Church History Part 1

Church History.

Vol. 3.

by J. H. Kurtz.

I. Relations between the Different Churches.

-- 152. East and West.

The papacy formed new plans for conquest in the domain of the Eastern church, but with at most only transient success. Still more illusory were the hopes entertained for a while in Geneva and London in regard to the Calvinizing of the Greek church.

1. _Roman Catholic Hopes._-The Jesuit missions among the Turks and schismatic Greeks failed, but among the Abyssinians some progress was made. By promising Spanish aid, the Jesuit Paez succeeded, in A.D. 1621, in inducing the Sultan Segued to abjure the Jacobite heresy. Mendez was made Abyssinian patriarch by Urban VIII. in A.D. 1626, but the clergy and people repeatedly rebelled against sultan and patriarch. In A.D. 1642 the next sultan drove the Jesuits out of his kingdom, and in it henceforth no traces of Catholicism were to be found.-In Russia the false Demetrius, in A.D. 1605, working in Polish Catholic interests, sought to catholicize the empire; but this only convinced the Russians that he was no true czar's son. When his Catholic Polish bride entered Moscow with 200 Poles, a riot ensued, in which Demetrius lost his life.(1)

2. _Calvinistic Hopes._-_Cyril Lucar_, a native of Crete, then under Venetian rule, by long residence in Geneva had come to entertain a strong liking to the Reformed church. Expelled from his situation as rector of a Greek seminary at Ostrog by Jesuit machinations, he was made Patriarch of Alexandria in A.D. 1602 and of Constantinople in A.D. 1621. He maintained a regular correspondence with Reformed divines in Holland, Switzerland, and England. In A.D. 1628 he sent the famous Codex Alexandrinus as a present to James I. He wrought expressly for a union of the Greek and Reformed churches, and for this end sent, in A.D. 1629, to Geneva an almost purely Calvinistic confession. But the other Greek bishops opposed his union schemes, and influential Jesuits in Constantinople accused him of political faults. Four times the sultan deposed and banished him, and at last, in A.D. 1638, he was strangled as a traitor and cast into the sea.-One of his Alexandrian clergy, Metrophanes Critopulus, whom in A.D.

1616 he had sent for his education to England, studied several years at Oxford, then at German Protestant universities, ending with Helmstadt, where, in A.D. 1625, he composed in Greek a confession of the faith of the Greek Orthodox Church. It was pointedly antagonistic to the Romish doctrine, conciliatory toward Protestantism, while abandoning nothing essential in the Greek Orthodox creed, and showing signs of the possession of independent speculative power. Afterwards Metrophanes became Patriarch of Alexandria, and in the synod, presided over by Lucar's successor, Cyril of Berrhoe, at Constantinople in A.D. 1638, gave his vote for the formal condemnation of the man who had been already executed.(2)

3. _Orthodox Constancy._-The Russian Orthodox church, after its emanc.i.p.ation from Constantinople and the erection of an independent patriarchate at Moscow in A.D. 1589 (-- 73, 4), had decidedly the pre-eminence over the Greek Orthodox church, and the Russian czar took the place formerly occupied by the East Roman emperor as protector of the whole Orthodox church. The dangers to the Orthodox faith threatened by schemes of union with Catholics and Protestants induced the learned metropolitan, Peter Mogilas of Kiev, to compose a new confession in catechetical form, which, in A.D. 1643, was formally authorized by the Orthodox patriarchs as ????d???? ??????a t?? ?a??????? ?a? ?p?st??????

?????s?a? t?? ??at??????.-Thirty years later a controversy on the eucharist broke out between the Jansenists Nicole and Arnauld, on the one side, and the Calvinists Claude and Jurieu, on the other (-- 157, 1), in which both claimed to be in agreement with the Greek church. A synod was convened under _Dositheus of Jerusalem_ in A.D. 1672, at the instigation of French diplomatists, where the questions raised by Cyril were again taken into consideration. Maintaining a friendly att.i.tude toward the Romish church, it directed a violent polemic against Calvinism. In order to save the character of the Constantinopolitan chair for constant Orthodoxy, Cyril's confession of A.D. 1629 was p.r.o.nounced a spurious, heretical invention, and a confession composed by Dositheus, in which Cyril's Calvinistic heresies were repudiated, was incorporated with the synod's acts.

-- 153. Catholicism and Protestantism.

The Jesuit counter-reformation (-- 151) was eminently successful during the first decades of the century in Bohemia. The Westphalian Peace restrained its violence, but did not prevent secret machinations and the open exercise of all conceivable arts of seduction. Next to the conversion of Bohemia, the greatest triumph of the restoration was won in France in the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Besides such victories the Catholics were able to glory in the conversion of several Protestant princes. New endeavours at union were repeatedly made, but these in every case proved as fruitless as former attempts had done.

