The International Theological Library
EDITED BY
CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D.,
_Professor of Theological Encyclopædia and Symbolics,
Union Theological Seminary, New York_;
AND
THE LATE STEWART D. F. SALMOND, D.D.,
_Principal, and Professor of Systematic Theology and
New Testament Exegesis,
United Free Church College, Aberdeen_.
A HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION.
BY THOMAS M. LINDSAY,
D.D., LL.D.
IN TWO VOLUMES--VOL. II.
INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY
A HISTORY
OF
THE REFORMATION
BY
THOMAS M. LINDSAY, D.D., LL.D.
PRINCIPAL, THE UNITED FREE CHURCH
COLLEGE, GLASGOW
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOLUME II
_THE REFORMATION IN SWITZERLAND, FRANCE
THE NETHERLANDS, SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND
THE ANABAPTIST AND SOCINIAN MOVEMENTS
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION_
WITH MAP OF THE REFORMATION AND
COUNTER-REFORMATION (1520-1580).
EDINBURGH
T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET
1907
PREFACE.
In this volume I have endeavoured to fulfil the promise made in the
former one to describe the Reformed Churches, the Anabaptist and
Socinian movements and the Counter-Reformation in the sixteenth century.
It has been based on a careful study of contemporary sources of
information, and no important fact has been recorded for which there is
not contemporary evidence. Full use has been made of work done by
predecessors in the same field. The sources and the later books
consulted have been named at the beginning of each chapter; but special
reference is due to the writings of Professor Pollard on the reigns of
Henry VIII. and Edward VI., and to those of MM. Lemonnier and Mariéjol
for the history of Protestantism in France. The sources consulted are,
for the most part, printed in Calendars of State Papers issued by the
various Governments of Europe, or in the correspondence of prominent men
and women of the sixteenth century, edited and published for Historical
and Archæological Societies; but the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic,
relating to the reigns of Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, is little
more than a brief account of the contents of the documents, and has to
be supplemented by reference to the original documents in the Record
Office.
The field covered in this volume is so extensive that the accounts of
the rise and progress of the Reformation in the various countries
included had to be very much condensed. I have purposely given a larger
space to the beginnings of each movement, believing them to be less
known and more deserving of study. One omission must be noted. Nothing
has been said directly about the Reformed Churches in Bohemia, Hungary,
and the neighbouring lands. It would have been easy to devote a few
pages to the subject: but such a brief description would have been
misleading. The rise, continuance, and decline of these Churches are so
inseparably connected with the peculiar social and political conditions
of the countries, that no adequate or informing account of them could be
given without largely exceeding the limits of space at my disposal.
After the volume had been fully printed, and addition or alteration was
impossible, two important documents bearing on subjects discussed came
into my hands too late for references in the text.
I have found that the Library of the Technical College in Glasgow
contains a copy, probably unique, of the famous Hymn-book of the
_Brethren_ published at Ulm in 1538. It is entitled: _Ein hubsch neu
Gesangbuch darinnen begrieffen die Kirchenordnung und Geseng die zür
Lants Kron und Fulneck in Behem, von der Christlichen Bruderschafft den
Piccarden, die bishero für Unchristen und Ketzer gehalten, gebraucht und
teglich Gutt zum Ehren gesungen werden._ Gedruckt zu Ulm bey Hans
Varnier. An. MDXXXVIII. I know of a copy of much later date in Nürnberg;
but of no perfect copy of this early impression. It is sufficient to say
that the book confirms what I have said of the character of the religion
of the _Brethren_.
Then in December 1906, Señor Henriques published at Lisbon the authentic
records of the trial of George Buchanan and two fellow professors in
the Coimbra College before the Inquisition. These records show that the
prosecution had not been instigated by the Jesuits, as was generally
conjectured, but was due to the malice of a former Principal of the
College. The statement made on p. 556 has therefore to be corrected.
The kindness of the publishers has provided an historical map, which I
trust will be found useful. It gives, I think for the first time, a
representation to the eye of the wide extent of the Anabaptist movement.
The red bars denote districts where contemporary documents attest the
existence of Anabaptist communities. At least four maps, representing
successive periods, would be needed to show with exactness the shifting
boundaries of the various confessions: one map can only give the general
results.
My thanks are again due to my colleague, Dr. Denney, and to another
friend, for the care they have taken in revising the proof sheets, and
for many valuable suggestions.
THOMAS M. LINDSAY.
_January_, 1907.
CONTENTS
BOOK III.
THE REFORMED CHURCHES.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
PAGE
§ 1. The limitations of the Peace of Augsburg 1
§ 2. The Reformation outside Germany 5
§ 3. The Reformed type of Doctrine 6
§ 4. The Reformed ideal of Ecclesiastical Government 7
§ 5. The influence of Humanism on the Reformed Churches 9
§ 6. What the Reformed Churches owed to Luther 13
§ 7. National Characteristics as they affected the Reformation 18
CHAPTER II.
THE REFORMATION IN SWITZERLAND UNDER ZWINGLI.
§ 1. The political condition of Switzerland 21
§ 2. Zwingli's youth and education 24
§ 3. Zwingli at Glarus and at Einsiedeln 27
§ 4. Zwingli in Zurich 29
§ 5. The Public Disputations 33
§ 6. The Reformation outside Zurich 38
In Basel--Oecolampadius and William Farel 38
In Bern--The _Ten Theses_ 40
In Appenzell and other Cantons 46
_The Christian Civic League_ (Protestant). _The Christian
Union_ (Romanist) 48
§ 7. The Sacramental Controversy 52
CHAPTER III.
