THE ARRESTED 
 REFORMATION
 
 THE ARRESTED 
 REFORMATION 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. WILLIAM MUIR, M.A., B.D., B.L. 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "THE CALL OF THE NEW ERA;' "OUR GRAND OLD BIBLE," 
 " THE BOOKS WE ALL WRITE," ETC. 
 
 MORGAN & SCOTT LD. 
 
 12, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS 
 LONDON, E.G. MCMXII
 
 Copyright 1912 by Morgan & Scott Ld.
 
 To my History Teacher 
 PRINCIPAL THOMAS M. LINDSAY 
 
 D.D., LL.D.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 rilHERE are many books which deal with the 
 Reformation, as well as many about the 
 Romish controversy. There are few, how- 
 ever, which deal with the Arrest of the Reformation 
 from the strictly practical standpoint and in view 
 of the present necessity. It is believed there is 
 need for one which has for its burden through- 
 out the answer to the inquiry: How can the 
 work of the Reformation be completed ? How 
 can Rome be won for the Evangel ? 
 
 In apologizing for the Reformers' neglect of 
 Foreign Missions, a failure which had so much to 
 do with the arrest of the good work they began, 
 it has been argued that they believed that the end 
 of the world was at hand, and that the nations 
 had made their choice as, indeed, in a sense they 
 had. But the end was not then, nor is it yet. 
 Still those who are faithful are looking for the 
 
 vii
 
 viii Preface 
 
 blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great 
 God and Saviour Jesus Christ. Still the conflict 
 between the Divine and the Satanic persists and 
 deepens, and if the good grows better the evil 
 grows worse. The icy fingers of disobedience and 
 division still prevent the triumph of the Good News 
 which was the secret of Reformation power, and 
 the chariot wheels drive heavily. 
 
 Yet there is no yearning among believers which 
 is more widespread than that for Revival : a 
 yearning which is itself half the battle, and the 
 dawn of the coming day. God has been showing 
 those who trust in Him that it must always be true 
 that without Him they can do nothing ; and their 
 sense of helplessness and need is very intense. 
 There have been drops of blessing many a time 
 since the Arrest came. There have even been 
 showers of blessing, as when the Evangelical Re- 
 vival gave birth to modern philanthropy and 
 mission effort both at home and abroad. But what 
 is needed is rain splashing, dripping, soaking 
 rain which will go down to the very roots of all 
 our life and make everything new. 
 
 If there is to be Revival, however, it must begin 
 at the House of God. It is the indifference within 
 the Churches which makes the indifference without
 
 Preface ix 
 
 such a menace. If only God's people everywhere 
 were to go back by the way of the Eeformation 
 the greatest Revival of heart-religion since the 
 days of the Apostles to Christ Himself, ready to 
 obey Him in everything, and to be nothing that He 
 may be all in all, who can doubt that they would 
 be filled with the very mind that is in Him, and be 
 swept on to the crowning victory through supreme 
 faith in His grace and power and a great compel- 
 ling compassion for those who have never felt His 
 healing touch. 
 
 This endeavour to deal with a difficult situation 
 as well as with a perplexing problem, with this very 
 definite and practical aim, is sent forth with the 
 earnest prayer, in which surely multitudes are 
 joining, that ere long we shall see a New Reforma- 
 tion which will be world- wide in its reach and will 
 suffer no arrest. Even should it come in dis- 
 concerting or revolutionary ways there will be 
 gladness everywhere : if only it comes and comes 
 quickly. The world is very weary without its 
 rightful Lord. Christ alone can fathom its yearn- 
 ings and satisfy its needs. 
 
 It is hoped that such new groupings of Refor- 
 mation problems and the problems of to-day as 
 may be found throughout, and especially in the
 
 x Preface 
 
 chapters on Reformation Genealogies and the Signi- 
 ficance of the Council of Trent, may prove useful 
 to not a few. 
 
 Above all it is hoped that the closing chapters 
 reach a genuine culmination in their argument and 
 appeal, and that there will be fruit therefrom to the 
 glory of God and the salvation of immortal souls.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGES 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The problem Failure of Reformation as well as 
 success The early promise The line then drawn 
 still persists The debateable territory Peace of 
 Westphalia Many and mixed motives at work 
 Reformation era not Golden Age Course of events 
 in Scot/and and England Causes of the arrest 
 Lack of unity The taint of Sacerdotalism 
 Failure as regards Social Reform and Foreign 
 Missions Arrest tacitly accepted now Rome 
 aggressive and virile . . . . .1-24 
 
 BOOK I 
 Origins and Principles 
 
 /. THE CASE FOR 
 
 THE REFORMATION 
 
 Trouble began even before Constantine' s time The 
 Mystery of Iniquity Menace of Sacerdotalism and 
 Erastianism How faith disappeared Corruptio 
 optimi pessima est The Renaissance Teutonic v. 
 Italian Humanism Christianity without the Bible 
 Romish substitutes for Scriptures Christianity 
 without conversion The religion of the natural 
 man 27-4?
 
 xii Contents 
 
 CHAf. PAGES 
 
 II. REFORMATION GENEALOGIES 
 
 Reformed Church neither a new Communion nor a 
 mere Secession Reformers before Reformation 
 Mediaval hymns Medieval social, political, and 
 revival movements Heretical sects The Fran- 
 ciscans and their failure Imitatio Christi The 
 Mystics The godly homes from which the Refor- 
 mers came Wiclif- John Wessel Church of 
 Rome schismatic Augustine's divided inheritance . 48-68 
 
 ///. THE PRINCIPLES OF 
 
 THE REFORMATION 
 
 The unity of sixteenth-century Europe One Church 
 One literary language Simultaneous revival in 
 many lands A new conception and use of Scrip- 
 ture God speaking directly to men The testimony 
 of the Holy Spirit Justification by faith alone 
 Heartfelt trust in personal Saviour Grace the 
 keynote Right and duty of private judgment 
 Priesthood of all beRevers Here also right involves 
 duty Orthodoxy in practice the main thing . . 6989 
 
 BOOK II 
 On the Field of History 
 
 I. THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 
 AMONG ENGLISH-SPEAKING 
 PEOPLES 
 
 The failure only comparative Sixteenth-century defects 
 now largely overcome Social movements Foreign 
 Missions English domination and Reformation in 
 Ireland Celts and Evangelicalism Wales 
 Scotland England's unique story Romish gains
 
 Contents xiii 
 
 PAGES 
 
 and losses The Free Churches In England Puri- 
 tanism High Churchism Reformed Churches In 
 America and Greater Britain . . . .93113 
 
 77. PROTESTANTISM 
 
 ON THE CONTINENT 
 
 Germany Cujus reglo ejus rellglo Line almost im- 
 movable yet France Edict of Nantes, Concordat, 
 Disestablishment The Netherlands Belgium and 
 Holland Dutch Foreign Missions Switzerland 
 Scandinavia Predominance of Lutheranlsm 
 Erastianlsm Bohemia and Persecution Hungary 
 and Reaction Spain Portugal Italy Absolut- 
 ism, socialism, and infidelity . . . .114-132 
 
 777. THE DEFORMATION AND THE 
 EVANGELICAL REVIVAL 
 
 Deformation not the last word Rationalism not off- 
 spring of Reformation Evangelicalism the golden 
 mean bet<ween SacerdotaRsm and Agnosticism 
 State of England in eighteenth century Protestant 
 Scholasticism Neglect of Missions Lutherans v. 
 Calvinists Pietism and Methodism Evangeli- 
 calism and Philanthropy The present indifference . 1 3 3- 1 46 
 
 IV. THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 
 
 Blood of martyrs not always seed of Church 
 Revival of Romish faith and enthusiasm How 
 Reformation affected Rome Council of Trent 
 The Jesuits Their ultimate failure inevitable 
 Causes of Counter- Reformation in Rome and 
 Protestantism Extent of reaction In Slustria, 
 Germany, and Switzerland In France and 
 England Its cessation . . , .I4y-l66
 
 xiv Contents 
 
 CHAP. PAGES 
 
 V. ROMAN CATHOLIC MISSIONS 
 
 Rome as aggressive as ever Home Missions , Schools, 
 Sodalities, Lecturers Foreign Missions Devoted 
 and humble helpers Impossibility of co-operation 
 with Rome Superstitious and magical work 
 Extent of Romish Missions ' Accommodation ' 
 Failure of early Missions Intrusion into Protest- 
 ant fields Terrible condition of South America 
 after Rome's long monopoly . . . .167-186 
 
 VI. 'LOS VON ROM' 
 
 The drift in France Rome and atheism Italy and 
 the revolt against priestism A Romish Bible 
 Society Anti-clericalism in Spain Portugal and 
 Belgium The movement away from Rome in 
 Austria Increasingly evangelical Many converts 
 from Rome in Austria and Germany Pessimism 
 unwarrantable ...... 187-204 
 
 VII. ROME IN THE NEW WORLD 
 
 Early Romish Missions and their fate Las Casas 
 and negro slavery Failure in California Canada 
 South America and its revolt j Brazil, Chile, 
 Peru, Mexico Rome's enormous losses in United 
 States The explanations offered The real ex- 
 planation Americanism. . . . .205-221 
 
 BOOK /// 
 Can the Arrest be removed? 
 
 I. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF TRENT 
 
 Rome's Kneage Church of Rome dates from Council 
 of Trent Clericalism and obscurantism then finally
 
 Contents xv 
 
 PAGES 
 
 chosen Bondage of a written constitution Rome 
 separated from unity of Western Church and made 
 a sect Far more than codification in Decrees 
 Justification, the Scriptures, and Transubstantia- 
 tion Sinister genius for choosing the worst part 
 and making it the whole Everything made to turn 
 on submission to the Papacy Reformers the true 
 Catholics 225-242 
 
 II. ROME AND THE MODERN SPIRIT 
 
 Rome's helplessness in presence of modern spirit The 
 slave of the letter ; in bondage to clericalism 
 Modernism not necessarily right because in conflict 
 'with Rome Believers must be free from mere 
 tradition, and must walk in the Tight The blunders 
 of the Curia and the infallible Pope Reception 
 given to Encyclical in England, Germany, and 
 France Rome in British Colonies Treatment of 
 Fogazzaro Intellect as well as spirit suffers 
 through Romish obscurantism Power behind the 
 Pope 243-261 
 
 ///. IF ROME IS TO BE WON 
 
 SHE MUST BE UNDERSTOOD 
 
 Many difficulties still in the way Division among 
 Protestants Rome's persistence in spite of many 
 defeats must be understood So must the needs to 
 which she ministers Iron as well as clay Saints 
 as well as sensualists She must be taken at her 
 best as well as at her worst Mere dialectical 
 triumphs not enough Rome's errors mainly per- 
 verted truths The needs she meets must be met in 
 better ways Priesthood, Confession, and the Mass 
 in the light of a fuller doctrine of the Holy Ghost .262-280
 
 xvi Contents 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 PAGES 
 
 IV. IF ROME IS TO BE WON IT 
 MUST BE BY POSITIVE 
 EVANGELICAL TRUTH 
 
 The Gospel alone can make all things ne<w Re-viva/ 
 of heart-religion needed Either Rome or the 
 Evangel must <win All believers must take part 
 in this -work of evangelising The great doctrines 
 of the faith must anew live and glow with reality 
 and passion Mere controversy of little avail 
 Mere protesting of no avail Revival must begin 
 at the House of God All things possible to those 
 who believe ; even the universal empire of their 
 Lord 281-299
 
 INTRODUCTION
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The Problem 
 
 MlHE one outstanding marvel of the Reforma- 
 tion era is that so much that was supremely 
 -^- valuable was achieved in so short a time. 
 The other is that where so much was accomplished 
 there was nevertheless failure as well as success, 
 and that the great movement halted so soon in its 
 victorious career. In some respects, indeed, that 
 great and fruitful revolution is the classic instance 
 of arrested development. For a time it seemed 
 destined to make all things new, but ultimately 
 it came far short of a universal triumph. At first 
 it went forth conquering and to conquer, but by 
 and by it was not only brought to a standstill 
 but was swept far back again. Nor is any 
 feature of the Reformation story more impressive 
 than the fact that the line which was drawn 
 between the nations within sixty years of the 
 time when Luther was proclaimed a heretic by 
 the Pope is drawn still. The peoples which were 
 Protestant then are Protestant and progressive
 
 4 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 still. Those which stood for Romanism then 
 are superstitious and decadent still. No Christian 
 nation which did not adopt the principles of the 
 Reformation before the end of the sixteenth 
 century has ever adopted them. Since then 
 Romish peoples have become infidel and some of 
 them Romish again, but none of them has become 
 Protestant. 
 
 After the first shock of battle was over, and 
 the Counter-Reformation had done its work, it 
 was found that Protestantism and the Evangel 
 had triumphed among the Germanic or Teutonic 
 peoples, whereas Rome had kept the great Latin 
 or Romance nations. On the one side of the line 
 were the North Germans and the Swiss, the 
 Scandinavians and the English, the Scots and the 
 Dutch. On the other were the Austrians and the 
 Italians, the Spanish and the French. And as it was 
 then so it is now. From the first the victory of the 
 Reformation was swift and decisive among the 
 peoples of Northern Europe, and they have never 
 gone back on the choice which they made in the 
 sixteenth century. For a time, however, many 
 wise and patriotic men cherished the expectation 
 that the nations of Southern Europe would also 
 be won. Some of the foremost statesmen of the 
 age, indeed, were determined that Rome should 
 be reformed sufficiently to prevent any schism in 
 the Church.
 
 Baffled Hopes 5 
 
 In the year 1541 Pope Paul in. actually deputed 
 Cardinal Contarini to meet the Protestants at 
 the Diet of Ratisbon to see whether terms could 
 be arranged for reconciliation and all - round 
 reform. Luther himself distrusted the whole 
 affair and did not appear, but Melanchthon was 
 there, and the doctrine of Justification by Faith 
 was even agreed on as the basis of reunion. For 
 political and other reasons, however, the negotia- 
 tions fell through, mainly because there was no 
 common ground for a genuine reconciliation, 
 nor any real desire for thorough reform among 
 the dominant Papal ecclesiastics. Yet the fact 
 that such a thing was even dreamed of by leaders 
 in Church and State shows what might have 
 been had there been no arrest, and gives point 
 to the reflection, how different the history of 
 Europe would have been and how different its 
 condition to-day had their hopes been realised. 
 The most shameful chapters in that history 
 would never have been written, and everything 
 would have been far other than it is. 
 
 Ere long, however, it became evident to the 
 most sanguine and the most determined alike, 
 that reunion was impossible ; and everywhere 
 men and nations had to make their momentous 
 choice. There can be no concord between Christ 
 and Belial, between the living and the dead. 
 Instead of reconciliation a far-reaching counter-
 
 6 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 revolution began in Italy and Spain, in both 
 of which countries the Eeformation had taken 
 a stronger hold than is usually realised, and soon 
 the two peoples and governments beyond the 
 Pyrenees and the Alps were on fire for the Papacy 
 with a zeal for long unknown. Under the leader- 
 ship of the Jesuits, too, the Council of Trent 
 finally decided that there were to be two hostile 
 camps and not one reformed and united Church. 
 The door was then closed for ever on reconciliation, 
 and whatever reform was in store for Rome was 
 thereafter to be on the basis of intolerance and 
 reaction. 
 
 But even then there was still a great stretch 
 of debateable territory in which the battle 
 between Rome and the Reformation had to be 
 fought out. It had still to be decided whether 
 South Germany, France, Belgium, Hungary, 
 Poland, and Ireland were to be Protestant or 
 Popish. Nowhere had the Reformation begun 
 more auspiciously in some respects than in France, 
 which according to Carlyle was within a hair- 
 breadth of becoming actually Protestant ; nor 
 did it anywhere gather round it a nobler band 
 of brave men and devoted women. In Belgium 
 the friends of the new movement were at one time 
 to be counted by hundreds of thousands ; while 
 in Austria there was a point where it could be 
 said that not more than one -thirtieth of the
 
 Romish Reaction 7 
 
 population could be depended on as good 
 Catholics. In Bavaria the Protestants had a 
 majority in the Assembly of the States ; in 
 Poland, according to the Papal Nuncio, it ap- 
 peared that Protestantism would completely 
 supersede Catholicism ; and it was still possible 
 that Ireland would be at one with her sister 
 kingdoms in their new departure on behalf of 
 freedom and truth. 
 
 Yet half a century later Kome was supreme in 
 every one of these countries and the deciding 
 line had been drawn as it still unhappily persists. 
 Even where the chances had seemed most decidedly 
 in favour of the Reformation the victory remained 
 with Rome ; and when the Peace of Westphalia was 
 arranged in 1648 she was left in full possession 
 of all the debateable lands which in the middle 
 of the preceding century seemed as likely as not 
 to slip from her grasp. No nation was then 
 Protestant, or is Protestant now, which had not 
 become thoroughly Protestant before the genera- 
 tion which heard Luther preach had passed away ; 
 a portentous result which must be faced and 
 understood if the work of the Reformation is 
 ever to be carried to the glorious consummation 
 which is so devoutly to be desired and which has 
 so long and so sadly been postponed. 
 
 The real strength of the Reformation movement 
 did not lie in statesmen or even reformers, but in
 
 8 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 the loyal, earnest men and women, in all the nations, 
 who in their sense of sin and their yearning for 
 reconciliation to God had gone directly to Him, 
 as the Reformers did, and had found pardon and 
 peace in His free saving grace. At its best it was 
 a great revival of heart religion, the greatest since 
 Apostolic days, and wherever that side of it pre- 
 dominated it not only overcame all opposition but 
 spread in spite of the most cunning and cruel devices 
 of the foe. 
 
 There were many, however, who adhered to the 
 Reformation for other reasons, and from very mixed 
 motives. There were those who wished political 
 freedom but were moved by no deep consciousness 
 of sin nor any profound realisation of the mercy of 
 God in Christ. There were those who longed for 
 moral cleansing who had no theological interests 
 nor any quarrel with the doctrines of Rome. There 
 were also those who saw opportunities for selfish 
 aggrandisement in such an upheaval ; as well as 
 those who were swept on by the crowd without 
 knowing very well where they were going. At 
 such a time there are always those who like Words- 
 worth's clouds move together if they move at all ; 
 while many even of those who were whole-hearted 
 in their conviction that the Augean stables must 
 be cleansed went no more with the Reformers 
 when they saw how much was involved in their 
 principles and demands. They foresaw political
 
 The Mixed Multitude 9 
 
 revolution, ecclesiastical schism, and theological 
 cleavage as well as moral purification and spiritual 
 uplift, and either shrank back into a barren neu- 
 trality or hardened into hostility to all change. 
 There were not a few who, like Erasmus, More, 
 and Pole, exhausted their zeal for reform in 
 dealing superficially with the evils which were 
 acknowledged by all earnest men ; and who 
 refused to trace these back to their causes in 
 doctrine and church government ; and there at 
 any rate the old Adam was too strong for the 
 young Melanchthon. 
 
 It is a serious error to think of the Eeformation 
 era, glorious and fruitful as it was, as if it were 
 the Golden Age of the Church, or as if everything 
 was perfect even when it was at its best. The best 
 is yet to be ; that best for which all the ages have 
 done their work. If we in our time are to put the 
 copestone on the building which the Reformers 
 only began ; if the liberated waters are to flow 
 once more in every land ; it can only be through 
 our being even more thoroughgoing in our loyalty 
 to the light we have and even more keenly respon- 
 sive to the needs of our age than the Reformers 
 were. Their work was permanently fruitful in 
 proportion as it was truly evangelical ; while 
 they failed in proportion as they were involved in 
 barren controversies, or were disobedient to the 
 heavenly vision. If we in our time are to witness
 
 IO The Arrested Reformation 
 
 the disappearance of the old lines of demarcation 
 between Protestant and Romanist, as by the grace 
 of God we ought, that can only be through every- 
 thing else being subordinated to a passion for 
 righteousness, to a Christlike compassion for the 
 souls of men, and to the whole-hearted practising 
 and proclamation of the great salvation. 
 
 The course of events in England and Scotland 
 may be taken as typical of much that took place 
 in other lands. In England the masses, who 
 were never really evangelised until John Wesley's 
 time, changed sides as the monarchs changed and 
 were usually ready to shout with the biggest crowd. 
 Many of them were on both sides at once in the time 
 of Henry vra., and later were Protestant under 
 Edward vi., Romanist under Mary, and again Pro- 
 testant, with modifications, under Elizabeth. The 
 attitude of the " man in the street " during these 
 vicissitudes was not very different from what it was 
 in later times when the excesses of the Restoration 
 threw such an unwelcome light on the professions 
 which so many had made under the Protectorate. 
 Even in Scotland, although the Reformation took 
 a firm hold of the common people, much as it did 
 in Germany and as it failed to do in France, and 
 although the great mass of the community stood 
 for the National Covenant as set forth in Grey- 
 friars Churchyard, the later generation of Cove- 
 nanters were only a fraction of the population, and
 
 The Light Quenched \ \ 
 
 many sections of the nation showed clearly that 
 they neither understood nor appreciated their 
 courage and faith. When the prisoners from Both- 
 well Brig were brought bound to Edinburgh the 
 mob greeted them with the taunt " Where's your 
 God ? " and few showed sympathy with them of 
 any sort. In Germany, too, in spite of his buoyant 
 optimism, Luther himself complained more and 
 more as time went on that the true evangelical 
 spirit and passion were sadly awanting ; a very 
 pathetic limitation of a movement which had to 
 be evangelical or nothing. 
 
 To explain fully how the Reformation movement 
 suffered such an arrest is probably an impossible 
 task ; but to suggest that it was wholly or even 
 mainly due to what Rome did, whether through 
 the redress of the more glaring abuses or through 
 remorseless persecution, is not only not in harmony 
 with the facts of the case but is to stand in the way 
 of the arrest being removed. This problem ought 
 to be looked at strictly from the practical point of 
 view and in order that the failure of the past may be 
 so understood as to open up the way to victory 
 in the days to come. A mere dialectic triumph 
 is of no account, and the very heart of the problem 
 is how it was that devices and persecution which 
 only served to spread the light in the sixteenth 
 century should have been able to quench it in the 
 seventeenth. How did the blood of the martyrs
 
 12 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 cease to be the seed of the Church ? The Counter- 
 Reformation cannot be ignored as a factor in the 
 case, but the causes of failure which are to be found 
 in the Reformed Churches themselves must be 
 laid bare if the twentieth century is to put the 
 copestone on the unfinished structure. 
 
 Nor are the more outstanding of these causes 
 far to seek. There was the lack of unity which so 
 soon brought the Reformation Churches into a 
 condition of bitter internal hostility, and had so 
 much to do with the horrors of the Thirty Years' 
 War. Men as great and wise as the Reformers 
 were might have agreed to differ, at least in the 
 non-essentials. There might easily have been 
 room for much healthy diversity of opinion, and 
 even of practice, in the free space which lay 
 between the Lutheran readiness to permit what- 
 ever was not actually prohibited in Scripture 
 and the Calvinistic position that nothing should 
 be allowed in the Church which is not allowed in 
 the Word. But latterly they could agree only in 
 denouncing each other, and in calling down fire 
 from heaven on all who did not follow with them. 
 Nor is it either ungenerous or hypercritical to 
 say that some at least of the Churches of the 
 Reformation came far short as regards the social 
 implications of the Gospel ; while all of them came 
 short as regards the Missionary obligations of 
 the Christian Church in view alike of the world's
 
 The Mystery of Iniquity \ 3 
 
 need and of the Great Commission. Probably, 
 too, in many instances they did not free themselves 
 entirely from the taint of sacerdotalism. There 
 is no subtler or more persistent influence for evil 
 than that of the Mystery of Iniquity, and presbyter 
 has only too often been priest writ large. 
 
 The paganism which so soon began to avenge 
 itself by creeping into the doctrines and practices 
 of the Early Church has never been altogether 
 eradicated, and has always been ready to become 
 the nucleus of heresy or corruption when faith 
 declined or ardour cooled. A little leaven leaveneth 
 the whole lump whether for evil or for good ; and 
 sacerdotalism can creep into Christian communities 
 like an untimely frost until even the Garden of the 
 Lord becomes a dreary waste. " Clericalism is 
 the enemy," said Gambetta, and he was right if 
 by clericalism he meant priestism, the spirit which 
 makes men seek to lord it over God's heritage 
 or stand between their fellows and God. There is 
 no power so malign, so hostile to freedom, or so 
 alien to the spirit of Christ as the spirit of the 
 priest, whether it manifests itself in Romanists 
 or in Protestants, among laymen or ministers or 
 those who have been episcopally ordained. 
 
 Nor was the lack of unity, so largely due in turn 
 to this leaven of sacerdotalism, any less fatal in the 
 conflict with Rome, especially after her forces were 
 mobilised under the new and effective leadership
 
 14 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 of the Society of Jesus. Nothing more hostile to 
 the interests of religion could well be imagined 
 than what came to be called the religious wars 
 weird contradiction in terms ; and as they developed 
 they did much to drive out everything for which 
 the friends of freedom and the Evangel were con- 
 tending. From the time when Luther refused to 
 associate with Zwingli and the Swiss, until the 
 time when the Peace of Westphalia, a hundred 
 and twenty years later, found Germany, especially 
 in the south and west, a wilderness of ruins with 
 haunts of wolves and robbers where there had been 
 prosperous communities, one deadly blow after 
 another was struck at vital godliness and pure 
 religion, and the crowning victory of the Reforma- 
 tion had meanwhile been rendered impossible. 
 ["' That many of the Reformers came short as 
 regards the social implications of the Gospel cannot 
 be denied. Nor is there room for doubt that the 
 results of their shortcomings were disastrous. 
 " It was little wonder," says Professor Pollard, 
 writing of the Peasants' War with all its disillusion- 
 ment and betrayal, " that the organisers of the 
 Lutheran Church afterwards found the peasants 
 deaf to their exhortations or that Melanchthon 
 was once constrained to admit that the people 
 abhorred himself and his fellow-divines." 
 
 That great warm-hearted hero, Martin Luther, 
 like the Apostle Peter and others, had the defects
 
 Luther and the Peasants \ 5 
 
 of his qualities ; and it is no part of the duty of 
 those who admire him to defend everything he 
 did or to proclaim him faultless. On the other 
 hand, every one must admit that his position was 
 extremely difficult. He was a peasant's son, and 
 his big human heart was sore for the serfs whose 
 hard bondage was growing harder every year. 
 But his work as evangelist-reformer, which was 
 dearer to him than life, might be endangered or 
 even undone in a great social upheaval. Very 
 early, indeed, he was denounced as a half-hearted 
 reformer, disloyal at once to logic and the Gospel, 
 at the very time when the evangelical doctrines 
 which he proclaimed were being made responsible 
 by those at the other extreme for what they 
 thought their vile social and political fruits. It 
 must be admitted, too, that in her divided state 
 no section of the Reformed Church could speak 
 either to masters or servants with the authority 
 which even the mightiest had had to respect in 
 the preceding ages. 
 
 Yet after every allowance has been made it 
 must be maintained that no course could have 
 been sadder than that which the great Reformer 
 ultimately pursued. At first he tried to mediate 
 between the contending parties ; and until he 
 declared himself against them the peasants counted 
 on him as their leader, or at any rate reckoned on 
 his silent approval. But latterly he turned on
 
 1 6 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 them and actually encouraged the nobles in their 
 murderous work; and not only did more than 
 130,000 persons perish in the atrocities which 
 ensued, but the wretched serfs were left in a worse 
 condition than before. They fell back on their 
 miserable conditions of life in bitterness and 
 despair, alienated for ever from the Reformation ; 
 while at the same time many of their oppressors 
 went no more with the new movement. 
 
 Perhaps it was beyond the wit of man at that 
 time to find a solution for the labour problem 
 as it then presented itself, but the probability 
 is that if the Reformers, and especially Luther, 
 had accepted their due share of responsibility, 
 the most lamentable of the excesses would have 
 been spared ; the utter failure of the rising would 
 have been averted ; the Counter-Reformation 
 would have proved abortive ; and the miserable 
 decline of the Churches into Erastianism, formal- 
 ism, and death would never have taken place. 
 Of course there was much about the outbreak 
 which deserved denunciation, especially as the 
 conflict deepened and hope fled. Evil laws and 
 cowardly inaction seldom fail to provide that sort 
 of justification for themselves. And vain as 
 it is to lament now as to what might have been 
 had Luther been as resolute against the oppressors 
 of the peasants as he was against the Hierarchy, 
 the fact remains that the Church of Christ in
 
 The Twelve Articles \ 7 
 
 Europe has never again had the same supreme 
 opportunity it then had of enforcing Christ's 
 message of hope for all mankind. 
 
 In the Twelve Articles which the serfs drew 
 up as their programme, and as embodying their 
 demands, they set forth their beautiful and 
 pathetic resolution to be no longer regarded as 
 the property of others since Christ had redeemed 
 them with His blood. They had found spiritual 
 freedom at the Cross, and in the midst of their 
 manifold hardships and wrongs they saw that 
 freedom in the State was also involved in the 
 deliverance which Christ had wrought for them. 
 In the new light they saw that Calvary was the 
 birthplace of the true and enduring rights of men. 
 Even as the Jerusalem Church had all things in 
 common in the first ardour of their love, and as 
 slavery in the Empire was modified into serfdom 
 at the Table of the Lord, these humble peasants 
 saw the truth in its fulness and beauty in the 
 new light which had flooded their sad and sordid 
 lives as only God's redeeming light can. Many 
 charges have been made against them by pre- 
 judiced historians, but it is increasingly evident 
 that their demands were entirely reasonable. 
 They called for the abolition of forced labour, a 
 system which was as wasteful as it was iniquitous ; 
 and the abolition of the more oppressive of their 
 feudal dues, which were as galling to their manhood
 
 1 8 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 as they were unjust to their miserable gains. To 
 have granted these demands, however, would have 
 meant a social revolution, and almost everywhere 
 they were treated with indignation and contempt. 
 Even the nobles who were in the light themselves 
 could not see what it meant for the suffering 
 peasants, and both preachers and princes did 
 much to betray the Reformation in the great 
 crisis. 
 
 The case is even clearer as regards the failure 
 of the Reformers with respect to the Missionary 
 obligations of the Church. After everything has 
 been said about their undoubted preoccupation 
 in the work at home, about the fact that the 
 maritime nations which alone were in touch with 
 the great heathen peoples were on the other side, 
 and about the influence of their predestinarianism 
 and their belief in the nearness of the end of the 
 world, it remains that they stand condemned 
 at the bar of history, and that their lack of response 
 to the clear command of Christ and to the appeal 
 of the perishing multitudes had much to do 
 with the unhappy Deformation which ensued, 
 and was far deadlier in its results than the Counter- 
 Reformation itself. There are spots on the sun; 
 and even the Reformers were not perfect. 
 
 It was left to Erasmus the Unready to plead for 
 Missions, and to the agents of Rome to go forth 
 in their determination to redress their losses in
 
 Missionary Obligations 1 9 
 
 Europe by gains among the heathen. In the 
 second generation of the Reformation era, John 
 Calvin, the prince of exegetes who was as fearless 
 as he was learned and far-seeing, in his com- 
 mentary on the Great Commission had not a 
 word to say as to the duty of the Church to those 
 who were sitting in the shadow of death. And 
 this neglect deepened into actual opposition in 
 the Protestant Churches, so that when in 1664 
 Baron von Welz appealed for the formation of a 
 society through which, with the Divine help, 
 the Evangelical religion might be extended, his 
 suggestions were stigmatised as impossible, and 
 were treated with indignation as nothing better 
 than proposals to cast the holy things of God 
 before dogs and swine. He seemed to the Pro- 
 testants of his time as one who dreamed, so much 
 were they in bondage to the prejudices which had 
 come down to them through the attitude of their 
 nobler predecessors. There is indeed much in 
 this aspect of the Reformation story which gives 
 point to the injunction of the poet : 
 
 " Miss not the occasion ; by the forelock take 
 
 That subtle power, the never-halting time ; 
 Lest a mere moment's putting off should make 
 Mischance almost as heavy as a crime." 
 
 In view of all this there is little room for surprise 
 that Rome, who had meanwhile been setting her
 
 2O The Arrested Reformation 
 
 house in order, was able to win back the debateable 
 territory. What is surprising is that she still 
 holds it almost without protest. It can hardly 
 be said that even ardent and convinced Evan- 
 gelicals expect the arrest of the Reformation to 
 be removed so that the lands which are still 
 covered by the arid sands of the desert may even 
 in our time be won for the Garden of the Lord. 
 A practical illustration of this may be found in 
 the diagnosis which Home Mission Committees 
 often make regarding the possibilities of any 
 district in which they propose to work. They 
 write off the Romish population as not within 
 their scope, and that not so much because they 
 are already connected with a church as because 
 they have no expectation of winning them for 
 the evangelical faith. Whether they are careless 
 or interested, if they are Romanists at all they are 
 ruled out so far as aggressive work is concerned. 
 
 Yet all the men of the Reformation era were 
 Romanists to begin with, and our present atti- 
 tude is the measure of the altered spirit which 
 now prevails. There are, of course, many con- 
 versions from the Church of Rome, and there are 
 obvious reasons why they are not blazoned abroad 
 as counter conversions are. A considerable part 
 of the emigration from Ireland to America, against 
 which the Romish Hierarchy are now setting 
 themselves, is said to be due to the fact that
 
 The Line of Demarcation 2 1 
 
 many wish to break with Koine and can do so 
 only by going where they can walk in the light 
 and be free therein. But no one can suggest that 
 such conversions are on an adequate scale or 
 that we have anything like a New Reformation 
 in the sense that the development so long ar- 
 rested has been resumed. Even the revivals 
 which have blessed the Church in modern times 
 have not appreciably shifted the line of demarcation 
 which was drawn so long ago and which sometimes 
 eems as if it were to remain for ever. 
 
 Not only so, but the Church of Rome is as virile 
 and aggressive as ever. We would hardly venture 
 nowadays to make John Bunyan's words about 
 Giant Pope our own, that, " though he be yet 
 alive, he is by reason of age, and also the many 
 shrewd brushes that he met with in his younger 
 days, grown so crazy and stiff in his joints, that he 
 can now do little more than sit in his cave's mouth, 
 grinning at pilgrims as they go by, and biting his 
 nails, because he cannot come at them." The giant's 
 power is still very tangible and real, as both baffled 
 statesmen and workers for Christ in many a land 
 know to their cost. The very failure of the Papacy 
 in its conflicts with modern governments, as in 
 France and Portugal, even where these have been 
 due to such ineptitude of diplomacy as to suggest 
 that the gods are making those mad whom they are 
 about to ruin, have only thrown it back more than
 
 22 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 ever on the people. For choice, Rome prefers 
 an autocracy, but when that fails her she can make 
 herself at home in a democracy ; and she has prob- 
 ably more friends to-day in France than she had 
 before she broke with the Republic. A Jesuit 
 Father at the time of the Vatican Council was dis- 
 graced for suggesting that the Church would be 
 stronger without the temporal power, but he had 
 warrant for his view. At any rate, that was the 
 case while Leo xm. was Pope. Such a pheno- 
 menon, too, as the~ numbers who have left the 
 Church of England for the Church of Rome in 
 recent times is both significant and disquieting. 
 
 Nor are Rome's losses, enormous as they are both 
 in the Old World and the New, an adequate offset 
 to these gains, since many of those who leave 
 her drift out to indifferentism and infidelity. In- 
 deed, it is one of the most disastrous features of 
 Romanism in practical life that it prepares so many 
 for unbelief. Mr. Chesterton describes some one 
 as "a lucid Southerner, incapable of conceiving 
 himself as anything but a Catholic or an atheist." 
 There are even Protestants who declare that, logic- 
 ally viewed, there is no half-way house between 
 Romanism and Agnosticism, a position which is 
 belied on every page of the Evangelical record, 
 and in every land on the face of the earth. 
 
 The problem, then, is this : How can the move- 
 ment so long arrested be resumed until the work
 
 The Menace of Romanism 23 
 
 of the Reformation has been completed, and all 
 Europe, yea the whole earth, is evangelical and 
 free ? How can the rays of the Sun of Righteousness 
 be brought to bear on the frozen streams so that the 
 living waters shall flow once more ? How can the 
 unity of the Brotherhood of Christ be widened so 
 that, through revival and reform, it shall at length 
 embrace all men everywhere ? The present situa- 
 tion is not only sad but intolerable, and prayer 
 should be offered continually that it may soon 
 come to an end. Those who love our Lord can 
 never look with complacency on the persistence 
 of a great unreformed system which in so many 
 respects is a menace to the spirituality of the 
 Kingdom of God ; and what does the prayer 
 '' Thy Kingdom come " mean if it does not 
 involve the endeavour to complete the Reformers' 
 work ? 
 
 A New Reformation which would make Rome 
 Evangelical would unite Protestants in gracious 
 ties ; for should the Ice Age end Christians would 
 be held together in the unity of the Spirit of 
 Christ and by the magnetism of His love. The 
 only effective way to bring in the new era is to 
 assail error with positive truth. The only way 
 to be loyal to the King is to extend His domain. 
 The only way to prevent Romish invasions is to 
 invade Rome with the Good News. Those who 
 are satisfied with things as they are, are bearing ,
 
 24 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 a very poor testimony to what Christ and the 
 Evangel have done for them, and have nothing of 
 the compelling compassion for souls which made 
 St. Paul cry out, " Necessity is laid upon me, yea 
 woe is unto me, if I preach not the Gospel."
 
 BOOK I 
 ORIGINS AND PRINCIPLES
 
 CHAPTER I 
 The Case for the Reformation 
 
 TO understand how the Reformation was 
 arrested, it is necessary to see something of 
 how it had become absolutely imperative. 
 The trouble began at least as far back as the days 
 of Constantino, when the sunshine of unwonted 
 favour brought so many into the Church, who 
 were won, not by the power of Divine truth but 
 by the Imperial edict. Men and women crowded 
 into the Church who brought with them their 
 heathen philosophies and their love of pagan 
 ceremonial, and corrupted the simplicity of the 
 Gospel alike in faith and worship, so that to this 
 day every branch of it still suffers from the in- 
 sidious invasion. The paganism which had been 
 conquered was deadlier than the paganism which 
 had power to persecute and kill. Victi victoribus 
 leges dederunt : the conquered gave laws to their 
 conquerors. If only the Empire had stopped 
 short with recognition, all might have been well. 
 The State should be Christian, a holy institution 
 of God, just like the Church. But when the State 
 takes the Church under her wing and patronises
 
 28 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 it, she does more harm than good; and a critic 
 as great and far-seeing as the poet Dante attributed 
 the "downfall of the Church to the fatal gift of 
 Constantine. Certain it is that under the new 
 auspices and patronage the Mystery of Iniquity, 
 of which St. Paul had such sad forebodings, 
 developed apace, until the tyranny of the priest 
 took the place of that of the pagan oppressor, 
 and the sacerdotal spirit, itself pagan, led to 
 many features of paganism being incorporated 
 into the doctrines and practices of the Christian 
 Church. 
 
 The truth is, however, that we must go still 
 farther back than the days of Constantine to get 
 to the very roots of the deadly upas tree whose 
 leaves were for the corruption of the nations. 
 The menace of Erastianism may date from the 
 year 313, but the menace of sacerdotalism is of 
 earlier origin. Almost from the first, through 
 pagan converts and a pagan environment, there 
 had been a gradual and steady infiltration of 
 alien ideas, a reversal of primitive conceptions, 
 and a degeneracy into forbidden practices. " As 
 soon as ever Christianity is cast into the world 
 to begin its history," says Mozley in his University 
 Sermons, " that moment there begins the great 
 deception." r ' There are to be false Christs and 
 false prophets, false signs and wonders ; so that 
 it is the parting admonition of Christ to His
 
 Sacerdotalism at Work 29 
 
 disciples, ' Take heed lest any man deceive you/ 
 as if that would be the great danger." The ex- 
 planation of this " mass of deception " lies in the 
 solemn power of Christianity, " not only to bring 
 out the truth of human nature, but, like some 
 powerful alchemy, to elicit and extract the false- 
 hood of it." When once the Church turned its 
 face towards sacerdotalism, that evil thing 
 developed within it not so much by any deliberate 
 usurpation as by what Dr. Horton calls " an 
 apparently intrinsic impulse from the original 
 presuppositions " of the priestly conception. 
 
 Already in the Apostolic era itself St. Paul 
 saw the Mystery of Iniquity at work. In the 
 second half of the second century the Lord's 
 Supper can be seen moving in the direction of 
 the Mass in the writings of Justin Martyr, and the 
 first suggestions of the authority of Eome appear- 
 ing in the writings of Irenaeus. By the third 
 century Cyprian had elaborated the extreme 
 view of episcopal authority, and the relics of 
 saints and martyrs were in use as objects of 
 superstitious veneration. By the fourth century 
 it was taken for granted that the priest had power 
 to remit and retain sins in the next world as well 
 as in this ; and we find evidences of the fanatical 
 asceticism, the scorn for marriage, and the hatred 
 of heretics which gradually eliminated mercy 
 and humanity from the ecclesiastical heart. In
 
 30 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 the fifth century Leo i. practically founded the 
 Papacy ; and by the end of the sixth century 
 the Papal claims were widely accepted, defended 
 as they already were by forgery as well as by super- 
 stition and tyranny. 
 
 And thus the leprosy of sacerdotalism spread 
 until, in the Middle Ages, the corruption was 
 such that Roman Catholicism had become a 
 travesty of the Church of the New Testament, 
 and the reign of the moral ideal was at an 
 end. The Divine categorical imperative had been 
 subordinated to trivial positive ordinances and 
 to the ritual and routine of the cloister or the 
 school. By the beginning of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury the Church-empire had become as worldly, 
 as corrupt, and as oppressive as the old World- 
 empire had been. The open vice, the gross 
 ignorance, the utter negligence of the Romish clergy, 
 both secular and monastic, were manifest to all 
 who had eyes to see ; and Pope Leo x. could 
 speak of the Gospel itself as a profitable fable 
 for him and his caste. 
 
 Not that all, even in the Hierarchy, were as 
 complacent or self-satisfied as the Pope in whose 
 reign the Reformation began. Not only were 
 there loyal souls in obscure places who were 
 keeping the fire on the altar from going altogether 
 out, there were great ecclesiastics whose hearts 
 revolted at much they saw, or who felt that some
 
 The Reforming Cardinals 3 i 
 
 sort of reformation was absolutely necessary in 
 order to prevent utter apostasy. Three great 
 cardinals of the Reformation era went so far as 
 to get bulls from Rome authorising them to visit 
 and reform the monasteries ; while, later, it was 
 the chief merit of the Jesuits that they saw clearly 
 that the Augean stables must be cleansed. From 
 their point of view the Counter-Reformation was 
 not merely a checkmate to the Protestant revolu- 
 tion but a genuine reform which had become as 
 necessary as, in their eyes, it was altogether 
 salutary. Only the ignorant can deny that those 
 whose opinion was of any value were agreed as to 
 the need for some reform. Not only so, but 
 there is a sense in which there was reform of a 
 sort all round. True as it is that reaction was the 
 order of the day when at length the Jesuits were 
 dominant, it is also true that certain abuses were 
 corrected, that provision was made for the educa- 
 tion of the priesthood which had been shamefully 
 neglected, and that some sort of decency was 
 enforced. Since that time a cultured pagan like 
 Leo x., or a man filled with the lust for war like 
 Julius ii., would probably be as impossible a Pope 
 as a monster like Alexander vi. And while on 
 the one hand the fact that reform was thus felt 
 to be necessary even within the remanent Church 
 abundantly justifies the demands of the Refor- 
 mers, the character of that Counter-Reformation
 
 32 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 enhances our sense of obligation to the real Re- 
 formers. So far as doctrine was concerned, it 
 meant reaction instead of purification, and that 
 the creed of the Romish Church was laid down 
 once for all in rigid statements from which there 
 was no appeal. The Inquisition, too, was set to 
 work on a more extended scale than before to 
 crush out every atom of diversity of opinion and 
 of independence of judgment or outlook. 
 
 It is a commonplace with certain writers to 
 speak of the ages before the Reformation as the 
 ages of faith ; and not a few who ought to know 
 better even look back regretfully on that epoch, 
 when they contrast it with our era of criticism, 
 unrest, and doubt. As a matter of fact, faith was 
 the one thing which was everywhere awanting, and 
 increasingly so as the Revolutionary era drew 
 near. As Sir Walter Scott has remarked in con- 
 nection with such festivities as the Abbot of 
 Unreason, " the indifference of the clergy, even 
 when their power was greatest, to the indecent 
 exhibitions which they always tolerated and 
 sometimes encouraged, forms a strong contrast 
 to the sensitiveness with which they regarded 
 any serious attempt, by preaching or writing, to 
 impeach any of the doctrines of the Church." 
 This want of faith comes out in the very archi- 
 tecture of the later Middle Ages. As Sir Daniel 
 Wilson has it in connection with the church which
 
 The Corruption of the Best 33 
 
 Mary of Gueldres, the Queen of James the Second 
 of Scotland, founded under the Calton Hill at 
 Edinburgh, " its vaulting-shafts sprang from 
 corbels fashioned into all manner of grotesque 
 imps, leering masks, and caricatures of monks and 
 friars, such as a jolly brother who looked out from 
 one of the angles of the apse over the very site of 
 the high altar, as if in purposed mockery of the 
 mysteries enacted below/* 
 
 The difficulty, indeed, is not to prove how 
 absolutely necessary the Reformation was, if the 
 Christian religion were to survive, but to conceive 
 how the Church of Christ, with so much Christian 
 truth regarding the Trinity, the Atonement, and 
 much else which still persisted in the midst of 
 abounding error, and with the abiding presence 
 of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of the humble 
 and contrite who trembled at His word, could 
 have become so corrupt. But corruptio optimi 
 pessima est ; and just because it was a corrupted 
 Church and not a mere institution of men it could 
 fathom deeps of impiety and perfidy as no other 
 institution could. There was the twofold and 
 apparently contradictory triumph of superstition 
 and naturalism pagan both of them. Even 
 the " faith " of the age had degenerated into a 
 miserable bondage to slavish fears, as may be 
 seen in such a life as that of King John of England, 
 who in his combination of superstition and iniquity 
 3
 
 34 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 was an example " writ large " of what a pagan 
 Christianity can produce. Although his wicked- 
 ness was such that, in the savage words of 
 the Saxon Chronicler, " foul as it is, hell itself 
 is denied by the fouler presence of John," he 
 would never venture on a journey without 
 hanging relics round his neck, and was as craven 
 in his superstition as he was daring in his 
 impiety. 
 
 It would appear that there is some fatal necessity 
 which compels those who strain at gnats to swallow 
 camels. Not only is faith lost, but all sense of 
 proportion or decency as well. Macaulay tells of 
 a Colonel Turner who, when on the scaffold for 
 his crimes, thanked God that he had never entered 
 a church without taking off his hat ; while Froude 
 tells of a gang of assassins in Ireland who sat down 
 to enjoy the fare in the house where their murdered 
 victims lay, but abstained from animal food 
 because it was Lent. It was not otherwise with 
 the enemies of our Lord, who, at the very time 
 when they were setting aside every appeal of 
 justice, patriotism, and honour, and were swear- 
 ing away an innocent life, could not enter Pilate's 
 house lest they should be denied by the leaven 
 which might be within its walls. 
 
