History of the great reformation in Europe

Front matter

Glass.

HISTOET

OF TUB

Preface

The work I have undertaken is not the history of a party. It is the history of one of the greatest revolutions ever effected in human affairs,' — the history of a mighty impulse communicated to the world three centuries ago, and of which the operation is still everywhere discernible in our own days. The history of the Reformation is altogether distinct from the history of Protestantism. In the former all bears the character of a regeneration of human nature, a religious and social transformation emanating from God himself. In the latter, we see too often a glaring depravation of first principles, — the conflict of parties, — a sectarian spirit, —and the operation of private interests. The history of Protestantism might claim the attention only of Protestants. The history of the Reformation is a book for all Christians, — or rather for all mankind.

An historian may choose his portion in the field before him. He may narrate the great events which change the exterior aspect of a nation, or of the world ; or he may record that tranquil progression of a nation, of the church, or of mankind, which generally follows mighty changes in social relations. Both these departments of history are of high importance. But the public interest has seemed to turn, by preference, to those periods which, under the name of Revolutions, bring forth a nation, or society at large, for a new era, — and to a new career.

Of the last kind is the transformation which, with very feeble powers, I have attempted to describe, in the hope that the beauty of the subject will compensate for my insufficiency. The name of revolution which I here give to it, is, in our days, brought into discredit with many who almost confound it with revolt. But this is to mistake its meaning. A revolution is a change wrought in human affairs. It is a something new which unrolls itself from the bosom of humanity ; and the word, previously to the close of the last century, was more frequently understood in a good sense than in a bad one : — ' ' a happy — a wonderful Revolution" was the expression. The Reformation, being the re-establishment of the principles of primitive Christianitv, was the reverse of a revolt. It was a movement regenerative of that which was destined to revive; but conservative of that which is to stand forever. Christianitv and the Reformation, while they established the great principle of the equality of souls in the sight of God, and overturned the usurpations of a proud priesthood, which assumed to place itself between the Creator and his creature, at the same time laid down as a first element of social order, that there is no power but what is of God,— and called on all men to love the brethren, to fear God, to honour the king.

The Reformation is entirely distinguished from the revolutions of antiquity, and from the greater part of those of modern times. In these, the question is one o'." politics, and the objsct proposed is the establishment or overthrow of the power of the one or of the many. The love of truth, of holindls, .of eternal things, was the simple and powerful spring which gave effect to that which we bave to narrate. It is the evidence of a gradual advance in human nature. In truth, if man, instead i of seeking only material, temporal, and earthly interests, aims at a higher object, and seeks spij ritual and immortal blessings, — he advances, he I progresses. The Reformation is one of the mosf j memorable days of this progress. It is a pledge that the struggle of our own times will terminate ! in favour of truth, by a triumph yet more spiritual 1 and glorious.

Christianity and the Reformation are two of the greatest revolutions in history. They were not limited to one nation, like the various political movements which history records, but extended to many nations, and their effects are destined to be felt to the ends of the earth.

Christianity and the Reformation are, indeed, the same revolution, but working at different periods, and in dissimilar circumstances. They differ in secondary features : — they are alike in their first lines and leading characteristics. The one is the re-appearance of the other. The former closes the old order of things ; — the latter begins the new. Between them is the middle age. One is the parent of the other ; and if the daughter is, in some respects, inferior, she has, in others, characters, altogether peculiar to herself.

The suddenness of its action is one of these characters of the Reformation. The great revolutions which have drawn after them the fall of a monarchy, or an entire change of political system, or launched the human mind in a new career of development, have been slowly and gradually prepared ; the power to be displaced has long been mined, and its principal supports have given way. It was even thus at the introduction of Christianity : But the Reformation, at the first glance, seems to offer a different aspect. The Church of Rome is seen, under Leo X., in all its strength and glory. A monk speaks, — and in the half of Europe this power and glory suddenly crumble into dust. This revolution reminds us of the words by which the Son of God announces his second advent: "As the lightning cometh forth from the west and shineth unto the east, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be."

This rapidity is inexplicable to those who see in this great event only a reform ; who make it simply an act of critical judgment, consisting in a choice of doctrines, — the abandoning of some, the preserving others, and combining those retained, so as to make of them a new code of doctrine.