THE REFORMATION IN GENEVA UNDER CALVIN.
§ 1. Geneva 61
§ 2. The Reformation in Western Switzerland 66
Farel and his band of evangelists 71
§ 3. Farel in Geneva 74
Bern, Freiburg, and Geneva 77
The Public Disputation and the _Thèses Évangéliques_ 85
§ 4. Calvin: Youth and education 92
_Christianæ Religionis Institutio_ 99
§ 5. Calvin with Farel in Geneva 102
_Articuli de regimine ecclesiæ_--Discipline in the Church 105
The theologians of Eastern Switzerland and excommunication 110
Calvin and Farel banished from Geneva 120
Calvin recalled to Geneva--_Les ordonnances ecclésiastiques
de l'Église de Genève_ 128
What Calvin did for Geneva 131
CHAPTER IV.
THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE.
§ 1. Marguerite d'Angoulême and the "group of Meaux" 136
§ 2. Attempts to repress the movement for Reform 144
§ 3. Change in the character of the movement for Reform 151
§ 4. Calvin and his influence in France 153
§ 5. Persecution under Henry II. 161
§ 6. The organisation of the French Protestant Church 164
§ 7. Reaction against persecution 169
§ 8. The higher aristocracy won for the Reformation in France 171
§ 9. France ruled by the Guises 173
§ 10. Catherine de' Medici becomes Regent 178
§ 11. The Conference at Poissy 186
§ 12. The massacre at Vassy 189
§ 13. The beginning of the Wars of Religion 191
§ 14. The massacre of St. Bartholomew 198
§ 15. The Huguenot resistance after the massacre 200
§ 16. The beginnings of the League 205
§ 17. The League becomes disloyal 207
§ 18. The day of Barricades 211
§ 19. The King takes refuge with the Huguenots 214
§ 20. The Declaration of Henry IV. 217
§ 21. Henry IV. becomes a Roman Catholic 219
§ 22. The Edict of Nantes 221
CHAPTER V.
THE REFORMATION IN THE NETHERLANDS.
§ 1. The political situation 224
§ 2. The beginnings of the Reformation 228
§ 3. The Anabaptists in the Netherlands 234
§ 4. Philip of Spain and the Netherlands 240
§ 5. William of Orange 254
CHAPTER VI.
THE REFORMATION IN SCOTLAND.
Preparation for the Reformation 274
Lollardy in Scotland 276
Lutheran writings in Scotland 279
The Beginnings of the Reformation 282
George Wishart 284
John Knox, early work in Scotland 285
Knox in England, in Switzerland, and at Frankfurt 286
The "Band subscrived by the Lords." "The Congregation" 289
Knox's final return to Scotland 293
Knox and Cecil. The English alliance 294
_The Scots Confession of Faith_ 302
_The First Book of Discipline_, or _the Policie and
Discipline of the Church_. _The Book of Common Order_ 304
Return of Queen Mary to Scotland 309
* * * * *
BOOK IV.
THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I.
THE CHURCH OF HENRY VIII.
Influences in England making for the Reformation. Lollardy, Hatred
of the Clergy, Humanism, Luther 315
The marriage of Henry and Catharine of Aragon, and the doubts
entertained of its validity 322
The Revolt of England from Roman jurisdiction 325
The _Ten Articles_ and the _Injunctions_ 333
_The Bishops' Book_, and its teaching 336
_The English Bible_ 337
Projected alliance with the German Protestants 340
The visitation and dissolution of monasteries 343
The _Six Articles_ and the _King's Book_ 347
CHAPTER II.
THE REFORMATION UNDER EDWARD VI.
The _Injunctions_ and the _Articles of Inquiry_ 351
The condition of the English Clergy 353
_The First Prayer-Book of King Edward VI._ 356
Continental Reformers in England 358
_The Second Prayer-Book of King Edward VI._ 361
Beginnings of the controversy about Vestments 364
CHAPTER III.
THE REACTION UNDER MARY.
The beginnings of Queen Mary's reign 368
The restoration of England to the papal obedience 371
The _Injunctions_ and the Visitation 374
The revival of heresy laws and the persecutions 375
The martyrdom of Cranmer 378
CHAPTER IV.
THE SETTLEMENT UNDER ELIZABETH.
Elizabeth resolves to be a Protestant. The political situation 385
The _Act of Supremacy_ and the _Act of Uniformity_ 390
The Elizabethan Prayer-Book 396
The _Act of Uniformity_ and the Rubric about _Ornaments_ 402
The dealings with recalcitrant clergymen 408
_The Thirty-Nine Articles_ 411
How Discipline was regulated 417
The character of the Elizabethan settlement 418
* * * * *
BOOK V.
ANABAPTISM AND SOCINIANISM.
CHAPTER I.
REVIVAL OF MEDIÆVAL ANTI-ECCLESIASTICAL MOVEMENTS.
Mediæval Nonconformists 421
The Anti-Trinitarians 424
CHAPTER II.
ANABAPTISM.
