Had all the implications of the principle of the right of individual judgment in matters of religion and morals been seen and frankly accepted by the reformers of the sixteenth century, the Protestant revolution would have effected at once the transfer of morality from a supernatural to a natural basis. But for an inerrant Church the reformers substituted an inerrant Book, which every one should accept as an infallible guide and rule of conduct. The ultimate sanctions of morality were still looked for in the historic past, in an outer revelation and an outer authority. Consequently the moral ideal of Protestantism retained the essentially theological, supernatural character of the ideal of Roman Catholicism.
New ranking of virtues in the moral type
But the changes effected by the reformers in the body of the teachings of the old Church resulted necessarily in a certain displacement and shifting of the virtues in the moral type, and in a new estimation of ethical values. Various virtues or duties hitherto regarded as essential to excellence of character were assigned a lower place in the rank of virtues or were excluded altogether from the ideal, while new moral qualities or attributes were added, the outcome being what we must regard as a new moral type. In the following pages we shall comment briefly upon the more important of the changes effected in several domains of the religious-ethical life.
Protestantism brings into disesteem the monastic ideal
We proceed now to notice some of the immediate and special moral effects of the Reformation. In the first place Protestantism discredited the monastic type of goodness. The meritoriousness of celibacy was denied. The austerities of the ascetic were declared to be not only useless but positively wrong. Instead of being an object of profound veneration and homage, the saint of medieval times became to the Protestant reformers an object of the deepest moral detestation.
The immediate consequences of this change in men’s conceptions of what constitutes the highest moral excellence was that throughout one half of Europe the monasteries, which the religious-moral enthusiasm of the earlier centuries of Christianity had created, were dismantled and razed to the ground, and an institution which had dominated Christian Europe for a thousand years was suppressed in all the northern lands.
This revolution, we believe, effected on the whole a great gain for morality and marked a forward movement in the moral evolution of the Western world; but at the same time it must be recognized that the destruction of this system, which throughout a full historical period had fostered some of the most admirable of Christian virtues and nurtured unnumbered saintly lives, resulted in the exclusion of valuable ethical elements from the moral life of Protestant communities. There are types of character nourished by the conventual system that society can ill afford to spare. Very few will dissent from Lecky’s view that “in the Sisters of Charity the religious orders of Catholicism have produced one of the most perfect of all types of womanhood.”[718]
Effects upon industrial morals of the dissolution of the monasteries
In destroying monasticism the Protestant reformers destroyed an anti-industrial type of character, and thus helped to clear the ground for the great industrial development which during the last three centuries has given a new aspect and outlook to civilization. The reformed Church gave prominence to the active masculine virtues as opposed to the passive feminine virtues exalted by the conventual system. Hence it was more favorable than the old Church to the development of civilization on its material side. It hardly admits of doubt that in these opposed tendencies of the ethical ideals of the two churches is to be sought one cause of the amazing contrast, industrially viewed, long observed between the distinctively Protestant and the distinctively Catholic countries of Europe. It is true that the line of demarcation once so observable is now becoming blurred, and that modern industrialism with its ideal of industrial virtues is fast becoming equally characteristic of all lands of advancing culture, whether Protestant, Catholic, or pagan.
Effects upon morals of the abolition of purgatory