The French revolution and religious reform :

Front matter

PRINCETON . NEW JERSEY PRESENTED BY

The Aut±ior October 26, 1901

DC 158.2 ,S63 1901 Sloane, William Milligan,

Chapter I

Split in the European state system. Rise of the revolutionary spirit, 3. Relations of the churches. The contract theory of government, 4. The class of professional writers. Influence of Voltaire and Rousseau, 5. The Physiocrats. Their ideals and sanctions, 6. Respective convictions of the social classes in France. L Infdme of Voltaire, 7. Meaning of the word. Loss of the historic sense, 8. Ecclesiastical organizations in France. Religion positive and negative, 9. Relations of the French monarchy and the popedom. Influence of the Jesuits, 10. The theory of Jansenism. The Jesuits and the Reformation, 11. The Jesuits and the popedom. Jansen's "Augustinus," 12. The Bull " Unigenitus." The power of Jansenism in French life, 13. Attitude of the French masses toward the hierarchy. Struggle of the parlements, 14. Relation of the parleynents to the people. The clergy demand the assembling of the Estates, 15. grandes remontmnces^ 16.

Chapter II VOLTAIRE'S INDICTMENT OF ECCLESIASTICISM

Elements of unity in France. Non-conformity a kind of treason, 19. The Bologna Concordat of 1516. Fall of the Jesuit order, 20. Papal control of the French episcopate. Disrepute of Jansenism, 21. Tem|)orary di.>- grace of the parlements. The privilege of a corrupt church, 22. Contributions due from church estates. Malversation of charitable funds, 23. Fusion of the nobility and prelacy. The principle of beneficent use, 24. Wealth of the prelacy. Influence of the prelates at court, 25, Voltaire and the higher clergy. Persecuting spirit of the church, 26. The case xiii xiv of Calas. Sirven charged with infanticide, 27. Voltaire as a protector of the persecuted. The extermination of dissent, 28. Treatment of Catholic mischief-makers. The case of Labarre, 29. The victory of a cause. The edict of tolerance, 30. Emigration of the Protestants, 31,

Chapter III

"The infamous woman." Desire for emancipation, 35. Forms of oppression. Items of the indictment, 36. Relation of the Protestants to French life. Tlieir skill in public affairs and relation to the Revolution, 37. How they were goaded to fanaticism. The classical tendency in France, 38. The classical spirit and constitutional government. Men as automata, 39. French theory of liberty. The secular idea identical in spirit with the religious, 40. Corruption of the clergy. The affair of the diamond necklace, 41. Virtues of the lower clergy. Their relation to the prelacy and to the Revolution, 42. Jansenism and the courts. Power of the lawyer class, 43. Political theories of the revolutionary agitation. All classes supporters of monarchy, 44. Idea of a republican monarchy. Awakening of the historic spirit, 45. Stages of reform. Ignorance of the masses, 46.

Chapter IV

Attack on the Bastille an act of self-defence. The alarm of the Paris populace, 49. Broglie s mercenary army as a menace. The victory an act of faith, 50. Religious sentiments of the people. Acts of public worship, 51. Religious hope a characteristic of 1789. The Revolution as the work of God^ 52. The transition to ferocity. The reactionary temper of the prelacy, 53. It demands the abrogation of the edict of tolerance. Revolt of the Jansenists and lower clergy, 54. The cahiers of the clergy. The noble abbots of f>ance, 55. Scandals of tlie monastic establishments. The pretexts of the prelates, 56. Rise of popular authority. The populace inaugurates reform, 57. The attitude of the prelates a menace to reform. Forced enthusiasm of the Assembly, 58. The inconsistency of the burghers. Popular outcry against all clerics, 59. Contrast of social extremes. Revolution loses its religious character, 60. Internal causes of social disintegration. Attacks on property, 61. Discrepancies of the tithing system. Amount of the tithes, 62. The burdens lifted, 63.

