History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume II (of 2)

Check of the Reformation in Europe. It is now more than three centuries since the Reformation commenced, and we are able, with some degree of accuracy, to ascertain its influence. Founded as it was on the right of private interpretation of the Scriptures, it introduced a better rule of life, and made a great advance towards intellectual liberty. It compelled men to be more moral, and permitted them to be more learned. For the traditions of superstition it substituted the dictates of common sense; it put an end to the disgraceful miracles that for so many ages had been the scandal of Europe. The assertion of the Italians that it was a great injury to letters is untrue. Though not to be regarded in any respect as a learned man, Luther approved of the study of Greek and Hebrew, recognized by all parties to be dangerous to the Latin system. And even if the accusation be admitted that he approved of their cultivation, not from any love of them, but from hatred to it, the world was equally a gainer. Toward the close of his life it seemed as if there was no other prospect for papal power than total ruin: yet at this day, out of three hundred millions of Christians, more than half owe allegiance to Rome. Almost as if by enchantment the Reformation suddenly ceased to advance. Rome was not only able to check its spread, but even to gain back a portion of what she had lost. Its causes were not supernatural. The cause of this, which may seem at first an extraordinary result, is not to be attributed to any supernatural influence, as some have supposed. When natural causes suffice, it is needless to look for supernatural.

Though there might be sovereigns who, like Henry VIII., had personal reasons for discontent with the Italian court; though there were some who sought to usurp the power and prerogatives of the popes; though there might be nobles who, as the Prince of Wales's tutor wrote to Sir W. Paget, were "importunate wolves, as are able to devour chantries, cathedral churches, universities, and a thousand times as much;" some who desired the plunder of establishments endowed by the piety of ages, and who therefore lent all their influence in behalf of this great revolution; there was among such and above such that small but all-important body of men who see human affairs from the most general point of view. Influence of statesmen and philosophers. To these, whatever might be the nation to which they happened to belong, it was perfectly evident that the decomposition of faith which had set in, if permitted to go on unchecked, could not possibly end in any other way than in producing an anarchy of sects. In their opinion, the German Reformation did not go far enough. It still practically left untouched the dependency of the Church upon the State. In the southern nations of the Continent it had merely irritated the great European ulcer, whereas what was required was the complete amputation of the rotten mass. In their judgment it was better to leave things as they were until a thorough eradication could be accomplished, and this, at the time, was obviously impossible. Not understanding, perhaps, how much human affairs are developed according to law, and how little by the volition of individuals, they liberally conceded that Catholicism had been the civilizing agency of Europe, and had become inwoven with the social fabric for good or for evil. It could not now be withdrawn without pulling the whole texture to pieces. Moreover, the curtain of papal authority, which at one time enveloped all Europe in its ample folds, had, in the course of these late events, been contracted and stretched across the Continent, dividing the northern and southern nations from each other. The people of the south saw on its embroidered surface nothing but forms of usefulness and beauty, they on the north a confusion of meaningless threads. But the few who considered it as a whole, and understood the relations of both sides, knew well enough that the one is the necessary incident of the other, and that it is quite as useless to seek for explanations as to justify appearances. To them it was perfectly clear that the tranquillity and happiness of Christendom were best subserved by giving no encouragement to opinions which had already occasioned so much trouble, and which seemed to contain in their very constitution principles of social disorganization.

Influence of the nature of the Reformation. A reason for the sudden loss of expansive force in the Reformation is found in its own intrinsic nature. The principle of decomposition which it represented, and with which it was inextricably entangled, necessarily implied oppugnancy. For a short season the attention of Protestantism was altogether directed to the papal authority from which it had so recently separated itself; but, with its growing strength and ascertained independence, that object ceased to occupy it, becoming, as it were, more distant and more obscure. Upon the subordinate divisions which were springing from it, or which were of collateral descent from the original Catholic stock, the whole view of each denomination was concentrated. The bitterness once directed against the papacy lost none of its intensity when pointed at rivals or enemies nearer home. Nor was it alone dissensions among the greater sects, oppositions such as those between the Church of England and the Church of Scotland, whose discords were founded on points admitted by all to be great and essential; the same principle ran down through all the modes of sectarian combination as they emerged into life, producing among those of equal power struggles, and in the strong toward the weak persecution. Effect of sectarian disputes. Very soon the process of decomposition had advanced to such an extent that minor sects came into existence on very unessential points. Yet even among these little bodies there was just as much acrimony, just as much hatred as among the great. These differences were carried into the affairs of civil life, each sect forming a society within itself, and abstaining, as far as might be, from associations with its rivals. Of such a state of things the necessary result was weakness, and, had there been no other reason, this in itself would have been quite sufficient in the end to deprive Protestantism of its aggressive power. An army divided against itself is in no condition to make warfare against a watchful and vigorous enemy.

