An essay on the spirit and influence of the reformation of Luther

Front matter

. AN

ESSAY

ON

Preface

BY THE TRANSLATOR,

WHEN the question which gave occasion to this work was first proposed by the National Institute of France, it particularly attracted the attention of the translator. In a Catholic country., the approbation of Catholicism has in general implied the belief that every thing opposed to Catholicism is full only of evil. It appeared to him,, therefore, a memorable proof of the extraordinarv progress of reason and liberality, when a learned assembly in a Catholic country proposed to estimate the beneficent effects which have arisen from the great revolt against the Catholic church.

The work itself gives occasion to additional sentiments of satisfaction and surprise. It is an unreserved display of all the vices of the papal system, and an impartial representation of the happy tendency and effects of the Reformation, To do justice to this most important subject the union of many talents was requisite. It was necessary to possess a very extensive and accurate

a2 ii Preface by the Translator.

acquaintance with historical facts, both ecclesias<- tical and political, and as well before the Reformation as after it. And a mind was required capable of the most vigorous and profound reflection, accustomed to trace the more important and hidden relations by which the series of human events is affected, and thoroughly imbued with that philosophy which imparts the knowledge of the faculties of man, and of the circumstances which tend to their improvement. It is enough for the present purpose to add that the translator w r as surprised to find so many of those great qualities combined on the present occasion; and of the numerous circumstances requisite for the perfect elucidation of the subject, he was pleased to observe that far more were present than absent. A picture, in any degree complete, of the consequences of the Reformation of Luther upon the political condition of man, and upon his intellectual improvement in Europe, he regards as an object of the utmost curiosity and importance. The knowledge of the subject communicated in the present performance appeared to him great ; and he thought that a service of some magnitude might be rendered to his countrymen by offering it to them in their own language. The views too which are presented, in the course of the inquiry, respecting the religious and political rights of mankind^ appeared to him so liberal and just, to

Preface by the Translator. iii

be placed at so proper a distance from those extravagant projects on the one hand, which are neither founded on a knowledge of human affairs, nor consistent with their prosperity; and from those contracted, mean, and ill-founded principles, on the other, that because human creatures often make a bad use of their liberty, the smaller part of them should always prevent the greater from having any, that he thought they could not be too generally diffused in a period when men are so frequently in extremes.

As the author immediately addresses himself to persons better acquainted with many of the circumstances connected with the Reformation, and less with others, than the people of this country, it appeared to the translator that several particulars in the work would require some illustration to his countrymen, and in other places that the inquiry might be aided by the views of some of our own authors, or even by the lights which he himself had been enabled to collect. Such is the principal intention of the notes. In some places too the ideas of the author appeared to stand in need of correction. And some notes are added chiefly for the sake of the curious particulars which they contain ; or to exhibit the opinion of some eminent author. Upon the whole it is hoped that this miscellany will add something both to the elucidation and to the interest of the work* iv Preface hy the Translator.

The sketch of ecclesiastical history subjoined is so very short, that it was impossible it could be explicit in every particular of importance. To have written notes on every thing in this whic might appear to stand in need of illustration or correction, would have required a space altogether disproportionate to the text. It was therefore thought proper to omit them.

It is necessary perhaps to remark, that the author considers the great inquiry concerning the effects of the Reformation of Luther as consisting of two parts ; The first, relating to its effects on the political affairs of Europe, and on the progress of literature ; The second, relating to its effects on morals in the nations of Europe, and on the religious ideas and character of the people. To the first part of the subject he was confined by the terms of the question proposed by the Institute. The latter part, he observes, forms an inquiry still more difficult, and not less important than that which he has attempted to execute.

Although this work is altogether directed to general purposes and conclusions, it is hardly possible, at the present moment, to avoid making a particular. application in regard to one department of British affairs. It appears an object of great importance to all those who truly understand, and wish well to the interests of Great Britain, not onlv that the Catholics of Ireland should be eman-

Preface by the Translator. v

cipated from all political disqualifications, but that they should be converted from a system, in its best shape, so much more unfavourable to their progress in reason and virtue, than that embraced by the rest of their fellow subjects. Were the Roman Catholics of Ireland delivered from those circumstances which lead them to regard the Protestants as their enemies, and brought to look without suspicion upon any thing presented to them by Protestants, a book, like this, in which the defects of the papal system, and its evil tendency with regard to all the best interests of men, are more fully and accurately pourtrayed than they have ever yet been, could not fail, approved too as it has been by Catholics, and in a Catholic country, to have the most powerful effects on the minds of all the best informed and superior classes, effects which would speedily descend from them to their inferiors.

