PROSTRATION OF PAPAL AUTHORITY.

457 found themselves unable to contend with the temporal power. The disposition of several pontiffs to favor the side of Spain and Austria, sharpened the antagonism between them and the French king, and subjected them to humiliation. When Clement XI. abandoned the antiFrench policy, he was obliged to succumb to the threats of the imperialists. Treaties of peace were concluded between the European nations, in which the interests and even rights of the Popes were involved, but in regard to which they were not consulted. The Church of France remained Catholic; it was even guilty of a revolting persecution; but it united with the monarch in abridging the power and thwarting the designs of the Holy See. Not only was the Catholic world divided into two parties, the Austrian and French, which the Pope could not control, but the Protestant States acquired a preponderance of power; and the Court of Innocent XI. naturally sympathized with the coalition, although its forces were predominantly Protestant, the end of which was to curb the ambition of Louis XIV.

Even the persecuting measures which Louis XIV. adopted ostensibly in behalf of the Catholic religion, were in the highest degree harmful to it; for the hatred of these atrocious proceedings contributed to swell the current of antipathy to the Church and to religion, which was gathering force in the minds of men. The Bull Unigenitus, as it condemned Jansenism and Augustinian doctrine, brought the Jesuits into alliance with the Papal See. But this Bull, with the cognate measures, divided the clergy and excited all the elements of opposition to the Papal supremacy over the Gallican Church. The Jansenists became virtual auxiliaries of the rising party, in whom the spirit of innovation had full sway.

Louis XIV. died in 1715. Voltaire was then about 1 Ranke, iii. 156.

twenty-one years old. The age of philosophy and illuminism, of religious and political revolutions, was approaching. The third estate, the middle class, was preparing to grasp the power which had been wrested from the nobles and concentrated in the throne. Freethinking, transplanted from England, was taking root and spreading through all orders of French society, thence to be diffused over Europe. The fabric of political and religious despotism which Louis XIV. had erected, was to go down before the end of the century, in a revolutionary tempest.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE PROTESTANT THEOLOGY.

PROTESTANTISM, under whatever diversities of form it appeared, and notwithstanding the varieties of character and of opinion which are observed among its leaders, is distinguished as a system of belief by two principles. These are justification by faith alone, and the exclusive authority of the Scriptures.1

The subject round which the Protestant discussions revolved, and out of which they originally sprang, is the reconciliation of man to God. The controversy with the Roman Catholics did not relate to the branches of theology on which the ancient councils had spoken. The Apostolic symbol, the creeds of Nicea and Chalcedon,

1 Among the books of reference respecting the Protestant and the Catholic Theology, are the Collections of Creeds; the Lutheran (edited by Hase, 1846); The Reformed (by Niemeyer, 1840); The Roman Catholic (by Streitwolf u. Klener, 1846). Calvin's Institutes and Melancthon's Loci Communes are the principal doctrinal treatises on the Protestant side, in the age of the Reformation. Bellarmine is still the ablest controversialist on the Catholic side, since the Tridentine Council; Disputationes de Controversiis Christianæ Fidei adv. hujus Temporis hæreticos (Rome, 1581, 1582, 1593). The ablest antagonists of Bellarmine were Martin Chemnitz, Examen Concil. Trid. (1565–73), and the Huguenot theologian, Chamier, Panstratie Catholicæ, etc. (Geneva, 1626; Frankfort, 1629). A convenient manual of Catholic Theology Perrone, Prælectiones Theologica (2 vols., 1847). Among the modern works on Protestant Theology are Planck, Gsch. d. prot. Lehrbegriffs (1781-1800); Gass, Gsch. d. prot. Dogmatik (1862); A. Schweizer, Die prot. Central-dogmen innerhalb d. ref. Kirche (1854); Heppe, Dogmatik d. deutsch Prot. (1857); Dorner, Gsch. d. prot. Theol. (1867); Schenkel, Das Wesen d. Prot. (1846). See also Werner, Gsch. d. kath. Theol. seit d. Trid. Conc. (1866). To these are to be added numerous modern works on Symbolics and on the History of Doctrine; by Neander, Klee (Roman Cath.), Baumgarten-Crusius, Hagenbach, Baur, Möhler (Rom. Cath.), Nitzsch, Winer, Shedd, etc.

