Even in the matter of theology, Protestantism did not hold its own against Catholic criticism. Both began by discriminating in the scriptural canon, rejecting some books and depreciating others, all the while professing to make the Word of God their sole or final standard. When the Catholics pressed the demand as to how they could settle what was the true Word of God, their followers and successors could make no answer, and had to fall back on an indiscriminate acceptance of the Canon. Again, Luther and Calvin alike maintained the doctrine of “Assurance,” and this was one of the points in Calvinism accepted by Arminius. The Catholics, naturally making the most of the admitted increase of sexual and other licence in Germany and elsewhere under Lutheranism, dwelt upon Luther’s predestinarianism in general, and the doctrine of Assurance in particular, as the source of the demoralization; and at the Council of Trent it was expressly condemned. Thereafter, though it was “part and parcel of the Confessions of all the Churches of the Reformation down to the Westminster Assembly,” it was in the last-named conclave (1643) declared not to be of the essence of faith; and the Scottish General Assembly subsequently deposed and condemned holders of this, the original Protestant doctrine. Similar modifications took place elsewhere. Thus the Protestant world drifted back to a Catholic position, affirmed at the Council of Trent against Protestantism;[92] and in Holland we shall see, in the rise of Arminianism, a similar surrender on the Protestant side to the general pressure of Catholicism upon the ethical weaknesses of Predestinarianism. On that point, however, the original Catholic doctrine of predestination was revived by the Spanish Jesuit Luis Molina (1535–1600; not to be confused with the later Quietist, Miguel de Molinos), who in his treatise Liberi Arbitrii concordia cum gratiæ donis (1588) set it forth as consequent upon God’s foreknowledge of man’s free use of his will. As a result of the dispute between the Thomists and Molina’s followers, known as the Molinists, the Pope in 1607 pronounced that the views of both sides were permissible—a course which had already been taken twenty years before with the controversy on predestination aroused by the doctrines of Michael Baius at the University of Louvain.[93] Thus the dissensions of Catholics in a manner kept in countenance the divided Protestants; but the old confidence of affirmation and formulation was inevitably sapped by the constant play of controversy; and from this Protestantism necessarily suffered most.
Intellectually, there was visible retrogression in the Protestant world. It is significant that throughout the sixteenth century most of the great scientific thinkers and the freethinkers with the strongest bent to new science lived in the Catholic world. Rabelais and Bruno were priests; Copernicus a lay canon; Galileo had never withdrawn from the Church which humiliated him; even Kepler returned to the Catholic environment after professing Protestantism. He was in fact excommunicated by the Tübingen Protestant authorities in 1612[94] for condemning the Lutheran doctrine that the body of Christ could be in several places at once. The immunity of such original spirits as Gilbert and Harriott from active molestation is to be explained only by the fact that they lived in the as yet un-Puritanized atmosphere of Elizabethan England, before the age of Bibliolatry. It would seem as if the spirit of Scripturalism, invading the very centres of thought, were more fatal to original intellectual life than the more external interferences of Catholic sacerdotalism.[95] In the phrase of Arnold, Protestantism turned the key on the spirit, where Catholicism was normally content with an outward submission to its ceremonies, and only in the most backward countries, as Spain, destroyed entirely the atmosphere of free mental intercourse. It was after a long reaction that Bruno and Galileo were arraigned at Rome.
The clerical resistance to new science, broadly speaking, was more bitter in the Protestant world than in the Catholic; and it was merely the relative lack of restraining power in the former that made possible the later scientific progress. The history of Lutheranism upon this side is an intellectual infamy. At Wittemberg, during Luther’s life, Reinhold did not dare to teach the Copernican astronomy; Rheticus had to leave the place in order to be free to speak; and in 1571 the subject was put in the hands of Peucer, who taught that the Copernican theory was absurd. Finally, the rector of the university, Hensel, wrote a text-book for schools, entitled The Restored Mosaic System of the World, showing with entire success that the new doctrine was unscriptural.[96] A little later the Lutheran superintendent, Pfeiffer, of Lübeck, published his Pansophia Mosaica, insisting on the literal truth of the entire Genesaic myth.[97] In the next century Calovius (1612–1686), who taught successively at Königsberg, Dantzic, and Wittemberg, maintained the same position, contending that the story of Joshua’s staying the sun and moon refuted Copernicus.[98] When Pope Gregory XIII, following an impulse abnormal in his world, took the bold step of rectifying the Calendar (1584), the Protestants in Germany and Switzerland vehemently resisted the reform, and in some cities would not tolerate it,[99] thus refusing, on theological grounds, the one species of co-operation with Catholicism that lay open to them. And the anti-scientific attitude persisted for over a century in Switzerland as in Scotland. At Geneva, J.-A. Turretin (1671–1737), writing after Kepler and Newton had done their work, laboriously repeated the demonstration of Calovius, and reaffirmed the positions of Calvin. So far as its ministers could avail, the Sacred Book was working the old effect.