SECTION II. On the principal States of Christendom 172

First Inquiry. — Internal Situation of the States.

I. Protestant Countries ibid.

Germany ] Q3

Denmark ICQ

Switzerland 2 J 3

Geneva 2l6

Holland . . .. 221

England 224

United States of America 225

II. States of which the Governments have not

embraced the Reformation.

France , « . 24S

Contents, ix

Italy Page 257

Poland 258

Russia . 262

Second Inquiry. — External Situation of the States of Europe, in regard to one another.

The balance of Power 264

First Period, from 1520 to 1556 . . . . 272

Second Period, from 1556 to l603 274

Third Period, from l6o3 to 1648 277

Recapitulation of the Effects of the Reformation in regard to Politics . t 280

CHAPTER II. On the Progress of Knowledge. t 284

SECTION I.

Effects of the moral Impulse communicated by

the Reformation 287

In regard to the Liberty of thought. . 288

In regard to the study of Religion, ancient

Languages, Exegesis, Archeology, History 2Q7 In regard to Philosophy and the moral and

political Sciences , 312

In regard to the physical and mathematical

In regard to the Belles Lettres and modern

Languages 337

In regard to the fine Arts 34/ x Contents.

SECTION IX.

Consequences of the Events which accompanied and followed the Reformation.

Disturbances and Wars in the political

World; Controversies in the theological 352 Secret societies, Freemasons, Rosy crucians,

Mystics, Illuminati 364

Jesuits, Jansenists, &c* 374

A Reflection concerning the uses made of the Wtalth of the Church 392

Recapitulation of the Effects of the Reformation, in regard to the Progress of Knowledge 396

Conclusion 399

A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH FROM ITS FOUNDER TO THE REFORMATION.

First Period. — Democracy. — From Jesus to Constantine 40Q

Second Period. — Oligarchy. — From Constantine to Mahomet 426

Third Period. — Monarchy. — From Mahomet to Hildebrand 447

Fourth Period. — Despotism. — From Hildebrand to Luther * . 46^

Conclusion , 476

ESSAY, Sec.

Part First. General Reflections

SECTION I.

On the State of the Question.

AF, during one of the centuries which preceded the sixteenth, when no barrier had as yet been raised against the supremacy of the Roman Pontiffs, a learned assembly had come to the resolution of estimating the effects of a schism, of an opinion contrary to that of Rome, the question undoubtedly would have been conceived in the following terms; "What are the evils, and what the scandal to which the church has been subjected by means of the impious and pernicious doctrine which has been stated?" At the present period,, when several respectable nations have separated themselves from the church of Rome, when the intimate connections which subsist between the

Jjtm^'- nations of Europe have habituated the adherents of Rome to behold among the professors of a different religion communities equally well regulated, equally virtuous, and equally enlightened with themselves, the question is naturally announced in a different manner. An assembly of philosophers in the heart of France, restored to Catholicism, propose, " To determine the influence of the Reformation of Luther upon the state of society in Europe, and upon the progress of reason and knowledge." This change in our language implies an important one in our opinions, and in this view of the subject, it may be asserted that the question answers itself.*

* If the question, thus stated, refer, as it appears evidently to do, to the beneficial influence of the Reformation, it denotes an era in the progress of liberality and knowledge. This is the first declaration in favour of the great revolt from Popish dominion, which has been made by a public and constituted body in a_Pqpish country. An opinion must be thoroughly ripe before it can be published in this manner. It was by slow degrees that popery succeeded in burring all liberality and freedom of mind. Ten centuries it laboured either to accomplish or preserve the conquest. Three centuries only have revolved since the rebellion ; and the votaries of popery itself declare to the whole world that this rebellion was beneficial to the human race.

Yet it was in this very country, that within a shorter period than three centuries all the horrors of a St. Bartholomew's day were perpetrated: when a king of France, from the windows of his palace, fired with his own hand at his alarmed and distracted subjects, as they were swimming across the river to

As the Institute has not accompanied this question with any preliminary explanation, the following observations, of which the object is to ascertain the sense and limits of the reply, cannot appear out of place.

escape from death, calling out incessantly, Kill, kill! and when the fanatical murderers pursued into the chamber of the king's sister, Marguerite de Valois, and even to the bed in which she was lying, some officers belonging to the court, whom they suspected of Protestantism.

