History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

by John William Draper

The rejection of miracle-evidence, and the substitution of legal evidence in its stead, accelerated the approach of the Reformation. No longer was it possible to admit the requirement which, in former days, Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his treatise, "Cur Deus Homo," had enforced, that we must first believe without examination, and may afterward endeavor to understand what we have thus believed. When Cajetan said to Luther, "Thou must believe that one single drop of Christ's blood is sufficient to redeem the whole human race, and the remaining quantity that was shed in the garden and on the cross was left as a legacy to the pope, to be a treasure from which indulgences were to be drawn," the soul of the sturdy German monk revolted against such a monstrous assertion, nor would he have believed it though a thousand miracles had been worked in its support. This shameful practice of selling indulgences for the commission of sin originated among the bishops, who, when they had need of money for their private pleasures, obtained it in that way. Abbots and monks, to whom this gainful commerce was denied, raised funds by carrying about relics in solemn procession, and charging a fee for touching them. The popes, in their pecuniary straits, perceiving how lucrative the practice might become, deprived the bishops of the right of making such sales, and appropriated it to themselves, establishing agencies, chiefly among the mendicant orders, for the traffic. Among these orders there was a sharp competition, each boasting of the superior value of its indulgences through its greater influence at the court of heaven, its familiar connection with the Virgin Mary and the saints in glory. Even against Luther himself, who had been an Augustinian monk, a calumny was circulated that he was first alienated from the Church by a traffic of this kind having been conferred on the Dominicans, instead of on his own order, at the time when Leo X. was raising funds by this means for building St. Peter's, at Rome, A.D. 1517. and there is reason to think that Leo himself, in the earlier stages of the Reformation, attached weight to that allegation.

Indulgences were thus the immediate inciting cause of the Reformation, but very soon there came into light the real principle that was animating the controversy. It lay in the question, Does the Bible owe its authenticity to the Church? or does the Church owe her authenticity to the Bible? Where is the criterion of truth?

It is not necessary for me here to relate the well known particulars of that controversy, the desolating wars and scenes of blood to which it gave rise: how Luther posted on the door of the cathedral of Wittemberg ninety-five theses, and was summoned to Rome to answer for his offense; how he appealed from the pope, ill-informed at the time, to the pope when he should have been better instructed; how he was condemned as a heretic, and thereupon appealed to a general council; how, through the disputes about purgatory, transubstantiation, auricular confession, absolution, the fundamental idea which lay at the bottom of the whole movement came into relief, the right of individual judgment; how Luther was now excommunicated, A.D. 1520, and in defiance burnt the bull of excommunication and the volumes of the canon law, which he denounced as aiming at the subversion of all civil government, and the exaltation of the papacy; how by this skillful manoeuvre he brought over many of the German princes to his views; how, summoned before the Imperial Diet at Worms, he refused to retract, and, while he was bidden in the castle of Wartburg, his doctrines were spreading, and a reformation under Zwingli broke out in Switzerland; how the principle of sectarian decomposition embedded in the movement gave rise to rivalries and dissensions between the Germans and the Swiss, and even divided the latter among themselves under the leadership of Zwingli and of Calvin; how the Conference of Marburg, the Diet of Spires, and that at Augsburg, failed to compose the troubles, and eventually the German Reformation assumed a political organization at Smalcalde. The quarrels between the Lutherans and the Calvinists gave hopes to Rome that she might recover her losses.

Leo was not slow to discern that the Lutheran Reformation was something more serious than a squabble among some monks about the profits of indulgence-sales, and the papacy set itself seriously at work to overcome the revolters. It instigated the frightful wars that for so many years desolated Europe, and left animosities which neither the Treaty of Westphalia, nor the Council of Trent after eighteen years of debate, could compose. No one can read without a shudder the attempts that were made to extend the Inquisition in foreign countries. All Europe, Catholic and Protestant, was horror-stricken at the Huguenot massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve (A.D. 1572). For perfidy and atrocity it has no equal in the annals of the world.

The desperate attempt in which the papacy had been engaged to put down its opponents by instigating civil wars, massacres, and assassinations, proved to be altogether abortive. Nor had the Council of Trent any better result. Ostensibly summoned to correct, illustrate, and fix with perspicacity the doctrine of the Church, to restore the vigor of its discipline, and to reform the lives of its ministers, it was so manipulated that a large majority of its members were Italians, and under the influence of the pope. Hence the Protestants could not possibly accept its decisions.

