REFORMATION REFORMED CHURCH. 



831 



emissions of money from their estates, which had 

 been occasioned by the avarice of Rome, the efforts 

 of legates, the privileges of foreign archbishops, 

 the begging of mendicant friars, and the connexion 

 of the religious orders with foreign governors : 

 another cause was the new spring given to com- 

 merce, trade, and agriculture, and the increase of 

 population, occasioned by the immigration of their 

 exiled brethren in the faith. They were now free to 

 arrange their financial systems, to improve the state 

 of their dominions, to augment their armies, and 

 to provide for the wars with which they were 

 threatened. And, as religion, which, till the peace 

 of Westphalia, was really or ostensibly the chief 

 motive of the civil alliances and wars, was also 

 the subject dearest to the heart of every individual, 

 the animation of the people prompted them to risk 

 their wealth and their blood in the cause of their 

 rulers. Thus the Protestant princes became great, 

 and states of small extent obtained a high political 

 importance, for whicli they were mostly indebted to 

 the reformation. The church gained much in 

 spirituality by its improvement, as has appeared 

 from the preceding views of morals, literature, and 

 religion. It lost its temporal goods, indeed, to the 

 princes, but received back a large proportion of 

 them, to be applied to worthier purposes. From 

 the patrimony of the ancient church, the funds for 

 public institutions of learning were increased ; new 

 and better ones were established ; orphan asylums 

 and hospitals were founded ; rewards provided for 

 literary men of merit, and the income of the lower 

 clergy increased. With the goods of the church, 

 the persons of the clergy came likewise under the 

 jurisdiction of the temporal princes. The influence 

 of the reformation has not been felt merely by the 

 nations which have adopted its principles; the 

 states which most violently opposed it, have 

 learned by experience the danger of attempting to 

 repress the operation of deep-rooted and wide- 

 spread convictions. If Charles V. had cherished 

 sufficient Jove for the Germans, and for the cause 

 of evangelical truth, which probably had made 

 some impression on him, to sacrifice to it his Span- 

 ish crown, he might have preserved Germany, 

 which, in his time, was almost entirely devoted to 

 the new doctrines, from the bloody religious wars 

 which afterwards desolated it, and have made it an 

 invincible monarchy under the Austrian sceptre. 

 The struggle of Spain against the new doctrines 

 procured her more hatred and ridicule from Europe 

 generally, than honour in Rome, and was followed 

 by the decay of her greatness. France, whose 

 kings, in conformity with their maxim, to use the 

 reformation abroad as a means of exciting dissen- 

 sion among the neighbouring powers, and to sup- 

 press its doctrines within their own dominions, 

 were at the same time the friends of the Protestant 

 princes and the bitter persecutors of their own Pro- 

 testant subjects, expiated the guilt of its double- 

 dealing in the ruinous civil wars and emigrations 

 which it occasioned. Still more pernicious was the 

 opposition to Protestantism in the case of Poland, 

 for the destruction of which Russia made use of 

 the same policy which France had employed with 

 tolerable success in Germany ; viz. affording sup- 

 port to the Dissidents (q. v.), and entering deeply 

 into its internal dissensions. The states of Italy, 

 which tolerated nothing that savoured of reforma- 

 tion, sunk deeper and deeper in political insignifi- 

 cance, which was, indeed, owing more to the dis- 

 covery of a passage by sea to the East Indies, and 

 the intercourse with America, than to the reforma- 

 tion. The popes struggled against this formidable 

 enemy with resolution, and in some cases with suc- 



cess. In the states which continued faithful to the 

 church, they established institutions for resisting 

 the progress of the new doctrines, and for the per- 

 secution of heretics. By the happy result of their 

 missions to Asia and America, they gained a spiri- 

 tual dominion over territories more extensive than 

 the half of Europe, which they had lost by the 

 reformation. But this success was transient, and 

 of little utility to their treasury. No mission could 

 compensate for what they had formerly drawn from 

 Germany, England, and Scandinavia. They were 

 obliged by necessity to curtail their ancient extrava- 

 gance, and by shame to correct the morals of the 

 clergy. Even the Catholic princes, by degrees, 

 grew more prudent, and diminished the power and 

 the revenue of the papal court in their states, par- 

 ticularly after the peace of Westphalia. (See Pope.) 

 The Catholics would no longer yield the same 

 obedience to it as before ; for, particularly in Ger- 

 many (Austria, and Bavaria), in France, and even 

 in Spain, principles and opinions were impercepti- 

 bly propagated, which made them partakers in the 

 new light that had spread over Europe. They 

 began to distinguish the true Catholic from the 

 Roman church ; and the doctrines of the latter not 

 founded on the Bible were viewed as merely disci- 

 plinary, and not to be put on the same footing with 

 divine truth. See Planck's history of the Protes- 

 tant Doctrine (6 vols., 2d ed., Leipsic, 1791); 

 Heeren's Development of the political Consequences 

 of the Reformation (Historical Works, part i.); 

 Menzel's History of the Germans from the Reforma- 

 tion c, (part i. Breslau, 1826); Burnet's History 

 of the Reformation ; the histories of England, by 

 Hume, Lingard, Mackintosh; and also the article 

 Britain. 



REFORMED CHURCH, in a general sense, 

 comprehends all those churches that have been 

 formed by a separation from the church of Rome ; 

 but the term Reformed is often restricted to those 

 Protestant churches which did not embrace the doc- 

 trines and discipline of Luther. The title was first 

 assumed by the French Protestants, and afterwards 

 became the common denomination of all the Calvi- 

 nistical churches on the European continent. It is 

 in this restricted sense that we wish it to be under- 

 stood in the present article. The same need of a 

 reformation of the church, which excited the zeal 

 of Luther in Germany, in the first half of the six- 

 teenth century, induced many distinguished literary 

 men and clergymen in Switzerland and the Nether- 

 lands, in England and France, to labour for the 

 same end. Among the Swiss, Ulrich Zuinglius and 

 John (Ecolumpadius (see these articles) were the 

 most prominent. When the Franciscan Bernard 

 Samson, a kindred spirit with Tetzel, preached the 

 efficacy of indulgences with equal shamelessness, 

 and came to Zurich, where Zuinglius was a reli- 

 gious teacher, the latter violently attacked him, and, 

 the council of Zurich seconding his zeal, Samson 

 was not tolerated in the city. In vain did a papal 

 nuncio labour to put down the reformer, and in 

 vain did the Swiss confederacy warn and threaten 

 him. After many changes in the forms of public 

 worship, on his own responsibility, in 1523, he 

 transmitted sixty-seven propositions in German, in 

 which he set forth his doctrines, to the council of 

 Zurich ; the council gave them to the world, and 

 invited the reformer to a disputation, and attended, 

 with many of the citizens, when it took place. A 

 large part of the audience was gained over to his 

 sentiments. The work of reform was now carried 

 on with impetuosity, and much that was in itself 

 innocent, and perhaps even useful, was abolished. 

 The altars, fonts, and images, were banished from 



