national church rationalism and latitudinarian supernaturalism
had to such an extent blotted out the ecclesiastical distinctions
between Reformed, Remonstrants, Mennonites, and Lutherans,
that the clergy of one party would unhesitatingly preach in the
churches of the others. Then rose the poet Bilderdijk, driven
from political into religious patriotism, to denounce with
glowing fury the general declension from the orthodoxy of Dort.
Two Jewish converts of his, the poet and apologist Isaac da Costa,
and the physician Cappadose, gave him powerful support. A zealous
young clergyman, Henry de Cock, was theological mouthpiece of
the party. Because he offended church order, especially by
ministering in other congregations, he was suspended and finally
deposed in 1834. The greater part of his congregation and four
other pastors with him formally declared their secession from the
unfaithful church, as a return to the orthodox Reformed church.
As separatists and disturbers of public worship, they were fined
and imprisoned, and were at last satisfied with the recognition
granted them of royal grace in 1839, as a separate or =Christian
Reformed Church=. It consists now of 364 congregations, embracing
about 140,000 souls, with a flourishing seminary at Kampen. The
=Reformed State Church=, with three-fourths of all the Protestant
population, persevered in and developed its liberalistic
tendencies. The State Synod of 1883 expressly declared that
the Netherland Reformed Church demands from its teachers not
agreement with all the statements of the confessional writings,
but only with their spirit, gist, and essence; and the synod
of 1877, by the vote of a majority, stated that no sort of
formulated confession should be required even of candidates for
confirmation. Yet even amid such proceedings from various sides,
a churchly and evangelical reaction of considerable importance
set in. Three great parties within the state church carried on
a life and death struggle with one another:
1. The Strict Calvinists, whose leader is Dr. Kuyper, formerly
pastor in Amsterdam;
2. The so-called Middle Party, which falls into two divisions:
the, just about expiring, Ethical Irenical Party, with
the Utrecht professor Van Oosterzee (died 1882), and the
Evangelical Party with the Gröningen professor Hofstede de
Groot, since 1872 Emeritus, as leaders, of which the former,
subordinating the confession, regards the Christian life
as the main thing in Christianity, and the latter declares
itself prepared to take the gospel alone for its creed and
confession; and
3. The so-called Modern Party, which, with Professors Scholten
and Kuenen as leaders, has its centre at Leyden, and in
theology carries out with reckless energy the destructive
critical principles of the school of Baur and Wellhausen
(§ 182, 7, 18).
The “_Moderns_” are also the founders and leaders of the
“_Protestant Federation_” after the German model (§ 180),
with its annual assemblies since 1873, in opposition to which
a “_Confessional Union_” holds its annual meetings at Utrecht,
and operates by means of evangelists and lay preachers in places
where there are only “Modern” pastors. The higher and cultured
classes in the congregations mostly favour the Gröningen and
some also the Leyden school, but the great majority of the middle
and lower classes are adherents of Kuyper, and have frequently
secured majorities in the Congregational Church Council.--The
Dutch school law of 1856 banished every sort of confessional
religious education from public schools supported by the state,
and so called forth the erection of numerous denominational
schools independent of the state, and the founding of a “_Union
for Christian Popular Education_,” which has spread through
the whole country. The university law sanctioned, after violent
debates in the chamber, in 1876, establishes in place of the old
theological faculties, professorships for the science of religion
generally, with the exception of dogmatics and practical theology,
and left it with the Reformed State Synod to care for these two
subjects, either in a theological seminary or by founding for
itself the two theological professorships in the universities
and supporting them from the sums voted for the state church.
The synod decided on the latter course, and appointed to the new
chairs men of moderate liberal views. The adherents of the strict
Calvinistic party, however, founded a Free Reformed University
at Amsterdam, which was opened in autumn, 1880. Its first rector
was Kuyper.--The =Lutheran Church= of fifty congregations and
sixty-two pastors, with about 60,000 souls, has also had since
1816 a theological seminary. In it neological tendencies prevail.
§ 200.3. The founding of the Free University at Amsterdam,
referred to above, led to a series of violent conflicts
which threatened to break up the whole Reformed church of
the Netherlands by a wild schism. The Reformed State Synod,
consisting mainly of Gröningen theologians, but also numbering
many members belonging to the Modern or Leyden school, and
constituting the supreme ecclesiastical court, had, in spite of
its eleventh rule, which makes “the maintenance of the doctrine”
a main task of all church government, for a long time admitted
the principle of unfettered freedom of teaching, and ordained
that even evidence of orthodoxy on the part of candidates for
confirmation would no longer be regarded as a condition of their
acceptance, their examination referring only to their knowledge,
the examining clergy and not the assisting elders being judges
in this matter. When now the Free University had been founded
in direct opposition to the synod, the latter resolved to reject
all its pupils at the examination of candidates, and when, in
the summer of 1885, its first student presented himself, actually
carried out this resolution. Thereupon the university transferred
the examination to a committee, elected by itself, consisting
of orthodox Reformed pastors and elders, and a small village
congregation agreed to elect the candidate for its poorly
endowed, and so for seventeen years vacant, pastorate. But the
synod refused him ordination. Therefore the director of a strict
Calvinistic Gymnasium, formerly a pastor, performed the ceremony,
and the congregation announced its secession from the synodal
union. At the same time in Amsterdam a second conflict arose over
the question of candidates for confirmation. Three pastors of the
“modern” school demanded the elders subject to them, among them
Dr. Kuyper, to take part as required in the examining of their
candidates; but these refused to give their assistance, because
the previous training had not been according to Scripture and the
confession, and also the majority of the church council approved
of this refusal, as the parents had complained, and declared
that the certificate of morality demanded by other pastors could
be made out only if candidates for confirmation had previously
formally and solemnly confessed their genuine and hearty faith in
Jesus Christ as the only and all-sufficient Saviour, which these,
however, in accordance with the Dutch practice of the eighteenth
century, declined to do. The controversy was carried by appeal
through all the church courts, and finally the State Synod
ordered the church council to make delivery of the certificates
within six weeks on pain of suspension. But this was brought
about before the expiry of that period by the outbreak of a
far more serious conflict over matters of administration. In
Amsterdam the administration of church property lay with a
special commission, responsible to the church council, consisting
of members, one half from the church council and the other half
from the congregations. If in the beginning of January, 1886,
the threatened suspension and deposition of the church council
should be carried out, in accordance with proper order until
the appointment of a new council all the rights of the same,
therefore also that of supervising that commission, would fall
to the “classical board” (§ 143, 1) as the next highest court.
In order to avoid this, the fateful resolution was passed on
December 14th, 1885, to alter § 41 of the regulations, so that,
if the church council in the discharge of its duty to govern
the community in accordance with God’s word and the legalized
church confession, it would be so hindered therein that it
might feel in conscience obliged to obey God rather than man
and accept suspension and deposition, and a church council should
be appointed, the administrative commission would be obliged
to remain subject, not to this, but to the original commission.
The “classical board” annulled this resolution, suspended on
January 4th, 1886, for continued obstinacy the previous church
council, and constituted itself, pending decision on the part of
discipline, interim administrator of all its rights and duties.
The suspended majority, however, called a meeting for the same
day, and when it found the doors of its meeting place closed,
sent for a locksmith to break them open. They were prevented by
the police, who then, by putting on a safety lock, strengthening
the boards of the door by mailed plates, and setting a watch,
greatly reduced the chances of an entrance. But the opposition
sent to the watchers a letter by a policeman demanding that
the representatives of the church council should be allowed to
pass; upon which these, regarding it as an order of the police,
withdrew. They then had the mailed plates sawn, took possession
of the hall and the archives and treasure box lying there, and
refused admission to the classical board. While then the question
of law and possession was referred to the courts of law, and
there the final decision would not be given before the lapse
of a year, the disciplinary procedure took its course through
all the ecclesiastical courts and ended in the deposition of all
resisting elders and pastors. The latter preached now to great
crowds in hired halls. From the capital the excitement increased
by means of violent publications on both sides, spread over the
whole land and produced discord in many other communities. Wild
and uproarious tumults first broke out in Leidendorf, a suburb of
Leyden. The pastor and the majority of the church council refused
to enter on their congregational list two girls who had been
confirmed by liberal churchmen elsewhere, and with by far the
greater part of the congregation seceded from the synodal union.
The classical board now, in July, 1886, declared the pastorate
vacant, and ordered that a regular interim service should be
conducted on Sundays by the pastors of the circuit. The uproar
among the people, however, was thereby only greatly increased,
so that the civil authorities were obliged to protect the deputed
preachers, by a large military escort, from rude maltreatment,
and to secure quiet during public worship by a company of police
in church. And similar conflicts soon broke out on like occasions
and with similar consequences in many other places throughout
all parts of the land. In December, 1886, the Amsterdam church
council also declared its secession from the state church, and a
numerously attended “Reformed Church Congress” at Amsterdam, in
January, 1887, summoned by Kuyper in the interests of the crowd
of seceders, resolved to accept the decision of the law in regard
to church property.[554]
§ 200.4. Even after the separation of Belgium there was still
left a considerable number of =Catholics=, about three-eighths of
the population, most numerous in Brabant, Limburg, and Luxemburg,
and these were, as of old, inclined to the most bigoted
ultramontanism. This tendency was greatly enhanced when the new
constitutional law of 1848 announced the principle of absolute
liberty of belief, in consequence of which the Jesuits crowded
in vast numbers, and the pope in 1853 organized a new Catholic
hierarchy in the land, with four bishops and an archbishop at
Utrecht, under the control of the propaganda. The Protestant
population went into great excitement over this. The liberal
ministry of Thorbecke was obliged to resign, but the chambers
at length sanctioned the papal ordinance, only securing the
Protestant population against its misapplication and abuse.--On
the withdrawal of the French in 1814 there were only eight
cloisters remaining; but in 1861 there were thirty-nine for monks
and 137 for nuns, and since then the number has considerably
increased.--The Dutch =Old Catholics= (§ 165, 8), on account
of their protest against the dogma of the Immaculate Conception
(§ 185, 2), enjoined upon the Catholic church by the pope, were
anew excommunicated, and joined the German Old Catholics in
rejecting the decrees of the Vatican Council (§ 190, 1).
