Cfttttc^ €ttt IBookB ■i Iminental Reformatio] B, J. KIDD Oxford Church Text Books— Continued, A Manual for Confirmation. The Rev. T. Field, D.D., Warden of Radley College. [Published. A History of the Church to 325. The Rev. H. N. Bate, M. A. , Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of London. \Pziblished. The Reformation on the Continent. The Rev. B. J. Kidd, B.D., Keble College, Tutor of Non- Collegiate Students, Oxford. \In the press. A History of the Church in the United States of America. The Right Rev. Leighton Coleman, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of Delaware, U.S.A. \In preparation. Old Testament History. In 2 Vols. The Rev. T. F. Hobson, M.A., Head Master of the King's School, Rochester. \In preparation. An Introduction to the New Testament. The Rev. Leighton Pullan, M.A. \In preparation. The Teaching- of St. Paul. The Rev. E. W. M. O. DE LA Hey, M.A., Tutor of Keble College, Oxford. \In preparation. Evidences of Christianity. The Rev. L. Ragg, M.A., Warden of the Bishop's Hostel, Lincoln. [/« preparation. The Apostles' Creed. The Rev. H. F. D. Mackay, M.A., Merton College, and Pusey House, Oxford. \In preparation. The Church, its Ministry and Authority. The Rev. Darwell Stone, M.A., Ptincipal of the Missionary College, Dorchester. S^In preparation. Mediaeval Church Missions. C. R. Beazley, M.A., Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. \In preparation. A Comparative History of Religions. The Rev. Leighton Pullan, M.A. \In preparation. A History of the Rites of the Church. The Rev. F. E. Brightman, M.A., Pusey House, Oxford. \In preparation. Instructions in Christian Doctrine. The Rev. V. S. S. Coles, M.A., Principal of Pusey House, Oxford. \In preparation. The Future State. The Rev. S. C. Gayford, M.A., Vice-Principal of Cuddesdon College. \In preparation. London : Rivingtons, 34 King Street, Covent Garden. 2 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/continentalreforOOkiddiala The Continental Reformation THE REV.[B^J. KIDD, B.D. KEBLE COLLEGE TUTOR OF NON-COLLEGIATK STUDENTS, OXFORD RIVINGTONS 34 AVJVG STREET, CO VENT GARDEN LONDON 1902 TO THE DEAH AND HONOURED MEMORY OF WILLIAM BRIGHT, D.D., LATE CANON OF CHRIST CHURCH AND REGIUS PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, OXFORD, CONTENTS Part I. — The German Reformation. CHAP. PACK I. Luther (1483-1517), 1 II. Reform. From the publication of the Theses to the Diet of Worms (1517-1521), . . 15 III. Revolution. From the Diet of Worms to the Diet of Speyer (1521-1526), . . 29 IV. Reconstruction. From the Diet of Speyer to the Diet of Augsburg (1526-1530), . 42 V. Conflict. From the Diet of Augsburg to the Peace of Augsburg (1530-1555), . . 58 Part II. — The Swiss Reformation. VI. In German Switzerland. Zurich — Zwingli (1519-1531), 72 VII. In French Switzerland. Geneva — Calvin (1541-1564), 87 Part III. — The Extent and Influence OP the Reformation. VIII. The Principles of the Reformation, . . 106 Appendix. The territorial expansion of Protestantism, 127 The territorial expansion of the Reformed, . 135 Index, ......... 138 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION PART I. THE GERMAN REFORMATION CHAPTER I LUTHER— 1483-1517 § 1. Luther was born at Eisleben, 10th November 1483. Next day, at his baptism, he received the name of Martin, after the saint of the day. His parents, Hans and Mar- garet Luther, were poor folk, and hard in the bringing up of thjeir children. Luther remembered the beatings that he had from them as a boy ; ' so that,' said he, 'the severe and harsh life which I led with them was the reason that I afterwards took refuge in the cloister and became a monk.' But they knew the value of an educa- tion, and sent him to school when ' a little child ' at Mansfeld. It was a miserable training he got there, harsh and narrow, though religious in its way. At four- teen he was sent on to Magdeburg, 1497, to the school of the 'NuUbriider,' probably the Brethren of the Com- mon Life ; but he was there no more than a year. In 1498 he was removed to Eisenach. Here it v/as that the poor scholar, with the fine alto voice, who sang for his maintenance from door to door, attracted the notice of a lady, Ursula Cotta. It was his first introduction to a social grade above his own. Eisenach too was rich in religious foundations ; and his earliest extant letter shows him on friendly terms with a house of Franciscans, to which Frau Cotta's family, as it would seem, had been 2 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION liberal benefactors. But he was not to enter religion yet. His university course was to intervene. § 2. Erfurt was the university to which he was sent, possibly as lying within easy reach of home. Here he spent seven years (1501-08), first as a student, then as a friar. He matriculated in 1501, took his B.A. in 1502, and his M.A. in 1505, when he stood second among seventeen candidates. Erfurt, founded at the end of the fourteenth century, belonged to the older group of German universities. Logic, dialectic and rhetoric, followed by a course of natural philosophy, resting not, as with us, on observation and experiment, but, like the study of moral philosophy, on the authority of Aristotle and his commentators, formed the usual training through which Luther would have proceeded to his degree. It was an education which did much to cultivate the mental powers, but little to furnish the mind, specially under the rule of Nominalism, then supreme. But Erfurt had also felt the touch of the new learning then astir in Germany ; and when Luther was there, the university had its circle of ' poets,' as they were called, or teachers and students of polite letters. Yet he was not one of them, nor much influenced by them. He learned no Greek at Erfurt ; and his Latin, while terse and vigorous, made no pretence, as theirs, to scholarly finish. The Latin authors he read for their subject-matter, not for their style. Learning as a whole he acquired for use, to be applied in practical life or in theology, not for its own sake. At his father's wish he now began to study the law ; but that was not his bent. One day, returning to Erfurt from a visit home, he was overtaken near the village of Stotterheim by a thunderstorm, just at a time when some intimate friend had recently met with a violent death. He vowed to enter religion if he should escape with his life ; and on I7th July 1505 presented himself for admission at the Augustinian Convent. Such was the outer change. It led to an inward struggle, lasting over his ordination to the priesthood, 2nd May 1507, till he left Erfurt in the autumn of the following year. Not that he had no true vocation, nor that the convent was so lax in its LUTHER— 1483-1517 3 religion as to be distasteful to him. On the contrary, lie threw himself with devotion into the duties and studies of the house. 'I was a pious monk,' he afterwards wrote, ' and so strictly observed the rules of my order, that I can say, if ever a monk got to heaven by monkery, so should I also have got there ; and to this all my com- rades in the cloister who have known me will bear witness. For if it had lasted longer, I should have tortured myself to death with watching, praying, read- ing, and other work.' He had a good conscience ; but it was a conscience increasingly oppressed by the sense that, for all the self-discipline and ceremonial exactness which he observed in accordance with the monastic rule and ideal of holiness, he could neither find acceptance with God nor peace within. Thus the inward struggle began, not between a good will and bad desires of his own, but between his whole being fixed in the resolve to please God and the legalism of the system to which he was committed. For it was a system which tended to represent God as an inexorable taskmaster, and so to leave His servants with a perpetual sense of falling short of His demands when they failed in any point of its requirements. To his own superiors Luther was indebted for his deliverance. An old friar pointed liim to the article in the Creed, ' I believe in the forgive- ness of sins,' and bade him remember that it applied to his case. The master of the novices asked him when in deep distress, 'Do you not know that the Lord has commanded us to hope.''' But it was to Staupitz, the Vicar-General of his Order, that Luther owed most, both as confessor and friend. Staupitz was one of those bright examples in whom, as in the psalmists attached to the Levitical worship of the Old Covenant, the com- patibility of personal religion with loyalty to the require- ments of an outward system is completely vindicated. He had reconciled in his own experience the ceremonial with the moral. He now taught Luther that the divine justice had been satisfied in Jesus Christ, and that, could lie only believe in Him, he was free. Thus Luther learned the doctrine of justification by faith from the best men of the old order which he was to overthrow 4 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION by its aid. Staupitz went further. He encouraged his pupil to read the Scriptures and S. Augustine ; and taught him to go back, behind the Scholastics, to the accredited sources of the faith as interpreted by the accepted Doctor of the West. Luther soon discovered the new truth ever3rwhere. It was not at this point theologically developed, but practically appropriated ; and so far from suggesting to his thoughts a breach with the Church, it secured him in his allegiance. In S. Paul and S. Augustine he found sympathetic minds who had escaped from entanglements of conscience through an experience not unlike his own. Staupitz wisely left him for a time to enjoy his new sense of freedom. Then, with the good sense of a true spiritual adviser, he set him to practical work. In the autumn of 1508 Luther left Erfurt, at the summons of his superior, who was also Dean of the Faculty of Theology in the University of Wittenberg, to be teacher of philosophy in that town. § 3. Wittenberg, though the ancient capital of Electoral Saxony, was, according to a contemporary, ' more like an old village than a town,' when Frederick the Wise (1465- 1525) determined to make it the seat of a university for his dominions. Its population was barely three thousand, its surroundings unattractive. Luther says it lay ^on the verge of civilisation ' ; and one of his colleagues describes 'the people' as 'above measure drunken, rude, and given to revelling.' The place presented a great contrast to refined and wealthy Erfurt. But it had its advantages for the Elector's purpose. The well-endowed chapter of the Castle Church, together with the Augus- tinian Convent, might readily supply the teaching staff of the new foundation. Fredei'ick accordingly procured from the Emperor Maximilian (1493-1519) a charter, dated 6th July 1502, which gave permission to teach and grant degrees in all faculties. He then obtained the papal sanction in an instrument which licensed the university to bestow degrees in theology and canon law. On 20th June 1507 a Bull of Julius ii. confirmed all that had been, done, and approved the endowment of learning out of the property of the Church. Frederick thus ranks with the distinguished group of statesmen LUTHER— 1483-1517 5 and ecclesiastics of his age, who, while loyal to the traditional teaching of the Church, saw no unjustifiable diversion of her revenues in their application to the cause of learning, but recognised both her duty and opportunity to move with the times. In 1508 the Elector himself established the university as a corpora- tion, with a rector at its head and four faculties, each presided over by a dean. The Castle Church was the centre of university life, its pulpit the place for academic exercises, its doors the notice-board for official announce- ments. When Luther arrived in the same year, the university was but just recovering from a visitation of the plague, and there were only 179 matriculations as against 41G in the year of its inauguration. The lecture list of 1507, the year before his arrival, is fortunately preserved, and illustrates the intellectual atmosphere of the place. Staupitz was one of five professors in Theo- logy ; there were seven in Canon Law ; three in Civil Law ; four in Medicine ; nine in Philosophy, and it is noteworthy that two of the nine, Amsdorf (1483-1565) and Carlstadt ' ( ? -1541), who were afterwards closely identified with reform, were lecturing, the one 'in via Scoti,' and the other 'in via S. Thomae.' There were also lectures announced by three teachers of ' poetry ' or the classics. But we find no Greek and no Hebrew ; no history and no science. The new learning had a footing in Wittenberg, but the old was dominant. The univer- sity, like its founder, had neither broken with the past nor refused a welcome to the coming age. Of Luther's activity, when he took up work among such surroundings, we know but little. He matriculated, with five other Augustinians, on S. Luke's Day, 18th October 1508. He took his B.D. on 9th March 1509, a step which gave him the right of expounding the Scriptures, and, in due course, of lecturing on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. But we do not find him so occupied. The same year he was summoned back to Erfurt ; and in the winter of 1511-12 he was sent to Rome, apparently to support the 1 His real name was Andrew Bodenstein, but he was called b\- the name of his birthplace, Carlstadt, in Franconia. 6 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION schemes of Staupitz for the consolidation of his Order in Germany. The visit opened his eyes in after years, but in no way shook his allegiance at the time. ' I was like a mad saint in Rome ; ran through every church and hole ; and believed every lie and stink that I found there. ' In the autumn of 1512 Luther was once more in Witten- berg ; and, under pressure from Staupitz, proceeded to the degree of D.D., 22nd October 1512. Clothed thus, as he afterwards persisted, with authority to handle the Scriptures, but bound as well to the defence of the Roman Church, he now entered upon five years of work and influence which made him a man of some mark, when he threw down the gauntlet to Tetzel in October 1517. § 4. Tlie years 1512-17 were years of steady develop- ment. Apart from academic lectures, Luther preached regularly in the chapel of his convent, and frequently in the parish church, and was busy both with tutorial work and with administration. As regent of studies he had at one time in the House ' 22 priests, 12 young men, in all 41 persons ' to provide for ; while as Provincial of his Order in Saxony, he was charged with the oversight of ten or eleven communities, and complains, ' I have need of almost two secretaries : all day long I do little but write letters.' But these preoccupations did not shut him out from a wider world. He now entered upon a lifelong friendship with George Burckhardt (1483-1545), called Spalatin, from Spalt, his birthplace in Franconia, who was at this time tutor to John Frederick, only son of Duke John, and nephew to the reigning Elector Frederick.^ Spalatin, chaplain friend and adviser to all three princes in turn, ' revered and consulted Luther as an Apollo ' ; and it was through his intimacy with Spalatin that Luther ever had the ear and the goodwill of the Saxon Electors. Spalatin had also been one of the Erfurt 'poets.' He maintained his connection with them, and was an occasional correspondent of Erasmus. Thus he served Luther as intermediary in another quarter, and 1 The Electors of Saxony were (1) Frederick the "Wise, 1486- 1525 ; (2) John the Constant, his brother, 1525-32 ; and (3) John Frederick the Magnanimous, 1532-47 ; d. 1554. LUTHER— 1483-1517 7 kept him in touch, if not wholly in sympathy, with the Humanists, Meanwhile, changes occurred which not only left Luther without rival in his university, but placed some of his friends in positions of influence. His Prior was now Wenceslaus Link, an old schoolfellow, and like- minded ; while Johann Lang, an old Erfurt friend and a ' poet,' first taught him Greek at Wittenberg, and then, returning to Erfurt as Prior of the Augustinians, kept a door open for his influence there. At Niirnberg also the new teaching had able exponents and many friends. How far, then, it may be asked, had Luther developed any new theological position ? (1) It would be a mistake to attribute much definiteness to his teaching as yet. It was not yet a system. He began with lectures on the Psalms, first delivered in 1613, and published in 1517. Here he holds fast to the mediaeval method of interpretation, which found a fourfold ^ sense in Scripture, and regarded the literal as the least important. He was a long way yet from his later prin- ciple that the Bible is the book for the million, or, in his own words, that 'the Holy Ghost is the all-simplest writer and speaker that is in heaven or on earth ; there- fore his words can have no more than one simplest sense, which we call the scriptural or literal meaning.' But he applies the old method so as everywhere to discover the doctrine of salvation by the free grace of Christ. Next he went on to Romans, 1515, and then to Galatians ; and his lectures on the latter Epistle, begun 27th October 151G, were published in September 1519. Melanchthon goes so far as to say that with the exposition of the Psalms and Epistles a new day dawned upon Christian doctrine, and finds the difl'erence between the Law and the Gospel plainly set forth at this early stage. But Luther ' says of himself that even in 1519 he could not comprehend Romans i. 17, ''For therein is the right- eousness [justitia] of God revealed from faith to faith : as it is written. The just shall live by faith" ; that he hated the words "justitia Dei" ; that it was only after ' Litera gesta docet, quod credas Allegoria, Tropologia quod agas, quod speres Anagogia.' 8 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION much meditatioiij and by the mercy of God, that he per- ceived their true meaning, and grew to love, as much as he had hated, them ; and finally, that he found, beyond all hope, his interpretation of them confirmed by Augustine. Unless, tlierefore, this clear and explicit testimony is to be rejected, it is plain that through this period Luther was only struggling towards' the belief which he afterwards made his own. ' His doctrine of justification is in a more or less fluid condition. He is sure that we are justified by faith in Christ. He is sure that in the work of salvation God is everything, man nothing. But he is far from having worked out the idea of ''faith only" into the precision which it afterwards assumed with him. ' ^ (2) But though his positive theology had hardly taken shape, a negative attitude toward existing practice and doctrine had already become habitual with him. Thus (a) his moral indig^nation is roused against the popular religion and its upholders. ITie Sermons on the Ten Commandments, first published in 1518, contain, as might be expected, in the exposition of the First Com- mandment, an attack on saint-worship, though Luther recognises the value of the intercession of the saints. He speaks out against the wrongdoings of popes, bishops, and monks ; but he does not repudiate the church system. He attacks the evils attendant upon the sale of indulgences, but refrains from questioning the doctrine on which they are based. Making every allowance for the fugitive character of pulpit utterances, these mark at least a growing sense of dissatisfaction with religion as it was. (6) A change of intellectual attitude accompanied this alienation. Like the Humanists, Luther now turned away from Aristotle and the Schoolmen; not, as they turned, to the classics, but to the Scriptures and the Fathers, specially S. Augustine. Aristotle he afterwards denounced as a ' damned heathen ' and a ' devil incarnate.' 'God sent him as a plague for our sins.' The meaning of this emphatic language was simply that he identified 1 Beard, Martin Luther, pp. 190, 191 (ed. 1896). LUTHER— 1488-1517 '^the philosopher' par excellence of S. Thomas Aquinas and the Scholastics with the system which, by the help of his formal logic, they had built up. It was the system in which Luther himself had been bred ; and, as he knew it, was employed either to amuse its adherents with idle discussions, which had as little relation to true religion as to actual fact, or else to justify the current belief in salvation by works, pilgrimages, pardons, masses satisfactory, and the like. For these results he held Aristotle responsible ! He determined that, at least in Wittenberg, his kingdom should come to an end. In May 1517 he was able to announce its overthrow. 'Our theology and S. Augustine go on prosperously, and reign in our university ; Aristotle descends gradually to eternal ruin ; the lectures on the Sentences are wonderfully dis- dained, nor can any one hope for hearers except teachers of this theology, i.e. the Bible and S. Augustine.' On 4th September 1517 a candidate for the degree of B.D. offered to defend, under Luther's presidency, a series of Ninety-seven Theses, ' Contra Scholasticam Theologiam,' of which one maintains that ' Almost the whole of Aristotle's Ethics is the worst enemy of grace,' and another that ' It is an error to say that without Aristotle no man becomes a theologian. ' (c) A return to S. Augustine was the complement of this revulsion from Aristotle. Augustine was a kindred spirit ; like Luther himself, a ' monument of grace.' As against any form of Pelagianism, Augustine had uni- formly contended that our salvation comes from no merits of our own, but solely from the Divine grace which is given to us. In him, then, Luther found a theology of free salvation by the grace of Christ with which to oppose the doctrine of salvation by works. Later on, the Lutheran system diverged from the Augustinian in its conception of justification as well as in its disparagement of the Church and the Sacraments which Augustine strongly upheld. But these were secondary differences, at present undeveloped. In per- sonal sympathy, and on the main idea that in the work of our salvation God's grace is all and man's effort nothing, Luther was at one with Augustine, and found 10 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION ill his still supreme authority the support that he looked for. He diflFered also from Augustine iu approaching the question of the relation between God and man from the human rather than from the divine side ; in insisting on man's incapacity to work out his own salvation, rather than on the sovereignty of God, as the reason for the need of grace. But the need of grace was the point in common. Another set of theses, defended under Luther's presidency in September 1516, were conclusive on this point. The question was, ' Whether man, made in the image of God, can by his own natural strength keep the commandments of his Maker, or do or think any- thing good } ' The answer was wholly in the negative, and was illustrated freely from the Bible and S. Augustine, (rf) In 1.516 Luther came into contact with Mysticism. Here was another school of thought, whose existence he had never suspected, loyal enough to the Church, but out of sympathy with the dominant exponents of her teaching. Where they demanded a scrupulous com- pliance with the outward obligations of religion, the Mystic fulfilled these indeed, but penetrated beyond into the region in which the soul could reach up to direct communion with God. To secure this communion. Mysticism required a total surrender of personality, and Luther only asked for a surrender of the will. The Mystics were thus in no sense reformers, but only wit- nesses to the need of reform. Contemplation rather than response in action to the will of God was the trend of their devotion. But here again divergences between Luther and the Mystics were as yet latent. He had this in common with them for the moment, that the method of both was that of an inward adhesion of the soul to God, which both regarded as of higher obligation than any system through which it might be attained. When, therefore, in 1516, Luther fell in with the Mystical treatise entitled Theologia Germanica, he felt himself supported by the accession of a new ally. In 1518 he published it with a characteristic preface : ^ ' Next to the Bible and S. Augustine, no book hath ever come into my 1 Theologia Germanica, transl. by Susanna "VVinkworth, p. xix (ed. 1893 in Macmillan's Golden Treasury Series). LUTHER— 1483-1517 11 hands, whence I have learnt, or would wish to learn, more of what God, and Christ, and man and all things are,' and he added, ' Read this little book who will, and then say whether our theology is old or new.' Luther himself ascribed the book to Tauler (1290-1361), with whose sermons he was already impressed. But the Theologia Germanica itself refers to Tauler, and is now known to have been written by a priest attached to the house of the Teutonic Order in Frankfurt at the end of the fourteenth century. Like the Imitation of Christ, it is full of a spontaneous and unadorned piety. With even less reference to the Sacraments than Thomas k Kempis (d. 1471), the author moves, like him, in a sphere above that in which theological or ecclesiastical diiferences occur. Luther at once felt that wherever Mysticism had struck root, he might be sure of sym- pathetic support. (e) Humanism was the last of the influences which surrounded Luther at this time. It had its connection with the Mystics ; and the revival of religion went hand in hand with a revival of letters, for The Brethren of the Common Life took the lead in both. Among their pupils were Thomas a Kempis and John Wessel (1420-89), who anticipated Luther in his assertion of the sole authority of Scripture and of Justification by Faith as well as in the attack on Indulgences, though Luther disowned any link of connection with him. Both these men were the teachers of Rudolf Agricola (1442-85). He, with others like-minded, went, as it is said under the advice of Thomas, to Italy ; and thence returned with a knowledge of the classics and plans for the introduction into German schools of what we should now call a liberal education. A spirit was already astir which had led German princes to set up new seats of learning in their dominions, and between 145G-1506 had added to the seven older Universities nine new founda- tions — Greifswald, Freiburg, Basel, Ingoldstadt, Trier, Tubingen, Mainz, Wittenberg, and Frankfurt-on-Oder. The Humanists supplemented this movement by the establishment of Schools, and the Schools reacted on the Universities, till the higher education of the country was 12 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION divided between institutions which championed some the old order of things like Koln, and others^ like Heidelberg, the new. When the rival ideas were thus arrayed, a quarrel broke out which, though it began over a trifle, developed into a controversy that enlisted ^11 Germany on one side or the other, and in the main on the side of change. Johann Reuchlln (1455-1522), a man of great learning and high character, was not only a Greek scholar, but the pioneer of the study of Hebrew. He deplored the defects of the Vulgate, and ventured to correct them by reference to the Hebrew original. He was no advocate of doctrinal change, but simply claimed the freedom of a scholar to interpret the text by critical examination of its meaning. In 1509 Johann Pfeflferkorn, a converted Jew, obtained an edict from Maximilian empowering him to confiscate Jewish books on the ground that their literature was the cause of the reluctance of the Jews to embrace the Christian faith. The Archbishop of Mainz resisted his proceedings : and certain referees, one of whom was Reuchlin, were appointed to report to the Emperor. Reuchlin sent in his report, October 1510, a dis- criminating document, in which, from the point of view of a scholar independent of current controversy, he advised that, excepting two books, Hebrew literature as a whole should be studied rather than destroyed ; for only so was it possible to bring the Jews to the true light. Nothing was done ; but a controversy followed between PfeiFerkorn and Reuchlin, in which Reuchlin was summoned to appear before the Inquisition, and only escaped by carrying the matter to the sympathetic ears of Leo x. Pope and Emperor both took Reuchlin under their protection : and public opinion had already decided that the theologians were wrong and the scholars right, in one word for liberty of thought as against repression. It was a great defeat for authority, though none of its doctrines were as yet involved. Reuchlin lived but a little while to enjoy his triumph. He was succeeded and even surpassed in influence by Desiderius Erasmus (1467-1636), not only the foremost scholar, but the leading man of letters in Europe. LUTHER— 1483-1517 13 Erasmus ridiculed the theologians in his Praise of Folly, 1509. He wrote with a serious purpose, as a sincere reformer. He contributed to the cause of reform by his editions (1516) of the Greek Testament and the Fathers ; and thus, by placing the resources of criticism at the disposal of reform, and opening the way for a comparison between the religion of Christian antiquity and religion as men saw it before their eyes, he created a temper in Germany ready to hail the first blow struck against the Church as it was by whatever agent it might be delivered. Others followed with less of Erasmus' earnestness or elegance, but in his spirit of raillery. In 1514 Relichlin met an attack of one of the Koln theologians, Ortuinus Gratius, by publishing a volume of letters addressed to him from learned friends under the title of Clarorum Virorum Epistolae. His object was to claim the weight of opinion as making for his own side. This suggested to the wits of the new learning the idea of ridiculing the theologians by a similar collec- tion of letters supposed to have passed between Ortuinus Gratius and his university admirers. Hence the Epistolae Ohscurorum Virorum, published c. 1516, from the pens of Ulrich von Hutten (1488-1523) and Crotus Rubianus (1486-1540), two Humanists once of Erfurt. The squib was too coarse to please Erasmus, and too frivolous for Luther. He called its author a vulgar clown. ^ But by raising tlie laugh against the upholders of orthodoxy as 'a. ''stupid party" opposed to the party of progress' ^ it did as much for the moment to prepare an atmosphere for the success of Luther's enterprise against them as the more solid and lasting work of Erasmus himself. Yet Luther never understood his debt to Erasmus. Both were earnest men, and both anxious for reform. But while the one expected it to be slow and looked for it to come through the solvent of liberal studies, the other felt that he must strike at once. Luther never cared for Humanism, and had no love for the classics. He was no scholar, but purely a theologian. Long before the 1 ' Hans Wurst '= ' Jack Sausage.' 2 Creighton, History of the Papacy, vi. 56 (ed. 1897). 14 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION open breach with Erasmus over the question of freewill, he wrote of him, 1517, ' I now read our Erasmus, but he pleases me less every day. It is well enough that he should constantly and learnedly refute the monks and priests, and charge them with a deep-rooted and sleepy ignorance. But I fear he does not sufficiently promote Christ and the grace of God, of which he knows very little.' It was to the cause of God's free grace, as endangered by Tetzel's Indulgences, that Luther now rallied by the publication of the Ninety-five Theses. CHAPTER II REFORM — 1517-1521 From the publication of the Theses to the Diet of Worms. § 1. The preaching of Indulgences near Wittenberg was the occasion of the Reformation. Legitimate enough in their origin. Indulgences had now become ordinary expedients of papal finance. They were the means of raising money, sometimes for a crusade, in the present instance for the rebuilding of S. Peter's at Rome. This project had been set on foot by Julius ii. (1503-13), with a Bull of Indulgence in 1510. The grant was renewed by his successor Leo x. (1513-22), who, at the end of 1514, began to organise collections for S. Peter's on a large scale. He did not venture to issue commissions for Spain, France, or England. But he divided Germany into three districts ; and, by a commission of 31st March 1515, assigned to Albert, Elector Archbishop of Mainz (1513-45) and Archbishop of Magdeburg, the right of promulgating the Indulgence in the large district which included his two provinces, together with the territories of his brother Joachim i.. Elector of Brandenburg (1499- 1635). Albert had only recently obtained his election to Mainz, and that by promising to pay for the pall out of his own purse. To keep his promise, he borrowed money from the banking-house of Fugger at Augsburg ; and it was arranged with the Pope that, in consideration of a cash payment of ten thousand ducats, the Archbishop's agents should reimburse themselves out of the Indulgence by retaining half the proceeds, and pay over the remainder to the papal exchequer. The bargain was concluded 15th April 1515, but its execution was deferred till the 15 16 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION Archbishop's claim to his share was explicitly recognised in Rome. Then he put the business of preaching the Indulgence into the hands of the Dominican John Tetzel (? 1460-1519), whom he appointed his sub-commissary. Tetzel had had long experience of such enterprises. He was an able theologian and a stirring preacher, who knew how to exploit the fears and affections of his audience, and could set out his wares to the best advantage. ' Consider,' said he, ' that for each and every mortal sin, it is necessary to undergo seven years of penance after confession and contrition, either in this life or in purgatory. How many mortal sins are committed in a day, how many in a week, a month, a year, how many in the whole extent of life ! They are well-nigh numberless, and those that commit them must needs suffer endless punishment in the burning pains of purgatory. But with these confessional letters you will be able at any time in life to obtain full indulgence for all penalties imposed upon you . . . and afterwards at the hour of death a full indulgence as to all penalties and sins, and your share of all spiritual blessings that exist in the Church militant and all its members. Do you not know that when it is necessary for any one to go to Rome, or undertake any other dangerous journey, he takes his money to a broker and gives a certain percentage, five, six, or ten, in order that at Rome or elsewhere he may receive again his funds intact, by means of the letters of this same broker? Are you not willing then, for the fourth part of a florin, to obtain these letters, by virtue of which you may bring, not your money, but your divine and immortal soul safe and sound into the land of Paradise .'' ' But the Indulgences were equally efficacious for souls already in purgatory ; and, as an inducement to the people to bny them for their departed friends, Tetzel gave out that ' as soon as the penny rattles in the box, the soul leaps out of purgatory.' It was the moral mischief of these proceedings that provoked the opposi- tion of Luther. Apart from the traffic in sacred things, 'Indulgences,' as he said in a sermon of 24th February 1517, 'taught the people to dread the punishment of sin instead of sin itself.' When therefore, in the autumn of REFORM— 1517-1521 17 that year, Tetzel, who was forbidden to eater Saxony, set up his mart just across the border from Wittenberg at Jiiterbog and Zerbst, Luther broke out into attack. He resolved to probe this question of Indulgences to its foundations ; and 31st October 1517 he posted on the doors of the Church of All Saints, the usual place for University notices, ' ninety-five Theses for disputation . . . concerning Penance and Indulgences, in the desire and with the purpose of elucidating the truth.' § 2. Tlie Tlieory of Indulgences was still incomplete, V» though Indulgences in some form were of considerable antiquity. The term itself was of civil origin, and meant a remission of punishment or of taxation. But the Church, in her Penitential Discipline, made room for such re- missions : as, from the fourth century, of the period of penance, which might be shortened at the discretion of the bishop, or, from the seventh, of the penance itself, which could then be commuted for payment in money and, in later times, for acts of devotion. In 1070 such a 'remission of penance,' now for the first time spoken of as 'indulgentia poenitentife,' was granted for attendance at the dedication festival of a church ; in 1095 for going on the Crusade ; in 1300 for the journey to Rome at the papal jubilee. Meanwhile the Schoolmen had developed the theory of Indulgences as a supplement to the doctrine of Penance. The sacrament of Penance consisted of Contrition, Confession, and Satisfaction. Confession brought Contrition to the test, while the absolution which accompanied it not only remitted the eternal guilt (culpa) of sin, but also reduced to reasonable proportions the temporal penalty (pcena) which attached to it, whether by imposition of the Church or by the requirement of divine justice. The payment of the penalty that still remained was Satisfaction, a com- pensation to God for wrong done, which had to be paid oflF either here or in purgatory. But the Church had in the infinite merits of Christ and the saints a spiritual treasury out of which, in return for alms or other works of piety, she could provide a man with the means of making Satisfaction, whether for himself or for departed friends. Such bounties dispensed by the Pope were what whs now B 18 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION meant by Indulgences ; and being given out of the treasure of the Church, they were remissions, not mere commutations, and they did not depend on the devotion of the receiver. In 1343 Clement vi., by the Bull Unigenitus, which, in view of the coming jubilee, defined the source of Indulgences to be the Church's Treasury of Merits, gave the sanction of his authority to tlie theory on which they had been based by the Schoolmen. It was this theory that lay behind Tetzel's proceedings, and was generally accepted when Luther challenged it. The Indulgence which Tetzel offered consisted of ' four principal graces': (1) 'The plenary remission of all sins ... by which the penalties that a man must pay in purgatory for his offences against the divine majesty are fully remitted ' ; (2) a ' confessionale ' or letter of privilege to choose one's own confessor, with special powers of absolution ; (3) a share in the spiritual wealth of the Church ; (4) ' for souls actually in purgatory, a plenary remission of all sins.' For securing the first three graces some formal expression of repentance was necessary ; but the last was a simple matter of purchase. Here and there the doctrinal basis of this system is questioned in the Theses. The fifth says, ' The Pope has neither the will nor the power to remit any penalties, except those which he has imposed by his own authority, or by that of the canons'; while the fifty-sixth and fifty- eighth declare that 'The treasures of the Church, whence the Pope grants Indulgences, are neither sufficiently named nor known . . . nor are they the merits of Christ and of the saints.' But their main concern is with the interests of practical religion. ' Our Lord ... in saying, "Repent ye," etc., intended that the whole life of believers should be penitence. This word cannot be understood of sacramental penance, i. e. of the confession and satisfaction which are performed under the ministry of priests. It does not, however, refer solely to inward penitence.'