1. _Conversions of Protestant Princes._-The first reigning prince who became a convert to Romanism was the Margrave _James III. of Baden_. He went over in A.D. 1590 (-- 144, 4), but as his death occurred soon after, his conduct had little influence upon his people. Of greater consequence was the conversion, in A.D. 1614, of the Count-palatine Wolfgang William of Neuburg, as it prepared the way for the catholicizing of the whole Palatinate, which followed in A.D. 1685. Much was made of the pa.s.sing over to the Catholic church of _Christina of Sweden_, the highly gifted but eccentric daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. As she had resigned the crown, the pope gained no political advantage from his new member, and Alexander VII. had even to contribute to her support. The Elector of Saxony, _Frederick Augustus II._, pa.s.sed over to the Roman Catholic church in A.D.

1697, in order to qualify himself for the Polish crown; but the rights of his Protestant subjects were carefully guarded. An awkwardness arose from the fact that the prince was pledged by the directory of the Regensburg Diet of A.D. 1653 to care for the interests of the evangelical church. Now that he had become a Catholic, he still formally promised to do so, but had his duties discharged by a commissioner. Subsequently this officer was ordered to take his directions from the evangelical council of Dresden.

2. _The Restoration in Germany and the Neighbouring States (-- 151, 1)._-Matthias having, in violation of the royal letter of his predecessor Rudolph II. (-- 139, 19), refused to allow the Protestants of Bohemia to build churches, was driven out; the Jesuits also were expelled, and the Calvinistic Elector-palatine Frederick V. was chosen as prince in A.D.

1619. Ferdinand II. (A.D. 1619-1637) defeated him, tore up the royal letter, restored the Jesuits, and expelled the Protestant pastors. Efforts were made by Christian IV. of Denmark and other Protestant princes to save Protestantism, but without success. Ferdinand now issued his _Rest.i.tution Edict_ of A.D. 1629, which deprived Protestants of their privileges, and gave to Catholic n.o.bles unrestricted liberty to suppress the evangelical faith in their dominions. It was then that Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, in religious not less than political interests, made his appearance as the saviour of Protestantism.(3) The unhappy war was brought to an end in A.D.

1648 by the publication at Munster and Osnabruck of the _Peace of Westphalia_, which Innocent X. in his bull "_Zelo Domus Dei_" of A.D. 1651 p.r.o.nounced "null and void, without influence on past, present, and future." Germany lost several n.o.ble provinces, but its intellectual and religious freedom was saved. Under Swedish and French guarantee the Augsburg Religious Peace was confirmed and even extended to the Reformed, as related to the Augsburg Confession. The church property was to be restored on January 1st, A.D. 1624. The political equality of Protestants and Catholics throughout Germany was distinctly secured. In _Bohemia_, however, Protestantism was thoroughly extirpated, and in the other Austrian states the oppression continued down to the time of Joseph II. In _Silesia_, from the pa.s.sing of the Rest.i.tution Edict, over a thousand churches had been violently taken from the evangelicals. No compensation was now thought of, but rather the persecution continued throughout the whole century (-- 165, 4), and many thousands were compelled to migrate, for the most part to Upper Lusatia.

3. Also in _Livonia_, from A.D. 1561 under Polish rule, the Jesuits gained a footing and began the restoration, but under Gustavus Adolphus from A.D.

1621 their machinations were brought to an end.-The ruthless _Valteline Ma.s.sacre_ of A.D. 1620 may be described as a Swiss St. Bartholomew on a small scale. All Protestants were murdered in one day. The conspirators at a signal from the clock tower in the early morning broke into the houses of heretics, and put all to death, down to the very babe in the cradle.

Between four and five hundred were slaughtered.-In _Hungary_, at the close of the preceding century only three n.o.ble families remained Catholic, and the Protestant churches numbered 2,000; but the Jesuits, who had settled there under the protection of Rudolph II. in 1579, resumed their intrigues, and the Archbishop of Gran, Pazmany, wrought hard for the restoration of Catholicism. Rakoczy of Transylvania, in the Treaty of Linz of A.D. 1645, concluded a league offensive and defensive with Sweden and France, which secured political and religious liberty for Hungary; but of the 400 churches of which the Protestants had been robbed only ninety were given back. The bigoted Leopold I., from A.D. 1655 king of Hungary, inaugurated a yet more severe persecution, which continued until the publication of the Toleration Edict of Joseph II. in A.D. 1781. The 2,000 Protestant congregations were by this time reduced to 105.

4. _The Huguenots in France (-- 139, 17)._-Henry IV. faithfully fulfilled the promises which he made in the Edict of Nantes; but under Louis XIII., A.D. 1610-1643, the oppressions of the Huguenots were renewed, and led to fresh outbreaks. Richelieu withdrew their political privileges, but granted them religious toleration in the Edict of Nismes, A.D. 1629. Louis XIV., A.D. 1643-1715, at the instigation of his confessors, sought to atone for his sins by purging his land of heretics. When bribery and court favour had done all that they could do in the way of conversions, the fearful dragonnades began, A.D. 1681. The formal _Revocation of the Edict of Nantes_ followed in A.D. 1685, and persecution raged with the utmost violence. Thousands of churches were torn down, vast numbers of confessors were tortured, burnt, or sent to the galleys. In spite of the terrible penal laws against emigrating, in spite of the watch kept over the frontiers, hundreds of thousands escaped, and were received with open arms as _refugees_ in Brandenburg, Holland, England, Denmark, and Switzerland.