Chapter V

Motives for abolishing feudahsm. The Assembly as a constituent body, 67. The unwritten constitution of France. The Tennis Court Oath, 68. The idea of fundamental laws. The Declaration of Rights, 69. The municipal revolution. The i^relates as anarchists, 70. The Assembly forced to outrun the Ecclesiastical Committee. How tithes were to be abolished, 71. The propositions adopted. Famine and the ecclesiastical estates, 72. Bitterness of the radical agitators. The wealth of the prelates, 73. Constitution of the Ecclesiasdcal Committee, The influential members, 74. Camus as a lawyer and scholar. His career, 75. Grc^goire as a deputy. Excellence of his character, 76. Dom Gerle as an enthusiast. Religion in the

XV

Declaration of Rights, 77. The radicals dissatisfied. The call for complete religious emancipation, 78. The black cockade at the Versailles banquet. Mob violence against all clergymen, 79. Beginning of clerical emigration. Debate on religious liberty, 80. Moderation of the Ecclesiastical Committee, 81.

Chapter VI SEIZURE AND SALE OF ECCLESIASTICAL ESTATES

Nature of church property. Voluntary contribution of church silver, 85. Dupont's inventory of ecclesiastical indebtedness. The heritage and the heir, 86. Contrast of popular misery and prelatic luxury. Maladministration of public charities, 87. The king requested to confiscate charitable funds. Abuses in the hospitals and prisons, 88. The Bishop of Autun as a financier. All church property to be treated as the tithes had been, 89. Power of the mob. The academic debates on the nature of property, 90. Mirabeau advocates confiscation. Retort of Maury and counterplea of Camus, 91. Common sense and juristic dialectic. Malouet as a conciliator, 92. Intervention of the mob. " Church property at the disposal of the nation," 93. History of the idea. Salaries provided for the pnests and prelates, 94. Urgency for action. Exasperation of the higher clergy and the radicals, 95. The fatal errors of the Assembly. Contrast between dealings with monarchy and ecclesiastics, 96. The double attack on French society, 97.

Chapter VII PRELUDE TO THE CIVIL CONSTITUTION OF THE CLERGY

Dom Gerle as a dramatic element. The rise of democracy, loi. The higher clergy refuse reform. The lower clergy accept it but suffer, 102. They reject the new definition of property. Treilhard presents report of Ecclesiastical Committee, 103. Protest from the Bishop of Clermont. Report adopted and sale of ecclesiastical domains begun, 104. Monasticism attacked. New attitude of the Assembly toward Protestants, 105. The status of Roman Catholicism discussed. The motion of Dom Gerle, 106. The question formulated. Mirabeau desires Roman Catholicism to be a national religion, 107. He is hooted down. The substitute for Gerle's motion, 108. Protest of the prelates. Church domains seized and sold, 109. The Assembly's Poor Laws. Reform inaugurated, 'no. The levelling process begun. The Third Estate and the proletariat, iii. Suffrage limited to active citizens. Eligibility to office, 112. The plan impossible. Paris overthrows the plan, 113. Recapitulation of Protestant history. The revival under Antoine Court, 114. Edict of 1724. Organization of worship, 115. The Protestants emancipated. Treatment of the Jews, 116. Final dispositions as to Jews. The non-Catholic elements of French population, 117. The new idea of equality, 118.

Chapter VIII THE CIVIL CONSTITUTION OF THE CLERGY

Confusion in the popular mind as to aristocracy. The notion of representation. 121. English and American precedents. French idea of church establishment, 122. Limitations of popular sovereignty. Selden and Camus, xvi

123. Religious habits of France. Rousseau's concept of absolute sovereignty, 124. Confusion of ecclesiastical and secular powers. Imminence of civil war, 125. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy an effort at reform. The plea of the ecclesiastics, 126. Attitude of the Constitution toward the Pope. Popular choice of pastors and their ordination, 127. The outline of the Constitution. Choice of pastors by ballot, 128. The metropolitan bishop as the source of spiritual mission. The Pope as an expression of church unity, 129. Relation of the Constitution to the theories of the age. Hesitation of Pius VI, 130. The king's dilemma. Resistance of the prelacy, 131. Robespierre's idea of priests as civil servants. Remnants of mediaevalism, 132. Growing opposition of the clericals. Outbreak of civil war, 133. Former theory of the relations between kingship and the church. Change in the episcopate, 134. Pastoral letters of the ultramontanes. All refractory priests rebels, 135. The oath of allegiance, 136.