^ The theological controversy that followed with the Dominicans, represented 1 Theses 1-3. See Wace and Buchheim, Luther's Primary Works, p. 414 (ed. 2). REFORM— 1517-1621 19 at first by Tetzel, January 1518, and then by Silvester Mazzolini,' June 1518, who stood close to Leo himself as instructor of the papal household,^ is of importance on two grounds. It served to bring out the fact that the doctrine of Indulgences rested simply on the worth of the Pope's claim to spiritual omnipotence; and it marked the end of the first stage in Luther's action when the question at issue ceased to wear the aspect of a quarrel between two friars, himself and Tetzel, and began to look like a revolt against the Roman See. § 3. The matter was now taken up by authority ; for the Archbishop of Mainz, as a man of business who found his interests menaced, had referred the Theses to the Pope. Luther was cited to Rome on a charge of heresy. But the Elector of Saxony, jealous for the reputation of his University, intervened, with the result that the case was committed to Cardinal Cajetan^ (1468-1634), who was then in Germany in attendance as Legate on the Diet at Augsburg. He was the ablest living exponent of the Thomist theology ; and as such, though not blind to the extravagances built upon it specially by Indulgence preachers, pledged to uphold the plenitude of papal power. On his arrival in Augsburg, Luther thrice appeared before the Legate, 12th, 13th, 14th October 1618, whom he found ready enough to treat him with consideration if only he would recant his errors. He was charged with two : (a) The assertion of Thesis 68 that ' the merits of Christ were not the treasure of Indulgences,' which was contrary to the definition of Clement vi. ; and (6) the proposition contained in a commentary on Thesis 7 that ' faith is necessary to one who approached the sacrament of penance, otherwise he approached it to his judgment.' He replied by rejecting the authority of the Pope in favour of the * most clear testimonies of Scripture in which the saints are said to be without merits,' and by reaffirming his doctrine of justification by faith. Quite unconsciously he had laid down the two principles of his Reformation — the sole 1 Called Prierias, from bis birthplace Pricrio. ' Magister Sacri Palatii. •'' Thomas de Vio, called Cajetan from his birthplace Gaeta. 20 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION authority of Scripture and the supreme necessity of faith. Further treaty was useless ; aud Luther secretly left Augsburg, after lodging with the Cardinal an appeal ' from the Pope imperfectly informed to the Pope to be better informed,' 16th August ; an appeal which he presently exchanged when the whole doctrine of Indul- gences, as developed down to this time, was confirmed in a Bull of 9th November addressed to Cajetan, for an appeal to a future General Council, 28th November 1518. But conciliation was still possible. A second papal envoy, Charles von Miltitz, was on his way to Germany, bearing the Golden Rose to the Elector Frederick. As a fellow-countryman and a man of the world he had a better chance of successful mediation with Luther than the Italian theologian. They met at Altenburg, 6th January 1 519. Miltitz persuaded Luther to write a letter of apology to the Pope, in which he promised, 3rd March, to say no more about Indulgences, and even to keep silence altogether if his adversaries would do the like. It was not his fault that the compact was soon broken. A year before John Maier, commonly known ^ as Eck C1486-1543), Professor of Theology and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ingoldstadt, had offered some anim- adversions on the ninety-five Theses. They had indeed been noticed by Luther, but were replied to at length by ' Luther's champion ' Carlstadt, Archdeacon of Witten- berg. Eck and Carlstadt might both be described as pro- fessional theological gladiators, who would be sorry to miss a controversial fray. Luther was drawn into it ; and a disputation was held at Leipzig, where, after a preliminary duel with Carlstadt, Eck debated with Luther, 4th-8th July 1519, the primacy of the Pope. Strong in the study of Scripture and the early Fathers, Luther had no difliiculty in showing that the Roman Church was not exclusively the Church, and that the Pope, whatever he might be by ecclesiastical arrangement, was not head of the Church by divine right. But when he went on implicitly to deny the infallibility of the so-called General Councils, held in the West after the separation 1 From his birthplace in Bavaria. REFORM— 1517-1521 21 of the Eastern and the AVestern Churches, by calling into question the condemnation of Hus at the Council of Constance, Eck seized the opportunity to show up his adversary as a dangerous heretic. ' If,' said he, ' the Reverend Father believes that a Council can err, he is to me a heathen and a publican.' The victory in debate belonged fairly to Eck ; and early in 1520 he vcas in Rome, busy with the proceedings that ended in Luther's excommunication . § 4. New positions, both in theology and politics, marked the progress of Luther's mind in 1520. On 12th January 1519 the old Emperor Maximilian died, after vain endeavours to secure the succession to his grandson Charles v, of Spain. But what he failed to effect by intrigue, the national spirit of Germany, finding expres- sion in the Electoral College, brought about; and Charles (1500-58), the head of the house of Hapsburg, and a son of the Empire as born in Ghent, was elected Emperor 27th June 1519, to the exclusion of his rival, Francis i.. King of France (1515-47), the papal candi- date. The young Emperor was the heir to a vast in- heritance, which included the Netherlands and Burgundy, Spain, Austria, Naples, Sicily and Sardinia, and the New World. He had responsibilities as vast, which, with his settled ambition to secure the dominance of the Ilapsburgs in Europe and the Empire, were to distract him throughout his reign from the service he had it in his power to render to the unification, ecclesiastical and civil, of the German people. Bnt this future was still dark. Men saw only the unwonted accession of strength which the imperial crown derived from an Emperor of such resources ; and they believed him not unwilling, as a prince of German blood and a liberal Catholic, to use them for patriotic ends. These ideals of the day had their influence on Luther. His movement ceased to be purely theological, and l)ecame a national affair. In August 1520 he anticipated the papal condemnation by the first of the three great Reformation treatises,' entitled an address To the Christian 1 VVace and Buchheim, op. cit. pp. 157 »qq. 22 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION Nobility of the German Nation respecting the Reformation of the Christian Estate. 'God has ^iven us,' he began, 'a young and noble sovereign, and by this has roused great hopes in many hearts.' The pamphlet falls into three parts. In Part i. , Luther explains that ' the Romanists have . . . drawn three walls round themselves ... so that no one could reform them. . . . First, . . , they have . . . maintained that the temporal power has no jurisdiction over . . . the spiritual ; secondly, . . , that no one may interpret the Scriptures but the Pope ; thirdly, . . . that no one may call a council but the Pope.' The first wall is overthrown by the contention 'that all Christians are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them save of office alone.' The priesthood of the laity precludes the exercise of any but a delegated authority by the clergy. It is for the laity, then, as priests to interpret the Scriptui-es and to sit in councils ; so that the second and third walls fall of themselves. Having thus claimed supreme authority in things spiritual for the laity, Luther next calls upon their natural leaders to take reform in hand themselves. In Part ii. he chastises the pomp and greed of popes and cardinals ; and concludes, in Part iii., with a long and tren- chant statement of abuses, such as annates, commendams, pall-money, appeals, and the innumerable exactions of ' that crowd of crawling vermin at Rome ' with which ' the temporal authorities or ... a general council' should make short work. He would have ' the German nation to become a free people of Christians ' under the Primate of Germany, and an Emperor free of the Pope. The treatise was addressed in German to the laity, and dealt with ecclesiastical politics. In October it was followed by an attack on mediaeval doctrine, addressed, in Latin, to theologians, and entitled On the Babylonish Captivity of the Church. As the author's faith in the State increased, his belief in the Church disappeared. In the seven sacraments with which the Church accom- panied and controlled the life of the Christian from the cradle to the grave, he saw nothing but an attempt to bring it all under the power of the priest ; there was nothing but a 'captivity,' and Rome was the modern Babylon. REFORM— 1517-1521 23 Hence the title. The book itself is a repudiation in detail sometimes of Roman^ but often of ancient and Catholic doctrine. It was the treatise which provoked the response of our royal Defender of the Faith ; but its historic importance is rather that it marks a point in Luther's opinions at which he had placed himself neces- sarily outside the communion of the Church. The seven sacraments were reduced to three — Baptism^ Penance, and the Eucharist. The Mass was no sacrifice : ' All we who are Christians are priests : those whom we«all priests are ministers chosen from amon^ us to do all things in our name . . . the priesthood is nothing else than a ministry . . . the sacrament of orders . . . nothing else than a ceremony for choosing preachers.' The last of the three treatises is connected with the final eflFort of Miltitz to effect a reconciliation. On 11th October he met Luther at Lichtenberg, and persuaded him to write once more to Leo x., and to send with the letter an explanation of his position. The letter was written, and by agreement antedated to 6th September, so as to appear to have anticipated the arrival of the papal condemnation. In it Luther clears himself of the charge of having attacked the Pope personally ; and adopts a tone of sympathy with Leo x. as against the Court of Rome, in terms which cannot exactly be called conciliatory. The letter covered an enclosure entitled Concerning Christian Liberty : not a polemic but, in intention at least, pacificatory. Its theme is that free through faith the Christian is servant of all through love : as if to imply that, for all its tyranny, the Church might count on the obedience of the true Christian, who in his turn had nothing to fear from her. But it was too late. Eck had already arrived at Leipzig with the Bull of Excom- munication, which had been issued 15th June 1520, and it was published in Wittenberg in the first week of October. § 5. The Bull of Excommunication, so far from crushing Luther, rallied Germany to his side. Eck was badly received everywhere. Students mobbed him. Bishops refused to publish his Bull. At Wittenberg it was publicly burned, 10th December 1520, together with the papal Canon Law. Evidently Luther was not alone. 24 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION His bold stand drew to his side forces of opposition to the papacy which had been long maturing in German}', and now found a leader in him. Thus (a) his cause was the cause of piety. Strong feel- ings of anger and disgust had been slowly roused among the common people by the vices of the clergy and the corruptions of the system which they administered. Anonymous broadsheets in plenty strengthened the demand for a moral reformation ; while Luther's sermons and popul&r expositions, as of the Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer, put out in 1520, lifted the discontent on to the higher plane of religious aspiration. To the earnest-minded he thus appeared to stand forth as the restorer of primitive morals and piety. Then (6) his cause was also the cause of learning. Small as was the sympathy between Luther and the Humanists, they had at least a common enemy in the Schoolmen, who savoured to the new learning of obscu- rantism and to Luther of merit. His appeal to the Bible and Christian antiquity brought him temporarily on to common ground with scholarship, and won for him whatever credit it enjoyed. The older Humanists, indeed, never ventured beyond a polite interest in his doings ; but one of the younger became at this time his ally for life. This was Philip Schwarzerd of Bretten, in the Palatinate, better known as Melanchthon (1497-1560), who at the age of twenty-one had recently been made professor of Greek in Wittenberg, 26th August 1518, at the instance of his great-uncle, the distinguished Reuchlin. He was the ripest fruit of the German renais- sance, a true scholar, and a man of mild and gentle mood. It soon became his task to second and to moderate Luther, part of whose greatness it was to know that he had need of such service and to accept it from a younger man. To Luther belonged the work of attack and de- struction ; to Melanchthon the business of systematising and reconstructing. He made palatable to courts and scholars what Luther could only present rough-hewn to the crowd. 'I am rough, boisterous, stormy, and alto- gether warlike,' said Luther. ' I am born to fight against innumerable monsters and devils. I must remove stumps REFORM— 1517-1521 25 and stones, cut away thistles and thorns, and cleai* the wild forests ; but Master Philip conies along softly and gently, sowing and watering with joy, according to the gifts which God has abundantly bestowed upon him.' Such was the debt that he knew he owed to his one friend from the ranks of Humanism ; and that support became eiFectively his from this time. Early in 1521 Melanchthon published his Loci Communes or Theological Commonplaces, which had grown out of lectures on the Epistle to the Romans ; and from henceforth the Witten- berg theology began to assume a systematic and attractive form. Again (c) Luther's cause was the cause of Germany. National feeling had recently been stirred to fresh resent- ment against Rome by papal interference with the imperial election on behalf of the French king, Of this sentiment Ulrich von Hutten and Fx'anz von Sick- ingen (1481-1523) made themselves the exponents. Both belonged to the lesser nobility of the Empire, who, to protect their order against the princes, looked to the re-establishment of a strong central authority in the hands of the Emperor. But Hutten was a Humanist as well as a knight. Where Melanchthon studied anti- quity for the furtherance of the Gospel, Hutten drew from it ideals of a reinvigorated Empire as the one hope of German unity and its bulwark against papal aggression. VV^hile Sickingen maintained a force sufficiently near the Electors at Frankfurt to turn the balance in favour of the national candidate, Hutten, who had recently re- turned from Italy, exposed, 1520, the scandals of the Court of Rome in his Vadiscus, or The Roman Trinity, and in his Inspicientes, or The Onlookers, taunted his countrymen with the drunkenness and stupidity that left them the prey of Italian ecclesiastics. Nationalism, specially in the form of national antipathy to Rome, was thus at the flood when Luther was excommunicated. ' Hutten preached in all parts that Germany must abandon Rome, and return to her own bishops and primates.' ^ He hailed Luther as an ally in the patriotic ' Ranke, History of the Beformation, 1. 468 (ed. 1845). 20 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION campaign ; and, at the request of Sickingen, offered him a retreat in Sickingen's castle of Ebernburg, should events menace his safety at home. The offer was declined. Luther's was a religious, theirs a political, enterprise ; and Luther would never appeal to force. Nor was any such appeal necessary : for (d) he enjoyed the support of public opinion in Saxony with the Elector at its head. Frederick, for all his mediaeval orthodoxy, was determined to see fair play for his subject, and stood steadily by him. When the nuncios desired him at Koln, November 1520, to put him under arrest, he replied by demanding a fair trial first. The Elector was indeed the most powerful and trusted lay prince of the Empire, who had himself but lately refused the imperial crown. So long as Luther enjoyed his protec- tion, he might ignore the papal Bull. § 6. But the Emperor was about to hold his first Diet at Worms, 27th January-25th May 1521 ; and the next move rested with him. He was accompanied by the papal legates, Caraccioli and Aleander ; who fully aware, as Aleander writes, that in Germany ' nine out of every ten cry " Luther," and the tenth, if he do not care for what Luther says, at least cries, " Death to the Court of Rome," ' bent all their efforts to make the Emperor pro- ceed against Luther on his own responsibility. He was to place Luther, as a heretic already condemned, under the ban of the Empire, which was thus simply to execute the sentence of the Church. But one article of the capitulations which Charles had signed at his election required that no German should be so condemned unheard. Here was a constitutional difficulty ; and there were political dangers to be taken into account as well. Aleander had rightly estimated the temper of German princes and people. They held the faith ' which they, their fathers, and their fathers' fathers had held ' ; but, loud in their demands for a disciplinary reform, they had prepared a long list of grievances for presenta- tion at the Diet, and Luther represented their general mind, if with some extravagance in doctrine, at any rate with a courage which required them to see that he REFORM— 1517-1521 27 had fair play. The Emperor could not disregard their wishes ; for not only was Spain in revolt against him, but he himself stood on the brink of war with his rival the King of France. Moreover, in this coming conflict he was still uncertain whether Leo x. would cast in his lot with himself or with the King. It was to the Pope's interest to support Francis in his hold upon Milan ; for otherwise, if Charles established his claim to that city as a fief of the Empire, the papal states would be shut in between his territories of Milan on the north and Naples in the south, and the papacy would be dominated by a Hapsburg ascendency in Europe. Luther thus became a factor in the political game between Pope and Emperor. The Pope was afraid of losing Germany ; and Charles had only to offer the show of a fair hearing to Luther to bring Leo to his side, and at the same time to satisfy German sentiment. The matter was accord- ingly referred to the Diet. On 18th February Aleander stated the case against Luther ; and, after a week's debate, the Estates agreed that, as Luther was so popular, and it would be dangerous not to hear him, he should be sent for under safe-conduct and asked to recant, but in no case disputed with. If he refused, then let events take their course ; but he must be heard, and the Emperor should consider the oppressions and abuses which Germany suffered from the Holy See. Accord- ingly, Luther appeared before the Diet, I7th April. A jurist conducted the business; and, following the plan agreed upon, asked him whether he was the author of the books which lay on the table before the Emperor, and if so, whether he would recant the opinions therein expressed. He asked for and was granted a day's delay. On the 18th he was asked for a straightforward answer. 'Since your most serene Majesty and your Lordships,' he replied, 'ask for a simple answer, I will give it. Unless I am convinced by witness of Scripture or plain reason (for I do not believe in the Pope or in Councils alone, since it is agreed that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am overcome by the Scrip- tures which I have adduced, and my conscience is caught in the Word of God. I neither can nor will recant 28 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION anything, for it is neither safe nor right to act against one's conscience.' Admiration for the courage of this plea for the rights of conscience has obscured the fact that it was impolitic and onesided. It was impolitic, as fatal not only to the official recognition of reform by the Empire, but to the sympathy which Luther might have counted upon from large classes of his countrymen. By refusing to submit to a Council, he forfeited the assistance of Charles and the majority in the Diet who wished for reform by a Council, and were so far anti-papal but Catholic. As it was, this section of opinion made further efforts to retain their sympathies with Luther through the media- tion first of a commission, and then of the Archbishop of Trier, but without avail. By denying the infallibility of Councils, he declared himself a heretic, drew down upon himself the vengeance of the Emperor, and threw him into an alliance of principle with the Pope. It was already an alliance of political advantage on both sides. On 8th May it was formally concluded. On the 25th tbe Edict of Worms, which pronounced Luther an outlaw, was read to a remnant of princes at the last session of the Diet. Next day it was promulgated. On 31st May the Emperor left Worms. For ten years he was absent from Germany. Tliis absence, coupled with political complications abroad, left the field free for reform to develop on its own lines (1521-80). They were the lines which Luther had laid down when he made his one- sided appeal only to Scripture and reason. The witness of historical Christianity, which should have taken rank with Scripture and reason, was nothing to him ; and when, after the ten years' respite, the Lutheran^ bodies emerged from their reconstruction on this basis, they emerged as a sect. ^ The word first appears as a recognised party name in the title of a pamphlet of December 1519, from the Lutheran side (Beard, Martin Luther, p. 337, ed. 1896). CHAPTER III REVOLUTION 1521-1526 From the Diet of Worms to the Diet of Speyer. § 1, Luther's "withdrawal to the Wartburg (May 1521 to March 1522) was the immediate sequel to the proceedings at Worms. As much to keep him quiet as to ensure his safety, he was seized on his way home and lodged, with the Elector's connivance, in the castle of that> name on the hill above Eisenach. Rumour said that he had been made away with. Albrecht Diirer even called upon Erasmus to take command ; but Aleander only suspected another trick of 'the Saxon fox.' Enforced leisure and richer food told for a time on Luther's health ; but he was not idle. Besides an exhaustive defence of Justifica- tion in reply to Latomus,^ a theologian of Louvain, he wrote against the tyranny of compulsory Private Con- fea/sion,'^ not, however, without commendation of the ordinance itself; he replied to a treatise of Catharinus on the Papal Supremacy, maintaining that the two sacraments and the Word of God are the only notes of the Church ; and. he went on with his PostilU-,^ or homilies on the liturgical Epistles and Gospels, a work on which he was engaged at intervals till 1528. But sinister reports began to reach him of developments at Wittenberg. The Augustinians had given up Private Masses, and this measure Luther justified in his De abroganda Missa Privata, 1st November. But when 1 Rationis Latomianae Confutatio. 2 Von der Beichte, oh die der Papst Macht habe zu gebieten. ^ Kirchcnpostille. 29 30 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION C'arlstadt proceeded to assert that, according to Scripture, priests not only might, but must marry, and that monks and nuns were free to leave their convents and marry, Luther thought it time to intervene. In his De votis monasticis, 21st November, he contended that, though monastic vows were as a rule entered upon with a view to merit, still there is an obvious difference between the vow of celibacy forced by ecclesiastical discipline on the clergy and the same vow freely undertaken by religious. Next month Luther shamed Albert of Mainz into aban- doning, 21st December, his projected sale of fresh Indulgences at Halle, and then set out upon a secret visit to Wittenberg. At the advice of friends there he took in hand, on his return to the Wartburg, his trans- lation of the New Testament from the Greek, and published it September 1522. Like our English Bible, it was the first literary classic in the native tongue, and would alone have entitled him to fame. But its service at the moment was that it put into the hands of the people a touchstone both of the old authoritative and of the new revolutionary systems. The translation of the Old Testament followed, and the first complete German Bible, appeared in 1.534. But before the New Testament was well in hand, Luther was wanted to quell disorders in VFittenberg, which he regarded as ' a disgrace to himself and to the Gospel.' ^ The Elector deprecated his return ; but he arrived 6th March 1522. § 2. A radical party was carrying all before it at Wittenberg in his absence. Two priests in the neigh- bourhood, Jacob Seidler and Bartholomew Bernhardi, married, acting out Luther's plea of Christian liberty, which neither Pope nor Synod was entitled to invade. In June 1521 Carlstadt attacked the institution of celibacy as a whole, in terms that provoked Luther's intervention. llie question was thus first agitated among the secular clergy. The friars took it up. One of the Augustinians, Gabriel Zwilling, preached against monastic vows. Thirteen of the brethren left the convent early in October, and those who remained, 1 Ranke, Ref. ii. 34. REVOLUTION— 1521-1526 31 together with the Carmelites, thought themselves no longer safe. In November Zwilling went on to denounce the adoration of the Host and the celebration of Mass without communicants till the prior was compelled to abolish Private Masses. Priests were interrupted at the altar by students and townsfolk ; and the Elector referred the questions raised by Zwilling and Carlstadt to their respective superiors, religious and academic. A council of Augustinians in December refused to regard monastic vows as sinful, but declared them no longer binding ; while the University declined to confirm the decision of a committee, on which Melanchthon served, for the abolition of the Mass, holding that it did not rest with Wittenberg to reform the rites of the Church at large. The innovators were checked ; and, 19th December, the Elector required conformity to established usages. But Carlstadt was not to be denied. On Christmas Day he said Mass with the omission not only of the elevation, but of all that implied the idea of sacrifice, and gave communion without previous confession and in both kinds. The ' little swarthy sunburnt man ' ^ played the demagogue with success, and already commanded an enthusiastic following. The official leaders were power- less. Melanchthon, bold enough to champion Luther in literary warfare with the Sorbonne,^ was timid in dealing with revolutionaries face to face, and liable to be carried off his feet by novel proposals. He was seconded by John Bugenhagen (1485-1558), a former Praemonstratensian canon of Treptow in Pomerania, and afterwards the chief organiser of the Lutheran communities in North Germany and Denmark ; and again by Justus Jonas (1493-1555), a jurist of Erfurt. Both these men, however, had but just taken office in Wittenberg, and never became leaders but of the second rank. Carlstadt was for the time supreme, though in reliance only upon 'the Lord Omnes.'^ On 1 Ranke, Ref. ii. 21. - Adveraus furiosum Parisiensium theologastrorum dccretum Phil. Melanchthonis pro Luthcro Apologia, June 1521. •* Luther's nickname for the radical following, in his Admonition to all Christians to abstain from Riot and Xedition, December 1521. 32 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION 27th December the radicals received a fresh impetus by the arrival of 'prophets' from Zwickau in the Harz Mountains — Storch, a weaver^ and Stiibner, a former student at Wittenberg. § 3. The Prophets of Zwickau^ 1522, were the advanced guard of Anabaptism^ a movement which first broke out there under Thomas Miinzer (1490-1525), and rapidly embarrassed the genuine work of reform both in Germany and Switzerland. Anabaptists were so called from the one tenet they had in common — the rejection of Infant Baptism ; but any further cohesion they lacked. They were ubiquitous sectaries of no one set of opinions, some holding mystical, others rationalistic doctrines ; but all radically opposed to existing religious systems, reformed or not, and many also to the existing institutions of society. The combined military and sacerdotal rule of Church and State was breaking down ; and freedom, newly won, took strange shapes. The typical Anabaptist held three positions. He rejected Infant Baptism as worthless where faith was impossible. He disparaged the written VFord and the regular ministry in favour of ' the moving of the Spirit ' ^ in individuals, who were thus endowed with an inspiration of the same kind as that of the first Apostles and Prophets. He proposed to subvert the existing civil order by force, and to set up the millennium in its place. It was Miinzer who mainly embodied this latter connection between Anabaptism and revolutionary politics, as afterwards appeared by his part in the Peasaiits' War. At present Wittenberg was sufficiently exercised by his prophets, who by their doctrine of a continuous inspiration pushed the claims of individualism to their limit, and used, to undermine the authority of Scripture, the very lever by which Luther had pulled down the authority of the Pope. Anabaptist logic was a severe comment on his own principles. At first Storch and Stiibner met with success. They easily won over Carlstadt, who married January 1522, and afterwards proceeded to unheard of innovations. Abandoning the vestments and auricular confession, he 1 Miinzer, quoted in Beard, Hiibert Lectures, p. 190. . REVOLUTION— 1521-1526 33 allowed the people to take the Host without preparation and for themselves ; led the attack on fast-days, pictures, and images ; preached that if the magistrates were slack to put down abuses, the people might take the law into their own hands ; urged the abolition of monasteries and the distribution of their endowments to the poor ; threw discredit on learning till students left the University and the schoolmaster broke up the Grammar School ; and all this on pleas drawn from the letter of Scripture, as that none should be called Rabbi,^ and that what was hid from the wise and prudent should be revealed unto babes. "^ Melanchthon, confessing that he failed to see how baptism could benefit without faith, allowed that 'for certain strong reasons he could not bring himself to condemn ' the prophets. His deference for Luther saved him ; and he urged the Elector to let 'Martin meet these men, for they appeal to him. ' ^ But Frederick hesitated. The Diet of Niirnberg was about to meet, and would hold him responsible for recognition of Luther in defiance of the Edict of Worms. Luther took the risks, and returned. On Sunday, 9th March, he began to deal with the disorders in a series of eight Shrove-tide sermons which lasted the week. His point throughout was liberty and order. He had resisted the tyranny of the Pope. Let them now resist the tyranny of majorities. There were things that the Bible had left free — vows of celibacy or of matrimony, private confession, images. Only things which contradict some clear and undoubted Scripture, such as Private Masses and compulsoiy Con- fession, were to be put away. The Bible, and the Bible only, was the rule of doctrine, but not of discipline. Thus Luther evoked order out of confusion. He laid down a principle that afterwards stood him in good stead, and became distinctive of the German Reformation as against the Swiss. In externals, Quod non est contra Scripturam, pro Scriptura est et Scriptura pro eo. The essence of Christianity was faith and love. Carlstadt and the Prophets had overlooked this to make a stand for things indifferent, and that in defiance of public order 1 Matt, xxiii. 8. - Matt. xi. 25. » Gieseler, v. 278 (ed. 1855). c 34 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION nnd constituted authority. Zwilling owned himself in the wrong. Carlstadt was silenced. The fanatics left the town in wrath. The Mass was restored ; only the Words of Institution in German were substituted for the Canon. Vows, communion in one or both kinds^ and private confession were left open. Luther himself became more circumspect in setting up faith against love, and the rights of conscience against the claims of authority. The credit of his work was for the time recovered^ and in the recovery he appeared at his best and greatest. § 4. The Diet of Niimberg, 1522-4, rescued reform from local interests and gave it a place in national policy. From July 1522 to August 1529 the Emperor was absent in Spain, preoccupied by the war with France. Before his departure he left the Hapsburg dominions, which stretched across Upper Germany from its eastern frontier to the Rhine, to his brother Ferdinand (1503-64), Arch- duke of Austria, who also became lieutenant of the Empire and president of the Council of Regency. That body had scarcely been constituted when Leo x. died, 1st December 1521, and was succeeded, 9th January 1522, by Adrian vi., once Charles's tutor, and lately his viceroy in Spain. Adrian was an orthodox theologian and a well-intentioned man. He had a sincere desire for reform in discipline, and an equally sincere conviction that repression of heresy must come first. He sent his legate Chieregati to Germany with instructions to make free admission of abuses. ' We are aware,' says the Pope, * that some years ago many abominations took place in this chair : ever5rthing was turned to evil, and the corruption spread from the head to the members, from the Pope to the prelates.' Such a state of things the Pope wished to put away ; but the Estates must do their part in putting down heresy. The Council of Regency, which had to make answer, was divided and referred the matter to the Diet at its second session, I7th November 1522, where the majority, though orthodox, was afraid to proceed to extremities against Luther in defiance of public opinion. His credit had been sufficiently restored by the suppression of disorder at Wittenberg to enable the Diet to throw its shield over him; and in their REVOLUTION— 1521-1526 35 Recess ^ of 6th March 1523 they replied that it was impossible to carry out the Edict of Worms for fear of civil war, thanked the Pope for his promises of reform, and demanded a free Council in Germany to meet within a year. Meanwhile Luther was to keep silence, and preachers were to confine themselves to the pure Gospel. They also reaffirmed the grievances of Germany in their Centum Gravamina. Thus the institutions of Germany, Council and Diet, placed themselves at the head of the national movement ; and had it not been for the con- cern of Pope and Emperor with Germany, not only might the country have been unified by the Reforma- tion, but reform itself might have taken a national character. Adrian vi. died on the news of his failure, 14th Sep- tember 1523. He was succeeded by Clement vii., 18th November 1623, a shrewd man who had a keener sense of the seriousness of the situation in Germany than his cousin Leo x., and saw better than Adrian the need of concerting action with the Emperor. The Council of Regency had lost the confidence of the nation owing to its failure to put down the Knights' War (September 1522 to April 1523). Cities, princes, and the Emperor himself were out of humour with it. As King of Spain, the existence of a representative institution was distaste- ful to him ; and as Emperor, its zeal for German nationalism was distasteful also. Early in 1524 it ceased to be of account. So when Clement's legate Campeggio arrived, he addressed himself to the Diet, and at its third session, which opened 14th January 1524, demanded prompt execution of the Edict of Worms. The Catholics were in a majority ; but even among the Estates, who were not a representative body, but an assembly of sovereigns, largely ecclesiastic, national feeling was so strong that the utmost the legate could secure was an undertaking, in the Recess of 18th April, to enforce the Edict 'as far as possible' ; and this was accompanied not merely by the former demand for a General Council to ^ The Recess was the collection of the Decrees of the Diet which had received the assent of the Emperor. 