will be differently received, according to differences of individual views.

66 an

That the Reformation in regard to its leading principle was insurrection of the human mind against the absolute power of spiritual order" (p. 256) is a remark that needs qualification. No doubt the assertion of this principle of absolute independence, or the unlimited right of private judgment in religion, became and has continued to be the great characteristic result of the religious revolution. But the Reformation did not at the outset (any more than many other great revolutions) generalize itself, define and enunciate the principles on which it proceeded. It began with opposition to special abuses and corruptions. Neither Luther nor his associates comprehended at first how far they should be carried. It was only in the sequel that the right of private judgment in religion was brought out, asserted, and contended for as a principle. Luther himself and the earliest reformers did not contend for it as an absolute principle. This is evident from the continual offers of Luther to submit himself implicitly to the decision of a general council. It is evident moreover from the fact that the reformers, just as much as the papists, held it right to inflict coercion, physical pains, and death upon those who denied what they regarded as the essential faith.

"The Roman Catholics," says Robertson, "as their system rested on the decisions of an infallible judge, never doubted that truth was on their side, and openly called on the civil power to repel the impious and heretical innovators who had risen up against it. The Protestants, no less confident that their doctrine was well founded, required with equal ardor the princes of their party to check such as presumed to impugn or oppose it. Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, Knox, the founders of the reformed church in their respective countries, inflicted, as far as they had power and opportunity, the same punishments, which were denounced by the Church of Rome, upon such as called in question any article of their creed."

Upon this passage of Robertson, Smythe (Lectures on Mod. Hist. p. 292, Am. ed.) remarks, that "Luther might have been favorably distinguished from Calvin and others. There are passages in his writings, with regard to the interference of the magistrate in religious concerns, that do him honor; but he was favorably situated, and lived not to see the temporal sword at his command. He was never tried."

Now whether the principle of independence of all authority, the absolutely unlimited right of private judgment in matters of religious faith, be or be not a correct principle, it will not be disputed at the present day that absolute independence of all human authority, and so far forth the unlimited right of private judgment, is a correct principle, and that all coercion or physical punishment is a monstrous absurdity and a monstrous crime. Yet nothing is clearer from history than that the reformers did not understand, did not act upon this principle; it was a century and a half before Protestants

learned definitively that they had no right to inflict death, imprisonment, stripes or fines upon heretics, and no right beyond that of simply separating from their communion. It is a prevalent opinion among us, that the Romanists are the only ones who put people to death on account of their religious opinions. Protestants should know that this is not the case. So far from it, much sad warrant was given for the taunt of the Papists, "that the reformers were only against burning when they were in fear of it themselves." It is far better therefore not to burden the defence of the Reformation with the impossible task of denying or palliating the indefensible acts of its first authors-acts to which they were led because they themselves were not yet fully emancipated from the corrupt principles of the age. The great cause of the Reformation does not stand or fall on such grounds; and nothing is lost by freely admitting all the persecuting acts of the early reformers.

Calvin burnt Servetus for heresy: the mild Melancthon approved the act; so did Bucer, (Calv. Epist. p. 147, ed. Genev. 1575). Calvin, in his letter to the Earl of Somerset, lord Protector of England, (Epist. p. 67,) speaking of the Papists and of the fanatic sect of "Gospellers," says expressly, "they ought to be repressed by the avenging sword which the Lord has put into your hands,gladio ultore coerceri quem tibi tradidit Dominus.”

In 1550, in the reign of Edward VI., a woman was burnt at the stake for some opinion about the incarnation of Christ. The king was extremely reluctant to sign the death warrant, and yielded only to the authority of Cranmer. See Burnet. The Protestant historian Fuller, a century afterwards, has this passage about it: She, with one or two Arians, were all who (and that justly) died in this king's reign for their opinions. "And that justly!!"

For an account of the executions and other severe punishments inflicted for religious opinions by the Protestants in England, see the Church Histories of Heylin, Fuller, and Collier, all Protestant writers. For a brief summary, see Smythe's Lectures on Mod. Hist. vol. i. p. 266, et seq. Am. ed. It appears that many were put to death in the reign of Henry VIII.; some in the time of Edward VI.; one hundred and sixty Roman Catholics in the reign of Elizabeth; sixteen or seventeen in that of James I.; and more than twenty by the Presbyterians and Republicans. Some of these were burned or hanged directly for their religious opinions; others under sanguinary laws enacted on supposed principles of state necessity.

