satisfaction, the classical localities made
   memorable by the Reformation,--Wittenberg, Eisleben, Eisenach, the
   Wartburg, Halle, Leipzig, Jena, Weimar, Erfurt, Gotha, Heidelberg,
   Zuerich, Geneva,--and found kind friends and Christian brethren
   everywhere. At Marburg, Coburg, Augsburg, I had been before. By way of
   contrast I made in the same year an interesting tour through
   Roman-Catholic Spain, the land of Ferdinand and Isabel, Charles V.,
   Philip II., and Ignatius Loyola, and compared her former and present
   state with the Protestant North. In Italy I have been three times,
   including a three-months sojourn in Rome. A visit to the places of
   events brings one nearer to the actors, and puts one almost into the
   position of a witness.

   This volume embraces, besides a general introduction to modern church
   history, the productive period of the German Reformation, from its
   beginning to the Diet of Augsburg (1530), and the death of Luther
   (1546), with a concluding estimate of the character and services of
   this extraordinary man. I have used the new Weimar edition of his works
   as far as published; for the other parts, Walch and the Erlangen
   edition. Of modern Protestant historians I have chiefly consulted Ranke
   (my teacher), and Koestlin (my friend), with whose views, on Luther and
   the Reformation I am in essential harmony. I have also constantly
   compared the learned Roman-Catholic works of Doellinger, and Janssen,
   besides numerous monographs. The reader will find classified lists of
   the sources and literature in all leading sections (e.g., pp. 94, 99,
   183, 272, 340, 399, 421, 494, 579, 612, 629, 695, 706), and occasional
   excursions into the field of the philosophy of church history (as in
   the introductory chapter, and in S:S: 49, 56, 63, 79, 87, 99, etc.). In
   these I have endeavored to interpret the past in the light of the
   present, and to make the movements of the sixteenth century more
   intelligible through their results in the nineteenth. For we must judge
   the tree by its fruits. "God's mills grind slowly, but wonderfully
   fine."

   I am conscious of the defects of this new attempt to reproduce the
   history of the Reformation, which has so often been told by friend and
   foe, but too often in a partisan spirit. I have done the best I could.
   God expects no more from his servants than faithfulness in the use of
   their abilities and opportunities.

   The Author.

   New York, September, 1888.

   HISTORY

   of

   MODERN CHRISTIANITY

   THE REFORMATION.

   FROM A.D. 1517 TO 1648.
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   CHAPTER I.

   ORIENTATION.

   Now the Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there
   is liberty.--2 Cor. 3:17.
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   S: 1. The Turning Point of Modern History.

   The Reformation of the sixteenth century is, next to the introduction
   of Christianity, the greatest event in history. It marks the end of the
   Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times. Starting from religion,
   it gave, directly or indirectly, a mighty impulse to every forward
   movement, and made Protestantism the chief propelling force in the
   history of modern civilization.

   The age of the Reformation bears a strong resemblance to the first
   century. Both are rich beyond any other period in great and good men,
   important facts, and permanent results. Both contain the ripe fruits of
   preceding, and the fruitful germs of succeeding ages. They are turning
   points in the history of mankind. They are felt in their effects to
   this day, and will be felt to the end of time. They refashioned the
   world from the innermost depths of the human soul in its contact, with
   the infinite Being. They were ushered in by a providential concurrence
   of events and tendencies of thought. The way for Christianity was
   prepared by Moses and the Prophets, the dispersion of the Jews, the
   conquests of Alexander the Great, the language and literature of
   Greece, the arms and laws of Rome, the decay of idolatry, the spread of
   skepticism, the aspirations after a new revelation, the hopes of a
   coming Messiah. The Reformation was preceded and necessitated by the
   corruptions of the papacy, the decline of monasticism and scholastic
   theology, the growth of mysticism, the revival of letters, the
   resurrection of the Greek and Roman classics, the invention of the
   printing press, the discovery of a new world, the publication of the
   Greek Testament, the general spirit of enquiry, the striving after
   national independence and personal freedom. In both centuries we hear
   the creative voice of the Almighty calling light out of darkness.

   The sixteenth century is the age of the renaissance in religion,
   literature, and art. The air was stirred by the spirit of progress and
   freedom. The snows of a long winter were fast, melting before the rays
   of the vernal sun. The world seemed to be renewing its youth; old
   things were passing away, all things were becoming new. Pessimists and
   timid conservatives took alarm at the threatened overthrow of cherished
   notions and institutions, and were complaining, fault-finding and
   desponding. A very useless business. Intelligent observers of the signs
   of the times looked hopefully and cheerfully to the future. "O
   century!" exclaimed Ulrich von Hutten, "the studies flourish, the
   spirits are awake, it is a luxury to live." And Luther wrote in 1522:
   "If you read all the annals of the past, you will find no century like
   this since the birth of Christ. Such building and planting, such good
   living and dressing, such enterprise in commerce, such a stir in all
   the arts, has not been since Christ came into the world. And how
   numerous are the sharp and intelligent people who leave nothing hidden
   and unturned: even a boy of twenty years knows more nowadays than was
   known formerly by twenty doctors of divinity."

   The same may be said with even greater force of the nineteenth century,
   which is eminently an age of discovery and invention, of enquiry and
   progress. And both then as now the enthusiasm for light and liberty
   takes two opposite directions, either towards skepticism and
   infidelity, or towards a revival of true religion from its primitive
   sources. But Christianity triumphed then, and will again regenerate the
   world.

   The Protestant Reformation assumed the helm of the liberal tendencies
   and movements of the renaissance, directed them into the channel of
   Christian life, and saved the world from a disastrous revolution. For
   the Reformation was neither a revolution nor a restoration, though
   including elements of both. It was negative and destructive towards
   error, positive and constructive towards truth; it was conservative as
   well as progressive; it built up new institutions in the place of those
   which it pulled down; and for this reason and to this extent it has
   succeeded.

   Under the motherly care of the Latin Church, Europe had been
   Christianized and civilized, and united into a family of nations under
   the spiritual government of the Pope and the secular government of the
   Emperor, with one creed, one ritual, one discipline, and one sacred
   language. The state of heathenism and barbarism at the beginning of the
   sixth century contrasts with the state of Christian Europe at the
   beginning of the sixteenth century as midnight darkness compared with
   the dawn of the morning. But the sun of the day had not yet arisen.

   All honor to the Catholic Church and her inestimable services to
   humanity. But Christianity is far broader and deeper than any
   ecclesiastical organization. It burst the shell of mediaeval forms,
   struck out new paths, and elevated Europe to a higher plane of
   intellectual, moral and spiritual culture than it had ever attained
   before.
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   S: 2. Protestantism and Romanism.

   Protestantism represents the most enlightened and active of modern
   church history, but not the whole of it.

   Since the sixteenth century Western Christendom is divided and runs in
   two distinct channels. The separation may be compared to the Eastern
   schism of the ninth century, which is not healed to this day; both
   parties being as firm and unyielding as ever on the doctrinal question
   of the Filioque, and the more important practical question of Popery.
   But Protestantism differs much more widely from the Roman church than
   the Roman church differs from the Greek, and the Protestant schism has
   become the fruitful mother of minor divisions, which exist in separate
   ecclesiastical organizations.

   We must distinguish between Catholicism and Romanism. The former
   embraces the ancient Oriental church, the mediaeval church, and we may
   say, in a wider sense, all the modern evangelical churches. Romanism is
   the Latin church turned against the Reformation, consolidated by the
   Council of Trent and completed by the Vatican Council of 1870 with its
   dogma of papal absolutism and papal infallibility. Mediaeval
   Catholicism is pre-evangelical, looking to the Reformation; modern
   Romanism is anti-evangelical, condemning the Reformation, yet holding
   with unyielding tenacity the oecumenical doctrines once sanctioned, and
   doing this all the more by virtue of its claim to infallibility.

   The distinction between pre-Reformation Catholicism and
   post-Reformation Romanism, in their attitude towards Protestantism, has
   its historical antecedent and parallel in the distinction between
   pre-Christian Israel which prepared the way for Christianity, and
   post-Christian Judaism which opposed it as an apostasy.

   Catholicism and Protestantism represent two distinct types of
   Christianity which sprang from the same root, but differ in the
   branches.

   Catholicism is legal Christianity which served to the barbarian nations
   of the Middle Ages as a necessary school of discipline; Protestantism
   is evangelical Christianity which answers the age of independent
   manhood. Catholicism is traditional, hierarchical, ritualistic,
   conservative; Protestantism is biblical, democratic, spiritual,
   progressive. The former is ruled by the principle of authority, the
   latter by the principle of freedom. But the law, by awakening a sense
   of sin and exciting a desire for redemption, leads to the gospel;
   parental authority is a school of freedom; filial obedience looks to
   manly self-government.

   The characteristic features of mediaeval Catholicism are intensified by
   Romanism, yet without destroying the underlying unity.

   Romanism and orthodox Protestantism believe in one God, Father, Son,
   and Holy Spirit, and in one divine-human Lord and Saviour of the race.
   They accept in common the Holy Scriptures and the oecumenical faith.
   They agree in every article of the Apostles' Creed. What unites them is
   far deeper, stronger and more important than what divides them.

   But Romanism holds also a large number of "traditions of the elders,"
   which Protestantism rejects as extra-scriptural or anti-scriptural;
   such are the papacy, the worship of saints and relics,
   transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the mass, prayers and masses for
   the dead, works of supererogation, purgatory, indulgences, the system
   of monasticism with its perpetual vows and ascetic practices, besides
   many superstitious rites and ceremonies.

   Protestantism, on the other hand, revived and developed the Augustinian
   doctrines of sin and grace; it proclaimed the sovereignty of divine
   mercy in man's salvation, the sufficiency of the Scriptures as a rule
   of faith, and the sufficiency of Christ's merit as a source of
   justification; it asserted the right of direct access to the Word of
   God and the throne of grace, without human mediators; it secured
   Christian freedom from bondage; it substituted social morality for
   monkish asceticism, and a simple, spiritual worship for an imposing
   ceremonialism that addresses the senses and imagination rather than the
   intellect and the heart.

   The difference between the Catholic and Protestant churches was
   typically foreshadowed by the difference between Jewish and Gentile
   Christianity in the apostolic age, which anticipated, as it were, the
   whole future course of church history. The question of circumcision or
   the keeping of the Mosaic law, as a condition of church membership,
   threatened a split at the Council of Jerusalem, but was solved by the
   wisdom and charity of the apostles, who agreed that Jews and Gentiles
   alike are "saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus" (Acts 15:11). Yet
   even after the settlement of the controversy by the Jerusalem
   compromise Paul got into a sharp conflict with Peter at Antioch on the
   same question, and protested against his older colleague for denying by
   his timid conduct his better conviction, and disowning the Gentile
   brethren. It is not accidental that the Roman Church professes to be
   built on Peter and regards him as the first pope; while the Reformers
   appealed chiefly to Paul and found in his epistles to the Galatians and
   Romans the bulwark of their anthropology and soteriology, and their
   doctrine of Christian freedom. The collision between Paul and Peter was
   only temporary; and so the war between Protestantism and Romanism will
   ultimately pass away in God's own good time.

   The Reformation began simultaneously in Germany and Switzerland, and
   swept with astonishing rapidity over France, Holland, Scandinavia,
   Bohemia, Hungary, England and Scotland; since the seventeenth century
   it has spread by emigration to North America, and by commercial and
   missionary enterprises to every Dutch and English colony, and every
   heathen land. It carried away the majority of the Teutonic and a part
   of the Latin nations, and for a while threatened to overthrow the papal
   church.

   But towards the close of the sixteenth century the triumphant march of
   the Reformation was suddenly arrested. Romanism rose like a wounded
   giant, and made the most vigorous efforts to reconquer the lost
   territory in Europe, and to extend its dominion in Asia and South
   America. Since that time the numerical relation of the two churches has
   undergone little change. But the progress of secular and ecclesiastical
   history has run chiefly in Protestant channels.

   In many respects the Roman Church of to-day is a great improvement upon
   the Mediaeval Church. She has been much benefited by the Protestant
   Reformation, and is far less corrupt and far more prosperous in
   Protestant than in Papal countries. She was driven to a counter-reform
   which abolished some of the most crying abuses and infused new life and
   zeal into her clergy and laity. No papal schism has disgraced her
   history since the sixteenth century. No pope of the character of
   Alexander VI. or even Leo X. could be elected any more. She lives
   chiefly of the past, but uses for her defence all the weapons of modern
   warfare. She has a much larger membership than either the Greek or the
   Protestant communion; she still holds under her sway the Latin races of
   both hemispheres; she satisfies the religious wants of millions of
   human beings in all countries and climes; she extends her educational,
   benevolent and missionary operations all over the globe; she advances
   in proportion as Protestantism degenerates and neglects its duty; and
   by her venerable antiquity, historical continuity, visible unity,
   centralized organization, imposing ritual, sacred art, and ascetic
   piety she attracts intelligent and cultured minds; while the common
   people are kept in ignorance and in superstitious awe of her mysterious
   authority with its claim to open the gates of heaven and hell and to
   shorten the purgatorial sufferings of the departed. For good and evil
   she is the strongest conservative force in modern society, and there is
   every reason to believe that she will last to the end of time.

