THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

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In a general way, religious liberty was unknown throughout Europe during the sixteenth century.

It is important to obtain a distinct idea of the stand taken by the Reformers of that day on the subject of mental emancipation. Luther had divested the Bible of its learned cerements and submitted it, in homely tongue, to the unlettered mass of his countrymen.* But in giving them the book, he denied to them the right of interpreting it. He and his co-laborers in the ministry, declared that if any one, reading the translated Scriptures, derived therefrom, how sincerely soever, conceptions touching the nature of the Trinity or of the Divinity of Christ, or of the doctrines of the atonement, that differed from their own, such a dissenter was a detestable blasphemer, who ought to suffer death, or, at the least, banishment. How much worse was the decree of a single Pope than the dictation of a presbytery? How much better the City Council of Geneva than the Ecumenical Council of Trent-both assuming to decide, for the Christian world, what is "the holy doctrine of God."

Could such men conquer in spiritual strife? And because they did not, are we justified in concluding, with Macaulay, that there is no such thing as religious progress? I think not. The Protestantism of the sixteenth century failed, indeed, to establish itself as the one dominant religion of civilization. But, evincing the spirit it evinced, do you think it ought ever to have succeeded?

That question (you will perhaps remind me) concerns articles of religious faith as well as rights of private judgment.

translation of the Bible (1573) Castalio boldly asserts the principle of religious liberty.

* In ten years (from 1523, when Luther's translation appeared, to 1533), fifty-seven editions of the New Testament were printed, of which seventeen from the Wittenberg presses.

"Whoso after my death shall contemn the authority of this school here at Wittenberg, if it remain as it is now, school and Church, is a heretic and perverted creature."-Luther's Table Talk, p. 339.

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THE AGE OF SCHOLASTICISM.

Undoubtedly. And though it be aside from my present purpose to engage in theological controversy-seeing that the world does not read folios nowadays, and that I propose to write but a single small volume, yet it is useful to be reminded what the dogmas of that day were. And this the rather, because one finds, in the symbolic history of the time, all-sufficient cause, and a certain apology, for the denial of mental freedom to humankind. While the Reformers set up faith in doctrine, aside from works, as the one thing needful for the soul's salvation, they rejected another phase of faith essential to human improvement. They had no belief in human virtue; and, as a corollary, they considered man unfit to be trusted, especially in choice of a religion.

Suffer me, then, here briefly to reproduce, from the accredited text-books of early Protestantism, a few of the more important doctrines; sufficiently well-known, doubtless, to most students of your profession; but less familiar, probably, in their original form, to the majority of secular inquirers.

§ 8. SALIENT DOCTRINES OF THE REFORMERS.

"The mournful record of an earlier age,

That, pale and half effaced, lies hidden away

Beneath the fresher writing of to-day."-LONGFELLOW.

The sixteenth century was eminently the age of scholasticism. The public mind of Europe fed upon dogmas and confessions of faith, as eagerly as did that of America in Revolutionary days on political axioms and State constitutions. Lutheran and Calvinist and Catholic debated, at market and at board, in Diet and workshop, the exciting question of Papal infallibility, with the same absorbing zeal as did the Puritan a century later the vexed issue touching the right divine of kings. The early Protestants discussed free-will, and the real presence, predestination, and justification by faith, with a fiery

earnestness that far outdid our warmest political strifes. We have much more toleration, but also much more indifference, in matters of religion, than these sturdy controversialists.

The fundamental and characteristic doctrines of the Reformation date from the patristic period. They derive chiefly from a man whose opinions, disseminated in the fifth century from the ancient capital of the Numidian kings, influenced with a power which no other schoolman ever exercised, the theology of the world throughout a thousand years, dating from the time he flourished.

St. Augustine seems to have deserved the character he bears, as one of the purest, kindest, and holiest of men; singular in his humility and severe in his self-discipline.* His "Confessions" have spoken to thousands of perturbed and penitent hearts, as they did, beyond question, to Luther in his Augustinian cell, and to Calvin during his precocious studies. "Luther," says Principal Tulloch, “nourished himself upon Scripture and St. Augustine." + Calvin's "Institutes " are based on Augustine's "City of God." In that great work, the monument of highest genius left to us from the ancient church, and generally

* In very early life led away by profligate companions, then attracted by the charm of classic poetry and æsthetics, afterwards, for nine years, a Manichæan; at the age of twenty-nine, weary of pleasure and philosophy, Augustine went to Rome, made the acquaintance of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, and was by him converted to Christianity. The death of a saintly mother and of an illegitimate son, plunging him in deepest grief, drove him to a monastic life. His episcopate of thirty-five years was one long labor of benevolence. Courteous in bearing, he invited Pagans to his table. In a controversy with the Universalists of his day, he asserted that their error should be tenderly dealt with, since it originated in a desire to vindicate the goodness and mercy of God. While he condemned and combated the heresy of Donatus (founded on denial of the Church's infallibility), he protested to the Proconsul of Africa that, if capital punishment was inflicted on the Donatists, he and his clergy would suffer death at the hands of these turbulent heretics, rather than be instrumental in bringing them before the tribunals. -S. Augustini Epistola, No. 127, ad Procons. Africæ.

