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Bible Encyclopedias
Reformation
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
or THE, is the name commonly given to the religious and ecclesiastical movement of the 16th century which resulted in the overthrow of the then allpowerful authority of the Roman popes in a large portion of the Christian world, and in the construction of a number of new religious organizations. The name itself is highly significant, and points to the importance of the new departure in the history of Christianity which then began. It has come into quite general use even among Roman Catholic writers, although the theologians of that Church have attempted to substitute for it other terms, like the "so-called Reformation," and the "separation of the Church." We have already had occasion in numerous articles of this Cyclopedia to refer to detached portions of the Reformation. The Church history of no important country of Europe could be complete without a mention of its reformatory movements, wdnhether they were successful or unsuccessful, and the biographies of the great fathers of the Reformation consist chiefly of an account of their labors in behalf of the reconstruction of the Church upon a new basis. The present article treats of the great turning-point in the history of Christianity as a whole.
I. Forerunners of the Reformation. — Like most of the great events in the history of mankind, the Reformation has had its preparatory history, in which attempts of a similar nature were made for the same purpose, meeting with no or but partial success, but yet smoothing the way for the marvellous changes which were achieved by the victorious reformation of the 16th century.
1. All the Reformed churches which have sprung from the movements of the 16th century are agreed in regarding the undue power which the bishops of Rome at an early time began to arrogate to themselves, and the centralized constitution which consequently was forced upon the Christian Church, as one of the most fatal deviations from the doctrines of the Bible and the practice and the life of the apostolic age. In a wider sense of the word, all the efforts, therefore, which have been made to repress and abolish the arrogant and encroaching power of the Roman popes, and to bring back the Church to its purity in the time of her founder and his first disciples, might be called preparatory and forerunning movements of the great Reformation. These movements have been manifold and widely different in their origin, progress, and ramifications, and each of them has to be individually judged by its own character and history. Indeed, throughout the Middle Ages, even when the power of the papacy was most despotic and absolute, a reformatory tendency was pervading the Church, often confining itself to secrecy and occult labors, but frequently bursting the bonds of the Church, proclaiming its reformatory principles in public, and defying the ire of an enraged hierarchy. Some of these outbursts ran smoothly on in the channels of a purely evangelical belief; others became impregnated with fanatical, sometimes even anti-Christian, elements, and threatened with a common overthrow both the State and the Church of the times. Among the more prominent reformatory movements in the earlier part of the Middle Ages were those of the Albigenses, the Cathari, and the Waldenses, to all of which (and many others) this Cyclopedia devotes special articles.
In the latter part of the Middle Ages, the deviation of the ruling Church from Scripture and primitive Christianity became more and more glaring, and the corruption among all classes of the clergy, from the highest to the lowest. more and more general. The call for a "reformation in the head and members" spread rapidly, and even great nations began to look upon the reformation of the Church as a national cause. It has been justly remarked that the meaning given to the term "reformation in the head and members" was by no means uniform, and that "every one understood it to mean primarily that which he most desired — the removal of what seemed to him most oppressive and unchristian." All malcontents, however, appeared to agree in regarding the administration of the Christian Church by the papal court as utterly depraved, and as subversive of true Christianity. The efforts made for putting an end to papal misrule and achieving a reformation of the Church were chiefly of two kinds. The one class found the seat of the degeneration not so much in a departure from the doctrine of the Bible as in the usurpation by the popes of greater power than belonged to them by divine and Church right. These men stroligly believed in the continuity of the visible Church; they rejected the right of separation and secession, and looked upon the oecumenical councils of the Church as the only medium through which the needed reformation of the Church should be effected. This school had for a long time a centre in the most famous literary institution of the Church — the University of Paris. Its chief representatives were Peter d'Ailly, the chancellor, his pupil Gerson, and Nicolas de Climanges, rector of that university. The hearty support of many of the foremnost princes of the age, including several emperors, was secured, and at the three great councils of Pisa, Constance. and Basle the majority of the assembled bishops and theologians expressed their: concurrence in these views, and earnestly endeavored to effect a radical reformation on this basis. Thejoyous hopes which had been raised in the Church by these reformatory efforts were, however, sorely disappointed when the pope succeeded in dissolving the Council of Basle.
Much more thorough than this class of reformers were a second, who not only turned against papal usurpations in the government of the Church, but also by a study of the Scriptures were led to look upon the entire doctrinal system of the Church, as it had gradually developed under the misguidance of the popes, as an apostasy from the Christianity of the Bible, and who therefore believed that, more than a reformation in its head and members, the Church needed a reformation in its spirit and doctrines. The foremost representatives of this: school were Wycliffe in England, and Huss in Bohemia. To Wycliffe the papacy appeared as anti-Christianity, and the papal power, in his opinion, was not derived from God, but from the emperor. He rejected altogether the existing hierarchical constitution of the Church, and advocated the substitution for it of the presbyterial constitution as he believed it to have existed in the apostolical age. To the traditions of the Church he absolutely denied an authoritative character, and declared the whole Scripture to be the only source and rule of religious knowledge. Huss derived his views of Church reform largely from Wycliffe, and in 1410 was excommunicated from the Church as a Wycliffite. One of the central doctrines of the reformation of' the 16th century rose, however, in his system to greater prominence, and he also resembled his great followers more than Wycliffe by arousing the masses of the people in behalf of reform. Neither Wycliffe nor Huss succeeded in carrying through a reformation. When the English governmelnt, which had protected Wycliffe during his lifetime from personal injury, began a bloody persecution against his followers, most of whom were found in the higher classes and among the men of learning, the reformatory movement in England came to a sudden standstill. The reformatory ideas of Huss appeared for a time to gain complete control of an entire country, and thus to establish a stronghold of evangelical Christianity: in the centre of Europe. But internal dissensions and the superior power of the German emperor annihilated in 1434 the prospects of the Hussite movement, which dwindled down into a small sect called the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren. Numerically too weak to exercise a missionary influence upon the remainder of Christian Europe, this religious denomination will yet always be counted among the ripest and most delicious fruits of the reformatory tendencies of the Middle Ages.
