We do not deny that reforms of this sort were needed at the epoch of the Protestant revolt and rebellion, and the Holy Council of Trent was convoked and held for the very purpose of effecting such as were needed, as well as for the purpose of condemning the doctrinal errors of the reformers; but we cannot concede that they were more especially needed at that epoch, than they had been at almost any time previous, since the conversion of the barbarians that overthrew the Roman empire, and of their pagan brethren that remained in the old homesteads. Long, severe, and continuous had been the struggle of the church to tame, humanize, and christianize these fierce and indocile barbarians, especially those who remained beyond the frontiers of the empire, and to whom the Roman name never ceased to be hateful, as it is even to this day with the bulk of the northern Germanic races. The evils which for eight centuries had grown out of the intractable and rebellious spirit of these races in their old homes, and their perpetual tendency to relapse into the paganism of their ancestors, and which had so tried the faith and patience of the church, had been in a great measure overcome before the opening of the sixteenth century, and their morals and manners brought into close conformity with the Christian ideal. The church, through her supreme pontiffs and saintly bishops, zealous and hard-working priests and religious, had struggled successfully against them; and was even getting the better of the polished Greek and Roman heathenism, partially revived in the so-called Revival of Letters, or the Renaissance, and was pursuing, never more steadily or more successfully, her work of evangelization and civilization; and we can point to no period in her history since the conversion of Clovis, king of the Franks, the missionary labors of St. Columbanus and his colonies of Irish monks in Eastern Gaul and Italy, and of St. Boniface and his Anglo-Saxon companions and successors in central Germany and the Netherlands, when reforms were less necessary, or the bonds of discipline were less relaxed, than at the epoch of the rise of Protestantism.
But, granting that reforms of this sort were especially needed in the sixteenth century, who had the right, on conservative and orderly principles, to propose or to effect them? Certainly not private individuals on their own authority, except so far as it concerned their own personal faith and morals, but to the ecclesiastical authorities of the time, as we see in the Holy Council of Trent. Reforms, even if needed and proper in themselves, if attempted by unauthorized individuals on their own responsibility, and carried out without, and especially in opposition to, the supreme authority of the church, are irregular, disorderly, and unlawful. A reform attempted and effected in church or state by unauthorized persons, and especially against the constituted authorities of either, is unquestionably an attempt at revolution, if words have any meaning. Now, was Luther's reformation effected by the church herself, or by persons authorized by her to institute and carry it on? Was it done by the existing authorities of the church in accordance with her constitution and laws, or was it done in opposition to her positive prohibition, and in most cases by violence and armed force against her?
There is no question as to the fact. Luther had no authority or commission from the church to attempt and carry out the reforms or changes he declared to be necessary; and, in laboring to effect them, he proceeded not only without her authority, but against it, just as he does who conspires to overthrow the state or to subvert the constitution and laws of his country. Luther, then, was not a conservative reformer, but a decided revolutionist, a radical, a sectarian, a destructive, and Dr. Krauth counts too much on the ignorance or credulity of his readers in expecting them to accept Lutheranism as "conservative reformation." A conservative reformation, as distinguished from or opposed to revolution, is a legal, constitutional reformation, effected under the proper authorities and by constitutional and legal means. Dr. Krauth himself would despise us or laugh at us if we should concede that such was Luther's reformation. It was effected by persons unauthorized to reform the church, against her constitution and laws existing at the time, and to which they themselves owed strict fidelity and unreserved obedience. They were conspirators against lawful authority, against their spiritual sovereign, and their pretended reform was a revolt, a rebellion, and, as far as successful, a revolution. It is idle to deny it, or to attempt to defend Luther and his associates on legal and constitutional principles. The reform or movement he attempted was without and against law, against the constitution and canons of the church, and was condemned and prohibited by the supreme spiritual authority. This is undeniable, and Dr. Krauth knows it as well as we do, and yet he has the hardihood to call it a "conservative reformation"!
