SECESSION OF THE GREAT CRITICS.

491

himself. Contradictions were pointed out, errors exposed, weakness detected, and new views offered of almost every thing within the range of literature.

From this burning ordeal one book alone came out unscathed. It was the Bible. It spontaneously vindicated for itself what Wic- The Bible. lif in the former times, and Luther more lately, had claimed for it. And not only did it hold its ground, but it truly became incalculably more powerful than ever it had been before. The press multiplied it in every language without end, until there was scarcely a cottage in reformed Europe that did not possess a copy.

value of patris

But if criticism was thus the stimulating principle that had given life to the Reformation, it had no little to do with its pause; and this is the influence over which Rome had no kind of control, and to which I have made allusion. The phases through which the Reformation passed were dependent on the coincident advances of learning. First it relied on the Scriptures, which were to the last its surest support; then it included the fathers. But, from a more intimate study of the Decline of the latter, many erudite Protestants were gradually brought back tie learning. to the ancient fold. Among such may be mentioned Erasmus, who by degrees became alienated from the Reformers, and subsequently Grotius, the publication of whose treatise, "De jure belli et pacis," 1625, really constituted an epoch in the political system of Europe. This great man had gradually become averse to the Reformation, believing that, all things considered, it had done more harm than good; he had concluded that it was better to throw differences into oblivion for the sake of peace, and to enforce silence on one's own opinions, rather than to expect that the Church should be compelled to accommodate herself to them. If such men as Erasmus, Casaubon, and Grotius had been brought to this dilemma by their profound philosophical meditations, their conclusion was confirmed among the less reflecting by the unhap ру intolerance of the new as well as the old Church. Men asked what was the difference between the vindictiveness with which Moral effects of Rome dealt with Antonio de Dominis, at once an ecclesiastic persecutions. and a natural philosopher, who, having gone over to Protestantism and then seceded, imprudently visited Rome, was there arrested, and, dying, his body was dug up and burnt, and the rigor of Calvin, who seized Servetus, the author of the "Christianismi Restitutio," and in part the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, when he happened to pass through Geneva, and committed him to the flames.

ticism.

Criticism had thus, in its earlier stage, produced well-marked results. As it developed it lost none of its power. It had enthroned End of patrispatristic theology; now it wrenched from its hand the sceptre. In the works of Daillé it showed that the fathers are of no kind of use-they are too contradictory of one another; even Jeremy Tay

492

of Servetus

by Calvin.

CONTINUATION OF THE REFORMATION IN AMERICA.

lor speaks of their authority and reputation as clean gone forever. In a few years they had sunk into desuetude, a neglect shared by many classical authors, whose opinions were now only quoted with a respectful smile. The admiration for antiquity was diminishing under the effect of searching examination. Books were beginning to appear, turning the old historians into ridicule for their credulity. The death of The burning Servetus was not without advantage to the world. There was not a pious or thoughtful man in all reformed Europe who was not shocked when the circumstances under which that unhappy physician had been brought to the stake at Geneva by John Calvin were made known. For two hours he was roasted in the flames of a slow fire, begging for the love of God that they would put on more wood, or do something to end his torture. Men asked, with amazement and indignation, if the atrocities of the Inquisition were again to be revived. On all sides they began to inquire how far it is lawful to inflict the punishment of death for difference of opinion. It opened their eyes to the fact that, after all they had done, the state of civilization in which they were living was still characterized by its intolerance. In 1546 the Venetian embassador at the court of Charles V. reported to his government that in Holland and Friesland more than thirty thousand persons had suffered death at the hands of justice for Anabaptist errors. From such an unpromising state of things toleration could only emerge with difficulty. It was the offspring, not of a philosophical charity, but of the checked animosities of ever-multiplying sects, and their detected impossibility of coercing one another.

tion continued

The history of the Reformation does not close, where many European The Reforma- authors have imagined, in a balanced and final distribution in America. of the north and south between the Protestant and the Catholic. The predestined issue of sectarian differences and dissensions is individual liberty of thought. So long as there was one vast overshadowing, intolerant corporation, every man must bring his understanding to its measure, and think only as it instructed him to do. As soon as dissenting confessions gathered sufficient military power to maintain their right of existence-as soon as from them, in turn, incessant offshoots were put forth, toleration became not only possible, but inevitable, and that is perhaps as far as the movement has at this time advanced in Europe. But Macaulay and others who have treated of the Reformation have taken too limited a view of it, supposing that this was its point. of arrest. It made another enormous stride when, at the American RevSeparation olution, the State and the Church were solemnly and openly and State. dissevered from one another. Now might the vaticinations of the prophets of evil expect to find credit; a great people had irrevocably broken off its politics from its theology, and it might surely have been expected that the unbridled interests, and instincts, and passions of

of Church

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE.