 Just before the Eeformation movement began 
 there had come into the midst of the deepening 
 corruption that other wonderful movement with
 
 The Renaissance 35 
 
 which it was closely associated, with all its revela- 
 tions and impulses, its new hopes and yearnings, 
 which is variously described as the Renaissance, 
 Humanism, and the Revival of Letters. The fall 
 of Constantinople in the year 1453 had scattered 
 Greek scholars among the Western nations of 
 Europe, and both the classical and ancient 
 Christian literature were recovered and made 
 objects of historical study and knowledge. 
 
 The results were as marvellous as they were 
 varied, and so closely were they bound up with the 
 Reformation which followed that for the ordinary 
 Romish theologian Greek became for a time the 
 language of the heretic. But the revival of letters 
 did not of itself involve the revival of religion, 
 and Transalpine Humanism was very different 
 from Cisalpine Humanism. The Teutonic Re- 
 naissance was notable for the intense ethical 
 seriousness, the religiousness, and the Christian 
 temper of its representative men ; whereas the 
 Italian Renaissance was notable for its unethical 
 character, its spirit of revolt against religion, and 
 its recoil towards the classical and pagan forms of 
 philosophical belief. Primitive Christianity, in- 
 deed, was not so intelligible to Southern as to 
 Northern Europe, so deadly had the influence of 
 the Papacy been where its triumph had been most 
 complete ; and already there was a strange 
 anticipation of the line of cleavage which was to
 
 36 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 be the abiding outcome of the Reformation move- 
 ment when it forced the nations to take their 
 stand for the Evangel or against. 
 
 Alike in the North and the South, however, the 
 Humanistic revival acted as a solvent. Then, as 
 always, the truth was a savour of life unto life 
 or of death unto death. Those whose eyes were 
 turned towards the light were led out into the 
 pathway to the Reformation. Those whose eyes 
 were blinded by passion and sin drifted into sheer 
 unbelief. Scholars had to make their choice be- 
 tween the New Testament and its teaching, and the 
 literature of paganism with all it involved ; and 
 ere long the nations, too, had to choose between 
 pure religion and undefiled, and thoroughgoing 
 antagonism to the claims of the eternal and 
 unseen. In the new light it was soon manifest 
 that the proudest of the claims made by the 
 Mediaeval ecclesiasticism were based on fraud ; 
 while even pagan ideals, especially through Plato, 
 rebuked the insincerities of the fallen Church. 
 The spirit of man, too, as made for God and in 
 the image of God, began to assert itself in Church 
 and State alike ; while students who read the 
 Greek New Testament of Erasmus found them- 
 selves compelled to ask the question, which all 
 men asked later as the vernacular scriptures 
 spread, Where were Rome and the Papacy, the 
 priesthood and the whole sacerdotal system, in
 
 Rome and the Bible 37 
 
 the Christianity of Christ and His Apostles, or 
 anywhere in the New Testament ? 
 
 The Christianity of Rome had in truth almost 
 wholly ceased to be Bible Christianity. In Mr. 
 Shorthouse's John Inglesant there is a striking 
 passage in his description of the form which 
 Christianity assumed in the mind and life of the 
 hero under the guidance of his Jesuit teachers. 
 " It was similar in many respects," he says, " to 
 that which prevails in the present day in most 
 Roman Catholic countries, and may be described 
 as Christianity without the Bible." This illumi- 
 nating phrase sums up the situation equally well 
 for the period just before the Reformation and 
 for the period with which he was dealing; a fact 
 which serves to show how little Rome changes 
 in any essential. In Fourteen Years a Jesuit 
 Count von Hoensbroech says that in the intensely 
 Ultramontane home of his youth the children 
 never saw the Bible, and that this neglect is 
 typical since Romanists go for teaching and help 
 and comfort not so much to the Scriptures as to 
 the thousand books of devotion which are supplied 
 them in every shape and size. " Non-biblical 
 piety," he adds, " is an ordinary thing in Catholic 
 circles." 
 
 It cannot be claimed for the Mediaeval Church 
 that she ever encouraged a knowledge of the 
 vernacular Scriptures even for her priests. The
 
 38 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 utmost she did was to tolerate a knowledge of 
 the Psalter, of Service Books, and in the fifteenth 
 century, of the Plenaria, which were made up 
 of paragraphs from the Gospels and Epistles 
 along with legends and popular tales. In- 
 creasingly, too, as Romanism developed on the 
 lines it still follows, and sacerdotalism was casting 
 its baleful shadow all over Europe, a knowledge 
 of the vernacular Scriptures was regarded with 
 suspicion by the ecclesiastical authorities. As 
 mutterings of dissatisfaction began to be heard 
 among the awakening nations, the influence of 
 the Bible was rightly felt to be hostile at once 
 to the oppressor and the priest. In the year 
 1229 a Council at Toulouse had decreed : ' We 
 also forbid the laity to possess any of the books 
 of the Old and New Testaments, except perhaps 
 the Psalter, or Breviary for the Offices, or the 
 Hours of the Blessed Virgin, which some out of 
 devotion wish to have ; but having any of these 
 books translated into the vulgar tongue we 
 strictly forbid." 
 
 In England, too, one Kneighton a chronicler, 
 writing probably before the year 1400, angrily 
 declared that Wiclif by his English version had 
 made Scripture " common and more open to 
 laymen and to women than it was wont to be to 
 clerks well-learned and of good understanding, 
 so that the pearl of the Gospel is trampled under
 
 Ritualists and the Bible 39 
 
 foot of swine." He maintained that Christ gave 
 His Gospel not to the Church but only to the 
 clergy and doctors of the Church, that they 
 might communicate it to the weaker brethren 
 and the laity according to their need. It is very 
 significant, in this connection, that in proportion 
 as men drift towards Romanism in their sym- 
 pathies and aspirations their love for the free 
 and unfettered circulation of the Bible diminishes- 
 ' To hear the Church was to hear the Bible in its 
 truest and only true sense. Was it not an abuse 
 of the Bible to send shiploads of copies across the 
 seas to convert the nations ? ''' is how one of 
 the English Churchmen who in our own time 
 have come under the influence of this tendency, 
 expresses what is surely a striking and illuminating 
 reversion to type. Another of the same school 
 puts it that " the crucifix should be the first 
 book for their English Home Missionaries' dis- 
 ciples ; and the Holy Scriptures must never be 
 put into the hands of unbelievers." When even a 
 tendency to Romanism in the twentieth century 
 gives birth to such sentiments there need be no 
 suggestion that it is ungenerous to hold that 
 undiluted Romanism in the fifteenth century 
 did not encourage men to read the Bible for 
 themselves. 
 
 The theory of the Mediaeval Church that any 
 knowledge of the Scriptures which was necessary
 
 40 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 for the laity should reach them through the clergy 
 was all the more intolerable, that increasingly 
 as corruptions multiplied the clergy themselves did 
 not know the Scriptures so as to be able to break 
 the Bread of Life to the hungry multitudes who 
 looked up to them to be fed and so often looked 
 in vain. There were only too many like the 
 notorious Bishop of Dunkeld who thanked God 
 that he knew neither the Old Testament nor the 
 New. In England, in the year 1551, out of 311 
 clerics in the diocese of Gloucester, all of them 
 incumbents of parishes, who were examined as 
 to their knowledge of the Ten Commandments, 
 the Apostles' Creed, and the Lord's Prayer, 
 only 90 passed well or fairly well. No fewer 
 than 171 of them could not repeat the Com- 
 mandments, 10 could not repeat the Lord's 
 Prayer, and 9 could not repeat the Creed. Mani- 
 festly such spiritual guides were not qualified 
 to take the place of the Scriptures for the people, 
 nor were they entitled to offer their teaching 
 as a substitute for the written oracles of God 
 as they did. As recently as May 3rd, 1824, Pope 
 Leo xn. spoke thus in an Encyclical to the 
 Latin Bishops : :< We also, venerable brothers, 
 in conformity with our apostolic duty, exhort 
 you to turn away your flocks from these poisonous 
 pastures (i.e. vernacular Bibles). Reprove, en- 
 treat, be instant in season and out of season,
 
 Rome and the Bible 41 
 
 that the faithful committed to you (adhering 
 strictly to the rules of the Congregation of the 
 Index) be persuaded that if the Sacred Scriptures 
 be everywhere indiscriminately published, more 
 evil than advantage will arise thence, because 
 of the rashness of men/' 
 
 In our own time, too, a striking example of 
 Rome's attitude to the Holy Scriptures has been 
 furnished in the experience of Henri Laserre the 
 distinguished Frenchman. Struck by the fact 
 that the children of the Church he loved knew 
 " the Divine Book only in fragments, without 
 logical or chronological order/ 5 he brought out a 
 very attractive and scholarly French translation 
 of the Four Gospels in the end of the year 1886. 
 "We must lead back," he said, "the faithful to 
 the great fountain of living water which flows 
 from the inspired book." As one who had done 
 much for the Church in connection with the shrine 
 at Lourdes his version readily obtained the sanc- 
 tion not only of the Archbishop of Paris but of 
 the Pope, and appeared with the Papal imprimatur. 
 The result was that within a year 25 editions, 
 amounting probably to 100,000 copies, were issued, 
 and it seemed as if France were at last to be allowed 
 to drink freely of the living flood ; and certainly 
 the eagerness of the people to read the Gospel for 
 themselves was most remarkable. 
 
 But the Jesuits soon interfered and proved that
 
 42 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 the Power behind the Pope is mightier than the 
 Pope himself. The Papal sanction was withdrawn 
 under the pretext that some passages were in- 
 accurately translated, although it had been ex- 
 pressly given through Cardinal Jacobini ; and 
 within twelve months of its first appearance the 
 book was on the Index, Papal imprimatur and all, 
 and at once as if by magic disappeared from 
 circulation. 
 
 Not only did the Bible practically disappear from 
 common use in the pre-Eeformation Church as 
 the Mystery of Iniquity developed, until what was 
 left was Christianity without the Bible, but every 
 effort had been made to fill up the place it ought 
 to have had with ecclesiastical and traditional 
 lore about saints and angels, to say nothing of sub- 
 stitutes less worthy. Dr. Horton describes the 
 process thus : 
 
 " As the Bible was taken from the Christian 
 it became necessary to entertain the mind with 
 other devotions, worships, and intercessions. To 
 take the place of the Bible and of Christ, the Virgin 
 Mary was elevated to a divine position in heaven, 
 and treated as the mediator between men and 
 her Son. Though St. Bernard, the last of the 
 Fathers, regarded the idea of her immaculate con- 
 ception as a heresy, because Christ and Christ 
 alone was born without sin, the worship of Mary 
 rapidly and inevitably filled the mind of the
 
 Substitutes for Scripture 43 
 
 Church." When once " the restraint of Scriptural 
 standards is lost, the Church proceeds to invent 
 new cults, to stimulate devotion. By slow and 
 sure steps the mother of Jesus was raised to the 
 rank of Queen of Heaven ; she became, as ' mother 
 of God/ the intercessor to whom men must pray 
 for interest with her Son. It took eighteen cen- 
 turies to establish the point that she was born sin- 
 less, in order to secure the sinlessness of her Son." 
 " As Mary was an ecclesiastical creation, fancy 
 and dogmatic necessity might paint her portrait 
 and exploit her authority at will. The saints and 
 even their relics, pilgrimages, sacred hearts, scapu- 
 laries and the endless novelties of Catholicism, 
 down to the fictions of Loretto and the extrava- 
 gances of New Pompeii, are devices to fill the mind 
 and heart of people who are cut off from the Scrip- 
 tures. The habitual use of the Bible would shatter 
 the whole system." '' The most humble reader 
 of the New Testament could not but see that 
 there was no Mass, no priest, no confessional, and 
 no purgatory there." 
 
 Another illuminating and pathetic description of 
 Mediaeval Komanism is that it had become 
 Christianity without conversion ; or, as it has 
 otherwise been expressed, it was the religion of the 
 natural man. ' Ye must be born again " is the 
 Master's message for all the ages, but gradually 
 the necessity for regeneration and conversion had
 
 44 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 been obscured until it was buried beneath the 
 sands which drifted in from the deserts of the 
 world as it lay in wickedness. Sinful men came 
 to believe that they could make their peace with 
 the Church, and through the Church with God, 
 without becoming spiritually-minded or new 
 creatures in Christ. John Ruskin says that the 
 root of almost every schism and heresy from which 
 the Christian Church has ever suffered is the desire 
 of men to earn salvation rather than receive it, 
 and that the reason why preaching is so commonly 
 ineffectual is that it calls on men oftener to work 
 for God than to behold God working for them. 
 
 But while this tendency is common to all the 
 Churches, Rome deliberately set herself to pander 
 to it, until it was no more than the truth to say 
 that by her accommodations she left the unre- 
 generate free to live in estrangement from God and 
 yet enjoy the conviction of being religious. By 
 one device after another the direct and personal 
 intercourse of the worshipper with God was reduced 
 to a minimum. Man was made for God and his 
 heart cries out for the Living God. Yet at the same 
 time he shrinks from drawing near because of his 
 sin ; and Rome set herself by her vast system of 
 mediation and intercession to satisfy both yearning 
 and shrinking with the most disastrous results. 
 The process ended by delivering the unsanctified 
 heart from all necessity for personal intercourse
 
 Rome and Conversion 
 
 45 
 
 with the Holy, Unseen, and Spiritual God. The 
 true offence of the Cross ceased even while the 
 literal cross and the crucifix were increasingly 
 obtruded. " It is one of the greatest secrets of the 
 power of popery that it accommodates the natural 
 heart of man with an apology for religion when yet 
 it makes no demand on him for close communion 
 with a Holy God." 
 
 The very severity of its demands from its 
 devotees is the proof rather than the refutation 
 of this. With all that is hard in the shape of pen- 
 ances and money exactions, the system is vastly 
 easier for the unspiritual than the evangelical 
 insistence on the need for repentance and faith, 
 for the new birth and the lowly heart. The cry 
 of corrupt human nature is, " Save us from heart- 
 work/' and the very "hardness" of Rome ministers 
 subtly to carnal pride. The Christian demand at 
 every stage is for faith, and the sacerdotal system 
 comes instead with its priests and external rites 
 to satiate if not to satisfy the deepest longings 
 of men without surrender to Christ Himself. 
 Those who have ears to hear can hear the Living 
 Voice of the Good Shepherd^ Others may come to 
 imagine that the voice of the priest is the Master's 
 voice, but they are wrong, and the fruits of their 
 error are very degrading and deadly. It is of 
 course true in the best sense that Christianity 
 is the religion for the natural man, but that is
 
 46 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 because it tells how he can become a new man 
 in Christ. It interprets his yearnings and fathoms 
 his needs that it may take him out of the fearful 
 pit and the miry clay. It tells of salvation for 
 sinners that it may save them from their sins 
 not that they may continue in sin. It is not 
 synonymous with morality, but it leads to the 
 purest moral life. It deals very tenderly with 
 those who cry out in their blindness for help, but it 
 makes no compromise with evil, and those to whom 
 it effectually appeals have the proof that they 
 have been called, in proportion as they turn from 
 everything unworthy and unclean, with a full 
 purpose of and endeavour after new obedience. 
 
 Under the influence of this neglect of Scripture 
 and these sacerdotal compromises and accom- 
 modations, the very vocabulary of the Christian 
 faith gradually changed its meaning in the 
 pre-Reformation Church. Words and phrases 
 which denoted spiritual relations came to be used 
 to describe what was external and visible. A 
 field was holy if it belonged to a priest and secular 
 if a layman drew the rent. A monk was holy 
 because he was a monk and quite apart from any 
 question as to his character ; while an ordinary 
 tradesman was secular although he might be a 
 saint. To become religious meant entering a 
 convent ; and religion itself was thought of as 
 consisting in the performance of a round of cere-
 
 Barriers Overthrown 47 
 
 monies. " Separation from the world " had no 
 reference to godliness, but to membership in a 
 visible and intensely worldly institution mis- 
 named the Church. The Hierarchy took away 
 the Lord so that the pious worshipper knew not 
 where to find Him ; and He was none the less 
 hidden that He was concealed by sacred phrases, 
 and under services which bore His own Holy 
 Name. 
 
 Hence it was that on its true and enduring 
 side the Reformation was just a great revival of 
 heart-religion, a movement born of the irresistible 
 desire of souls, awakened to their true needs, to 
 get near to God. The Mediaeval Church had 
 ended in barring the way to the Divine presence, 
 and it was the overthrow of these barriers which 
 constituted the Reformation. The great tide 
 which arose, and grew deeper and mightier, 
 through the outpouring of the Holy Ghost on His 
 waiting people, ended in sweeping the barriers 
 away, and then the Reformation was an accom- 
 plished fact. The more clearly this is recognised 
 the stronger will the case for the Reformation 
 become.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 Reformation Genealogies 
 
 F^NELON the French Archbishop once 
 asked an old Huguenot peasant, "Where 
 was your Church two hundred years ago ? " 
 and received the gracious response, " In hearts 
 like yours." The popular reply, however, to the 
 question, " Where was your Church before the 
 Reformation ? " is the counter-question, " Where 
 was your face before it was washed ? " Those 
 who know the story of the strivings and yearnings 
 of the centuries which preceded the Reformation 
 know well that the Reformed Church is the Church 
 reformed, and that it is not to be viewed as if 
 it were either a new communion or a mere 
 secession from the Catholic Church. There never 
 was a time, even when the Mystery of Iniquity 
 was most potent, when there were not purity and 
 piety and faith, or when there were not protests 
 and attempts at reform. In the best sense Pro- 
 testantism is not a breaking away from the un- 
 divided Church of the West, but is the Evangelical- 
 ism of that Church that in virtue of which it sur- 
 vived and was a Church purified, strengthened,
 
 Reformers before Reformation 49 
 
 and, above all, made explicit. The ancestry of 
 the Reformers is to be found in the godly men 
 and women who even in the darkest days, by 
 their simple evangelical piety, kept the fire on 
 the altar from going out altogether. Low as it 
 might burn, the flickering flame was never quite 
 extinguished. Even when the gracious Christ 
 could do no mighty works because of the cor- 
 ruption and unbelief of His own, He never left 
 Himself without a witness, and there never was a 
 time when He was not laying His hands on a 
 few sick folk and healing them. When at length 
 the Reformation came, men did not receive the 
 Evangelical doctrine as something entirely new, 
 but as something they had always felt, although 
 they had not been able to give adequate expres- 
 sion to their feelings. 
 
 There were Reformers before the Reformation, 
 as there were heroes before Agamemnon. Again 
 and again there were uprisings against wrongs 
 which had become intolerable outbreaks of 
 religious fervour among those whose hearts were 
 crying out for the Living God, which in their 
 beginnings seemed as full of promise as the Re- 
 formation movement itself. It may be that all 
 who at various times broke with Rome are no 
 more to be accounted as ancestors of the mighty 
 men of the sixteenth century than all the enemies 
 of Rome to-day are to be accounted friends of the 
 
 4
 
 50 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 Evangel. But on the other hand it must be borne 
 in mind throughout that in connection with the 
 heresies of some of the sectaries and intransigeants 
 of the Middle Ages, due apparently to Pagan or 
 Mohammedan influences, our information is almost 
 exclusively derived from their bitter and often 
 unscrupulous foes. For long that was the case 
 also with the sects of the post-Reformation era, 
 and as the light spread it has been found that they 
 were often grossly maligned. 
 
 Bound the great statue of Luther in the Ref orma- 
 tion Memorial at Worms the figures of Hus, 
 Savonarola, Wiclif, and Peter Waldo are grouped 
 as precursors; and not only were there others 
 who might have been added to that noble group, 
 there were multitudes of humble precursors of the 
 Reformation who never lifted up their voices in 
 public protest, but who never bowed the knee to 
 Baal. For, full of interest as the upheavals in the 
 Middle Ages are, it is not to them exclusively 
 we must look for the roots of the Reformation 
 or for anticipations of its principles. Rather must 
 we look to the humble faithful men and women 
 who all the centuries through were the salt of 
 the earth, the light of the world, and the friends 
 of God. They had the new life in their hearts ; 
 they never quite abandoned the idea that all 
 mankind were to be won for Christ ; and in spite 
 of every theory to the contrary they went past
 
 Mediaeval Hymns 51 
 
 the priest and had fellowship with Christ their 
 Saviour and Lord. Unfortunately, however, these 
 are just the people who get no place in the records 
 of these formative ages. Chroniclers like Froissart 
 who saw everything from feudal castle walls, 
 and actually held that the seething discontent of 
 his time grew out of " the great ease and abund- 
 ance of goods in which the common folk then 
 lived," knew as little of them as the monkish 
 annalists in their blindness and superstition. 
 Yet they were there, forming the subsoil in which 
 the roots of the Reformation trees of knowledge 
 and liberty grew up in due time, and preserving 
 faith in the earth amid rude violence, appalling 
 cruelty, and ever-deepening corruption of life 
 and dogma. 
 
 Gracious and helpful suggestions of this are to 
 be found in the Mediaeval hymns, translations 
 of which appear in all the hymn-books of the 
 Christian Church. Many of these still thrill 
 with a passion for Jesus which appeals to every 
 believer, and shows not only how much truth had 
 survived, but how much love and faith there 
 were in spite of abounding error and evil. We 
 have a man like Bernard of Clairvaux, the great 
 statesman and leader ; and pope-maker though 
 he was he sounds the depths where all else is for- 
 gotten except the great Divine Saviour for great 
 sinners. He it was who taught the Church to
 
 52 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 sing " Jesus the very thought of Thee " ; "0 Jesus 
 King most wonderful " ; " Jesus Thou joy of 
 loving hearts." We have a man like Bernard of 
 Clugny, too, with his wonderful satire on the luxury, 
 folly, and vice of his age written although it 
 was in the splendid monastery which in the 
 twelfth century had 2000 religious establishments 
 owning its authority and extending its influence. 
 It is true that the reform which he achieved only 
 ended in deepening the darkness, through its 
 unchristian view of what separation from the 
 world meant. Yet his yearning cry was this : 
 
 " Jesus in mercy bring us 
 
 To that dear land of rest, 
 Who art with God the Father 
 And Spirit ever blest/' 
 
 We have likewise Thomas of Celano with his 
 " Dies Irae," said by many to be the grandest, 
 kingliest hymn ever penned ; the hymn which 
 Goethe, Dryden, Haydn, Milman, and Jeremy 
 Taylor united in putting first among hymns ; and 
 which Mozart made the basis of his celebrated 
 Requiem, and Dr. Johnson could never repeat 
 without tears. It also has the Mediaeval passion 
 for Jesus : 
 
 " Faint and weary Thou hast sought me, 
 On the cross of suffering bought me, 
 Shall such grace be vainly brought me ?"
 
 Medieval Strivings 53 
 
 There never was a time when men and women who 
 were sinners and yearning for pardon, purity, and 
 peace were not showing that in the very midst of 
 error, and along with much that was anti-Christian, 
 they were hearing the voice of Jesus and crying 
 to Him in love and faith. 
 
 When we turn to the actual overt movements 
 which were so common in the pre-Reformation 
 Church, and tell of much striving and desire, we 
 find that they were of many kinds. A philosophic 
 historian, who asserts that the problem of our time 
 is to discover the true relation between faith and 
 science, and that the problem of the sixteenth 
 century was to reconcile faith and liberty, says 
 that the problem of the thirteenth and fourteenth 
 centuries was to adjudicate between faith and 
 reason, between Aristotle and St. Paul. In many 
 respects, however, the problem has been the same 
 not only in these three epochs but all through the 
 history of the Church in its conflict with sin and 
 error. Much as men depend on their environment 
 to give form to the expression of their deepest 
 needs, these needs are always the same in virtue 
 of the universal in man ; and in the midst of 
 Medievalism with its strange limitations and 
 categories we meet everywhere the same profound 
 human yearnings, often inarticulate and even 
 blind, it is true, which led to the Reformation 
 in the sixteenth century and which will lead
 
 54 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 to the final victory of the Gospel, come when 
 that may. 
 
 " Thou hast made us for Thyself and we can only 
 find true rest in serving Thee " is the interpreta- 
 tion of the spiritual struggles of mankind whether 
 in Augustine's day or Bernard's, in Luther's day 
 or Wesley's, or in our own. Man needs God, and 
 when in his quest he fails to find Him the blackest 
 shadow of all is that which is cast by his perverted 
 ideal the fall of one who was made in the image of 
 God, and is haunting empty broken cisterns in the 
 hope of finding Him. If we are ever to put an end 
 to the arrest which we deplore, we must lay hold of 
 the oneness of the soul's needs alike in the Middle 
 Ages, in the Reformation era, and now. Far from 
 requiring to cut ourselves off from what was best 
 in the Mediaeval Church, we can only complete 
 the Reformers' work by serving ourselves heirs to 
 it all. Men have always needed God, although they 
 have often shown it in strange ways ; and they still 
 need God and can only be brought into one great 
 living unity in Christ on the basis of that need. 
 
 For the sake of clearness, and at the risk of 
 ignoring many cross divisions, the Mediaeval 
 movements which shed light on the Reformation 
 may be taken as falling into four classes. There 
 were risings against the pretensions of Rome which 
 were almost entirely social or political and 
 in no strict sense anticipations of the sixteenth
 
 Risings against Papacy 55 
 
 century Revolution. There were heretical move- 
 ments which were neither revivals of heart-religion 
 nor anticipations of the sixteenth century Ref orma- 
 tion. There were revivals of religion which 
 spent themselves along purely sacerdotal lines. 
 And there were revivals which were implicit 
 anticipations alike of the new life of the Reforma- 
 tion and of its supreme principle of the priesthood 
 of all believers. 
 
 There were risings against the Papacy and 
 its manifestations all through the later Middle 
 Ages, which were far from being either placid 
 or self-satisfied. Many influences contributed to 
 these ; ranging from the effects of the Crusades, 
 which have been described as the Foreign Policy of 
 the Papacy, to the ravages of the Black Death. 
 There were also such solvents as the writings of 
 men like Dante and Marsilius of Padua ; and, on 
 the eve of the Reformation, the invention of 
 printing, the coming of the New Learning, and 
 the discovery of the New World. Much was due 
 likewise to the break-up of the Holy Roman 
 Empire, which, although it had ceased to be either 
 Holy or Roman or Imperial, was in theory the 
 political counterpart of the Church ; the moon in 
 the firmament in which the Church was the sun. 
 Consequent on this came the birth of the nations 
 of Europe very much on the lines along which they 
 have developed since.
 
 56 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 These Mediaeval protests against Rome were 
 sometimes national and due to the financial ex- 
 actions of the Papacy and its interference in 
 the internal affairs of the nations. There were, 
 for example, the resentment which gave rise to 
 the Statutes of Prsemunire and Provisors in 
 England, and the movement for the independence 
 of the secular power in France in the reign of 
 Philip the Fair, who has been called the Tamer 
 of the Papacy. This attitude of the French 
 people deepened into what is summed up in 
 history as Gallicanism. There were also class 
 risings, born of the intolerable condition of the 
 common people, which assailed the Church in so 
 far as it had become the ally of the rulers and 
 landowners. These social movements were some- 
 times inspired, in part at least, by religious strivings 
 and new light, as in the case of Jack Cade in 
 England. Sometimes, however, as in the French 
 Jacquerie, no such influence can be traced. 
 
 Such an outstanding phenomenon as the 
 " Babylonish Captivity/' as it was called, must 
 also have had far-reaching effects in destroying 
 the moral influence of the Papacy. In her wars 
 with France, England could hardly respect a Pope 
 who was the puppet of France; and when there 
 were rival Popes who banned each other with 
 much fertility of resource, all the nations began 
 to look on the Papacy with other eyes. The long
 
 Medieval Heresies 57 
 
 struggle, too, between the Church and the Empire 
 embittered and estranged many; and once and 
 again the doings of the Papal authorities were well 
 calculated to destroy their influence among the 
 nations. 
 
 It is difficult to speak with certainty of the 
 heretical sects of the later Middle Ages ; and some 
 hold that they were not really heretical. They 
 are sometimes included among the forerunners 
 of the Eeformers, alike by ardent friends and 
 unscrupulous foes ; and the records have been 
 so perverted that it is almost impossible to get 
 at the truth. Certain it is that some of the 
 charges against them are ridiculous, and in the 
 eyes of the Papal authorities their gravest heresy 
 usually was that they opposed the sacerdotalism 
 which was casting its blight on every part of 
 Church life and doctrine. There seems, however, 
 to be some evidence that survivals or revivals 
 of the Gnosticism which even the Apostles had 
 to combat, and of the Manichseism which en- 
 tangled Augustine in his early years, appeared 
 in various tendencies in the thirteenth and four- 
 teenth centuries, regarding which we have only 
 very confused information. 
 
 The best known name in this connection is that of 
 the Albigenses, who have sometimes been confused 
 with the Waldensians, who happily still survive. 
 Whatever their doctrines were, they were treated
 
 58 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 with appalling cruelty, and apparently exter- 
 minated by agents of Rome who received their 
 fertile lands as a reward. It was in this connec- 
 tion that the ever-infamous order of Abbot Arnold 
 was given : " Slay them all, God will know His 
 own." A German scholar traces their genealogy 
 thus : The first outflow from the stream of heresy 
 which arose far away in Asia through the contact 
 between Christianity and the Oriental religions 
 were the Manichseans ; the next the Paulicians 
 of the seventh century ; the next the Cathari, 
 who in the tenth and eleventh centuries were very 
 strong in Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Dalmatia. Of 
 these Cathari, the Bogomili, Patareni, and 
 Albigenses were only individual developments. 
 
 Among others usually included as Mediaeval 
 heretics are the Beghards and Beguines who 
 seem to have been plain simple folk who began 
 well if they ended ill, in their strivings after 
 deliverance from the crushing tyranny of the 
 priest. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, 
 too, there were the Brethren of the Free Spirit, 
 who are charged with holding that the perfect 
 are free from the law and cannot sin, that every 
 pious man is a Christ even as God becomes man, 
 and that whatever is done in love is pure. Some 
 of them may have ended in deeps of immorality ; 
 but apart from monkish embellishments there is 
 no assured proof of this. They banned marriage
 
 Attempts at Reform 59 
 
 and private property, it is true, but that usually 
 led them to asceticism and not to libertinism ; 
 and so far as the Albigenses are concerned there 
 is evidence that their life was pure. 
 
 In any case these sects have no bearing on the 
 Reformation except in so far as their story was 
 used in the sixteenth century to prejudice the new 
 movement. If there were communistic libertinism 
 and pantheism in some of the outgoings of the 
 ferment of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, 
 they had no part in the religious revival in which 
 the Reformation was born. Its parentage can be 
 traced along very different lines. It must be 
 repeated, too, that it no more follows that all 
 who set themselves against Rome prior to the 
 Reformation were Reformers before the Reforma- 
 tion, than that everything which now calls itself 
 Modernism is synonymous with Evangelicalism. 
 
 The Reform movements along Romish lines 
 were numerous enough to bear eloquent testimony 
 to the need for cleansing, and impotent enough 
 to show that the sacerdotal system itself was the 
 real source of the evils which abounded, and the 
 great barrier to effective reform. The Reform- 
 ing Councils were always baffled, and with the 
 failure of the Council of Constance and that of 
 Basle all hope of genuine reform of the Church 
 from within faded away. New Orders were 
 instituted with eager faith and many a hope,
 
 60 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 but they never gave Christ the supreme place and 
 ended in corruption as great as that against 
 which they were begun as protests and remedies. 
 There were also exposures in the writings of the 
 poets and others ; and no one in the Reformation 
 era said harder things about the ecclesiastics and 
 their immorality than had been said by men 
 like Petrarch, Chaucer, and Boccaccio, who never 
 dreamt of aught else than living and dying in 
 the Communion of Rome. Thinkers and states- 
 men, too, assailed the evils which abounded 
 in the Church with extraordinary frankness and 
 vigour; upholding the claims of the national 
 Churches as against the Papacy as even the most 
 " Rome ward " Anglicans still do ; demanding 
 the preaching of the Gospel; and at times even 
 attacking the Romish doctrine of the sacraments. 
 But they all looked for reform from within, as 
 indeed the Reformers themselves did at first, 
 and along with the persistence of Papal rule. 
 Men as diverse as Henry vni. and his victim 
 Sir Thomas More, each with his plan of reform, 
 were Sacerdotalists to the end. 
 
 There are two outstanding names which are 
 representative of Mediaeval aspirations and heroic 
 self-surrender at their best : Francis of Assisi 
 and Catherine of Siena. Their movements, how- 
 ever, like all similar movements, broke on the rock 
 that religion was made a thing of ceremonies and
 
 Imitatio Christi 6 1 
 
 dogmas rather than of the heart, and that separa- 
 tion from the world was made artificial and unreal. 
 Francis called those of his generation who yearned 
 for freedom from sin and likeness to God to a life 
 of exact imitation of the poverty, celibacy, and 
 obedience of our Lord ; and a genuine revival was 
 the result of his example and influence. But 
 ere long the Franciscans departed from the ideal 
 of Francis ; and by and by the Fratricelli or 
 Spiritual Franciscans were treated as enemies of 
 Rome ; and in spite of fresh waves of reform, 
 through new outgoings of the spirit of Francis, 
 the ignorance and immorality of those who still 
 bore his name in the sixteenth century had much 
 to do with the popular indignation and disgust 
 which found expression in the Reformation. 
 
 Even the far-famed and justly-prized Imitatio 
 Christi spent itself very largely along Romish 
 lines, although it helped and guided many who were 
 in the true ancestry of the Reformation. It is the 
 finest product of the monastic spirit in literature, 
 and through it there throbs the yearning heart 
 of Mediaeval Christianity. But it is the life of the 
 cloister which is set forth ; and, in the ultimate, 
 imitation is not the Evangelical ideal. The 
 Christian is to be filled with Christ so as to repro- 
 duce Him in the daily life ; and not to copy Him 
 laboriously as art-students copy the great Masters. 
 It is the legal spirit which speaks of men doing
 
 62 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 their best while they are still rejecting God's Best. 
 At times the so-called imitation of Christ has even 
 been made an excuse for refusing Him and His 
 new life. The Evangelical appeal is that our 
 union to Christ should be such that He lives in us 
 and we live in Him so that we grow into perfect 
 likeness to him, not by constant effort but by 
 living His life and manifesting His Spirit. Evan- 
 gelical holiness is not a manufactured article on 
 which the tool marks can be seen, but a flower of 
 the Holy Spirit's planting, which grows in the 
 Garden of the Lord. 
 
 When we come to the genuine precursors of 
 the Reformation we meet men like the Mystics, 
 who were in the true Apostolic Succession even 
 if they were Evangelical in reality rather than in 
 form. They were of many types, and for the 
 most part lived a true life of consecration to God 
 without seeking to express their convictions in 
 set terms, or coming into collision with the un- 
 spiritual theories and practices of the official 
 Church. There was Meister Eckhart the Domini- 
 can monk who died in the Roman Communion, 
 and who earned the honourable title of Master 
 of the Holy Scriptures. He did not openly assail 
 the prevalent corruption, but he called men away 
 from empty forms and wordy scholasticism to 
 wait on God. He told them that the remedy for 
 the ills of the time was in their own hands ; that
 
 The Mystics 63 
 
 they were called to cultivate personal piety in 
 all manner of circumstances. The external form 
 was nothing if the spirit was right. 
 
 Then there was Nicolas of Basle, " the Great 
 Layman/' who gathered the Friends of God 
 around him to represent the reality of which the 
 Brethren of the Free Spirit were the counterfeit. 
 His great appeal was for union to God through 
 self-renunciation and the indwelling of the Holy 
 Ghost. He was burnt as a heretic at Vienna in 
 his extreme old age somewhere about the year 
 1400. There were the contemporaries John of 
 Ruysbroeck, the Flemish curate, and John Tauler, 
 the preacher of repentance. Tauler is the typical 
 mystic for most, and he lived a life of wonderful 
 courage and usefulness. It was a true instinct 
 which almost in our own time led the Protestants 
 of Strasburg, five centuries after he had gone to 
 his rest, to raise a stone over his grave in the 
 church where he had preached repentance so long 
 before to his fellow-townsmen. There was also a 
 mystic like Henry Suso, the son of a German baron, 
 who became a monk, and one of the Friends of God. 
 Instead of being censured like Eckhart, burned like 
 Nicolas, suspected like Ruysbroeck, or excom- 
 municated like Tauler, Suso was raised to the 
 minor stage of canonisation as the Blessed Amandus, 
 for his loyalty to the Mediaeval Church. These 
 men take us into godly homes and bring us into
 
 64 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 touch with pious souls who, in the midst of much 
 that was alien to the doctrine and practice of the 
 New Testament Church, lived for God and gave 
 themselves up to do His will. For the most part 
 it was from homes like these that the Reformers 
 were by and by to come forth, to summon the 
 nations to newness of life. 
 
 Besides the Mystics there were others whose 
 anticipation of the Reformers was so clear and 
 definite as to raise the question once and again, 
 why men like Luther and Zwingli succeeded 
 where men like Wiclif and Hus failed. The only 
 answer is that the fulness of the time had not yet 
 come; and that in the sixteenth century there 
 was a unique combination such as had never been 
 before, through the intellectual revival, the birth 
 of the nations, the invention of the printing press, 
 and the discovery of the New World. Some one 
 has put it that there was now fresh oxygen in 
 the air, so that the fire of Reformation once kindled 
 burned with a steady and consuming flame. 
 " The wind bloweth where it listeth ; so is every 
 one that is born of the Spirit/' 
 
 Some of these precursors of the Reformers were 
 men of outstanding nobility and gifts. The work 
 of John Wiclif, the Morning Star of the English 
 Reformation as he has been called, for example, 
 was vastly more fruitful than has sometimes been 
 supposed. Writers like Professor Pollard and Dr.
 
 Wiclif and Savonarola 65 
 
 Rashdall go so far as to say that the English Re- 
 formation was native to the soil, that it borrowed 
 little or nothing from Luther, and that in many 
 particulars it followed the lines laid dov/n by Wiclif 
 long before. When it is said that Wiclif lived 
 before his time that does not mean that he was 
 one born out of due season, but that in his case 
 the interval between the sowing and reaping was 
 even longer than usual. Yet the fact that Wiclif 
 was hearing Mass at the time of his last illness 
 reminds us that he was a precursor of the Refor- 
 mation rather than a Reformer in the sixteenth 
 century sense. That is even truer of another 
 hero in the fight with tyranny and corruption, 
 Savonarola, the great Italian. His latest writing 
 is the most advanced from the Evangelical view- 
 point, but he never quite got away from the 
 limitations which the cloister life begets. Along 
 with evangelical truth and fervour he combined 
 much which was inconsistent with the Evangel ; 
 and it is significant that the Florentines who 
 adhered to him, the Piagnoni or Weepers as they 
 were called, did not favour the Reformation 
 when it became an accomplished fact, and are 
 even said to have persecuted the followers of 
 Luther. Savonarola's greatest book, The Triumph 
 of the Cross, was used as a text-book in Romish 
 schools. 
 
 Others of this band of noble pioneers whose 
 5
 
 66 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 names ought to be held in grateful remembrance 
 are Hus and Jerome, John of Goch and John 
 Wessel. It was of this last that Luther said: 
 " Had I read Wessel before, my enemies would 
 have said, Luther has taken everything from 
 Wessel, so thoroughly do our ideas agree." Weasel's 
 teaching was in harmony with Reformation 
 doctrine in matters so crucial and vital as Scrip- 
 ture, Justification, and the Priesthood of Be- 
 lievers. It was, indeed, only the protection of 
 powerful friends that saved him from the Inquisi- 
 tion ; and many of his works were destroyed 
 by the diligence of the mendicant friars. How 
 complete such destruction could be may be seen 
 from the fate of an Italian tractate, entitled 
 The Benefits of Christ's Death, which appeared 
 in Venice in 1542, and of which no fewer than 
 sixty thousand copies had been sold within six 
 years, besides many reprints and translations 
 thereafter. Yet the extirpation of it was so 
 thorough that thirty years after its appearance 
 it was no longer to be found in the original, and a 
 century later it was believed that no translation 
 of it existed. 
 
 The genealogies of the Reformation thus show 
 that the ancestry of the Reformers is not to be 
 found in Mediaeval heretics and separatists, but 
 among those who were truly evangelical in spirit 
 in spite of much error, and who had fellowship
 
 Augustine s Inheritance 67 
 
 with God in spite of every barrier which priest- 
 craft had set up. Similarly the ancestry of the 
 Church of Rome is to be found in those who 
 paved the way for the belief in Transubstantiation 
 and the substitution of a man-made religion for the 
 Divine revelation. The Church of Rome to-day 
 represents only one side of the Mediaeval Church, 
 and that the schismatic. Not only so, but the 
 ancestry of the post-Reformation sects whether 
 on the Anabaptist or the Socinian extreme, used 
 as they have been to vilify Evangelicalism as if 
 they were its logical or legitimate fruits, is to be 
 found in part in Pantheistic, Manichsean, and 
 other heresies which appeared sporadically in the 
 Mediaeval Church, and in part in doctrines of that 
 Church which were never branded as heretical. 
 Much that had been secretly at work in the minds 
 of men found vent after the Reformation which 
 was in no sense bound up with it. 
 
 How strangely truth and error were often com- 
 bined in the pre-Reformation era may be seen in 
 Augustine himself. The Reformers largely owed 
 their doctrines of grace to him, but he was a 
 fountain of bitter water as well as of sweet. He 
 upheld the celibacy of the clergy, advocating monas- 
 ticism, and had much to do with the introduction 
 of the doctrine of purgatory. " The inheritance of 
 Augustine," says Principal Fairbairn, "was divided. 
 The Catholics succeeded to his polity, the Reformers
 
 68 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 to his theology." " Augustine's ideas in regard 
 to the Church/' says Harnack, " are full of contra- 
 dictions." The Reformers were not schismatics 
 nor were their doctrines novelties. They represent 
 the triumph of truths and yearnings which were 
 never wholly unknown even in the darkest days. 
 Evangelicalism had been almost crushed out by 
 sacerdotalism, but it had lingered on in the hearts 
 of those who were humble and contrite ; and in 
 the Reformation era, when the Breath of God 
 fanned the smouldering embers into flame, they 
 blazed out into a great conflagration which 
 illumined many a land.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 The Principles of the Reformation 
 
 HOW far the Reformers met the situation 
 with which they were confronted can best 
 be seen by a consideration of the great 
 practical and operative principles which were 
 common to all of them. Such a consideration 
 will also show how deplorable, as well as how un- 
 necessary, was the arrest which ere long laid its 
 icy fingers on the movement which at first went 
 forth conquering and to conquer. That it began 
 well is not open to question. 
 
 The great conflict and revival of the sixteenth 
 century may be looked at with advantage from 
 various standpoints. The movement may be looked 
 at from the national point of view, and its special 
 features among the different peoples traced and 
 compared. There were the nations where practi- 
 cally the whole community came under its influence 
 such as England, Scotland, and Holland; Norway, 
 Sweden, and Denmark ; and the nations where it 
 failed and which as a consequence ended in reaction 
 such as Italy, France, and Spain. Italy became 
 a mere geographical expression ; while Spain and
 
 70 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 France were held more grimly than ever under the 
 twofold despotism of the Church and the Crown. 
 The Inquisition may be taken as the symbol of the 
 one despotism and the Bastille of the other. 
 There were also the nations, such as Germany and 
 Switzerland, where it only partially succeeded, and 
 where the results were civil war and the indefinite 
 postponement of the development of their corporate 
 life. It may also be looked at from the stand- 
 point of the division into Lutheran, Reformed, 
 and Anglican, which resulted in, and had so much 
 to do with, the arrest which we are considering. 
 Lutheranism became dominant in Germany and 
 Scandinavia ; Calvinism in Scotland, Switzerland, 
 and the Netherlands ,' while Anglicanism pursued 
 a course of its own in England, through its insist- 
 ence on the necessity for the historical episcopate 
 in the Reformed Church. 
 
 The Reformation may also be looked at as a 
 European movement, and from the standpoint 
 of the common influences which led to a simul- 
 taneous revival in so many lands. And it has to 
 be borne in mind that the Europe of Luther was 
 more susceptible to such a simultaneous movement 
 than the Europe we know, in spite of our modern 
 means of intercommunication. The fourteenth 
 and fifteenth centuries had, it is true, been the 
 birth-time of the nations of modern Europe, but 
 there was only one Church. When the Reforma-
 
 Reformation Europe 7 l 
 
 tion began, Aberdeen and St. Andrews were ruled 
 from the same centre as Canterbury and York. 
 Frankfort and Copenhagen obeyed the same 
 ecclesiastical rule as Venice, Brussels, and Mar- 
 seilles. Not only so, but the dominant statesmen 
 in all the lands were nearly always Churchmen 
 who used their power for the most part in the 
 interests <of the Papal domination. One result of 
 this universal system was that the same sort of 
 abuses existed everywhere. Every land suffered 
 from the greed and corruption of Rome, and in 
 every land the pious and sincere were alienated 
 from Popery and prepared for the Reformation. 
 The German merchant and the Scottish peasant, 
 the Flemish weaver and the Swiss shepherd, the 
 French nobleman and the English artisan, alike 
 suffered from the exactions of the Papal system, 
 and in person and family, as patriots and men 
 with souls to be saved, had grievances hard to be 
 borne against the greedy, licentious, ignorant, 
 and idle ecclesiastics who swarmed everywhere. 
 
 There was also the fact that scholars all over 
 Europe wrote and spoke one literary language. 
 Lord Bacon, for example, although he flourished 
 as late as the reign of James the First, rewrote his 
 greatest works in Latin that he might appeal to the 
 scholars and students of Europe. The effects of 
 this common language were, comparative ease in 
 reaching those who had most to do with shaping
 
 72 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 the public opinion of the time, and a certain 
 community of interest and feeling. Latin was 
 the language of " humanity," and the books and 
 pamphlets which exposed the corruptions of the 
 Romish system and called men to newness of life 
 were read without distinction of nationality. 
 When the new spirit began to move men it appealed 
 at once to Oxford and Paris, to Antwerp and 
 Erfurt. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, 
 that the Reformation was so widespread, or that 
 it attained European dimensions such as no move- 
 ment since has ever attained. 
 
 But besides the one Church with its common 
 abuses and the one language with its community of 
 interests, the Breath of God was breathing upon the 
 nations in a wondrous way in that era, and creat- 
 ing everywhere a new sense of sin, with a longing 
 not merely for official pardon, but for true holiness 
 and likeness to God. It was a time of renaissance, 
 of new outgoings and unwonted expectations 
 alike in literature, navigation, and trade ; and 
 the spirit of man was likewise strangely moved by 
 that Wind which bloweth where it listeth, and was 
 profoundly stirred by longings for peace of con- 
 science and fellowship with God. The priest, 
 however, and all the priest stood for, blocked the 
 way. That there were many, indeed, even in the 
 darkest days who surmounted every obstacle 
 and drew near through the Saviour Christ can
 
 Reformers and the Bible 73 
 
 hardly be doubted, but they did so in spite of the 
 entire Church system ; and whether they knew 
 it or not were rebels against that system. The 
 Reformation meant a return to the beliefs and 
 practices of primitive Christianity. The super- 
 structure which ages of ignorance and craft had 
 built up was overthrown in whole or in part. 
 
 Some of the Reformed Churches went further 
 than others, and went furthest in proportion 
 as they were most spiritual ; but all of them aimed 
 at the Christianity of Christ and His Apostles. 
 Not only did they go back to the Scriptures, they 
 made a deeper plunge into the meaning of the 
 Scriptuves ; and the principles which were common 
 to all of them may most concisely be described 
 as gathering round a new conception and use of 
 Scripture, justification by faith alone, and the 
 right and duty of private judgment ; and as 
 summed up in the doctrine of the priesthood of all 
 believers. 
 
