C14 



REFORMATION 



representative* in England. Linacre, Groeyn, 

 Colet, and Sir Thomas Store were all men mure or 

 less emancipated from medievalism, though none 

 of tliem broke communion with Koine. Both Mure 

 and Colet spoke their mimN freely on the unworthy 

 lives of the clergy; and the latter l>y his founda 

 tion of St Paul's School in 1 .110, and by his placing 

 it uinler lay supervision, took a step of the highest 

 iiniMirtance in the direction of the new order. But 

 it IB in the political development of England that 

 we find the adequate explanation of her final 

 breach with Home. For centuries the pope had 

 come to he more and more regarded as a foreign 

 prince, whose powers, a* he claimed the ri^ht to 

 exercise them over Englishmen and English 

 property, were incompatible with English interests 

 and English liherty. Moreover, by the date of 

 ll-nry's accession the pope was a mere Italian 

 prince, whose own interests led him to seek the 

 support of the strongest arm. When Clement 

 VII., therefore, declared against the divorce from 

 Catharine, Henry regarded the decision not as the 

 oracle of Christendom, hut as the counsel of an 

 earthly prince whose own interests left him no 

 other alternative. 



The breach with Rome was thus inevitable ; but 

 it still remained to be settled whether the old or the 

 new religion should finally gain the English people. 

 Henry himself to the close of his life professed to 

 have broken with the old only in the one point of 

 the headship of the church. In the reign of Edward 

 VI. a clear departure was made from the doctrinal 

 system of the ancient church ; but the temporary 

 reaction under Mary showed how strong a hold 

 that system still possessed on the hearts of the 

 people. When Elizabeth came to the throne in 

 1558 it was only her prudent policy that saved the 

 country from tlie internecine divisions of France 

 and Germany. Three parties were equally bent 

 on realising their own conceptions of a religious 

 settlement. The adherent* of the old religion, 

 who still probably made a half of the people, hail 

 not lost hope of a return to the oM spiritual 

 allegiance. Those who had renounced the papacy 

 themselves made two distinct parties, each bent 

 on ends so conflicting, that it was evident from the 

 first that they could never work in common. The 

 governing principle of the one party, from which 

 eventually sprang the Church of England, was to 

 minimise the differences between the old faith and 

 the new. ami as far as possible to maintain the 

 continuity of the religious tradition in the countiy. 

 The other, which drew its inspiration from Calvin 

 and Geneva, and was afterwards known as the 

 Puritan party, aimed at a root and branch rejec- 

 tion of papal Christianity as at once in the interest 

 of what they thought a purer creed, and as the 

 only safeguard against a return to the old const i- 

 tution. It was owing to her politic handling of 

 these conflicting parties that at Elizalteth'a death 

 England was of one mind regarding the question of 

 the papal supremacy, and that the severance from 



Koine MM a definitive fact in the development. 



of the country. By happy turns of event*, such 

 as her excommunication by Pius V. in 1570, ami 

 'ny the extraordinary issue of the Spanish Armada 

 in 1588, not only was the number of Catholics 

 reduced, but such as still clung to the ancient 

 faith thenceforward put their allegiance to their 

 native prince before any claim of the Roman see. 

 It was this final triumpfi of the Protestant revolu- 

 tion in England that saved the movement in all 

 the other countries of Europe. 



The triumph of the Prou-stant movement in 

 Scotland is likewise a fact of the first importance 

 in European history. In Scotland, from the very 

 In-ginning of Luther's revolt, we find the presence 

 of the same elements which elsewhere led to 



revolution. As in other countries, the Scottish 

 clergy hail lost the respect of the country. As 

 early as 1525 Lutheran books were so widely read 

 that an act of parliament was passed forbidding 

 their importation. The very efforts of the church 

 to stamp out the new heresy, as in the burning 

 of Patrick Hamilton in 1528, and of George 

 \Vislmrt in 1546, served only to hasten the turn 

 of affairs which it had dreaded. Jealousy of the 

 wealth and political influence of the clergy dis- 

 posed the nobility to throw in their lot with the 

 party of revolution. When in 1659 Knox returned 

 from his long sojourn abroad, his unflinching 

 zeal and personal force supplied the momentum 

 that was needed to complete a revolution already 

 in full course ; and in the following year Pro- 

 testantism was formally established as the religion 

 of the country. The consequences of this revolu- 

 tion extended far beyond Scotland. Had Mary 

 on her return in 1561 found Scotland united in 

 the Catholic faith, she would have commanded 

 the destinies of England. Elizabeth could never 

 have effected a religious settlement, and, with 

 England paralysed, Protestantism could not have 

 held ite own against the united forces of Catholi- 

 cism. 



Thus, by the middle of the 16th century, it 

 seemed as if the revolution must sweep all In-fore 

 it, and the papal system be as completely effaced 

 by Protestantism as Paganism had been effaced by 

 Christianity. At the beginning of the revolt the 

 authorities of the ancient church did not fully 

 realise that the forces arrayed against them 

 menaced their very existence. When the true 

 extent of the danger was realised the church dis- 

 played all the resources of an institution whose 

 roots were in the very heart of Christendom, and 

 which, alike by its traditions and by its special 

 adaptations to the wants of the human spirit, 

 appealed to the deepest instincts of a large section 

 of all the peoples of western Europe. The Society 

 of Jesus, founded in 1540, supplied an army of 

 enthusiasts, whose policy and devotion saved Koine 

 from dissolution. By the decrees of the Council 

 of Trent ( 1545-63), inspired by the spirit and aims 

 of the Jesuits, the church reaffirmed its traditional 

 teaching, conceding nothing either to renaissance 

 or reform; and a succession of popes during tin- 

 later half of the 16th century earned out with a 

 zeal worthy of the better ages of the papacy the 

 policy marked out for them by the Jesuits. 

 Through the disunion of the Protestants and the 

 strenuous efforts of the papacy, the middle of the 

 10th century saw the tide of revolution checked ; 

 and in certain countries, more especially jn (!er 

 many, the Jesuits even gained ground which had 

 lieen" lost. By the close of the same century 

 Europe was portioned lietween the two religions 

 almost by the same dividing lines as exist at the 

 present day. 



It has U-en said that the central fact of the reli- 

 gious revolution of the 16th century was the sever 

 ance of the Protestant nations from the Roman see ; 

 but the great schism inevitably led to issues of 

 which the Protestant reformers never dreamed, and 

 which they would have denounced in as unqualified 



terms as any theologian of tl ledia'val church. 



The reform of religion preached by Luther or 

 I'alvin implied no real change in the modes of 

 thought that distinguishc-d medi.-evalism. Their 

 theology was but another form of scholasticism; 

 their attitude to the classical tradition or to any 

 departure from their own conception of the scheme 

 of things was precisely that of the Schoolmen 



trained on the lie tals and Aristotle. For an 



infallible church they substituted the Bible as the 

 unerring expression of God's relation to man: thu 

 interpretation of the Bible they left to the indi- 