But the Protestant pretence is that Luther and his associates acted in obedience to a higher authority than that of popes and councils, and were justified in what they did by the written word of God and Christian antiquity. An appeal of this sort, on Protestant principles, from the decisions of a Protestant sect, might be entertained, but not on Catholic principles from the decision of the Catholic Church, for she is herself, at all times and places, the supreme authority for declaring the sense of the written as well as of the unwritten word, for declaring and applying the divine law, whether naturally or supernaturally promulgated, and for judging what is or is not according to Christian antiquity. Their appeal was irregular, revolutionary even, and absurd and not to be entertained for a moment. She authorized no appeal of the sort, and the appeal could have been only from her judgment to their own, which at the lowest is as high authority as theirs at the highest. Luther and his associates did not appeal to a higher law or authority against the popes and councils, but to a lower, as Döllinger has done in asking permission to appeal from the judgment of a general council, to that of a national or rather a provincial council. The appeal to Christian antiquity was equally unavailable, for it was only setting up their private judgment against the judgment of the supreme court. The church denied that she had departed from the primitive church, and her denial was sufficient to rebut their assertion. In no case, then, did they or could they appeal to or act on a higher law or authority than hers. They opposed and could oppose to her judgment, rendered by popes and councils, of the law or word of God, written or unwritten, or of Christian antiquity, only their own judgment, which at the best was no better than hers at the worst.
The simple fact is, there is no defence of the so-called Reformation on catholic, church, or conservative principles. It sought to reform the faith, and to change the very constitution of the church, and wherever it was successful, it proved to be the subversion of the church, and the destruction of her faith, her authority, and her worship. Dr. Krauth says that this was not originally intended by the reformers, and that they had in the beginning no clear views, or fixed and determined plan of reform, but were carried forward by the logic of their principles and events to lengths which they did not foresee, and from which they would at first have recoiled. But this only proves that they were no divinely illumined and God-commissioned reformers, that they knew not what manner of spirit they were of, that they took a leap in the dark, and followed a blind impulse. If the spirit they obeyed, or the principle to which they yielded, led them or pushed them step by step in the way of destruction, to the total denial of the authority of the church, or to transfer it from the pope and hierarchy to Cæsar or the laity, which we know was universally the fact, it is clear proof that the spirit or principle of the Reformation was radical, revolutionary, destructive, not conservative.
That conservative men among Protestants abhor the radicalism and sectarianism which the whole history of the Protestant world proves to be the natural and inevitable result of the principles and tendencies of the so-called Reformation, we are far from denying; but whatever of resistance is offered in the Protestant world to these results is due not to Protestantism itself, but either to Catholic reminiscences and the natural good sense of individuals, to the control of religious matters assumed by the civil government, which really has no authority in spirituals, or to the presence and constant teaching of the Catholic Church. "What is bred in the bones will out in the flesh." Everywhere the Protestant spirit, the Protestant tendency, is to remove farther and farther from Catholicity, to eliminate more and more of Catholic dogma, Catholic tradition, Catholic precepts, and to approach nearer and nearer to no-churchism, to the rejection of all authority in spiritual matters, and the reduction of the whole supernatural order to the natural. Faith in the Protestant mind is only a probable opinion, sometimes fanatically held indeed, and enforced by power, but none the less a mere opinion for that. The conception of religion as a divine institution, of the church as a living organism, as a teaching and governing body, as the kingdom of God, placed in the world as the medium of divine grace and of the divine government in human affairs, is really entertained by no class of Protestants, but disdainfully rejected by all as spiritual despotism, Romish usurpation, or Popish superstition.
