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Protestantism
The subject will be treated under the following heads, viz.:
I. Origin of the Name. II. Characteristic Protestant Principles. III. Discussion of the Three Fundamental Principles of Protestantism:
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A. The Supremacy of the Bible; B. Justification by Faith Alone; C. The Universal Priesthood of Believers.
IV. Private Judgment in Practice. V. "Justification by Faith Alone" in Practice. VI. Advent of a New Order: Csaropapism. VII. Rapidity of Protestant Progress Explained. VIII. Present-day Protestantism. IX. Popular Protestantism. X. Protestantism and Progress:
of those Western Churches and sects which, in the sixteenth century, were set up by the Reformers in direct opposition to the Catholic Church. The same man may call himself Protestant or Reformed: the term Protestant lays more stress on antagonism to Rome; the term Reformed emphasizes adherence to any of the Reformers. Where religious indifference is prevalent, many will say they are Protestants, merely to signify that they are not Catholics. In some such vague, negative sense, the word stands in the new formula of the Declaration of Faith to be made by the King of England at his coronation; viz.: "I declare that I am a faithful Protestant". During the debates in Parliament it was observed that the proposed formula effectively debarred Catholics from the throne, whilst it committed the king to no particular creed, as no man knows what the creed of a faithful Protestant is or should be.
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A. Prejudices; B. Progress in Church and Churches; C. Progress in Civil Society; D. Progress in Religious Toleration; E. The Test of Vitality.
XI. Conclusion.
authority as such, but only subordinates it to, and measures its value by, the Bible, and believes in a progressive interpretation of the Bible through the expanding and deepening consciousness of Christendom. Hence, besides having its own symbols or standards of public doctrine, it retained all the articles of the ancient creeds and a large amount of disciplinary and ritual tradition, and rejected only those doctrines and ceremonies for which no clear warrant was found in the Bible and which seemed to contradict its letter or spirit. The Calvinistic branches of Protestantism went farther in their antagonism to the received traditions than the Lutheran and the Anglican; but all united in rejecting the authority of the pope. [Melanchthon for a while was willing to concede this, but only jure humano, or a limited disciplinary superintendency of the Church], the meritoriousness of good works, indulgences, the worship of the Virgin, saints, and relics, the sacraments (other than baptism and the Eucharist), the dogma of transubstantiation and the Sacrifice of the Mass, purgatory, and prayers for the dead, auricular confession, celibacy of the clergy, the monastic system, and the use of the Latin tongue in public worship, for which the vernacular languages were substituted.
Where absolute reliance on God's word, proclaimed by his accredited ambassadors, is wanting, i.e. where there is not the virtue of faith, there can be no unity of Church. It stands to reason, and Protestant history confirms it. The "unhappy divisions", not only between sect and sect but within the same sect, have become a byword. They are due to the pride of private intellect, and they can only be healed by humble submission to a Divine authority.
the fact that Protestant churches have lived through several centuries and have moulded the character not only of individuals but of whole nations; that millions of souls have found and are finding in them the spiritual food which satisfies their spiritual cravings; that their missionary and charitable activity is covering wide fields at home and abroad. The apparent incongruity does not exist in reality, for private judgment is never and nowhere allowed full play in the framing of religions. The open Bible and the open mind on its interpretation are rather a lure to entice the masses, by flattering their pride and deceiving their ignorance, than a workable principle of faith. The first limitation imposed on the application of private judgment is the incapacity of most men to judge for themselves on matters above their physical needs. How many Christians are made by the tons of Testaments distributed by missionaries to the heathen? What religion could even a wellschooled man extract from the Bible if he had nought but his brain and his book to guide him? The second limitation arises from environment and prejudices. The assumed right of private judgment is not exercised until the mind is already stocked with ideas and notions supplied by family and community, foremost among these being the current conceptions of religious dogmas and duties. People are said to be Catholics, Protestants, Mahommedans, Pagans "by birth", because the environment in which they are born invariably endows them with the local religion long before they are able to judge and choose for themselves. And the firm hold which this initial training gets on the mind is well illustrated by the fewness of changes in later life. Conversions from one belief to another are of comparatively rare occurrence. The number of converts in any denomination compared to the number of stauncher adherents is a negligible quantity. Even where private judgment has led to the conviction that some other form of religion is preferable to the one professed, conversion is not always achieved. The convert, beside and beyond his knowledge, must have sufficient strength of will to break with old associations, old friendships, old habits, and to face the uncertainties of life in new surroundings. His sense of duty, in many eases, must be of heroical temper. A third limitation put on the exercise of private judgment is the authority of Church and State. The Reformers took full advantage of their emancipation from papal authority, but they showed no inclination to allow their followers the same freedom. Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Knox were as intolerant of private judgment when it went against their own conceits as any pope in Rome was ever intolerant of heresy. Confessions of faith, symbols, and catechism were set up everywhere, and were invariably backed by the secular power. In fact, the secular power in the several parts of Germany, England, Scotland, and elsewhere has had more to do with the moulding of religious denominations than private judgment and justification by faith alone. Rulers were guided by political and material considerations in their adherence to particular forms of faith, and they usurped the right of imposing