How could an entire people ? — how could many nations have so rapidly performed so difficult a work ? How could such an act of critical judgment kindle the enthusiasm indispensable to great and especially to sudden revolutions? But the Reformation was an event of a very different kind ; and this its history will prove. It was the pouring forth anew of that life which Christianity had brought into the world. It was the triumph of the noblest of doctrines—of UHl which animates those who receive it with tb# purest and most powerful enthusiasm, — the doctrine of Faith — the doctrine of Grace. If the Reformation had been what ninny Catholics and Protestants imagine. — if it had been that negative system of a negative reason, which rejects with childish impatience

PREFACE.

whatever displeases it, and disowns the grand ideas and leading truths of universal Christianity, — it would never have overpassed the threshold of an academy, — of a cloister or even of a monk's cell. But it had no sympathy with what is commonly intended by the word "Protestantism. Far from having sustained any loss of vital energy, it arose at once like a man full of strength and resolution.

Two considerations will account for the rapidity and extent of this revolution. One of these must lie sought in God, the other among men. The impulse was given by an unseen hand of power, and the change which took place was the work of God. This will be the conclusion arrived at by every one who considers the subject with impartiality and attention, and does not rest in a superficial view. But the historian has a further office to perform : — God acts by second causes. Many circumstances, which have often escaped observation, gradually prepared men for the great transformation of the sixteenth century, so that the human mind was ripe when the hour of its emancipation arrived.

The office of the historian is to combine these two principal elements in the picture he presents. This is what is attempted in the present work. — We shall be easily understood, so long as we investigate the secondary causes which contributed to bring about the revolution we have undertaken to describe. Many will, perhaps, be slower of comprehension, and will be inclined even to charge us with superstition, when we shall ascribe to God the accomplishment of the work. And yet that thought is what we particularly cherish. The history takes as its guiding star the simple and pregnant truth that God is in Histoky. But this truth is commonly forgotten, and sometimes disputed. It seems fit, therefore, that we should open our views, and by so doing justify the course we have taken.

In these days, history can no longer be that dead letter of facts to recording which the majority of the earlier historians confined themselves. It is felt that, as in man's nature, so in his history, there are two elements, — matter and spirit. Our great writers, unwilling to restrict themselves to the production of a simple recital, which would have been but a barren chronicle, have sought for Borne principle of life to animate the materials of the past.

Some have borrowed such a principle from the rules of art; they have aimed at the simplicity, truth, and picturesque of description; and have endeavoured to make their narratives live by the interest of the events themselves.

Others have sought in philosophy the spirit which should fecundate their labours. With incidents they have intermingled reflections, — instructions, — political and philosophic truths, — and have thus enlivened their recitals with a moral which they have elicited from them, or ideas they have been able to associate with them.

Both these methods are, doubtless, useful, and should be employed within certain limits. But there is another source whence we must above all seek for the ability to enter into the understanding, the mind, and the life of past ages; — and this is Religion. History must live by that principle of life which is proper to it. and that life is God. He must be acknowledged and proclaimed in history ; — and the course of events must be displayed as the annals of the government of a Supreme Disposer.

I have descended into the lists to which the recitals of our historians attracted me. I have there seen the actions of men and of nations developing- themselves with power, and encountering in hostile collision : — I have heard I know not what clangour of arms ; but nowhere has my attention been directed to the majestic aspect of the Judge who presides over the struggle.

And yet there is a principle of movement emanating irom God himself in all the changes among nations. God looks upon that wide si age on which the generations of men successively meet and struggle. He is there, it is true, an invisible God ' but if the profaner multitude pass before Him with out noticing Him, because he is "a God that hideth himself," — thoughtful spirits, and such as feel their need of the principle of their being, seek him with the more earnestness, and are not satisfied until they lie prostrate at his feet. And their search is richly rewarded. For, from the heights to which they are obliged to climb to meet their God, — the world's history, instead of offering, as to the ignorant crowd, a confused chaos, appears a majestic temple, which the invisible hand ot God erects, and which rises to His glory above the rock of humanity.

Shall we not acknowledge the hand of God in those great men, or in those mighty nations which arise,' — come forth, as it were, from the dust of the earth, and give a new impulse, a new form, or a new destiny to human affairs ? Shall we not acknowledge His hand in those heroes who spring up among men at appointed times ; who display activity and energy beyond the ordinary limits of human strength ; and around whom individuals and nations gather, as if to a superior and mysterious power? Who launched them into the expanse of ages, like comets of vast extent and flaming trains, appearing at long intervals, to scatter among the superstitious tribes of men anticipations of plenty and joy — or of calamities and terror? Who, but God himself? Alexander would seek his own origin in the abodes of the Divinity. And in the most irreligious age there is no eminent glory but is seen in some way or other seeking to connect itself with the idea of divine interposition.