§ 2. England
Freethought gained permanently as little in England as elsewhere in the process of substituting local tyranny for that of Rome. The secularizing effect of the Reformation, indeed, was even more marked there than elsewhere. What Wolsey had aimed at doing with moderation and without revolution was done after him with violence on motives of sheer plunder, and a multitude not only of monasteries but of churches were disendowed and destroyed. The monastic churches were often magnificent, and “when the monasteries were dissolved, divine service altogether ceased in ninety out of every hundred of these great churches, and the remaining ten were left ... without any provision whatever” for public worship.[100] All this must have had a secularizing effect, which was accentuated by the changes in ritual; and by the middle of the century it was common to treat both churches and clergy with utter irreverence, which indeed the latter often earned by their mode of life.[101] Riots in churches, especially in London, were common; there was in fact a habit of driving mules and horses through them;[102] and buying and selling and even gaming were often carried on. But with all this there was no intellectual enlightenment, and in high places there was no toleration. Under Henry VIII anti-Romanist heretics were put to death on the old Romanist principles. In 1532, again, was burned James Bainham, who not only rejected the specially Catholic dogmas, but affirmed the possible salvation of unbelievers.
Under the Protectorate which followed there was indeed much religious semi-rationalism, evidently of continental derivation, which is discussed in the theological literature of the time. Roger Hutchinson, writing about 1550, repeatedly speaks of contemporary “Sadducees and Libertines” who say (1) “that all spirits and angels are no substances, but inspirations, affections, and qualities”; (2) “that the devil is nothing but nolitum, or a filthy affection coming of the flesh”; (3) “that there is neither place of rest nor pain after this life; that hell is nothing else but a tormenting and desperate conscience; and that a joyful, quiet, and merry conscience is heaven.”
See The Image of God, or Layman’s Book, 1550, ch. xxiv: Parker Society’s rep. 1842, pp. 134, 138, 140. Cp. p. 79 and Sermon II, on The Lord’s Supper (id. p. 247), as to “Julianites” who “do think mortal corpo, mortal anima.” To the period 1550–60 is also assigned the undated work of John Veron, A Frutefull Treatise of Predestination and of the Divine Providence of God, with an Apology of the same against the swynishe gruntinge of the Epicures and Atheystes of oure time. There was evidently a good deal of new rationalism, which has been generally ignored in English historiography. Its foreign source is suggested by the use of the term “Libertines,” which derives from France and Geneva. See below, p. 473. The above-cited tenets are, in fact, partly identical with those of the libertins denounced at Geneva by Calvin.
Such doctrine, which we shall find in vogue fifty years later, cannot have been printed, and probably can have been uttered only by men of good status, as well as culture; and even by them only because of the weakness of the State Church in its transition stage. Yet heresy went still further among some of the sects set up by the Anabaptist movement, which in England as in Germany involved some measure of Unitarianism. A letter of Hooper to Bullinger in 1549 tells of “libertines and wretches who are daring enough in their conventicles not only to deny that Christ is the Messiah and Saviour of the world, but also to call that blessed Seed a mischievous fellow and deceiver of the world.”[103] This must have been said with locked doors, for much milder heresy was heavily punished, the worst penalties falling upon that which stood equally with orthodoxy on Biblical grounds.
In 1541, under Henry VIII, were burned three persons “because they denied transubstantiation, and had not received the sacrament at Easter.” See the letter of Hilles to Bullinger, Original Letters, as cited, i, 200. The case of Jean Bouchier or Bocher, burned in 1550, is well known. It is worth noting that the common charge against Cranmer, of persuading the young king to sign her death warrant, is false, being one of the myths of Foxe. The warrant was passed by the whole Privy Council, Cranmer not being even present. See the Parker Society’s reprint of Roger Hutchinson, 1812, introd. pp. ii-5. Hutchinson apparently approved; and it is significant of the clerical attitude of the time that he calls (Image of God, ch. xxx, p. 201) for the punishment of Anabaptists by death if necessary, but does not suggest it for “Sadducees and Libertines.”