36 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION be summoned without delay, but by a resolution calling an assembly of the German nation to meet at Speyer in the autumn for the settlement of religious aflfairs. Had the assembly met, the temper of all classes was such that reform would have been embodied in a German National Church. Pope and Emperor were alarmed, and Cam- peggio set himself to frustrate the project by organising a Papal opposition. On 6th July 1524 Ferdinand, the two Dukes AV^illiam (1508-50) and Louis (1508-45) of Bavaria, and twelve Bishops of Upper Germany, entered upon the league of Batisbon (Regensburg) for the defence of the Roman faith in return for a grant of disciplinary reforms. The Emperor supported the league, and in an edict of 15th July forbade the national assembly at Speyer. The immediate outlook was ominous for the Lutherans ; but of more importance were the lasting issues of the legate's success. German unity, religious and political, was shattered. Elsewhere reform led to national consolidation ; in Germany it resulted in national disruption. The attempt to take it under the tegis of the federal institutions of the Empire had failed, and it fell into the hands of the territorial princes. Each side, moreover, became harder and narrower. The Roman party completed at Trent the conservative reform begun at Regensburg, but only sys- tematised the mediaeval doctrines. The party of reform, baulked of its power to carry the nation with it, took only a section in its train, and then developed a doctrinal and disciplinai-y system out of harmony with historical Chris- tianity. § 5. In fact, such a weakening of tlie Beformation was already in progress, 1524-5. It was due to (a) the secession of the Humanists. Erasmus and Luther were at one in their attacks upon papal abuses and monasticism, though Ei-asmus chastised the monks for ignorance and Lutlier for self-right- eousness. Each had a just sense of what the other contributed to the common cause. 'Luther,' said Erasmus to the Elector, 'has touched the Pope's crown and the monks' bellies ' ; while Luther wrote of Erasmus, ' He has done what he was ordained to do ; REVOLUTION— 1521-1526 37 he has introduced the ancient languages in place of injurious scholastic studies.' But mutual appreciation was not unmixed with mutual criticism. Erasmus wrote that he had taught nearly everything which Luther taught, only without his violence and love of paradox ; while Luther said that Erasmus ' has done enough to uncover the evil, but to reveal the good, and to lead into the land of promise is not his business, in my opinion.' They corresponded, but in tones of frigid recognition of each other's gifts. Luther's obstinacy at Worms, his gross reply to Heniy viii., the radicalism of his followers at Wittenberg, and the free use now being made in the Peasants' War of his doctrine of Christian liberty, alien- ated Erasmus. The coarseness and violence of the reformer were repellent to the fastidiousness and irre- solution of the scholar. The one hoped to find a place in heaven for SQcrates and Cicero, and took Jerome, the great patristic linguist, for his master. Luther held that ' the blessed Jerome, for all his five languages, was no match for Augustine, who knew but one, though Erasmus thinks otherwise.' A breach was thus imminent. It was Erasmus who opened it. Luther had been led by his fear of allowing merit to the recipient of grace to assert the total depravity of man, and to deny the free- dom of the will. In September 1524 Erasmus, in the Diatribe de Libera Arbitrio, maintained freedom as the indispensable condition of responsibility. Luther took a year to reply, and in December 1525 answered with the De Servo Arbitrio, in which, with the fidelity to Augus- tinianism that characterised him no less than Calvin, he contended for the absoluteness of God's predestination of some and reprobation of others, in language which, for all its vehemence, is argumentatively disastrous. The controversy ended in personalities ; but thoughtful men sided with Erasmus, who, followed by Willibald Pirckheimer (1470-1530), Crotus Rubianus, and the Humanists generally, abandoned the Reformation, which was thus divorced from liberal learning. About the same time {b) practical men were alienated by its connection with the Peasants' War. Carlstadt and Miinzer, on their expulsion from Wittenberg, departed^ 38 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION the one to Rotheriburg in Franconia, the other to Svrabia on the upper Rhine, where they spread revolutionary opinions among the peasantry. Long-standing oppression had given the peasants just ground for discontent ; and, before the publication of the Theses, local leagues of the Bundschuh had arisen with demands for social justice based upon religion. In the winter of 1524-5 all South Germany was at the mercy of the peasants, whom Miinzer had incited to arms, and the demands were repeated in the Twelve Articles of the Peasants, March 1525. Luther was not responsible for the outbreak in the sense that his doctrine of Christian liberty provoked a ferment unknown before ; but religious teachers, proclaiming ' freedom for all whom God Almighty had made free in His Son,' were caught by the existing animus against the then institutions of society, and inflamed it beyond con- trol. Reform became revolution ; and once more, as at Wittenberg and in the Knights' War, its credit was at stake. After vain attempts at mediation, 19th April, when it was too late, Luther threw himself on to the side of the temporal rulers, bidding them 'stab, slay, and strangle ' without restraint. The peasants were defeated at Frankenhausen, 15th May 1525. Miinzer was beheaded, and thousands barbarously put to death. The fanaticism which accompanied the rising enabled men to say, not without a show of truth. This is the out- come of Reformation principles ; while the fury with which the princes, backed by the middle classes, repressed it at the bidding of the peasant's son, bound him exclu- sively to their side, and lost him the popularity with the poor which he had hitherto enjoyed. Scarcely was the struggle over when the cause of reform was further weakened, (c) It lost a wise and firm friend by the death of the Elector Frederick, 5th May ; and (d) it received no less a shock by the marriage of Luther with Catharine von Bora, 13th June. The marriage was a scandal to public sentiment, not least as the alliance of an ex-friar with an escaped nun ; and Erasmus gave expression to the low esteem in which the reformers were held by a gibe at the Lutheran tragedy as a comedy which ended in a wedding. REVOLUTION— 1521-1526 39 § 6. Early in 1525 the European situation rendered the outlook darker still. From the first campaign in Navarre, 1621, the fortune of war wavered between Charles and Francis till the French king was taken prisoner before Pavia, 24th February 1525. The Emperor, with his rival thus in his power, threatened to dominate the whole of Europe, and might have returned to Germany to put down heresy with the sword. But he was too successful, and in his success thought only of recovering the ancient Burgundian heritage of his house. By the Treaty of Madrid, 14th January 1526, he liberated Francis on condition that Burgundy should be restored, and the French claims on Milan, Naples, Flanders, and Artois abandoned. But no sooner was Francis free than he obtained the Pope's absolution from his oath to observe the treaty ; and Pope and King together united, 22nd May, in the Holy League of Cognac, with Milan, Venice, and Florence ' under the protection of Henry of England,' to drive the Emperor from Italy, and restore the balance of power in Europe. It would have been a formidable coalition had the signatories been in earnest. But Henry was too anxious to obtain his divorce from Catharine of Aragon, the Emperor's aunt, to quarrel with her nephew ; and during the summer the imperial troops made head in Italy, capturing Milan and dictating terms to Clement at Rome. The situation was saved from an unexpected quarter. The Ottoman power reached its zenith under Solyman the Magnificent (1520- 66), who in 1521 captured Belgrade, long the bulwark of Christendom against the Turk, and five years later over- threw Louis II., the last Jagellon King of Bohemia and Hungary, at the battle of Mohacz, 29th August 1526. Louis perished in the flight ; and his two crowns passed to Ferdinand, who, though he considered himself entitled to them by his marriage with Anne, sister of the fallen king, submitted to election as King of Bohemia, 23rd October 1526, and was crowned King of Hungary, 3rd November 1527. Bohemia was his in its entirety ; but Hungary was divided between the Turk, who retained the central provinces; John Zapolya (1526-40), in Tran- sylvania; and Ferdinand, who held but a strip of 40 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION Hungarian territory on the eastern borders of the Empire. This was an accession of power, but mucli more of responsibility, to the House of Austria. On it now devolved the defence of Christendom. While Soly- man was still on the march to Mohacz, a Diet was summoned for the protection of the Empire ; and reform was saved by the advance of the Turk. § 7. The Diet of Speyer is a turning-point in the history of the Reformation. The league of Ratisbon had bound together the Catholic princes of the south. Upon the suppression of the Peasants, it was the turn of the north to combine. On 19th July 1525, George, Duke of Albertine Saxony (1500-39), united with the Electors Joachim of Brandenburg and Albert of Mainz, and the two Dukes Henry (1514-68) and Eric (d. 1540) of Bruns- wick, to 'extirpate the root of this disturbance, the damned Lutheran sect,' and obtained the Emperor's ratification of their purpose in a missive from Spain. Thus menaced, John the Constant, Elector of Saxony (1525-32), and Philip, Landgrave of Hesse (1518-67), who had recently declared for reform after an interview with Melanchthon at Heidelberg, agreed to stand by each other in the league of Torgau, 4th May 1526. They were joined in June by Ernest, Duke of Brunswick- Liineburg (1521-46); Wolfgang, Duke of Anhalt-Kothen, and the city of Magdeburg ; as the Diet proceeded, by Strassburg, Niirnberg, Ulm, and Augsburg ; and, soon after it was over, by Albert, Duke of Prussia (1525-68), formerly Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights. The league also sought the support of Frederick i. of Den- mark (1523-33) and Gustavus Vasa of Sweden (1523-60). So widely had sympathy for reform spread. The Diet opened June 25, and the old project of a common pro- gramme of reforms was under discussion, when the Emperor intervened with proposals for the prohibition of all innovations till the Council and for the enforce- ment of the Edict of Worms. The cities boldly alleged that this was impracticable ; things had gone too far. The Diet fell back on the only possible alternative, and resolved to grant to each state in regard to i-eligion the independence which it had actually begun to enjoy. In REVOLUTION— 1521-1526 41 the Recess of 27tli August 1626 they declared that We, the Electors, Princes, and Estates of the 'Empire, have unanimously agreed and resolved . . . each one so to live, govern, and carry himself as he hopes and trusts to answer it to God and his Imperial Majesty. The Edict of Worms was neither enforced nor repealed ; for Ferdinand wanted the aid of both parties against the Turk. The decision was merely adjourned, and this was the original purpose of the Recess. But it left the Evangelical States free to act. They reformed themselves, and interpreted the Recess to justify their procedure. Thus it became the basis of the final settlement, 1555 ; and while it gave reform in each State a legal plea, it sub- stituted territorialism for nationalism, and perpetuated th« disruption of the German people. CHAPTER IV RECONSTRUCTION — 1526-1530 From the Diet ofSpeyer to the Diet of Augsburg. § 1. A reconstruction of the ecclesiastical system followed upon the Recess of the Die.t of Speyer. In Saxony it included the reorganisation of Public Worship, of the Ministry, and of Popular Education. The Saxon institutions became the model for other evangelical States in Lower Germany. (1) The need for a reform of Public Worship had attracted Luther's attention in the struggle with Carl- stadt. He himself took the first step toward services in the vernacular, by the publication of the German New Testament, September 1522, presently followed by a translation of the Psalms. In 1523 appeared his Taufbuchlein,^ or translation of the office for Holy Baptism, and an essay on The Order of Divine Service in the Congregation,^ in which he sketched out a system, afterwards adopted, with slight modifications, by the Saxon Visitors. On week-days, about four or five a.m., priest and school were to sing a Mattins, consisting of lessons, psalms, a few good responses and antiphons, with a prayer or two, the whole to be over within an hour ; and a similar service about five or six p.m. was to continue the tradition of Evensong. Luther thus set store by the daily service ; but on Sundays and Holy-days the whole parish was to sing Mass and Vespers as usual, with sermon in the morning on the Gospel and on the Epistle in the afternoon. Legendary matter was to be dropped, ^ Riahter, Kirchenordnungen, i. pp. 7 sqq. ^ Ibid. pp. 1 sqq. 42 RECONSTRUCTION— 1526-1530 48 and anything but the Word omitted. The essay well illustrates the conservatism of its author, and his readi- ness to adopt any existing order where not inconsistent with Holy Scripture. But in doctrine he was less restrained ; and in the Formula Missae et Communionis pro ecclesia Vittembergensi,^ of December 1523, he attacks the Mass from a point of view which, when it came to be made the basis of revision three years later, produced a liturgy of a type quite different from the Roman Mass or any other liturgy of the ancient Church, The pamphlet is addressed to Nicholas Hausmann, the pastor of Zwickau (1521-32), who was perplexed by the prophets of that town, Luther begins by protesting that, though no lover of change for its own sake, he must ' prove all things and hold fast that which is good.' Accordingly, the Mass is to be taken for a sacrament, not a sacrifice ; and the rite is to be reshaped on this basis. Introit, Kyrie, Gloria in Excelsis, Collect, Epistle, Gradual, Gospel, and Nicene Creed are to be preserved, nor is the sequence of the Mass disturbed up to this point ; but the rest. Offertory and Canon, is abomination. Ah hinc omnia fere sonant ac olent ohlationem; and radical changes were projected. Non- essentials were to be left open, the use of the vernacular, vestments,^ private confession, fasting, and even Com- munion in one kind ; nor is the whole service, as thus outlined, to be regarded as in any sense a law to be uniformly observed, still less as a work to be punctiliously done. If stress is laid upon any particular requirements, it is on preaching and on the need of German hymns for congregational singing. Between 1523-4 Luther wrote twenty-four of his thirty-six hymns ; and the publication in 1524 of the Wittenberg Enchiridion of eight hymns gave birth to a German hymnody, at once free in its piety and churchly in its tone, whose best fruits have reached England through John Wesley. Luther's powers as poet and composer rose to their height in 1527 with Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott. But by this time Mass in German was well established in Wittenberg, having been ^ Richter, Kirchenordnungen, i. pp. 2 sqq. 2 Forbidden in Prussia, 16th November 1736. Thej' have Biiivived in Norway (Daniel, Cod. Lit. ii. 90, n. 1). 44 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION first sung by the Elector's order, October 1525. In 1526 the German Mass and Order of Divine Service ^ completed the reconstruction of public worship, on the lines already adopted at Zwickau. Besides weekday services, which have now practically dropped, though they were observed at Halle ^ in the seventeenth century, provision was made on Sundays (a) at five or six a.m. for a sort of Mattins for servants with sermon on the Epistle, followed by Te Deum or Benedictus, Collect, and Blessing ; {b) at eight or nine a.m. for the chief service of the Lord's Day, Mass with a sermon on the Gospel, vestments, altars, and lights remaining ; and (c), in the afternoon, for a relique of Vespers with Magnificat and a sermon on the Old Testa- ment. The following table will illustrate the comparison and contrast of the revised with the Roman Mass : — Roman ^ Introit Kj'rie (ix) Gloria in Excelsis Collect (or Collects) Epistle Gradual, and Alleluia Gospel [Sermon] Creed Oremus Offertory Sursum Corda and Preface Luther'' s German Brandcnhurg - Niirn- Mass, 1526 herg, 1533 ^ A spiritual Song or Psalm in German, as Psalm 34 Kyrie (iii) Collect Epistle A German Hymn Gospel Creed in German Sermon on the Gospel tlntroit, or German Hymn Kyrie (ix) fGloria in Excelsis Collect (or Collects) Epistle t Alleluia, or Gradual Gospel fCreed Sermon Paraphrase of Lord's Exhortation to Com- Prayer and ex- munion hortation to Com- ^ Richter, Kirchenordnungen, i. pp. 35 sqq. 2 Daniel, Cod. Lit. ii. 78, n. 1, and Appendix in. Ordo chori filalensis anni 1660 cum hodierno (1848) comparatus. 3 Cf. Hammond, Liturgies, p. xxix. sq. * Richter, Kirchenordnungen, i. pp. 176 sqq. t In Latin or German. RECONSTRUCTION— 1526-1530 45 Sanctus The Canon (Te igitur . . . Lord's Prayer) Fraction and Com- mixture with Agnus Dei The Pax The Prayers 'Diie I.e.' and 'Perceptio,' etc. Communion, with the anthem called ' Communio ' [Thanksgiving] Collect called ' Post-communio ' Dismissal-formula Words of Institution, Words of Institution with elevation Sanctus, in Gertaan fSanctus Lord's Prayer Communion Thanksgiving 'The peace of the Lord,' etc. Benediction Communion, t' Agnus,' t' Communio' Thanksgiving Benediction. with (2) A reorganisation of the Ministry accompanied the change of worship. Three types of Church polity lay open to Luther's acceptance ; but, after trifling with two, he rejected them all in favour of provisional arrangements concerted with the State. (a) His doctrine that the laity are priests in such sense tliat the clergy are only their ministers and only so long as they hold office, pointed to the form of Church govern- ment now known as Congregationalism, in which each congregation is regarded as the source of spiritual power,^ and the Ministry is constituted from below. In a treatise of 1523 entitled De instituendis niinistris ecclesiae Luther advised the Bohemian Utraquists, whose Church affairs were in confusion owing to their requirement of episcopal ordination, to assemble together and proceed in God's name to elect whom they would. ' Let the most eminent and respected among you lay their hands with good courage on the chosen candidate, and, when this has t In Latin or German. 1 Cf. his treatise, of the spring of 1523, Dass cine christliche VersamvUuruf oder Oenveinde das Recht wnd Macht habc aUc Lchre zu urtheilen und Lchrer zu berufen. 46 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION takeu place in several parishes, let the pastors have a right to elect a head or superintendent to visit them. ' ^ The experiment was tried when the Synod of Homherg, 20th October 1526, introduced the Reformation into Hesse with a scheme of Church government ^ elaborated by Francis Lambert (1487-1530), a convert of Zwingli and a pupil of Luther, and based upon the right of each congregation of believers as a church to choose its own 'bishops.' Lambert must have the credit of being the first in Germany to apply the evangelical doctrine of the universal priesthood of the laity to organisation, and so of working out the democratic pHnciple, which was to give its characteristic vigour to English and American Puritanism alike in secular and ecclesiastical politics. But this doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, though admirably suited to countries such as France or Scotland where reform rose up in opposition to the civil power, was unacceptable in England or in the several states of Germany, where monarchy was established and reform grew to maturity under the protection of the crown. Luther deplored the stolid incapacity of his fellow- countrymen for self-government, and regarded the measures which he advised to the Bohemians as, for Germany at least, premature. (b) He next cast a passing glance at Presbyterian- ism : and, arguing from the equality of ' bishop ' and 'presbyter' in the New Testament that priests might ordain, on 14th May 1525 he 'ordained' his secretary 'deacon.' Melanchthon justified the proceeding on the ground that the bishops were negligent ; and in his appendix to the Articles of Schmalkald, 1537, recurred to the position, in favour with some mediaeval writers, that bishop and presbyter constitute but one order. ^ In 1542, when the Bishop of Naumburg died, Luther ' consecrated ' his friend Amsdorf 'bishop' to succeed him. But these precedents were not followed ; and indeed Luther rarely seems to have taken seriously any question of organisa- tion. ' What does it matter,' wrote the chief Lutheran 1 Ranke, Ref. ii. p. 484. 2 Richter, Kirchenordnungen, i. pp. 56 sqq. ' Francke, Libri Symholici Ecclesiae Lutheranae, part ii. p. 54. RECONSTRUCTION— 1526-1530 47 organiser Bugenhagen^ ' by whom the call is given ? ' The Bible, by the reformer's own principles, was no such rule in questions of discipline as that a parity of ministers could be deduced from it as obligatory j while for the verdict of history, Luther, whose whole training was that of a scholastic, had little reverence. (c) Melanchthon had more, and wished to retain Episcopacy. ^ But when, by the conversion to Lutheran- ism 1525-7 of two bishops from the dominions of Albert, Duke of Prussia — George von Polenz, Bishop of Samland, and Erhardt von Queiss, Bishop of Pomesania— Luther might have secured the apostolical succession for the new pastorate, he neglected the opportunity without scruple. It would have caused difficulties ; for the Bishops of Saxony — Meissen, Naumburg, and Merseburg — were all papists, and would have resented intrusion. Why, then, should he take any legal risks, where he thought that no principle was at stake .'' To him too the hierarchy was ' hateful ' and 'hellish.' And further, the Reformation was the work of a friar, backed by his University and his Prince ; it was an uprising of the lower clergy and the secular estates against the Pope and the bishops. Episcopacy, therefore, was held to be both unnecessary and impossible. (rf) Under these influences, Luther fell back upon arrangements with the State which were intended only to be provisional, and were not without precedent on the Roman side. Since 1521 the Dukes of Bavaria exercised an authority in spiritual things ^ without regard to the jurisdiction of the bishops ; and, though this was by papal grant, it was but one case of a tendency everywhere operative according to which every secular magistrate, from the King of Spain to the burgomaster of a free town, ignored at will the claims of the spiritualty and regarded liimself as responsible to God particularly for the good order of the Church. So the Saxon Electors and Albert of Prussia became Nothbischofe or Makeshift-bishops ; pastors were appointed in the parishes ; over each group was set a superintendent, the Prince being *summus ^ Apol. Conf. Aug. art. xiv. ; Francke, op, cit. i. p. 205. 2 Ranke, Rcf. ii. pp. 169, 502. 48 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION episcopus,' The powers now to be exercised by the Visitors passed eventually to consistories organised at Wittenberg 1639-42, which administered the authority of the sovereign people as represented in the person of their Prince. (3) Provision for Popular Education on a religious basis was also part of the reforming policy. As early as 1520 Luther had urged that ' foundations and convents should again be organised as . . . Christian schools,' ^ and that ' in schools of all kinds the chief and most common lesson should be the Scriptures. ' ^ Four years later he impressed upon town councils The Need for Founding and Maintain- ing Christian Schools,^ 1524 ; and pointed to the revenues of the deserted monasteries as ready to hand for the pur- f»ose. In this work he laid stress on the study of anguages ; for Hebrew and Greek ' are the sheath in which the sword of the Spirit is kept ' ; while some years before he had scattered broadcast the elements of reli- gious knowledge in his first sermons at Wittenberg, 1516-7j on the Ten Commandments, and in forms of devotion and instruction consisting of the Command- ments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer, 1520. No sooner had the opportunity come with the Recess of Speyer than he wrote, 22nd November 1526, to the Elector John, urging him, as supreme guardian of the young, to compel villages to provide schools and preachers. The education given was to be in the tradi- tional elements of religious knowledge. 'Let those three things suffice which have belonged to Christianity from all times ' * — the Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer. It was also to be preparatory to an intelligent participation in the services of the Church. 'The first thing needed for the German public worship is a blunt, plain, simple, good Catechism.'^ It was a year or two before these intentions were carried out, for 1 Address to the Nobility ; see Wace and Buchheim, Luther's Primary Works, p. 205. * Ibid. p. 233. ^ An die Rathsherren alter Stddte deutschen Landes, dass sic christliche Schulen aufrichten und halten sollen (Wittenberg, 1524). * Primary Works, p. 30. 5 Gterman Mass (Daniel, Cod. Lit. ii. 101). RECONSTRUCTION— 1526-1530 49 Luther was in bad health, and there were epidemics of the plague. But when at length engaged on the Visita- tion near Wittenberg, he found himself ' compelled and driven by the wretched and lamentable state of affairs which I discovered lately when I acted as inspector ' ^ to set to work on a formulary of elementary instruction. In the spring of 1529 he produced the Greater Catechism. It was intended for children, but found too long for them ; and in the preface to the third edition next year it was commended ' especially to all pastors and preachers that they may daily practise themselves in ' ^ it. In July 1529 it was superseded by the Short Catechism,^ an excellent manual which, besides short expositions of the Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer, with an appendix of prayers, borrowed from a catechism of the Bohemian Brethren the idea of explaining Baptism and the Eucharist, and a 'Home Table' of texts on the duties of family, civic, and social life. It was further enlarged by an instruction ' How the simple folks should be taught to confess,' which is Luther's own. The Catechism should be ranked with the Anglican Catechism and the Westminster Shorter Catechism for the influ- ence which each has had in its own sphere on the forma- tion of national character. But there are contrasts as noteworthy. Between the Lutheran and Anglican Cate- chisms there is a kinship of tone and plan, though not based on any known historical relation. Their interest is mainly moral, and their structure short, simple, and conservative to a degree. The Westminster Shorter Catechism,* like others of Calvinistic origin, is long and dogmatic. The English formulary begins with *What is your name ? ' ; the German with the Ten Command- ments ; the Scotch with ' What is the chief end of man .'' ' and then plunges headlong into the Divine Decrees.^ § 2. The Visitation of Saxony, 1628-9, set up the system that has now been sketched. A visitation was properly the work of the bishops ; but as they stood aloof, Luther, 1 Preface to Short Catechism (Primary Works, p. 1). 2 Primary Works, p. 24. 3 /Ji^j, pp. 1-23. •* Edited in Clark's Bible Class Primers by Dr. Salmond, ' Question 7. 50 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION in letters of 1525-7, repeatedly urged the Elector to take up the task. ' The people,' he wrote, ' live like swine ; there is no fear of God and no discipline ; for the Pope's ban is gone, and every one does as he likes.' Discipline, in fact, had broken down under papal misrule ; and the disorder was increased by antinomiau preachers, such as Agricola at Eisleben, who promised ' remission of sins ' as cheap as ever Indulgence preachers had offered it, for faith only, without 'repentance' for transgression of law. The ignorance of the people was on a par with their indifference ; and the clergy, robbed of their obla- tions, were starving, incompetent, and sometimes vicious. At length, by the Elector's orders, Melanchthon pub- lished in German, March 1528, the Instructions to Visitors,^ with a preface by Luther. The preface dis- claims any intention of ' publishing this as a rigid com- mand as though we would institute a new papal decree.' It is rather 'a confession of our faith, and we hope that all pious pastors will accept it'; for, while the secular magistrate is not called to teach, he may justly intervene, like Constantine, in the interests of peace and order. The Instructions consist of eighteen articles conceived in a wise and liberal spirit, so much so that Erasmus was struck by the moderation of the Visitors. Arts. 1-13 set forth the doctrine to be preached, in which Justifica- tion by Faith holds the central place ; but pastors are reminded of their 'duty to preach the whole Gospel, and not one part without the other.' They are to avoid doctrinal subtleties and teach good works ; to be positive, not polemical, in their utterances ; above all, to let the Pope and the bishops alone. Art. 14 deals with the Turkish War. Art. 15, ' Of daily service in the Chui-ches,' prescribes in populous places 'three psalms in Latin or German ' as the nucleus of a daily Mattins, and in the evening 'three Vesper psalms in Latin and not in German, for the sake of the school-children,' together with lessons, canticles, prayers, and at the end a German hymn and the Collect. Sermons are to be on Wednes- days, Fridays, and Holy Days. On Sunday afternoons, 1 Richter, Kirchenordnungen, i. pp. 82 sqq. RECONSTRUCTION— 1526-1630 51 for servants and children, there is to be regular instruc- tion on the Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer, The Holy Days are those of the Christian year, but not of the saints. On Sundays the people are to be admonished to the reception of the Eucharist, but the frequency with which it is to be celebrated is not pre- scribed. Art. 16 treats of discipline; Art 17, 'of Superintendents,' who, in place of bishops, are merely charged with admitting and supervising ministers, and reporting at Court. Art. 18 lays down the normal plan of education for the Latin schools of the country. Armed with these Instructions, six commissions of four members each visited the parishes of Saxony. Luther and Melanchthon took their share. Churches were reformed, schools established, pastors appointed. In two years Luther could report to the Elector that 'the Word of God is effective and fruitful in the entire land. Your Grace has more and better pastors than any other country in the world.' 'The whole of Lower Germany,' says Ranke,^ 'adhered to the forms established under Luther's influence in Saxony.' § 3. The new institutions were scarcely brought to birth when their life was threatened at a second Diet of Speyer, 1629. The war dragged on in Italy till a catastrophe happened which placed the Pope at the Emperor's mercy. On 6th May 1527 a horde of Spaniards and Germans broke upon Rome, plundered the city, and made the Pope a prisoner. The sack of Rome had momentous results ; for the Papacy, robbed of its treasures of wealth and art, ceased to be a pagan, and became a pious, or at least a decorously Christian, power. But not at once. Clement was a Medici, and wished to restore his family to Florence. The Emperor in his turn had more to gain by liberating the Pope than by keeping him pi-isoner. As King of Spain, he could not violate national sentiment by indignities offered to the Vicar of Christ. He had the honour of a Spanish princess to vindicate, and the Pope alone could protect the marriage of Henry and Catharine. They had a 1 Hef. ii. p. 514. 52 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION common interest in the suppression of heresy in Germany. Accordingly an agreement was effected, 26th November 1527, which, after the defeats of the League in the following year, ripened into the Peace of Barcelona, 29th June 1529. Clement acquiesced in Charles's dominance in Italy, while the Emperor undertook to further the papal interests there ; and both joined hands to put down heresy. Francis i., too, who was in no condition to continue the war, was induced to come to terms with his rival by the Peace of Cambray, 5th August 1529. He abandoned the French claims to Flanders and Italy. Thus the Emperor was left master of the situation ; and the negotiations for both these treaties were making favourable progress when a diet was summoned to meet at Speyer on 21st February. It was to deliberate about the Turk ; about a breach of the peace due to the rashness of reforming princes who had been tricked into arming against a supposed conspiracy of Catholic sovereigns ; and, above all, about the recent innovations. Both sides met in a temper of suspicion. The Catholic Estates were in the majority, with Pope and Emperor, once more united, at their back. It was decided to revoke the Recess of the former Diet of Speyer, and, 7th April, to substitute the provision that ' those who held to the Edict of Worms should continue to do so : in the districts which had departed from it no further innovation should be introduced, and no one should be prevented from saying Mass. No ecclesiastical body should be deprived of its authority or revenues. Lastly, the sects which deny the sacrament of the true body and blood of Christ should in no wise be tolerated any more than the Anabaptists.' This was not merely to check the spread of reform till the promised Council, but to restore the spiritual jurisdiction of the bishops, to disallow the new institutions of the Evan- gelical states, and to reduce them from that position of equality with the Catholic states in respect of religious autonomy, which they had enjoyed since 1526. They could do nothing but protest. They demanded recogni- tion of the claims of minorities and of the rights of conscience. ' In human affairs,' they said, ' the more RECONSTRUCTION— 1526-1530 53 ought not to oppress the less ; since the afl'air does not belong to many of them in common, but to each in particular.