Chapter IX

Reform verges to revolution. Division of opinion among the canonists, 139. The king's attitude. He signs the Constitution with apparent sincerity, 140. The oath of allegiance required from officiating priests. Demand that it be obligatory on all priests, 141. The clerical members of the Assembly withdraw. They are supported by a majority of the laity, 142. Mirabeau attacks the clergy. The organization of the Constitutional Church, 143. Deplorable results. Silence of the Vatican and the king's duplicity, 144. False position of both parties. Character of the new clergy, 145. Renewed rioting. The king turned back from St. Cloud, 146. Lafayette and the non-jurors. Rise of democracy, 147. Leaders of the democrats. The word "republic," 148. Classes of democrats. Louis XVI apparently yields, 149. The Constitutional mass at St. Germain I'Auxerrois. The Pope's Rhone counties, 150. He condemns the Constitution and the Revolution. Pronounces the former heretical, 151. Double-dealing of the Constitutionals. Resultant outrages, 152. Divergent course of Constitutional bishops. Death of Mirabeau, 153. The party of the "patriots." Disasters incident to the king's flight, 154.

Chapter X

The road to chaos. Final steps, 158. Jesuitry of the king. His plan thwarted, 158. The king's motives. His arraignment of the Civil Constitution, 159. Lafayette and religious liberty. The oath to the two " constitutions," 160. The disorders of 1791 due to the "patriot" party. Nature of the rioting, 161. Reports on the subject. Behavior of the Consdtutional bishops, 162. Mob rule in Paris. Degeneracy of the Legislative, 163. The clerical oath a source of evil. Violence of the refractory clergy, 164. They are styled aristocrats. Renewed ecclesiastical legislation, 165. The refractory clergy denounced as traitors. Efforts at conciliation, 166. Violence of the non-jurors. Call for complete disestab- Ushment of religion, 167. Increase of scepticism. Idea of a national religion, 168. The public festivals of France. The classical spirit, 169. Talleyrand's plea for national festivals. Mirabeau and Cabanis, 170. Mass celebrated in 1790 at the Festival of Federation. The " altar of the xvii countr>'," 171. Beginning of atheistic festivals. Voltaire's remains to be placed in the Pantheon, 172. Vain protests against the decree. Triumph of the secularizers, 173. The new saint. Arrival of the procession in Paris, 174. Enthusiasm of the mob. Secular canonization, 175. Deification of Reason, 176.

Chapter XI

State of the monasteries, 179. Strengthened by the law of 1790, A new attack, 180. The theory of public safety. The king alienates the legislature, 181. The Girondists at the helm. Rise of the war spirit, 182. Duplicity of the king. Suspicion aroused, 183. Confusion of secular and religious duty. 1 he Avignon massacres, 184. No tolerance for the refractory clergy. The king vetoes the decree, 185. Identification of all priests as traitors. Religion as treason, 186. Climax of riot and disorder. The Constitutionals take a fatal step, 187. The country declared to be in danger. The desire for anarchy, 188. Analogy with the English revolution of 1688, 189. No present hope for religious liberty. The Revolution as a movement against religion, igo. Defiance of European opinion. The convents closed and estates confiscated, 191. Massacre legalized. The battle of Valmy, 192. The Convention attacks all religion. The new oath of allegiance, 193. Indecision of the Pope. Proscription of the clergy, 194. Clerical marriages prescribed. The swift descent to irreligion, ig'$. Energy of the radicals. Confusion of public opinion, 196. The notorious apostacy of 1793. Gr^goire stems the tide, 197. The Festival of Reason, 198. The Festival of the Supreme Being, 199. Attacks on Robespierre, 200.