   Thus the two branches of Western Christendom seem to hold each other in
   check, and ought to stimulate each other to a noble rivalry in good
   works.

   The unhappy divisions of Christendom, while they are the source of many
   evils, have also the good effect of multiplying the agencies for the
   conversion of the world and facilitating the free growth of every phase
   of religious life. The evil lies not so much in the multiplicity of
   denominations, which have a mission to fulfil, as in the spirit of
   sectarianism and exclusivism, which denies the rights and virtues of
   others. The Reformation of the sixteenth century is not a finale, but a
   movement still in progress. We may look hopefully forward to a higher,
   deeper and broader Reformation, when God in His overruling wisdom and
   mercy, by a pentecostal effusion of His Holy Spirit upon all the
   churches, will reunite what the sin and folly of men have divided.
   There must and will be, in the fullest sense of Christ's prophecy, "one
   flock, one Shepherd" (John 10:16). [2]
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   [2] We say "one flock" (mia poimne) not "one fold" (which would require
   mia aule). The latter is a strange mistranslation which has passed from
   the Latin version (ovile) into King James's version, and has often been
   abused as an argument for the papacy and ecclesiastical uniformity. It
   is corrected in the Revision. The two flocks, Jews and Gentiles, became
   one flock in the one Shepherd (poimen), not by entrance into the aule
   of the Jews. There may be one flock in many folds or ecclesiastical
   organizations. The prophecy was no doubt already fulfilled in the
   Apostolic Church (Eph. 2:11-22), but awaits a higher fulfillment when
   "the fulness of the Gentiles shall come in, and all Israel shall be
   saved." Rom. 11:25, 26.
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   S:3. Necessity of a Reformation.

   The corruption and abuses of the Latin church had long been the
   complaint of the best men, and even of general councils. A reformation
   of the head and the members was the watchword at Pisa, Constance, and
   Basel, but remained a pium desiderium for a whole century.

   Let us briefly review the dark side in the condition of the church at
   the beginning of the sixteenth century.

   The papacy was secularized, and changed into a selfish tyranny whose
   yoke became more and more unbearable. The scandal of the papal schism
   had indeed been removed, but papal morals, after a temporary
   improvement, became worse than ever during the years 1492 to 1521.
   Alexander VI. was a monster of iniquity; Julius II. was a politician
   and warrior rather than a chief shepherd of souls; and Leo X. took far
   more interest in the revival of heathen literature and art than in
   religion, and is said to have even doubted the truth of the gospel
   history.

   No wonder that many cardinals and priests followed the scandalous
   example of the popes, and weakened the respect of the laity for the
   clergy. The writings of contemporary scholars, preachers and satirists
   are full of complaints and exposures of the ignorance, vulgarity and
   immorality of priests and monks. Simony and nepotism were shamefully
   practiced. Celibacy was a foul fountain of unchastity and uncleanness.
   The bishoprics were monopolized by the youngest sons of princes and
   nobles without regard to qualification. Geiler of Kaisersberg, a stern
   preacher of moral reform at Strassburg (d. 1510), charges all Germany
   with promoting ignorant and worldly men to the chief dignities, simply
   on account of their high connections. Thomas Murner complains that the
   devil had introduced the nobility into the clergy, and monopolized for
   them the bishoprics. [3] Plurality of office and absence from the
   diocese were common. Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz was at the same time
   archbishop of Magdeburg and bishop of Halberstadt. Cardinal Wolsey was
   archbishop of York while chancellor of England, received stipends from
   the kings of France and Spain and the doge of Venice, and had a train
   of five hundred servants. James V. of Scotland (1528-1542) provided for
   his illegitimate children by making them abbots of Holyrood House,
   Kelso, Melrose, Coldingham and St. Andrews, and intrusted royal
   favorites with bishoprics.

   Discipline was nearly ruined. Whole monastic establishments and orders
   had become nurseries of ignorance and superstition, idleness and
   dissipation, and were the objects of contempt and ridicule, as may be
   seen from the controversy of Reuchlin with the Dominicans, the writings
   of Erasmus, and the Epistolae Virorum Obscurorum.

   Theology was a maze of scholastic subtleties, Aristotelian dialectics
   and idle speculations, but ignored the great doctrines of the gospel.
   Carlstadt, the older colleague of Luther, confessed that he had been
   doctor of divinity before he had seen a complete copy of the Bible.
   Education was confined to priests and nobles. The mass of the laity
   could neither read nor write, and had no access to the word of God
   except the Scripture lessons from the pulpit.

   The priest's chief duty was to perform, by his magic words, the miracle
   of transubstantiation, and to offer the sacrifice of the mass for the
   living and the dead in a foreign tongue. Many did it mechanically, or
   with a skeptical reservation, especially in Italy. Preaching was
   neglected, and had reference, mostly, to indulgences, alms, pilgrimages
   and processions. The churches were overloaded with good and bad
   pictures, with real and fictitious relics. Saint-worship and
   image-worship, superstitious rites and ceremonies obstructed the direct
   worship of God in spirit and in truth.

   Piety which should proceed from a living union of the soul with Christ
   and a consecration of character, was turned outward and reduced to a
   round of mechanical performances such as the recital of Paternosters
   and Avemarias, fasting, alms-giving, confession to the priest, and
   pilgrimage to a holy shrine. Good works were measured by the quantity
   rather than the quality, and vitiated by the principle of
   meritoriousness which appealed to the selfish motive of reward.
   Remission of sin could be bought with money; a shameful traffic in
   indulgences was carried on under the Pope's sanction for filthy lucre
   as well as for the building of St. Peter's Dome, and caused that
   outburst of moral indignation which was the beginning of the
   Reformation and of the fearful judgment on the Church of Rome.

   This is a one-sided, but not an exaggerated description. It is true as
   far as it goes, and needs only to be supplemented by the bright side
   which we shall present in the next section.

   Honest Roman Catholic scholars, while maintaining the infallibility and
   consequent doctrinal irreformability of their church, admit in strong
   terms the decay of discipline and the necessity of a moral reform in
   the sixteenth century. [4]

   The best proof is furnished by a pope of exceptional integrity, Adrian
   VI., who made an extraordinary confession of the papal and clerical
   corruption to the Diet of Nuernberg in 1522, and tried earnestly,
   though in vain, to reform his court. The Council of Trent was called
   not only for the extirpation of heresy, but in part also "for the
   reformation of the clergy and Christian people;" [5] and Pope Pius IV.,
   in the bull of confirmation, likewise declares that one of the objects
   of the Council was "the correction of morals and the restoration of
   ecclesiastical discipline." [6]

   On the other hand, it must be admitted that the church was more than
   once in a far worse condition, during the papal schism in the
   fourteenth, and especially in the tenth and eleventh centuries; and yet
   she was reformed by Pope Hildebrand and his successors without a split
   and without an alteration of the Catholic Creed.

   Why could not the same be done in the sixteenth century? Because the
   Roman church in the critical moment resisted reform with all her might,
   and forced the issue: either no reformation at all, or a reformation in
   opposition to Rome.

   The guilt of the western schism is divided between the two parties, as
   the guilt of the eastern schism is; although no human tribunal can
   measure the share of responsibility. Much is due, no doubt, to the
   violence and extravagance of the Protestant opposition, but still more
   to the intolerance and stubbornness of the Roman resistance. The papal
   court used against the Reformation for a long time only the carnal
   weapons of political influence, diplomatic intrigue, secular wealth,
   haughty pride, scholastic philosophy, crushing authority, and bloody
   persecution. It repeated the course of the Jewish hierarchy, which
   crucified the Messiah and cast the apostles out of the synagogue.

   But we must look beyond this partial justification, and view the matter
   in the light of the results of the Reformation.

   It was evidently the design of Providence to develop a new type of
   Christianity outside of the restraints of the papacy, and the history
   of three centuries is the best explanation and vindication of that
   design. Every movement in history must be judged by its fruits.

   The elements of such an advance movement were all at work before Luther
   and Zwingli protested against papal indulgences.
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   [3] In his Narrenbeschwoerung (1512): "Aber seit der Teufel hat Den
   Adel bracht in Kirchenstat, Seit man kein' Bischof mehr will han Er sei
   denn ganz ein Edelmann," etc.

   [4] So Bellarmine and Bossuet. Moehler also (in his Kirchengesch. III.
   99) says: "We do not believe that the period before the Reformation was
   a flourishing period of church history, for we hear from it a thousand
   voices for a reformation in the head and members (wir hoeren aus
   derselben den tausendstimmigen Ruf nach einer Verbesserung anHaupt und
   Gliedern uns entgegentoenen)" Even Janssen, the eulogist of mediaeval
   Germany, devotes the concluding section of the first volume of his
   Geschichte des deutschen Volkes (p. 594-613) to a consideration of some
   of the crying evils of those times.

   [5] Sess. I. (held Dec. 13, 1545): "ad extirpationem haeresium , ad
   pacem et unionem ecclessiae, ad reformationem cleri et populi
   Christiani." See Smets, Concilii Trident. Canones et Decreta, p.10.

   [6] "Ad plurimas et perniciosissimas haereses extirpandas, ad
   corrigendos mores, et restituendam ecclesiasticam disciplinam" etc. See
   Smets, l.c. 209.
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   S: 4. The Preparations for the Reformation.

   C. Ullmann: Reformatoren vor der Reformation. Hamburg, 1841, 2d ed.
   1866, 2 vols. (Engl. trans. by R. Menzies, Edinb. 1855, 2 vols.). C. de
   Bonnechose: Reformateurs avant reforme du xvi. siecle. Par. 1853, 2
   vols. A good resume by Geo. P. Fisher: The Reformation. New York, 1873,
   ch. III. 52-84; and in the first two lectures of Charles Beard: The
   Reformation, London, 1883, p. 1-75. Comp., also the numerous monographs
   of various scholars on the Renaissance, on Wiclif, Hus, Savonarola,
   Hutten, Reuchlin, Erasmus, etc. A full account of the preparation for
   the Reformation belongs to the last chapters of the History of
   Mediaeval Christianity (see vol. V.). We here merely recapitulate the
   chief points.

   Judaism before Christ was sadly degenerated, and those who sat in
   Moses' seat had become blind leaders of the blind. Yet "salvation is of
   the Jews;" and out of this people arose John the Baptist, the Virgin
   Mary, the Messiah, and the Apostles. Jerusalem, which stoned the
   prophets and crucified the Lord, witnessed also the pentecostal miracle
   and became the mother church of Christendom. So the Catholic church in
   the sixteenth century, though corrupt in its head and its members, was
   still the church of the living God and gave birth to the Reformation,
   which removed the rubbish of human traditions and reopened the pure
   fountain of the gospel of Christ.

   The Reformers, it should not be forgotten, were all born, baptized,
   confirmed, and educated in the Roman Catholic Church, and most of them
   had served as priests at her altars with the solemn vow of obedience to
   the pope on their conscience. They stood as closely related to the
   papal church, as the Apostles and Evangelists to the Synagogue and the
   Temple; and for reasons of similar urgency, they were justified to
   leave the communion of their fathers; or rather, they did not leave it,
   but were cast out by the ruling hierarchy.

   The Reformation went back to first principles in order to go forward.
   It struck its roots deep in the past and bore rich fruits for the
   future. It sprang forth almost simultaneously from different parts of
   Europe and was enthusiastically hailed by the leading minds of the age
   in church and state. No great movement in history--except Christianity
   itself--was so widely and thoroughly prepared as the Protestant
   Reformation.

   The reformatory Councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basel; the conflict of
   the Emperors with the Popes; the contemplative piety of the mystics
   with their thirst after direct communion with God; the revival of
   classical literature; the general intellectual awakening; the biblical
   studies of Reuchlin, and Erasmus; the rising spirit of national
   independence; Wiclif, and the Lollards in England; Hus, and the
   Hussites in Bohemia; John von Goch, John von Wesel, and Johann Wessel
   in Germany and the Netherlands; Savonarola in Italy; the Brethren of
   the Common Life, the Waldenses, the Friends of God,--contributed their
   share towards the great change and paved the way for a new era of
   Christianity. The innermost life of the church was pressing forward to
   a new era. There is scarcely a principle or doctrine of the Reformation
   which was not anticipated and advocated in the fourteenth and fifteenth
   centuries. Luther made the remark that his opponents might charge him
   with having borrowed everything from John Wessel if he had known his
   writings earlier. The fuel was abundant all over Europe, but it
   required the spark which would set it ablaze.

   Violent passions, political intrigues, the ambition and avarice of
   princes, and all sorts of selfish and worldly motives were mixed up
   with the war against the papacy. But they were at work likewise in the
   introduction of Christianity among the heathen barbarians. "Wherever
   God builds a church, the devil builds a chapel close by." Human nature
   is terribly corrupt and leaves its stains on the noblest movements in
   history.

   But, after all, the religious leaders of the Reformation, while not
   free from faults, were men of the purest motives and highest aims, and
   there is no nation which has not been benefited by the change they
   introduced.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 5. The Genius and Aim of the Reformation.

   Is. Aug. Dorner: On the formal, and the material Principle of the
   Reformation. Two essays, first published in 1841 and 1857, and
   reprinted in his Gesammelte Schriften, Berlin, 1883, p. 48-187. Also
   his History of Protestant Theology, Engl. trans. 1871, 2 vols.