* Ferdinand refused to receive the protest ; but it was immediately published in an Instrument of 25th April, in which the Protestants, headed by the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse, together with fourteen imperial cities of Upper Germany, appealed from the wrong done them at the Diet to the Emperor, the next free Council, or a German national assembly. § 4. Protestant dissensions deprived the protest of immediate effect. It had been presented but was still unpublished when, 22nd April, 'a particular secret agreement' was made between the Elector, the Land- grave, and the cities of Niirnberg, Ulm, and Strassburg for mutual defence. On the same day Philip wrote to Zwingli urging a conference of Saxon and Swiss in the hope that differences which had already arisen in the doctrine of the Eucharist might be so adjusted as to provide a basis for common action. The need for such action was imperative ; and Philip, the first to recognise it, was the natural mediator. He was the ally of the Elector, and had affinities, religious and political, with the Swiss. A fresh advance of the Turk, who appeared before Vienna, 20th September, with 250,000 men, favoured the plan ; and though the Wittenberg theo- logians viewed it with suspicion, the Conference of Marburg was arranged for Michaelmas 1529. Luther and Melanchthon appeared for their side ; Zwingli, the reformer of Zurich, CEcolampadius of Basel, and Butzer (1491-1551) of Strassburg, on behalf of the Swiss. The discussion turned upon the Eucharist ; and both Luther and Zwingli advanced opinions to which they had been committed since 1523. Luther held to the literal sense of the Words of Institution, meeting all difficulties by the divine omnipotence ; the Swiss took them figuratively. Zwingli, indeed, placed the figure in the copula (est = significat), and CEcolampadius in the predicate (corpus = figura corporis) ; but both claimed the support of John vi. 63 against a literal interpretation, and laid stress on the impossibility of a body being in more places than one at a time. * You have a different 54 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION spirit from ours,' was Luther's just appreciation, at part- ing, of the gulf between his opponents' position and his own. It is true that a consensus was reached on four- teen out of the fifteen Marburg Articles ; but the fifteenth recorded a fundamental difference as to ' whether the true body and blood of Christ was bodily in the bread and wine.' Philip's scheme was frustrated. Luther at once took the Marburg Articles and revised them, as he after- wards explained, not ' for the sake of the papists,' but against the Sacramentaries, such being his name for the Zwinglian party, who acknowledged the presence only of the outward sign (sacramentum = signum ') in the Eucharist. So revised, they became known as the Articles of Schwabach. Theologically they took rank as the first of the Lutheran Symbolical Books. For political ends, they were accepted by the Convention of Schwabach, 16th^ October, as the condition of membership in a strictly Lutheran league of North German states. The wider combination had failed. § o. It was thus a dark prospect for the Protestants when the Emperor was on his way to Germany for the Diet of Augsburg, 1530. In the summons which he issued, 21st January, from Bologna, where he stayed to receive the imperial crown, 24th February, at the hands of the Pope, he promised ' a charitable hearing for every man's opinions ' ; and so favourably was this language received by the Protestant princes, that they were there to wel- come him at his entry into Augsburg, 1.5th June. But they had made their preparations. At the advice of his Chancellor, the Elector called his theologians to Torgau and bade them state their case in writing ; ' for it was hardly likely,' said the Chancellor, 'that the preachers but only the princes and councillors would be allowed to speak. ' They gave their opinion in the Torgau Articles, which dealt mainly with discipline. Eck meanwhile had traduced the Evangelical doctrines at court; and Melan- chthon, who was engaged on the 'Saxon counsel,' was thus fain to include a defence of doctrine. The Apology became the Confession of Augsburg. It falls into two 1 Cf. Art. xxix. : 'The sign or sacrament of so great a thing.' RECONSTRUCTION— 1526-1630 65 parts, doctrinal and disciplinary, which are based respec- tively on the Articles of Schwabach and Torgau. But Melanchthon retained the tone of an Apology which, as befitted the moment when Protestantism had all the forces of the Papacy and the Empire arrayed against it, was moderate and conciliatory. There was nothing, he said, in the Protestant doctrine ' quod discrepet a Scrip- turis vel ab ecclesia Catholica vel ab ecclesia Romana, quatenus ex Scriptoribus nota est. . . . Sed dissensio est de quibusdam abusibus.' ^ '^I cannot tread so softly and gently,' wrote Luther,^ as he returned the draft which had been offered for his approval. After further revision, it received the signatures of seven princes, headed by the Elector and the Landgrave, and of the two cities of Niirnberg and Reutlingen ; and it was read in the Diet, 25th June. The temperate tone of the Confession had unexpected effects. For the reformers of Upper Germany it was too conservative, specially in its statement of the Real Presence.^ So the four cities of Strassburg, Constance, Lindau, and Memmingen sent in to the Emperor their Confessio Tetrapolitana,* which he would only receive, 11th July; and Zwingli, with whom they sympathised rather than with Luther, forwarded, 3rd July, his Fidei Ratio.^ The breach, revealed among friends at Marburg, was thus openly acknowledged at the Diet before a hostile majority prepared to do its worst. For if too conserva- tive for the Swiss, the Confession was neither submissive enough for the majority who wished to retain the estab- lished worship, nor candid enough for the Legate Cam- peggio, who pointed out with truth that in it much of the real doctrine of the Protestants was concealed. The Papacy, for instance, is not mentioned 'for certain reasons' ; and no allusion is made to the- Lutheran view of the priesthood of the laity. Accordingly the majority backed by the Legate were strong enough to bring the Emperor over to their plans. He himself would have 1 Conf. Aug. i. Art. 22 ; Francke, Lihri Symbolici, i. p. 25. 2 May 15. a Pars i. Art. 10 ; Francke, i. p. 16. * Niemeyer, CoUectio Confessionv/m EcclcsiariimReformatarwmj pp. 740 sqq. "* Hid. pp. 16 sqq. 66 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION preferred, as well for his own dignity as for his policy of conciliation, to sit as umpire between the Catholic and Protestant Estates in the Diet. But Rome would not accept a lay judge in spirituals, while the Catholic majority declined to forgo their position of advantage for that of party to a suit. Led by the sterner spirits, they recommended, 26th June, a Confutation^ of the Confession, which was drawn up by Eck and other divines, and, after five revisions, read in the Diet, 3rd August. It is of importance as showing how real a modification the reforming movement had effected in the current teaching of orthodoxy ; but, being a Con- futation still, it scarcely made for peace. A milder section thereupon interposed with the suggestion of a conference between the theologians of either side. It was opened, 16th August, and the skill of Eck, with Melauchthon's readiness to make concessions, had almost brought reconciliation in sight when irreconcilables inter- vened. Luther would not admit nor Rome abandon the papal claim to supremacy as of divine right. The limits of negotiation had been reached. The Emperor, who from the first had an understanding with the Pope, put an end to the business by a message to the Protestants, 7th September, in which, after announcing the Council, he summoned them ' in the interval to conform to the faith and practice of the Emperor, the States, and the universal Christian Church.' He was now for force; but the Estates, always jealous of their liberty whenever any of their number was menaced by the central power, incensed too at the proposed election of Ferdinand as King of the Romans, which was to make the Empire hereditary in the house of Hapsburg, and anxious to present a united front to the re-advancing Turk, de- manded delay. A Recess was announced,^ 22nd Septem- ber, which declared the Confession of the Protestants confuted, allowed them till 15th April 1531 to conform, forbade innovations till then, and committed the enforce- ment of its terms to the Imperial Chamber. The 1 Confutatio Pontificia, ap. Francke, iii. App. pp. 43 sqq. 2 publ, 19th November. RECONSTRUCTION— 1526-1530 57 Protestants immediately rejected the Recess, denied that their Confession had been confuted, and offered Melan- chthon's Apologia Confessionis^ in its defence. It was refused ; but their gains were considerable. An appeal to the sword had again been put off. Fourteen imperial cities joined them in repudiation of the Recess. At Christmas plans for the Protestant League ofSchmalkald were drawn, in which, under the leadership of Saxony and Hesse, the four cities of Upper Germany put aside their theological differences and made common cause with the princes and cities, including Magdeburg, Bremen, and Liibeck, in the north. * Francke, i. pp. 51 sqq. ; publ. April 1531. CHAPTER V CONFLICT — 1530-1655 From the Diet of Augsburg to the Peace of Augsburg. The German Reformation was complete at Augsburg, Its doctrine and institutions underwent no change ; for its Confession was never superseded, and its organisation remained untouched. ' With great care/ says one of the Visitors,! 'we brought it to pass that every parish should have its teacher and its allotted income ; every town its schools, and all that belongs to a church ' ; while ' in all the reformed communities a clergy, indebted for its position and importance to the zeal and efforts of the civil power, was substituted for one whose rights were exclusively derived from episcopal ordination.' ^ Changes so momentous were certain to be challenged. The interest of this chapter centres in the struggles of Pro- testantism, at last successful, to obtain legal recognition. § 1. The Schmalkaldic League was the first step taken by the Protestants to secure it. At the end of 1530 they were threatened not merely with coercion in the near future, but with proceedings to be immediately taken against them in the Imperial Chamber for their seizure of ecclesiastical property. They also had to fear the election of Ferdinand as King of the Romans ; for then, beside the Catholic majority in the Diet and in the Supreme Court, the Emperor through his brother would have secured a hold on the government when absent, and the prospect, after his death, of its continuance in his house. Alone of the electoral college, John of Saxony ^ Myconius, ap. Ranke, Ref. ill. p. 520. " Ranke, Ref. ill. p. 523. 58 CONFLICT— 1530-1555 59 refused his consent, induced the theologians of Witten- berg to admit the right of self-defence, and came to an understanding with those of Strassburg. Ferdinand was elected, 5th January 1531 ; but on 27th February the leaguers, at their second meeting, concluded a treaty of mutual defence for six years, and, when the days of grace ran out on loth April, were strong enough to be left in peace. Eight cities of Upper Germany and seven of Lower had joined the princes^ during the summer.- In October the League received assurances from Bavaria, the Catholic rival of the Hapsburgs ; in December a constitution ; in April 1532, at Schweinfurt, a regular organisation. The Protestants were now in a position to treat with the Emperor on something like equal terms. In view of a fresh advance of the Sultan, 26th April, he had, in convoking a Diet at Regensburg, suspended proceedings against them in the Imperial Chamber. They demanded their entire abandonment and a Council free to decide by the Word of God. They were obliged, however, to be content with a truce known as the Peace of Nilmberg, 23rd July 1532, which assured their posi- tion till a Council should be convened by the Pope. In return, the Protestants joined the Emperor to repel the Turk ; while he promised in the Recess of Regensburg that if the Council were not held within a year, he would summon an assembly of the Empire to deal with its religious troubles. At this moment of reconciliation with the Emperor and of good hope for the Protestant cause, the Elector John the Constant died, 16th August 1532. § 2. Charles now proceeded to Italy to hasten the Council ; but this was to resume a project always alarm- ing to the Court of Rome. Clement was illegitimate and simoniacal ; while such were the vested interests of his officials that, at the first rumour of a Council, all the ^ The Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, the two Dukes of Brunswick-Luneburg and Bninswick-Grubenhagen, Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt-Kothen, Counts Gebhardt and Albert of Mansfeld. 2 Ranke, Ref. iii. p. 435. Of Lower, Magdeburg, Bremen, Liibeok, Gottingen, Brunswick, Goslar, Einbeck; of IJpper, Strassburg, Ulm, Constance, Reutlingcu, Memmingen, Lindau, Biberach, Isny. CO THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION saleable offices of the Curia had fallen in value. Pope and Emperor met at Bologna, 5th December, and Clement could only escape by the plea that, until Chris- tian princes were at one, nothing could be done. To save appearances, he agreed to send joint envoys to Germany to make arrangements ; but presently went to meet the French King at Marseilles, 11th October 1533, where a plan of action was concerted against the house of Hapsburg, and cemented by the marriage of the Pope's niece, Catharine de Medici, with Prince Henry of Orleans. The Pope, in fact, was making secret use of the Pro- testants through their ally, the King of France, to rid himself of the pressure which Charles was applying as roughly to him as to them. Philip of Hesse was en- couraged to attack Wiirtemberg, which, since the deposi- tion of Duke Ulrich (1487-1550) by the Swabian League in 1519, had been held by Ferdinand. The Landgrave was victorious at LaufFen, 13th May 1534, and by the peace of Kadan, 29th June, Ferdinand agreed to restore Wurtemberg to Duke Ulrich, though as a fief of Austria. The Pope's part in all this was well understood. By keeping Germany in confusion, he had successfully frustrated the Council ; but at the price of a great increase of power to the Protestants. Wiirtemberg declared itself Protestant ; the newly-founded University of Tubingen became the stronghold of Lutheranism in the south ; and the Schmalkaldic League gained a new member and a firm footing in Upper Germany. Clement vii. died 25th September 1534, and was succeeded, 13th October, by Alexander Farnese, who became Paul in. (1534-49). Born in 1468, he owed his early advancement to Alexander vi., and retained at sixty-six the love of ease and the worldly spirit of the popes of the Renaissance in their palmy days. His chief aim, like that of his patron, was to build up a princely house for his children ; but he was statesman enough to see that times had changed, and that reform was in- evitable if the Roman Church was to survive. He surrounded himself with cardinals who sympathised with Luther in the doctrine of Justification and were devout men. At the instance of the Emperor, now returned CONFLICT— 1530-1555 61 from the overthrow of the Mahometan sea-power under Khaireddin Barbarossa in the Western Mediterranean (June — August 1535) he sent his nuncio, Peter Paul Vergerio, to Germany to arrange for the Council, and in a Bull of 2nd June 1536 convoked it at Mantua for the following May ; for he was not disposed to forgo the advantage of holding it in an Italian town. But a third war between Cliarles and Francis (1536-8) intervened, till it was brought to an end by the mediation of Paul III. at the Pacification of Nice, 18th June 1538 ; and in a Convention at Schmalkald, February 1537, the League repudiated any but a free Council to meet in Germany, though they passed over, as too violent, a statement of the Protestant case which Luther had prepared for presenta- tion at Mantua in the Articles of Schmalkald, afterwards reckoned among the Lutheran Symbolical Books. For the moment Charles seemed disposed to revert to the plan of a national synod in some secret instructions sent to his Vice-Chancelior Held, who was his intermediary at Schmalkald ; but this would have meant a certain triumph for Lutheranism and a breach with the Pope. A further attempt to hold the Council at Vicenza proved equally futile. The Emperor abandoned for the time all schemes for a Council, national or general ; and fell back, by the advice of his Chancellor Granvella, on another expedient. § 3. It was to compose the religious differences of Germany by informal Conferences. Religious division is no new thing in modern states, and quite consistent with national stability. But it was both new and perilous in the sixteenth century, and demanded the anxious attention of statesmen. Since the Peace of Nurnberg, the Protestants had received further accessions of strength. They were joined by the princes of Brandenburg-Ansbach, Anhalt-Dessau, Nassau, and Pomerania, as well as by the towns of Nurnberg, Hannover, Hamburg, Frank- furt, Augsburg, and Kempten. The overthrow of Ana- baptism at Munster, 24th June 1536, though it conferred a local triumph on the bishop, purged their credit of revolutionary tendencies. Further, two power- ful states in the north were found, on the death of their 62 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION sovereigns, to be really on the same side. In 1535 Joachim i,. Elector of Brandenburg, and in 1639 George, Duke of Saxony, both staunch Catholics, died. Henry, who succeeded his brother in ducal Saxony (1539-41), no sooner appeared in Leipzig and Dresden than a single visitation, 6th July, served to introduce the Reformation. The sons of Joachim followed. John the younger. Margrave of the Neumark, entered the League in 1537, though it was not till November 1539 that the Elector Joachim ii. (1535-71) and his capital Berlin adopted the same faith. So rapid was its progress that by this time the only Catholic states of importance were Austria, Bavaria, the Palatinate, the Duchy of Brunswick - Wolfenbiittel, and the three ecclesiastical Electorates of the Rhine. Of these, Hermann von Wied, Prince-Archbishop of Koln (1522-47), was waver- ing. In the face of such defections, the Emperor assembled a conference of divines at Hagenau in Elsass, June 1540 ; but the Protestants were so hampered by the countenance which Luther and Melanchthon had given to the bigamy of Philip of Hesse in the previous March, and by the illness of Melanchthon, that tliey were not represented by their best men. The proceed- ings were postponed to another Conference at Worms (December 1540 — January 1541), where Granvella pre- sided, and Eck and Melanchthon, as protagonist^ in a discussion based on the Confession of Augsburg, came to an agreement on Original Sin. But the Conference was cut short, 18th January, by an imperial rescript which ordered its resumption (27th April — 22nd May 1541) at the Diet of Regensburg, where Caspar Contarini, the most distinguished and conciliatory of the reforming cardinals who surrounded Paul iii. , was to be present as papal legate. The discussion was taken up by the able and moderate men of both sides — for the Catholics by Julius von Pflug, afterwards Bishop of Naumburg, Eck, and Gropper ; for the Protestants by Melanchthon, Butzer, and Pistorius of Hesse, Granvella again, at times, occupy- ing the chair. The basis of discussion was no longer the Confession of Augsburg, but a document lately prepared in secret at Worms. By 10th May an agreement was CONFLICT— 10.30-1555 63 reached on the State of Man before the Fall, Free-will, Original Sin, and even the tenet that we are justified by faith only to the exclusion of merit. Never had the prospects of reunion been so bright. But they were visionary. Contarini sent the article to Rome, only to be rejected in Consistory, 27th May, for its omission of merit. John Frederick, Elector of Saxony (1532-47), who sent it to Luther, received the reply that it was ' a patched-up thing.' Besides irreconcilables at a distance, there were difficulties on the spot ; for, by 22nd May, diflferences were revealed, as the discussion proceeded, upon the authority and constitution of the Church as governed by the Roman pontiff, which proved insuper- able. Finally, Francis feared a united Germany which would have left his rival the Emperor supreme in the Council and in Europe. The Diet could only resolve in its Recess that the results of the Colloquy of Regensburg should be laid before a Council, national or general, and that meanwhile the Protestants were to abide by the articles accepted, and the prelates to press ' a Christian order and reformation ' upon their clergy. But the Council was sigain put off by a fourth war between Charles and Francis (1542-4), which was only brought to a close by the Peace of Crespy, 14th September 1544. Hermann, Elector of Koln, relying upon the Recess, and summoning Butzer and Melanchthon to his aid, had gone over to Reform. The Elector Palatine, Frederick ii. (1544-56), was on the point of going. The Electoral College would then have consisted of four Protestants ^ to thi'ee Catholics ; ^ and the empire would be lost to the House of Hapsburg. Peace, therefore, was imperative for the Emperor. The time had come to put down Protestantism by the sword. § 4. To break the power of the League as an imperium in impeHo was the Emperor's aim in the Sctiinalkaldic War, 1546-7 ; but he concealed his purpose till he was free to strike. He continued to hold Diets and 1 The Electors of Brandenburg, Saxony, the Palatinate, and Koln. 2 The King of Bohemia, and the Archbishops of Mainz and Trier. 64 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION Conferences, where concessions were announced or com- promise discussed. At the Diet of Speyer, February 1544, he obtained help for Ferdinand against the Turk and for himself against Francis, the ally of the Turk, by renew- ing the grants of Regensburg which repealed the Edicts of Worms and Augsburg, relieved the Protestants of disabilities, and allowed them to retain the ecclesiastical property till the Council. This indeed was all they wanted ; for it was a bestowal not merely of toleration, but of civil and religious equality. But it angered the Pope, who, fearing that Germany was on the point of settling its religious affairs without him, addressed a remonstrance, 24th August, to Charles and recalled the Council, which had already been summoned and suspended, to meet at Trent ; a city indeed of the Empire as Germans de- manded, but near enough to be managed from Rome. The Protestants, secure in the Emperor's promises, regarded the Council with a languid interest ; and they were surprised, but not alarmed, when Ferdinand, at the Diet of Worms, March 1545, took advantage of the Council's assembling to require them to submit to it on the ground that the original Recess of Speyer was merely provisional till that event. The Council actually met 13th December 1545 ; and the Emperor endeavoured to put pressure upon it and upon the Protestants at the same time. He urged the Pope to have reform taken in hand at Trent before doctrine, and summoned another conference at Regensburg for January 1546. It proved fruitless, but was a gain of time. The Catholic repre- sentatives held themselves bound by the Council ; those of the Protestants were recalled to save them further trouble ; and the Diet, which was sitting simultaneously in Regensburg, referred the religious question to the Council. There the legates, in defiance of the Emperor's wishes, proceeded to take doctrine first ; and on 8tn April 1546, by making the standard of reference in doctrine to consist in Scripture and Tradition regarded as of co- ordinate authority,^ they shut the door upon reconcilia- 1 Sacrosancta oecumenica et generalis Tridentina synodus . . . omnes libros tarn veteris quam novi testameuti . . . nee noa CONFLICT— 1530-155d 65 tion or any serious modilicatiou ot niediteval orthodoxy. The decision thus taken, though it did not dissemble sufficiently to suit the Emperor's cautious methods, wa« not out of harmony with his real mind, particularly when, as at this juncture, his preparations were nearly complete. As far back as 15-il he had availed himself of the coolness that arose between the Elector and the Landgrave in consequence of the latter's bigamy, to bind the League through Philip to make no further alliances, and this pact was fatal to the reforming movements inCleves and Koln, 1543. He also secured the neutrality of the Elector of Brandenburg, the Elector Palatine, and several cities ; and he attached to himself the Land- grave's son-in-law, Maurice, who on the death of his father Henry had succeeded him as Duke of Albertine Saxony (1541-53), and had then quarrelled with his cousin, the Elector John Frederick. Both had claims over the see of Meissen ; and both desired the reversion of the two sees of Magdeburg and Halberstadt, whicli had accepted Protestantism and lay near at hand. Other princes were reconciled to the Emperor, as Duke William of Bavaria, the Catholic rival of the Hapsburgs, or entered his service, as Duke Eric of Brunswick-Calenberg and the Hohenzollern Margraves John of Ciistrin and Albert of Culmbach. Thus when the Council opened, the League was in a critical con- dition. It was isolated ; for the Elector, the Landgrave, and Duke Ulrich were the only princes to take up arms, with four cities only — Augsburg, Strassburg, Ulm, and Constance. It had no acknowledged leader, and the leadership was even contested. No help was to be ex- pected from the Swiss ; for in 1544 Luther had broken out against the Sacramentaries with more than his old violence.' His death, 18th February 1546, removed the last obstacle to war, for he never would consent to the traditiones ipsas turn ad fidem turn ad mores pertinentes . . . con- tinua successione in ecclesia catholica conservatas, pari pietatis affectu ac reverentia suscipit et veneratur. Sessio iv. 1 In his Brief Confession of the Holy Sacrament, published September 1544. Melanchthon calls it in a letter to Bullinger ' an atrocissimum scriptum.' When the Ziirichers replied in the Ortho- dox Confession of the Ministers of the Church of Zilrich, 1545, 66 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION use of force. On l!)th June Maurice entered into a league with the Emperor. On 26th June Paul iii. allied with him, furnished troops and supplies, and proclaimed a holy war. It was now useless for Charles to pretend, as he had done, that his enterprise was no war of religion, and the Protestants began to arm ; but the Emperor kept up the form of treating the struggle as one in which only the central authority of the Empire was at stake. On 20th July he outlawed the Elector and the Landgrave. Maurice, appointed Elector, 27th October, in place of his cousin as the price of his secession from the Protestant cause, invaded Saxony in company with Ferdinand. By December Southern Germany was in the Emperor's hands. Next spring the battle of Miihlberg, 24th April 1547, decided the fate of Saxony. The Elector was taken ; and the Landgrave surrendered, two months later, at Halle. Both were imprisoned ; the Archbishop of Koln deposed ; the League at an end ; and the Emperor not only lord of all Germany but, by the death of his rival Francis, 31st March 1547, master of the situation in Europe. § 5. But, for all his ascendency, Charles could barely give effect to a provisional settlement by The Interim of Augsburg, 1548. Before the campaign was half over, he was at variance with the Pope, who, jealous of the Emperor's success, withdrew his troops and subsidies, January 1547 ; sought the support of Francis and in- directly of the Protestants ; and transferred the Council to Bologna, 11th March, lest the Holy See should become the sport of the Hapsburgs, and reform be forced too rudely on the Curia. The Emperor, in his turn, had reason to complain ; for the Council had done nothing serious for reform, and, so far from conciliating the Protestants, had handled in a hostile sense the very doctrines most in dispute — Original Sin,^ l7th June 1546, and Justification, 2 18th January 1547. He declared the Pope's name was so odious that he could not mention it ; and the quarrel was embittered when the Pope Luther wrote, 'Beatus vir qui non abiit in consilio Sacramcn- tariorum, et in via Zwinglianorum non stetit, et in cathedra Tigurincrum non sedit.' ' Session v. - Session vi. CONFLICT— 1530-1555 07 accused Gonzaga, the imperial goveruor of Milau, of complicity in the murder, 10th September, of his son Piero Luigi Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza. Paul called in vain upon Charles to invest his grandson, Ottavio Farnese, with the two cities ; and in vain tried to revenge himself by an alliance with Venice and Henry ii.. King of France (1547-69). But tliese states were in no mood to entangle themselves with the mighty Emperor. Charles, aware of his strength, summoned the Armed Diet of Augsburg, September 1547, so called because of the presence of the imperial troops ; lodged a protest against the proceedings at Bologna as null and void, 18th January 1548 ; and essayed to settle the religious troubles of Germany on his own responsibility. With the aid of three learned men — Julius von Pflug, Bishop of Naumburg ; Michael Heldiug, SuiFragan of Mainz ; and John Agricola, Court Preacher to the Elector of Brandenburg — he issued a formulary of twenty-six articles which, while retaining the hierarchy and the usual worship, conceded marriage of priests and Communion in both kinds until the Council, though in doctrine it disguised the Lutheran views in Catholic language. Accepted as a provisional settlement, 15th May 1648, this Interim was imposed by a Recess of the Diet on the Protestant states, in company with a Formula Reforma- tionis for the removal of abuses in the Catholic states. But, like most compromises, and particularly those enforced from above, it was ill received. In the south it was admitted, but Brenz (1499-1570), Schnepf, and some four hundred Lutheran clergy were ejected. ^ In the north, indeed, it was received in Electoral Brandenburg, and for the Electorate of Saxony at the desire of Maurice in the modified form of the Interim of Leipzig, 22nd December 1548 : but this took place under the guidance of Melanchthon, who held that its ceremonial and disciplinary provisions might be treated as d8id(j)opa or indifferent ; and elsewhere it was either ignored or rejected, as in the larger cities. The Adiaphoristic Controversy that ensued (1548-55) left Melanchthon and ' Dutzer and other refugees came to England just in time to • influence the revifsion of the Prayer Book, 1552. (58 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION his followers, the ' Philippists,' more or less isolated at Wittenberg, and roused into opposition an extreme school of ' Gnesiolutherans ' ^ at Jena, under the leader- ship of Flacius Illyricus (1520-75), which caught the popular ear by its cry for no concession and loyalty to the name of Luther, But the Interim was no less offensive to the Catholics, and pai'ticularly to the Pope, who resented the interference of the lay power in matters spiritual, and even advised Henry ii. to unite with the Protestants in an attack on the Emperor. Paul did not live to take advantage of the difficulties which were thickening round his adversary through his failure to gauge the meaning and force of religious conviction. He died, 10th November 1549, in a fit of rage and grief at the secession of his grandson Ottavio to the imperial cause, a month after he had been forced to break up the Council at Bologna, 14th September, in view of its recall to Trent. His successor, the easy-going Julius iii. (1550-55), committed himself, in sheer weariness, to the Emperor's plans. The Pope resummoned the Council to Trent for 1st May 1551, while the Emperor put fresh pressure upon the Protestants and obliged them to send representatives. They submitted to the legates, 24th January 1552, the Confessio Saxonica and the Confessio Virtembergensis,^ drawn up respectively by Melanchthon for Saxony and Brenz for ^Vurtemberg, as the basis of an accommodation. But the desire for it was scarcely serious on either side; and before it could be reached, a train was laid and fired by the Elector Maurice, which completely ruined the commanding position of Charles himself. § 6. The event was no less a catastrophe than the downfall of the Emperor. Germany had a deeper griev- ance against him than his policy of religious oppression. The Armed Diet, by setting up an imperial treasury for the maintenance of his Spanish soldiery, had given him an authority which few of his predecessors had enjoyed. Germany had, in fact, exchanged constitutional rule for absolutism ; and Charles, though he had met with poor ^ r^^fftos - genuine Lutherans, as they professed alone to be. ^ For its influence on the Thirty-nine Articles, see the author's Thirty-nine Articles (p. 40) in this series. ' CONFLICT— 1530-1555 69 success in his efforts to establish religious unity^ was within measurable distance of achieving his equally cherished ambition to assimilate the Empire to the Spanish monarchy and make it hereditary in his house. The tyranny bore the more heavily for the indignities offered to the Elector and the Landgrave. Maurice once more saw his chance. He had never forgiven the author of his fortunes for an alleged breach of faith over the terms on which he had induced his father-in-law to surrender. The odium of all that followed was his ; and he had to redeem his character in the eyes of his country- men. While the Emperor was preoccupied in forcing his will from Augsburg on Pope and Protestants alike at the resumed Council, Maurice broke up his camp before Magdeburg, November 1551, on which town he was enforcing the Interim at the head of the imperial troops ; entered into secret alliance with Henry u. by the treaty of Friedewalde, 15th January 1552 ; induced him, at the price of receiving the three frontier bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, for France, to take the field as ' Pro- tector of the liberties of Germany and its captive princes ' ; and then, marching rapidly southward, on April 4th seized Augsburg, from which Charles had fled only just in time, advanced in pursuit to Innsliruck, and destroyed the imperinl power at a single blow. The Council broke up in terror at his approach, 28th April ; the Emperor escaped to Villach in Carinthia, and left his brother to make provisional terms with the victor in the Convention of Passau, 2n(i August 1562. They were not unfavour- able ; for Charles had wrung from Ferdinand the reversion of the Empire in favour of his own son, Philip ii. of •Spain, to the exclusion of Ferdinand's heir Maximilian ; and there was now a strong middle party, well supported by German opinion, tired of war and alive to the necessity for a policy of live-and-let-live in religion. 