Want of concentrated power. But this was not all. It was in the nature of Protestantism from its outset that it was not constructive. Unlike its great antagonist, it contained no fundamental principle that could combine distant communities and foreign countries together. It originated in dissent, and was embodied by separation. It could not possess a concentrated power, nor recognize one apostolic man who might compress its disputes, harmonize its powers, wield it as a mass. For the attainment of his aims the Protestant had only wishes, the Catholic had a will. The Church of England, of Scotland, or of any other Protestant nation, undoubtedly did discharge its duty excellently well for the community in which it was placed, but, at the most, it was only a purely local institution, altogether insignificant in comparison with that great old Church, hoary and venerable with age, which had seen every government and every institution in Europe come into existence, many of them at its bidding, which had extirpated paganism from the Roman empire, compelled the Cæsars to obey its mandates, precipitated the whole white race upon the Holy Land – that great old Church, once the more than imperial sovereign of Christendom, and of which the most respectable national Church was only a fragment of a fragment.

Condition of Catholicism. Very different was it with Catholicism. It possessed an organization which concentrated in the hand of one man irresistible power, and included all the southern countries of Europe not Mohammedan. It could enforce its policy by the armies and fleets of obedient kings. It is not surprising, when this state of things is considered, that the spread of the Reformation was limited to its first fervour – that the men who saw its origin saw also its culmination. It is not to be wondered at that, with the political weakening arising from a tendency to subdivision and disintegration on one side, and the preparing of a complete and effective organization against the danger that was threatening on the other, the issue should have turned out as it did.

The means of resistance resorted to by Rome. Rome, awaking at last to her danger, met the Reformation with four weapons – a counter-reformation, an increased vigour in the Inquisition, the institution of the Jesuits, and a greater embellishment of worship. The disposition of the northern nations was to a simplification of worship, that of the south to adorn it with whatever could captivate the senses. Ranke asserts that the composition of the mass of Marcellus by Palestrina, 1560, had a wonderful effect in the revival of religion; there can be no doubt that it constituted an epoch in devotion. A counter-reformation. But of all these, the first and best was a moral change which she instantly imposed upon herself. Henceforth it was her intention that in the chair of St. Peter should never again be seen atheists, poisoners, thieves, murderers, blasphemers, adulterers, but men, who, if they were sometimes found, as must be the case, considering the infirmities of humanity, incompetent to deal with the great trials which often befell them, were yet of such personal purity, holiness of life, and uprightness of intention as to command profound respect. Those scandals that hitherto had everywhere disgraced her began to disappear, a true reformation, but not a schism, occurring through all ecclesiastical grades. Had Protestantism produced no other result than this, it would have been an unspeakable blessing to the world.

The Inquisition brought into activity. By another very different means the Italian power sought to insure its domination – by an increased activity of the Inquisition. It is difficult to understand how men of capacity could have justified this iniquitous institution. Certainly it could not have been upon any principles of Christian morality, nor even upon those of high statesmanship. For the Inquisition to accomplish its purpose, it must needs be as all-seeing as Providence, as inexorable as the grave; not inflicting punishments which the sufferer could remember, but remorselessly killing outright; not troubling itself to ascertain the merits of a case and giving the accused the benefit of a doubt, but regarding suspicion and certainty as the same thing. If worked with the unscrupulous, impassive resolution of Machiavellianism, this great engine for the coercion of the human mind could be made to accomplish its purpose. It thoroughly extinguished Protestantism in Spain and Italy, and in those countries maintained a barrier against the progressive reason of man.

