Every manuscript transcribed from the classics, and every Bible set free from the moles and the bats; every improvement in law, science, and art, together with each progressive invention, from the mariner's compass to the monk's gunpowder, was the forerunner and guaranty of even greater light and freedom than the reform of the sixteenth century saw realized.
The alleged infallibility and unchangeableness of the Roman church is necessarily self-destructive; since all systems, civil or ecclesiastical, which are incapable of advancing with the tide of general improvement, must be swept away by its progress. Tenets and customs framed for times of barbarous ignorance, could not withstand the test of improved civilization and knowledge. It is said that the shadow is nowhere so dark as immediately under the lamp; and when the true light of Heaven is obscured, the vessel that bears it casts the darkest shade. When theology takes the place of piety, and dead creeds are substituted for living virtues, it should not occasion surprise if the symbols of religion are deified, and all other power is lost. The wisdom that is from above is not a formal confession, but a progressive principle imbued with vital truth; and when the church forgot the life, the truth vanished from the symbol, leaving the defunct relics of unspiritual knowledge. But this was not always so. Through long centuries of darkness and toil, religious teachers filled a real office, a thing not of silks and drawing-rooms, but of the translation of the Scriptures, preaching the gospel, and appearing at the martyr's stake when requisite. Then a bishop was a real genuine pastor, who had a flock and fed it; he was a leader of men, and lived up to the growing wants of mankind. In due time, the perversion of this office wrought its own cure. By engendering grievances, it generated complaints, which occasioned inquiries; and thus not only were certain unfounded claims discovered, but a radical change in the whole system was effected. It was felt that the ministers of the gospel, styling themselves the vicars of Christ, had too long been undoing his work. It was alleged that they withdrew his books, counterfeited his words, made their own opinion a law, enforcing it by fire and sword; that they intruded themselves into the secrets of the heart, and laid conscience asleep. They monopolized the eternal clemency, and set a price for the ransom of the soul, even beyond the limits of repentance; and reached the climax of perverseness when they sat in the Vatican, the rivals of kings in wealth and power, if not in crime.
It was at this crisis in mediæval religion, that, early in the sixteenth century, the Augustin monk Luther visited Rome to strengthen his faith, where he found incredulity seated on the tomb of the apostle Peter, and paganism revived in the chief seat of religious power. Julius II., with a helmet on his head, dreamed only of battles; and the cardinals, ciceroneans in their language, were transformed into poets, diplomatists, and warriors. Leo X. succeeded, and by becoming a prince still more in the style of other princes, he ceased to be the representative of the Christian republic. But he soon heard from afar a clamor springing up beyond the Alps, and arising among barbarians. "A quarrel between monks," said Leo. Pericles despised the barbarians of Macedon, and perished. Augustus despised the barbarians of Scythia, and perished. Leo X. despised the barbarians of Germany, and while the young mind of that western world was in revolt, the glory of the popedom paled before the flames at Wittemberg, in which, amid shouting students, the propositions of Tetzel were burned.
We believe that the reformation must have taken place, and nearly at the same time and place, though neither a Tetzel nor a Luther had ever lived. The great correlatives which finally resulted in that outbreak and forward movement, were very far from being accidents; they were most providential and necessary phenomena in the course of the social development of civilized mankind. Luther was the mere cock-crowing of a day, for the advent of which innumerable heroes before him had labored and longed. The emancipation and enlargement of that age had a more powerful cause than either some casual incident, exasperated personal interests, or unmingled views of religious improvement. It was a new and vast struggle of the human mind to achieve its destiny; a new-born purpose to think and judge for itself, freely and independently, of facts and opinions which, until then, were imposed upon Europe by the coercion of unquestioned authority. It was the great primary insurrection of the popular heart and will against absolute spiritual power, and was chiefly brought about by the church itself. What is most to be regretted is, that the work then done was so incomplete, and that the perfection of that reformation has been so long delayed.