their own choice on their subjects, regardless of private opinions: cujus regio hujus religio. The above considerations show that the first Protestant principle, free judgment, never influenced the Protestant masses at large. Its influence is limited to a few leaders of the movement, to the men who by dint of strong character were capable of creating separate sects. They indeed spurned the authority of the Old Church, but soon transferred it to their own persons and institutions, if not to secular princes. How mercilessly the new authority was exercised is matter of history. Moreover, in the course of time, private judgment has ripened into unbridled freethought, Rationalism, Modernism, now rampant in most universities, cultured society, and the Press. Planted by Luther and other reformers the seed took no root, or soon withered, among the half-educated masses who still clung to authority or were coerced by the secular arm; but it flourished and produced its full fruit chiefly in the schools and among the ranks of society which draw their intellectual life from that source. The modern Press is at infinite pains to spread free judgment and its latest results to the reading public. It should be remarked that the first Protestants, without exception, pretended to be the true Church founded by Christ, and all retained the Apostles' Creed with the article "I believe in the Catholic Church". The fact of their Catholic origin and surroundings accounts both for their good intention and for the confessions of faith to which they bound themselves. Yet such confessions, if there be any truth in the assertion that private judgment and the open Bible are the only sources of Protestant faith, are directly antagonistic to the Protestant spirit. This is recognized, among others, by J. H. Blunt, who writes: "The mere existence of such confessions of faith as binding on all or any of the members of the Christian community is inconsistent with the great principles on which the Protestant bodies justified their separation from the Church, the right of private judgment. Has not any member as just a right to criticise and to reject them as his forefathers had a right to reject the Catholic creeds or the canons of general councils? They appear to violate another prominent doctrine of the Reformers, the sufficiency of Holy Scripture to salvation. If the Bible alone is enough, what need is there for adding articles? If it is rejoined that they are not additions to, but merely explanations of, the Word of God, the further question arises, amid the many explanations, more or less at variance with each other given by the different sects of Protestantism, who is to decide which is the true one? Their professed object being to secure uniformity, the experience of three hundred years has proved to us what may not have been foreseen by their originators, that they have had a diametrically opposite result, and have been productive not of union but of variance" (Dict. of Sects, Heresies, etc.", London, 1886, s.v. Protestant Confessions of Faith). By pinning private judgment to the Bible the Reformers started a book religion, i.e. a religion of which, theoretically, law of faith and conduct is
contained in a written document without method, without authority, without an authorized interpreter. The collection of books called "the Bible" is not a methodical code of faith and morals; if it be separated from the stream of tradition which asserts its Divine inspiration, it has no special authority, and, in the hands of private interpreters, its meaning is easily twisted to suit every private mind. Our modern laws, elaborated by modern minds for modern requirements, are daily obscured and diverted from their object by interested pleaders: judges are an absolute necessity for their right interpretation and application, and unless we say that religion is but a personal concern, that coherent religious bodies or churches are superfluous, we must admit that judges of faith and morals are as necessary to them as judges of civil law are to States. And that is another reason why private judgment, though upheld in theory, has not been carried out in practice. As a matter of fact, all Protestant denominations are under constituted authorities, be they called priest or presbyters, elders or ministers, pastors or presidents. Notwithstanding the contradiction between the freedom they proclaim and the obedience they exact, their rule has often been tyrannical to a degree, especially in Calvinistic communities. Thus in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was no more priest-ridden country in the world than Presbyterian Scotland. A book-religion has, moreover, another drawback. Its devotees can draw devotion from it only as fetish worshippers draw it from their idol, viz. by firmly believing in its hidden spirit. Remove belief in Divine inspiration from the sacred books, and what remains may be regarded as simply a human document of religious illusion or even of fraud. Now, in the course of centuries, private judgment has partly succeeded in taking the spirit out of the Bible, leaving little else than the letter, for critics, high and low, to discuss without any spiritual advantage.