" On the evening of St. Bartholomew," says Hume, " the signal was given for a general massacre. The hatred, long entertained by the Parisians against the Protestants, made them second, without any preparation, the fury of the court $ and persons of every condition, age, and sex, suspected of any propensity to that religion, were involved in an undistinguished ruin. The streets of Paris flowed with blood ; and the people, more enraged than satiated with their cruelty, as if repining that death had saved the victims from farther insult, exercised on their dead bodies all the rage of the most licentious brutality. Orders were instantly dispatched to all the provinces for a like general execution of the Protestants } and in Rouen, Lyons, and many other cities, the people emulated the fury of the capital."

Even so late as the time of our own happy revolution, the revocation of the edict of Nantz produced the most deplorable scenes in France j and upwards of half a million of her most useful citizens were happy to fly from their native land, and abandon their means of subsistence, to escape the horrors of the persecution to which they were subject.

We shall be told that France stripped herself of religion -, and that she is now restored to Catholicism in name rather than in reality. This is no objection to the exhilarating conclusion

B2

A reformation in religion appears at first sight calculated to produce effects only on that which concerns religion, on the doctrine and discipline of the church. But, long before the Reformation of Luther, the church and the state had become so blended together in all the political systems in Europe, that it was impossible to shake the one without communicating the shock to the other. The church, which every where formed a state within the state, had so far pushed its encroachments upon the latter, that it threatened to swallow it up. All Europe had long been in danger of passing under the yoke of an absolute theocracy. The sovereigns of the new Empire of the West, who saved it from that destiny, alarmed it in their turn with the project of an universal monarchy. The kings of France, of England, of Sweden, and of Denmark, the princes and free cities of Germany and Italy opposed only partially and successively the pretensions of either respecting the progress of reason. It is no small matter that France is stripped of bigotry and superstition. This is the first step. The transition from no religion to a pure religion is, in a whole people, much easier than from a corrupt and pernicious, to a pure religion. The propensity in man to religious sentiments will ever prevent a nation from being long without a religion j and the intermediate state, which produces writings like that we are now perusing, so powerfully Calculated to introduce a good religion, cannot be considered as useless.

competitor. A new impulse, a new and powerful tie which bound together the oppressed against the two oppressors at once, an event which wakened the passions of men, the love of liberty, and religious and political enthusiasm which doubled the power of princes by inflaming the minds of their subjects, which, together w T ith independence, offered to rulers the rich prey of the spoils of the clergy ; an event, I say, like this, must needs, in such a juncture, produce an universal agitation in Europe. The fabric of modern states was shaken by it to the very foundation. During the long and painful struggle which ensued, every thing obtained a new form and position. A new political order arose out of the general fermentation and confusion ; the different elements of which it is composed, long and variously agitated, obeyed at last the gravitating law of the moral world, and assumed the place assigned by their respective weight, which was not, however, in general, the place which they for^ merly occupied. A new order of ideas also sprung up from the agitation of opinions. Men dared to think, to reason, and to examine what before only challenged a blind submission. Thus a simple stroke aimed at the discipline of the church was the cause of a considerable change in the political situation of the states of Europe, and in the moral culture of its inhabitants. The Institute, therefore, was animated with the true spirit of history when it prompted the solution of the problem which it has stated so well. It is glorious for a writer to treat, before such an assembly, of religion and politics, those two cardinal points of the life of man. One of the first prerogatives of true liberty, is the power of full and unconstrained expression on those important subjects; and in whatever country that power is exercised, infallibly that country is free.*

* It is impossible to deny that this compliment to the Institute is, in this instance at least, well deserved. We are enabled to say so with still greater evidence, now that it has given its suffrage to a work in which so many free and noble sentirr. are contained. To enhance the merit of that assembly, it is to be remembered that it is placed under a government by no means very favourable to freedom of opinion ; and that general tone of mind which this book has a tendency to inspire, is one which Bonaparte would be very sorry to see gaining ground among his people. The circumstances attending this publi cation, however, are a sufficient proof that such a tone of mind is gaining ground among them, and that it is too strong for all the powers of Bonaparte to resist. It is produced by the circumstances of the race, the situation into which the spec ie large is now brought 5 and no attempts of any body of men in any quarter will avail against it.

