Moreover, the accentuation of the virtues of thrift and industry, which made capitalism and Calvinism allies, but reflected the standards natural to the bourgeois class. It was by the might of the merchants and their money that the Reformation triumphed; conversely they benefited both by the spoils of the church and by the abolition of a privileged class. Luther stated that there was no difference between priest and layman; some men were called to preach, others to make shoes, but—and this is his own illustration—the one vocation is no more spiritual than the other. No longer necessary as a mediator and dispenser of sacramental grace, the Protestant clergyman sank inevitably to the same level as his neighbors.
{749} [Sidenote: Intellectual aspect]
(3) In its relation to the Renaissance and to modern thought the Reformation solved, in its way, two problems, or one problem, that of authority, in two forms. Though anything but consciously rational in their purpose, the innovating leaders did assert, at least for themselves, the right of private judgment. Appealing from indulgence-seller to pope, from pope to council, from council to the Bible and (in Luther's own words) from the Bible to Christ, [Sidenote: Individualism] the Reformers finally came to their own conscience as the supreme court. Trying to deny to others the very rights they had fought to secure for themselves, yet their example operated more powerfully than their arguments, even when these were made of ropes and of thumb-screws. The delicate balance of faith was overthrown and it was put into a condition of unstable equilibrium; the avalanche, started by ever so gentle a push, swept onward until it buried the men who tried to stop it half way. Dogma slowly narrowing down from precedent to precedent had its logical, though unintended, outcome in complete religious autonomy, yes, in infidelity and skepticism.
[Sidenote: Vulgarization of the Renaissance]
Protestantism has been represented now as the ally, now as the enemy of humanism. Consciously it was neither. Rather, it was the vulgarization of the Renaissance; it transformed, adapted, and popularized many of the ideas originated by its rival. It is easy to see now that the future lay rather outside of both churches than in either of them, if we look only for direct descent. Columbus burst the bounds of the world, Copernicus those of the universe; Luther only broke his vows. But the point is that the repudiation of religious vows was the hardest to do at that time, a feat infinitely more impressive to the masses than either of the former. It was just here that the religious movement became a great solvent of conservatism; it made the masses think, passionately if not {750} deeply, on their own beliefs. It broke the cake of custom and made way for greater emancipations than its own. It was the logic of events that, whereas the Renaissance gave freedom of thought to the cultivated few, the Reformation finally resulted in tolerance for the masses. Logically also, even while it feared and hated philosophy in the great thinkers and scientists, it advocated education, up to a certain point, for the masses.
[Sidenote: The Reformation a step forward]
In summary, if the Reformation is judged with historical imagination, it docs not appear to be primarily a reaction. That it should be such is both a priori improbable and unsupported by the facts. The Reformation did not give our answer to the many problems it was called upon to face; nevertheless it gave the solution demanded and accepted by the time, and therefore historically the valid solution. With all its limitations it was, fundamentally, a step forward and not the return to an earlier standpoint, either to that of primitive Christianity, as the Reformers themselves claimed, or to the dark ages, as has been latterly asserted.
[1] S. Reinach: Cultes, Mythes et Religions, iv, 467.
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