And those revolutions which, in their progress, precipitate dynasties and nations to the dust, those heaps of ruin which we meet with in the sands of the desert, those majestic remains which the field of human history offers to our reflection, do they not testify aloud to the truth that God is in History ? Gibbon, seated on the ancient Capitol, and contemplating its noble ruins, acknowledged the intervention of a superior destiny. He saw, he felt its presence ; wmerever his eye turned it met him ; that shadow of a mysterious power reappeared from benmd every ruin ; and he conceived the project of depicting its operation in the disorganization, the decline, and the corruption of that power of Rome which had enslaved the nations. Shall not that mighty hand which this man of admirable genius, but who had not bowed the knee to Jesus Christ, discerned among the scattered monuments of Romulus and of Marcus Aurelius, — the busts of Cicero, and Virgil, — Trajan's trophies, and Pompey's horses, be confessed by us as the hand. of our God ?

But what superior lustre does the truth— that God is in history — acquire under the Christian dispensation? What is Jesus Christ — but God's purpose in the world's history ? It was the discovery of Jesus Christ which admitted the greatest of modern historians* to the just comprehension of his subject. — " The gospel," says he, "is the fulfilment of all hopes, the perfection of all philosophy, the interpreter of all revolutions, the key to all the seeming contradictions of the physical and moral world, — it is life, — it is immortality. Since I have known the Saviour, every thing is clear; — with him. there is nothing I cannot solve. "t

Thus speaks this distinguished historian ; and, in truth, is it not the keystone of the arch, — is it not the mysterious bond which holds together the things of the earth and connects them with tho*e of heaven, — that God has appeared in our nature ? What ! God has been born into this

* John von Miiller.

fLettre k C. Bonnet-

PREFACE.

world, and we are askod to think and write, as if He were not everywhere working out his own will in its history ? Jesus Christ is the true God of human history ; the very lowliness of his appearance may be regarded as one proof of it. If man designs a shade or a shelter upqn earth, <ve look to see preparations, — materials, scaffoldm^, and workmen. But God when he will give shade or shelter, takes the small seed which the new-born infant might clasp in its feeble hand, and deposits it in the bosom of the earth, and from that seed, imperceptible in its beginning, he produces the majestic tree, under whose spreading boughs the families of men may find shelter. To achieve great results by imperceptible means, is the law of the divine dealings.

It is this law which has received its noblest illustration in Jesus Christ. The religion which has now taken possession of the gates of all nations, which at this hour reigns, or hovers over all the tribes of the earth, from east to west, and which even a sceptical philosophy is compelled to acknowledge as the spiritual and social law of this world ; — th.it religion, than which there is nothing nobler under the vault of heaven, — nay, in the very universe of creation ; — what was its commencement ? . . . A child born in the meanest town of the most despised country of the earth ; — a child whose mother had not even what falls to the lot of the most indigent and wretched woman of our cities. — a room to bring forth in ; — a child born in a stable and placed in an ox's crib . . . . O God ! I acknowledge thee there, and I adore thee.

The Reformation recognised the same law of God's operations : and it had the consciousness that it fulfilled it. The thought that God is in history is often put forth by the Reformers. We find it on one occasion in particular expressed by Luther, under one of those comparisons familiar and grotesque, yet not without a certain sublimity, which he took pleasure in using, that he might be understood by the people. " The world," said he one day, in a conversation with his friend at table, — "the world is a vast and grand game of cards, made up of emperors, kings, and princes. The pope for several centuries has beaten emperors, princes, and kings. They have been put down and taken up by him. Then came our Lord God ; he dealt the cards ; he took the most worthless of them all, (Luther,) and with it he has beaten the Pope, the conqueror of the kings of the earth . . . There is the ace of God. ' He has cast down the mighty from their seats, and has exalted them of low degree,' as Mary says."

The age of which I am about to retrace the history is most important for our own generation. Man, when he feels his weakness, is generally inclined to seek assistance in the institutions he sees standing around him, or else in groundless inventions of his imagination. The history of the Reformation shows that nothing new can be wrought with " old things," and that if, according to the Saviour's word, we need new bottles for new wine, we need also new wine for new bottles. The history of the Reformation directs men to God, who orders all events in history ; to that divine word, ever ancient in the eternal nature of the truths it contains, ever new in the regenerative influence it exercises, — that word which, three centuries ago, purified society, brought back the faith of God to souls enfeebled by superstition, and which, in every age of man's history, is the source whence cometh salvation.