§ 200.5. =The Kingdom of Belgium.=--Catholic Belgium obtained
after its separation from Holland a constitution by which
unlimited freedom of religious worship and education, and the
right of confessing opinion and of associating, were guaranteed,
and to the state was allowed no interference with the affairs
of the church beyond the duty of paying the clergy. Also in
Leopold I., 1830-1865, of the house of Saxe-Coburg, it had a king
who though himself a Protestant was faithful to the constitution,
and, according to agreement, had his children trained up in
the Roman Catholic church. The confederacy of radicalism and
ultramontanism, however, was broken by the irreconciliable enmity
and violent conflict in daily life and in the chambers among
clerical and liberal ministers. The ultramontanes founded
at Louvain in 1834 a strictly Catholic university, which was
under the oversight of the bishops and the patronage of the
Virgin; while the liberals promoted the erection of an opposition
university for free science at Brussels. That the Jesuits used
to the utmost for their own ends the liberty granted them by the
constitution by means of missions and the confessional, schools,
cloisters, and brotherhoods of every kind is what might have been
expected. But liberalism also knew how to conduct a propaganda
and to bring the clergy into discredit with the educated classes
by unveiling their intrigues, legacy-hunting, etc., while
these exercised a great influence chiefly upon bigoted females.
The number of cloisters, which on the separation from Holland
amounted only to 280, had risen in 1880 in that small territory
to 1,559, with 24,672 inmates, of whom 20,645 were nuns.
§ 200.6. After the ultramontane party had enjoyed eight years
of almost unchallenged supremacy, the Malou ministry favourable
to it was overthrown in June, 1878, and a liberal government,
under the presidency of Frère-Orban, took its place. Then began
the =Kulturkampf= in Belgium. The charge of public education was
taken from the ministry of the interior, and a special minister
appointed in the person of Van Humbeeck. He began by changing
all girls’ schools under the management of sisters of spiritual
orders into communal schools, and in January, 1879, brought in
a bill for reorganizing elementary education, which completely
secularized the schools; deprived the clergy of all official
influence over them, and relegated religious instruction to the
care of the family and the church, the latter, however, having
the necessary accommodation allowed in the school buildings.
The chambers approved the bill, and the king confirmed it, in
spite of all protests and agitation by the clergy. The clerical
journals put a black border on their issue which published it;
the provincial councils under clerical influence nullified as
far as possible all money bequests for the public schools, and
the bishops assembled in August at Mechlin resolved to found
free schools in all communities, and to refuse absolution to all
parents who entrusted their children to state schools and all
teachers in them, in order thus to cause a complete decay of the
public schools, which indeed happened to this extent that within
a few months 1,167 communal schools had not a single Catholic
scholar. On complaint being made by the government to Leo XIII.,
he expressed through the Brussels nuncio his regret and
disapproval of the proceedings of the bishops; but, on the
other hand, he not only privately praised them on account of
their former zeal in opposing the school law, but also incited
them to continued opposition. When this double dealing of the
curia was discovered, the government in June, 1880, broke off
all diplomatic relations with the Vatican by recalling their
ambassador and giving the nuncio his passports. The ministerial
president publicly in the chamber of deputies characterized
the action of the Holy See as “_fourberie_.” Whereupon the pope
at the next consistory called princes and peoples as witnesses
of this insult. In May, 1882, the results of the inquiry into
clerical incitements against the public was read in the chamber,
where such startling revelations were made as these: Priests
taught the children that they should no longer pray for the king
when he had committed the mortal sin of confirming the school law;
the ministers are worse than murderers and true Herods; a priest
even taught children to pray that God might cause their “liberal”
parents to die, etc. Amid such conflicts the Catholic party
in parliament split into the parties of the _Politici_, who
were willing to submit to the constitution, and that of the
_Intransigenti_, who, under the direction of the bishops and the
university of Louvain, held high above everything the standard
of the syllabus. The latter fought with such passionateness, that
the pope felt obliged in 1881 to enjoin upon the episcopate “that
prudent attitude” which the church in such cases always maintains
in “enduring many evils” which for the time cannot be overcome.
But undeterred, the government continued to restrict the claims
of the clergy, so far as these were not expressly guaranteed by
the constitution.--In June, 1884, as the result of the elections
for the chamber of deputies, the clerical party again were in
power. Malou was once more at the head of a ministry in favour of
the clericals, caused the king to dissolve the senate, and in the
new elections won there also a majority for his party. No sooner
were they in power than the clerical ministry, in conjunction
with the majority in the chambers, proceeded with inconsiderate
haste, amid the most violent, almost daily repeated explosions
from the now intensely embittered liberal and radical section
of the population, which only seemed to increase their zeal,
to employ their absolute power to the utmost in the interest of
clericalism. The restoration of diplomatic relations with the
papal curia in the spirit of absolute acquiescence in its schemes
was the grand aim of the reaction, as well as a new school law
by which the schools were completely given over again to the
clergy and the orders. But when at the next communal elections
a liberal majority was returned, and protests of the new communal
councils poured in against the school law on behalf of the vast
number of state certificated teachers reduced by it to hunger and
destitution, the Malou ministry found itself obliged to resign in
October, 1884. Its place was taken by the moderate ultramontane
Beernaert ministry, which sought indeed to quiet the excitement
by mild measures, but held firmly in all essential points to the
principles of its predecessor.
§ 200.7. An exciting episode in the Belgium _Kulturkampf_ is
presented by the appearance of Bishop =Dumont of Tournay=, who,
previously an enthusiastic admirer of Pius IX. and a vigorous
defender of the infallibility dogma, also a zealous patron of
stigmatization miracles at Bois d’Haine (§ 188, 4), now suddenly
turned round on the school question and refused to obey the papal
injunction. For this he was first suspended, and then in 1880
formally deposed by the pope. He afterwards wrote letters in the
most advanced liberal journals with violent denunciations of the
pope, whom he would not recognise as pope, but only as Bishop of
Rome, and so styled him not Leo, but only Pecci. In these letters
Dumont makes the interesting communication that the virgin Louise
Lateau, favoured of God, has threatened with excommunication the
“intruder” Durousseaux, nominated by the pope as his successor,
because she continues to reverence Dumont as the only legitimate
Bishop of Tournay. The Vatican pronounced him insane, and the
chapter appealed to the civil authorities to have him declared
incapable in the sight of the law, which, however, they refused,
because they could not regard Dumont’s insanity as proved. On
the other hand, Dumont refused to renounce his episcopal office,
and accused Durousseaux of having by night, with the help of a
locksmith, obtained entrance to his episcopal palace, and having
taken forcible possession of a casket lying there, which, besides
the diocesan property to the value of five millions, contained
also about one and a half millions of his own private means.
Pending the issue of the conflict, as to which of the two should
be regarded as the true bishop, the palace was now officially
sealed up. The attempt to arrest the robbed casket had to be
abandoned, because meanwhile the canon Bernard, as keeper of the
treasures of the diocese, had fled with its contents to America.
He was, however, on legal warrant imprisoned in Havanna and
brought back to Belgium in 1882. In April, 1884, the dispute
of the bishops was definitively closed by the judgment of
the supreme tribunal, according to which Dumont, having been
legitimately deposed, has no more claim to the title and revenues
of his earlier office; and in 1886 the supreme court of appeal
at Brussels condemned Bernard “on account of serious breach of
trust” to three years’ imprisonment.
§ 200.8. =The Protestant Church= was represented in Belgium
only by small congregations in the chief cities and some Reformed
Walloon village congregations. But for several decades, by the
zealous exertions of the Evangelical Society at Brussels with
thirty-four pastors and evangelists, the work of evangelization
not only among Catholic Walloons, but also among the Flemish
population, has made considerable progress, notwithstanding all
agitation and incitement of the people by the Catholic clergy,
so that several new evangelical congregations, consisting mostly
of converts, have been formed. In two small places indeed the
whole communities, roused by episcopal arbitrariness, have gone
over.--The pastor Byse employed by the Evangelical Society at
Brussels has taken up the idea that all men by the fall have
lost their immortality, and that it could be restored again by
faith in Christ, while all the unreconciled are given over to
annihilation, the second death of Revelation ii. 11, xx. 15. So
long as he maintained this theory merely as a private opinion
the society took no offence at it, but when he began to proclaim
it in his preaching and in his instruction of the young, and
declined to yield to all advice on the matter, the synod of 1882
resolved upon his dismissal. But a great part of his congregation
still remain faithful to him.
§ 201. THE SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES.
Notwithstanding the common Scandinavian-national and
Lutheran-ecclesiastical basis on which the civil and religious life is
developed, it assumed in the three Scandinavian countries a completely
diversified course. While in Denmark the civil life bore manifold traces
of democratic tendencies and thereby the relations between church and
state were loosened, Sweden, with a tenacity almost unparalleled in
Protestant countries, has for a long period held fast in exclusive
attachment to the idea of a state church. On the other hand Denmark
was far more open to influences from without hostile to the church,
on the one side those of rationalism, on the other, those of the
anti-ecclesiastical sects, especially of the Baptists and Mormons, than
Sweden, which in its certainly barren, if not altogether dead orthodoxy
till after the middle of the century was almost hermetically sealed
against all heterogeneous influences, but yet could not altogether
over-master the pietistically or methodistically coloured movements
of religious yearning that arose among her own people. Norway, again,
although politically united with Sweden, has, both in national character
and in religious development, shown its more intimate relationship with
Denmark.