The mediæval roots of Anabaptism 430
Anabaptism organisation 434
Varieties of teaching among the Anabaptists 437
Anabaptists object to a State Church 442
The Anabaptists in Switzerland. Their persecution 445
Anabaptist hymnology 449
The Kingdom of God in Münster 451
Bernhard Rothmann and his work in Münster 452
Dutch Anabaptists in Münster 459
Polygamy in Münster 463
CHAPTER III.
SOCINIANISM.
Lelio and Fausto Sozzini 470
Socinianism took its rise from a criticism of Doctrines 473
Socinianism and the Scoto-Pelagian theology 474
The doctrines of God, the Work of Christ and the Church 477
* * * * *
BOOK VI.
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION.
CHAPTER I.
THE NECESSITY OF A REFORMATION OF SOME SORT UNIVERSALLY ADMITTED.
Variety of complaints against the mediæval Church 484
Formation of local churches 487
CHAPTER II.
THE SPANISH CONCEPTION OF A REFORMATION.
§ 1. The religious condition of Spain 488
§ 2. The reformation under Ximenes 490
§ 3. The Spaniards and Luther 493
§ 4. Pope Adrian VI. and the Spanish Reformation 496
CHAPTER III.
ITALIAN LIBERAL ROMAN CATHOLICS AND THEIR CONCEPTION OF A REFORMATION.
§ 1. The religious condition of Italy 501
§ 2. Italian Roman Catholic Reformers 504
§ 3. Cardinals Contarini and Caraffa 513
§ 4. The Conference at Regensburg 519
CHAPTER IV.
IGNATIUS LOYOLA AND THE COMPANY OF JESUS.
§ 1. At Manresa 525
§ 2. Ignatius at Paris. The ecclesiastical situation at Paris 533
§ 3. _The Spiritual Exercises_ 538
§ 4. Ignatius in Italy 545
§ 5. _The Society of Jesus_ 549
CHAPTER V.
THE COUNCIL OF TRENT.
§ 1. The assembling of the Council 564
§ 2. Procedure at the Council 568
§ 3. Restatement of Doctrines 570
The Doctrine of the Rule of Faith 572
Original Sin and Justification 575
§ 4. The second meeting of the Council 581
§ 5. The third meeting of the Council 587
The position of the Pope strengthened 593
CHAPTER VI.
THE INQUISITION AND THE INDEX.
§ 1. The Inquisition in Spain 597
§ 2. The Inquisition in Italy 600
§ 3. The Index of prohibited books 602
§ 4. The Society of Jesus and the Counter-Reformation 606
BOOK III.
_THE REFORMED CHURCHES._
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
§ 1. _The Limitations of the Peace of Augsburg._
The Religious Peace of Augsburg (1555) secured the legal recognition of
the Reformation within the Holy Roman Empire, and consequently within
European polity. Henceforward States, which declared through their
responsible rulers that they meant to live after the religion described
in the _Augsburg Confession_, were admitted to the comity of nations,
and the Pope was legally and practically debarred from excommunicating
them, from placing them under _interdict_, and from inviting obedient
neighbouring potentates to conquer and dispossess their sovereigns. The
Bishop of Rome could no longer, according to the recognised custom of
the Holy Roman Empire, launch a Bull against a Lutheran prince and
expect to have its execution enforced as in earlier days. The Popes were
naturally slow to see this, and had to be reminded of the altered state
of matters more than once.[1]
Of course, the exalted Romanist powers, civil and ecclesiastical, never
meant this settlement to be lasting. They intrigued secretly among
themselves, and fought openly, against it. The final determined effort
to overthrow it was that hideous nightmare which goes by the name of the
Thirty Years' War, mainly caused by the determination of the Jesuits
that by the help of God _and_ the devil, for that, as Carlyle has
remarked, was the peculiarity of the plan, all Germany must be brought
back to the obedience of Holy Stepmother Church, and to submission to
the Supreme Headship of the Holy Roman Empire--the Supreme Headship
becoming more and more shadowy as the years passed. The settlement
lasted, however, and remains in general outline until the present.
But the Religious Peace of Augsburg did not end the revolt against Rome
which was simmering in every land in Western Europe. It made no
provision for the multitude of believers in the _Augsburg Confession_,
whose princes, for conscience' sake or for worldly policy, remained
steadfast to Rome, save that they were to be permitted to emigrate to
territories where the rulers were of the same faith as theirs. These
Lutherans were to be found in every part of Germany, and were very
abundant in the Duchy of Austria. The statement of Faber, the Bishop of
Vienna, that the only good Catholics in that city were himself and the
Archduke Ferdinand, was, of course, rhetorical; but it is a proof of the
numbers of the followers of Luther.[2]
It chained irrevocably to the Romanist creed, by the clause called the
_ecclesiastical reservation_, not merely the people, but the rulers in
the numerous ecclesiastical principalities scattered all over Germany.
This provision secured that if an ecclesiastical prince adopted the
Lutheran faith, he was to be deprived of his principality. It is
probable that this provision did more than anything else to secure for
the Romanists the position they now have in Germany. It was partly due
to the alarms excited by the fact that Albert of Brandenburg, Master of
the Teutonic Knights, had secularised his land of East Prussia and had
become a Lutheran, and by the narrow escape of the province of Köln from
following in the same path, under its reforming archbishop, Hermann von
Wied.