Many fled into the wilds of the Cevennes, where under the name of Camisards they maintained a heroic conflict for years, until at last exterminated by an army at least ten times their strength. The struggle reached the utmost intensity of bitterness on both sides in A.D. 1702, when the fanatical and inhumanly cruel inquisitor, the Abbe du Chaila, was slain. At the head of the Camisard army was a young peasant, Jean Cavalier, who by his energetic and skilful conduct of the campaign astonished the world. At last the famous Marshal Villars, by promising a general amnesty, release of all prisoners, permission to emigrate with possessions, and religious toleration to those who remained, succeeded in persuading Cavalier to lay down his arms. The king ratified this bargain, only refusing the right of religious freedom. Many, however, submitted; while others emigrated, mostly to England. Cavalier entered the king's service as colonel; but distrusting the arrangements fled to Holland, and afterwards to England, where in A.D. 1740 he died as governor of Jersey.

In A.D. 1707 a new outbreak took place, accompanied by prophetic fanaticism, in consequence of repeated dragonnades, but it was put down by the stake, the gallows, the axe, and the wheel. France had lost half a million of her most pious, industrious, and capable inhabitants, and yet two millions of Huguenots deprived of all their rights remained in the land.(4)

5. _The Waldensians in Piedmont (-- 139, 25)._-Although in A.D. 1654 the Duke of Savoy confirmed to the Waldensians their privileges, by Easter of the following year a b.l.o.o.d.y persecution broke out, in which a Piedmontese army, together with a horde of released prisoners and Irish refugees, driven from their native land by Cromwell's severities, to whom the duke had given shelter in the valleys, perpetrated the most horrible cruelties.

Yet in the desperate conflict the Waldensians held their ground. The intervention of the Protestant Swiss cantons won for them again a measure of toleration, and liberal gifts from abroad compensated them for their loss of property. Cromwell too sent to the relief of the sufferers the celebrated Lord Morland in A.D. 1658. While in the valleys he got possession of a number of MSS. (-- 108, 11), which he took home with him and deposited in the Cambridge Library. In A.D. 1685 the persecution and civil war were again renewed at the instigation of Louis XIV. The soldiers besieged the valleys, and more than 14,000 captives were consigned to fortresses and prisons. But the rest of the Waldensians plucked up courage, inflicted many defeats upon their enemy, and so moved the government in A.D. 1686 to release the prisoners and send them out of the country. Some found their way to Germany, others fled to Switzerland.

These last, aided by Swiss troops, and led by their own pastor, Henry Arnaud, made an attack upon Piedmont in A.D. 1689, and conquered again their own country. They continued in possession, notwithstanding all attempts to dislodge them.

6. _The Catholics in England and Ireland._-When James I., A.D. 1603-1625, the son of Mary Stuart, ascended the English throne (-- 139, 11), the Catholics expected from him nothing short of the complete restoration of the old religion. But great as James' inclination towards Catholicism may have been, his love of despotic authority was still greater. He therefore rigorously suppressed the Jesuits, who disputed the royal supremacy over the church; and the bitterness of the Catholics now reached its height.

They organized the so-called _Gunpowder Plot_, with the intention of blowing up the royal family and the whole Parliament at the first meeting of the house. At the head of the conspiracy stood Rob. Catesby, Thomas Percy of Northumberland, and Guy Fawkes, an English officer in the Spanish service. The plan was discovered shortly before the day appointed for its execution. On November 5th, A.D. 1605, Fawkes, with lantern and matches, was seized in the cellar. The rest of the conspirators fled, but, after a desperate struggle, in which Catesby and Percy fell, were arrested, and, together with two Jesuit accomplices, executed as traitors. Great severities were then exercised toward the Catholics, not only in England, but also in Ireland, where the bulk of the population was attached to the Romish faith. James I. completed the transference of ecclesiastical property to the Anglican church, and robbed the Irish n.o.bles of almost all their estates, and gifted them over to Scottish and English favourites.

All Catholics, because they refused to take the oath of supremacy, _i.e._ to recognise the king as head of the church, were declared ineligible for any civil office. These oppressions at last led to the fearful _Irish ma.s.sacre_. In October, A.D. 1641, a desperate outbreak of the Catholics took place throughout the country. It aimed at the destruction of all Protestants in Ireland. The conspirators rushed from all sides into the houses of the Protestants, murdered the inhabitants, and drove them naked and helpless from their homes. Many thousands died on the roadside of hunger and cold. In other places they were driven in crowds into the rivers and drowned, or into empty houses, which were burnt over them. The number of those who suffered is variously estimated from 40,000 to 400,000. Charles I., A.D. 1625-1649, was suspected as instigator of this terrible deed, and it may be regarded as his first step toward the scaffold (-- 155, 1). After the execution of Charles, Oliver Cromwell, in A.D. 1649, at the call of Parliament, took fearful revenge for the Irish crime. In the two cities which he took by storm he had all the citizens cut down without distinction. Panic-stricken, the inhabitants of the other cities fled to the bogs. Within nine months the whole island was reconquered. Hundreds of thousands, driven from their native soil, wandered as homeless fugitives, and their lands were divided among English soldiers and settlers. During the time of the English Commonwealth, A.D.