 A New Conception and Use of Scripture. The 
 Reformers' doctrine of the Bible as the only in- 
 fallible source and rule of faith and practice has 
 been described by the theologians as the formal 
 or objective principle of the Reformation ; but 
 more simply put, their doctrine was that in Scrip- 
 ture every believer can hear God speaking directly 
 to him, and that He can be heard by every one 
 in whose hands the Bible is. It is, indeed, often
 
 74 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 asserted that they simply put the Bible in the 
 place of the Pope, and followed the one authority as 
 blindly and unintelligently as the Romanists followed 
 the other, and in an equally idolatrous spirit. 
 
 But there is no foundation for the charge. The 
 first thing they did was to claim that the Bible 
 should not be dealt with as a literary prodigy, 
 but should be interpreted like any other book. 
 The Mediaeval doctrine of Scripture had dis- 
 tinguished four senses in which any passage 
 might be interpreted. In addition to the his- 
 torical sense or plain meaning, which could be 
 discovered by the ordinary rules of grammatical 
 interpretation, there were the allegorical, moral, 
 and anagogic senses which were said to teach men 
 respectively what they were to believe, what they 
 were to do, and what they were to hope. As an 
 outcome of this fantastic treatment the historical 
 and only trustworthy meaning came to be the 
 least valued of the four. It lay on the surface 
 and any one might discover it, whereas the other 
 meanings could only be ascertained by the im- 
 aginative and ingenious. Even Erasmus, the 
 greatest of the Humanists, spoke disparagingly 
 of the grammatical method, and asked : " What 
 does it matter whether you read the Books of 
 Kings or Livy's History if you cannot look to 
 allegory ? *' Many even went so far as to advise 
 that those interpreters of Scripture should be
 
 Reformers and the Bible 75 
 
 followed who departed furthest from the letter. 
 The result was that almost any passage could be 
 made to teach almost anything its expositor wished 
 it to teach. Elaborate doctrines were deduced 
 from the genealogies of Abraham and David, 
 and important rules of conduct from the High- 
 Priest's robes, or our Lord's journey from Caper- 
 naum to Nain. 
 
 The Reformers set themselves resolutely against 
 this ur scholarly and pernicious system. '' The 
 Holy Spirit," said Luther, " is the all-simplest 
 writer or speaker that is in heaven or on earth, 
 and therefore His words can have no more than 
 one simplest sense which we call the scriptural 
 or literal meaning." " I have observed," he also 
 declared, " that all heresies and errors have orig- 
 inated not from the simple words of Scripture, 
 as is so universally asserted, but from neglecting 
 these simple words and from the affectation of 
 subjective tropes and inferences." Calvin, for 
 his part, held that the Romish method was nothing 
 but a device of Satan for annihilating the dignity 
 of Scripture. In agreement with these repre- 
 sentative Reformers the Westminster Confession 
 of Faith sums up the Reformed doctrine thus : 
 " All things in Scripture are not alike plain in 
 themselves nor alike clear anto all, yet those 
 things which are necessary to be known, believed 
 and observed for salvation, are so clearly pro-
 
 76 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 pounded and opened in some place of Scripture 
 or other that not only the learred but the unlearned 
 in a due sense of the ordinary means may attain 
 unto a sufficient understanding of them." The 
 Bible was thus taken from the theologians and 
 given to the people to be for all time the people's 
 Book. The ecclesiastical media through which 
 the light had shone in such fitful and bewildering 
 ways were set aside, and welcome rays of hope 
 and peace shone from the Word itself into many 
 a lowly, weary, waiting heart. 
 
 The Reformers, however, were not content 
 with insisting that the Bible should be read and 
 understood like any other book, they dealt with 
 it in a far freer fashion than would be approved by 
 some of their disciples now. Luther, for example, 
 in one connection or another, asked what it 
 mattered whether or not Moses wrote Genesis ; 
 put the date of Ecclesiastes down past the time 
 of Malachi ; wished the Book of Esther was not 
 in the Bible ; said that the story of Jonah was 
 more absurd than the fables of the poets ; and not 
 only denied that the Epistle of James could have 
 been written by an Apostle or could be reconciled 
 with the writings of St. Paul, but called it an 
 epistle of straw as compared with the writings 
 of Peter, Paul, or John. Calvin, too, every- 
 where exercises similar freedom, although he 
 used it with greater discretion. He pronounced
 
 Freedom and Faith 77 
 
 John viii. 1-11 and 1 John v. 7 to be interpolations ; 
 denied the Messianic reference of some of the 
 Psalms usually held to be Messianic ; and in deal- 
 ing with an apparent discrepancy in the Gospels, 
 said that he did not know how it had arisen and 
 did not very much care. These great exegetes 
 lived when Bible Criticism was in its infancy, 
 and in the fuller light of our time they might 
 have changed some of their textual opinions. As 
 a matter of fact they changed some of them as 
 it was, when they understood the Word better. 
 
 But in view of such utterances it is ridiculous 
 to say that they made a fetish of the Bible which 
 they had rescued for the people. That they 
 have likewise been accused of having anticipated 
 modern rationalism by their attitude to Scripture 
 suggests that, in a marvellous way, considering 
 the atmosphere in which they were trained, 
 they found the golden mean of manly independ- 
 ence and reverent simplicity. 
 
 Turning from their negative teaching, as they 
 removed the encrustations of the ages, to their 
 positive teaching about Scripture, we see how 
 fruitful was the conception of the Word with 
 which they enriched mankind. They thought 
 of the Bible as no mere storehouse of information 
 regarding doctrine and morals, but as a means 
 of grace, since God spoke in it directly to the 
 human soul. They taught that men could not
 
 78 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 only obtain instruction through the study of 
 Scripture but could enter into fellowship with 
 Him whose book it is. For them it opened 
 up the way not merely to knowledge about God 
 but to communion with God. Those who make 
 a diligent and faithful use of it share in the blessed 
 experience of intercourse with God, of which 
 it tells. The Bible was vindicated as the record 
 of that revelation in history by which God in His 
 grace has been training men for Himself, and 
 making the great salvation known to them. 
 It was never a mere book for the Reformers, 
 but a living voice. Their doctrine of the Testi- 
 mony of the Holy Ghost must always be borne 
 in mind in connection with their doctrine of 
 Scripture, for it was only in the light of that 
 Testimony, only because the Spirit of God spoke 
 to them in it, that they made the Bible the 
 ultimate standard by which they tested not only 
 the claims of Rome but every other claim. They 
 clung to the Bible with their whole heart and 
 mind, and made it their constant guide ; but they 
 never worshipped the letter with that devotion 
 which kills. They kept their hearts open to 
 the Spirit who gave them light. And thus they 
 heard the voice of the Father leading them on to 
 higher and holier heights, and knew the life- 
 giving Word of the Living God. If only their 
 successors had been as loyal and wise, the ages
 
 Testimony of Holy Spirit 
 
 which followed would have had a very different 
 tale to tell. Instead of arrested development 
 there would have been that perennial revival 
 and endless growth to which God has called His 
 Church. 
 
 Then, as now, the Romish theory of the Sacra- 
 ments was that they perpetuate and prolong the 
 work of Christ in such a way that the believer is 
 not left merely to faith in something which took 
 place in a far distant past, but is in touch with the 
 living presence of God. This theory, like most of 
 the Romish theories, has grown out of an actual 
 need. It is salvation here and now that men crave. 
 It is a Saviour who is a present reality for whom 
 the heart yearns. But the Reformers soon saw 
 that this want had been provided for in an infinitely 
 better way than by the Mass or priestly absolution. 
 The Living Word, truly understood, has this ever- 
 present application and power. It speaks through 
 the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Spirit speaks through 
 it in a blessed circle of grace, to the faithful soul 
 here and now, as it has always spoken to those who 
 wait on Him. As the Reformers thought of it and 
 used it, the Bible is the voice of God speaking 
 directly to men in words they can hear and under- 
 stand. When they were asked how they knew it 
 was the Word of God, they replied that there was 
 that in it which made them as sure that God 
 was speaking to them in it, as they were that they
 
 8o The Arrested Reformation 
 
 could see the light of day. Their interpretation 
 of it verified itself to their hearts by the light 
 and peace which the acceptance of it brought. It 
 is the voice of the Good Shepherd which those 
 who are His are able to recognise as they follow 
 Him. 
 
 The significance of this is emphasised by the con- 
 trast, already alluded to, between the attitude of the 
 Reformation and that of Rome to the circulation 
 of the Bible. On the part of the Romish authorities 
 there was a growing determination to keep the 
 vernacular Scriptures from the people, and this 
 became explicit and official at the Council of Trent. 
 The Reformers, on their part, hastened to translate 
 the Bible into every language and to put it into 
 every hand. It was at once their daily guide and 
 their court of appeal ; and they held that with God 
 speaking to him in it, the poor man knew more 
 about the way of salvation than Councils or Popes 
 did without its instruction and inspiration. 
 
 Justification by Faith alone. This doctrine, 
 which for many is the characteristic doctrine of 
 the Reformers, has been called their material or 
 subjective principle, and is closely bound up with 
 their new doctrine of the Scriptures. Faith, for 
 the Reformers, meant more than cold assent to 
 doctrines. It was personal trust in and resting 
 on the personal Saviour who spoke to them in the 
 Word. To tell how this doctrine came to be in
 
 ^Justification by faith Si 
 
 the forefront would be to tell the story of the 
 Reformation. The desire to be just before God is 
 one of the most fundamental in the heart of man. 
 There is an innate yearning to be at peace with 
 God, and the different religions are just the 
 different ways in which men have attempted to 
 meet that yearning ; and when the Reformers 
 had their eyes opened in actual experience of the 
 pardoning grace of God in Christ they saw that 
 the Church of Rome had been leading men in 
 the wrong direction. They found that the chief 
 importance had come to be put on the external; 
 and they heard the indulgence-seller advertise 
 his power to forgive the most flagrant offences 
 in return for money payments. Not only so, but 
 for men who through faith and repentance had 
 been born again, the theory which underlay that 
 system was almost as repugnant as the system 
 itself. That theory was that the Divine pardon 
 could only be pronounced by a priest. The only 
 channel through which God spoke pardon and 
 peace to the penitent soul was the priesthood of 
 Rome, manifestly vicious as it sometimes was. 
 
 In opposition to all this, the Reformers taught 
 that the penitent can go direct to God in his 
 sorrow for his sin, and in simple dependence on 
 the promises can obtain pardon from God. The 
 Romish system made pardon depend on the 
 mechanical completeness of confession and con-
 
 82 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 trition, and on adherence to stereotyped forms ; 
 whereas the Reformation doctrine made it depend 
 on the sovereign grace of God in Christ bestowed 
 on all who trust in Him. " Justification is an act 
 of God's free grace, wherein He pardoneth all our 
 sins and accepteth us as righteous in His sight 
 only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us 
 and received by faith alone." 
 
 This faith has sometimes been reduced to a mere 
 intellectual assent to doctrines, an affair of the 
 head rather than of the heart ; but with the Re- 
 formers it was always heartfelt trust in a personal 
 Saviour. The penitent sinner goes direct to 
 Him whom he has offended, and who alone can 
 pardon ; and who always pardons those who cry to 
 Him in faith. Grace is the keynote of the whole 
 Reformation system, as became a movement which 
 was primarily a revival of religion ; and in presence 
 of the free grace of God the need for priests with 
 their absolution and indulgences disappears, and 
 the whole fabric of the Romish system of justifica- 
 tion crumbles to the dust. 
 
 The chief objection which has been urged to the 
 Reformers' doctrine helps to make this obvious. 
 It has constantly been affirmed that it tends to 
 make those who accept it careless in regard to the 
 moral law ; or, as a modern writer has it, that it is 
 an affront on morality. History, however, shows 
 that its tendency is exactly the reverse. The faith
 
 Antinomianism 8 3 
 
 which brings the sinner into personal touch 'with 
 Christ is of its own nature fruitful in good works. 
 It reaches the deepest springs of holy living and 
 aspiration. It provides the only sure foundation 
 for the Christian life, and opens up the only way 
 by which those who have been sinners can have 
 fellowship with God. Experience has never shown 
 that fear is a more powerful incentive to purity 
 than gratitude, and the yearning to be Christ- 
 like, born of union to Him. If faith meant the 
 mere acceptance of certain dogmas, the objection 
 of Antinomianism might hold ; but when it means, 
 as it meant for the Reformers, that the soul has 
 gone out in loving surrender to Christ, it cannot 
 hold, inasmuch as the highest possible basis and 
 inspiration for the moral life has been secured. 
 
 With Luther as with St. Paul, with Calvin as with 
 Augustine, the longing for holiness was passionate 
 and overwhelming, and the whole record of the 
 Church is with us to prove that free grace has been 
 immensely more fruitful in holy, tender, Christ- 
 like lives than any system of legalism which has 
 yet been devised. That some are unable to rise 
 to the heights, and that there have been camp- 
 followers in the army of God all through, do not 
 prove that the doctrine of justification by faith is 
 inadequate. There were Antinomians in St. 
 Paul's day, and the nature of his appeals to them 
 bears out the conviction that the Apostolic doctrine
 
 84 Tfie Arrested Reformation 
 
 was the Reformation doctrine, even as it is still 
 the doctrine of all the Evangelical Churches. 
 " Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound ? 
 God forbid," seems to presuppose the Reformation 
 doctrine of justification by faith alone, and to show 
 that the Apostolic doctrine was misunderstood and 
 assailed very much as the doctrine of the Reformers 
 was. 
 
 The Right and Duty of Private Judgment. In 
 the Middle Ages under feudal law the rights of man 
 as man were hardly ever recognised in any sphere. 
 The vassal obeyed his lord, and the lord his over- 
 lord. Even the freedom of monarchs was in part 
 mere arbitrary caprice, and in part was subject 
 to the veto of the barons and the limits of taxation. 
 At its best such a system developed personal 
 devotion, and made " spend me defend me " mean 
 that the vassal would share what his lord had. 
 But it was altogether out of harmony with the 
 Divine origin and destiny of men, and the Re- 
 formation demand for freedom of conscience and the 
 right of private judgment struck its death-knell. 
 Luther and many another who followed him may 
 have had no clear perception of all that was in- 
 volved; but Calvin and Knox and others who 
 came a generation later saw clearly enough that 
 freedom could not be confined to one department ; 
 and we see now that it must be claimed for every 
 sphere.
 
 Private ^Judgment 85 
 
 " Our modern ideas of civil liberty are in the 
 last resort rooted in the Reformation. From the 
 moment when the Reformers swept away all that 
 came between the individual soul and its Creator, 
 asserted the full rights of the humblest being to 
 unrestricted communion with God through Christ, 
 and laid upon him the burden and glory of responsi- 
 bility to the Supreme for the gift of Eternal Life 
 from that hour political liberty became inevitable. 
 The religious truth wrought itself out in the political 
 and economic sphere by virtue of the unity of the 
 soul. Religious conviction generated the spirit 
 of liberty." How could a man who stood before 
 the King of kings admit that he was unfit to share 
 in the social and political government of his own 
 fatherland ? It was not, however, through any 
 explicit claim so much as through the exercise of 
 their freedom that the Reformers laid the founda- 
 tion of the freedom which we now enjoy. The 
 right was implied in the procedure by which the 
 teaching of Rome was rejected in obedience to the 
 teaching of Christ, and right and duty always 
 went hand in hand. 
 
 Whenever it was seen that pardon comes through 
 a transaction between the soul and God, and that 
 the Bible is such a Divine message that every one 
 who reads it aright can understand it and enter by 
 faith and obedience into the blessedness of which 
 it tells, it was inevitable that the claim should be
 
 86 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 asserted that man must be free to deal with God 
 for himself and to read and interpret the Bible 
 for himself. Not only so, but in the new light 
 it was by and by seen that it is absurd to interfere 
 with this right. No one can believe to order. 
 Men can only believe what for them is credible, 
 and force cannot take the place of credibility. 
 " Convince a man against his will, he's of the same 
 opinion still;" and even when one wishes to be 
 convinced, conviction can neither be commanded 
 nor forced. A man can no more believe with his 
 neighbour's faith than he can see with his neigh- 
 bour's eyes ; and those who deny the right of 
 private judgment are as stupid as they are tyran- 
 nical. For the Reformers the duty of private 
 judgment was vastly more than the right. We 
 are no more at liberty to abrogate this right or to 
 neglect the exercise of this spiritual faculty for the 
 discovery of necessary truth than we are free to 
 put out our eyes. Those who do not use their 
 right of private judgment are failing in an obvious 
 duty. 
 
 Many years ago when the late Marquis of Ripon 
 became a Roman Catholic and resigned the Grand- 
 mastership of the English Freemasons at the 
 instigation of his spiritual advisers, it was argued 
 that his right of private judgment had been recog- 
 nised since it was in the exercise of it he had given 
 up the position. But that was to forget that there
 
 Priesthood of Believers 87 
 
 is a duty as well as a right, and that while rights 
 may be surrendered duties cannot be evaded with- 
 out guilt. Yet how many there are who claim to be 
 the children of the Reformation who are as faith- 
 less to this duty as the devotees of Rome ! No 
 Christian should ever forget that every right in- 
 volves a duty, and that obedience to the duty is the 
 only valid proof of appreciation of the right. 
 
 These great Reformation principles regarding 
 Scripture, justification by faith, and the right and 
 duty of private judgment, are all summed up in the 
 doctrine of the, priesthood of all believers. The 
 right of access to God's very presence has been 
 conferred by Him on all who are His ; and every 
 believer can and must hear God speaking to 
 him in His Word and by His Spirit. Either 
 there is no priest but Christ, or every believer is a 
 priest ; and no one can be a New Testament priest 
 except in the sense in which every believer is a 
 priest. Every believer exercises the priestly 
 functions of drawing near to God, pleading the all- 
 availing and ever-valid sacrifice of Christ, and 
 making intercession for others and himself. 
 
 Nor is it open to doubt that in this respect 
 also the Reformation doctrine is the doctrine of the 
 New Testament. There are many names given to 
 Christian ministers there, but never once are they 
 called priests as an order or class. They are called 
 presbyters or elders, bishops or overseers, pastors
 
 88 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 or shepherds, teachers or preachers, ambassadors, 
 leaders, stewards, and ministers or servants ; but 
 they are never described as sacrificing priests. 
 And the reason is obvious. These other names 
 are all congruous, and on the same plane, and in 
 harmony with the Evangelical doctrine of the 
 ministry and its relation to Christian people. 
 But " priest " takes us into another realm unknown 
 to the Apostolic Church ; and in the New Testa- 
 ment there is no priest except in the sense in which 
 Christ has made all His people kings and priests 
 unto God. 
 
 Yet the whole edifice of Romanism rests on the 
 assumption that the ministers of Rome are sacri- 
 ficing priests who stand between worshippers and 
 God, and who have power to bring Christ's body to 
 the altar, to offer it in sacrifice, and to forgive sins. 
 The penitent can neither tell God directly about 
 his sin or his sorrow for sin, nor hear God's word 
 of pardon for himself. " None but we of the 
 Apostolic Succession can give the body of Christ 
 to the people " is the Roman claim ; and to every 
 Roman priest at his ordination it is said : " Receive 
 thou power to offer sacrifices unto God, and to 
 celebrate masses both for the living and the dead." 
 In the light of their own experience and with the 
 Bible in their hands all this seemed to the Reformers 
 to be blasphemous as well as mechanical and un- 
 spiritual j and over against it they put their
 
 Rights and Duties 89 
 
 doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. What- 
 ever difference might prevail as to other matters 
 there was none, and could be none, as to this. It 
 was altogether fundamental and essential; alto- 
 gether central and basal. Any deflection from it 
 meant disaster; and the slightest trace of error 
 could not fail to be "the little rift within the lute" 
 which must by and by make "the music mute, 
 and, ever widening, slowly silence all." 
 
 And here also the right involves a duty. If 
 only those to whom God's message comes were 
 all to avail themselves of their privilege, this 
 doctrine would soon commend itself everywhere 
 as in harmony with man's deepest needs and most 
 sacred aspirations. Orthodoxy in creed is of 
 no avail unless there is also orthodoxy in practice. 
 Some draw near to God in spite of error, and are 
 better than their creed. Others may never draw 
 near in spite of their correct doctrine, and may 
 have no creed but one of words. It was of the 
 very essence of Eeformation theology that men 
 could only know the doctrine of God if they did 
 His will; that light could only arise for them 
 in proportion as they drew near and had com- 
 munion with the living God. If the work of the 
 Keformers is to be completed and the arrest re- 
 moved, there must be loyalty to their practice 
 as well as their doctrine of the presence of God.
 
 BOOK II 
 ON THE FIELD OP HISTORY
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The Reformation Movement among the English- 
 speaking Peoples 
 
 rilHE contrast is great between the abundant 
 literature which gathers round every aspect 
 -- of the Reformation struggle, and the meagre 
 fashion in which the conflict since, especially in 
 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, has 
 been dealt with. Not a few who are familiar 
 with every phase of the situation in the sixteenth 
 century know hardly anything of the state of 
 affairs now in any other country than their own. 
 Yet although the interest ceased with the heroic 
 age, curiosity might have led far more to follow 
 the windings of the stream thereafter. As for 
 the present situation, more important motives 
 than curiosity may well impel us to see what has 
 been the issue of well-nigh four centuries of strife. 
 Not otherwise can we find what prospect there 
 is of all-round triumph for the evangelical truth 
 and for a perfected Reformation. If the arrest 
 which was put on the expansion of Protestantism 
 after its first series of victories is to be removed, 
 its history must be traced from that point of view. 
 
 93
 
 94 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 So far as the English-speaking peoples are con- 
 cerned, it may be claimed that the Reformation 
 has more than held its own since the line of 
 demarcation was drawn so tragically in the very 
 era of its beginnings. In our confession of failure 
 there must be no exaggeration, nor any suggestion 
 of actual decadence. The failure has only been 
 comparative, and Evangelicalism is strong enough 
 to face the facts whatever they may be. Behind 
 the ramparts which were erected so soon and so 
 unhappily after the great cataclysm it has on 
 the whole lived a strong and vigorous life, and has 
 been gradually overcoming the defects which 
 did so much to hinder its outgoings in the sixteenth 
 century. It has awakened, for example, to the 
 social implications of the Gospel, and our era has 
 seen the unquestioned predominance of social 
 interests and problems. It is still the sorrow 
 of all its branches that the very poorest are so 
 largely outside their borders ; but that very 
 sorrow and the efforts which it inspires are the 
 proof and measure of how far we have travelled. 
 The Reformed Churches led the way in connection 
 with elementary education, and cared for the 
 children of the poor long before education was 
 national, compulsory, and free. They led the 
 way also in connection with Old Age Pensions, 
 Free Libraries, and much else. It is to those who 
 received their inspiration and their training in
 
 Hindrances Overcome 95 
 
 these Churches that we owe whatever is hopeful 
 in connection with the modern Labour Movement. 
 Everywhere under the leadership of their Saviour 
 men and women are going out in fellowship with 
 Him among the fallen and lonely, the hungry 
 and submerged; and often at eventide they have 
 the joy of bringing home their sheaves with them. 
 Nor has the change been less remarkable in 
 regard to the Missionary obligations of the Evangel. 
 There is still much to be done, but the Keformed 
 Churches are awake as they never were before to 
 the claims of the heathen world. So momentous, 
 indeed, has the change been that many now feel 
 that the waves of revival which are to make all 
 things new at home, to deliver the Church from 
 indifference and heresy, from unbelief and world- 
 liness, and to obliterate the distinction between 
 Evangelical and Komanist in the One, Holy, 
 Catholic, and Apostolic Church realised at last, 
 may come homewards from the foreign field. 
 That would be another of the pathetic ironies of 
 history of which there are many, for God fulfils 
 Himself in many ways ; and the prayer of all who 
 are in sympathy with His gracious purpose of 
 salvation is " Come Holy Spirit ; come directly 
 or from the Far East as seemeth good to Thee ; 
 but oh, come, and come quickly ! " Evangelicals 
 everywhere are now agreed, in theory at least, that 
 whether or not the attitude of the Reformers to
 
 g6 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 Foreign Missions can be vindicated, it requires 
 explanation, in view of the Saviour's unequivocal 
 command. 
 
 Even as regards the divisions which so soon 
 marred the Reformation, and the failure to dis- 
 tinguish unity from uniformity, or to realise 
 that the Divine purpose is so manifold that it must 
 be fulfilled in many ways, there has been a change 
 for the better, although there also much remains 
 to be done. Union in social effort at home and 
 in mission work abroad has led the various 
 branches of the Evangelical Church to understand 
 each other better, and they have come to know 
 each other as never before in the pathway of 
 obedience to their One Lord. Not only is there 
 co-operation in many fields of service, but there 
 are strivings after actual union. The entente 
 cordiale has passed homewards from the regions 
 beyond. For just as in Canada the movement 
 for the union of Presbyterians, Methodists, and 
 Congregationalists in one great Evangelical Church, 
 a movement as full of hope as it is of courage, has 
 been inspired and reinforced by the needs of the 
 Far West into which emigrants are for ever pouring, 
 so the pressure of the problems of heathenism is 
 forcing the churches into harmony with each other 
 out at the front, and in the firing line. In India 
 the representatives of no fewer than six Presby- 
 terian Churches have become one Church, and
 
 Union Movements 
 
 97 
 
 others are expected to join them. In Calcutta 
 the Colleges of the Established Church of Scotland 
 and the United Free Church of Scotland have 
 joined forces and become one institution to per- 
 meate the new learning in India with the Person 
 and Doctrine of Christ, and to train native Indian 
 converts to evangelise their countrymen. The 
 same unifying process is going on in connection 
 with the famous Christian College at Madras. 
 
 It is probable, therefore, that the pressure of 
 social problems at home will combine with the 
 pressure from abroad to enable the various Churches 
 of the Reformation to see things from the Divine 
 standpoint, and in their right relations and propor- 
 tions ; promoting a great Christian Brotherhood in 
 which there will be room for charity in all things, 
 along with unity in essentials and liberty in non- 
 essentials, combined with the wisdom truly to 
 distinguish what is essential and to see past every- 
 thing else to their Divine Head. 
 
 The only Northern country in which the Refor- 
 mation did not take root was Ireland, and it 
 may be that the inhabitants of the Emerald Isle 
 in the sixteenth century were hardly to be ranked 
 among the English-speaking peoples. Ireland had 
 been won for Christianity so early that she repaid 
 the earlier gift of Patrick by the gift of Columba 
 to Scotland, and with him all that lona stood for 
 in these early ages ; and the Irish Church was 
 7
 
 98 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 the last in Europe to become Romish. Not only 
 so, although it was the English domination which 
 was the fatal barrier at the Reformation, it was 
 by a Bull of Pope Hadrian iv., the only English 
 Pope, that Ireland was handed over to the 
 English in 1145. In the time of Henry vin. the 
 Irish people naturally spurned the religion of the 
 conqueror, and no wise or pious efforts seem to 
 have been made to win them for Evangelic truth. 
 
 It was not till 1602, for example, seventy- 
 seven years after William Tyndale had given 
 the English ploughboy the New Testament in his 
 mother-tongue, that there was an Irish New 
 Testament; and that was typical of much else 
 which was left undone. To this day the Protest- 
 antism of Ireland, whether Episcopalian or Presby- 
 terian or of the smaller denominations, is handi- 
 capped by being viewed as the religion of the 
 conqueror, and the identification of Nationalism 
 with loyalty to Rome has been one of the most 
 successful devices of the priests. Patriotic Irish- 
 men are made to feel that loyalty to Ireland 
 demands loyalty to Popery ; although there have 
 been occasions in recent years when the Hierarchy 
 seemed to recognise that unless they went with the 
 crowd it would probably go on without them ; 
 and they preferred being leaders to being left in 
 the rear. The testimony as to how far Evangelical 
 work can be freely carried on in Ireland outside
 
 Ireland 
 
 99 
 
 of Ulster is very conflicting ; but it seems to be 
 tolerated only so long as it is deemed fruitless. 
 
 Yet, tolerated or not, it is not in vain; and 
 possibly it is most fruitful in districts where all 
 controversy is hushed, owing to the overwhelming 
 predominance of Romanism. Those, however, who 
 are thus won for the Gospel have usually to go 
 elsewhere ; and the line of demarcation still runs 
 where it has run for centuries. Yet relatively to 
 the total population, Protestantism in Ireland is 
 more than holding its own. The number of Presby- 
 terians, for instance, is not much less than it was 
 when the population was considerably greater. 
 But that may be due to the fact that emigration 
 has been most extensive among the Romish 
 section of the community; although, as has been 
 already hinted, that may not be for economic 
 reasons alone. 
 
 It can hardly be doubted that rapid progress 
 would be made if the din of mere controversy 
 were hushed, and consecrated men and women 
 were free to set themselves to win the unsaved 
 for Christ. Not only do all men need Christ, 
 but there is much in Irish Romanism which 
 altogether fails to respond either to the deepest 
 cravings of the Irish people or to the new yearnings 
 for social amelioration which characterise our 
 generation. There are indications, not a few, 
 that the money exactions of the Hierarchy for
 
 IOO The Arrested Reformation 
 
 buildings and much else, as well as their inter- 
 ference in all the affairs of the people, are keenly 
 resented. The trouble is not " the priest in 
 politics " but " the priest in everything " ; and 
 those who see beneath the surface say that such 
 a subtle influence as that of the different atmo- 
 sphere of the multitude of letters and newspapers, 
 often accompanied by money orders, which come 
 from the expatriated Irish in America to their 
 kinsfolk at home, is telling all round ; and that the 
 heavy yoke of Rome may be thrown off sooner 
 and more completely than is sometimes supposed. 
 As things are, however, a modern writer who 
 knows Ireland well, and from within, has probably 
 good grounds for making one of his characters 
 say : "I don't know how it is in other countries, 
 
 */ 
 
 but here you are born one thing or the other, 
 Protestant or Roman Catholic, just as you are 
 born a boy or a girl. You cannot change. At 
 least no one can who has any religion to change/' 
 
 With the Irish Celts so predominantly Romish 
 it is all the more remarkable that the other Celts 
 in the United Kingdom, whether in England or 
 Scotland or Wales, are as predominantly Protestant. 
 In Wales, in spite of St. Winifred's Well and the 
 much flaunted invasion by ecclesiastical refugees 
 from the Continent, Protestantism is not only 
 overwhelmingly strong but has been revived by 
 wave after wave of new life within modern times :
 
 Wales I o i 
 
 and is now vastly healthier than it was in the 
 Reformation era or long after. Like Ireland, 
 Wales had to meet the call of the Reformation 
 at the great disadvantage that her conquerors 
 were taking the Protestant side, and for long in- 
 difference prevailed ; the English Hierarchy doing 
 little to commend the Evangel to those committed 
 to their care. As the Reformation came to Wales 
 there was nothing in it which was calculated to 
 impress her with the moral grandeur of the new 
 strivings. As Mr. Owen Edwards, however, has 
 shown in The Story of the Nations, the Jesuits 
 came to Wales too late to arouse a national opposi- 
 tion to the Reformation on the ground that it 
 was an English movement ; and both at home 
 and abroad Welsh blood was shed for the Gospel. 
 It is not in accordance with fact for Romanists 
 to suggest that Celts once emancipated are likelier 
 than Saxons to yield to their blandishments. The 
 Official Year-book of the Church of England for 
 1910 shows how vast the Protestant preponderance 
 is in Wales. The Church of England has 193,081 
 communicants, while the Nonconformists have 
 550,280 ; or two communicants between them out 
 of every five persons over three years of age. 
 
 As for Scotland, although her Protestantism 
 has been somewhat disintegrated, that is more in 
 appearance than in reality ; and it has more than 
 regained the vitality which it lost during the sad
 
 IO2 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 eighteenth century of decline and death. Fortu- 
 nately for her, Scotland had a Second Reformation 
 instead of a Counter-Reformation. Her Pro- 
 testantism has passed through persecution and 
 expansion, through decadence and revival; and, 
 with exceptions which prove the rule, any increase 
 in the number of Romanists in Scotland is due to 
 immigration, mainly from Ireland. As for her 
 divisions, which at times have been little short 
 of a scandal in view of the urgency of her work, 
 some of them are already healed, and there is a 
 widespread desire to draw together to defend the 
 faith, in the best of all ways, by a united attack 
 on everything alien to the rule of Christ whether 
 at home or abroad. ' You have neither law nor 
 parliament for your Church/' was said to John 
 Knox, but his all-sufficient reply was : " We have 
 the authority of God for it " ; and the freedom 
 and simplicity of Presbyterianism which seemed 
 to Knox and his contemporaries to rest broad- 
 based on the will of God and the people's will have 
 never ceased to commend it to the great mass of 
 the Scottish people. Knox himself had no anti- 
 pathy to the Reformed Episcopal Church of 
 England, and at first the Church of Scotland did 
 not differ radically from the Church of Edward vi.; 
 but the General Assembly, which is the key to 
 the democratic system of Presbyterianism, was 
 always an essential feature of its polity.
 
 Scotland 103 
 
 Nor are the Presbyterians left single-handed to 
 fight the battle of the Evangel in Scotland ; and 
 such is the nature of the fight that there is 
 room in it for all who love the Lord, whether 
 they prefer to follow the banner of Episcopacy 
 or that of Methodism or Congregationalism rather 
 than that of Presbytery. The invasion of Irish 
 Romanists, however, has raised many new prob- 
 lems and created many difficulties. It has made 
 it more difficult, for example, to retain the quiet 
 Scottish Sabbath which did so much to deepen 
 the spirituality of the community ; and the whole 
 relation of Romanism to the preservation of the 
 Day of Rest is one which should not be over- 
 looked. One reward which Scotland has received 
 for the hospitality she has ever offered to refugees 
 from other lands has been that some of them have 
 assailed her most cherished traditions and have 
 sneered at a so-called Judaic Sabbath they never 
 understood. Scottish Evangelicals have the fact 
 ever before them that if the Gospel is to possess 
 the whole land there are many who must be 
 rescued from superstition. The problem of the 
 arrested Reformation is now visible in every 
 Scottish town. 
 
 The story of the English Reformation is unique 
 from beginning to end ; and at the present time 
 opinions are keenly divided as to the prospects 
 of the Evangel in England. Some fear, as
 
 104 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 others hope, that the Catholic Revival, as it has 
 been called, will spread until the Church of 
 England is ready to lose its identity in the Church 
 of Rome. Many, however, although they are 
 amazed at the indifference of the people, comfort 
 themselves with the conviction that the Romeward 
 movement at the worst is largely clerical and that 
 the heart of the nation is still sound ; as hostile as 
 ever to papal pretensions ; as much assured as 
 ever that priestism is the enemy of liberty both in 
 Church and State ; and still loyal to the great 
 doctrines of grace which are common to Paul and 
 Augustine, to Martin Luther and John Wesley. 
 They agree with what Cardinal Manning is reported 
 to have said to some of his co-religionists who 
 wished to force the pace, that they should never 
 forget that Oliver Cromwell is not dead but only 
 asleep and may awake at any moment. And it 
 is certainly remarkable that in spite of foreign 
 invasions, and the numbers who have gone over 
 to Rome from among the Ritualists, the Romish 
 population is not increasing in proportion to the 
 whole population ; indeed is hardly increasing 
 at all. 
 
 The late Cardinal Vaughan wrote in the Ency- 
 clopedia Britannica that in the later years of 
 the nineteenth century the additions to the Church 
 of Rome numbered from eight to nine thousand a 
 year, but that against this has to be set what is
 
 England 105 
 
 called the " leakage/' " This is a subject," he said, 
 " which has engaged much attention. Apart from 
 neglected children who are picked up by Protestant 
 institutions, there are apparently few Catholics 
 who pass over to the religious practices of other 
 denominations. But the number of those who 
 neglect the practice of their own religion, and 
 lapse into an indifJerentism which either in them- 
 selves or their children tends to become per- 
 manent, must be very considerable, and perhaps 
 balances or even more than balances, the accessions 
 to the Catholic population from other causes/' 
 He added that " the causes of the leakage are not 
 difficult to recognise. The prevalent tone of 
 thought and literature, so anti-dogmatic and 
 agnostic, accounts for much. So too does the 
 want of earnestness about their eternal destiny, 
 which is to be expected in a proportion of the 
 adherents of every religion, and naturally disposes 
 them to abandon a religion whose tenets are dis- 
 liked by a majority in the country where they live. 
 But the most potent cause of all is the absence 
 of proper parental control over the children of the 
 poor in the period of life following on their school- 
 days, an absence largely due to parental neglect, 
 but largely also to the difficulty of exercising 
 such control under the conditions of modern 
 labour." Those who come into contact with the 
 criminal classes and those on the borderland, say
 
 106 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 that this leakage is even more common among 
 Komanists than among other sections of the 
 population. Not, of course, that that is much 
 consolation for those who wish above all else to 
 resume the arrested development by winning the 
 whole land for the Gospel. Yet so far as Romish 
 progress is concerned it is well to know that 
 whatever increase there is in agents and agencies 
 or in social and political influence, there is none 
 as regards actual adherents. The Eoman Catholic 
 Monitor of 17th February 1912 admitted that 
 whereas a century ago the Romish population of 
 Great Britain and Ireland was roughly one in 
 three of the whole, it is now about one in seven ; 
 and that whereas the non-Romish population of 
 these islands is now about three times as great as 
 it was a hundred years ago, the Romish popula- 
 tion is not much more than it was then. 
 
 In England, as elsewhere, the Churches of the 
 Reformation are sadly divided, the Free Churches 
 in the aggregate being much more numerous than 
 many suppose. Recent statistics show that while 
 the Established Church has 6,886,972 sittings, the 
 Free Churches have accommodation for 7,848,804, 
 or nearly a million more. Not only so, but the 
 Free Churches have 11,000 more communicants, 
 and 890,000 more in their Sabbath Schools than 
 the Church of England. How far the " Catholic 
 Revival " has helped to put the National Church
 
 The Leakage 107 
 
 in such a minority can hardly be ascertained ; but 
 it is certain that the claim that the very poor can 
 only be brought within the churches by the adop- 
 tion of ritualistic and other practices closely akin 
 to those of the Church of Rome, has never been 
 proved to be more than a claim. Those who 
 wish such practices know where to get them ; 
 and everything goes to show that if either the 
 masses or the classes are to be won it must be 
 through the preaching of the Gospel by those who 
 themselves have experienced its saving and keeping 
 power. 
 
 It is noteworthy that in the story of the Eng- 
 lish Church there is no outstanding name bound 
 up with its Reformation like that of Luther in 
 Germany, or Knox in Scotland. There were men 
 like Latimer, the great preacher and heroic martyr ; 
 and Cranmer, the eminent ecclesiastic whose death 
 more than aught else, according to Green, sealed 
 the doom of Popery in the land. There were 
 heroes, too, like Ridley, Hooper, and Rogers ; 
 but no one stands out as supreme. Perhaps the 
 nearest to this is William Tyndale, who gave England 
 the Bible in her own tongue. It was God Himself 
 who said : " Let there be light ; " and it was round 
 the Scriptures that the English Reformation, 
 like every other enduring Reformation, gathered. 
 " Lord open the King of England's eyes " was 
 the dying prayer of the martyred translator. He
 
 io8 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 knew well that the political changes which Henry 
 had introduced were not and could not be the 
 Reformation. Henry burned Protestants because 
 they denied the doctrine of Transubstantiation, 
 and beheaded Romanists because they adhered to 
 the supremacy of the Pope; and those who make 
 a Protestant hero of the sensual despot have 
 little appreciation of what heroes are or of what 
 Protestantism is. 
 
 When Henry died, his son and heir, Edward vi., 
 was only a boy. He seems to have been a sincere 
 Protestant, but boy though he was he had his 
 father's Tudor love of irresponsible power, and 
 during his brief reign the Reformation was so 
 identified with tyranny and unpopular statesmen 
 that he achieved little more for liberty and light 
 than his father had done. His sister Mary who 
 succeeded him, an earnest, cankered, misguided 
 woman, did more than either her father or brother 
 for the cause she hated. It was in her reign that 
 it was finally decided that England was not to be 
 Romish. She burned the Reformed doctrines 
 into the hearts of the English people, and taught 
 them to hate the system which sent women and 
 children as well as godly men to the stake. History 
 dates the death-blow of Romanism in England from 
 the time when Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer 
 perished in the flames. The poor Queen died 
 broken-hearted and embittered, and the shouts
 
 Puritanism 109 
 
 of welcome with which her successor was greeted 
 told that the reign of terror had miserably failed 
 to achieve its end. Queen Elizabeth was not 
 a religious woman, but she was far-seeing as few 
 British monarchs have been, and surrounded as 
 she was by some of the ablest statesmen who have 
 ever stood around a throne, she steered the ship 
 of the state splendidly, and soon saw that she 
 must be a Protestant if she was to be a Queen. 
 During her reign England became the great 
 Protestant power in Europe, standing beside 
 Holland against Spain and the Pope. Her suc- 
 cessor James, "the wisest fool in Christendom," 
 roused the deeper side of English Protestantism 
 partly by his pedantic interference and partly by 
 his coquetting with Spain. 
 
 This deeper side is usually called Puritanism, 
 but might also be called Calvinism ; and whatever 
 else the Calvinists stood for, they alone met the 
 Jesuits with a resolution as great as their own, 
 and kept the Counter-Reformation within bounds. 
 There were two rival forces in the English Church 
 from the first, and it is only in the light of that 
 fact that the present state of affairs in that com- 
 munity can be understood. In Lord Tennyson's 
 Life it is told that when he received the Lord's 
 Supper not long before his death, he explained that 
 he only partook of it on the understanding 
 that it was a communion and not a mass, a life-
 
 I IO The Arrested Reformation 
 
 giving feast and not a sacrifice. That such a pro- 
 test was needed indicates the composite character 
 of the English Church. There has always been a 
 High Church party in it with tendencies which 
 might lead to Rome ; and there have always been 
 those of Evangelical sympathies. Some think 
 that this is one of the glories of the Church of 
 Cranmer and Laud, of Bishop Ryle and Lord 
 Halifax ; but it is only when neither party is very 
 zealous that the two can live quietly side by side. 
 
 Prior to the Evangelical Revival, although, as 
 Pitt is said to have put it, she had a Popish liturgy, 
 a Calvinistic creed, and an Arminian clergy, the 
 Church had peace, but it was the peace of the ice- 
 age. They were all frozen together. By and by, 
 however, there grew up an Evangelical party led 
 by men like Venn and Scott, Wilberforce 
 and Simeon ; to be met later by the counter-revival 
 on the sacerdotal side led by Newman and Pusey. 
 Many English Churchmen now reject the name 
 Protestant with scorn. They repudiate any con- 
 nection with Lutherans or Calvinists ; but are 
 eager to associate with any Church, however cor- 
 rupt, which claims apostolic succession through a 
 historic episcopate. How this will end no one can 
 say ; but one day the English people, with their love 
 for freedom and fair-play, will probably drive the 
 mass-mongers from place and power, and take their 
 stand once more among the Reformed communities.
 
 The Sleeping Cromwell \\\ 
 
 Protestantism among the English-speaking 
 peoples must not, of course, be simply identified 
 with Protestantism in the United Kingdom. There 
 are great and growing Protestant Churches in the 
 United States of America and in the Greater 
 Britain beyond the seas. In the various Colonial 
 Churches the spirit of union has been more in 
 evidence than in the homeland, and their develop- 
 ment has been rapid. In North America during 
 the last ten years the membership of Y.M.C.A/s 
 has increased 90 per cent., the greatest develop- 
 ment having been in definitely Christian work. 
 Out of twenty-five millions, too, throughout the 
 world who adhere to Methodism in its various 
 forms, nearly twenty millions are to be found on 
 the American Continent ; with half a million in 
 Australasia, and 400,000 in Asia and Africa. 
 
 On this aspect of our scheme two remarks may 
 be made. The one is that the present state of 
 affairs is far from satisfactory. Even if the heart 
 of the British people is sound, any degradation may 
 come to those who are besotted by indifference to 
 the highest appeals, and careless in presence of the 
 supreme issues. Rome is ever on the alert, her 
 organisation is wonderfully complete, and the 
 sooner the sleeping Cromwell is awakened the 
 better. Fain would Rome find compensation for 
 her losses on the Continent by gains in Britain and 
 America. No form of Christian work is more
 
 112 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 urgent than to rouse the free peoples of these 
 realms from their lethargy, that they may recognise 
 their duty as well as their right to be free ; and that 
 they may be led to rejoice in that personal living 
 faith in Christ as Saviour and Friend which is the 
 only permanent safeguard against Popery or any 
 other evil. 
 
 The other remark is that if only the Protestant- 
 ism of the twentieth century were throbbing, 
 as that of the Reformers was, with Christlike 
 compassion for the lost sheep, and for all who 
 are enslaved by error and sin, all would be well. 
 It is a blunder to credit the Romish system not 
 merely with iniquitous designs but with almost 
 superhuman ingenuity and power ; or to pay it 
 the sinister compliment of being afraid of its malign 
 influence. It is well never to despise the foe, but 
 it is fatal to carry that so far as to enter the battle 
 with the conviction that the enemy is mightier 
 than we. The history of Romanism, especially 
 since the Jesuits have been at the helm, has been 
 a history of failure, and never more so than in our 
 own time, and we are well able to overcome as our 
 fathers did if only we trust in God and in Him 
 alone. If we let the light shine and walk loyally 
 in it, Satan will be vanquished by Christ and error 
 will perish like some evil fungus which can flourish 
 only in the darkness. The Good News which won 
 so many for Christ in the sixteenth century is still
 
 The Great Consummation 113 
 
 the power of God unto salvation ; and if only there 
 were everywhere positive, devoted, faithful, 
 Christian living and exposition of God's free grace, 
 Romish error would not only be overcome, but 
 Romanists would be won for the Saviour Lord 
 as in the brave days of old.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 Protestantism on the Continent 
 
 IN some respects the story of Protestantism 
 on the Continent of Europe is a sad one, 
 since it tells not merely of a Romish Counter- 
 Reformation but of a rationalistic Reformation. 
 Fortunately, however, it is not wholly sad since it 
 also tells of repentance and fresh expansion, and in 
 particular of the great modern outburst of philan- 
 thropy and missionary enterprise which is summed 
 up as the Evangelical Revival. 
 
 In Germany, the head-centre of the Reformation 
 movement, war broke out between the Emperor 
 and the Romanists on the one hand and the Pro- 
 testant princes on the other, in the year in which 
 Luther died, and went on at intervals until 1555. 
 In that year the Peace of Augsburg put the two 
 religions on terms of formal equality throughout 
 the Empire. The conflict, however, soon began 
 again and was carried on with redoubled violence 
 in the Thirty Years' War. Even the Peace of Augs- 
 burg had been only a maimed one, although it 
 brought more than many had hoped for. Its 
 principle, which seems abhorrent and intolerable
 
 Thirty Tears War 115 
 
 to us, was cujus regio ejus religio, " the subject 
 follows the religion of the State," or " a man's 
 religion is that of his prince " ; which did not involve 
 genuine freedom for any, while nothing was done 
 for those who were not of the same faith as their 
 rulers. For long, indeed, anything of the nature of 
 true toleration, and still less of perfect freedom, 
 was deemed both impossible and wrong ; and the 
 evil-omened Peasants' War had done much to 
 turn what had been a popular religious revival 
 into a political movement. Where the two parties 
 were nearly balanced there was civil war. Where 
 one was much stronger than the other there was 
 persecution. It was only gradually that the 
 Protestants themselves saw what was involved in 
 their claim to be free before God ; if, indeed, they 
 have all seen it yet. What Christian men claim 
 for themselves they must claim for others, and 
 freedom of conscience necessarily excludes any- 
 thing of the cast-iron and compulsory uniformity 
 which has so often been the impossible ideal of 
 ecclesiastics. 
 
