The religious movement of the sixteenth century boasts, and not without reason, of having been a radical departure from the spirit of the age which preceded it. It broke with the past; first, in regard to particular questions, concerning which it took issue with existing belief. But the separation which ensued in the religious sphere soon extended to the whole range of man’s spiritual faculties. The followers of the new prophets were associated together in communities and nations, and became entirely estranged from the ancient system.
This isolation was bound to produce in a short time wide divergence of sentiment, and an ever-increasing estrangement from the past.
Americans going abroad find themselves constantly misinterpreting and being misunderstood by foreigners.
We live in another era, and under circumstances so different that it is only by earnest and thoughtful preparation that we can qualify ourselves to judge of other nations.
Any person who will pause for a moment will realize the difficulty of conceiving what the present state of the world would have been had the movement towards a high material development, which preceded Protestantism, been conducted under Catholic auspices alone. Of course, such a conception is impossible to the common ignorant Protestant; but even enlightened minds outside the Catholic Church must acknowledge that it is not easy to acquire a full sympathy with the intellectual epoch which preceded Protestantism. Wherever the new religion became dominant, a thorough break was effected between past and present. The American freeman resembles his English great-grandfather far more closely than the Protestant of the seventeenth resembles the Catholic of the fifteenth century. The French communist still speaks the language in which the feudal tenant addressed the seigneur of the last century; but it would be rash to affirm his capacity to understand the sentiments of his peasant grandfather.
The change wrought by the sixteenth century extends throughout the world, and affects the deepest, most powerful, and most mysterious range of sentiment. This change occurred just as the literature of modern times had begun to take shape and form. Everything has borne the stamp either of its action or of the reaction against it. It was a veritable Lethe; and those who passed through it forgot the images, expressions, and thoughts of preceding generations.
The results of this tendency were entirely overlooked by the partisans of Luther and Calvin. But the most superficial student of history nowadays perceives in them irrefragable proof of two things: first, that the movement of the sixteenth century was something altogether new in the world; and, secondly, that it was completely subversive of the entire order which preceded it. To deny either of these propositions is to bid defiance to truth and farewell to reason. And whereas Catholics have been abused for predicting these facts, there are not wanting Protestants who glory in acknowledging them, now that they can no longer be controverted.
However, we do not wish to bring them forward in our condemnation of Protestantism, but simply to illustrate another fact which is equally true.
Protestantism, amongst other evils, has brought a spirit of scepticism into historical research which is one of the most ghastly symptoms of its present stage of dissolution. We do not mean a spirit which demands proof, but a spirit which no amount of proof can satisfy—which denies facts unquestionably true, and endeavors to cast discredit upon the most authentic records.
It is not hard to perceive the cause or to trace the development of this spirit.