§ 201.1. =Denmark.=--From the close of last century rationalism
has had a home in Denmark. In 1825 Professor Clausen, a moderate
adherent of the neological school, published a learned work on
the opposition of “Catholicism and Protestantism,” identifying
the latter with rationalism. First of all in that same year
Pastor =Grundtvig= (died 1872), “a man of poetic genius, and
skilled in the ancient history of the land,” inspired with
equal enthusiasm for the old Lutheranism of his fathers and for
patriotic Danism, entered the lists and replied with powerful
eloquence, lamenting the decay of Christianity and the church.
He was condemned by the court of justice as injurious, after he
had during the process resigned his pastoral office. A like fate
befell the orientalist Lindberg, who charged Clausen with the
breach of his ordination vow. The adherents of Grundtvig met
for mutual edification in conventicles, until at last in 1832
he obtained permission again to hold public services. Not less
influential was the work of Sören =Kierkegaard= (died 1855), who,
largely in sympathy with Grundtvig, without ecclesiastical office,
in his writings earnestly pled for a living subjective piety
and unweariedly maintained an uncompromising struggle against
the official Christianity of the secularized clergy. The wild,
unmeasured Danomania of 1848-1849, during the military conflict
with Germany, drew opponents together and made them friends.
Grundtvig declaimed against everything German, and of the two
factors, which he had formerly regarded as the pivots on which
universal history turned, Danism and Lutheranism, he now let
go Lutheranism as of German origin. He therefore proposed the
abrogation of the distinctive German-Lutheran confessions, placed
the Apostles’ Creed before and above the Bible and, pressing
in a one-sided manner the doctrine of baptismal grace, demanded
a “joyous Christianity,” denied the necessity of continued
preaching and exercise of repentance, and wished especially to
introduce into the schools the Norse mythology as introductory
to the study of Christianity. His adherents wrought with the
anti-church party for the abolition of the union of church
and state. The Danish constitutional law of 1849 abolished
the confessional churches of the state church, and Catholics,
Reformed, Moravians, and Jews were granted equal civil rights
with the Lutherans. Since then the Catholic church has made slow
but steady progress in the country, and the increasing Baptist
movement was also favoured by a law of the Volkthing of 1857,
which abolished compulsory baptism, and only required the
enrolment of all children in the church books of their respective
districts within the period of one year. Civil marriage had also
been granted to dissenters in 1851, and in 1868 the peculiar
institution of “electing communities” was founded, by means of
which twenty families from one or more parishes which declare
themselves dissatisfied with the pastors appointed them,
may, without leaving the national church, form an independent
congregation under pastors chosen by themselves and maintained
at their own cost. The =Schleswig-Holstein= revolution in
1848, occasioned enormous confusion and disturbance in the
ecclesiastical conditions of the district. Over a hundred German
pastors were expelled and forty-six Schleswig parishes deprived
of the use of the German language in church and school. In 1864
both provinces were at last by the Austrian and Prussian alliance
rent from the Danish government, and in consequence of the German
war of 1866 were incorporated with Prussia.
§ 201.2. =Sweden.=--In Sweden there was formed in 1803, in
opposition to the barren orthodoxy of the state church, a
religious association which, if not altogether free of pietistic
narrowness, was yet without any heretical doctrinal tendency,
and exercised a quiet and wholesome influence. From the diligent
_reading_ of Scripture and the works of Luther that prevailed
among its members it obtained the name of _Läsare_. The state
proceeded against its members with fines and imprisonment,
according to the old conventicle law of 1726, and the mob treated
them with insults and violence. But in 1842 a fanatical tendency
began to show itself under the leadership of a peasant, Erich
Jansen, who induced many “_Readers_” to quit the church and to
cast into the fire even Luther’s Postils and Catechism as quite
superfluous alongside of Holy Scripture. They mostly emigrated
to America in 1846. The law of the land since 1686 threatened
every Swede who seceded from the Lutheran state church with
imprisonment and exile, loss of civil privileges and the right
of inheritance. As might therefore be supposed the French Marshal
Bernadotte, who in 1818, under the name of Charles XIV., ascended
the throne of Sweden, had been previously in 1810 obliged to
repudiate the Catholic confession. Even in 1857 the Reichstag
rejected a royal proposal to set aside the Secession as well
as the Conventicle Act. But in the very next year, the holding
of conventicles under clerical supervision, and in 1860, the
secession to other ecclesiastical denominations, were allowed by
law. The constitution of 1865 still indeed made adherence to the
Lutheran confession a condition of qualification for a seat in
either of the chambers. The Reichstag of 1870 at last sanctioned
the admission of all Christian dissenters and also of Jews to all
offices of state as well as to the membership of the Reichstag.
On behalf of dissenters, especially of the numerous Baptists
and Methodists, the right of civil marriage was granted in
1879. In 1877, Waldenström, head-master of the Latin school
at Gefle, without ecclesiastical ordination, began zealously
and successfully by speech and writings (to secure the widest
possible circulation of which a joint stock company with large
capital was formed) to work for the revival of the Christian life
in the Lutheran national church. He vigorously contended against
the church doctrine of atonement and justification, repudiating
the idea of vicarious penal suffering, and broke through all
church order by allowing the sacrament of the Lord’s supper to
be dispensed by laymen. He thus put himself, with his numerous
following, directed by lay preachers in their own prayer meetings
and mission halls, into direct opposition to the church, but by
the wise forbearance of the ecclesiastical authorities he has not
yet been formally ejected.[555]
§ 201.3. =Norway.=--In Norway, toward the end of last century,
rationalism was dominant in almost all the pulpits, and only a
few remnants of Moravian revivalism raised a voice against it.
But in 1796, a simple unlearned peasant =Hans Nielsen Hauge=,
then in his twenty-fifth year, made his appearance as a revival
preacher, creating a mighty spiritual movement that spread among
the masses throughout the whole land. He had obtained his own
religious knowledge from the study of old Lutheran practical
theology, and arising at a period of extraordinary spiritual
excitement, “his call,” as Hase says, “to be a prophet was
like that of the herdsman of Tekoa.” From 1799 he continued
itinerating for five years, persecuted, reproached, and
calumniated by the rationalistic clergy, ten times cast into
prison, under a law of 1741, which forbad laymen to preach, and
then set free, until he had gone over all Norway even to its
farthest and remotest corners, preaching unweariedly everywhere
in houses and in the open air often three or four times a
day, and nourishing besides the flame which he had kindled by
voluminous writings and an extensive correspondence. He directed
his preaching not only against the rationalism of the state
clergy, but also against the antinomian religion of feeling, of
“Blood and Wounds” theology introduced in earlier days by the
Moravians, with a one-sided emphasis and exaggeration indeed, but
still in all essentials maintaining the basis and keeping within
the lines of Lutheran orthodoxy. In 1804 he was charged with
tendencies dangerous to church and state, obtaining money from
peasants on false pretences, inciting the people against the
clergy, etc., and again cast into prison. The trial this time was
carried on for ten years, until at last in 1814 the supreme court
sentenced him on account of his invectives against the clergy to
pay a fine, but pronounced him not guilty on the other charges.
Broken down in spirit and body by his long imprisonment, he could
not think of engaging again in his former work. He died in 1824.
Numerous peasant preachers, however, issuing from his school
were ready to go forth in his footsteps, and till this day the
salutary effects of his and their activity are seen in wide
circles. The law of 1741 which had been made to tell against them
was at last abrogated by the Storthing in 1842. In 1845 the right
of forming Christian sects was recognised, and in 1851 even the
Jews were allowed the right of settlement previously refused them,
and the security of all civil privileges. Since that time even
in Norway the Catholic church has made considerable progress;
in June, 1878, it had eleven churches and fourteen priests.
§ 202. GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.
During the course of the century a breach from without was made upon
the stronghold of the Anglican established church and its legal standing
throughout the United Kingdom. The strong coherence of the Anglican
episcopal church had already been weakened internally by the rise within
its own bosom of High, Low, and Broad tendencies. The advance of the
first-named party to tractarianism and ritualism opened the door to
Romish sympathies, while in the last-named school German rationalism and
criticism found favour, and the low church party was not ashamed to go
hand-in-hand with the evangelical pietistic and methodistic tendencies
of the dissenters. There followed numerous conversions to Rome,
especially from the aristocratic ranks of the upper ten thousand. The
Emancipation Act of 1829 opened the door to both Houses of Parliament to
the Catholics, and in 1858 the same privileges were extended to the Jews.
Also the bulwarks which the state church had in the old universities
of Oxford and Cambridge were undermined, and in 1871 were completely
overthrown by the legal abolition of all confessional tests. Down to
1869 the hierarchy of the episcopal state church, though clearly alien
to the country, maintained its legal position in Catholic Ireland, till
at last the Irish Church Bill brought it there to an end. Repeatedly
have bills been introduced in the House of Commons, though hitherto
without success, by members of the incessantly agitating Liberation
Society, to disestablish the churches of England, Scotland, and
Wales.[556]
§ 202.1. =The Episcopal State Church.=--The two opposing parties
of the state church corresponded to the two political parties
of Tories and Whigs. The _high church party_, which has its most
powerful representatives in the aristocracy, holds aloof from
the dissenters, seeks to maintain the closest connexion between
church and state, and eagerly contends for the retention of all
old ecclesiastical forms and ordinances in constitution, worship,
and doctrine. On the other hand the _evangelical or low church
party_, which is more or less methodistically inclined, holds
free intercourse with dissenters, associating with them in
home and foreign mission work, etc., and with various shades
of differences advocates the claims of progress against those
of immobility, the independence of the church against its
identification with the state, the evangelical freedom and
general priesthood of believers against orthodoxy and hierarchism.
From their midst arose a movement in 1871, occasioned by the
Oxford “Essays and Reviews” and the works of Bishop Colenso,
which resulted in the publication, under the authority of
the bishops, of the “Speaker’s Commentary,” so-called because
suggested by Denison, who had long been speaker of the House
of Commons. It is a learned, thoroughly conservative commentary
on the whole Bible by the ablest theologians of England. On the
revision of the English translation of the Bible see § 181, 4.