Nothing shows better the vast difference between the two classes of reformers who have been characterized in the above lines than the fact that Gerson, the most gifted representative of the first named, was the leading spirit at the Council of Constance which sentenced Huss to be burned at the stake. Besides these two broad currents of reformatory movements which are visible in the Church history of the latter part of the Middle Ages, there were a large number of theological writers who bravely contended for bringing the corrupt Church of their times back to the purity of Bible Christianity, and who more or less discussed all the great reformatory questions which agitated the world in the 16th century. Among the most celebrated of these reformers were John (Pupper) of Goch, rector of a convent of nuns at Mechlin, John Wessel (Gansfort), called by his friends Lux Imundi, and John (Ruenrath) of Wesel. Though many of these writers made undisguised assaults upon the received doctrines of the Church, their views, if not directly addressed to the people, were frequently tolerated as learnied opinions of the school.
One of the most gifted reformatory preachers of the Middle Ages appeared towards the close of the 15th century in Italy. With a rare eloquence and boldness he attacked the immoral life prevailing in both Church and State, and demanded a radical reform of both. Though few reformatory preachers have ever succeeded better than Savonarola in swaying the emotions of large masses of the people, he did not lay the foundation of any reformatory organization; and when he was burned at the gibbet, there was no one to continue the work of his life.
2. At the close of the 15th century, the Church had succeeded in repressing all the reformatory movements of the Middle Ages, at least so far as to prevent, mostly by the sword of the secular arm, the consolidation of any of these movements into a powerful ecclesiastical organization, like that of the Eastern Church. But her triumph, after all, was more apparent than real. Her authority had been thoroughly undermined, and remained shaken in every country of Europe. The threats of the Church might extort reluctant recantations from a number of intimidated reformers; but her very successes of this kind had the effect of spreading the latent discontent with a religious organization which so palpably cared more for power than for the purity of Christian doctrine and Christian life. Other powerful agencies aided in shaking the belief of the educated classes in the Church. The most influential among them was the school of the Humainists,.who used the revival of classical studies for promoting a general literary culture, which not only fully emancipated itself from the gilardianship of the Church, but frequently assumed an indifferent and antagonistic position even with regard to Christianity. Especially in Italy, humanism became an enthusiastic worshipper of pagan antiquity, and it became quite common that high dignitaries of the Church were in the circles of their friends and acquaintances known as avowed atheists. Even pope Leo X was credited with the remark — and, whether true or not true, it was regarded as credible by his contemporaries — "It is generally known how much we and ours have profited by the fable of Christ." While in Italy many of the leading humanists became opponents of Christian belief, though they had no objection to retaining their positions, which often were of the highest rank, in the Church, the chief patrons of the classical studies in the Teutonic countries were mostly men of earnest Christian convictions, who cultivated them with a view to strengthening the cause of Christianity, and of reforming the Church. It was especially the community of the Brothers of the Common Life who founded a number of excellent schools, in which the highest attainments in the revived classical studies, and an education in the principles of earnest, purified Christianity, were aimed at. Though the community as a whole never entered into an oppositional attitude with regard to the Church, but rather, like its greatest member, Thomas a Kempis, limited itself to teaching, preaching, and practicing that which in the system of the ruling Church appeared to be unobjectionable to earnest and pious Christians, its teachers and pupils generally favored the idea of a Church reformation, and in the 16th century many of them became enthusiastical co-workers in the reformatory labors of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin.
The labors of such men could not fail to kindle in Germany still more the desire for a reformation, and to strengthen the expectation that in resuming the work of reformation on a grand scale the German nation would take the lead. As early as 1457, chancellor Mayer of Mentz wrote to AEneas Svlvius, subsequently pope Pius II: "The German nation, once the queen of the world, but now a tributary handmaid of the Roman Church, begins to arouse herself as out of a dream, and is resolved to throw off the yoke." This spirit of preparing for the overthrow of the papal yoke and the purification of Christianity at the proper time was fondly nurtured by hundreds of learned and pious men in the latter part of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century; and when at length the right leader appeared at the fulness of time, he found hundreds of thousands ready to fall at once into line as combatants in the grand army of reform.
II. Luther's Reformation in Germany. — While the forerunners of the Reformation diffused in the Church the yearning for a radical purification of Christianity, and while the humanists were educating a race much better fitted for being the standard-bearers of a thorough reform than were the reformers of preceding centuries, a number of other great events co- operated for bringing the mediaeval history of mankind to a close, and for ushering in a new sera. Maritime discoveries of unparalleled magnitude widened the horizon of the European nations and led to a rapid growth of commerce, to an increase of manufactures, and a greater and more general diffusion of wealth. The invention of the art of printing diffused knowledge among the masses of the people to an extent which former generations would have regard ed as impossible. Feudalism and medieval chivalry collapsed before the rise of the wealthier and more intelligent burgherdom of the cities and towns, on the one hand, and the consolidation of powerful states under centralized governments, on the other. The new forces which obtained a controlling influence upon modern society were not always, and not by necessity, hostile to the rulling Church; but it is at once apparent that when in alliance with reformatory Church movements they were a considerable aid in raising up more formidable oppositions to the popes and their Church than those which had been put down in the Middle Ages. Soon after the beginning of the':6th century, Germany, then the soil most favorable to religious reform, produced the man who succeeded in carrying through the reforms which the preceding centuries had so often in vain attempted, who dealt to the papacy a heavier blow than it had received since the separation of the Eastern Church, and whose name, forever associated with "The Reformation," stands at the portal of modern history as one of its greatest pillars. No one disputes the eminent position which Martin Luther occupies in history, nor the extraordinary qualities which elevated him to it. The Manual of Church History, by Dr. Alzog, which has been translated into nearly all the languages of Europe, and is very extensively used in the theological schools of the Roman Catholic Church, says of Luther: "If we look upon his agitated, eventful life, we must count him among the most remarkable men of all centuries, althrough he has not grasped his mission as a reformer of the Church. We must also recognise his courage, though it frequently degenerated into defiance — his untiring activity, his popular, irresistible eloquence, sparkling wit, and disinterestedness. He did not lack a profound religious sentiment, which yearned for satisfaction, and which constitutes the fundamental character and the most brilliant feature of his system." A Protestant Church historian (Kurtz) justly calls Luther a religious genius, who was called to his great work by the rarest union of the necessary qualifications and gifts of the intellect, sentiment, character, and will; who was trained and educated by a providential guidance of his life; who, in his own life, had passed through the entire essential course of reformation, had tested in himself its divine power, and then could not but make the holiest and dearest experience of his life serviceable to all the world.
