Religion_Christianity

History of Protestantism, history of the movement from its beginnings in northern Europe in the early 16th century as a reaction to medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices to the 20th century. Along with Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, Protestantism became one of three major forces in Christianity. After a series of European religious wars, and especially in the 19th century, it spread rapidly in various forms throughout the world. Wherever Protestantism gained a foothold, it influenced, to a greater or lesser extent, the social, economic, political, and cultural life of the area.

Protestantism was given its name at the Diet of Speyer in 1529. At that imperial assembly the Roman Catholic princes of Germany, along with the Holy Roman emperor Charles V, rescinded most of what toleration had been granted to the followers of Martin Luther three years earlier. On April 19, 1529, a protest was read against this decision, on behalf of 14 free cities of Germany and six Lutheran princes, who declared that the decision did not bind them because they were not a party to it, and that if forced to choose between obedience to God and obedience to Caesar they must choose obedience to God. They appealed from the diet to a general council of all Christendom or to a congress of the whole German nation. Those who made this protest became known as Protestants. The name was adopted not by the protesters but by their opponents, and gradually it was applied as a general description to those who adhered to the tenets of the Reformation, especially to those living outside Germany. In Germany the adherents of the Reformation preferred the name evangelicals and in France Huguenots.

In the 16th century the name Protestant was used primarily in connection with the two great schools of thought that arose in the Reformation, the Lutheran and the Reformed. In England in the early 17th century the word Protestant was used in the sense of "orthodox Protestant," as opposed to those who were regarded by Anglicans as unorthodox, such as the Baptists or the Quakers. Roman Catholics, however, used it for all who claimed to be Christian but opposed Catholicism (except the Eastern churches). They therefore included under the term Baptists, Quakers, and Catholic-minded Anglicans. Before the year 1700 this broad usage was accepted, though the word was not yet applied to Unitarians. The English Toleration Act of 1689 was entitled "an Act for exempting their Majesties' Protestant subjects dissenting from the Church of England." But the act provided only for the toleration of the opinions known in England as "orthodox dissent" and conceded nothing to Unitarians. Throughout the 18th century the word Protestant was still defined in relation to the historical reference of the 16th-century Reformation. Samuel Johnson's dictionary (1755), which is characteristic of other dictionaries in that age, defines the word thus: "one of those who adhere to them, who, at the beginning of the reformation, protested against the errours of the church of Rome." (W.O.C.)

The Protestant Reformation occurred against the background of long developments and rich ferment in the Roman Catholic Church and the world of the late Middle Ages. For two reasons it has been difficult to gain perspective on those times. Catholic historians had an interest in showing how much reform was occurring before and apart from the radical disrupters of the 16th century, the Protestant reformers. Protestant historians, on the other hand, portrayed the late medieval church in the most negative terms to show the necessity of the Reformation, which consequently came to look like a complete break with a corrupt past.

There has always been agreement on the fact that there were reform developments and ferment in the 15th-century church all the way from Spain and Italy northward through Germany, France, and England. Some of these were directed against abuses by the papacy, the clergy, and monks and nuns. The pious, for example, abhorred Innocent VIII (1484-92), who performed marriage ceremonies for his own illegitimate children in the Vatican, and Alexander VI (1492-1503), who was and was seen to be depraved. The public was also increasingly aware of and angered by luxurious papal projects, for which funds were exacted.

At this time of rising national consciousness there appeared a generation of theologians who remained entirely within the context of medieval Roman Catholicism but who engaged in fundamental criticisms of it. Thus William of Ockham (d. 1349?) spoke up as a reformer within the Franciscan order. He wished to return this religious order to the ideal of poverty, which it had in large part abandoned. As part of his reform he maintained that Pope John XXII was heretical. Ockham saw the papacy and empire as independent but related governments or realms. When the church was in danger of heresy, lay people--princes and commoners alike--must come to its rescue. This meant, in the present case, reform.

Alongside a piety that combined moral revulsion with national feelings, Christian humanism was a further sign of stirring in the late medieval church. In Italy, Lorenzo Valla (1407-57) used his sophisticated techniques of historical inquiry to expose a number of forgeries that had given the papacy many of its powers and much of its domain. In Germany, Johannes Reuchlin (1455-1522) studied Greek and Hebrew, the biblical languages, and fought for the rights of scholars to question traditional claims of the church. In Holland, Desiderius Erasmus (1466/69-1536), who remained a Roman Catholic, used his vast learning and his satiric pen to question the practices of the church.

While the Reformers attacked people in high places, they also regarded the Catholicism of ordinary people as being in need of reform. Devotion to the Virgin Mary had come to look superstitious to them as well as to occur at the expense of devotion to Christ. Such practices as pilgrims visiting shrines or parishioners regarding relics of saints with awe seemed to perpetuate a kind of paganism under a Christian veneer. The pestilences and plagues of the 14th century had bred an inordinate fear of death, which led to the exploitation of simple people by a church that was, in effect, offering salvation for sale. By the turn of the 16th century much of Europe was ripe for reforms that Catholicism could neither open itself up to nor contain. (M.E.M.)

Luther said that what differentiated him from previous reformers was that they attacked the life, he the doctrine of the church. Whereas they denounced the sins of churchmen, he was disillusioned by the whole scholastic scheme of redemption. The assumption was that man could erase his sins one by one through confession and absolution in the sacrament of penance. Luther discovered that he could not remember or even recognize all of his sins, and the attempt to dispose of them one by one was like trying to cure smallpox by picking off the scabs. Indeed, he believed that the whole man was sick. The church, however, held that the individual was not too sick to make up for bad deeds by some good deeds. God gave to all a measure of grace. If human beings lay hold of it and did the best they could, God would reward them with a further gift of grace with which they could perform deeds of genuine merit, which would give them credit before God. Human beings might even die with more than enough credits for salvation. These extra credits constituted a treasury of the merits of the saints, from which the pope could make transfers to those whose accounts were in arrears. The transfer was called an indulgence and for this, in Luther's day, the grateful recipient made a contribution to the church.

This arrangement proved to be a popular way of raising money particularly because, unlike tithes, it was voluntary and could provoke no resentment. By this means crusades, cathedrals, hospitals, and even bridges were financed. At first the indulgence, according to the Germanic law of commutation of a physical punishment to a fine, applied only to penalties imposed by the church on earth. Then it was extended to penalties imposed by God in purgatory. In Luther's day immediate release from purgatory was being offered, and the remission not only of penalties but even of sins was assured. Thus the indulgence encroached upon the sacrament of penance.

Luther was desperately in earnest about his standing before God and Christ. The woodcuts of Christ the Judge on a rainbow consigning the damned to hell filled him with terror. He believed the monastic life to be the way par excellence to acquire those extra merits that would more than balance his account. He became a monk and subjected himself to rigorous asceticism, but he could never reach the assurance that a sinful pygmy like himself could ever stand before the inexorable justice and majesty of God. Continual recourse to the confessional simply convinced him of the fundamental sickness of the whole man. He began then to question the goodness of a God who would make human beings so weak and then damn them for what they could not help. Relief came through the study of the Psalms. Luther found the 22nd Psalm particularly revealing because it contains the words quoted by Christ upon the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Evidently then, Christ, being without sin, so identified himself with sinful humanity as to feel himself estranged from God. Christ the Judge seated upon the rainbow had become Christ the Derelict upon the cross, and here the wrath and the mercy of God could find their point of meeting so that God was able to forgive those utterly devoid of merit. He could justify the unjust, and this required of man only that he accept the gift of God in faith. This was the doctrine of justification by faith, which became the watchword of the Reformation.

