Part IV. INFLUENCE OF THE REFORMATION ON SOCIETY. CHAPTER XI. INFLUENCE OF THE REFORMATION ON RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. Stating the question-Two aspects - Professions - M. D'Aubigné's theory-"Combating" ad libitum-Diversities and sects-Inconsistency-Early Protestant intolerance-The mother and her recreant daughter-Facts on persecution of each other by early ProtestantsOf Karlstadt-Luther the cause of it-Persecution of AnabaptistsSynod at Hamburg-Luther's letter-Zuingle-The drowned JewCalvinistic intolerance-Persecution of Catholics - Diet of Spires -Name of Protestant-A stubborn truth-Strange casuistry-Convention at Smalkalde-Inquisition and St. Bartholomew's day-The Michelade, a set-off-Union of church and state-A bear's embraceHallam's testimony-Parallel between Catholic and Protestant countries. WE have seen what was the influence of the boasted reformation on religion: we are now to examine how it affected the interests of this world. Among these, liberty is the one which is perhaps dearest to the human heart. The very name excites a thrill, and stirs the deepest feelings of the soul. Did the reformation promote liberty ? Did it break the fetters of political bondage, and did it favor freedom of conscience? Were those who came within the range of its influence rendered more free, either religiously or politically, than they had been before? The question presents two aspects; and we begin with that which is religious, both because this involves higher interests, and because it forms the natural point of transition from the merely religious and spiritual to the merely secular and temporal influence of the reformation. Religious liberty guarantees to every man the right to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience, without thereby incurring any civil penalties or disabilities whatever. Did the reformation secure this? We shall see. A summary collection of the facts of history bearing on the subject will settle the question. The reformation indeed boasted much on this subject. It professed to free mankind from the degrading yoke of the papacy, and to restore to them their Christian liberty. Men were told that they who professed the old religion were groaning under a worse than Babylonian captivity, and that those who would rally under the banner of reform would be brought back into the land of Israel, there to worship in freedom and in peace near the Sion of God. The pope was Antichrist; the church was ruthlessly trampled under foot by his ministers; the liberties of the world were crushed. And mankind were invited to arise in their strength, to break their chains, and to be free! The restraining influence of church authority was to be spurned as wholly incompatible with freedom, and each one was to be guided solely by his own private judgment in matters of religion. The Germans were told of the grievances they had to endure in ages past from the court of Rome. Angry passions, once excited by long forgotten controversies between the Germanic empire and the Roman pontiffs, were called up again from the abyss in which they had slumbered for centuries; and the Germans were implored, in the talismanic name of liberty, to break off all connection with Rome for ever. In case they would do this, the reformation promised that they should realize the brightest visions of freedom. Such was the specious theory of the reformation; such the boasting speculation of Protestant writers generally. M. Guizot, in his Lectures on Civilization in Modern Europe, asserts that through the reformation was brought about "the emancipation of the human mind." According to M. D'Aubigné, the Catholic church had utterly destroyed all human liberty. "But as a besieging army day by day contracts its lines, compelling the garrison to confine their movements within the narrow enclosure of the fortress, and at last obliging it to surrender at discretion, just so the hierarchy, from age to age, and almost from year to year, has gone on restricting the liberty allowed for a time to the human mind, until at last, by successive encroachments, there remained no liberty at all. That which was to be believed, loved, or done, was regulated and decreed in the courts of the Roman chancery. The faithful were relieved from the trouble of examining, reflecting, and combating; all they had to do was to repeat the formularies that had been taught them.' * This is all, to say the least, an absurd exaggeration, a grotesque romance, not even borrowed from real life. What! were men then, for fifteen hundred years, mere automatons? Did the obedience to the decisions of the church stifle all rational liberty? Had not Christ enjoined this obedience on all under penalty of being ranked with heathens and publicans ? Did Christ and the apostles leave it free to men to decide, by their private judgment, whether they would receive or reject the doctrines they taught? And in enjoining obedience on all, with the menace of eternal damnation to him that would not believe, did they crush all liberty? Might not our historian also taunt their practice with being inimical to freedom, on the ground that it "relieved the faithful from the trouble of examining, reflecting, and combating?" In what consists the difference between the authorita * D'Aubigné, iii, 237. † Matth. xviii. + Mark xvi. tive teaching of the first body of Christ's ministers, the apostles and that of the body of pastors who, by divine commission, succeeded them in the office of preaching, teaching, and baptizing, and who, in the discharge of these sacred duties, were promised the divine assistance "all days, even to the consummation of the world ?""* And if the latter was opposed to rational liberty, why was not the former? Besides, we learn, for the first time, that the Roman chancery decided on articles of faith: we had always thought that this was the exclusive province of general councils, and, when these were not in session, of Roman pontiffs with the acquiescence of the body of bishops dispersed over the world. We had also thought that even these did not always decide on controverted points, but only in cases in which the teaching of revelation was clear and explicit; and that, in other matters, they wisely allowed a reasonable latitude of opinion. But M. D'Aubigné would have us believe that Roman Catholics are bound hand and foot, body and soul, and that they are not allowed even to reflect! They were certainly not allowed to "combat:" this was the special privilege of the reformed party. The old church wisely ordained that all the "combating" should take place, if at all, without her pale: she would permit no wrangling nor sects within her bosom. It is indeed curious to observe how M. D'Aubigné boasts of this privilege of wrangling among discordant sects as the very quintessence of Christian liberty! This precious liberty could not be enjoyed so long as a recognition of the principle of church authority held the religious world in unity; the reformers therefore determined to burst this bondage of union, and to assert their freedom to "combat" ad libitum! "The reformation," he says, "in restoring liberty to the church, must therefore restore to it its original diver *Matth. xxviii. sity (!), and people it with families united by the great features of resemblance derived from their common head, but varying in secondary features, and reminding us of the varieties inherent in human nature. Perhaps it might have been desirable that this diversity should have been allowed to subsist in the universal church without leading to sectarian divisions; and yet we must remember that sects are only the expression of this diversity."* Humiliating avowal! Sects are therefore as essential features in Protestantism, as are the "diversities" of which they are but the expression! And all this is essential to that Christian liberty for which the world is indebted to the "glorious reformation!" St. Paul, a competent authority, reckons sects and dissensions with murders and drunkenness; and says of all of them that "they who do such things shall not obtain the kingdom of God." Thus, according to our historian, an essential feature of Christian liberty, is an essential bar to entrance into the kingdom of heaven! The reformation is welcome to all the merit of having originated such a system of liberty! As well might its panegyrist have claimed for it, as essential to the liberty which it brought into the world, a license for murders and drunkenness. A little farther on, he thus glories in the shame of Protestantism. "True it is, that human passion found an entrance into these discussions (among Protestant sects), but while deploring such minglings of evil, Protestantism, far from seeking to disguise the diversity, publishes and proclaims it. Its path to unity is indeed long and difficult, but the unity it proposes is real." Real in what? Is there one common ground of unity which Protestantism has not recklessly trodden down and rendered desolate ? Truly its path to unity "has been long and difficult." During three hundred years, this tortuous path has been seen winding in more than a hundred different directions, and it has not yet led the weary wanderer to unity! * Ibid. p. 238. † Gallatians v, 20, 21. + Ibid. p. 238. |