36

PERSECUTION AND THE SWORD

sufficient, if unaided by mental and moral agencies, to arrest a reformatory movement so powerful and widespread as was that of Lutheranism in 1570. It proved insufficient in the early ages to check a weaker sect, the primitive Christians; although, under Decius in the middle of the third century, and yet more especially fifty years later under Dioclesian and Galerius, it showed itself in forms of death and of torture marked by a ferocity unparalleled in the history of the world. The martyrs in those days, greedy of death as the surest entrance to heaven, denounced themselves, by hundreds, to the authorities; * and their religious teachers found it necessary to exert their utmost authority in order to check this species of self-immolation. The spirit of the new religion passed unquenched through the fiery trial.

The counter-revolution which set in toward the close of the sixteenth century was evidently a recoil of opinion far more than a repression by force. Outside of Spain and Italy, no authority to the Inquisition was conceded, after the date of the Reformation, by temporal sovereigns; Spain was the chief scene of its horrors. Nor can we ascribe to victories in the

in the inmost depths of the heart of man were thus changed into mere outward acts. A slight turn of the thoughts was held to exonerate from all guilt."—History of the Popes, III. pp. 139, 143.

* If Tertullian may be trusted, the entire population of a small town in Asia presented themselves before the proconsul, proclaiming their faith in Christianity and entreating him to carry into effect the Imperial decree and put them all to death. When, partially acceding to their supplication, he had executed a few and dismissed the rest, these departed bitterly grieving that they had been deemed unworthy of the glorious martyr-crown.

The number of victims who suffered under the Spanish Inquisition will never be accurately known, yet it was undoubtedly greater than that of all the martyrs under the Pagan persecutions of the first three centuries. It is to be conceded that the Protestant faith was actually crushed out of existence in Spain, by the death of obdurate heretics and the extremity of terror in the survivors. At one time, about 1558, "there were converts in almost all the towns and in many of the villages of the ancient kingdom of Leon.".-(MCCRIE, Reformation in

ARE INSUFFICIENT EXPLANATIONS.

37

field the losses, in converts and in territory, of the Reformers. When the war waged by the Smalcalde League of Protestants against Charles V. was terminated by Alva's victory at Mühlberg,* that seemingly disastrous defeat scarcely at all arrested the progress of the new faith. Even to the terrible night of St. Bartholomew and the horrors that succeeded it, though for the time they undoubtedly crushed hope and spirit among the Huguenots, we cannot trace the state of feeling which prevailed throughout France, twenty years after the massacre, when Henry IV., Protestant and fearless soldier as he was, finding himself about to be deserted even by the most gallant of those Huguenot nobles whose swords had won for him the battle of Ivry, was fain to abjure his religion in order to secure a throne.†

No. Neither fortune of arms nor suffering by persecution; neither the serpent-wisdom of an Order of which the members were all things to all men, nor the cleansing of those shameless corruptions which had so scandalized the Augustinian monk, Martin Luther, when in 1510 he visited degenerate Rome—not any one of these incidents, nor all of them combined, can be accepted as even plausible explanation why Protestantism, after virtually conquering three-fourths of Europe in one half century, lost, in the next eighty years, full one-half of all she had gained.

Lost, and never recovered it; not after ten generations had passed; not down to the present day.

Spain, London, 1829, p. 231.) A Catholic historian (PARAMO, Hist. Inquisitiones), says: "Had not the Inquisition taken care in time, the Protestant religion would have run through Spain like wildfire." But that wary institution took the alarm in 1558; the first auto-da-fè was celebrated May 21, 1559, at Valladolid, in presence of Don Carlos and the Queen Dowager; and ere five years had passed, Protestantism was literally exterminated, from the Pyrenees to the Atlantic.

* In 1547.

"Even the Protestant clergy had the wisdom to exhort the king, (Henry IV.) to return into the bosom of the Catholic Church. Calvinism, by the burdensome austerities of its moral censures, finished by losing its attraction for the nobles.”—GERVINUS: Introduction to His tory of Nineteenth Century, pp. 47, 48.

38

SCEPTICAL REVOLUTION OF EIGHTEENTH, AND

If still there lingers in your minds a doubt whether one is justified in concluding that the reactionary movement dating from 1570 cannot be explained, as the result of incidental and extraneous agencies; or if you fall back, perhaps, on the position that the Reformation was premature in so rude a century as the sixteenth; then I pray you to interpret another episode in the history of the Lutheran movement, occurring two hundred years after Luther's time.

