authority of the Church were revolutionists. However slightly you look
into the constitution of the Church, you will be convinced that the
Reformation possessed the character of an insurrection. What is the
meaning of this fine word, Reformation? Amelioration, doubtless. Well,
then, with history before us, it is easy to show that it was only a
prostration of the human mind. Glutted with the wealth of which it
robbed the Catholics, and the blood which it shed, it gives us, instead
of the harmony and Christian love of which it deprived our ancestors,
nothing but dissensions, resentments, and discords. No, the Reformation
was not an era of happiness and peace; it was only established by
confusion and anarchy. Do you feel your heart beat at the mention of
justice and truth? Acknowledge, then, what it is impossible to deny,
that Luther must not be compared with the apostles. The apostles came
teaching in the name of Jesus Christ their master, and the Catholics are
entitled to ask us from whom Luther had his mission. We cannot prove
that he had a mission direct or indirect. Luther perverted Christianity;
he withdrew himself criminally from the communion in which regeneration
alone was possible.
It has been said that all Christendom demanded a reformation--who
disputes it? But long before the time of Luther the papacy had listened
to the complaints of the faithful. The Council of Lateran had been
convened to put an end to the scandals which afflicted the Church. The
papacy labored to restore the discipline of the early ages, in
proportion as Europe, freed from the yoke of brute force, became
politically organized and advanced with slow but sure step to
civilization. Was it not at that time that the source of all religious
truth was made accessible to scientific study, since, by means of the
watchful protection of the papacy, the holy Scriptures were translated
into every language? The New Testament of Erasmus, dedicated to Leo X,
had preceded the quarrel about indulgences.
A reformer should take care that, in his zeal to get rid of manifest
abuses, he does not at the same time shake the faith and its wholesome
institutions to the foundation. When the reformers violently separated
themselves from the Church of Rome, they thought it necessary to reject
every doctrine taught by her. Luther, that spirit of evil, who scattered
gold with dirt, declared war against the institutions without which the
Church could not exist; he destroyed unity. Who does not remember that
exclamation of Melanchthon, "We have committed many errors, and have
made good of evil without any necessity for it"?
In justification of the brutal rupture of Germany with Rome, the
scandals of the clergy are alleged. But if at the period of the
Reformation there were priests and monks in Germany whose conduct was
the cause of regret to Christians, their number was not larger than it
had been previously. When Luther appeared, there was in Germany a great
number of Catholic prelates whose piety the reformers themselves have
not hesitated to admire.
What pains they take to deceive us! In books of every size they teach
us, even at the present day, that the beast, the man of sin, the
creature of Babylon, are the names which God has given in his Scriptures
to the pope and the papacy! Can it be imagined that Christ, who died for
our sins, and saved us by his blood, would have suffered that for ten or
twelve centuries his church should be guided by such an abominable
wretch? that he would have allowed millions of his creatures to walk in
the shadow of death? and that so many generations should have had no
other pastor but Antichrist?
Luther mistook the genius of Christianity in introducing a new principle
into the world--the immediate authority of the Bible as the sole
criterion of the truth. If tradition is to be rejected, it follows that
the Bible cannot be authoritatively explained by acquired knowledge; in
a word, human interpretation based upon its comprehensions of the Greek
and Hebrew languages. So, by this theory, the palladium of orthodoxy is
to be found in a knowledge of foreign tongues, and living authority is
replaced by a dead letter; a slavery a thousand times more oppressive
than the yoke of tradition. Has any dogmatist succeeded in drawing up a
confession of faith by means of the Bible which could not be attacked by
means of reason? This formula, that the Bible must be the "_unicum
principium theologiae_," is the source of contradictory doctrines in
Protestant theology; hence this question arises: "What Protestant
theology is there in which there are not errors more or less?" It was
the Bible that inspired all the neologists of the sixteenth century; the
Bible that they made use of to persecute and condemn themselves as
heretics. When Luther maintained that the Bible contains the enunciation
of all the truths of which a knowledge is necessary to salvation, and
that no doctrine which is not distinctly laid down in the Bible can be
regarded as an article of faith, he did not imagine that the time was at
hand when everybody, from this very volume, would form a confession for
himself, and reject all others which contradicted his individual creed.