Besides these two parties, however, there has arisen a third,
the broad church party. It originated with the distinguished
poet and philosopher, Coleridge (died 1834), and includes many of
the most excellent and scholarly of the clergy, especially those
most eminent for their acquaintance with German theology and
philosophy. They do not form an organized ecclesiastical party
like the evangelicals and high church men, but endeavour not
only to overcome the narrowness and severity of the former, but
also to secure a broader basis and a wider horizon for theology
as well as for the church.[557]--The struggle for the legalizing
of marriage with a deceased wife’s sister has been energetically
pressed since 1850, but though the House of Commons has
repeatedly passed the bill, it has been hitherto by small
majorities, under the influence of the bishops, rejected by
the House of Lords.--A non-official =Pan-Anglican Council=
of English bishops from all parts of the world, excluding
the laity and inferior clergy, with pre-eminently anti-Romish
and anti-ritualistic tendencies, was held in London in 1867
(cf. § 175, 5). When it met the second time in 1878, it was
attended by nearly one hundred bishops, one of them a negro. Of
the three weeks’ debates and their results, however, no detailed
account has been published.
§ 202.2. =The Tractarians and Ritualists.=--The activity of
the dissenters and the episcopal evangelical party’s attachment
to them stirred up the adherents of the high church party to
vigorous guarding of their interests, and drove them into a
one-sided exaggerated accentuation of the Catholic element. The
centre of this movement since 1833 was the university of Oxford.
Its leaders were Professors Pusey and Newman, its literary organ
the _Tracts for the Times_, from which the party received the
name of =Tractarians=. This was a series of ninety treatises,
published 1833-1841, on the basis of Anglo-Catholicism, which
sought, while holding by the Thirty-nine Articles, to affirm
with equal decidedness the genuine Protestantism over against
the Roman papacy, and, in the importance which it attached to
the apostolical succession of the episcopate and priesthood
and the apostolical tradition for the interpretation of
Scripture, the genuine Catholicism over against every form
of ultra-Protestantism. In this way, too, their dogmatics in
all the several doctrines, as far as the Thirty-nine Articles
would by any means allow, was approximated to the Roman Catholic
doctrine, and indeed by-and-by passed over entirely to that type
of doctrine. Newman’s Tract 90 caused most offence, in which,
with thoroughly jesuitical sophistry, it was argued that the
Thirty-nine Articles were capable of an explanation on the basis
of which they might be subscribed even by one who occupied in
regard to the church doctrine and practice an essentially Roman
Catholic standpoint. The university authorities now felt obliged
to declare publicly that the tracts were by no means sanctioned
by them, and that especially the application of the principles of
Tract 90 to the conduct of students in the matter of subscription
of the Thirty-nine Articles is not allowable. Bishop Bagot of
Oxford, hitherto favourable to the tractarians, refused to permit
the continued issue of the tracts. The other bishops also for
the most part spoke against them in their pastorals, and a flood
of controversial pamphlets roused the wrath of the non-Catholic
populace. But on the other hand tractarianism still found favour
among the higher clergy and the aristocracy. In 1845 Newman went
over to the Catholic church, and has since led a retired life
devoted to theological study. Pius IX. paid him no attention,
but in 1879 Leo XIII. acknowledged and rewarded his services to
the Catholic church by elevating him to the rank of cardinal.
The majority of the tractarians disapproved of Newman’s step and
remained in the Anglican church. Thus acted Pusey (died 1882),
the recognised leader of the party, after whom they were now
called =Puseyites=. Many, however, followed Newman’s example,
so that by the end of 1846 no less than one hundred and fifty
clergymen and prominent laymen were received into the widely
opened door of the Catholic church.[558]--The following twelve
years, 1846-1858, were occupied by two dogmatico-ecclesiastical
conflicts vitally affecting the interests of the tractarians.
1. =The Gorham Case.= The Thirty-nine Articles took essentially
Lutheran ground in treating of baptism, recognising it
as a vehicle of regeneration and divine sonship, and the
tractarians laid uncommonly great stress upon this article.
So also the Bishop of Exeter, Dr. Philpotts, refused to
institute the Rev. Cornelius Gorham because of his views on
this subject. Gorham accused him before the Archbishop of
Canterbury, but the Court of Arches decided in favour of the
bishop. The Court of Appeal, however, the judicial committee
of the Privy Council, annulled the episcopal judgment, and
ordered that Gorham should be installed in his office. In
vain did Philpotts, by a protest before the Court of Queen’s
Bench, and then before the Court of Common Pleas, against
the jurisdiction of the Privy Council in this case, in
vain, too, did Blomfield, Bishop of London, insist upon the
revival of Convocation, which for one and a half centuries
had been inoperative as a spiritual parliament with upper
and lower houses, and in vain did a tractarian assembly of
more than 1,500 distinguished clergymen and laymen lodge
a solemn protest. The judgment of the Privy Council stood,
and Gorham was inducted to his office in 1850. Many of
the protesters now went over to the Catholic church, and
about 600 others, like the Puritan Pilgrim Fathers 230
years before (§ 143, 4), under ecclesiastical oppression,
emigrated to New Zealand.
2. =The Denison Eucharist Case.=--The Puseyite Archdeacon
Denison of Taunton, in the diocese of Bath and Wells, had
in 1851 in open defiance of the Thirty-nine Articles, which
represent Calvin’s views of the Lord’s Supper, affirmed in
preaching and writing that unbelievers as well as believers
eat and drink the body and blood of the Lord. Over this
he was involved in a sharp discussion with a neighbouring
clergyman called Ditcher. In 1854 Ditcher accused Denison
before his bishop, who, after vain efforts to reconcile
the parties, referred the matter to the Court of Arches,
which sought, but in vain, to end the strife by compromise.
Ditcher now in 1856 brought his complaint before the
_Queen’s Bench_, which obliged the archbishop to take up the
matter again. A commission appointed by him declared that
the complaint was quite justifiable, and threatened Denison,
when he refused any sort of retraction, with deposition.
But the Court of Appeal in 1858 stayed the judgment on
the ground of a technical error in procedure, and Denison
remained in office.
§ 202.3. From the middle of 1850 the tractarians, who had
hitherto confined themselves to the development of the Romanizing
system of doctrine, began to apply its consequences to the church
ritual and the Christian life, and so won for themselves the name
of =Ritualists=, which has driven out their earlier designation.
Wherever possible they showed their Catholic zeal by introducing
images, crucifixes, candles, holy water, mass dresses, mass
bells, and boy choristers, urged the restoration of the seven
sacraments, especially of extreme unction, auricular confession,
the sacrificial theory and Corpus Christi day, of prayers for
the dead and masses for souls, invocation of saints and the
blessed Virgin; they also praised celibacy and monasticism,
etc. Ritualism has from the first shown singular skill in party
organization. The _English Church Union_, founded in 1860, has
now nearly 200,000 members, of these about 3,000 clergymen and
50 bishops, and it embraces 300 branches over the whole domain
of the Anglican church. Numerous brotherhoods and sisterhoods,
guilds and orders, organized after the style of Roman Catholic
monasticism, promote the interests of ritualism, and zealously
prosecute home and foreign mission work. The _Confraternity
of the Blessed Sacrament_ originated in 1862, was able in 1882
to celebrate Corpus Christi day in 250 churches along with the
Romish church, dispensing only with the procession. The _Society
of the Holy Cross_, founded in 1873 consists only of priests,
and forms a kind of directory for all branches of the ritualistic
propaganda. The _English Order of St. Augustine_ has a threefold
division, into spiritual brothers who are preparing for priests’
orders, lay brothers who are being qualified as lay preachers,
both under the strictest vows, and a sort of tertiaries, who are
free from vows. Among the sisterhoods which already supply nurses
to all the great hospitals of the capital, the most important is
that called “by the name of Jesus.” They take, like the Beguines
of the middle ages, the three vows, but not as binding for life.
By the ultra high church party the genuine apostolic succession
of the ordination of the first Protestant archbishop, Matthew
Parker, and so the genuineness of all subsequent ordinations
going back to him, were doubted; three Anglican bishops are
said to have had episcopal consecration anew conferred on them
by a Greek Catholic bishop. The reckless and wilful procedure
of the ritualists in imitating the Roman Catholic ritual in
public worship called forth frequent violent disturbances at
their services, and noisy crowds flocked to their churches.
Most frequent and violent were the riots in 1859 and 1860 in the
parish of St. George’s, London, where scarcely any service was
held without disgraceful scenes of hissing, whistling, stamping,
and cries of “No popery.” The offscouring of all London flocked
to the Sunday services as to a public entertainment. Instead of
hymns, street songs were sung, instead of responses blasphemous
cries were shouted forth, while cushions and prayer-books
were hurled at the altar decorations, etc. These unseemly
proceedings were caused by the ritualistic rector, Bryan King,
who had introduced the objectionable ceremonial, and obstinately
continued it in spite of the decided opposition and protests
of his colleague, Mr. Allen. King’s removal in 1860 first
put an end to these disturbances, which police interference
proved utterly unable to check. The ritualistic _Church Union_,
called into existence by these proceedings, was opposed by an
anti-ritualistic _Church Association_, and from both multitudes
of complaints and appeals were brought before the ecclesiastical
and civil tribunals. The first case they brought up was that of
Rev. A. H. MacConochie, of Holborn, who, having been admonished
by the ecclesiastical courts on account of his ritualistic
practices in 1867, appealed to the Privy Council. And although
this court decided in 1869 that all ceremonies not authorized
by the prayer-book are to be regarded as forbidden, he and
his followers continued to act on the principle that whatever
is not there expressly prohibited ought to be permitted. The
_Public Worship Regulation Bill_, introduced by Archbishop Tait,
and passed by Parliament, which legislatively determined the
procedure in ritualistic cases, did not prevent the constant
advance of this movement. The _Court of Arches_ now issued a
suspension against the accused, and condemned them to prison
when they continued to officiate, until they declared themselves
ready to obey or to demit their office. Tooth of Hatcham, Dale of
London, Enraght of Bordesdale, and Green of Miles Platting were
actually sent to prison in 1880. But the first three were soon
liberated by the Court of Appeal finding some technical flaw
in the proceedings against them, while Green, in whose case no
such flaw appeared, lay in confinement for twenty months. The
ritualists still persistently continued their practice, and their
opponents renewed their prosecutions; these were followed by
appeals to the higher courts, presenting of petitions to both the
Houses of Parliament, addresses with vast numbers of signatures
for and against to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to Convocation
which had meanwhile been restored, to the Cabinet, to the
Queen, etc. The result was that many cases were abandoned, some
obnoxious parties transferred elsewhere, and a very few deposed.
