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Place Ignatius Loyola at Oxford. He is certain to become the head of a
formidable secession. Place John Wesley at Rome. He is certain to be the first
General of a new society devoted to the interests and honor of the Church. Place
St. Theresa in London. Her restless enthusiasm ferments into madness, not
untinctured with craft. She becomes the prophetess, the mother of the faithful,
holds disputations with the devil, issues sealed pardons to her adorers, and
lies in of the Shiloh. Place Joanna Southcote at Rome. She founds an order of
barefooted Carmelites, every one of whom is ready to suffer martyrdom for the
Church; a solemn service is consecrated to her memory; and her statue, placed
over the holy water, strikes the eye of every stranger who enters St. Peter's.
We have dwelt long on this subject, because we believe that of the many causes
to which the Church of Rome owed her safety and her triumph at the close of the
sixteenth century, the chief was the profound policy with which she used the
fanaticism of such persons as St. Ignatius and St. Theresa.
The Protestant party was now indeed vanquished and humbled. In France, so strong
had been the Catholic reaction that Henry the Fourth found it necessary to
choose between his religion and his crown. In spite of his clear hereditary
right, in spite of his eminent personal qualities, he saw that, unless he
reconciled himself to the Church of Rome, he could not count on the fidelity
even of those gallant gentlemen whose impetuous valor had turned the tide of
battle at Ivry. In Belgium, Poland, and Southern Germany, Catholicism had
obtained complete ascendancy. The resistance of Bohemia was put down. The
Palatinate was conquered. Upper and Lower Saxony were overflowed by Catholic
invaders. The King of Denmark stood forth as the Protector of the Reformed
Churches: he was defeated, driven out of the empire, and attacked in his own
possessions. The armies of the House of Austria pressed on, subjugated
Pomerania, and were stopped in their progress only by the ramparts of Stralsund.
And now again the tide turned. Two violent outbreaks of religious feeling in
opposite directions had given a character to the whole history of a whole
century. Protestantism had at first driven back Catholicism to the Alps and the
Pyrenees. Catholicism had rallied, and had driven back Protestantism even to the
German Ocean. Then the great southern reaction began to slacken, as the great
northern movement had slackened before. The zeal of the Catholics waxed cool.
Their union was dissolved. The paroxysm of religious excitement was over on both
sides. One party had degenerated as far from the spirit of Loyola as the other
from the spirit of Luther. During three generations religion had been the
mainspring of politics. The revolutions and civil wars of France, Scotland,
Holland, Sweden, the long struggle between Philip and Elizabeth, the bloody
competition for the Bohemian crown, had all originated in theological disputes.
But a great change now took place. The contest which was raging in Germany lost
its religious character. It was now, on one side, less a contest for the
spiritual ascendancy of the Church of Rome than for the temporal ascendancy of
the House of Austria. On the other side, it was less a contest for the reformed
doctrines than for national independence. Governments began to form themselves
into new combinations, in which community of political interest was far more
regarded than community of religious belief. Even at Rome the progress of the
Catholic arms was observed with mixed feelings. The Supreme Pontiff was a
sovereign prince of the second rank, and was anxious about the balance of power
as well as about the propagation of truth. It was known that he dreaded the rise
of an universal monarchy even more than he desired the prosperity of the
Universal Church. At length a great event announced to the world that the war of
sects had ceased, and that the war of states had succeeded. A coalition,
including Calvinists, Lutherans, and Catholics, was formed against the House of
Austria. At the head of that coalition were the first statesman and the first
warrior of the age; the former a prince of the Catholic Church, distinguished by
the vigor and success with which he had put down the Huguenots; the latter a
Protestant king who owed his throne to a revolution caused by hatred of Popery.
The alliance of Richelieu and Gustavus marks the time at which the great
religious struggle terminated. The war which followed was a war for the
equilibrium of Europe. When, at length, the peace of Westphalia was concluded,
it appeared that the Church of Rome remained in full possession of a vast
dominion which in the middle of the preceding century she seemed to be on the
point of losing. No part of Europe remained Protestant, except that part which
had become thoroughly Protestant before the generation which heard Luther preach
had passed away.
