indirectly infringe on the unchangeable principles of faith. This was hallowed and consecrated ground, which was not to be trodden by the rude foot of controversy. She said to the stormy billows of proud human opinion: "Thus far shall you come, and no further: and here shall you break your boiling waves!"* When the reformers cast off this yoke of Church authority, and said "they would not serve" any longer, they had no alternative left, but to decide, each one for himself, what was the doctrine of Christ. Private judgment was thus necessarily substituted for the teaching of the Church: human opinion for faith. As men were differently constituted, they naturally took different views of the religion of Christ. Each one struck out a new system for himself; and soon, instead of the one Religion which had been received with reverence for ages, the world beheld the novel spectacle of almost as many religions as there were heads among the Protestant party! D'Aubigné's theory on this subject is as curious as it is liberal-in the modern sense of this term. He thus discourses on what he calls the diversities of the Reformation: "We are about to contemplate the diversities, or, as they have been since called, the variations of the Reformation. These diversities are among its most essential characters. Unity in diversity, and diversity in unity, is a law of nature, and also of the church. Truth may be compared to the light of the sun. The light comes from heaven colorless, and ever the same: and yet it takes different hues on earth, varying according to the objects on which it falls. Thus different formularies may sometimes express the same Christian truth, viewed under different aspects. How dull would be this visible creation, if all its boundless variety of shape and color were to give place to an unbroken uniformity!"+ 66 A beautiful theory truly, and aptly illustrated! So, then, 'the different formularies" of Luther, openly asserting the * Job xxxviii: 12. "Huc usque venies et non amplius; et hic confringes tumentes fluctus tuos." † D'Aubigné, vol. iii, p. 235, in the introduction to the eleventh book, in which he treats of the controversies between the partisans of Zuingle and Luther. AS MANY RELIGIONS AS HEADS. 225 real presence of Christ in the holy Sacrament, and of Zuingle flatly denying this presence, "both express the same Christian truth viewed under different aspects!" These great champions of Protestantism, as we have seen, mutually anathematized and denounced each other as children of Satan on this very ground, and yet, in good sooth, they maintained "the same Christian truth under different aspects!" They plainly contradicted each other on many other important points, and the Wittenberg doctor would consent to hold no communion with him of Zurich ;* and yet they maintained "the same Christian truth!" Luther said to Zuingle, who proposed mutual communion at the close of the famous conference of Marburg, in 1528, "No, no: cursed be the alliance which endangers the truth of God and the salvation of souls. Away with you: you are possessed by a different spirit from ours. But take care: before three years the anger of God will fall on you!" And yet D'Aubigné would have us believe, that they agreed as to the substance of "Christian truth!" Verily, he must think others as credulous as he himself seems to be! And then, the charming illustration from the light of the sun! It is almost a pity to spoil its poetic beauty; though even a poet would lay himself open to the most severe criticism, were his figures no more appropriate or true to nature. D'Aubigné has taken more than even a poetic license. Does the light of the sun, no matter how diversified, reflect contradictory images "of the objects on which it falls ?" Is it so very uncertain, as to leave us in doubt, as to the shape and color of external objects? Does it make us the dupes of constant optical illusions? The light which the reformers professed to borrow from heaven did all this. And then, does it fall much short of blasphemy, to maintain that God is indifferent as to whether we believe truth or error; and that He delights in such a diversity of opinions as runs into open con *In the conference of Marburg. See Audin, "Life of Luther," p. 415, 416. Audin, ibid. See also Luther's Ep. ad Jacobum, præp. Bremens. tradictions? And this too, when his well beloved Son came on earth "to bear testimony to the truth," and laid down His life to seal it with his blood! And when the Saviour pronounced the awful declaration: "He that believeth not shall be condemned;"* which declaration referred to the necessity of belief “in all things whatsoever he had commanded!"+ The doctrine of private judgment, broached by the reformers, led to endless inconsistencies and contradictions. It was the prolific parent of sects almost innumerable. More than fifty of these arose before the death of Luther! It was natural that it should be so: "These diversities were among the most essential features of the Reformation."§ The tree was only bearing its natural fruits; and the latter, according to the divine standard, are the best criterion whereby to judge of the former: "By their fruits ye shall know them."