ways protests and reacts. Finally it should be remembered that Protestantism never claimed infallibility and perfection, and is always open to further improvement and progress on the basis of the Word of God.-We now proceed to the general principles of the reformation as held to this day, in their acknowledged standards, by all the Protestant churches to which it gave rise. The reformation was originally neither a political nor a philosophical nor a literary, but a religious and ecclesiastical movement. It started with the practical question: How can the troubled conscience find pardon and peace and become sure of personal salvation? It retained from the Catholic system all the objective doctrines of Christianity concerning the Holy Trinity and the divine human character and work of Christ-in fact, all the articles of faith contained in the apostles' and other œcumenical creeds of the early church. But it joined issue with the prevailing system of religion in soteriology, or in the doctrines relating to subjective experimental Christianity, especially the justification of the sinner before God, the true character of faith, good works, the rights of conscience, and the rule of faith. It asserted the principle of evangelical freedom as laid down in the epistles of Paul to the Romans and Galatians, in opposition to the system of an outward legalistic authority which held the individual conscience and private judgment bound. It brought the believer into a direct relation and union with Christ as the one and all-sufficient source of salvation, in opposition to traditional ecclesiasticism, and priestly and saintly intercession. The Protestant goes directly to the Word of God for instruction, and to the throne of grace in his devotions; while the pious Catholic always consults the teaching of his church, and often prefers to offer his prayers through the medium of the Virgin Mary and the saints. Schleiermacher states the difference between Catholicism and Protestantism in the formula: "Catholicism makes the believer's relation to Christ depend upon his relation to the church; Protestantism makes the relation of the believer to the church depend upon his relation to Christ." In other words, Catholicism gets to Christ through the church, Protestantism gets to the church through Christ; the former proceeds from the body to the head, the latter from the head to the body; with the one churchliness is the measure of christliness, with the other the degree of christliness determines and conditions the character and value of churchliness. From this general principle of evangelical freedom and direct individual relationship of the believer to Christ proceed the two fundamental doctrines of Protestantism, the absolute supremacy of the word of Christ, and the absolute supremacy of the grace of Christ. The one is called the formal principle, or principium cognoscendi; the other the material principle, or principium essendi. The former proclaims the canonical Scriptures (to the exclusion of the

Apocrypha of the Old Testament), and more particularly the word of Christ and the apostles, to be the only and sufficient infallible source and rule of faith and practice, and asserts the right of private interpretation of the same; in distinction from the Roman Catholic view, which declares the Bible and tradition or church authority to be two coördinate sources and rules of faith, and makes tradition, especially the decrees of popes and councils, the only legitimate and infallible interpreter of the Bible. In its extreme form Chillingworth expressed this principle of the reformation in the well known formula: "The Bible, I say, the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants." Genuine Protestantism, however, by no means despises or rejects tradition and church authority as such, but only subordinates it to and measures its value by the Bible, and believes in a progressive interpretation of the Bible through the expanding and deepening consciousness of Christendom. Hence, beside having its own symbols or standards of public doctrine, it retained all the articles of the ancient Catholic creeds and a large amount of disciplinary and ritual tradition, and rejected only those doctrines and ceremonies of the Catholic church for which it found no clear warrant in the Bible, or which it thought contradicted its letter or spirit. The Calvinistic branches of Protestantism went further in their antagonism to the received traditions than the Lutheran and the Anglican reformation; but all united in rejecting the authority of the pope (Melanchthon for a while was willing to concede this, but only jure humano, as a limited disciplinary superintendency of the church), the meritoriousness of good works, the indulgences, the worship of the holy Virgin and of the saints and relics, the 7 sacraments with the exception of baptism and the eucharist, the dogma of transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the mass, purgatory and prayers for the dead, and