+ Leaders of the Reformation, London, 1859, p. 10.

in the African bishop's voluminous lucubrations,* we find the source, not only of the Reformers' creed, but also, in later years, of the Jansenist heresy. His doctrine is tersely expressed in that saying of his: "He that made thee without thy aid, will He not save thee without thy aid?" Pity it is, that in reproducing, in exaggerated form, the worthy father's peculiar views, the sixteenth-century dialecticians failed to im-itate his personal gentleness and charity.f

Luther led the forlorn hope against the old fortress of Papal infallibility, and it was the heavy cannon of his rough rhetoric that first effected a practicable breach. But, as regards the dogmatic history of the early Protestant movement, Calvin is the central figure. The chief work of his life, his celebrated "Institutes," officially set up by his fellow-townsmen of Geneva as a scheme of doctrine too holy to be questioned, won for him, in his own times, from Melancthon and from the Protestant world generally, the title, by excellence, of “THE THEOLOGIAN;" and even in our day it is accepted, by popular historians of the Reformation, not only as the most complete and methodical text-book of that movement, but as one of the most triumphant efforts of human wit. §

The chief characteristic of this work is its frank directness. It is free from all paltering and equivocation. Its author,

* The titles alone of St. Augustine's numerous works make a long catalogue.

† While full justice should be rendered to St. Augustine's kindly nature, one ought not to forget that the doctrines he taught led logically to intolerance and persecution.

+ Institutes of the Christian Religion ("Institutio Religionis Christianæ"), by JOHN CALVIN. The translation which I have followed, made from the original Latin and collated with the author's last edition in French, is by John Allen, London, 1813. It has the reputation, deserved, I think, of being one of the most faithful extant.

§ Merle D'Aubigné says of this treatise, that it "is the finest body of doctrine ever possessed by the Church of Christ." And he adds : This work, accomplished by spiritual force, far exceeds, in the importance of its consequences, all that has ever been done by the pens of the ablest

INCULCATING HUMAN DEPRAVITY.

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having assumed his premises, hesitates at no conclusions to which they logically lead. Even while he confesses predestination to be a "horrible decree," he asserts it none the less boldly, as divine doctrine, on that account. Nor does he shrink from inculcating "abhorrence of ourselves,"† nor from such admissions as that grace is not offered to all men, that the most odious crimes are God's work, and the like. But let this fearless dogmatist speak for himself.

First, on the doctrine of human depravity:

"Let us hold this as an undoubted truth which no opposition can ever shake, that the mind of man is so completely alienated from the righteousness of God, that it conceives, desires, and undertakes everything that is impious, perverse, base, impure, and flagitious; that his heart is so thoroughly infected by the poison of sin that it cannot produce anything but what is corrupt; and that if, at any time, men do anything apparently good, yet the mind always remains involved in hypocrisy and fallacious obliquity, and the heart enslaved by its inward perIn vain do we look in our nature for any

verseness.

thing that is good." t

He reiterates this sentiment again and again, apparently seeking, by sweep of condemnation, to leave no loophole for human self-respect. Witness this:

"Everything in man, the understanding and the will, the soul and body, is polluted. Man is, of himself, nothing else than

concupiscence."`§

statesmen or the swords of the greatest warriors."—History of the Reformation in the Time of Calvin (New York Ed., 1865), vol. iii. pp. 170, 172. Tulloch, with whom Calvin is no special favorite, admits him to be "the greatest Biblical commentator of his age," and characterizes his Institutes as the charter of the great movement to which he was destined to give theological consistency and moral triumph."—Leaders of the Reformation, pp. 103 and 167.

*

Decretum quidem horribile fateor," are his words.-Institutes, Book 3, Chap. 23.

+ Inst., B. 2, C. 1, § 1.

§ Inst., B. 2, C. 1, § 10.

Inst., B. 2, C. 3, § 19 and § 2.