What this insight meant for the doctrine of indulgences is at once apparent. The great offense was not the financial aspect but rather the very notion that human beings dared to engage in bookkeeping with God. Luther by now had become a professor at the University of Wittenberg and also a pastor. His parishioners were obtaining the indulgences issued by Albert, the new archbishop of Mainz, half of the proceeds to be retained by him as reimbursement for his installation fee as archbishop, the other half to go to the pope for the building of the Basilica of St. Peter's at Rome. For this indulgence Albert made unprecedented claims. If the indulgence were on behalf of the donor himself, he would receive preferential treatment in case of future sin, if for someone else already in purgatory, he need not be contrite for his own sin. Remission was promised not only of penalties but also of sins, and the vendor of the indulgences offered immediate release from purgatory.

Against these instructions Luther launched his Ninety-five Theses on All Saints' Day of the year 1517. In the theses he presented three main points. The first concerned financial abuses; for example, if the pope realized the poverty of the German people, he would rather that St. Peter's lay in ashes than that it should be built out of the blood and hide of his sheep. The second focused attention on doctrinal abuses; for example, the pope had no jurisdiction over purgatory and if he did, he should empty the place free of charge. The third attacked religious abuses; for example, the treasury of the merits of the saints was denied by implication in the assertion that the treasury of the church was the gospel. This was the crucial point. When the papacy pronounced Luther's position heretical, he countered by denying the infallibility of popes and for good measure of councils also. Scripture was declared to be the only basis of authority.

Luther found support in many quarters. Already a widespread liberal Catholic evangelical reform sought to correct the moral abuses such as clerical concubinage, financial extortion, and pluralism (i.e., the holding of several benefices by one man) and ridiculed the popular superstitions associated with the cult of the saints and their relics, religious pilgrimages, and the like. This movement had representatives in all lands, notably John Colet in England, Jacques Lefèvre in France, Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros in Spain, Juan de Valdés in Naples, and, above all, Erasmus of Rotterdam. Erasmus found nothing amiss in Luther's theses except that he had been too tart as to purgatory, and when the cry of heresy was raised against Luther, he wrote to the elector Frederick III the Wise, Luther's prince, telling him that as a Christian ruler he was obligated to see to it that his subject should have a fair hearing.

Yet despite the support from these parties, Luther would have been speedily crushed had Pope Leo X taken seriously the religious side of his office. The secularization of the papacy saved Luther, and he destroyed the secularization of the papacy. At the moment when Luther appeared to be foredoomed, an election for the office of Holy Roman emperor was pending. It was elective and any European prince was eligible, including Henry VIII of England, Francis I of France, Charles I of Spain. The Pope wished none of them because the position entailed control over Germany, and the augmentation of power to one of the three would destroy the balance of power. His preference was for a minor prince, and none fitted the role better than Luther's protector, Frederick the Wise of Saxony. In consequence the Pope dallied in the case of Luther and even after Charles was elected, the Pope was willing to play Frederick against him. Not until June 1520, nearly three years after the Ninety-five Theses, was Luther summoned to submit within 60 days. The time was reckoned from the date of the actual delivery of the bull to the person named. So great was the obstruction to Rome on the part even of German bishops that the bull was not handed to Luther until October 10.

He employed the summer of 1520 to bring out some of the great manifestos of the Reformation. The Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation called upon the ruling class in Germany, including the emperor, in whom Luther had not yet lost confidence, to reform the church in externals by returning to apostolic poverty and simplicity. This appeal to the civil power to reform the church was a return to the earlier practice of the Middle Ages when emperors more than once had deposed and replaced unworthy popes. Luther argued that the papacy of his day was only 400 years old, meaning that it was the Gregorian reform that had given the church its lead in matters political, encroaching thereby on the sphere of the magistrate on the ground that the lowliest priest did more for mankind than the loftiest king. Luther countered with the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, including Christian magistrates. Any layman was spiritually a priest, though not vocationally a parson. The Christian ruler, then, being himself a priest, could reform the church in externals, as the church might excommunicate him in spirituals. The liberal Catholic reformers could sympathize with this program except for the identification of the papacy with Antichrist. This savoured of the medieval sects.

Another tract dealt with the sacraments. The title was The Babylonian Captivity, meaning that the sacraments themselves had been taken captive by the church. Luther reduced the number of the sacraments from seven to practically two. The seven were baptism, the Eucharist or mass, penance, confirmation, ordination, marriage, and extreme unction. Luther defined a sacrament as rite instituted by Christ himself. By this token only baptism and the Eucharist were strictly sacraments and penance only as confession. Extreme unction, that is anointing with oil those on the verge of death, was dropped entirely. Confirmation went out for a time but was later restored. Ordination continued as a rite of the church. Penance included contrition, confession, and satisfaction. Luther felt that none could be sure of genuine contrition, none could make satisfaction. Confession was wholesome but should be voluntary and could be made to any fellow Christian. Marriage was not a Christian sacrament, because it was not instituted by Christ but by God in the garden of Eden, and valid not only for Christians but also for Turks and Jews. Baptism was to be administered but once only and to babies on the ground of their dormant faith.

This left the mass, and at this point Luther gave the greatest offense. The wine, he asserted, should be given to the laity as well as the bread, as in the Hussite practice. No masses should be said for the dead by the priest alone without communicants, because the Eucharist involved fellowship not only with Christ but also with believers. The most drastic change was that Luther denied the doctrine of transubstantiation, according to which, at the pronouncement of the words of institution, the elements of bread and wine, though retaining their accidents of colour, shape, and taste, nevertheless lost their substance, which was replaced by the substance of the body of Christ as God. This Luther denied, saying that no change was wrought by the words of Christ.

Luther, nevertheless, believed that the body of Christ was physically present upon the altar because Christ said, "This is my body." Therefore, in some inexplicable manner, his body must be "with, in, and under" the elements. But if no change was wrought, how did his body come to be on the altar? Because his body was everywhere. But if everywhere, why especially there? Because in view of human limitations God had decreed two modes of self-disclosure, the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacrament. There the eyes of the believer were opened. This view undercut sacerdotalism, since the words of the priest did not bring the body of Christ to the altar. The undercutting of sacerdotalism destroyed the hierarchical structure of society culminating in the papacy.

But what was to be done with Luther? On December 10, instead of submitting, he defiantly burned the papal bull together with a copy of the canon law. The normal course would then have been to excommunicate him outright, but Frederick the Wise insisted that he be given a fair hearing. The natural body to pass judgment would have been a council of the church. But the popes were the greatest obstructionists when it came to calling a council because they feared the revival of conciliarism, which in the previous century bade fair to convert the church into a constitutional monarchy. There would have been no Council of Trent save for Luther. Only after another 20 years, when the spread of his teaching left no other expedients, was a council convened. Consequently, his hearing had to be before a secular tribunal, the Diet of the empire meeting at Worms in the winter and spring of 1521. Since this was a secular tribunal the attempt was made to prove that he was not simply a heretic but also a rebel whose views were more subversive of the civil than of the ecclesiastical order, because he was undermining the very principle of authority. Luther was brought before the Diet and given an opportunity to repudiate his books. Had he disclaimed the one on the sacraments, the other points might have been negotiated. He acknowledged them all. Would he then disclaim some of their teaching? Who was he to reject the teaching of the ages? Let him give an answer without horns, to which he replied: "I will answer without horns and without teeth. Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason--I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other--my conscience is captive to the Word of God, I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen." The Emperor then placed Luther under the imperial ban. The bull of excommunication by the church was formally released only later. Frederick the Wise at this point intervened and wafted Luther away to a place of hiding.