 The Thirty Years' War began in Bohemia in 1619 
 and soon spread until Germans and Danes, French 
 and Dutch, Swedes and many others, were in- 
 volved in it ; and it ended in 1648 with the Peace 
 of Westphalia. The chief scene of the war was 
 Germany, and although it resulted in the two 
 religions being once more put on an equality of a
 
 1 1 6 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 kind, the country was ruined. From that time 
 almost till our own, Germany remained a mere lax 
 confederation of petty despotisms with little either 
 of freedom or national feeling. For the most 
 part Protestantism lay dormant. The earnestness 
 and power were gone ; and almost till modern 
 times it held its own only in a negative fashion. 
 In the religious as in the political sense it had 
 ceased to " subdue kingdoms," as was the case also 
 with its great rival. 
 
 More recently, however, German Protestantism 
 has shared in the Evangelical Revival; and the 
 formation of the Empire within recent times 
 has gone to strengthen the Protestantism of the 
 Fatherland. The Emperor, it is true, patronises 
 the monks at times under the common delusion 
 that Rome stands for law and order, and is a 
 bulwark against militant Socialism. Our own 
 King James had it : ' ' No bishop, no king ; " 
 and many rulers have been inclined to favour 
 Rome and her claims because their rights and 
 privileges seemed bound up with hers, and because 
 they thought that her hostility to change in the 
 Church would make her their ally in resisting 
 changes in the State. As a matter of fact, however, 
 dominant Romanists in our time are ready to ally 
 themselves with the social democracy if need be 
 to promote their own ends. " Political forms 
 are tools in our hands " is their motto. " Religion
 
 German Missions 117 
 
 has the right to avail herself of anything, even of 
 freedom, in order to rule/' The red cap of the 
 revolutionary can be brought out provisionally to 
 replace the hat of the priest. On the other hand, 
 the recent wrath of the Germans, rulers and people 
 alike, over the slur cast on Luther's memory by 
 the Pope, in connection with the Borromeo cele- 
 brations, has shown that they have no intention 
 of allowing Eoman dictation or of going to 
 Canossa. 
 
 The line between the two religions, however, 
 remains almost immovable, any change there is 
 being in favour of the Protestants. In 1871 there 
 were 623 Protestants in every thousand of the 
 population as against 362 Roman Catholics ; 
 whereas in 1880 the corresponding figures were 
 626 and 359 ; and in 1890, 628 and 358. The work 
 of such a Society as that which was formed in 
 1832 to commemorate the two hundredth anni- 
 versary of the victory and death of Gustavus 
 Adolphus at Liitzen is one of several omens for 
 good. It devotes itself to helping needy Protestant 
 Churches, especially in Roman Catholic districts, 
 and has done much excellent work in this way. 
 The work of the German Missionary Societies has 
 also in it the promise and potency of a new era. 
 Since 1877 the number of these has trebled ; and 
 in 1910 they had over 1300 missionaries in active 
 service, with more than 6000 native helpers, well
 
 1 1 8 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 over half a million baptized native converts, and 
 more than 3000 schools, with 150,000 scholars. 
 
 In France as in the other Romance-speaking 
 countries, as well as in parts of Germany, the 
 Protestants followed Calvin rather than Luther and 
 went further from Rome than the Lutherans did. 
 The truth is that Luther did not shake himself 
 altogether clear of the traditions in which he grew 
 up ; and when in his doctrine of Consubstantiation 
 he taught that the body and blood of our Lord 
 are received not merely by the faithful but by the 
 unbelieving participants in the Lord's Supper, he 
 was still under the influence of the magical doctrine 
 of the Sacraments. It is not surprising, therefore, 
 that many of the Reformers and their followers 
 felt that they must leave that also behind and come 
 completely out of the house of bondage. And just 
 as the new movement arose in different ways in 
 different countries, sometimes beginning among 
 the people and sometimes among their rulers, so 
 it developed along different lines. In Great 
 Britain, for instance, we have England which 
 changed the least of all the nations and Scotland 
 which changed the most. At first the Reforma- 
 tion movement in France was full of promise. 
 Lefevre, who was Professor of Theology in Paris, 
 published his French New Testament in 1522 ; and 
 in no other country on the Continent did so many 
 of the educated and upper classes sympathise with
 
 French Exiles 
 
 119 
 
 the Protestant cause. In 1559 the French Re- 
 formed Church consisted of 2000 congregations 
 and 400,000 adherents, among whom were the King 
 of Navarre and the Prince of Conde. During the 
 second half of the sixteenth century, from 1562 
 till 1595, the history of France is mainly that of 
 the Religious Wars, falsely so-called. The massacre 
 of the Huguenots on St. Bartholomew's Day, 1572, 
 is the most memorable event of a period which 
 closed in 1593, when Henry of Navarre became a 
 Romanist in order to secure the succession to the 
 throne and bring about peace ; saying cynically 
 that Paris was worth a mass. The Edict of Nantes, 
 issued in 1598, secured toleration and certain 
 privileges for the French Protestants, but this was 
 revoked in 1685 by Louis xiv., when a most re- 
 lentless persecution which greatly impoverished 
 France was begun. Hundreds of thousands of 
 her best citizens were driven to Britain, Holland, 
 and other countries to enrich them by their in- 
 dustry, skill, and business capacity. In Britain 
 " the exiles established themselves as silk workers 
 at Spitalfields, cotton spinners at Bideford, tapestry 
 weavers at Exeter, wool carders at Taunton, 
 kersey makers at Norwich, hat makers at Wands- 
 worth, sailcloth 'makers at Ipswich, workers in 
 calico at Bromley, in glass in Sussex, in paper at 
 Laverstock, and in cambric at Edinburgh." 
 " French refugees drilled the Russian armies ; a
 
 I2O The Arrested Reformation 
 
 Huguenot Count became Commander-in-Chief in 
 Denmark ; and Schomberg led the army of Branden- 
 burg and afterwards that of England." 
 
 It was not till the Revolutionary era that there 
 was any further recognition for the Protestants 
 of France. When Napoleon was First Consul of 
 the Republic he entered into the famous Con- 
 cordat of 1802, which only came to an end in 
 1905 ; and which not only secured certain rights 
 for them but also a share in the money voted for 
 the concurrent endowment of the various creeds. 
 In recent years, prior to Disestablishment, the 
 sum thus voted annually was 43,000,000 francs, of 
 which 1,600,000 or 64,000 went to the different 
 sections of the Protestants. It was not, however, 
 till the time of the Third Republic, and after a 
 lapse of 213 years, that their General Assembly 
 was able to meet and prepare an authoritative 
 Confession of their Faith. There are now over 
 a thousand places of Protestant worship in 
 France in addition to many mission halls. And 
 as in earlier times the French Protestants still 
 include an unusual proportion of men of influence 
 and ability. Scarcely one in sixty of the whole 
 population is Protestant, yet in one of the early 
 Cabinets of the Republic five out of ten Secretaries 
 of State were Protestant, and only one a Romanist 
 who was believed to go to mass. Unfortunately, 
 however, the French Protestants are sadly divided,
 
 The Netherlands 121 
 
 and the leaven of rationalism has done deadly 
 injury. But in France, as in Germany, the growth 
 of the missionary spirit is a hopeful sign. French 
 Missions in Basutoland, on the Upper Zambesi, 
 and in the Transvaal have been much owned of 
 God, and their reflex influence on the sons and 
 daughters of the Huguenots at home cannot but 
 be helpful. So also in Senegal, New Caledonia, 
 Madagascar, and elsewhere there are proofs that 
 this Church which was under a cross so long, and 
 is still so tiny, is seeking to follow the national 
 flag with the Divine light. 
 
 In the Netherlands, especially under the leader- 
 ship of William the Silent, not the Taciturn but 
 the man who could keep his own counsel, deliver- 
 ance alike from the yoke of the Papacy and of 
 Spain came at length and after much anguish. 
 At the Eeformation the whole land was a busy 
 hive of industry where men peacefully followed 
 the pursuits of agriculture, manufactures, and 
 commerce; and the truth which poured in from 
 Germany, England and France found many 
 ready to respond to it. As the number of Pro- 
 testants increased the influence of France and 
 Geneva became dominant, and the Lutheran type 
 of teaching gave way to that of Calvin. Philip of 
 Spain set himself to put out the light with all the 
 resources of his vast power, but he failed utterly 
 after the most memorable struggle ever waged
 
 122 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 between patriots and tyrants. Even although 
 William was murdered in 1581 his son Maurice, 
 trained for the work by his father who knew what 
 might happen, carried on the conflict with success. 
 
 Never did so small a power withstand a great one 
 so long and so successfully. Yet the persecution 
 succeeded so far as Belgium was concerned. That 
 portion of the Netherlands is now one of the most 
 Popish countries in Europe. The Seven Provinces, 
 however, now known as Holland, are as pre- 
 dominantly Protestant, except in Limburg and 
 North Brabant. Holland, according to Dr. 
 William Barry the Romish historian, the only 
 country in Europe where religious freedom was 
 understood or enjoyed, suffered much and still 
 suffers from the ravages of rationalism ; but there 
 also there is an element of hope in the growth of 
 the missionary spirit. During the nineteenth 
 century the number of native Christians in the 
 Dutch colonies rose from 60,000 to 478,000. 
 
 In Switzerland as elsewhere the course of the 
 Reformation was largely decided by the circum- 
 stances of the people. The Swiss were already 
 free when the Germans were still serfs ; a con- 
 federation of little republics with the motto : 
 " Each for all and all for each ; " and the new 
 movement quickly took root among them. It was 
 far easier for Zwingli than for Luther to break 
 with the past, and it was the Swiss type of the
 
 Geneva and Rome 123 
 
 Reformation which spread among the other free 
 peoples. Even as in the second generation of 
 the struggle Rome drew herself together and with 
 signal success confronted her now disorganised 
 foes, so it was from Geneva the forces went forth 
 which met the resuscitated power of Rome with 
 a genius, devotion, and self-sacrifice at least equal 
 to her own ; and said " Thus far and no further " 
 to her Counter-Reformation. It was not possible 
 to confront men like Philip or Alva or the Stuarts 
 with the passive resistance which Luther favoured. 
 
 War to the knife had been proclaimed, and it 
 was those who followed Calvin who took up the 
 challenge. Many of them may have been stern and 
 gloomy, but the times were stern and gloomy and 
 so was the work they had to do ; and they saved 
 Holland and Scotland, and almost saved France. 
 So far as Switzerland itself was concerned, while the 
 more progressive cantons like Zurich, Basle, Berne, 
 and Geneva became Protestant, the Forest Cantons 
 remained loyal to the Medievalism in which they 
 had grown up, with the result that Switzerland, 
 like Germany, was left rent in twain. In the year 
 1900 the census returns showed 1,918,197 Pro- 
 testants as against 1,383,135 Roman Catholics, 
 and 12,551 Jews. 
 
 In Scandinavia the Lutherans carried every- 
 thing before them, and whatever loss there may 
 have been in consecration since Reformation
 
 124 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 days there has been none in numbers. In Sweden, 
 for example, in 1890, out of a population of over 
 five millions under fifty thousand were registered 
 as not adhering to the Lutheran creed, and even 
 of these the greater part were Baptists and 
 Methodists. Only 1390 were Romanists and 
 3402 Jews. In Norway, in 1896, out of a popula- 
 tion of more than two millions and a quarter only 
 30,685 were returned as not belonging to the 
 Evangelical Lutheran Church, and of these over 
 twenty thousand were Free Lutherans, Methodists, 
 and Baptists. Similarly in Denmark in 1890, 98*44 
 per cent, of the population of over two millions 
 were returned as belonging to the State Evan- 
 gelical Reformed Church ; and besides these there 
 were over ten thousand Free Lutherans, and only 
 3647 Roman Catholics. It is a question how far 
 this unchallenged supremacy of Lutheranism has 
 been favourable to spiritual Efe, and there is no 
 question but that, like other lands, these Northern 
 nations need another revival on the sixteenth 
 century scale. Some who are eagerly scanning the 
 heavens for signs of the coming showers see a cloud 
 at least as big as a man's hand in the Northern 
 skies in such movements as the Inner Mission in 
 Denmark and the Free Mission in Norway and 
 Sweden. The Foreign Mission work of the Nor- 
 wegians in Madagascar, too, as well as that of 
 the Danes in Greenland and the Far North, has
 
 Erastianism 125 
 
 been greatly blessed ; while it is said that no other 
 people can show such a percentage of missionary 
 martyrs as the Swedes. 
 
 The Erastianism of these Scandinavian Churches 
 suggests the reflection that just as one of the forces 
 which made for the Eeformation was the tyranny 
 of the Church over the State, the tendency there- 
 after in many cases was to replace that by the 
 tyranny of the State over the Church, which is 
 equally removed from the ideal of a free Church in 
 a free State. Princes who became Protestant at the 
 Reformation usually favoured Lutheranism rather 
 than Calvinism, and affairs were arranged on an 
 Erastian basis, which has seldom made for the 
 growth of Evangelicalism and has never made for 
 the manifestation of Evangelical fervour. Erasti- 
 anism is no more favourable to the progress of 
 the Gospel than Hildebrandism, and it was one of 
 the influences which made the chariot wheels 
 drive heavily and even come altogether to a 
 standstill. The same spirit which led certain 
 powerful supporters of the Reformation to lay 
 greedy hands on the patrimony of the Church, 
 even where it had been ear-marked for education 
 and charity, led in many instances to legal 
 bonds being imposed which were not only an un- 
 warrantable interference with the freedom which 
 our Lord bestows on all who are His, but did 
 much to prevent the triumph of the Reformation.
 
 126 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 It is neither unhistoric nor uncharitable to say that 
 just as some were camp-followers of the Evan- 
 gelical army because of the wealth which had 
 hastened the decay of the Mediaeval Church, there 
 were also those who favoured the new movement 
 because of their determination to bring the Church 
 into some measure of subjection to the State. 
 
 In Bohemia, the land of John Hus and Jerome 
 of Prague, Protestantism took a strong hold at the 
 Reformation. Nine-tenths of the people are said 
 to have come under the influence of the Reformed 
 faith. Their rulers, however, remained fanatically 
 Romanist, and although the Bohemian Royal 
 Charter of 1609 guaranteed freedom of conscience 
 for the Protestants it was ultimately withdrawn 
 in 1621, when a reign of terror ensued. Among 
 other laws, which show how absolutely relentless 
 the persecution was, it was decreed that no 
 non-Catholics could carry on a trade or enter 
 into marriage or make a will. Light and air 
 were denied the Protestants. Yet the real per- 
 versions were very few. Thousands quietly re- 
 mained true to their faith. Thousands more 
 made their way into foreign lands. More than 
 thirty thousand Bohemian families, including 
 five hundred belonging to the aristocracy, went 
 into voluntary exile. So sanguinary were the 
 measures adopted and so remorseless was the per- 
 secution, that whereas Bohemia had four million
 
 Persecution and Progress 127 
 
 inhabitants when the Thirty Years' War began, 
 it had only seven or eight hundred thousand when 
 it ended. Yet there were still some witnesses 
 for the truth ; and to-day there is a native 
 Bohemian Church which, although it represents 
 little more than two per cent, of the population, is 
 making progress, and has shared to the full in the 
 revival, spiritual as well as racial and political, 
 which has led to the Los von Rom movement in 
 the Austrian Empire. 
 
 In Hungary, through the influence of the 
 Bohemian Brethren and the Waldensians and of 
 Hungarian students who brought Luther's teach- 
 ings back from Wittenberg, the Reformation 
 spread with great rapidity, especially among the 
 German-speaking portion of the population. The 
 nobles, however, identified reformation in the 
 Church with a revolutionary attack on their 
 privileges and rallied to the defence of the old 
 ways. As early as 1523 Lutherans were declared 
 to be punishable by death and confiscation of 
 their property. Yet the new ideas steadily gained 
 influence, and although still more drastic measures 
 were adopted in 1525 to crush them out, these 
 did more to hasten the downfall of the Hungarian 
 Kingdom than to destroy Protestantism. 
 
 Meanwhile the Calvinistic form of the Reforma- 
 tion had gained such a hold on the Hungarian- 
 speaking portion of the people and magnates that
 
 128 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 it was sometimes designated the Hungarian faith. 
 At one time hardly a seventh of the population 
 adhered to Rome ; but through the agency 
 of the Jesuits a reaction set in. Many of the 
 leading families returned to the Papal fold, and 
 power gradually slipped from the hands of the 
 Protestants. All sorts of means, insidious and 
 violent, were used, and in many cases successfully 
 used, to win the people from the Reformed faith ; 
 those who remained loyal joining the Czechs as 
 against the Austrians, realising that the battle 
 for freedom of conscience and worship was 
 practically the same as that for constitutional 
 liberty. At the end of the eighteenth century 
 the Hungarian Protestants received a certain 
 recognition and liberty from the Emperor Joseph 11., 
 the son of Maria Theresa ; and in our time there 
 are nearly three and a half millions of them as 
 against eight and a quarter millions of Romanists ; 
 a truly wonderful result in view of all they have 
 undergone century after century since the 
 Reformation. 
 
 Even in Spain, the home of the Inquisition and 
 of religious fanaticism, the Reformation was not 
 without its friends ; mainly, however, among men 
 of rank and learning. Spanish merchants bought 
 Luther's works at Frankfort Fair and had them 
 translated into Spanish, and carried across the 
 Pyrenees. Some of the Spanish grandees, too,
 
 The Doom of Spain 129 
 
 who were at the Diet of Augsburg or in England 
 after the marriage of Philip and Mary, came under 
 the influence of Protestant ideals and doctrines. 
 But by means of a persecution which did not 
 spare suspects as eminent as the Archbishop of 
 Toledo, and which culminated in 1559 and 1560 
 in autos-da-fe in Seville and Valladolid, where the 
 Evangel had taken root most firmly, the light 
 was put out. The blood of the martyrs is not 
 always the seed of the Church, and to-day there 
 are probably not seven thousand Protestants in 
 Spain out of a population of over seventeen 
 millions. These " acts of faith," however, sealed 
 the doom of Spain, politically and intellectually 
 as well as spiritually. It is to priestcraft and 
 superstition and the corruptions which are their 
 invariable fruits, that she owes her present 
 decrepitude, when none is so poor as do her rever- 
 ence. Popery has brought what was the great 
 world-power in the sixteenth century very low, 
 and has blighted its life all round in literature, 
 science, and art, as well as in religion and the arts 
 of national expansion. 
 
 In Portugal there was no Reformation story, 
 although to it also seeds of the truth were wafted 
 in that sowing time, and took root in brave 
 responsive hearts. Otherwise her story is that of 
 Spain so far as the desolating domination of 
 Popery is concerned. When the Revolution of 
 9
 
 130 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 1910 let in some light all Europe was appalled 
 at the revelations which were made of corruption 
 and degradation. Honour and honesty seemed 
 to be as scarce as comfort and education. The 
 Inquisition was established in 1536 and (according 
 to the volume on Portugal in The Story of the 
 Nations) it " quickly destroyed all that was left 
 of the old Portuguese spirit, and so effectually 
 stamped out the revival of Portuguese literature 
 that while, towards the close of the sixteenth 
 century, the rest of Europe was advancing in 
 civilisation under the influence of the Renaissance, 
 Portugal fell back, and her literature became dull. 
 The establishment of the Inquisition was followed 
 in 1540 by the introduction of the Jesuits, who 
 speedily obtained control of the national education, 
 and carefully checked intellectual development/' 
 The Protestants of Portugal are said only to number 
 some five hundred out of a population of five 
 millions. 
 
 In Italy, which saw Popery at its worst but 
 was enriched by the money which was drained 
 from other lands, the friends of reform were 
 numerous and the truths of the Reformation had 
 their noble martyrs. The writings of the Re- 
 formers were widely spread. ' Whole libraries," 
 says Melanchthon, writing probably in 1540, 
 " have been carried from the late fair into Italy/' 
 and Cardinal Caraffa warned Pope Paul in. that
 
 Southern Europe a?id Rome \ 3 i 
 
 " the whole of Italy was infected with the Lutheran 
 heresy, which had been extensively embraced both 
 by statesmen and ecclesiastics." The forces of 
 the Counter-Reformation and the Catholic re- 
 action did their work so well, however, that now, 
 although Italy can hardly be called a Romish 
 country, there are only 62,000 Protestants in her 
 population of over thirty millions, and these 
 include the famous and much enduring and 
 victorious Waldensians. 
 
 In all these lands in Southern Europe, although 
 the Protestant population is but a fraction of the 
 whole, there is a growing recognition of the fact 
 that Popery saps the vigour of a nation and withers 
 its energies. The growth of nationalism which 
 is everywhere so characteristic of our time has 
 led many to see that there is no enemy to real 
 progress, either as regards national aspirations 
 or the development of national commerce and 
 industry, so deadly as superstition and priest- 
 craft. 
 
 Only the blind can fail to see the unsatisfac- 
 tory position of Roman Catholic communities as 
 regards education, and their consequent intel- 
 lectual and scientific inferiority. The commercial 
 prizes have passed out of the hands of the Romish 
 nations, like Spain, Portugal, and Italy, which 
 once controlled the world's trade, into the hands 
 of the great Protestant nations, Great Britain,
 
 132 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 Germany, and America. The new longing for 
 freedom and for a larger share of material comfort 
 for the working classes is opening eyes every- 
 where; and in the dry, modern light many are 
 seeing that absolutism in religion, like absolutism 
 in politics, must go. Unfortunately, however, it 
 is one thing to turn from Roman bondage and 
 another to find freedom in Christ ; and mean- 
 while the Southern uprising against priestcraft, 
 with its baneful and inevitable fruits, has made 
 for infidelity rather than for Evangelism. True 
 Protestantism which began in a religious revival 
 can only flourish through revival, and it is 
 for that all lovers of truth and freedom should 
 ever pray. Only so can the arrested development 
 be resumed, and all the lands be won for a living 
 faith in a living and regnant Saviour King.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 The Deformation and the Evangelical Revival 
 
 rilHE story of the Protestant Churches, as we 
 have seen, is one of decay and quickening, 
 
 -- of reaction and revival ; and now the 
 forces of degeneration and regeneration are in 
 keenest conflict. Amid much that is discon- 
 certing, however, an element of hope is to be 
 found in the fact that the era of indifference 
 seems well-nigh at an end. If the Reforma- 
 tion was, unhappily, followed by deformation, 
 that in turn has been followed by genuine 
 revival. 
 
 Sad as the Counter-Reformation was when the 
 Reformation forces were beaten back by violence 
 and craft, the Deformation was still sadder, as 
 lethargy and error crept into the Protestant camp 
 and made progress impossible. It has, indeed, 
 been asserted that this Deformation was not so 
 much a perversion of the Reformation as the 
 legitimate outcome of the principles held in 
 common by all the Reformers. Romanists declare 
 that nothing else was to be expected ; that Rational- 
 ism, with its variants of Deism and Socinianism, 
 
 133
 
 134 ^ e ^- rreste( ^ Reformation 
 
 is the inevitable offspring of the Reformation 
 attitude to authority ; that anarchy could not 
 but be the monstrous progeny of the licence which 
 the Reformers claimed under cover of liberty 
 of conscience. The Rationalists, too, claim that 
 they are the true sons of the Reformers, and that 
 the logic of the Reformation position was bound 
 to banish the supernatural from human life, and 
 to lead to the refusal to allow the miraculous either 
 as regards the inspiration of Scripture or the 
 Person and Work of our Lord. This, however, 
 is not historically tenable. Rationalism is not the 
 necessary result of freedom as the Reformers 
 claimed it and as it has been widely exercised since ; 
 nor did it grow directly or legitimately out of the 
 Reformation. Just as the Reformed Churches 
 represent the true piety of the Mediaeval Church, 
 and the Church of Rome the corrupt and pagan 
 sacerdotalism of the Middle Ages, the Rationalists 
 represent the heretical sects which wt^e usually 
 alien to the Evangelicalism of the Reformers, 
 although they are sometimes looked on as their 
 forerunners. We may even find the precursors 
 of German Transcendentalism, alike in its strength 
 and weakness, in the old German Mystics. The 
 true ancestors of the Rationalists with their hatred 
 of the supernatural are not the Reformers, but 
 such a sect as the Cathari, who, along with a 
 perfectly warrantable revolt against the Roman
 
 The True Golden Mean 135 
 
 Hierarchy, were misled by a pagan dualism which 
 had come to them from the Far East. 
 
 Nor is it the case, although loudly proclaimed 
 by some who ought to know better, that there is 
 no abiding resting-place between Sacerdotalism 
 and Agnosticism. The all-sufficient reply to that 
 is the whole history of Keformation truth, arrested 
 although its development has been. Inadequate 
 as its expansion abroad and its manifestation of 
 the Gospel of Grace at home have been, it has 
 proved itself to be God's House Beautiful, in 
 which multitudes have lived lives rich in fruit and 
 full of the power of the Holy Ghost. It has been 
 infinitely more than a half-way house if by that 
 is meant a place of compromise. It represents 
 the true golden mean and gathers up what is best 
 in both extremes while avoiding their errors. It 
 is not open to any who would be loyal to truth to 
 assert that that cannot be which has been and is. 
 Protestantism in the best sense is the most potent 
 fact in modern life, and has given men the freedom 
 they cherish most alike in Church and State. 
 Not only so, it is the meeting-place to which 
 those may yet be drawn who have drifted to the 
 one extreme or the other. Those who have turned 
 to Sacerdotalism through fear of Agnosticism or 
 to Agnosticism through contempt for Sacerdotalism 
 may yet meet in faith and freedom and in the 
 enjoyment of the inspired Word of the Living
 
 136 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 God, and of all the rights of those who have been 
 made kings and priests unto God, in the good land 
 into which the Reformers were led by the free 
 Spirit of God. Those who have found their way 
 either to the Torrid Zone of Sacerdotalism which 
 enfeebles and enervates and where superstition 
 and priestcraft destroy energy and power of 
 initiative, or to the inhospitable regions of the 
 Arctic Zone of Agnosticism with its arid wastes, 
 ought alike to be drawn into the Temperate Zone 
 of winsome, healthy, open-air Christianity. In 
 that kindly region alone can there be fulness of 
 life, since there men must work if they are to live, 
 but are assured of the reward of their labour if 
 they work. Christianity is the religion of the 
 Spirit, and the Reformers showed how that may 
 best be realised ; and the ideal for all who are 
 their worthy descendants is that Reformation 
 truth, the truth of the Gospel, shall yet gather all 
 men everywhere to worship and serve the King 
 of kings. 
 
 As to the sad facts of the Deformation and 
 perversion of Protestantism there is no room for 
 doubt. Bishop Butler said of the England of 
 the eighteenth century that it had practically 
 renounced Christianity, and there are many proofs 
 that he did not greatly exaggerate the state of 
 affairs. The general state of the Church was 
 almost incredible in its torpor and death. It is,
 
 Deformation in England 137 
 
 indeed, difficult for us in these happier times to 
 realise how terrible the condition of things was 
 on the eve of the awakening. But the testimony 
 borne to the reign of deep and almost unbroken 
 darkness is manifold. The eminent lawyer, 
 Blackstone, writing in 1780, says that on his 
 removal from Oxford to London he sought out 
 every outstanding preacher in the Metropolis, 
 and that he did not hear a single discourse that 
 had more of Christianity in it than the writings 
 of Cicero. He said that he could never discover, 
 from what he heard, whether the preacher was a 
 follower of Confucius or of Mahomet or of Christ. 
 
 Hannah More, too, tells that on one occasion 
 she " saw but one Bible in the parish of Cheddar, 
 and that was used to prop a flower-pot." ' There 
 is a general decay of vital religion in the hearts 
 and lives of men," wrote Isaac Watts. There 
 were hardly any traces of moral or religious 
 training among the poor; and that their social 
 superiors were no better may be gathered from 
 the reply of the Duchess of Buckingham to Lady 
 Huntingdon, who had asked her to go with her 
 to hear Whitefield preach. " I thank your lady- 
 ship for the information concerning the Methodist 
 preachers. Their doctrines are most repulsive, 
 and are strongly tinctured with impertinence 
 and disrespect towards their superiors, in per- 
 petually endeavouring to level all ranks and to
 
 138 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 do away with all distinctions. It is monstrous 
 to be told that you have a heart as sinful as the 
 common wretches that crawl on the earth, and I 
 cannot but wonder that your ladyship should 
 relish any sentiments so much at variance with 
 high rank and breeding/' 
 
 A plan of reformation suggested by Dean Swift, 
 himself an extraordinary person to be a Church 
 dignitary, throws a lurid light on the depths of 
 the Deformation. In 1709 he wrote an essay 
 entitled " A Project for the Advancement of 
 Religion," in which he declares that " hardly one 
 in a hundred among our people of quality or gentry 
 appears to act by any principle of religion, . . . 
 nor is the case much better with the vulgar." 
 His remedy showed that he was no exception to 
 the rule himself, for his proposal was that persons in 
 power should make religion the necessary step to 
 favour and preferment, meaning by religion decor- 
 ous conduct and attendance at church. ' ' Keligion, " 
 he urged, " must be the turn and fashion of the 
 age." As for Foreign Missions, the Bishop of St. 
 David's, who questioned the right of any people 
 to send their religion to another, may be taken 
 as representing the attitude of the Establishment ; 
 while the reception which William Carey got from 
 his colleagues in the Baptist ministry may be 
 taken as indicating that of the Nonconformists. 
 ' When God wishes to convert the heathen,
 
 Formalism and Dogmatism 139 
 
 He will do it without your help or ours " was 
 what they said ; although, of course, that was 
 just what God was not prepared to do. He alone 
 can save the world, but He does not save the 
 world alone. But fortunately all this shows not 
 merely how far things had deteriorated in England 
 since the days of Tyndale and Latimer, but also 
 how far they have since improved. Had the 
 Deformation been the last word, few would have 
 cared even to study it in its debasement. 
 
 Nor were matters any better on the Continent. 
 There also it was being made clear that dis- 
 obedience is the pathway to death and doom. 
 Protestant Scholasticism had spread everywhere, 
 and the churches were frozen by formalism and 
 dogmatism. Not only so, but the darkness became 
 deepest just before the dawn, until even the 
 flickering light which had shone forth through 
 men like Francke and Ziegenbalg was fading 
 away; and out in the fighting line with heathenism 
 the very missionaries were tainted with the fatal 
 rationalistic blight. Tliere were many forces at 
 work against Protestantism and its inner or 
 outer growth the fear of democratic rule on the 
 part of the governing classes ; the intrigues and 
 persecutions of the Jesuits, now the ruling power 
 in Rome ; and much else but her worst foes 
 were those of her own household. The neglect of 
 Foreign Missions which characterised the Reformers
 
 140 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 became actual opposition on the part of their 
 successors. It was argued that : " Go ye into all the 
 world and preach the Gospel to every creature " 
 was a command for the Apostles alone, and that it 
 was casting pearls before swine to take the Good 
 News to the heathen. One leader, John Gerhard 
 of Jena, actually persuaded himself that Tartary, 
 Egypt, India, and Abyssinia were filled with 
 Evangelical Christians, while others held that 
 the Gospel had already been preached to the 
 whole world. 
 
 The result of this disastrous limitation was that 
 their work not only came to a standstill, but the 
 energy which should have been expended in winning 
 the heathen at home and abroad was expended 
 in forming new sects and parties ; until the bitter- 
 ness and hatred of the various sections of the 
 Reformed Churches cast a deep shadow over 
 everything for which they stood. It was not 
 merely that they did not co-operate with each 
 other in the defence of the truth or in self-defence. 
 They persecuted each other and divided their 
 forces in such a way as to invite the enemy to 
 conquer them in detail. Toleration, inadequate 
 as that is as a substitute for freedom, is a plant 
 of slow growth. Even yet it grows mainly 
 in the fields of indifference, where it ceases even 
 to be toleration. Not only so, but much that 
 had worked out in practice better than it appeared
 
 Calvinists and Lutherans 141 
 
 to be in theory, so long as the warmth of revival 
 saved men from the worst consequences of their 
 logic, became hurtful all round when the religion 
 of forms and creeds began to displace the religion 
 of the Spirit. The evils of devotion to the infinitely 
 little and of division over petty details can only 
 be escaped when there is fervour for Christ and 
 the extension of His Kingdom ; and the differences 
 between Calvinists and Lutherans became serious 
 and disastrous as true spiritual life and earnestness 
 grew less. There are always irregularities where 
 there is strenuous life, but that very life lifts those 
 who differ to a higher plane. It is when faith 
 grows cold that men make a religion of their 
 differences, and when that stage was reached by 
 the Keformed Churches a deadly blow was struck 
 at the truth. 
 
 The hostility of the Lutheran princes in Germany 
 to Calvinism made them deaf to the appeals of 
 their Dutch neighbours, brethren in the faith, 
 throughout their long - continued struggle with 
 Spain. It is even probable that if the Lutheran 
 Elector of Saxony had gone to the help of the 
 Calvinistic Elector of the Palatinate in his extreme 
 need, Bohemia and Austria would have been 
 Protestant to-day. The English exiles in the 
 days of Queen Mary, persecuted and suffering 
 as they were, were refused hospitality by the 
 Lutherans because they followed not with them ;
 
 142 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 and such doings were typical rather than ex- 
 ceptional, and were not confined to one church 
 or party or locality. By their divisions in the 
 face of the common enemy and by the evil spirit 
 which begat these divisions and was begotten 
 by them, they doomed themselves to weakness 
 and disaster, morally and spiritually as well as 
 politically. 
 
 It is not to be wondered at that the deadly 
 upas tree of rationalism took root by and by in 
 such a soil; that the doctrine of pre-destination, 
 which had been viewed as a means of grace by 
 the Reformers, was turned into fatalism ; or 
 that the new scholasticism elaborated doctrines 
 which first of all were put in place of vital religion 
 and then disappeared. Rationalism did not begin 
 by being hostile to the Christian revelation as the 
 Reformers had vindicated it and had found new 
 life in it. At first it merely sought permission 
 to render its authority more secure by estab- 
 lishing it on grounds of reason, as before it had 
 been received on grounds of faith. But it ended 
 by seeking to annihilate all that was distinctively 
 Christian. The doctrine of the Trinity, for 
 example, had to be eliminated as incapable of 
 proof or logical demonstration, and with it went 
 the doctrine of our Lord's eternal Sonship. The 
 end was that revealed religion was banished ; while 
 morality was reduced to the one virtue of worldly
 
 Pietism and Methodism 143 
 
 prudence; and the work of the Reformers was 
 largely undone. 
 
 Not that the fire on the altar ever went altogether 
 out. Even when things were at their worst, as had 
 been the case in the days before the Reformation, 
 there were godly men and women in all the Pro- 
 testant Churches who never bowed the knee to 
 Baal. In the very heyday of the rationalistic 
 reaction, and long before the Evangelical Revival 
 came, there was a remarkable religious movement 
 which was fraught with blessing for many, and 
 with promise for the whole Church. In Germany 
 it was called Pietism and in England Methodism. 
 It set itself alike against the rationalism which 
 sought to reduce Christianity to being a natural 
 religion, and the formalism which was eating 
 away the very life of the Churches. It sub- 
 stituted fervour and personal devotion to Christ 
 for the barren forms which were all that were 
 left for so many, and its influence was great and 
 widespread. It is significant, too, that at once, as 
 by a Divine instinct, it set itself to do the social 
 and mission work which the Reformers had so 
 largely left undone, and with such disastrous 
 results. 
 
 Whenever the gentle breath of Pietism began 
 to melt the ice of the Lutheran Church there 
 was organised effort on behalf of the poor and 
 the heathen. It was Francke, whose name meets
 
 1 44 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 us wherever good work was being done in that 
 era, who founded the Orphanage at Halle, and 
 helped to send out the pioneer missionaries, 
 Ziegenbalg and Plutsche, to Tranquebar. The 
 little Church of the United Brethren sent more 
 missionaries into the field between 1720 and 
 1740 than the whole of the Reformed Churches 
 had hitherto done in the two centuries of their 
 existence. More than that, as Francke had been 
 used of God to kindle Whitefield, so the Moravians 
 aroused Wesley, one of the mightiest instruments 
 for social amelioration Great Britain has ever 
 known. And the same features characterised 
 the later Evangelical Revival when at length 
 it came in such power that it is not yet spent. 
 Philanthropy went hand in hand with earnest 
 efforts on behalf of the perishing multitudes abroad. 
 As Mr. Green put it : *' The passionate impulse 
 of human sympathy with the wronged and afflicted 
 raised hospitals, endowed charities, built churches, 
 sent missionaries to the heathen, supported Burke 
 in his plea for the Hindu, and Clarkson and 
 Wilberforce in their crusade against the iniquities 
 of the slave trade/' 
 
 Nothing, indeed, is more noteworthy than this 
 combination of philanthropy and eager Evangel- 
 ism in connection with the Evangelical Revival, 
 alike for its own sake and as throwing light on how 
 the arrest of the Reformation is to be removed.
 
 Philanthropy and Evangelism 145 
 
 It is only through such a combination that the 
 embargo can be lifted and deliverance from the 
 power of the dead hand achieved. It is at 
 the front, whether at home or abroad, that men 
 come to see things in their true proportions and 
 in the Divine light. Those who have been where 
 their fellows worship the lower animals have 
 little patience with discussions as to whether the 
 members of episcopal and non- episcopal churches 
 may sit together at the Table of the Lord. It 
 is as they do His will that the Churches know His 
 doctrine, and His will is that His message of 
 salvation through Christ should be proclaimed 
 to all mankind, not as a testimony against them 
 but to tell them that the great heart of love is 
 yearning over them. The union of forces in all- 
 round Evangelism will lead to that union which 
 ensures the victory which is twice blessed, blessing 
 the vanquished and the victors alike. Yet it is 
 still one of the disquieting features of the situa- 
 tion that indifference is so widespread. This is 
 partly a legacy from the neglect of the past, and 
 partly due to the antagonism to the unseen which 
 is one of the most subtle modern forms of ration- 
 alism. The same determination to banish the 
 supernatural which still shows itself in certain 
 critical tendencies shows itself also in the sheer 
 worldliness which makes so many occupy their 
 whole life with the things of sense and time. 
 
 10
 
 146 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 In this story of reaction and revival, however, 
 reaction is not the last word ; and although nothing 
 is more urgent than fresh waves of quickening 
 there has been no real return to the state of affairs 
 in the pre-revival days. Everywhere there is the 
 yearning to make Christ real for all, and to bring 
 the love-light into dumb eyes and the deathless 
 hope into despairing hearts. The most disconcert- 
 ing fact is, that even after a century of revival 
 Protestantism is doing little more than hold its 
 own so far as Romanism is concerned. But it is 
 of the essence of Evangelicalism to face discon- 
 certing facts, and to bring gains out of losses ; 
 and in their faith in their holy cause the children 
 of the Reformers will neither ignore the indifference 
 which is such a menace and leads so many to cry 
 " a plague on both your houses," nor forget that 
 their golden age is still in front and that their best 
 is yet to be.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 The Counter-Reformation 
 
 ALTHOUGH Leo x. looked on the beginnings 
 of the Reformation with contempt, as 
 another quarrel among the monks, Rome 
 would have crushed out the new movement at 
 once had she been able to do so. She had crushed 
 out many another which had begun with as much 
 promise of success. The political situation in 
 Germany, however, made that impossible, and 
 for a time she tried what conference and cajolery 
 could accomplish. The exigencies of the Empire 
 brought it about that the truth was too firmly 
 planted to be uprooted when the full force of the 
 blast fell on it ; and in God's providence even the 
 Turks contributed to this result. For various 
 reasons Charles v, did not allow persecution in 
 the Empire, until persecution was either impossible 
 or too late. Elsewhere, however, there was per- 
 secution in abundance, both dire and grim. In 
 the Netherlands, where such a heroic conflict 
 was waged, thousands died for their faith ; while 
 in France the Huguenots were slain in war, 
 
 massacred in peace, and hunted down at all times 
 
 147
 
 148 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 as the enemies of the race. It is estimated that 
 in the sixty years from 1520 till 1580 as many as 
 200,000 Protestants died in various parts of Europe 
 for their religion and their Lord. 
 
 Nor was the blood of the martyrs in every case 
 the seed of the Church. In Holland and Britain 
 persecution confirmed the people in their devotion 
 to the principles of the Reformation as well as in 
 their determination to be free. As they said in 
 St. Andrews, the " reik " of many a burning 
 infected those on whom it fell, with the new 
 doctrines. According to Knox, Hamilton's 
 martyrdom was the beginning of the Reformation 
 in Scotland ; while, according to Green, Cranmer's 
 finally made it certain that England was lost to 
 Rome. But it was otherwise in Spain and Italy. 
 In these countries nascent Protestantism was 
 literally burned out. Those who were strong 
 enough to avow their faith were exterminated by 
 the prison, the torture, and the flames. There is 
 no reason in the nature of things why persecution 
 should not succeed if only it is sufficiently thorough- 
 going, and in these lands the light was quenched ; 
 and the peoples of Southern Europe, bright with 
 promise and endowed with many gifts, entered on 
 long years of thick darkness and degradation from 
 which they are only now emerging. 
 
 As Macaulay puts it : " The civil sword in Spain 
 and Italy was unsparingly employed in support of
 
 The Blood of the Martyrs \ 49 
 
 the Catholic Church. The Inquisition was armed 
 with new powers and inspired with a new energy. 
 If Protestantism, or the semblance of Protestant- 
 ism, showed itself in any quarter, it was immedi- 
 ately met, not by petty, teasing persecution, but 
 by persecution of that sort which bows down and 
 crushes all but a very few select spirits. Whoever 
 was suspected of heresy, whatever his rank, his 
 learning, or his reputation, was to purge himself 
 to the satisfaction of a severe and vigilant tribunal, 
 or to die by fire. Heretical books were sought out 
 and destroyed with the same unsparing rigour. 
 Works which were once in every house were so 
 effectually suppressed, that no copy of them is 
 now to be found in the most extensive libraries. 
 One book in particular, entitled, Of the Benefit 
 of the Death of Christ, had this fate. It was 
 written in Tuscan, was many times reprinted, 
 and was eagerly read in every part of Italy. But 
 the inquisitors detected in it the Lutheran doctrine 
 of justification by faith alone. They proscribed it ; 
 and it is now as utterly lost as the second decade 
 of Livy." 
 
 Not that persecution was the only device of Rome 
 when she was confronted by the Reformation. 
 The Inquisition and the Index by themselves do 
 not altogether account for the Counter-Reformation. 
 Only enthusiasm and faith, along with extra- 
 ordinary self-denial, can explain the inroads which
 
 I 50 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 Rome was able to make on the territories she had 
 lost for a time. 
 
 One of the outstanding features of the post- 
 Reformation era was the outbreak of new zeal 
 in the Romish Church as soon as it was clearly 
 seen how formidable the Protestant movement was 
 threatening to be. " In the course of a single 
 generation," to quote Macaulay again, "the whole 
 spirit of the Church of Rome underwent a change. 
 From the halls of the Vatican to the most secluded 
 hermitage of the Apennines, the great revival was 
 everywhere felt and seen. All the institutions 
 anciently devised for the propagation and defence 
 of the faith were furbished up and made efficient. 
 Fresh engines of still more formidable power were 
 constructed. Everywhere the old religious com- 
 munities were remodelled, and new religious 
 communities called into existence. Within a year 
 after the death of Leo, the Order of Camaldoli 
 was purified. The Capuchins restored the old 
 Franciscan discipline the midnight prayer and 
 the life of silence. The Barnabites and the Society 
 of Somasca devoted themselves to the relief and 
 education of the poor. To the Theatine Order a 
 still higher interest belongs. Its great object 
 was the same with that of our early Methodists to 
 supply the deficiencies of the parochial clergy. . . . 
 The members of the new brotherhood preached 
 to great multitudes in the streets and in the fields,
 
 The Roman Revival 151 
 
 prayed by the beds of the sick, and administered the 
 last sacraments to the dying." It is not possible 
 to understand the Counter-Reformation with a view 
 to a resumption of the Evangelical triumphs 
 which were then brought to a close if it be 
 imagined that the revival of Roman Catholicism 
 was merely official or external. 
 
 This is not a question of despising the enemy, 
 but of understanding him ; and in so far as that 
 revival was real, it was one of the collateral results 
 of the Reformation. How far it was also a case 
 of the good being the enemy of the best is another 
 matter ; and it sometimes happens that such a good 
 can do evil work better than the worst. But to 
 quote Macaulay yet again : " The Court of Rome 
 itself was purified. During the generation which 
 preceded the Reformation, that Court had been a 
 scandal to the Christian name. Its annals are 
 black with treason, murder, and incest. Even its 
 more respectable members were utterly unfit to 
 be ministers of religion. . . . But when the great 
 stirring of the mind of Europe began when 
 doctrine after doctrine was assailed when nation 
 after nation withdrew from communion with the 
 successor of St. Peter, it was felt that the Church 
 could not be safely confided to chiefs whose highest 
 praise was, that they were good judges of Latin 
 compositions, of paintings, and of statues, whose 
 severest studies had a pagan character, and who
 
 152 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 were suspected of laughing in secret at the sacra- 
 ments which they administered, and of believing 
 no more of the Gospel than of the Morgante 
 Maggiore. Men of a different class now rose to the 
 direction of affairs men whose spirit resembled 
 that of Dunstan and of Becket. The Roman 
 Pontiffs exhibited in their own persons all the 
 austerity of the early anchorites of Syria. ... As 
 was the head, such were the members. The change 
 in the spirit of the Catholic world may be traced 
 in every walk of literature and art." We do not 
 sufficiently honour those whom they defeated, 
 unless we give these new protagonists of Rome 
 the credit that is their due ; even although we 
 insist that it was the Protestants themselves who 
 gave regenerated Romanism the great oppor- 
 tunity of which it so amply availed itself in the 
 Counter-Reformation. 
 
 In addition to some who for one reason or another 
 remained in the Church of Rome, although they were 
 in sympathy even with the doctrinal aspects of the 
 Reformation, there were many who were anxious 
 to effect real reforms in the government of the 
 Roman Church, although they viewed any doctrinal 
 reforms either with indifference or dread. Charles v. 
 was far from being alone in calling for a General 
 Council which might reunite distracted Christendom 
 by the removal of abuses which no one could defend. 
 Luther himself had appealed to such a Council,
 
 Council of Trent 153 
 
 although not to one Pope-ridden and Jesuit- 
 controlled, like that which ultimately assembled at 
 Trent. The meetings of that Council, with which 
 the Counter-Keformation must always be asso- 
 ciated, took place at intervals during the years 
 from 1545 to 1563. They were held at Trent as 
 technically within the bounds of the Empire, and 
 yet not too far from Italy to prevent it being 
 dominated from Home. 
 