The issue of the Reformation was the acceptance by all the Protestant Churches of the dogma that the Bible is a sufficient guide for every Christian man. Tradition was rejected, and the right of private interpretation assured. It was thought that the criterion of truth had at length been obtained.

The authority thus imputed to the Scriptures was not restricted to matters of a purely religious or moral kind; it extended over philosophical facts and to the interpretation of Nature. Many went as far as in the old times Epiphanius had done: he believed that the Bible contained a complete system of mineralogy! The Reformers would tolerate no science that was not in accordance with Genesis. Among them there were many who maintained that religion and piety could never flourish unless separated from learning and science. The fatal maxim that the Bible contained the sum and substance of all knowledge, useful or possible to man—a maxim employed with such pernicious effect of old by Tertullian and by St. Augustine, and which had so often been enforced by papal authority—was still strictly insisted upon. The leaders of the Reformation, Luther and Melanchthon, were determined to banish philosophy from the Church. Luther declared that the study of Aristotle is wholly useless; his vilification of that Greek philosopher knew no bounds. He is, says Luther, "truly a devil, a horrid calumniator, a wicked sycophant, a prince of darkness, a real Apollyon, a beast, a most horrid impostor on mankind, one in whom there is scarcely any philosophy, a public and professed liar, a goat, a complete epicure, this twice execrable Aristotle." The schoolmen were, so Luther said, "locusts, caterpillars, frogs, lice." He entertained an abhorrence for them. These opinions, though not so emphatically expressed, were entertained by Calvin. So far as science is concerned, nothing is owed to the Reformation. The Procrustean bed of the Pentateuch was still before her.

In the annals of Christianity the most ill-omened day is that in which she separated herself from science. She compelled Origen, at that time (A.D. 231) its chief representative and supporter in the Church, to abandon his charge in Alexandria, and retire to Caesarea. In vain through many subsequent centuries did her leading men spend themselves in—as the phrase then went—"drawing forth the internal juice and marrow of the Scriptures for the explaining of things." Universal history from the third to the sixteenth century shows with what result. The dark ages owe their darkness to this fatal policy. Here and there, it is true, there were great men, such as Frederick II. and Alphonso X., who, standing at a very elevated and general point of view, had detected the value of learning to civilization, and, in the midst of the dreary prospect that ecclesiasticism had created around them, had recognized that science alone can improve the social condition of man.

The infliction of the death-punishment for difference of opinion was still resorted to. When Calvin caused Servetus to be burnt at Geneva, it was obvious to every one that the spirit of persecution was unimpaired. The offense of that philosopher lay in his belief. This was, that the genuine doctrines of Christianity had been lost even before the time of the Council of Nicea; that the Holy Ghost animates the whole system of Nature, like a soul of the world, and that, with the Christ, it will be absorbed, at the end of all things, into the substance of the Deity, from which they had emanated. For this he was roasted to death over a slow fire. Was there any distinction between this Protestant auto-da-fe and the Catholic one of Vanini, who was burnt at Toulouse, by the Inquisition, in 1629, for his "Dialogues concerning Nature?"

The invention of printing, the dissemination of books, had introduced a class of dangers which the persecution of the Inquisition could not reach. In 1559, Pope Paul IV. instituted the Congregation of the Index Expurgatorius. "Its duty is to examine books and manuscripts intended for publication, and to decide whether the people may be permitted to read them; to correct those books of which the errors are not numerous, and which contain certain useful and salutary truths, so as to bring them into harmony with the doctrines of the Church; to condemn those of which the principles are heretical and pernicious; and to grant the peculiar privilege of perusing heretical books to certain persons. This congregation, which is sometimes held in presence of the pope, but generally in the palace of the Cardinal-president, has a more extensive jurisdiction than that of the Inquisition, as it not only takes cognizance of those books that contain doctrines contrary to the Roman Catholic faith, but of those that concern the duties of morality, the discipline of the Church, the interests of society. Its name is derived from the alphabetical tables or indexes of heretical books and authors composed by its appointment."