Since that time there has been no religious war between Catholics and
Protestants as such. In the time of Cromwell, Protestant England was united with
Catholic France, then governed by a priest, against Catholic Spain. William the
Third, the eminently Protestant hero, was at the head of a coalition which
included many Catholic powers, and which was secretly favored even by Rome,
against the Catholic Lewis. In the time of Anne, Protestant England and
Protestant Holland joined with Catholic Savoy and Catholic Portugal, for the
purpose of transferring the crown of Spain from one bigoted Catholic to another.
The geographical frontier between the two religions has continued to run almost
precisely where it ran at the close of the Thirty Years' War; nor has
Protestantism given any proofs of that "expansive power" which has been ascribed
to it. But the Protestant boasts, and boasts most justly, that wealth,
civilization, and intelligence, have increased far more on the northern than on
the southern side of the boundary, and that countries so little favored by
nature as Scotland and Prussia are now among the most flourishing and best
governed portions of the world, while the marble palaces of Genoa are deserted,
while banditti infest the beautiful shores of Campania, while the fertile
sea-coast of the Pontifical State is abandoned to buffaloes and wild boars. It
cannot be doubted that, since the sixteenth century, the Protestant nations have
made decidedly greater progress than their neighbors. The progress made by those
nations in which Protestantism, though not finally successful, yet maintained a
long struggle, and left permanent traces, has generally been considerable. But
when we come to the Catholic Land, to the part of Europe in which the first
spark of reformation was trodden out as soon as it appeared, and from which
proceeded the impulse which drove Protestantism back, we find, at best, a very
slow progress, and on the whole a retrogression. Compare Denmark and Portugal.
When Luther began to preach, the superiority of the Portuguese was
unquestionable. At present, the superiority of the Danes is no less so. Compare
Edinburgh and Florence. Edinburgh has owed less to climate, to soil, and to the
fostering care of rulers than any capital, Protestant or Catholic. In all these
respects, Florence has been singularly happy. Yet whoever knows what Florence
and Edinburgh were in the generation preceding the Reformation, and what they
are now, will acknowledge that some great cause has, during the last three
Centuries, operated to raise one part of the European family, and to depress the
other. Compare the history of England and that of Spain during the last century.
In arms, arts, sciences, letters, commerce, agriculture, the contrast is most
striking. The distinction is not confined to this side of the Atlantic. The
colonies planted by England in America have immeasurably outgrown in power those
planted by Spain. Yet we have no reason to believe that, at the beginning of the
sixteenth century, the Castilian was in any respect inferior to the Englishman.
Our firm belief is, that the North owes its great civilization and prosperity
chiefly to the moral effect of the Protestant Reformation, and that the decay of
the southern countries of Europe is to be mainly ascribed to the great Catholic
revival.
About a hundred years after the final settlement of the boundary line between
Protestantism and Catholicism, began to appear the signs of the fourth great
peril of the Church of Rome. The storm which was now rising against her was of a
very different kind from those which had preceded it. Those who had formerly
attacked her had questioned only a part of her doctrines. A school was now
growing up which rejected the whole. The Albigenses, the Lollards, the
Lutherans, the Calvinists, had a positive religious system, and were strongly
attached to it. The creed of the new sectaries was altogether negative. They
took one of their premises from the Protestants, and one from the Catholics.
From the latter they borrowed the principle, that Catholicism was the only pure
and genuine Christianity. With the former, they held that some parts of the
Catholic system were contrary to reason. The conclusion was obvious. Two
propositions, each of which separately is compatible with the most exalted
piety, formed, when held in conjunction, the ground-work of a system of
irreligion. The doctrine of Bossuet, that transubstantiation is affirmed in the
Gospel, and the doctrine of Tillotson, that transubstantiation is an absurdity,
when put together, produced by logical necessity, the inferences of Voltaire.