It is singular to observe many persons, impelled by- a vague desire to believe in something settled, addressing themselves now-a-days to old Catholicism. In one view, the movement is natural. Religion is so little known (in France)

that men scarce thin7i of finding it elsewhere than where they see it inscribed in large letters on a banner that time has made venerable. We do not say that all Catholicism is incapable of affording to man what he stands in need of. We think Catholicism should be carefully distinguished from Popery. Popery is, in our judgment, an erroneous and destructive system ; but we are far from confounding Catholicism with Popery. How many respectable men, — how many sincere Christians, has not the Catholic Church comprised within its pale ! What important services were rendered by Catholicism to the existing European nations, in the age of their first formation, — at a period when itself was still richly imbued with the Gospel, and when Popery was as yet only seen behind it as a faint shadow ! But those times are past. In our day, attempts are made to reconnect Catholicism with Popery ; and if Catholic and Christian truths are put forward, they are but as baits made use of to draw men into the net of the hierarchy. There is, therefore, nothing to be hoped from that quarter. Has Popery renounced so much as one of its observances, of its doctrines, or of its claims ? The religion which was insupportable in other ages will be less so in ours? What regeneration has ever emanated from Rome? Is it from that priestly hierarchy, full, even to overflow, of earthly passions, — that that spirit of faith, of charity, of hope can come forth, which alone can save us ? Can an exhausted system, which has scarcely strength for its own need, and is everywhere in the struggles of death, — living only by external aids, — can such a system communicate life, and breathe throughout Christian society the heavenly breath that it requires ?

This craving void in the heart and mind which betrays itself in our contemporaries, will lead others to apply to that modern Protestantism which has, in many parts, taken the place of the powerful doctrines of Apostles and Reformers ? A notable uncertainty of doctrine prevails in many of those Reformed churches whose first members sealed with their blood the clear and living faith that animated their hearts. Men distinguished for their information, and, in all other things, susceptible of generous emotions, are found carried away into singular aberrations. A vague faith in the divine authority of the Gospel is the only standard they will maintain. But what is this Gospel ? The whole question turns on that ; and yet on that they are silent, or else each one speaks after his own mind. What avails it to know that God has placed in the midst of the nations a vessel containing their cure, if we are regardless what it contains, or fail to appropriate its contents to ourselves ? This system cannot fill up the void of the times. Whilst the faith of Apostles and Reformers discovers itself, at this day, everywhere active and effectual for the coiv version of the world, this vague system does nc thing, — throws light on nothing, — vivifies nothing.

But let us not abandon all hopes. Does not Catholicism confess the great doctrines of Christianity? does it not acknowledge the one God, Father, Son, and Spirit, — Creator, Saviour, and Sanctifier? And that vague Protestantism. — does it not hold in its hand the book of life, for conviction and instruction in righteousness? And how many upright minds, honoured in the sight of men and beloved of God. are there not found among those subjected to these two systems ! How can we help loving them ? How retrain from ardently desiring their complete emancipation from human elements ? Charity is boundless : it embraces the most distant opinions to lead them to ihe feet of Jesus Christ.

Already there are indications that these two extreme opinions are in motion, and drawing nearer to Jesus Christ, who is the centre of the

PREFACE.

truth Are there not already some Roman Catholic congregations among whom the reading of the Bible is recommended and practised ? and as li> Protestant rationalism, how many steps has it not already taken towards Jesus Christ? It never was the offspring of the Reformation; — for the history of that great change will show that it was an epoch of faith: — but may we not be permitted to hope that it is drawing nearer to it ? Will not the power of the truth come forth to it from the word of God ? and will not its coming have the effect of transforming it ? Already we often see in it a feeling of religion, inadequate no doubt, but yet a movement in the direction of sound learning, encouraging us to look for more definite advances.

But modern Protestantism, like old Catholicism, is, in itself, a thing from which nothing can be hoped, — a thing quite powerless. Something very different is necessary, to restore to men of our day the energy that saves. A something is requisite which is not of man, but of God. " Give me," said Archimedes, "a point out of the world, and I will raise the world from its poles." True Christianity is this standing beyond the world, which lifts the heart of man from its double pivot of selfishness and sensuality, and which will one day move the whole world from its evil way, and cause it to turn on a new axis of righteousness and peace.