The Peace of Augsburg made no provision for any Protestants other than
those who accepted the Augsburg Confession; and thousands in the
Palatinate and all throughout South Germany preferred another type of
Protestant faith. It is probable that, had Luther lived for ten or
fifteen years longer, the great division between the Reformed or
Calvinist and the Evangelical or Lutheran Churches would have been
bridged over; but after his death his successors, intent to maintain, as
they expressed it, the deposit of truth which Luther had left, actually
ostracised Melanchthon for his endeavour to heal the breach. The
consequence was that the Lutheran Church within Germany after 1555 lost
large districts to the Reformed Church.
Under Elector Frederick III., surnamed the Pious, the territorial Church
of the Palatinate separated from the circle of Lutheran Churches, and in
1563 the Heidelberg Catechism was published. This celebrated doctrinal
formula at once became, and has remained, the distinctive creed of the
various branches of the Reformed Church within Germany; and its
influence extended even farther.
Bremen followed the example of the Palatinate in 1568. Its divines
published a doctrinal _Declaration_ in 1572, and a more lengthy
_Consensus Bremenensis_ in 1595. Anhalt, under its ruler John George
(1587-1603), did away with the consistorial system of Church government,
and abandoned the use of Luther's Catechism. Hesse-Cassel joined the
circle of German Reformed Churches in 1605. These examples were followed
in many smaller principalities, most of which, imitating all the
Reformed Churches, published separate and distinctive confessions of
faith, which were nevertheless supposed to contain the sum and substance
of the common Reformed creed.[3]
These German principalities, rulers and inhabitants, placed themselves
deliberately outside the protection of the Religious Peace of Augsburg.
The fundamental principles of their faith were not very different from
the Lutheran, but they were important enough to make them forego the
protection which the treaty afforded. Setting aside minor differences
and sentiments, perhaps more powerful than doctrines, their separation
from neighbouring Protestants was based on their objection to the
doctrine of _Ubiquity_, essential to the Lutheran theory of the
Sacrament of the Supper, and to the consistorial system of
ecclesiastical government. They repudiated the two portions of the
Lutheran system which were derived professedly from the mediæval Church,
and insisted on basing their exposition of doctrine and their scheme of
ecclesiastical government more directly on the Word of God. They had
come in contact with another reformation movement, had recognised its
sturdier principles, and had become so enamoured of them that they felt
compelled to leave the Lutheran Church for the Reformed.
Still confining ourselves to Germany, it is to be noticed that the
Augsburg Confession ostentatiously and over and over again separated
those who accepted it from protesters against the mediæval Church, who
were called Anabaptists. It repudiated views supposed to be held by them
on Baptism, the Holy Scripture, the possibility of a life of sinless
perfection, and the relation of Christian men to the magistracy. In some
of the truces arranged between the Emperor and the evangelical
princes,--truces which anticipated the religious Peace of
Augsburg,--attempts were made to induce Lutherans and Romanists to unite
in suppressing those sectaries. It is needless to say that _they_ were
not included in the settlement in 1555. Yet they had spread all over
Germany, endured with constancy bloody persecutions, and from them have
come the large and influential Baptist Churches in Europe and America.
From beginning to end they were outside the Lutheran Reformation.
§ 2. _The Reformation outside Germany._
When we go beyond Germany and survey the other countries of Western
Europe, it is abundantly evident that the story of the Lutheran movement
from its beginning down to its successful issue in the Religious Peace
of Augsburg is only a small part of the history of the Reformation.
France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Bohemia, Hungary, even Italy,
Spain, and Poland, throbbed with the religious revival of the sixteenth
century, and its manifestations in these lands differed in many
respects from that which belonged to Germany. All shared with Germany
the common experiences, intellectual and religious, political and
economic, of that period of transition which is called the Renaissance
in the wider sense of the word--the transition from mediæval to modern
life.[4] They had all come to the parting of the ways. They had all
emerged from Mediævalism, and all saw the wider outlook which was the
heritage of the time. All felt the same longing to shake themselves
clear of the incubus of clericalism which weighed heavily on their
national life, whether religious or political. Each land went forward,
marching by its own path marked out for it by its past history,
intellectual, religious, and civil. The movements in these various
countries towards a freer and more real religious life cannot be
described in the same general terms; but if Italy and Spain be excepted,
their attempts at a national reformation had one thing in common which
definitely separated them from the Lutheran movement.
§ 3. _The Reformed type of Doctrine._
If the type of doctrine professed by the Protestants in those countries
be considered (confessedly a partial, one-sided, and imperfect
standard), it may be said that they all refused to accept some of the
distinctive Lutheran dogmatic conclusions, and that they all departed
more widely from some of the conceptions of the Mediæval Church. Their
national confessions in their final forms borrowed more from Zurich and
Geneva than from Wittenberg, and they all belong to the Reformed as
distinguished from the Lutheran or Evangelical circle of creeds.[5] It
was perhaps natural that differences in the ritual and theory of the
Holy Supper, the very apex and crown of Christian Public Worship, should
be to the general eye the visible cleavage between rival forms of
Christianity. In the earlier stages of the Reformation movement, the
great popular distinction between the Romanists and Protestants was that
the one refused and the other admitted the laity to partake of the Cup
of Communion; and later, within an orthodox Protestantism, the thought
of _ubiquity_ was the dividing line. The Lutherans asserted and the
Reformed denied or ignored the doctrine; and those confessions took the
Reformed view.