The author conveys a lesson, which will not be misunderstood, when he states the freedom of expression, with regard to re] _ and politics, as the grand criterion of the liberty of every country. With regard to religion, Bonaparte indeed is not disposed to be without indulgence. But Frenchmen . cannot consider their liberty of expression very complete in regard to

The Institute, by inquiring what has been the influence of the Reformation of Luther, indicates clearly enough its opinion, that this influence has now ceased, or at least has no longer an active existence. In fact, nearly three centuries have now elapsed since the first explosion. The agitation which it produced has subsided by degrees ; the force which originally communicated the impulse, and by which so many new phaenomena were produced, has ceased to act as a living power, as a productive principle. The institutions which it created, and those which it modified, have, for the most part, continued; some have disappeared; but those which have remained follow at the present period the general course of events, and that course is no longer directed by the Reformation as an immediate cause. It has performed in a great measure, what it was destined to perform. Its present influence is of a derived and secondary nature; gentle, and visible only in the effects of the institutions which derive from it their birth,

politics. They know and feel that no restraint can be more complete. The conclusion to which they are here called to attend is, that they are not free. It is a hint, a suggestion which it was worthy of a philosopher and a man of spirit to give. It will not be without its effect. This book has run with great rapidity through France, and over all Europe ; and in most places it will diffuse clearer ideas of the civil and religious rights of mankind.

8 Spirit and In/Zuencc of the

The time then has arrived, when a judgment of it may be formed, when we can enumerate and discuss the benefits and the evils which it has produced to the human race* It is undoubtedly conformable to the views of the Institute that I should confine myself to specify exactly the more immediate effects of the Reformation, and content myself with a slight notice of its remoter consequences. Were it proposed to enter into the detail of these last, it would be necessary to draw the immense picture of the history of the states of Europe from that epoch, since there is scarcely any great event, or any result of the Reformation, such, for example, as the actual constitution of the Germanic Body, or the Republic of the United Provinces, the influence of which in its turn has not been greater or less. It would be impossible ever to find a way out of this labyrinth of secondary consequences. For, to regard the matter thus, the influence of every political or religious commotion is propagated to infinitude. We still at this moment feel more or less what happened in India, Arabia, Greece, and Italy, in very distant times. We yet live under the very perceptible influence of the invasion of the people* of the north, of the crusades, and other political movements, which have become principles of action among the nations. The line of the culture of nations, a line deviating, often winding, sometimes

Reform atiort of Luther, ■ ■ 9

retrograde, is formed by the complicated action of so many different forces; to mark its turnings, and deflections, in estimating the forces which concurred in its production, is the business of the philosophy of history. The author of the present inquiry will regard it as sufficient happiness, i£ ; his judges are of opinion that he has completed a similar task, in regard to that period of modern history when the Reformation was the predominant force.

Meanwhile it is impossible for a man to engage in the inquiry into the effects of the Reformation without finding himself constrained to make this reflection; " Is not that great event which I consider as a cause itself the simple result of other events which have preceded it ? and must I not, on this account, refer to them, and not to ity which has been only an intermediate agent, the real origin of all that has followed ?" Assuredly; such is the lot of mind in its researches. While it looks forward, the point of its departure appears^to be a fixed station from which the succeeding steps have proceeded. On looking backwards, the first point appears to it but a necessary connection of those beyond it, and the step, as it were, by which one passes to those on the other side. To the eye of the mind, every event as it traces it upwards becomes a simple effect ; every effect as it traces it downwards becomes In its turn a cause. The principle which leads us to attribute to an event every thing which follows that even^ as if it were its effect, is the conducting thread by which we are enabled to arrange historical facts. It is the law of cohesion, by which the present is united to the past. To mount up in this manner from the effect to the cause, even to a First Cause subsisting by itself, and which is the effect of no other cause, is a want, a demand of our intellectual nature, which searches for an absolute principle in which its speculations terminate. On this deceitful path it is that Metaphysics loses her way. — A man entirely unacquainted with the nature of a river, arriving on the banks of one, and observing it here to flow in an extensive plain, there confined in a narrow channel, in another place foaming by the agitation of a cataract; such a man would regard the first turning of the stream where it might lie concealed from his eye as the origin of tKe river; should he ascend, the cataract would produce a similar illusion; having reached the source at last, he would consider the mountain from which it issues as the primary cause of the river: he would soon however reflect, that the bowels of the mountain must shortly be exhausted by so constant a stream ; he will observe the accumulation of clouds, the rains, without which the drained mountain would yield no water.

Thus do the clouds become the primary cause; but those are brought by the winds which sweep the great seas: and by the sun it is that they are raised from the sea. Whence then comes this power in the sun ? Thus is he quickly conducted to the inquiries of speculative physics, by the search of a cause, of an absolute principle from which he may deduce in the last resort the explanation of so many phenomena.