were accepted in common by both parties. In respect to the Trinity and the person of Christ, they stood on the same ground. On the subject of Anthropology, the doctrine of sin, it is true that the Reformers earnestly asserted the Augustinian views, in opposition to that modified opinion, less hostile to the Pelagian tenet, which had been distinctly espoused by one of the leading medieval schools, the followers of Scotus, and had affected all of the scholastic systems. It was in their profound sense of the reality of sin, and of its dominion in the human will, that the Protestants laid the foundations of their theology. Zwingle alone, of all the foremost Reformers, called in question the fact of native guilt, as this is asserted in the Augustinian theology; and even he did not adhere uniformly to his theory. But the doctrine of sin was only indirectly and subordinately brought into the debate. The same might be said of the Atonement, since the body of the reformers rested on the Anselmic idea of satisfaction, which likewise formed a part of the opposing creed.2 The point of difference was on the vital question how the soul, burdened with self-condemnation, is to obtain the forgiveness of sins and peaceful reunion to God in the character of a reconciled father. In the teachings, injunctions, services, ceremonies of the Church, the Re

1 The Protestants held that the moral perfections—that is, the holiness-of the first man are concreated; the Catholics, that they are superadded gifts of grace. Cat. Rom., 1. ii. qu. 19. This doctrine of the donum supernaturale is drawn out in full by Bellarmine, Grat. primi Hom., ii. The effect of the fall is said by the Catholics to be the loss of the donum supernaturale, and a consequent, though indirect, weakening of the natural powers (rulnera naturæ); by the Protestants it was held to be a positive depravation of human nature. Bellarmine, Amis. Grat., III. i.; Conf. August., p. 9; Apol. August. Conf., p. 51; Conf. Helvet., II. cc. viii., ix.

2 The doctrine common to Anselm and Aquinas, that the satisfaction of Christ is absolute in itself, and infinite, was denied only by the school of Scotus, who held that it is finite, but is accepted by the divine will — acceptilatio - for more than its intrinsic worth. The Tridentine creed denies that pardon carries with it the remission of all punishment; but asserts that the satisfaction rendered by the sinner is available only through the satisfaction of Christ. Sess. xiv. c. viii. See Baumgarten-Crusius, Dogmengsch., ii. 273, n. a.

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.

461

formers had sought for this infinite good in vain. They found it in the doctrine of gratuitous pardon, from the bare mercy of God, through the mediation of Christ; a pardon that waits for nothing but acceptance on the part of the soul- the belief, the trust, the faith of the penitent. Everything of the nature of satisfaction or merit on the part of the offender is precluded, by the utterly gratuitous nature of the gift, by the sufficiency of the Redeemer's expiation. Every assertion of the necessity of works or merit on the side of the offender, as the ground of forgiveness, is a disparagement of the Redeemer's mercy and of his expiatory office. Faith, thus laying hold of a free forgiveness and reconnecting the soul with God, is the fountain of a new life of holiness, which depends not on fear and homage to law, but on gratitude and on filial sentiments. Christ himself nourishes this new life by spiritual influences that flow into the soul through the channel of its fellowship with Him. Justification is thus a forensic term; it is equivalent to the remission of sins. To justify, signifies not to make the offender righteous, but to treat him as if he were righteous, to deliver him from the accusation of the law by the bestowal of a pardon. Saving faith is not a virtue to be rewarded, but an apprehensive act; the hand that takes the free gift. Such, in a brief statement, was the cardinal principle of the Protestant interpretation of the Gospel.1 The Christian life has its centre in this experience of forgiveness. Virtues of character and victories over temptation grow out of it. Christian ethics are united to Christian theology by this vital bond.

But to what authority could the Reformers appeal in behalf of their proposition? What assurance had they of its truth? How did they arrive at the knowledge of

1 This idea of justification is the key-note in Luther's Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, and in Melancthon's Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. It is the distinctive feature of the Protestant exegesis of the writings of Paul.