493

men would have dragged every thing into the abyss of anarchy. Yet what do we, who are living nearly a century after that time, find the event to be? Sectarian decomposition, passing forward to its last extreme, is the process by which individual mental liberty is engendered and maintained. A grand and imposing religious unity implies tyranny to the individual; the increasing emergence of sects gives him increasing latitude of thought—with their utmost multiplication he gains his utmost liberty. In this respect, unity and liberty are in opposition; as the one diminishes, the other increases. The Reformation broke down unity; it gave liberty to masses of men grouped together in Emergence sufficient numbers to insure their position; it is now invisibly, thought. but irresistibly making steps, never to be stayed until there is an absolute mental emancipation for man.

of liberty of

Great revolutions are not often accomplished without much suffering and many crimes. It might have been supposed before the event, perhaps it is supposed by many who are not privileged to live among the last results, that this decomposition of religious faith must be to the detriment of personal' and practical piety. Yet America, in which, The Ameriof all countries, the Reformation at the present moment has far- can clergy. thest advanced, should offer to thoughtful men much encouragement. Its cities are filled with churches built by voluntary gifts; its clergy is voluntarily sustained, and is, in all directions, engaged in enterprises of piety, education, mercy. What a difference between its private life and that of ecclesiastics before the Reformation! Not, as in the old times, does the layman look upon them as the cormorants and curse of society; they are his faithful advisers, his honored. friends, under whose suggestion and supervision are instituted educational establishments, colleges, hospitals, whatever can be of benefit to men in this life, or secure for them happiness in the life to come.

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SOCIAL CONDITION OF ENGLAND.

CHAPTER XXI.

DIGRESSION ON THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND AT THE END OF THE AGE OF FAITH.

RESULTS PRODUCED BY THE AGE OF FAITH.

Condition of England at the Suppression of the Monasteries.

Condition of England at the Close of the seventeenth Century.-Locomotion, Literature, Libraries.-Social and private Life of the Laity and Clergy.—Brutality in the Administration of Law.—Profligacy of Literature.—The Theatre, its three Phases.—Miracle, Moral, and Real Plays.

Estimate of the Advance made in the Age of Faith.—Comparison with that already made in the Age of Reason.

ARRIVED at the commencement of the Age of Reason, we might profitably examine the social condition of those countries destined to become conspicuous in the new order of things. I have not space to present Results of the such an examination as extensively as it deserves, and must Age of Faith. limit my remarks to that nation which, of all others, is most interesting to the American reader-that England, which we picture to ourselves as foremost in civilization, her universities dating back for many centuries; her charters and laws, on which individual, and therefore social liberty rests, spoken of as the ancient privileges of the realm; her people a clear-headed race, lovers and stout defenders of freedom. During by far the greater part of the past period she had been Catholic, The social condi- but she had also been reformed-ever, as she will always be, religious. A correct estimate of her national and individual life will point out to us all that had been done in the Age of Faith. From her condition we may gather what is the progress made by man when guided by such theological ideas as those which had been her rule of life.

tion produced in

England.

The following paragraphs convey an instructive lesson. They dissipate some romantic errors; they are a verdict on a political system from its practical results. What a contrast with the prodigious advancement within a few years when the Age of Reason had set in! How strikingly are we reminded of the inconsequential, the fruitless actions of youth, and the deliberate, the durable undertakings of manhood!

For many of the facts I have now to mention the reader will find authorities in the works of Lord Macaulay and Mr. Froude on English history. My own reading in other directions satisfies me that the picture here offered represents the actual condition of things.

At the time of the suppression of the monasteries in England the in

MONASTERIES, CASTLES, CABINS.

495

suppression of the

fluences which had been in operation for so many centuries Condition at the had come to an end. Had they endured for a thousand monasteries. years longer they could have accomplished nothing more. The condition of human life shows what their uses and what their failures had been. There were forests extending over great districts; fens forty or fifty miles in length, reeking with miasm and fever, though round the walls of the abbeys there might be beautiful gardens, green lawns, shady walks, and many murmuring streams. In trackless woods where men should have been, herds of deer were straying; the sandy hills were alive with conies, the downs with flocks of bustard. The peasant's cabin was made of reeds or sticks plastered over with mud. His fire was chimneyless-often it was made of peat. In the objects and manner of his existence he was but a step above the industrious beaver who was building his dam in the adjacent stream. There were highwaymen on the roads, pirates on the rivers, vermin in abundance in the clothing and beds. The common food was peas, vetches, fern roots, and even the bark of trees. There was no commerce to put off famine. Man was altogether at the mercy of the seasons. The population, sparse as it was, was perpetually thinned by pestilence and want. Nor was the state of the townsman better than that of the rustic; his bed was a bag of straw, with a fair round log for his pillow. If he was in easy circumstances, his clothing was of leather; if poor, a wisp of straw wrapped round his limbs kept off the cold. It was a melancholy social condition when nothing intervened between reed cabins in the fen, the miserable wig. wams of villages, and the conspicuous walls of the castle and monastery. Well might they who lived in those times bewail the lot of the aguestricken peasant, and point, not without indignation, to the troops of pilgrims, mendicants, pardoners, and ecclesiastics of every grade who hung round the Church, to the nightly wassail and rioting drunkenness in the castle-hall, secure in its moats, its battlements, and its warders. The local pivots round which society revolved were the red-handed baron, familiar with scenes of outrage and deeds of blood, and the abbot, indulging in the extreme of luxury, magnificent in dress, exulting in his ambling palfrey, his hawk, his hounds. Rural life had but little improved since the time of Cæsar; in its physical aspect it was altogether neglected. As to the mechanic, how was it possible that he could exist where there were no windows made of glass, no, not of oiled paper, no workshop warmed by a fire. For the poor there was no physician, for the dying the monk and his crucifix. The aim was to smooth the sufferer's passage to the next world, not to save him for this. Sanitary provisions there were none except the paternoster and the ave. In the cities the pestilence walked unstayed, its triumphs numbered by the sounds of the death-crier in the streets or the knell for the soul that was pass

ing away.