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St. Louis, 1908, 27-83, where each quotation is documented by a reference to Luther's works as published by de Wette).
of kings, princes, and town magistrates. The one discarded Pope of Rome was replaced by scores of popes at home. These, "to strengthen themselves by alliances for the promulgation of the Gospel", banded together within the limits of the German Empire and made common cause against the emperor. From this time forward the progress of Protestantism is on political rather than on religious lines; the people are not clamouring for innovations, but the rulers find their advantage in being supreme bishops, and by force, or cunning, or both impose the yoke of the new Gospel on their subjects. Denmark, Sweden, Norway, England, and all the small principalities and imperial towns in Germany are examples in point. The supreme heads and governors were well aware that the principles which had brought down the authority of Rome would equally bring down their own; hence the penal laws everywhere enacted against dissenters from the state religion decreed by the temporal ruler. England under Henry VIII, Elizabeth, and the Puritans elaborated the most ferocious of all penal codes against Catholics and others unwilling to conform to the established religion. To sum up: the much-vaunted Protestant principles only wrought disaster and confusion where they were allowed free play; order was only restored by reverting to something like the old system: symbols of faith imposed by an outside authority and enforced by the secular arm. No bond of union exists between the many national Churches, except their common hatred for "Rome", which is the birthmark of all, and the trade-mark of many, even unto our day.
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The reformatory movement of the sixteenth century found the ground well prepared for its reception. The cry for a thorough reformation of the Church in head and members had been ringing through Europe for a full century; it was justified by the worldly lives of many of the clergy, high and low, by abuses in church administration, by money extortions, by the neglect of religious duties reaching far and wide through the body of the faithful. Had Protestantism offered a reform in the sense of amendment, probably all the corrupt elements in the Church would have turned against it, as Jews and pagans turned against Christ and the Apostles. But what the Reformers aimed at was, at least in the first instance, the radical overthrow of the existing Church, and this overthrow was effected by pandering to all the worst instincts of man. A bait was tendered to the seven-headed concupiscence which dwells in every human heart; pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, sloth, and all their offspring were covered and healed by easy trust in God. No good works were required: the immense fortune of the Church was the prize of apostasy: political and religous independence allured the kings and princes: the abolition of tithes, confession, fasting, and other irksome obligations attracted the masses. Many persons were deceived into the new religion by outward appearances of Catholicism which the innovators carefully maintained, e.g. in England and the Scandinavian kingdoms. Evidently we need not look for Divine intervention to account for the rapid spread of Protestantism. It would be more plausible to see the finger of God in the stopping of its progress.
philosophies and many religions: the point is that Protestantism proclaims itself its standard-bearer, and claims credit for its achievements. Moreover, Modernistic views in philosophy, theology, history, criticism, apologetics, church reform etc., are advocated in nine-tenths of the Protestant theological literature in Germany, France, and America, England only slightly lagging behind. Now, Modernism is at the antipodes of sixteenthcentury Protestantism. To use Ritschl's terminology, it gives new "values" to the old beliefs. Scripture is still spoken of as inspired, but its inspiration is only the impassioned expression of human religious experiences; Christ is the Son of God, but His Son-ship is like that of any other good man; the very ideas of God, religion, Church, sacraments, have lost their old values: they stand for nothing real outside the subject in whose religious life they form a kind of fool's paradise. The fundamental fact of Christ's Resurrection is an historical fact no longer; it is but another freak of the believing mind. Harnack puts the essence of Christianity, that is the whole teaching of Christ, into the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man: Christ Himself is no part of the Gospel! Such was not the teaching of the Reformers. Presentday Protestantism, therefore, may be compared with Gnosticism, Manichism, the Renaissance, eighteenth-century Philosophism, in so far as these were virulent attacks on Christianity, aiming at nothing less than its destruction. It has achieved important victories in a kind of civil war between orthodoxy and unbelief within the Protestant pale; it is no mean enemy at the gate of the Catholic Church.
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of the book over the mass of Englishmen showed itself in a thousand superficial ways, and in none more conspicuously than in the influence exerted on ordinary speech. . . . But far greater than its effect on literature or social phrase was the effect of the Bible on the character of the people at large . . . (Hist. of the English People, chap. viii, 1).
charity are flourishing; the Catholic mission-field is world-wide and rich in harvest. The hierarchy was never so united, never so devoted to the pope. The Roman unity is successfully resisting the inroads of sects, of philosophies, of politics. Can our separated brethren tell a similar tale of their many Churches, even in lands where they are ruled and backed by the secular power? We do not rejoice at their disintegration, at their falling into religious indifference, or returning into political parties. No, for any shred of Christianity is better than blank worldliness. But we do draw this conclusion: that after four centuries the Catholic principle of authority is still working out the salvation of the Church, whereas among Protestants the principle of Subjectivism is destroying what remains of their former faith and driving multitudes into religious indifference and estrangement from the supernatural.