1. The origin of the German Reformation was quite humble and indefinite. Pope Leo X, of whom even Roman Catholic writers must say that "he does not appear to have experienced the blessing and power of the Christian faith," and that "religion was not to him the highest affair of life," had arranged for a very extensive sale of indulgences. It was not deemed worth while to assign for such an outrage upon the religious sentiment of pious Christians a more specious pretext than that the proceeds of the sale were intended for a war against the Turks and the erection of St. Peter's church. The real destination of the money, it was quite commonly believed, was to defray the exorbitant expenditures of the pope's court and to serve as a marriage dowry of his sister. Archbishop Albert of Mentz, of whose Christian belief as little was known as of that of the pope, authorized the sale in Germany on condition that fifty per cent. of the gross income should flow into his own pocket. A Dominican friar (Tetzel) carried on the trade with an effrontery which outraged the sentiments of thousands of earnest Christians. Among those who were urged by their conscience to rise against this profanation of Christianity was Luther, then a young monk in an Augustinian convent. When a young student, he had been driven by his anxiety for the salvation of his soul into the retirement of a convent. After long doubts and mental troubles, he had derived from a profound study of the Scriptures, and of the writings of Augustine and Tauler, the consolatory belief that man is to be saved, not by his own works, but by faith in the mercy of God in Christ.
When he became a doctor of the Sacred Scriptures, he was deeply impressed with the duty imposed upon him by the oath he had to take on the occasion of teaching and making known to the world the truths of Christianity. Both as an earnest Christian, who sincerely believed in the Christianity of the Scriptures, and as a conscientious teacher of theology, Luther felt himself impelled to enter an energetic protest against the doings of Tetzel. In accordance with the principles of the Church of Rome, he wrote to several neighboring bishops to stop the sale of indulgences, and only when this appeal remained unheeded he determined to act himself. On the eve of All-Saints' Day, Oct. 31, 1517, he affixed to the castle church of Wittenberg the celebrated ninety-five propositions, which are generally looked upon as the beginning of Luther's reformation. Both Protestant and Roman Catholic writers are agreed that these theses involved by no means on Luther's part a conscious renunciation of the Roman Catholic faith. Luther himself showed this clearly by his subsequent appeal to the pope; but Dr. Hase justly remarks that Luther certainly must have been aware that he had thrown out a challenge to the most powerful prelates and monks. On the other hand, the opposition to Rome was so widespread that Luther's words worked upon public opinion as the kindling spark in a powdermagazine. Even the pope, who had at first looked upon the matter as another monkish quarrel, became startled at the electric shock which it produced throughout the Christian world. Serious measures for arresting the progress of the movement were resolved upon. At first the pope cited Luther to Rome, but at the request of the University of Wittenberg and the elector of Saxony the concession was made that the papal legate, Thomas de Vio, of Gaeta (better known in history under the name Cajetanus), should examine Luther in a paternal manner.
The characteristic feature in Luther's line of defence was the rejection of the arguments taken from the fathers and the scholastics, and the demand to be refuted by arguments taken from the Bible. It was also remarkable that soon after appealing from the cardinal's treatment to the pope when better informed, he was urged on, by a fresh papal bull in behalf of indulgences, to change his appeal and to direct it to an oecumenical council. Soon after, the Roman court found it expedient to change its policy with Luther, and to endeavor to bring him back by means of compromise and kindliness. The papal chamberlain, Karl von Miltiz, a native of Saxony, was so far successful that Luther promised to write letters in which he would admonish all persons to be obedient and respectful to the Roman Church, and to write to the pope to assure him that he had never thought of infringing upon the privileges of the Roman Church. The promised letter was actually indited; its language is full of expressions of humility, and exalts the Roman Church above everything but Christ himself. He also promised to discontinue the controversy if his opponents would do the same. But soon he was drawn into the Disputation of Leipsic (June 27 to July 15, 1519), which the vain-glorious Dr. Eck (even Roman Catholic writers thus characterize him) had originally arranged with Carlstadt. History awards to Dr. Eck the glory of having been the more clever disputant, but Luther's cause was nevertheless greatly benefited by it. The arguments of his opponents drove Luther onward to a more explicit rejection of Romish innovations. He was led to assert that the pope was not by divine right the universal bishop of the Church, to admit a doubt of the infallibility of councils, and to be convinced that not all Hussite doctrines were heretical.
At the same time the reformatory movement was greatly strengthened by the universal sympathy that began to be expressed with Luther, by the alliance with the liberal humanists and knights of Germany, and especially by the open accession to his cause of one of the greatest scholars of the age, Dr. Melancthon. The conflict between Rome and Luther now became one for life and death. Dr. Eck returned from a journey to Rome with a bull which declared Luther a heretic and ordered the burning of his writings. Luther, on the other hand, systematized his views in three works, all of which appeared in 1520: To his Imperial Majesty and the Christian Nobility of the German Nation; On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church; and Sermon on the Freedom of a Christian Man. Finally he broke away the last bridge of retreat by publicly burning (Dec. 10, 1520) the papal bull with the papal canon law. The pope succeeded in prevailing upon the German emperor and the German Diet of Worms (1521) to proceed against Luther; and when the latter firmly refused to recant, and avowed that he could yield nothing but to the Holy Scriptures and reasonable argument, he was placed under the ban of the empire; but so great was the discontent in Germany with Rome that the same assembly that condemned Luther for opposing the faith of their ancestors presented 101 articles of complaint against the Roman see. The ban of the empire involved serious dangers for Luther, for it gave permission to any one to assault his person and seize upon his property; but he was saved from these dangers by his secluded life at the Castle of Wartburg, to which disguised horsemen, according to a previous understanding with the elector, but against his own desire, had conducted him. Far from the turmoil of political agitation, he found time not only to issue several powerful polemical essays (against auricular confession, against monastic vows, against masses for the dead, and against the new idol of the archbishop of Mentz), which refuted the rumor that he was dead, but to conceive and partially execute the plan of translating the Bible into the native tongue. During the absence of Luther from Wittenberg, the Reformation under the leadership of men who were more impetuous and practical, but less circumspect and theplogical, assumed a more aggressive turn against Rome.
