2 MARCH 1861, Page 22

REFORMATION OF Tilk. SIX..I.EENTH CENTURY.* Mentz D'Aulacarks History of Me

Reformation of the Sizteenth Century has been too long before the world to require any elaborate report. Moreover, it is not with the original work that we have to deal, but with a translated digest of it; of which we need only say that it &suns to be fairly done, and reads pleasantly and idiomatically enough. In drawing up this epitome, Mr. Gill has endeavoured both to brig out the facts of the Reformation, and to incorporate with the uap:ativethe substance of D'Aubignes remarks and illustrations. Thus, in addition to a sort of running commentary, we find some of the lead- ing -events of the great Protestant revolution recorded, and many of the principal actors in it portrayed, in the picturesque, vivid, and informing pages ot this useful condensation. An exhaustive account of the Reformation, however, will not be found in it any more than in.the original history from which it is taken. The reader will seek in vain among its chapters for any narrative of the national move- ment in England under Henry VIII., or of the religious reform in Scotland presided over by John Knox. Even the story of the great hero of the Genevese Independence is untold in this volume. It closes with an anticipation of the glorious career awaiting the Gospel, in an ancient city situated in a broad and extensive valley "on the borders of Lake Leman, where the Rhone, pure and blue as heaven, rolls forth its sparkling waters ;" and announcing that "God was about to make Geneva—the scene of Calvin's labours—a beacon of the Church, and a bulwark of Christianity," it leaves as in an ex- pectant mood, and with a feeling of disappointment. Our objection to M. D'Aubigies view of the Reformation is its philosophical incompleteness. By men educated in the schoolroom of formularies, accustomed to wear the strait-waistcoat of what they consider orthodox opinion, and to think in a ready-made groove of punctual, trim, and safe theory, no such incompleteness as we detect will be acknowledged. Their interpretation of Protestantism is more or less in unison with that of D'Aubigne. They neither rightly under- stand the origin and progress of that momentous event which we call the Protestant Reformation, nor do they rightly comprehend the good or the evil in the institutions secular and spiritual of the middle ages. M. D'Aubigne himself distinguishes, it is true, between the history of Protestantism and the history of the Reformation ; but we are by no means convinced that this distinction implies any philosophical appreciation of the subject. At any rate he wishes to restrict its consideration within certain limits, to examine it through a dogmatic telescope, and describe it, as it appeared to his vision, after its passage through a by no means colourless medium. We are bound, however, to say that the precise significance of the dis- tinction is not clear to us ; and if by the history of Protestantism, M. D'Aubigne means what we mean by the history of the Protestant Reformation, he has fairly forewarned us not to expect a philosophical treatment of his great argument, and in this case we have no right to complain. We incline to think that this is what lie really did mean. We incline to believe that he wished to survey the revolution that awakened the sixteenth centery into terrific energy, from a merely pulpit point of view. So understood, his work is not ill done. The preacher supersedes the philosopher; and since he proclaims his intention of doing so, he tells us what we are to look for in his predications, and if we look for something that he never intended to be there, the fault surely lies with ourselves.

In the second chapter of Mr. Gill's Digest we are told "that for ages a universal cry had been callingfor reform in thc Church, and every human power had attempted it. But God alone was able to effect it." There is truth in this proposition, but it is much too vague; and as we might expect, the author goes off into the resist- ance of the Hohenstaufen princes to the Papacy, and to the anta- gonist proclamation of certain dogmas (not, however, without mean- nig)_14 the Mystics and Waldenses. That the spiritual system of the Middle Ages was imperfect and oppressive, is not for a moment to be doubted; but that it was the only system appropriate to the wants and capacities of men, the only system that could countervail the tyranny and brutality inherent in the barbarous "nationalities" and illiterate and often ferocious feudalism of those times, is also as little to be doubted. The old Catholicism, in truth, disci- plined, educated, and developed the west of Europe. It was one of the great phases of European faith ; it was one of the forms of European life ; it was one of the moulds of European speculation. But it was the product of periods necessarily imperfect; and as such was destined to pass away before a nobler faith, a purer life, a bolder speculation. When Catholicism, to use a cant phrase of the day, had completed its mission, it began to decline. In the fourteenth century the power of the popes was the object of kingly aggression. The attempt of Boniface nil. to establish an absolute dominion, at the very moment when, as a great thinker has remarked, Catholicism had shown itself incompetent to direct the intellectual movement, resulted in the strong reaction of Philippe-le-Bel. The Reform

• The History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century. By the Rev. J. H. Merle D'Aubigne, D.D. Abridged and Translated by the Rev. John Gill. Roatledge, Warne, and Rontledge. movement began, in Italy, with Petrarch and Dante, a fact to which D'Aubigne nghtly directs our attention. In England, about the middle of the fourteenth century, Wycliffe appealed against the Pope, and we know something of the depth and breadth of that appeal. The revival of letters was a splendid preliminary of the Reformation ; and the scientific tendencies of the human mind were already obscurely felt and dimly recognized. The Reformation, then, was a consequence of the general social advancement. Catholicism, on the one hand, had abdicated its functions and was found wanting; and Protestantism, on the other, became the more or less imperfect expression of the new wants, feelings, and powers which the pro- gress of mankind had called into active and. energetic existence.