§ 4. _The Reformed ideal of Ecclesiastical Government._
This similarity of published creed was the one _positive_ bond which
united all those Churches; but it may also be said that all of them,
with the doubtful exception of the Church of England,[6] would have
nothing to do with the consistorial system of the Lutheran Churches, and
that most of them accepted in theory at least Calvin's conception of
ecclesiastical government. They strove to get away from the mediæval
ideas of ecclesiastical rule, and to return to the principles which they
believed to be laid down for them in the New Testament, illustrated by
the conduct of the Church of the early centuries. The Church, according
to Calvin, was a theocratic democracy, and the ultimate source of
authority lay in the membership of the Christian community, inspired by
the Presence of Christ promised to all His people. But in the sixteenth
century this conception was confronted and largely qualified in
practice, by the dread that it might lead to a return to the clerical
tutelage of the mediæval Church from which they had just escaped.
Presbyter might become priest writ large; and the leaders of the
Reformation in many lands could see, as Zwingli did in Zurich and
Cranmer in England, that the civil authorities might well represent the
Christian democracy. Even Calvin in Geneva had to content himself with
ecclesiastical ordinances which left the Church completely under the
control of _les très honnorès seigneurs syndicques et conseil de
Genève_; and the Scottish Church in 1572 had to recognise that the King
was the "Supreme Governor of this realm as well in things temporal as in
the conservation and purgation of religion." The nations and
principalities in Western Europe which had adopted and supported the
Reformation believed that manifold abuses had arisen in the past,
directly and indirectly, through the exemption of the Church and its
possessions from secular control, and they were determined not to permit
the possibility of a return to such a state of things. The scholarship
of the Renaissance had discovered the true text of the old Roman Civil
Code, and one of the features of that time of transition--perhaps its
most important and far-reaching feature, for law enters into every
relation of human life--was the substitution of civil law based on the
Codes of Justinian and Theodosius, for canon law based on the Decretum
of Gratian. These old Roman codes taught the lawyers and statesmen of
the sixteenth century to look upon the Church as a department of the
State; and the thought that the Christian community had an independent
life of its own, and that its guidance and discipline ought to be in the
hands of office-bearers chosen by its membership, was everywhere
confronted, modified, largely overthrown by the imperious claim of the
civilian lawyers. Ecclesiastical leaders within the Reformed Churches
might strive as they liked to draw the line between the possessions of
the Church, which they willingly placed under the control of civil law,
and its discipline in matters of faith and morals, which they declared
to be the inalienable possession of the Church; but, as a rule, the
State refused to perceive the distinction, and insisted in maintaining
full control over the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Hence it came about
that in every land where the secular authorities were favourable to the
Reformation, the Church became more or less subject to the State; and
this resulted in a large variety of ecclesiastical organisations in
communities all belonging to the Reformed Church. While it may be said
with perfect truth that the churchly ideal in the minds of the leaders
in most of the Reformed Churches was to restore the theocratic democracy
of the early centuries, and that this was a strong point of contrast
between them and Luther, who insisted that the _jus episcopale_ belonged
to the civil magistrate, in practice the secular authorities in
Switzerland, the Netherlands, the Palatinate, etc., kept almost as tight
a hold on the Reformed national Churches as did the Lutheran princes and
municipalities. In one land only, France, the ecclesiastical ideal of
Calvin had full liberty to embody itself in a constitution, and that
only because the French Reformed Church struggled into existence under
the civil rule of a Romanist State, and, like the Christian Church of
the early centuries, maintained itself in spite of the opposition of the
secular authorities which persecuted it.
§ 5. _The Influence of Humanism on the Reformed Churches._
The portion of the Reformation which lay outside the Peace of Augsburg
had another characteristic which distinguished it from the Lutheran
Reformation included within the treaty--it owed much more to Humanism.
Erasmus and what he represented had a greater share in its birth and
early progress, and his influence appeared amidst the most dissimilar
surroundings. Henry VIII. and Zwingli seem to stand at opposite poles;
yet the English autocrat and the Swiss democrat were alike in this, that
they owed much to Erasmus, and that the reformations which they
respectively led were largely prompted by the impulse of Humanism. One
has only to compare the _Bishops' Book_ and the _King's Book_ of the
Henrican period in England with the many statements Erasmus has made
about the kind of reformation he desired to see, to recognise that they
were meant to serve for a reformation in life and morals which would
leave untouched the fundamental doctrinal system of the mediæval Church
and its organisation in accordance with the principles laid down by the
great Humanist. The Bible, the Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds,
with the doctrinal decisions of the first four Oecumenical Councils, were
recognised as the standards of orthodoxy in the _Ten Articles_; and the
Scholastic Theology, so derided by Erasmus, was contemptuously ignored.
The accompanying _Injunctions_ set little store by pilgrimages, relics,
and indulgences, and the other superstitions of the popular religious
life which the great Humanist had treated sarcastically. The two books
alluded to above are full of instructions for leading a wholesome life.
The whole programme of reformation is laid down on lines borrowed from
Erasmus.
Zwingli was under the influence of Humanism from his boyhood. His young
intellect was fed on the masterpieces of classical antiquity--Cicero,
Homer, and Pindar. His favourite teacher was Thomas Wyttenbach, who was
half a Reformer and half a pure follower of Erasmus. No man influenced
him more than the learned Dutchman. It was his guidance and not the
example of Luther which made him study the Scriptures and the
theologians of the early Church, such as Origen, Jerome, and Chrysostom.