Had the sect which was rising at Paris been a sect of mere scoffers, it is very
improbable that it would have left deep traces of its existence in the
institutions and manners of Europe. Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as
Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It
furnishes no motive for action. It inspires no enthusiasm. It has no
missionaries, no crusaders, no martyrs. If the Patriarch of the Holy
Philosophical Church had contented himself with making jokes about Saul's asses
and David's wives, and with criticizing the poetry of Ezekiel in the same narrow
spirit in which he criticized that of Shakespeare, Rome would have had little to
fear. But it is due to him and to his compeers to say that the real secret of
their strength lay in the truth which was mingled with their errors, and in the
generous enthusiasm which was hidden under their flippancy. They were men who,
with all their faults, moral and intellectual, sincerely and earnestly desired
the improvement of the condition of the human race, whose blood boiled at the
sight of cruelty and injustice, who made manful war, with every faculty which
they possessed, on what they considered as abuses, and who on many signal
occasions placed themselves gallantly between the powerful and the oppressed.
While they assailed Christianity with a rancor and an unfairness disgraceful to
men who called themselves philosophers, they yet had, in far greater measure
than their opponents, that charity towards men of all classes and races which
Christianity enjoins. Religious persecution, judicial torture, arbitrary
imprisonment, the unnecessary multiplication of capital punishments, the delay
and chicanery of tribunals, the exactions of farmers of the revenue, slavery,
the slave trade, were the constant subjects of their lively satire and eloquent
disquisitions. When an innocent man was broken on the wheel at Toulouse, when a
youth, guilty only of an indiscretion, was beheaded at Abbeville, when a brave
officer, borne down by public injustice, was dragged, with a gag in his mouth,
to die on the Place de Greve, a voice instantly went forth from the banks of
Lake Leman, which made itself heard from Moscow to Cadiz, and which sentenced
the unjust judges to the contempt and detestation of all Europe. The really
efficient weapons with which the philosophers assailed the evangelical faith
were borrowed from the evangelical morality. The ethical and dogmatical parts of
the Gospel were unhappily turned against each other. On one side was a Church
boasting of the purity of a doctrine derived from the Apostles, but disgraced by
the massacre of St. Bartholomew, by the murder of the best of kings, by the war
of Cevennes, by the destruction of Port-Royal. On the other side was a sect
laughing at the Scriptures, shooting out the tongue at the sacraments, but ready
to encounter principalities and powers in the cause of justice, mercy and
toleration.
Irreligion, accidentally associated with philanthropy, triumphed for a time over
religion accidentally associated with political and social abuses. Everything
gave way to the zeal and activity of the new reformers. In France, every man
distinguished in letters was found in their ranks. Every year gave birth to
works in which the fundamental principles of the Church were attacked with
argument, invective, and ridicule. The Church made no defense, except by acts of
power. Censures were pronounced: books were seized: insults were offered to the
remains of infidel writers; but no Bossuet, no Pascal, came forth to encounter
Voltaire. There appeared not a single defense of the Catholic doctrine which
produced any considerable effect, or which is now even remembered. A bloody and
unsparing persecution, like that which put down the Albigenses, might have put
down the philosophers. But the time for De Montforts and Dominics had gone by.
The punishments which the priests were still able to inflict were sufficient to
irritate, but not sufficient to destroy. The war was between power on one side,
and wit on the other; and the power was under far more restraint than the wit.
Orthodoxy soon became a synonym for ignorance and stupidity. It was as necessary
to the character of an accomplished man that he should despise the religion of
his country, as that he should know his letters. The new doctrines spread
rapidly through Christendom. Paris was the capital of the whole Continent.
French was everywhere the language of polite circles. The literary glory of
Italy and Spain had departed. That of Germany had not dawned. That of England
shone, as yet, for the English alone. The teachers of France were the teachers
of Europe. The Parisian opinions spread fast among the educated classes beyond
the Alps: nor could the vigilance of the Inquisition prevent the contraband
importation of the new heresy into Castile and Portugal. Governments, even
arbitrary governments, saw with pleasure the progress of this philosophy.