1649-1660, all moderate men, even those who had formerly demanded religious toleration, not only for all Christian sects, but also for Jews and Mohammedans, and even atheists, were now at one in excluding Catholics from its benefit, because they all saw in the Catholics a party ready at any moment to prove traitors to their country at the bidding of a foreign sovereign.-The Restoration under Charles II. could not greatly ameliorate the calamities of the Irish. Religious persecution indeed ceased, but the property taken from the Catholic church and native owners still remained in the hands of the Anglican church and the Protestant occupiers. To counterbalance the Catholic proclivities of Charles II. (-- 155, 3), the English Parliament of A.D. 1673 pa.s.sed the _Test Act_, which required every civil and military officer to take the test oaths, condemning transubstantiation and the worship of the saints, and to receive the communion according to the Anglican rite as members of the State church.

The statements of a certain t.i.tus Oates, that the Jesuits had organized a plot for murdering the king and restoring the papacy, led to fearful riots in A.D. 1678 and many executions. But the reports were seemingly unfounded, and were probably the fruit of an intrigue to deprive the king's Catholic brother, James II., of the right of succession. When James ascended the throne, in A.D. 1685, he immediately entered into negotiations with Rome, and filled almost all offices with Catholics. At the invitation of the Protestants, the king's son-in-law, William III. of Orange, landed in England in A.D. 1688, and on James' flight was declared king by the Parliament. The Act of Toleration, issued by him in A.D. 1689, still withheld from Papists the privileges now extended to Protestant dissenters (-- 155, 3).(5)

7. _Union Efforts._-(1) Although _Hugo Grotius_ distinctly took the side of the Remonstrants (-- 160, 2), his whole disposition was essentially irenical. He attempted, but in vain, not only the reconciliation of the Arminians and Calvinists, but also the union of all Protestant sects on a common basis. Toward Catholicism he long maintained a decidedly hostile att.i.tude. But through intimate intercourse with distinguished Catholics, especially during his exile in France, his feelings were completely changed. He now invariably expressed himself more favourably in regard to the faith and the inst.i.tutions of the Catholic church. Its semi-Pelagianism was acceptable to him as a decided Arminian. In his "_Votum pro Pace_" he recommended as the only possible way to restore ecclesiastical union, a return to Catholicism, on the understanding that a thorough reform should be made. But that he was himself ready to pa.s.s over, and was hindered only by his sudden death in A.D. 1645, is merely an illusion of Romish imagination.(6)-(2) King Wladislaus IV. of Poland thought a union of Protestants and Catholics in his dominions not impossible, and with this end in view arranged the _Religious Conference of Thorn_ in A.D. 1645. Prussia and Brandenburg were also invited to take part in it. The elector sent his court preacher, John Berg, and asked from the Duke of Brunswick the a.s.sistance of the Helmstadt theologian, George Calixt. The chief representatives of the Lutheran side were Abraham Calov, of Danzig, and John Hulsemann, of Wittenberg. That Calixt, a Lutheran, took the part of the Reformed, intensified the bitterness of the Lutherans at the outset. The result was to increase the split on all sides. The Reformed set forth their opinions in the "_Declaratio Thorunensis_," which in Brandenburg obtained symbolical rank.-(3) _J. B. Bossuet_, who died in A.D. 1704, Bishop of Meaux, used all his eloquence to prepare a way for the return of Protestants to the church in which alone is salvation. In several treatises he gave an idealized exposition of the Catholic doctrine, glossed over what was most offensive to Protestants, and sought by subtlety and sophistry to represent the Protestant system as contradictory and untenable.(7) During the same period the Spaniard _Spinola_, Bishop of Neustadt, who had come into the country as father confessor of the empress, proposed a scheme of union at the imperial court. The controverted points were to be decided at a free council, but the primacy of the pope and the hierarchical system, as founded _jure humano_, were to be retained. In prosecuting his scheme, with the secret support of Leopold I., Spinola, between A.D. 1676 and 1691, travelled through all Protestant Germany. He found most success, out of respect for the emperor, in Hanover, where the Abbot of Locc.u.m, Mola.n.u.s, zealously advocated the proposed union, in which on the Catholic side Bossuet, on the Protestant side the great philosopher _Leibnitz_, took part. But the negotiations ended in no practical result. That Leibnitz had himself been already secretly inclined to Catholicism, some think to have proved by a ma.n.u.script, found after his death, ent.i.tled in another's hand, "_Systema Theologic.u.m Leibnitii_." Favourably disposed as Leibnitz was to investigate and recognise what was profound and true even in Catholicism, so that he reached the conviction that neither of the two churches had given perfect and adequate expression to Christian truth, he has apparently sought in this work to make clear to himself what and how much of specifically Catholic doctrines were justifiable, and to sketch out a system of doctrine occupying a place superior to both confessions. In this treatise many doctrines are expressed in a manner quite divergent from that of the Tridentine creed, while several expressions show how clearly he perceived the contradiction between his own Protestant faith and the Romish system, amid all his attempts to effect a reconciliation.