The influence and example of Erasmus can be seen even in his attempts to
create a rational theory of the Holy Supper. His reformation, in its
beginning more especially, was much more an intellectual than a
religious movement. It aimed at a clearer understanding of the Holy
Scriptures, at the purgation of the popular religious life from idolatry
and superstition, and at a clearly reasoned out scheme of intellectual
belief. The deeper religious impulse which drove Luther, step by step,
in his path of revolt from the mediæval Church was lacking in Zwingli.
He owed little to Wittenberg, much to Rotterdam. It was this connection
with Erasmus that created the sympathy between Zwingli and such early
Dutch Reformers as Christopher Hoen, and made the Swiss Reformer a power
in the earlier stages of the Reformation in the Netherlands.
The beginnings of the Reformation movement in France, Italy, and Spain
were even more closely allied to Humanism.
If the preparation for reformation to be found in the work and teaching
of mediæval evangelical nonconformists like the _Picards_ be set aside,
the beginnings of the Reformation in France must be traced to the small
group of Christian Humanists who surrounded Marguerite d'Angoulême and
Briçonnet the Bishop of Meaux. Marguerite herself and Jacques Lefèvre
d'Étaples, the real leader of the group of scholars and preachers, found
solace for soul troubles in the Christian Platonism to which so many of
the Humanists north and south of the Alps had given themselves. The aim
of the little circle of enthusiasts was a reformation of the Church and
of society on the lines laid down by Erasmus. They looked to reform
without "tumult," to a reformation of the Church by the Church and
within the Church, brought about by a study of the Scriptures, and
especially of the Epistles of St. Paul, by individual Christians weaning
themselves from the world while they remained in society, and by slowly
leavening the people with the enlightenment which the New Learning was
sure to bring. They cared little for theology, much for intimacy with
Christ; little for external changes in institutions, much for personal
piety. Their efforts had little visible effect, and their _via media_
between the stubborn defenders of Scholasticism on the one hand and
more thorough Reformers on the other, was found to be an impossible path
to persevere in; but it must not be forgotten that they did much to
prepare France for the Reformation movement which they really
inaugurated; nor that William Farel, the precursor of Calvin himself in
Geneva, belonged to the "group of Meaux."
If Humanism influenced the "group of Meaux," who were the advance guard
of the French Reformation, it manifested itself no less powerfully in
the training of Calvin, who in 1536 unconsciously became the leader of
the movement. He was one of the earliest and most enthusiastic students
of the band of "royal lecturers" appointed by Francis I. to give France
the benefits of the New Learning. He had intimate personal relations
with Budé and Cop, who were allied to the "group of Meaux," and were
leaders among the Humanists in the University. His earliest book, a
Commentary on the _De Clementia_ of Seneca, shows how wide and minute
was his knowledge of the Greek and Latin classical authors. Like
Erasmus, he does not seem to have been much influenced by the mystical
combination of Platonism and Christianity which entranced the Christian
Humanists of Italy and filled the minds of the "group of Meaux"; and
like him he broke through the narrow circle of elegant trifling within
which most of the Italian scholars were confined, and used the New
Learning for modern purposes. Humanism taught him to think imperially in
the best fashion of ancient Rome, to see that great moral ideas ought to
rule in the government of men. It filled him with a generous indignation
at the evils which flowed from an abuse of absolute and arbitrary power.
The young scholar (he was only three-and-twenty) attacked the
governmental abuses of the times with a boldness which revived the best
traditions of Roman statesmanship. He denounced venal judges who made
"justice a public merchandise." He declared that princes who slew their
people or subjected them to wholesale persecution were not legitimate
rulers, but brigands, and that brigands were the enemies of the whole
human race. At a time when persecution was prevalent everywhere, the
Commentary of the young Humanist pleaded for tolerance in language as
lofty as Milton employed in his _Areopagitica_. He was not blind to the
defects of the stoical morality displayed in the book he commented upon.
He contrasted the stoical indifference with Christian sympathy, and
stoical individualism with the thought of Christian society; but he
seized upon and made his own the loftier moral ideas in Stoicism, and
applied them to public life. Luther was great, none greater, in holding
up the liberty of the Christian man; but there he halted, or advanced
beyond it with very faltering step. Humanism taught Calvin the claims
and the duties of the Christian society; he proclaimed them aloud, and
his thoughts spread throughout that portion of the Reformation which
followed his leadership and accepted his principles. The Holy
Scriptures, St. Augustine, and the imperial ethics of the old Roman
Stoicism coming through Humanism, were a trinity of influence on all the
Reformed Churches.
The Reformation in Spain and Italy was only a brief episode; but in its
short-lived existence in these lands, Humanism was one of the greatest
forces supporting it and giving it strength. In both countries the young
life was quenched in the blood of martyrs. So quickly did it pass, that
it seems surprising to learn that Erasmus confidently expected that
Spain would be the land to accomplish the Reformation without "tumult"
which he so long looked forward to and expected; that the Scriptures
were read throughout the Spanish peninsula, and that women vied with men
in knowledge of their contents, during the earlier part of the sixteenth
century.