We are far from saying that the old Reformers aimed only at nega- tions. To reconstitute was, no doubt, their object, as a sort of pro- visional reconstitution has been the result of their efforts. But Pro- testantism was, from one point of view, what its name implies, and what it has been truly called; "a methodical protest against the in- tellectual bases of the old social order." It protested against the power of the popes, under the kings; it protested, later, against national subjugation to the See of Rome; it protested against the hierarchy, against the sacramental system, and, in its ultimate and extreme phase, against the dogmatic system. Protestantism was a revolt of the human mind, perfectly justifiable—a revolution, which was expressed in certain formularies, east into the moulds of Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anglicanism, and even Puritanism, but which was something more comprehensive, if less definite, than them all.

For Protestantism in its tendencies and its results, is not to be gauged and measured by Protestant opinions so called. Protes- tantism means pre-eminently mental emancipation—freedom of intel- lect and freedom of conscience. Within certain narrow limits, too, it meant this with the Reformers of the sixteenth century. It up- held liberty of thought as against the Pope; it proclaimed freedom of conscience as against Rome; but there it stopped. When Calvin burned Servetns, the collective Protestantism of his day approved. Even Cranmer was ready with his bill of pains and penalties against heresy, the stake included. . Toleration of dogma that was not their dogma was omitted from the programme of the early Reformers. But they were among the men who " builded greater than they knew." They familiarized the mind, with the sentiment and doctrine of private judgment, in however mutilated a form; they conquered our birthright for us, though they refused to put us in entire posses- sion of it ; they entered into the castle of the giant, and bound him, and manacled, his satellites; and if they left the castle standing and the inmates plotting, they have, at least, shown us how we may com- plete the work which they so gloriously commenced. But the Reformation implies more than the assertion of human, liberty. It has its moral as well as its intellectual aspect. If the want of freedom was a paramount want of the sixteenth century, the want of moral purification was also profoundly felt. In this sense Protestantism was a return of the heart as well as of the head "to Truth and Reality in opposition to Falsehood and Semblance :" it was not only a protest against a manufactured salvation, but it was a demand for spiritual growth and improvemeet. We must not allow. this impulse towards a sincere and genuine goodness to be disguised under any Lutheran or Calvinistic symbol whatever. Justification by faith is susceptible of a large and noble interpretation, but if we harden it into dogma we shall scarcely see what was one great aim of the Protestant Reformation—the life of Truthfulness, Justice,. and Reality, which it demanded. D'Aubigne not inappropriately calls John Huss the Bohemian martyr, the John the Baptist of the Re- formation, as foreseeing and preparing this majestic crisis. Yet it was the scandalous vices of the clergy rather than the errors of the Church that he attacked. When Tetzel sold salvation by a sort of publie auction, Luther was horror-struck. The people who came to confess to him showed him their letters of indulgence, and told him they did not choose to abandon their sins. The pious monk replied that he cared nothing for their bits of paper, and declared that, as they would not promise to change their conduct, he would not give them absolu- tion. It was thus with Calvin, with Knox, and with Cromwell. To make men free (though not without restrictions), was only one end with the Reformers; to make men true, upright, sincere, to establish a divine kingdom upon earth, and to teach loyalty to what is highest and holiest, was a second end. That they often sought to. accom- plish this purpose in a narrow spirit and by tyrannical interference is undeniable. But perhaps the times admitted only of this mode of reformation. Religions compression, though in itself not desirable, is yet, in some instances, intelligible and venial; and if a.higher con- viction and a finer sense of personal duty and greater capacity of self- control enable us to dispense with the drill-sergeants of religion, we may rejoice to have outgrown their necessity, and yet recognize the value of the work done by the illustrious founders of the Reforma- tion.

The opinions now expressed will seem wanting to some minds in what is called the spiritual element. This element they will find in Mr. Gill's readable digest of the French Evangelical's history. We have endeavoured to state our impression of the general or human significance of the great revolution of the sixteenth century. Its particular or dogmatic significance is brought out, in some degree at any rate, in the volume under review. Regarding this history of the Reformation as only a partially completed work, we have, perhaps, no right to criticize it for its want of completeness. Still, as it now stands, it is only a fragment of a history, and not a. history itself. The history of Protestantism should hardly terminate before the era of the Westphalian compromise. Two centuries have elapsed since that transaction.

. Within forty, years after its origie, Protestantism, it has been observed, acquired its greatest European extension and then retreated. What was the cause of this retreat? Why has Catholicism succeeded in. making head.. against it, since the period of its first recession? What, if any, are the future conquests of Protestantism ? and, above all, what will be the final form of the great mental revolution which doctrinal Protestantism inaugurated, but which, under none of its present modifications, it shows itself very competent to direct? Will the Church of, England preside over the religious life of the future; or will Dissent increase in our own country, till the National Esta- blishment become avowedly the church of the minority? Will there be a new Protestantism in Italy, or a transformed Catholicism? These are questions which reflective men must sometimes ask them- selves. Mere is the oracle that shall reply to the interrogators ?