   Phil. Schaff: The Principle of Protestantism, Chambersburg, Penn., 1845
   (German and English); Protestantism and Romanism, and the Principles of
   the Reformation, two essays in his "Christ and Christianity," N. York,
   1885. p. 124-134. Also Creeds of Christendom, Vol. I. 203-219.

   Dan. Schenkel: Das Princip des Protestantimus. Schaffhausen, 1852 (92
   pages). This is the concluding section of his larger work, Das Wesen
   des Protestantismus, in 3 vols.

   K. F. A. Kahnis: Ueber die Principien des Protestatismus. Leipzig,
   1865. Also his Zeugniss von den Grundwahrheiten des Protestantismus
   gegen Dr. Hengstenberg. Leipzig, 1862.

   Charles Beard: The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in its relation
   to Modern Thought and Knowledge. Hibbert Lectures for 1883. London,
   1883. A Unitarian view, written with ample learning and in excellent
   spirit.

   Henry Wace and C. A. Buchheim: First Principles of the Reformation, or
   the 95 Theses and three Primary Works of Dr. M. Luther. London, 1885.

   The literature on the difference between Lutheran and Reformed or
   Calvinistic Protestantism is given in Schaff's Creeds of Christendom,
   l. 211.

   The spirit and aim of evangelical Protestantism is best expressed by
   Paul in his anti-Judaistic Epistle to the Galatians: "For freedom did
   Christ set us free; stand fast, therefore, and be not entangled again
   in a yoke of bondage." Christian freedom is so inestimable a blessing
   that no amount of abuse can justify a relapse into a state of spiritual
   despotism and slavery. But only those who have enjoyed it, can properly
   appreciate it.

   The Reformation was at first a purely religious movement, and furnishes
   a striking illustration of the all-pervading power of religion in
   history. It started from the question: What must a man do to be saved?
   How shall a sinner be justified before God, and attain peace of his
   troubled conscience? The Reformers were supremely concerned for the
   salvation of the soul, for the glory of Christ and the triumph of his
   gospel. They thought much more of the future world than of the present,
   and made all political, national, and literary interests subordinate
   and subservient to religion. [7]

   Yet they were not monks, but live men in a live age, not pessimists,
   but optimists, men of action as well as of thought, earnest, vigorous,
   hopeful men, free from selfish motives and aims, full of faith and the
   Holy Ghost, equal to any who had preceded them since the days of the
   Apostles. From the centre of religion they have influenced every
   department of human life and activity, and given a powerful impulse to
   political and civil liberty, to progress in theology, philosophy,
   science, and literature.

   The Reformation removed the obstructions which the papal church had
   interposed between Christ and the believer. It opened the door to
   direct union with him , as the only Mediator between God and man, and
   made his gospel accessible to every reader without the permission of a
   priest. It was a return to first principles, and for this very reason
   also a great advance. It was a revival of primitive Christianity, and
   at the same time a deeper apprehension and application of it than had
   been known before.

   There are three fundamental principles of the Reformation: the
   supremacy of the Scriptures over tradition, the supremacy of faith over
   works, and the supremacy of the Christian people over an exclusive
   priesthood. The first may be called the objective, the second the
   subjective, the third the social or ecclesiastical principle. [8]

   They resolve themselves into the one principle of evangelical freedom,
   or freedom in Christ. The ultimate aim of evangelical Protestantism is
   to bring every man into living union with Christ as the only and
   all-sufficient Lord and Saviour from sin and death.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [7] What Dr. Baur, the critical Tuebingen historian, says of Luther, is
   equally applicable to all the other Reformers: "Dass fuer Luther die
   Reformation zur eigensten Sache seines Herzens geworden war, dass er
   sie in ihrem reinsten religioesen Interesse auffasste, getrennt von
   allen ihr fremdartigen blos aeusserlichen Motiven, dass es ihm um
   nichts anderes zu thun war, alsum die Sache des Evangeliums und
   seinerseligmachenden Kraft, wie er sie an sich selbst in seinem innern
   Kampf um die Gewissheit der Suendenvergebung erfahren hatte, diess ist
   es, was ihn zum Reformator machte."Gesch. der Christl. Kirche, vol. IV.
   5 (ed. by his son, 1863). Froude says of Luther: "He revived and
   maintained the spirit of piety and reverence in which, and by which
   alone, real progress is possible."Luther, Preface, p. vi.

   [8] German writers distinguish usually two principles of the
   Reformation, the authority of the Scriptures, and justification by
   faith, and call the first the formal principle (or Erkenntnissprincip,
   principium cognoscendi), the second the material principle (principium
   essendi); the third they omit, except Kahnis, who finds a third
   principle in the idea of the invisible church, and calls this the
   Kirchenprincip. The Lutheran Church gives to the doctrine of
   justification by faith the first place; and the Formula of Concord
   calls it "articulus praecipuus in tota doctrina Christiana." But the
   Reformed confessions give the first place to the doctrine of the
   normative authority of Scripture, from which alone all articles of
   faith are to be derived, and they substitute for the doctrine of
   justification by faith the ulterior and wider doctrine of election and
   salvation by free grace through faith. The difference is
   characteristic, but does not affect the essential agreement.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 6. The Authority of the Scriptures.

   The objective principle of Protestantism maintains that the Bible, as
   the inspired record of revelation, is the only infallible rule of faith
   and practice; in opposition to the Roman Catholic coordination of
   Scripture and ecclesiastical tradition, as the joint rules of faith.

   The teaching of the living church is by no means rejected, but
   subordinated to the Word of God; while the opposite theory virtually
   subordinates the Bible to tradition by making the latter the sole
   interpreter of the former and confining interpretation within the
   limits of an imaginary consensus patrum. In the application of the
   Bible principle there was considerable difference between the more
   conservative Lutheran and Anglican Reformation, and the more radical
   Zwinglian and Calvinistic Reformation; the former contained many
   post-scriptural and extra-scriptural traditions, usages and
   institutions, which the latter, in its zeal for primitive purity and
   simplicity, rejected as useless or dangerous; but all Reformers opposed
   what they regarded as anti-scriptural doctrines; and all agreed in the
   principle that the church has no right to impose upon the conscience
   articles of faith without clear warrant in the Word of God.

   Every true progress in church history is conditioned by a new and
   deeper study of the Scriptures, which has "first, second, third,
   infinite draughts." While the Humanists went back to the ancient
   classics and revived the spirit of Greek and Roman paganism, the
   Reformers went back to the sacred Scriptures in the original languages
   and revived the spirit of apostolic Christianity. They were fired by an
   enthusiasm for the gospel, such as had never been known since the days
   of Paul. Christ rose from the tomb of human traditions and preached
   again his words of life and power. The Bible, heretofore a book of
   priests only, was now translated anew and better than ever into the
   vernacular tongues of Europe, and made a book of the people. Every
   Christian man could henceforth go to the fountain-head of inspiration,
   and sit at the feet of the Divine Teacher, without priestly permission
   and intervention. This achievement of the Reformation was a source of
   incalculable blessings for all time to come. In a few years Luther's
   version had more readers among the laity than ever the Latin Vulgate
   had among priests; and the Protestant Bible societies circulate more
   Bibles in one year than were copied during the fifteen centuries before
   the Reformation.

   We must remember, however, that this wonderful progress was only made
   possible by the previous invention of the art of printing and by the
   subsequent education of the people. The Catholic Church had preserved
   the sacred Scriptures through ages of ignorance and barbarism; the
   Latin Bible was the first gift of the printing press to the world;
   fourteen or more editions of a German version were printed before 1518;
   the first two editions of the Greek Testament we owe to the liberality
   of a Spanish cardinal (Ximenes), and the enterprise of a Dutch scholar
   in Basel (Erasmus); and the latter furnished the text from which, with
   the aid of Jerome's Vulgate, the translations of Luther and Tyndale
   were made.

   The Roman church, while recognizing the divine inspiration and
   authority of the Bible, prefers to control the laity by the teaching
   priesthood, and allows the reading of the Scriptures in the popular
   tongues only under certain restrictions and precautions, from fear of
   abuse and profanation. Pope Innocent III. was of the opinion that the
   Scriptures were too deep for the common people, as they surpassed even
   the understanding of the wise and learned. Several synods in Gaul,
   during the thirteenth century, prohibited the reading of the Romanic
   translation, and ordered the copies to be burnt. Archbishop Berthold,
   of Mainz, in an edict of January 4th, 1486, threatened with
   excommunication all who ventured to translate and to circulate
   translations of sacred books, especially the Bible, without his
   permission. The Council of Constance (1415), which burnt John Hus and
   Jerome of Prague, condemned also the writings and the hopes of Wiclif,
   the first translator of the whole Bible into the English tongue, to the
   flames: and Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury and chancellor of
   England, denounced him as that "pestilent wretch of damnable heresy
   who, as a complement of his wickedness, invented a new translation of
   the Scriptures into his mother tongue." Pope Pius IV. (1564), in the
   conviction that the indiscriminate reading of Bible versions did more
   harm than good (plus detrimenti quam utilitiatis), would not allow
   laymen to read the sacred book except by special permission of a bishop
   or an inquisitor. Clement VIII. (1598) reserved the right to grant this
   permission to the Congregation of the Index. Gregory XV. (1622), and
   Clement XI. (in the Bull Unigenitus, 1713), repeated the conditional
   prohibition. Benedict XIV., one of the liberal popes, extended the
   permission to read the Word of God in the vernacular to all the
   faithful, yet with the proviso that the translation be approved in Rome
   and guarded by explanatory notes from the writings of the fathers and
   Catholic scholars (1757). This excludes, of course, all Protestant
   versions, even the very best. They are regarded as corrupt and
   heretical and have often been committed to the flames in Roman Catholic
   countries, especially in connection with the counter-Reformation of the
   Jesuits in Bohemia and elsewhere. The first edition of Tyndale's New
   Testament had to be smuggled into England and was publicly burnt by
   order of Tunstall, bishop of London, in St. Paul's church-yard near the
   spot from which Bibles are now sent to all parts of the globe. The
   Bible societies have been denounced and condemned by modern popes as a
   "pestilence which perverts the gospel of Christ into a gospel of the
   devil." The Papal Syllabus of Pius IX. (1864), classes "Societates
   Biblicae" with Socialism, Communism, and Secret Societies, calls them
   "pests frequently rebuked in the severest terms," and refers for proof,
   to several Encyclicals from November 9th, 1846, to August 10th, 1863.
   [9]

   Such fulminations against Protestant Bible societies might be in some
   measure excused if the popes favored Catholic Bible societies, which
   would be the best proof of zeal for the spread of the Scriptures. But
   such institutions do not exist. Fortunately papal bulls have little
   effect in modern times, and in spite of official prohibitions and
   discouragements, there are zealous advocates of Bible reading among
   modern Catholics, as there were among the Greek and Latin fathers. [10]
   Nor have the restrictions of the Council of Trent been able to prevent
   the progress of Biblical scholarship and exegesis even in the Roman
   church. E pur si muove. The Bible, as well as the earth, moves for all
   that.

   Modern Protestant theology is much more just to ecclesiastical
   tradition than the Reformers could be in their hot indignation against
   the prevailing corruptions and against the papal tyranny of their day.
   The deeper study of ecclesiastical and secular history has dispelled
   the former ignorance on the "dark ages," so called, and brought out the
   merits of the fathers, missionaries, schoolmen, and popes, in the
   progress of Christian civilization.

   But these results do not diminish the supreme value of the sacred
   Scripture as an ultimate tribunal of appeal in matters of faith, nor
   the importance of its widest circulation. It is by far the best guide
   of instruction in holy living and dying. No matter what theory of the
   mode and extent of inspiration we may hold, the fact of inspiration is
   plain and attested by the universal consent of Christendom. The Bible
   is a book of holy men, but just as much a book of God, who made those
   men witnesses of truth and sure teachers of the way of salvation.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [9] Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, II. 218; Koellner, Symbolik II. 351,
   sqq.; Hase, Handbuch der Protestant. Polemik, fourth ed., 1878, p. 68
   sqq. There were indeed vernacular translations of the Bible long before
   the Reformation; but it is a most astounding exaggeration when Perrone,
   as quoted by Hase, asserts (Praelect. Theol. III. S: 317): "Per idem
   tempus 800plus minus editiones Bibliorum aut N. T. ante Reformationem
   prodierant, ac per universam Europam catholicam circumferebantur,
   antequam vel protestantis nomen agnosceretur. Et ex his 200 versiones
   in linguis vernaculis diversarum gentium omnium manibus libere
   versabantur."

   [10] See L. Van Ess,Auszuege ueber das nothwendige und nuetzliche
   Bibellesen aus den Kirchenvaetern und anderen kathol. Schriften, second
   ed., 1816; also the preface to his translation of the New Testament.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 7. Justification by Faith.