An episode connected with the days of the French encyclopedists, when Voltaire derided; when D'Alembert and Diderot wrote; when Paine discoursed of an age of reason, and Volney of the ruin of empires. In those days men witnessed, some with amazement and terror, some with exultation, what seemed a concerted attack upon all that was most ancient in opinion, and all that is usually held most sacred in religion. Let Macaulay, who has graphically described this uprising of scepticism, often allied with talent and learning, sometimes with philanthropy, briefly sum up to us the result:

"During the eighteenth century the influence of the Church of Rome was constantly on the decline. Unbelief made extensive conquests in all the Catholic countries of Europe, and in some countries obtained a complete ascendency. The Papacy was at length brought so low as to be an object of derision to infidels, and of pity rather than of hatred to Protestants.* During the nineteenth century this fallen Church has been gradually rising from her depressed state and reconquering her old dominion.. No person who calmly reflects on what, within the last few years,† has passed in Spain, in Italy, in South America, in Ireland, in the Netherlands, in Prussia, and even in France, can doubt that her power over the hearts and minds of men is now greater than it was when the 'Encyclopedia'

*Ranke's history fully bears out Macaulay's view of the situation. After giving the particulars of the death, in France, of the aged and deposed Pius VI., in August, 1799, he adds: “In fact it seemed as if the papal power was now forever at an end."-vol. iii. p. 226.

This was written in 1840.

COUNTER REVOLUTION OF NINETEENTII, CENTURIES. 39

and the Philosophical Dictionary' appeared. It is surely remarkable that neither the moral revolution of the eighteenth century, nor the moral counter-revolution of the nineteenth, should, in any perceptible degree, have added to the domain of Protestantism. During the former period whatever was lost to Catholicism was lost also to Christianity; during the latter, whatever was regained by Christianity was regained also by Catholicism. We should naturally have expected that many' minds, on the way from superstition to infidelity, or from infidelity back to superstition, would have stopped at an intermediate point. We think it a most remarkable fact that no Christian nation which did not adopt the principles of the Reformation before the end of the sixteenth century, should ever have adopted them. Catholic communities have, since that time, become infidel and become Catholic again, but none have become Protestant."*

Macaulay is right. All this is most remarkable. He to whom it supplies not theme for earnest meditation must be very careless, or very contracted in circle of thought.

§ 4. HOW EXPLAIN THE FOREGOING EPISODES?

All that has been said and believed of human progress-how mighty Truth is, how sure to prevail over Error-is it pure

* MACAULAY'S Essays, New York Ed. of 1856, vol. iii. pp. 339, 340. The extract is from his celebrated review of Ranke's History of the Popes, an admirable essay, rather, on the Reformation and its ebbings and flowings, and its results. I am compelled to differ from Ma-. caulay's inferences, while I admire, and in part have followed, his masterly array of facts.

It ought to be borne in mind, in connection with the reactionary movement in favor of Catholicism above spoken of as occurring during the early portion of the present century, that the terrors of the Inqui sition had nothing to do in bringing it about.

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fable?

ABSTRACT OF ROMAN CATHOLIC DOCTRINES.

Or are we to believe that it is not against Error that Protestantism is losing the battle?

We have had recent official reminders what some of the claims of Roman Catholicism are. That Christ himself has invested the Pope with full authority to rule and govern the Universal Church; that the Pope may properly issue decrees, by his assured knowledge, by his own impulse and by the fulness of his apostolic power; that such decrees shall remain in force in all time to come, and shall never, on any plea, be revoked, or limited, or questioned, even though an Ecumenical Council, including the college of Cardinals, unanimously consents to their revocation.*

Other claims, asserted and maintained by the Church of Rome, may be culled from equally authentic sources.

The

We

See, in confirmation, the "Constitution" issued by the present Pope, under date of December 4, 1869, to provide for the contingency of his death during the recent Ecumenical Council. It affirms that "to the Roman Pontiffs our Lord Jesus Christ gave the full power to feed, rule, and govern the Universal Church." The Pope then goes on to declare: "Of our certain knowledge, our motion, and in the plenitude of our Apostolic power, we decree and ordain,” etc., (giving details, excluding the council from all share in the election of a Pope, and declaring null and void whatever they may do, until a successor to the Papal chair shall be so chosen). Then he proceeds: "This decision must not be questioned, attacked, refuted, invalidated, retracted, legally revoked, or submitted to discussion. declare null and void whatever shall be done to the contrary, during the vacancy of the Apostolic See, by any authority whatever, whether by the authority of the Council of the Vatican, or of any other ŒEcumenical Council; even with the unanimous consent of the Cardinals that now are, or at any future time may be." And the document winds up by proclaiming that whoever shall "call in question this our declaration, decree, and will," or shall "dare to infringe them," or shall" make such an attempt," ""let him know that he incurs the indignation of Almighty God and of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.”—Translation made for the (London) Vatican, and officially published in the (New York) Catholic Register of January 22, 1870.

As from the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, which commenced its sessions in December, 1545, twenty-five years after the