Several priests renounced celibacy and were married; Carlstadt administered the Lord's supper in both kinds, and in the German language. To these changes Luther made no objection; but when Carlstadt began to commit open acts of violence in disturbing the public worship of the Roman Church — when enthusiastic prophets appeared from Zwickau, who boasted of immediate divine revelations, rejected infant baptism, and denounced Church, State, and science — he emerged once more from his seclusion, silenced by powerful sermons his adversaries at Wittenberg, and once more placed himself at the helm of the movement. In intimate union with. Melancthon, he now labored for completing the theological system of the Church which began to rear itself on the basis of his reformatory movement. Luther himself gave his chief attention to continuing the translation of the Bible in German, which was completed in 1534, and constitutes in every respect one of the master-productions of the reformatory age; while Melancthon, in his celebrated work on theological science (Loci Communes Rerum Theologicarum), gave to the theological leaders of the new Church a hand-book of doctrine which, as a literary production, ranked with the best works that the Church of Rome had produced up to that time.
In Rome, Leo X had meanwhile (1521) been succeeded by Adrian VI, the son of a mechanic of Utrecht, who, while strongly attached to the continuity of the external Church and opposed to the separation already produced by Luther, was at the same time sincerely and honestly devoted to the cause of a religious reform. The energy displayed by him and the success obtained were, however, by no means commensurate with the honesty of his convictions. During his short administration (1521-23) he was neither able to,arrest the anti-Church reformation of Luther nor to smooth the way for the introduction of any reforms within the Church. The latter were hated in Rome no less than the former, and when Adrian died he was succeeded by a humanist, Clement VII, who, like Leo X, was anxious to preserve the splendor and the power of the papal court, and showed not the least interest in the purity of religion.
In Germany, during this interval, the protracted absence of the emperor had prevented the adoption of any stringent measures for the suppression of the Reformation, and allowed the latter to strike deeper roots in the nation. The majority of the princes, it is true, were not yet willing to part with the religion of their fathers, and to identify themselves with the movement which they thought represented their beloved ancestors as heretics. They mistrusted Rome, however; persisted in demanding reforms; contented themselves with resolving at several successive diets that the Edict of Worms should be carried out as much as possible, and thus enabled the princes and free cities which were friendly to the Reformation to consolidate it within the boundaries of their states. When the papal legate Campeggio succeeded at the Diet of Ratisbon, in 1524, in bringing about an alliance between Ferdinand of Austria, the dukes of Bavaria, and most of the bishops of Southern Germany for the preservation of the old faith and for carrying out the Edict of Worms, landgrave Philip of Hesse and elector John of Saxony, at a meeting held at Gotha, took the initiatory step for a counter-alliance of the friends of the Reformation. Luther and Melancthon were at first opposed to the conclusion of any offensive and defensive alliance, on the ground that God's cause should not be defended by carnal weapons. When, however, the danger appeared to increase, a defensive alliance between the landgrave and the elector was concluded in 1526 at Torgau, and was soon joined by a number of other princes.
As the emperor became involved in a new foreign war in which the pope was on the side of his enemies, the Diet of Spire unanimously agreed upon the decree that until the meeting of a free general council every state should act with regard to the Edict of Worms as it might venture to answer to God and his imperial majesty. This decree gave to the states which were friendly to the Reformation time to reorganize the churches of their territories on the basis of the Reformation. The lead was taken by the elector John the Constant of Saxony. Melancthon drew up the articles of visitation, in accordance with which, in 1529, a general Church visitation of ecclesiastical and lay cotmcillors took place. Among the results of this visitation were the compilation of two catechisms by Luther for more efficient instruction of the children in the elements of religion, the appointment of superintendents to exercise spiritual supervision, and the introduction of an ecclesiastical constitution, which became the common model for the churches in the other German states. Luther, in the meantime (1525), had followed the example of many of his clerical friends and married. As the continuing centre of the entire movement, Luther exerted a powerful influence in many directions as professor and author by an extensive correspondence far beyond the borders of Germany, and by supplying the churches with a great number of excellent Church hymns in the native tongue. By these Church hymns, as well as by his translation of the Bible, Luther at the same time occupied so prominent a position in the history of German literature that Germany as a nation appeared to be under the greatest indebtedness to him, and its further progress to be closely linked to the success of the Reformation. A number of theological controversies into which Luther was drawn, and of which those with king Henry VIII of England, with Erasmus, with Carlstadt, and Zwingli were the most important, belong more to the personal history of Luther than to that of the Reformation.
2. A new crisis for the German Reformation began in 1529 with the Diet of Spire. The emperor having victoriously finished his wars, was now free from foreign entanglements, and showed himself determined to maintain the religious unity of the empire. A very numerous attendance of bishops and prelates secured a Catholic majority, which, in accordance with the imperial demand, decreed that the Edict of Worms should be carried through in the states which had hitherto acknowledged its authority, but that no innovations should be required in the remaining provinces; that none should be obstructed in celebrating the mass; and that the privileges of every spiritual estate should be respected. Against this recess, which if carried out would have made a further progress of the Reformation impossible, Electoral Saxony, Hesse, Luneburg, Anhalt, the margrave of Brandenburg, and fourteen imperial cities entered a protestation, from which they were henceforth called Protestants. They appealed from it to the emperor-to a free council and a German national assembly. Philip of Hesse urged the evangelical princes to assume a defiant attitude for the defence of the Reformation, and, in order to strengthen their alliance, advised a union with the imperial cities that favored the Reformation of Zwingli. In accordance with his wishes, a theological colloquy was arranged at Marburg (Oct. 1 to 3, 1529), in which Zwingli, Luther, OEcolampadius. and Melancthon took part.
They failed to effect an agreement in the doctrine of the Lord's supper, but parted with the mutual promise to end the public controversy. Soon after the evangelical princes assembled at the Convention of Schwabach, Luther had drawn up, on the basis of the articles of Marburg, the so-called seventeen Schwabach articles, which the Zwinglian cities were requested to sign as conditional of their admission to the alliance. The request was, however, declined, and the convention remained without result. At the next Diet of Augsburg (1530) the emperor intended to put an end to the religious strife. The elector of Saxony therefore requested his theologians to draw up a brief summary of the evangelical faith, and they accordingly presented to him a revision of the Schwabach articles at Torgau (the Torgau articles). The elector was accompanied to Augsburg by Spalatin, Melancthon, and Jonas. Luther, who was still under the ban of the empire, remained behind at Coburg. The emperor's arrival was delayed, and Melancthon used the time up to the opening of the diet (June 20) for composing, on the basis of the Torgan articles, the famous Confession of Augsburg (q.v.), the first of the symbolical books of the Lutheran Church, which, after being approved by Luther, was signed by the states. It had been drawn up both in Latin and in German; and although the emperor desired the Latin text to be read, it was at the request of the elector publicly read to the diet in German (June 25). Some of the princes admitted that they had derived from this document a clearer conception of the Reformation than they had possessed heretofore of its character and design; but the emperor commissioned the Catholic theologians Faber, Eck, Cochlaeus, and Wimpina to prepare a "confutation" of the Confession, which was read on Aug. 3. The emperor declared that he was determined to stand by the doctrines laid down in the confutation; that he expected the same from the princes; that he was the patron of the Church, and not willing to tolerate a schism in Germany. He refused to receive the "Apology of the Augsburg Confession," which had been composed by Melancthon in reply to the "confutation." The recess of the empire of Sept. 22 announced that the confession of the Protestants had been refuted, but that time for consideration would be given to them until April 15 of the next year; until then all should refrain from diffusing their heresy by writing or preaching; and within six months a general council would be called for the ultimate settlement of the matter.