Chapter XII A GLIMPSE OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

All Christians temporarily united against atheism, 203. The horrors of deportation. The emigration of the clerg>', 204. The new conformists. Ministrations during the Terror, 205. Behavior of the absentees. A faithful Constitutional, 206. Gr^goire's speech on liberty of worship. The French fury, 207. Robespierre's fall, 208. The Thermidorians as persecutors. Triumph of moderation in Paris, 209. Grdgoire's famous plea delivered. Effect of his pastoral, 210. Rehgious liberty decreed. Feeling of relief, 211. Police supervision of worship. No cessation of persecution, 212. Salaries and pensions of clerics. The secular cult in preparation, 213. Disestablishment of the Constitutionals. Their organization perpetuated, 214. Celebration of the Decadis. The concept of Theophilanthropy, 215. Churches reopened. A new stumbling-block, 216. Compromise considered. The royalist folly, 217. Reaction of the Convention. The clericals dismayed, 218. The Day of the Sections, 219. The Directory favors persecution. The church bell as a party cry, 220. Revival of royalism, 221.

Chapter XIII

France and the new system of public law in Europe, 225. Weakness of the Directory. The V/hite Terror, 226. Its significance. Political power dependent on the army, 227. Failure of French armies. New arrangement xviii of French society, 228. No religious liberty under the Directory. Jordan's plea for freedom of worship, 229. Royer-Collard suggests a new concordat. The radicals again supreme, 230. The oath of hatred to royalty. Religion openly proscribed, 231. Deportation of priests. The Constitutionals again strengthened, 232. Revival and survival of religious feeling, 233. Reorganization of the Constitutional church, 234. Disintegration of French society. Meetings held on Decadis, 235. Resistance to the effort. Theophilanthropy, 236. Its supporters and festivals. The high-priest and his assistants, 237. The services and holidays, 238. Complete disorganization of Protestantism, 239. Tyranny of the Directory, 240. "King and religion" the new watchword. Bonaparte's prestige, 241. Prehminaries of the Concordat, 242.

Chapter XIV DESIGN AND FORM OF THE CONCORDAT

The Day of 18 Brumaire. The rehef of France, 245. Character of the provisional Consulate, 246. The new constitution. Religious parties of the Consulate, 247. Their relations to each other, 248. The Freethinkers. Design of Bonaparte, 249. The First Consul's alternatives, 249. Views concerning the Concordat, 250. Defects of criticism. Views of the Orthodox Catholics, 251. The Casuists. The system of tolerance, 252. Ministers of religion as state functionaries. Ideal of the Revolution. Bonaparte's aim, 253. The Concordat as a compromise, 254. Religious opinions of Bonaparte, 255. His ecclesiastical diplomacy, 256. Terms proposed to Pius VII. Change in the episcopate, 257. Reasons for the change. Negotiations begun, 258. Attitude of the Constitutionals. Disposition of the church estates, 259. The reconstruction of the episcopate, 260. Conduct of Pius VII, 261. Strength of the First Consul, 262. The final draft of the Concordat, 263.

Chapter XV ENFORCEMENT OF THE CONCORDAT

The power of France. The weakness of the papacy, 267. The Council of the Constitutionals, 268. Wiles of the Papal negotiators. The state of public opinion in France, 269. The Consular court. Dispersal of radical forces, 270. Protests against the Concordat. Consalvi's charge of duplicity, 271. Negotiations broken and renewed, 272. The crucial article accepted, 273. The Concordat proclaimed. Schism of the "Little Church," 274. Organization of the new system. The Organic Articles, 275. Despotic elements of the latter, 276. Dissenters under the Concordat, 277. Importance of the new measures in France and elsewhere, 278. Changes in the other Catholic lands, 279. Modifications in France under Napoleon, 280. Effects of the Concordat in contemporary France, 281.

Vergil's Eclogues, i. 28.

IN less than a single generation of mankind the French people were transformed ; comparing the close of the eighteenth century with the opening of the nineteenth, French society was in that short space of time almost transfigured. It was a pardonable exaggeration with which in 1795 Boissy d'Anglas exclaimed ''We have lived six centuries in six years." The French nation was alreadyold when the epoch displayed its first phase ; and, as the Latin poet has expressed his thought in a curious parallel, while sporting with its fellows in the thraldom of feudalism, its ''hair began to fall gray under the shears" before it gained its modern liberty. The Revolution, therefore, when it did come, was quite sure to be as it was, both hasty and thorough; in consequence there was no smooth transformation, but instead there were the roar and crash, the turmoil and dust of ruin. The contemporary mind, whether alert or pensive, found these outward and sensible appearances more interesting than the inner processes of construction, which were really more noteworthy. It is perhaps only now that, after the subsidence of the turbulent agitation, we can enumerate the astounding results.

