how could the people be expected to continue long obedient subjects? If the peasant might form his own judgment of the things of God, might he not with equal justice define his rights as to the chase and pasturage? If the monk was no longer bound by vows, which he had voluntarily spoken, why should the peasant be a slave to obligations to which he had never given his consent, and which he believed to be contrary to the will of Christ?"

66

The people, however, were not put to the trouble of drawing these inferences; Luther did it for them in his two works, "On the Liberty of the Children of God” and “On the Temporal Power;" and that they were quick in getting at his meaning and energetic in turning his teaching to practical account, the history of the "Peasants' War" abundantly proves. These people,” said Melanchthon, in a tone of complaint, "growing daily more accustomed to liberty, now that they have shaken off the yoke of the bishops, will accept no other. What do they care for doctrine or religion? Their thoughts are fixed only on liberty and power."

8. "By a singular coincidence," says Schiller," "two political facts contributed to bring about the schism. On the one hand, the sudden preponderance of the house of Austria, which menaced the liberties of Europe, and caused princes to fly to arms; and, on the other, the ardent zeal of this house for the maintenance of the old faith drove nations into revolt." Princes were all the more willing to take advantage of the opportunity thus offered them, in that they hoped to derive from it many advantages. First of all, they desired to free themselves from the suzerainty of the emperor; next, Luther had commanded them to seize and confiscate the estates of churches and convents; and, lastly, they were allowed by his system to take the supreme ecclesiastical jurisdiction into their own hands. Against the cupidity which he thus excited in their breasts, he was himself obliged, some time later, to protest "There are still," he says in one of his sermons, “some

1 Raumer, Hist. of Europe from the End of the Fifteenth Century, Vol. I, p. 380.

'Hist. of the Thirty Years' War, Bk. I., in initio.

truly good evangelical princes ;" and he adds the reason, “because there are yet remonstrances in Catholic churches which they can steal and monastic estates which they can confiscate." In his "Table Talk" he consigns to the custody of his satanic majesty those princes who appropriated to their own use the goods they had stolen from the Church, while ministers of the Gospel, with wives and children on their hands, had not enough to keep them from starving. Unless aid be sent, and that speedily, he said, it will be all up with the Gospel and the schools in this country, for the pastors are destitute.

9. When princes had gained so many advantages by the Reformation, it was but natural that they should employ all the resources at their command to have it introduced everywhere. On this point the proofs are so evident that Jurieu, an inveterate enemy of the Catholic Church, makes the following candid avowal: "That the Reformation was brought about by political power," he says, "is incontestable. Thus in Geneva, it was the Senate; in other parts of Switzerland, the Grand Council of each canton; in Holland, the States-General; in Denmark, Sweden, England, and Scotland, kings and parliaments, that introduced it. Nor was the supreme power of the State content with guaranteeing full liberty to the partisans of the Reformation; it also took from Papists their churches, and forbade them to exercise their religion in public. Nay, more, in some countries the private exercise of Catholic worship was forbidden by legislative enactments." "In Silesia," says Adolphus Menzel,1 "the new church was mainly established

1 1 L. c., Vol. II., p. 2; Vol. III., p. 91 sq. If it be said that Catholic governments also persecuted and put to death some of those who first professed and propagated the new teachings, it may be fairly replied that there is a wide distinction between the two cases. Catholic rulers desired to protect the ancient religion, which had been maintained for a thousand years, and was so essentially a part of the laws and constitutions of their States that they regarded an assault upon it as a menace to the social and political orders to which it had given life and form. (See above, p. 142, the warning of Charles V.) Experience had taught them that political commotions, revolts, and civil wars are the inevitable consequences of religious schism, and these they were anxious to provide against. A glance at the sad condition of those countries over which the disasters of religious wars had passed made rulers, whose realms had as yet es

by the favor and protection of princes and magistrates. Nearly all the people were loyal to the ancient faith, and had not the most remote thought of making any change in their religion. The Polish peasants, like those of German descent, embraced the religion that had been introduced by the nobles. In Sweden, Gustavus Vasa, who had conquered the independence of his country, professed the new teachings, because he desired to bring to the support of his throne the wealth and the power that had been taken from the clergy. In England, the divorce of Henry VIII., and the quarrel to which it gave rise between himself and the Pope, was the occasion of the Reformation." The testimony of these writers is corroborated by that of Frederic the Great in his Memoirs. "If the causes," said he, " which promoted the spread of the Reformation be reduced to their last analysis, they will be found to be as follows: In Germany it was interest; in England lust; and in France a love of novelty."

It may be here remarked that of all those princes who were so enthusiastic for the Reformation, there was not a single one distinguished for honesty of conduct or purity of morals. We have only to compare the impure and bloodthirsty Henry VIII.; the sensual Philip of Hesse; the unbelieving and frivolous Albert of Prussia; the despotic Christiern II. of Denmark; and the equally despotic Gustavus Vasa of Sweden, with contemporary Catholic princes like George, Duke of Saxony; Joachim, Elector of Brandenburg; the Emperors Maximilian, Charles V., Ferdinand I., and Ferdinand II.; the Dukes of Bavaria, Albert and Maximilian I., and many others, and we shall see how incomparably more noble, more pure, and more elevated were the lives of the latter than those of the former.

caped such visitations, more energetic in adopting measures of unusual severity, or crushing out the rising sect the moment it gave tokens of its presence. And, as a matter of fact, this policy saved Spain from the horrors of a relig ious war. Cf. Hortig's Ch. Hist., continued by Döllinger, Vol. II., Pt. II.,

p. 690.