the use of the Latin language in public worship, for which the use of the vernacular languages was substituted. The other fundamental doctrine of the reformation has reference to the personal appropriation of the Christian salvation, and has for its object to give all glory to Christ by declaring that the sinner is justified before God, i. e., acquitted of guilt and declared righteous, solely on the ground of the all-sufficient merit of Christ as apprehended by a living faith; in opposition to the theory, then prevalent and substantially sanctioned by the council of Trent, which makes faith and good works the two coordinate sources of justification. Genuine Protestantism does not, on that account, by any means reject or depreciate good works; it only denies their value as sources or conditions of justification, but insists on them as the necessary fruits of faith and evidence of justification. To these two prominent principles of the reformation, which materially affect its theology and religious life, must be added a third, the doctrine of the universal priesthood of be

lievers, and the right and duty of the laity not only to read the Bible in the vernacular tongue, but also to take part in the government and all the public affairs of the church.-We now present an outline of the history of the reformation in the various countries in which it finally succeeded, leaving out Bohemia, Italy, and Spain, where it was suppressed by the combined opposition of the secular and ecclesiastical authorities. I. THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY was directed by the genius and energy of Luther, the learning and moderation of Melanchthon, assisted by the princes, especially the electors of Saxony, and sustained by the majority of the people in spite of the opposition of the bishops and the imperial government. It commenced in the university of Wittenberg with the protest against the traffic in indulgences, Oct. 31, 1517 (ever since celebrated in Protestant Germany as the festival of the reformation), and soon became a powerful popular movement. At first it moved within the bosom of Catholicism. Luther shrunk in holy horror from the idea of a separation from the religion of his fathers. He only attacked a few abuses, taking it for granted that the pope himself would condemn them if properly informed. But the irresistible logic of events carried him step by step far beyond his original intentions, and brought him into irreconcilable conflict with the central authority of the church. Pope Leo X., in June, 1520, pronounced the sentence of excommunication against Luther, who burned the bull together with the canon law and several books of his opponents. The diet of Worms in 1521, where he made his memorable defence, added to the excommunication of the pope the ban of the emperor. But the dissatisfaction with the various abuses of Rome and the desire for the free preaching of the gospel were so extensive, that the reformation both in its negative and positive features spread in spite of these decrees, and gained a foothold before 1530 in the greater part of northern Germany, especially in Saxony, Brandenburg, Hesse, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Lüneburg, Friesland, and in nearly all the free cities, as Hamburg, Lübeck, Bremen, Magdeburg, Frankfort, and Nuremberg; while in Austria, Bavaria, and along the Rhine it was persecuted and suppressed. Among the principal causes of this rapid progress were the writings of the reformers, Luther's German version of the Scriptures, and the evangelical hymns, which introduced the new ideas into public worship. The diet of Spire in 1526 left each state to its own discretion concerning the question of reform until a general council should settle it for all, and thus sanctioned the principle of territorial independence in matters of religion which prevails in Germany to this day, each sovereignty having its own separate ecclesiastical establishment and organization in close union with the state. But the next diet of Spire, which convened in 1529, prohibited the further progress of the reformation. Against this decree of the Catholic majority the evan

gelical princes entered, on the ground of the Word of God, the inalienable rights of conscience, and the decree of the previous diet of Spire, the celebrated protest, dated April 20, 1529, which gave rise to the name of Protestants. The diet of Augsburg in 1530, where the Lutherans offered their principal confession of faith, drawn up by Melanchthon and named after that city, threatened the Protestants with violent measures if they did not return shortly to the bosom of the old church. Here closes the first and most eventful period of the German reformation. The second period embraces the formation of the Protestant league of Smalcald for the armed defence of Lutheranism, the various theological conferences of the two parties for an adjustment of the controversy, the death of Luther, the imperial interims or compromises (the