   The subjective principle of Protestantism is the doctrine of
   justification and salvation by faith in Christ; as distinct from the
   doctrine of justification by faith and works or salvation by grace and
   human merit. Luther's formula is sola fide. Calvin goes further back to
   God's eternal election, as the ultimate ground of salvation and comfort
   in life and in death. But Luther and Calvin meant substantially the
   same thing, and agree in the more general proposition of salvation by
   free grace through living faith in Christ (Acts 4:12), in opposition to
   any Pelagian or Semi-pelagian compromise which divides the work and
   merit between God and man. And this is the very soul of evangelical
   Protestantism. [11]

   Luther assigned to his solifidian doctrine of justification the central
   position in the Christian system, declared it to be the article of the
   standing or falling (Lutheran) church, and was unwilling to yield an
   inch from it, though heaven and earth should collapse. [12] This
   exaggeration is due to his personal experience during his convent life.
   The central article of the Christian faith on which the church is
   built, is not any specific dogma of the Protestant, or Roman, or Greek
   church, but the broader and deeper truth held by all, namely, the
   divine-human personality and atoning work of Christ, the Lord and
   Saviour. This was the confession of Peter, the first creed of
   Christendom.

   The Protestant doctrine of justification differs from the Roman
   Catholic, as defined (very circumspectly) by the Council of Trent,
   chiefly in two points. Justification is conceived as a declaratory and
   judicial act of God, in distinction from sanctification, which is a
   gradual growth; and faith is conceived as a fiducial act of the heart
   and will, in distinction from theoretical belief and blind submission
   to the church. The Reformers derived their idea from Paul, the
   Romanists appealed chiefly to James (2:17-26); but Paul suggests the
   solution of the apparent contradiction by his sentence, that "in Christ
   Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but
   faith working through love."

   Faith, in the biblical and evangelical sense, is a vital force which
   engages all the powers of man and apprehends and appropriates the very
   life of Christ and all his benefits. It is the child of grace and the
   mother of good works. It is the pioneer of all great thoughts and
   deeds. By faith Abraham became the father of nations; by faith Moses
   became the liberator and legislator of Israel; by faith the Galilean
   fishermen became fishers of men; and by faith the noble army of martyrs
   endured tortures and triumphed in death; without faith in the risen
   Saviour the church could not have been founded. Faith is a saving
   power. It unites us to Christ. Whosoever believeth in Christ "hath
   eternal life." "We believe," said Peter at the Council of Jerusalem,
   "that we shall be saved through the grace of God," like the Gentiles
   who come to Christ by faith without the works and ceremonies of the
   law. "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved," was Paul's
   answer to the question of the jailor: "What must I do to be saved?"

   Protestantism does by no means despise or neglect good works or favor
   antinomian license; it only subordinates them to faith, and measures
   their value by quality rather than quantity. They are not the
   condition, but the necessary evidence of justification; they are not
   the root, but the fruits of the tree. The same faith which justifies,
   does also sanctify. It is ever "working through love" (Gal. 5:6).
   Luther is often charged with indifference to good works, but very
   unjustly. His occasional unguarded utterances must be understood in
   connection with his whole teaching and character. "Faith" in his own
   forcible language which expresses his true view, "faith is a living,
   busy, active, mighty thing and it is impossible that it should not do
   good without ceasing; it does not ask whether good works are to be
   done, but before the question is put, it has done them already, and is
   always engaged in doing them; you may as well separate burning and
   shining from fire, as works from faith."

   The Lutheran doctrine of Christian freedom and justification by faith
   alone, like that of St. Paul on which it was based, was made the cloak
   of excesses by carnal men who wickedly reasoned, "Let us continue in
   sin that grace may abound" (Rom. 6:1), and who abused their "freedom
   for an occasion to the flesh" (Gal. 5:13). All such consequences the
   apostle cut off at the outset by an indignant "God forbid."

   The fact is undeniable, that the Reformation in Germany was accompanied
   and followed by antinomian tendencies and a degeneracy of public
   morals. It rests not only on the hostile testimonies of Romanists and
   separatists, but Luther and Melanchthon themselves often bitterly
   complained in their later years of the abuse of the liberty of the
   gospel and the sad state of morals in Wittenberg and throughout Saxony.
   [13]

   But we should remember, first, that the degeneracy of morals,
   especially the increase of extravagance, and luxury with its attending
   vices, had begun in Catholic times in consequence of discoveries and
   inventions, the enlargement of commerce and wealth. [14] Nor was it
   near as bad as the state of things which Luther had witnessed at Rome
   in 1510, under Pope Julius II., not to speak of the more wicked reign
   of Pope Alexander VI. Secondly, the degeneracy was not due so much to a
   particular doctrine, as to the confusion which necessarily followed the
   overthrow of the ecclesiastical order and discipline, and to the fact
   that the Lutheran Reformers allowed the government of the church too
   easily to pass from the bishops into the hands of secular rulers.
   Thirdly, the degeneracy was only temporary during the transition from
   the abolition of the old to the establishment of the new order of
   things. Fourthly, the disorder was confined to Germany. The Swiss
   Reformers from the start laid greater stress on discipline than the
   Lutheran Reformers, and organized the new church on a more solid basis.
   Calvin introduced a state of moral purity and rigorism in Geneva such
   as had never been known before in the Christian church. The Huguenots
   of France, the Calvinists of Holland, the Puritans of England and New
   England, and the Presbyterians of Scotland are distinguished for their
   strict principles and habits. An impartial comparison of Protestant
   countries and nations with Roman Catholic, in regard to the present
   state of public and private morals and general culture, is eminently
   favorable to the Reformation.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [11] Only in this sense can it be called Augustinian; for otherwise
   Augustin's conception of justificatio is catholic, and he identifies it
   with sanctificatio. Moreover he widely differs from the Protestant
   conception of the church and its authority. Luther felt the difference
   in his later years.

   [12] Articuli Smalcaldici, p. 305 (ed. Rechenb., or 310 ed. Mueller):
   "De hoc articulo [solam fidem nos justificare] cedere or aliquid contra
   illum largiri aut permittere nemo piorum potest etiamsi coelum et terra
   et omnia corruant. (Acts 4:12; Isa. 53:3). Et in hoc articulo sita sunt
   et consistunt omnia, quae contra papam, diabolum et universum mundum in
   vita nostra docemus, testamur et agimus. Quare opportet nos de hac
   doctrina esse certos, et minime dubitare, alioquin actum est prorsus,
   et papa et diabolus et omnia adversa jus et victoriam contra nos
   obtinent." Luther inserted in his translation of Rom. 3:28, the word
   allein (sola fide, hence the term solifidianism), and the revised
   Probebibel of 1883 retained it. On the exegetical questions involved,
   see my annotations to Lange on Romans 3:28.

   [13] The weight of Doellinger's three volumes on the Reformation (1848)
   consists in the collection of such unfavorable testimonies from the
   writings of Erasmus, Wizel, Haner, Wildenauer, Crotus Rubeanus,
   Biblicanus, Staupitz, Amerpach, Pirkheimer, Zasius, Frank, Denk,
   Hetzer, Schwenkfeld, Luther, Melanchthon, Spalatin, Bugenhagen, and
   others. They give, indeed, a very gloomy, but a very one-sided picture
   of the times. Janssen makes good use of these testimonies. But both
   these Catholic historians whose eminent learning is undeniable, wrote
   with a polemic aim, and make the very truth lie by omitting the bright
   side of the Reformation. Comp. on this subject the controversial
   writings of Koestlin and Ebrard against Janssen, and Janssen's replies,
   An meine Kritiker, Freiburg i. B. 1883 (Zehntes Tausend, 227 pages),
   and Ein zweites Wort an meine Kritiker, Freib. 1883 (Zwoelftes Tausend,
   144 pages).

   [14] Even Janssen admits this, but is silent about the greater
   corruption in Rome. See his Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes I. 375 sqq.
   Comp. his Ein zweites Wort an meine Kritiker, p. 82.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 8. The Priesthood of the Laity.

   The social or ecclesiastical principle of Protestantism is the general
   priesthood of believers, in distinction from the special priesthood
   which stands mediating between Christ and the laity.

   The Roman church is an exclusive hierarchy, and assigns to the laity
   the position of passive obedience. The bishops are the teaching and
   ruling church; they alone constitute a council or synod, and have the
   exclusive power of legislation and administration. Laymen have no voice
   in spiritual matters, they can not even read the Bible without the
   permission of the priest, who holds the keys of heaven and hell.

   In the New Testament every believer is called a saint, a priest, and a
   king. "All Christians," says Luther, "are truly of the spiritual
   estate, and there is no difference among them, save of office alone. As
   St. Paul says, we are all one body, though each member does its own
   work, to serve the others. This is because we have one baptism, alike;
   one gospel, one faith, and are all Christians for baptism, gospel and
   faith, these alone make spiritual and Christian people." And again: "It
   is faith that makes men priests, faith that unites them to Christ, and
   gives them the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, whereby they become
   filled with all holy grace and heavenly power. The inward
   anointing--this oil, better than any that ever came from the horn of
   bishop or pope--gives them not the name only, but the nature, the
   purity, the power of priests; and this anointing have all they received
   who are believers in Christ."

   This principle, consistently carried out, raises the laity to active
   co-operation in the government and administration of the church; it
   gives them a voice and vote in the election of the pastor; it makes
   every member of the congregation useful, according to his peculiar
   gift, for the general good. This principle is the source of religious
   and civil liberty which flourishes most in Protestant countries.
   Religious liberty is the mother of civil liberty. The universal
   priesthood of Christians leads legitimately to the universal kingship
   of free, self-governing citizens, whether under a monarchy or under a
   republic.

   The good effect of this principle showed itself in the spread of Bible
   knowledge among the laity, in popular hymnody and congregational
   singing, in the institution of lay-eldership, and in the pious zeal of
   the magistrates for moral reform and general education.

   But it was also shamefully perverted and abused by the secular rulers
   who seized the control of religion, made themselves bishops and popes
   in their dominion, robbed the churches and convents, and often defied
   all discipline by their own immoral conduct. . Philip of Hesse, and
   Henry VIII. of England, are conspicuous examples of Protestant popes
   who disgraced the cause of the Reformation. Erastianism and
   Territorialism whose motto is: cujus regio, ejus religio, are
   perversions rather than legitimate developments of lay-priesthood. The
   true development lies in the direction of general education, in
   congregational self-support and self-government, and in the intelligent
   co-operation of the laity with the ministry in all good works, at home
   and abroad. In this respect the Protestants of England, Scotland, and
   North America, are ahead of the Protestants on the Continent of Europe.
   The Roman church is a church of priests and has the grandest temples of
   worship; the Lutheran church is a church of theologians and has most
   learning and the finest hymns; the Reformed church is a church of the
   Christian people and has the best preachers and congregations.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 9. The Reformation and Rationalism.

   G. Frank: De Luthero rationalismi praecursore. Lips., 1857.

   S. Berger: La Bible an seizieme siecle; etude sur les origines de la
   critique. Paris, 1879.

   Charles Beard: The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in relation, to
   Modem Thought and Knowledge (Hibbert Lectures). London, 1883. Lect. V.

   Comp. also Lecky: History of Rationalism in Europe. London, 4th ed.
   1870, 2 vols. George P. Fisher: Faith and Rationalism. New York, 1879,
   revised 1885 (191 pages).

   The Roman Catholic Church makes Scripture and tradition the supreme
   rule of faith, laying the chief stress on tradition, that is, the
   teaching of an infallible church headed by an infallible Pope, as the
   judge of the meaning of both. [15]

   Evangelical, Protestantism makes the Scripture alone the supreme rule,
   but uses tradition and reason as means in ascertaining its true sense.

   Rationalism raises human reason above Scripture and tradition, and
   accepts them only as far as they come within the limits of its
   comprehension. It makes rationality or intelligibility the measure of
   credibility. We take the word Rationalism here in the technical sense
   of a theological system and tendency in distinction from rational
   theology. The legitimate use of reason in religion is allowed by the
   Catholic and still more by the Protestant church, and both have
   produced scholastic systems in full harmony with orthodoxy.
   Christianity is above reason, but not against reason.

   The Reformation is represented as the mother of Rationalism both by
   Rationalistic and by Roman Catholic historians and controversialists,
   but from an opposite point of view, by the former to the credit, by the
   latter to the disparagement of both.

   The Reformation, it is said, took the first step in the emancipation of
   reason: it freed us from the tyranny of the church. Rationalism took
   the second step: it freed us from the tyranny of the Bible. "Luther,"
   says Lessing, the champion of criticism against Lutheran orthodoxy,
   "thou great, misjudged man! Thou hast redeemed us from the yoke of
   tradition: who will redeem us from the unbearable yoke of the letter!
   Who will at last bring us a Christianity such as thou would teach us
   now, such as Christ himself would teach!"

   Roman Catholics go still further and hold Protestantism responsible for
   all modern revolutions and for infidelity itself, and predict its
   ultimate dismemberment and dissolution. [16] But this charge is
   sufficiently set aside by the undeniable fact that modern infidelity
   and revolution in their worst forms have appeared chiefly in Roman
   Catholic countries, as desperate reactions against hierarchical and
   political despotism. The violent suppression of the Reformation in
   France ended at last in a radical overthrow of the social order of the
   church. In Roman Catholic countries, like Spain and Mexico, revolution
   has become a chronic disease. Romanism provokes infidelity among
   cultivated minds by its excessive supernaturalism.

   The Reformation checked the skepticism of the renaissance, and the
   anarchical tendencies of the Peasants' War in Germany and of the
   Libertines in Geneva. An intelligent faith is the best protection
   against infidelity; and a liberal government is a safeguard against
   revolution.