8. _The Lehnin Prophecy._-The hope entertained, about the end of the seventeenth century, by Catholics throughout Germany of the speedy restoration of the mother church was expressed in the so called _Vaticinium Lehninense_. Professedly composed in the thirteenth century by a monk called Hermann, of the cloister of Lehnin in Brandenburg, it characterized with historical accuracy in 100 Leonine verses the Brandenburg princes down to Frederick III., of whose coronation in A.D.

1701 it is ignorant, and after this proceeds in a purely fanciful and arbitrary manner. From Joachim II., who openly joined the Reformation, it enumerates eleven members, so that the history is just brought down to Frederick William III. With the eleventh the Hohenzollern dynasty ends, Germany is united, the Catholic church restored, and Lehnin raised again to its ancient glory. Under Frederick William IV., the Catholics diligently sought to prove the genuineness of the prophecy, and by arbitrary methods to extend it so as to include this prince. Lately "the deadly sin of Israel" spoken of in it has been pointed to as a prophecy of the _Kulturkampf_ of our own day (-- 197). The first certain trace of the poem is in A.D. 1693. Hilgenfeld thinks that its author was a fanatical pervert, Andr. Fromm, who was previously a Protestant pastor in Berlin, and died in A.D. 1685 as canon of Leitmeritz, in Bohemia.

-- 154. Lutheranism and Calvinism.

The Reformed church made its way into the heart of Lutheran Germany (-- 144) by the Calvinizing of Hesse-Ca.s.sel and Lippe, and by the adherence of the electoral house of Brandenburg. Renewed attempts to unite the two churches were equally fruitless with the endeavours after a Catholic-Protestant union.

1. _Calvinizing of Hesse-Ca.s.sel, _A.D._ 1605-1646._-Philip the Magnanimous, died 1567, left to his eldest son, William IV., one half of his territories, comprising Lower Hesse and Schmalcald, with residence at Ca.s.sel; to Louis IV. a fourth part, _viz._ Upper Hesse, with residence at Marburg; while his two youngest sons, Philip and George, were made counts, with their residence at Darmstadt. Philip died in 1583 and Louis in 1604, both childless; in consequence of which the greater part of Philip's territory and the northern half of Upper Hesse with Marburg fell to Hesse-Ca.s.sel, and the southern half with Giessen to Hesse-Darmstadt.-Landgrave _William IV._ of Hesse-Ca.s.sel sympathised with his father's union and levelling tendencies, and by means of general synods wrought eagerly to secure acceptance for them throughout Hesse by setting aside the _ubiquitous_ Christology (-- 142, 9) and the Formula of Concord, while firmly maintaining the _Corpus Doctrinae Philippic.u.m_ (-- 142, 10). The fourth and last of those general synods was held in 1582.

Further procedure was meanwhile rendered impossible by the increase of opposition. For, on the one hand, Louis IV., under the influence of the acute and learned but contentious aegidius Hunnius, professor of theology at Marburg, 1576-1592, became more and more decidedly a representative of exclusive Lutheranism; and, on the other hand, William's Calvinizing schemes became from day to day more reckless. His son and successor _Maurice_ went forward more energetically along the same lines as his father, especially after the death of his uncle Louis in 1604, who bequeathed to him the Marburg part of his territories. These had been given him on condition that he should hold by the confession and its apology as guaranteed by Charles V. in 1530. But in 1605 he forbad the Marburg theologians to set forth the ubiquity theology; and when they protested, issued a formal prohibition of the dogma with its presuppositions and consequences, and insisted on the introduction of the Reformed numbering of the commandments of the decalogue, and the breaking of bread at the communion, and the removal of the remaining images from the churches (-- 144, 2). The theologians again protested, and were deprived of their offices. The result was the outbreak of a popular tumult at Marburg, which Maurice suppressed by calling in the military. When in several places in Upper and even in Lower Hesse opposition was persisted in, and the resisting clergy could not be won over either by persuasion and threatening or by persecution, Maurice in 1607 convened consultative diocesan synods at Ca.s.sel, Eschwege, Marburg, St. Goar, and soon after a general synod at Ca.s.sel, which, giving expression on all points to the will of the landgrave, drew up, besides a new hymnbook and catechism, a new "Christian and correct confession of faith," by which they openly and decidedly declared their attachment to the Reformed church. Soon Hesse accepted these conclusions, but not the rest of the state, where the opposition of the n.o.bles, clergy, and people, in spite of all attempts to enforce this acceptance by military power, imprisonment, and deposition, could not be altogether overcome.-Meanwhile George's son and successor, _Louis V._, 1596-1626, had been eagerly seeking to make capital of those troubles in his cousin's domains in favour of the Darmstadt dynasty. He gave his protection to the professors expelled from Marburg in 1605, founded in 1607 a Lutheran university at Giessen, and made accusations against his cousin before the imperial supreme court, which in 1623, on the basis of the will of Louis IV. and the Religious Peace of Augsburg (-- 137, 5), declared the inheritance forfeited, and entrusted the electors of Cologne and Saxony with the execution of the sentence. These in conjunction with the troops of the league under Tilly attacked Upper and Lower Hesse; the Lutheran University of Giessen was transferred to Marburg, and Upper Hesse, after the banishment of the Reformed pastors, went over wholly to the Lutheran confession. Maurice, completely broken down, resigned in favour of his son _William V._, who was obliged to make an agreement, according to which he made over Upper Hesse, Schmalcald, and Katzenelnbogen to _George II._ of Hesse-Darmstadt, the successor of Louis V. In consequence of his attachment to Gustavus Adolphus in the Thirty Years' War the ban of the empire was p.r.o.nounced upon William. He died in 1637. His widow, _Amalie Elizabeth_, undertook the government on behalf of her young son William VI., and in 1646, after repeated victories over George's troops, made a new agreement with him, by which the territories taken away in 1627 were restored to Hesse-Ca.s.sel, under a guarantee, however, that the _status quo_ in matters of religion should be preserved, and that they should continue predominantly Lutheran. The university property was divided; Giessen obtained a Lutheran, Marburg a Reformed inst.i.tution, and Lower Hesse received a moderately but yet essentially Reformed ecclesiastical const.i.tution.