During all this brightening period, Florence remained the chief city whose beauty and power were coveted alike by Bourbons and the Medici. Leo X. loved her fondly; and the revolt of his native city was more painful to Clement VII. than even the downfall of Rome. And how eagerly did Paul III. seek to obtain footing in Florence! With a proud self-reliance young Duke Cosmo wrote: "The pope who has succeeded in so many undertakings, has now no wish more eager than that of doing something in Florence as well; he would fain estrange this city from the emperor, but this is a hope that he shall carry with him into his grave." Yes, truly, many such like dukes, emperors, and popes, buried their petty jealousies and ambitions in loathsome clay, but the great and glorious God overruled all their schemings, and rendered them instrumental in urging forward the tide of improvement more broadly and swiftly to its goal. If Columbus, in opposition to the counsel of Martin Alonzo Pinzon, had continued to sail in a westerly direction, he would have fallen into the warm Gulf Stream, which would probably have borne him to Florida, and thence to Cape Hatteras and Virginia. That would have introduced a Catholic and Spanish population upon the soil of republican North America, instead of the English and Protestant colonists which were its more auspicious germs. The same infinite hand winnowed away the old European chaff through needful tempests, and wonderfully fitted the seed-wheat with which to sow this vast domain of untainted soil.
We have before alluded to the mission of Augustin, when, having come thousands of miles over Alps and sea to debarbarize our degraded ancestors, he landed on the eastern coast of England, and began a most successful career by baptizing Ethelbert, king of Kent, into the Christian faith. This was the first unarmed invasion of the British shore, yet a bannered host. A company of black-robed recluses from the ruins of the Cœlian hill, undertook the conquest of the remotest western isles then known, and marched bravely to the task, bearing before them, as Venerable Bede records, the image of our Redeemer, and his saving cross. Those same Benedictine brethren, with their successors, were the authors of nearly every thing great and good which was afterwards produced from Canterbury to Killarney, and from Iona's solitary retreat to the more magnificent shrines which glorified the rugged western coasts, and reflected with augmented charms the last beams of the setting sun. The literature, art, science, philosophy, and religion of England would now have but little to show, had it not been for the protracted and noble toil of the great religious orders, Franciscans and Dominicans, but especially those greatest of benefactors, the learned and industrious disciples of the earlier Benedict.
Tread through the ruined cloisters of Furness, or Fountains, or Tintern, and think not that when devotees retired from the strife, the passion, the whirl of the Maelstrom of life, the sounds of ambition and trade never penetrated hither. Alas, within these sacred inclosures passion and pomp reigned violently as in the nearest neighborhood to the throne, what day one brother rose to the cellararius, or a more talented aspirant was exalted to the abbacy. Memory coined her chronicles, and fancy wove her dreams then as now. The bustle of preparation preceded the expected knight, or baron, or prince who honored the monastery with his presence, and when the Lord Abbot returned from visiting the national parliament. Neither monotony nor dullness prevailed while the monks literally, as well as in a mental and religious sense, transformed the wilderness and noxious fens of England into a healthful and productive garden.
Thus redeemed and cultivated, of all portions of the eastern hemisphere England is the country of constitutional rights and religious freedom. It would seem as if that insulated corner of the world had been created and placed there as a nursery on purpose to receive from the mainland plants the most select to be eventually transferred to a yet more propitious soil. To this end conduced all the movements of the different nations which successively occupied that hardy territory. The conquest of the Normans, and the state of the country at the period of this conquest, about the middle of the eleventh century, together with the great events which succeeded it, conspired with an efficacy constantly increased to mature the colonists who were commissioned to plant in a new world the elements of liberty which had fortified and rocked their own cradle in the most vigorous clime. As in literature, art, science, and philosophy, so especially in religion does the great principle of independency run back most remotely with the English race. The best things that existed on the continent at the culmination of mediæval excellence were carried across the channel bodily by the Normans, and first among these was the disposition and power to resist papal domination. Guizot states that the pope had given his approval to William's enterprise, and had excommunicated Harold. Nevertheless, William boldly repulsed the pretensions of Gregory VII., and forbade his subjects to recognize any one as pope until he had done so himself. The canons of every council were to be submitted to him for his sanction or rejection. No bull or letter of the pope might be published without the permission of the king. He protected his ministers and barons against excommunication. He subjected the clergy to feudal military service. And finally, during his reign, the ecclesiastical and civil courts, which had previously been commingled in the county courts, were separated. Thus, while in Italy and France the Roman populations possessed no institutions at all, in England Saxon institutions were never stifled by Norman institutions, but, associated with them, enlarged their scope, and liberated their action. All over the continent barbarism, feudalism, and absolute power held successful sway, derived either from Roman or ecclesiastical ideas; but in England, absolute power was never able to obtain a footing; oppression, temporal and spiritual, was frequently practiced in fact, but it was never established by law.