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liberty for themselves against established Episcopacy. Tyrannical abuse of their victory in oppressing the Episcopalians brought about their downfall, and they in turn were the victims of intolerance. James II, himself a Catholic, was the first to strive by all the means at his command, to secure for his subjects of all the denominations "liberty of conscience for all future time" (Declaration of Indulgence, 1688). His premature Liberalism was acquiesced in by many of the clergy and laity of the Established Church, which alone had nothing to gain by it, but excited the most violent opposition among the Protestant Nonconformists who, with the exception of the Quakers, preferred a continuance of bondage to emancipation if shared with the hated and dreaded "Papists". So strong was this feeling that it overcame all those principles of patriotism and respect for law of which the English people are wont to boast, leading them to welcome a foreign usurper and foreign troops for no other reason than to obtain their assistance against their Catholic fellow-subjects, in part to do precisely what the latter were falsely accused of doing in the time of Elizabeth. The Stuart dynasty lost the throne, and their successors were reduced to mere figure-heads. Political freedom had been achieved, but the times were not yet ripe for the wider freedom of conscience. The penal laws against Catholics and Dissenters were aggravated instead of abolished. That the French Revolution of 1789 was largely influenced by the English events of the preceding century is beyond doubt; it is, however, equally certain that its moving spirit was not English Puritanism, for the men who set up a declaration of the Rights of Man against the Rights of God, and who enthroned the Goddess of Reason in the Cathedral Church of Paris, drew their ideals from Pagan Rome rather than from Protestant England.
State, begun with Constantine and continued under his successors, the Roman emperors of East and West, led to much good, but probably to more evil. The lay episcopacy which the princes assumed well-nigh reduced the medieval Church to a state of abject vassalage, the secular clergy to ignorance and worldliness, the peasant to bondage and often to misery. Had it not been for the monasteries the Church of the Middle Ages would not have saved, as it did, the remnant of Roman and Greek culture which so powerfully helped to civilize Western Europe after the barbarian invasions. Dotted all over the West, the monks formed model societies, well-organized, justly ruled, and prospering by the work of their hands, true ideals of a superior civilization. It was still the ancient Roman civilization, permeated with Christianity, but shackled by the jarring interests of Church and State. Was Christian Europe, from a worldly point of view, better off at the beginning of the fifteenth century than pagan Europe at the beginning of the fourth? For the beginning of our distinctly modern progress we must go back to the Renaissance, the Humanistic or classical, i.e. pagan revival, following upon the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks (1453); upon the discovery of the new Indian trade route round the Cape of Good Hope by the Portuguese; upon the discovery of America by the Spaniards, and upon the development of all European interests, fostered or initiated at the end of the fifteenth century, just before the birth of Protestantism. The opening of the New World was for Europe a new creation. Minds expanded with the vast spaces submitted to them for investigation; the study of astronomy, at first in the service of navigation, soon reaped its own reward by discoveries in its proper domain, the starry heavens; descriptive geography, botany, anthropology, and kindred sciences demanded study of those who would reap a share in the great harvest East and West. The new impulse and new direction given to commerce changed the political aspect of old Europe. Men and nations were brought into that close contact of common interests, which is the root of all civilization; wealth and the printing-press supplied the means for satisfying the awakened craving for art, science, literature, and more refined living. Amid this outburst of new life Protestantism appears on the scene, itself a child of the times. Did it help or hinder the forward movement? The youth of Protestantism was, naturally enough, a period of turmoil, of disturbing confusion in all the spheres of life. No one nowadays can read without a sense of shame and sadness the history of those years of religious and political strife; of religion everywhere made the handmaid of politics; of wanton destruction of churches and shrines and treasures of sacred art; of wars between citizens of the same land conducted with incredible ferocity; of territories laid waste, towns pillaged and levelled to the ground, poor people sent adrift to die of starvation in their barren fields; of commercial prosperity cut down at a stroke; of seats of learning reduced to ranting and loose living; of charity banished from social intercourse to give place to slander and abuse, of coarseness in speech and manners, of barbarous cruelty on the part