But some were not so convinced. Many of the liberal Catholic reformers, like Erasmus, recoiled from Luther's paradoxes, from his confidence that his interpretation of Scripture was correct, from his acceptance of the doctrine of predestination, which makes of God a tyrant when he elects some and damns others regardless of their behaviour. The German national movement collapsed. Then in Luther's own circle variant forms of Protestantism arose, which in the aggregate are variously described as the left wing of the Reformation or as the radical Reformation. The terminology does not matter so much as the recognition that no neat classification is possible.

Two figures emerging in Luther's circle are significant by way of anticipation. One was Karlstadt (c. 1477/81-1541), who drew the radical inference from the dualism of flesh and spirit that art and music should be abolished as external aids to religion and the Presence of Christ's body on the altar should be interpreted in a spiritual sense. His program issued in iconoclastic riots. He extended Luther's doctrine of the priesthood of all believers to mean that all laymen were pastors. If one person was assigned the tasks of a parson, he should dress like others and, like others, should work with his hands. The clergy not only might but must marry. The sabbath should be strictly observed. This program anticipated the Puritan movement. It entailed a blending of spiritualism and legalism. The sensory aids to religion were to be discarded by those advanced in the spiritual life and then snatched away by laws from those still weak.

A much more disquieting figure than Karlstadt was Thomas Müntzer (c. 1490-1525), a man of learning and a creative firebrand, who may be regarded not as the progenitor but as the first formulator of the concept of the Protestant Holy Commonwealth. He believed that the elect, those predestined by God for salvation, could be sufficiently identified to compose a definite group. Luther denied the possibility of distinguishing the elect from the nonelect. Müntzer's test was the new birth in the spirit. The test was not for him an absolute mark, and he recognized that among the wheat there might be some weeds, yet he accepted it as an adequate test for the formation of a community bound together by a covenant. The mission of this group was to set up the Kingdom of God on Earth, the Holy Commonwealth, by wiping out the ungodly. In the attempt they would have to endure suffering, and here Müntzer drew from German mysticism the theme of walking in Christ's steps toward the cross. But the trial would end in triumph, for the Lord Jesus would speedily come to vindicate his saints and erect his Kingdom. There are obviously incompatibles here, the way of suffering and the infliction of suffering, the feverish activity of man to achieve that which will be established by God. But logical incompatibles fuse at high emotional temperatures. Müntzer appealed to the Saxon princes to implement his program, but they banished him. He found a hearing among the revolting peasants and led them at the Battle of Frankenhausen, where they were butchered and he captured and beheaded. Luther execrated his memory because he seized the sword in defense of the gospel. The Marxists have exalted him as the prophet of social revolution because he was the only one of the Reformers who had a deep feeling for the sufferings of the socially oppressed. In grasping the sword he did not essentially differ from Huldrych Zwingli, Gaspard de Coligny, or Oliver Cromwell.

Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531), the great figure in Swiss Protestantism, was in fact if anything more committed to military action than Müntzer because he fell as a combatant with sword and helmet on the field of battle. He became a Reformer independently of Luther, with whom he was entirely in accord as to justification by faith and predestination. At certain points Zwingli drew from Erasmus and Karlstadt, notably with respect to the disparagement of the sensory aids to religion. Zwingli, though an accomplished musician, considered that the function of music was to put the babies to sleep rather than to worship God. The organ was dismantled and the images removed from the cathedral at Zürich. The Lord's Supper was understood by Zwingli in his most extreme period simply as a memorial of Christ's death and, on the part of the recipient, as a public declaration of faith with more significance for the members of the congregation who saw him take his stand than for his own spiritual life. Zwingli could the more readily retain the baptism of infants because it was simply a recognition that the child belongs to the people of God as the child in the Old Testament belonged by circumcision to Israel. The analogy with Judaism applied at many points, for Zwingli regarded the Christian congregation as the new Israel of God, an elect people, reasonably identifiable, not as with Müntzer by the new birth but by adherence to the faith. This company could be called theocratic in the sense that it was under the rule of God, whom church and state should alike serve in close collaboration. The identification of the whole populace of Zürich with this elect people was the more tenable because those not in accord with the ideal were disposed to leave. Zwingli approved of even an aggressive war to forestall interference from the Roman Catholic cantons. In the second war of Kappel he fell in 1531.

In Zwingli's circle arose the group who formed the mainstay of the radical Reformation. They shared with Zwingli, and with all the reformers to a degree, the desire to restore the church to the primitive pattern, but they were more drastic in their restitution. Manifestly the early church had not been allied with the state. Luther, Zwingli, and other Reformers saw no sense in forcing the church back into the period when the state was hostile and the Christians were persecuted. After the state became Christian, there could very well be a close alliance, as indeed there had been in ancient Israel.

The radicals restricted their biblicism to the New Testament and espoused three tenets therefrom that have come to be axiomatic in the United States: the separation of church and state, the voluntary church, and religious liberty. They were called Anabaptists on the ground that, having rejected infant baptism, they rebaptized adults previously baptized. But they called themselves simply Baptists, denying that they repeated baptism since the dipping of babies was no baptism at all. Baptism, they held, did not itself regenerate but was only the outward sign of an inner experience, the rebirth in the spirit, of which only an adult was capable. The Anabaptists, so-called, also believed in the possibility of a Christian society whose members were marked both by the conversion experience and also by a highly disciplined deportment. In obedience to the New Testament they repudiated swearing oaths and recourse to violence, whether in war or at the hands of the magistrate. The saints should withdraw from the wicked world.

This whole program obviously had political and social aspects and was a threat to that society or any other, for no society, save that of a small sect, has ever renounced the use of the sword. The Anabaptists were marked for extermination by Catholics and Protestants alike. One of their first leaders, Felix Manz, was drowned in Zürich in 1527. The Diet of Speyer in 1529, at which the Lutherans protested, subjected the Anabaptists to the penalty of death with the concurrence of the Lutherans. Persecution in the first decade eliminated the leaders, most of them educated and moderate men. Less temperate spirits came to the fore, sustaining their courage by setting dates for the speedy coming of the Lord. One band, composed mainly of Anabaptists, took over the town of Münster in Westphalia in 1534 and, contrary to the tenets of their fellows, seized the sword and, in accord with Old Testament practice, restored polygamy. The town was captured by Catholics and Lutherans conjoined and the leaders were executed. Persecution everywhere intensified.

In Holland Menno Simons (c. 1496-1561), the founder of the Mennonites, repudiated violence, polygamy, and the setting of dates for the coming of the Lord and returned to the teaching of the early founders. The Mennonites survived partly by reason of accommodation to military service in Holland, partly by migration first to eastern Europe and then to the Americas. Another group, named Hutterites from Jakob Hutter (died 1536), was allowed to form communal colonies in Moravia on the estates of tolerant feudal nobles who were willing to drop the demand for military service in return for excellent craftsmanship in field and shop. Because of subsequent persecution these groups also migrated to the New World. The Swiss branch, which survives in the United States, is called the Amish. The entire pattern of ideas has reappeared in various combinations in subsequent history, not only among the Church of the Brethren and the Quakers but among all of the free churches disclaiming a state connection.