   The connection of the Reformation with Rationalism is a historical
   fact, but they are related to each other as the rightful use of
   intellectual freedom to the excess and abuse of it. Rationalism asserts
   reason against revelation, and freedom against divine as well as human
   authority. It is a one-sided development of the negative, protesting,
   antipapal and antitraditional factor of the Reformation to the
   exclusion of its positive, evangelical faith in the revealed will and
   word of God. It denies the supernatural and miraculous. It has a
   superficial sense of sin and guilt, and is essentially Pelagian; while
   the Reformation took the opposite Augustinian ground and proceeded from
   the deepest conviction of sin and the necessity of redeeming grace. The
   two systems are thus theoretically and practically opposed to each
   other. And yet there is an intellectual and critical affinity between
   them, and Rationalism is inseparable from the history of Protestantism.
   It is in the modern era of Christianity what Gnosticism was in the
   ancient church--a revolt of private judgment against the popular faith
   and church orthodoxy, an overestimate of theoretic knowledge, but also
   a wholesome stimulus to inquiry and progress. It is not a church or
   sect (unless we choose to include Socinianism and Unitarianism), but a
   school in the church, or rather a number of schools which differ very
   considerably from each other.

   Rationalism appeared first in the seventeenth century in the Church of
   England, though without much effect upon the people, as Deism, which
   asserted natural religion versus revealed religion; it was matured in
   its various phases after the middle of the eighteenth century on the
   Continent, especially in Protestant Germany since Lessing (d. 1781) and
   Semler (d. 1791), and gradually obtained the mastery of the chairs and
   pulpits of Lutheran and Reformed churches, till about 1817, when a
   revival of the positive faith of the Reformation spread over Germany
   and a serious conflict began between positive and negative
   Protestantism, which continues to this day.

   1. Let us first consider the relation of the Reformation to the use of
   reason as a general principle.

   The Reformation was a protest against human authority, asserted the
   right of private conscience and judgment, and roused a spirit of
   criticism and free inquiry in all departments of knowledge. It allows,
   therefore, a much wider scope for the exercise of reason in religion
   than the Roman church, which requires an unconditional submission to
   her infallible authority. It marks real progress, but this progress is
   perfectly consistent with a belief in revelation on subjects which lie
   beyond the boundary of time and sense. What do we know of the creation,
   and the world of the future, except what God has chosen to reveal to
   us? Human reason can prove the possibility and probability of the
   existence of God and the immortality of the soul, but not the certainty
   and necessity. It is reasonable, therefore, to believe in the
   supernatural on divine testimony, and it is unreasonable to reject it.

   The Reformers used their reason and judgment very freely in their
   contest with church authority. Luther refused to recant in the crisis
   at Worms, unless convinced by testimonies of the Scriptures and "cogent
   arguments." [17] For a while he was disposed to avail himself of the
   humanistic movement which was skeptical and rationalistic in its
   tendency, but his strong religious nature always retained the mastery.
   He felt as keenly as any modern Rationalist, the conflict between
   natural reason and the transcending mysteries of revelation. He was
   often tormented by doubts and even temptations to blasphemy, especially
   when suffering from physical infirmity. A comforter of others, he
   needed comfort himself and asked the prayers of friends to fortify him
   against the assaults of the evil spirit, with whom he had, as he
   thought, many a personal encounter. He confessed, in 1524, how glad he
   would have been five years before in his war with papal superstition,
   if Carlstadt could have convinced him that the Eucharist was nothing
   but bread and wine, and how strongly he was then inclined to that
   rationalistic view which would have given a death blow to
   transubstantiation and the mass. He felt that every article of his
   creed--the trinity, in unity, the incarnation, the transmission of
   Adam's sin, the atonement by the blood of Christ, baptismal
   regeneration, the real presence, the renewal of the Holy Spirit, the
   resurrection of the body--transcended human comprehension. In Aug. 2,
   1527, during the raging of the pestilence at Wittenberg, he wrote to
   Melanchthon, who was absent at Jena: "For more than a week I have been
   tossed about in death and hell; so that, hurt in all my body, I still
   tremble in every limb. For having almost wholly lost Christ, I was
   driven about by storms and tempests of despair and blasphemy against
   God. But God, moved by the prayers of the saints, begins to have pity
   upon me, and has drawn my soul out of the lowest hell. Do not cease to
   pray for me, as I do for you. I believe that this agony of mine
   pertains to others also." [18]

   In such trials and temptations he clung all the more mightily to the
   Scriptures and to faith which believes against reason and hopes against
   hope. "It is a quality of faith," he says in the explanation of his
   favorite Epistle to the Galatians, "that it wrings the neck of reason
   and strangles the beast, which else the whole world, with all
   creatures, could not strangle. But how? It holds to God's Word, and
   lets it be right and true, no matter how foolish and impossible it
   sounds. So did Abraham take his reason captive and slay it, inasmuch as
   he believed God's Word, wherein was promised him that from his
   unfruitful and as it were dead wife, Sarah, God would give him seed."

   This and many similar passages clearly show the bent of Luther's mind.
   He knew the enemy, but overcame it; his faith triumphed over doubt. In
   his later years he became more and more a conservative churchman. He
   repudiated the mystic doctrine of the inner word and spirit, insisted
   on submission to the written letter of the Scriptures, even when it
   flatly contradicted reason. He traced the errors of the Zwickau
   prophets, the rebellious peasants, the Anabaptists, and the radical
   views of Carlstadt and Zwingli, without proper discrimination, to
   presumptuous inroads of the human reason into the domain of faith, and
   feared from them the overthrow of religion. He so far forgot his
   obligations to Erasmus as to call him an Epicurus, a Lucian, a doubter,
   and an atheist. Much as he valued reason as a precious gift of God in
   matters of this world, he abused it with unreasonable violence, when it
   dared to sit in judgment over matters of faith. [19]

   Certainly, Luther must first be utterly divested of his faith, and the
   authorship of his sermons, catechisms and hymns must be called in
   question, before he can be appealed to as the father of Rationalism. He
   would have sacrificed his reason ten times rather than his faith.

   Zwingli was the most clear-headed and rationalizing among the
   Reformers. [20] He did not pass through the discipline of monasticism
   and mysticism, like Luther, but through the liberal culture of Erasmus.
   He had no mystic vein, but sound, sober, practical common sense. He
   always preferred the plainest sense of the Bible. He rejected the
   Catholic views on original sin, infant damnation and the corporeal
   presence in the eucharist, and held advanced opinions which shocked
   Luther and even Calvin. But he nevertheless reverently bowed before the
   divine authority of the inspired Word of God, and had no idea of
   setting reason over it. His dispute with Luther was simply a question
   of interpretation, and he had strong arguments for his exegesis, as
   even the best Lutheran commentators must confess.

   Calvin was the best theologian and exegete among the Reformers. He
   never abused reason, like Luther, but assigned it the office of an
   indispensable handmaid of revelation. He constructed with his logical
   genius the severest system of Protestant orthodoxy which shaped French,
   Dutch, English and American theology, and fortified it against
   Rationalism as well as against Romanism. His orthodoxy and discipline
   could not keep his own church in Geneva from becoming Socinian in the
   eighteenth century, but he is no more responsible for that than Luther
   for the Rationalism of Germany, or Rome for the infidelity of Voltaire.
   Upon the whole, the Reformed churches in England, Scotland and North
   America, have been far less invaded by Rationalism than Germany.

   2. Let us now consider the application of the principle of free inquiry
   to the Bible. [21]

   The Bible, its origin, genuineness, integrity, aim, and all its
   circumstances and surroundings are proper subjects of investigation;
   for it is a human as well as a divine book, and has a history, like
   other literary productions. The extent of the Bible, moreover, or the
   Canon, is not determined by the Bible itself or by inspiration, but by
   church authority or tradition, and was not fully agreed upon till the
   close of the fourth century, and even then only by provincial synods,
   not by any of the seven oecumenical Councils. It was therefore justly
   open to reinvestigation.

   The Church of Rome, at the Council of Trent, settled the Canon,
   including the Apocrypha, but without any critical inquiry or definite
   theological principle; it simply confirmed the traditional usage, and
   pronounced an anathema on every one who does not receive all the books
   contained in the Latin Vulgate. [22] She also checked the freedom of
   investigation by requiring conformity to a defective version and a
   unanimous consensus of the fathers, although such an exegetical
   consensus does not exist except in certain fundamental doctrines.

   The Reformers re-opened the question of the extent of the Canon, as
   they had a right to do, but without any idea of sweeping away the
   traditional belief or undermining the authority of the Word of God. On
   the contrary, from the fulness of their faith in the inspired Word, as
   contained in the Scriptures, they questioned the canonicity of a few
   books which seem to be lacking in sufficient evidence to entitle them
   to a place in the Bible. They simply revived, in a new shape and on
   doctrinal rather than historical grounds, the distinction made by the
   Hebrews and the ancient fathers between the canonical and apocryphal
   books of the Old Testament, and the Eusebian distinction between the
   Homologumena and Antilegomena of the New Testament, and claimed in both
   respects the freedom of the ante-Nicene church.

   They added, moreover, to the external evidence, the more important
   internal evidence on the intrinsic excellency of the Scripture, as the
   true ground on which its authority and claim to obedience rests; and
   they established a firm criterion of canonicity, namely, the purity and
   force of teaching Christ and his gospel of salvation. They did not
   reject the testimonies of the fathers, but they placed over them what
   Paul calls the "demonstration of the Spirit and of power" (1 Cor. 2:4).

   Luther was the bold pioneer of a higher criticism, which was indeed
   subjective and arbitrary, but, after all, a criticism of faith. He made
   his central doctrine of justification by faith the criterion of
   canonicity. [23] He thus placed the material or subjective principle of
   Protestantism above the formal or objective principle, the truth above
   the witness of the truth, the doctrine of the gospel above the written
   Gospel, Christ above the Bible. Romanism, on the contrary, places the
   church above the Bible. But we must remember that Luther first learnt
   Christ from the Bible, and especially, from the Epistles of Paul, which
   furnished him the key for the understanding of the scheme of salvation.

   He made a distinction, moreover, between the more important and the
   less important books of the New Testament, according to the extent of
   their evangelic purity and force, and put Hebrews, James, Jude, and
   Revelation at the end of the German Bible. [24]

   He states his reason in the Preface to the Hebrews as follows:
   "Hitherto we have had the right and genuine books of the New Testament.
   The four that follow have been differently esteemed in olden times." He
   therefore appeals to the ante-Nicene tradition, but his chief objection
   was to the contents.

   He disliked, most of all, the Epistle of James because he could not
   harmonize it with Paul's teaching on justification by faith without
   works, [25] and he called it an epistle of straw as compared with the
   genuine apostolic writings. [26]

   He objected to the Epistle to the Hebrews because it seems to deny (in
   Heb. 6, 10 and 12) the possibility of repentance after baptism,
   contrary to the Gospels and to Paul, and betrays in 2:3, a
   post-apostolic origin. He ascribed the authorship to Apollos by an
   ingenious guess, which, though not supported by ancient tradition, has
   found great favor with modern commentators and critics, [27] chiefly
   because the authorship of any other possible writer (Paul, Barnabas,
   Luke, Clement) seems to offer insuperable difficulties, while the
   description of Apollos in Acts 18:24-28, compared with the allusions in
   1 Cor. 1:12; 3:6; 4:6; 16:12, seems to fit exactly the author of this
   anonymous Epistle.

   He called the Epistle of Jude an "unnecessary epistle," a mere extract
   from Second Peter and post-apostolic, filled with apocryphal matter,
   and hence rejected by the ancient fathers.

   He could at first find no sense in the mysteries of the Apocalypse and
   declared it to be "neither apostolic nor prophetic," because it deals
   only with images and visions, and yet, notwithstanding its obscurity,
   it adds threats and promises, "though nobody knows what it means"; but
   afterwards he modified his judgment when the Lutheran divines found in
   it welcome weapons against the church of Rome.

   The clearest utterance on this subject is found at the close of his
   preface to the first edition of his German version of the New Testament
   (1522), but it was suppressed in later editions. [28]

   Luther's view of inspiration was both strong and free. With the
   profoundest conviction of the divine contents of the Bible, he
   distinguished between the revealed truth itself and the human wording
   and reasoning of the writers. He says of one of the rabbinical
   arguments of his favorite apostle: "My dear brother Paul, this argument
   won't stick." [29]

   Luther was, however, fully aware of the subjective and conjectural
   character of these opinions, and had no intention of obtruding them on
   the church: hence he modified his prefaces in later editions. He judged
   the Scriptures from an exclusively dogmatic, and one-sidedly Pauline
   standpoint, and did not consider their gradual historical growth.

   A few Lutheran divines followed him in assigning a subordinate position
   to the seven Antilegomena of the New Testament; [30] but the Lutheran
   church, with a sound instinct, accepted for popular use the traditional
   catholic Canon (not even expressly excluding the Jewish Apocrypha), yet
   retained his arrangement of the books of the New Testament. [31] The
   Rationalists, of course, revived, intensified, and carried to excess
   the bold opinions of Luther, but in a spirit against which he would
   himself raise the strongest protest.

   The Reformed divines were more conservative than Luther in accepting
   the canonical books, but more decided in rejecting the Apocrypha of the
   Old Testament. The Reformed Confessions usually enumerate the canonical
   books.

