REFORMATION. 



829 



cal punishments, which were imposed on offenders ; 

 and indulgences, by which they purchased, at no 

 small price, permission to sin ; pilgrimages, which 

 great numbers of the unhappy undertook, to seek 

 absolution from wonder-working images, and to in- 

 dulge in promiscuous excesses. While the reform- 

 ers wholly suppressed these abuses, which made the 

 remission of sins venal in the eyes of the people, 

 they deprived licentiousness of the support of legal 

 toleration, and directed penitents to seek for recon- 

 ciliation with God only by faith and new obedience. 

 They exhibited in its true vileness that gloomy 

 asceticism, which represented inhuman self-torture, 

 solitude, poverty, nakedness, filth, hunger and mis- 

 ery, and even privileged beggary and idleness, as 

 pleasing to God, and steps towards the highest per- 

 fection : they threw open the monasteries, dis- 

 charged monks and nuns from their vows, and per- 

 mitted marriage to the teachers of religion. At one 

 blow, the workshops of superstition, and the abodes 

 of secret sins and private cruelties, were destroyed ; 

 a multitude of unhappy beings were set at liberty 

 and restored to mankind ; and the flames of a pas- 

 sion which had destroyed the peace of thousands of 

 noble natures, or sated itself by the seduction of 

 innocence, were reduced to the limits of moderation, 

 and made to promote domestic happiness. Thus, 

 by the abolition of celibacy and nionasticism, the 

 reformers restored to nature the rights which make 

 it the nurse of virtue. But what places the merit 

 of the reformation, in regard to morals, in the clear- 

 est light, next to removal of those obstructions to 

 virtue which existed in the ancient church, was its 

 leading to the acknowledgment of the intimate 

 connexion of religion with daily life, furnishing 

 purer motives of action, and kindling the moral 

 feeling, of which it was itself the offspring, to a 

 warmth which produced the most valuable fruits in 

 all the relations of public and domestic life. The 

 reformers themselves were not the only noble exam- 

 ples of moral dignity and faithfulness : among their 

 adherents, likewise, the power of the gospel and the 

 sense of duty, gave birth to an honesty and a self- 

 control which elevated the character of society, 

 wherever Protestantism triumphed. The minds of 

 men, liberated from the constraint of human author- 

 ity, and referring every thing to God and the judge 

 in their own bosoms, attained a true conscientious- 

 ness. The integrity and noble sentiments of the 

 Protestant princes put to shame the artifices of Rom- 

 an policy. A heroic courage, which sacrificed every 

 thing earthly to the cause of truth, a firmness in the 

 profession of faith, a cheerful spirit under the sever- 

 est oppressions, a boldness and confidence in death, 

 examples of which the world beheld with admira- 

 tion, appeared among high and low. The courts of 

 the Spanish inquisition, which raged against Protes- 

 tant Christians, in the Netherlands, found it neces- 

 sary to substitute private executions for public ones, 

 in order to conceal from the eyes of the people the 

 firmness of their victims. The moral tone of the 

 Protestants could not long remain at such a pitch : 

 in proportion as the numbers of the Protestants in- 

 creased, unworthy members found their way into 

 the church. Moral improvement was sometimes 

 neglected, in consequence of the zeal for orthodox 

 opinions, especially among the Lutherans, who 

 wanted, in general, a well-ordered system of cimrc.'i 

 discipline ; and an abuse of Luther's doctrine 

 tliat faith is the only ground of saltation was 

 sometimes made an excuse for a vicious life. But, 

 notwithstanding this, the morality of the adherents 

 of the reformation received from its influence much 

 firmness and constancy. It spread most rapidl/ 

 among the citizens, who had attained independence 



by means of the constitution of the towns ; and with 

 this class the Protestant clergy had become inti- 

 mately connected by a common mode of life, by 

 common interests, and by family alliances. The 

 spirit of morality which they called into life, struck 

 its roots deep and lastingly in this numerous and 

 most flourishing class of the people. Institutions 

 were founded in the cities for the instruction of the 

 young and the relief of the poor ; laws were made 

 tor the promotion of morality ; industry was encour- 

 aged by the abolition of superfluous festivals ; and 

 a public opinion was formed, distinguished for strict- 

 ness, purity, and power over the minds of men. In 

 these respects, the Reformed or Calvinistic party 

 excelled the Lutherans. Reformed Switzerland 

 and especially Geneva, where Calvin introduced a 

 system of church discipline, and instituted a court of 

 morals, composed of clergy and laymen, presented 

 an example of purity, unique in its kind, which was 

 imitated by the societies of France and Holland, and 

 the Presbyterians of Scotland and England. The 

 salutary and durable effects of the reformation on 

 the virtue of its adherents in general are obvious to 

 every traveller, even in modern times, by a com- 

 parison of Catholic countries with Protestant. 



The influence of the reformation on literature has 

 been very important An acquaintance with clas- 

 sic antiquity, at the beginning of the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, was a luxury enjoyed only by a few distin- 

 guished scholars; and it could not be otherwise 

 under the papal dominion, which might allow clas- 

 sical reading, but could by no means tolerate philo- 

 sophical deductions therefrom, and practical appli- 

 cations of them to the existing state of things, 

 without the risk of its own overthrow. Hence, 

 even in 1515, Leo the tenth prohibited the printing 

 of translations of the ancients into the vernacular 

 tongues, though he patronised classical scholars, and 

 gave them splendid rewards. Pomponatius was 

 suffered to teach, at Bologna, the unreasonableness, 

 in a philosophical point ot view, of the most import- 

 ant doctrines of Christianity ; and it was left to the 

 contentious monks to dispute the point with him. 

 Aretino was allowed to vent his wit in virulent 

 libels and licentious poems. Leo the tenth and his 

 successors loaded him with wealth and honours, and 

 Rome styled this monster of impiety and vice " the 

 Divine." The sciences were permitted to become 

 the nurses of unbelief and moral corruption, if no 

 doubt of the supremacy of the pope >vas circulated 

 and no ray of imelligence was let in upon the 

 people. With the learned luxury which prevailed 

 in Italy at the revival of ancient learning, a system- 

 atic plan of keeping the people in ignorance went 

 hand in hand. The Holy Scriptures, with the orig- 

 inal of which scarcely an individual clergyman iu 

 the largest diocese was acquainted, narrowly 

 escaped being added to the Index of Prohibited 

 Books, in which all translations of them were actu- 

 ally inserted, except the Latin version of the church. 

 The divines who argued against Reuchlin had seen 

 no New Testament in Greek ; and they looked upon 

 the Hebrew as a cunningly-devised language of 

 sorcerers. The philosophy ot the scholastic? fol- 

 lowed the philosophy of Aristotle ; not that of 

 the instructor of Alexander, but a tissue of empty 

 subtleties and rash assumptions, which was called 

 by its disciples, '-the wisdom of Aristotle/" but 

 by Luther, " a cold, stinking and dead dog." 

 The study of the ancient languages, the general 

 use of Latin, as a medium of literary intercourse, 

 and tlie invention of the art of printing, promouui 

 the progress of learning ; but the only element in 

 which they could flourish, an. I the only direction in 

 which they could be of -ji-iiijnd utility, they received 