Another form of Protestantism was Calvinism, named for John Calvin (1509-64), a Frenchman educated in humanist and legal studies, who in consequence of a conversion to the Protestant reform had to flee France. In Basel, at the age of 27, he brought out the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, which in successive expansions became for centuries the manual of Protestant theology. Calvin was in basic agreement with Luther as to justification by faith and the sole authority of Scripture. On the sacrament of the Lord's Supper he took a mediating position between the radical Swiss and the Lutheran view. Thus he believed that the body of Christ was not everywhere present, but that his spirit was universal and there was a genuine communion with the risen Lord. Calvin took a middle view likewise with respect to music and art. He favoured congregational singing of the Psalms, and this became a characteristic mark of the Huguenots in France and the Presbyterians in Scotland and the New World. As to art, he rejected the images of saints and the crucifix (that is, the body of Christ upon the cross), but allowed a plain cross. These modifications do not refute the generalization that Calvinism was alien to art and music in the service of religion but not in the secular sphere.

As over against Luther, there was a shift of emphasis in Calvin, whose Institutes did not begin with justification by faith but with the knowledge of God. Luther found refuge from the terror of God's dispensations in the mercy of Christ. Calvin could the more calmly contemplate the frightfulness of God's judgments because they would not descend upon the elect. Luther, as noted, saw no way of knowing who were the elect. He could not be sure of himself and throughout his life had a continual struggle for faith and assurance. Calvin had certain approximate and attainable tests. He did not require the experience of the new birth, which is so inward and intangible, though to be sure later Calvinism moved away from him on this point and agonized over the marks of election. For Calvin there were three tests: the profession of faith, as with Zwingli; a rigorously disciplined Christian deportment, as with the Anabaptists; and a love of the sacraments, which meant the Lord's Supper since infant baptism was not to be repeated. If a person could meet these three tests let him assume his election and stop worrying.

If one could achieve such assurance, what an enormous release of energy to be directed to the glory of God and the erection on Earth of some semblance of a holy commonwealth! The term became common in New England. Calvin's own statement was that "the Church reformed is the kingdom of God." Calvin saw more of a possibility of its realization through the efforts of the elect because he muted the expectation of the imminent return of the Lord. The service of the Kingdom did not require a particular vocation. Any worthy occupation is a divine calling demanding unremitting zeal. Luther had emphasized the secular callings as over against the monastic, which in the Middle Ages alone had been called a vocation. With Calvin the point was not so much that one should accept one's lot and rejoice in the assigned task, however menial, as that the work would contribute to the larger realization of the Christian society.

Calvin had a concrete opportunity for the realization of his ideal, albeit at first only on a small scale. The city of Geneva had recently thrown off the authority of the bishop and of the duke of Savoy and had not yet joined the Protestant Swiss Confederation, though aided in the fight for liberation by the Protestant city of Bern. Through the Bernese, Protestant preachers began to evangelize Geneva. The city was threatened by civil war. The bellicose preacher Guillaume Farel, unable himself to contain the violence he had helped to unleash, laid hold of Calvin merely passing through the city and impressed him into the unwelcome task of leadership. After turbulent years, a banishment and a recall, he was able for the last two decades of his life to direct the city that John Knox considered "the most godly since the days of the apostles." There was actually scarcely a feature of Thomas More's Utopia that Geneva did not seek to realize.

The program, despite all the turbulence, was the more attainable because of a selective process with respect to the population. At the outset all the Catholics who would not submit to the new regime had to leave. Among those who remained, excommunication from the church, if not removed within six months, meant banishment from the city. Control over excommunication, after a long struggle, came to be entirely in the hands of the church. The state, having long suffered from the abuse of excommunication for political purposes, was loath to concede to the church exclusive control. Abortive attempts to achieve independence had been made by the Protestant churches at Basel and Strassburg. Calvin succeeded, with the result that one who was not in the graces of the church could not for long be a member of the community. A further factor ensuring a select constituency was the influx of 6,000 refugees from France, Italy, Spain, and, for a time, from England into a city of 13,000. Thus in Geneva, church, state, and community came to be one. The ministers and the magistrates with differentiated functions were alike the servants of God in the erection of this new Israel; and the comparison with ancient Israel was the more striking and the inner cohesion the more intensified because Geneva also was begirt by foes, the duke of Savoy and the duke of Alba, like the old Canaanites and Philistines.

The situation in France with respect to the Reformation was not altogether dissimilar to that in Germany because, although the decentralization of government was not as great, some of the French provinces enjoyed a considerable autonomy, particularly in the south, and it was in the Midi and French Navarre that the Protestant movement had its initial strength. Then, too, noble houses were continually conspiring to manipulate or eviscerate the monarchy. The religious issues came to be intertwined with the political ambitions. The ruling houses, first the Valois from Francis I through Henry III and then the Bourbon, beginning with Henry IV, sought to secure the stability of the land and the throne by quelling religious strife either by the extermination or toleration of minorities.

The ground was better prepared for the reform of the church in France than in Germany because of the efforts of liberal Catholics such as the scholar Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and the bishop of Meaux, Guillaume Briçonnet. King Francis I and his sister Margaret of Angoulême not infrequently intervened to save humanist reformers from the menaces of the obscurantists, and Margaret's daughter, Jeanne d'Albret, the queen of Navarre, a feudatory of France, provided an asylum for the persecuted in her domain, though she did not herself espouse the Huguenot cause until 1560. When Lutheran teaching first began to infiltrate France, Francis I, who would not abet heresy, fluctuated in his policy of repression, depending on whether he desired a political alliance with the pope, the Turk, or the German Lutherans. The year 1534 precipitated a crisis when placards were posted in Paris savagely attacking the mass. Severe repression followed. Bishop Briçonnet made his submission. Farel fled to Geneva, Lefèvre to Strassburg, Calvin to Basel. Under Henry II, the son of Francis, repression was intensified, particularly when in 1559 France and Spain made peace and thus each was free to devote attention to the suppression of heresy at home. The persecution of the Huguenots, as the Protestants came to be called in France, would have been intense save for the death of the King in a tournament.

At this point the rivalry of the noble houses injected itself more overtly into the religious struggle. The crown, with its alternating policy of eradication or recognition, was flanked by two extreme houses for whom the religious issue was of intense concern. The House of Guise was so Catholic as to be willing to call in Spanish aid, and the family of Admiral Coligny so Huguenot as to be willing to court help from England and even from Germany. Under Francis II the Guises were in the ascendant because the queen, later queen of Scots, was of that house. Some of the Huguenots, foreseeing the suppression in store, hatched the Conspiracy of Amboise, an attempted assassination of the leaders of the Guise party and transferral of power to the House of Bourbon.

This was plainly rebellion and acutely raised a problem with which the Protestants had long been wrestling. The Lutherans had had to face it earlier when the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 gave them a year in which to submit on pain of war. The Lutheran princes then had formed the Schmalkaldic League to resist arms with arms. Luther was loath to condone any use of the sword in defense of the Gospel and absolutely forbade any recourse to violence on the part of a private citizen against the magistrates. This was his reason for disapproval of the Peasants' War. But now the jurists pointed out to Luther that the emperor was an elected ruler and that if he transgressed against the true religion he might be brought to book by the electors, who also were magistrates. Thus arose the doctrine of the right of resistance of the lower magistrate against the higher. The concept lost its pertinence in Germany after the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, which granted toleration to the Lutherans in the territories where they were predominant. Minorities in Lutheran and Catholic lands were granted the right of migration without loss of goods.

