THE ORIGINS OF PROTESTANTISM 



gious polity which is based upon the conception 

 of individual responsibility for opinion. The 

 antagonist conception of corporate responsi- 

 bility for opinion had its origin and justifica- 

 tion in the military necessities of primeval 

 society, when there were no political aggregates 

 larger than the tribe. With the aggregation of 

 men into great, complex, and stable political 

 aggregates, in other words, with the passing 

 away of the circumstances by which the notion 

 of corporate responsibility was historically jus- 

 tified, the notion began to lose its hold upon 

 men's minds. As men in the ordinary affairs 

 of life began to proceed upon the notion of in- 

 dividual responsibility, they began to apply the 

 same principle to religious matters ; and great 

 religious teachers began to protest against the 

 various implications of the primeval notion. 

 Such a protest was implicitly made by the 

 Founder of Christianity, who insisted upon the 

 importance of conduct and the worthlessness 

 of ceremonial and formula ; and fifteen centu- 

 ries later, after Europe had emerged from a 

 life and death struggle with barbarism, in which 

 primitive notions had been partially revived and 

 the Church had become partially paganized, a 

 similar protest, in the name of Christ, was ex- 

 plicitly made by Martin Luther. 



January, 1881. 



243 