The Edict of Worms was to be carried out, and the imperial court was to proceed against the disobedient. As, soon after the close of the diet, a legal process was actually begun against the Protestant states for having confiscated the property of the Church, the Protestant powers met at Smalkald, and concluded (1531) a defensive alliance for six years, at the head of which the elector of Saxony and the landgrave of Hesse were placed. Fortunately for the new alliance, the emperor was soon again involved in a war with the Turks, who threatened an invasion of Austria and Germany, and his desire to obtain the aid of the Protestant churches once more disposed him favorably towards toleration. New negotiations resulted in the conclusion of the religious peace of Nuremberg (July 23, 1532), which enjoined upon both parties mutual friendship and Christian love until the approaching council. Pope Clement VII so far yielded to the demands of the emperor that he promised in 1533 to convoke a council within the space of a year at Mantua, Bologna, or Piacenza; but he demanded, at the same time, from the Protestants a previous unconditional submission to the decrees of the council. This promise the Protestants naturally refused to give, though they were ready to attend the council and plead their cause. The power of the Protestants in the meanwhile was greatly strengthened by the accession of the dukes of Pomerania and Wurtemberg, and by a union with the cities which favored the Zwinglian Reformation; and which, after a religious colloquy, held at Cassel in 1535, between Melancthon and Bucer, agreed in May, 1536, upon the Wittenberg Concord, by which the cities unequivocally accepted the Augsburg Confession.
When in July, 1536, the pope actually convoked the council at Mantua, the Protestant states met again for consultation at Smalkald. They accepted and signed the "Articles of Smalkald" which had been composed by Luther, and which presented the doctrines of the Reformation in much stronger terms than the Confession of Augsburg, and they remained unanimous in the resolve not to attend an Italian council, at which the pope would appear both as a party and as a judge. The council did not meet, but in 1538 a "holy league" for the suppression of Protestantism was formed at Nuremberg by the archbishops of Mentz and Salzburg, the dukes of Bavaria, George of Saxony, and Henry of Brunswick. But the next year George died, and was succeeded by his Protestant brother Henry, who found it easy to carry through the Reformation; and a few years later (1542), Henry of Brunswick was driven from his dominions, into which his conquerors likewise introduced the Reformation. The elector of Brandenburg, Joachim I, a decided enemy of Luther, was likewise (1535) succeeded by a Protestant son. Thus gradually the Reformation gained over to its side nearly all the secular princes of Germany, with the exception of the dukes of Bavaria and the house of Hapsburg, which found it necessary to adhere to the old faith on account of its connection with Spain, Belgium, and Italy. Several new attempts were made to effect a reconciliation of the contending parties.
The Colloquy of Worms (1540) remained without any result. At the Diet of Ratisbon (1541), where Rome was represented by the pious legate Contarini, who himself favored the fundamental doctrines of Protestantism as they were then maintained, an agreement was effected between the theologians concerning the doctrine of justification and other points, but it was found impossible to harmonize views on transubstantiation. The Protestants, but not the Catholics, had to pledge themselves to abide by the agreed articles (the Ratisbon Interim) until the meeting of the council. The pope was finally prevailed upon by the emperor to open (Dec. 13, 1545) the long-promised council at Trent, a city of the German empire. The emperor still adhered to the plan to force the pope into a Catholic reformation of the Church, and the Protestants into submission to the Church. Another colloquy at Ratisbon was arranged in 1546 to draw up a basis of union to be submitted to the council, but it remained without result. At the same time, the emperor was determined to break the political power of Protestantism by annihilating the Smalkald alliance, and in this he was quite successful. The elector and the landgrave were declared guilty of high-treason, and in the ensuing Smalkaldic war, in which duke Maurice, though himself a Protestant, fought from political motives on the side of the emperor, both princes were defeated and made prisoners. The other members of the league, with the exception of a few cities, submitted.
The emperor was anxious not to give to his expedition the name of a religious war. but the pope accorded a plenary indulgence to all who would aid in the extermination of the heretics. Shortly before the beginning of the war (Feb. 18, 1546), Luther had died at Eisleben, where he had been invited to act as umpire between the counts of Mansfeld. In order to prevent the participation of the Protestants in the council, the pope caused the immediate condemnation of some important Protestant doctrines in the first session of that body; and to escape the reformatory pressure of the emperor, he transferred the council (March, 1547), on the pretext that in Trent it was threatened by the pestilence, to Bologna, where it soon dissolved. The emperor was greatly dissatisfied, and determined to go on with his own reformatory policy for preserving the religious unity of Christendom. At his request, the conciliatory and nobble-minded bishop of Naumburg, Julius von Pflugk, and the court preacher of the elector of Brandenburg, John Agricola, drew up the Augsburg Interim (1548), which was adopted by the diet, and was to serve as the standard according to which all matters relating to religion should be arranged until the decision of the council. At first the Interim was intended to be valid for both Protestants and Catholics, but it really remained in force only among the former, to whom it conceded the marriage of the clergy, the use of the cup in the sacrament, and some indefinite constructions of particular doctrines of the Catholic Church. The Protestants submitted to the Interim with great reluctance; and even the emperor's ally; Maurice of Saxony, did not risk its uuconditional introduction, and at his advice the Leipsic Interim (1548) was drawn up by Melancthon, in which the greater part of the Catholic ritual was declared to be indifferent (adiaphoron), and therefore fit to be retained.