The Jesuits are established. But the most effective weapon to which the papacy resorted was the institution of the order of the Jesuits. This was established by a bull of Paul III., 1540, the rules being that the general, chosen for life, should be obeyed as God; that they should vow poverty, chastity, obedience, and go wherever they were commanded; their obedience was to the pope, not to the Church – a most politic distinction, for thereby an unmistakable responsibility was secured. They had no regular hours of prayer; their duties were preaching, the direction of consciences, education. By the Jesuits Rome penetrated into the remotest corners of the earth, established links of communication with her children who remained true to her in the heart of Protestant countries, and, with a far-seeing policy for the future, silently engrossed the education of the young. At the confessional she extorted from women the hidden secrets of their lives and those of their families, took the lead in devotion wherever there were pious men, and was equally foremost in the world of fashion and dissipation. Their influence all over the world. There was no guise under which the Jesuit might not be found – a barefoot beggar, clothed in rags; a learned professor, lecturing gratuitously to scientific audiences; a man of the world, living in profusion and princely extravagance; there have been Jesuits the wearers of crowns. There were no places into which they did not find their way: a visitor to one of the loyal old families of England could never be sure but that there was a Jesuit hidden in the garret or secreted behind the wainscot of the bedroom. They were the advisers of the leading men of the age, sat in the cabinets of kings, and were their confessors. They boasted that they were the link between religious opinion and literature. With implicit and unquestioning obedience to his superior, like a good soldier, it was the paramount duty of the Jesuit to obey his orders, whatever those orders might be. It was for him to go, at the summons of a moment, with his life in his hand, to the very centre of pagan or of reformed and revolted countries, where his presence was death by law, and execute the mission intrusted to him. If he succeeded, it was well; if he should fall, it was also well. To him all things were proper for the sake of the Church. It was his business to consider how the affair he had in hand was to be most surely accomplished – to resort to justifiable means if they should appear sufficient, if not, to unjustifiable; to the spiritual weapon, but also to be prepared with the carnal; to sacrifice candour if the occasion should require, if necessary even truth, remembering that the end justifies the means, if that end is the good of the Church.

While some religious orders were founded on retirement, and aimed at personal improvement by solitude, the Jesuits were instructed to mix in the affairs of men, and gather experience in the ways of worldly wisdom. And since it is the infirmity of humanity, whatever may be the vigour of its first intentions, too often to weary in well-doing, provision was made to re-enforce the zeal of those becoming lukewarm to admonish the delinquent, by making each a spy on all the others, under oath to reveal everything to his superior. In that manner a control was exercised over the brotherhood in all parts of the world. In Europe they had, in a very short time, stealthily but largely engrossed public education; had mixed themselves up with every public affair; were at the bottom of every intrigue, making their power felt through the control they exerted over sovereigns, ministers of state, and great court ladies, influencing the last through the spiritual means of the confessional, or by the more natural but equally effectual entanglements of requited love. Already they had recognized the agency of commerce in promoting and diffusing religious belief, and hence simultaneously became great missionaries and great merchants. With the Indies, East and West, they carried forward extensive commercial undertakings, and had depôts in various parts of Europe. In these operations they were necessarily absolved from their vows of poverty, and became immensely rich. In South America they obtained a footing in Paraguay, and commenced their noble attempt at the civilization of the Indians, bringing them into communities, teaching them social usages, agricultural arts, and the benefits arising to themselves and the community from labour. They gave them a military organization, subdivided according to the European system, into the customary arms – infantry, cavalry, artillery; they supplied them with munitions of war. It was their hope that from this basis they should be able to spread the rule of the Church over America, as had been done in preceding ages over Europe.