In this manner the historian who inquires into the cause of the decline of the papal authority, of the terrible war of thirty years, of the reduction of the House of Austria, the establishment of a powerful opposition in the heart of the empire, the erection of Holland into a free state, and so of the rest, must ^t first behold the immediate origin of all those events in the Reformation, and attribute them unconditionally to its influence. But pushing his researches higher, he perceives that the Reformation itself is evidently but a necessary result of other circumstances which preceded it ; an event of the sixteenth century, with which, to use an expression of Leibnitz, the fifteenth was pregnant ; at most only the cataract of the river. How many people still obstinately persist in referring the French revolution to the deficit, as its primary cause, to the convocation of the states general, to the tiers etat } to the parish clergy.* Others, who look somewhat farther, think they

* The difficulties in which the French crown was involved, immediately previous to the revolution, are well known. The public income fell short of the expenditure of the court j and the term by which this disproportion is expressed, is the deficit. Those difficulties, and the impossibility which was felt of Increasing the taxes without new and important changes in the government, produced the convocation of the states general. And in that national assembly, as is well known, the revolution began.

In the feudal kingdoms of Europe the people were regarded as consisting of three orders, or states, as they were called; that of the nobility, that of the clergy, and that of the commonalty. When the affairs of a nation required a consultation of the whole people, the assembly distinguished into these orders, was called the states general, that is the general assembly of the three states. The order of commonalty was in France denominated the tiers etat, or third state. The constitution of this order was never so exactly ascertained as in England. It is well known that the representatives of cities were in itj but no order of persons, corresponding to our knights of shires ; and the great body of peasantry was not represented in the national council. These assemblies are plainly of the same nature with our parliaments in the more early periods. But the power of the aristocracy in this country obliged the king to strengthen himself by the alliance of parliaments for an extensive period 3 and afterwards the spirit and power of parliaments made it impracticable for him to lay them aside, when the power of the aristocracy declined j and thus parliaments have been continued in this country; whereas the states general were early set aside by the kings of France, find that cause in a particular parliament, in the

When the financial difficulties in France rendered the wheels of government incapable of moving any longer, every expedient was had recourse to, rather than convoke this almost forgotten assembly. The assembly of the notables was first tried, consisting of the nobility and higher clergy, with such persons of the third estate as the king chose to call. To them was proposed the abolition of the exemption of the nobility, and clergy from taxes, and of other abuses. But it was not obtained. The states general, which were called for on all sides, were lecurred to as no longer avoidable. Those who discover the origin of the French revolution in this assembly, must needs search a little for the cause of that assembly itself ; and still more for the cause why that assembly was more dangerous in the present age, to kingly powers, than in former ones, when it had been its protection. This danger arose from the change in the circumstances of the king and of the people, and from the change in opinion. And to trace and appreciate those changes, has been very little either in the talents or intentions of the persons who have hitherto declaimed upon the French revolution. Among those who fnd the cause of the French revolution entirely or principally in the tiers etat is Mr. Burke. " After" says he, " I had read over the list of the persons and descriptions elected into the tiers etat, nothing which they afterwards did could appear astonishing." Yet the tiers etat unquestionably afforded a pretty fair representation of the opinions, projects, and principles predominant in the nation. If that be the case, what was the cause of this general tone, and habit of thought, which as soon as it found an occasion of acting must necessarily produce such scenes as the French revolution ? This formed no part of Mr. Burke's inquiry. The composition of the tiers etat, unfit as it was for the transcendently difficult work of reforming a disordered state, arose out of the general circumstances of France, and was as little the effect of partiextinction of the Jesuits, &c* They are all right under a certain limited point of view which

cular, and momentary causes, as the composition and tone of the Diet of Augsburg.

* The word parliament in the English language is near in signification to the term states general in French. In this last tongue the word parliament was used in a very different sense. It was applied to certain courts of justice, composed of a considerable number of judges. It had been usual for the kings of France to have their edicts registered by those parliaments, particularly by that of Paris. These edicts, there being no constituted legislature in France, were the laws 5 but by long practice, it came to be generally conceived that they were not of the force of laws, — till they were registered by the parliaments. On this ground the parliaments had often remonstrated against unpatriotic edicts, and had prevented their execution. For a series of years the disputes, of this nature, had continued to grow more violent 3 and the opposition which the parliaments had made to the edicts for imposing new taxes had contributed greatly to bring the difficulties of government to a crisis. Those who see not the operation of general causes in this gradual opposition are certainly not very profound contemplators of history.