2. _Calvinizing of Lippe, _A.D._ 1602._-Count Simon VI. of Lippe, in his eventful life, was brought into close relations with the Reformed Netherlands and with Maurice of Hesse. His dominions were thoroughly Lutheran, but from A.D. 1602 Calvinism was gradually introduced under the patronage of the prince. The chief promoter of this innovation was Dreckmeyer, chosen general superintendent in A.D. 1599. At a visitation of churches in A.D. 1602, the festivals of Mary and the apostles, exorcism, the sign of the cross, the host, burning candles, and Luther's catechism were rejected. Opposing pastors were deposed, and Calvinists put in their place. The city Lemgo stood out longest, and persevered in its adherence to the Lutheran confession during an eleven years' struggle with its prince, from A.D. 1606 to 1617. After the death of Simon VI., his successor, Simon VII., allowed the city the free exercise of its Lutheran religion.

3. _The Elector of Brandenburg becomes Calvinist, _A.D._ 1613._-John Sigismund, A.D. 1608-1619, had promised his grandfather, John George, to maintain his connexion with the Lutheran church. But his own inclination, which was strengthened by his son's marriage with a princess of the Palatinate, and his connexion with the Netherlands, made him forget his promise. Also his court preacher, the crypto-Calvinist Solomon Fink, contributed to the same result. On Christmas Day, A.D. 1613, he went over to the Reformed church. In order to share in the Augsburg Peace, he still retained the Augsburg Confession, naturally in the form known as the _Variata_. In A.D. 1624, he issued a Calvinist confession of his own, the _Confessio Sigismundi_ or _Marchica_, which sought to reconcile the universality of grace with the particularity of election (-- 168, 1). His people, however, did not follow the prince, not even his consort, Anne of Prussia. The court preacher, Ged.i.c.ke, who would not retract his invectives against the prince and the Reformed confession, was obliged to flee from Berlin, as also another preacher, Mart. Willich. But when altars, images, and baptismal fonts were thrown out of the Berlin churches, a tumult arose, in A.D. 1615, which was not suppressed without bloodshed. In the following year the elector forbade the teaching of the _communicatio idiomatum_ and the _ubiquitas corporis_ (-- 141, 9) at the University of Frankfort-on-the-Oder. In A.D. 1614, owing to the publication of a keen controversial treatise of Hutter (-- 158, 5) he forbade any of his subjects going to the University of Wittenberg, and soon afterwards struck out the Formula of Concord from the collection of the symbolical books of the Lutheran church of his realm.-Continuation, -- 169, 1.

4. _Union Attempts._-Hoe von Hoenegg, of an old Austrian family, was from A.D. 1612 chief court preacher at Dresden, and as spiritual adviser of the elector, John George, on the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, got Lutheran Saxony to take the side of the Catholic emperor against the Calvinist Frederick V. of the Palatinate, elected king of Bohemia. In A.D.

1621, he had proved that "on ninety-nine points the Calvinists were in accord with the Arians and the Turks." At the Religious Conference of Leipzig of A.D. 1631 a compromise was accepted on both sides; but no practical result was secured. The Religious Conference of Ca.s.sel, in A.D.

1661, was a well meant endeavour by some Marburg Reformed theologians and Lutherans of the school of Calixt (-- 158, 2); but owing to the agitation caused by the Synergist controversy, no important advance toward union could be accomplished. The union efforts of Duke William of Brandenburg, A.D. 1640-1688, were opposed by Paul Gerhardt, preacher in the church of St. Nicholas in Berlin. On refusing to abstain from attacks on the Reformed doctrine he was deposed from his office. He was soon appointed pastor at Lubben in Lusatia, where he died in A.D. 1676.-The most zealous apostle of universal Protestant union, embracing even the Anglican church, was the Scottish Presbyterian John Durie. From A.D. 1628 when he officiated as pastor of an English colony at Elbing, till his death at Ca.s.sel in A.D. 1640, he devoted his energies unweariedly to this one task.

He repeatedly travelled through Germany, Sweden, Denmark, England, and the Netherlands, formed acquaintance with clerical and civil authorities, had intercourse with them by word and letter, published a mult.i.tude of tracts on this subject; but at last could only look back with bitter complaints over the lost labours of a lifetime.(8)-Continuation, -- 169, 1.