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of princes, nobles, and judges in their dealings with the "subject" and the prisoner, in short of the almost sudden drop of whole countries into worse than primitive savagery. "Greed, robbery, oppression, rebellion, repression, wars, devastation, degradation" would be a fitting inscription on the tombstone of early Protestantism. But violenta non durant. Protestantism has now grown into a sedate something, difficult to define. In some form or other it is the official religion in many lands of Teutonic race, it also counts among its adherents an enormous number of independent religious bodies. These Protestant Teutons and semi-Teutons claim to be leaders in modern civilization: to possess the greatest wealth, the best education, the purest morals; in every respect they feel themselves superior to the Latin races who still profess the Catholic religion, and they ascribe their superiority to their Protestantism. Man knows himself but imperfectly: the exact state of his health, the truth of his knowledge, the real motives of his actions, are all veiled in semiobscurity; of his neighbour he knows even less than of himself, and his generalizations of national character, typified by nicknames, are worthless caricatures. Antipathies rooted in ancient quarrels political or religious enter largely into the judgments on nations and Churches. Opprobrious, and so far as sense goes obsolete epithets applied in the heat and passion of battle still cling to the ancient foe and create prejudice against him. Conceptions formed three hundred years ago amid a state of things which has long ceased to be, still survive and distort our judgments. How slowly the terms Protestant, Papist, Romanist, Nonconformist, and others are losing their old unsavoury connotation. Again: Is there any of the greater nations that is purely Protestant? The richest provinces of the German Empire are Catholic, and contain fully one-third of its entire population. In the United States of America, according to the latest census, Catholics form the majority of the church-going population in many of the largest cities: San Francisco (81.1 per cent); New Orleans (79.7 per cent); New York (76.9 per cent); St. Louis (69 per cent); Boston (68.7 per cent); Chicago (68.2 per cent); Philadelphia (51.8 per cent). Great Britain and its colonies have a Catholic population of over twelve millions. Holland and Switzerland have powerful Catholic provinces and cantons; only the small Scandinavian kingdoms have succeeded in keeping down the old religion. A further question suggests itself: granting that some states are more prosperous than others, is their greater prosperity due to the particular form of Christianity they profess? The idea is absurd. For all Christian denominations have the same moral code the Decalogue and believe in the same rewards for the good and punishments for the wicked. We hear it asserted that Protestantism produces self-reliance, whereas Catholicism extinguishes it. Against this may be set the statement that Catholicism produces disciplined order an equally good commercial asset. The truth of the matter is that self-reliance is best fostered by free political
institutions and a decentralized government. These existed in England before the Reformation and have survived it; they likewise existed in Germany, but were crushed out by Protestant Csaropapism, never to revive with their primitive vigour. Medieval Italy, the Italy of the Renaissance, enjoyed free municipal government in its many towns and principalities: though the country was Catholic, it brought forth a crop of undisciplined self-reliant men, great in many walks of life, good and evil. And looking at history, we see Catholic France and Spain attaining the zenith of their national grandeur, whilst Germany was undermining and disintegrating that Holy Roman Empire vested in the German nation an empire which was its glory, its strength, the source and mainstay of its culture and prosperity. England's grandeur during the same epoch is due to the same cause as that of Spain: the impulse given to all national forces by the discovery of the New World. Both Spain and England began by securing religious unity. In Spain the Inquisition at a small cost of human life preserved the old faith; in England the infinitely more cruel penal laws stamped out all opposition to the innovations imported from Germany. Germany itself did not recover the prominent position it held in Europe under the Emperor Charles V until the constitution of the new empire during the Franco-German War (1871) Since then its advance in every direction, except that of religion, has been such as seriously to threaten the commercial and maritime supremacy of England. The truth of the whole matter is this: religious toleration has been placed on the statute books of modern nations; the civil power has severed itself from the ecclesiastical; the governing classes have grown alarmingly indifferent to things spiritual; the educated classes are largely Rationalistic; the working classes are widely infected with anti-religious socialism; a prolific press daily and periodically preaches the gospel of Naturalism overtly or covertly to countless eager readers; in many lands Christian teaching is banished from the public schools; and revealed religion is fast losing that power of fashioning politics, culture, home life, and personal character which it used to exercise for the benefit of Christian states. Amid this almost general flight from God to the creature, Catholicism alone makes a stand: its teaching is intact, its discipline stronger than ever, its confidence in final victory is unshaken.