But the Calvinists were not included in the peace, and the problem of armed resistance again became acute in France. Calvin would not condone the Conspiracy of Amboise because it was not led by a lower magistrate. The term was now applied to the princes of the blood in line for succession to the throne. This meant the House of Bourbon. The Conspiracy of Amboise failed. Francis II died, and was succeeded by his brother, the young Charles IX. The queen mother, Catherine de Médicis, took the lead and sought to avert religious war by granting the Huguenots limited toleration in restricted areas in the edict of 1562. When François, duc de Guise, discovered the Huguenots worshiping outside the prescribed limits, as he claimed, he opened fire. The Massacre of Vassy set off the wars. The Huguenots now were led by a prince of the blood, Louis I, 1st prince de Condé, of the House of Bourbon. Calvin approved. There followed three inconclusive wars. Condé was killed in the first and François, duc de Guise, was assassinated. His son, now Henri, duc de Guise, believed in the complicity of Coligny, the new leader of the Huguenots. At the end of 10 years of indecisive conflict, Catherine made another effort at a settlement to be cemented by the marriage of Henry of Navarre, a Bourbon, the son of Jeanne d'Albret and the hope of the Huguenots, and her own daughter Margaret (Marguerite de Valois), a Catholic. The leaders of all parties came to Paris for the wedding. The Duke of Guise made an attempt on the life of Coligny, which failed. Then the Guise, with the connivance of Catherine and her son Charles, who panicked, tried to wipe out all of the leaders of the Huguenot party in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day in August 1572. Other massacres followed in the provinces.

Charles IX was succeeded by his brother, Henry III, two years later (1574). Such was the revulsion against the massacre that the King could rule only by forming an alliance with the Huguenot Henry of Navarre. A fanatical Catholic was thereby so outraged that he assassinated the King. Both sides had abandoned the fiction of the inferior magistrate and had gone in unabashedly for popular revolution. Henry of Navarre then became Henry IV, but he was unable to take Paris and rule France so long as he was a Protestant. In order to pacify the land he made his submission to Rome and promulgated an edict of toleration for the Huguenots, the Edict of Nantes, in 1598. It gave them liberty of worship again in limited areas but full rights of participation in public life. The edict remained in force until the revocation in 1685.

In the meantime the Reformation had taken hold in England. The beginning there was political rather than religious, a quarrel between the king and the pope of the sort that had occurred in the Middle Ages without resulting in a permanent schism, and might not have in this instance save for the total European situation. The dispute had its root in the assumption that the king was a national stallion expected to provide an heir to the throne. England did not have the Salic law, which in France forbade female succession, but England had just emerged from the Wars of the Roses and the fear was not unwarranted that the struggle might be resumed if there were not a male succession. Catherine of Aragon, the queen of Henry VIII, had borne him numerous children of whom only one survived, the princess Mary, and more were not to be expected. The ordinary procedure in such a case was to discover some flaw in the marriage that would allow an annulment or, in the terminology of that day, a divorce. In this instance the flaw was not difficult to find, because Catherine had been married to Henry's brother Arthur, and the law of England, following the prohibition in the book of Leviticus, forbade the marriage of a man with his deceased brother's widow. At the time of the marriage the pope had given a dispensation to cover this infraction of the rule. The question now was whether the pope had the authority to dispense from the divine law. Catherine said there had been no need for a dispensation because her marriage to Arthur had not been consummated and there had been no impediment to her marriage to Henry. The knot would have been cut by some casuistry had Catherine not been the aunt of Emperor Charles V, who was not prepared to see her cast aside in favour of another wife, and who controlled the pope. Clement VII, wishing neither to provoke the emperor nor to alienate the king, dallied so long that Henry took the matter into his own hands, repudiated papal authority, and in 1534 set up the Anglican Church with the king as the supreme head. The spiritual head was the archbishop of Canterbury, now Thomas Cranmer, who married Henry to Anne Boleyn. She bore the princess Elizabeth. By still another wife Henry did have a son who succeeded as Edward VI.

Although the basic concern of Henry was political, the alterations in the structure of the church gave scope for a reformation religious in character. Part of the impulse came from the survivals of Lollardy, part from the Lutheran movement on the Continent, and even more from the Christian humanism represented by Erasmus. The major changes under Henry were the suppression of the monasteries, the introduction of the Bible in the vernacular in the parish churches, and permission to the clergy to marry, though this was later revoked. The resistance to Henry's program was not formidable and the executions resulting were not numerous. Henry was impartial in burning some Lutherans who would not submit to his later reactionary legislation and toward some Catholics who would not accept the royal supremacy over the church, notably John Fisher and Thomas More.

On his ascension to the throne in 1547, young Edward VI was hailed by Cranmer and other Protestants as England's Josiah, the young 7th-century-BC king of Judah who enforced the Deuteronomic reform. Edward, it was held, would rid the land of idolatry so that England might be blessed. Protestantism advanced rapidly during his reign through the systematic reformation of doctrine, worship, and discipline--the three external marks of the true church. A reformed confession of faith and a prayer book were adopted, but the reformation of the ecclesiastical laws that would have defined the basis of discipline was blocked in Parliament by the most powerful of the English nobility.

The death of Edward and England's return to Roman Catholicism in 1553 under Queen Mary was interpreted by Protestants as a judgment by God upon a nation that had not taken the Reformation seriously enough. Many, including Cranmer, died as martyrs to the Protestant cause. Others fled to the European continent. Those in exile experimented with more radical forms of worship and discipline. Leading clergymen published material justifying rebellion against an idolatrous ruler. Many saw in Geneva, which was a haven for English exiles, a working model of a disciplined church. Exiles produced two large volumes of incalculable consequence for English religious thought. John Foxe's Actes and Monuments, popularly known as The Book of Martyrs, and the Geneva Bible were the most popular books in England for many years after they were published. They provided a view of England as an elect nation chosen by God to bring the power of the Antichrist (understood to be the pope) to an end. An England obedient to God would receive his favour. Otherwise, it would experience his plagues.

Elizabeth I, beginning her rule in 1558, was hailed as the glorious Deborah (12th-century-BC Israelite leader), the "restorer of Israel." She did not restore it far enough for English Protestants, however. Two statutes promulgated in her first year--the Act of Supremacy, stating that the queen was "supreme governor" of the Church of England, and the Act of Uniformity, ensuring that English worship should follow The Book of Common Prayer--defined the nature of the English religious establishment. In 1563 the primary church legislative body, the Convocations of Canterbury and York, defined standard doctrine in the Thirty-nine Articles, but attempts in the Convocation to reform the prayerbook further and to produce a reformed discipline failed. Defeated there, the reformers came to rely more on Parliament, where they could always depend on strong support.

In Scotland the Reformation is associated with the name of John Knox, who declared that one celebration of the mass is worse than a cup of poison. He faced the very real threat that Mary, Queen of Scots, would do for Scotland what Mary Tudor had done for England. Therefore Knox defied her to her face in matters of religion and, though a commoner, addressed her as if he were all Scotland. He very nearly was, because in the period prior to 1560 many an obscure evangelist had converted the lowlands largely to the religion of John Calvin. The church had been given a Presbyterian structure, culminating in a General Assembly, which had actually as great and perhaps a greater influence than the Parliament. Because of her follies, and very probably her crimes (complicity in the murder of her husband), Mary had to seek asylum in England. There she became the focus of plots on the life of Elizabeth until Parliament decreed her execution. Presbyterianism came to be established in Scotland, and this very fact alone made possible the union of Scotland with England. Union of Protestant England with a Catholic Scotland would have been unthinkable.