Ratisbon, Augsburg, and Leipsic interims), and the Smalcaldian war, and ends with the success of the Protestant army under Maurice of Saxony and the peace of Augsburg in 1555, which secured to the Lutheran states the free exercise of their religion, but with a restriction on its further progress. The third period, from 1555 to 1580, is remarkable for the violent internal controversies of the Lutheran church: the Osiandrian controversy, concerning justification and sanctification; the adiaphoristic, arising originally from the fruitless compromises or interims; the synergistic, concerning faith and good works; and the crypto-Calvinistic or sacramentarian controversy about the real presence. These theological disputes led on the one hand to the full development of the doctrinal system of Lutheranism as laid down in the "Book of Concord" (first published in 1580), which embraces all the symbolical books of that church, namely, the three oecumenical creeds, the Augsburg confession and its "Apology" by Melanchthon, the two catechisms of Luther and the Smalcald articles drawn up by the same in 1537, and the "Form of Concord," composed by 6 Lutheran divines in 1577. But on the other hand, the fanatical intolerance of the strict Lutheran party against the Calvinists and the moderate Lutherans, called after their leader Melanchthonians or Philippists, drove a large number of the latter over to the Reformed church, especially in the Palatinate (1560), in Bremen (1561), Nassau (1582), Anhalt (1596), HesseCassel (1605), and Brandenburg (1614). The German Reformed communion adopted the Heidelberg catechism, drawn up by two moderate Calvinistic divines, Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus, in 1563, by order of the elector Frederic III. or the Pious, as their confession of faith. The 16th century closes the theological history of the German reformation; but its political history was not brought to a final termination until after the terrible 30 years' war by the treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which secured to the Lutherans and the German Reformed churches (but to no others) equal rights with the Roman Catholics within the limits of

the German empire. These two denominations, either in their separate existence or united in one organization (as in Prussia and other states since 1817), are to this day almost the only forms of Protestantism recognized and supported by the government, all others being small self-supporting sects regarded with little sympathy by the popular mind. But within those ecclesiastical establishments Germany has bred and tolerated during the last 50 years almost every imaginable form of theoretic belief, from the strictest old school orthodoxy to the loosest rationalism and scepticism. Since the third jubilee of the reformation, however (1817), there has been a gradual and steady return from neology to the original evangelical Protestantism. II. THE REFORMATION IN SWITZERLAND. This was contemporaneous with, but independent of, the German reformation, and resulted in the formation of the Reformed communion as distinct from the Lutheran. In all the essential principles and doctrines, except that on the mode of Christ's presence in the eucharist, the Helvetic reformation agreed with the German; but it departed further from the received traditions in matters of government, discipline, and worship, and aimed at a more radical moral and practical reformation of the people. It naturally divides itself into three periods: the Zwinglian, from 1516 to 1531; the Calvinistic, to the death of Calvin in 1564; and the period of Bullinger and Beza, to the close of the 16th century. The first belongs mainly to the German, the second to the French cantons, the third to both jointly. Zwingli commenced his reformatory preaching against various abuses at Einsiedeln in 1516, and then with more energy and effect at Zürich in 1519. His object was to "preach Christ from the fountain," and to "insert the pure Christ into the heart." At first he had the consent of the bishop of Constance, who assisted him in putting down the sale of indulgences in Switzerland, and he stood even in high credit with the papal nuncio. But a rupture occurred in 1522, when Zwingli attacked the fasts as a human invention, and many of his hearers ceased to observe them. The magistrate of Zürich arranged a public disputation in Jan. and another in Oct. 1523, to settle the whole controversy. On both occasions Zwingli, backed by the authorities and the great majority of the people, triumphed over his papal opponents. In 1526 the churches of the city and the neighboring villages were cleared of images and shrines, and a simple, almost puritanic mode of worship took henceforward the place of the Roman Catholic mass. The Swiss diet took a hostile attitude to the Reformed movement, similar to that of the German diet, with a respectable minority in its favor. To settle the controversy for the republic, a general theological conference was arranged and held at Baden, Aargau, in May, 1526, with Dr. Eck, the famous antagonist of Luther, as the champion of the Roman, and Ecolampadius of the Reformed

