REFORMATION. 



827 



of the Floly Scriptures, immediately brought every 

 new idea, which was suggested, to the touchstone 

 of his system, and admitted nothing which seemed 

 to oppose that belief. Zuinglius, less trammelled 

 with fixed dogmas, and more ready to follow his 

 own judgment, was, on the other hand, more prompt 

 to embrace those views, which at first sight appear- 

 ed reasonable to him. Hence lie was more in dan- 

 ger of adopting error as truth, while Luther was 

 more apt to reject truth as error, lest he should re- 

 nounce his faith. The east and north adhered to 

 the opinions of Luther ; the west and south followed 

 the more liberal views of the Reformed church. 

 The greater part of Switzerland and Geneva 

 (1535), a great part of the population of France, 

 particularly of the southern part (see Huguenots), 

 England (in 1547, with the reservation of the hier- 

 archical dignities, and with a temporary interruption , 

 in the reign 01 Mary, in 1555 58), Scotland, where 

 Knox introduced the Presbyterian form of church 

 government, in 15GO, on the Geneva model, and 

 the United Provinces of the Netherlands, which, at 

 one blow, gained Protestantism and freedom, 

 belonged to the Reformed church. (See England, 

 Church of, and Henry VIII. ; Knox ; Nether- 

 lands ; and Creed.) In Transylvania, the Lutheran 

 confession prevailed ; in Hungary, Calvinism en- 

 tered with it ; and in Poland, where the reforma- 

 tion had found numerous adherents (from 1556J, 

 the two Protestant parties, with the Moravian 

 brethren, concluded a convention (consensus) at 

 Sendomir, in 1750, which united them in one poli- 

 tical body, known as the Dissidents, (q. v.) The 

 attempt of Gebhard, elector of Cologne, in 1582, 

 to introduce the reformation into his archbishopric 

 totally failed, owing to his want of prudence. 

 Whatever dissensions may have separated the 

 Lutherans and Calvinists at this period, they had, 

 and still have, the fundamentals of doctrine and 

 discipline, the spirit, and the name of true Protes- 

 tants in common, and every step in the progress of 

 the reformation is to be considered as a gain to both 

 parties. But the ill will which continued to exist 

 between the Catholics and Protestants, even after 

 the religious peace, eventually kindled the thirty 

 years' war. and devastated Germany. The peace 

 of Westphalia established between the parties a 

 legalized toleration ; but the Protestant subjects of 

 Catholic princes too often experienced its viola- 

 tion, and the. Catholics in Protestant states (as the 

 Irish) not unfrequently suffered a similar fate. 

 (See Religious Liberty, and Catholic Emancipa- 

 tion.} After this general outline of the history of 

 the reformation, it remains to give some views of 

 the influence which it has exercised on the reli- 

 gion and morals, on the literary and political con- 

 dition, of nations. 



From what has been said, it appears that the 

 reformation was a necessary consequence of the 

 mental progress of the Western, and particularly 

 of the Teutonic nations. The opposition of its ene- 

 mies gave it consistency and importance. The 

 assaults of passionate and ignorant opposers, the 

 intrigues and violence of the Roman court, and the 

 applause of his whole nation, urged Luther farther 

 than he had thought of going. Circumstances, the 

 concurrence of which human wisdom could neither 

 produce nor prevent, favoured the enterprise beyond 

 his highest hopes. Involved in contests with adver- 

 saries whose victory seemed almost certain, and 

 convulsed by internal dissensions (the peasants' 

 war, and the troubles of the Anabaptists', the re- 

 formation still made rapid progress. After it had 

 been going on a few years, it no longer depended 

 on its authors tor the direction it should take. The 



influence of Protestant principles has had a large 

 share in bringing about those improvements, which, 

 in modern times, have extended to almost every 

 class of society in Europe. Before the reforma- 

 tion, the doctrines of the church comprised a in;t^ 

 of propositions and precepts, the fruit of circum- 

 stances which were intended to support the divine 

 authority of the priesthood, and rested in part on 

 perversions of history ; but the great truths which 

 every Christian ought to know, were either ne- 

 glected or adulterated, and the gospel of Jesus 

 could hardly be recognised. In the view of Catho- 

 lics, indeed, such of these doctrines as are not 

 founded on the Bible, rest on verbal traditions, 

 which the teachers of the church received from the 

 apostles and fathers, and which the popes or coun- 

 cils, with the aid of the Holy Ghost, gradually 

 made known (see Tradition); but their fruits bore 

 no traces of their pretended divine origin. The 

 place of religion was supplied, in the minds of the 

 lower classes, by a mixture of fear and diversion, 

 aided by a service full of mechanical ceremony and 

 superstition. At one time, it was a timid fear of a 

 spiritual being wielding the terrors of temporal suf- 

 fering and eternal damnation ; at another, delight 

 in the ornaments of the churches and their priests ; 

 admiration of their splendid, and, for the most part, 

 unintelligible exhibitions ; some times the occupa- 

 tion of the imagination with various legends and 

 miraculous histories, and prayers repeated in the 

 order of the beads of the rosary, confessions, pen- 

 ances, fasts, pilgrimages, and rich gifts to the 

 the church of money and other valuables. The 

 ignorance of the common people blinded them to 

 the wretchedness of their spiritual condition ; but 

 the better informed soon perceived that the entire 

 reference of the doctrines of the. church to the sup- 

 port of the papal power, and of its worship to the 

 visible images of the saints, directed nearly all the 

 devotion of the faithful to things which do not 

 belong to the Christian profession, and in no way 

 promote a sincere reverence of God. No wonder 

 that Christianity, thus perverted, became, in the 

 eyes of many of the most distinguished divines 

 and laymen, whose taste had been formed by the 

 study of the classics, a subject of unmingled con- 

 tempt. The ecclesiastical princes of Italy used it 

 only as the instrument of their selfish purposes, 

 and opposed with obstinacy a reformation of the 

 church, which they viewed as dangerous and 

 chimerical. An open rupture with the pope gave 

 the reformers the power of throwing off the cor- 

 ruptions and foreign appendages of religion, both 

 in doctrine and worship, and of restoring a Chris- 

 tianity which knows no rule of piety but the Holy 

 Scriptures, asks nothing but faith and virtue, and, 

 instead of being the secret possession of a privi- 

 leged caste of priests, was laid open to all. The 

 idea that there is something for which man is ac- 

 countable only to himself and his God ; that in reli- 

 gion human authority is nothing; and that it is, 

 therefore, the duty of every one to study the Holy 

 Scriptures, as its source, and to rest his faith on 

 his own convictions ; that acts of worship derive 

 their whole value from the faith of the worship- 

 pers, and their obvious tendency improve those 

 who take part in them ; in short, a living com- 

 mentary on the doctrine, " God must be worship 

 ped in spirit and in truth," was spread by the 

 preaching, and still more by the writings of the 

 reformers, among the whole mass of the people. 

 Thousands of the scholars of the universities, the 

 friends of philosophy and of classical antiquity, in- 

 telligent citizens, and discontented individuals of 

 the lower clergy, had long been ready to share in 