 During these eventful years Luther died and war 
 began in Germany in 1546, Elizabeth became Queen 
 of England in 1558, the first French Reformed 
 Synod was held at Paris in 1559, and the Scottish 
 Church was reformed in 1560. The composition 
 of the Council, from which less and less was looked 
 for as its character and limitations became known, 
 was predominantly Italian, and of the Italians 
 many were absolutely dependent on the Pope. 
 No unfettered discussion was allowed ; nothing 
 could be introduced but by the Papal legates, 
 nor anything decided except with the Pope's 
 consent. The voting was by individuals and not 
 by nations, and it was never for one moment a free 
 council. As Archbishop Laud pointed out, it was 
 against all law, Divine, natural and human, that 
 the Pope, the chief person to be reformed, should 
 sit as president in it and be chief judge in his own 
 cause. From the first the Protestants had no 
 voice in it, although it had been intended by the
 
 154 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 Emperor that their case should be stated by them- 
 selves ; and its bias against genuine concessions 
 to them became more and more marked as it went 
 on. Various abuses were abolished ; provision 
 was made for the better training of the priesthood ; 
 the organisation of the Hierarchy and the discipline 
 of the Church were improved ; but, on the other 
 hand, the anti- evangelical elements in Medisevalism 
 were perpetuated and made dominant, and Home, 
 instead of reuniting the warring sections of the 
 Church, became hopelessly a sect. 
 
 Not only were the main abuses left untouched 
 and the current Roman contentions reaffirmed, 
 the supremacy of the Pope as against Councils 
 was established as never before. The tendency was 
 then blessed and made official which finally 
 triumphed in the decree of the Papal Infallibility 
 in 1870. Since the Council of Trent the unity of 
 the See of St. Peter has become increasingly 
 the all-dominating mark of the Roman Church. 
 No goodness is of any value, nor is any love or 
 devotion recognised as Christian which is not 
 accompanied by absolute submission to the Pope. 
 Since then, the Romish system has been more 
 logical and coherent, but it has been less possible 
 than before for men and women Evangelical at 
 heart to be nurtured in Rome or to remain in her 
 communion; even allowing for the incalculable 
 element in human nature, the obstinate irrationality
 
 The 
 
 155 
 
 of the heart of man, and the power of faith to live 
 in unexpected places. There is far less room for 
 controversy and far less scope for change than 
 there was a difference which is not borne in mind 
 as it ought to be by those who argue as if the 
 Church of Rome now were very much the same as 
 the Church in which Luther and Calvin, Knox and 
 Zwingli, grew up and were converted. 
 
 The movement which began at Trent and was 
 consummated in our own day, and which made 
 unity of organisation and absolute submission 
 to the Pope the supreme tests, was chiefly the 
 work of the Jesuits, who emerged on the scene as 
 the great dominating force before the second 
 assembling of the Council in 1551, and whose 
 influence was supreme throughout its later doings. 
 Their policy was not merely to put an end to the 
 idea of reunion through reform, but to silence the 
 cry for compromise. " Cease your discussions and 
 crush Protestantism " was their motto ; and for 
 a time their success was extraordinary. They 
 secured the removal of the grosser abuses which 
 weakened Rome ; they carried Romish doctrines 
 among the heathen in an era when there were no 
 corresponding Protestant missions ; and they 
 drove back the Reformation movement to the 
 limits which are still its practical boundaries. The 
 disciples of Ignatius Loyola were the " Calvinists " 
 of Rome who carried war into the enemy's camp ;
 
 I 5 6 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 and they received conditional sanction in 1540, 
 and unconditional approval three years later. 
 
 The change they wrought was as vast as it was 
 rapid, but their power became so great that it not 
 only raised up enemies against them but led to cor- 
 ruptions within their own ranks, with the result 
 that not much more than two centuries after its 
 inception the Order fell amid the execration of 
 civilised mankind. After having been expelled 
 from such Popish countries as Portugal and Spain, 
 the Society of Jesus was abolished by the Pope 
 on 21st July 1773. It had saved the Roman 
 Church in the time of its greatest need, but by the 
 middle of the eighteenth century it seemed to be 
 without a friend. In the British Museum the medal 
 struck by Pope Clement xiv. to commemorate 
 the dissolution of the Order may be seen. The 
 reverse shows our Lord, followed by St. Peter and 
 the Pope, driving out three Jesuits with the words : 
 " I never knew you : depart from me ye all." 
 Underneath is a Latin reference to Psalm cxviii. 
 23 : " This is the Lord's doing ; it is marvellous 
 in our eyes." 
 
 The Society of Jesus was resuscitated after the 
 fall of Napoleon and in that era of reaction which 
 proved that to forget nothing and learn nothing 
 was no monopoly of the Bourbons. It is probable, 
 too, that its influence and power were never 
 greater than they are now when it has become
 
 The Power behind the Pope \ 5 7 
 
 " the power behind the Pope/' and its General, 
 the Black Pope, dictates terms to the titular Pope. 
 Yet the lessons of its fall remain to show that 
 somehow or other this remarkable Order has 
 gathered widespread suspicion and hostility 
 around it, among Romanists as well as Protest- 
 ants ; and that it has been dogged by failure 
 throughout. Their entire history suggests that 
 we pay the Jesuits too high a compliment when 
 we think of them as irresistible. They have not 
 only come short of enduring success in their enter- 
 prises, but their ultimate failure is inevitable. 
 
 When men are degraded morally and intellect- 
 ually to the level of automata they cannot do their 
 best work ; and it is significant that even in the 
 realm of education, Jesuit successes have been in 
 connection with the exact sciences rather than in 
 philosophy or theology, where personality and 
 individuality count. The Power in the universe 
 which makes for righteousness is supreme after all ; 
 and when any body of men set themselves in 
 opposition to it they are bound to fail, no matter 
 how great their ability or how absolute their 
 devotion. The Jesuits are not immoral as the old 
 monks were in their idleness and ignorance ; but 
 probably they are even more fundamentally at 
 variance with the moral order of the universe, 
 with their doctrines of probabilism, mental reserva- 
 tion, and the end justifying the means. The folly
 
 158 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 of the wise and the blindness of the far-seeing are 
 manifest on every page of the history of the Jesuits, 
 even the latest. For now as ever, they are handi- 
 capped by the essential and fundamental limita- 
 tions of the subjection to which they have doomed 
 themselves ; a subjection which would ennoble 
 were it rendered to God, but which cannot but de- 
 grade when it is rendered to men. The Dreyfus 
 case was simply one of the latest proofs that they 
 who make use of edged tools will cut themselves ; 
 that they who use the sword will perish by the 
 sword ; and that they who corrupt a community 
 cannot but be involved in the inevitable disaster. 
 
 " He who sits in heaven shall laugh," as when 
 the consummation of the oft-baffled machinations 
 of the Jesuits in the Infallibility Decree of 1870 
 weirdly coincided with the loss of the Temporal 
 Power. As one of the most recent writers on this 
 theme, Count von Hoensbroech in his Fourteen 
 Years a Jesuit, points out, their successes have 
 always been lacking in endurance and magnitude. 
 They have frittered away their vast political in- 
 fluence in a variety of intrigues, and in small 
 disputes which universally lack statesmanship on 
 a large scale. They cannot point to a single 
 far-reaching success in the domain of universal 
 politics. They train machines and not men. 
 They destroy individuality and are wanting there- 
 fore in independent thought and action. Even
 
 The Folly of the Wise 159 
 
 their devotion and self-sacrifice are mechanical ; 
 and " smoothly gliding balls trace no deep furrows, 
 they leave only light, easily effaceable marks." 
 
 The General Election in Canada in 1911 pro- 
 vided another instance of how the Jesuits over- 
 reach themselves and miss their mark just when 
 success seems assured. One of the leading 
 members of Sir Wilfrid Laurier's defeated govern- 
 ment says that the " indiscreet, unwise, and 
 impudent " sermons of Father Bernard Vaughan 
 at the Eucharistic Congress the year before were 
 largely responsible for a result which was very 
 gratifying to the militant Protestantism of the 
 Dominion. It would be foolish on our part to 
 despise their power and craft, for our free institu- 
 tions may be involved in the ruin which the 
 enemies of truth and freedom cannot but bring 
 on themselves ; and it will be no consolation that 
 they have failed to subject the nations to the 
 Papal sway if they end in disgusting modern 
 Europe with Christianity through their identi- 
 fication of it with corruption and intrigue. 
 
 But it would be equally foolish for those who 
 believe in God to tremble before the worldly 
 wisdom which within a few years has contrived to 
 lose Italy, France, and Portugal to the Roman See ; 
 and seems likely to lose the half-pagan half-popish 
 Central and South American States as well. All we 
 need in order to win in the world-conflict is to be
 
 160 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 open-eyed and loyal to the Gospel of the grace of 
 God, and to meet the devotion and self-surrender 
 of the Society of Jesus with whole-hearted consecra- 
 tion to our Lord. As for the suspicion and hatred 
 which the Jesuits have inspired, not only among 
 Protestants but among Romanists, securus judicat 
 orbjs terrarum what all the world says must 
 be true. It is not for nothing that the English 
 dictionary, which has neither ecclesiastical nor 
 political leanings, defines "Jesuitry" as implying 
 " deceptive practices, subtle distinctions, or 
 political duplicity ; or craft ; " or that the French 
 " escobarderie," the equivalent of subtle lies, 
 comes from Escobar, the Spanish casuist who came 
 under Pascal's lash in the Provincial Letters. 
 We owe it to the deadening and baneful influ- 
 ence of modern Jesuitry that in our own time 
 men of pure and even of devout life have been 
 parties to the Congo, Philippine, Dreyfus, and 
 Ferrer horrors. " That a few negroes should be 
 flogged by white men instead of tortured by their 
 own chiefs, or that one wretched Jew should be 
 punished unjustly, cannot weigh for one moment 
 against the interests of the Church and the con- 
 sequent salvation of souls." 
 
 In its wider application, as summing up the 
 entire Romanist reaction, the Counter-Reforma- 
 tion was due to a variety of causes. There were 
 the superficial reforms of the Council of Trent.
 
 The Society of jfesus 1 6 1 
 
 There was the power of the Inquisition and the 
 Index which united to wage war against freedom 
 in every guise. There was the influence of Spain, 
 the great world-power of the age with its gold 
 still thought to be inexhaustible, and its sword 
 which still seemed to be invincible. There was 
 the revival of Mediaeval piety as seen in men like 
 Carlo Borromeo and Francis de Sales. There 
 were the well-grounded fears of kings and nobles 
 that the victorious Evangel would put an end to 
 their privileges, so often tyrannous and inde- 
 fensible. There were the failures and divisions 
 of the Reformed Churches themselves after the 
 first waves of revival had spent their force. But 
 above all else there were the genius and deter- 
 mination of the Society of Jesus which inspired 
 and dominated the movement throughout. The 
 extent of the reaction has already been indicated, 
 but it is of the essence of any inquiry into the 
 Arrested Reformation to emphasise how far- 
 reaching it was. It meant the repression of the 
 strivings after reform which had manifested them- 
 selves among the nations of Southern Europe, 
 a repression which not only involved destruction 
 for Evangelism but the disappearance of freedom, 
 literature, and art. It made a desert of the fairest 
 parts of Europe and called it peace. It also 
 meant that in Germany and Switzerland, which 
 at first seemed likely to be wholly won for the 
 ii
 
 1 62 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 new light, the waves of reaction swept over district 
 after district, with the result that there were 
 divided interests and desolating wars. In 1558 
 a Venetian traveller reported that only a tenth 
 of the German people remained true to the Roman 
 See, but by and by great territories like Bavaria, 
 Baden, and the Rhine Provinces were won back. 
 It likewise meant that the empire of Austria is 
 now predominantly Romish, although at one time 
 more than half of it had welcomed Evangelical 
 truth. 
 
 " Bavaria, the Rhine Provinces, the Duchy 
 of Austria itself/' says Principal Lindsay, " were, 
 according to contemporary accounts, more than 
 half Protestant. Nearly all the seats of learning 
 were Protestant. The Romanist universities of 
 Vienna and Ingolstadt were almost deserted by 
 students. Under the skilful and enthusiastic 
 leadership of Peter Canisius, the Jesuits were 
 mainly instrumental in changing this state of 
 things. They entered Bavaria and Austria. 
 They appeared as the heralds and givers of 
 education, and took possession of the rising 
 generation. They established schools in all the 
 principal centres of population. They were good 
 teachers. They produced school books of a 
 modern type; the catechism written by Canisius 
 himself was used in all their schools (it trans- 
 planted into Romanism the Lutheran system of
 
 t Conquests 163 
 
 catechising) ; they charged no fees ; they soon 
 had the instruction of the Koman Catholic children 
 in their hands. The astonished people of town 
 and country districts began to see pilgrimages of 
 boys and girls, conducted like modern Sunday- 
 school treats, led by the good fathers, to visit 
 famous churches, shrines, holy crosses, miraculous 
 wells, etc. The parents were induced to visit 
 the teachers ; visits led to the confessional, and 
 the confessional to the directorate. Then followed 
 the discipline of the Spiritual Exercises, usually 
 shortened to suit the capacities of the penitents. 
 Whole districts were led back to the confessional 
 . . . the parents following the children. The 
 higher education was not neglected. Jesuit 
 colleges founded at Vienna and Ingolstadt peopled 
 the decaying universities with students, and gave 
 them new life. ... A generation of ardent souls 
 were trained for the service of the Roman Church, 
 and vowed to combat Protestantism to the death." 
 The territorial principle, that each district should 
 be of the same religion as its rulers, was now used 
 for the overthrow of the Reformation. Romish 
 rulers with Protestant subjects were induced to 
 withdraw protection from them, and many migra- 
 tions resulted which have left their mark on 
 Europe. The Jesuits set themselves, too, to secure 
 the perversion of Protestant rulers, and were 
 strangely successful. In 1614, for instance, they
 
 164 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 won the Count-Palatine, Wolfgang William of Neu- 
 burg, and paved the way for the Romanising of the 
 whole of the Palatinate in 1685. They even won 
 an Elector of Saxony, who went over in 1679 that 
 he might qualify himself for the Polish crown. 
 In the preceding era they won Duke Albert v., and 
 thus secured Bavaria and then Baden for Rome. 
 And so the work went on. In Bohemia, Protest- 
 antism was nearly extirpated. In Silesia thou- 
 sands were forced to migrate. In Hungary, where 
 the victory of the Reformation had been almost 
 assured, the 2000 congregations of Protestants at 
 the end of the sixteenth century were represented 
 by little more than 100 at the end of the eighteenth. 
 The reaction in France lay outside the Counter- 
 Reformation proper, but its results were equally 
 far-reaching and significant. Had the French 
 become Protestant, as at one time seemed likely, 
 the results would have been unspeakably moment- 
 ous, and there would probably have been no 
 Counter-Reformation. So irresistible was the Re- 
 formation movement in France for a time, that 
 in 1551 Queen Catherine, as the only way to pre- 
 serve Catholicism, called on the Pope to allow 
 the removal of images, the administration of the 
 sacrament in both kinds, and the abolition of 
 private masses. Yet by such colossal crimes as 
 the massacre of St. Bartholomew and the revoca- 
 tion of the Edict of Nantes, France doomed herself
 
 The Reaction Checked 165 
 
 not merely to Romanism but to the absolutism 
 which led to the Revolution in 1789, and to the 
 infidelity which has weakened her at home and 
 abroad. 
 
 Strictly speaking, the Counter-Reformation did 
 not affect England ; but it might be argued that the 
 retention of the forms and phrases which have 
 lent themselves, willingly or unwillingly, to the 
 Ritualistic reaction in our own time, was a phase 
 of it. Certain it is that her whole-hearted adhesion 
 to the Reformation cause, as that was understood 
 in Germany and Scotland, would have changed 
 the whole face of Europe in the days when the 
 conflict was most critical. Strangely enough, the 
 dry rot which began to weaken Protestantism 
 at the very time when it seemed destined to carry 
 everything before it, began to affect Rome in turn 
 as disastrously, after she also had had her share 
 of success. ' The great southern reaction began 
 to slacken," says Macaulay, " as the great northern 
 movement had slackened before. The zeal of the 
 Catholics became cool ; their union was dissolved. 
 The paroxysm of religious excitement was over 
 on both sides. The one party had degenerated as 
 far from the spirit of Loyola, as the other from the 
 spirit of Luther." Unhappily, however, the line 
 had by that time been drawn which still persists ; 
 and in addition the spirit of the Counter-Reforma- 
 tion still lives and moves and has its being in those
 
 1 66 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 who seek to get rid of their personal responsibility 
 in spiritual things by casting the burden on others. 
 In the phases of Reformation and Counter-Reforma- 
 tion, of reaction and counter-reaction, of revival 
 and decline which we have been considering on the 
 large scale, we have " writ large " what is being 
 enacted day by day in many a life. The never- 
 ceasing prayer of God's remembrancers should 
 be, that erelong the era of the Counter-Reforma- 
 tion may be really at an end ; and that the spirit 
 and fruits of the Reformation, the graces of the 
 Evangel, may reign supreme in every land. ' Wilt 
 Thou not revive us again, that Thy people may 
 rejoice in Thee ? "
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Roman Catholic Missions 
 
 THE problem of the Arrested Reformation is 
 complicated by the fact that the Church 
 of Rome was never more aggressive than she 
 is now. Alike as an ecclesiastical organisation and 
 a home and foreign mission agency, she measures 
 her strength everywhere with that of her rivals. 
 Man shall not live by bread alone, and even the 
 Church of Rome, with all her subtle adaptation to 
 human weakness and human pride, could not 
 flourish by mere craft and intrigue. She is many- 
 sided in her efforts, and with all her logic is often 
 admirably inconsistent. Semper eadem has been 
 her proud boast, but it can hardly be said to have 
 been her practice either in conduct or creed. 
 Father Sacchi and his Roman observatory are not 
 only a curious commentary on the dealings of 
 the Inquisition with Galileo, but are an allegory of 
 much else which is of far greater importance. Rome 
 has, indeed, been ever the same as regards her 
 intolerance of independence and freedom, and as 
 regards her determination to identify unity with 
 
 a ruthless uniformity, and to reduce every other 
 
 167
 
 1 68 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 question to that of absolute submission to the 
 Papal See. 
 
 She has, however, given many proofs in recent 
 times of her readiness to adapt herself to modern 
 circumstances, and even to add to her doctrines, 
 as well as to readjust her methods of work. With 
 regard to doctrinal innovations, if it be said that 
 the Infallibility of the Pope was implicit in her 
 system, at any rate since the Council of Trent, the 
 facts remain that it was not a doctrine of the whole 
 Church until modern times, that it was always 
 obnoxious to many of her greatest theologians, that 
 in spite of all the efforts of the Jesuits at Trent no 
 decision regarding it was arrived at there, and that 
 its promulgation in 1870 was only accomplished 
 by means : of far-reaching coercion. As regards 
 aggressive work, Rome has never been hampered 
 by the semper eadem principle as she sought to 
 win the heathen abroad or heretics at home. 
 Instead, she has shown a readiness to be all things 
 to all men in the unworthy sense, if only she could 
 win them. That in the summer of 1911 Arch- 
 bishop now Cardinal Bourne consecrated a 
 motor caravan to serve as an itinerating chapel 
 for scattered communities, shows that her agents 
 are quite up to date in their efforts to extend 
 the sphere of their influence. A preacher as 
 eminent as Father Vaughan went through East 
 Anglia in the autumn of the same year with what
 
 Romish Home Missions 169 
 
 he called a propagation van. In the manufactur- 
 ing districts, too, missions are sometimes held 
 before six o'clock in the morning, when the work- 
 people begin their work. There is nothing stereo- 
 typed in the mission methods of those who are 
 seeking to bring outsiders into the fold of the 
 Church of Home. 
 
 According to the late Cardinal Vaughan, the 
 registered gains of Eome in England numbered 
 between eight and nine thousand per annum 
 during the later years of the nineteenth century. 
 Many of these recruits were doubtless obtained 
 through the so-called Catholic revival in the Church 
 of England, while others may be due to the 
 assiduous and subtle efforts which are made to 
 influence public opinion through the newspaper 
 press. It is also probable that some are obtained 
 through the educational propaganda which is 
 carried on so persistently by refugee nuns and 
 others. By creating the impression that their 
 schools are " genteel " ; by underselling their 
 rivals ; and by covering up the teaching for the 
 sake of which their schools exist, under a fair show 
 of imparting " Parisian French " they have 
 obtained a hold in various parts of the country 
 which is a menace to evangelical truth. Much is 
 also done to influence the careless by such demo- 
 cratic agencies as the sodalities which now play 
 such an important part in the life of the Roman
 
 170 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 Catholic population. The Sodality of the Holy 
 Family in Limerick as organised by the Redemp- 
 torist Fathers numbers more than 6000 members ; 
 which, even although the subscription paid at each 
 monthly meeting is no more than twopence, means 
 an income of more than 600 a year. These 
 sodalities serve Rome in three ways. They raise 
 money which is entirely at the disposal of the 
 priests. They get the people to attend the 
 sacraments ; those who are absent being marked 
 down as black sheep. They act as an intelligence 
 department for the priests. Not a visit can be 
 paid, not a copy of the Scriptures can be circulated, 
 not an effort to speak a word for Christ can be 
 made, without a report to the clerical superin- 
 tendent from one or other of the members who are 
 everywhere in the workshops and the homes of 
 the people. 
 
 Yet another line along which aggressive work 
 is carried on in the homelands by Rome, is that 
 followed by the Guild of our Lady of Ransom, 
 which has the conversion of England to Roman 
 Catholicism as its object. Lectures are given at 
 public meetings where questions are invited by 
 expert debaters who are well qualified to influence 
 the ignorant and unsettled. The report of such a 
 lecture given in a London suburb to a large audience 
 shows that the subject was " Why I am not a 
 Protestant ; " and that the lecturer dealt with
 
 Romish Lecturers 171 
 
 the philosophic uncertainty of Protestantism ; 
 the practical inconsistency of Protestantism; and 
 the failure of Protestantism as evinced by recent 
 sociological research. He made the most of the 
 aberrations of the New Theology and the Higher 
 Criticism, and of our social evils, as proofs of the 
 failure of the Keformation. Some of the arguing 
 was specious enough, and much of the treatment 
 of the facts of the case, alike in the past and the 
 present, both superficial and misleading ; but there 
 was enough that was true in what was said to 
 make those with little foundation of personal 
 religious experience and accurate knowledge 
 imagine that the conclusions which were drawn 
 were also true. 
 
 In the foreign mission field Rome's record alike 
 in the Reformation era and in our own day is a 
 remarkable one. The likelihood is that on the 
 whole she is seen at her best there ; and that the 
 worthiest of her agents have found an outlet for 
 their energies in such work, as the least likely to 
 involve them in what they disliked or to bring 
 them into conflict with their superiors. There 
 are two sides to the 'propaganda de fide. There is 
 that which tells of the efforts of an ambitious 
 Hierarchy to find compensation for their losses 
 at home by gains abroad, and of their readiness 
 to make use of compromise and accommodation 
 in so doing. But there is also that which tells of
 
 172 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 heroic self-denying men and women seeking to 
 share what they have with others whose need is 
 greater than their own, and doing it with a 
 sublime forgetfulness of self even where they did 
 it in ignorance and superstition. In connection 
 with the work of the Jesuit Order, for example, 
 the best men from the moral view-point are those 
 who have usually no voice in its government. 
 Those who are naturally sympathetic, kindly, and 
 self-denying sincerely anxious to do their duty 
 to God and their fellow-men are greatly valued 
 by the Order, although they are not allowed to 
 rule. " From the ranks of the Fathers who have 
 taken only three vows come the men whose work 
 gives to the Society amongst devout Roman 
 Catholics a reputation for holiness, and, in the 
 foreign mission field, for heroic devotion to what 
 they believe to be their duty. . . . They do the 
 work which gains for the Order renown and praise." 
 It is left to others to do the kind of work which 
 has given the word " Jesuit " its English dictionary 
 significance. 
 
 It is noteworthy in this connection that while 
 the foreign mission work of the Romish Church 
 in modern times is partly due to the revival of 
 the Jesuit Order in 1813, and to the entrance of 
 other Orders into the field, as well as to the in- 
 fluence of the missionary colleges, it is most of 
 all due to the zeal of " A few humble and obscure
 
 Missionaries 173 
 
 Catholics " as they described themselves, who 
 at Lyons in 1822 founded an " Institute for the 
 Propagation of the Faith." They did not send 
 out missionaries. They simply collected money 
 which they gave to the various Orders and 
 Societies, to enable them to extend their opera- 
 tions gradually to the whole world. In 1843 
 the income of this voluntary association was 
 141,000, and it was assisting 130 bishops and 
 4000 priests. Since then its resources and work 
 have more than doubled. During the first 
 seventy years of its existence it raised 10,714,000, 
 of which three millions came from France. Since 
 1843 it has had an auxiliary " Society of the 
 Holy Children," through which the children help 
 the children, and which has now about five million 
 subscribers of a halfpenny a month, and educates 
 146,000 children in over six hundred orphanages 
 and three thousand schools. 
 
 The extent of the foreign mission work of the 
 Roman Church is not only enormous but there 
 are great districts in the heathen world where 
 the only form of Christianity proclaimed is that 
 of Eome. It is cause for sincere regret that so 
 many of those who are being called out of heathen 
 darkness receive their first impressions of Christ 
 and His salvation through channels defiled by pagan 
 sacerdotalism. Co-operation with Romish mis- 
 sionaries in the foreign field was advocated by
 
 174 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 more than one speaker at the World Missionary 
 Conference in Edinburgh in 1910. Dr. Wardlaw 
 Thompson of the London Missionary Society 
 said : "I long for the time when we shall see 
 another Conference and when the men of the 
 Greek Church and the Roman Church shall talk 
 over things with us in the service of Christ. The 
 kingdom will not come until every branch of the 
 Church can unite together in some common effort 
 of service for the Lord." Bishop Brent of the 
 American Protestant Episcopal Church in the 
 Philippine Islands, said : " There is a wonderful, 
 a great, and venerable Church sitting apart to-day, 
 in an aloofness that is more pathetic than it is 
 splendid. It is not co-operating with us as we 
 can compel it to co-operate, that is, if we set our 
 minds upon it. Shall we wait for the Roman 
 Catholic Church to lead us or shall you and I lead 
 and compel the Roman Catholic Church to come 
 to us ? They will never come to us until we go 
 to them. ... In any scheme, practical or theo- 
 retical, for unity, we must take into our reckoning 
 the .Roman Catholic Church, which is an integral 
 part of the Church and of the Kingdom of God. 
 . . . There are occasions when we must fight the 
 Roman Catholic Church, and I have done this in 
 our Church, but remember that fair fighting is one 
 of the elements in Christian co-operation and the 
 promotion of unity." The Bishop of South wark
 
 Co-operation with Rome 175 
 
 also said : " If we are indeed to reach unity, if, 
 indeed, ' only one Church of Christ ' is to be 
 founded in new countries, the unity must com- 
 prehend the great communion of Rome as well as 
 the great Church of the East. Both are Churches 
 rich with past associations and present gifts 
 of devotion and spiritual life. It seems as 
 though the separate channels were worn far too 
 deep for the streams ever to meet. But till 
 they do, language which speaks of Christian 
 unity as come or coming is simply unmeaning. 
 There are, however, some considerations which 
 may encourage the faith that looks to Him with 
 whom everything is possible. The letter from a 
 Roman Catholic Archbishop read to the Conference 
 yesterday shows how near to us some great souls 
 within that Communion are. We owe another 
 illustration to an English Roman layman, Baron 
 von Hiigel. There is hardly, I will venture to say, 
 any instructed member of this Conference who, if 
 he read his book on the Mystical Element in 
 Religion, would not say this man would have to be 
 in the first rank of citizens in a united Church of 
 Christ. We include at this Conference in our 
 statistics the figures, the enormous figures of 
 Roman Catholic work in the mission field. Perhaps 
 when next some Conference like this shall gather, 
 the spirit of unity may have brought it to pass 
 that some representatives of that Church may be
 
 176 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 able to enter into personal conference with their 
 separated brethren." 
 
 There is no evidence that these sentiments were 
 approved by many at the Edinburgh Conference, 
 and there is abundant evidence that they are held 
 in utter detestation by most of those who know 
 the situation at first hand. As a matter of fact, 
 Rome will not co-operate with Evangelicals. The 
 subject was fully discussed at the London Mission- 
 ary Conference in 1888, and the men who were most 
 in love with mission work and most eager to do 
 everything that would bring success, all spoke 
 sorrowfully and solemnly of the objectionable 
 methods and baneful results of Roman Catholic 
 missions as they had come into actual contact with 
 them. They testified with one voice that the agents 
 of Rome often make use of unworthy means, that 
 they trust to the crucifix, the adoration of angels, 
 the Virgin, and the Host, as well as to the con- 
 fessional, austere penances, and gorgeous cere- 
 monial, rather than to the Gospel. 
 
 In his Missionary Achievement, Dr. W. T. 
 Whitley tells of a " Protestant visitor to South 
 India twelve years ago who watched a Roman 
 Catholic open-air service for twenty minutes under 
 the impression that it was a gorgeous heathen 
 function." Xavier himself, the greatest of all 
 their missionaries, has left descriptions of his 
 methods, which show how impossible co-operation
 
 Xaviers Methods 177 
 
 must be until Rome has undergone a complete 
 change. " Here am I almost alone, " he says in 
 one passage, " from the time that Anthony re- 
 mained sick at Manapar ; and I find it an incon- 
 venient position to be in, in the midst of a people 
 of unknown tongue without the assistance of an 
 interpreter. Roderick, indeed, who is here, acts 
 as an interpreter in place of Anthony ; but you 
 know well how much they know of Portuguese. 
 Conceive, therefore, what kind of sermons I am 
 able to address to the assemblies, when they do 
 not understand me nor I them. I ought to be 
 an adept in dumb show. Yet I am not without 
 work ; for I want no interpreter to baptize children 
 just born, or those whom their parents bring, nor to 
 relieve the famishing and the naked who come my 
 way. So I devote myself to these kinds of good 
 works and do not regard my time as lost." Nor is 
 this sort of superstitious and magical work a thing 
 of the past. In the returns made by the Roman 
 Catholic authorities in February 1910 to the Board 
 of Indian Commissioners of the United States, it 
 was stated that there are 106,000 Roman Catholics 
 among the Indians, but part of these are actually 
 referred to by the Director as " baptized pagans." 
 In the year 1895 the Propaganda returned the 
 number of the adherents of the Church of Rome 
 in the heathen world as 3,606,000, and as that did 
 not include all their work the total would probably 
 
 12
 
 178 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 be nearly four millions. At the end of the nine- 
 teenth century the Societe des Missions Strangers, 
 a Paris society, and the largest Roman Catholic 
 missionary society, had 34 bishops, 1100 mission- 
 aries, 680 native priests, with a native following all 
 over Eastern Asia of nearly a million and a quarter. 
 At the same period the Jesuits had 3989 mission- 
 aries at work in various parts of the world ; and 
 the other Orders are also largely represented in 
 the foreign field. In the year 1908 the professing 
 Christians in Japan were divided into 73,000 
 Protestants, 62,000 Roman Catholics, and 30,000 
 belonging to the Greek Church. In China at the 
 same date there were 1200 European Romish 
 priests and nearly a million members. It is not 
 possible to rejoice unreservedly in all this work, 
 but it would be ungenerous to ignore the enter- 
 prise and devotion of which it tells. On the 
 Congo, for example, Cardinal Lavigerie's white- 
 robed Fathers have been at work since 1883, 
 dividing to some extent the honours with the 
 Protestant missionaries. Yet, even there the 
 cloven hoof has been shown by the way in which 
 the representatives of Rome condoned the in- 
 iquities of the agents of the late King Leopold 
 against the unanimous testimony of all other 
 missionaries ; and as even the Belgians do not now 
 condone them ; apparently for political and ecclesi- 
 astical reasons.
 
 The Cloven Hoof 
 
 In the year 1899, according to their own reports, 
 the agents of the Societe des Missions Etrangers 
 baptized 155,000 children of pagans in articulo 
 mortis. Bishop Caldwell, the learned and devoted 
 S.P.G. missionary at Tinnevelly, went so far as 
 to say that " the Roman Catholic Hindus, in 
 intellect, habits and morals do not differ from 
 the heathen in the smallest degree." Miss Gordon 
 Gumming in Two Years in Ceylon said that she 
 had seen the very identical devil-dancers engaged 
 from the temples of Siva to accompany the pro- 
 cessions alike of heathen gods and of Roman 
 images of Christ and the Virgin Mother. She had 
 seen the image of Buddha opposite the image of 
 the Virgin in the same chapel, and apparently 
 receiving equal adoration. She had seen Hindus, 
 Buddhists, and Roman Catholics alike paying 
 their vows together at the shrine of St. Anne, 
 by whom certain miracles were believed to have 
 been wrought. The Madras Census Report for 
 1891 stated that wherever the native Christians 
 were mainly Roman Catholics, as in Tanjore and 
 Madura, the percentage of educated Christians 
 was low ; whereas of Tinnevelly, where the S.P.G. 
 and the C.M.S. divide the land, the official report 
 was ; " This is one of the few districts where a 
 large percentage of the population is classed as 
 educated." 
 
 Even Romanists, however, must see that the
 
 180 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 methods by which the transitory triumphs of the 
 sixteenth century were won by their missionaries 
 now stand condemned at the bar of history. 
 Nothing in all the annals of the Christian Church 
 is more melancholy than the results of the work 
 of Xavier and his successors. In China, for 
 instance, the work ceased to advance whenever 
 the authorities at home forced the missionaries 
 to limit the extent to which conversion by " accom- 
 modation " was carried. It is all very well to 
 discover points of contact between false religions 
 and the true; but to adopt as the name of Grod 
 the Chinese character for the Supreme Being 
 in the ancient classics, and to permit ancestor 
 worship in a modified form seemed even to the 
 papal authorities to be going too far. Urban vni. 
 and Innocent x. both declared the ceremonies 
 permitted by the Jesuits in China to be super- 
 stitious and idolatrous, as well they might when 
 images of Buddha with a slight application of 
 the chisel served for images of Christ ; and the 
 roadside shrines of Kwanyin, the goddess of 
 mercy, were adapted to Mariolatry. And just 
 as in Brittany, Calvaries were placed on the top 
 of menhirs so as to intercept pagan worship, so the 
 wearing of the Brahminical cord, and the smearing 
 of ashes on the forehead are still permitted to 
 Roman converts in India. 
 
 It has also to be borne in mind that the records
 
 Conversion by Accommodation 181 
 
 of what was actually achieved by the earlier 
 Romish missionaries are often unreliable. The 
 Secretary of the Congregatio de propaganda fide 
 said in a report to Pope Innocent xi. that " it 
 seems to be the constant opinion of all the members 
 of the Congregation, that little credit is to be 
 given to the Relations, Letters, and Supplications 
 that come from the Missionaries." By the end 
 of the eighteenth century Romish foreign mission 
 work was almost at a standstill and the native 
 Churches were either dead or dying. Evangelisa- 
 tion by dumb show had been weighed in the 
 balances and found wanting. In the old kingdom 
 of the Congo, for instance, although the entire 
 population had been Christianised in the Roman 
 sense, and the capital still bears the name San 
 Salvador, Christianity had quite disappeared 
 when in 1879 the Baptist missionaries began their 
 work in what to all intents and purposes was a 
 heathen land. In Canada, California, and Mexico, 
 also, there is little to show for more than three 
 centuries of work. In South America, where there 
 were once extensive missions on the Orinoco, 
 the Rio Negro, and the River Plate, all are practi- 
 cally gone. 
 
 And so likewise with the early Romish efforts 
 in India, China, and Japan. The missionaries 
 meddled with politics and trade, and were the 
 tools of European powers seeking new markets
 
 1 82 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 and territorial expansion ; and they frequently 
 incurred the hatred and contempt of those 
 among whom they worked instead of winning 
 their confidence and affection. Their boasted 
 celibacy, too, with some advantages, has many 
 drawbacks ; and those who speak from experience 
 say that one Christian missionary home, with a 
 Christian wife and family, does more to humanise, 
 elevate, and evangelise a corrupt community than 
 twenty celibate men. Perrone held that married 
 priests would not go with the same readiness 
 among barbarous nations as men who were un- 
 married. But the Protestant churches have never 
 lacked those who were ready to spend and be spent 
 for their Lord ; and the old custom of the Mor- 
 avians, who are in the front rank of missionaries, 
 was to make their agents marry in order to add 
 to their efficiency. 
 
 There is one feature of Rome's work in heathen 
 lands which cannot be ignored; the intrusion of 
 her agents into Protestant fields. The testimony 
 to this treason in the very firing line is uniform ; 
 and in cases where the heathen have been neglected 
 and Protestant converts assailed with all sorts 
 of allurements, it has actually been argued, "the 
 heathen may be saved by the light of nature, but 
 there is no hope for you Protestants ; therefore 
 we come to you first." In India and Africa, in 
 New Zealand and the North- West of Canada,
 
 Co-operation Impossible 183 
 
 the experience of Protestant missionaries has been 
 the same. It may be that what has been so uni- 
 formly done is nothing more than was to be ex- 
 pected, but it throws a somewhat lurid light 
 on the suggestion that there can be co-operation 
 with Romish missionaries in winning the world for 
 Christ. The truth is that whether we look at the 
 Old World or the New, at the homelands or the 
 foreign field, at the sixteenth century or the 
 twentieth, we find that whenever the deadly virus of 
 sacerdotalism, by which Rome now stands or falls, 
 enters in, all sense of honour and fairplay, all 
 sense of tolerance and good-feeling, withers away 
 until little or nothing is left of the mind which is 
 in Christ. The only co-operation worth having is 
 round the Gospel with its open Bible and the 
 priesthood of all believers. 
 
 " While therefore," as Dr. Eugene Stock puts 
 it, " we are bound to acknowledge the self-denial 
 and devotion of many of the Roman missionaries, 
 and not to doubt that there have been among 
 them not a few who, knowing Christ as their own 
 Saviour, have earnestly preached Him to the 
 heathen, it is impossible to shut our eyes to the 
 plain facts of history as recorded by themselves, 
 or to the actual circumstances of the mission-field 
 at the present time. With every desire to show 
 large-mindedness and charity, no well-informed 
 Christian can suppose that, as regards a very
 
 184 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 large portion of Roman missionary work both in 
 the past and in the present, its character could 
 command the Divine blessing." With every desire 
 to be generous as well as just we cannot but regret 
 that any heathen people should begin the Christian 
 life by coming under the Romish yoke which 
 neither we nor our fathers were able to bear. 
 
 Writing of South America, Dr. Robert E. Speer, 
 the eminent authority on missions, gives six striking 
 reasons for prosecuting mission work there, which 
 throw much light on what Roman missions may 
 mean: (1) The moral condition of the South 
 American countries warrants and demands the 
 presence of the force of Evangelical religion, which 
 will war against sin, and bring to men the power 
 of righteous life. A temperate and fair-minded 
 writer asserts that in these lands " male chastity 
 is practically unknown." (2) The Protestant mis- 
 sionary enterprise, with its stimulus to education 
 and its appeal to the rational nature of man, 
 is required by the intellectual needs of South 
 America. It may justly be called an illiterate 
 continent, although many of the upper classes 
 have been educated abroad. (3) Protestant mis- 
 sions are justified in South America in order to 
 give the Bible to the people. There are Roman 
 Catholic translations both in Spanish and Portu- 
 guese, but the Church of Rome has discouraged or 
 forbidden their use. The priests themselves are
 
 South America 185 
 
 ignorant of the Scriptures ; and but for the Bible 
 Societies and Protestant missions the people of 
 South America would be without the Word of 
 God. (4) Protestant missions are justified and 
 demanded in South America by the character 
 of the Roman Catholic priesthood. Everywhere 
 on that continent there is evidence, legally con- 
 vincing as well as morally sickening, that the 
 stream of the Church is polluted at its fountains. 
 (5) Protestant missions in South America are 
 justified because the Roman Catholic Church has 
 not given the people Christianity. The testimony 
 is overwhelming that few in the Roman Catholic 
 Church know the facts of Christ's life, and that 
 fewer still know Christ. Even the dead Christ 
 who is set forth in place of the living Saviour is a 
 subordinate figure. The central place is given 
 to the Virgin. (6) Protestant missions are justified 
 in South America because the Roman Catholic 
 Church is at the same time so strong and so weak 
 there. The priest stands in place of God, and 
 even where his life is vile, the people distinguish 
 between his functions as priest in which he stands 
 as God before the altar, and his life as man in 
 which he falls into the frailties of the flesh. The 
 Church has a hold on politics and family life and 
 society which is paralysing. On the other hand, 
 it has not the power it has been supposed to 
 have and the inefficiency of its work is pitiful. It
 
 1 86 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 is steadily losing ground in spite of its enormous 
 resources. The churches are mostly ill-attended 
 save on festivals. The priests are derided and 
 reviled. The religious teachers of South America 
 have made the men of the continent irreligious. 
 They have discovered that what was taught 
 them is false, and they have flung away the 
 faith which they now call superstition.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 " Los von Rom " 
 
 THE phrase " Los von Rom," away from Rome, 
 has special reference to the deeply in- 
 teresting movement which in recent years 
 has been going on in Austria, pre-eminently the 
 land of the Arrested Reformation. There have, 
 however, been kindred movements elsewhere, 
 and the situation which has resulted is full not 
 only of interest but of hope. 
 
 In France, the eldest daughter of the Church, 
 it has been computed by a Romish ecclesiastic 
 in Paris that if the number of loyal Roman 
 Catholics were to be ascertained from the payment 
 of Easter dues, the falling away from Rome is such 
 that there are not more than four millions loyal 
 out of its thirty-nine millions. The Church 
 authorities themselves compute that at a recent 
 Easter not more than five millions, including 
 children, took communion. Nowhere, indeed, has 
 the drift from Rome been on such a scale as 
 in France, although probably nowhere has it been 
 less a drift to the Evangelical faith. As a matter 
 of fact, nations never drift to. Christ. Mere
 
 1 88 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 momentum does not take men to Him. They 
 must turn in penitence and faith. But not only 
 has the French legislature disestablished the 
 Romish Church in the land, the French people 
 have repudiated it almost with contempt. In one 
 general election after another the whole influence 
 of the Church has been used in vain against the 
 anti-clericalism which is in power and is so aggres- 
 sively hostile ; and amid all the Cabinet changes 
 no change is in favour of the Church. 
 
 The movement in France has at least three 
 elements in it making for revolution if not for 
 reformation. There is the political movement 
 which was made inevitable by the attitude of 
 Romanism to the Republic. The monks and nuns 
 have been bitterly reactionary, and the Dreyfus 
 conspiracy showed that they are prepared to set 
 aside all the restraints of patriotism and even 
 of ordinary morality in their determination to 
 control the life of the nation in the interests of 
 Rome. There has also been widespread revolt 
 among the priests against the determination of the 
 Vatican to prevent any arrangement with the 
 civil authorities. Many priests have already left 
 the Church of Rome ; in some cases having entered 
 into the light of Christ, in other cases having 
 become infidels. No fewer than two hundred 
 priests are said to be abandoning Romanism every 
 year ; not many, perhaps, out of 56,000, but a
 
 Romanism in France 189 
 
 proof that disintegrating elements are at work. 
 There are likewise movings among the people, 
 some of them indicating that eyes and hearts 
 are turning towards the light, and all of them 
 that revolutionary changes may be impending. 
 
 It would appear that the Gospel is touching 
 the finest minds in the nation, and that Pro- 
 testantism is compelling attention by means of 
 its literature. And it is also compelling attention 
 by what is even better than the best literature. 
 A writer in a Roman Catholic magazine, seeking 
 to stir up his co-religionists to emulation, says 
 that " Protestantism has far more influence than 
 one would expect from so small a handful of men, 
 were they not inspired by the principles of tolerance, 
 righteousness, and justice, which alone can carry 
 moral and social reform. In France everything 
 which is expressive of moral strength the struggle 
 against intemperance, against immorality, against 
 all social evils whatever they may be is the 
 work of the Protestants." Another French writer, 
 reared in the Roman Church, has described the 
 other side of the situation in equally striking 
 words : " Owing to her organisation, her frame- 
 work, and her sacerdotal strength, Roman Catholic- 
 ism has every appearance of strength and grandeur, 
 but spiritual life has gone out of her. It is with 
 her as with the Pontiffs of Rome, who are covered 
 after their death with the richest pontifical robes,
 
 190 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 crowned with the tiara, dressed in the stole, and 
 carried thus triumphantly before crowds who 
 prostrate themselves as if the Pope could still 
 bless them. Take away the draperies, shake off 
 the bandages, you will find decomposition and 
 worms. The Angel of death has passed over her." 
 Unfortunately, however, this anti-clericalism in 
 France manifests itself mainly in hatred of all 
 religion. The name of the Deity has been erased 
 from the school-books in the communal schools, 
 and fools say openly that there is no God. 
 Yet Evangelical work is being developed, and in 
 recent years Protestant congregations have been 
 formed in places where no assemblies for Reformed 
 worship have been held for three centuries or 
 more. In the district of the Charante, for instance, 
 once bathed with the blood of the Huguenots, 
 where there were 51 Reformed congregations 
 in 1598 and only 3 in 1807, there were 43 agents 
 at work in 1900, three of them converted priests, 
 and the number has since been increased. It 
 may be that even yet the blood of the martyrs 
 will be the seed of the Church. Some hold that 
 the coming conflict in France will not be between 
 Romanism and Protestantism but between 
 Christianity and an atheistic Socialism, and the 
 Christianity which will conquer in such a strife 
 must be filled with evangelical fervour and be 
 supremely loyal to the Gospel of the Divine
 
 Romanism in Italy igi 
 
 grace. Many noble workers are busy sowing 
 the good seed. The forces of evil are numerous 
 and mighty, but He who is the truth is mightiest 
 of all, and the victory will remain with those who 
 put their trust in Him. 
 
 When we turn to the other Latin peoples we 
 find the same sort of strivings and doings. In 
 Italy the detestation of Romanism is even deeper 
 than in France. Crispi, the well-known statesman, 
 once said in the House of Deputies that the day 
 was coming when Christianity would kill Roman 
 Catholicism ; and Dr. Raffaele Mariano, Professor 
 of Philosophy in the University of Naples, and 
 once a devoted Romanist, has described the 
 Church of Rome in Italy as the antithesis of 
 Christianity. Meanwhile, however, this wide- 
 spread hostility to the Vatican has not been 
 accompanied by any corresponding Evangelical 
 revival. Materialism in its grossest forms has 
 lifted up its head in opposition to every form 
 of religion, and threatens the family and the home 
 as well as the Church and the State. Yet some 
 progress is being made. A great place has 
 been secured for the circulation of the Bible. 
 Not only have the British and Foreign and other 
 Bible Societies developed their noble work, but a 
 Roman Catholic Society has been formed to 
 circulate the Scriptures. In 1888, an Italian 
 newspaper published an edition of the Bible
 
 192 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 in 210 parts, which were sold at one halfpenny 
 each ; and in five years as many as 50,000 sets 
 were sold. Italy is beginning to realise that the 
 Bible is not a foreign book, but the heritage of 
 all the nations. 
 
 In June 1902 the Society of St. Jerome issued 
 from the Vatican Press an edition of the Gospels 
 and the Acts, in one volume with notes ; and 
 this has since been sold in very large numbers 
 at a cost of from twopence to fourpence an 
 enormous step in advance, even with the notes. 
 Such a departure from the traditional policy of 
 Rome is full of significance, and speaks volumes 
 for the strivings of Italy after something better than 
 she has. During the meetings of the Vatican 
 Council in 1870, some one wished to refer to a 
 passage of Scripture in arguing against the pro- 
 posed decree of Infallibility, and not only was 
 there not a Bible in the Church where they were 
 met, but no one present had a copy. This Romish 
 Council ended in borrowing a Bible from the 
 Protestant chaplain of the Prussian Embassy. 
 In 1902, however, the Society of St. Jerome not 
 only received the approval of some two hundred 
 bishops for its work of circulating the Scriptures, 
 but the Pope granted an indulgence of three hundred 
 days to any of the faithful who read its version 
 for at least a quarter of an hour a day. By the 
 year 1908 not far short of a million copies of it had
 
 Romanism in Spain 193 
 
 been circulated, and the remainder of the New 
 Testament was being prepared for publication. 
 