Causes of their suppression. An intolerable apprehension of their invisible presence and unscrupulous agency made all Europe put them down at last. The amenities of exquisite courteousness, the artifices of infinite dissimulation, cannot for ever deceive. Men found, by bitter experience, that within the silken glove there was an iron hand. From their general in Rome, who was absolute commander of their persons and unchallengeable administrator of their prodigious wealth, down to the humblest missionary who was wearing away his life among the Andes, or on the banks of the Hoang-ho, or in the solitary prairies of Missouri, or under the blazing sun of Abyssinia – whether he was confessing the butterfly ladies of Paris, whispering devilish suggestions into the ear of the King of Spain, consoling the dying peasant in an Irish cabin, arguing with mandarins in the palace of the Emperor of China, stealing away the hearts of the rising generation in the lower schools and academies, extorting the admiration of learned societies by the profundity of his philosophy and the brilliancy of his scientific discoveries – whether he was to be seen in the exchanges and marts of the great capitals, supervising commercial operations on a scale which up to that time had been attempted by none but the Jews – whether he was held in an English jail as a suspected vagabond, or sitting on the throne of France – whether he appeared as a great landed proprietor, the owner of countless leagues in the remote parts of India or South America, or whether he was mixing with crowds in the streets of London, and insinuating in Protestant ears the rights of subjects to oppose and even depose their monarchs, or in the villages of Castile and Leon, preaching before Catholic peasants the paramount duty of a good Christian implicitly to obey the mandates of his king – wherever the Jesuit was, or whatever he was doing, men universally felt that the thing he had in hand was only auxiliary to some higher, some hidden design. This stealth, and silence and power became at last so intolerable that the Jesuits were banished from France, Spain, Portugal, and other Catholic countries. But such was their vitality that, though the order was abolished by a papal bull in 1773, they have been again restored.

Effects of change of opinion among the learned. Though it is sometimes said that Rome in this manner, by her admirable combinations and irresistible movement, succeeded at last in checking the Reformation, a full consideration of the state of affairs would lead us to receive that assertion with very considerable restriction. She came out of the conflict much less powerful than she had entered it. If we attribute to her policy all that it can justly claim, we must also attribute to causes over which she had no kind of control their rightful influence. The Reformation had been, to no small extent, due to the rise of criticism, which still continued its development, and was still fruitful of results. Latin had fallen from its high estate; the modern languages were in all directions expanding and improving; the printing-press was not only giving Greek learning to the world, but countless translations and commentaries. The doctrine successfully established by Luther and his colleagues – the right of private interpretation and judgment – was the practical carrying out of the organic law of criticism to the highest affairs with which man can be concerned – affairs of religion. The Reformation itself, philosophically considered, really meant the casting off of authority, the installation of individual inquiry and personal opinion. Effects of criticism on religion and literature. If criticism, thus standing upon the basis of the Holy Scriptures, had not hesitated to apply itself to an examination of public faith, and, as the consequence thereof, had laid down new rules for morality and the guidance of life, it was not to be expected that it would hesitate to deal with minor things – that it would spare the philosophy, the policy, the literature of antiquity. And so, indeed, it went on, comparing classical authors with classical authors, the fathers with the fathers, often the same writer with himself. Contradictions were pointed out, errors exposed, weakness detected, and new views offered of almost everything within the range of literature.

The Bible. From this burning ordeal one book alone came out unscathed. It was the Bible. It spontaneously vindicated for itself what Wiclif in the former times, and Luther more lately, had claimed for it. And not only did it hold its ground, but it truly became incalculably more powerful than ever it had been before. The press multiplied it in every language without end, until there was scarcely a cottage in reformed Europe that did not possess a copy.

But if criticism was thus the stimulating principle that had given life to the Reformation, it had no little to do with its pause; and this is the influence over which Rome had no kind of control, and to which I have made allusion. The phases through which the Reformation passed were dependent on the coincident advances of learning. First it relied on the Scriptures, which were to the last its surest support; then it included the Fathers. Decline of the value of patristic learning. But, from a more intimate study of the latter, many erudite Protestants were gradually brought back to the ancient fold. Among such may be mentioned Erasmus, who by degrees became alienated from the Reformers, and subsequently Grotius, the publication of whose treatise, "De jure belli et pacis," 1625, really constituted an epoch in the political system of Europe. This great man had gradually become averse to the Reformation, believing that, all things considered, it had done more harm than good; he had concluded that it was better to throw differences into oblivion for the sake of peace, and to enforce silence on one's own opinions, rather than to expect that the Church should be compelled to accommodate herself to them. If such men as Erasmus, Casaubon, and Grotius had been brought to this dilemma by their profound philosophical meditations, their conclusion was confirmed among the less reflecting by the unhappy intolerance of the new as well as the old Church. Moral effects of persecutions. Men asked what was the difference between the vindictiveness with which Rome dealt with Antonio de Dominis, at once an ecclesiastic and a natural philosopher, who, having gone over to Protestantism and then seceded, imprudently visited Rome, was there arrested, and dying, his body was dug up and burnt, and the rigour of Calvin, who seized Servetus, the author of the "Christianismi Restitutio," and in part the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, when he happened to pass through Geneva, and committed him to the flames.