This necessity for inquiry so occupies the minds of men at the present
day that the principal articles of the original creed are rejected by
those who call themselves the disciples of Jesus.
But what are we to understand by the Bible? The question was a difficult
one to solve even at the beginning of the Reformation, when Luther, in
his preface to the translation of the Bible, laid down a difference
between the canonical books by preferring the gospel of St. John to the
three other evangelists; by depreciating the Epistle of St. James as an
epistle of straw, that contained nothing of the Gospel in it, and which
an apostle could not have written, since it attributes to works a merit
which they did not possess. It was in the Bible that Luther discovered
these two great truths of salvation, which he revealed to the world at
the beginning of his apostleship--_the slavery of man's will, and the
impeccability of the believer_.
It is said in Exodus, chapter ix, that God hardened the heart of
Pharaoh. It was questioned whether these words were to be construed
literally. This Erasmus rightly denied, and it roused the doctor's
wrath. Luther, in his reply, furiously attacks the fools who, calling
reason to their aid, dare call for an account from God why he condemns
or predestines to damnation innocent beings before they have even seen
the light. Truly, Luther, in the eyes of all God's creatures, must
appear a prodigy of daring when he ventures to maintain that no one can
reach heaven unless he adopts the slavery of the human will. And it is
not merely by the spirit of disputation, but by settled conviction, that
he defends this most odious of all ideas. He lived and died teaching
that horrible doctrine, which the most illustrious of his
disciples--among others, Melanchthon and Matthew Albert of
Reutlingen--condemned. "How rich is the Christian!" repeated Luther;
"even though he wished it, he cannot forfeit heaven by any stain;
believe, then, and be assured of your salvation: God in eternity cannot
escape you. Believe, and you shall be saved: repentance, confession,
satisfaction, good works, all these are useless for salvation; it is
sufficient to have faith."
Is not this a fearful error--a desolating doctrine? If you demonstrate
to Luther its danger or absurdity, he replies that you blaspheme the
Spirit of light. Neither attempt to prove to him that he is mistaken; he
will tell you that you offend God. No, no, my brother, you will never
convince me that the Holy Spirit is confined to Wittenberg any more than
to your person.
Not content with maledictions, Luther then turns himself to prophecy; he
announces that his doctrine, which proceeds from heaven, will gain, one
by one, all the kingdoms of the world. He says of Zwingli's explanation
of the eucharist, "I am not afraid of this fanatical interpretation
lasting long." On the other hand Zwingli predicted that the Swiss creed
would be handed down from generation to generation, crossing the Elbe
and the Rhine. Prophet against prophet, if success be the test of truth,
Luther will inevitably have to yield in this point.
The Reformation, which at first was entirely a religious phenomenon,
soon assumed a political character; it could not fail to do so. When
people began to exclaim, like Luther, on the house-tops: "The Emperor
Charles V ought not to be supported longer; let him and the Pope be
knocked on the head;" that "he is an excited madman, a bloodhound, who
must be killed with pikes and clubs," how could civil society continue
subject to authority? It was natural that the monk's virulent writings
against the bishops' spiritual power should be reduced by the subjects
of the ecclesiastical superiors into a political theory. When he
proclaimed that the yoke of priests and monks must be shaken off, we
might expect that this wild appeal would be directed against the tithes
which the people paid to the prelates and the abbots. The Saxon's
doctrine being based wholly on the holy Scriptures, the peasant
considered himself authorized in virtue of their text to break violently
with his lord; hence that long war between the cottage and the castle.
This it was that made Erasmus write sorrowfully to Luther: "You see that
we are now reaping the fruits of what you sowed. You will not
acknowledge the rebels; but they acknowledge you, and they know only too
well that many of your disciples, who clothed themselves in the mantle
of the Gospel, have been the instigators of this bloody rebellion. In
your pamphlet against the peasants, you in vain endeavor to justify
yourself. It is you who have raised the storm by your publications
against the monks and the prelates, and you say that you fight for
gospel liberty, and against the tyranny of the great! From the moment
that you began your tragedy I foresaw the end of it."