It also declared that the power of the pope and of the bishops might be acknowledged so long as they used it for the edification, and not for the destruction, of the Church. But even this more Protestant Interim gave no satisfaction, and the fermentation continuied until the new pope, Julius III, reconvoked the Council of Trent for May 1,1551. The emperor demanded that Protestants should attend the council, but Maurice made the attendance dependent upon the condition that Protestants should receive the right of voting, that the former resolutions against the Protestants should be annulled, and that the pope himself should be subject to a general council. Melancthon elaborated as the basis of the doctrinal negotiations the Confessio Saxonica, or Repetitio Confessionis Augustance. Protestant deputies from Wiirtemberg, Brandenburg, Saxony, and Strasburg appeared at Trent, and Melancthon, accompanied by several theologians of Wittenberg, set out to join them. The situation of the Reformation was radically changed when Maurice concluded a secret alliance against the emperor with a uIumber of Protestant princes and the Catholic king of France, to whom, for his assistance, the three German bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun were treacherously surrendered by the allies.
Maurice, in a short and decisive war (1552), completely defeated the emperor, who was sick at Innsbruck, and compelled him to agree to the Treaty of Passau (July 30, 1552), which set the landgrave of Hesse at liberty (the elector of Saxony had been liberated previously), opened the imperial council to the adherents of the Reformation, promised a diet for the settlement of the religious differences, and provided a permanent peace for at least all those who sympathized with the Augsburg Confession. The continuance of the war between Germany and France delayed the convocation of the.Diet of Augsburg until Feb., 1555. Both parties in Germany had arrived at the conviction that the hope of terminating the religious controversy by means of religious colloquies or by a general council must be abandoned for the present, arid that peace and order in the empire could only be maintained by mutual forbearance. After long negotiations, the "Religious Peace of Augsburg" was concluded. — It guaranteed the free exercise of religion to the Catholics and the adherents of the Confession of Augsburg. According to the "territorial system,"which now came into use, the prince of every German state had a right to reform the Church within his dominion. The subjects of both Protestant and Catholic governments who were unwilling to conform to the ruling religion retained only the right to leave their country without obstruction. The Protestants remained in possession of the ecclesiastical benefices which they held in 1555. But with regard to the future, it was provided that all spiritual states of the empire which should subsequently go over to the Augsburg Confession should by that act forfeit their offices and possessions. The Catholics remembered with fear the losses which they had sustained by the secession of the grand master of the German order, Albert of Brandenburg, and with which they were threatened by the sympathy with the Reformation of the archbishop Hermann of Cologne; and they therefore believed that on the adoption of the articles securing to them the possession of bishoprics and other ecclesiastical states, even if their actual incumbents should become Protestants, the very existence of their Church would depend. The article called "Ecclesiastical Reservation" (Reservatun Ecclesiasticum) was proclaimed by the Roman king Ferdinand as an actual ordinance of the diet, though the Protestants loudly protested against it, and their protest had to be recorded in the peace.
III. Zwingli's and Calvin's Reformation in Switzerland. — Next to Germany, Switzerland became the principal source of the Reformation. But it sent forth two currents which have never fully united, though many connecting canals have been built between them, and both are now usually acknowledged as belonging to one comprehensive system; which is commonly designated as the Reformed Church. One of the movements originated in German, the other in French, Switzerland. At the head of the one was Ulric Zwingli, at the head of the other John Calvin. The thirteen cantons which constituted Switzerland at the beginning of the 16th century were still in nominal connection with the German empire; and the same causes, therefore, which have been referred to in our account of Germany favored the growth of the Reformation in Switzerland. Dissatisfaction with and contempt of Rome were, moreover, promoted in Switzerland by the large number of mercenaries who were employed in the military service of the popes, and who, after returning home, not only diffused a knowledge of the utter corruption prevailing in Rome, but by their own unworthy lives helped to bring Rome into disrepute.
1. Ulric Zwingli, who gave the first impulse to the Reformation in German Switzerland, (See ZWINGLI), had received his education at the universities of Vienna and Basle, and in the latter place had joined himself to a circle of enthusiastic admirers of ancient learning and of enlightelned religious views who gathered around Erasmus. It was more classical education and scientific study of the Holy Scriptures than, as in the case of Luther, religious experience which made Zwingli an earnest advocate of religious reform, although, like his teacher Erasmus, he continued to hope for a reformation within the Church by the ecclesiastical authorities themselves. Such views were entertained quite generally in Switzerland; and thus, though Zwingli in 1518 raised his voice against the effrontery of a trader in indulgences, the Franciscan monk Bernardin Samson, he was appointed papal chaplain by the papal legate. His preaching against the corruptions prevailing in the Church became more earnest after he had been appointed, in 1519, "Lent priest" in Zurich. The influences proceeding from Luther did not remain without effect upon him, and he began to be looked upon in Zurich as a Lutheran at heart. When he designated the rule of fasting as an ordinance of man, the Council of Zurich, in 1522, took his part against the bishop of Constance.
Zwingli's first reforming work, Von Erkiesen und Freyheit der Spysen, which was published at this time, gave a new imptuse to the movement. In the same year Zwingli, in the name of the reformatory party among the clergy, addressed the Diet of Lutcerne and the bishop of Constance in behalf of a free preaching of the Gospel; he also demanded the abolition of priestly celibacy. In accordance with Zwingli's wish, the Council of Zurich arranged on Jan. 29, 1523, a religious conference, at which Zwingli presented the reformatory doctrines he had preached in sixty-seven articles, and defended them so successfilly that the Council of Zurich charged all the preachers to preach the pure Gospel in the same manner. Soon after, Zwingli received an efficient co-laborer in his reformatory efforts by the appointment of Leo Judae as Lent priest at Zurich. Several events signalized at this time the steady advance of the cause. The council allowed nuns to leave their convents, several of the clergy married without hindrance, a German baptismal service was introduced, and the cathedral chapter, at its own request, received new andt suitable ordinances. In other cantons, especially in Lucerne, Fribourg, and Zug, a violent opposition was manifested against the Reformation, but in Zurich its success was fully secured. The council convoked a new conference for October 26, upon images and the mass, to which all Swiss bishops and cantons were invited, but only Schaffhausen and St. Gall sent delegates. No champion for images and mass was found at the conference, and the Council of Zurich concluded to promote the reformation of the canton by diffusing the proper instruction in the country districts, for which purpose Zwinigli, the abbot Von Cappel, and Conrad Schmidt, commnander of the knights of St. John at Kussnacht, were appointed. With the assent of the council, Zwingli published his Christian Introduction, which was to explain to the people more fully the meaning of the religious Reformation. Soon new reformatory measures were adopted by the council. The shrined pictures in the churches were shut up, and every priest was left free to celebrate mass or not as he chose (Dec., 1523). On Whit- Sunday, 1524, the work of removing the images from the churches was begun, and it was completed in thirteen days.