'ITie con- federates were to lay down their arms, when the Landgrave would be released. The Interim was to disappear, ('ouncil or no Council, the position of the Protestants was to be assured by the Diet. On 15th August the Emperor ratified the treaty, and set the Elector John Frederick free as well. 70 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION § 7. In three years it was confirmed by the Peace of Augsburg^ 26th September 1565, but peace was long in coming owing to the obstinacy with which Charles clung to the hope of re-establishing his authority. In wrath at the loss of Metz, he sought to recover it (October — December 1552) with the aid of the Margrave Albert of Culmbach, who was discontented with the truce imposed at Passau, He failed ; but assisted Albert to continue hostilities in Germany until the League of Heidelberg, February 1553, headed by P'erdinand and Maurice, took up the cause of law and order, and determined to enforce the peace. On 9th July 1553 they defeated Albert at Sievershausen, where Maurice, at once the betrayer and restorer of Protestantism, received a mortal wound. His cousin, John Frederick, died 3rd March 1554, foiled in his schemes to recover the Electorate which passed to Duke Augustus, the brother of Maurice. Other misfortunes befell the imperial arms ; and Charles was at last content to draw England to his side by the marriage of Philip and Mary, and leave Germany alone to settle its aifairs under the guidance of Ferdinand. The Diet met at Augsburg, February 1555. All desired an accommodation ; but the Protestants were resolved to stand by the Augsburg Confession, whereas Morone, the Papal Legate, and Otto, Bishop of Augsburg, the Imperial Commissioner, would hear of no peace except at the price of submission to the Catholic Church. But these prelates, as Cardinals, were suddenly called away to the conclave by the opportune death of Julius in. , 5th March, and detained for the election of his two successors — Marcellus ii,, 9th April, and Paul iv., 23rd May. Ferdinand resumed the negotiations with a free hand. It was agreed that all religious disputes were to be settled peacefully by the Imperial Chamber, so con- stituted as to secure equal rights to either side. Further, every secular sovereign was to be allowed to choose which of the two creeds he would adopt, and to enforce it within his dominions ; and, while such ecclesiastical property as had been secularised up to 1552 was to be retained by those who held it, no further alienations were to be permitted. The Lutherans demanded that CONFLICT— 1530-155.5 7l any ecclesiastical prince, who might become a Protestant, should retain his place, and be at liberty to take his subjects with him ; but this would have been fatal, certainly to the constitution, probably to the Catholicism, of the Empire, and it was enacted instead that such prelates, if they seceded, should relinquish their office and revenues. This Ecclesiastical Reservation, as it was called, or reservation of the rights of territorial rulers in the case of spiritual sovereigns, was inserted in the agreement, but so was a Protestant protest against it. Yet the main point was gained that 'neither party should molest the other,' and each enjoy civil and religious equality. Thus Protestantism obtained legal recognition. It had won a permanent but a maimed victory, fruitful in after miseries. The fixing of a given year as the limit of its progress was too arbitrary to last, so long as it retained its religious vitality. The Peace, too, was the work of princes, and paid no regard to the individual conscience nor to the rights of minorities. It merely respected the interests of territorialism, neither establishing the religion of the majority in the Empire, nor adopting the principle of religious liberty. Its principle was rather 'Cujus regio, ejus religio,' the principle first laid down at the Diet of Speyer, 1526 ; and this fell far short of what is now meant by religious toleration. Moreover, such toleration as was conceded applied only to Luther- ans. No legal status, no recognition even, was bestowed on the Reformed ^ ; and they, the followers of Zwingli and Calvin, were now the most vigorous of the protestant sects. The future of protestantism lay with them ; and it is their rise to power which demands our attention next. 1 Note. — The name 'Reformed,' as applied in Germany to communities which drew their inspiration from the Swiss, emanates from the Palatinate at a time when Calvinism ousted Lutheranism under the Elector Frederick iv. (1583-1610). The Calvinists boasted of their 'really reformed religion,' by contrast with that of the Lutherans. I have used 'Protestant' and 'Reformed' as distinctive terms historically associated with Lutherans and Calvinists respectively ; and kept ' protestant ' to denote their common rejection of Catholic Christianity, whether Roman or not. PART II. THE SWISS REFORMATION CHAPTER VI IN GERMAN SWITZERLAND. ZWINGLI 1519-1531 § 1. Switzerland in 1513 was the seat of a Confederation consisting of thirteen cantons and occupying two lines of territory. To the north-east, in the region bounded by the Rhine and the Aar, lay twelve out of the thirteen. They belong to Rhineland, and were German-speaking. To the south-west, between the lakes of Neuchatel and Geneva, lay the thirteenth Freiburg, and beyond it other districts opening out into France and Savoy. They are French-speaking, and follow the line of the Rhone. These divisions mark oiF the spheres and stages of the Swiss Reformation. Zwingli was the reformer of German Switzerland, and had accomplished his task from Ziirich by 1531. Ten years later Calvin settled in Geneva, and completed the reform of French Switzerland, 1541-64. But the course of each reform was conditioned as much by constitutional as by territorial divisions. The Con- federation was made up in its origin of portions of the Holy Roman Empire which had drawn together for defence against Rudolph, Count of Hapsburg, founder of the imperial dignity of his house. Its nucleus con- sisted of three cantons, Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, 1291, joined by two more, Luzern, 1332, and Zug, 1352. These were known as the Five Forest Cantons, and are situated round the lake of Luzern. By the admission of Glarus and the two imperial cities of Zurich and Bern, the League, about the middle of the fourteenth century, was raised to eight cantons; and during the fifteenth it 72 ZWINGLI— 1519-1531 73 acquired a great reputation by the victories with which it vindicated its independence. A natural result was the admission of new members — Freiburg, Solothurn, Basel (a third free city of the Empire)^ SchafFhausen, and Appenzell ; so that in 1513 there were thirteen cantons practically, though not technically, free of the Empire. Swiss independence seemed secured. But it was menaced from without and from within. The military prowess of the Swiss, who were brave and poor, led them to sell their swords to neighbouring princes, and a class of mercenaries grew up whose presence at once increased the factions and lowered the morals of their native land. At the same time, the Confederation, which was already encumbered by the different degrees of intimacy with which its later were bound to its earlier members without being neces- sarily bound to each other, introduced additional com- plications into the federal constitution. These became so many opportunities for strife and jealousy. There wei'e ' allied ' districts, with varying rights as to a seat in the Diet ; such as the Abbot of S. Gall, the city of Geneva, and the sister confederations of the Vallais and the Grisons. There were also 'subject' districts, or con- quests made by one or more cantons, and ruled exclusively at the pleasure of their conquerors. It is easy to see how such cumbrous machinery would get out of gear. In the Diet which directed it, as each canton had the same number of votes without regard to its population, repre- sentation was unreal. A majority of the assembly could defeat a majority of the people ; yet any populous or influential canton might go its own way with impunity, for the Diet had no means of enforcing its decisions. Thus there was a deadlock. The Five Forest Cantons, which commanded the voting power of the Diet, were rural democracies, bound by pensions and interest to the Pope, and sparsely populated by countrymen devoted to the old faith. Opposed to them stood the cities, Bern, Basel, and Zurich ; and as these were municipal republics with governments more or less aristocratic, and the weight of numbers, wealth, and intelligence on their side, the burghers resented their bondage in the Diet, and were disposed to take an independent line as well in religion as 74 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION in politics. Reformation and redistribution became part of the same programme ; and, as in Germany, where the Diet was equally unrepresentative of the nation, religious questions fell to the decision of the separate states. But there was this diflFerence, that in Zurich or Bern movements came from below, and the Town Council was frequently called in to retard or regulate what the people themselves desired. This communal character of the Swiss Reformation was accentuated by the ecclesiastical conditions of the Confederation. The territories connected with it lay in six dioceses ; the Vallais belonging to Sitten, the Grisons to Chur, the Italian districts to Como, Basel to its own bishop ; and the rest falling, on the left bank of the Aar, to Lausanne, and on its right bank to Constance, whose bishop, Hugo von Hohenlandenberg, thus had Zurich within his jurisdiction and ruled over the larger part of the Confederation. But the bishoprics were immediately dependent on the Pope. He used the hierarchy, headed I)y Matthew Schinner, Cardinal-bishop of Sitten, to fui-ther the papal interests and recruit for the papal armies. It was impossible but that the Swiss Reformation should be carried through by the action of local states on republican lines ; not indeed without episcopal sympathy in its earlier stages, but at the last in defiance of episcopal authority. § 2. Huldreich Zwingli was born at Wildhaus in the Toggenburg, 1st January 1484. His father was a peasant- proprietor in fair circumstances, and magistrate of the village. His uncle, Bartholomew Zwingli, was dean of AV^esen, some twelve miles to the south-west ; and sent the boy to school first at Basel, then at Bern, till he was old enough, at sixteen, to go on to the University of Vienna. At school he would have learned Latin, dialectic, and music ; and from a boy he was an accomplished musician, passionately fond of his art. From Vienna he returned to Basel ; and, supporting himself by teaching classics in S. Martin's school, matriculated 1st May 1502, proceeded B.A. 1504, and M.A. 1506. It was in his last year there that he came under the influence of the humanist Thomas Wyttenbach (1472-1526), whom he describes as ' most learned and holiest of men,' and who ZWINGLI— 1519-1531 75 taught him ' at a time when none of us had ever heard of Luther, except that he had published something upon Indulgences . . . what a cheat and delusion Indulgences were,' and further to look to Holy Scripture as the supreme authority in matters of faith. Three men — Capito,^ Jud,2 and Pellicanus,^ who were afterwards to take a prominent part in promoting the Reformation- shared with Zwingli the instructions of Wyttenbach. In 150G Zwingli was ordained priest, and became the Curate of Glarus, a charge which he held for ten years, 1506-16. To this period belongs his first acquaintance with Greek, which ' I began ... in order that I might learn the teaching of Christ from the original sources,' and also his introduction to Erasmus, then at Basel, whom, as a younger humanist, he hailed as the ' greatest of philosophers and theologians.' But Zwingli was always a man of action. He thrice accompanied as their chaplain a body of mercenaries from his parish, who took service in Italy with the papal armies ; but, though him- self at first a pensioner and even a pension agent of the Pope, he came to denounce the mercenary traffic as equally corrupting whether French or papal : and this led, through the opposition of interested pensionaries among his flock, to his departure from Glarus. The next two years he spent as people's priest at Einsiedeln, 1516-18, a great place of pilgrimage where there was a miraculous image of Our Lady much sought after. The Abbot and his administrator were friendly to the New Learning. They smiled, no doubt, at much that went on : but thought no harm of their new and now celebrated preacher when he wrote mocking letters about Bern- hardin Samson, the last arrived, August 1518, peddler of ' pardons hot from Rome ' ; expounded the Gospel at Alass in reliance upon the Fathers ; ' told the Lord ( Cardinal of Sitten that the Papacy had a false founda- tion, supporting the same from Scripture,' and then ' Wolfgang Kopfli (1478-1541), reformer of Basel and Strassburg. 2 Leo Jud (1482-1542), Pastor of S. Peter's, Zurich, and trans- lator of the Scriptures (1525-31). ' •' Konrad Kurschner (1478-1556), Professor of Hebrew at Zurich. 76 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION accepted an appointment as 'Acolyte Chaplain of Our Most Holy Lord the Pope.' Not that Zwingli was insincere. His opposition was that of a humanist, who never went through a spiritual crisis like Luther or Calvin. It was the fruit not of moral indignation, for he was at this time leading an unchaste life, but of growing intellectual antagonism. On 1st January 1519, through the influence of his friend and biographer Oswald Myconius,^ a teacher of classics at Zurich, Zwingli was inducted as people's priest in the Minster. It was a poorly paid but important office ; for to it was attached the duty of preaching. Zwingli at once began a con- tinuous exposition of the New Testament on Sundays, which lasted four years, and was given without reference to the Fathers. On market days he preached from the Psalms to the country folk in the market place. He was a real orator, with a practical turn aud a homely treat- ment. He was also a patriot, and denounced the pensions. When Samson reached Ziirich in the spring of loli), Zwingli preached against his pardons with the approba- tion of the Bishop of Constance and his Vicar-General ; and the Diet, then sitting in the city, remonstrated witli Leo X., who bade them ' send him off without ceremony.' It would be a mistake to think that religious considera- tions stood first as yet on either side. But Zwingli's teaching was beginning to tell. When the friars replied from their pulpits, the Town Council ranged itself on his side and ordered, early in 1.520, that preachers should keep to the New Testament and prove their doctrine from the Bible alone. Next year Zwingli became a Canon, and so a citizen of Zurich, having renounced his papal pension ; and in 1522 Zurich withdrew from the mercenary business altogether. § .3. The years 1522-6 comprise the course of the Keformation in Zurich. In Lent 1522 some of the towns- folk violated the fast, and when called to account by the Council, quoted Zwingli as their authority. He came to their defence in a sermon of 30th March on Choice and Liberty respecting Food, which justified the breach of Church order on such grounds as that the fast in Lent I Geissbiisler (1488-1552)— from X532 'antistes ' at Basel. _ ZWINGLI— 1519-1531 77 was not within the power of Church officers to impose, being nowhere contemplated in JScripture. But the Council ordered its observance till abrogated by authority ; and the Bishop of Constance, after sending a commission of inquiry, wrote to the Chapter and the Council bidding them suppress innovations. In July he procured from the Diet a decree prohibiting the preaching of reforming doctrines ; but as Zurich was j ust then at variance with tlie other cantons by her repudiation of the mercenary service, she was the more bent on going her own way. Two petitions, one signed, and both probably drafted, by Zwingli, were presented by ' certain preachers ' to the bishop and to the Diet, in which, while frankly basing their request on their own ill life, they demanded liberty for priests to marry. No answer was given, or per- haps expected. They took the matter into their own hands and married, Zwingli early in 1522, though his marriage was not publicly recognised till 2nd April 1524. On 17th July another topic was settled on the basis of the Bible only, when Francis Lambert, a Franciscan from Avignon, debated with Zwingli the lawfulness of Invocation of Saints. He professed him- self converted ; and, after a visit to Wittenberg 1528, was instrumental in giving a Zwinglian tone to the reformation of Hesse, where he died as professor of theology in the University of Marburg. The rapid handling of such questions naturally led to a revival of pulpit controversy ; and the Council once more took sides with the advocates of the Bible, and the Bible only, by a decree, 21st July, that the preaching friars of Zurich should ' leave Aquinas and the doctors of that class ' and preach according to Scripture only. In August the Ziirich clergy bound themselves to this standard ; and Zwingli, after asserting it to the bishop in his Archeteles, so called because of his intention, when he began, to make an end, clinched the argument for the supremacy of Scripture in a sermon of 6th September on The Perspicuity and Certainty of the Word of God. Here he adopts the position of protestant individualism ; and contends that only the Holy Spirit is requisite to make the Word intelligible, no Church, no Council, no Pope 78 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION at all. In November he resigned his office of people's priest ; but the Council, without consulting the bishop, begged him to preach as before. In 1523 two disputations carried reforms under public authority a stage further. At the first, which was opened, 29th January, by the Burgomaster inviting all who would to enter the lists against Master Zwingli, Faber, the Vicar-General, urged that they should await the action of the Diet of Nurnberg and the General Council ; but Zwingli reaffirmed his principle that Scripture constituted a sufficient standard of reference, and in his Sixty-seiien Articles contested the current doctrines of the Papal Supremacy, the Mass, the Invoca- tion of Saints, Works, Vows, and Purgatory. One of them assigns 'all that the so-called spiritual order claims' to 'the secular arm when it is Christian. '^ The Articles were confirmed by ' the burgomaster. Council and Great Council of the city of Ziirich,' and reinforced by their author in the summer by an Explanation for the people, but it had to be accompanied by a tractate intended to head off a revolutionary party now beginning to appear. The bishop and the Diet were powerless. The one issued a pastoral, 10th July, the other threats, .30th September. Meanwhile nuns returned to the world and married, baptism ^ was administered in the vernacular, the Council regulated anew the services of the Minster, and Zwingli proceeded to attack The Canon of the Mans. He had also taught that images were but idols, and image-breakers began to translate his ideas into practice. To meet these dangers, lest zeal should outrun public order, the Council imprisoned the icono- clasts, but arranged a second disputation. They summoned the clergy of the Canton, invited the bishops 1 Cf. his assertion, ' AiaKocrlwi/ senatus (the Great Council of Two Hundred) summa est potestas ecclesiae vice '( Rankc, Bef. iii. p. 80 n.) It holds the supreme power, ecclesiastical and civil, as representative of the commune. For the Articles, see Niemeyer, Collectio Confessionum, pp. .3 sqq. 2 The form used is given in Daniel, Codex Liturgicus, iii. p. 106. It was superseded, 1525, by a Form of Baptism . . . with the omission of all additions ivhich have no ground in God's Word {Ibid. p. 112, and Richter, Kirchenordnungen, i. p. 134). ZWJNGLI— 1519-1531 79 of Constance, Basel, and Chur, the University of Basel, and the other Cantons. The diocesan bade them, 16th October, defer to the coming General Council. But the disputation was held, 26th to 28th October, on Images and the Mass, with immediate results. On 28th October, acting on the principle that every Christian community ^ is a Church, and competent to regulate its own affairs, the men of Zurich placed themselves beyond the juris- diction of their bishop ; and proceeded to organise a new Church system in accordance with their new convictions. The Mass and Images were done away, the one being no sacrifice, and the other merely an occasion for idolatry, as was explained by Zwingli in his Short Christian In- troduction, 9th November, which accompanied, at the request of the Council, their mandate for establishing the new order of things. On Christmas Day Communion was given under both kinds in the Minster, and Bible expositions took the place of daily Mass. Some of the Chapter demurred, when further disputations followed, and the three bishops, the University of Basel, and the other Cantons were asked for their opinion on Zwingli's Introduction. On 25th May 1524 the bishop of Constance replied in vindication of the Mass and Images, and received in return, from the pen of Zwingli, iheChristian answer of the Burgomaster and Council of Zurich, 15th June. From that day the end of the old order advanced apace. The images and shrines were destroyed, the relics burned, the organs broken up, Masses for the dead and Religious Houses, 3rd December, put down. At Easter 1525 Zwingli appeared before the Council, and demanded the abolition of the Mass. In its place was set up 'a. regular love-feast,' ^ celebrated on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter. On a table with a white ^ German Gemeinde. ' Thus did Ziirich sever itself from the bishopric (and hence from the whole system of the Latin hier- archy), and undertook to found a new form of Church govern- ment on the basis of the Commune or Congregation ' (Ranke, Ref. iii. p. 85). - Ibid. iii. p. 88. The form is given in Richter, Kirchcn- ordnungen, i. p. 136, or Daniel, Codex Liturfficus, iii. p. 145; and by Zwingli himself, as an appendix to his Expositio Fidci, 1531. (Cf. Niemeyer, pp. 72 sqq.). 80 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION cloth wei-e set cakes of uuleavened bread in wooden platters^ and wine in wooden beakers. The service began with a sermon^ collect, epistle (1 Cor. xi. 20), Gloria in Excelsis, gospel (John vi. 47), Creed, and the Lord's Prayer. Then followed the account of the Institution, read to the people sitting; the elements were passed round, and the ll^Sth Psalm recited in thanksgiving ; but music and any special vestments were alike discarded. On 2oth June Bible-readings, or pro- phesyings, in imitation of 1 Cor. xiv., took the place of the Canonical Hours. The ordinary services were at eight and four on Sundays, besides a service for children and servants at midday, with preaching daily instead of the early Mass. Psalmody, prayer, confession of sins, the Lord's Prayer, and the Creed, and, to crown all, preaching, constituted the order ; but it was not fixed. The attendance fell off, and the magistrates issued an edict, 26th March 1530, requiring churchgoing. Christ- mas, New Year's Day, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost, with at first the observance of several Saints' Days, kept up the tradition of the Chi-istian year. The government of the Church was taken over by the Council, which appointed a court of discipline and a marriage court. On 4th April 1526 it set apart certain revenues for the ministers ; and Zwingli showed his zeal for a learned ministry by the founding of a theological seminary, 1525, where Zwingli, Leo Jud, and Myconius lectured. Coun- try synods extended the reforms in the rest of the Canton ; but the whole was the work of a small republic dominated by one man. § 4. The new order was scarcely set up when it was challenged (a) by the Anabaptists and (b) by Luther, (a) From the first there had been a handful of extremists eager to force the pace of reform in advance of public opinion in Zurich. It was they who first broke the fast ; and they further demanded, in accordance with Zwingli's theory that the congregation was the Church, that he should consult the whole commune, and not merely the Council. They were headed, 1522, by Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel, sons of prominent citizens ; though it was not till 28th October 1523 that they came ZWIXGLI— 1519-1531 81 forward as a radical party, urging, in the disputation, immediate removal of" Images and the Mass. In the autumn of 1524, on the appearance of Miinzer at SchafF- hausen and Carlstadt in Ziirich itself, they became Anabaptists, and, when brought before the Council, claimed Zwingli on their side. They were met by a disputation, 17th January 1525 ; but Zwingli, finding it difficult to prove Infant Baptism from the Bible only, preferred to denounce them as ' refractory blockheads,' and the Council commanded the baptism of infants under pain of banishment. In February Grebel re-baptized adults. Upon a second disputation, 20th March, 'four- teen men and seven women ' were cast into prison, ' to see whether it were possible to turn them from their error ' ; and on a third ending fruitlessly, 6th November, the Council banished the leaders, who all came to a miserable end. Manz they drowned in the lake of Zurich. But Balthasar Hubmaier (1480-1528), pastor of Waldshut, remained to carry on a literary controvei'sy with Zwingli (1525-6), in which Zwingli ^ argued for Infant Baptism on the ground that water-baptism is merely a sign of allegiance like circumcision ; while Hubmaier,2 for the very reason that Christian baptism was more than John's baptism, rejected its bestowal on infants. But the controversy was cut short by the flight of Hubmaier and his recantation on the rack. In an edict of 9th September 1527, Zurich, Bern, and St. Gall united to get rid of the Anabaptists by drowning, as guilty not merely of tenets inimical to civil order, but, as in St. Gall, of actual crime, Zwingli having inaugu- rated their rout in The Refutation of the Tricks of the Catabaptists ,^ or drowners, a nickname which sufficiently hints that abuse and ridicule were called in to accom- plish what argument, on his own principle of allowing nothing for which Scripture proof could not be adduced, had failed to effect. (6) It was not so easy to silence 1 On Baptism, Anahaptism, and Infant Baptism, 27th May 1525. ' ImpoRsibile enim est ut res aliqua externa fidem hominis internam confirmet et stabiliat.' 2 On the Christian Baptism of Believers, llth July 152.'>. " I'ublishefl olst .July lo'^T. P 82 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION Luther, with whom, since 1526, Zwingli had been openly at issue on the Real Presence. The earlier stages of the dispute belong to the literary record of the two com- batants ; but when, 31st August 1527, Zwingli and CEcolampadius replied to Luther's Large Confession on the Sacrament, the Landgrave of Hesse intervened in the interest of united action. But the Conference of Mar- burg, October 1529, revealed a cleavage which, as we have seen, kept Protestant and Reformed in lasting isolation, political and theological as well. § 5. By this time throughout German Switzerland the Zwinglian opinions had taken root. In Bern, which belonged to the diocese of Lausanne, the crisis began, 1522, when Bercthold Haller (1492-1536), a canon of the Cathedral, and Sebastian Meyer, a Franciscan professor of theology, were accused of heresy before the Town Council at the instance of the bishop. They were aided by a Shrovetide comedy of Nicholas Manuel called ' The Eaters of the Dead,' in which clerical rapacity as evinced in Masses for the departed was held up to scorn. Next year the Council ordered preachers to confine them- selves to the Go'spel, released nuns of their vows, and on the appearance of Heim, a Dominican champion of the old order, banished both him and Meyer. The country districts forsook the Mass, and disorder increased till, 1527, a disputation was appointed, at which the Bishops of Lausanne, Constance, Basel, and Sitten were sum- moned to appear, or else forfeit their authority. It was held 6th to 25th January 1528. There was little real discussion ; but the ten Theses of Bern ^ were adopted, drawn up by Haller and revised by Zwingli. An orgy of image-breaking and organ-smashing ensued, and was defended by Zwingli in a sermon against 'altars and idols ' as ' filth and rubbish ' ; and on 7th February a decree^ of the Council legalised the ten Theses, repudiated 1 Text in Niemeyer, p. 15. The first is on the Supremacy of the Word of God; and the rest against (2) Tradition, (3) Satisfaction, (4) The Real Presence, (5) The Sacrifice of the Mass, (6) Saintly Mediators, (7) Purgatory, (8) Images, (9) and (10) Celibacy. - Text in Richter, Kirchenordnumien, i. pp. 104 sciq. ZUINGLI— 1519-1531 83 the Episcopal jurisdiction, and set up a State religion. On 25th June Bern entered into alliance with Zuriclf. Similar proceedings introduced the Reformation at Basel, where it began to take shape upon the appoint- ment, 1522, of the modest and scholarly (Ecolampadius ^ (1482-1531) to the church of S. Martin. He had col- laborated with Erasmus in editing the New Testament in Greek, 1516 ; and he at once sought the friendship of Zwingli in a letter of 10th December 1522. The next year was one of quiet growth ; but in 1524 CEcolampadius welcomed at his house William Farel (1489-1565), the precursor of Calvin, and had sufficient influence to pro- cure him a mandate from the Council, 24th February, for a disputation which had been refused by the Uni- versity. Farel attacked the current system in thirteen theses, from which no positive result ensued. But under the influence of CEcolampadius, who now began to expound the Scriptures in order, the Government per- mitted baptism and a liturgy in German, with Communion in both kinds ; the disuse of ceremonies ; the secularisa- tion, 2nd February 1525, of convents ; psalmody in German ; and a Catechism, 1526. Then followed pulpit railings, and on Good Friday, 1528, the first mutterings of iconoclasm. The Government sought to temporise ; but at Christmas rival parties among the burghers flew to arms, four-fifths in the cause of reform, demanding decision by a popular vote. On Shrove Tuesday, 1529, a decree of the Council covered the abolition of the Mass and of images, some of which had already been destroyed. The rest were reduced to ashes on Ash Wednesday. In April Erasmus took to flight ; the bishop and chapter also, with most of the religious. (Ecolampadius, ap- pointed preacher at the Cathedral, became antistes of Basel till his death. The University was temporarily eclipsed, but reconstituted. On 1st April 1529 recon- struction began with a mandate from the Council,^ which set up a new Church polity, conservative in such points as daily service and weekly Communion, and a ^ Hausschein. 2 Text in Richter, KircJirvordiivnc/en, i. pp. 120 s'l'/. 84 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION t'ode of discipline, afterwards rigorously enforced by tlic Ban, 15:30. In GlaruB, St. Oall, Appenzell, Schaffhausen, Solotlium, Constance, Thurgau, and the Graubiinden, with the towns of Biel and Miihlhausen, reform took a similar course. Except in the Forest Cantons and Freiburg, it was generally established over German Switzerland before Zwingli's death. In Germany Zwinglianism was checked by the equal opposition of Catholics and Lutherans. § 6. It suiFered as sudden a check on its own soil. In 1524 Eck, anxious to retrieve or to extend his fame, wrote to the Diet offering to refute the heresies of Zwingli at a public disputation. Zwingli at first accepted, but afterwards evaded the challenge ; but the Diet of Luzern fixed the disputation for May 1526 at Baden in Aargau. Baden, though only twelve miles north-west of Ziirich, lay in a territory dominated by the Forest Cantons. The debate, which lasted four weeks (21st May to 18th June), was conducted with skill by Eck, and with learning by (Ecolampadius. It turned on the usual topics of the Mass, the Intercession of the Saints, Images, and Purgatory ; and as the majority in a dis- tinguished assembly declared for Eck, it served its purpose as a demonstration intended to counteract the growing influence of Zwingli. Nine out of the twelve cantons which recognised the meeting subscribed a decree in condemnation of his teaching. This teaching was also obnoxious on political grounds ; for, apart from the resistance, headed by Zurich, to pensions and foreign enlistment, a further demand for equalised rights of representation in the Diet rendered the suppression of reform a matter of life and death for the Forest Cantons. Accordingly they refused to tolerate the new doctrines in the common lordships and bailiwicks ; while Zurich and Bern, which had an equal share in the government of these dependencies, vindicated the right of a local majority to choose for itself. Thus the Confederacy was divided into hostile camps. Early in 1529 the Five Cantons leagued themselves with Ferdinand of Austria, and were joined by Freiburg, Wallis, and Solothurn. The City Cantons, in the meanwhile, had "^ entered into ZWINGLI- 1519-1531 85 Christian Burgher Rights ' with each other, which included Zurich, Bern, Basel, Constance, Biel, Miihlhausen, St, Gall, Schaffhausen, and afterwards Strassburg. The burning of a Zurich minister, Jacob Kaisei', at Schwyz, May 1529, precipitated the first war of Cappel, in which Zurich was the aggressor, 8th June ; but a truce was signed, 24th June, on condition of (1) mutual toleration between the cantons ; (2) for the common bailiwicks, the recognition of the rights of majorities ; and (3) the dis- solution of the alliance of the Five Cantons with the House of Austria. But hostilities only had to await a second dispute over an ' allied ' district to be resumed at once. The Abbey of St. Gall was ' protected ' by two Reformed and two Catholic Cantons. On the death of the Abbot, Zurich and Glarus wished to suppress the Abbey — a project which Luzern and Schwyz as naturally resisted. Recriminations took place in the Diet, till, loth May 1531, Bern and Zurich laid an embargo on food supplies for the Forest Cantons. The Foresters crossed the border to give battle, and won a complete victory over the Ziirichers on the sanguinary field of Cappel, 11th October 1631, where, true to his martial and patriotic spirit, Zwingli was left among the slain. The second Peace of Cappel, 20th November, reaffirmed the principle of mutual toleration, but dissolved the 'Burgher Rights,' and arrested the extension of reformed doctrine. Bullinger (1504-75) at Zurich, and Myconius at Basel, took up the work of Zwingli and (Ecolampadius. But their chief task was to supersede the personal Confessions of Zwingli 1 and the local Confessions of Bern - and BaseP 1 The chief of these were — (1) 1523. The Sixty-seven Articles, with the Explanation and the Introduction. (2) 1525. The Commentary on True and False Religion. (3) 15.30. Fidei Ratio, presented to the Emperor at the Diet of Augsburg. (4) 1530. De divina providentia. (5) 1531. Christianae Fidei hrevis et clara Expositio, addressed to Francis i. ; cf. Niemeyer, pp. 36 sqq. 2 Theses Bemenses, 1528. 3 Confessio Basiliensis I. (Myconius), 1534 ; ibid. pp. 78 sqq. ; Confessio Basiliensis II. or First Helvetic Confession (Bul- linger, Myconius, etc.), 1536; ibid. pp. ^Q^ sqq. m THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION by formularies, such as the Consent of Zurich (1549),^ which brought Zurich into line with Geneva on the doctrine of the Sacraments, and so paved the way for the consolidation of reform in Switzerland under the magisterial domination of Calvin. 1 Consensus Tigurinus (Calvin and Bnllinger) ; ibid. pp. 191 sqq. The sacraments are not only ' notae ac tesserae Christianae professionis ac societatis,' but 'organa quidem sunt, quibus efficaclter, ubi visum est, agit Deus.' CHAPTER VII IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND. CALVIN 1541-1564 § 1. French Switzerland, which included the modern cantons of Biel, Neuchatel, Vaud, and Geneva, was inhabited by a people of Romanic stock, but was politi- cally dependent on Bern. It was reformed, in the main, by French refugees. The first of these was William Farel, a native of Gap in Dauphine, and a pupil of Faber Stapu- lensis (1455-1636). He had already been conspicuous at the disputations of Basel and Bern, when, under com- mission from the Bernese government, he took up the part of a roving preacher in its territories. He was a little insignificant man, with a red and tousled beard, a loud voice, and a defiant air ; a master-hand at denun- ciation or destruction, but with less capacity for rebuild- ing upon the ruins. In 1529 he appeared at Lausanne, but was resisted by the bishop. He next turned his attention to Neuchdtel, 1530, where he preached in the streets till the doors of the churches were open to him. The first to admit him was the hospital chapel. In August he made inflammatory excursions into the villages round. Finally, after an outbreak of iconoclasm, 22nd October, Farel preached the next day at the hospital, and invited his hearers to go with him to the principal church of the city, and there substitute the Word of God for the Mass. The church and thirty chapels near it were wrecked, the altars and images dashed to pieces, and the Host eaten like common bread. On 4th November com- missioners came from Bern to take a ballot about reform, which ended in Farel's favour by a majority of eighteen. The Mass was abolished, but the clergy were left unmolested, with their tithes duly paid. Farel then 87 88 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION departed to repeat the proceedings elsewhere. At Orbe he had among his hearers a native of the town named Peter Viret (1511-71), who joined him in preaching there, 6th May 1531, and was afterwards sent by the Bernese government, April 1536, to open a reforming campaign in Lausanne. Lausanne was a chief town of the Pays de Vaud, which had recently fallen to the Bernese by their victory over the Savoyards ; and Viret had sufficiently advanced his cause for a disputation to be held, October 1536, at which P'arel bore the brunt of the debate, aided by Viret and Calvin. On 19th October Bern abolished the papal hierarchy in the Pays de Vaud, and two years later set up a new Church polity in its place, 31st March 1538. But this is to anticipate. Farel and Viret continued their crusade ; and Farel visited the Waldenses of Pied- mont at the request of two of their preachers, who were returning from a mission to the reformers of Strassburg^ Basel, and Bern, where they had submitted their doctrines for approval or correction. Farel attended their Synod, 12th September 1532, at Chanforans, in the valley of the Angrogne, and aided in initiating that connection between this ancient but harmless sect of pietists and the Reformed, which continues to this day. Shortly after, he arrived with Viret at Geneva, 2nd October, under credentials from the Bernese ; but was compelled to fly by the opposition of the Catholics, headed by the Vicar-General, and supported by the canton of Freiburg. Bern resented this treatment of its preachers, and at the end of 1533 Farel was enabled to return to Geneva under its protection, reinforced by Viret and Froment, another French refugee. With them was associated Peter Robert Olivetan, of Noyon in Picardy, and uncle of Calvin. His contribution to the Reformation in French Switzerland was the translation of the New Testament, published 1534, largely at the expense of the poor Wal- denses. In 1535 the whole Bible appeared in French, with an introduction from the pen of Calvin. § 2. Geneva at this time had lately passed through a political crisis, and was in course of winning its freedom and its new faith together. Formerly the city owed CALVIN— 1541-1564 89 obedience to its prince-bishop, Pierre de la Baume (1523- 36), and to its suzerain, Charles in., Duke of Savoy (1504-36). The Duke aimed at incorporating Geneva with his realm, and the city was divided into two factions — that of the Mamelukes, who espoused the pretensions of Savoy, and that of the Patriots or Confederates,^ who called in the aid of Bern and Freiburg against the Duke and his creature the bishop. The Patriots triumphed in 1526, when a republican constitution was adopted, and the bishop was limited to his ecclesiastical rights. But as Charles continued to annoy the Genevese, in 1530 Bern and Freiburg took the field in defence of their ally, and compelled him to sue for peace. On 5th July 1533 the bishop also left the city. Such was the condition of affairs on the return of Farel and his company at the end of that year. The lords of Bern demanded that free course should be given to the Gospel ; and, notwithstand- ing the alienation of Freiburg, which was unreformed, a disputation was arranged to decide the issues. It was held 29th January 1534; and Farel and Viret debated with Guy Furbity, a Dominican who had been summoned by the Catholics to champion their cause, the authority of the Church and the Scriptures, and the practice of fasting. In March the church of the Franciscans was acquired for the Reformed ; and when, on the renuncia- tion of the alliance by Freiburg, 12th April, the Bernese were left with a free hand, other measures were taken in quick succession, beginning with the demolition of convents. In June there followed a second disputation ; while Farel and Viret began to celebrate the Lord's Supper after the new fashion. In July the bishop, aided by Freiburg, attempted to surprise the city ; but the attempt only led to the final repudiation of his authority. In August the three principal churches of the Madeleine, S. Gervais, and S. Peter, the cathedral, were occupied by the reformers ; images were broken, relics dispersed, and altars overthrown after harangues from Farel. When at last he appeared, 10th August, before the 1 Eidgenossen, or Eidgenots ; whence, it is thought, Huguenots, about 1560. 