From a study of the history connected with these facts, the reader will be able to judge for himself how far the principle of the freedom of the mind in regard to religious faith, was recognised or respected by the reformers.

One more question the student should have before his mind in going through the history of this period. Admitting the right of individual judgment to be absolutely independent of all human authority, and all punishment for religious opinions to be absurd and monstrous,-has man, on the other hand, a right to oppose

his

individual judgment to divine authority, and arbitrarily to reject the historical evidence by which the divine decision of any article of faith is established? On this point let the student recur to the remarks of Guizot, p. 261. "It [the Reformation] fell into a double error. On the one side it did not know or respect all the rights of human thought; at the very moment that it was demanding these rights for itself, it was violating them towards others. On the other side, it was unable to estimate the rights of authority in matters of reason. I do not speak of that coercive authority which ought to have no rights at all in such matters, but of that kind of authority which is purely moral, and acts solely by its influence upon the mind. In most reformed countries, something is wanting to complete the proper organization of intellectual society, and to the regular action of old and general opinions. What is due to and required by traditional belief, has not been reconciled with what is due to and required by freedom of thinking; and the cause of this undoubtedly is, that the Reformation did not fully comprehend and accept its own principles and effects."

This perhaps is the most important passage in the lecture for the student's meditation, and indicates a profound insight on the author's part into the great problem which it was the mission of the Reformation to solve; but which, as the author too truly says, is yet to be solved.

LECTURE XIII.

THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION.

We have seen, that during the course of the sixteenth century, all the elements, all the facts, of ancient European society had merged in two essential facts, the right of free examination, and centralization of power; one prevailing in religious society, the other in civil society. The emancipation of the human mind and absolute monarchy triumphed at the same moment over Europe in general.

It could hardly be conceived that a struggle between these two facts-the characters of which appear so contradictorywould not, at some time, break out; for while one was the defeat of absolute power in the spiritual order, the other was the triumph of absolute power in the temporal order; one forced on the decline of the ancient ecclesiastical monarchy, the other was the consummation of the ruin of the ancient feudal and municipal liberty. Their simultaneous appearance was owing, as I have already observed, to the circumstance that the revolutions of the religious society followed more rapidly than those of the civil; one had arrived at the point in which the freedom of individual thought was secured, while the other still lingered on the spot where the concentration of all the powers in one general power took place. The co-incidence of these two facts, so far from being the consequence of their similitude, did not even prevent their contradiction. They were both advances in the march of civilization, but they were advances connected with different situations; advances of a different moral date, if I may be allowed the expression, although coincident in time. From their position it seemed inevitable that they must clash and combat before a reconciliation could be effected between them.

The first shock between them took place in England. The struggle of the right of free inquiry, the fruit of the Reformation, against the entire suppression of political liberty, the object

aimed at by pure monarchy-the attempt to abolish absolute power in the temporal order, as had already been done in the spiritual order-this is the true sense of the English revolution; this is the part it took in the work of civilization.

But how, it may be asked, came it to pass, that this struggle took place in England sooner than anywhere else? How happened it that the revolutions of a political character coincided here with those of a moral character sooner than they did on the Continent?

In England, the royal power had undergone the same vicissitudes as it had on the Continent. Under the Tudors it had reached a degree of concentration and vigor which it had never attained to before. I do not mean to say that the practical despotism of the Tudors was more violent and vexatious than that of their predecessors; there were quite as many, perhaps more, tyrannical proceedings, vexations, and acts of injustice, under the Plantagenets, as under the Tudors. Perhaps, too, at this very period the government of pure monarchy was more severe and arbitrary on the Continent than in England. The new fact under the Tudors was, that absolute power became systematic; royalty laid claim to a primitive, independent sovereignty; it held a language which it had never held before. The theoretic claims of Henry VIII., Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I., are very different from those of Edward I. and III., although, in point of fact, the power of the two latter monarchs was nowise less arbitrary or extensive. I repeat, then, it was the principle, the rational system of monarchy, which changed in England, in the sixteenth century, rather than its practical power; royalty now declared itself absolute and superior to all laws, even to those which it declared itself willing to respect,

There is another point to be considered; the religious revolution had not been accomplished in England in the same way as on the Continent; it was here the work of the monarchs themselves. It must not be supposed that the seeds had not been sown, or that even attempts had not been made at a popular reform, or that one would not probably have soon broken out. But Henry VIII. took the lead; power became revolutionary; and hence it happened, at least in its origin, that, as a redress of ecclesiastical abuses, as an emancipation of the human mind, the reform in England was much less