The abolition of many other usages followed in rapid succession; and the transformation in religious service was completed by the celelration on April 13, 14, and 16, 1525, of the Lord's supper again in its original simplicity in the great minster. The publication of Zwingli's De Vera et Falsa Religione and the first part of the Zurich translation of the Bible likewise gave a favorable impulse. Beyond Zurich, the Reformation was carried through in nearly the whole canton of Appenzell, and in the town of Muhlhausen; a broad foundation was laid in Berne by the preaching of the prudent Berchtold Haller; in Basle, Wolfgang Fabricius Capito and Caspar Hedio were the first preachers, and in 1524 the authorities conceded to John CEcolampadius those conditions in regard to reform under which he accepted an appointment as minister. The Reformation also gained a firm ground in Schaffhausen and St. Gall. The majority of the cantons were, however, still opposed to the Reformation, and the Diet of Lucerne (Jan., 1525) endeavored to satisfy the longing for a reformation without rending the Church. Its decrees, however, did not go into effect; and the Catholic cantons, in accordance with the advice of Dr. Eck, arranged a new religious disputation at Baden (May 19, 1526), where (Ecolampadins acted as the spokesman of the Reformed theologians.
Though both parties claimed the victory, the Reformation continued to make progress. In the summer of 1526, the Grisons granted religious freedom; in April, 1527, the Reformed party obtained a majority in the Council of Berne. which, after a new disputation at Berne (Jan. 6, 1528), officially introduced the Reformation. Decisive measures for securing the preponderance of the Reformation were taken in 1528 by St. Gall, and in 1529 by Basle and Glarus. As the most zealous of the Catholic cantons, especially Schwvz, Uri, Unterwvalden, Lucerne, Valais, and Fribourg, resorted to forcible measures for the suppression of the Reformation, Zurich and Constance, on Dec. 25,1527, formed a defensive alliance under the name of Burgher Rights. It was joined in 1528 by Berne and St. Gall; in 1529 by Biel, Mtuhlhausen, Basle, and Schaffhausen; in 1530 by Strasburg, which had been repelled by the German Protestants. The landgrave of Hesse also was received into it in 1530, at least by Zurich and Basle. In the meanwhile five Catholic cantons — Lucerne, Zug, Schwvz, Uri, and Unterwalden — had concluded (April, 1529) a league with king Ferdinand for the maintenance of the old faith. A war declared by Zurich in 1529 against the five cantons was of short duration, and the peace was favorable to the former. In 1531 the war was renewed, and the forces of Zurich were totally defeated at Cappel, Zwingli himself finding his death. The peace which Zurich and Berne were forced to conclude was, on the whole, humiliating; it recognised, however, and secured both confessions of faith. Soon after the battle of Cappel, OEcolampadius died (Nov. 23, 1531) of grief for the losses of the Reformed Church. Henry Bullinger in Zurich, and Oswald Myconius in Basle, now became the leading spirits among the Reformed, whose strength was greatly impaired by internal dissensions and by the progress of the Anabaptists. The Catholic cantons succeeded in arresting the further spread of the Reformation in German Switzerland, and in repressing it by force in some free districts and in parts of the cantons Soleure and Glarus; but in the remainder of the Reformed cantons, especially in Zurich and Berne, the population steadfastly continued to adhere to the cause of religious reform.
2. In French Switzerland, the reformatory movement began in 1526 in the French parts of the cantons Berne and Biel, where the Gospel was preached by William Farel, a native of France. In 1530 he established the Reformation in Neufchatel. In Geneva a beginning was made as early as 1528; in 1534, after a religious conference held at the suggestion of the Bernese, in which Farel defended the Reformation, public worship was allowed to the Reformed; rapid progress was then made through the zeal of Farel. Froment, and Viret; and in 1535, after another disputation, the papacy was abolished by the council anid the Reformation adopted. In 1536 John Calvin, (See CALVIN) arrived in Geneva, and was induced by Farel to remain in the city and to aid him in his struggle against a party of freethinkers who called themselves Spirituels. In October of the same year he took part with Farel and Viret in a religious disputation held at Lausanne, which resulted in the adhesion of the Pavs-de-Vaud to the cause of the Reformation. In 1538 both Calvinn and Farel were banished by the council, which had taken offence at the strict Church discipline introduced by the Reformers. Soon, however, the friends of the Reformation regained the ascendency, and Calvin was recalled in 1541, while Farel remained in Neufchatel. For several years Calvin had to sustain a desperate struggle against his opponents, but in 1555 they were finally subdued in an insurrection set on foot by Ami Perrin. From that time the reformatory ideas of Calvin were carried through in both Church and State with iron consistenc,. and Geneva became a centre whence reformatory influences spread to the remotest parts of Europe. By an extensive correspondence and numerous religious writings, he exerted a strong personal influence far bevond the boundaries of Switzerland. The theological academy of Geneva, founded in 1588, supplied the churches of many foreign countries, especially France, with preachers trained in the spirit of Calvin. When Calvin died, in 1564, the continuation of his work devolved upon the learned Theodore Beza. Calvin disagreed in many points with Zwingli, whose views gradually lost ground as those of Calvin advanced. The Second Helvetic Confession, the most important among the symbolical books of the Reformed Church, which was compiled by Bullinger in Zurich, published in 1566, and recognised in all Reformed countries, completed the superiority of Calvin's principles over those of Zwingli.