Numerous reforms, generally laudable, sometimes hurried on without sufficient
regard to time, to place, and to public feeling, showed the extent of its
influence. The rulers of Prussia, of Russia, of Austria, and of many smaller
states, were supposed to be among the initiated.
The Church of Rome was still, in outward show, as stately and splendid as ever;
but her foundation was undermined. No state had quitted her communion or
confiscated her revenues; but the reverence of the people was everywhere
departing from her.
The first great warning-stroke was the fall of that society which, in the
conflict with Protestantism, had saved the Catholic Church from destruction. The
Order of Jesus had never recovered from the injury received in the struggle with
Port-Royal. It was now still more rudely assailed by the philosophers. Its
spirit was broken; its reputation was tainted. Insulted by all the men of genius
in Europe, condemned by the civil magistrate, feebly defended by the chiefs of
the hierarchy, it fell: and great was the fall of it.
The movement went on with increasing speed. The first generation of the new sect
passed away. The doctrines of Voltaire were inherited and exaggerated by
successors, who bore to him the same relation which the Anabaptists bore to
Luther, or the Fifth-Monarchy men to Pym. At length the Revolution came. Down
went the old Church of France, with all its pomp and wealth. Some of its priests
purchased a maintenance by separating themselves from Rome, and by becoming the
authors of a fresh schism. Some, rejoicing in the new license, flung away their
sacred vestments, proclaimed that their whole life had been an imposture,
insulted and persecuted the religion of which they had been ministers, and
distinguished themselves, even in the Jacobin Club and the Commune of Paris, by
the excess of their impudence and ferocity. Others, more faithful to their
principles, were butchered by scores without a trial, drowned, shot, hung on
lamp-posts. Thousands fled from their country to take sanctuary under the shade
of hostile altars. The churches were closed; the bells were silent; the shrines
were plundered; the silver crucifixes were melted down. Buffoons, dressed in
copes and surplices, came dancing the carmagnole even to the bar of the
Convention. The bust of Marat was substituted for the statues of the martyrs of
Christianity. A prostitute, seated on a chair of state in the chancel of Notre
Dame, received the adoration of thousands, who exclaimed that at length, for the
first time, those ancient Gothic arches had resounded with the accents of truth.
The new unbelief was as intolerant as the old superstition. To show reverence
for religion was to incur the suspicion of disaffection. It was not without
imminent danger that the priest baptized the infant, joined the hands of lovers,
or listened to the confession of the dying. The absurd worship of the Goddess of
Reason was, indeed, of short duration; but the deism of Robespierre and Lepaux
was not less hostile to the Catholic faith than the atheism of Clootz and
Chaumette.
Nor were the calamities of the Church confined to France. The revolutionary
spirit, attacked by all Europe, beat all Europe back, became conqueror in its
turn, and, not satisfied with the Belgian cities and the rich domains of the
spiritual electors, went raging over the Rhine and through the passes of the
Alps. Throughout the whole of the great war against Protestantism, Italy and
Spain had been the base of the Catholic operations. Spain was now the obsequious
vassal of the infidels. Italy was subjugated by them. To her ancient
principalities succeeded the Cisalpine republic, and the Ligurian republic, and
the Parthenopean republic. The shrine of Loretto was stripped of the treasures
piled up by the devotion of six hundred years. The convents of Rome were
pillaged. The tricolored flag floated on the top of the Castle of St. Angelo.
The successor of St. Peter was carried away captive by the unbelievers. He died
a prisoner in their hands; and even the honors of sepulture were long withheld
from his remains.
It is not strange that in the year 1799, even sagacious observers should have
thought that, at length, the hour of the Church of Rome was come. An infidel
power ascendant, the Pope dying in captivity, the most illustrious prelates of
France living in a foreign country on Protestant alms, the noblest edifices
which the munificence of former ages had consecrated to the worship of God
turned into temples of Victory, or into banqueting-houses for political
societies, or into Theophilanthropic chapels, such signs might well be supposed
to indicate the approaching end of that long domination.