xxi xxii

In the second decade of the nineteenth century the old famihar things of the eighteenth were already afar off. The names of provinces hoary with age survived, but as memories only; feudalism, still rampant in 1780, seemed in 18 10 to have been a nightmare that had vanished with the dawn; mediasvalism had been exorcised like an evil spirit ; titles of ancient nobility still tripped over men's lips, but as honorific designations merely; the real distinctions of life bore the names, not of French landed estates, but of recent battle-fields and sieges in distant countries ; the most coveted decoration was the red ribbon of honor controlled by an imperial democracy. There survived not one of the effete social habits of France ; every human interchange of relations in commerce, industry, trade, agriculture, education ; in the state, the church and the family — all were new and different from the old. It is true that the confederation of European monarchies which momentarily overwhelmed the French democracy did, a little later, hang on the walls of Paris an obsolete standard to flap there idly for a brief hour. Louis XVIII. but served by his inglorious reign to remind a fervid people of territories lost, of transitory glories, of national shame, of an antiquated absolutism revived for a time in Europe as the expression of national unity — elsewhere in reality, but at Paris as nominal and shadowy, despicable and hateful in the popular opinion of all France. Like other cast-off garments and institutions, the absolute Bourbon royalty was destined for the rubbish heap where it now reposes.

This was the radical nature and these were the permanent results of a thorough and remorseless revolution, justly enough designated French though in reality European. It burst forth in France because there it had been longest in preparation and there the xxiii crust of conservatism was thinnest,^ but its causes are remotely traceable throughout all Europe and its influences left no European land untouched. The rapidity of its course is the riddle of modern history, and of all the swift transformations which it wrought, the quick and utter disintegration of the social fabric in France is the most extraordinary. This dizzy movement has hitherto been studied from various sides, more particularly the political and fiscal. Some efforts have been put forth to examine the social history of the epoch, and a few valuable volumes have been devoted to the ecclesiastical revolution as such. But the secular effects of the shocks which gradually shattered Ultramontanism in France have not received the attention they deserve. The feudal church was the cement of French society to a higher degree than the absolute monarchy. The overthrow of the feudal church inaugurated the modern era.

The intelligent observer of that interesting philosophic toy, the gyroscopic top, is aware that its noddings, turnings and backings are due to the composition of forces that can be separated and described. Nevertheless what actually happens is not w^hat is expected. Likewise the composition of forces in history produces results which defy prediction. Revolutions in history, unlike those in physics, turn moreover on several axes simultaneously, the hidden ones being generally the more important. Not until the social history of the revolutionary epoch has been written in a period which, considering the intricacy of the subject and the boundless material to be mastered, must still be far dis-

' See the remarkable predictions of Mably. Des Droits et des Devoirs du Citoyen. Paris, 1789. The book, though written in 1758, was not published until after the author's death.

It is a brilliant examination of contemporary thought and tendencies.

xxiv tant, can our analysis be complete; but meantime the experiences of the French people in its religious life can at least be outlined. In order to understand them the threads of one certain process in history must first be caught up and re-knitted. The ecclesiastical conditions of feudal and royal Europe were basic to the entire superstructure of fiscal and administrative tyranny, which disappeared in England and America a century before it vanished entirely from French soil and partially from the rest of Western Europe.

The expansion of social institutions for the sake of fuller personal life, individual and collective, is clearly the most desirable of mere earthly things. Slavery was a marked advance beyond the butchery of captives taken in war, and serfdom is a state infinitely superior to that of slavery; the winning of civil and political liberties by man in the mass has lifted the race to a still loftier platform; when social liberty too is secured, when justice is equitably administered and human nature approaches perfection, the earthly Utopia will be at hand. But the projection of even the most admirable institution down the ages, until it becomes an anachronism, is intolerable, for it checks the transition from uniformity and simplicity to variety and complexity, which we call progress. Slavery and serfdom, though once absolutely good, are to-day abominations wherever they survive; there are likewise forms of mediaevalism equally abominable, to which men cling with fatal conservatism.