cause. Its result was in form adverse, but in fact favorable to the cause of the reformation. It was now introduced in the majority of the cantons, at the wish of the magistrates and the people, by Ecolampadius in Basel and Haller in Bern, also in part in St. Gall, Schaffhausen, Glarus, Appenzell, Thurgau, and the Grisons; while in the French portions of Switzerland William Farel and Viret prepared the way for Calvin. The small cantons however around the lake of Lucerne, Uri, Schwytz, Unterwalden, Lucerne, and Zug, steadfastly opposed every innovation. At last it came to an open war between the Reformed and Catholic cantons. Zwingli's policy was overruled by the apparently more humane, but in fact more cruel and disastrous policy of Bern, to force the poor mountaineers into measures by starvation. The Catholics, resolved to maintain their rights, attacked and routed the small army of Zürichers in the battle of Cappel, Oct. 1531. Zwingli, who had accompanied his flock as chaplain and patriot, met a heroic death on the field of battle, and Ecolampadius of Basel followed him in a few weeks. Thus the progress of the reformation was suddenly arrested in the German portions of Switzerland, and one third of it remains Catholic to this day. But it took a new start in the western or French cantons, and rose there to a higher position than ever. Soon after this critical juncture the great master mind of the Reformed church, who was to carry forward, to modify, and to complete the work of Zwingli, and to rival Luther in influence, began to attract the attention of the public. John Calvin, a Frenchman by birth and education, but exiled from his native land for his faith, found providentially a new home in 1536 in the little republic of Geneva, where Farel had prepared the way. Here he developed his extraordinary talents and energy, as the greatest divine and disciplinarian of the reformation, and made Geneva the model church for the Reformed communion, and a hospitable asylum for persecuted Protestants of every nation. His theological writings, especially the "Institutes" and "Commentaries," exerted a formative influence on all Reformed churches and confessions of faith; while his legislative genius developed the presbyterian form of government, which rests on the principle of ministerial equality and of a popular representation of the congregation by lay elders, aiding the pastors in maintaining discipline and promoting the spiritual prosperity of the people. Calvin died after a most active and devoted life in 1564, and left in Theodore Beza (died 1605) an able and worthy successor, who together with Bullinger, the faithful successor of Zwingli in Zürich, and author of the second Helvetic confession (1566), labored to the close of the 16th century for the consolidation of the Swiss reformation and the spread of its principles in France, Holland, Germany, England, and Scotland. III. THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE. While the reformation in Ger

many and Switzerland carried with it the majority of the population, it met in France with the united opposition of the court, the hierarchy, and the popular sentiment, and had to work its way through severe trial and persecution. The tradition in that country was favorable to a change, as France had always maintained a certain degree of independence of Rome, and as the university of Paris, once the centre of European intelligence and culture, had strongly urged a thorough reformation in capite et membris on the councils of the 15th century. The first professed Protestants in France were Lefèvre, Wolmar, Farel, Viret, Marot, Olivetanus, Calvin, and Beza, all men of distinguished learning and ability; but most of them had to seek safety in exile. It was only after the successful establishment of the reformation in French Switzerland, that the movement became serious in the neighboring kingdom. Calvin and Beza may be called the fathers of the French Reformed church. Their pupils returned as missionaries to their native land. The first Protestant congregation was formed at Paris in 1555, and the first synod held in the same city in 1559. In 1561 the theological conference at Poissy took place, where Theodore Beza eloquently but vainly pleaded the cause of the Protestants before the dignitaries of the Roman church, and where the name Reformed originated. In 1571 the general synod at La Rochelle adopted the Gallican confession and a system of government and discipline essentially Calvinistic, yet modified by the peculiar circumstances of a church not in union with the state, as in Geneva, but in antagonism with it. The movement now unavoidably assumed a political character, and led to a series of civil wars which distracted France till the close of the 16th century. The Roman Catholic party, backed by the majority of the population, was