90 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION Council of Two Hundred, it was resolved to abolish the old order. On the same evening a deputation of the Council waited upon the Vicar-General to inform him of the resolution which had been adopted — the bishop's jurisdiction was renounced, and the celebration of Mass ceased. On the 27th the Council published an order requiring the citizens to worship God according to the Scriptures ; and though this order may be considered as officially establishing the Reformed religion in Geneva, a further sanction was given to it, 21st May 1536, when, two months before the arrival of Calvin, the citizens, at the instance of Farel, were compelled to take oath that they would abide by the precepts of the Gospel. But before this event Geneva had won her political as w:ell as her ecclesiastical independence, and the Reformation came to be identified with patriotism and liberty. Provoked by its progress and the suppression of the bishopric, the Duke renewed his attacks on the city, till, on the fresh declaration of war, April 1536, between the Emperor and the King of France, the French invaded Savoy, and obliged him to draw off his forces and leave Geneva free indeed, but indebted for its rescue to Bern. Power ^ fell into the hands of the Three Councils — the Little Council of Twenty-five, the Great Council of Sixty,^ the General Council of Two Hundred,^ and the popular assembly. But it was a very modified democracy that thus recovered its independ- ence ; for the drift of changes now coming into force when Calvin first set foot in Geneva was to concentrate all power upon the Little Council, and so to set up that aristocratic or oligarchical regime, which best suited his genius as well as his working political theory.* 1 On the constitution of Geneva, see Dyer, Life of Calvin, pp. 60 sqq. 2 Instituted 1457. 3 Instituted 1526, in imitation of Bern and Freiburg, the new allies of Geneva. * ' Equidem si in se considerentur tres illae, quas ponunt Philo- sophi, regiminis formae, minime negaverim . . . aristocratiam . . . aliis omnibus longe excellere : non id quidem per se, sed quia rarissime contingit, Regcs ita sibi moderari, ut nunquam a justo et recto discrepet eorum voluntas,' etc. (Inst. iv. xx. 8). CALVIN— 1541-1564 91 8 3. John Calvin was born at Noyon, in Picardy, 10th July 1509. His father was notary iu the ecclesiastical court, and secretary to the bishop, able to give his son a superior education, and alive to the advantage of it. As a boy he was brought up with the children of the noble house of Mommor, and to this circumstance he owed that refinement of manners which distinguished him from Luther and Zwingli, as well as from Farel, of whom Erasmus said sardonically that he was ever prating 'Gospel, Gospel,' but wanted 'Gospel manners.' Calvin, even as a boy, was so strict and censorious, that his play- mates nicknamed him 'The Accusative Case.' At the age of twelve he received a prebend from the bishop with a view to his studies, and paid a priest to say Mass for him. He himself was never ordained ; and it is noteworthy that both he and Melanchthon, the other protestant dogmatist, were laymen. At fourteen he went to Paris to study under Mathurin Cordier, who was also the teacher of Ignatius Loyola. Here Calvin showed all the aptitudes of a classical scholar, and he owed to Cordier his elegant Latin style. He presently developed a taste for the law, in pursuit of which he went first to Orleans to hear Pierre I'Etoile, and then to Bourges to sit at the feet of Andre Alciat, a teacher of jurisprudence from Italy. To these legal studies he was indebted for his precise and logical mind. At Orleans he took his LL.D. before he finally left in the autumn of 1533, and while at Bourges he fell in with a German humanist, Melchior Wolmar, who was the professor of Greek. Through him he became acquainted with the course of reform in Germany ; and meanwhile Olivetan, his uncle, drew him to the study of Scripture. On the death of his father, who had been ambitious to see him a lawyer, Calvin returned to Paris, June 1531, chiefly to study theology. In 1532 he published his first work on Seneca, purely the work of a Humanist ; but to the end of this year must be assigned his ' sudden conversion,' as he describes it, which led him in November to an attack upon the Sorbonne. H? was now the acknowledged leader of a band of young reformers in Paris ; and 1st November 1533, when Cop, the Rector of the University, delivered 92 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION an inaugural address vvitli animadversions on the Chiircli, Calvin's hand was traced in it, and he had to flee. He took refuge in the dominions of Margaret, Queen (1527- 49) of Navarre, a patroness of the protestants, with Canon Louis du Tillet, at Claix, near Angouleme. Here he passed as Charles d'Espeville^ and was known as the Grecian ^ of Claix, But he ventured back to Paris in 1534, where he became involved with some obscure but hotheaded enthusiasts who posted up placards, 18th October, denouncing 'the Pope and all his vermin' as ' Anti-Christ,' and had to take to flight again. After various wanderings, he arrived in Basel early in 1535 : and while there, January 1535 to March 1536, in the learned and congenial society of Grynaeus (1493-1541), Capito, and other reformers, he finished the first draft of the Institutio Christianas Religionls, which, with an apologetic preface addressed to F'l-ancis i., and dated 23rd August 1535, he published in March of the following year. The Institutes went through eight Latin editions in Calvin's lifetime, the last in 1559. It was at once recognised, by enemies no less than by friends, as mai-king an epoch in theology ; and it has won him from later scholars the title of 'the Aristotle,' or better, ' the Thomas Aquinas ' of the Reformed. In its final shape, the work is divided into four books : De Cognitione Dei Creatoris, De Cognitione Dei Redemptoris in Christo, De modo percipiendae Christi gratiae, De externis mediis. Like the orthodox protestantism of to-day, which owes its origin to Calvin, it follows the Catholic Creeds in theology and christology, but is Augustinian in its doctrine of man and of the course of the soul's salvation. Its real breach with historical Christianity begins, where our modern diff"erences also take their rise, with the clauses 'I believe in . . . the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, the Forgiveness of Sins.' In other words, the breach is mainly apparent in the 1 The awe with which a ' Grecian ' is still regarded at Christ's Hospital recalls at once the name and the deference paid to it, in the age to which that ' religious, royal, and ancient Foundation ' owes its birth. CALVIN— 1541-1564 m fourth book, which rejects the Church, the Ministry, and the Sacraments as hitherto understood. But the real significance of the work goes further. The young jurist of twenty-seven employs all the logic of which he was a master to set forth a new Church polity as the only one which can pretend to the sanction of Holy Scripture; and he does so with such success, that to the ancient system of dogma which was waiting to be compacted at Trent he, and he only, opposed a system as compact, as hierarchical, and as capable of evoking enthusiasm in its turn. His work represents the last word of orthodox protestantism, and the furthest pole from Rome. He himself had the honour of being regarded by her as her worst and most dangerous enemy ; for he took up, with no less success, Rome's own aim of bringing every relation of life inider the domination of religion, and gave it effect, at a time when she herself stood at her lowest ebb of influence, in the ecclesiastical state of Geneva. It was fitting that Geneva, where a close oligarchy was seizing upon power, should be the scene of this experiment. But it was a chance that Calvin set foot thei'e. In the spring of 1586 he left Basel on a visit to Renee (1511-75) Duchess of Ferrara and cousin of Francis i. She was an accomplished princess, whose court was a city of refuge for protestant exiles. Calvin, however, did not stay long. On his way north, with the intention of settling at Basel or Strassburg, he had to make a detour through Savoy owing to the renewal of war between Charles and P^rancis. In August he reached Geneva, where Farel, who had heard of him through du Tillet, secured him, with a characteristic adjuration, to remain as lecturer at S. Peter's, 5th September 1636. § 4. Farel and Calvin began work together at a moment when deliverance from political servitude had revived a distaste for moral restraints. Geneva was a rich and pleasure-loving city, with an excitable population, a habit of turbulence, and a loose code of public and private morals. In earlier days it had been necessary to prohibit dancing, masquerades, and ostentatious display. The preachers took a stand against these things, and as early as September 1 .536 complaints were made by many Hi THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION that their reproofs were intolerable. Farel and Calvin replied with an ecclesiastical constitution contained in two documents accepted by tlie Council, 10th November. The first was a Catechism prepared by Calvin on the basis of the Institutes, and entitled 'Instruction et Con- feasion de Foi,^ which was published 1537. It was accompanied by a Confession of Faith extracted from it, which was the work of Farel aided by Calvin, and was published April 1537 under the title Confession de la Foi extraite de I' Instruction dont on use en I'eglise de la dite ville^ [Geneva]. This Confession consists of twenty-one Articles, the most important of which were Art. i., which lays down Scripture only as the sole rule of faith and practice ; Art. xix., which asserts the necessity of discipline by excommunication ; and Art. xxi., which prescribes obedi- ence to the civil magistrate. The Council, at the instance of the preachers, required these ' articulos de regimine ecclesiae' to be read every Sunday from the pulpits to prepare the citizens for their adoption. On 29th July the people were individually sworn to the new polity, and 12th November it was enforced under penalty of banishment. But discontent was not slow to appear. The people had hailed the Reformation at its outset because it gave them independence from Savoy and the bishop ; but they had no mind either for the new clericalism with its weapon of excommunication, which they looked upon as an invasion of their liberty more tyrannous than the yoke they had lately cast off, nor for the new regime imposed by men like Farel and Calvin who, as French refugees, were no less foreigners than the Savoyards or the Pope. The preachers had gone too fast and too far, without either tact or sympathy. It was comparatively easy for them to dispose of opposition from the Anabaptists, whom the Council banished March 1537, and from Peter Caroli, who accused Calvin, as others did, probably unjustly, of Arianism. He had certainly avoided in the Confession the use of the words 'Trinity' and '^ Person' which do not occur in Scripture, 1 See it in Corpus Reformatorum, edd. Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss, vol. 1. ( = Calvini Opera, vol. xxii.), pp. 34 sqq, '-' 7li)d. pp. 8fi sftq. CALVIN— 1541-1564 95 but he had adopted them freely in the Catechism as in the Institutes. But it was u more difficult matter to quell the Patriots, or Libertines, as Calvin called them : the more so as Bern sided with this phase of Genevese opinion, and was hostile to the radicalism of the reformers who had abolished unleavened bread, fonts, and the four festivals of Christmas, New Year, the Annunciation, and the Ascension, — all of which Bern retained. Bern was equally hostile to the use which they desired to make of excommunication, even forbidding brides to be married with flowing tresses. The crisis came with the election, 3rd February 1538, of the four syndics from the popular party. Riots ensued, and Bern demanded the re- admission of its peculiar rites. At Easter, Farel at S. Gervais', and Calvin at S. Peter's, refused to give the people Communion. They were banished on Eastfer Tuesday, 23rd April 1538 ; and the struggle against the discipline ended, for the time, in their entire defeat. § 5. The exiles laid their complaints before Bern and before a synod at Zurich (28th April to 4th May), but without effect. In July, Farel accepted an invitation to Neuchatel, where, excepting for a visit undertaken to champion the new doctrines in Metz, September 1542, he spent the rest of his life. He died 13th September 1565. But Calvin retired first to Basel, and thence, at the invitation of Butzer, to Strassburg, September 1538, where he became pastor of a congregation of French refugees at S. Nicholas', and professor in the new protestant college. It was the time of the religious conferences at Hagenau, Worms, and Ratisbon. Calvin visited all three ; at Worms he renewed his recent acquaintance with Melanchthon ; and at Ratisbon con- tributed through him an opinion on the Eucharist which did not make for conciliation. But these visits were merely incidents in a retired life. In 1539 he brought out the second Latin edition of the Institutes, and, 16th October, his first exegetical work, the Commentary on the Romans. Next year he married, August 1540, Idelette de Bure, the widow of an Anabaptist whom he had converted. In 1541 appeared a treatise in French On the Lord's Supper, But ])y this time events were 5)0 THK CONTINENTAL RRFORMATION almost ready for his recall to Geneva. On 18th March 1539, Cardinal Sadoleti (1477-1547), Bishop of Carpentras in Dauphine and one of the conciliatory group of scholars who surrounded Paul iii., took advantage of the recent expulsion of their ministers to invite the Genevese to return to the Church, in a letter addressed to the Council. They declined ; but when Calvin, who had privately received a copy of the invitation, wrote a reply and sent it, 1st September 1539, to the Council, they ordered the two letters, 30th January 1540, to be printed and circulated together. Calvin's answer con- tains an able defence of the Reformation, which 'has hand and foot,' as Luther said of it ; for it was not only able, but written in a dignified and gentlemanly tone. But its adoption by the Council marks the decline of the party which had expelled its author. The Patriots, after their triumph, received the customs of Bern, submitted the ecclesiastical to the civil power, and admitted the Bernese rights of sovereignty. But they failed to keep order : the old licentiousness reappeared, till at last their leader, Jean Philippe, the Captain-general, was put to death, 10th June. Their rivals, with Ami Perrin at their head, at once came forward as the party of law, order, and reform ; and in a letter of 22nd October, couched in the most flattering terms, the three Councils begged Calvin to return. The logic of events had con- vinced them, at least for the time, of the need for the discipline. Calvin was in a position to make his own terms ; and he made its adoption a sine qua non. But he was alarmed and reluctant to return, till Butzer tlireatened him with the judgment of Jonah, who refused to go and preach in Nineveh. On 13th September 1541 he entered Geneva. § 6. The ecclesiastical state in Geneva which Calvin set up, 1541-55, was devised in the interests of a discipline, justified, as Hooker allows, ' for that he saw how needful these bridles were, to be put in the jaws of that city.'^ The experiment was on a small scale, for only a city state 1 E. P. Preface, ii. 7 (vol. i p. 138, ed. Keble, 1841). For sketches of Calvin's discipline, see this Preface, and Bancroft, Survey of the pretended Hohi DiseipNne, CALVIN— 1641-1564 97 was concerned. Calvin himself seems to recognise, in letters to the Protector Somerset^ and to the King of Poland,- that in larger territories tlie old Church order was better ; and certainly the discipline, save in Scotland, was just that part of his system which his followers generally failed to carry out. But for its enforcement on a city community, no man could have had a fairer field nor have come to it with such fixed ideas to plant out. In Geneva the old Church polity had perished ; the new republican institutions were scarcely on their feet. But the Inditutea, as the work of a protestant scholastic, contained a scheme for everything, which only awaited application in one consistent system of civil and ecclesiastical polity. To efi'ect this was Calvin's chief aim from the day of his recall, and his next was to make of Geneva a stronghold from which protestantism, in its severest form, might be propagated throughout Europe. The rest of his life consists of little else than his struggles to accomplish these two ends. On 13th September 1541, the very day of his arrival, six laymen were appointed by the Council, at his request, to join him in drawing up ordinances for discipline. Their report was ratified, 9th November, by the Council of Two Hundred ; adopted by the people, 20th November ; and finally received by the three Councils as well as by the general assembly of the citizens, 2nd January 1542, with blowing of trumpets and pealing of the great bell. Les Ordonnances ecclesiastiques de I'Eglise de Geneve,^ which thus came into being, if taken together with the Institutes, give us a clear idea of the ' new manner of living ' or ' polity ecclesiastic . . . taken from the Gospel of Jesus Christ.' The Ordinances proceed on the theory of (1) the Church, laid down in the Institutes, that ' wheresoever the Word of God is sincerely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to the institu- tion of Christ, there is, no doubt, a church of God ' ; * 1 Epist. 86 of 22nd October 1548 ; cf. Dixon, ii. 524 sqq. for an account of it. - Epist. 190 of 9th December 1554 ; cf. Dyer, p. 148. 3 Richter, Kirchenordntmgen, i. pp. 342 sqq. * Inst. iv. i. 0. 98 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION and again^ that the visible Church is at once a mother without whom we cannot have God for our Father, and a school for life of divine appointment. ^ (2) Church government therefore is of vital importance, and the Ordinances begin by specifying the ' four orders or kinds of office which our Lord instituted for the govern- ment of His Church, to wit. Pastors, Doctors, Elders, and Deacons. ' ^ Calvin, in the Institutes, dismisses Apostles, Prophets, and Evangelists from the list of Eph. iv. 11 as 'not instituted in the Church in perpetuity, but only whilst churches were to be established where none existed before ; or at all events, where they were to be transferred from Moses to Christ. ' He then tacitly anticipates any question as to his own authority and that of his co- reformers by an ingenious reservation in favour of ' at least Evangelists being raised up by God, as in our own time ; of whom there was need to bring back the Church from the defection of Antichrist. ' ^ But while thus claiming for himself a fresh commission from above on a par with that of the first teachers of Christianity, the ordinary ministry, without which a church cannot exist, was to consist of Pastors* and Doctors, the difference being that while Pastors are concerned with discipline, sacra- ments, and preaching, the function of Doctors is to interpret the Scriptures.^ Among the permanent ministry were also to be included Elders ® who, as ' governments ' of 1 Cor. xii. 28, or 'rulers' of Rom. xii. 8, were to have a share with the bishops or presbyters in 'the censorship of morals and the exercise of discipline ' ; and finally,' Deacons,'^ to care for the poor. This fourfold ministry the Ordinances adopt and assign its functions in similar terms ; but they further prescribe how each grade shall be admitted. And it is remarkable that while the real appointment of ministers rested, in accordance 1 Inst. IV. i. 4. 2 Richter, i. p. 342. 3 jnst. iv. iii. 4. 4 Ibid. §§ 5-8 ad init. 5 Ibid. § 4. •> Ibid. § 8. The 'bishops,' 'presbyters,' and 'pastors' of Scripture are all 'verbi ministri.' But the Ruling Elder, though no Minister of the Word, is a sort of 'presbyter.' Hence the polity came to be known as ' Presbyterianism ' with its ' parity of ministers ' ( ' bishop '= ' presbyter '), and two orders of ' presbyter ' and 'deacon.' "^ Ibid. § 9. CALVIN— 1641-1564 99 with Calvin's sympathies, with the oligarchy, to whom they took oath, and not, according to his theory,^ with the popular vote, the Scriptural requirement of ordina- tion by laying on of hands, which is recognised in the Institutes as obligatory, not indeed by Divine precept, but by Apostolic usage,^ is, in the Ordinances, ignored. The greatest stress is laid, as we should expect, on the appointment of Elders. Their duty is to ' keep watch over the life of every one,' to admonish and to report. They are to be twelve in all, ' men without reproach and above suspicion, above all, fearing God,' removable at pleasure, but not without urgent cause. ^ (3) Having thus provided for the Ministry, the Ordinances next deal with the services * to be per- formed in the congregation by the Ministers and Elders. They appoint three sermons a week at S. I'eter's, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in the early morning, which Calvin was himself in the habit of delivering every other week ; and another at S. Gervais on Wednesdays. On Sundays there were sermons, in the early morning, at all three parish churches. They were preceded by an exhortation to prayer from the minister, who was not, however, tied to the form given, a confession of sins, a psalm sung by the people, and an extempore prayer that the sermon might be delivered and received to edification. Then followed intercessions, not without severe references to 'brethren living under the tyranny of Antichrist' and the lost condition of mankind ; finally, the Apostles' Creed and the Levitical blessing.'' At midday, there was a catechism to which all citizens were to bring or send their children for instruction in the long and argumentative formulary which was published in French, 1541, and in Latin as the Catechismus Qenevensis,^ 1545, and became the parent of Nowell's Catechism, 1663, in England, the Heidelberg Catechism,'^ 1563, in 1 Inst. IV. lii. 15. 2 ma. § 16. 3 Richter, i. p. 345. < Ihid. pp. 344, 345. ■* See Precv/m Ecdesiasticarum Formula, given as an appendix to Catechismus Genevensis, in Niemeyer, op. cit. pp. 170 sqq. 6 Ibid. pp. 123 sqq. 7 Ibid. pp. 390 sqq. 100 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION the Palatinate, and the Westminster Shorter Catechism of Scotland, 1647. When children had mastered it, they made their profession of faith in public, and so were admitted to Communion. At three there were sermons again. Such were the ordinary services. Pro- vision was made for special calamities, such as the plague which visited Geneva in 1542, and again in 1545; but none for even the four festivals, which were abolished, 16th November 1549. Marriages could be solemnised after banns and befoi'e a sermon any day ; funerals at discretion, but with no form of service and ' without superstition,' and no sick person was to keep his bed three days without sending for the minister.' Of the .sacraments, Baptism was to take place pub- licly at sermon time, and ' only to be administered by the ministers' ; and no names were to be given ' connected with idolatry or sorcery, such as those of Claud or of the Three Kings,' ^ The 'Form for administering Baptism ' ^ begins with a rubric provid- ing for children to be brought on Sundays at the catechism and on other days at the sermon ; then follows a long instruction, a prayer, the Lord's Prayer, a promise by the sponsors to teach the child the Creed, which the minister recites, when it grows up, and also to bid it ' take care to preach the name of Jesus Christ and edify its neighbours ' ; finally, the actual baptism by affusion,* in the Threefold Name. In their regulations for ' The Supper,' ^ the Ordinances lay stress on frequent Communion, but ' nevertheless, for the present, we have advised and ordained that it be administered four times a year, to wit, the Sunday nearest Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and the first Sunday in September.' The bread is to be distributed by the Ministers, the chalice by the Elders or the Deacons ; the tables are to be placed near the pulpit, and the rite only celebrated in the temple. A notice is to be given the Sunday before, which, on turning to La forme des pricres et chants ecclesi- astiques which Calvin built on Farel's first French liturgy 1 Richter, i. p. 350. 2 /^^,. p. 346. 3 Niemeyer, pp. 179 sqq. * Cf. Inst. iv. xv. 19. 6 Richter, i. p. 346. CALVIN— 1541-1564 101 for Neuchatel, 1633, and introduced at Geneva^ 1542 — the form appended in Latin to the Catechism ' — is seen to include a warning to every one to prepare, not to bring children unless they have made their profession of faith, and a caution to aliens and newcomers not to approach without first putting themselves under instruc- tion. To this end the Ordinances provide for the visitation - of every household by a Minister and Elder a sufficient time before Easter to allow of reports being made, when necessary, to the consistory. The rite itself took place after the ordinary morning sermon, and was introduced by a lengthy address based on 1 Cor. xi. 23-27, the drift of which is to fence the tables from unworthy receivers, to encourage those who approach in reliance upon the promises of Christ, and to direct their minds to 'where Christ is in the glory of the Father' rather than to the ' earthly elements ' which are but 'given us for a mark and a sign.' Distribution is then made, and, in the meanwhile, ' a psalm ^ is sung or a place of Scripture appropriate to the Sacrament ... is read ' ; and the office concludes with a thanksgiving and the Levitical blessing. It is followed by an opprobrious rubric calling attention to the difference between Christ's institution and the Mass, a difference ' as wide as that between light and darkness.' (4) To maintain a system so exacting there was need of the charactei-istic institution of Geneva, the Consistory. It was a court consisting of six Ministers and the twelve Elders, which met every Thursday, nominally under the presidency of a Syndic, but actually under the control of Calvin, who was 'tacitly regarded as Vice-President.'* 1 Niemeyer, p. 184. ^ Richter, i. p. 351. "^ Psalmody, soon metrical, is as characteristic of the Swiss as Hymnody of the German Reformation : cf. Clement Marot (1497-1544), Les Psaiimes mis en rime, 1562 ; and in England, Sternhold (1553) and Hopkins (under Mar)-), for whose 'barbarity and botching' see Heylin, History of the Reformation, i. 270 (ed. Cambridge, 1849) ; Tate and Brady, 1696. The Wesleys introduced us to German Hymnody. *lSo MM. Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss, in Ann, Calv. [Op. xxi. p. 396]. 102 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION He was the soul of the tribunal^ which proceeded with a severity at once trivial and uniform.* The Consistory possessed no civil jurisdiction, and at first was jealously restricted, 1543, to the power of admonishing. It claimed, but did not acquire, the right of excommuni- cation till the final defeat of the ' Libertines,' as Calvin called his opponents, in 1555. This claim was in strict conformity with his theory of (5) the relation between the .spiritual and the secular power, according to which each is independent and sovereign in its own sphere.^ But it was of the essence of his theocratic conception of this relation that the Church stands to the State as the soul to the body ; ^ so that the State, as the organ of the theocracy, had merely to carry out the decrees of its spiritual dictators.* In Geneva, though not without severe struggles, this was done. The processes of those who were foi'ced to make the ' amende honorable ' in the garb of a penitent, or who were banished or put to death, are to be found in the registers of the Council. Else- where the later Calvinists fell back on their master's ideal principle, the separation of Church and State, which thus became the tradition of the English Puritans, as it is now the cherished conviction of their successors in the 'Free Churches,' as they term themselves, of England and America. § 7. To recount the rest of Calvin's career would be impossible were it worth while. It is not surprising that he met with Opposition, whether from Sebastian Castellio (1515-63), a rationalist who had attacked the Canon of Scripture from his place as Rector (1541-4) of the School at Geneva, an offence for which he was deprived and exiled, or from the Anabaptists, against whom he levelled his Brief Instruction against the errors of the sect of the Anabaptists, 1545. They were pretty well subdued ; but he had still to deal with the Libertines. This was a 1 For examples, see Dyer, Life of Calvin, p. 144, and summaries in Ranke, Civil Wars, etc., in France, i. pp. 217, 218 ; and Beard, Hihhert Lectures, p. 250. 2 Inst. rv. xi. 3. ^ Ibid. iv. xx. 1. * Ibid. IV. xi. 4. He quotes S. Ambrose, 'Imperator bonus intra ecclesiam, non super ecclesiam, est.' CALVIN— 1541-1564 103 composite party. On the one side stood the Patriots, an honourable majority, led by Ami Perrin, once active in support of reform and in procuring Calvin's recall ; who were zealous, as against Bern, for civic indepen- dence ; as against the discipline, for personal liberty ; and as against its author, zealous to check the growing preponderance of refugees in Geneva, by whom Calvin's ascendency was increasingly sustained. But the party also included a left wing of sheer fanatics who combined pantheistic with antinomian tenets, and, calling them- selves Spiritual, professed to be free from the moral law. Madame Perrin, the wife of the Captain-General, and Madame Ameaux, the wife of a Councillor, who were Spirituals, connected the leaders of the Patriot majority with its coarser following. The struggle was long, but Calvin never flinched. He attacked the Spirituals in a tract addressed Auj; ministrcs de I'Eglise de Neuchdtel, contre la Secte fanatique et furieuse de Lihertins qui se nominent Spirituels, 1545. He forced Pierre Ameaux, for a personal insult, to make the ' amende honorable,' April 1546. Gruet, a coarse and scofiing unbeliever, whose blasphemies, however, were not discovered till after his death, was tortured and beheaded, 26th July 1547. Perrin, who had been imprisoned, disgraced, restored, and then elected first Syndic, was condemned to death, 3rd June 1555, and only escaped by flight. Less connected with the patriotic opposition to the discipline was the case of Bolsec, who sufi"ered in the cause of intellectual liberty. On 16th October 1551 he exclaimed in church against Calvin's doctrine of Predestination and Reprobation as ' a false and godless notion . . . which would ascribe the origin of sin and evil to God.' The other Swiss com- munities were consulted, but declined to make themselves parties to a creed which denies, as Bullinger put it, that 'according to the sentiments of the Apostles, God wills the happiness of all mankind.' Bolsec, neverthe- less, was banished, 23rd December ; and the doctrine remorselessly reaffirmed in the Consensus Pastorum Gene- vensis Ecdesia;, de ceterna Dei prcudestinatione,^ 1st 1 Niemeyer, pp. 218 sqq. 104 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION January 1552. But the fate of Servetus was the crowning? act of Calvin's successful tyranny. He was a Spanish physician and a stranger to Geneva, who in two works — the De Trinitatis errorihus of 1531 and the Chris- tianismi : Restitutio of 1553 — enunciated anti-Trinitarian errors. Process was entered against him 13th August, and he was burnt 27th October 1553 ; but the deed was blackened with special infamy from the fact that, seven years previously, Calvin had written to Farel, 18th September 1546, ' nam si venei'it, modo valeat mea auctoritas, vivum exire nunquam patiar.'^ But in all this Calvin was neither before nor behind his age. Beza, his successor, wrote in defence ^ of the execution, and the gentle Melanchthon has left his approval on record.^ Calvin only excelled his contemporaries in the outspokenness with which he advocated the duty of repressing heresy by force. ^ His work was an immense success. Geneva, though its system tended to encourage hypocrisy,'' was out- wardly a reformed and even a strict city. It became with its new University, founded 5th June 1559, under the rectorship of Theodore Beza (1519-1605), the intellectual centre of protestantism. The Swiss Reformed bodies, already drawn into the circle of Calvin's influence by the Consensus Tigurinus, 1549, were united shortly after his death, 27th May 1564, by the acceptance of a common doctrine in the Second Helvetic Confession,^ 1566. It was also an Internationa 1 Ep. 767 ; Calvini Op. viii. p. 283. 2 De haereticis a civili magistratu puniendis, 1554, in answer to Castellio, one of the first champions of tolerance. 3 In letters of 14th October 1554; 20th August 1555; 10th April 1557. * In the letter to Somerset referred to above, of. the Second Helvetic Confession cxxx., De Magistratu: '"Neque enim frustra accepit a Deo gladium." Stringat ergo hunc Dei gladium in omnes maleficos . . . blasphemes . . . et in omnes eos quos Deus punire ac etiam caedere jussit. Coerceat et haereticos . . . incorrigibiles, Dei majestatem blasphemare, et ecclesiam Dei conturbare, adeoque perdere non desinentes ' (Niemeyer, p. 535). ' Beard, Hibbert Lectures, p. 252 n., for the evidence. 8 Niemeyer, pp. 462 sqq. CALVIN— 1541-1564 105 Confession ; and Calvin was the only international Reformer. Outside Scandinavia and northern Germany, the Reformation took a Calvinistic hue.^ In France and the Netherlands, in England and Scotland, in America and the Dutch Republics of South Africa, Huguenots and Patriots, Puritans, Covenanters and Boers, per- petuated the Calvinistic creed and reproduced the severe but sturdy type of Calvinistic character. They were grim predestinarians, fierce disciplinarians, zealous persecutors, the friends of civil liberty, but the enemies of intellectual freedom, of state churches, of inferior races, and of art in any form that appeals to the eye ; men who feared God rather than loved Him, and rarely seemed to love their neighbour.^ 1 On the territorial expansion of protestantism, see Appendix. - Motley has a fine passage on the Calvinist type, see United Netherlands, iv. p. 548 (ed. 18G7). PART III. THE EXTENT AND INFLUENCE OF THE REFORMATION CHAPTER VIII THE PRINCIPLES OF THE llEFORMATION § 1. Von Ranke, contrasting the Continental with the English Reformation, observes, in a pregnant sentence, that 'their great difference is visible at a glance. In Germany the movement was theological and popular. . . . In England it was juridico-canonical, not connected with appeals to the people.'^ It is a judgment that will be amply borne out, if we briefly review the history with which we are now familiar, and compare it with the progress of reform in England. Luther began to cherish in private the tenet of justifi- cation by faith only, while working out his reconciliation in the convent. When he came forward with the public protest of the Theses, it was as a theologian equipped with a theory of salvation by free grace, which he pro- posed to substitute for the religion of salvation by works that then held the field. Certainly he believed that, as the exponent of S. Augustine, he was attacking not the official teaching of the Church, but only the system of the Schoolmen who had perverted it ; and he wrote to Pope Leo, in all good conscience, with the expectation that he would have him for his patron. But 'the peculiarity of his movement was the enunciation of principles of belief which, on being worked out to their logical issues, were found to be dissolvent of the Catholic system ' ; ^ and the interest of his early activity lies in 1 History of England, chiefly in the Seventeenth Century, i. p. 154. 2 Beard, Martin Luther, p. 380. 