Whenever religion has been the subject of discussion, there have been three points to which our attention have been directed. God, — Man, — and the Priest. There can be but three kinds of religion on this earth, God, Man, or the Priest, is its author or its head. I call that the religion- of the Priest, which is devised by the priest, for the glory of the priest, and in which a priestly caste is dominant. I apply the name of the religion of Man to those systems and various opinions framed by man's reason, and which, as they are the offspring of his infirmity, are, by consequence, destitute of all sanative efficacy. I apply the words religion of God, — to the Truth, such as God himself has given it, and of which the object and the effect are God's glory and Man's salvation.

Hierarchism, or the religion of the priest ; Christianity or the religion of God ; rationalism, or the religion of man ; — such are the three doctrines which in our day divide Christendom. There is no salvation, either for man or society, in hierarchism or in rationalism. Christianity alone can give life to the world ; and, unhappily, of the three prevailing systems, it is not that which numbers most followers.

Some, however, it has. Christianity is operating its work of regeneration among many Catholics of Germany, and doubtless also of other countries. It is now accomplishing it with more purity, and power, as we think, among the evangelical Christians of Switzerland, of France, of Great Britain, and of the United States. Blessed be God, such individual or social regenerations, wrought by the Gospel, are no longer in these days prodigies to be sought in ancient annals. We have ourselves witnessed a powerful awakening, begun in the midst of conflicts and trials, in a small republic, whose citizens live happy and tranquil in the bosom of the wonders with which creation surrounds them.* It is but a beginning ; —and already from the plenteous horn of the Gospel we see come forth among this people a

* Canton of Vaud.

] noble, elevated, and courageous profession of the ! great truths of God ; a liberty ample and real, a government full of zeal and intelligence ; an affect I tion, elsewhere too rarely found, of magistrates for ! people, and of the people for their magistrates; a powerful impulse communicated to education and general instruction, which will make of this country an example for imitation ; a slow, but certain amelioration in morals ; men of talent, all Christians, and who/ rival the first writers of our Ian- 1 guage. All these riches developed between the dark Jura and the summits of the Alps, on the magnificent shores of Lake Leman, must strike the traveller attracted thither by the wonders of those mountains and valleys, and present to his meditation one of the most eloquent pages which the Providence of God has inscribed in favour of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

It is the history of the Reformation in general that I propose to write. I intend to trace it among different nations, — to point out the same effects of the same truths, — as well as the diversities which take their origin in the varieties of the national character. But it is in Germany especially that we shall see and describe the history of the Reformation. It is there we find its primitive type ; — it is there that it offers the fullest development of its organization. It is there that it bears, above all, the marks of a revolution not confined to one or more nations, but, on the contrary, affecting the world at large. The German Reformation is the true and fundamental Reformation. It is the great planet, and the rest revolve in wider or narrower circles around it, like satellites drawn after it by its movement. And yet the Reformation in Switzeklakd must, in some respects, be considered as an exception, both because it took place at the very same time as that of Germany, and independently of it ; and because it bore, especially at a later period, some of those grander features which are seen in the latter. Notwithstanding that recollections of ancestry and of refuge, — and the memory of struggle, suffering, and exile, endured in the cause of the Reformation in France. — give, in my view, a peculiar charm to the history of its vicissitudes, — I nevertheless doubt whether I could place it in the same rank as those which I have here spoken of.

From what I have said, it will be seen that I believe the Reformation to be the work of God. Nevertheless, as its historian, I hope to be impartial. I think I have spoken of the principal Roman Catholic actors in the great drama, Leo X., Albert of Magdeburg, Charles V., and Doctor Eck, &c. more favourably than the majority of historians. And, on the other hand, I have "had no wish to conceal the faults and errors of the Reformers.

This history has been drawn from the original sources with which a long residence in Germany, the Low Countries, and Switzerland has mode me familiar : as well as from the study, in the original languages, of documents relating to the religious history of Great Britain and other countries. Down to this time we possess no history of that remarkable period. Nothing indicated that the deficiency would be supplied when I commenced this work. This circumstance could alone have led me to undertake it ; — and I here allege it in my justification. The want still exists : — and I pray Him from whom cometh down every good gift, to cause that this work may, by His blessing, be made profitable to some who" shall read it.