§ 6. _What the Reformed Churches owed to Luther._
There was, then, a Reformation movement which in its earliest beginnings
and in its final outcome was quite distinct from that under the
leadership of Luther; but it would be erroneous to say that it was
altogether outside Luther's influence, and that it owed little or
nothing to the great German Reformer. It is vain to speculate on what
might have been, or to ask whether the undoubted movements making for
reformation in lands outside Germany would have come to fruition had not
Luther's trumpet-call sounded over Europe. It is enough to state what
did actually occur. If it cannot be said that the beginnings of the
Reformation in every land came from Luther, it can scarcely be denied
that he gave to his contemporaries the inspiration of courage and of
assured conviction. He delivered men from the fear of priestcraft; he
taught men, in a way that no other did, that redemption was not a secret
science practised by the priests within an institution called the
Church; that all believers had the privilege of direct access to the
very presence of God; and that the very thought of a priesthood who
alone could mediate between God and man was both superfluous and
irreconcilable with the truest instincts of the Christian religion. His
teaching had a sounding board of dramatic environment which compelled
men to listen, to attend, to be impressed, to understand, and to follow.
He had been and was a deeply pious man, with the piety of the type most
esteemed by his contemporaries, and therefore easily understood and
sympathised with by the common man. His piety had driven him into the
convent, as then seemed both natural and necessary. Inside the monastery
he had lived the life of a "young saint"--so his fellow monks believed,
when, in the fashion of the day and of their class, they boasted that
they had among them one destined to revive again the best type of
mediæval saintship. No coarse, vulgar sins of the flesh, common enough
at the time and easily condoned, smirched his young life. When he
attained to peace in believing, he had no doubt of his vocation; no
sudden wrench tore him away from the approved religious life of his
time; no intellectual doubt separated him from the beliefs of his
Church. His very imperviousness to the intellectual liberalising
tendencies of Humanism made him all the more fit to be a trusted
religious leader. He went forward step by step with such a slow, sure
foot-tread that the common man could see and follow. When he did come
forward as a Reformer he did not run amuck at things in general. He felt
compelled to attack the _one_ portion of the popular religious life of
the times which all men who gave the slightest thought to religion felt
to be a gross abuse. The way he dealt with it revealed that he was the
great religious genius of his age--an age which was imperatively if
confusedly calling for reform within the sphere of religion.
If to be original means simply to be the first to see and make known a
single truth or a fresh aspect of a truth, it is possible to contest the
claim of Luther to be an original thinker. It would not be difficult to
point out anticipations of almost every separate truth which he taught
to his generation. To take two only--Wessel had denounced indulgences in
language so similar to Luther's, that, when the Reformer read it long
after the publication of the _Theses_, he could say that people might
well imagine that he had simply borrowed from the old Dutch theologian;
and Lefèvre d'Étaples had taught the doctrine of justification by faith
before it had flashed on Luther's soul with all the force of a
revelation. But if originality be the gift to seize, to combine into one
organic whole, separate isolated truths, to see their bearing upon the
practical religious life of all men, educated and ignorant, to use the
new light to strip the common religious life of all paralysing
excrescences, to simplify it and to make it clear that the sum and
essence of Christianity is "unwavering trust of the heart in Him who has
given Himself to us in Christ Jesus as our Father, personal assurance of
faith because Christ with His work undertakes our cause," and to do all
this with the tenderest sympathy for every true dumb religious instinct
which had made men wander away from the simplicity which is in Christ
Jesus, then Luther stands alone in his day and generation,
unapproachable by any other.
Hence it was that to the common people in every land in Europe up till
about 1540, when Calvin's individuality began to make itself felt,
Luther represented the Reformation; and all who accepted the new
teaching were known as Lutherans, whether in England, the Low Countries,
France, or French speaking Switzerland.[7]
Ecclesiastical historians of the Reformed Church from the sixteenth
century downward have often been inclined to share Luther's supremacy
with Zwingli. The Swiss Reformer was gifted with many qualities which
Luther lacked. He stood in freer relation to the doctrines and practices
of the mediæval Church, and his scheme of theology was perhaps wider and
truer than Luther's. He had a keener intellectual insight, and was
quicker to discern the true doctrinal tendencies of their common
religious verities. But the way in which he regarded indulgences, and
his manner of protesting against them, showed his great inferiority to
Luther as a religious guide.
"Oh the folly of it!" said Zwingli with his master Erasmus,--"the crass,
unmitigated stupidity of it all!" and they scorned it, and laughed at
it, and attacked it with the light keen shafts of raillery and derisive
wit. "Oh the pity of it!" said Luther; and he turned men travelling by
the wrong road on their quest for pardon (a real quest for them) into
the right path. Zwingli never seemed to see that under the purchase of
indulgences, the tramping on pilgrimages from shrine to shrine, the
kissing, reverencing, and adoring of relics, there was a real
inarticulate cry for pardon of sins felt if not vividly repented of.
Luther knew it, and sympathised with it. He was a man of the people, not
merely because he was a peasant's son and had studied at a burgher
University, but because he had shared the religion of the common people.
He had felt with them that the repeated visits of the plague, the new
mysterious diseases, the dread of the Turks, were punishments sent by
God because of the sins of the generation. He had gone through it all;
plunged more deeply in the terror, writhed more hopelessly under the
wrath of God, wandered farther on the wrong path in his quest for
pardon, and at last had seen the "Beatific Vision." The deepest and
truest sympathy with fellow-men and the vision of God are needed to make
a Reformer of the first rank, and Luther had both as no other man had,
during the first quarter of the sixteenth century.