-- 155. Anglicanism and Puritanism.(9)

On the outbreak of the English Revolution, occasioned by the despotism of the first two Stuarts, crowds of Puritan exiles returned from Holland and North America to their old home. They powerfully strengthened their secret sympathisers in their successful struggle against the episcopacy of the State church (-- 131, 6); but, breaking up into rival parties, as Presbyterians and Independents (-- 143, 3, 4), gave way to fanatical extravagances. The victorious party of Independents also split into two divisions: the one, after the old Dutch style, simple and strict believers in Scripture; the other, first in Cromwell's army, fanatical enthusiasts and visionary saints (-- 161, 1). The Restoration, under the last two Stuarts, sought to re-introduce Catholicism. It was William of Orange, by his Act of Toleration of A.D. 1689, who first brought to a close the Reformation struggles within the Anglican church. It guaranteed, indeed, all the pre-eminent privileges of an establishment to the Anglican and Episcopal church, but also granted toleration to dissenters, while refusing it to Catholics.

1. _The First Two Stuarts._-_James I._, dominated by the idea of the royal supremacy, and so estranged from the Presbyterianism in which he was brought up (-- 139, 11), as king of England, A.D. 1603-1625, attached himself to the national Episcopal church, persecuted the English Puritans, so that many of them again fled to Holland (-- 143, 4), and forced Episcopacy upon the Scotch. _Charles I._, A.D. 1625-1649, went beyond his father in theory and practice, and thus incurred the hatred of his Protestant subjects. William Laud, from A.D. 1633 Archbishop of Canterbury, was the recklessly zealous promoter of his despotic ideas, representing the Episcopacy, by reason of its Divine inst.i.tution and apostolic succession, as the foundation of the church and the pillar of an absolute monarchy. Laud used his position as primate to secure the introduction of his own theory into the public church services, among other things making the communion office an imitation as near as possible of the Romish ma.s.s. But when he attempted to force upon the Scotch such "Baal-worship" by the command of the king, they formed a league in A.D.

1638 for the defence of Presbyterianism, the so called Great Covenant, and emphasised their demand by sending an army into England. The king, who had ruled for eleven years without a Parliament, was obliged now to call together the representatives of the people. Scarcely had the Long Parliament, A.D. 1640-1653, in which the Puritan element was supreme, pacified the Scotch, than oil was anew poured on the flames by the Irish ma.s.sacre of A.D. 1641 (-- 153, 6). The Lower House, in spite of the persistent opposition of the court, resolved on excluding the bishops from the Upper House and formally abolishing Episcopacy; and in A.D. 1643, summoned the Westminster a.s.sembly to remodel the organization of the English church, at which Scotch representatives were to have a seat. After long and violent debates with an Independent minority, till A.D. 1648, the a.s.sembly drew up a Presbyterian const.i.tution with a Puritan service, and in the Westminster Confession a strictly Calvinistic creed. But only in Scotland were these decisions heartily accepted. In England, notwithstanding their confirmation by the Parliament, they received only partial and occasional acceptance, owing to the prevalence of Independent opinions among the people.-Since A.D. 1642, the tension between court and Parliament had brought about the Civil War between Cavaliers and Roundheads. In A.D. 1645, the royal troops were cut to pieces at Naseby by the parliamentary army under Fairfax and Cromwell. The king fled to the Scotch, by whom he was surrendered to the English Parliament in A.D. 1647.

But when now the fanatical Independents, who formed a majority in the army, began to terrorise the Parliament, it opened negotiations for peace with the king. He was now ready to make almost any sacrifice, only on religious and conscientious grounds he could not agree to the unconditional abandonment of Episcopacy. Even the Scotch, whose Presbyterianism was now threatened by the Independents, as before it had been by the Episcopalians, longed for the restoration of royalty, and to aid in this sent an army into England in A.D. 1648. But they were defeated by Cromwell, who then dismissed the Parliament and had all its Presbyterian members either imprisoned or driven into retirement. The Independent remnant, known as the Rump Parliament, A.D. 1648-1653, tried the king for high treason and sentenced him to death. On January 30th, A.D. 1649, he mounted the scaffold, on which Archbishop Laud had preceded him in A.D. 1645, and fell under the executioner's axe.(10)

2. _The Commonwealth and the Protector._-Ireland had never yet atoned for its crime of A.D. 1641 (-- 153, 6), and as it refused to acknowledge the Commonwealth, Cromwell took terrible revenge in A.D. 1649. In A.D. 1650 at Dunbar, and in A.D. 1651 at Worcester, he completely destroyed the army of the Scots, who had crowned Charles II., son of the executed king, drove out, in April A.D. 1653, the Rump of the Long Parliament, which had come to regard itself as a permanent inst.i.tution, and in July opened, with a powerful speech, two hours in length, on G.o.d's ways and judgments, the Short or Barebones' Parliament, composed of "pious and G.o.d-fearing men"

selected by himself. In this new Parliament which, with prayer and psalm-singing, wrought hard at the re-organization of the executive, the bench, and the church, the two parties of Independents were represented, the fanatical enthusiasts indeed predominating, and so victorious in all matters of debate. To this party Cromwell himself belonged. His attachment to it, however, was considerably cooled in consequence of the excesses of the Levellers (-- 161, 2), and the fantastic policy of the parliamentarian Saints disgusted him more and more. When therefore, on December 12th, A.D.