headed by the dukes of Guise, who derived their descent from Charlemagne and looked to the throne, then occupied by the house of Valois. The Protestant party, numerically weaker, but containing some of the noblest blood and best talent of France, was headed by the princes of Navarre, the next heirs to the throne and descendants of Hugh Capet. The queen regent Catharine, during the minority of her sons, Francis II. and Charles IX., of the house of Valois, although decidedly Roman Catholic in sentiment, tried to keep the rival parties in check in order to rule over both. But the Roman league took possession of Paris, while the prince of Condé occupied Orleans. Three civil wars followed in rapid succession, when the court and the duke of Guise resorted to treason, and concerted a wholesale slaughter of the Huguenots in the memorable St. Bartholomew's night, Aug. 24, 1572, the leaders of the party having been expressly invited to Paris to attend the marriage of Prince Henry of Navarre with a sister of Charles IX. as a general feast of reconciliation. (See BARTHOLOMEW MASSACRE.) But the party was only diminished in number, by no

means annihilated. Six other civil wars followed with varying fortune, and terminated at last in the victory of Prince Henry of Navarre, who, after the assassination of Henry III. by a Dominican monk, ascended the throne of France as Henry IV. in 1589. This seemed to decide the triumph of Protestantism in France. But the Roman party, still more numerous and powerful, and supported by Spain and the pope, elected a rival king and threatened to plunge the country into new bloodshed. Then Henry, from political and patriotic motives, but apparently not from religious conviction, abjured the Protestant faith, in which he had been brought up, and professed the Roman Catholic religion (1593), saying that Paris and the peace of France were "worth a mass. At the same time, however, he secured to his former associates, then numbering about 760 congregations throughout the kingdom, in spite of the remonstrance of the pope and the bishops, a legal existence and the right of the free exercise of religion, by the celebrated edict of Nantes in 1598, which closes the stormy period of the French reformation. From that time the Reformed church in France flourished, until the revocation of the edict of Nantes by Louis XIV. in 1685 reduced it to a "church of the desert;" yet it survived the most cruel persecutions at home, and enriched by thousands of exiles the population of every Protestant country in Europe and America. IV. THE REFORMATION IN THE NETHERLANDS was kindled partly by Lutheran influences from Germany, but mostly by Reformed and Calvinistic influences from Switzerland and France. first martyrs, Esch and Voes, were burned at Antwerp in 1523. The despotic arm of Charles V. (who inherited the sovereignty of the 17 provinces from his grandmother) and his son Philip II. of Spain resorted to the severest measures for crushing the rising spirit of religious and political liberty. The duke of Alva surpassed the persecuting heathen emperors of Rome in cruelty, and, according to Grotius, destroyed the lives of 100,000 Dutch Protestants during the 6 years of his regency (1567-'73). Finally, after long and patient endurance, the 7 northern provinces, Holland, Zealand, Utrecht, Gelderland, Overyssel, Groningen, and Friesland, rose in open revolt against the intolerable yoke of foreign tyranny, formed a federal republic, first under the leadership of William of Nassau, prince of Orange, the Dutch Washington, and after his assassination (1584) under his son Maurice, and after a long and heroic struggle accomplished their independence of the church of Rome and the crown of Spain. Their independence was at last acknowledged by Spain in 1609. The southern provinces, however, remained Roman Catholic-and subject to Spain. The first Dutch Reformed synod was held at Dort in 1574, and in the next year the university of Leyden was founded. The Protestantism of Holland is predominantly Calvinistic, and adopts as its doctrinal and disciplinary

Its

standards the Heidelberg catechism of 1563, the Belgic confession of 1562, and the articles of the synod of Dort. This important synod was held (1619) in consequence of the Arminian controversy, which violently agitated the country at that time. The Arminians or Remonstrants, differing in 5 points from the Calvinists, and holding to the freedom of the will and a conditional predestination, were condemned by the synod of Dort, but continued as a tolerated sect, and exerted, through the writings of their distinguished scholars and divines, Arminius, Hugo Grotius, Episcopius, Limborch, and Le Clerc (Clericus), considerable influence upon Protestant theology in England, France, and Germany during the 18th century. The orthodox church of Holland has been represented in the United States since 1609 by the Reformed Protestant Dutch church, the second oldest of the denominations in the United States. V. THE