§ 202.4. =Liberalism in the Episcopal Church.=--The more liberal
tendency of the broad church party had also many supporters who
scrupled not to pass beyond the traditional bounds of English
orthodoxy. In opposition to the orthodoxy zealousy inculcated
at Oxford, rationalism found favour at the rival university of
Cambridge, and vigorous support was given to the views of the
Tübingen school of Baur in the London _Westminster Review_. And
even in high church Oxford, there were not wanting teachers in
sympathy with the critical and speculative rationalism of Germany.
Great excitement was caused in 1860 by the “_Essays and Reviews_,”
which in seven treatises by so many Oxford professors contested
the traditional apologetics and hermeneutics of English theology,
and set a sublimated rationalism in its place. In Germany these
not very important treatises would probably have excited little
remark, but in the English church they roused an unparalleled
disturbance; more than nine thousand clergymen of the episcopal
church protested against the book, and all the bishops
unanimously condemned it. The excitement had not yet subsided
when from South Africa oil was poured upon the flames. Bishop
Colenso of Natal (died 1883), who had zealously carried on the
mission there, but had openly expressed the conviction that
it is unwise, unscriptural, and unchristian to make repudiation
by Caffres living in polygamy, of all their wives but one, a
condition of baptism, had occasioned still greater offence by
publishing in 1863 in seven vols. a prolix critical disquisition
on the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua, in which he contested
the authenticity and unconditional credibility of these books
by arguments familiar long ago but now quite antiquated and
overthrown in Germany. During a journey to England undertaken for
his defence he was excommunicated and deposed by a synod of the
South African bishops in Capetown. The Privy Council, as supreme
ecclesiastical court in England, cleared him, as well as the
authors of the Essays, from the charge of heresy. An important
aid for the dissemination of liberal religious views is afforded
by the Hibbert Lectureship. Robert Hibbert (died 1849), a wealthy
private gentleman in London, assigned the yearly interest of
a considerable sum for “the spreading of Christianity in its
simplest form as well as the furthering of the unfettered
exercise of the individual judgment in matters of religion.”
The Hibbert trustees are eighteen laymen who dispense the
revenues in supplementing the salaries of poorly paid clergymen
of liberal views, in providing bursaries for theological students
at home and abroad, and in other such like ways, but since 1878
especially, by advice of distinguished scholars, in the endowment
of annual courses of lectures, afterwards published, on subjects
in the domain of philosophy, biblical criticism, the comparative
science of religion and the history of religion. The first
Hibbert Lecturer was the celebrated Oxford professor, Max Müller,
in 1878. Among other lecturers may be named Renan of Paris in
1880; Kuenen of Leyden in 1882; Pfleiderer of Berlin, in 1885.
The battle waged with great passionateness on both sides since
1869 for and against the removal of the Athanasian Creed, or at
least its anathemas, from the liturgy has not yet been brought
to any decided result.
§ 202.5. =Protestant Dissenters in England.=--Down nearly to the
end of the eighteenth century all the enactments and restrictions
of the Toleration Act of 1689 (§ 155, 3) continued in full force.
But in 1779 the obligation of Protestant dissenters to subscribe
the Thirty-nine Articles was abolished, and the acknowledgment
of the Bible as God’s revealed word substituted. The right of
founding schools of their own, hitherto denied them, was granted
in 1798. In 1813 the Socinians were also included among the
dissenters who should enjoy these privileges. After a severe
struggle the _Corporation and Test Acts_ were set aside in 1826,
affording all dissenters entrance to Parliament and to all civil
offices. The necessity of being married and having their children
baptized in an episcopal church was removed by the Marriage and
Registration Act of 1836 and 1837, and divorce suits were removed
from the ecclesiastical to a civil tribunal in 1857. In 1868
compulsory church rates for the episcopal parish church were
abolished. Lord Russell’s University Bill of 1854, by restricting
subscription of the Thirty-nine Articles to the theological
students, opened the universities of Oxford and Cambridge
to dissenters, while the University Tests Bill of 1871 made
the adherents of all religious confessions eligible for all
university honours and emoluments at both seminaries. Thus
one restriction after another was removed, so that at last the
episcopal church has nothing of her exclusive privileges left
beyond the rank and title of a state church, and the undiminished
possession of all her ancient property, from which her prelates
draw princely revenues.
§ 202.6. =Scotch Marriages in England.=--The saints of the
English Revolution had indeed resolved in 1653 to introduce
civil marriage (§ 162, 1). But the reaction under Cromwell set
this unpopular law aside, and the Restoration made marriage by
an Anglican clergyman, even for dissenters, an indispensable
condition of legal recognition. But in no country, especially
among the higher orders, were private marriages, without the
knowledge and consent of the family, so frequent as here,
and clergymen were always to be found unscrupulous enough to
celebrate such weddings in taverns or other convenient places.
When an end had been put to such irregularities on English soil
by an Act of Parliament of 1753, lovers seeking secret marriage
betook themselves to Scotland. In that country there prevailed,
and still prevails, the theory that a declaration of willingness
on both sides constitutes a perfectly valid marriage. The
Scottish ecclesiastical law indeed requires church proclamation
and ceremony, but failure to observe this requirement is
followed only by a small pecuniary fine. Fugitive English couples
generally made the necessary declaration before a blacksmith
at Gretna-Green, who was also justice of the peace in this
small border village, and were then legitimately married people
according to Scottish law. Only in 1856 were all marriages
performed in this manner without previous residence in Scotland
pronounced by Act of Parliament invalid.
§ 202.7. =The Scottish State Church.=--The Presbyterian Church of
Scotland, from the beginning strictly Calvinistic in constitution,
doctrine and practice, has, generally speaking, preserved
this character. Only in recent times has the endeavour of the
so-called _Moderates_ to introduce a milder type of doctrine won
favour. The Established Church, as a national church properly
so-called and recognised by law, dates from the political union of
England and Scotland in the kingdom of Great Britain in 1707, and
the Anglican Episcopal Church there was then reduced to a feebly
represented dissenting denomination. Patronage, set aside indeed
in the Reformation age, but restored under Queen Anne in 1712,
and since then, in spite of all opposition from the stricter
party, continued, because often misused to secure the intrusion
of inacceptable ministers upon congregations, gave occasion
to repeated secessions. Thus the _Secession Church_ broke off
in 1732, and the _Relief Church_ in 1752, the latter going
beyond the former’s protest against patronage by unconditional
repudiation of Erastianism, _i.e._ the theory of the necessary
connection of Church and State (§ 144, 1), and the assertion
of the spiritual independence of the church, and expressed
firmly the principles of Voluntaryism, _i.e._ the payment of all
ecclesiastical officers, etc., by voluntary contributions. Both
parties united in 1847 in the _United Presbyterian Church_, which
now embraces one-fifth of the population.--Twice that number
joined the secession of the Free Church in 1843. The General
Assembly of the Church of Scotland granted to congregations in
1834 the right of vetoing presentations to vacancies. The civil
courts, however, upheld the absolute right of patrons, and at
the Assembly of 1843 about two hundred of the most distinguished
ministers, with the great Dr. Chalmers (died 1847) at their head,
left the state church, and, as _Non-Intrusionists_, founded
the _Free Church of Scotland_, which at its own cost formed new
parishes and distinguished itself by Christian zeal in every
direction. It differs from the _United Presbyterian Church_ in
restricting its opposition to the abuse of patronage, without
repudiating right off every sort of state aid and endowment as
unevangelical. But even to it the law passed in 1846, granting
to all congregations the right of veto, seemed now no longer
a sufficient motive to return to the state church. Even when
in 1874, parliament, at the call of the government, formally
abolished the rights of patronage through all Scotland and gave
to the congregations the right of choosing their own ministers,
the General Assembly of the Free Church by a great majority
refused to reunite with the state church brought so near
it, because it conceded to the civil courts unwarrantable
interference with its internal affairs, especially the right
of suspending its clergy.[559]
§ 202.8. =Scottish Heresy Cases.=--The Glasgow presbytery
lodged before the United Presbyterian Synod in Edinburgh of
1878 a charge against the Rev. Fergus Ferguson of heresy,
because his teaching was in conflict with the church doctrine
of the atonement in saying that sinners, apart from Christ’s
intervention, would not suffer eternal punishment but extinction,
and that the same fate still lay before unbelievers and the
impenitent. After five days’ violent discussion, the majority of
the synod, while strongly dissenting from his views and urging
him to avoid it in his preaching and catechising, resolved
to retain him in office as having proved his adherence to the
orthodox doctrine of the atonement. But when, at next year’s
synod, the Rev. D. Macrae of Gourock asserted that, in spite of
the Westminster Confession, it was allowable for ministers to
deny the eternity of punishment, and would not promise to preach
otherwise, he was unanimously deposed.--Far more exciting and
long continued were the proceedings begun in the Free Church
in 1876, against Professor Robertson Smith of Aberdeen, who was
charged before his presbytery with offensive statements about
angels, but especially with contradicting the inspiration of
Scripture by contesting the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy.
