The situation of the spiritual power, which exercised government over the human understanding, was very different; it had fallen, on the contrary, into a state of inertness and stagnation. The political influence of the church, or of the court of Rome, was much attenuated; the European society was no longer in its exclusive possession, but had passed under the dominion of lay governments. Nevertheless, the spiritual power preserved all its pretensions, all its prominence, and all its external importance. There happened to it what has more than once occurred to old governments. The majority of the complaints that were alleged against it were scarcely better founded than in many such outcries. It is not true that the court of Rome was highly tyrannical in the sixteenth century, or that the abuses, properly so called, were more numerous or glaring than they had been at other times. On the contrary, the ecclesiastical government had never perhaps been more easy, more tolerant, or more disposed to let things take their course, provided the rights it had hitherto enjoyed were so far recognised as not to render them inoperative, provided it were assured its previous existence, and were paid its accustomed dues. It would willingly have left the human mind undisturbed, if the human mind would have been equally complacent with it. But it is precisely when governments have least vigour, when they do least mischief, that they are attacked, because men can then do so, whereas formerly they could not.
It is therefore evident, from the mere examination of the state of the human mind at this era, and of that of its government, that the character of the Reformation must have been a new burst of liberty, a grand rebellion of human intellect. This was undoubtedly the predominant cause, that which rose above all the others; a cause more influential than all the interests either of nations or of sovereigns, than the demand for reform, properly so called, than the desire for the redress of those grievances which were complained of at that period.
I will suppose that after the Reformation had broken out for some years, when it had paraded all its pretensions, and inventoried all alleged grievances, the spiritual power had suddenly fallen into agreement with it, and had said, 'Well, so be it, I will reform all; I will revert to an order of things more just and religious. I will suppress all annoyances, arbitrary interferences, and tributes; even in matters of faith I will modify, re-interpret, and return to the primitive meanings. But the grievances being thus redressed, I will preserve my position; I will be, as formerly, the government of the human mind, with the same power and the same rights.' Would the religious revolution have been satisfied with these terms, and stopped in its course! I think not; I believe firmly that it would have continued its career, and that, after demanding reform, it would have claimed liberty. The crisis of the sixteenth century was not simply a reforming one; it was essentially revolutionary. It was impossible to remove from it that character in any instance, or its inherent merits and defaults; it had all the consequent effects of such a character.
Let us cast a glance at the consequences of the Reformation; let us see what it mainly, and above all things, effected in the different countries in which it was developed. It is to be observed that it was developed in very various and distinct situations, in the midst of very unequal chances. Now, if we find that, if in spite of the diversity of situations and the inequality of chances, it everywhere followed an identical bent, achieved an identical result, and preserved an identical character, it will be clear that this character, which thus surmounted all the diversities of situation, and all the inequalities of chance, must be the fundamental character of the event, and that the result thus obtained must be that which it essentially aimed at.
Now, wherever the religious revolution of the sixteenth century prevailed, if it did not work out the complete enfranchisement of the human mind, it procured it a new and considerable increase of liberty. It undoubtedly left thought subject to all the risks of liberty or servitude as to political institutions, but it abolished or disarmed the spiritual power, the systematic and formidable government of the thought. This result the Reformation attained amid the most opposite combinations. In Germany there was no political liberty, nor did the Reformation introduce it; indeed it rather strengthened than weakened the power of princes, and was more adverse to the free institutions of the middle ages than favourable to their development. Nevertheless, it aroused and sustained a liberty of thought in Germany greater perhaps than anywhere else. In Denmark, a country where absolute power prevailed, where it penetrated even into the municipal institutions, as well as into the general ones of the state, the influence of the Reformation wrought the enfranchisement and free exercise of thought in all its directions. In Holland, amidst a republic, and in England, under a constitutional monarchy, and in spite of a religious tyranny long of a very harsh order, the emancipation of the human intellect was likewise accomplished. Finally, in France, in a situation which seemed the least favourable to the effects of the religious revolution, in a country where it had been subdued, there even it was a principle of intellectual independence and freedom. Up till 1685—that is to say, until the revocation of the Edict of Nantes—the Reformation held a legal existence in France. During that long space of time it wrote and discussed, and provoked its adversaries to write and discuss also. This fact alone, this war of pamphlets and conferences between the old and the new opinions, disseminated in France a liberty much more real and active than is generally imagined; a liberty which conduced to the prosperity of science and morality, and to the improvement of the French clergy, as well as to the advantage of thought in general. Let us look at the discussions of Bossuet with Claude, and at the whole of the religious polemics at that period, and then ask ourselves whether Louis XIV. would have sanctioned a similar display of liberty upon any other topic. Thus the Reformation and the opposite party enjoyed more liberty in France in the seventeenth century than was allowed to any person or thing besides. The religious spirit was then much bolder, and treated its questions with far less reserve, than the political spirit, even of Fenelon in his Telemachus. This state of things did not cease until the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Now, from 1685 to the outburst of the human intellect in the eighteenth century, there were not forty years; and the influence of the religious revolution in furtherance of intellectual liberty had scarcely ceased, when that of the philosophical revolution commenced.
Thus we see that wherever the Reformation penetrated, wherever it played an important part, whether victorious or vanquished, it had, as a general, predominant, and invariable result, a prodigious advancement to the activity and liberty of thought, a grand tendency to the emancipation of the human understanding from thraldom.
And not only had the Reformation this constant result, but it aspired to none other; wherever that was obtained, it was contented, and very rarely sought for anything further, so much was it the groundwork of the event, its primitive and fundamental character! Thus in Germany, so far from demanding political liberty, it accepted, I will not say political servitude, but the absence of freedom. In England, it consented to the hierarchical constitution of the clergy, and the existence of a church as full of abuses as ever the Roman church was, and much more servile to power. How came it to pass that the Reformation, so fierce and stubborn in many respects, thus showed itself so accommodating and supple? Because it had achieved the general fact to which it tended—the abolition of the spiritual power, and the enfranchisement of human thought. I repeat, wherever it attained that object, it easily reconciled itself to all systems and situations.
Now let us take the reverse side of this examination, and let us see what happened in those countries where the religious revolution did not penetrate, or was early stifled, or was unable to gain any development. History shows that the human mind was not enfranchised: two great countries, Spain and Italy, distinctly attest the fact. Whilst in those portions of Europe where the Reformation has held an important station, the human intellect has taken, in the three last centuries, an activity and freedom previously unknown, in those where it has not penetrated it has fallen in the same epoch into weakness and inertness; insomuch, that the trial and the counter-trial have been made, as it were, simultaneously, and produced analogous results.