—"The Reformation, which promised to put an end to the reign of disputatious theology, had, on the contrary, awakened in all minds a fondness for dispute, bordering on fanaticism: it was the fever of logomachy. Half a century before, men indeed disputed; but then the doctrine of the Church was not called into question: now however it was attacked on all sides. In each university, and even in every private house, Germany saw a pulpit erected for whoever pretended to have received the understanding of the divine word." T This raging fever of disputation has continued to burn in the bosom of Protestantism even to the present day: it has not abated in the progress of ages. True, in Germany and on the continent of Europe, it has, to a great extent, lately cooled down into a state of mortal apathy—a more dangerous symptom far than the malady which it has superseded: but * St. Mark, xvi: 16. † The parallel passage in St. Matthew, xxviii : 20. ‡ See Audin, p. 331. ¡ D'Aubigné, ut supra. Audin, ibid., p. 190, 191. A war of words. elsewhere, it has left the patient in the same restless and tossing condition, as formerly. Most of the reformers found in the Bible, that a priest who had made a solemn vow of celibacy to God, might and even ought to break it, by taking a wife. The first who made this consoling discovery, were Bernard of Felkirk, abbot of Remberg, and the aged Karlstadt, archdeacon of Wittenberg. The new light which had dawned upon them was hailed with ecstasy by the lovers of "Christian liberty" throughout Germany. Some went still further, and maintained, Bible in hand, with Bucer, Capito, Karlstadt and other evangelists, that marriage was not indissoluble; and that a Christian could dismiss his wife, or even retain her, and take one or more others at the same time, after the example of the ancient patriarchs. These styled themselves "the sons of liberty"-they should have said libertinism. We shall see, a little later, to what frightful consequences these horrid doctrines led! "All the hallucinations of a disordered intellect were for a time ascribed to the Holy Ghost. Never had the divine wisdom communicated itself more liberally to the human mind! The Bible was laid open, as an anatomical subject, on an operator's table, and every doctor came with his lance in hand-as afterwards did Dumoulin-to anatomize the word of God, and to seek the spirit, which before Luther had escaped the eye of Catholicism. It was an epoch of glosses and commentaries, which time has not had the trouble of destroying, for they abounded with absurdity, and fell beneath the weight of ridicule which crushed them at their birth. There were new lights, who came to announce that they had discovered an irresistible argument against the Mass, purgatory, and prayers to the saints. This was simply to deny the immortality of the soul!"*-This startling impiety was really maintained in full school at Geneva, by certain "new lights," who came from Wittenberg.† Menzel, the Protestant historian of Germany, freely admits * Audin, p. 192. "Quidquid de animarum habetur immortalitate, ab antichristo ad statuendam suam culinam excogitatum est." Prateolus-Elench. voce Athei, p. 72. See also Bayle's Dictionary, art. Luther. that division was the essential heritage of the Reformation, whose unity it fatally marred, thereby frittering away its strength. He says: "The Protestants, blind to the unity and strength resulting from the policy of the Catholics, weakened themselves more and more by division. The reformed Swiss were almost more inimical to the Lutherans than the Catholics were, and the general mania for disputation and theological obstinacy produced divisions among the reformers themselves. When, in 1562, Bullinger set up the Helvetic Confession, to which the Pfalz also assented in Zurich, Basle refused and maintained a particular Confession."* The From the earliest period of its history, "the hydra of the Reformation had a hundred heads. The Anabaptists believed with Münzer, that without a second baptism, man could not be saved. The Karlstadtians preached up polygamy. The Zuinglians rejected the real presence. Osiander taught that God had predestined only the elect. The Majorists taught that works were not necessary for salvation; while the followers of Flaccus accused the Majorists of popery. Synergists preached up man's liberty. The Ubiquitarians believed, that the humanity of Christ was, like His divinity, omnipresent. Some held original sin to be the nature, substance, the essence of man; while others regarded it as a mere mode of his being. All these sects boasted of the Bible, as a sufficient rule of faith; they published confessions, composed creeds, and insisted on faith, as a condition of communion. Children of the same father, whom they had severally denied, they cursed and proscribed each other: they gave the name of heretic to, and shut the gates of heaven against, all their brethren in revolt, who happened to differ with them."+ Other fanatics preached up the community of goods, with Storck and the Anabaptists; others with the prophets of Alstell, "the demolition of images, of churches, of chapels, and the adoration of the Lord on high places ;" and others, * History of Germany, II, 275. † Audin, p. 208, 209. See the authorities he quotes, ibid., note. |