 But difficulties then began to be put in the way. 
 The circulation of the vernacular Gospels was 
 denounced by many as a dangerous propaganda, 
 and in 1911 The Bible in the World had to report : 
 " Information from a trustworthy source shows 
 that, though the Society has not been dissolved 
 by any express official act, it is nevertheless 
 practically stifled. The Curia has not killed it 
 directly, but has so managed that it should expire 
 gradually, slowly, of itself." This is hardly to be 
 wondered at perhaps, but we can rejoice in what 
 has been accomplished, for the dissemination of 
 the Scriptures cannot but lead to the spread of 
 the Evangel. Who knows but that many of those 
 who have seen Italy become a nation, will be 
 spared to see her freed not only from the Grand 
 Dukes but from the priests. 
 
 In Spain also some progress is being made. In 
 that land brought down from her high estate, 
 according to Dollinger, through idleness taught 
 by the numerous monks, cruelty taught by the 
 Inquisition, and ignorance produced by the Index 
 till but yesterday there was no place for the Gospel. 
 Now, however, meetings for religious purposes 
 may be held without legal hindrance ; buildings 
 may be constructed for Reformed worship in 
 the ordinary form of churches ; and avowedly 
 13
 
 IQ4 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 Evangelical schools may be carried on. Just as 
 the issue of the war with Prussia did much to 
 discredit the Papacy in Austria, the issue of the 
 war in Cuba did much to open the eyes of the 
 thoughtful in Spain to the inevitable results of 
 subjection to the priests. They could not fail 
 to see that in the shock of war the Popish nations 
 go down as of necessity before the Protestant; 
 and the most popular plays in their theatres 
 are those which lay bare the intrigues of the 
 priests, and show how much the nation has suffered 
 at their hands. Anti-clericalism in Spain, how- 
 ever, as elsewhere in Romish countries, is social 
 and political rather than religious, and many 
 drift from Rome into sheer unbelief. Yet the 
 movings in Spain are not to be despised any 
 more than those in Italy; while recent events in 
 Portugal remind us that we know not what a day 
 may bring forth. 
 
 The revolution in Portugal, followed by the 
 closing of many convents and monasteries, has 
 prepared the way for legislation abolishing the 
 privileges of the Roman Church. In spite of the 
 widespread hatred of all religion, there is good 
 reason, too, for expecting that a door will be 
 opened for Bible Societies, Evangelical Schools, 
 and other New Testament Missions. The dis- 
 establishment proposals reveal how profound the 
 hatred of the new rulers of the nation is for the
 
 Portugal and Belgium 195 
 
 Church, which they deem mainly responsible for 
 its degradation. And when we reflect that these 
 proposals emanate from those whom the Church 
 baptized and educated from childhood, their 
 significance is increased. The Jesuits are famous 
 educationists, and are credited with saying that 
 if they get the children till they are seven, they 
 care not who gets them thereafter. But in this 
 generation alone they have lost millions whom 
 they had till long after they were seven. They 
 may be able to give their pupils such a bent that 
 they lose few of them to the Evangelical faith, 
 but the fact remains that they are losing multitudes 
 of them so far as Rome is concerned. 
 
 Belgium is another Popish country where there 
 is fierce conflict. The people are overwhelmingly 
 Ultramontane, with what seems the inevitable 
 concomitant, a large atheistic element ; and the 
 Evangelical element is painfully small. Yet the 
 success of the Belgian Christian Missionary Church 
 has been most remarkable. Its membership now 
 consists of over eleven thousand, almost all of 
 whom have been won from the Roman Church. 
 Numerous schools and other agencies for good 
 are also at work, and in one district alone since 
 1906 more than 500 families have openly broken 
 with Rome. The Gospel is still the power of God 
 unto salvation to all who believe, even if they 
 have been educated by the Jesuits ; and Evangeli-
 
 196 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 cals in happier lands ought to do everything in 
 their power, in these critical days, to flood the 
 awakening nations with the truth as it is in Christ. 
 He alone can fathom their aspirations and hallow 
 their strivings for freedom. Most of the ministers 
 of the Belgian Missionary Church have come 
 from Switzerland, having left their much-loved 
 mountains and valleys to labour in rough mining 
 villages on miserably inadequate incomes. The 
 sacrifice involved in such work is not one whit less 
 than that of those who go to India and China ; 
 and such work in hitherto Komish nations ought 
 to be undertaken in the same spirit as work in 
 pagan countries is. When men and women press 
 in at the open doors in emancipated Europe as they 
 press in at the open doors in Africa or the Far 
 East the day of Europe's redemption will be at 
 hand. In Switzerland itself ominous changes 
 are taking place in some of the Roman Catholic 
 Cantons, on lines which are now familiar wherever 
 Rome has had unquestioned sway. In Ticino, 
 for example, whereas the number returning them- 
 selves as " confessionless " in 1900 was only 583, 
 in 1910 it was 5710. The corresponding figures 
 in Lucerne were 97 and 1047. 
 
 It is in Austria, however, once so hopeful but so 
 long in bonds, that we find the Los von Rom most 
 fruitfully at work. There more than anywhere 
 else it has resulted in genuine religious revival ;
 
 Romanism in Austria 197 
 
 and is due to the yearning for nearness to God and 
 not to indifference to Divine truth. To it alone 
 the description, " a new reformation," can be ap- 
 proximately applied. Some, indeed, hold that it is 
 essentially a political movement, and probably 
 the political element predominated at first. But 
 it has since deepened and broadened as men were 
 obedient to the truth ; and as if to prove how 
 truly religious it has become, some who joined it 
 at first for political reasons have now abandoned 
 it. As the light has spread, as the truth has 
 grown on those who were loyal to it, and as Rome 
 has been true to herself as intolerant and perse- 
 cuting, the movement has deepened into a far- 
 reaching Evangelical awakening. 
 
 Ever since the war between Austria and Prussia 
 in 1866, and the consequent decline in the import- 
 ance and influence of the German-speaking portions 
 of the Dual Empire, the conviction has steadily 
 grown among them that it is through Protestantism 
 alone that their German nationality, of which they 
 are proud, can be preserved. Gradually, too, 
 their eyes have opened to the fact that it is by no 
 accident that the progressive peoples are Protest- 
 ant and the Romish peoples reactionary ; and so 
 the watchword of the German national party in 
 Austria has increasingly become Los von Rom 
 we must be free from Rome. They see that 
 the leadership of the German-speaking race has
 
 1 98 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 passed from Komish Austria to Protestant Ger- 
 many because the rule of the priests puts an 
 arrest on enterprise, and saps the strength of a 
 nation. They are embittered, too, by the way 
 in which the influence of Rome has been thrown 
 into the scale against them and their claims in the 
 racial and lingual strife which distracts the Austrian 
 Empire. They have been led on from politics to 
 religion, from patriotic aspirations to the longing 
 for peace with God. It is always difficult to elimin- 
 ate politics from a revolt from Rome, but this 
 movement in Austria has now lost its political 
 character so thoroughly that the Czechs, or Slav 
 portion of the population of Bohemia, have joined 
 hands with their German compatriots to develop 
 the good work. 
 
 Such a movement as this among the German- 
 speaking Austrians has naturally aroused much 
 interest in the German Fatherland. Generous 
 help has been given by the Gustav- Adolf- Verein, 
 and during the period from 1898 to 1908 the 
 Evangelicals of Germany sent no fewer than a 
 hundred pastors into Austria to extend the work. 
 Much has also been done by friends of the Gospel 
 to promote the movement by means of evangelical 
 literature, and especially by the circulation of the 
 Bible. The result is that those who had turned 
 their back on all religion are now sitting at the 
 Saviour's feet. New life and hope have come to
 
 Los von Rom 199 
 
 those who were sunk in sin. Hungry souls have 
 been fed with the Bread of Life. The long-crushed 
 Protestantism of Austria has had a new spirit 
 breathed into it. The dispirited descendants of 
 Hus and Jerome have been delivered from their 
 lethargy, born of the all-pervading power of Popery, 
 and have come to a new sense of their responsi- 
 bility, as lights in the midst of a darkness so dense. 
 Mission and philanthropic work is being undertaken 
 in a new fashion, and active evangelical com- 
 munities are being built up. There has also been 
 a moving among the dry bones within the Romish 
 Communion. The official attitude is to decry the 
 movement as political, and identify Protestant- 
 ism with disloyalty to the Empire ; to predict 
 that it will be a mere riverside eddy like the 
 Old Catholic movement ; and to strain the re- 
 sources of the law in order to persecute wherever 
 that is possible. Yet many who have not left 
 the Church, and may never leave it, have been 
 quickened, and some of them co-operate with the 
 Evangelicals. 
 
 The Los von Rom movement has also strength- 
 ened the ranks of the Old Catholics, who provide 
 a sort of half-way house for those who cannot go 
 all the way. They also provide a half-way house 
 for those who only halt on their way to whole- 
 hearted Protestantism. This probably accounts 
 in part for the slowness of their progress. They
 
 2OO The Arrested Reformation 
 
 have members in Holland, Germany, Switzerland, 
 Austria, France, and Italy, in the Old World ; as 
 well as in Mexico and among the Poles of the 
 United States, in the New. Yet in spite of the 
 fact that in Austria alone thousands of Roman 
 Catholics have joined them in recent years, their 
 entire membership is probably not more than 
 a hundred thousand, and they do little more than 
 hold their own. In doctrine they stand on the 
 decisions of the first seven General Councils. 
 Auricular confession is not obligatory on their 
 members, nor is celibacy obligatory on their 
 clergy. The vernacular tongue is used in nearly 
 all their services, although Latin is retained in 
 part of the ritual of the Mass. Valuable, however, 
 as this movement has been for those in the tran- 
 sition stage, it must go further before it can become 
 a great popular movement. The Evangel must 
 be put much more definitely in the forefront. But 
 unto the upright light arises, and the Old Catholics 
 have proved themselves brave and truth-loving 
 and loyal to the light they have. 
 
 Alike in Austria and Germany secessions from 
 one Church to another must be registered, and 
 from the autumn of 1898 till the end of 1904 the 
 number of those who were registered in Austria 
 as having left the Church of Rome and become 
 Protestants was 33,176. That did not include 
 those who attached themselves to Missions or the
 
 The Old Catholics 201 
 
 smaller Protestant churches of which the State 
 takes no cognizance, so that probably about 
 38,000 seceded during these six and a half years, 
 in addition to nearly 12,000 to the Old Catholics ; 
 or a total of about 50,000. Nor has the movement 
 spent itself. The returns for 1910 show that 
 in German-speaking Bohemia 1502 Romanists 
 were registered as having been received into 
 37 Protestant congregations, an increase of 413 
 over the previous year. During the last twelve 
 years no fewer than 7476 secessions have been 
 registered in the Province of Styria alone. These 
 converts include many men of influence, priests, and 
 intellectuals, who, however, seldom sound a 
 trumpet before them when they make the great 
 surrender in an empire still so Romish. It 
 is noteworthy in this connection that there are at 
 least 32 Protestants in the Austrian Parliament, 
 nearly all them converts from the Church of Rome, 
 about three times as many as the Protestant 
 proportion of the population would warrant. 
 
 In Germany this Austrian movement is not 
 only arousing much interest but is telling in many 
 ways for heart-religion. Recent events have 
 shown how sensitive the German people are as 
 regards interference from Rome, and how deter- 
 mined they are not to allow the Vatican to go 
 beyond its own sphere. The Ne Temere Decree, 
 for instance, has not been allowed to be pro-
 
 2O2 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 mulgated in the Fatherland. There, as else- 
 where on the Continent, Rome has prepared 
 many for atheistic Socialism, and in the General 
 Election of January 1912 the greatest increases 
 in the Socialist vote were in Romish constituencies. 
 But in addition to such leakage the secessions to 
 Protestantism have been numerous. From 1890 
 to 1900, 46,000 Roman Catholics were registered 
 as having become Protestants, as against 6820 
 Protestants who became Romanists. The ratio 
 of secessions is on the increase, too, and principally 
 among the middle classes and the artisans in the 
 towns. A Jesuit writer in a German Jesuit 
 organ acknowledges that in Baden between 1825 
 and 1890 Roman Catholicism lost about a hundred 
 thousand souls; that the loss in the nineteenth 
 century in the whole of Germany amounted to one 
 million at least, three hundred thousand having 
 been lost since 1871 ; and that through mixed 
 marriages a hundred thousand children have 
 been lost in recent times. Alongside of these 
 actual secessions, too, there are indications of 
 intellectual revolt, social discontent, and religious 
 yearnings within the Roman Church which may 
 result in much vaster secessions in the near future. 
 It is thus evident that on the Continent of Europe 
 Rome is losing ground, and that ere long we may 
 see greater things than these. It also is evident 
 that the Churches of the Reformation only win, and
 
 Rome and Revolution 203 
 
 only deserve to win, when they are frankly 
 Evangelical. No revolt from Eome which does 
 not rest on the Gospel can accomplish much. 
 Whatever its political fruits are it must be religious 
 first of all. It cannot but result in social and 
 political reform, but if it is to set men free it must 
 be definitely religious all through. Those who 
 are set free in soul by the Divine grace will not 
 remain serfs, but this political freedom can come 
 only as the outcome of the religious work which has 
 been calling sinners to the Saviour. The insinua- 
 tion that the modern movement towards Protest- 
 antism is associated with, and even responsible 
 for, revolution and mob-rule, regicide and sabotage, 
 is as insolent as it is ridiculous. It is Popery 
 which has driven so many into indifference and 
 hostility to all religion, by its worldliness and 
 corruption, and hindered legitimate reform by 
 its association with tyrants. By her intolerant 
 and persecuting spirit Rome has alienated many 
 who have either left her altogether, or are looking 
 out on the strange happenings of these days with 
 eyes friendly to freedom and truth. 
 
 No attitude is less warrantable among earnest 
 Evangelicals than that of the pessimist ; even 
 as none is more barren. Probably there never 
 were so many as there are now who are striving 
 to lift up the fallen, to safeguard the tempted, 
 and to help the unfortunate. If only believers
 
 204 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 everywhere were fired with love for God and a 
 passion for souls, the progress of the Reformation 
 would be resumed on a scale commensurate with 
 the needs of men, in harmony with the great 
 doings of old when modern Europe began to 
 live, and in line with what is best in the yearnings 
 of our age.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 Rome in the New World 
 
 AMERICA never played so great a part in 
 the world's affairs as now, and it is de- 
 stined to grow in influence as the years 
 go past, and not merely the United States but 
 Canada becomes a great world-power. The Church 
 of Rome is not alone in seeking to redress its losses 
 in the Old World by gains in the New ; and many a 
 cause is trying to find room for development in 
 the New World which vested interests and inveter- 
 ate habit denied it in the Old. Already, too, the 
 reaction of the New on the Old is vast. 
 
 It has been shown above that the fate of the 
 early Romish missions in North America was both 
 sad and suggestive. There was the usual mixture 
 of clay and iron ; subordination of the spiritual 
 to the political, and readiness to enter into com- 
 promises which were fatal to enduring success, 
 along with marvellous courage and self-denying 
 toil. The first Romish missionary to receive 
 ordination in America was the Dominican Bartholo- 
 mew de Las Casas, the most eminent missionary of 
 
 his age. He set himself to deliver the hapless 
 
 205
 
 206 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 natives from the slavery into which the Spaniards 
 had reduced them, but the adventurers with whom 
 he had to contend were usually able to thwart 
 his efforts. In his eagerness to help the aborigines, 
 " he crossed the sea twelve times ; he traversed 
 every then known region of America and the 
 Islands; he made repeated journeys from Spain 
 to Flanders and Germany, to see the Emperor on 
 the affairs of his Mission." Yet all the while his 
 literary labours would have been remarkable 
 even in a scholar who had no calling outside the 
 quiet of some private study. The one blot on his 
 reputation is that he sanctioned the beginnings 
 of the African slave trade and the introduction of 
 negro slaves into America. His reasons for doing 
 so were that he wished to spare his converts, and 
 that Africans could toil in that climate without the 
 same danger to health and life. But he lived to 
 deplore bitterly that he done such manifest evil 
 in the interests of a very problematic good. His 
 repentance, however, came too late to undo the 
 mischief. He was dealing with men who were 
 besotted by the lust for wealth and power, and the 
 vile traffic grew in spite of him ; while alongside 
 of it the degradation of the natives also increased. 
 
 Lower California was entered by Jesuit mission- 
 aries in 1697, and they maintained their hold at 
 various points until 1767, when they were expelled 
 by the King of Spain, who transferred their pro-
 
 Early Romish Missions 207 
 
 perty to the Franciscans. Later, however, the 
 Dominicans held Lower California; while the 
 Franciscans withdrew to Upper California, where 
 they flourished until Mexico became independent of 
 Spain in 1822. From that time they lost ground 
 and finally were broken up in 1840. " The treat- 
 ment by the fathers of the natives of the country," 
 says Professor Whitney in the Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica, " was successful so far as the accumula- 
 tion of material wealth was concerned, but not in 
 the slightest degree conducive to their intellectual 
 advancement or development, as the so-called 
 converts were simply the slaves of the ' good 
 fathers/ ' The hold of the Romish missionaries 
 among the Indians of the North- West Territories 
 has, however, been more permanent than that of 
 those who wrought among the aborigines of the 
 East or the South. Of 99,000 Indians in British 
 North America about 27,000 are still in paganism ; 
 and the others are about equally divided between 
 Protestant and Roman Catholic missions. 
 
 One of the historians of the Jesuits says that 
 through their work among the Red Indians the 
 tribes " learned to mingle Jesus Christ and France 
 in their affections," a dubious compliment which 
 explains much ; and which reminds us that one of 
 the outstanding features of the modern situation 
 in Canada is the influence of the French-speaking 
 Romanists in the Province of Quebec. Owing to
 
 208 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 arrangements made long ago the hierarchy there 
 enjoy enormous wealth and great political power. 
 They have much to do with interpreting the laws 
 as well as making them. There, as elsewhere, 
 however, priestism tends to defeat itself by the 
 arrogance of its pretensions, and the old-world 
 claims of Borne are increasingly felt to be altogether 
 out of place in the New World. The air of Canada 
 is not favourable to despotism either in the Church 
 or the State. There are now over 30,000 French 
 Protestants in the Dominion, and it is computed 
 that the converts to the Reformed faith among 
 the French Canadians who have emigrated to the 
 United States number at least 40,000. Not only so, 
 but Romanists persist in sending their children 
 to the public schools in spite of the opposition of 
 their priests, and show in many other ways that the 
 old restraints and prejudices are losing their power 
 and new standards are coming into operation. 
 
 Nor is this good work among the Romanists of 
 Canada confined to the East of the Dominion. In 
 Alberta, which has been called the " melting-pot of 
 the nations," many Ruthenian emigrants are com- 
 ing under Evangelical influences. Their ancestral 
 faith is Roman Catholicism, but large numbers 
 of them have thrown off Rome's fetters, and the 
 Presbyterian Church of Canada is meeting with 
 much encouragement in its many-sided work on 
 their behalf.
 
 South America 209 
 
 As regards the condition of South America, it 
 has been indicated already that history has prob- 
 ably no more terrible indictment of any system 
 than that which the state of " the neglected con- 
 tinent " after she has had unlimited sway for 
 centuries, furnishes against the Church of Eome. 
 The only parallel to be found is in the condition 
 of the Italian States prior to their deliverance 
 in our own era from the depths into which they 
 had sunk, under the immediate rule of the Popes 
 and their agents. There also, as in South America, 
 Romanism, rectified by no contact with Protest- 
 antism, showed what its true nature is in such 
 circumstances, and reached almost incredible 
 depths of superstition, ignorance, and fanaticism. 
 Even the revolutionary movements which have 
 made republics of one after another of these South 
 American States did little or nothing at first to 
 lessen the power of the priests, although the prin- 
 ciples of religious freedom were usually embodied 
 in the new constitutions. In Brazil, Protestant 
 marriage only ceased to be regarded in law as 
 concubinage in 1851, and civil penalties only 
 ceased to follow excommunication in 1870. The 
 Jesuits, however, were expelled in 1874, two 
 years later than they had been similarly dealt 
 with in Guatemala ; and in 1884 the increasing 
 numbers of monks and nuns from Europe led the 
 Government to appoint a Commission to carry 
 14
 
 2io The Arrested Reformation 
 
 out a law which had been passed in 1870 for the 
 secularisation of all monastic property, after 
 providing pensions for those entitled to support. 
 In the same year all naturalised non-Catholics 
 were made eligible for election to Parliament and 
 the provincial assemblies. In Ecuador as recently 
 as 1862 a concordat was concluded with the Curia 
 which put education under the Jesuits, and 
 absolutely prevented any worship but that of the 
 Church of Rome. In 1875, however, the Jesuits 
 left Quito in disgrace, and the concordat was 
 abrogated. 
 
 In Chile as recently as 1863, when more than 
 two thousand women and children lost their lives 
 through the burning of a church during the festival 
 of the Immaculate Conception, the priests pro- 
 nounced the calamity an act of grace of the Blessed 
 Virgin, who wished to give the country a vast 
 number of saints and martyrs. Eleven years 
 later the Chilian Bishops put the president and 
 members of the National Council and of the Lower 
 House under the ban, because they had favoured 
 liberty of worship. Their day was over, however, 
 and the ban was unheeded. Yet it was not till 
 1883 and after a long struggle, in the course of 
 which the Papal Legate was sent out of the country, 
 that the perfect equality of all forms of worship 
 was decreed ; a step which had been taken in the 
 Argentine only eighteen years before. Peru would
 
 Chile and Peru 211 
 
 now appear to be the only South American 
 State in which Protestants are still without re- 
 ligious liberty, and even there the struggle for 
 freedom is going on. Still, however, the Bible is 
 publicly burned in Peru, and filth, degradation, 
 and disease abound. The Incas are in many cases 
 absolutely without the knowledge of the Gospel. 
 According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, they 
 have with the exception of a few remote tribes 
 adopted Christianity, but in other respects they 
 retain the habits of life practised by their Inca 
 forefathers. This, which is so characteristic of 
 those whom Rome " Christianises," recalls the 
 Samaritans of whom the Scriptures say that 
 " they feared the Lord and served their own gods." 
 Yet, as Charles Darwin was forward to acknow- 
 ledge, even the most degraded of these South 
 American peoples, the inhabitants of Terra del 
 Fuego, have been elevated by the Gospel when 
 it was proclaimed in purity and power, alike in 
 doctrine and life. The story of Puerto Rico, too, 
 is significant as showing what the Evangel has 
 wrought among those old Spanish communities 
 when it got the opportunity. A church census 
 taken in 1911 of the Protestant and Romish 
 churches in 23 municipalities containing 40 per 
 cent, of the population of the islands, showed that 
 the Romanist attendances numbered 8094 as 
 against Protestant attendances of 8870, or 776
 
 212 T-he Arrested Reformation 
 
 in favour of the Reformed churches. Yet 
 Protestant Missions in Puerto Rico only began 
 ten years ago, whereas Rome had a monopoly for 
 nearly four centuries. Nor is there any reason 
 to doubt that similar results will be attained 
 elsewhere throughout South America whenever 
 the good work is carried on as it ought to be. 
 
 This view is confirmed by what has happened in 
 Mexico, which has so much more in common with 
 South America than with the North. It was not till 
 1873 that the Jesuits, everywhere in these con- 
 flicts associated with misgovernment and absolut- 
 ism, were driven out and a check put on the enor- 
 mous pretensions of the priests. But already an 
 interesting religious awakening had begun through 
 the conversion of a priest named Francis Aguilar 
 and a monk named Manuel Aguas. They laid 
 the foundations of the Iglesia de Jesus, composed 
 of converted Mexicans, which within twenty-five 
 years had over 70 congregations throughout the 
 country, with ten thousand adherents. If the 
 Protestant churches in Great Britain and America 
 had viewed these Central and South American 
 lands as they should, as calling for foreign mission 
 work, there would even now have been a great 
 positive work of Evangelisation going on alongside 
 of the negative work of disintegration and revolt. 
 Even as things are, however, there are not a few 
 men and women seeking to carry the light of the
 
 Mexico and Brazil 213 
 
 Gospel into the midst of pagan and sacerdotal 
 darkness. And it is through their work, sporadic 
 as it has usually been, that any progress towards 
 civilisation is being made. Most of all, it is due 
 to the circulation of the Bible that the light is 
 breaking, and the incubus of corruption, social and 
 political, moral and spiritual, is being lifted. 
 
 In Brazil, for instance, where the priests in 
 three hundred years of supremacy had done 
 nothing to get rid of slavery, one who has shared 
 in the work says that freedom " came through 
 the missionaries from the United States with the 
 open Bible in their hands, aided by your British 
 and Foreign Bible Society and by the Societies 
 of London who had scattered millions of copies 
 of God's Word, and had so taught the people of 
 Brazil that they should love their neighbour as 
 themselves. That sentence had brought a revolu- 
 tion in the minds and hearts of Brazilians. The 
 Government would not stop the abolition move- 
 ment, and so in fifteen days from the day when 
 the Government presented the Bill, the slaves 
 were free." Nor is the failure of Rome in these 
 regions to be wondered at when we find that 
 a Council of the early Jesuit missionaries, held at 
 Lima, decided that on the ground of intellectual 
 difficulties it was not expedient that any act of 
 Christian devotion except baptism should be 
 imposed on their South American converts without
 
 214 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 the greatest precautions. The veneer of Christi- 
 anity was of the thinnest, and the fruits have just 
 been what might have been looked for from such 
 ambiguous seed. " From Mexico southwards/' 
 says a writer in Blaclcwood's Magazine for 
 November 1911, " the disorders of the clergy, 
 secular or regular, are notorious. Decently behaved 
 clerics can only be obtained by importing them. 
 The men who possess what passes for education 
 in South America are as destitute of all religious 
 beliefs as of sexual morality." 
 
 When we turn to the fortunes of Rome in the 
 United States we are brought face to face with a 
 situation which more than any other throws light 
 on our problem whether the arrest on the Re- 
 formation can be removed. The official returns 
 for 1910 show that in round numbers there are 
 fifteen millions connected with the Church of Rome 
 in the United States. The exact figures were 
 14,618,761. But the estimate of prominent mem- 
 bers of the Roman Church in America is that 
 if they had held all who were once theirs there 
 ought to have been forty millions a leakage which 
 has with much moderation been described as 
 " well-nigh startling." 
 
 If it had been in America, as it has so often been 
 on the Continent, that those who drift from Rome 
 became indifferent or hostile to revealed religion, 
 the situation there would have been not only
 
 The United States 2 I 5 
 
 startling but sad. As it is, however, there is 
 hardly an Evangelical congregation in the Union in 
 which there are not converts from Rome, and in 
 some congregations their number is large. Sta- 
 tistics show that at least a tenth of the members 
 of the various Protestant churches in the United 
 States have once been Romanists, a fact without 
 parallel anywhere else. 
 
 Such a landslide has naturally given rise to much 
 heart-searching among those who deplore it, and 
 the explanations offered are very significant ; even 
 although they do not include the power of the 
 Gospel to meet the essential needs of those who 
 were made in the image of God, and the effect of 
 freedom on the sacerdotal pretensions of Rome. 
 Among the reasons given by Romanist writers 
 and speakers there are five which are outstanding. 
 (1) The influence of the national public schools. 
 In many of these the Bible is read, and even those 
 who do not come specially under its influence learn 
 to look on it without suspicion. Even where the 
 Bible has no place there is a free atmosphere with 
 nothing of sacerdotalism to lead to mental or 
 moral atrophy. The Roman Catholic Church 
 fights the public school with all the weapons in 
 her armoury ; and her hatred of it is the measure 
 of its power for good. Her champions describe 
 it as pestiferous and baleful, but even those who 
 might be expected to do so seem to pay little heed
 
 2 1 6 The Arrested Reformation 
 i 
 
 to their envenomed remonstrances. (2) The part 
 played by mixed marriages. Some of the priests 
 put this as the foremost cause of their losses. In 
 Europe such marriages often play into the hands 
 of Rome, but in the freer air of America they 
 usually mean the loss of the children, and often 
 of the Romish parent as well. The Ne Temere 
 Decree may be taken as the measure of Rome's 
 dread of such unions. (3) The effect of the notorious 
 association of Roman Catholics with the liquor 
 trade. This association superficially viewed is a 
 lucrative one for the Church, but she has appar- 
 ently to pay a big price for it in the end. A 
 Canon of the Church has thus pointed out the 
 tremendous loss of influence which is involved : 
 " If the drunken neighbourhood is the Catholic 
 neighbourhood ; if the drunkards' names in the 
 police reports are notoriously those of Catholics ; 
 if the saloon-goers and the saloonists are Catholics ; 
 if the ' boodlers ' who thrive by saloon politics 
 are Catholics ; if the saloon-made paupers and 
 tramps are Catholics then, as a moral force 
 among men, Catholicity is done for in that com- 
 munity." It would appear that not only do 
 the great majority of the saloon-keepers in the 
 Republic belong to the Roman Church, but that at 
 least 90 per cent, of the criminals in the prisons 
 of the Republic are Romanists although only 
 14 per cent, of the population is Romanist. (4)
 
 The American Leakage 217 
 
 The effect of the rapidly-growing discrimination 
 in the minds of the masses between Christ and the 
 Church. That not only means that when Christ's 
 voice is heard His message is very different from 
 that of the Church, but that Rome has put the 
 Church where Christ should be. On the continent 
 of Europe, where Protestantism is sometimes in- 
 visible, Christ has often to bear the odium of 
 the corruptions which have been associated with 
 His worship. But in America it is easy to institute 
 comparisons between w T hat is and what ought 
 to be ; and thus many of those who are lost to 
 Eome are won for Christ. (5) The results of neglect 
 of the rural classes. According to this view the 
 
 J 
 
 immigrants as they scatter all over the vast terri- 
 tories of the States are not followed up as they 
 ought to be. The efforts of the Hierarchy and 
 priesthood alike, it is said, have been far too 
 much absorbed by the urban populations. Not 
 only so, but their machinery was borrowed from 
 the Old World and has prevented them from caring 
 as they should for the negroes, the Indians, and 
 scattered communities. When the great emigration 
 from Europe, and especially from Ireland, led to 
 an enormous increase in the Roman Catholic 
 population, the Church was for long unable to 
 provide priests or services for them, and such 
 organisation as existed was confined to the 
 towns. The result was that many drifted into
 
 2 1 8 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 Protestant churches, a process which was acceler- 
 ated by the fact that at that time the priests 
 were mostly French. "And so," says a Komish 
 writer, " we lack a sturdy, intelligent, rural class. " 
 Besides these, other explanations are given 
 for a leakage which all feel demands explanation. 
 Among these are the strife between capital and 
 labour, the anti-Catholic tendencies of the Govern- 
 ment, the influence of pernicious literature, the 
 lack of literature of a helpful kind, and the neglect 
 of congregational singing. In addition to these 
 there are the organised movements for freedom 
 and reform which have led to large secessions, 
 and the whole group of tendencies and aspirations 
 which have been summed up under the term 
 Americanism. It seemed at first as if Americanism 
 were to obtain the patronage of leading members 
 of the American Hierarchy, but they were not of 
 the stuff of which even quasi-martyrs are made, 
 and hastened to declare to the authorities at 
 Rome that they had never meant what everybody 
 thought they did. It is easier, however, to set 
 such forces in operation, or to coquette with them, 
 than to hush them to sleep when they prove 
 troublesome; and most manifestly they have to 
 be reckoned with. The history of the United 
 States has shown that freedom and Romanism 
 do not go together. From the days of the War 
 of Independence freedom in the State has reacted
 
 Americanism 219 
 
 on the Church, and very early the Roman Catholic 
 laity in South Carolina claimed the power to 
 administer the property of the Church. In 1832 
 a Romish bishop calculated that of f.fty thousand 
 descendants of Roman Catholics in the two 
 Carolinas not more than ten thousand belonged 
 to the Church of their forefathers. A year later 
 it was stated that the young men of the United 
 States did not think of entering the priesthood, 
 nor did their parents urge them to do so. The 
 result was that the clergy were recruited from the 
 more ignorant classes, and were the social inferiors 
 of the Protestant pastors. 
 
 Among the more definite movements, apart 
 from the general tendency to Americanism, two 
 are outstanding, that of Hecker and the Paulists, 
 and that among the immigrant Poles. Many who 
 emigrate from Europe to America do so, in part 
 at least, in order to get away from priestly domina- 
 tion, and even to break altogether from Rome 
 in a new environment where such a step does not 
 involve social ostracism and loss. Discontent 
 with Rome has to do with much of the emigration 
 of Bohemians and Poles, and probably also of 
 the Irish. Many of these emigrants have already 
 in spirit broken with the Church, and the others 
 cannot but feel that they can now think for 
 themselves after a new sort, and that they can 
 now follow their convictions. " The great and
 
 22O The Arrested Reformation 
 
 continuous defection from Catholicism of the 
 Irish in America," said Mr. Sydney Brooks in 
 The Fortnightly Review for February 1912, "is a 
 phenomenon at least as much explicable by the 
 environment they have left as by that they have 
 entered." 
 
 Hecker began life as a Methodist; and only 
 became a Komanist when he was twenty-five 
 years old, and after he had already been an inmate 
 of a socialist community. As might have been 
 expected he proved a restless Romanist. He set 
 himself to Americanise his new religion, and to 
 free it from the taint of being a foreign institution. 
 With this in view he founded the Paulist order, 
 which has not, however, accomplished very much ; 
 its significance consisting mainly in its recognition 
 of the fact that if Rome is to appeal to the American 
 mind and thrive in the soil of the Republic it 
 must borrow from Protestantism. But this is 
 just what the Encyclical of Pope Leo xm. ex- 
 plicitly forbade it to do. The movement among 
 the Poles in America first took definite shape in 
 1881, when a congregation in Chicago declared 
 themselves independent of Rome because they 
 were denied the right to take part in the manage- 
 ment of the temporal affairs of the Church, along 
 with the clergy. Others were added to their 
 numbers until in 1897 a bishop was chosen by 
 those who then called themselves the Polish
 
 Rome and freedom 2 2 I 
 
 Catholic Independent Church of America, and he 
 was consecrated at Berne by prelates of the Old 
 Catholic Church. In 1903, however, he and his 
 people to the number of 80,000 members were 
 admitted into the American Episcopal Church. 
 
 A similar movement among the Poles in Penn- 
 sylvania resulted in the formation of an independent 
 Polish National Church, which held its first synod 
 in 1904. There were 150 lay delegates present 
 along with twenty priests, who came from five 
 States. They also have chosen a bishop of their 
 own. Movements of the same sort have taken 
 place among the Czech and Italian immigrants. A 
 considerable number of Czech congregations have 
 been organised, composed of converts from the 
 Roman Church; and an Italian Alliance has been 
 formed of Italian converts. And the end is not 
 yet. At Trent, Rome condemned herself to 
 Medievalism, and whatever unity and strength 
 that brought it also brought essential weakness. 
 It has been made manifest that Medievalism 
 cannot thrive in America. It may soon be made 
 manifest that it cannot now thrive anywhere.
 
 BOOK III 
 CAN THE ARREST BE REMOVED?
 
 CHAPTER I 
 The Significance of Trent 
 
 THE Church of Rome which must be evangelised 
 if the arrest on the Reformation is to be 
 removed dates from the Council of Trent, 
 and in this fact lies the supreme significance of 
 that Council. Mr. Froude held that it is not 
 possible to magnify its importance ; but its far- 
 reaching issues have often been missed, sometimes 
 through lack of historical perspective, and some- 
 times because of the very multiplicity of the details 
 of its proceedings and decrees. In some respects 
 it did for the Church of Rome what the revocation 
 of the Edict of Nantes did for France. It involved 
 a permanent impoverishment and loss of light and 
 truth. It was a kind of moral and intellectual 
 suicide. Since then Rome has been bound hand 
 and foot with the graveclothes of Medisevalism and 
 priestism ; and whatever is new has in anticipation 
 been condemned as untrue. The doors and win- 
 dows of the great cathedral were then closed, so 
 that with all its magnificence the light and air 
 might no longer find their way in even fitfully 
 as before.
 
 226 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 In certain essential respects that Council and 
 not the Reformation was the watershed between the 
 old and the new, the dividing line between pagan 
 clericalism and New Testament evangelicalism. 
 It professed only to formulate what had always 
 been held, but it changed in formulating ; closing 
 open questions; making the irregular null and 
 void ; and with a sinister instinct and ingenuity 
 causing the worse part to appear the whole. Till 
 then there had been the possibility that some com- 
 mon ground might be discovered for all who wished 
 reform, some basis on which the unity of Western 
 Christendom might be preserved, and in which 
 loyalty to the essentials of the Gospel might be 
 combined with freedom in their detailed applica- 
 tion. But Rome then made explicit choice of 
 obscurantism in preference to light ; and has found 
 no place for repentance since. It is true that she 
 set herself to remove certain abuses, and thereby 
 reassured some who were wavering in their 
 allegiance. She likewise perfected her organisa- 
 tion, regimenting her priesthood so that no new 
 revolutionary movement need be feared. The 
 burden of her doctrinal definitions, however, was 
 that she deliberately separated herself from the 
 friends of the Evangel, not a few of whom had 
 hitherto found it possible to maintain a precarious 
 existence within her borders. As Reformation 
 Genealogies show, it was not the Reformers who
 
 Dexterous Ambiguity 227 
 
 separated themselves from Catholicism even as it 
 had existed in the later Middle Ages. It was 
 Rome who was schismatic, and she separated 
 herself formally from the unity of the Church at 
 Trent ; that Council which cursed so much which 
 not a few had fain hoped it might bless. 
 
 The vital questions regarding this Council are 
 not those which concern its legality or authority, 
 but those which concern its spirit, and, above all, its 
 attitude to the past. It matters little now that it 
 was neither catholic nor free, for however they 
 were arrived at we must accept its decisions as 
 momentous facts. Until then the Western Church 
 had to some extent been like a nation with an 
 unwritten constitution, and the Decrees of Trent 
 mark her transition to the comparative im- 
 mobility and bondage of a written constitution. 
 Controverted, and in part open, questions were 
 replaced by unalterable dogmas ; varying tradi- 
 tions by definite and inflexible decrees ; and an 
 inconsistency, which left room for genuine if 
 irregular triumphs of faith, by a grim logic which 
 in alliance with a dexterous ambiguity enslaved 
 the spirit of those who became subject to it. A 
 uniformity was established in matters of faith and 
 discipline which had never existed before, and which 
 was to be an impregnable bulwark not merely 
 against innovations but against the possibility of 
 further illumination and growth. The path was
 
 228 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 deliberately made straiter in order that it might 
 be more secure. Rome lost in extension what 
 she gained in intension, and it is a question 
 whether such a Reformation as that of the sixteenth 
 century could possibly begin now within her ranks. 
 It may gratify Romanists to believe that it could 
 not, but that proves that their Church is not that 
 of pre-Reformation days. The Church of the 
 Reformers did not go out into the world poor and 
 bare like a manumitted bondmaid. She took her 
 property with her ; the best traditions of the Mediae- 
 val Church, the real treasures of the Church uni- 
 versal. It was not Rome but those whom she 
 anathematised as heretics who were in the true 
 line of the Apostolic Succession. 
 
 In the earlier sessions of the Council itself there 
 was room for opinions for which there was no room 
 when it closed. Even as regards such funda- 
 mental matters as the Canon of Scripture, the 
 relation of Scripture and tradition, the doctrine 
 of original sin, the nature of the atonement, the 
 meaning and effect of justification, the theory of 
 the sacraments and the claims of the episcopate, 
 views were freely advocated by those whose ortho- 
 doxy was not in question which were anathema 
 when the Council was at an end. Nothing, indeed, 
 is more remarkable than the way in which divines 
 of unquestioned loyalty as well as conspicuous 
 ability gave expression to opinions closely allied
 
 Rome Schismatic 229 
 
 to those of the Kef ormers. Every subj ect awakened 
 controversy; and what was ultimately decreed 
 not only restated old propositions but framed new 
 ones, and shut many a door which had at least been 
 ajar. Even if it had been the case, as it was not, 
 that the final decisions were in harmony with what 
 had always been the doctrine of the Church, it 
 remains that difference of opinion was no longer 
 tolerated. Freedom was destroyed in the name 
 of unity and logic. The voice of controversy 
 was hushed, so that the Church of Rome, instead 
 of perpetuating the unbroken Christendom of the 
 West prior to the Reformation, became a sect, 
 the thing she professes so heartily to abhor. Under 
 the guidance of the Jesuits a " new body of doc- 
 trine " was substituted for the ancient doctrines ; a 
 body of doctrine which became complete in our own 
 time through the promulgation of the Immaculate 
 Conception of the Virgin, and the Papal Infallibility, 
 with the enthronement of the Liguorian morality. 
 The determination of the managers of the 
 Council and never was Council more systematic- 
 ally managed to identify Protestantism with 
 the old Mediaeval heresies shows how conscious 
 they were of all this. The Reformation doctrines 
 are always exhibited in an exaggerated form, and 
 mixed up with real heresies which the Reformers 
 condemned as heartily as the Romanists. The 
 Reformers were the lineal descendants of the
 
 230 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 Mediaeval saints and not of the Mediaeval heretics, 
 as the Jesuits insinuated ; and were no more 
 responsible for such aberrations as post-Reforma- 
 tion Socinianism than Rome was for similar aberra- 
 tions in pre-Reformation days. Not only so, but 
 as the Council went on Rome increasingly identified 
 herself with Pelagian and semi-Pelagian heresies 
 as against Augustinianism, and left it to those 
 whom she condemned to stand for what was at 
 the heart of what was best in the days of the un- 
 divided Church. In their codification the theo- 
 logians of Trent did not go as far back as Paul 
 or Augustine, but only as far as Thomas Aquinas. 
 The sphere of free grace was limited by the need for 
 finding a place for the sacerdotal view of the 
 sacraments. In the earlier sessions there was a 
 certain Augustinian flavour of the sovereignty and 
 sufficiency of Divine grace, owing to the influence 
 of the great Dominican theologians ; but as the 
 Jesuit influence became supreme this disappeared. 
 Every way was now to lead to Rome, and ways 
 which led elsewhere were diverted or closed. 
 
 The decree concerning justification is usually 
 regarded as a masterpiece of dexterity ; but this 
 very dexterity proves that more than codification 
 took place. The Reformation doctrine of justifica- 
 tion by faith alone had to be rejected. Yet justice 
 had to be done to the followers of Aquinas, who 
 were not unfriendly to a moderate presentation
 
 The y&uit Triumph 2 3 I 
 
 of that doctrine ; opposed though they were to 
 the Evangelical doctrines of the sacraments and 
 the Church. A place had also to be found for 
 the doctrine of merit derived from good works. 
 The result is that what seems to be given with 
 one hand is taken away by the other ; and while 
 much is said with which Evangelicals can agree, 
 room is left for a system of righteousness by works. 
 Instead of making justification consist in an act of 
 God performed for the sake of Christ on the exercise 
 of faith, the decree makes it consist in an act of 
 God performed for the sake of what has been done 
 in man to occasion it. The all-sufficiency of 
 Christ as Saviour is obscured, and men are led to 
 seek acceptance with God through the cultivation 
 of dispositions, the doing of good works, and the 
 observance of rites. Here and there concessions 
 are made to the Augustinianism which had had a 
 surprising hold on their best minds, but the decree 
 is anti-evangelical throughout, and this is the 
 measure of what was effected under cover of de- 
 finition. Not that the extent of the change was 
 realised by all who were at the Council. There 
 was too much theological ignorance, to say nothing 
 of graver defects, for that. Indeed, dexterous as 
 the decree is, there was enough of Augustinianism 
 left in it to make Jansenism possible in days to 
 come. But Jansenism was no more than a flicker- 
 ing flame. As Principal Lindsay has put it : " It
 
 232 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 is sufficient to say that the theologians of Trent do 
 not seem to have the faintest idea of what the 
 Reformers meant by faith, and never appear to 
 see that there is such a thing as religious experi- 
 ence." As regards the central doctrine of justi- 
 fication, it was the heretical and not the orthodox 
 tendencies which prevailed ; Pelagius and not 
 Augustine, Abelard and not Bernard. The only 
 representative of England in the Council, Cardinal 
 Pole, keen Romanist though he was, left it in 
 disgust when the doctrine of the Church as it was 
 to be had been denned, so convinced was he that 
 it was not the true orthodox doctrine of the saints. 
 The extent of the changes thus effected at Trent 
 under cover of codification and formulation can 
 best be seen by reference to the details of the lead- 
 ing decrees. In connection with the doctrine 
 of Scripture, for example, the magnitude of the 
 departure from the practice of the best days is 
 very manifest. All through the Reformation con- 
 flict the defenders of Rome made a use of the 
 Bible which was not allowable to obedient sons of 
 the Church after Pius iv. issued the creed which 
 bears his name, and which sums up, sometimes not 
 very fairly, the official interpretation of the decrees 
 of Trent. Every Mediaeval theologian held that 
 the whole doctrinal system of the Church was 
 based on the Scriptures of the Old and New 
 Testaments. When the Reformers made their
 
 Doctrine and Scripture 233 
 
 appeal to the Bible there was no sense of novelty 
 in their doing so, and their opponents, far from 
 challenging that appeal, made it themselves. 
 
 But since the Council of Trent the faithful can 
 only interpret Scripture in accordance with the 
 unanimous consent of the Fathers. " No one shall 
 interpret the Scriptures against that meaning 
 which Holy Mother Church has held and holds, 
 to whom it belongs to judge of their true sense 
 and interpretation ; nor shall dare to interpret 
 the Holy Scriptures contrary to the unanimous 
 consent of the Fathers." But the Fathers are 
 never unanimous about anything, and although it 
 had not the courage to say so, the intention of the 
 Council clearly was to place the authoritative 
 exposition of Scripture in the hands of the Pope. 
 If, however, there is one thing as to which the 
 Fathers were unanimous it was as to the absolute 
 sufficiency of Scripture as revealing all necessary 
 doctrines both of faith and practice, and in re- 
 pudiating every claim of authority for themselves 
 in their interpretations. They all held that their 
 conclusions must be tested by Scripture. 
 
 It is probable that there is some warrant some- 
 where in earlier writings for everything in the 
 Tridentine doctrine of Scripture, and that that 
 doctrine represented the trend of later Romish 
 belief ; but the significant thing is that what was 
 only a part of what had been held, and the less
 
 234 T/ie Arrested Reformation 
 
 worthy part, was made the whole. This comes 
 out in every section of the decree ; as, for instance, 
 in the new importance which was put on tradition 
 as a source of revelation. It was proclaimed that 
 " traditions, whether relating to faith or to morals, 
 dictated either orally by Christ or by His Holy 
 Spirit, and preserved in continuous succession 
 within the Catholic Church/' were to be received 
 " with an equal feeling of piety and reverence " 
 as the books of Holy Scripture. Not only was 
 this an entirely novel position so far as the early 
 Church was concerned, but at the Council itself a 
 speaker was still free to pronounce it an ungodly 
 thing to pay equal respect to tradition and to 
 Holy Scripture. The final decision of the Council, 
 however, in making binding on all what had never 
 before been an article of faith, provided the means 
 for warding off any attack based on the Bible 
 alone ; while its logical issue was the declaration 
 of Pius ix. that the decrees of a Pope speaking 
 ex cathedra are on a level with the Word of God, 
 since nothing was said as to where the guardians 
 of this dogmatic tradition were to be found. It 
 would almost seem that they were determined to 
 serve themselves heirs to our Lord's denunciation 
 of those who teach as doctrines the command- 
 ments of men and make the Word of God of none 
 effect by their traditions. 
 