   Zwingli objected only to the Apocalypse and made no doctrinal use of
   it, because he did not deem it an inspired book, written by the same
   John who wrote the fourth Gospel. [32] In this view he has many
   followers, but the severest critical school of our days (that of
   Tuebingen) assigns it to the Apostle John. Wolfgang Musculus mentions
   the seven Antilegomena, but includes them in the general catalogue of
   the New Testament; and Oecolampadius speaks of six Antilegomena
   (omitting the Hebrews), as holding an inferior rank, but nevertheless
   appeals to their testimony. [33]

   Calvin had no fault to find with James and Jude, and often quotes
   Hebrews and Revelation as canonical books, though he wrote no
   commentary on Revelation, probably because he felt himself incompetent
   for the task. He is silent about Second and Third John. He denies,
   decidedly, the Pauline authorship, but not the canonicity, of Hebrews.
   [34] He is disposed to assign Second Peter to a pupil of Peter, who
   wrote under the auspices and by direction of the Apostle; but he guards
   in this case, also, against unfavorable inferences from the uncertainty
   of origin. [35]

   Calvin clearly saw the inconsistency of giving the Church the right of
   determining the canon after denying her right of making an article of
   faith. He therefore placed the Canon on the authority of God who bears
   testimony to it through the voice of the Spirit in the hearts of the
   believer. The eternal and inviolable truth of God, he says, is not
   founded on the pleasure and judgment of men, and can be as easily
   distinguished as light from darkness, and white from black. In the same
   line, Peter Vermilius denies that "the Scriptures take their authority
   from the Church. Their certitude is derived from God. The Word is older
   than the Church. The Spirit of God wrought in the hearts of the bearers
   and readers of the Word so that they recognized it to be truly divine."
   This view is clearly set forth in several Calvinistic Confessions. [36]
   In its exclusive form it is diametrically opposed to the maxim of
   Augustin, otherwise so highly esteemed by the Reformers: "I should not
   believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Church."
   [37] But the two kinds of evidence supplement each other. The human
   authority of tradition though not the final ground of belief, is
   indispensable as an historical witness of the genuineness and
   canonicity, and is of great weight in conflict with Rationalism. There
   is no essential antagonism between the Bible and the Church in the
   proper sense of the term. They are inseparable. The Church was founded
   by Christ and the apostles through the preaching of the living Word of
   God, and the founders of the Church are also the authors of the written
   Word, which continues to be the shining and guiding light of the
   Church; while the Church in turn is the guardian, preserver,
   translator, propagator, and expounder of the Bible.

   3. The liberal views of the Reformers on inspiration and the canon were
   abandoned after the middle of the sixteenth century, and were succeeded
   by compact and consolidated systems of theology. The evangelical
   scholasticism of the seventeenth century strongly resembles, both in
   its virtues and defects, the catholic scholasticism of the Middle Ages
   which systematized and contracted the patristic theology, except that
   the former was based on the Bible, the latter on church tradition. In
   the conflict with Romanism the Lutheran and Calvinistic scholastics
   elaborated a stiff, mechanical theory of inspiration in order to set an
   infallible book against an infallible pope. The Bible was identified
   with the Word of God, dictated to the sacred writers as the penmen of
   the Holy Ghost. Even the classical purity of style and the integrity of
   the traditional text, including the Massoretic punctuation, were
   asserted in the face of stubborn facts, which came to light as the
   study of the origin and history of the text advanced. The divine side
   of the Scriptures was exclusively dwelled upon, and the human and
   literary side was ignored or virtually denied. Hence the exegetical
   poverty of the period of Protestant scholasticism. The Bible was used
   as a repository of proof texts for previously conceived dogmas, without
   regard to the context, the difference between the Old and New
   Testaments, and the gradual development of the divine revelation in
   accordance with the needs and capacities of men.

   4. It was against this Protestant bibliolatry and symbololatry that
   Rationalism arose as a legitimate protest. It pulled down one dogma
   after another, and subjected the Bible and the canon to a searching
   criticism. It denies the divine inspiration of the Scriptures, except
   in a wider sense which applies to all works of genius, and treats them
   simply as a gradual evolution of the religious spirit of Israel and the
   primitive Christian Church. It charges them with errors of fact and
   errors of doctrine, and resolves the miracles into legends and myths.
   It questions the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch, the genuineness of
   the Davidic Psalms, the Solomonic writings, the prophecies of
   Deutero-Isaiah and Daniel, and other books of the Old Testament. It
   assigns not only the Eusebian Antilegomena, but even the Gospels, Acts,
   the Catholic Epistles, and several Pauline Epistles to the
   post-apostolic age, from a.d. 70 to 150.

   In its later developments, however, Rationalism has been obliged to
   retreat and make several concessions to orthodoxy. The canonical
   Gospels and Acts have gained by further investigation and discovery;
   [38] and the apostolic authorship of the four great Epistles of Paul to
   the Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians and the Apocalypse of John is
   fully admitted by the severest school of criticism (that of Tuebingen).
   A most important admission: for these five books teach or imply all the
   leading facts and truths of the gospel, and overthrow the very
   foundations of Rationalism. With the Christ of the Gospels, and the
   Apostle Paul of his acknowledged Epistles, Christianity is safe.

   Rationalism was a radical revolution which swept like a flood over the
   Continent of Europe. But it is not negative and destructive only. It
   has made and is still making valuable contributions to biblical
   philology, textual criticism, and grammatico-historical exegesis. It
   enlarges the knowledge of the conditions and environments of the Bible,
   and of all that belongs to the human and temporal side of Christ and
   Christianity. It cultivates with special zeal and learning the sciences
   of Critical Introduction, Biblical Theology, the Life of Christ, the
   Apostolic and post-Apostolic Ages.

   5. These acquisitions to exegetical and historical theology are a
   permanent gain, and are incorporated in the new evangelical theology,
   which arose in conflict with Rationalism and in defense of the positive
   Christian faith in the divine facts of revelation and the doctrines of
   salvation. The conflict is still going on with increasing strength, but
   with the sure prospect of the triumph of truth. Christianity is
   independent of all critical questions on the Canon, and of human
   theories of inspiration; else Christ would himself have written the
   Gospels, or commanded the Apostles to do so, and provided for the
   miraculous preservation and inspired translation of the text, . His
   "words are spirit, and are life." "The flesh profiteth nothing."
   Criticism and speculation may for a while wander away from Christ, but
   will ultimately return to Him who furnishes the only key for the
   solution of the problems of history and human life. "No matter," says
   the world-poet Goethe in one of his last utterances, "how much the
   human mind may progress in intellectual culture, in the science of
   nature, in ever-expanding breadth and depth: it will never be able to
   rise above the elevation and moral culture which shines in the
   Gospels."

   Notes.

   The famous close of the Preface of Luther's edition of the German New
   Testament was omitted in later editions, but is reprinted in Walch's
   ed. XIV. 104 sqq., and in the Erlangen Frankf. ed. LXIII. (or eleventh
   vol. of the Vermischte Deutsche Schriften), p. 114 sq. It is verbatim
   as follows:

   "Aus diesem allen kannst du nu recht urtheilen unter allen Buechern,
   und Unterschied nehmen, welchs die besten sind. Denn, naemlich, ist
   Johannis Evangelion, und St. Pauli Episteln, sonderlich die zu den
   Roemern, und Sanct Peters erste Epistel der rechte Kern und Mark unter
   allen Buechern; welche auch billig die, ersten sein sollten, und einem
   jeglichen Christen zu rathen waere, das er dieselben am ersten und
   allermeisten laese, und ihm durch taeglich Lesen so gemein maechte, als
   das taeglich Brod.

   "Denn in diesen findist [findest] du nicht viel Werk und Wunderthaten
   Christi beschrieben; du findist aber gar meisterlich ausgestrichen, wie
   der Glaube an Christum Suend, Tod und Hoelle ueberwindet, und das
   Leben, Gerechtigkeit und Seligkeit gibt. Welchs die rechte Art ist des
   Evangelii, wie du gehoeret hast.

   "Denn wo ich je der eins mangeln sollt, der Werke oder der Predigt
   Christi, so wollt ich lieber der Werke denn seiner Predigt mangeln.
   Denn die Werke helfen mir nichts; aber seine Worte, die geben das
   Leben, wie er selbst sagt (Joh 5.V.51). Weil nu Johannes gar wenig
   Werke von Christo, aber gar viel seiner Predigt schreibt; wiederumb die
   andern drei Evangelisten viel seiner Werke, wenig seiner Worte
   beschreiben: ist Johannis Evangelion das einige zarte, recht(e)
   Hauptevangelion, und den andren dreien weit fuerzuzichen und hoeher zu
   heben. Also auch Sanct Paulus und Petrus Episteln weit ueber die drei
   Evangelia Matthai, Marci und Lucae vorgehen.

   "Summa, Sanct Johannis Evangel. und seine erste Epistel, Sanct Paulus
   Epistel(n), sonderlich die zu den Roemern, Galatern, Ephesern, und
   Sanct Peters erste Epistel. das sind die Buecher, die dir Christum
   zeigen, und alles lehren, das dir zu wissen noth und selig ist ob du
   sohon kein ander Buch noch Lehre nummer [nimmermehr] sehest and horist
   [hoerest]. Darumb ist Sanct Jakobs Epistel ein recht strohern(e)
   Epistel, gegen sie, denn sie doch kein(e) evangelisch(e) Art an ihr
   hat. Doch davon weiter in andern Vorreden."
     __________________________________________________________________

   [15] "I am the tradition" (la tradizione son io), said Pope Pius IX.,
   during the Vatican Council which substituted an infallible papacy for
   an infallible council, in conflict both with oecumenical councils and
   popes who officially denounced Pope Honorius III. as a Monotheletic
   heretic. See vol. IV. 500 sqq.

   [16] This charge is sanctioned by several papal Encyclicals; it is
   implied, negatively, in the Syllabus of Pius IX. (1864), and,
   positively, though cautiously, in the Encyclical of Leo XIII Immortale
   Dei (Nov. 1, 1885), which characterizes the Reformation movements
   (without naming them) as "those pernicious and deplorable revolutionary
   tendencies which were aroused in the sixteenth century, and which,
   after introducing confusion into Christendom, soon, by a natural
   course, entered the domain of philosophy, and from philosophy into all
   the lines of civil society. Hasak, in his book--Dr. M. Luther
   (Regensburg, 1881), takes as his motto: " Be reconciled to the Church
   of God, the old mother church, which, for these eighteen hundred years,
   has been the preserver of the eternal truth, before the bloody flood of
   atheism and the socialistic republic breaks upon us as a true judgment
   of the world."

   [17] "Scripturae sacrae testimoniis vel evidenti ratione," or
   "evidentissimis rationibus; in the German form, as repeated by him on
   the occasion, "durch Zeugnisse der heil. Schrift und durch helle
   Gruende."See Koestlin II. 452 sq. and 800. The words seem to assign to
   reason an independent position by, the side of the Scriptures, but in
   case of conflict Luther always allowed the decision to the Scriptures.

   [18] Briefe, ed. de Wette, III. 189: "Ego sane ... plus tota hebdomada
   in morte et inferno jactatus, ita ut toto corpore laesus adhuc tremam
   membris," etc. Comp. Luther's letters to Spalatin, July 10th and Aug.
   19th, 1527, l.c. III. 187, 191.

   [19] He called reason "the mistress of the devil,"" the ugly devil's
   bride,"" a poisonous beast with many dragons' heads," "God's bitterest
   enemy." The coarsest invective against this gift of God is found in the
   last sermon he preached at Wittenberg, in the year of his death (1546),
   on Rom. 12:3. He here represents reason as the fountain of gross and
   subtle idolatry, and says: Wucherei, Saeuferei, Ehebruch, Mord,
   Todtschlag, etc., die kann man merken, und verstehet auch die Welt,
   dass sie Suende sein; aber des Tuefels Braut, Ratio, die shoene Metze,
   faehret herein, und will klug sein, und was sie saget, meinet sie, es
   sei der heilige Geist; wer will da helfen? Weder Jurist, Medicus, noch
   Koenig oder Kaiser. Denn es ist die hoechste Hure die der Teufel hat!'
   And again:" Derohalben wie ein junger Gesell muss der boesen Lust
   wehren, ein Alter dem Geiz: also ist die Vernunft von Art und Natur
   eine, schaedliche Hure."... " Die Vernunft ist und soll in der Taufe
   ersaeuft sein."" Hoere auf, du verfluchte Hure; willst du Meisterin
   sein ueber den Glauben, welcher sagt, dass im Abendmahl des Herrn sei
   der wahre Leib und das wahre Blut; item dass die Taufe nicht schlecht
   Wasser ist ... Diesem Glauben muss die Vernunft unterthan und gehorsam
   sein."And much of the same sort, with vehement denunciations of the
   Schwaermergeister and Sacramentirer (the sectaries and Zwinglians). See
   Werke, ed. Walch XII. col. 1530 sqq. It is noteworthy that Luther first
   abused reason in his book on the Slavery of the Human Will against the
   semi-Pelagianism of Erasmus. But his assaults on Aristotle and the
   scholastic theology began several years earlier, before 1517.

   [20] Luther felt this when he told him at Marburg: "You have a
   different spirit."