1" Si l'on veut réduire les causes du progrès de la réforme à des principes simples, on verra, qu'en Allemagne ce fut l'ouvrage de l'intérêt, en Angleterre celui de l'amour, et en France celui de la nouveauté." (Memoires de Bran denbourg.)

MON

York Po

CIRCULA

~ Ave.

MENT

CHAPTER III.

CONTINUATION OF THE HISTORY OF PROTESTANTISM-ITS INTERNAL DISSENSIONS.

+Döllinger, The Reformation and its Interior Development, Ratisb. 1836 sq. 3 vols. Perrone, Il Protestantesimo e la Regola di Fede, 3 pts. in 3 vols., Rome, 1853; Fr. tr., Paris, 1854. Balmes, El Protestantismo comparado con el Catolicismo, 4 vols., Barcelona, 1842-1844; Engl. tr., Baltim. 1851. †Nicolas, The Relation of Protestantism and all Heresies to Socialism, Mentz and Paderborn, 1853. (Onno Klopp), Studies on Catholicism, Protestantism, and Toleration in Germany, Schaffhausen, 1857. Gieseler, Ch. H., Vol. III., Pt. II., pp. 115–382, gives copious quotations from authentic sources, and adds the bibliography incident to the subject. Frank, Hist. of Protestant Theology, Lps. 1862, Pt. I. Dorner, Hist. of Protestant Theology, Munich, 1867.

§ 335. General Characteristics of Protestantism.

The Lutherans, like the Catheri and Waldenses of the Middle Age and kindred sects of an earlier date, professed to restore the true Apostolic Church by abolishing the abuses of the Church Catholic, and setting up Holy Scripture as the one and only ground of Faith. This absolute appeal to the authority of the Bible continued to be the underlying principle of the new system, even after discussions upon doctrines the most vital had demonstrated its utter insufficiency, and contradictions the most glaring1 had proved the necessity of tradition, which the Reformers had so arrogantly rejected. For them a visible, infallible, and sanctifying Church, established by God and anterior to the Holy Scriptures, had no longer any meaning. They rejected her authority and denied even her

1 Such is the opinion of the Protestant theologian, Werenfels, whose distich, quoted in Vol. I., may be repeated here:

Hic liber est in quo quaerit sua dogmata quisque,
Invenit et pariter dogmata quisque sua.

2Cf. Lessing's Axioms against Rev. Pastor Goetze of Hamburg. Complete Works, ed by Lachmann, Vol. X., pp. 133-251. † Kuhn, The Formal Princi ples of Catholicism and Protestantism, being three articles in the Tübingen Quarterly Review of 1858.

existence as a visible organization. In her place they substituted an invisible Church, whose members, scattered over the face of the earth, were united in fellowship by hidden and spiritual bonds. The immediate consequence of such a theory was to make doubt a matter of necessity, and change of teaching, even in the most important truths of religion, the heritage of all time.' Doctrinal teachings were now the resul of hazard and caprice, and the age of experimental theology seemed to have dawned upon Europe.

But while the principle of anarchy was thus sanctioned and consecrated by the new religious communities, they saw the necessity of setting up some sort of authority as an indispensable basis of dogmatic teaching for their spiritual society. To this end the Books of Symbols were composed; but these could not command an enduring authority, for the reason. that they were based on human opinion. The Catholic Church had always taught the necessity of good works. Her enemies misrepresented her teachings, and advocated the doctrine of justification by faith alone. As time went on, Lutheranism developed into Protestantism, or an unqualified protest against certain doctrines, not because they were false, but because they were taught by the Catholic Church. Thus Luther, for no other reason than to be opposed to the Pope, would

1 Bossuet, Histoire des Variations des Églises Protestantes, Paris, 1740, 2 vols.; or, History of Variations of Protestant Churches, Antwerp, 1742; N. Y. 1836; Dublin, 1842, 2 vols., 8vo. Planck, Hist. of the Origin and Changes of the Protestant Dogmas. See above, p. 2.

'Libri symbolici Evangelicor. (Confessio Augustana; Apologia confess. August.; Articuli Smalcaldici; Catechismi Lutheri; Formula Concordiae), ed. Hase, Lps. 1837. Corpus libror. symbol., qui in eccl. Reformatorum auctoritatem public. obtinuerunt, ed. Augusti, Elberf. 1827. Collectio confessionum in eccl. reformatis publicatar., ed. Niemeyer, Lps. 1840. (Confessiones helveticae tres, supplemented with the Catechism of Geneva; Confessio tetrapolitana, viz., Strasburg, Lindau, Constance, and Memmingen; Confessio Gallica; Confessio Scotica, for the Scottish Presbyterian Church; Confessio Anglica, sive XXXIX. Articuli, for the Anglican High-Church; Confessiones Belgicae ; Canones Dordraceni XVII.; the Catechism of Heidelberg of the Palatinate; Confessio Bohemica; Confessio Hungarica; Confessiones Poloniae; Confes. siones Marchiae, or the Confessions of the March (of Brandenburg). Cf. Dieringer, in Aschbach's Eccl. Cyclopaed., art. Bekenntnissshriften (Symbol ical writings), and "The Symbolical Books of the Protestant Church being at variance with Scripture and Reason," Lps. 1846.