Knox is frequently reproached for his intolerance in regarding one celebration of the mass as worse than a cup of poison, but one must remember that the year 1560 marked the peak of polarization between the confessions. Similar intolerance had been mounting at Rome. Paul III, after an abortive attempt at reform, had introduced the Roman Inquisition in 1542. His successor, Paul IV, placed everything that Erasmus had ever written on the Index. The Council of Trent began its sittings in 1545, introducing rigidity in dogma and austerity in morals. The Protestant views of justification by faith alone, the Lord's Supper, and the propriety of clerical marriage were sharply rejected. All deviation within the Catholic fold was rigidly suppressed. When Carranza, the archbishop of Toledo, returned to Spain in 1559, after assisting Mary in the restoration of Catholicism in England, he arrived in time for the last great auto-da-fé of the Lutherans. Himself under suspicion for ideas no more heretical than those of Erasmus, he was incarcerated for 17 years in the prison of the Inquisition. The liberal cardinal Giovanni Morone was imprisoned during the pontificate by Paul IV, and under Pius V, Pietro Carnesecchi, an Erasmian and one-time secretary of Clement VII, was burned in Rome. John Knox and Pope Pius V represent the acme of divergence between the confessions. (R.H.B.) (J.C.S.) (Ed.)

Puritanism first emerged as a distinct movement in a controversy over clerical vestments and liturgical practices. Immediately following the Elizabethan Settlement, a practical latitude existed for Protestant clergy to wear what they chose while leading worship. Many preachers took this opportunity to do away with the formal attire as well as other practices traditionally associated with the Roman Catholic mass. But in 1564 Queen Elizabeth demanded that Matthew Parker, the archbishop of Canterbury, enforce uniformity in the liturgy. He did so somewhat reluctantly with the publication of his Advertisements in 1566. Those who refused to wear the now prescribed garb came to be considered collectively, and with scorn, as "Puritans" or "precisians" for their unwillingness to submit in these seemingly minor points to the supremacy of the queen.

Aside from vestments and liturgy the form of church government was a second controversial issue among Elizabethan English Protestants. In 1570 Thomas Cartwright (1535-1603) delivered a series of lectures at Cambridge University proposing that presbyterian government, or government by local councils of clergy and laity, might be an improvement over the current system of archbishops, bishops, and appointments. Cartwright was dismissed for his opinions and fled to Geneva. Two years later John Field and Thomas Wilcox anonymously published an Admonition to the Parliament, which pushed Cartwright's ideas even further. In reply John Whitgift, vice-chancellor at Cambridge, maintained that the government of the church should be suited to the government of the state and that episcopal government best suited monarchy. In this dispute most Puritans shied away from extremes and supported some form of episcopacy, but a small number went beyond even Cartwright and Field in seeking to effect immediately a "reformation without tarrying for any." These Separatists broke with the established parish system to set up voluntary congregations that covenanted with God and with themselves, chose ministers by common consent, and put into practice the Puritan marks of the true church. Robert Browne (d. 1633) was an early advocate of the Separatist mentality.

The leaders of the Puritan movement, however, including Cartwright (who had returned to England in 1585) and Field, repudiated the Separatists and sought to set up "presbyterianism in episcopacy," or a "church within the church." This compromise between presbyterianism and episcopacy was preferred by the most prominent Puritans, and they began to institute such a system by means of informal public meetings of clergy and laity to expound and discuss the Bible. These meetings were called "prophesyings," and they were favoured for their educational value to the rural population by Edmund Grindal, who had succeeded Parker as archbishop of Canterbury in 1576. But the prophesyings were also the occasions for local Puritan clergy, laity, and gentry to mobilize, and they were viewed by Elizabeth, in the context of the more radical groups, as a political threat. An increasingly clear alliance between Puritans and certain factions within Parliament did not allay Elizabeth's fears.

Thus, the Queen ordered Grindal to suppress the prophesyings. When he refused, Elizabeth effectively suspended him from the exercise of his office. This suspension further alienated Puritans. Meetings continued, often in a modified form, called classis or conferences, which were loosely coordinated by John Field in London. Following Grindal's death in 1583, John Whitgift, Cartwright's old opponent, advanced to Canterbury. Whitgift had no hesitance in closing down the prophesyings, but he proceeded with caution in formal prosecution of Puritans. Extended ecclesiastical hearings by the Court of High Commission, under the leadership of John Aylmer, and civil proceedings by the Star Chamber were accompanied by the imprisonment of only a few of the most prominent Puritans.

Whitgift's policy, along with the death of Field and other Puritan leaders between 1588 and 1590, effectively ended any grand plan for a continuing reformation of the English Church under Elizabeth. The generally moderate Elizabethan Puritan movement was over, and the forces of reform dispersed into various parties and programs ranging from nonseparating congregationalism (as advocated by William Ames) to open subversion of the established hierarchy as in the anonymous Marprelate Tracts (1588-89). Despite failure to promote reform in matters of church structure, the Puritan spirit continued to spread throughout the society. Protestants with Puritan sympathies controlled colleges and professorships at Oxford and Cambridge, had the ears of many leaders in the House of Commons, and worked tirelessly as preachers and pastors to continue the preaching of Protestantism in its distinctively "hot" Puritan form to the laity. (M.E.M.)

Puritan hopes were raised when James VI of Scotland succeeded Elizabeth as James I of England in 1603. James was known to be Calvinist in theology, and he had once signed the Negative Confession of 1581 favouring the Puritan position. In 1603 the Millenary Petition (with a claimed thousand signatures) presented Puritan grievances to the King, and in 1604 the Hampton Court Conference was held to deal with them. The petitioners were sadly in error in their estimate of the King, who had learned by personal experience to resent Presbyterian clericalism. At Hampton Court he coined the phrase, "no bishop, no king." Outmaneuvered in the conference, the Puritans were made to appear petty in their requests.

As a seal upon the Hampton Court Conference James appointed Richard Bancroft to be Whitgift's successor as archbishop of Canterbury and encouraged the Convocation of 1604 to draw up the Constitutions and Canons against Nonconformists. Conformity in ecclesiastical matters became a pattern in areas where forms of nonconformity had survived under Elizabeth. Though a number of the clergy were deprived of their positions, others took evasive action and got by with minimal conformity. Members of Parliament supported them in their position by arguing that since the canons had not been ratified by Parliament they did not have the force of law.

Despite the presence of controversy, Puritan and non-Puritan Protestants under Elizabeth and James had been united by adherence to a broadly Calvinistic theology of grace. Much of Whitgift's restraint in handling Puritans, for instance, can be traced to the prevailing Calvinist consensus he shared with the Nonconformists. Even as late as 1618 the English delegation to the Synod of Dort supported the strongly Calvinistic decisions of that body. Under Charles I, however, this consensus broke down, driving yet another rift into the Church of England. Anti-Puritanism in matters of liturgy and organization became linked with anti-Calvinism in theology.

The leaders of the anti-Puritan and anti-Calvinist party, notably Richard Montagu, whose New Gagg for an Old Goose (1624) first linked Calvinism with the abusive term "Puritan," drew upon the development of Arminianism in Holland. Arminians stressed God's universal offer of salvation to mankind in contrast to the Calvinistic doctrine according to which God predestined a few to salvation, with the rest of humanity reprobated or damned. Early English Arminians added to this an increased reverence for the sacraments and liturgical ceremony. Richard Neile, bishop of Durham, was the first significant patron of Arminians among the hierarchy, but by the time William Laud was appointed bishop of London in 1628, he was the acknowledged leader of the anti-Puritan party. London was regarded as the stronghold of Puritanism, and a policy of thorough anti-Puritanism was begun there. Men who were not Separatists found their positions increasingly difficult to maintain.