That civil war, in which Germany had to mourn the loss of more than a
hundred thousand of her children, was the consequence of Luther's
preaching. It is fortunate that, through the efforts of a Catholic
prince, Duke George of Saxony, it was speedily brought to an end. Had it
lasted but a few years longer, of all the ancient monuments with which
Germany was filled, not a single vestige would have remained. Karlstadt
might then have sat upon their ruins, and sung, with his Bible in his
hand, the downfall of the images. The iconoclast's theories, all drawn
from the Word of God, held their ground in spite of Luther, and dealt a
fatal blow to the arts.
When a gorgeous worship requires magnificent temples, imposing
ceremonies, and striking solemnities; when religion presents to the eye
sensible images as objects of public veneration; when earth and heaven
are peopled with supernatural beings, to whom imagination can lend a
sensible form--then it is that the arts, encouraged and ennobled, reach
the zenith of their splendor and perfection. The architect, raised to
honors and fortune, conceives the plans of those basilicas and
cathedrals whose aspect strikes us with religious awe, and whose richly
adorned walls are ornamented with the finest efforts of art. Those
temples and altars are decorated with marbles and precious metals, which
sculpture has fashioned into the similitude of angels, saints, and the
images of illustrious men. The choirs, the jubes, the chapels, and
sacristies are hung with pictures on all sides. Here Jesus expires on
the cross; there he is transfigured on Mount Tabor. Art, the friend of
imagination, which delights only in heaven, finds there the most sublime
creations--a St. John, a Cecilia, above all a Mary, that patroness of
tender hearts, that virgin model to all mothers, that mediatrix of
graces, placed between man and his God, that august and amiable being,
of whom no other religion presents either the resemblance or the model.
During the solemnities, the most costly stuffs, precious stones, and
embroidery cover the altars, vessels, priests, and even the very walls
of the sanctuary. Music completes the charm by the most exquisite
strains, by the harmony of the choir. These powerful incentives are
repeated in a hundred different places; the metropolises, parishes, the
numerous religious houses, the simple oratories, sparkle with emulation
to captivate all the powers of the religious and devout mind. Thus a
taste for the arts becomes general by means of so potent a lever, and
artists increase in number and rivalry. Under this influence the
celebrated schools of Italy and Flanders flourished; and the finest
works which now remain to us testify the splendid encouragement which
the Catholic religion lavished upon them.
After this natural progress of events, it cannot be doubted that the
Reformation has been unfavorable to the fine arts, and has very much
restrained the exercise of them. It has severed the bonds which united
them to religion, which sanctified them, and secured for them a place in
the veneration of the people. The Protestant worship tends to disenchant
the material imagination; it makes fine churches and statues and
paintings unnecessary; it renders them unpopular, and takes from them
one of their most active springs.
The peasants' war was soon succeeded by the spoliation of the
monasteries; "an invasion of the most sacred of all rights, more
important, in certain respects, than liberty itself--property." From
that time not a day passed without Luther preaching up the robbery of
the religious houses. To excite the greed of the princes whom he wished
to secure to his views, he loved to direct their attention to the
treasures which the abbeys, cloisters, sacristies, and sanctuaries
contained. "Take them," he said; "all these are your own--all belong to
you." Luther was convinced that to the value of the golden remonstrances
which shone on the Catholic altars he was indebted for more than one
conversion. In a moment of humor he said: "The gentry and princes are
the best Lutherans; they willingly accept both monasteries and chapters,
and appropriate their treasures."
The Landgrave of Hesse, to obtain authority for giving his arm to two
lawful wives, took care to make the wealth of the monasteries glitter in
the eyes of the Church of Wittenberg, so that as the price of their
permission he was willing to give it to the Saxon ministers. The plunder
of church property, preached by Luther, will be the eternal condemnation
of the Protestants. Though Naboth's vineyard may serve as a bait or
reward for apostasy, it cannot justify crime.