REFORMATION IN HUNGARY. This country was first brought into contact with the reform movement by disciples of Luther and Melanchthon, who had studied at Wittenberg, after 1524. Ferdinand I. granted to some magnates and cities liberty of worship, and Maximilian II. (1564-76) increased it. The synod of Erdöd in 1545 organized the Lutheran, and the synod of Csenger in 1557 the Reformed church. The German settlers mostly adopted the Augsburg confession, the national Magyars the Helvetic confession. Rudolph II. having in 1576 suppressed religious liberty, Prince Stephen Bocskai, strengthened by his alliance with the Turks, reconquered by force of arms (1606) full toleration for the Lutherans and Calvinists in Hungary and Transylvania. In the latter country Socinianism also found a refuge and has maintained itself to this day. VI. THE REFORMATION IN POLAND was prepared by fugitive Bohemian Brethren or Hussites, and promoted by the writings of the German reformers. King Sigismund Augustus (1548-'72) favored the movement and corresponded with Calvin. The most distinguished Protestant of that country was Jan Laski, or John à Lasco, a Calvinist, who fled from Poland for his faith, was called back by the Protestant nobility, aided by several friends translated the Bible, and labored for the union of the Reformed and Lutherans (died 1560). A compromise between the two parties was effected by the general synod of Sandomir (Consensus Sendomiriensis) in 1570. But subsequently internal dissensions, the increase of Socinianism, and the efforts of the Jesuits greatly interfered with the prosperity of Protestantism in that country. The German provinces now belonging to Russia, Courland, Livonia, and Esthonia, opened likewise the door to the reformation, and adopted the Augsburg confession. VII. THE REFORMATION IN SCANDINAVIA. The reformers of Sweden were two brothers, Olaf and Lars Peterson, or Petri, disciples of Luther, who after 1519 preached against the existing state of the church. Gustavus Vasa, who delivered the country from the

Danes and became king in 1523, favored Protestantism from political and mercenary motives; the whole country, including the bishops, followed without much difficulty. He appropriated a large portion of the wealth of the church to meet the expenses of his wars and administration. The synod of Oerebro in 1529 sanctioned the reform, and the synod of Upsal in 1593, after a fruitless attempt to reconcile the country to Rome, confirmed and completed it. Sweden adopted the Lutheran creed, to the intolerant exclusion of every other, and retained the episcopal form of government in the closest union with the state. Sweden did great service to the cause of Protestantism in Europe, by its gallant king Gustavus Adolphus, during the 30 years' war. More recently attempts have been made, though without success as yet, to abolish the intolerant laws against dissenters. Denmark became likewise an exclusively Lutheran country, with an episcopal form of state-church government, under Christian III. A diet at Copenhagen in 1536 destroyed the political power of the Roman clergy, and divided most of the church's property between the crown and the nobility. The remaining third was devoted to the new ecclesiastical organization. Bugenhagen of Wittenberg was then called to complete the reform. From Denmark the reformation passed over to Norway about 1537. The archbishop of Drontheim fled with the treasures of the church to Holland; another bishop resigned; a third was imprisoned; and the lower clergy were left the choice between exile and submission to the new order of things, which most of them preferred. Iceland, then subject to Danish rule, likewise submitted to the Danish reform. VIII. THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. The struggle between the old and the new religion lasted longer and raged more fearfully in England and Scotland than on the continent, and continued in successive shocks even down to the end of the 17th century, for Puritanism was a second reformation; but it left in the end a very strong impression upon the character of the nation, and affected deeply its political and social institutions. In theology English Protestantism was dependent upon the continental reform, especially the ideas and principles of Calvin; but it displayed greater practical energy and power of organization. It was from the start a political as well as a religious movement, and hence it afforded a wider scope to the corrupting influence of selfish ambition and violent passion than the reformation in Germany and Switzerland; but it passed also through severer trials and persecutions. In the English reformation we distinguish five periods. The first period (1527 to 1547) witnessed the abolition of the authority of the Roman papacy under Henry VIII. This was merely a negative and destructive process, which removed the outward obstruction and prepared the way for the reform. Henry VIII. quarrelled with the pope, not on religious or theo