Laud, who became archbishop of Canterbury in 1633, was clearly a favourite of Charles. He oversaw the advance of Arminians to influential positions in the church and subtly promoted the propagation of Arminian theology. His fortunes began to turn, however, when he attempted to introduce into the Church of Scotland a liturgy comparable to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. When "Laud's Liturgy" was introduced at the Church of St. Giles at Edinburgh, a riot broke out leading to a popular uprising that restored Presbyterianism in Scotland.

Religion played perhaps the key role in the parliamentary elections, and Calvinists came to dominate the Commons. Puritans, who had been increasingly alienated from the ecclesiastical and civil hierarchy since the mid-1620s, suddenly saw an opportunity to return the Church of England to its original doctrinal system and to carry out reforms that had been held in check since the Elizabethan Settlement. Arminianism in theology, liturgy, and government was linked in the popular mind with Catholicism, as fears of a Spanish conspiracy to undermine Protestant England became widespread. The first act of the Long Parliament, as it came to be called (1640-53), was to set aside Nov. 17, 1640, as a day of fasting and humiliation. Cornelius Burges and Stephen Marshall were appointed to preach that day to members of Parliament. Their sermons urged the nation to renew its covenant with God in order to bring about true religion through the maintenance of "an able, godly, faithful, zealous, profitable, preaching ministry in every parish church and chapel throughout England and Wales" and through the establishment of a civil magistracy that would be "ever at hand to back such a ministry."

In the course of his reign it had become apparent that Charles himself was the patron of Arminians and their attempt to redefine the doctrine of the Church of England. Arminians in turn favoured Charles's causes against Puritans and Parliament. This alliance held despite increasing pressure on Charles to cooperate with Parliament on economic and military matters. The resulting civil war between the forces of the King and the troops of Parliament was hardly just a religious struggle between Arminians and Calvinists, but conflict over religion played an undeniably large role in bringing about the Puritan Revolution. As Protestantism split, so did English society.

A majority of the Puritan clergy of England probably would still have opted for a modified episcopal church government. Parliament, however, needed Scotland's military help. It adopted the Solemn League and Covenant, which committed the Westminster Assembly to develop a church polity close to Scotland's presbyterian form. A small, determined Assembly group of "Dissenting Brethren" held out for the freedom of the congregation, or "Independency," as opposed to the power of presbytery. Others, called Erastians, wanted to limit the offenses under the power of church discipline. Because both groups had support in Parliament, the reform of church government and discipline was frustrated.

Dissent within the assembly was negligible compared with dissent outside it. Pamphlets by John Milton, Roger Williams, and others schooled in Puritanism pleaded for greater freedom of the press and of religion. Such dissent was supported in the New Model Army, a Parliamentarian army of 22,000 men organized and disciplined under Sir Thomas Fairfax (1612-71) as commander in chief and Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), and the real power in England was passing to the military leaders who had defeated all Royalist forces. Late in 1648 the victors feared that the Westminster Assembly and Parliament would reach a compromise with the defeated Charles that would destroy their gains for Puritanism. In December 1648 Parliament was purged of members unsatisfactory to the Army, and in January 1649 King Charles was tried and executed.

The Independent clergyman John Owen guided the religious settlement under Cromwell. He maintained that the "reformation of England shall be more glorious than of any Nation in the world, being carried on, neither by might nor power, but only by the spirit of the Lord of Hosts." Error was a problem for both Cromwell and Owen, but, as Owen expressed it, it was better for 500 errors to be scattered among individuals than for one error to have power and jurisdiction over all others.

Such was the basis for a pluralistic religious settlement in England under the Commonwealth in which parish churches were led by men of Presbyterian, Independent, Baptist, or other opinions. Jews were permitted to live in England. But it was unacceptable for such groups as Roman Catholics or Unitarians to hold religious views publicly. Cromwell was personally willing to tolerate The Book of Common Prayer, but his Parliament was not. Voluntary associations of churches were formed, such as the Worcestershire Association, to keep up a semblance of church order among churches and pastors of differing persuasions.

In the upheaval brought on by the wars radical groups appeared that both challenged and advanced the Puritan vision of the New Jerusalem. The Levellers (a republican and democratic political party) in the New Model Army in 1647 and 1648 interpreted the liberty that comes from the free grace of God offered to all men in Christ as having direct implications for political democracy. The Diggers (agrarian communists) in 1649 planted crops on common land, first at St. George's Hill near Kingston and later at Cobham Manor, also near Kingston, to encourage God to bring soon the day when all men would live in an unstructured community of love with a communal economy. The Fifth Monarchy Men (an extreme Puritan millennialist sect) in 1649 presented their message of no compromise with the old political structures and advocated a new structure, composed of saints joined together in congregations with ascending representative assemblies, to bring all men under the kingship of Jesus Christ. As distinct units these groups were short-lived. A more enduring group was founded by George Fox (1624-91) as the Society of Friends, or Quakers, which pushed the Puritan logic disallowing any remnants of popery to its ultimate limit with a program of no ministers, no sacraments, and no liturgy. Puritanism had never been a monolithic movement, and accession to power had brought the factions to bear. The limits of the Puritan spirit of reform showed clearly in the widespread persecution of the Quakers.

After the death of Cromwell chaos threatened, and in the interest of order even some Puritans supported the restoration of Charles II. They hoped for a modified episcopal government, such as had been suggested in 1641 by the archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher (1581-1656). Such a proposal was satisfactory to many Episcopals, Presbyterians, and Independents. When some veterans of the Westminster Assembly went to Holland in 1660 to meet with Charles before he returned, the King made it clear that there would be modifications to satisfy "tender consciences."

These Puritans were outmaneuvered in their attempt to obtain a comprehensive church, however, by those who favoured the strict episcopal pattern. A new Act of Uniformity was passed on May 19, 1662, by the Cavalier Parliament. The act required reordination of many pastors, gave unconditional consent to The Book of Common Prayer, advocated the taking of the oath of canonical obedience, and renounced the Solemn League and Covenant. Between 1660 and when the act was enforced on Aug. 24, 1662, almost 2,000 Puritan ministers were ejected from their positions.

As a result of the Act of Uniformity, English Puritanism entered the period of the Great Persecution. The Conventicle Act of 1664 punished any person over 16 years of age for attending a religious meeting not conducted according to The Book of Common Prayer. The Five Mile Act of 1665 prohibited any ejected minister from living within five miles of a corporate town or any place where he had formerly served. Still, some Puritans did not give up the idea of comprehension (inclusiveness of various persuasions). There were conferences with sympathetic bishops and brief periods of indulgence for Puritans to preach, but fines and jailings set the tone. Puritanism became a form of Nonconformist Protestantism.

During the short reign of Charles's Roman Catholic brother, James II (1685-88), fear of Roman Catholic tyranny united politically both establishment and Nonconformist Protestants. This new unity brought about the "Glorious Revolution" (1688), establishing William and Mary on the throne. The last attempt at comprehension failed to receive approval by either Parliament or the Convocation under the new rulers. In 1689 England's religious solution was defined by an Act of Toleration that continued the established church as episcopal but also made it possible for dissenting groups to have licensed chapels. The Puritan goal to further reform the nation as a whole was transmuted into the more individualistic spiritual concerns of Pietism or else the more secular concerns of the Age of Reason.