After various proposals of deposition, suspension, rebuke,
acquittal, had been made, the General Assembly of 1880, after
much deliberation and discussion, by a majority found the charge
of heterodoxy not proven, but earnestly exhorted the accused
to greater circumspection and moderation, and the decision was
greeted with thundering applause from the students and waving of
handkerchiefs from the ladies present. But when, very soon after
this acquittal, several other contributions by him appeared
in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, on the Hebrew Language and
Literature, and Haggai, in the spirit of the Wellhausen criticism
(§ 182, 18), as also an article on Animal Worship among the
Arabians and in the Old Testament, in the _Journal of Philology_,
the _Commission_ sitting in Edinburgh reinstituted proceedings
against him. In October, 1880, Smith vindicated before that court
his scientific attitude toward the Old Testament, maintaining
that a moderate criticism of the biblical books was reconcilable
with the maintenance of their inspired authority. The majority of
the Commission, however, voted for his expulsion from his chair.
Smith protested both against the competence and against the
judgment of the Commission, but declared himself ready to submit
to the judgment of the General Assembly. Meanwhile he accepted
an invitation from Glasgow to deliver public lectures there on
the Old Testament, which were received with extraordinary favour.
This course was published under the title: “_The Old Testament
in the Jewish Church_.” The General Assembly of May, 1881, now
decided by a large majority to remove him from his academical
chair, with retention of his license and his professor’s
salary, which latter, however, Smith declined. But his numerous
sympathizers presented him with a scientific library worth
£3,000, and promised an annual stipend equal to his former salary.
In 1883 he received the appointment as Professor of Arabic in
Cambridge and the large revenues of that office allowed him to
decline the offer of his friends.[560]
§ 202.9. =The Catholic Church in Ireland.=--The Catholic
inhabitants of Ireland under Protestant proprietors, and forced
to pay tithes for the support of the Protestant clergy, were
always deprived of civil rights. In 1809 O’Connell (died 1847),
an agitator of great popular eloquence, placed himself at the
head of the oppressed people, in order in a constitutional way
to secure religious and political freedom and equality. At last,
in 1829, the Emancipation Bill, supported by Peel and Wellington,
was passed, which on the basis of the formal declaration of the
whole Catholic episcopate that papal infallibility and papal
sovereignty in civil matters was not part of the Catholic faith
nor could be joined therewith either in Ireland or anywhere else
in the Catholic world, gave to Catholics admission to parliament
and to all civil and military appointments. But the hated tithes
remained, and were enforced, when refused, by military force.
After long debates in both houses of parliament, the Tithes Bill
was adopted in 1838, which transferred the tithe as a land-tax
from tenants to proprietors, which, however, was only a
postponing of the question. It was thus regarded by O’Connell. He
declared that justice for Ireland could only be got by abolishing
the legislative union with Great Britain existing since 1800,
and restoring her independent parliament. For this purpose
he organized the Repeal Association. In 1840 another no less
powerful popular agitator arose in the person of the Irish
Capuchin, Father Mathew, the apostle of temperance, who with
unparalleled success persuaded thousands of those degraded by
drink to take vows of abstinence from spirituous liquors. He
kept apart from all political agitation, but the fruits of his
exertions were all in its favour. O’Connell in 1843 organized
monster meetings, attended by hundreds of thousands. The
government had him tried, the jury found him guilty, but the
House of Lords quashed the conviction and liberated him from
prison in 1844. The Peel ministry now sought to soothe the
excitement by passing in 1845 the Legacy Act, which allowed
Catholics to hold property in their own names, and the Maynooth
Bill, by which the theological seminary at Maynooth received a
rich endowment from the State. Continued famine, and consequent
emigration of several hundreds of thousands to America and
Australia, relieved Ireland of a considerable portion of its
Catholic population, while Protestant missions by Bible and
tract circulation and by schools had some success in evangelizing
those who remained. On November 5th, 1855, the anniversary of
the Gunpowder Plot, the Redemptorists at Kingstown, near Dublin,
erected and burnt a great bonfire in the public streets of Bibles
which they had seized, and the primate archbishop of Ireland
justified it by reference to the example of the believers at
Ephesus (Acts xix. 19).
§ 202.10. The Fenian movement, originating among the American
Irish, which since 1863 created such terror among the English,
was the result of political rather than religious agitation.
Although this movement failed in its proper end, namely the
complete separation of Ireland from England, it yet forced
upon the government the conviction of the absolute necessity of
meeting the just demands of the Irish by thorough-going reforms
and putting an end to the oppressions which the native farmers
suffered at the hands of foreign landowners, and the grievances
endured by the Catholic church by the maintenance of the Anglican
church established in Ireland. The carrying out of these reforms
was the service rendered by the Gladstone ministry. By the Irish
Land Bill of 1870 the land question was solved according to
the demands of justice, and by the Irish Church Bill of 1869,
which deprived the Anglican church in Ireland of the character
of a state church and put it on the same footing as other
denominations, the church question was similarly settled. The
dignitaries of the Anglican church thus lost their position as
state officials and their seats in the House of Lords. The rich
property of the hitherto established church was calculated and
applied partly to compensating for losses caused by this reform,
partly to creating benevolent institutions for the general
good. But neither the Church Bill, nor the Land Bill, nor the
Universities Bill, which in 1880 founded by state aid a Catholic
university in Dublin, secured the reconciliation of the Irish.
“Eternal hatred of England” was and is the battle cry; “Ireland
for the Irish, and only for them,” is their watchword. In order
to carry out this scheme an Irish “National League” was formed,
and innumerable secret “Moonlighters,” under the supposed
leadership of “Captain Moonshine,” committed atrocities by
burning farm steadings and mutilating cattle, murdering and
massacring by dagger and revolver, petroleum and dynamite, and
directed their operations against the representatives of the
government, against proprietors who sought rent, against tenants
who paid rent, against officials who endeavoured to enforce it,
and against everything that was, or was called, English. In order
to cut at the root of this lawlessness, which by proclamation
of a state of siege was only restricted, not overthrown, the
government of 1881 passed further agrarian reforms: All tenant
rights were to be purchased by the surplus of the fund formed by
the disestablishment of the Irish church, and where this did not
suffice, by state grants, and the right to conclude contracts
for rent and to determine its amount was transferred from the
proprietors to a newly-constituted land court, without whose
permission, after the lapse of the fifteen years’ term, no rent
contract could be made. But even this did not stop almost daily
repeated murders and acts of destruction. The government now
sought the aid of the pope through the mediation of a Catholic
member of parliament on a visit to Rome; but these merely
confidential negotiations led to no considerable result. In May,
1883, the curia, on the occasion of a collection promoted by the
National League as a magnificent national present to the great
(Protestant) leader of the agitation, Mr. Parnell, in a circular
letter, forbad “_proprio motu_,” the bishops in the strictest
manner taking any part in the movement, and urged them to
dissuade their members from doing so. But only Archbishop McCabe
of Dublin (died 1885), from the first an opponent of the League,
issued a pastoral against it to be read in all the pulpits of his
diocese. The other bishops ignored the papal command, and among
the Catholic people the opinion obtained that they owed to the
pope obedience in spiritual but not in political matters. The
collections for the Parnell fund were continued with redoubled
zeal. The attempts of dynamitards, supplied with materials by
their American compatriots, and other agrarian offences have not
yet been finally stopped.
§ 202.11. =The Catholic Church in England and Scotland.=--The
Emancipation Act, passed mainly for the relief of the Irish,
naturally also benefited English Catholics, who in 1791 had been
allowed to hold Catholic services. Led by the numerous accessions
of Puseyites to entertain the most extravagant hopes, Pius IX.
in 1850 issued a bull, by which the Roman Catholic hierarchy
in England was reinstituted with twelve suffragan bishoprics
under one archbishop of Westminster. The bull occasioned great
excitement in the Protestant population (_Anti-Papal Aggression_),
and the _Ecclesiastical Titles Bill_ forbade the use of
ecclesiastical titles not sanctioned by the law of the land.
After the first excitement had passed, the Catholic bishops,
at their head the learned and brilliant and zealous ultramontane
Cardinal Archbishop Wiseman (died 1865), and his successor,
surpassing him, if not in genius and learning, at least in
ultramontane zeal, the Puseyite convert Manning, made a cardinal
in 1875, used with impunity their condemned titles, until in 1871
the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill was formally revoked by act of
parliament. Conversions in noble families were particularly
numerous in the later decades. Since 1850 the number of Catholics
in England and Scotland has quadrupled. This has been caused in
great part by Irish emigration, for the middle and lower ranks of
the English have scarcely been affected by the conversion fever,
which as the latest form of the fitful humour of the English had
so rich a harvest in the families of the nobility. In 1780 all
London had only one Catholic place of worship, the chapel of the
Sardinian embassy, which on June 2nd of that year was wrecked and
burnt by a raging mob. Now the English capital has two episcopal
dioceses, ninety-four Catholic churches and chapels (besides
about 900 Anglican churches) with 313 clergymen, and forty-four
cloisters. In the House of Lords sit twenty-eight Roman Catholic
peers, and in both countries there are forty-seven Catholic
baronets. Since 1847 England has a specifically Catholic
university at Kensington, under the episcopate, and with the
pope as its supreme head, which, however, with its poor staff
of teachers and its expensive course attracts but a few of
the Catholic youth of England. Since the Anti-Papal Aggression
of 1850 failed, the Protestant people have shown themselves
comparatively indifferent to such assumptions of the papacy.--In
the Act of Union of 1707 (§ 155, 3), =Scotland= was guaranteed
the absolute exclusion of every sort of Roman Catholic hierarchy
for all time to come. But in recent times the number of its
Catholic inhabitants so greatly increased, that Pius IX. in his
last years, not unaided by the English government, eagerly urged
the re-establishment of the hierarchy, and Leo XIII. was able at
his first consistory of the college of cardinals in March, 1878,
to make appointments to the two newly-erected archdioceses and
their bishoprics. On the following Easter Sunday the allocution
relating thereto was read in all Catholic churches in Scotland.
The restoration was thus carried out in spite of all protests and
demonstrations of Scottish Protestants.