   [21] Comp. here the Critical Introductions to the Bible, and especially
   Reuss, Histoire du Canon des Saintes Ecritures, Strasbourg, 1863. Ch.
   XVI. p. 308 sqq.; Hunter's Engl. transl. (1884) p. 290 sqq.

   [22] Sess. IV. (April 8th, 1546): "Si quis autem libros ipsos integros
   cum omnibus suis partibus, prout in ecclesia catholica legi
   consueverunt, et in veteri Vulgata Latina editione habentur, pro sacris
   et canonicis non susceperit et traditiones praedictas sciens et prudens
   contempserit, anathema sit." Schaff, Creeds II. 82. There were,
   however, protesting voices in the council: some desired to recognize
   the old distinction between Homologumena and Antilegomena; others
   simply an enumeration of the sacred books used in the Catholic church,
   without a dogmatic definition. Sarpi censures the council for its
   decision, and there are Catholic divines (as Sixtus Senensis, Du Pin,
   Jahn), who, in spite of the decision, make a distinction between
   protocanonical and deuterocanonical books.

   [23] "This," he says in the Preface to the Epistle of James, " is the
   true touchstone (der rechte Pruefstein) of all books, whether they make
   Christ their sole topic and aim" [literally " drive Christ,"Christum
   treiben], " or not; since all Scripture shows Christ (Rom. 3), and St.
   Paul wishes to know nothing but Christ (1 Cor. 2). That which does not
   teach Christ is not apostolic, though St. Peter and Paul should teach
   it; again, that which preaches Christ is apostolic, though Judas,
   Annas, Pilate and Herod should say it."The devil himself can quote
   Scripture.

   [24] In this distinction Carlstadt had preceded him in his book, De
   Canon. Scripturis (Wittenb. 1520, reprinted in Credner's Zur Gesch. des
   Kanons, 1847, p. 291-412). Carlstadt divided the books of the canon
   into three ordines: (1) libri summae dignitatis (the Pentateuch, though
   not written by Moses, and the Gospels); (2) secundae dignitatis (the
   Prophets and 15 Epistles); (3) tertiae dignitatis (the Jewish
   Hagiographa and the seven Antilegomena of the New Testament).

   [25] He rejects the epistle first of all, "because it gives
   righteousness to works in flat contradiction to Paul and all other
   Scriptures;" secondly, "because, while undertaking to teach Christian
   people, it does not once mention the passion, the resurrection, the
   Spirit of Christ; it names Christ twice, but teaches nothing about him;
   it calls the law a law of liberty, while Paul calls it a law of
   bondage, of wrath, of death and of sin." He offered his doctor's cap to
   any who could harmonize James and Paul on the subject of justification,
   and jests about the trouble Melanchthon took to do it. He made the
   contradiction unnecessarily stronger by inserting his allein (sola)
   before durch den Glauben in Rom. 3:28. He first attacked the Epistle of
   James in his book De Captivitate Babylonica, in 1520, where he calls it
   an epistle unworthy of the apostolical spirit. Carlstadt seems to have
   fallen out with Luther in the same year on this question; for he
   defended the Epistle against the frivola argumenta of a bonus sacerdos
   amicitiae nostrae (who can be no other than Luther), in his book De
   canonicis Scripturis, Wittenbergae, 1520.

   [26] The comparison must not be overlooked. He says: gegen sie, i.e.,
   as compared with the Epistles of Paul, Peter and John, previously
   mentioned. See the passage in full below. He could not be blind to the
   merits of James as a fresh, vigorous teacher of practical Christianity.

   [27] Bleek, de Wette, Tholuck, Luenemann, Kendrick (in Lange),
   Hilgenfeld, de Pressense, Davidson, Alford, Farrar, and others.

   [28] See note at the end of this section. His Table Talk contains bold
   and original utterances on Esther, Ecclesiastes and other books of the
   Old Testament; see Reuss on the Canon, 330 sqq. While Luther on the one
   hand limited the canon, he seemed disposed on the other hand to extend
   it, when he declared Melanchthon's Loci Theologici to be worthy of a
   place in the canon. But this was merely an extravagant compliment.

   [29] Comp. his comments on the allegory of Sarah and Hagar in his Latin
   Com. on Gal. 3:25 (Erl. ed. II. 252).

   [30] Brentius, Flacius, Urbanus Regius, the authors of the Magdeburg
   Centuries, and Chemnitz.

   [31] None of the symbolical books of the Lutheran church gives a list
   of the canon, but the Formula of Concord (p. 570) declares that the
   "prophetica et apostolica scripta V. et N. T. " are the "unica regula
   et norma secundum quam omnia dogmata omnesque doctores aestimari et
   judicari opporteat."

   [32] "Us Apocalypsi nehmend wir kein Kundschafft an, denn es nit ein
   biblisch Buch ist." Werke, ed. Schuler and Schulthess, II. 1. p. 169.
   In another place he says: "Apocal. liber non sapit os et ingenium
   Joannis." De clar. Verbi Dei, p. 310.

   [33] See Reuss, p. 315 sq. Eng. ed.

   [34] In the introduction to his Com. on Hebrews: "Ego ut Paulum
   auctorem agnoscam adduci nequeo." His reasons are, the difference of
   style and of the docendi ratio, and because the writer counts himself
   with the disciples of the Apostles (Heb. 2:3); but nevertheless he
   accepts the book as inspired and canonical, because it more clearly
   than any other book treats of the priesthood and sacrifice of Christ.

   [35] In Argum. Ep. Sec. Petri, he notes "manifestum discrimen" between
   the first and second Epistle, and adds: "Sunt et aliae probabiles
   conjecturae ex quibus colligere licet alterius esse potius quam Petri,"
   but he sees in it, "nihil Petro indignum"

   [36] The Second Helvetic confession, c. 1 and 2, and the Belgic
   Confession, art. 5, combine the testimony of tradition and that of the
   Holy Spirit, but lay chief stress upon the latter. So the Gallican
   Conf., art. 4: "We know these books to be canonical and the sure rule
   of our faith, not so much by the common accord and consent of the
   church (non tant par le, commun a ord et consentement de l'eglise), as
   by the testimony and inward illumination of the Holy Spirit, which
   enables us to distinguish them from other ecclesiastical books, upon
   which, however useful, we cannot found any articles of faith." The
   Westminster Confession, ch. I. 4, sets aside the testimony of
   tradition, saying: "The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it
   ought to be believed and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of
   any man or church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the
   Author thereof; and therefore it is to be received, because it is the
   Word of God." The Scripture proofs given are, 2 Pet. 1:19, 21; 2 Tim.
   3:16; 1 John 5:9; 1 Thess. 2:13; but they have no bearing upon the
   question of canonicity.

   [37] "Ego evangelio non crederem, nisi me moveret ecclesiae
   auctoritas," Contra Ep. Fundam., c. 5. A thoroughly Roman catholic
   principle in opposition to the Manichaen heresy. But the testimony of
   the church is indispensable only in the history of the origin of the
   several books, and the formation of the canon.

   [38] Thus Mark is regarded by many Rationalists as the primitive Gospel
   based on Peter's sermons. Matthew has received valuable testimonies
   from the discovery of the Greek Barnabas who quotes him twice, and from
   the discovery of the Didache of the Apostles, which contains about
   twenty reminiscences from the first Gospel. On the Johannean question
   the Tuebingen critics have been forced to retreat from 170 to 140, 120,
   110, almost to the life time of John. The Acts have received new
   confirmation of their historical credibility from the excavations in
   Cyprus and Ephesus, and the minute test of the nautical vocabulary of
   chapter 27 by an experienced seaman. On all these points see the
   respective sections in the first volume of this History, ch. XII. p.
   569 sqq.; 715 sqq.; 731 sqq; and 853 sqq.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 10. Protestantism and Denominationalism. [39]

   The Greek Church exists as a patriarchal hierarchy based on the first
   seven oecumenical Councils with four ancient local centres: Jerusalem,
   Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople; to which must be added, since
   1725, St. Petersburg where the Holy Synod of orthodox Russia resides.
   The patriarch of Constantinople claims a primacy of honor, but no
   supremacy of jurisdiction over his fellow-patriarchs.

   The Roman Church is an absolute monarchy, headed by an infallible pope
   who claims to be vicar of Christ over all Christendom and unchurches
   the Greek and the Protestant churches as schismatical and heretical.

   The Reformation came out of the bosom of the Latin Church and broke up
   the visible unity of Western Christendom, but prepared the way for a
   higher spiritual unity on the basis of freedom and the full development
   of every phase of truth.

   Instead of one organization, we have in Protestantism a number of
   distinct national churches and confessions or denominations. Rome, the
   local centre of unity, was replaced by Wittenberg, Zurich, Geneva,
   Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh. The one great pope had to surrender to
   many little popes of smaller pretensions, yet each claiming and
   exercising sovereign power in his domain. The hierarchical rule gave
   way to the caesaropapal or Erastian principle, that the owner of the
   territory is also the owner of its religion (cujus regio, ejus
   religio), a principle first maintained by the Byzantine Emperors, and
   held also by the Czar of Russia, but in subjection to the supreme
   authority of the oecumenical Councils. Every king, prince, and
   magistrate, who adopted the Reformation, assumed the ecclesiastical
   supremacy or summepiscopate, and established a national church to the
   exclusion of Dissenters or Nonconformists who were either expelled, or
   simply tolerated under various restrictions and disabilities.

   Hence there are as many national or state churches as there are
   independent Protestant governments; but all acknowledge the supremacy
   of the Scriptures as a rule of faith and practice, and most of them
   also the evangelical confessions as a correct summary of Scripture
   doctrines. Every little principality in monarchical Germany and every
   canton in republican Switzerland has its own church establishment, and
   claims sovereign power to regulate its creed worship, and discipline.
   And this power culminates not in the clergy, but in the secular ruler
   who appoints the ministers of religion and the professors of theology.
   The property of the church which had accumulated by the pious
   foundations of the Middle Ages, was secularized during the Reformation
   period and placed under the control of the state, which in turn assumed
   the temporal support of the church.

   This is the state of things in Europe to this day, except in the
   independent or free churches of more recent growth, which manage their
   own affairs on the voluntary principle.

   The transfer of the episcopal and papal power to the head of the state
   was not contemplated by the Reformers, but was the inevitable
   consequence of the determined opposition of the whole Roman hierarchy
   to the Reformation. The many and crying abuses which followed this
   change in the hands of selfish and rapacious princes, were deeply
   deplored by Melanchthon, who would have consented to the restoration of
   the episcopal hierarchy on condition of the freedom of gospel preaching
   and gospel teaching.

   The Reformed church in Switzerland secured at first a greater degree of
   independence than the Lutheran; for Zwingli controlled the magistrate
   of Zurich, and Calvin ruled supreme in Geneva under institutions of his
   own founding; but both closely united the civil and ecclesiastical
   power, and the former gradually assumed the supremacy.

   Scandinavia and England adopted, together with the Reformation, a
   Protestant episcopate which divides the ecclesiastical supremacy with
   the head of the state; yet even there the civil ruler is legally the
   supreme governor of the church.

   The greatest Protestant church-establisbments or national churches are
   the Church of England, much weakened by dissent, but still the richest
   and most powerful of all; the United Evangelical Church of Prussia
   which, since 1817, includes the formerly separated Lutheran and
   Reformed confessions; the Lutheran Church of Saxony (with a Roman
   Catholic king); the Lutheran Churches of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway;
   the Reformed Churches of Switzerland, and Holland; and the Reformed or
   Presbyterian Church of Scotland.

   Originally, all evangelical Protestant churches were embraced under two
   confessions or denominations, the Lutheran which prevailed and still
   prevails in Germany and Scandinavia, and the Reformed which took root
   in Switzerland, France, Holland, England and Scotland, and to a limited
   extent also in Germany, Bohemia and Hungary. The Lutheran church
   follows the larger portion of German and Scandinavian emigrants to
   America and other countries, the Reformed church in its various
   branches is found in all the Dutch and British colonies, and in the
   United States.

   From these two confessions should be distinguished the Anglican Church,
   which the continental historians from defective information usually
   count with the Reformed Church, but which stands midway between
   evangelical Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, and may therefore be
   called Anglo-Catholic. She is indeed moderately Reformed in her
   doctrinal articles, [40] but in polity and ritual she is much more
   conservative than the Calvinistic and even the Lutheran confession,
   pays greater deference to the testimony of the ancient fathers, and
   lays stress upon her unbroken episcopal succession.

   The confessional division in the Protestant camp arose very early. It
   was at first confined to a difference of opinion on the eucharistic
   presence, which the Marburg Conference of 1529 could not remove,
   although Luther and Zwingli agreed in fourteen and a half out of
   fifteen articles of faith. Luther refused any compromise. Other
   differences gradually developed themselves, on the ubiquity of Christ's
   body, predestination, and baptismal regeneration, which tended to widen
   and perpetuate the split. The union of the two Confessions in Prussia
   and other German states, since 1817, has not really healed it, but
   added a third Church, the United Evangelical, to the two older
   Confessions which, still continue separate in other countries.

   The controversies among the Protestants in the sixteenth century roused
   all the religious and political passions and cast a gloom over the
   bright picture of the Reformation. Melanchthon declared that with tears
   as abundant as the waters of the river Elbe he could not express his
   grief over the distractions of Christendom and the "fury of
   theologians." Calvin also, when invited, with Melanchthon, Bullinger
   and Buzer, in 1552, by Archbishop Cranmer to Lambeth Palace for the
   purpose of framing a concensus-creed of the Reformed churches, was
   willing to cross ten seas for the cause of Christian union. [41] But
   the noble scheme was frustrated by the stormy times, and still remains
   a pium desiderium.