106 THE PRINCIPLES OF THE REFORMATION 107 the rapidity with which disillusionment came, when, on his excommunication, no one was more surprised than Luther to find himself at variance in doctrine with the old Church. But before the bolt fell, the three treatises of 1520 sufficiently indicate that the breach was definitely a doctrinal one, and only accentuated by the hot temper of the one side and the monetary interests at stake on the other. The new foundation of doctrine was simply the believer's justification by faith only, and, coupled with the supreme authority of the Word of God, his right as a priest to have access to it and to interpret it for himself. These tenets were reduced to theological precision in the later formularies of Protestantism ; but, as the spiritual experience of one man, the force of whose personality was such as to carry princes and people with him in spite of Emperor and Diet, they now became the standard of a new orthodoxy. The Lutheran Reformation, working upwards from below, shattered the hope of German unity, and broke away from the faith and order of the ancient Church. The Swiss Reformation began about the same time in separate movements ; but neither in Zwingli nor in (Ecolampadius do we find spiritual experiences which so told on a powerful character as to impress its convictions permanently on their countrymen. They were humanists, and they died when their work was but half done. But it was taken up and unified by Calvin, who, though he had his crisis of conversion, effected by the logic of a system what Luther brought about by a theology of the heart. In countries influenced by Calvin the antagonism of the new to the old faith and order was deeper even than in German lands ; and, except in Scotland, where it swept the field, Calvinism, taking its rise in opposition to govern- ments, became a standing menace to national cohesion. The movements of reform abroad were thus doctrinal in origin ; they reproduced in doctrine the personality of one man ; they spread upwards from below ; they ended in the disintegration both of Church and State. The English Reformation took a different course. In origin a political movement, taking rise in Henry's quarrel with the Pope for refusing him a divorce, it 108 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION became, before tbe papal jurisdiction was repudiated, 1534,^ a constitutional movement in which power was transferred from the clergy to the laity,^ and then a social revolution through which, by the suppression of the monasteries,^ wealth passed over to the same side. It became a religious movement when the Convocation of 153G, which two years before had rejected the papal jurisdiction, took up the repression of popular protestant opinions which had found their way in from the Con- tinent, and in the Ten Articles * accepted as the authori- tative standard of doctrine the Bible as interpreted by the ' three Creeds ' and ' the four holy Councils ' of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon. These terms of reference were repeated verbatim in the Bishops' Book,° 1537, and the Kings' Book,^ 1543, when they received statutory recognition '^ ; and, after the reactionary reigns of Edward and Mary, the one protestant and the other papist, but both alike dominated by minorities bent upon the adoption of foreign types of religion in England, the Henrician doctrinal standard was recovered both by Parliament and Convocation. In 1559 the Act of Supremacy provided that the courts ' shall not . . . adjudge any matter ... to be heresy, but only such as heretofore have been . . . adjudged to be heresy, by the authority of the canonical Scriptures, or by the first four general Councils';* and in 1571 the Convocation which finally revised the Thirty-nine Articles bade preachers ' see to it that they teach nothing in the way of a sermon . . . save what is agreeable to the teaching of the Old or New Testament, and what the Catholic fathers and ancient bishops have collected from this selfsame doctrine.'" But side by side with the reforms in doc- trine carried out by Cranmer and others with their eye 1 Gee and Hardj', Documents illustrative of English Church History, Nos. xlix. 1. li. Hi. liii. Iviii. 2 Ibid. Nos. xlviii. li. Iv. ^ Ibid. Nos. Ixi. Ixiv. •* Lloyd, Formularies of Faith, pp. xvii. sqq. 5 Ibid. p. 61. « Ibid. p. 227. 7 35 H. viii. c. 1 (1543). s 1 Eliz. c. 1, § 36 ; Gee and Hardy, op. cit. p. 455. 9 Canon 6 ; ibid. p. 476. THE PRINCIPLES OF THE REFORMATION 109 upon the doctrinal standard thus authoritatively laid down, there went a liturgical revision handled in the same way. A resolution of Convocation, 2nd December 1547, sanctioning Communion in both kinds, was taken up by an Act of Parliament which restored the cup to the laity in accordance with ' the common use and practice both of the Apostles and of the primitive Church, by the space of five hundred years and more after Christ's Ascen- sion ' ; ^ and under cover of this double authority the Prayer Book appeared. In its successive revisions it bears traces of the ebb and flow of foreign influences ; but for profession of faith it recites not any national or local confession, but the ancient creeds, in worship it draws upon the sources of mediseval devotion and cere- mony, and in Church order it provides that the orders of Bishop, Priest, and Deacon 'may be continued.' Now this development is in striking contrast with the course of reform abroad. In England there was a fortunate dearth of great men — no Luther, no Calvin. What was done, was done not from below, but from above ; not by individuals, but by the Crown and the three estates of the realm. What took shape was not a one-man theo- logy, worship, or discipline, but the reformed faith and order of the Catholic Church. The result was not national disintegration, but an energy at once of cohesion and expansion that is still unspent. § 2. But when the most is made of these difi^erences, the Reformers, English and foreign, approach common ground. (a) They ascribe the supreme authority in matters of faith to Holy Scripture. ^ The Council of Trent, on the contrary, placed Tradition side by side with Scripture as a co-ordinate source of truth ^ ; and its later decisions were simply arrived at by taking first the controversies of the day,"* and then the seven sacraments as materials with which to build up a coherent system on this foundation. With the Lutherans, there was at first some hesitation in choosing a rival platform. The Confession of Augsburg opens by basing the doctrine of 1 1 Efl. vi. c. 1 ; ibid. p. 327. " ^ Cf. Art. vi. ^ Supra, p. 64, n. 1. * Supra, p. 66. 110 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION the Trinity on the decree of the Council of Nicaea.* But the Swiss 2 and the later Lutheran formularies ^ were at one in starting from Scripture alone, and in erecting the protestant system on this basis. Protestant theology thus stands at the opposite pole to Rome, but not with- out presenting a contrast to the Anglican Articles. They do not lead off as with a postulate in their statement of the sufficiency of Scripture,* but with a rehearsal of the traditional faith of Christendom.^ Then, after a deferen- tial recognition of the creeds," when they come to treat of the Church, they assign to her 'authority in contro- versies of faith ' and the rights of a judge to ' expound.' ^ They are thus at one with Roman theology in conceiving of the relation between the Church and Scripture as parallel to that which subsists between a judge and the law that he has to administer,^ assigning, however, less latitude to the judge, and to the tradition which guides the judge a subordinate, not a co-ordinate, authority. 1 'Ecclesiae magno consensu apud nos decent deci'etum Nicaenae synodi de unitate essentiae divinae et de tribus personis verum et . . . credendum esse' {Conf. Aug., Pars. i. Art. i. De Deo; Francke, Lihri SymhoUci Ecclesiae Lutheranae, i. p. 13). 2 e.g. Conf. Helv. Prior (1536), Art. 1. — 'De Scriptura Sacra. Scriptura canonica verbum Dei, Spiritu S. tradita, et per pro- phetas apostolosque mundo proposita, omnium perfectissima et antiquissima Philosophia, pietatem omnem, omnem vitae rationem sola perf ecte continet ' (Niemejer, op. cit. p. 115) ; or Calvini Institutio, I. vi. 2. — 'Sic autem habendum est ut nobis affulgeat vera religio, exordium e ccelesti doctrina fieri debere, nee quen- quam posse vel minimum gustum rectae sanaeque doctrinae percipere nisi qui Scripturae fuerit discipulus' (ed. Tholuck, p. 56) ; or Conf. Helv. Posterior (1566), Art. 1. — 'De Scriptura Sancta. In . . . Scriptura Sancta habet universalis Christi ecclesia plenis- sime exposita, quaecunque pertinent cum ad salvificam fidem, tum ad vitam Deo placentem, recte informandam ' (Niemeyer, op. cit. p. 467). 3 e.g. Formula Concordiae (1580), Pars i. Prooem. — 'Credimus . . . unicam regvdam et normam, secundum quam omnia dog- mata omnesque doctores aestimari et judicari oporteat, nuUam omnino aliam esse quam prophetica et apostolica scripta quum Veteris tum Novi Testamenti (Francke, op. cit. iii. p. 18). ■* Art. vi. ^ Arts. i.-v. ^ Art. viii. '' Art. xx. 8 Cf. Cone. Trid., Sessio iv. 'Decret. de edit, et usu sacrorum librorum. Nemo . . . contra eum sensum quem tenuit et tenet sancta mater ecclesia, cujus est judicare de vero sensu et inter- THE PRINCIPLES OF THE REFORMATION 111 Such an hermeneutical tradition the Anglican reformers found in the writings of the Fathers^^ and they went to work as men who were restoring the Church by the model of antiquity. But this was not the mind of the Continental reformers. They aimed rather at replacing the false system of ' Antichrist ' ^ by a true one ; and, claiming for themselves ' a peculiar authority above the natural, though below the supernatural, above the Patristic though below the Apostolic,'^ they scorned Tradition,* and placed ' Fathers or moderns ' all on a level as mere ' witnesses ' ^ to the truth which they re-discovered. It was of the essence of protestantism thus to rest its teaching, not on the Bible as God gave it, i.e. the Bible in the Church, but upon the Bible and the Bible only.. But (b) this opens up the further question of the pretatione Scripturarum Sacrarum, aut etiam contra unanimem consensum Patrum ipsam Scripturain Sacram interpretari audeat ' (Canones et Decreta, etc., p. 17); and for the comment of Bellarmine, see De Verbo Dei, iii. 3 (De controversiis, torn. i. coll. 135, sqq. Parisiis, 1613). ^ It would be easy to quote passages in which the English reformers appeal to the Fathers ; but two are of special interest, as showing that reverence for antiquity made the gap between them and the Continent and what they meant by antiquity. (1) Cranmer, writing to Vadianus, a Zwinglian, 1537, says : ' Vidi pleraque omnia, quae vel ab CEcolampadio vel a Zuinglio scripta sunt et edita, didicique omnium omnia cum delectu esse legenda . . . Quatenus quidem papisticos et sophisticos errores et abusus indicare, convincere, corrigereque sunt conati, laudo et approbo. Atqui utinam intra fines illos constitissent, neque fruges una cum zizaniis conculcassent, hoc est veterum doctorum primorumque in ecclesia Christi scriptorum auctoritatem una vio- lassent ' (Jenkyns, Cranmer' s Remains, i. 195). (2) Ridley, in the Disputation at Oxford, 17th April 1555, after submitting himself to the Church, argues that 'the carnal presence . . . falsifieth the sayings of the godly fathers and the Catholic faith of the Church. ... By the sayings of the Fathers I mean of Justin, Irenseus, TertuUian, Origen, Eusebius Emissenus, Athanasius, Cyril, Epiphanius, Jerome, Chrysostom, Augustine, Vigilius, Fulgentius, Bertram [ninth century], and other most ancient Fathers ' ( Works, ed. Parker Society, p. 171). 2 Calvin, Institutes, iv. ii. 12 ; vii. 25. 3 Gladstone, Gleanings, iii. p. 231 ; cf. supra, p. 98. 4 Conf. Helv. Post., Art. 2 ; Niemeyer, op. cit. p. 470. •^ Formula Concordiac, Pars i. Prooem. ; Francke, op. cit. iii. p. 18. 112 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION right to interpret Scripture. The Roman and Anglican formularies both reserve it to the Church. But the English Church places the Scripture in the hands of the layman and bids him prove for himself what the Church teaches ; while Rome demands that he shall merely accept what the Church teaches. To Rome the Christian layman is but a child ; by the Church of England he is treated as a man ; but protestantism, in substituting the authority of the Scriptures for the authority of the Church, really made him the sole arbiter of his own faith. Exaggerating the privileges of the layman's priesthood to the detriment of that authority to teach which is part of the 'stewardship' of the ministerial priesthood,^ it sent him to the Bible as to a mine from whence he was to quarry the truth for himself. The crisis of reform was no time to observe that this is an illegitimate use to make of Scripture, which itself assumes that the baptized Christian so far from coming to the Bible for his instruction in the faith receives the faith from the Church ; ^ but it was felt that to claim the right for each was to strike the most effective blow at the Church which in practice had taken the Scripture away from all. The right thus claimed in the heat of battle was justified by the assertion of the perspicuity of Holy Writ. 'The Bible,' said Luther, 'belongs to all, and so far as is necessary for salvation is clear enough, but also dark enough for souls that pry and seek to know more.'^ Zwingli was no less explicit;* and Calvinism repeats the thesis in the \Vestminster Confession. '^ But 1 Luke xii. 42 ; 1 Cor. iv. 1. 2 Cf. The Thirty-nine Articles (in this series), Art. xx. pp. 181, 182. ' Quoted in Beard, Hihhert Lectures, p. 124. So Melanchthon: ' In prineipalibus capitibus pertinentibus ad legem et Evangelium, Seriptura est aperta et sine obscuritate ' [Ibid. n. 2), 4 Supra, p. 77. 5 ' Those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned . . . may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them ' (Cap. i. Clark's Handbooks, p. 38). THE PRINCIPLES OF THE REFORMATION 113 in the exercise of this right Luther and Zwingli soon found themselves at variance in regard to the Eucharist, and both fell foul of the Anabaptists, as their followers fell out with the Socinians, because these in their turn claimed their liberty of private interpretation. What was to be done ? If the situation was serious because of the variations of protestants, it was more serious because ' the authority of the Scriptures could not be used for authoritative purposes in the same way and to produce the same results as the voice of the Church. . . . Luther held on his way stoutly, not obscurely intimating in the general tone of his dogmatic affirmations that if other people did not see things as he did, it was their own fault.' ^ Zwingli took refuge in calling names.^ It was left to Calvin and the Swiss Confessions while professedly accepting the essential principle of protestant freedom to curtail it by reaffirming that no Scripture is of any private interpretation, and that ' the infallible rule of the interpretation of Scripture is Scripture itself. '^ (c) Similar divergences arose in regard to the application of Scripture. Theywere never healed. The Saxon reformers made Scripture the rule of doctrine only, and felt free to retain in rites, ceremonies, and Church order whatever did not conflict with Scripture."* But the Swiss were absolutely rigid. They made Scripture the rule of discipline as well ; and not content with rejecting everything which had no explicit warrant in Scripture, they claimed for the particular Church polity, which they held to be ex- clusively Scriptural, that it alone was of divine right.'' (d) The more vital question as to the foundation on which 1 Beard, op. cit. pp. 125 sq. ^ Supra, p. 81. 3 Westminster Conf. c. i. p. 40, ut supra ; and cf . Conf. Helv. Prior, Art. 2 [Scripturae Sacrae] ' interpretatio ex ipsa sola pe- tenda est' (Niemeyer, p. 116), Conf. Helv. Post. Art. 2. — 'Scrip- turas sanctas dixit Apostolus Petrus non esse interpretationis privatae. I'roinde non probamus interpretationes (piaslibet . . . illara Scripturarum intcrpretationem pro orthodoxa . . . agnos- cimus quae ex ipsis est petita Scripturis ' (Jhid. p. 409). The Soci- nians adopted the same rule (Cat. Racov. qu. 36) ; and how can a Trinitarian protestant answer them ? •* Supra, p. 33. " Supra, p. 98 ; and cf. Hooker, who, on historical grounds, maintains the divine origin of Episcopacy, but declines to argue 114 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION Scripture itself rests was not raised at the Reformation. On all sides its authority was taken for granted, and the strife was about its interpretation. But Calvin attempted the answer when he based its authority ' upon the con- current witness of the Holy Spirit in the written Word and in the believer's soul.'^ Similarly the Canon was to him self-attested. The English Church, on the con- trary, accepts as Canonical those ' books ... of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church.' ^ She takes the historical, not the subjective, for the test of truth ; and, as for the meaning of Scripture, she would look to the Spirit in the Society to interpret His own record in the Books, so for its authority she requires more than the individual's sense of its ^majesty,' and would decline to accept it without the ' witness ' ^ of the Church. § 3. We must now turn from the first principles which separate protestantism from the Catholic Church to consider its internal dififerences. How is it that when Lutheran and Calvinist started from common ground, they were so soon sundered by deep lines of cleavage .'' The answer is to be found in the differences both of character and circumstance between Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, which led them, while professing to be guided by the even as they [the Puritans] do, that in Scripture there must needs be found some particular form of Church polity, which God hath instituted, and which for that ver3' cause belongeth to all Churches to all times ' (E. P. m. x. 8). ^ Beard, op. cit. p. 123 : ' Maneat ergo hoc fixum, quos Spiritus sanctus intus docuit, solide acquiescere in Scriptura, et hanc quidem esse aiiTowLcrTov, neque demonstrationi et rationibus subjici eam fas esse : quam tamen meretur apud nos certitudinem, Spiritus testimonio consequi. Etsi enira reverentiam sua sibi ultro majestate conciliat, tunc tamen demum serio nos afficit, quum per Spiritum obsignata est cordibus nostris. Illius ergo virtute illu- minati, jam non aut nostro aut aliorum judicio credimus, a Deo esse Scripturam : sed supra humanum judicium, certo certius con- stituimus (non secus ac si ipsius Dei numon illic intueremur) hominum ministerio, ab ipsissimo Dei ore ad nos fluxisse ' (Inst. I. vii. 5, and cf. The Westminster Conf. c. i. p. 3B, ut supra). 2 Art. vi. ■* Cf. Art. XX. ; S. Augustine, 'Ego evangelio non crederem, nisi me catholicae ecclesiae commoveret auctoritas.' Contra epist. Manichaei, § 6 (Opera, viii. col. 154a. ed. Ben.) ; and Hooker, E. P. iii. viii. 14. THE PRINCIPLES OF THE REFORMATION 11,5 Bible only, to unconsciously interpret it each in accor- dance with his own dominant theological principle. Luther was a thorough German, a peasant's son brought up among monarchical surroundings, with a nature coarse but strong, a scholastic's education, and the temperament of a mystic. Powerful in attack, he had a mystic's indifference to outward things, and was content to allow existing institutions, such as the State, to build up where he had destroyed. ^ So fearless a leader had no equals, but a great following ; subordinates in plenty, but no successor. Those who came after him managed for a time to hand on his strong attachment to sacra- mentalism without sacerdotalism, but all they could perpetuate was his dominant tenet of Justification by Faith only. It was a tenet which led not merely to inconsistencies of statement in Luther's theology, but to the adoption of a standard for the interpretation of Scripture so arbitrary that Protestantism could not but follow a one-sided development. Starting from the absolute freedom of God's grace in Christ, Luther re- covered, at a time when it most wanted reasserting, the personal and inward side of religion in opposition to the Judaism of the current teaching. But he failed to insist that we are justified- by faith only, with the requisite balance. ^ He inserted 'only' into his transla- tion of Rom. iii. 28, and defended it with petulant self- ^ Supra, p. 47, and cf . ' Cujus regio, ejus religio,' for the way in which the State got control of religion. The Aitgsburg Con- fession, Part III. Art. vii., had laid down, 'Non igitur commis- cendae sunt potestas ecclesiastica et civilis ' (Francke, i. p. 43) ; and Luther, writing to Melanchthon in reference to this article, had held ' Primum cum certum sit duas istas administrationes esse distinctas et diversas, nempe ecclesiasticam et politicam, quas mire confudit et miscuit Satan per papatum : nobis hie acriter vigilandum est, nee committendum, ut denuo conf undantur ' (De "\Vette, iv. 105). But they were not able to prevent the usurpa- tion which they foresaw ; and at the end of his days Luther wrote, 'Satan pergit esse Satan. Sub papa miscuit Ecclcsiam politiae : sub nostro tempore vult miscere politiam Ecclesiae ' (De Wette, V. 596). * The official Lutheran statement is in Conf. Aug. i. iv. : ' Decent quod homines non possint justificari coram Deo propriis viribus, meritis aut operibus, sed gratis justificentur propter 116 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION assertiveness.* He declared that heaven and earth should collapse before he would yield the point, ^ and both he and his followers made it the 'articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiae. ' ^ He could scarcely forgive S. Paul for the phrase ' faith working through love.'* Now it is not so much the tenet as its overstatement and isolation which has made Protestantism a one-sided creed. In his better moments faith was with Luther, as with S. Paul, that enthusiastic surrender of the soul to its Saviour which issues in a changed life ; but partly through the misfortune of the German language possessing no other word for faith but one which commonly means belief,^ and partly through Luther's insistence on faith to the exclusion not only of ' works of law,' ^ but of good works, faith came to mean less than with S. Paul. It stood not for devoted adhesion Christum per fidem, quum credunt se in gratiam recipi et peccata remitti propter Christum, qui sua morte pro nostris peccatis satisfecit. Hanc fidem iniputat Deus pro justitia coram ipso Rom. ill. et iv.' (Francke, 1. p. 14). The characteristic Lutheran phrases about justification are that a man is justified when he believes himself to be justified, and that he is justified 'sola fide.' The conditions of justification are thus faith onlj', and faith in something less than the Person of Christ — a message, promise, proposition, or event. 1 'If your papist makes much useless fuss about the word "sola," "allein, tell him at once, "Dr. Martin Luther will have it so." . . . Are they doctors ? So am I . . .' [cf . 2 Cor. xi. 22]. Sendbrief, Sept. 1530 ; Works (ed. Erlangen), Ixv. 107- For his attachment to 'sola fide,' cf. Form. Cone. ii. iii., which quotes from Luther's Com. on Galatians, ' Hie respondemus cum Paulo, sola fide in Christum nos pronunciari justos, non operibus legis aut caritate, etc' (Francke, iii. p. 127). 2 Art. Smalcald., ii. i. (Francke, ii. p. 8). ^ Cf. Melanchthon in Apol. Conf. c. ii. (Francke, i. p. 64) and Luther ap. Form.. Cone. ii. iii. : ' Si unicus hoc articulus sincerus permanserit, etiam Christiana ecclesia sincera concors et sine omnibus sectis permanet ' (Francke, iii. p. 122). It was held as firmly, though not as of the same capital importance by the Swiss reformers, who go farther back, behind faith the condition of salva- tion, and start from the cause of salvation in God's eternal elec- tion, cf . Conf. Basil. Prior, Art. ix. De Fide (Niemeyer, p. 98) and Conf. Helv. Post. c. xv. : ' Credimus cum Apostolo hominem peccatorem justificari sola fide in Christum, non lege' aut ullis operibus ' (ibid. p. 495). On the meaning of Justification by Faith, see The Thirty-nine Articles (in this series), pp. 131 sqq. * Gal. V. 6. 5 Glaube. 6 Rom. iii. 20, 28, etc. THE PRINCIPLES OF THE REFORMATION 117 to a Person, but for belief in a message. It was com- plete, in fact, not in moral self-surrender, but in in- tellectual assent. On the other hand. Justification, instead of being confined, as by S. Paul, to the initial moment of reception into the Divine favour, came to stand for Justification, Sanctification, and Salvation as well. ^ It covered the whole Christian course till the Gospel of Justification by Faith became a reckless promise of salvation by mere belief. The antinomian consequences of such a doctrine were not slow to manifest themselves, but they were of temporary duration in proportion to their violence. Its permanent effects were as disastrous. S, Paul's doctrine of Justification starts the believer on his Christian course in pei'sonal relation with the Saviour ; but, so far from leaving him a mere individual, it is the prelude to his incorporation by Baptism into Christ's Body the Church in order to his full develop- ment there in association with others by the ministry of Priest and Sacrament. The Lutheran doctrino has ended by dispensing with all that should follow Justification. Not Indulgences only, but everything else that seemed to savour of merit, whether the Eucharistic Sacrifice^ ^ Cf. Sanday and Headlam on Romans, pp. 147 sqq., for the history of the interpretation of Justification by Faith ; and for Luther's doctrine of it, Beard, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 129 sqq., or Hagenbach, History of Doctrines, ii. p. 267 (ed. 1847). * For Luther's opinions on the Sacrifice of the Mass. see supra, p. 43. Starting from ' Testamentum ' (R.V. 'covenant') in Matt. xxvi. 28, etc., he argued that the Eucharist is an action purely manward, ' a promise of the remission of sins made to us by God . . . confirmed by the death of the Son of God.' On the Babylonish Captimty of the Chu/rch (Wace and Buchheim, Luther's Primary Works, p. 319). The Conf. Aurj. ii. iii. 'De Missa' professes 'Retinetur missa apud nos et summa reverentia celebratur,' but continues 'missa instituta est, ut fides in iis qui utuntur sacramento, recordetur quae beneficiaaccipiet per Christum' (Francke, i. pp. 29, 30). The Eucharist consists of a Word of Promise (Matt. xxvi. 28, etc.) and a sign 'et sicut verbiim ad fidem excitandam traditum est : ita .sacramentum [=signumj institutum est ut ilia species in- currens in oculos moveat corda ad credendum ' (Apol. Conf. c. xii. ; Francke, i. p. 268). The Eucharist is thus merely an acted sermon. * We receive the mass but give a sacrifice,' and ' it would be safer to deny their authority [sc. of the Fathers] altogether than to grant that the mass is a work or a sacrifice ' {Primary Works, p. 335). 118 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION or human Free-will,^ disappeared at the first onset, lest we should appear to contribute to our own salvation and wrong the free grace of God. Then the need of a Priesthood, 2 of the Visible Cliurch/ and ultimately of Sacraments^ fell away. Luther indeed stood out man- fully for a grace conferred on infants in Baptism/ and for such a Real Presence " even as involved an eating by ' At the disputation of Leipzig {supra, p. 20), Luther compared man to a saw, which is a passive instrument in the hand of the carpenter ; and in the Dc Servo Arhitrio [supra, p. 37) he takes the declarations, in which God urges man to keep His command- ments, ironically, as if a father were to say to his child ' Come,' when he knows he cannot come (cf. Hagenbach, Hist. Doctr. ii. p. 259). Melanchthon recoiled from this extreme position. 2 'AH Christians are truly of the clergy, and there is among them no difference save of office alone. ... A bishop's ordina- tion is no more than this, that in place of the entire congregation he takes one out of the whole body of those who possess equal power, and commits to him the exercise of that same power for the rest. . . . What is common to all may no man take to him- self without the will and command of the congregation. And whenever it happens that any one chosen to such an office is deposed for misconduct, then is he straightway what he was before. A deposed priest is a priest no longer. But now they have invented ' ' characteres indelebiles," and prate that a deposed priest is nevertheless something other than a bad layman ... all of which are laws and talk invented of men ' (Address to the Christian Nobility, quoted in Beard, p. 133 ; cf. Primary Works, pp. 1C4, 165). 3 Commenting on Conf. Aug. i. vii. 'De ecclesia,' the Apol. Conf. says, ' Dicimus existere hanc ecclesiam, videlicet vere cre- dentes et justos sparsos per totum orbem. Et addimus notas : puram doctrinam evangelii et sacramenta ' (Francke, i. p. 14G). •• ' An invisible but an indissoluble connection will ... be found to subsist between the tenets of the ministerial succession and of sacramental grace. The first will never be found without the second ; the second will not long survive the extinction of the first' (Gladstone, Gleanings, iii. p. 24). 5 'Luther is very hard put to it to reconcile his subjective prin- ciple with any sacramental conception of baptism : he shrinks from acknowledging a purely supernatural effect of the water and the words upon the unconscious child : on the one hand, he declares that the water is not mere water, but water deified by the Word ... on the other, he falls back upon a theorj' . . . that the representative faith of sponsors somehow stands in the place of the genuine spiritual affection in the subject of the sacrament' (Beard, p. 137; cf. Primary Works, pp. 137, 357). 8 Real Presence = presence of the 'res sacramenti.' THE PRINCIPLES OF THE REFORMATION 119 the wicked, and the cumbrous theory of Consubstantia- tion to protect it.^ But not even the weight of his name could save tlie Sacraments under the solvent of 'faith only' from degradation to the level of mere forms. They have dropped into the background : as Priest was at once displaced by minister ; Indelible Orders by tem- porary office ; and the Visible Church by assemblies of believers. This is popular protestantism as it derives fi'om Luther ; but the rationalism of his countrymen is as severe a comment on his first principle, in its claim to interpret the Scripture from an a priori standpoint. Whether that standpoint be the anti-supernatural or the anti-sacerdotal, it is equally the standpoint of individualism ; and not even Luther's attempt to treat Scripture, by a free use of the old allegorical method, as the exposition of a single divine purpose or 'gospel,' could serve for a defence against the rationalism involved in his maxim that the Scriptures are to be interpreted by the ' Gospel,' not the 'Gospel' by the Scriptures. ^ It was in strict fidelity to this principle that the Epistles were exalted above the Gospels,^ the Epistle to the Romans above 1 Cf. Primary Works, pp. 138, 315; Conf. Awj. i. x. — 'DeccBna Domini docent quod corpus et sanguis Christi vere adsint et dis- tribuantur vescentibus' (Francke, i. p. 16). Art. Smalc. vi. — 'De Sacramento altaris sentimus panem et vinum in ccena esse verum corpus et sanguinem Christi, et non tantum dari et sumi a piis, sed etiam ab impiis Christianis ' (ibid. ii. p. 32). The germ of the later theory of Consubstantiation appears in the following theory of Luther's : ' Fire and iron, two different substances, are so mingled in red-hot iron that every part of it is both fire and iron. Why may not the glorious body of Christ much more be in every part of the substance of the bread?' (Primary Works, p. 313). In the Confessio Variata, Melanchthon substituted ' Vere exhibeantur ' (Francke, App. p. 8). 2 Cf. the references to Luther's Works, collected by Beard, pp. 126. 127. •' ' Those Apostles who treat of tenest and highest of how faith in Christ alone justifies, are the best Evangelists. Therefore are S. Paul's Epistles more a Gospel than Matthew, Mark, and Luke. For these do not set down much more than the story of the works and miracles of Christ ; but the grace which we receive through Christ, no one so boldly extols as S. Paul, especially in his letter to the Romans ' (From Luther's Preface to 1 Peter, quoted in Beard, p. 128). 120 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION other Epistles, while ' S. James's Epistle is, in comparison with these, a mere letter of straw, for it has nothing evangelical about it.' * The ^religion of Protestants' is thus something less than ' the Bible only ' ; and though Luther has certainly enriched all life, religious and civil, by his bold stand for the rights of conscience which carry with them personal responsibility and civil liberty, he has impoverished both the conception and the resources of religion, by leaving the individual soul in isolation without the discipline and the grace of the Divine Society intended for its perfection. The place of the Society in the training of the indi- vidual was more promineiit in the teaching of the Swiss Reformers.^ Zwingli 2 was, like Luther, a peasant's son, but brought up in the free air of an Alpine republic. By education a Humanist, by vocation a secular priest, he was anxious to find a place in heaven for the heroes of classical heathendom, and his liberal spirit contrasts in this with the narrowness displayed by Luther, whether in his distaste for the classics or in his limited conception of the range of salvation. Zwingli carried the same broad vigour into politics, where his ideal was that of a righteous and well-ordered community, administered both in things spiritual and temporal by delegates of its own, with the plain letter of Scripture for its charter, and for its main- stay the unlimited Sovereignty of God. It was from the point of view of this Sovereignty, particularly as carrying with it the sufficiency and certainty of Holy Writ, that Zwingli started to interpret the Scriptures. It placed him in opposition to the paganism rather than to the Judaism of the mediaeval Church ; and iconoclasm, to which Luther had no inclination, invariably distinguishes, as in England under Edward vi., the approach of Swiss influences. The Old Testament spirit here apparent led Zwingli to make war for the truth. It may also have 1 From Luther's Preface to New Testament (1524), quoted in Beard, p. 128. 2 Cf. the opening description of the purpose of the Church in Inst. IV. i. 1. 3 For this account of Zwingli's principles, cf. Beard, HiUicrt Lectures, pp. 229 sqq. THE PRINCIPLES OF THE REFORMATION 121 had its share, along with the theory of the Commune, in determining that identification of Church and State which makes it impossible to speak of relations between them in Zurich, and which led to the conception of ecclesiastical discipline as a thing to be enforced by the secular arm as well as to persecution on principle, for heretics and felons were equally offenders against the community. Religion was for the individual, but as part of the community. It was a law rather than a passion ; and the best account that has been given of Zwingli's reduction of sacraments to the level of mere signs and of the Eucharist, in spite of the Words of Institution, to a bare commemoration of an absent Christ, is to ascribe it to that practical view of religion which appeals to ' common sense.' ^ If Justification by Faith only was Luther's permanent contribution to the mental stock of popular protestantism, its rejection of sacraments except as marks of allegiance is its chief inheritance from Zwingli. It was to Calvin that protestantism was indebted for embodiment in final shape. He belongs to the second age of the Reformation ; and, with the work both of Luther and Zwingli before him, he took Zwingli's by preference to build on, because he started from Zwingli's foundation principle, the unlimited Sovereignty of God. Raising the level of Zwinglianism at points, as in acknow- ledging a Virtual Presence in the Eucharist,'^ and giving 1 Beard, p. 241. Of the sacraments in general, which he re- garded as mere signs, Zwingli, in Fidei Ratio, wrote : ' Credo . . . omnia sacramenta tarn abesse ut gratiam conferant ut ne adferant quidem aut dispensent . . . sacramenta dari in testimonium publi- cum ejus gratiae, quae cuique privato prius adest. . . . Credo . . . sacramentum esse sacrae rei, hoc est, factae gratiae signum ' (Nie- meyer, pp. 24 sqq.). In the Eucharist, he held a Real Absence, i.e. the absence of the 'res sacramenti.' By His ascension Christ 'abiit et non est hie' (ibid. p. 47) ; the most he would admit was 'verum Christi corpus adsit, fidei contemplatione ' (ibid. p. 26). 2 Calvin characterised Zwingli's view as a ' prof ana sententia.' His own teaching is ' Non aliter animas nostras came et sanguine Christi pasci quam panis et vinum corporalem vitam tuentur et Bustinent. . . . Quod si verum est, praeberi nobis signum visibile ad obsignandam invisibiiis rei donationem, accepto corporis symbolo, non minus corpus etiam ipsum nobis dari certo con- fidamus' (Inst. iv. xvii. 10), With which compare the Consensus 122 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION to the Church disciplinary powers ^ over the individual, with an authority above that of the State,^ he worked out its main principle of theology proper into a system and developed it on its anthropological side. 