1653, after five months' fruitless opposition to the radical demands of the extravagant majority, all the most moderate members of the Parliament had resigned their seats and returned their mandates into Cromwell's hands, he burst in upon the psalm-singing remnant with his soldiers, and entered upon his life-long office of the Protector of the Commonwealth with a new const.i.tution. He proclaimed toleration of all religious sects, Catholics only being excepted on political grounds (-- 153, 6), giving equal rights to Presbyterians, and offering no hindrance to the revival of Episcopacy. He yet remained firmly attached to his early convictions. He believed in a kingdom of the saints embracing the whole earth, and looked on England as destined for the protection and spread of Protestantism.

Zurich greeted him as the great Protestant champion, and he showed himself in this _role_ in the valleys of Piedmont (-- 153, 5), in France, in Poland, and in Silesia. He joined with all Protestant governments into a league, offensive and defensive, against fanatical attempts of Papists to recover their lost ground. When Spain and France sued for his alliance, he made it a condition with the former that, besides allowing free trade with the West Indies, it should abolish the Inquisition; and of France he required an a.s.surance that the rights of Huguenots should be respected.

And when in Germany a new election of emperor was to take place, he urged the great electors that they should by no means allow the imperial throne to continue with the Catholic house of Austria. Meanwhile his path at home was a th.o.r.n.y one. He was obliged to suppress fifteen open rebellions during five years of his reign, countless secret plots threatened his life every day, and his bitterest foes were his former comrades in the camp of the the saints. After refusing the crown offered him in A.D. 1657, without being able thereby to quell the discontents of parties, he died on September 3rd, A.D. 1658, the anniversary of his glorious victories of Dunbar and Worcester.(11)

3. _The Restoration and the Act of Toleration._-The Restoration of royalty under _Charles II._, A.D. 1660-1685, began with the reinstating of the Episcopal church in all the privileges granted to it under Elizabeth. The Corporation Act of December, A.D. 1661, was the first of a series of enactments for this purpose. It required of all magistrates and civil officers that they should take an oath acknowledging the royal supremacy and communicate in the Episcopal church. The Act of Uniformity of May, A.D. 1662, was still more oppressive. It prohibited any clergyman entering the English pulpit or discharging any ministerial function, unless he had been ordained by a bishop, had signed the Thirty-nine Articles, and undertook to conduct worship exactly in accordance with the newly revised Book of Common Prayer. More than 2,000 Puritan ministers, who could not conscientiously submit to those terms, were driven out of their churches.

Then in June, A.D. 1664, the Conventicle Act was renewed, enforcing attendance at the Episcopal church, and threatening with imprisonment or exile all found in any private religious meeting of more than five persons. In the following year the Five Mile Act inflicted heavy fines on all nonconformist ministers who should approach within five miles of their former congregation or indeed of any city. All these laws, although primarily directed against all Protestant dissenters, told equally against the Catholics, whom the king's Catholic sympathies would willingly have spared. When now his league with Catholic France against the Protestant Netherlands made it necessary for him to appease his Protestant subjects, he hoped to accomplish this and save the Catholics by his "Declaration of Indulgence" of A.D. 1672, issued with the consent of Parliament, which suspended all penal laws. .h.i.therto in force against dissenters. But the Protestant nonconformists saw through this scheme, and the Parliament of A.D. 1673 pa.s.sed the anti-Catholic Test Act (-- 153, 6). Equally vain were all later attempts to secure greater liberties and privileges to the Catholics. They only served to develop the powers of Parliament and to bring the Episcopalians and nonconformists more closely together. After spending his whole life oscillating between frivolous unbelief and Catholic superst.i.tion, Charles II., on his death-bed, formally went over to the Romish church, and had the communion and extreme unction administered by a Catholic priest. His brother and successor _James II._, A.D. 1685-1688, who was from A.D. 1672 an avowed Catholic, sent a declaration of obedience to Rome, received a papal nuncio in London, and in the exercise of despotic power issued, in A.D. 1687, a "Declaration of Freedom of Conscience," which, under the fair colour of universal toleration and by the setting aside of the test oath, enabled him to fill all civil and military offices with Catholics. This act proved equally oppressive to the Episcopalians and to Protestant dissenters. This intrigue cost him his throne. He had, as he himself said, staked three kingdoms on a ma.s.s, and lost all the three. _William III._ of Orange, A.D.

1689-1702, grandson of Charles I. and son-in-law of James II., gave a final decision to the rights of the national Episcopal church and the position of dissenters in the _Act of Toleration_ of A.D. 1689, which he pa.s.sed with consent of the Parliament. All penal laws against the latter were abrogated, and religious liberty was extended to all with the exception of Catholics and Socinians. The retention of the Corporation and Test Acts, however, still excluded them from the exercise of all political rights. They were also still obliged to pay t.i.thes and other church dues to the Episcopal clergy of their dioceses, and their marriages and baptisms had to be administered in the parish churches. Their ministers were also obliged to subscribe the Thirty-nine Articles, with reservation of those points opposed to their principles. The Act of Union of A.D.