 The same sinister genius for choosing the worse
 
 A Sinister Genius 235 
 
 part appears in connection with the exaltation of 
 the Vulgate as the authoritative text of Scripture. 
 This was not only new but in violent opposition 
 to the best usages of the Mediaeval Church. " It 
 cast aside," says Principal Lindsay, " as worse 
 than useless the whole scholarship of the Renaiss- 
 ance both within and outside of the Mediaeval 
 Church, and on pretence of consecrating a text 
 of Holy Scripture, reduced it to the state of a 
 mummy, lifeless and unfruitful." The Council 
 deliberately made itself the slave of the letter ; 
 and since many of its members had shared in the 
 Humanist revival, this ridiculous decision was 
 very keenly debated. It was, indeed, not only 
 unscientific, but was a characteristic attempt to 
 shut out the light. The Vulgate was an old and 
 faulty translation, a manifestly incorrect version 
 of a corrupt text ; yet it was foisted on the 
 Church in deference to the exigencies of an un- 
 scriptural doctrine of Scripture, and a mechanical 
 doctrine of the Church. In deference to Erasmus 
 and the new learning, however, it was admitted 
 that there must at least be a new and scholarly 
 edition of the Vulgate, now so highly exalted ; 
 and the attempts to obtain such an edition are a 
 strange commentary on the claims which were 
 made for the Pope as head of the Church. The 
 question was referred to Rome, and a committee 
 under Cardinal Caraffa, afterwards Pope Paul IV.,
 
 236 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 advised corrections in accordance with rules framed 
 for the purpose. But Pope Sixtus v. framed 
 other rules, and took the matter into his own 
 hands ; and in 1590 published the official edition of 
 the Vulgate under the name of the Sixtine edition. 
 This was put forth with full apostolical authority 
 as henceforth unalterable on pain of the greater 
 excommunication ; and with the assurance that 
 he had corrected the misprints with his own hands. 
 But he soon had occasion to be alarmed at his 
 handiwork, and caused the most serious errors 
 to be covered up with slips of paper. After his 
 death it was suggested that his work should be 
 suppressed, but ultimately in accordance with 
 Bellermine's advice a new edition containing as 
 many as two thousand emendations appeared in 
 1592, still under the name of Sixtus ; and so far as 
 possible the earlier edition was quietly set aside. 
 
 The same tendency to make the worse part 
 the whole comes out further in connection with 
 the growing unwillingness of the ecclesiastical 
 authorities to allow the people to read the Bible 
 for themselves. It helps to show how real the 
 possibilities of a universal reformation had been 
 that the division on this point in the Council was 
 acute ; but, as usual, obscurantism prevailed. 
 The Mediaeval Church had never encouraged a 
 knowledge of the vernacular Scriptures, but the 
 practice had not been uniform ; and even in Spain
 
 Transubstantiation 237 
 
 there had been vernacular translations. Now, 
 however, the Spanish bishops sought to have all 
 Bible reading in the mother tongue prohibited; 
 whereas the German bishops demanded whether 
 children were not to be taught the Lord's Prayer 
 in a language they could understand. But in 
 the end the interpretation and, by inference, the 
 study of the Bible by private persons was pro- 
 hibited; and in 1564 Pius rv. made the reading 
 of Komish translations of Scripture depend on the 
 permission of the bishop or officer of the Inquisi- 
 tion, in accordance with the advice of the father- 
 confessor. After Trent, Rome increasingly felt 
 that her doctrines could not bear the light of 
 Scripture ; and thus one after another the better 
 influences which somehow had persisted in face 
 of sacerdotal and pagan opposition were banished. 
 In the choice between light and darkness the 
 Romish authorities rejected the light which con- 
 demned what they were determined was now to 
 be supreme both in doctrine and practice. 
 
 Even in regard to the doctrines of Transub- 
 stantiation and the Mass, which lay at the root 
 of most of the aberrations and corruptions of the 
 later Mediaeval Church, the Council of Trent was 
 far from summing up or including all that had 
 been generally held. Here also there had been 
 more than one stream of tendency, and the pagan 
 stream was chosen as that which alone was to
 
 238 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 flow in the days to come. On the whole subject 
 of the sacraments the Council was faced with 
 great difficulties owing to opposition between the 
 earlier and more evangelical Thomist and the 
 later Scotist and Nominalist theology ; and these 
 were surmounted by dexterous ambiguity, by 
 statements at variance with the facts of history, 
 and by giving the real victory to the Jesuits. The 
 propositions ultimately adopted, with many 
 anathemas on all who did not accept them, were 
 only arrived at by majority votes, and amid a 
 conflict of the most irreconcilable opinions. That 
 in this also the part was put in place of the whole 
 comes out in various ways. In 1551, for example, 
 while the Council was still in session, the Bishop of 
 Durham, Cuthbert Tonstal, issued a treatise in 
 which, Tyndale's enemy as he was, a doctrine is 
 set forth which is quite different from that of Trent, 
 and nearly approaches that of the Liturgy and 
 Articles of the Church of England. And so with 
 other great Roman divines. The canon of the 
 Mass itself contained prayers which provided the 
 first arguments against Transubstantiation which 
 suggested themselves to the Reformers. When 
 Rome selected one of the discordant views which 
 were advocated even in the Council she belied 
 her claim that her doctrine represents what the 
 unbroken Church had held always and every- 
 where.
 
 The Power of the Pope 239 
 
 What holds true of these palmary decrees 
 holds true also regarding the place assigned to the 
 Pope. Choice was again made of a part, and that 
 the unworthy part, to be the whole. Everything 
 was made to turn on absolute submission to the 
 Papacy. Even those who emphasise the reforms 
 which were agreed to, although some of them were 
 never carried out, admit that the " chief point 
 was, and continued to be, the establishment of 
 the unimpeachable legitimacy of the Papal chair 
 as the main pillar of the newly-found uniformity." 
 Not only was the power of the Pope, which had 
 been one great source of the abuses which were to 
 be rectified, left untouched, the form of sub- 
 scription to the creed involved a promise of 
 obedience to the Pope. The very ambiguities 
 which were left or introduced, and the chaos of 
 authority resulting from the new place given to 
 the amorphous Fathers in connection with Scrip- 
 ture, were used to identify religion with a blind 
 and unreasoning submission to the Church identi- 
 fied as the Pope. For those who were Romanists 
 first and Christians afterwards, all this may have 
 been involved in the theories which had prevailed 
 on the eve of the Reformation ; but there were 
 likewise other theories which had been strenuously 
 held by the more spiritually- minded, and had 
 never been denied a place before. These, how- 
 ever, were now anathema, and since then all the
 
 240 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 doctrines of Rome have been gradually reduced in 
 practice to one article, submission to the cult of 
 the Papacy. 
 
 This same sinister tendency showed itself at 
 Trent in connection with the new organisation 
 which made all else subordinate to the new abso- 
 lutism ; the new uniformity falsely called unity. 
 Even the improvement in regard to the education 
 of the priests, which some episodes at the Council 
 itself showed was much required, proceeded on 
 lines which brought everything more and more 
 completely under the domination of the ecclesi- 
 astical authorities. Seminary-trained priests be- 
 come the creatures of the Papacy as those who 
 are educated along with their fellow-men in 
 ordinary schools or universities seldom do, and 
 these are the agents which Ultramontanism wishes. 
 In view of all this it is an enormous interference 
 with the facts of history and experience to pre- 
 sume that Rome is the heir of the undivided 
 Church ; a claim which seems to fascinate some. 
 The only parallel to it is the assumption that she 
 alone is the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic 
 Church; which is monstrous in face of the fact 
 that she has often been rent by the bitterest 
 divisions, that she has often been defiled by the 
 grossest vices, that she has separated herself from 
 multitudes of those who hold the faith as it is in 
 Jesus, and that the problem of the ages is how
 
 Reformed Churches Catholic 241 
 
 to account for her fundamental divergences from 
 the Church of the Apostles. 
 
 For true Catholicity we must turn to the Re- 
 formers. For them the Catholic Church is 
 universal in the sense that it includes all the 
 faithful disciples of Christ in every age and land. 
 The Reformed churches were and are Catholic 
 as receiving the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity 
 and the Catholic canon of Scripture which contains 
 the teaching of our Lord and His apostles. They 
 are in the Apostolic Succession as holding the 
 teaching which has come down from the Apostles ; 
 and as (f sent " just as the Apostles were. In the 
 later Middle Ages, under the influence of Hilde- 
 brandism, Catholicity was thought of as consisting 
 in union with the Roman Church ; but even prior 
 to the Reformation the study of Roman law had 
 led men back to the older conception embodied in 
 the Theodosian and Justinian codes, that Catho- 
 licity consists in the acceptance of the Nicene 
 doctrine of the co-equality of the Father, Son, 
 and Holy Ghost. The claim of the Reformers 
 always was that they could renounce the Papacy 
 without ceasing to be members of the Catholic 
 Church, and even those of them who did not make 
 insistance on the historical episcopate essential 
 have never been without a clear and consistent 
 doctrine of the Church as consisting of those who 
 
 have the one Lord, the one faith, and the one 
 16
 
 242 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 baptism. As Dr. James Walker says in his 
 Scottish Theology, they could " meet the Church 
 idealism of Rome, in many ways so grand and 
 attractive, with a nobler Church idealism. They 
 could throw back the charge that Protestantism 
 dismembers and breaks up the Kingdom of God 
 upon earth, with the reply that Protestant unity 
 is as much a reality as Roman unity, only the 
 centre of it is in heaven, not on the banks of the 
 Tiber." It cannot be too strenuously insisted 
 on that it is those who stand for the decrees of 
 the Council of Trent who are the separatists 
 and schismatics, and not those who are loyal to 
 Reformation truth.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Rome and the Modern Spirit 
 
 FTHHE significance of the Council of Trent was 
 
 Xthat the Church of Home then shut the door 
 on the new light which God has promised 
 to those who do His will, and are responsive to 
 the leading of the Divine Spirit who has so much 
 to say to those who are able and willing to hear 
 Him. In anticipation it condemned the new as 
 not true ; and prepared the saddest of all dilemmas 
 for the Romanist who wishes to be loyal to his 
 upbringing and his Church, and yet knows well 
 that much of the new appeal and aspiration of 
 our age is of God. The philosopher Hegel held 
 that the real tragedies of life do not emerge in the 
 conflict between the false and the true, but in the 
 conflict between two truths ; and such a tragedy 
 has darkened the life of many who have grown 
 up in the Church of Rome, and yet would fain 
 obey the beckoning hand which they believe to 
 be Divine. That one representative Romanist 
 Abbot Gasquet can say, that even if he could not 
 follow or fully understand the Papal Encyclical 
 against Modernism, he would deem it his obvious
 
 244 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 duty and only safe way to bow to the directions 
 it contains; and that another can argue that 
 " since the Church is enlightened by the Holy 
 Spirit it is really absurd to urge upon her renovation 
 or regeneration, as though she could be liable to 
 defect or dulness," shows how helpless Romanism 
 is in presence of the modern spirit with all its 
 promise and potency for good, and all its possi- 
 bilities of unsettlement and unbelief. 
 
 The modern spirit may be described as the 
 attitude of mind generated by and manifested 
 in the rise of the democracy, the supremacy of 
 social questions, the triumph of physical science, 
 and the application of critical principles to Holy 
 Scripture. Never has there been a more searching 
 era than ours for the Christian Church. Never 
 was there so much unrest or so much indifference. 
 Criticism of all sorts, fair and unfair, was never 
 so intrusive or so ceaseless. Every institution, 
 even the most venerable and stable, is on its 
 trial. Every dogma, even the most sacred and 
 universal, is in the melting-pot. In every case 
 credentials are being called for and exposed to 
 the keenest scrutiny and the fiercest light. This 
 applies to all the Churches, and there are mani- 
 festations of the modern spirit which are hostile 
 to all religion. But it applies in a special sense 
 to the Church of Rome, inasmuch as she claims 
 to be above criticism. Just because she has
 
 Graveclothes of Clericalism 245 
 
 made herself the slave of the letter, and bound 
 herself with the graveclothes of clericalism, she 
 is helpless in presence of the conditions which 
 now prevail. 
 
 Even those who are least aware of it have 
 changed their outlook, and a Church which is 
 committed to Medievalism in days when men find 
 it difficult even to appreciate what Medisevalism 
 was, is altogether unable to sanctify the new 
 temper for high and holy ends. The appeal to 
 mere authority now avails with few even among 
 those who are hardly conscious of how much their 
 world has altered ; and much that was accepted 
 as inevitable or indubitable even fifty years ago 
 is now either discredited or on its trial. This is 
 the era of the religion of the Spirit ; and those who 
 live as Christians should, in the expectation of fuller 
 light, know that all things will work together for 
 good no matter how searching the inquiry or how 
 thorough the revolution. If Home refuses to 
 acknowledge what is legitimate and true in the 
 modern spirit, so much the worse for Rome. It is 
 for Evangelical believers to show the better way ; 
 to make it manifest that freedom and reverence 
 may be combined so that they can respect the 
 rights of man; not in opposition to the rights of 
 God, but because they find rest and peace in Him. 
 
 Not that what calls itself Modernism is right just 
 because it is in conflict with Rome. Much of it is
 
 246 The Arrested -Reformation 
 
 no more true than it is new ; as when it sets itself 
 to ignore the supernatural, or to shut the spiritual 
 and unseen out of human life. In so far as 
 Modernism means revolt against the miraculous 
 either in Scripture or in ordinary life ; the denial 
 of the Virgin Birth, the Divinity of Our Lord and 
 His rising from the dead, and the unique inspira- 
 tion of the Bible ; it would be very short-sighted 
 for any believer to rejoice in its victories over 
 Rome. Yet even where anti-clericalism views all 
 ministers of religion as priests and impostors, and 
 all the doctrines of the Christian faith as super- 
 stitious, it may break the power of the priest and 
 dispel superstition so that the preacher of free 
 grace can get a hearing as he cannot where Rome 
 is dominant. Nor is it ungenerous to an enemy 
 who is down to suggest that Rome has brought 
 most of her troubles on herself, just as she has cast 
 deep shadows over the whole realm of Evangelical 
 truth, by her alliance with despotism, by her opposi- 
 tion to freedom, and by forcing so many to identify 
 New Testament Christianity with her corrupt and 
 inadequate representation of it. Neither the anti- 
 clerical feeliDg which is so widespread, nor the 
 anti-religious aspect of the manifestations of the 
 modern spirit so common in countries where Rome 
 has been supreme for centuries, is matter for sur- 
 prise ; and in God's grace the Kingdom of His Son 
 may come erelong in these misguided and much-
 
 Modernism 247 
 
 wronged lands through the healthy detestation of 
 tyranny and unreality alike in Church and State. 
 The light of Divine truth may break for those who 
 are sitting in darkness and the shadow of death, 
 even through revolution and unbelief. 
 
 It is becoming less and less possible for men to 
 build on mere tradition, since each must face 
 the eternal issues for himself, and be led into saving 
 fellowship with the unseen, if the joy of the Lord is 
 to be his. If those who profess to know what all this 
 means had greater faith in their Lord, the coming 
 of His Kingdom in every land would not be long 
 delayed. They are often " sicklied o'er " with the 
 half-unconscious fear that what they call faith 
 may only be superstition : and the only cure for 
 that is to live in the open, to walk in the light, to 
 be loyal to the truth in its fulness, and be glad in 
 the Lord ; since nothing is so infectious or so much 
 required as the joy of salvation for the weary 
 and heavy laden. It is no part of the Christian 
 faith to act as if God has nothing more to say 
 to those who are able to hear Him. When the 
 Pilgrim Fathers were setting out in the Mayflower 
 to claim the New World for freedom and God, 
 Pastor Robinson besought them to expect fresh 
 light from Him who is the light ; and even yet 
 the half has not been told us of what He has in store 
 for those who do His will. All light and truth 
 are of God, and it is not the Christian attitude
 
 248 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 to tremble for the ark. We must try the spirits 
 whether they are of God, since the new is not 
 necessarily the true ; but we must always be 
 willing to readjust our outlook in loyalty to what- 
 ever is of God ; in the faith that nothing which 
 is truly from above can conflict with His revela- 
 tion of grace in Christ. But that is just what 
 Romanism since the Council of Trent cannot do. 
 Her boasted logic and her proud claim that she 
 never changes have become her Nemesis in days 
 when the tide of life is running so swiftly. 
 
 To imagine that the record is closed or that God 
 has nothing to say to His people through all the 
 wondrous events of our time is unbelief as well 
 as folly ; but since she finally put herself in bonds 
 Rome can neither appreciate nor hallow the 
 modern spirit as a Church of Christ should. Our 
 era will rank with that of the Reformation 
 as epoch-making ; and amid the solvents which 
 are at work the Church of the Living God must 
 be free to respond to every word He speaks, and 
 to follow His hand wherever it beckons. Our 
 faith in the ministry of the Holy Ghost should 
 mean nothing less than that ; and that is just 
 what it cannot mean for the Church of Rome. 
 
 Among the many signs and portents of the 
 revolution which confronts us, nothing is more 
 remarkable than the changes which are taking 
 place in the Roman Catholic communities in every
 
 Rome's Nemesis 249 
 
 land. If Ireland is an exception, it is the excep- 
 tion which proves the rule. And even in Ireland, 
 where Rome is strong because she has sided with 
 the popular party, disintegrating forces are at 
 work, and we know not what a day may bring 
 forth. The reception given to the Papal Encyclical 
 against Modernism showed that the Pope and his 
 advisers might as well have tried to sweep back the 
 Atlantic with a broom, or turn back the hands on 
 the dial of time, as bid men cease to breathe the 
 atmosphere of their generation, and order those 
 who were made at first in the image of God to 
 cease thinking in days when the ends of the world 
 have come on us. Even among the well-disciplined 
 followers of the Jesuits there have been mutterings 
 of revolt. Even those who accept the dogma of 
 the Papal Infallibility are aghast at its practical 
 application, and cannot shut their eyes at the 
 bidding of the Pope, as if modern science were a 
 heretical fiction. Our generation has had another 
 illustration of the folly of the wise, and has seen 
 that an infallible Pope may be a very inadequate 
 guide. The Curia has never made more blunders 
 in practical politics than since it was decreed 
 that it is presided over by one who is infallible. 
 Those who longed for an unerring guide must be 
 disconcerted when the white light shows that the 
 Pope is as fallible as any other of the leaders of men. 
 Soon after the Encyclical appeared, a letter was
 
 250 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 addressed to the Pope by some of the Romish 
 clergy in Wurtemberg, explaining that he had 
 made a mistake. They pointed out that the 
 theologians whose work was condemned were 
 men devoted heart and soul to the Roman Catholic 
 religion and the Apostolic chair, and that their 
 aim was to defend the Christian religion with 
 new weapons suitable to modern times. The 
 methods of meeting error, they said, which may 
 have been successful centuries ago are of no avail 
 now ; and any attempt to compel their application 
 to-day is merely a useless endeavour to turn the 
 wheel of time backwards. On the same week 
 it was also announced that the Pope had excom- 
 municated the anonymous writers of an Italian 
 pamphlet entitled Tine Programme of the Modernists, 
 written in reply to the Encyclical, and which the 
 faithful were forbidden to sell or read. It was 
 announced, too, that Father Tyrrell had been 
 deprived of the sacraments because of two articles 
 he had published in criticism of the Encyclical, 
 a step which evoked a remarkable protest from 
 the journal called Vanity Fair. Written as if 
 from within the Romish Church it says : 
 
 '' The sooner the Vatican composes its quarrel 
 with Father Tyrrell the better for the Vatican. The 
 feeling against the punishment meted out to him 
 is growing more and more bitter among English 
 Catholics. The Vatican has been losing touch
 
 The Papal Encyclical 251 
 
 with English Catholic thought for a good many 
 years ; it seems not to have the slightest idea 
 how thorough is our sympathy with Father Tyrrell's 
 refusal to become an accomplice in the profanation 
 of allowing the sacred edifice of the Mass to be 
 used as an instrument of government and moral 
 coercion, how strong is our support of his refusal 
 to submit his correspondence with those who come 
 to him nearly always secretly and privately as 
 to one to whose secrecy they can trust, to censor- 
 ship and ecclesiastical supervision. Between the 
 Ultramontane point of view and the English 
 Catholic point of view there has always been very 
 little in common ; and nowadays the wise and 
 enlightened English Catholics are more than ever 
 opposed to the Italian policy of robbing the 
 Church of the help of the really vital and pro- 
 gressive forces within her bosom. Every blow 
 struck at Father Tyrrell is a blow struck at English 
 Catholicism." 
 
 In Germany, too, even Romanists resent the 
 defamation of the national hero. In 1904 a 
 Roman Catholic professor in the University of 
 Wurzburg got into trouble for protesting as others 
 have done against the slanders published about 
 Luther, and against the extravagances of the Ultra- 
 montanes. Since then the Senate of the University 
 of Tubingen has intervened on behalf of Professor 
 Gunter, who had been ordered by his bishop to
 
 252 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 discontinue his lectures on Church History because 
 of the suspicion that he was propagating Modernist 
 views. They described such action as an inad- 
 missible interference with freedom of teaching. 
 
 In France also the light is spreading and the 
 resentment against papal tyranny deepening. 
 After the Encyclical was published the Cardinal of 
 Paris set a vigilance committee to work to keep 
 watch over all publications and all teachers 
 infected by the new views ; and writings meant 
 for the faithful had to pass a censor. Several 
 bishops, however, have resigned in protest against 
 the policy of the Vatican ; and one of these, the 
 Bishop of Tarentaise, in bidding farewell to his 
 clergy, said : " There has been a radical change 
 in the intellectual habits of our countrymen. They 
 will no longer be treated as children. Hence- 
 forth the priest must combine with his capacity 
 as minister of God, the prestige and influence which 
 are given by a good education, and also that 
 straightness of character which is regarded to-day 
 as the chief of social virtues." If the conflict in 
 France is actually between Medisevalism and 
 straightness of character we need not be surprised 
 that another spokesman, himself a Romanist, 
 insists that a "Church handed over to the unchecked 
 control of Pius x. and the persons who satisfy his 
 ideal of a good Catholic can have only one future. 
 Its ruin will be swift and complete, and in a com-
 
 Clericalism and Freedom 253 
 
 paratively few years it will be an insignificant 
 sect." 
 
 An outstanding feature of the modern spirit is 
 its yearning for social and political amelioration; 
 and the epigram attributed to James I. : " No 
 bishop, no king," is not nearly so true as the 
 counter-statement that the priest and the " sover- 
 eign people " cannot flourish side by side. Many a 
 priest has been a patriot. There have even been 
 prelates who stood for freedom for others as well 
 as for themselves. But clericalism is the enemy of 
 liberty, and in practice has always tended to pride 
 and vanity, to tyranny and intolerance, to Hilde- 
 brandism and Ultramontanism. Clericalism in this 
 sense has led the men of the Latin races to revolt from 
 revealed religion, in their ignorance of New Testa- 
 ment Christianity which has no priest but Christ 
 and is the friend and inspirer of the rights of man. 
 Even in the Old Testament the priest, divinely 
 appointed as he was, required the corrective of the 
 prophet to save religion and the freedom of the 
 spirit of man from forms and rites which had lost 
 their spirituality and power. 
 
 It has been computed that during the last 
 seventy years no fewer than one hundred and 
 eighty millions of the people of Europe have been 
 set free from bonds in the State, and it was in- 
 evitable that those who had been enfranchised in 
 politics should begin to think for themselves in
 
 254 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 connection with religion ; a step which is fatal to 
 the claims which Rome makes for herself and her 
 priesthood. Many are of the opinion that Great 
 Britain is allowing Rome to abuse her hospitality 
 and her free institutions, and liberty ought never 
 to be allowed to degenerate into licence. But 
 wisdom is justified of her children, and in the end 
 freedom will vanquish every foe as the sunshine 
 and the open air vanquish disease. Where there 
 is vigilant loyalty to Evangelical truth, Popery 
 cannot continue to flourish in a free State. It is a 
 fungus which perishes when exposed to the light ; 
 and although the statistics of buildings and 
 functionaries seem to prove the success of the 
 Romish invasion, the statistics of loyal men and 
 women tell another tale. Not only is there a 
 constant leakage, there is conflict where outsiders 
 suppose there is nothing but harmony ; and 
 changes are going on which show how vain is the 
 semper eadem cry. It is not possible for us to tell 
 what is in the minds of the wiser ecclesiastics 
 in Britain or Germany, America or France, but 
 there are indications that not a few of them 
 are seriously disquieted by the doings of the 
 present Pope. 
 
 Nor is it the Pope alone whose actions suggest 
 the ancient saying that those whom the gods would 
 ruin they first of all make mad. Reference has 
 already been made to the anti-Roman spirit
 
 Prancing Pro-Consuls 255 
 
 aroused in Canada by the boastful words of Father 
 Bernard Vaughan, and it is interesting to find 
 that Cardinal Moran did the same kind of work in 
 Australia in connection with Empire Day, 1911. 
 He instructed his priests that it was not to be 
 regarded as Empire Day, but as Australia Day, 
 and that if a flag were hoisted it was to be the 
 Southern Cross and not the Union Jack. Taken 
 in conjunction with the introduction of the Ne 
 Temere Decree this has united the Protestant de- 
 nominations there against the Romanists, who are 
 only a fourth of the population, as they have not 
 hitherto been united. Freedom seems to act like 
 new wine on these prancing pro-consuls of the 
 Papal See : and nothing is clearer than that Rome 
 does not believe in the sovereignty of the people as 
 against her own claims to be supreme. She can 
 adapt herself to circumstances, and can use a 
 democracy as well as an oligarchy. But she does 
 not love a free atmosphere ; and the Jesuits in 
 particular have a deep and universal hatred of 
 modern civilisation, and make use of modern 
 weapons to destroy it wherever they can. They 
 use education to prevent education, and freedom 
 and free institutions to make freedom impossible. 
 Even where Church societies with a democratic 
 appearance are allowed, there is always the veto of 
 the Church at the crucial point ; and it is the 
 duty of those who love freedom to proclaim from
 
 256 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 the housetops that priestism and liberty cannot 
 flourish side by side. 
 
 Neither a free press nor freedom of public meeting 
 has a place in the Romish programme; and any 
 semblance of either is to be found only where free 
 Protestant institutions have compelled her to come 
 to some extent into line. She can appeal to the 
 populace against their rulers, but her normal 
 appeal is to the rulers as against the rights of the 
 people. She claims that she stands for authority, 
 for law and order, and that governments which do 
 not support her doom themselves. What this 
 means in practice was shown in the Italian State 
 not fifty years ago, when the authority on which 
 the Church smiled and which she herself exercised 
 meant intolerable tyranny and almost incredible 
 corruption. The liberty of the Catholic Church 
 has always meant bonds for the Catholic people. 
 A.S for patriotism, the priest has no nation but 
 Rome, and between him and the claims of father- 
 land come the claims of the Church. Alike in 
 Italy and Austria in the last generation, and in 
 Spain and Portugal in this, the movement for 
 freedom has found the Church of Rome set for the 
 defence of despotism, the apologist of men who 
 trampled on every sacred right of those whom 
 Christ has called to be free. 
 
 What is true of the modern yearning for freedom 
 in the State is true also of the modern spirit of
 
 The Spirit of Inquiry 257 
 
 inquiry which is everywhere at work. That 
 spirit may become lawless and lay unclean fingers 
 on the very Ark of God, but the Spirit of God 
 is a free Spirit and the Word of God is not bound. 
 It is not for those who believe in God to act as if 
 Christianity could not stand criticism or live in 
 the open air. But Rome takes refuge from the 
 spirit of inquiry, legitimate and illegitimate alike, 
 behind the walls of tradition, authority, and 
 papal infallibility ; as if God the Holy Spirit 
 had no new light for His people, for the present 
 duty and the present distress. She is seeking to 
 meet the terrible artillery of modern warfare with 
 the old and broken shields of Medievalism, and 
 her treatment of a man like Antonio Fogazzaro 
 shows how incapable she is of distinguishing 
 between what is good and what is evil in the 
 tendencies of our time. He was accused of being 
 a Modernist, although his writings make it evident 
 that he was no partisan of Loisy or Tyrrell^ but 
 simply a liberal Romanist who wished to put the 
 reading of Scripture and loyalty to the precepts 
 of the Gospel in the place occupied by puerile 
 devotions and political intrigues. In his last book 
 he disclaimed any idea of innovating on received 
 doctrines, and protested his obedience to the 
 Hierarchy and the Pope. But he was dealt with 
 as a soldier would be who dared to criticise his 
 officers in a time of war ; and it was made clear
 
 258 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 that there is as little room as ever there was for 
 independence among the members of the Roman 
 Church. 
 
 That incident also shows, however, that with 
 all her power Rome cannot shut the opening door. 
 The Index now advertises more than it extin- 
 guishes ; and, as Mr. Lathbury says, " the Pope 
 has shut up his army in an eighteenth-century 
 fortress, and has left the enemy in unchallenged 
 command of all the heights from which his posi- 
 tion may be shelled/' Medievalism may save the 
 schools of the Church from open discussion of 
 modern problems, but it cannot protect them 
 from inroads which must be met with living truth 
 and the love of truth. Those whose life is hid 
 with Christ in God are set for work and not for 
 discussion, yet if they refuse to examine the 
 foundations of their faith they doom themselves 
 to mental paralysis. 
 
 Dollinger held that with the exception of 
 Newman none of the English Churchmen who 
 became Romanists in his time continued to write 
 as well after the change as before. The intellect 
 suffers through obscurantism as well as the spirit. 
 Of Manning he said that warmth and depth of 
 religious feeling disappeared before reserve and 
 even suspicion. So Bishop Gore says : " Candour, 
 an attempt to fairly produce the whole case, a 
 love of the whole truth, . . . this seems to have
 
 A Bankruptcy in Morality 259 
 
 vanished from their literature, and its place is 
 taken by an abundant skill in making the best 
 of all that looks Homeward in history and ignoring 
 the rest. Indeed, it seems to be not only in 
 dealing with the Papal claims that the Roman 
 Church is disqualified from dealing broadly and 
 frankly with facts. She has adopted a fatal tone 
 of distrust towards the critical reason altogether, 
 so that she seems by her whole method to put 
 herself at a disadvantage in dealing with some 
 of the most pressing problems of our time which 
 are coming up for solution." " In other words, 
 there seems to be an impassable gulf between the 
 haughty isolation of the Roman Church on the 
 one hand, and the intellectual hospitality of the 
 modern age on the other. . . . While the one 
 aims at the establishment of a sacerdotal autocracy 
 resting on suppression and stagnation, the other 
 aims at unrestricted development and a wide 
 view of human possibilities." No wonder that 
 Dollinger could also say that the dogma of papal 
 infallibility had produced a general bankruptcy 
 in morality ; for mental paralysis like this can 
 hardly fail to end in moral debility. There is an 
 impassable gulf between Romanism and the spirit 
 which is set for freedom, for the rights of man, 
 and for the emancipation of the human mind. 
 
 It is probable that the attitude of Rome to 
 the modern spirit is due to the fact that the Pope
 
 260 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 is in the hands of men cleverer and less scrupulous 
 than himself, who are determined to complete the 
 victory of 1870 by converting the Papacy into 
 an absolute despotism, with the Society of Jesus 
 as the power behind the throne. But that victory 
 only completed the Jesuit victory at the Council 
 of Trent ; and pagan sacerdotalism is simply 
 showing itself in its true colours ; making it more 
 manifest than ever that Home cannot consecrate 
 the new situation which has arisen, nor take her 
 part in staunching the wounds from which modern 
 society is slowly bleeding to death. Indeed, 
 Eome has inflicted some of the wounds which are 
 worst of all to heal. It is not that she is opposed 
 to learning itself. She has many learned men 
 in certain departments ; and, as Macaulay pointed 
 out long ago, those who expect Romanism to dis- 
 appear before mere learning are greatly mistaken. 
 So long as scholars subject themselves absolutely 
 to the decrees of the Vatican, and pride themselves 
 on accepting what in itself is incredible, the light 
 will be kept out and inquiry will be stifled. 
 
 Yet the world moves and the light spreads. The 
 one question is whether the modern spirit is to 
 be mainly destructive or is to lead those who 
 are in the stream of doubt across to a fuller and 
 nobler faith in God. Only those Protestants who 
 are also Christians will count in the world conflict 
 which has already begun. Mere tradition is of
 
 The Spreading Light 261 
 
 as little avail on the one side as on the other. 
 Every man must face the eternal issues, as he 
 must learn the multiplication table, for himself. 
 The cry " let us be done with religion altogether " is 
 only too often heard, and there are those who teach 
 that freethinkers alone are the enemies of super- 
 stition. It is said that in recent times only one 
 President of the French Republic has been inside 
 a church, and that he explained that he went to 
 Notre Dame with the Czar as part of his official 
 duty. Protestantism must be made winsome 
 through those who are free from prejudice because 
 they are walking in the liberty which their Lord 
 has purchased for them. Deep down in the 
 heart of man under every system, there is the 
 longing for that peace which nothing but living 
 fellowship with Christ can bring, and those who 
 live His life and manifest His free Spirit will do 
 most to hasten the overthrow of all that is of 
 anti-Christ, His ceaseless foe.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 If Rome is to be Won she must be understood 
 
 CAN Rome be won ? Can the frozen streams 
 of blessing melt in the sunshine of a new 
 consecration and flow to the ends of the 
 earth with healing and beauty and hope ? Can 
 the river of God which grows deeper and deeper 
 till it is ankle-deep, and then up to the loins, 
 now reach the desert and the Dead Sea, as the 
 river of Ezekiel's vision did, so that everything 
 shall live ? That is the one end which is really 
 worth working for. 
 
 There is no longer the neglect of the social 
 implications of the Gospel that there was in the 
 Reformation Era, nor such manifest failure to 
 obey the Great Commission of our Lord. Ours 
 is the era of social reform, and the yearning prayer 
 of every loyal believer is that the solution of our 
 social problems will come under the leadership of 
 Christ and not under an alien lord. As regards 
 Foreign Missions, the entire outlook has so changed 
 since the Reformation Age that the hope is wide- 
 spread that all the earth shall hear the good news 
 
 in the lifetime of some who are already in the work. 
 
 263
 
 Lack of Untty 263 
 
 The rock of offence created by the spirit of 
 disunion is, however, a rock of offence still. It is 
 true that we have got beyond the conception of 
 the sixteenth century, which explains so much of its 
 blundering, that there is room for only one Church 
 in a land. It is also true that it is not so easy as 
 it used to be to fan the embers of controversy into 
 flame, although some controversialists still do their 
 worst or their best ; but that is as much due to 
 indifference to vital truth as to a nobler and purer 
 perception of what is really essential. It is like- 
 wise true that there are many who are now ready 
 to co-operate in inter-denominational work, 
 especially in connection with the heathen and 
 the lapsed and the great charities. Still, however, 
 there is a sad and notable lack of that true and 
 essential spirit of unity which our Lord Himself 
 says is a prerequisite to convincing the world that 
 He is the Sent of the Father. The spirit of unity 
 often exists where there is not ecclesiastical union, 
 and there may be more unity alongside of apparent 
 separation than there is in certain forms of external 
 unity. There are sects in Romanism which are 
 as far apart as the Evangelical denominations. 
 But we are still far from that oneness of con- 
 secration and aim which will send the Reformed 
 churches once again to their work, conquering 
 and to conquer as one army of the Living God, 
 and claiming the whole earth for Him.
 
 264 T/ie Arrested Reformation 
 
 The year of grace 1911 saw two significant 
 illustrations of how difficult it is for professing 
 Christians to cultivate a true sense of proportion, 
 and to see things from the standpoint of the 
 world's need and the Saviour's love. In con- 
 nection with the Coronation, the Bishop of 
 Hereford arranged a Communion Service in his 
 Cathedral to which he invited the Nonconformists 
 of the Diocese ; a very innocent and suitable 
 thing to do, as many think. But even men in the 
 forefront among the Anglican leaders denounced 
 his action, apparently on the ground that every- 
 thing must stand or fall by confirmation by bishops 
 who claim to be in the line of the Apostolic 
 Succession. Along these lines there can be no 
 triumphal advance on the citadels of Rome. 
 
 In the General Assembly of the Church of 
 Scotland, too, where the question of the validity 
 of Wesleyan " orders " was discussed, the decision 
 was of the nature of a compromise ; in spite of 
 powerful appeals for brotherly recognition. The 
 " orders " in question were not pronounced 
 invalid, but neither were they acknowledged to 
 be valid. Thus the penalty of division is continued 
 division ; and even although lines of demarcation 
 disappear in actual work rather than in dis- 
 cussions, there is little likelihood of Eome being 
 won for the Evangel by those who cannot unite 
 round what is really fundamental ; a living union
 
 Difficulties in the VPay 265 
 
 to Christ, a love for souls born of fellowship with 
 Him, and baptism into His Spirit, along with 
 liberty to differ on matters which are of less 
 moment and in regard to which the mind of God 
 has not been made so clear. 
 
 It is obvious, then, that there are difficulties yet 
 in the way preventing the liberated waters from 
 flowing freely in every land. There are still 
 refrigerators freezing the streams of blessing. 
 But it is through obedience the blessing comes, 
 and Rome will never be won by those who wait 
 till every difficulty has been removed. The Red 
 Sea only opens up before those who obey the 
 command and tell the people " that they go 
 forward." Mission work will be fruitful in pro- 
 portion as those who hear the call are loyal in their 
 response, and the barriers which still separate 
 those who are loyal to the One Lord and are all 
 one in Him, will disappear only as those who 
 have the light walk in it in singleness of heart. 
 
 To understand Rome does not mean merely 
 that those who would win her through the Evangel 
 must know all about her doctrines and practices, 
 her failures and successes. Some who had the 
 most intimate acquaintance with the entire 
 Romish controversy never won a soul for Christ, 
 and never seem to have tried to do so. It is not 
 enough to study Romanism for what it truly is, 
 a great masterpiece of constructive genius, or to
 
 266 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 see ita consummate ability and logic, or the subtlety 
 of its response to the needs of man. Students 
 have followed these lines who have not accom- 
 plished much in the way of conquest. " The 
 Reformation is an event long since past," said 
 Macaulay in a eulogy which like many such is 
 not borne out by the facts. ''' That volcano has 
 spent its rage. The wide waste produced by its 
 outbreak is forgotten. The landmarks which 
 were swept away have been replaced. The ruined 
 edifices have been repaired. The lava has 
 covered with a rich encrustation the fields which 
 it once devastated, and after having turned a 
 beautiful and fruitful garden into a desert, has 
 again turned the desert into a still more beautiful 
 and fruitful garden." How far that is from 
 being literally correct has been already shown ; 
 and the spectator who would see only unity and 
 beauty, recovery and power, must stand afar off. 
 
 What is necessary is to understand the whole 
 system with sympathy for the souls of men. 
 There must be spiritual insight to grasp the secret 
 of the fascination of Rome, and to understand 
 its persistence in spite of so many defeats. Easy 
 solutions are usually inadequate anywhere, and 
 are manifestly useless where the whole power of 
 the Satanic has been at work all through to 
 pervert and defeat the Divine. There is a sense 
 in which all the deterioration which has made
 
 Easy Solutions Inadequate 267 
 
 a wilderness of what was once the Garden of the 
 Lord can be explained by the germs of the 
 sacerdotalism which originated in the paganism 
 which so soon crept in like the sands from the 
 Sahara on the fertile plains of Egypt, and spread 
 until everything was contaminated. But that is 
 not all the truth. If it had been, the structure 
 would have gone to pieces long ago. There is a 
 sense, too, in which the whole Papal system may 
 be looked at as the outcome of the fatal determina- 
 tion which has been at work throughout, and is one 
 of the proofs of fche place which paganism so soon 
 assumed, to work out a religion for the unregenerate 
 man which satisfies him after a fashion, but 
 leaves him unregenerate still. As the religion of 
 the natural man, Kome has met needs which ought 
 to have been met on other and Christian lines. 
 "It is a development which is the result of an 
 overreckless self-accommodation to the un- 
 regenerate natural instincts in religion," says 
 Bishop Gore. But again that is not all the truth. 
 We must also bear in mind the extraordinary 
 humanness of the system on which Professor 
 M'GifEert has been laying emphasis : " The way 
 in which it recognises and makes a place for 
 common human impulses, putting even the least 
 worthy of them to some use." The needs and 
 yearnings which Rome meets after her own 
 fashion must be understood if she is to be won.
 
 268 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 The satisfaction which she has provided on the 
 lower level must be provided along lines which 
 lead men ever upwards to God. 
 
 It is a strange mixture which is found in the 
 system which we call Popery, and the secret of its 
 age-long hold on so many of our fellow-men can 
 only be discovered by those who recognise the iron 
 as well as the clay. Some of the old monks were 
 sensualists and some of them were saints. And 
 still alongside of unmeasured superstition and 
 ignorance wonderful devotion and self-forgetting 
 love are to be found. " How can a man be home- 
 sick who has no home ? " was the striking reply 
 of a Romish missionary to one who spoke to him of 
 the isolation of the sphere to which he was being 
 sent ; and even when we resent the subjection 
 which turns into automata those who were made 
 for God, and the cunning which makes things easy 
 for the unspiritual by making them difficult, 
 we must not only earn the right to criticise or 
 denounce by showing the better way, we must do 
 justice to whatever is noble and good. Protestants 
 who are not as obedient to Christ as ordinary 
 Romanists are to their ecclesiastical superiors 
 have not earned that right ; and when the victory 
 of the Evangel is complete the Saviour's garland 
 must include even the wilderness flowers. 
 
 Raymund Lull, the missionary, may be taken to 
 show, for the pre-Reformation era, how much
 
 Romish Saints 269 
 
 true piety there may be alongside of much error. 
 Dr. Speer says that he was the greatest missionary 
 who has ever gone out to the Moslem world. " He 
 was a Christian of the modern spirit of Catholicity : 
 neither Roman nor Protestant ; a man of spiritual 
 judgment, of Divine love. He saw the futility 
 of authority in matters of religion at a time when 
 other men were busy with the most devilish 
 expression of belief in authority ever conceived 
 the Inquisition. He loved Christ with a passionate 
 love and saw that the only true method was the 
 method of love." He had no idea that Christi- 
 anity was not a complete and sufficient religion. 
 He did not study other religions with the purpose 
 of providing from them ideals which Christianity 
 was supposed to lack. Nor did he propose to 
 reduce out of all religions a common fund of 
 general principles more or less to be found in all, 
 and regard these as the ultimate religion. He 
 studied other religions to find out how better to 
 reach the hearts of their adherents with the Gospel, 
 itself perfect and complete, lacking nothing, need- 
 ing nothing from any other doctrine. With him 
 there was a difference between Christianity and 
 other religions not in degree only, but in kind. In 
 his arguments with the Moslems it is striking how 
 little there is which is distinctively Komish. It is 
 Evangelical to the core, and it is not at all surprising 
 that the Jesuits have always been hostile to his
 
 270 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 memory. Indeed Rome long hesitated whether to 
 condemn him as a heretic or recognise him as a 
 martyr and a saint. He is as far as possible from 
 being typical ; and is rather the exception which 
 proves the rule. In seeking to understand Rome, 
 however, it is necessary to recognise the excep- 
 tions as well as the rule. 
 
 Nor are such exceptions to the rule altogether a 
 thing of the past so far as genuine piety is con- 
 cerned ; although of necessity they are more 
 exceptional than ever since the door was shut 
 on the Gospel at Trent, and they are no longer of 
 the evangelical type like Raymund Lull. Yet 
 even since that consummation of the great apos- 
 tasy there have been men like Carlo Borromeo, 
 Philip Neri, and Francis de Sales ; and difficult 
 as it is for those who live in the sunshine and 
 the open air of the Evangelical faith to under- 
 stand how superstition and the persecuting spirit 
 can persist side by side with self-surrender and 
 devoutness, it would be churlish to belittle their 
 piety such as it was. Even where those whom 
 Rome beatifies and canonises are unhealthy, un- 
 genial, and unattractive, not to say repellent, 
 because of that sort of detachment and absorption 
 which can be associated with much that is essenti- 
 ally un-Christian " with its consequent deadness to 
 mere human virtue and earthly goodness," they 
 must be understood if Rome is to be evangelised
 
 The Devotional Life 271 
 
 and everything that is worthy is to be carried 
 forward into the enduring sum and aggregate of the 
 new unity. 
 
 That is true likewise of certain phases of the 
 devotional life which the Church of Rome has 
 cultivated and from which something may be 
 learned in spite of its hothouse atmosphere. It is 
 of the essence of loyalty to the coming Kingdom 
 of the Lord Christ to claim "whatsoever things 
 are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever 
 things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, and 
 whatsoever things are of good report," no matter 
 what their environment may be, for the King. 
 Not otherwise can justice be done to a very com- 
 plex situation and an overwhelmingly difficult 
 problem. It is manifestly in the interests of 
 enduring conquest for our Lord that nothing 
 helpful or true should be lost ; and that that which 
 gives influence or power or charm, for certain 
 natures, to such books as the Garden of the Soul, 
 or to writers like Challoner and Alban Butler, 
 should be sympathetically understood. 
 
 It is very futile to imagine that the last word 
 has been said about the morals of Romanism 
 when we have unearthed the scandals which have 
 so often gathered round the confessional and 
 monasticism ; or have shown that there seems to 
 be something in the very genius of sacerdotalism 
 which makes men strain at gnats and swallow
 
 272 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 camels. It is easy to denounce living by rule as 
 ultimately hostile to Christian freedom, and to 
 speak disparagingly of cloister piety and of 
 holiness which is nurtured on manuals of devotion ; 
 for beyond question that sort of thing tends to 
 become not merely sentimental but mawkish, and 
 in the end unreal and therefore immoral. Yet if 
 Home is to be understood with any expectation 
 of setting her free from her errors in doctrine and 
 practice alike, she must be taken at her best as well 
 as at her worst. Those who are themselves coarse 
 and self-indulgent, the creatures of impulse and 
 caprice, have no right to indulge in harsh criticism 
 of those who follow John the Baptist rather than 
 Christ, even although they misrepresent the free, 
 healthy, moral life to which Christian men and 
 women are called. Only those whose righteous- 
 ness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and 
 Pharisees can hopefully assail their sins and short- 
 comings, and along with their own freedom they 
 must have everything that is admirable in those 
 who at their best are producing a torso and not 
 the whole man. 
 