   Much as we must deplore and condemn sectarian strife and bitterness, it
   would be as unjust to charge them on Protestantism, as to charge upon
   Catholicism the violent passions of the trinitarian, christological and
   other controversies of the Nicene age, or the fierce animosity between
   the Greek and Latin Churches, or the envy and jealousy of the monastic
   orders of the Middle Ages, or the unholy rivalries between Jansenists
   and Jesuits, Gallicans and Ultramontanists in modern Romanism. The
   religious passions grow out of the selfishness of depraved human nature
   in spite of Christianity, whether Greek, Roman, or Protestant., and may
   arise in any denomination or in any congregation. Paul had to rebuke
   the party spirit in the church at Corinth. The rancor of theological
   schools and parties under one and the same government is as great and
   often greater than among separate rival denominations. Providence
   overrules these human weaknesses for the clearer development of
   doctrine and discipline, and thus brings good out of evil.

   The tendency of Protestantism towards individualism did not stop with
   the three Reformation Churches, but produced other divisions wherever
   it was left free to formulate and organize the differences of
   theological parties and schools. This was the case in England, in
   consequence of what may be called a second Reformation, which agitated
   that country during the seventeenth century, while Germany was passing
   through the horrors of the Thirty Years' War.

   The Toleration Act of 1689, after the final overthrow of the
   semi-popish and treacherous dynasty of the Stuarts, gave the Dissenters
   who were formerly included in the Church of England, the liberty to
   organize themselves into independent denominations under the names of
   Presbyterians, Independents or Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers;
   all professing the principles of the Reformation, but differing in
   minor points of doctrine, and especially in discipline, and the mode of
   worship.

   The Methodist revival of religion which shook England and the American
   colonies during the eighteenth century, gave rise to a new denomination
   which spread with the enthusiasm of an army of conquest and grew into
   one of the largest and most influential communions in English-speaking
   Christendom.

   In Scotland, the original unity of the Reformed Kirk was likewise
   broken up, mostly on the question of patronage and the sole headship of
   Christ, so that the Scotch population is now divided chiefly into three
   branches, the Established Church, the United Presbyterian Church, and
   the Free Church of Scotland; all holding, however, to the Westminster
   standards.

   In Germany, the Moravian brotherhood acquired a legal existence, and
   fully earned it by its missionary zeal among the heathen, its
   educational institutions, its pure discipline and stimulating influence
   upon the older churches.

   All these Churches of Great Britain and the Continent were transplanted
   by emigration to the virgin soil of North America, where they mingle on
   a basis of equality before the law and in the enjoyment of perfect
   religious freedom. But few communions are of native growth. In America,
   the distinction between church and sect, churchmen and dissenters, has
   lost its legal meaning. And even in Europe it is weakened in the same
   proportion in which under the influence of modern ideas of toleration
   and freedom the bond of union of church and state is relaxed, and the
   sects or theological parties are allowed to organize themselves into
   distinct communities.

   Thus Protestantism in the nineteenth century is divided into half a
   dozen or more large denominations, without counting the minor divisions
   which are even far more numerous. The Episcopalians, the Lutherans, the
   Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, the Methodists, and the
   Baptists, are distinct and separate families. Nor is the centrifugal
   tendency of Protestantism exhausted, and may produce new denominations,
   especially in America, where no political power can check its progress.

   To an outside spectator, especially to a Romanist and to an infidel,
   Protestantism presents the aspect of a religious chaos or anarchy which
   must end in dissolution.

   But a calm review of the history of the last three centuries and the
   present condition of Christendom leads to a very different conclusion.
   It is an undeniable fact that Christianity has the strongest hold upon
   the people and displays the greatest vitality and energy at home and
   abroad, in English-speaking countries, where it is most divided into
   denominations and sects. A comparison of England with Spain, or
   Scotland with Portugal, or the United States with Mexico and Peru or
   Brazil, proves the advantages of living variety over dead uniformity.
   Division is an element of weakness in attacking a consolidated foe, but
   it also multiplies the missionary, educational, and converting
   agencies. Every Protestant denomination has its own field of
   usefulness, and the cause of Christianity itself would be seriously
   weakened and contracted by the extinction of any one of them.

   Nor should we overlook the important fact, that the differences which
   divide the various Protestant denominations are not fundamental, and
   that the articles of faith in which they agree are more numerous than
   those in which they disagree. All accept the inspired Scriptures as the
   supreme rule of faith and practice, salvation by grace, and we may say
   every article of the Apostles' Creed; while in their views of practical
   Christianity they unanimously teach that our duties are comprehended in
   the royal law of love to God and to our fellow-men, and that true piety
   and virtue consist in the imitation of the example of Christ, the Lord
   and Saviour of all.

   There is then unity in diversity as well as diversity in unity.

   And the tendency to separation and division is counteracted by the
   opposite tendency to Christian union and denominational intercommunion
   which manifests itself in a rising degree and in various forms among
   Protestants of the present day, especially in England and America, and
   on missionary fields, and which is sure to triumph in the end. The
   spirit of narrowness, bigotry and exclusiveness must give way at last
   to a spirit of evangelical catholicity, which leaves each denomination
   free to work out its own mission according to its special charisma, and
   equally free to co-operate in a noble rivalry with all other
   denominations for the glory of the common Master and the building up of
   His Kingdom.

   The great problem of Christian union cannot be solved by returning to a
   uniformity of belief and outward organization. Diversity in unity and
   unity in diversity is the law of God in history as well as in nature.
   Every aspect of truth must be allowed room for free development. Every
   possibility of Christian life must be realized. The past cannot be
   undone; history moves zig-zag, like a sailing vessel, but never
   backwards. The work of church history, whether Greek, Roman, or
   Protestant, cannot be in vain. Every denomination and sect has to
   furnish some stones for the building of the temple of God.

   And out of the greatest human discord God will bring the richest
   concord.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [39] Denominationalism is, I believe, an American term of recent
   origin, but useful and necessary to express the fact, without praise or
   blame, that Protestant Christianity exists in various ecclesiastical
   organizations, some of which are large, others small, some differing in
   doctrine, others only in polity and worship, some liberal and catholic,
   others contracted and exclusive. I use it in this neutral sense, in
   preference to Confessionalism which implies confessional or doctrinal
   difference, and Sectarianism which implies bigotry and is a term of
   reproach.

   [40] The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, as revised under Elizabeth
   (1563 and 1571), are borrowed in part, verbatim, from the Augsburg
   Confession of 1530 and the Wuertemberg Confession of 1552, but are
   moderately Calvinistic in the doctrine of the Lord's Supper, and on
   predestination; the five Lambeth Articles of 1595, and the Irish
   Articles of Archbishop Ussher (1615) are strongly Calvinistic, and the
   latter furnished the basis of the Westminster Confession. But the
   Lambeth Articles and the Irish Articles were gradually forgotten, and
   the Book of Common Prayer which is based on the office of Sarum, has
   practically much greater influence than even the Thirty-nine Articles.
   See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom vol. I. 624 sqq., 630 sqq., 658 sqq.,
   662 sqq.

   [41] See the correspondence in Cranmer's Works publ. by the Parker
   Society, Vol.II. 430-433.
     __________________________________________________________________

   S: 11. Protestantism and Religious Liberty.

   Comp. Ph. Schaff: The Progress of Religious Freedom as shown in the
   History of Toleration Acts, N. York, 1889. (126 pages.)

   The Reformation was a grand act of emancipation from spiritual tyranny,
   and a vindication of the sacred rights of conscience in matters of
   religious belief. Luther's bold stand at the Diet of Worms, in the face
   of the pope and the emperor, is one of the sublimest events in the
   history of liberty, and the eloquence of his testimony rings through
   the centuries. [42] To break the force of the pope, who called himself
   and was believed to be, the visible vicar of God on earth, and who held
   in his hands the keys of the kingdom of heaven, required more moral
   courage than to fight a hundred battles, and it was done by an humble
   monk in the might of faith.

   If liberty, both civil and religious, has since made progress, it is
   due in large measure to the inspiration of that heroic act. But the
   progress was slow and passed through many obstructions and reactions.
   "The mills of God grind slowly, but wonderfully fine."

   It seems one of the strangest inconsistencies that the very men who
   claimed and exercised the right of protest in essentials, should have
   denied the same right to others, who differed from them in
   nonessentials. After having secured liberty from the yoke of popery,
   they acted on the persecuting principles in which they had been brought
   up. They had no idea of toleration or liberty in our modern sense. They
   fought for liberty in Christ, not from Christ, for liberty to preach
   and teach the gospel, not to oppose or pervert it. They were as
   intensely convinced of their views as their Roman opponents of theirs.
   They abhorred popery and heresy as dangerous errors which should not be
   tolerated in a Christian society. John Knox feared one Romish mass in
   Scotland more than an army of ten thousand French invaders. The
   Protestant divines and princes of the sixteenth century felt it to be
   their duty to God and to themselves to suppress and punish heresy as
   well as civil crimes. They confounded the law with the gospel. In many
   cases they acted in retaliation, and in self-defense. They were
   surrounded by a swarm of sects and errorists who claimed to be the
   legitimate children of the Reformation, exposed it to the reproach of
   the enemies and threatened to turn it into confusion and anarchy. The
   world and the church were not ripe for a universal reign of liberty,
   nor are they even now.

   Religious persecution arises not only from bigotry and fanaticism, and
   the base passions of malice, hatred and uncharitableness, but also from
   mistaken zeal for truth and orthodoxy, from the intensity of religious
   conviction, and from the alliance of religion with politics or the
   union of church and state, whereby an offence against the one becomes
   an offence against the other. Persecution is found in all religions,
   churches and sects which had the power; while on the other hand all
   persecuted religions, sects, and parties are advocates of toleration
   and freedom, at least for themselves. Some of the best as well as the
   worst men have been persecutors, believing that they served the cause
   of God by fighting his enemies. Saul of Tarsus, and Marcus Aurelius,
   the Stoic saint and philosopher on the throne of the Caesars, have in
   ignorance persecuted Christianity, the one from zeal for the law of
   Moses, the other from devotion to the laws and gods of Rome.
   Charlemagne thought he could best promote Christianity among the
   heathen Saxons by chasing them through the river for wholesale baptism.
   St. Augustin, Thomas Aquinas, and Calvin were equally convinced of the
   right and duty of the civil magistrate to punish heresy. A religion or
   church established by law must be protected by law against its enemies.
   The only sure guarantee against persecution is to put all churches on
   an equal footing before the law, and either to support all or none.

   Church history is lurid with the infernal fires of persecutions, not
   only of Christians by heathens and Mohammedans, but of Christians by
   Christians.

   But there is a silver lining to every cloud, and an overruling
   Providence in all human wickedness. The persecutions test character,
   develop moral heroism, bring out the glories of martyrdom, and sow the
   bloody seed of religious liberty. They fail of their object when the
   persecuted party has the truth on its side, and ultimately result in
   its victory. This was the case with Christianity in the Roman empire,
   and to a large extent with Protestantism. They suffered the cross, and
   reaped the crown.

   Let us now briefly survey the chief stages in the history of
   persecution, which is at the same time a history of religious liberty.

   1. The New Testament furnishes not a single passage in favor of
   persecution. The teaching and example of Christ and the Apostles are
   against it. He came to save the world, not to destroy it. He declared
   that His kingdom is not of this world. He rebuked the hasty Peter for
   drawing the sword, though it was in defense of his Master; and he
   preferred to suffer and to die rather than to call the angels of God to
   aid against his enemies. The Apostles spread the gospel by spiritual
   means and condemned the use of carnal weapons.

   For three hundred years the church followed their example and advocated
   freedom of conscience. She suffered persecution from Jews and Gentiles,
   but never retaliated, and made her way to triumph through the power of
   truth and a holy life sealed by a heroic death. [43]

   2. The change began with the union of church and state under
   Constantine the Great, in the East, and Charles the Great, in the West.
   Both these emperors represent the continuation of the old Roman empire
   under the dominion of the sword and the cross.

   The mediaeval theory of the Catholic Church assumes a close alliance of
   Caesar and Pope, or the civil and ecclesiastical power, in Christian
   countries, and the exclusiveness of the Catholic communion out of which
   there can be no salvation. The Athanasian Creed has no less than three
   damning clauses against all who dissent from the orthodox doctrine of
   the Trinity and the Incarnation. From this point of view every heresy,
   i.e., every departure from catholic orthodoxy, is a sin and a crime
   against society, and punishable both by the church and the state,
   though in different ways. "The church does not thirst for blood " [44]
   but excommunicates the obstinate heretic and hands him over to the
   civil magistrate to be dealt with according to law. And the laws of
   pagan Rome and Christian Rome were alike severe against every open
   dissent from the state religion. The Mosaic legislation against
   idolatry and blasphemy, which were punished by death, as a crime
   against the theocracy and as treason against Jehovah, [45] seemed to
   afford divine authority for similar enactments under the Christian
   dispensation, in spite of the teaching and example of Christ and his
   Apostles. The Christian emperors after