We would not be alone in thinking that the single greatest fact of secular history was the emergence of Christianity from behind the veil of persecution, not as an adjunct of the empire but as a distinct human power, with a complete, separate organization of its own. It is well-nigh absurd to speak of church and

XXV state as two in the heathen world, but in the Christian world they never were and for this reason they never can be one.^

The single, all important question throughout the Christian ages, from the day when Christianity was recognized by the state, has been the relation between two utterly distinct powers, the spiritual and the temporal, each claiming its share of control over the individual man. It is self-evident that this relation can take only one of three forms : the temporal authority may control the spiritual, the spiritual authority the temporal, or they may endeavor to run equal and parallel. In general, Byzantium represented the first of these three relations, Rome the second : the effort to establish the third is represented by the series of treaties known technically as Concordats, which mark in successive stages the failure of both the other plans. The survival in some form or other of each or all of these three ideas within Christendom is the stumbling block of contemporary life. In the nature of things we ought no longer to consider the relations of church and state; our attention should be focussed on something far different, the relations of government and religion.

The thirteenth century is justly regarded as the age at which the twin systems of feudalism and Romanism reached the culminating point of their constructive work. Thus far they had assimilated and guided the intellectual movement of Europe completely, beneficently and almost without opposition. But when Pope Boniface VIII. (1294) reasserted the temporal as well as the spiritual supremacy for St. Peter's chair, the general and embittered resistance to his claims revealed the

^ Sec the epochal book of M. Fustel dc Coulangcs, La Cite Antique.

xxvi impotence of the papacy.^ It was in vain that recourse was had to physical violence for the repression of error : spiritual control has no basis except in voluntary assent, and the change already begun was only retarded not prevented. Almost simultaneously the system of land tenure based on defensive military power, which we call feudalism, met with a similar reverse. Charles the Great, Otto the Great, and the Crusades mark the successive epochs in which European society, regardless of local or class distinctions, put forth common exertions for the common safety. One and all, these defensive wars displayed the impotence of feudalism for the organization of the impulses and aims which were common to the West, and which demanded a political and social system competent to realize them in offensive warfare. The careful student of history can remark throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a continuous, spontaneous, though in the main unconscious, evolution of the forces destined to overthrow feudalism in its strongholds. In the necessary conflict between the social and ecclesiastical authorities, as represented by the church and empire, the former was in the main victorious; in the scheme of public life it relegated military force to a level beneath that of moral power, and for the man it exalted the value of love, charity and holiness as the aims of private life.

Amid these very conflicts, however, the ecclesiastical, theocratic regime suffered its final, overwhelming and

^ There is a striking contrast between Canossa, where the emperor was humbled by the Pope, and Anagni, where the Pope, arrayed in all his ecclesiastical pomp, was made to feel the rude buffets of Sciarra Colonna, and escaped with life only by the intervention of Nogaret, the agent of France in his overthrow. Yet the comparison halts, for the French monarchy had then supplanted the empire as representative of secular oower.

xxvii irreparable defeat. In its struggle for supremacy it had, unconsciously at times but for the most part consciously, assimilated feudalism ; quite unwittingly it found itself doomed to the fate of feudalism. Absolute itself in the assertion of spiritual power, it stimulated the assertion of absolute temporal power as made by temporal feudal princes, and when political absolutism took the form of princely despotism, the papacy with its ecclesiastical absolutism became a temporal power itself. But not of the first order. The secular spirit had swept humanity with it. Principalities became kingdoms and kingdoms became nations and nations became states throughout the western world. Imperial Catholicism disappeared in the disruption of imperial temporal power. Catholic ecclesiasticism was confronted by the menace of independent national churches. Local centralization seemed destined to replace what was left of universal centralization in the church, just as it had already shattered the universal state ; in the political crash Rome was but a fragment of feudal absolutism and so far contemptible. The Pope as a secular prince was but an Italian royalet, elective at that. The close of the fifteenth century marked the end of all effort to restore the pagan idea of unity in church and state. The question ever since has been one merely of their relations.