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present day. It called forth a burst of missionary enthusiasm such as has not been seen since the first day of Pentecost. So far as organization is concerned, there can be no question that the mantle of the men who made the Roman Empire has fallen upon the Roman Church; and it has never given more striking proof of its vitality and power than it did at this time, immediately after a large portion of Europe had been torn from its grasp. Printing-presses poured forth literature not only to meet the controversial needs of the moment but also admirable editions of the early Fathers to whom the Reformed Churches appealed sometimes with more confidence than knowledge. Armies of devoted missionaries were scientifically marshalled. Regions of Europe which had seemed to be lost for ever [for example, the southern portion of Germany and parts of Austria-Hungary] were recovered to the Papacy, and the claims of the Vicar of Christ were carried far and wide through countries where they had never been heard before" (R.H. Malden, classical lecturer, Selwyn College, Cambridge, in "Foreign Missions", London, 1910, 119-20). Dr. G. Warneck, a protagonist of the Evangelical Alliance in Germany, thus describes the result of the Kulturkampf: "The Kulturkampf (i.e. struggle for superiority of Protestantism against Catholicism in Prussia), which was inspired by political, national, and liberal-religious motives, ended with a complete victory for Rome. When it began, a few men, who knew Rome and the weapons used against her, foretold with certainty that a contest with Romanism on such lines would of necessity end in defeat for the State and in an increase of power for Romanism. . . . The enemy whom we met in battle has brilliantly conquered us, though we had all the arms civil power can supply. True, the victory is partly owing to the ability of the leaders of the Centre party, but it is truer still that the weapons used on our side were blunted tools, unfit for doing serious harm. The Roman Church is indeed, like the State, a political power, worldly to the core, but after all she is a Church, and therefore disposes of religious powers which she invariably brings into action when contending with civil powers for Supremacy. The State has no equivalent power to oppose. You cannot hit a spirit, not even the Roman spirit . . ." (Der evangelische Bund und seine Gegner", 13-14). The anti-religious Government of France is actually renewing the Kulturkampf; but no more than its German models does it succeed in "hitting the Roman spirit". Endowments, churches, schools, convents have been confiscated, yet the spirit lives. The other mark of Catholic vitality the power of propagation is evident in missionary work. Long before the birth of Protestantism, Catholic missionaries had converted Europe and carried the Faith as far as China. After the Reformation they reconquered for the Church the Rhinelands, Bavaria, Austria, part of Hungary, and Poland; they established flourishing Christian communities all over North and South America and in the Portuguese colonies, wherever, in short, Catholic powers allowed them free play. For nearly three hundred years Protestants were too intent on self-
preservation to think of foreign missionary work. At the present day, however, they develop great activity in all heathen countries, and not without a fair success. Malden, in the work quoted above, compares Catholic with Protestant methods and results: although his sympathy is naturally with his own, his approbation is all for the other side.
Conclusion
Catholicism numbers some 270 millions of adherents, all professing the same Faith, using the same sacraments, living under the same discipline; Protestantism claims roundly 100 millions of Christians, products of the Gospel and the fancies of a hundred reformers, people constantly bewailing their "unhappy divisions" and vainly crying for a union which is only possible under that very central authority, protestation against which is their only common denominator.
Sources
For controversial matter see any Catholic or Protestant textbooks. The Catholic standard work is BELLARMINE, Disputations de Controversiis Christianoe fidei etc. (4 vols., Rome, 1832-8); on the Protestant side: GERHARD, Loci Theologici, etc. (9 vols., Berlin, 1863-75). For the historical, political, and social history of Protestantism the best works are: DLLINGER, Die Reformation (3 VOLS., Ratisbon, 1843-51); The Church and the Churches, tr. MACCABE (1862); JANSSEN, Hist. of the German People at the close of the Middle Ages, tr. CHRISTIE (London, 1896-1910); PASTOR, Hist. of the Popes from the close of the Middle Ages, tr. ANTROBUS (London, 1891-1910); BALMES, Protestantism and Catholicity in their effects on the civilization of Europe, tr. HANFORD AND KERSHAW (1849); BAUDRILLART, The Catholic Church, the Renaissance and Protestantism, tr. GIBBS (London, 1908), these are illuminating lectures given at the Institut Catholique of Paris by its rector. On the Protestant side may be recommended the voluminous writings of CREIGHTON and GARDINER, both fair-minded.
APA citation. Wilhelm, J. (1911). Protestantism. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved May 5, 2009 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12495a.htm MLA citation. Wilhelm, Joseph. "Protestantism." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 12. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. 5 May 2009 <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12495a.htm>.