A laureate of the Institute of France has discovered grounds for
palliating this blow to property. He congratulates the princes who
embraced the Reformation for having, by means of the ecclesiastical
property, filled their coffers, paid their debts, applied the
confiscated wealth to useful establishments, clubs, universities,
hospitals, orphanages, retreats, and rewards for the old servants of the
state. But Luther himself took care, on more than one occasion, to
denounce the avarice of the princes who, when once masters of the
monastic property, employed its revenues for the support of mistresses
and packs of hounds. We remember the eloquent complaints which he
uttered in his old age against these carnal men, who left the Protestant
clergy in destitution, and did not even pay the schoolmasters their
salaries. He mourned them, but it was too late. Sometimes the
chastisement of heaven fell, even in this life, on the spoiler; and
Luther has mentioned instances of several of those iron hands, who,
after having enriched themselves by the plunder of a monastery, church,
or abbey, fell into abject poverty. Besides, we will admit that Luther
never thought of consoling the plundered monks by asserting, like
Charles Villers, that "one of the finest effects of these terrible
commotions which unsettle all properties, the fruits of social
institutions, is to substitute for them greatness of mind, virtues, and
talents, the fruits of nature exclusively."
If the triumph of the peasants in the fields of Thuringia might have
been an irreparable misfortune to Germany and to Christianity, we cannot
deny that Luther's appeal to the secular arm, to suppress the rebellion,
may have thoroughly altered the character of the first Reformation. Till
then it had been established by preaching; but from the moment of that
bloody episode it required the civil authority to move it. The sword,
therefore, took the place of the Word; and to perpetuate itself the
Reformation was bound to exaggerate the theory of passive obedience. One
of the distinguished historians of Heidelberg, Carl Hagen, has recently
favored us with some portions of the political code in which
Protestantism commands subjects to be obedient to the civil power, even
when it commands them to commit sin.
Thus the democratic element, first developed by the Reformation, was
effaced to become absorbed in the despotic. It was no longer the people,
but the prince, who chose or rejected the Protestant minister. When the
Landgrave of Hesse consulted Melanchthon, in 1525, as to the line he
should pursue in the appointment of a pastor, the doctor told him that
he had the right to interfere in the election of the ministers, and
that, if he surmounted the struggles in which the Word of God had
involved him, he ought not to commit that sacred Word but to such
preacher as seemed best to him; in other terms, observes the historian,
to him whom the civil power thinks competent. And Martin Bucer contrived
to extend Melanchthon's theory by constituting the civil power supreme
judge of religious orthodoxy, by conferring on it the right of ultimate
decision in questions of heresy, and of punishing, if necessary by fire
and sword innovators, who are a thousand times more culpable, he says,
than the robber or murderer, who only steal the material bread and slay
the body, while the heretic steals the bread of life and kills the soul.
Intolerance then entered into the councils of the Reformation. It was no
longer with the peasants that Luther declared war. Whoever did not
believe in his doctrines was denounced as a rebel; in the Saxon's eyes,
the peasant was only an enemy to be despised; the real Satan was
Karlstadt, Zwingli, and Krautwald.
His disciples were no longer satisfied with plundering the
monasteries--they desired to live in ease; they must have servants, a
fine house, a well-supplied table, and plenty of money. The struggle
then was no longer with piety and knowledge, but with power and
influence. Every city and town had its own Lutheran pope. At Nuremberg,
Osiander was a regular pacha. Those who among the Protestants endeavored
to reprove his scandalous ostentation were abused and maligned. When he
ascended the pulpit, his fingers were adorned with diamonds which
dazzled the eyes of his hearers.
The religious disputes which disturbed men's minds in Germany retarded,
rather than advanced, the march of intellect. Blind people who fought
furiously with each other could not find the road to truth. These
quarrels were only another disease of the human mind. Although printing
served to disseminate the principles of the reformers, the sudden
progress of Lutheranism, and the zeal with which it was embraced, prove
that reason and reflection had no part in their development.