A decade before the landing of the Mayflower (1620) in Massachusetts a strong Puritan influence was planted in Virginia. Leaders of the Virginia Company who settled Jamestown in 1607 saw themselves in a covenant relation to God, and they carefully read the message of their successes and failures. A typical Puritan vision was held by the Virginia settler Sir Thomas Dale. His strict application of severe laws disciplining the Jamestown community in 1611 probably saved the colony from extinction, but he also earned a reputation as a tyrant. Dale thought of himself as a labourer in the vineyard of the Lord, as a member of Israel building up a "heavenly New Jerusalem." Like Oliver Cromwell later, whom he resembled, Dale interpreted his military success as a direct sign of God's lending "a helping hand."

Puritan clergymen saw excellent opportunity for their cause in Virginia. The Reverend Alexander Whitaker, the "apostle of Virginia," wrote to his London Puritan cousin in 1614, "But I much more muse, that so few of our English ministers, that were so hot against the surplice and subscription, come hither where neither is spoken of." The church in Virginia, however, became more directly aligned with the English establishment when the settlements were made into a royal colony in 1624.

Thus stands the cause between God and us; we are entered into covenant with Him for this work; we have taken out a commission; the Lord hath given us leave to draw our own articles . . . Now if the Lord shall be pleased to hear us and bring us in peace to the place we desire, then hath He ratified this covenant and sealed our Commission, [and] will expect a strict performance of the articles contained in it. Lack of performance of the articles, in this view, would bring down the wrath of God.

The pattern for church organization in the colony was determined by John Cotton, who pursued "that very Middle-way" between English Separatism and the presbyterian form of government. Unlike the Separatists he held the Church of England to be a true church, though blemished; and unlike the Presbyterians he held that there should be no ecclesiastical authority between the congregation and the Lordship of Christ. Cotton proposed that the church maintain its purity by permitting only those who could make a "declaration of their experience of a work of grace" to be members. Cotton's plan ensured that church government should be in the hands of the elect, the chosen of God.

In order to head off a possible new form of church government dictated from England at the time of the Westminster Assembly, churches from the four Puritan colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven met in a voluntary synod in 1648. They adopted the Cambridge Platform, in which the congregational form of church government was worked out in detail. The standard for church membership came under question when it was found that numbers of second-generation residents could not testify to the experience of grace in their lives. This resulted in the Half-Way Covenant of 1657 and 1662 that permitted baptized, moral, and orthodox persons to share in the privileges of church membership except for partaking of communion.

William Penn's "holy experiment" in Pennsylvania represented another Puritan variation, only this time under Quaker norms. When Penn came into the ownership of this vast tract of land, he saw it as a mandate from God to form an ideal commonwealth. In New Jersey, Puritans from the New Haven colony who were dissatisfied with the Half-Way Convenant sought to reestablish the pristine Puritan community at Newark. Maryland, which had been established under Roman Catholic auspices, soon had a strong Puritan majority among its settlers.

By the middle of the 16th century Lutheranism was dominant in northern Europe. Württemberg, after the restoration of Duke Ulrich, adopted the reform in 1534. The outstanding Reformer was Johannes Brenz and the great centre Tübingen. Brandenburg, with Berlin as its capital, embraced the reform in 1539. In that same year ducal Saxony, until then vehemently Catholic, changed sides. Elisabeth of Braunschweig, also in that year, became a convert, but only after long turbulence did her faith prevail in the land. Very significant for the north as a whole was the stand taken by Albert of Prussia, who was a member of the Polish Diet and whose wife was Danish. He secularized the Teutonic Knights and in 1525 acknowledged himself a Lutheran. In the Scandinavian lands Denmark toyed with Lutheranism as early as the 1520s, but not until 1539 was the Danish Church established on a national basis with the king as the head and the clergy as leaders in matters of faith. Norway followed Denmark. The Diet of Västerås officially declared what had for some time been true, namely, that Sweden was an evangelical state. The outstanding Swedish Reformers were the brothers Olaus and Laurentius Petri. Finland, under Swedish rule, followed suit. The Reformer there was Mikael Agricola, called "the father of written Finnish." The Baltic states of Livonia and Estonia were officially Lutheran in 1554. Subsequently ravished by the Russians, portions of these lands united with Sweden, Denmark, and Poland. Lutheranism survived. Toward the east, Austria under the Habsburgs could enjoy no state support for the evangelical movement, which nevertheless gained adherents. In Moravia, as noted, the Hutterites established their colonies under tolerant magnates.

Eastern Europe was a seedbed for even more radical varieties of Protestantism, because kings were weak, nobles strong, and cities few, and because religious pluralism had long existed. Poland acquired a large German Lutheran population when the Danzig area came under Polish control, and a large contingent of the Bohemian Brethren migrated to Poland when the Habsburg ruler attempted their extermination. Several of the Polish noblemen adopted their pacifism and would wear only swords made of wood. To Poland also flocked the Italian anti-Trinitarians, having been granted an asylum, perhaps merely because they were Italian, by the Italian queen of Poland, Bona Sforza. Named Socinians from their leader, Faustus Socinus, they flourished until dissipated by the Counter-Reformation. Much more extensive was the Calvinist influx not only into Poland but into the whole of eastern Europe. This variety of Protestantism appealed to those of non-German stock because it was not German and no longer markedly French, as well as because of its revolutionary temper and republican sentiments. The Compact of Warsaw in 1573 called the Pax Dissidentium ("The Peace of Those Who Differ") granted toleration to Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, and Bohemian Brethren, but not to the Socinians.

In Hungary, the Turkish victory at the Battle of Mohács in 1526 brought about a division of the land into three sections, the northwest ruled by the Habsburg Ferdinand, the eastern province of Transylvania under Zápolya, and the area of Buda under the Turk. Even before this date Lutheranism had made inroads not only in the German but also in the Magyar sections. Subsequently Calvinism made even greater gains. The anti-Trinitarians found a permanent locus in Transylvania. The weakness of the government and the diversity of religion in this whole area made for a large degree of toleration.

The Reformation gained no lasting hold in Spain and Italy. In Spain the main reason for this must be found in the conflicts of the previous century when the Christians were striving to achieve political, cultural, and religious unification by converting or expelling the unbelievers, the Jews and the Moors. The Inquisition was introduced in 1482 to root out all remnants of Jewish practices among the Marranos, the Jewish converts to Christianity. The non-Christian Jews were expelled in 1492. Then Granada fell and the same process was applied to the Moriscos, the Moorish converts, and the unconverted Moors, after a century, also were expelled. Because the process had thus far been successful, the pressures were relaxed, and Spain enjoyed a decade of Erasmian liberalism in the 1520s. But with the infiltration of Lutheranism the machinery of repression again was brought into force.

In Italy sectarian and heretical movements had proliferated in the late Middle Ages. But one by one they had been crushed, and the Italians may well have felt that such rebellions were futile. Furthermore, the friars preached moral rather than doctrinal reform as Luther had done. Another consideration was that the new monastic orders, the Capuchins, Theatines, and Jesuits, gained papal favour and became a mighty force in counteracting Protestant infiltration, which nevertheless did take place. Venice was a centre, with its branch house of the Lutheran banking family of Fugger, and so was Lucca. At Naples the Spanish mystic Valdés, though not a Protestant, expounded a piety of the type of the liberal Catholic reform, and some of his followers were attracted to the movements coming from beyond the Alps. Calvinism gained a hold. But the Roman Inquisition, as above noted, was established in 1542, and those with Protestant leanings either made cloisters of their own hearts, or went to the stake, or crossed the mountains into permanent exile. The most radical theological views of the Reformation were those propounded by the Spanish and Italian anti-Trinitarians. (R.H.B.) (J.C.S.) (M.E.M.)