'The Calvinistic type of theology differs from the Lutheran not so much in the docrines which it includes, as in the relative importance which it gives to such as are common to both. Its centre of gravity is not the same. Both are Augustinian in their origin and essence : both assume tlie absolute foreknowledge and determining power of God, the servitude of the human will, the corruption and incapacity of man's nature. But wliile Lutheranism crystallises round the idea of justification by faith, and is, so to speak, anthropological, ('alvinism, beginning and ending with the supremacy of God, is theological, ... In the one, the main thing is the sinner's personal relation to Christ . . . ; in the other, the majesty of God, who is over all and in all, and the awful omnipotence of the Divine decree fixing the unalterable succession of events, and rigidly determining the eternal fate of men from a period before time was. And when we come to look a little more closely at the constituents of Cal- vinistic theology, we see how this master-thought runs through it all. In the process of salvation, it at once shuts out all co-operation of the human will, and assures the final perseverance of the elect : shall not God begin, round off, complete His own work ? . . . The sacraments may be signs or seals, or what you will,' but not means Tigurinus, iu whicli, with BuUinger, he joined to consolidate the Swiss Reformation (sujjra, p. 86, and Niemeyer, pp. lQ2sqq.); or Conf. Helv. ii. xxi. — ' Christus, corpore in cnelis absens nobis, praesens est nobis non corporaliter quidem sed spiritualiter per vivificam operationem ' (ihid. p. 522). This is to acknowledge a presence of the ' virtus sacramenti.' ^ Supra, p. 98. '^ 'Non magistratus, si pius est, eximere se volet communi filiorum Dei subjcctione, cujus nou postrema pars est, ecclesiae ex verbo Dei judicanti se subjicere: tantum abest ut judicium illud tollere debeat . . . Imperator bonus intra Ecclesiam, non super Ecclesiam est ' {Inst. iv. xi. 4). He draws the sharpest distinction between Church and State, and adds, ' Sic conjunctae debent esse operae, ut altera sit adjumento alteri, non impedi- mento' {ibid. § 3). THE PRINCIPLES OF THE REFORMATION 123 of ^race. ' To the same source may be traced the bare- ness of Calvinistic worship and its unwillingness to charm the soul through the senses : God, the Omnipotent and the Omnipresent, will choose and occupy and mould His own, without the vain help of audible and visible things. The one thought of God dominates, almost engulfs, all others ; and it is a God whose will binds the world and men in bonds of adamant.' ^ It may be surprising that such a system was once powerful ; but it is not surprising that its fall has been as complete as its consequences to faith and morals disastrous. In belief, it is a small thing that its doctrine of an Invisible Church of the Elect- should have rendered the Church ^ superfluous and the Sacraments merely obsignatory,* compared with the tendency to Socinianism which has from the first been the running sore of Cal- vinism, and is the natural result of isolating the power 1 Beard, pp. 255 sqq. 2 '[EcclesiaJ quae re vera est coram Deo . . . comprehendit . . . electos omnes qui ab origine mundi fuerunt' (Inst. iv. i. 7); cf. Conf. Helv. ii. 17 (Niemeyer, pp. 499 sqq.), and Conf. Scot. 16. — ' Haec Ecclesia est invisibilis, soli Deo nota, qui solus uovit, quos elegit ' (ibid. p. 349). ^ Calvinism certainly recognised an external Church, with notes, 'imprimis verbi Dei sincera praedicatio.' Where this was lack- ing it rejected all churches, 'utcunque interim jactent succes- sionem Episcoporum, Unitatem et Antiquitatem. Quinimo praecipiunt nobis Apostoli ut fugiamus idolatriam et Babylonem. . . . Communionem vero cum ecclesia Christi vera tanti facimus ut negemus eos coram Deo vivere posse qui . . . ab ea se separant. . . . Extra Christum, qui se electis in ecclesia fruendum praebet, nullam esse salutem' (Conf. Hclv. ii. p. 17; Niemeyer, p. 503). Hence the hatred of the English Puritan for the Separatist ; but the doctrine of the Invisible Church proved fatal to the Catholic doctrine of the Church. It is now abandoned by scholars, e.g. Hort, The Christian Ecclesia, p. 169, and even in The Free Church Catechism. * ' Videtur mihi haec simplex et propria fore definitio, si dix- erimus [Sacramentum] externum esse symbolum, quo benevolen- tiae erga nos suae promissiones conscientiis nostris Dominus obsignat, ad sustineudam fidei nostrae imbecillitatem ' (Inst. iv. xiv. 1). Tliey do not confer grace; and are meaningless to the non-elect, cf. Consensus Tvjurinus, § 17. — 'Namreprobis peraeque ut electis signa administrantur ; Veritas autem signoruin .id hos solos pervenit ' (Niemeyer, p. 195). 124 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION of God and forgetting that He is love. But this is not all. After destroying all moral distinctions by making God the author of evil in its doctrine of Predestination/ Calvinism by its tenet of Reprobation goes on to paint Him as a capricious tyrant who, allowing half the world to be saved do what it may, and consigning the other half to be damned do what it can, repels us from worshipping Him. Thus, as in the case of Mill, who mistook it for Christianity, Calvinism is largely answerable for modern unbelief. 2 And if it thus makes God wicked, Calvinism ^ ' Praedestinationem vocamiis aeternum Dei decretum, quo apud se constitutum habuit quid de unoquoque liomine fieri vellet. Non enim pari conditione creantur homines : sed aliis vita aeterna, aliis damnatio aeterna praeordinatur. Itaque prout in alterutrum finem quisque conditus est, ita vel ad vitam vel ad mortem prae- destinatum dicimus' {Inst. in. xxi. 5). He proceeds to say that Predestination logically requires Reprobation : ' Quando ipsa electio nisi reprobationi opposita non staret ' {Ibid, xxiii. 1) ; and that the Fall was itself decreed bj' God : ' Quum ergo in sua corruptione pereunt, nihil aliud quam pcenas luunt ejus calamitatis, in quam ipsius praedestinatione lapsus est Adam ac posteros suos praecipites secum traxit' {Ibid. § 4). But here his heart condemned him : ' Unde factum est ut tot gentes, una cum liberis eorum infantibus aeternae morti ijivolveret lapsus Adae absque remedio, nisi quia Deo ita visum est? Hie obmutescere oportet tam dicaces alioqui linguas. Decretum quidem horribile fateor : inficiari tamen nemo poterit quin praesciverit Deus quern exitum esset habiturus homo, antequam ipsum conderet, et ideo praesciverit quia decreto suo sic ordinarat ' {Ibid. § 7). Zwingli asserts election without reprobation in the Fidei Ratio, and so emphasises the Divine Sovereignty as to destroy Freewill (Nie- meyer, pp. 17, 18) ; cf. 'Impulit Deus latronem ut occideret: sed aeque impellit judicem ut percussorem justitiae mactet : et qui impellit agit sine omni criminis suspicione : non enim est sub lege' {De Providcntia). ^ 'If instead of the "glad tidings" that there exists a Being in whom all the highest excellences which the human mind can conceive exist in a degree inconceivable to us, I am informed that the world is ruled by a Being whose attributes are infinite ; but what they are we cannot learn, nor what are the principles of his government, except that "the highest human morality which we are capable of conceiving of" does not sanction them; convince me of it and I will bear my fate as I may. But when I am told that I must believe this, and at the same time call this Being by the names which express and affirm the highest human morality, I say in plain terms that I will not. Whatever power such a THE PRINCIPLES OF THE REFORMATION 125 by its doctrine of the utter depravity ^ of humau nature renders man incapable of good. Yet in spite of itself, by that assurance which no Calvinist ever lacked, that he is one of the elect, it was rich in a strenuous type of character which has outlasted its life as a creed. § 4. But notwithstanding divergences, Lutheranism, Zwinglianism, and Calvinism resemble each other far more than any of them resemble the Catholic Church ; and the principles of the Continental Reformation were radically the same. They are those which have estab- lished a footing in this country not with the English Church, but among the protestant sects, who hold to the Catholic faith in the Trinity and the Incarnation, but have inherited 'a, Zwinglian doctrine of the Sacraments, a Lutheran doctrine of faith, and the old Calvinistic doctrine of the Church. '^ Certainly Justification by Faith only, the Sufficiency of Scripture, and the Priest- hood of the Laity were all principles that needed reasserting. They have their place in Catholic theo- logy ; but they were reasserted in terms of such violence as to end in a severance from the Catholic Church. The immediate result of their reassertion was a confusion only reduced to order in the period of protestant Scholasticism, by an elaborate ConfessionaP literature intended to curb the process of disintegration which the Reformers themselves deplored ; and the Confessions were supplemented among Lutherans by State protection, and with Calvinists by an inquisitorial discipline. These restraints were eflfectual in creating a new orthodoxy, and in fencing it about with a special tradition of its Being may have over me, there is one thing which He shall not do : He shall not compel me to worship Him. I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures ; and if such a Being can sentence me to hell for not 80 calling Him, to hell I will go' (Mill, Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosoph;/, pp. 128, 129). 1 Cf. Inst. II. i. 8 ; Conf. Hclv. Post. viii. (Niemeyer, p. 477) ; of. * dead in sin and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body' {Westm. Conf. c. vi.). Contrast Art. ix. ; and see The Thirty-nine Articles, pp. 61 and 126 (in this series). 2 The Reformation in Great Britain, p. Ill (in this series). 3 Beard, c. viii. 126 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION own. But they gave way at length before the advance of that Toleration which was never conceded by the Reformers to one another or to their opponents. The victory of Toleration has set the principles of the foreign Reformation at liberty to reach their goal. Every man may now^ if he chooses, take his Bible and make his religion for himself.^ If the vast mass of protestants have maintained their Bible intact ^ and kept their hold on the cardinal truths of the Trinity and the Incarnation, that is not the merit of their protestantism. For the Bible as for the Faith Christendom is indebted to the Undivided Church. 1 Contrast the presentation of Christianity, as a body of truth Divinely revealed and obligatory, implied in Rom. vi. 17, 2 Tim. i. 13, etc. '•^ ' But ' the canon is an open question. ... It never can be anything else on the principles of protestantism' (Bruce, Apologetics, p. 321). APPENDIX THE TERRITORIAL EXPANSION OF PROTESTANTISM A. Of Lutheranism,^ § 1. Within the Empire, the advance of Protestantism was (i) spontaneous, and belongs to its first years. 'No arrange- ments needed to be made, no plan had to be agreed upon, no mission was necessary ' (Ranke) ; and (ii) due to (1) great leaders : Luther and Melanchthon. (2) protectors : the Saxon Electors, and Philip of Hesse. (3) the support of (a) the LTniversities, e.g. Wittenberg. (b) the Cities, c.ff. Niirnberg. (c) the Friars, c.y. (a) Augustinians ; Lang in Erfurt, Giittel in Eis- leben. Link in Altenburg, Heinrich Voes and Johann Esch, the first martyrs (July 1, 1523), in Brussels. (^) Franciscans ; Briessmann in Konigsberg, F. Myconius in Gotha, Lambert in Hesse. (7) Dominicans ; Butzer in Strassburg. (S) Carmelites ; Urbanus Regius in Llineburg. (A) The States of the Empire. I. Electoral Saxony. Universities of Wittenberg, and Jena 1.548. 1526. The German Mass and Order of Divine Service. 1528-9. The Visitation of Saxony. 1529. The Greater Catechism and 2'he Short Catechism. 1533. The Wittenberg Church Ordinance [Richter, i. 220]. 1542. Constitutions and Articles of the Spiritual Consistory at Wittenberg [ibid. i. 367]. 1 See Spraner-Menke, HistoHscher Handatlas de» MUteldUerg, Map No. 48, 18. 6d. X27 128 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION II. Hesse. 1526, Oct. 20. Synod of Homberg. Reformatio ecclcsiarum Hassiac [ibid. i. 56], abortive. University of Max- burg. 1532. Hessian Church Ordinance [ibid. i. 163]. III. Brunswick. (i) 1527. Duke Ernest of B.-Lunebubo put forth the Lilneburg Articles [Richter, i. 70]. (ii) 1531. Duke Francis of B.-Grubenhagen, joined tlie Schmalkaldic League. (iii) 1540. On the death of Duke Eric, B.-Calenbebg be- came Protestant. (iv) 1543. In spite of the opposition of Duke Henry (1514- 68), B.-WoLFENBtJTTEL receivcd a Church Ordinance [ibid. ii. 56] from Bugenhagen ; but the reformation was not victorious till 1568. IV. HoLSTEiN (better reckoned with Schleswig and Denmark). 1527. Populace Lutheran. 1542. Church Ordinance \ibid. i. 353] from Bugenhagen. V. Mecklenburg, under two brothers, the Protestant Duke Henry and the Catholic Duke Albert. 1527. Protestantism had made progress. 1532. Magnus, son of Duke Henry, administrator of the bishopric of Schwerin. 1534. Duke Henry adopted Communion in both kinds. 1539. Schwerin and, 1547, Mecklenburg, declared itself Protestant. 1540. Mecklenburg Church Ordinance {ibid. i. 322]. University of Eostock. VI. Anhalt. 1529. Prince Wolfgang (1492-1566) of A.-Kothen joined in the Protest at Speyer. 1532. The three Princes, John (d. 1551), George (d. 1553), and Joachim (d. 1561), of A. -Dessau summoned Nicholas Hausmann to Dessau (1532-8). 1534. Anhalt Protestant. VII. POMERANIA. 1531. Death of the Catholic Duke George of Pommern WOLGAST. 1534, Aug. Agreement of Kammin between his son Philip and Duke Barnim of Pommern-Stettin to introduce the reformation. Dec. Diet of Treptow decided for the ' Gospel.' 1535. Bugenhagen's Church Ordinance [ibid. i. 248] and Visitation. APPENDIX 129 VIII. WOrtembebo. 1534, June 29. Peace of Kadan and restoration of Duke Ulrich (1487-1550). Reforms, in S., by Ambrose Blaurer (1492-1564), a follower of Butzer; in N., by Erhardt Schnepf, a follower of Luther. Concord of WUrtemberg. 'The Body of Christ is present verily but not locaUy.' 1536. Church Ordinance [Richter, i. 265], bv Schnepf and Brenz (1499-1570). University of Tubingen. IX. DucAi Saxony. 1539, April 17. Death of Duke George and accession of Duke Henry (1539-41). Whitsuntide. Luther at Leipzig. July 9. Prohibition of Private Masses and Com- munion in one kind. Church Ordinance [ibid. i. 307] from Justus Jonas. X. Brandenburg-Ansbach. 1527. Death of the Margrave Casimir and accession of his brother George. 1528, March 1. Diet of Ansbach sets up Lutheranism. 1533. Church Ordinance of Bramdenhurg-Niimherg [ibid, i. 176]. XI. Electobai, Brandenburg. 1535, June 11. Death of the Elector Joachim i. ; his wife Elizabeth and Matthias, Bishop of Brandenburg, having already turned Protestant. John of Ciistrin, his younger son, allows Protestant preaching in the Neumark. 1539, Nov. 1. The Elector Joachim ii. (1535-71) received the Sacrament in two kinds. Nov. 2. The Lord's Supper, according to the Lutheran rite, in Berlin. 1540, March. The Diet admits a Church Ordinance [ibid. i. 323], by the bishop. 1543. Consistories and Superintendents displace the bishops. XII. The Palatinate. * 1540. Pfalz-ZweibrOcken Protestant, reform having en- tered under Pfalzgraf Ludwig (d. 1532). 1542. Pfalz-Neuborg Protestant, under Otto Heinrich. 1546. In the Electoral Palatinate, Frederick ii. (1544-56) abjured the Pope, and the reformation was carried through by Otto Heinrich (1556-59). University of Heidelberg. 1557. Pfalz-Simmern Protestant, under Frederick the Pious. 130 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION (J5) The towns, and particularly the flMPERiAi. Cities. ' Preachers arise, the Lutheran hymns become popular, and the congregations take part in religious questions. The Council at first makes a greater or less resistance, but at length gives way ' [Ranke, Ref. iii. 423]. Thus :— 1523. +Hamburg. Church Ordinance, from Bugenhagen, 1529 [Richter, i. 127]. 1523. fSTRAssBURo, under Butzer (1523-46) and Capito (1523-41). Church Ordinance, 1534 [Richter, i. 231]. 1524. fNORNBERG, under Spengler (1522-34) and Osiander (1520-48). Church Ordinance,^ 1533 [ibid. i. 176], from Osiander and Brenz. c 1524. The Swabian cities of fSoHWABiscH-HALL, under Brenz ^1522-46), Church Ordinance, 1526 [ibid. i. 40], tReutlingen, tEssLiNOKN[z6id. i. 247], tHeilbronn, fNoRDLiNQEN [ibid. i. 18], fULM [ibid. i. 157]. 1524. Magdebubg, under Amsdorf (1524-42), Endoioment Ordinance [ibid. i. 17]. 1525. tBBEMEN. Church Ordinance, 1534 [ibid. i. 241]. 1528. Brunswick, whose Church Ordinance [ibid. i. 106] by Bugenhagen, and ' Gotteskasten ' for the mainten- ance of the clergy [Ranke, Bef. iii. 424] became the model institutions of North Germany. 1530. fFRANKFURT-oN-MAiN [Richtcr, i. 140], but formal conversion delayed till 1534 [Ranke, Eef. iii. 539]. 1530. tLtJBECK. Church Ordinance [ibid. i. 145], by Bugen- hagen, 1531. Cl531. tGr0SLAR[i6lci. i. 154], ElMBECK, G6TTINGEN[i6ld. i. 142]; fCoNSTANCE, fMEMMINGEN, fLlNDAU, fBlBERACH, flsNY. cl534. Hannover [ibid. i. 273], fWEissENBUBO, i*AuGSBURa. 1541. Halle. Church Ordinance [ibid. i. 339], by Justus Jonas. 1542. +Reoensbubq. 1544. fRoTHENBURO ON Tauber. (C) Summary : within the decade after the Peace of Ausburg, 1555. (i) Of the Temporal Estates (1) the Imperial Cities were almost all Protestant, and (2) the Princes also, except the hereditary dominions of Ferdinand of Austria, with his kingdom of Bohemia, and the duchies of Bavaria, Cleves, and Brunswick- Wolfenbiittel. 1 For its influence on the English Prayer Book, see Dowden, Worlc- manship of the Prayer Book, pp. 30, 41. APPENDIX 131 (ii) Of the Spiritual Estates, Protestantism was dominant in the bishoprics of Electoral Brandenburg and Saxony, and in the sees of Bremen, Verden, Osnabriick, Min- den, Magdeburg, Schwerin, Halberstadt, Liibeck, Katzeburg, and Kammin. (ill) In 1558 the Venetian ambassador wrote that only one- tenth of the people of Germany remained Catholic [Banke, Histonj of the Popes, i. 401]. § 2. Outside the Empire. I. Eastern Prussia, ruled by the Teutonic knights as vassals of Poland. 1511. The Margrave Albert of Brandenburg Grand Master (1511-25). 1522. He visits Niirnberg and Wittenberg, and then sum- mons to Konigsberg the Lutheran preachers John Briessmann (1523-49), Paul Speratus (1524-51), and John Poliander (1524-41). 1523. George von Polenz, Bishop of Samland (1519-50), and, 1527, Erhardt von Queiss, Bishop of Pomerania (1523-29), turn Protestant. 1525. April 10. Albert becomes Duke of Prussia (1525-68), and Prussian Protestantism and nationality appear together. July 6. The bishops surrender their oflSce, and the Duke becomes 'summus episcopus.' Dec. Articles of Ceremonies and other Ecclesiastical Ordinances [Richter, i. 28]. 1526-8. A visitation ; with a German Liturgy and Postils from Wittenberg. 1544. University of Konigsberg. The Scandinavian Kingdoms, on the dissolution of the Union of Calmar (1397-1524), by the rising of Sweden against Denmark, became Protestant. Thus : — II. Denmark. 1523. Frederick i., Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, succeeds his nephew, the tyrant Christian ii. (1513-23), as King of Denmark and Norway (1523-33). Hans Tausen, a Danish student from Wittenberg, preaches at Wiborg. 1524-9. Hymns, the baptismal service, and the New Testa- ment in the vernacular. 1526. The king declares himself Protestant, and makes Tausen his chaplain. 1527. Diet of Odense allows Protestant preaching and marriage of clergy. 1528. Protestantism, through the preaching of Hermann Tast, victorious in Schleswig. 132 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION 1530. Diet at Copenhagen. The Protestant Confessio Haf- nica, by Tausen. 1533. Accession of Christian m. (1533-59). 1536, Aug. 20. Bishops imprisoned and despoiled. Bugen- hagen called in : his Church Ordinance, 1537. 1537, Aug. 12. Bugenhagen crowns the King and Queen. Sept. 2. Bugenhagen 'consecrates' 7 'bishops,' after- wards increased to 12, viz. 6 for Denmark, 4 for Norway, 2 for Iceland. c 1542. Danish rites adopted in Schleswig-Holstein [Richter, i. 353], but consistories instead of 'bishops.' University of Copenhagen. III. Norway. 1537. On the approach of Christian iii., hitherto recognised only in the South, the North, which had held out under the Archbishop of Trondhjem, was com- pelled to yield. Church property confiscated : Episcopacy abolished : reconstruction on the basis of the Danish institu- tions. IV. Iceland. 1540-8. Gisser Einarssen, formerly a student at Witten- berg, as ' bishop ' of Skalholt began to reform after the Danish model. 1550, Nov. 7. Execution of John Aresen, Bishop of Holum, leader of the Catholics. Lutheranism introduced, often by force. 1552. ' The last representatives of Catholicism disappeared ' [Ranke, Popes, i. 396]. V. Sweden. 1519. Olaf and Laurence Petersen, formerly students at Wittenberg, begin to preach reform at Strengnas, with the countenance of Archdeacon Laurence Andersen, administrator of the diocese. Opposi- tion of the Bishop of Linkoping, with a brief from Adrian vi. 1523, June 7- Diet of Strengnas elects Gustavus Vasa king (1523-60), the hierarchy supporting Christian ii. of Denmark and Catholicism. Hence identification of king and national party with Protestantism. Laurence Andersen, chancellor: Olaf Petersen, preacher in Stockholm : and Laurence Petersen, professor at Upsala. 1524, Christmas. Disputation, at which Olaf Petersen maintains the Protestant opinions. 1526. Mass in Latin abolished : New Testament translated. APPENDIX 133 1527. Diet of Westeras allowed — (1) King to seize Episcopal possessions ; (2) Nobles to resume gifts made to the Church since 1454 ; and (3) Free preaching of 'the pure Word of God and the Gospel.' 1529. Synod of Oerebro, owing to opposition of clergy and peasantry, retains old ceremonies. 1530. Olaf Petersen issues hymn-book and (1531) the 'Swedish Mass.' 1531. Laurence Petersen, Archbishop of Upsala, conse- crated, as were six others, by Peter Magnussen, the Catholic Bishop of Westeras.^ 1537-43. Insurrection. 1544. The innovations established by Diet of Westeras. VI. Poland and its Dependencies. (i) LivLAND and Kurland, in spite of the opposition of the Grand Master of the Order of the Sword, Walter of Plet- tenberg (1515-35), of the Archbishop of Riga, and the Bishops of Oesel and Dorpat, being inhabited by Ger- mans, welcome the Reformation. 1521. Riga received a Protestant preacher. 1527. Briessmann arrives in Riga, Church Ordin- ance, 1530 [Richter, ii. 487]. 1539. Margrave William of Brandenburg, brother of Albert, Duke of Prussia, 'archbishop' of Riga. 1558. Gotthardt Kettler, the last Grand Master, avowed himself a Lutheran. 1561. Livland, annexed to the Polish Crown, and Protestant. (11) Western Prussia. 1523. Danzig, Thorn, and Elbing declare themselves Protestant, (ill) Poland. 1548-72. Sigismund Augustus, patron of the new opinions. 1548. Immigration of Bohemian Brethren, expelled by Ferdinand. 1549. Calvin dedicates his Commentary on Hebrews to the King, c 1550. Introduction of anti-Trinitarian tenets by George Blandatra, an Italian refugee. 1 On the open question of Swedish Orders see Report of the Lambeth Conference, pp. 119 sqq., and Pahiier, Treatise on the Church, i. p. 297 (ed. 1842). 134 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION 1551. Synod of Petrikau, under the leadership of Cardinal Hosius, Bishop of Ermeland (1551- 79), advocates repression. 1552. The nobles deprive the Church Courts of coer- cive power. 1556. The nobles secure for their dependents religious liberty, which is bestowed on Lutherans and Bohemian Brethren, just united (1555), and on the towns of Danzig, Thorn, and Elbing. John k Lasco (1499-1560) arrives and is set over the Reformed in Little Poland. Growth of Calvinism. 1561. Annexation of Livland and (1569) Union with Lithuania, both largely German and Lutheran. 1570. Consensus of Sandomir [Niemeyer, 553] at- tempts a union between Lutherans, Cal- vinists, and Bohemian Brethren, against anti-Trinitarians. 1573, Jan. 6. Diet proclaims a general toleration of Dissidents. Babel of sects. Re-conquest of Poland by Jesuits, i VII. Bohemia [strictly part of the Empire, but better classed with the realms of Ferdinand]. 1415. Burning of Huss. The nation mainly Utraquist, holding Communion sub utraque specie necessary. 1457. The Moravians or United Brethren. 1519. Luther in correspondence with the Utraquists; but (1520) regards the United Brethren as heretical. 1523. Luther addresses De institiiendis ministris to the Utraquists, deprecating their requirement of epis- copal ordination, and On the Adoration of the Sacrament to the United Brethren, reflecting on their merely symbolic doctrine of the Eucharist. 1526, Aug. 29, Mohacz. Oct. 23, Ferdinand King of Bo- hemia. He puts pressure on heretics. Hence 1532. Apologia vera doctrines of the United Brethren, with a preface by Luther. 1535. Their Confessio Bohmmica [Niemeyer, 771] to Ferdi- nand. 1542. The Brethren make terms with Luther, and after- wards serve in the Schmalkaldic War. Hence, after Miihlberg, 1547, Sep. 18. Ferdinand revoked his toleration of the Brethren and 1548, May 4, banished them. 1556. The Jesuits in Prague ; Bohemia recovered for Catholicism. 1 See Pollard, The. Jesuits in Poland (the Lothian Essay, 1892). . APPENDIX 135 VIII. In Hungary and Transylvania, during the civil war (1526-40) Protestantism advanced with impunity. (i) Transylvania, mainly German. John Honter (1533-49). 1542. Cronstadt and (1543) Hermannstadt Protestant. 1550. Reformatio ecclesiarum Saxonicarum in Tran- sylvania, a Church Ordinance by Honter, sanctioned by the Saxon Diet. 1557. Crown grants equal rights to all bodies holding the Confession of Augsburg. 1564. A Saxon majority holding the Confession of Augsburg, and, a little later, a smaller Mag- yar community holding the Second Helvetic Confession of 1566 [Niemeyer, 462], 1579. The Jesuits enter Transylvania, and the Catholic minority becomes a majority, because of Protestant dissensions. (ii) Hungary. Matthias Devay (1531-45) of Debreczin. 1529. Devay a student at Wittenberg ; influenced by Melanchthon. 1533. Translation of S. Paul's Epistles ; and, shortly, of New Testament. 1541. Devay, after a journey to Basel, begins to pro- pagate Swiss views on the Eucharist. 1547. Ferdinand demands a Confession. 1549. Confessio Pentapolitana, of the Five Cities of Upper Hungary ; Lutheran. 1557. Confessio Czengerina [Niemeyer, 542] of the Magyar majority ; Reformed. 1567. Synod of Debreczin. The Reformed adopt Second Helvetic Confession. Protestant dis- sensions. The Jesuits recover Hungary to Catholicism. IX. In Spain and Italy, Protestantism, once widely diffused, was rooted out, in Spain by Philip ir. and the national Inquisi- tion ; in Italy, by the Roman Inquisition set up in 1542, B. Of Calvinism. I. France. 1498-1515. Louis xii. Intercourse with Italy. 1512. Jacques Lef^vre of Etaples (Faber Stapulensis, 1455- 1536), a humanist, in a commentary on S. Paul attacks merit, and makes Scripture the sole authority. Early reforms thus humanist and Lutheranising. 1515-47. Francis i. A humanist, but with ' Un roi, une foi, une loi ' for a motto. 136 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION 1521. Lef^vre and his friends denounced by the Sorbonne as Lutherans. 1523. Persecutions begin. The Sorbonne, the Parliament, and the Queen-mother resist reform. 1529-35. Francis, under the influence of his sister Margaret, Queen of Navarre (1527-49), checks persecution ; but, alarmed by excesses of anabaptists at Munster, 1535. Revokes edict of Coucy. Persecution renewed. Flight of Calvin. 1540-45. Massacre of the Vaudois. Decline of Lutheranism. 1547-59. Henry ii. Crown hostile : protestants Reformed, not Lutheran. 1555. The 'Christaudins,' or 'Faithful' of Paris, adopt the communal ecclesiastical government of Geneva. So elsewhere. 1558. Estimated at 400,000 ; and some 2150 congregations. 1559. Oonfessio Gallicana [Niemeyer, 311] and a book of discipline : both Calvinistic : Congregation the unit : ' conaistoire ' of ministers and elders : ' synode pro- vinciale ' : ' synode nationale.' c 1560. The Huguenots, with common funds, confession, and ministry, are thus a powerful and aggressive cor- poration. 1562-98. The "Wars of Religion, i ending with Edict of Nantes, and toleration for Huguenot minority. II. The Netherlands. Reform took three stages. Lutheran, Revolutionary, Calvinist. (i) Lutheran. 1519. East Friesland converted to Lutheran opinions by 1528. 1520, Feb. Lutheranism condemned by the Univer- sity of Louvain. Latomus' controversy with Luther. 1520, March-] 550. Nine repressive edicts. 1523, July 1. Two Augustinians burnt in Brussels, for Lutheranism. 1550. The Inquisition. Waning of Lutheranism before (ii) Sacramentaries and Anabaptists. 1521. Cornelius Hoen, an advocate, De eucharistia. The first to allege 'est=significat.' Rejected in Wittenberg : adopted in Zurich. These tenets were spread in the south by William Tyndale (burnt 1536), by John k Lasco in East Friesland (1543-48). 1 See Armstrong, The French Wars of Religion, invaluable for the study of French protestantism. APPENDIX 137 c 1535. Anabaptists in Friesland, Holland, and Bra- bant : whence recruits for the Kingdom of Zion in Mtinster. (iii) Calvinism. Oct. 1555. Accession of Philip ii. 1559. Margaret of Parma Regent, with Granvella for her minister. 1561. Increase of bishoprics from 4 to 17, with Gran- vella Archbishop of Mechlin. Resentment of nobles and people at this and at the edicts. 1562. Confessio Belgica [Niemeyer, 360] Calvinistic, with special condemnation of Anabaptists, to disarm the hostility of the Government. « 1566. Adopted in synod at Antwerp. Rebellion began. 1573. Church organisation after the Genevan model. 1579. The seven northern provinces withdraw. The United Netherlands (1609) strongly Calvinist. 1578-92. The Duke of Parma recovers the ten south- ern provinces. ' In every town as it was conquered, the Jesuits were settled . . . they transformed Belgium, which had pre- viously been half-protestant, into one of the most decidedly [Roman] Catholic countries in the world ' [Ranke, Popes, i. 475]. III. Scotland. See "Wakcman and PuUan, The Beformation in Great Britain, c. vi., and note (i) 1560. Destruction of the old order by Acts of the Scottish Parliament, abolishing the papal jurisdiction and the Mass, 24 Aug. [Text in Rait, Mary Queen of Scots, p. 9]. (ii) 1560-92. The new institutions set up by — 1560. Confessio Scoticana [Niemeyer, 340 ; Mitchell, The Scottish Reformation, c. vi.]. 1560. The First Book of Discipline [Mitchell, c. viii.], Church Government. 1564. The Book of Common Order [Mitchell, c. v.], Worship. 1569. The Order of Excommvmication and Public Me- pentance. 1578. The Second Book of Discipline [Mitchell, c, x.]. 1581. The Negative Confession of Faith [Niemeyer, 357]. 1592. Parliament sanctions Calvinistic Presbyterianism thus established. 1646. The Westminster Confession and the Shorter Catechism [see texts in Clark's Handbooks for Bible-Classes], INDEX Abuses, 34, Adiaphoristic controversy, 68. Adrian VI., Pope, 34 f. Albert, Archbishop of Mainz, 15, 19, 40. Duke of Prussia, 40, 47. of Culmbach, 65, 70, Aleander, 26 f, 29. Amsdorf, 5, 46. Anabaptists, 32, 52, 61, 80, 102. Anhalt, 40, 59, 61, 128. Antinomianism, 50, 117. Antiquity, the appeal to, 108 ff, 123. Apologia Confessionis, 57. Apostolicalsuccession,ii8, 123; re- jection of, by foreign reformers, 47. 79 ; retention of, by English reformers, 109. Aristotle, 8 f. Articles, Schmalkald, 46, 61 ; Marburg, 54 ; Scliwabach, 54 f; Torgau, 54 f ; the Sixty- seren, 78 ; the Thirty-nine, 108, no. Augsburg, 19, 40, 65, 130 ; diets of (1518) 19, (1530) 54, (1547) 68, (1555) 70; Interim of, 66 f ; Peace of, 70 f. Augustine, Saint, 15. 188 Augustinians, 2, 4, 7, 29 ff, 127. Austria, 62. Barbarossa, Khaireddin, 61. Barcelona, Peace of, 52. Basel, II, 83. Bavaria, 36, 47, 62, 65, 130. Bern, 82. 'Bible only," 33, 77, in f, 120, 126. Bohemia, 39, 134. Brandenburg-Ansbach, 61, 129. Brandenburg, Electoral, 62, 67, 129 f. Brenz, (yj. Brethren of the Common Life, i, II. Brunswick, 40, 59, 62, 65, 128. Bugenhagen, 31, 47, 130. Bullinger, 85, 103. Butzer, 53, 62, 67, 96, 130. Cajetan, 19 f. Calvin, 87 ff ; theology of, 107 ff. Calvinism, spread of, 135 ff. Cambray, Peace of, 52. Campeggio, 35 f, 55. Cappel, battle of, 85. Carlstadt, 5, 20, 30 ff, 38. INDEX 139 Catechisms : Luther's Greater, 49 ; Short, 49 ; the Anglican, 49 ; Westminster Shorter, 49, IOC ; Calvin's, 94 ; Genevensis, 99 ; Nowell's, 99 ; Heidelberg, 99 ; Racovian, 113. Centum gravamina, 35. Charles v., 21, 26 ff, 34, 39 f, 51 f, 54. 56. 59 f. 63, 68 f, 70. in,, Duke of Savoy, 89. Church, authority of the, no ; doctrine of the, 97, 118, 123; and State, 47 f, 102, 121. Clement vi., 18 f. VII., 35, 39, 51 f, 59 f. Clergy, marriage of the, 30, 33, 67. Cognac, league of, 39. Communion in one or both kinds, 34. 67. Conferences, 61 f. Confession, private, 18, 29, 33. Confessions, Lutheran, Augs- burg, 55, 109 ff; Apologia Con- fessionis, 57; Variata, 119; Saxonica, 68 ; Virtembergensis, 68; Formula Concordiae, iioff; Butzer's Confessio Tetrapoli- tana,55 ; Zwinglian, Fidei Ratio, 55, 121; Bernensis, 82; Basi- liensis i. and ii., 85 ; Expositio, 85 ; Calvinistic, Confession de la Foi, 94 ; Consensus Tigu- rinus, 86, 104; Consensus Genevensis, 103 ; Scoticana, 123, 137 ; Second Helvetic, 104, 109 ff; Westminster, 112 ff; Czengerina, 135 ; Gallicana, 136 ; Belgica, 137. Confutatio Pontificia , 56. Congregationalism, 45 f, 79 f. Consubstantiation, 119. Contarini, 62. Council, project of, 28, 35 f, 40, 56, 59 ff; of Trent, 68 f. Councils, authority of, 20 f, 22, 27. Crespy, Peace of, 63. Denmark, 31, 131. Diet, constitution of German, 35 ; of Swiss, 73. Discipline, the Calvinistic, 94, loi f, 104, 137. EcK, 20 f, 23, 56, 62, 84. Education, Luther's provision for, 48. English Reformation, 106 ff. Episcopacy, Luther's rejection of, 47- Episcopal jurisdiction, rejection of, by Zurich, 79 ; by Geneva, 90. Epistolae obscurorum virorum, 13- Erasmus, 12 f, 36 f, 83. Erfurt, 2, 7, 13. Eucharist, the Holy, 53, 117, 121, 136- Farel, 83, 87 ff, 93 ff. Ferdinand of Austria, 34, 36, 39, 56, 58 f, 60, 84, 134 f. Flacius Illyricus, 67. Forest Cantons, 71 f, 84. France, 135 f. Francis i., 21, 39, 52, 60, 63, 135. Frankfurt on Main, 11, 61, 130. Frederick, Elector Palatine, 63, 65, 129. Elector of Saxony, 4, 19 f, 26, 31, 36, 38. 140 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION Frederick i. of Denmark, 40, 131, Freewill, 37, 118. Freiburg im Breisgau, 11. Canton of, 73, 84, 89 f. Friars, 127. Fugger, 15. George, Duke of Saxony, 40, 62, 129. Geneva, constitution of, 88. German Mass and Order of Divine Service, 44, 127. Grace, 9 f , 115 f. Granvella, 61 f, Gustavus Vasa, 40, 132. Hagenau, 62. Haller, 82. Hamburg, 61, 129. Hapsburg, House of, 21, 27, 34, 40, 56, 58 f, 63, 66, 69, 71. Hausmann, 43. Heidelberg, 11, 40. Henry, Duke of Saxony, 62, 65. VIII. of England, 23, 39, II. of France, 69. Hermann, Archbishop, 62 f, 65 f. Hesse, 46, 127. Holstein, 128, 131. Homberg, synod of, 46, 127. Hugo, Bishop of Constance, 74 ff. Humanists, 24, 36 f. Hungary, 134 f. Hutten, Ulrich von, 13, 25. Hymnody, 43, loi. Iceland, 132. Iconoclasm, 78 f, 82 f, 87 f, 120. Imperial Cities, 129. Indulgences, 14 ff, 75 ; theory of, 17 f. Infant Baptism, 81, 118. Ingolstadt, 11, 20. Inquisition, 12. Institutio Christiana Religionis, 92 f, 97 ff, no ff. Joachim i.. Elector of Branden- burg, 15, 40, 62, 129. II. Elector, 62, 129. John, Elector of Saxony, 6, 40, 54- Frederick, Elector, 6, 63, 6s f, 69 f. of Ciistrin, 62, 65, 129. Julius II., Pope, 15. III., Pope, 68. Justification, 8, 11, 20, 115 ff. Justus Jonas, 31, 130. Knights' War, 35, 38. Laity, priesthood of the, 22 f, 112 f. Lambert, 46, 77. Lauffen, battle of, 60. Lausanne, 88. Leipzig, 20, 23, 62, 118 ; Interim of, 67. Leo X., Pope, 12, 15, 19, 23, 27, 34 f- Livland, 133 f. Lord's Supper, the, 80, 95, 100. Luther, life of, 1-65, passim ; theology of, 21-3, 109 ff. 'Lutheran,' the name, 28, 71. Madrid, Treaty of, 39. Magdeburg, i, 15, 40, 57, 59, 69, 130. Marburg, Conference of, 53, 82. Margaret, Queen of Navarre, 92, I3S- INDEX 141 Mass, Canon of, 34, 78 ; Sacrifice of, 23, 31, 43, 82, loi, 117; Private Masses, 29, 33. Maurice, Elector of Saxony, 65, 69. Maximilian, 4, 12, 21. Mecklenburg, 128. Melanchthon, 7, 24 f, 31, 33, 40, 5° fi S3. 56 f, 62, 67 f, 116, 118 f. Merits, Treasury of, 18. Ministry, Luther's reorganisation of, 45 ; Calvin's, 98 ; doctrine of, 23, 118. Mohacz, battle of, 39. Miihlberg, battle of, 66. Miinster, Siege of, 61. Miinzer, 32. Myconius, Oswald, 76, 85, Mystics, 10. Nassau, 61. Netherlands, the, 136. Neuchitel, 87. Nice, Pacification of, 61. Norway, 132. Nurnberg, 7, 34, 40, 55, 61 ; Peace of, 59. CECOLAMPADIUS, 53, 83 f. Olivetan, 88, 91. Ordonnances eccldsiastiques de Genive, 97 ff. Palatinate, the, 63, 129. Passau, Convention of, 69. Paul HI., Pope, 60, 66. Paul IV., Pope, 70. Pavia, battle of, 39, Peasants' War, the, 32, 38. Persecution, duty of, 104, 121. Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, 40, S3. 60, 65 f, 69, 82. Poland, 133 f. Pomerania, 31, 61, 128. Predestination and Reprobation, 103, 122 ff. Presbyterianism, 46, 98, 113, 137. ' Protestant,' the name, 53, 71. Prussia, Eastern, 130; Western, 133- Purgatory, doctrine of, 16 ff. Puritanism, 46, 105, 123. Psalmody, loi. Radicals, 30 ff. Rationalism, 119 f. Real Presence, 53, 118 f. Real Absence, 53, 121. ' Recess,' meaning of, 35. Reformation, principles of, 20, 22 f, 125 f ; difference of English and foreign, 106 ff ; of Saxon and Swiss, 33, 113 ff. ' Reformed,' meaning of, 71. Regensburg (Ratisbon), league of, 36, 40 ; diet of, 59, 62 ; confer- ences of, 62, 64, 130. Ren6e, Duchess of Ferrara, 93. Reuchlin, 12 f, 24. Sacerdotalism, the true, 112. Sacraments, doctrine of, 23, 96, 118, 121, 123. Sacramentaries, 54, 136. Saxony, Electoral, 127 ; Visitation of, 49 ff. Ducal, 129. Schmalkald, League of, 57 ff. Schmalkaldic War, 63 ff. Schnepf, 67. Schoolmen, 6, 24. Scotland, 137. 142 THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION Scripture, translation of, 30, 75, 88 ; interpretation of, 7, 112 f, 119 f; sufficiency of, 11, 27, 109 ff, 125 ; authority of, 114. Servetus, 104. Sickingen, 25. Socinians, 113, 123. Spalatin, 6. Speyer, 36 ; Diet and Recess (1526) of, 40 f, 52 ; Diet and Protest of, 51 f ; Diet (1544) of, 64. Staupitz, 3, 6. Strassburg, 40, 53, 55, 65, 130. Sweden, 132 f, Tetzel, 16, 18 f. Teutonic Knights, 40, 130. Theologia Germanica, 10 f. Thomas k Kempis, S., ii. Thomas Aquinas, S. ,' 9, 77. Toleration, 126. Torgau, League of, 40. Transylvania, 40, 134. Tradition, 64, 109 ff. Trent, Council of, 36, 64, 66, 68 f, no. Tubingen, 11, 60, 129. Turk, the, 39 f, 50, 52 f, 56, 59, 64, Ulm, 40, 130. Ulrich, Duke of Wiirtemberg, 60, 65. Universities, 11, 127 ff. Utraquists, 45, 134. Vestments, the Eucharistic, 32, 43- Viret, 88. Virtual Presence, 121 f. Waldenses, 88. Wittenberg, 4 f , 11, 24, 30 ff, 43, 48. Worms, Diet of (1521), 26 ff; (1545), 64 ; Edict of, 28, 36, 40 f, 52, 64 ; Conference of, 62. Worship, Lutheran, 42 ff, Zwin- glian, 80, Calvinistic, 99 ff. Wiirtemberg, 60, 128 f. Zapolya, 40. Zurich, 53, 72 ff, 76 ff. Zwickau, prophets of, 32. Zwilling, 30, 34. Zwingli, 53, 55 ; life and work of, 74 ff ; theology of, 120 f. ^Xfoxi) Ct)urct) Cert Boofes Small Fcap. 8vo. is. each, net. Genera/ Editor, The Rev. LEIGHTON PULLAN, M.A., Fellow of St. Johiis College, and Lecturer in Theo- logy at St. /o/in's, Oriel, and Queen's Colleges, Oxford. A Comprehensive Series of Cheap and Scholarly Manuals dealing with the more important branches of Religious Knowledge. The Reformation on the Continent. The Rev. B. J. Kidd, B.D., Keble College, Tutor of Non-Collegiate Students, Oxford. History of the Church to A.D. 325. 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