It is useless to say that this is a departure from or an abuse of the principle of the Protestant Reformation. It is no such thing; it is only the logical development of the radical and revolutionary principles which the reformers themselves avowed and acted on, and which carried them to lengths which, in the outset, they did not dream of, and from which Dr. Krauth says truly they would, had they foreseen them, have shrunk with horror. We do not find that Lutheranism, when left by the civil magistracy to itself, and suffered to follow unchecked its own inherent law, is any more conservative or less radical in its developments and tendency than Calvinism or Anglicanism, that prolific mother of sects, or any other form of Protestantism. Every revolution must run its course and reach its goal, unless checked or restrained by a power or influences foreign to itself, and really antagonistic to it. The reformers rejected the idea of the church as a kingdom or governing body, or as a divine institution for the instruction and government of men, and substituted for it, in imitation of the Arabian impostor, a book which, without the authority of the church to declare its sense, is a dead book, save as quickened by the intelligence or understanding of its readers. Their followers discovered in the course of time that the book in itself is immobile and voiceless, and has no practical authority for the understanding or the will, and they cast it off, some, like George Fox and his followers, for a pretended interior or spiritual illumination, the reality of which they can prove neither to themselves nor to others; but the larger part, for natural reason, history, erudition, and the judgment of learned or soi-disant learned men. Their work has gone on till, with the more advanced party, all divine authority is rejected, and as man has and can have in his own right no authority over man, reason itself has given way, objective truth is denied, and truth and falsehood, right and wrong, it is gravely maintained, are only what each man for himself holds them to be. The utmost anarchy and confusion in the intellectual and moral world have been reached in individuals and sects said to have "advanced views."
Such have been the results of Dr. Krauth's "conservative reformation" in the spiritual order, in Christianity or the church. It introduced the revolutionary principle, the principle of individualism, of private judgment, and insubordination into the religious order, and, as a necessary consequence, it has introduced the same principle into the political and social order, which depends on religion, and cannot subsist without it. Hence, the great and damning charge against the church in our day is that by her unchangeableness, her immovable doctrines, her influence on the minds and hearts, and hold on the consciences of the faithful, she is the great supporter of law and order—despots and despotism, in the language of the liberal journals—and the chief obstacle to the enlightenment and progress of society, in the same language; but radicalism and revolution in ours. Hence, the whole movement party in our times, with which universal Protestantism sympathizes and is closely allied, is moved by hostility to the church, especially the Papacy. Hence, it and the Protestant journals of the Old World and the New are unable to restrain their rage at the declaration of the Papal supremacy and infallibility by the Council of the Vatican, or their exultation at the invasion of the States of the Church, their annexation to the Subalpine kingdom, and the spoliation of the Holy Father by the so-called King of Italy. Why do we see all this, but because the revolutionary principle, which the reformers asserted in the church, is identically the principle defended by the political radicals and revolutionists?
Having thrown off the law of God, rejected the authority of the church, and put the faithful in the place of the pope and hierarchy, what could hinder the movement party from applying the same subversive principle to the political and social order? The right to revolutionize the church, and to place the flock above the shepherd, involves the right to revolutionize the state, and the assertion of the right of the governed to resist and depose their governors at will, or at the dictation of self-styled political and social reformers. Protestantism has never favored liberty, as it claims, and which it is impotent either to found or to sustain; but its claims to be the founder and chief supporter of modern liberalism, which results naturally and necessarily from the fundamental principle of the reformers, that of the right of the people to resist and depose the prelates placed over them, cannot be contested. If no man is bound, against his own judgment and will, to obey the law of God, how can any one be bound in conscience to obey the law of the state? and if the people may subvert the constitution of the church, and trample on her divine authority, why may they not subvert the constitution of the republic, and trample under foot the human authority of the civil magistrate, whether he be called king or president? It is to Protestantism we owe the liberalistic doctrine of "the sacred right of insurrection," or of "revolution" assumed to be inherent in and persistent in every people, or any section of any people, and which justifies Mazzini and the secret societies in laboring to bring about in every state of Europe an internal conflict and bloody war between the people and their governments. It deserves the full credit of having asserted and acted on the principle, and we hold it responsible for the consequences of its subversive application; for it is only the application in the political and social order of the principle on which the reformers acted, and all Protestants act, in the religious order against the church of God.