As the early Benedictines laid at the foot of the cross all the noble and graceful gifts which had been bestowed on them, not seeking popular applause, so the greatest of their successors, by the same Providence, were made subservient to the work of progress in general, and of religious improvement in particular. The lamp of divine truth was not suffered to be extinguished even in the darkest times. From the earliest, and through the deepest corruptions of Christianity, God has never left himself without a succession of witnesses. For example, Vigilantius, in the sixth century, vehemently remonstrated against relics, the invocation of saints, lighted candles in churches, celibacy, pilgrimages, prayers for the dead, and all the doubtful innovations which had crept into the church. Claudius, of Turin, called the first Protestant reformer, in the ninth century bore a noble testimony to the truth. Arnold of Brescia, Henry of Lausanne, and Peter of Brughes, successfully raised their voices against growing corruptions, and pleaded for reform. But freest, mightiest, and most salutary was the voice of England on this behalf. Thomas Bradwardine, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Greathead, the learned and fearless Bishop of Lincoln, and the noble Fitzrulf, Archbishop of Armagh, in the thirteenth century, caused their powerful lights to shine from the earliest and most exalted points. Still these were but the lesser lights, the casual out-breakings of pent-up fires, precursors of the approaching morning and brilliant day.
But it was in that same western sky that the auspicious star arose, and Wickliff appeared. Thenceforth men became yet more guilty of thinking out of the beaten track, of questioning the arrogant claims of the priesthood, and of not only publishing to the world the living oracles of God, but also of teaching the people their right and duty to read them. The Scriptures were for the first time translated into English by the pastor at Lutterworth, and by his agency, mainly, was a foundation laid for the reform of Christendom. No sooner was this chief luminary violently eclipsed in England, than it began to shine with redoubled splendor on the continent, and the darkness which had so long gathered over the religious world was scattered. Queen Ann, the wife of Richard II., a native of Bohemia, having embraced the doctrines of Wickliff, caused the books of the reformer to be circulated in her paternal land. Huss and Jerome of Prague, by this means caught the fire of the English reformer, raised the banner of religious progress, and ceased not, till their lamp was extinguished in the blood of martyrdom, to devote their great learning and influence in defense of obscured truth. From the ashes of these sacrifices rose a light which shone throughout all Germany; and, like the flames which kindled on Latimer and Ridley, at that great source of the Lutheran reformation, Oxford, lighted a candle which, under the blessing of God, could never go out. A spirit of inquiry was roused not only in schools and universities, but among the nobility, and in the minds of the common people, not to be repressed. The foretokenings of rising day which resounded in Alpine glens, and along the valleys of Piedmont and Languedoc, long before broke from Lollard dungeons, and were echoed by the Huguenots. The same gracious God who, through the darkest centuries, kept alive the fire of true religion in the East, by means of the Nestorians, and in due time kindled it afresh in the hearts of the Waldenses of the West, from age to age, and from place to place, fitted a thousand minds for the accomplishment of his purposes. Councils, emperors, kings, philosophers, poets, the church herself, all in their turn contributed their influence, and hastened the result. It was written in the decrees of Heaven that the Bible should be the weapon by which the principalities and powers of sin should be overcome, the strongholds of the adversary demolished, and from their high places in the sanctuary the unclean birds should be dislodged. But the regenerator of the living temple, destined to rebuild the sacred altar, and restore its fine gold, must first be set free from the blinding bondage of dead languages. Therefore arose the towering genius of Reuchlin, the teacher of the great Melancthon, and the masterly mind of Erasmus, the one to give Europe a translation of the Old Testament, and the other of the New; while both, with worthy compeers and successors, employed their profound and varied talents in defense of invincible truth. All the springs of intellectual action which were so palpably at work in the sixteenth century, are clearly traceable to the thirteenth, when the energies of the great West were elicited, and independent thought was first born. The German reformation was a necessary consequence of what preceded. Internal fires had long been burning, and the heaving earth must soon give them vent. Infinite wisdom saw that the grand eruption had better transpire in central Europe, and it is evident that the time had come for it to take place somewhere. Had not Luther led, it must ere long have been conducted by some other hand.