 It is perfectly obvious that the doctrines of the 
 Roman Church must be understood in the light of 
 their vitality and power if there is to be victory 
 for the Evangel. To seek a mere dialectical 
 triumph, for example, in connection with the 
 great central doctrine of the priesthood almost
 
 The Priesthood 273 
 
 savours of indecency. The corruption and strength 
 of Romanism both grow from the same root, the 
 belief that the Roman priesthood possesses 
 mystical power conferred through episcopal or- 
 dination. But how is it that the name "priest," 
 which is never once applied to the Christian 
 ministry as such in the New Testament, with all 
 it stands for, has come to be favoured by the great 
 majority of those who have borne or still bear the 
 Christian name, and profess to be guided by the 
 New Testament ? What is the need which is met 
 or pandered to ? What truth has been perverted ? 
 The situation cannot be sufficiently accounted for 
 by the ambition of worldly ecclesiastics for power, 
 or even by the gradual corruption which was due to 
 the persistence of Judaic elements or the entrance 
 of paganism. In any case, it is only if the need 
 which has been so disastrously met can be under- 
 stood that it can be met aright by the practice of 
 the doctrines of the priesthood of all believers, the 
 unique priesthood of Him who ever liveth to make 
 intercession for us, and the abiding ministry of the 
 Holy Ghost who has come to abide with us for ever. 
 The word " priest " is not used in this connection 
 in the New Testament church because the thing 
 which it denotes does not exist there. There is no 
 ministering priest because there is now no atoning 
 sacrifice to offer. The only, because all-availing, 
 
 sacrifice of which the Gospel knows is that which 
 18
 
 274 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 Christ once offered when He gave Himself for us ; 
 and Christianity has no place for the sacerdotal 
 conception because that presupposes an order of 
 men who stand between God and their fellow-men, 
 and through whose ministrations alone the sinner 
 can be accepted of God. But on the other hand 
 there are the essential facts of human experience in 
 all the ages which have to be reckoned with, that 
 man needs God, and that his sin has blocked the 
 only way by which he can draw near. The sinner 
 cannot approach of himself, and unless he knows 
 of Him who is the great High Priest, and knows 
 that He is not merely a historical personage but 
 a living Lord who can be with him here and now, 
 he will not see how Christ can take the place which 
 the Roman priest professes to occupy or meet 
 the need which he professes to meet. The very 
 essence of priesthood is that it should be ever 
 available, and from this viewpoint and in relation 
 to a need which is so real and which must be met, 
 far more should be made of the ministry of the 
 Holy Ghost as the other Comforter who is to be 
 with us to the end. 
 
 Not only so, but there is nothing more urgent 
 than that those who rightly proclaim the priest- 
 hood of all believers should exercise their office 
 continually. It is not for nothing that believers 
 are called priests unto God in the New Testament, 
 and orthodoxy in theory is of no avail unless there
 
 The Confessional 275 
 
 is also orthodoxy in practice. Logic, no matter 
 how unassailable, is never enough unless there is 
 also life ; and it is those who have the love-light 
 in their eyes and the thrill of fellowship with the 
 Saviour in their souls who will conquer Rome for 
 Christ. Those alone can understand Romish 
 error, and minister to the need which gives that 
 error its power, who are themselves priests, draw- 
 ing near for themselves and others through the 
 sacrifice once offered by their great High Priest, and 
 through the Divine Spirit. 
 
 Closely allied to this doctrine of the priest in 
 Romanism is the doctrine and practice of Confession, 
 which must also be understood if there is to be 
 victory. It has gathered much that is evil round 
 it, and has immensely increased the illicit power of 
 the Roman priesthood ; and it is very difficult for 
 those who know it only from without to under- 
 stand in any measure how certain phases of it can 
 be tolerated among those who are rational and 
 free. That, however, makes it all the more 
 necessary to inquire what the other phases of it 
 are in virtue of which it still occupies the place 
 it does. There must be many who go to con- 
 fession not merely to get a clean slate on which to 
 proceed to inscribe a new account of transgressions 
 which are by and by to be similarly forgiven, but 
 because they hate evil, and come away with a 
 lighter heart after they hear the words of priestly
 
 276 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 absolution. It is in their bone and sinew, in the 
 very warp and woof of their being, there through 
 heredity and environment alike, to believe that 
 their burden has really been removed ; and the 
 history of faith-healing and mind-cure shows 
 how much such a belief means for those who still 
 possess it. 
 
 How long this belief can persist on any wide 
 scale in these days of disintegration and criticism 
 it is not possible to say. For the most part the 
 men, certainly the educated men, in many Roman 
 Catholic countries seem to possess it no longer; 
 and education and unrest may do for the women 
 of the next generation what they have done for 
 the men of this. But those who would not have 
 any lif e left empty even if it be swept and garnished, 
 will seek with sympathy and insight so to under- 
 stand the situation that the Spirit of truth shall 
 enter in and occupy the emptied life for God. 
 
 On one side of it the confessional tells of one of 
 the many ways in which Rome has betrayed her 
 sacred trust and sold the pass, and has shackled 
 the spirit of man. From the other side of it, and 
 from the viewpoint of those who find their way into 
 it in simplicity and sincerity, it also tells of the 
 intolerable burden of unforgiven sin, and of the 
 yearning of the awakened conscience for pardon 
 and peace. It brings us face to face with the 
 deepest needs of sinning and suffering mankind,
 
 The Mass 277 
 
 and although the surgeon who would heal must 
 deal sternly with the corruptions both social and 
 moral which have gathered round this system, he 
 will deal tenderly with the needs out of which it 
 grows, and will show that here and now the true 
 penitent can hear the words of the great High 
 Priest Himself as He says : " Thy sins are for- 
 given thee." If that makes a demand on faith, 
 it is because there can be no genuine repentance 
 without faith ; and it also needs faith to hear the 
 words of absolution from the priest so as to find 
 comfort and relief in them. The evangelical 
 demand is not the greater of the two, and it en- 
 nobles in proportion as the other degrades. 
 
 A similar attitude must be taken up in connection 
 with the doctrine of the Mass and its allied doctrine 
 of Transubstantiation, bound up as it is with the 
 doctrine of the priest, if it is to be hopefully under- 
 stood. That doctrine also tells of the perversion 
 of a truth rather than of falsehood from beginning 
 to end. That which is wholly untrue cannot persist 
 as the Mass has done. It is true that there is 
 now no semblance left in the gorgeous ceremonial 
 of Rome to the Supper in the Upper Room ; and 
 that the process of perversion can be traced. The 
 Mass ministers to the senses rather than to the 
 spirit. It rests on a God-dishonouring Manichsean 
 doctrine of the flesh. It is idolatrous and super- 
 stitious. But it gets much of its power from the
 
 278 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 yearning of man's heart for something that is not 
 historical merely, a sacrifice once offered and never 
 to be repeated ; a yearning, which must be met 
 somehow, for something which is here and now 
 for present worship and present need. The spirit 
 of man rejects as altogether inadequate the merely 
 commemorative theories of the Lord's Supper ; 
 and if its deepest emotions and longings seem 
 illogical and even irrational at times, that means 
 that the logic of the spirit is profounder than the 
 logic of the schools. The true Church must 
 insist on the objective aspects of the Supper being 
 kept in the forefront to meet this need; and at 
 the same time must insist that that Sacrament 
 is primarily a Divine means of grace in which we 
 are the recipients, rather than a human ceremony 
 in which we make an offering. That the first 
 celebration in the Upper Room was a true com- 
 munion ; that unbelievers who participate receive 
 no spiritual gift ; and that men are on the down- 
 grade whenever they begin to think of the ele- 
 ments as offered in any way, or as in any sense 
 a sacrifice ; must never be overlooked or obscured. 
 So long as we apply the principle that we are 
 primarily receivers and not givers at the Table 
 of the Lord, we shall not come into bondage to 
 the sacrificial conception which worked so dis- 
 astrously throughout the centuries. 
 
 Besides their insistence on the priestly office
 
 The Holy Spirit 279 
 
 of every believer, the unique priesthood of our 
 Lord, and the positive and objective aspects of 
 the Lord's Supper, Evangelical Christians must 
 make more than they have hitherto done of the 
 ministry of the Holy Spirit as taking of the things 
 of Christ and showing them unto us, and as that 
 other Comforter who has come to perpetuate the 
 Redeemer's work and be with His Church for ever. 
 In rejecting the errors of the Roman Church we 
 must not overlook the great truths which she has 
 perverted. The yearnings and needs which have 
 been so inadequately and unworthily met, just 
 as they have been so clearly proved, by the doctrine 
 of the priest and the mass and by the persistence 
 of the confessional, are all met graciously and 
 tenderly and divinely by the indwelling Spirit 
 who makes the past of Bethlehem, Gethsemane, 
 and Calvary ever present with us, and gives the 
 sense of pardon and the joy of salvation to those 
 who receive Him. 
 
 If anything like the time and thought which 
 have been expended on the doctrine of the 
 Second Person of the Trinity had been spent 
 on the Person and Work of the Third Person, 
 it would have been clearly shown how fully His 
 ministry covers the whole realm of human need 
 and aspiration as these have been laid bare in 
 the strivings and failures and victories of the 
 Christian centuries. His preventing grace, His
 
 280 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 enlightening grace, His sanctifying grace, divinely 
 satisfy great fundamental needs of human 
 nature which have often been perverted and mis- 
 understood. Through Him, in the Sacraments 
 and otherwise, Christ and the benefits of the 
 New Covenant are represented, sealed, and applied 
 to believers. He is a Free Spirit and is not 
 tied to the Sacraments or the ordinary means of 
 grace. His ministry is personal. His acts are 
 free, personal acts. The true witness-bearing 
 which is to win Rome must be the religion of the 
 Spirit. Through Him alone can the perversions 
 be reversed and the true disentangled from the 
 false. Through Him alone can the mysterious 
 forces which have held so many in bonds be 
 rescued from their degradation. Through Him 
 alone can spiritual satisfaction take the place of 
 carnal, or true spiritual unity be realised. It is 
 the unity of the Holy Spirit, as He enlightens 
 every believer, and makes him one with all the 
 rest in truth and love, which must be sought, and 
 not that external uniformity which rests on the 
 annihilation of individual responsibilities and 
 rights.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 If Rome is to be Won it must be by Positive 
 Evangelical Truth 
 
 IF Rome is to be won, she must be evangelised 
 as well as understood. Dr. Horton says 
 that " Protestantism will never vanquish 
 Catholicism, nor will Catholicism ever recover 
 Protestantism into its stereotyped and artificial 
 unity." " But," he adds, " we may cherish the 
 conviction, and work towards its realisation, that 
 Christianity, like a swelling tide, will yet rise and 
 overflow Catholicism and Protestantism alike, 
 merging them in a far better and purer Catholicism 
 than has yet been conceived." Professor Rothe, 
 who held that " it is a terrible thought that a 
 cultivated man in our day should be capable of 
 considering Roman Catholic Christianity in all 
 seriousness as the true Christianity," said : " The 
 Evangelical Church will never conquer the Catholic 
 Church, but Evangelical Christianity will conquer 
 Catholic Christianity in the Catholic Church, and 
 in spite of it ; and, indeed, it has already done so 
 in no insignificant degree." " Protestantism, as 
 a moral power, has been victorious over that part
 
 282 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 of Christendom which has remained in the Roman 
 Catholic Church." 
 
 In some respects, however, that is a hard saying, 
 for as things are the Roman Catholic Church is 
 not only a menace to spiritual religion, as well as 
 to human progress and freedom, she is a nucleus 
 for legalism and corruption. She has been thought 
 of as holding the masses in a merely human 
 organisation as the Evangelical churches cannot, 
 even as she appeals alike to oligarchies and 
 autocrats ; but in the present distress and in- 
 difference to churches, if not to religion, she is 
 not only as helpless as any, but is doing much to 
 increase the indifference among those who have 
 the misfortune to know Christianity only as she 
 represents it. She has alienated the masses where 
 she has been mightiest ; and even those who 
 imagined that they might win the crowds by 
 imitating her spectacular methods are acknow- 
 ledging their failure. If the masses are to be won 
 for religion, they must be brought into touch 
 with Divine realities ; they must be evangelised, 
 that is, and won through the Gospel which has 
 gained every triumph that has made all things 
 new in the days which are gone. 
 
 To say, as some do, that we are concerned only 
 with Rome as an organised system, which has 
 an exclusive spirit and makes intolerant and 
 intolerable claims, has no meaning for believers
 
 Romish Expectations 283 
 
 in Christ. Politicians might say that, having 
 regard merely to its social and public bearings, 
 as the very antipodes of the freedom which is 
 the ideal. But those who are set for the coming 
 of the Kingdom of God on earth are concerned 
 not only with Komanism, but with Komanists, 
 and wish all of them to rejoice in the liberty 
 wherewith Christ makes men free. That is vastly 
 more than wishing to make them Protestants ; 
 for even as Francis de Sales said, " There are 
 good Catholics who are very bad Christians ; " 
 there are some who bear the Evangelical name 
 who give no evidence that the Gospel has been 
 God's Good News for them. Nothing but a 
 widespread revival of heart-religion like that 
 which led to the Reformation, but on a still larger 
 scale, can meet the situation in which we find 
 ourselves, or effectively solve our problems. The 
 Reformation was but a prophecy of the con- 
 summation which is yet to be. 
 
 In The Dawn of All, Monsignor Benson shows 
 that many Romanists expect that it will be Rome 
 and not Protestantism which will win; that 
 Clericalism, " Tenfame, 1'ennemi," will strangle 
 Christianity. He shows, too, that they will not 
 shrink from persecution to bring this triumph 
 about. The leading conception of Ultramontanism 
 is that of domination at any cost. If the Gospel 
 is to win, those who believe in it must act on
 
 284 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 the offensive ; and surely there never was a warfare 
 into which the true-hearted might enter more 
 eagerly than into this which is to chase error away 
 by means of the truth, to set the nations free, to 
 put the government on the shoulders of Christ 
 and many crowns on His brow, to put darkness 
 and error, misunderstanding and prejudice, for 
 ever to flight by letting the light of the Saviour 
 God shine forth in all its beauty and power. 
 
 It is very significant that at the Reformation 
 the best description of all the branches of the 
 Reformed Church was found in the word " Evan- 
 gelical." Not that the name " Protestant " de- 
 serves the reproaches hurled at it as emphasising 
 merely the negative side of the Great Revival : 
 a protest against error rather than the positive 
 side of preaching the Gospel, which alone is the 
 power of God unto salvation. Philology and 
 history alike show that it stands for a protesta- 
 tion for the truth as much as for a protest against 
 error. As contrasted with the legalism of Rome, 
 Reformation theology has always laid the supreme 
 emphasis on the free grace of God and on the fact 
 that the only plea which sinners in their penitence 
 require is their need. The New and Completed 
 Reformation would be hastened by a tide of 
 Evangelical revival flooding all the Churches 
 the Church of Rome along with the others 
 with new life from God. The true Evangelical
 
 Evangelicals 285 
 
 is convinced that if Christ be lifted up from the 
 earth He will draw all men unto Him, and that 
 in proportion as we lift Him up in our lives, in 
 purity, freedom, and faith, all men everywhere, 
 within Rome or without, will be won for Him. 
 " Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered." 
 
 Such a work as this can never be done if minis- 
 ters and evangelists alone take part in it. It can 
 be done, and it must be done, by all who know 
 the Gospel for themselves, and there is a wide and 
 needy field for the operations of all who are ready 
 and qualified to enter it for their Lord. ' The 
 most effective way of meeting the peril which is 
 involved in the pernicious activity of the priestly 
 agents of the Roman Curia," says an American 
 writer, "is to promote the evangelisation of the 
 Roman Catholic people by putting before them 
 those fundamental truths of the Gospel which 
 most of them practically never hear from their 
 priests for the simple reason that, speaking 
 generally, the priests do not know them them- 
 selves. The most useful way to do this is by 
 testifying to individuals as to what Christ has 
 done in the heart and life of the speaker not 
 by attacking doctrines and dogmas of the Papal 
 Church. Most ' good ' Roman Catholics are 
 sincerely desirous of rinding acceptance with God ; 
 and in their hearts they know that going to mass, 
 doing penance, and obtaining absolution, com-
 
 286 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 pletely fail to give peace to their souls. They 
 do not know that they can go to the Heavenly 
 Father through the Saviour direct, but have 
 been taught from their childhood that it is only 
 through the Church they can receive good things 
 from God. The fact that Jesus Christ is able 
 to save to the uttermost all who come to Him 
 in faith and repentance, and the fact that He is 
 able to keep them from falling, will be quite new 
 ideas to most of the reader's Catholic friends/' 
 And thus all who know the truth of the Gospel 
 in its simplicity and power are called to share 
 in the work of all-round evangelisation. 
 
 For many, the great doctrines of the faith have 
 been hardened into formulas which have become 
 barren as the soil of the trodden footpath, and 
 they must all be made to live and glow with 
 passion and reality if Popery is to be vanquished 
 by that victory which turns enemies into friends. 
 As has been seen, for the most part we have to 
 deal with perverted truths rather than with sheer 
 falsehood, with worthy ends pursued in unworthy 
 ways, with mixed motives and mixed men ; and 
 nothing can meet such a situation but letting 
 the pure and holy light shine forth through the 
 faithful presentation of the whole counsel of God 
 and the entire message of salvation. Sound 
 doctrine is involved where there is the true Gospel, 
 but it is doctrine on fire with conviction born
 
 The Light must Shine 287 
 
 of actual experience of the saving grace of God 
 which alone will suffice. It was so in earlier 
 days, and nothing less will suffice in our day. 
 There must be intellectual conviction of the truth 
 of ihe great doctrines of the faith, but there must 
 also be conversion. Nothing but regeneration is 
 sufficient, and however much the lecture hall 
 and the study may be in the background the 
 work will only be done by the preaching of the 
 Gospel by all who have the Gospel to preach. 
 
 Mere controversy of itself is of little avail, 
 although it must often be engaged in in defence 
 of the truth. Unless there is direct exposition 
 of the fundamentals of Christianity nothing 
 effective or enduring can be achieved. Those who 
 would deal faithfully and fruitfully with Romanists 
 or Romanism must show forth the absolutely 
 free grace of God in the Gospel, with its immediate 
 message for all and its promise not only of for- 
 giveness but of eternal life. Scriptural views 
 alike of sin and salvation must be set forth ; the 
 conscience must be aroused to feel its need of 
 Christ ; the heart must discover its true Lord in 
 Him ; and the whole life must be yielded up 
 gratefully and entirely to Him. Superstition is 
 best denounced by making the truth known. 
 The darkness is only overcome when the light 
 shines in. No human power can sweep away a 
 fog ; but those who climb the hill can get above
 
 288 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 it to where the sun is shining in the clear sky ; 
 and the Evangel of God's grace can take sinners 
 out of the mists and fogs. 
 
 The experience of the McAll Mission in France 
 is one of many illustrations and proofs that the 
 enduring work must be done by evangelisation. 
 Controversy may be an ally, but it may also be 
 obtruded so as to hinder rather than help. It 
 is the positive truth, which is the engrafted Word, 
 which is able to save the soul. That Mission 
 has now not only Gospel halls in Paris and 
 throughout France, but carries on work along 
 other lines. Motor cars carry Gospel preachers 
 among the communes, where there is now unlimited 
 freedom to proclaim the truth as it is in Christ ; 
 while two missionary boats ply on the Seine and 
 its tributaries with the very best results. Nor is 
 it otherwise elsewhere when such work is done; 
 and all that is needed for the crowning victory 
 is that it should be carried on everywhere, and 
 that all who know the truth should live and 
 proclaim it with enthusiasm and originality, with 
 the wisdom of the serpent and the gentleness of 
 the dove. There are some whose Protestantism 
 seems to consist wholly of protesting, and is bound 
 up with mere antagonism and controversy ; as 
 well as some whose Protestantism is not winsome, 
 as the Gospel should always be. For while it is 
 true that there is nothing winsome in it for those
 
 Protesting not Enoug/i 289 
 
 who are wedded to sin, it is also true that men 
 are strange mixtures, with many survivals and 
 reminders of the fact that they were made for 
 God, and can find no true rest apart from Him ; 
 and there is something in every one to which the 
 Gospel can appeal. 
 
 It is noteworthy that the 66th Canon of the 
 Church of England expressly directs that Evan- 
 gelical work should be carried on among the 
 Roman Catholic population. Each bishop is in- 
 structed to seek diligently for all such in his 
 diocese, and to direct the clergy of the parishes 
 to labour by all means to win them from their 
 errors. If the vicar is not able to do so, a special 
 preacher is to be appointed for the work, and, 
 failing this, the bishop is directed himself to do the 
 work. Nor should it be overlooked in this con- 
 nection how much there is inherent in Romanism 
 to which the Gospel message can appeal. Over- 
 laid although it so often is with error and supersti- 
 tion, the fundamental truth of salvation through 
 the sacrifice offered by our Lord on Calvary is there 
 far more truly than in the rationalism of some of 
 the enemies of the Papacy. Many are better 
 than their creed, just as some are worse ; and 
 those who would win Rome must set themselves 
 so to preach the Gospel, which is the power of 
 God unto salvation, as to be able to begin with 
 what is common ground for Evangelicals and
 
 290 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 Romanists, that without shedding of blood there is 
 no remission of sin. 
 
 It is probable, indeed, that there should be a 
 clearer distinction observed between Romanism 
 as an ecclesiastical system and Romanism as a 
 religion dealing with conscience and the salvation 
 of souls. As an ecclesiastical system it is a des- 
 potism of the most pernicious sort; but many 
 Romanists are its victims rather than its instru- 
 ments, and are in a state of more or less conscious 
 protest against it. Those who deal with these 
 victims of the system must make the most of 
 the elements of Evangelical truth which are to be 
 found in the Romish religion, and which help to 
 explain why it has endured as it has done, and 
 how it has met, after its own fashion, the needs of 
 multitudes throughout the centuries. There are 
 other elements which contradict and partly nullify 
 what there still is of the Evangel, but fair white 
 lilies may grow in a bed of meadow-muck, and 
 those who would engage hopefully in the work of 
 world-wide evangelisation must take their stand 
 on the Gospel in all their dealings with members of 
 the Church of Rome. 
 
 The true Church cannot live in the past, even 
 the past of the Reformation, although the past 
 may live through it to ever fairer issues and ever 
 fuller revelation and satisfaction. The only 
 effective defence is attack ; and the attack must
 
 The Positive Message 291 
 
 primarily be along the lines which were so fruitful 
 in the great days of old, and are fruitful yet where 
 they are loyally followed. The Church of Christ 
 can only flourish, and only deserves to flourish, 
 where it is true to the truth, which is still good 
 news for the weary and sinning and empty-hearted. 
 Mere controversy about doctrines is easy, but it 
 may have as little religion in it as controversy 
 about fiscal reform. It is tempting, too, to show 
 that the so-called One, Holy, Catholic, and 
 Apostolic Church is neither One, nor Holy, nor 
 Catholic, nor Apostolic ; and in some respects is 
 not even a Church, since it has become very largely 
 an organisation of human skill and craft. But 
 while this side should never be left wholly in abey- 
 ance, it must be no more than a subsidiary line of 
 attack. 
 
 The first line, the line ever in evidence, must be 
 the positive message with which the Gospel comes, 
 and all experience goes to show that it is along 
 these lines the great consummation can alone come 
 when all men everywhere shall serve the One Lord. 
 All who love their Lord and long for the coming 
 of His Kingdom should set themselves to make 
 their faith as attractive as they can, and while 
 entering into no compromise with sin should 
 set what is positive in the forefront. To well- 
 informed people the great name of Protestant has 
 never suggested an undue emphasis of the merely
 
 292 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 negative side ; since nothing can thrive on nega- 
 tions alone. But neither must it be allowed to 
 suggest any undue emphasis on mere doctrines, no 
 matter how correct they are ; for of all things it grew 
 out of a personal experience of God, and must con- 
 tinue to do so if it is to be vital and progressive. 
 Nor must it be taken as suggesting that any one 
 period or episode is to be stereotyped. Our God 
 is the God of the living and not of the dead, and 
 we cannot walk in borrowed or reflected light. 
 God must be as near us as He was to the Apostles 
 or Reformers. 
 
 In their loyalty to the past genuine Christians 
 welcome reverent inquiry and court new light. 
 They are not obscurantists, but believers in the 
 Holy Ghost. Even the straitest of the Evangelical 
 churches have looked for fresh light to break forth 
 for them, and their history has been one of steady 
 illumination and growth. They have heard the 
 call to study the Word of God, not only in Scripture 
 but in His dealings with His people throughout 
 the history of the Church. They know that their 
 Lord has many things to say to them when they 
 are able to hear them. " Justification by faith " 
 may become a parrot cry ; the right of private 
 judgment an empty formula. The Church of 
 Christ which is to bring in the Kingdom will have 
 open eyes and a responsive spirit, and will show 
 that through the Triune God, who is with His
 
 Confidence in the Truth 293 
 
 people here and now, all that is claimed for the 
 mass and the priesthood as the organ of the Divine 
 guidance is enjoyed by those who wait upon the 
 Father through the Word and Spirit. No claim 
 will suffice unless it is attested in fact. Some 
 who have made much of the right of private judg- 
 ment have forgotten how barren it must be unless 
 there is loyalty to the corresponding duty. Every 
 right involves a duty; and those whom God has 
 endowed with reason and surrounded with re- 
 sponsibility must be free in fact, and must decide 
 for themselves as in His presence. 
 
 In its jealousy for the truth the true Church is 
 never intolerant. It knows that what men claim 
 for themselves they must claim for others. 
 Christianity can only lose by violence and force ; 
 it can only gain by truth and love. In a sense 
 truth cannot tolerate error, and what some call 
 toleration is just indifference. To them it does 
 not matter what a man believes, because they 
 believe nothing as they ought, and so they build 
 their pantheon for all the gods. But in another 
 and nobler sense those for whom truth means most 
 will be in sympathy with all others who believe, 
 even if they look at things from other view-points 
 than theirs and see them in other lights and pro- 
 portions. Their confidence in the truth is such 
 that they believe that the truth-loving will be 
 led to Him who is the Truth. At the Reforma-
 
 294 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 tion it was the true men who found the truth, the 
 devoted seekers who were led out into the wealthy 
 place of the Spirit of God; and still it is to the 
 upright that light arises in the darkness. The 
 consummation which must be sought is to show the 
 best men and women in the Church of Eome that 
 their deepest yearnings such as that assurance of 
 pardon and eternal life which is denied them as a 
 heresy to be anathematised can be satisfied only 
 through obedience to the call to untrammelled 
 fellowship with God, and to be kings and priests 
 unto God through the one great High Priest. 
 
 No one is a true Evangelical who believes that 
 the truth requires more than a fair field and no 
 favour. Rome is never satisfied even in the 
 foreign field unless she has the civil arm on her 
 side ; but nothing is clearer from history than 
 that the civil arm has brought weakness and 
 confusion from the days of Constantine until 
 now. The times of genuine spiritual triumph 
 have been when the truth had to struggle against 
 the forces of evil. The times of decline, of pagan 
 intrusion and moral decay, have been when the 
 Church of God compromised herself by worldly 
 alliances and consented to be buttressed by 
 ambitious monarchs and scheming statesmen. 
 Here, at any rate, force is no remedy, and the 
 gains which come through imperial decrees mean 
 weakness and not strength. Force may keep
 
 Force no Remedy 295 
 
 down brutes but can never make men. It may 
 silence the enemy but it can never lead to con- 
 versions. The Reformation could not but end 
 in the emancipation of the whole circle of human 
 life. It meant intellectual freedom; and science 
 in the works of Lord Bacon and philosophy in 
 the writings of Descartes soon entered on a 
 development, independent of theology, such as 
 was not possible before that revolution took place. 
 Even if it would, true Protestantism cannot stifle 
 inquiry, irregular though it be. If it were able 
 to do that it would commit suicide. Serfs may 
 be driven in regiments, but the Gospel has to 
 guide and inspire the free. It is possible to crush 
 out differences and call the desert unity ; but 
 the unity of the Kingdom is one which recognises 
 difference and subordinates no legitimate rights 
 or healthy outgoings of the spirit of man. Far 
 too often, however, the Protestant ecclesiastic has 
 shared in the intolerance of his Roman brother. 
 He was ready to provide a much longer chain, 
 but still there was a chain ; whereas the only 
 teaching which can triumph must be that of the 
 Spirit, which makes men free all round. Even 
 loyalty to the past may become a fetish unless 
 there are open eyes for the new fresh light of the 
 Spirit of God. 
 
 Even when it is discouraged by indifference 
 and defeat genuine Protestantism is not dismayed.
 
 296 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 Truth is great and will prevail. Those who trust 
 in God can take long views and await the far 
 results. " Truth pressed to earth shall rise 
 again, the eternal years of God are hers." But 
 those who are the children of the Reformation 
 must do the deeds of the Reformation ; walking 
 in the light of God ; rising above every tradition 
 of the past to the new needs and the new promises 
 of the present ; and passing beyond doctrines, even 
 the purest, to personal fellowship with the Saviour 
 Christ. There is a very suggestive picture in one of 
 Wiclif s Bibles. A tiny fire has broken out in the 
 midst of a company of priests. It is burning 
 inside the covers of a Bible and spreading rapidly. 
 They all gather round it and try to blow it out ; 
 but the more they blow the more it burns, until 
 at last they are compelled to flee to escape its 
 consuming flames. The Word which Rome has 
 always dreaded and tried to suppress is a living 
 Word for those who are free; and an adequate 
 doctrine of Scripture, as ever responding to every 
 true need, would do much to meet the cravings 
 which Rome has attempted to meet by so many 
 unhappy and ruinous devices. In the first days 
 of Christianity every believer was of necessity an 
 evangelist, a city set on a hill, a centre of light 
 and leading, a citadel and stronghold of the truth. 
 It was so also in Reformation times, when even 
 the timid had to show whose side they were on
 
 Revival 297 
 
 and witness for the Saviour and His perfect 
 salvation. Nor can the final triumph of the 
 faith be attained otherwise in our era. Revival 
 must begin at the House of God if the regions 
 beyond are to become the garden of the Lord. 
 It is from the Evangelical side that the arrest can 
 and must be removed, so that the water of life 
 may flow all over the earth; and it is to attain 
 nothing less than that, that believers are called. 
 
 It may be argued that it is not the Reformation 
 merely that has been arrested but Christianity, 
 inasmuch as its enemies were never more numerous 
 or virulent than they are now, and lack of power 
 is the most manifest feature of the situation. 
 To that it is sufficient to reply that in connection 
 with Christianity also the most urgent need of our 
 time is to lift the arrest, to put an end to the ice 
 age, to rise to the heights of its imperial and 
 imperious claims. All things are possible to 
 those who believe, and no loyal Christian dare 
 doubt that if all those who truly believe were to 
 rise to the height of their responsibilities and 
 were to go forward in the power of the Spirit of 
 God and His Word, the Roman Catholic peoples 
 would ere long be won, even if the framework of 
 the Hierarchy were left as a hopeless remainder. 
 Nor is this too great a task for the lovers of the 
 Gospel if God be for them ; and it is probable that 
 if they advanced in faith they would discover
 
 298 The Arrested Reformation 
 
 that already the victory of the Evangel and 
 freedom has been greater than sometimes appears, 
 and that there is more sincere vital aggressive 
 Christianity in the world now than ever there 
 was before, in spite of materialism and agnosticism, 
 of Popery and indifference. 
 
 In speaking of the arrest of the Reformation 
 there is no suggestion that the Reformation has 
 in any sense been a failure. The very significance 
 of its arrest lies in the fact that it has done so 
 much as to make it marvellous that it has not 
 done more. All that is best in our modern life, 
 whether in public or private, and all the institu- 
 tions of which we are proudest come to us through 
 the Reformation. The new tenderness for child- 
 hood, the new honour paid to womanhood, the 
 new yearnings to chase poverty and disease away 
 and to abolish misery and crime all that fills 
 men's hearts with hope comes to us through the 
 Reformation. 
 
 But those who have the Spirit of Christ can- 
 not but long for greater things than these, for 
 realisation where there is only hope, for the 
 universal empire of their Lord, for victory over 
 error and superstition, over sin and unbelief, 
 to the very ends of the earth. It would be much 
 to set humanity free from the incubus of Rome. 
 It would be infinitely more to bring all men into 
 living personal surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ.
 
 The Grand Result 
 
 299 
 
 It is a great honour to be called to share in such 
 a work, and a great inspiration. Those who 
 hear it may well give themselves up to it with 
 ardour and self-surrender, proud to follow in the 
 footsteps of the heroes and heroines of the days 
 which are gone, and filled with the courage and 
 faith which come from great ideals and from the 
 call to nothing less than the conquest of the whole 
 earth for their Lord.
 
 INDEX 
 
 " ACCOMMODATION," CONVERSION 
 by, 179-182. 
 
 Albigenses, 57, 59. 
 
 Americanism, 218-220. 
 
 Ancestry of Reformation, 48-68, 
 134, 242 ; of Modern Roman- 
 ism, 67, 225-242. 
 
 Antinomianism, ancient and 
 modern, 83. 
 
 Arrested Reformation : the prob- 
 lem, 3-24; causes of, 12-20; 
 tacitly accepted now, 20 ; how 
 it can be removed, 263-299. 
 
 Augustine, his divided inheritance, 
 67, 230, 232. 
 
 Austria : Reformation in, 6, 126- 
 128 ; Los von Rom in, 196-201. 
 
 " BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY," 56. 
 Bavaria, Reformation in, 7, 162. 
 Belgium, Los von Rom in, 195. 
 Bernard of Clairvaux, 42, 51. 
 Bernard of Clugny, 52. 
 Bible, Rome and the, 37, 40, 43, 
 
 45, 80, 193 ; Ritualists and the, 
 
 39. 
 
 Bunyan and Giant Pope, 21. 
 Butler, Bishop, 136. 
 
 CALVIN, AND MISSIONS, 19 ; AND 
 Scripture, 75-76 ; and Anti- 
 nomianism, 83 ; and freedom, 
 84. 
 
 Calvinists v. Lutherans, 70, 118, 
 121, 123, 125, 127, 141. 
 
 Catherine of Siena, 60. 
 
 Celts and Reformation, 100. 
 
 Charles v., 147, 152. 
 
 Chesterton, quoted, 22. 
 
 Civil Freedom and Reformation, 
 85. 
 
 Confessional, the, 275-277. 
 
 Constantine, 27 ; his fatal gift, 28. 
 
 Co-operation with Rome, 174-176, 
 183. 
 
 Councils : Toulouse, 38 ; Con- 
 stance, 59 ; Basle, 59 ; Trent, 6, 
 80, 153-155, 221, 225-242, 260, 
 270 ; Vatican, 22, 158. 
 
 Counter- Reformation, 6, 14, 18, 
 31, 114, 123, 147-166. 
 
 Cranmer, 107, 149. 
 
 Cyprian, 29. 
 
 DANTE AND CORRUPTION OF 
 
 Church, 28, 55. 
 Decadence of Romish nations, 4, 
 
 129-132, 194, 197. 
 Deformation, the, 18, 133-146; 
 
 Foreign Missions during, 138- 
 
 140. 
 Disunion among Reformers, 12, 
 
 14, 96, 97, 141 ; in modern 
 
 times, 263-164. 
 Dollinger, quoted, 193, 258, 259. 
 
 ECKHART, THE MYSTIC, 62. 
 
 Edict of Nantes, 119, 164. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 109. 
 
 Emigration to America, one cause 
 of, 21, 99, 219. 
 
 England, Statutes of Praemunire 
 and Provisors, 56 ; Reformation 
 in, 65, 70, 103-110; Deforma- 
 tion in, 136-139. 
 
 Erasmus, 9, 18, 36, 74, 235. 
 
 Erastianism, 16, 28, 125. 
 
 Europe in Reformation Era, 70-72. 
 
 Evangelicals, before Reformation, 
 48-50 ; in Reformed Churches, 
 284-294 ; and philanthropy, 
 144-145. 
 
 301
 
 302 
 
 Index 
 
 FAILURE OF EARLY ROMISH 
 
 Missions, 181, 205 seq. 
 Fairbairn, Principal, quoted, 67. 
 Faith, Reformers' doctrine of, 80, 
 
 82. 
 
 Fenelon, 48. 
 Feudalism, 84. 
 Fogazzaro, 257. 
 Foreign Missions, 19 seq., 138; 
 
 Danish, 124; Dutch, 122; 
 
 French, 121 ; German, 117 ; 
 
 Norwegian, 124 ; Swedish, 125 ; 
 
 Romish, 171-186, 205 seq. 
 France, 4, 118-121, 164, 137-190, 
 
 252, 261. 
 
 Francis of Assisi, 60. 
 Froissart, quoted, 51. 
 Froude, quoted, 34, 225. 
 
 GALLICANISM, 56. 
 Gambetta and clericalism, 13. 
 Gasquet, abbot, quoted, 243. 
 Genealogies, Reformation, 48-68, 
 
 134 ; modern Romanist, 67, 
 
 225-242. 
 Germany, Reformation in, 114- 
 
 118 ; Los von Rom in, 198, 201- 
 
 202, 250-251. 
 
 Gore, Bishop, quoted, 258, 267. 
 Grace, in Reformation theology, 
 
 82. 
 Green, J. R., quoted, 144, 148. 
 
 HARNACK, QUOTED, 68. 
 
 Henry vm., 10, 60, 108. 
 
 High Church party in England, 
 
 110. 
 
 Hoensbroech, Count von, 37, 158. 
 Holland, Reformation in, 121 ; 
 
 and freedom, 122. 
 Holy Spirit, Reformers and, 78- 
 
 80 ; doctrine of, 279-280, 292. 
 Horton, Dr., quoted, 29, 42, 281. 
 Hungary, 164. 
 Hus, 50, 64, 126, 199. 
 Hymn writers, Mediaeval, 51-53. 
 
 " IMITATIO CHRISTI," 61. 
 Infallibility, papal, 155, 234, 236, 
 
 249. 
 
 Inquisition, 32, 149. 
 Ireland and the Reformation, 97- 
 
 100. 
 
 Irenaeus, 29. 
 Italian Humanism, 35. 
 
 Italy and the Papacy, 130, 148- 
 150. 
 
 JAPAN, MISSIONS IN, 178. 
 
 Jesuits, 6, 14, 31, 128, 155-163, 
 172, 212, 213, 229, 260 ; power 
 behind Pope, 42, 157, 260. 
 
 John, King of England, 33. 
 
 Justification, by faith alone, 80- 
 84 ; at Trent, 230-232. 
 
 Justin Martyr, 29. 
 
 KNOX, JOHN, 84, 102, 107, 148. 
 
 LAS CASAS, 205. 
 
 Laserre, Henri, 41. 
 
 Latin peoples and Reformation, 4, 
 69. 
 
 Latin as the literary language, 
 70-72. 
 
 Laud and Council of Trent, 153. 
 
 Lindsay, Principal, quoted, 162, 
 231, 235. 
 
 Loisy, 257. 
 
 " Los von Rom," 180-204 ; In 
 Austria, 196-201 ; Belgium, 
 195 ; Canada, 208 ; France, 
 187-190, 252; Germany, 198, 
 201-202, 250-251 ; Italy, 191- 
 193 ; Mexico, 212 ; Portugal, 
 194; Spain, 193; United 
 States, 214-221. 
 
 Lull, Raymund, 268-270. 
 
 Luther, had defects of qualities, 
 14 ; and the Arrest, 11 ; and 
 peasants, 15 ; and John 
 Wessel, 66 ; and Scripture, 75, 
 76 ; and Antinomianism, 83 ; 
 and freedom, 84. 
 
 Lutherans and Calvinists, 70, 118, 
 121, 123, 125, 127, 141. 
 
 McALL MISSION, 288. 
 
 Macaulay, quoted, 34, 148, 150, 
 
 151, 165, 266. 
 M'Giffert, Professor, 267. 
 Manichgean heresies, 57-59, 67, 277. 
 Manning, Cardinal, 104. 
 Mass, doctrine of, at Trent, 237- 
 
 238; 277-279. 
 Mediaeval, heresies, 50, 57-59, 134, 
 
 229; hymn writers, 51-53; 
 
 movements, 50, 53-60 ; poets 
 
 and the Papacy, 60 ; Reformers, 
 
 64-66; Saints, 50, 66.
 
 Index 
 
 303 
 
 Melanchthon, at Diet of Ratisbon, 
 
 5; 14, 130. 
 
 Methodism, 103, 111, 143. 
 Mexico, Rome in, 212. 
 Missions, Danish, 124 ; Dutch, 
 
 122 ; French, 121 ; German, 
 
 117 ; Norwegian, 124 ; Swedish, 
 
 125; Romish, 167-186, 205 
 
 seq. 
 Missionary obligations of Church, 
 
 18, 195. 
 
 " Mixed Multitude," the, 9. 
 Modernism, 243-261. 
 More, Sir Thomas, 9. 
 Mozley, quoted, 27. 
 " Mystery of Iniquity," 13, 28, 29, 
 
 48. 
 Mystics, 62-64. 
 
 NATURAL MAN, ROME AND THE, 
 4446. 
 
 Ne Temere Decree, 201, 216, 255. 
 Netherlands, Reformation in, 121. 
 Nicolas of Basle, 63. 
 Non- Biblical Christianity, 37. 
 
 OLD CATHOLICS, 199-200. 
 Origins and Principles, 25-89. 
 Origins, Reformation, 48-68, 134, 
 242 ; Romish, 67, 225-242. 
 
 PAGANISM, IN MEDIEVAL CHURCH, 
 13, 27 ; in Mediaeval heresies, 
 50, 57-59, 229. 
 
 Papacy, doctrine, at Trent, 239 ; 
 its failures, 21 ; risings against, 
 55. 
 
 Pascal, 160. 
 
 Peasants' War, 14, 16, 115. 
 
 Persecution, 147-149. 
 
 Piagnoni and Reformation, 65. 
 
 Pietism, 11, 143. 
 
 Pole, Cardinal, 9, 232. 
 
 Pollard, Professor, quoted, 14, 64. 
 
 Popes : Leo I., 30 ; Hadrian iv., 
 98 ; Alexander vi., 31 ; Paul 
 m., 5; Julius n., 30; Leo x., 
 30, 147, 150; Paul IV., 235; 
 Pius iv., 232, 237 ; Sixtus v., 
 236; Innocent x., 180; Urban 
 vm., 180; Innocent xi., 181 ; 
 Clement xiv., 156 ; Leo. xn., 
 40 ; Pius IX., 234 ; Leo. xm., 
 22, 220 ; Pius X., 252. 
 
 Portugal, Rome in, 129, 194. 
 
 Priest, the, in Romanism, 81, 88 ; 
 
 in New Testament, 87-89, 273. 
 Priesthood of all believers, 87-89, 
 
 272-275. 
 Principles of the Reformation, 
 
 69-89. 
 Private judgment, right and duty 
 
 of, 84-87. 
 Protestantism and Rationalism, 
 
 133-136. 
 
 Protestant Scholasticism, 139. 
 Puritanism, 109, 247. 
 
 RATISBON, CONCILIATION AT 
 Diet of, 5. 
 
 Reformation, failed as well as 
 succeeded, 3 ; divided the 
 nations, 4 ; possibility of com- 
 plete, 5 ; its real strength, 7, 9 ; 
 not the golden age, 9 ; problem 
 of arrested, 3-24 ; should be 
 completed, 10, 20, 93, 112; of 
 the serfs, 16 ; absolute necessity 
 for, 31-33 ; a great revival, 8, 
 47, 68, 72, 82; principles of, 
 69-89 ; and civil liberty, 85. 
 
 Reformation in Austria, 6, 196- 
 201 ; Bavaria, 7 ; Belgium, 6, 
 122, 195 ; England, 10, 65, 70, 
 103-110; France, 6, 118-121, 
 187-190, 252; Germany, 113- 
 118, 198, 201-202, 250-251 ; 
 Hungary, 127 ; Ireland, 97- 
 100; Italy, 130, 191-193; 
 Netherlands, 121 ; Poland, 7 ; 
 Portugal, 129, 194; Scandi- 
 navia, 123 ; Scotland, 10, 101- 
 103; Spain, 128, 148, 193; 
 Switzerland, 122, 196; Wales, 
 100-101. 
 
 Reformers, catholicity of, 241- 
 242 ; and social implications of 
 Gospel, 14 ; and Foreign Mis- 
 sions, 19 ; true ancestry of, 50, 
 59, 61, 64, 66 ; before Reforma- 
 tion, 50, 227-228. 
 
 Reforming Cardinals, 31 ; Coun- 
 cils, 59. 
 
 Renaissance, 35, 36, 55, 64, 72 ; 
 Transalpine and Cisalpine, 35. 
 
 Romanism and national de- 
 cadence, 4, 69, 129-132 ; and 
 conversion, 43-46. 
 
 Rome, and the Bible, 37, 40, 43, 
 45, 80, 193, 233-237; and
 
 Index 
 
 democracy, 22, 253, 256; 
 schismatic, 229 ; and the de- 
 votional life, 271 ; and Foreign 
 Missions, 174-176, 178-179, 
 183, 205 seq. ; and reform, 6, 
 32,150-153; in British Colonies, 
 159, 255. 
 Ruskin, quoted, 44. 
 
 SACERDOTALISM, LEAVEN OF, 13, 
 
 27-30, 38, 46, 57. 
 Savonarola, 50, 65. 
 Saxon Chronicle, 34. 
 Scandinavia, Reformation in, 123. 
 Scotland, Reformation in, 10, 
 
 101-103 ; Irish immigrants and 
 
 Sabbath in, 103. 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 32. 
 Scripture, Mediaeval doctrine of, 
 
 74 ; Reformers and, 73-80, 107 ; 
 
 Rome and, 37, 40, 43, 45, 80, 
 
 193, 233-237 ; Westminster 
 
 Confession and, 75. 
 Serfs and Reformation, 16 ; their 
 
 demands reasonable, 17. 
 Shorthouse, Mr., and non-biblical 
 
 Christianity, 37. 
 Social implications of Gospel, 12, 
 
 94. 
 South America, Rome in, 181, 
 
 184-186, 209-211, 213. 
 Spain, Reformation in, 128, 148, 
 
 193. 
 
 Speer, R. E., quoted, 184-186, 269. 
 Suso, the Mystic, 63. 
 Swift, Dean, quoted, 138. 
 Switzerland, Reformation in, 122, 
 
 196. 
 
 TAULER, 63. 
 
 Temporal Power, the, 22. 
 Tennyson and Lord's Supper, 109. 
 " Testimony of Holy Ghost," 78. 
 Teuton peoples and Reformation, 
 
 4, 69 ; and Humanism, 35. 
 The Benefits of Christ's Death, 66, 
 
 149. 
 
 Thirty Years' War, 12, 115, 127. 
 Thomas of Celano, 52. 
 Transubstantiation doctrine, at 
 
 Trent, 237-238. 
 
 Trent, Councils of. See Councils. 
 Tyndale, Wm., 98, 107, 139. 
 
 UNION MOVEMENTS, 96-97. 
 United States, Rome in, 214- 
 221. 
 
 VULGATE, ROME AND THE, 235- 
 
 236. 
 Vaughan, Cardinal, quoted, 104. 
 
 169. 
 
 WALDENSIANS, 57, 127, 131. 
 
 Waldo, Peter, 50. 
 
 Wales, Reformation in, 100-101. 
 
 Welz, Baron von, 19. 
 
 Wesley, John, 10, 144. 
 
 Wessel, John, 66. 
 
 Westphalia, Peace of, 7, 14, 115. 
 
 Whitefield, 137, 144. 
 
 Wiclif, 38, 50, 64, 65, 296. 
 
 XAVIEE'S MISSIONARY METHODS, 
 178-179. 
 
 Y.M.C.A.'s IN NORTH AMERICA, 
 111. 
 
 ZWINGLI, 14, 64, 121, 155. 
 
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