3. Although the majority of the German Protestant churches remained in connection with the Lutheran Reformation, a German Reformed Church which wore a moderately Calvinistic aspect sprang up in several parts of Germany. In 1560 the elector Frederick III of the Palatinate embraced the Reformed creed, and organized the Church of his dominions according to Reformed principles. By his authority, Ursinus and Olevianus composed the Heidelberg Catechism, which soon came to be regarded not only as the standard symbolical book of the German Reformed Church, but was highly esteemed throughout the Reformed world. Maurice. the learned landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, after several fruitless attempts to reconcile the Lutheran and Reformed churches, joined the latter in 1564, and compelled the Lutheran Church of his dominion to enter into communion with Calvinism. In Anhalt, Calvinism was introduced chiefly from attachment to Melancthon, and Nassau introduced the Heidelberg Catechism in consequence of its relation to the house of Orange. The most important accession to the Reformed Church of Germany was that of John Sigismund, elector of Brandenburg, who onl Christmas day, 1613, received the Lord's supper in the court church of Berlin according to the Calvinistic ritual. Although he tried, as all princes of these times did, to induce the people to follow his example, the overwhelming majority of the country continued to remain Lutheran. Among the free imperial cities, it was especially Bremen which adopted the Reformed creed.
IV. The English Reformnation. — In England the writings of Luther were warmly welcomed by many, especially by those who secretly adhered to the doctrines of Wycliffe. King Henry VIII, who was a great admirer of St. Thomas a Becket, wrote against Luther (1521) the work Adsertio VII Sacramentorum, for which he received from the pope the title Defensor Fidei. He also wrote the emperor of Germany a letter in which he called for the extirpation of the heretics. But Lutheranism found zealous adherents even at the English universities, and an English translation of the Bible (1526) by Frith and Tyndale, members of the university of Cambridge, had a decisive effect. Soon the king fell out with the pope, because the latter refused to annul Henry's marriage with Catharine of Aragon, the niece of the emperor Charles V. The king, who represented that his marriage with Catharine, his brother's widow, was open to objections, laid the matter, by advice of Thomas Cranmer, before the Christian universities; and when replies were received declaring the marriage with a brother's wife as null and void, the king separated from Catharine, married Anne Boleyn, and fell under the papal ban. The English Parliament sundered the connection between England and Rome, and recognised the king as the head of the Church. Henry was desirous of destroying the influence of the pope over the Church of England, to which, in other respects, he wished to preserve the continuity of its Catholic character.
The cloisters were subjected to a visitation in 1535, and totally abolished in 1536; and the Bible was diffused in the mother tongue (1538) as the only source of doctrine; but the statute of 1539, imposed distinct limits upon the Reformation, and, in particular, confirmed transubstantiation, priestly celibacy, masses for the dead, and auricular confession. A considerable number of those who refused to comply with the religious changes introduced into England were executed. A powerful party, headed by Thomas Cranmer, after 1533 archbishop of Canterbury, and Thomas Cromwell, after 1534 royal vicargeneral for ecclesiastic affairs, exerted a silent influence in behalf of a nearer approach towards the Reformed churches of continental Europe. They met with little success during the reign of Henry, but obtained a majority in the regency which ruled England during the minority of Edward VI. Peter Martyr, Occhino, Bucer, and Fagius were called to England to aid Cranmer in carrying through the Reformation. The basis was laid in the Book of Homilies (1547), the new English liturgy (the Book of Common Prayer, 1548), and the Forty-two Articles (1552); but the labors of Cranmer were interrupted by the death of Edward VI (1553). His successor, queen Mary, the daughter of Henry and Catharine of Aragon, was a devoted partisan of the Church of Rome, during whose reign Cranmer and from three hundred to four hundred other persons were executed on account of their religion. A papal nuncio appeared in England, and an obsequious parliament sanctioned the reunion with Rome; but the affections of the people were not regained, and the early death of Mary (1558) put an end to the official restoration of the Papal Church. Queen Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn, whose birth, in consequence of the papal decision, was regarded by the Roman Catholics as illegitimate, resumed the work of her father, and completed the English Reformation, as distinct both from the Church of Rome and the Reformations of Germany and Switzerland.
The Book of Common Prayer which had been adopted under Edward was so changed as to be less offensive to Catholics, and by the Act of Uniformity, June, 1559, it was made binding on all the churches of the kingdom. Most of the Catholics conformed; of 9400 clergy, their benefices were only lost by fourteen bishops, fifteen heads of ecclesiastical corporations, fifty canons, and about eighty priests. Matthew Parker, the former teacher of the queen, was appointed archbishop of Canterbury. The validity of his ordination, which was not sanctioned by the pope, nor made according to the Roman rite, was at once disputed in numerous Catholic writings, but has also found some Catholic defenders, as Le Courayer. The Confession of Faith which had been drawn up under Edward in forty-two articles was reduced to thirty-nine articles, and in this form it was adopted by a convocation of the clergy at London in 1562, and by Parliament made, in 1571, the rule of faith for all the clergy. According to the Thirty-nine Articles, the Scriptures contain everything necessary to salvation; justification is through faith alone, but works acceptable to God are the necessary fruit of this faith; in the Lord's supper there is a communion of the body of Christ, which is spiritually received by faith; and predestination is apprehended only as it is a source of consolation. Supreme power over the Church is vested in the English crown, but it is limited by the statutes. Bishops continued to be the highest ecclesiastical officers and the first barons of the realm. Subscription to the articles was made binding only on the clergy; to the laity freedom of conscience was allowed.
The adoption of the Thirty-nine Articles completed, in the main, the constitution of the Episcopal Church of England. Some parts of the Church government and the liturgy, especially the retaining of sacerdotal vestments, gave great offence to a number of zealous friends of a radical religious reformation who had suffered persecution during the reign of Mary, and, while exiles, had become strongly attached to the principles of strict Calvinism. They demanded a greater purity of the Church (hence their name Puritans), a simple, spiritual form of worship, a strict Church discipline, and a Presbyterian form of government. The Act of Uniformity (1559) threatened all Nonconformists with fines and imprisonment, and their ministers with deposition and banishment. When the provisions of the act began to be enforced, a number of the Non-conformist clergy formed separate congregations in connection with presbyteries (since 1572), and a considerable portion of the clergy and laity of the Established Church sympathized with them. The rupture between the parties was widened in 1592 by an act of Parliament that all who obstinately refused to attend public worship, or led others to do so, should be imprisoned and submit, or after three months be banished; and again in 1595, when the Presbyterians applied the Mosaic Sabbath laws to the Christian Sunday, and when Calvin's doctrines respecting predestination excited animated disputes.
A much more uncompromising opposition than that by the Puritans was made to the Established Church by Robert Brown, who embraced (from 1580) Calvinism in its strictest form, denounced the English Church as a false Church, and d
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McClintock, John. Strong, James. Entry for 'Reformation'. Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/tce/r/reformation.html. Harper & Brothers. New York. 1870.