So men listened to him all over Europe wherever there had been a
stirring of the heart for reformation, and it would be hard to say where
there had been none. Czechs, Hungarians, and Poles in the east;
Spaniards, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Dutch, and Scots in the west; Swedes
in the north, and Italians in the south--all welcomed, and read, and
were moved by what Luther wrote. First the _Theses_, then sermons and
tracts, then the trumpet call _To the Nobility of the German Nation_ and
the _Præludium to the Babylonian Captivity of the Church of Christ_,
and, above all, his booklet _On the Liberty of a Christian Man_. As men
read, what had been only a hopeful but troubled dream of the night
became a vision in the light of day. They heard proclaimed aloud in
clear unfaltering speech what they had scarcely dared to whisper to
themselves. Fond and devout imaginations became religious certainties.
They risked all to get possession of the sayings of this "man of God."
Cautious, dour Scotch burghers ventured ship and cargo for the sake of
the little quarto tracts hid in the bales of cloth which came to the
ports of Dundee and Leith. Oxford and Cambridge students passed them
from hand to hand in spite of Wolsey's proclamations and Warham's
precautions. Luther's writings were eagerly studied in Paris by town and
University as early as May 1519.[8] Spanish merchants bought Luther's
books at the Frankfurt Fair, spent some of their hard won profits in
getting them translated and printed in Spanish, and carried them over
the Pyrenees on their pack mules. Under the influence of these writings
the Reformation took shape, was something more than the devout
imagination of a few pious thinkers, and became an endeavour to give
expression to common religious certainties in change of creed,
institutions, and worship. Thus Luther helped the Reformation in every
land. The actual beginnings in England, France, the Netherlands, and
elsewhere had come into existence years before Luther had become known;
it is possible that the movements might have come to fruition apart from
his efforts; but the influence of his writings was like that of the sun
when it quickens and makes the seed sprout that has been "happed" in a
tilled and sown field.
§ 7. _National Characteristics._
It was not that the Reformation in any of these countries was to become
Lutheran in the end, or had a Lutheran stage of development. The number
of genuine Lutherans outside Germany and Scandinavia was very small.
Here and there a stray one was to be found, like Dr. Barnes in England
or Louis Berquin in France. One of the deepest principles of the great
Reformer's teaching itself checked the idea of a purely Lutheran
Reformation which would embrace the whole Reformation Church. He taught
that the practical exercise of faith ought to manifest itself within the
great institutions of human life which have their origin in God--in
marriage, the family, the calling, and the State, in the ordinary life
we lead with its environment. Nations have their character and
characteristics as well as individual men, and they mould in natural
ways the expression in creed and institution of the religious
certainties shared by all. The Reformation in England was based on the
same spiritual facts and forces which were at work in France, Germany,
and the Netherlands, but each land had its own ways of embodying them.
It is interesting to note how national habits, memories, and even
prejudices compelled the external embodiment to take very varying
shapes, and force the historian to describe the Reformation in each
country as something by itself.
The new spiritual life in England took a shape distinctly marked out for
it by the almost forgotten reformatory movement under Wiclif which had
been native to the soil. Scotland might have been expected to follow the
lead of England, and bring her ecclesiastical reconstruction into
harmony with that of her new and powerful ally. The English alliance was
the great political fact of the Scottish Reformation, and leading
statesmen in both countries desired the still nearer approach which
conformity in the organisation of the Churches could not fail to foster.
But the memory of the old French alliance was too strong for Cecil and
Lethington, and Scotland took her methods of Church government from
France (not from Geneva), and drifted farther and farther away from the
model of the English settlement. The fifteenth century War of the Public
Weal repeated itself in the Wars of Religion in France; and in the Edict
of Nantes the Reformed Church was offered and accepted guarantees for
her independence such as a feudal prince might have demanded. The old
political local independence which had characterised the Low Countries
in the later Middle Ages reasserted itself in the ecclesiastical
arrangements of the Netherlands. The civic republics of Switzerland
demanded and received an ecclesiastical form of government which suited
the needs of their social and political life.
Yet amidst all this diversity there was the prevailing sense of an
underlying unity, and the knowledge that each national Church was part
of the Catholic Church Reformed was keener than among the Lutheran
Churches. Protestant England in the time of Edward VI. welcomed and
supported refugees banished by the Augsburg Interim from Strassburg.
Frankfurt received and provided for families who fled from the Marian
persecutions in England. Geneva became a city of refuge for oppressed
Protestants from every land, and these strangers frequently added quite
a third to her population. The feeling of fraternity was maintained, as
in the days of the early Church, by constant interchange of letters and
messengers, and correspondence gave a sense of unity which it was
impossible to embody in external political organisation. The sense of a
common danger was also a wonderful bond of kinship; and the feeling that
Philip of Spain was always plotting their destruction, softened
inter-ecclesiastical jealousies. The same sort of events occurred in all
the Churches at almost the same times. The Colloquy of Westminster
(1559) was separated from the Colloquy of Poissy (1561) by an interval
of two years only, and the same questions were discussed at both. Queen
Elizabeth openly declared herself a Protestant by partaking of the
communion in both "kinds" at Easter, 1559; and on the same day Antoine
de Bourbon, King of Navarre, made the same profession in the same way at
Pau in the south of France. Mary of Guise resolved that the same
festival should see the Scots united under the old faith, and thus
started the overt rebellion which ended in Scotland becoming a
Protestant nation.
The course of the Reformation in each country must be described
separately, and yet it is the one story with differences due to the
accidents of national temperaments, memories, and political
institutions.