§ 202.12. =German Lutheran Congregations in Australia.=--Besides
the dominant Anglican church, emigration has led to the formation
of a considerable number of German Lutheran congregations, which
are distributed in three synods.
1. The Victoria Synod was founded in 1852 by pastor Göthe.
It adopted at first the union platform, but subsequently
attached itself more decidedly to the Lutheran confession.
2. Pastor Karch, who in 1830 emigrated with a number of Prussian
Lutherans, in order to avoid the union, laid the foundation
of the Immanuel Synod. Since 1875 it has been supplied with
preachers from the missionary institute of Neuendettelsau.
It is distinguished by its missionary zeal for the conversion
of the natives, pursues with special interest the study of
the prophetic word, and makes chiliasm an open question which
need not rend the church.
3. The South Australian Synod, on the other hand, is the decided
opponent of any sort of chiliasm, and has assumed an attitude
of violent antagonism to the Immanuel Synod.
§ 203. FRANCE.
In France, lauded as the eldest daughter of the church after the
overthrow of the first Empire, ultramontanism, under the secret and
open co-operation of the Jesuits, has ever arisen with revived youth
and vigour out of all the political convulsions which have since passed
over the land. And though indeed Gallicanism seemed again to obtain
strength under the second Empire and, down to the close of that period,
found many able champions among learned theologians like Bishop Maret
(§ 189, 1), and even among exalted prelates like the noble Archbishop
Darboy of Paris, a martyr of his office under the Commune (§ 212, 4),
its influence faded gradually, and in the latest phase of France’s
political development, the third republic, seems utterly to have
disappeared, so that even the “_Kulturkampf_” which broke out in 1879
could not give it life again.--The number of Protestant churches and
church members, in spite of bloody persecutions during the Bourbon
restoration, and many arbitrary restrictions by Catholic prefects under
the citizen king and the second Empire, by numerous accessions of whole
congregations and groups of congregations through zealous evangelization
efforts, by means of school instruction, itinerant preaching, and Bible
colportage, has increased during the century fourfold. In the Reformed
church the opposition of methodistically tinctured orthodoxy, reinforced
from England and French Switzerland, and rationalistic freethinking,
led to sharp conflicts. Also in the Lutheran church, more strongly
influenced by Germany, similar discussions arose, but a more
conciliatory spirit prevailed and violent struggles were avoided.
§ 203.1. =The French Church under Napoleon I.=--In 1801 Napoleon
as Consul concluded with Pius VII. a =Concordat= which, adopting
the concordat of Francis I. (§ 110, 14), abandoning the pragmatic
sanction of Bourges, and only haggling about the limits to be
fixed for the two powers, gave no consideration to the idea of
a wholesome internal reform of the French Church: Catholicism is
the acknowledged religion of the majority of the French people;
the church property belongs to the state, with the obligation to
maintain the clergy and ordinances; the clergy who had taken the
oath and those who were expatriated were all to resign, but were
eligible for election; new boundaries were to be marked out for
the episcopal dioceses with reference to the political divisions
of the country; the government elects and the pope confirms the
bishops, and these, with approval of the government, appoint the
priests. The one-sided =Organic Articles= of the first Consul of
1802, which were annexed to the publication of the Concordat as
a code of explanatory regulations, made any proclamation of papal
orders and decrees of all foreign councils dependent on previous
permission of the government, as also the calling of synods and
consultative assemblies of the clergy. They further ordained that
all official services of the clergy should be gratuitous, and
transferred to the civil council the right and duty of strict
inquiry into any clerical breach of civil laws and any misuse
or excessive exercise of clerical authority. The thirty-first
article, however, created that unhappy order of _Desservants_
or curates, the result of which was that interim appointments
were made to most of the benefices in order to squeeze state pay
in supplement to the inadequate ecclesiastical endowments, and
so their holders were at the absolute mercy of the bishops who
could transport or dispense with them at any moment. For further
particulars about the friendly and hostile relations of Napoleon
and the pope, see § 185, 1. By an imperial decree of 1810, the
four articles of the Gallican Church (§ 156, 3) were made laws
of the Empire; and a French National Council of 1811 sought to
complete the reconstruction of the church according to Napoleon’s
ideas, but proved utterly incapable for such a task, and was
therefore dissolved by the emperor himself.--To pacify the
Protestants, dissatisfied with the Concordat, amid flattering
acknowledgment of their services to the state, to science and
to the arts, an appendix was attached to the Organic Articles,
securing to them liberty of religious worship and political and
municipal equality with Catholics. For training ministers for the
Reformed Church a theological seminary was founded at Montauban,
and for Lutherans an academy with a seminary at Strassburg.
Napoleon also afterwards proved himself on every occasion ready
to help the Protestants. He was equally forward in recognising
public opinion in France. The National Institute of France in
1804 offered a prize for an essay on the influence of Luther’s
Reformation on the formation and advance of European national
life, and awarded it to the treatise of the Catholic physician
Villers (_Essai sur l’influence de la réf. de Luther_, etc.),
which in all respects glorified Protestantism. Even the Catholic
clergy during the first Empire exhibited an easy temper and
tolerance such as was never shown before or since. The obligatory
civil marriage law introduced by the Revolution in 1792, obtained
place in the _Code Napoléon_ in 1804, and was with it introduced
in Belgium and the provinces of the Rhine.[561]
§ 203.2. =The Restoration and the Citizen Kingdom.=--The =Charter=
of the Bourbon Restoration under Louis XVIII. (1814-1824) and
Charles X. (1824-1830) made Catholicism the state religion and
granted toleration and state protection to the other confessions.
A new concordat concluded with Pius VII. in 1817, by which that
of Napoleon of 1801, with the Organic Articles of the following
year, were abrogated, and the state of matters previous to 1789
restored, was so vigorously opposed by the nation, that the
ministry were obliged to withdraw the measure introduced in both
chambers for giving it legislative sanction. Ultramontanism,
however, in its boldest form, steadily favoured by the
government, soon prevailed among the clergy to such an extent
that any inclination to Gallicanism was denounced as heresy and
intolerance of Protestantism lauded as piety. In southern France
the rekindled hatred of the Catholic mob against the Reformed
broke out in 1815 in brutal and bloody persecution. The
government kept silence till the indignation of Europe obliged
it to put down the atrocities, but the offenders were left
unpunished. Connivance in such lawlessness on the part of the
government contributed largely to its overthrow in the July
revolution of 1830. The Catholic Church then lost again the
privilege of a state religion, and the hitherto persecuted and
oppressed Protestants obtained equal rights with the Catholics.
But even under the new constitutional government of Orleans,
ultramontanism soon reasserted itself. The Protestants had to
complain of much injury and injustice from Catholic prefects,
and the Protestant minister Guizot claimed for France the
protectorate of the whole Catholic world. The Reformed Church
meanwhile flourished, though vacillating between methodistic
narrowness and rationalistic shallowness, growing both inwardly
and outwardly, and also the Lutheran communities, which outside
of Alsace were only thinly scattered, enjoyed great prosperity.
In the February revolution of 1848 the Catholic clergy readily
yielded obedience to the citizen king Louis Philippe, and,
on the ground that the Catholic church is suited to any form
of government which only grants liberty to the church, did
not refuse their benediction to the tree of freedom with the
sovereign people at the barricades.
§ 203.3. =The Catholic Church under Napoleon III.=--Louis
Napoleon, as president of the new republic (1848-1852), and still
more decidedly as emperor (1852-1870), inclined to follow the
traditions of his uncle, regarded the concordat of 1801 as still
legally in force and seemed specially anxious to arouse zeal
for the Gallican liberties. Although his bayonets secured the
pope’s return to Rome (§ 185, 2) and even afterwards supported
his authority there, he did not fulfil the heart’s wish of the
emperor by the people’s grace to place the imperial crown upon
his head in his own person. Severely strained relations between
the imperial court and the episcopate resulted in 1860 from a
pamphlet against the papacy inspired by the government (§ 185, 3).
Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans, was one of the oldest and most
determined defenders of the interests of the papal see, and from
Poitiers the emperor was pretty openly characterized as a second
Pilate. The government did not venture directly to interfere
between the two, but reminded the bishops that the emperor’s
differences with the pope referred only to temporal affairs. It
also forbade the forming of separate societies for the collecting
of Peter’s pence, and dissolved the societies of St. Vincent,
instituted for benevolent purposes, but misused for ultramontane
agitations. When Archbishop Desprez of Toulouse, like his
predecessors in 1662 and 1762, on May 16th, 1862, with pompous
phrases of piety appointed the jubilee festival of the “_fait
glorieux_,” by which at Toulouse three hundred years before,
by means of shameful treachery and base breach of pledges 4,000
Protestants were murdered (§ 139, 15), a shout of indignation
rose from almost all French journals and the government forbade
the ceremonial. It also refused permission to proclaim the papal
encyclical with the syllabus (§ 185, 2) and condemned several
bishops who disobeyed for misuse of their office. Under the
influence of the ultramontane empress Eugenie, however, the
relation of the government to the curia and the higher clergy of
the empire, since the one could not do without the other, became
more friendly and intimate, till the day of Sedan, September 2nd,
1870, put an end to the Napoleonic empire and the temporal power
of the papacy which it had maintained.
§ 203.4. =The Protestant Churches under Napoleon III.=--After the
revolution of 1848, the Lutherans at an assembly in Strassburg
and the Reformed in Paris consulted about a new organization of
their churches. But as the latter resolved in order to maintain
constitutional union amid doctrinal diversity, entirely to set
aside symbol and dogma, pastor Fr. Monod and Count Gasparin,
the noble defenders of French Protestantism, lodged a protest,
and with thirty congregations of the strict party constituted
a new council at Paris in 1849, independent of the state, as the
_Union des églises évangéliques de France_ with biennial synods.