But the end was not yet. Again doomed to death, the milk-white hind was still
fated not to die. Even before the funeral rites had been performed over the
ashes of Pius the Sixth, a great reaction had commenced, which, after the lapse
of more than forty years, appears to be still in progress. Anarchy had had its
day. A new order of things rose out of the confusion, new dynasties, new laws,
new titles; and amidst them emerged the ancient religion. The Arabs have a fable
that the Great Pyramid was built by antediluvian kings, and alone, of all the
works of men, bore the weight of the flood. Such as this was the fate of the
Papacy. It had been buried under the great inundation; but its deep foundations
had remained unshaken; and when the waters abated, it appeared alone amidst the
ruins of a world which had passed away. The republic of Holland was gone, and
the empire of Germany, and the great Council of Venice, and the old Helvetian
League, and the House of Bourbon, and the parliaments and aristocracy of France.
Europe was full of young creations, a French empire, a kingdom of Italy, a
Confederation of the Rhine. Nor had the late events affected only territorial
limits and political institutions. The distribution of property, the composition
and spirit of society, had, through great part of Catholic Europe, undergone a
complete change. But the unchangeable Church was still there.
Some future historian, as able and temperate as Professor Ranke, will, we hope,
trace the progress of the Catholic revival of the nineteenth century. We feel
that we are drawing too near our own time, and that, if we go on, we shall be in
danger of saying much which may be supposed to indicate, and which will
certainly excite, angry feelings. We will, therefore, make only one more
observation, which, in our opinion, is deserving of serious attention.
During the eighteenth century, the influence of the Church of Rome was
constantly on the decline. Unbelief made extensive conquests in all the Catholic
countries of Europe, and in some countries obtained a complete ascendancy. The
Papacy was at length brought so low as to be an object of derision to infidels,
and of pity rather than of hatred to Protestants. During the nineteenth century,
this fallen Church has been gradually rising from her depressed state and
reconquering her old dominion. No person who calmly reflects on what, within the
last few years, has passed in Spain, in Italy, in South America, in Ireland, in
the Netherlands, in Prussia, even in France, can doubt that the power of this
Church over the hearts and minds of men, is now greater far than it was when the
Encyclopedia and the Philosophical Dictionary appeared. It is surely
remarkable, that neither the moral revolution of the eighteenth century, nor the
moral counter-revolution of the nineteenth, should, in any perceptible degree,
have added to the domain of Protestantism. During the former period, whatever
was lost to Catholicism was lost also to Christianity; during the latter,
whatever was regained by Christianity in Catholic countries was regained also by
Catholicism. We should naturally have expected that many minds, on the way from
superstition to infidelity, or on the way back from infidelity to superstition,
would have stopped at an intermediate point. Between the doctrines taught in the
schools of the Jesuits, and those which were maintained at the little supper
parties of the Baron Holbach, there is a vast interval, in which the human mind,
it should seem, might find for itself some resting-place more satisfactory than
either of the two extremes. And at the time of the Reformation, millions found
such a resting-place. Whole nations then renounced Popery without ceasing to
believe in a first cause, in a future life, or in the Divine mission of Jesus.
In the last century, on the other hand, when a Catholic renounced his belief in
the real Presence, it was a thousand to one that he renounced his belief in the
Gospel too; and, when the reaction took place, with belief in the Gospel came
back belief in the real presence.
We by no means venture to deduce from these phenomena any general law; but we
think it a most remarkable fact, that no Christian nation, which did not adopt
the principles of the Reformation before the end of the sixteenth century,
should ever have adopted them. Catholic communities have, since that time,
become infidel and become Catholic again; but none has become Protestant.
Here we close this hasty sketch of one of the most important portions of the
history of mankind. Our readers will have great reason to feel obliged to us if
we have interested them sufficiently to induce them to peruse Professor Ranke's
book. We will only caution them against the French translation, a performance
which, in our opinion, is just as discreditable to the moral character of the
person from whom it proceeds as a false affidavit or a forged bill of exchange
would have been, and advise them to study either the original, or the English
version, in which the sense and spirit of the original are admirably preserved.
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