As yet, however, neither feudalism nor ecclesiasticism had met with organized opposition. This was at hand. The successive revivals and reforms which constituted the new birth of humanity in art, in letters, in religion and in politics, were, each and several, conscious opponents of the passing social phase. Though disdaining it, they were one and all forms of the protest which found its climax in Calvinism, religious, political and. social. Calvinism was not merely a dogma;

xxviii it was and is a system embracing the totality of life, intended to supplant entirely the scheme of traditional authority as exemplified in Roman and feudal society. From its inception onward to 1650 it represented the vanguard of the coming age. It attacked the hierarchy, social, political and ecclesiastical, with the sword of the Bible as the only infallible rule of faith and conduct. Shielding itself behind the buckler called the right of private judgment and using the watchword of reform, its battle-cry was the call for a return to more or less completeness of primitive Christian living. Its chosen style was "Reformed" not ''Protestant"; there was to be no break of historic continuity. But its recognized enemy was the theology of Rome as central to the whole despised system of religious and social tyranny.

In the struggle for ascendancy between Rome and Reform blood flowed in torrents. In France the result was the formal defeat of Calvinism .which took its revenge in furnishing the data for the radical philosophy of many among those who suffered ; in Holland the conflict produced the political liberties to a new nation emancipated from Spain, the land which under Philip II. represented the extreme reaction of medisevalism ; in Germany the Thirty Years' War was ended by a treaty which recognized the rupture of the European state-system and established public law not exactly on a secular but at least on a political basis; England, with elements both Anglican and Puritan, became the foremost Protestant power, just as France, purged in the furnace of civil war, was thereafter the most intelligent and vigorous Catholic state.

I

I

HROUGHOUT the eighteenth century the critical

X spirit was abroad. Among the Teutons it was largely positive and constructive because successful in reforming every department of life; among the Latins it was negative and destructive because thwarted in the spheres of church, state, society and learning. In the north the social movement was for the most part unsystematic, practical and adapted to local circumstances ; in the Roman Catholic state system it grew^ revolutionary, systematic and radical in almost exact proportion to the limitation by royal or ecclesiastical authority set upon its dimensions as to numbers and permitted scope. The reply to the Council of Trent, to the Society of Jesus, to the Index, was long in coming wherever the reactionary influence prevailed ; when it did come, it was in the mordant, defiant language of Voltaire, in the appeal of Rousseau to an authority which was not that of Rome, nor of God in his Word, but which was that of Humanity as represented in a supposed state of nature. From this destructive criticism emerged what is specifically known in modern history as the revolutionary spirit, the central principle of which is an extreme and perverted conception of what the Reformation called the right of private judgment.

To the Catholic the Reformer was irreligious, to the Reformer the Revolutionary was doubly so; yet the difference between the two latter was essentially one of degree and religious attitude, while that between the two former was at bottom one of historical feeling. The Reformed Church gravitates at once in any moment of uncertainty toward Catholicism rather than toward the system of the Revolution. It is a question of accepting or rejecting a supernatural authority, of Theism more or less extensive and comprehensive against Atheism more or less radical.

Bacon and Descartes began the examination of the eternal verities in the light of reason, compelling the adaptation of Christian creeds to the truth of science as far as discovered. Hobbes, Spinoza and Bayle mark the transition into the narrowest conceivable Theism, discarding alike Christianity and revelation, setting the temporal power above the spiritual, subjecting the Bible to the same rules of criticism as would be applied to profane literature. In Hobbes appears as a philosophic force the theory extracted by a Calvinistic reformer, Francis Hotman, from the Bible, and destined to become the dogma of all political philosophers down to the threshold of our own time, the theory of a contract between ruler and ruled. Used by Hobbes in the interest of absolutism, it was remodelled by Locke to uphold the English Revolution of 1688, and in the same form it is fundamental to the institutions of our own Revolution of 1776. Finally Rousseau revamped it as the basis of the extremists of 1786 in France. The concept of sovereignty in the abstract, royal, ecclesiastical, aristocratic or imperial, formed by Bodin, was thus gradually transmuted into that of popular sovereignty expressed by majorities.