End of patristicism. Criticism had thus, in its earlier stage, produced well-marked results. As it developed it lost none of its power. It had enthroned patristic theology; now it wrenched from its hand the sceptre. In the works of Daillé it showed that the fathers are of no kind of use – they are too contradictory of one another; even Jeremy Taylor speaks of their authority and reputation as clean gone for ever. In a few years they had sunk into desuetude, a neglect shared by many classical authors, whose opinions were now only quoted with a respectful smile. The admiration for antiquity was diminishing under the effect of searching examination. Books were beginning to appear, turning the old historians into ridicule for their credulity. The burning of Servetus by Calvin. The death of Servetus was not without advantage to the world. There was not a pious or thoughtful man in all reformed Europe who was not shocked when the circumstances under which that unhappy physician had been brought to the stake at Geneva by John Calvin were made known. For two hours he was roasted in the flames of a slow fire, begging for the love of God that they would put on more wood, or do something to end his torture. Men asked, with amazement and indignation, if the atrocities of the Inquisition were again to be revived. On all sides they began to inquire how far it is lawful to inflict the punishment of death for difference of opinion. It opened their eyes to the fact that, after all they had done, the state of civilization in which they were living was still characterized by its intolerance. In 1546 the Venetian ambassador at the court of Charles V. reported to his government that in Holland and Friesland more than thirty thousand persons had suffered death at the hands of justice for Anabaptist errors. From such an unpromising state of things toleration could only emerge with difficulty. It was the offspring, not of charity, but of the checked animosities of ever-multiplying sects, and the detected impossibility of their coercing one another.

The Reformation continued in America. The history of the Reformation does not close, as many European authors have imagined, in a balanced and final distribution of the north and south between the Protestant and the Catholic. The predestined issue of sectarian differences and dissensions is individual liberty of thought. So long as there was one vast, overshadowing, intolerant corporation, every man must bring his understanding to its measure, and think only as it instructed him to do. As soon as dissenting confessions gathered sufficient military power to maintain their right of existence – as soon as from them, in turn, incessant offshoots were put forth, toleration became not only possible, but inevitable, and that is perhaps as far as the movement has at this time advanced in Europe. But Macaulay and others who have treated of the Reformation have taken too limited a view of it, supposing that this was its point of arrest. Separation of Church and State. It made another enormous stride when, at the American Revolution, the State and the Church were solemnly and openly dissevered from one another. Now might the vaticinations of the prophets of evil expect to find credit; a great people had irrevocably broken off its politics from its theology, and it might surely have been expected that the unbridled interests, and instincts, and passions of men would have dragged everything into the abyss of anarchy. Yet what do we, who are living nearly a century after that time, find the event to be? Sectarian decomposition, passing forward to its last extreme, is the process by which individual mental liberty is engendered and maintained. A grand and imposing religious unity implies tyranny to the individual; the increasing emergence of sects gives him increasing latitude of thought – with their utmost multiplication he gains his utmost liberty. In this respect, unity and liberty are in opposition; as the one diminishes, the other increases. Emergence of liberty of thought. The Reformation broke down unity; it gave liberty to masses of men grouped together in sufficient numbers to insure their position; it is now invisibly, but irresistibly making steps, never to be stayed until there is an absolute mental emancipation for man.

The American clergy. Great revolutions are not often accomplished without much suffering and many crimes. It might have been supposed before the event, perhaps it is supposed by many who are not privileged to live among the last results, that this decomposition of religious faith must be to the detriment of personal and practical piety. Yet America, in which, of all countries, the Reformation at the present moment has farthest advanced, should offer to thoughtful men much encouragement. Its cities are filled with churches built by voluntary gifts; its clergy are voluntarily sustained, and are, in all directions, engaged in enterprises of piety, education, mercy. What a difference between their private life and that of ecclesiastics before the Reformation! Not, as in the old times, does the layman look upon them as the cormorants and curse of society; they are his faithful advisers, his honoured friends, under whose suggestion and supervision are instituted educational establishments, colleges, hospitals, whatever can be of benefit to men in this life, or secure for them happiness in the life to come.