Villers has drawn a brilliant sketch of the influence which the
Reformation exercised over biblical criticism. "It may be said that
criticism of the Scripture text was unknown previous to the time of
Luther; and if by this is meant that captious, whimsical, and shuffling
criticism which DeWette has so justly condemned--certainly so. But that
which relates to languages, antiquities, the knowledge of times, places,
authors--in a word, hermeneutics--was known and practised in our schools
before the Reformation, as is proved by the works of Cajetan and
Sadoletus, and a multitude of learned men whom Leo X had encouraged and
rewarded. We have seen besides, in the history of the Reformation, what
that vain science has produced. It was by means of his critical
researches that, from the time of Luther, Karlstadt found such a meaning
of '_Semen immolare Moloch_,' as made his disciples shrug their
shoulders; that Muenzer preached community of goods and wives; that
Melanchthon taught that the dogma of the Trinity deprives our mind of
all liberty; that at a later period Ammon asserted that the
resurrection of the dead could not be deduced from the New Testament;
Veter, that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses; that the history of
the Jews to the time of the Judges is only a popular tradition;
Bretschneider, that the Psalms cannot be looked upon as inspired;
Augusti, that the true doctrine of Jesus Christ has not been preserved
intact in the New Testament; and Geisse, that not one of the four
gospels was written by the evangelist whose name it bears.
"Since the days of Semler, Germany presents a singular spectacle: every
ten years, or nearly so, its theological literature undergoes a complete
revolution. What was admired during the one decennial period is rejected
in the next, and the image which they adored is burned to make way for
new divinities; the dogmas which were held in honor fall into discredit;
the classical treatise of morality is banished among the old books out
of date; criticism overturns criticism; and the commentary of yesterday
ridicules that of the previous day."
FOOTNOTES:
[25] Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, was Luther's friend and
protector.
[26] Georg Spalatin, a friend and fellow-reformer of Luther's, was in
the diplomatic service of Elector Frederick.
[27] Charles, the grandson of Maximilian I, Emperor of the Holy Roman
Empire, succeeded him 1519. At the time of his coronation Charles was
but twenty years old. He was also King of Spain.--ED.
[28] It is obvious that he refers to Christ, who is spoken of in
Scripture as the Holy One of God (St. Mark i. 24; Acts ii. 27), not, as
ignorance and malice have suggested, to himself.
[29] Ulrich von Hutten was a friend and supporter of Luther.
[30] In 1521-1522 Frederick the Wise gave Luther asylum in the Wartburg,
where for ten months the reformer remained in disguise as "Junker
Georg." His room, with its furniture, is still preserved.
NEGRO SLAVERY IN AMERICA
ITS INTRODUCTION BY LAW
A.D. 1517
SIR ARTHUR HELPS
In 1442 the first negro slaves were imported into Europe.
They were taken from Africa to Portugal in ships of Prince
Henry, the "Navigator." From that time there was little
traffic in negroes until after the discovery of America.
Then there was great destruction of American Indians by war,
disease, and killing work, and the importation of negroes
into Spanish America was begun in order to fill the void in
the labor market.
Influenced by the spirit of Bartolome de las Casas, a
Spanish monk, celebrated as the defender of the Indians
against his own countrymen who conquered them, the monarchs
of Spain prohibited Indian slavery. "It is a very
significant fact that the great 'Protector of the Indians,'
Las Casas, should, however innocently, have been concerned
with the first large grant of licenses to import negroes
into the West India Islands."
We first hear of the introduction of negro slaves in those
islands through the instructions given in 1501 to Nicolas de
Ovando, who in the following year succeeded Columbus as
governor. During the nine years of his governorship negro
slavery in the Spanish possessions of the New World was
greatly extended. A few years later, as shown by Helps,
official license gave it a legal sanction. Helps' account
begins with an abstract of Las Casas' memorials to the King
of Spain looking to a remedy for the bad government of the
West Indies.
The outline of Las Casas' scheme was as follows: The King was to give to
every laborer willing to emigrate to Espanola his living during the
journey from his place of abode to Seville, at the rate of half a real a
day throughout the journey, for great and small, child and parent. At
Seville the emigrants were to be lodged in the Casa de la Contratacion
(the India House), and were to have from eleven to thirteen maravedis a
day. From thence they were to have a free passage to Espanola, and to be
provided with food for a year. And if the climate "should try them so
much" that at the expiration of this year they should not be able to
work for themselves, the King was to continue to maintain them; but
this extra maintenance was to be put down to the account of the
emigrants, as a loan which they were to repay. The King was to give them
lands--his own lands--furnish them with ploughshares and spades, and
provide medicines for them. Lastly, whatever rights and profits accrued
from their holdings were to become hereditary. This was certainly a most
liberal plan of emigration. And, in addition, there were other
privileges held out as inducements to these laborers.