It will be evident how extremely difficult it is to gather facts so various, so extensive, and so closely interwoven, into one clear historical conclusion. It is, however, necessary. When events are once consummated, when they have become history, the great and essential object with men is to find out the general facts, the connection of causes and effects. This is, so to speak, the immortal portion of history, that to which all generations have need of referring, in order to comprehend the past, and to comprehend themselves. This necessity for generalisation, for arriving at a rational deduction, is the most potent and the most glorious of all the intellectual wants; but in satisfying it, great care must be taken to guard against imperfect and precipitate generalisations. Nothing is more enticing than to yield to the pleasure of fixing immediately, and at first sight, upon the general character and permanent results of such an era or such an event. The human mind is like the human will, ever eager to come to the point, impatient of obstacles and fetters, and urgent for conclusions, willingly overlooking the facts which tease and embarrass it; but whilst disregarding them, it cannot destroy them, and they still subsist to convict it some day of error, and to condemn its precipitancy. There is but one means by which the human mind can escape this danger, and that is, by courageously and patiently devoting itself to the study of facts, before generalising and forming conclusions. Facts are to the thought what the rules of morality are to the inclination. It is bound to ascertain them, and bear their weight; and it is only when it has fulfilled this duty, and when it has formed an accurate idea of its extent, that it is permitted to expand its wings, and take flight to the lofty region whence it may behold all things in their entirety and their results. If it insists upon mounting too quickly, and without having gained a knowledge of all the territory which it has thence to contemplate, the chances of error and failure are beyond calculation. It happens as in the solution of an arithmetical question, where a preliminary mistake leads to others, ad infinitum. Thus in history, if in the first labour all the facts have not been properly investigated, if the taste for precipitate generalisation has been indiscreetly indulged, it is impossible to assign limits to the consequent absurdities.
By so emphatically dilating on this point, I am in some degree prejudicing myself. I have been necessarily restricted in this inquiry to attempts at generalising, to giving general summaries of facts which we have not had leisure to study closely. Having now arrived at an epoch in which this task is much more difficult than at any other time, and when the chances of error are far greater, I have judged it my duty to be explicit in laying down these positions, so that my own deductions may be exposed to their test. Having done this, I shall now proceed to attempt upon the Reformation what I have done upon other events—namely, to endeavour to distinguish its predominant fact, to describe its general character; in a word, to assign the station and the part of this great occurrence in the progress of European civilisation.
It will be recollected in what state we left Europe at the end of the fifteenth century. We witnessed in its course two great experiments at religious revolution or reform; an experiment at legal reform by the councils, and one at revolutionary reform by the Hussites in Bohemia: both of them we saw stifled and failing in effect; and yet we were made aware that it was impossible to extinguish the spirit, and that it was sure to reproduce itself under one form or another—that, in fact, what the fifteenth century had essayed, the sixteenth would inevitably accomplish. It is not my intention to recount the details of the religious revolution of the sixteenth century; I suppose them to be almost universally known. I am concerned merely with its general influence upon the destinies of the human race.
When investigations have been made into the causes which originated this great event, the adversaries of the Reformation have imputed it to accidents, to evils in the course of civilisation—for example, to the sale of indulgences being intrusted to the Dominicans, which rendered the Augustines jealous; and as Luther was an Augustine, that this, therefore, was the determining motive of the Reformation. Others have attributed it to the ambition of the sovereigns, to their rivalship with the ecclesiastical power, and to the greediness of the lay nobles, who were anxious to get possession of the property of the church. It has been thus wished to explain the religious revolution solely by the worst features in mankind and in human affairs—by private interests and personal passions.
On the other hand, the friends and partisans of the Reformation have attempted to account for it by the mere necessity for effective reform in the abuses of the church; they have represented it as a redressing of religious grievances, as an undertaking conceived and executed with the sole design of reconstituting the primitive and pure church. Neither the one nor the other of these explanations appears to me well founded. The second has more truth than the first; at least it is more noble, more in accordance with the extent and importance of the event, but yet I do not conceive it at all more exact. In my opinion, the Reformation was neither an accident, the consequence of some great chance, or of some personal interest, nor a simple exhibition of religious improvement, the fruit of an imaginary perfection of humanity and truth. There was a cause more powerful than all these would imply, and which rises superior to all the particular causes. It was a great explosion for the liberty of the human understanding, an uncontrollable demand for its free exercise of thought and judgment, by its own powers alone, upon facts and ideas which Europe previously received, or was held bound to receive, from the hands of authority. It was a grand undertaking for the enfranchisement of human thought, and, to call things by their proper names, a rebellion of the human understanding against power in spiritual matters. Such is, as far as I can judge, the veritable character, the general and predominant character, of the Reformation.
When we inquire into the state, at this epoch, of the human mind, on the one hand, and into that of the spiritual power of the church, which had the government of the human mind, on the other, we are struck with a twofold fact.
With regard to the human understanding, we perceive a much greater activity, a much greater craving for development, than it had ever felt. This increased activity was the result of various causes, which had been accumulating for ages. For example, there had been times in which heresies sprang up, occupied some space, and fell to be replaced by others; and there had been times in which philosophical opinions held the same course as heresies. The labours of the human mind, both in the religious and philosophical sphere, had been accumulating from the eleventh to the sixteenth century; and the moment was at last come in which they were destined to have a result. Furthermore, all those means of instruction, instituted or authorised in the bosom of the church itself, were far from being fruitless. Schools had been founded, and from these schools issued men not barren in knowledge, whose number increased daily. These men at length insisted upon thinking for themselves, and for their own guidance, for they felt themselves more fortified than they had ever previously been. Finally came that revival and youthful vigorousness imparted to the human intellect by the restoration of antiquity, of which I have before described the progress and effects.
All these united causes communicated a highly energetic movement, an imperative necessity for advancement, to the mind of man in the sixteenth century.