CHRISTIANITY 



219 



full ; yet the enslaved Church continued to pre- 

 serve the treasurer of piety. MonaMticism became 

 tin- ri^'lit arm of the papacy, and rendered it the 

 imi-t precious service in the education of races 

 still nnl' and indeed hardly escaped from barbarism. 

 With (Injury VII. tlu great traiiHformation was 

 completed, ami tin- new theocratic organisation 

 appeared in all it> glory. No one can deny that 

 uinlcr the given condition* it rendered precious 

 services. It was still Christianity, however dis- 

 figured, t<> which Europe owed its alleviation from 

 the harliarism that weighed upon it. To it alone 

 the weak and the oppressed owed it that they were 

 not crushed 



It is impossible to do more than characterise 

 briefly some of the most prominent features of the 

 middle ages and the Reformation. In the middle 

 \ve mark the immoderate expansion of the 

 religious and social omnipotence or Christianity, 

 manifesting itself in the Crusades and the momen- 

 tary subordination of the state to the Church after 

 memorable struggles ; and in consequence of that 

 very temporal primacy of the Church we see it diverge 

 more ana more from its primitive type. It has quite 

 decidedly become a new theocracy, and as has ever 

 been the case the progressive diminution of its liber- 

 ties coincides with the complete subversion of the 

 grand doctrine of justification by faith. Salvation 

 by works replaces salvation by grace, the supposed 

 merits of glorified saints are purchased for the benefit 

 of sinners, and finally indulgences from the conse- 

 quences of sin are sold for a price in money. Yet 

 Christianity even thus disfigured and diminished 

 still shows itself beneficent for the consolation of 

 human misery. It produces a magnificent art. 

 The Gothic cathedral is the symbol of its greatness 

 and also of its formidable power. Scholasticism 

 produces its famous theological Summas which are 

 as it were the cathedrals of thought. The monastic 

 orders founded in great numbers contribute at once 

 to the relief of the wretched and to the enslavement 

 of the faithful. Yet it was in some of these con- 

 vents that there was developed that profound and 

 touching mysticism which sought to find God 

 beyond the sacerdotal hierarchy. From the 14th 

 century onwards an ardent aspiration towards 

 reform stirred the Church. It was the ferment 

 preparing the great approaching renovation that 

 was to shine forth after the great schism, which 

 weakened the papacy by breaking it into factions. 

 This need of reform was expressed officially in the 

 councils of Pisa and Basel. The Reformation had 

 already its forerunners in John Huss and Wyclif, 

 while it was, as it were, realised beforehand in the 

 valleys of Piedmont. 



With Luther it burst forth with irresistible power. 

 If its banner was victorious over great part of 

 Europe it was tacause it bore the grand device 

 of all Christian liberty : ' The just shall live 

 by faith.' The liberty of the people of God was 

 actually reconquered in principle ; it founded itself 

 as at the first days of Christianity on the certainty 

 of salvation granted by grace and seized by faith. 

 This doctrine of liberation dismisses all human 

 mediator! to find again the universal priesthood in 

 the sacrificial priesthood of the Redeemer. To all 

 tradition it opposes the sovereign authority of 

 Christ, whom Luther calls the king of the Bible, 

 which alone permits us to know him. Next en- 

 sued a gigantic struggle, on the one hand, )>etween 

 the Reformation ana the ancient Catholic Church, 

 whose usurpations linked with a mercenary concep- 

 tion of salvation were consecrated by the Council 

 of Trent ; and on the other hand, between Christi- 

 anity and a pagan culture eager to resuscitate the 

 naturism of the ancient world without its religious 

 aspirations. This double struggle has reached in 

 our day its culminating height. It is complicated 



whether in Catholicism or in the churches of the 

 I :.-i.. i mat inn by an intestine struggle which brings 

 to an issue upon narrowed ground the two opposing 

 elements. Tims Catholicism even after the Council 

 of Trent saw arise within itself a movement for 

 i nil m, which, rendered illustrious by the AbW de 

 St Cyran and Pascal, tried to elevate the doctrine of 

 grace and to limit the papal power. That noble, 

 effort was compelled to succumb before persecution, 

 after having done honour to the church of France. 

 Gallicanism contrived to lay some restriction nnon 

 the papal powers, but was speedily defeated like 

 Jansenism, from which it had separated in the 17th 

 century while retaining the stamp of its influence. 



In ili'' bosom of Protestantism there broke out 

 early a struggle between a conservatism which 

 would retain as much as possible of Catholicism 

 and a Christian liberalism whose aim it was to 

 bring back the Church to the apostolic type. 

 That struggle has led to the creation of differ- 

 ent churches practising in both hemispheres with 

 more or less fidelity the constituent principles 

 of the Reformation, or, more correctly, continuing 

 them and disengaging them from things incon- 

 sistent therewith. In the domain of thought the 

 battle has been fought between the partisans of a 

 strict dogmatism and those who would admit of 

 theological progress without breaking in anything 

 with the eternal gospel. We must also recognise 

 that within the heart of historical Protestantism we 

 have seen produced, rather more than a century 

 since, on some questions, philosophical tendencies 

 which are Christian only in name, and which 

 in their extreme manifestations would introduce 

 into the fortress the enemy that besets the walls 

 we mean a culture decidedly anti-Christian. The 

 siege is being carried on to-day more vigorously 

 than it ever was before. The struggle between 

 Christianity and tendencies contrary to it has never 

 been more serious. Anti-Christianity under all its 

 forms has taken a considerable development, and 

 seems to resuscitate in our modern so-called Chris- 

 tian world the old Paganism, while eliminating 

 from it the better elements, its aspirations and fore- 

 shadowings of the religion of the redemption ; for 

 this neo-Paganism in its most logical manifesta- 

 tions ends in an absolute naturalism which will only 

 admit of matter and force in the evolution of all 

 life. On the other hand, what we call the Judaising 

 tendency so ready to appear in the Church on the 

 morrow of the apostolic age, has reached in these 

 last days the final stage of its course. The ecclesi- 

 astical policy which has brought about in succession 

 the syllabus of Pius IX., the Encyclical Quanta 

 Cura (1864), the proclamation of the Immaculate 

 Conception of the Virgin (1854), and that of the 

 papal Infallibility at the Vatican council of 1870, 

 have assured the triumph of the theocratic system, 

 while condemning everything in the bosom of con- 

 temporary Catholicism like liberty in the Church or 

 in the heart. Nothing is further from our thought 

 than to place Catholicism per se outside the pale 

 of Christianity. We recognise in it the treasures 

 of piety. Its charity has never expended itself 

 over social misery more bounteously than now. 

 Christ is loved and adored within its fold by a 

 multitude of pious souls who find him in spite 

 of defective forms of worship and the long 

 chain of the sacerdotal hierarchy. We refer 

 only to the peculiarly ecclesiastical and specific 

 principle of Catholicism when we speak of its 

 deplorable return to Jewish theocracy. This return 

 is the more inexplicable as the institutions proper 

 to the Old Covenant have no longer any reason 

 for their existence since they have found their 

 accomplishment in the gospel. It is impossible not 

 to observe that there exists a real co-relation 

 between the development of the anti-Christianity 



