of creed and ritual, new systems of polity, an altered type of Christian life. On the other hand, it is a great transaction, in which sovereigns and nations bear a part; the occasion of wars and treaties; the close of an old and the introduction of a new period in the history of culture and civilization.

The era of the Reformation, if we give to the term this comprehensive meaning, embraces the interval between the posting of Luther's Theses, in 1517, and the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.

THE RISE OF THE

CHAPTER II.

PAPAL HIERARCHY AND ITS DECLINE THROUGH THE CENTRALIZATION OF NATIONS.

ONE essential part of Protestantism was the abolition of the authority of the hierarchical order. Bossuet has remarked that if it is only abuses in the Church that separate Protestants from Catholics, these abuses can be remedied, and thus the ground of the existence of the schism is taken away. But to say that the Reformation began in a protest against abuses of administration is simply to say that Protestantism was not full-grown at the start. In its mature form, as all the world knows, the Reformation was a rejection of papal and priestly authority. In studying the movement, this is one of the main points to which attention must be directed. In inquiring into the causes of the Reformation, therefore, we shall first review the rise and progress of the hierarchical system, and show how it had been weakened in the period immediately antecedent to the sixteenth century. We shall then contemplate a variety of facts which betokened a religious revolution and contributed to produce it.

1 The extent of these abuses before the Reformation is admitted by the highest Catholic authorities. Bellarmine says: "Annis aliquot, antequam Lutherana et Calvinistica hæresis oriretur, nulla ferme erat, ut ii testantur, qui etiam tunc virebant, nulla (inquam) prope erat in judiciis ecclesiasticis severitas, nulla in moribus disciplina, nulla in sacris literis eruditio, nulla in rebus divinis reverentia, nulla propemodum jam erat religio." Opera, vi. 236; or Gerdesius Hist. Evang. renovati, i: 25. Pope Adrian VI. confessed to the Diet of Nuremberg in 1522 that the deepest corruption had infected the Holy See and spread thence through the lower ranks of the clergy. Raynaldus, Annales, ann. 1522, No. 66; or Sleidan, l. iv. See, also, Bossuet, Variations des Prot., livr. i. (Œuvres, v. 519). The Letters of Erasmus abound in corroborative testimonies.

The idea of the authority of the sacerdotal order is separable from the idea of papal supremacy within it. Yet, as a matter of fact, many of the causes that tended to the overthrow of faith in the latter doctrine, operated likewise to undermine the former. The keystone of the arch could not be loosened without affecting the stability of the whole structure. In the present chapter, the rise and decline of the papal dominion will be the main subject of attention; and in treating of the second branch of the topic, the decline of the Papacy, we shall direct attention in particular to the influence of a cause which may be denominated the spirit of nationalism.

The religion of the old dispensation is declared in the Old Testament itself, by the prophets, to be rudimental and introductory to a more spiritual system. This character of inwardness belongs to the religion of Christ, which, for this reason, is fitted to be universal. Worship is set free from legal restrictions, and from the external and sensuous characteristics of the Jewish ritual. In one grand feature, especially, is the religion of the New Testament distinguished from the preparatory system — the absence of a mediatorial priesthood. The disciples were to form a community of brethren, who should be associated on a footing of equality, all of them being illuminated and directed, as well as united, by the one Spirit. The persevering efforts of the judaizing party to preserve the distinctive features of the Jewish system and foist them upon the Church, failed. The true, catholic interpretation of the Gospel, as giving liberty to the soul and direct access to God through the one high priest who supersedes all other priestly mediation - that interpretation to which all of the Apostles assented in principle, but of which Paul was so clear and steadfast an expounder - prevailed in the Christian societies that were early scattered over the Roman Empire. Their organization was simple. The idea of a body in which, while all the members serve

PRIMITIVE CHURCH ORGANIZATION.

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each other, they are still adapted to different functions, for which they are severally designated by the ruling principle - which, in the case of the Church, is the Divine Spirit lay at the root. As was natural, all of the Christians in a town were united in one society, or ecclesia, the old Greek term for an assembly legally called and summoned. In each society there was a board of pastors, called indifferently elders, presbyters - a name taken from the synagogue or bishops, overseers, a name given by the Greeks to persons charged with a guiding oversight in civil administration. In the election of them, the body of disciples had a controlling voice, although, as long as the Apostles lived, their suggestions or appointments would naturally be accepted. These officers did not give up, at first, their secular occupations; they were not even, at the outset, intrusted as a peculiar function with the business of teaching, which was free to all and specially devolved on a class of persons who seemed designated by their gifts for this work. The elders, with the deacons whose business it was to look after the poor and to perform kindred duties, were the officers, to whom each little community committed the lead in the management of its affairs. The change that took place, either during or soon after the age of the Apostles, by which precedence was given in each board of pastors to one of their number to whom the title of bishop was exclusively appropriated, did not of itself involve any fundamental alteration in the spirit or polity of the churches.1 But

1 The polity of the Church in the Apostolic age is admirably described by Rothe, Die Anfänge d. Christl. Kirche u. ihrer Verfassung (1837), although Rothe's particular hypothesis respecting the origin of the Episcopate has found little, if any favor. The Roman Catholic and Anglican view, that the Episcopate, as a distinct office, was ordained by the Apostles for the whole Church, is maintained by Walter, Kirchenrecht (13th ed., 1861). The counterpart, on the Protestant side, of Walter's work is that of Richter, Kirchenrecht (7th ed., 1872). There is an able historical Dissertation on the "Christian Ministry" by Prof. Lightfoot, St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians (2d ed., 1869). The more usual view of Protestants is advocated by Neander and Gieseler in their Church histories. See, also, Jacob, The Eccl. Polity of the New Testament (1872). The controversial literature on the subject is enough to form a library.

as we approach the close of the second century we find marked charges, some of them of a portentous character; such as indicate that the process of externalizing the Christian religion and the idea of the Church, has fairly set in. The enlargement of the jurisdiction of bishops by extending it over dependent churches in the neighborhood of the towns, and the multiplying of church offices, are changes of less moment. But the officers of the Church are more and more assuming the position of a distinct order, which is placed above the laity and is the appointed medium of conveying to them grace. The conception of a priesthood, after the Old Testament system, is attaching itself to the Christian ministry. Along with this gradual change there is an imperceptible yet growing departure from the fundamental doctrine of salvation, as it had been set forth by Paul, and an adoption of a more legal view, in which faith is identified with doctrinal belief, and hence is coupled with works, instead of being their fruitful source. This doctrinal change and this attributing of a priestly function and prerogative to the clergy, were not in any considerable degree the result of efforts on the part of Jewish Christians and of judaizing parties, which had been early overcome and cast as heretical sects beyond the pale of the Church. They were rather the product of tendencies in human nature, which are liable to manifest themselves at any time, and which serve to account in great part for the tenacious adherence of the Jewish sectaries to their ritual. But these tendencies were materially aided by the peculiar circumstances in which the early Church was placed, of which the abuse of the Pauline doctrine by Gnostic and by Antinomian speculations was doubtless one. There

were causes which gave rise at once to the hierarchical idea or doctrine and the hierarchical polity. The persecutions to which the Church was subject at the hands of the Roman government, and still more the great conflict