Louis Napoleon gave to the Reformed Church a central council in
Paris with consistories and presbyteries; to the Lutheran, an
annual general consistory as a legislative court and a standing
directory as an administrative court. The Lutheran theological
faculty at Strassburg with its vigorous unconfessional science
represents the westernmost school of Schleiermacher’s theology.
The academy at Montauban, with Adolph Monod at its head,
represents Reformed orthodoxy, not strictly confessional but
coloured by methodistic piety, and Coquerel in Paris, was the
head of the rationalistic party of the Reformed national church.
The lead in the reaction against rationalism since 1830 has
been taken by the _Société évangélique_ at Paris, which, aiming
at the Protestantising of France, and using for this end Bible
colportage, tract distribution, the sending out of evangelists,
school instruction, etc., has developed an extraordinarily
restless and successful activity. It has been powerfully
supported by the evangelical society of Geneva. The number of
Protestant clergymen in France has steadily risen, and almost
every year in and out of the Catholic population new evangelical
congregations have been formed, in spite of endless difficulties
put in the way by Catholic courts. In Strassburg, in 1854, the
Jesuits persuaded the Catholic prefects to recall and arrest
the revenues of the former St. Thomas institute, which since the
Reformation had been applied to the maintenance of a Protestant
gymnasium. The prefect of Paris, however, was instructed to
desist from his claims. In the speech from the throne in 1858,
the emperor declared that the government secured for Protestants
full liberty of worship, without forgetting, however, that
Catholicism is the religion of the majority, and the _Moniteur_
commented on this imperial speech so evidently in the spirit
of the _Univers_, that the prefects could not be in doubt how
to understand it. By General Espinasse, who, after the Orsini
attempt on the emperor’s life in 1858, officiated for a long
time as Minister of the Interior, the prefects were expressly
instructed, to extend their espionage of the ill-affected press
to the proceedings of the evangelical societies, and to prohibit
the colportage of Protestant Bibles. On a change of minister,
however, the latter enactment was withdrawn, and only agents
of foreign Bible societies were interfered with. By an imperial
decree of 1859, the right of permitting of the opening of new
Protestant churches and chapels was taken from the local courts
and transferred to the imperial council of state. For every
Protestant congregation, so soon as it numbered 400 souls, the
legal state salary for the clergymen would be paid.
§ 203.5. =The Catholic Church in the Third French
Republic.=--The Gambetta government, the national vindication
of the 4th September, 1870, resigned its power in February, 1871,
into the hands of the National Assembly elected by the whole
nation, which, although through clerical influence upon the
electors predominantly monarchical and clerical, appointed
the old Voltairean Thiers (died, 1877), formerly ministerial
president under Louis Philippe, as alone qualified for the
difficult post of president of the republic. In the necessary
second vote, indeed, there was a considerable increase of the
republican and as such thoroughly anti-clerical party; but even
in its ranks it was admitted that the establishment of France
as leader of all Europe in the fight against ultramontanism
and the co-operation therein of the clergy were the absolutely
indispensable means for the political _Revanche_, after which
the hearts of all Frenchmen longed as the hart for the water
streams. A petition from five bishops and other dignitaries
to the National Assembly for the restoration of the temporal
power of the pope was set aside as inopportune. But Archbishop
Guibert of Paris, without asking the government, proclaimed the
infallibility dogma, and the minister of instruction, Jules Simon,
contented himself with warning the episcopate in a friendly way
against any further illegal steps of that kind. The clerical
party was also successful in its protest to the National Assembly
against the education law, which by raising the standard of
instruction, placing it under the supervision of the state and
making inspection of schools obligatory, proposed to put an end
to the terrible ignorance of the French people as the chief cause
of their deep decay. Bishop Dupanloup of Orleans was appointed
president of the commission for examining it, and so its fate
was sealed. Meanwhile the people, by frequent manifestations of
the Virgin, were roused to a high pitch of religious excitement.
Crowds of pilgrims encouraged by miraculous healings flocked
to our Lady of La Salette, at Lourdes, etc. (§ 188, 6), and the
consecration of _Notre Dame de la Deliverance_ at Bayeux was
celebrated as a brilliant national festival. When in May, 1873,
Thiers gave way before the machinations of his opponents and,
under the new president, Marshal Macmahon, the thoroughly
clerical ministry of the Duc de Broglie got the helm of affairs,
the pilgrimage craze, mariolatry and ultramontane piety, aided
by the prefects and mayors, increased to an unparalleled extent
among all ranks. Under the Buffet ministry of 1875 the influence
of clericalism was unabated. To him it owed its most important
acquisition, the right of creating free Catholic universities
wholly independent of the State, with the privilege of conferring
degrees. But when in 1876 the new elections for the National
Assembly gave an anti-clerical majority, Buffet was obliged to
resign. The new Dufaure ministry, with the Protestant Waddington
as minister of instruction, declared indeed that it continued
the liberty of instruction, but decidedly refused the right
of conferring degrees. The proposal to this effect met with
the hearty support of the new chamber of deputies. But all the
greater was the jubilation of the clericals when the senate by
a small majority refused its consent, and all the more eagerly
was the founding of new free Catholic universities carried on,
at Paris, Angers, Lyons, Lille and Toulouse, but notwithstanding
every effort they only attracted a very small number of
scholars,--in 1879, when they flourished most, at all the five
there were only 742 students.
§ 203.6. =The French “Kulturkampf,” 1880.=--The Dufaure ministry
was succeeded in December, 1876, by the semi-liberal ministry
of Jules Simon, which again was driven out in a summary fashion
by president Macmahon on May 16th, 1877, and replaced, on the
dissolution of the chamber, by a clerical ministry under Duc
de Broglie. But in the newly elected chamber the republican
anti-clerical majority was so overwhelming that Macmahon, on
January 30th, 1879, abandoning his motto of government, _J’y
suis et j’y reste_, was at last obliged, between the alternatives
offered him by Gambetta, _Se soumettre ou se démettre_, to choose
the latter. His successor was Grévy, president of the Chamber,
who entrusted the protestant Waddington with the forming of a new
ministry in which Jules Ferry was minister of instruction. Ferry
brought in a bill in March to abolish the representation of the
clergy in the High Council of Education by four archiepiscopal
deputies, continuing indeed the free Catholic universities,
but requiring their students to enroll in a state university
which alone could hold examinations and give degrees, and
finally enacting by Article 7 that the right of teaching in all
educational institutions should be refused to members of all
religious orders and congregations not recognised by the state.
The chamber deputies accepted this bill without amendment on
July 9th, but the senate on March 7th, 1880, after passing
six articles refused to adopt the seventh. On March 29th, the
president of the republic issued on his own authority two decrees,
based indeed upon earlier enactments (1789-1852), gone into
desuetude indeed, but never abrogated (§ 186, 2), demanded the
dissolution of the Society of Jesus, containing 1,480 members
in 56 institutions, within three months, and insisted that the
orders and congregations not recognised by the State, embracing
14,033 sisters in 602 institutions and 7,444 brothers in 384
institutions, in the same time should by production of their
statutes and rules seek formal recognition or else be broken
up. A storm of protests on the part of the bishops greeted these
“_March Decrees_,” and riotous demonstrations made before the
Minister of Instruction at his residence at Lille expressed the
protests of the students of the Catholic university there. The
pope now broke his reserve and by a nuncio sent the president
of the republic a holograph letter in which he declared that he
must interfere on behalf of the Jesuits and the threatened orders,
because they were indispensably necessary to the wellbeing of
the church. He did not wish that they should have recourse to
unlawful means, but it must be understood that they would appeal
to the courts for protection of their threatened civil liberties.
When therefore on the morning of June 30th the police began their
work of expelling the Jesuits from their houses, these lodged a
complaint before the courts of invasion of their domestic peace
and infringement of their personal liberty. Their schools were
closed on August 31st, the end of the school year; meanwhile
they had taken the precaution to transfer most of them to such as
would be ready afterwards to restore them. The enforcement of the
second of the March Decrees against the other orders was delayed
for a while. A compromise proposed by the episcopate, favoured
by the pope and not absolutely rejected even by the minister
Freycinet, Waddington’s successor, according to which instead
of the required application for recognition all these orders
should sign a declaration of loyalty, undertaking to avoid all
participation in political affairs and to do nothing opposed to
existing order, brought about the overthrow of this ministry in
September, 1880, by the machinations from other motives of the
president of the chamber and latent dictator, Leon Gambetta. At
the head of the new ministry was Ferry, who held the portfolio of
instruction, and under him the carrying out of the second March
Decree began on October 16th, 1880. Up to the meeting of the
chamber in November 261 monasteries had been vacated; the rest,
as from the first all female congregations, were spared, so that
France with its colonies and mission stations still number
4,288 male and 14,990 female settlements of spiritual orders,
the former with about 32,000, the latter with about 166,200
inmates.--The expulsion of the Jesuits, as well as the more
recent of the other orders, was, however, stoutly opposed. The
police told off for this duty found doors shut and barricaded
against them or defended by fanatical peasants and mobs of
shrieking women, so that they had often to be stormed and broken
up by the military. Still more threatening than this opposition
was the reaction which began to assert itself at the instance
of the almost thoroughly ultramontane jurists of the country, a
survival of the times of Napoleon III. and Macmahon. An advocate
Rousse, who publicly stated the opinion that the March Decrees
were illegal and therefore not binding, was supported by 2,000
attorneys and over 200 corporations of attorneys and by many
distinguished university jurists. More than 200 state officials
and many judiciary and police officers, together with several
officers of the army, tendered their resignations so as to avoid
taking part in the execution of the decrees. When it became clear
that unfavourable verdicts would be given by the courts invoked
by the Jesuits against the executors of the decree, as indeed was
soon actually done by several courts, the government lodged an
appeal against their competence before the tribunal of conflicts
which also actually in regard to all such cases pronounced them
incompetent and their decisions therefore null and void; but the
complainers insisted that their complaints should be taken to a
Council of State as the only court suitable to deal with charges
against officials, which, as might be expected, was not done.