As a consequence, a great religious revolution that has disturbed Western Christianity ever since took place. Writers have viewed it from many and varying standpoints and have agreed to differ about its significance. The place accorded this revolutionary movement in history depends entirely on the writer about it. For some historians it was a great movement in human freedom and the origin of practically all the blessings of modern civilization. For others it was mainly a political reaction brought about by ambitious monarchs tempted by the idea of ruling Church as well as State and, above all, of enriching themselves by the confiscation of Church property. These two contradictory views are gradually being brought into some harmony. It has taken {246} all the power of modern scientific and critical history, with the consultation of original and contemporary doc.u.ments and the critical appreciation of these, to bring us a little nearer the truth. We are not yet in a position to see this clearly. But we are much nearer than ever before, and the future is most promising.
In the meantime, the only way that the reform movement can be treated concretely and objectively in its place in Columbus" Century is to consider it, as we have every other important phase of the period"s activity, through the lives of the men who are the acknowledged leaders and prime movers in it. There are three who, though utterly out of sympathy with each other, are more responsible for the division of Western Christianity than any others. These are Luther in Germany, Calvin in France and Switzerland, and through Knox in Scotland, and finally Henry VIII in England. Undoubtedly all three of these men were of great force of character, possessed of a personality that enabled them to dominate others. Luther and Calvin were besides the masters of a vigorous style in the vernacular when that mode of expression was rare enough to make them a power over the ma.s.ses of the people in their respective countries. Scholars had always used Latin for learned discussions of religious subjects up to this time, but now these were brought into the forum of popular debate through the use of the vernacular. Above all, every man was told that all he needed to do was read the Scriptures, interpret them for himself and make out his own religion without the necessity for submitting to any authority. Hallam declares that "it cannot be denied that the reform was brought about by stimulating the most ignorant to reject the authority of their Church," though he adds in comment that "it instantly withdrew this liberty of judgment and devoted all who presumed to swerve from the line drawn by law to virulent obloquy and sometimes to bonds and death."
Lord Acton once declared that the most difficult problem in historical writing would be to have a confirmed Catholic and a confirmed Protestant agree in the writing of the lives of the reformers, and especially of Luther. Very many lives of the three men we have mentioned have been written, and Lord {247} Acton"s suggestion might well be repeated with regard to nearly all of them. In recent years, however, owing to the publication of contemporary doc.u.ments consequent upon the opening of archives and the scientific development of history, it has been possible to get actual facts rather than opinions with regard to them and we are now probably in a better position to judge them and the movement with which their names and activities are so intimately connected than any generation since their time. As the editors of the "Cambridge Modern History" declared in their preface, "the long conspiracy against the revelation of truth has gradually given way." "In view of changes and of gains such as these (the printing of archives), it has become impossible for the historical writer of the present age to trust without reserve even to the most respected secondary authorities. While we cannot obtain ultimate history in this generation, conventional history can be discarded and the point can be shown that has been reached on the road from one to the other." These expressions are more true with regard to the history of the Reformation and the reformers than any other period and men.
All the generalized explanations of Luther"s movement that used to be accepted as accounting for the Reformation and its progress have now been definitely rejected by the almost universal consensus of historians. The reaction began at least a generation ago. Hallam, in his "Introduction to the History of Literature," said:
"Whatever be the bias of our minds as to the truth of Luther"s doctrines, we should be careful, in considering the Reformation as a part of the history of mankind, not to be misled by the superficial and ungrounded representations which we sometimes find in modern writers. Such as this, that Luther, struck by the absurdity of the prevailing superst.i.tions, was desirous of introducing a more rational system of religion; or that he contended for freedom of inquiry, and the boundless privileges of individual judgment; or what others have pleased to suggest, that his zeal for learning and ancient philosophy led him to attack the ignorance of the monks and the crafty policy of the Church, which withstood all liberal {248} studies. These notions are merely fallacious refinements, as every man of plain understanding, who is acquainted with the early reformers, or has considered their history, must acknowledge."
Recent historical investigation emphasizes more and more that the movement was not religious in any sense, except superficially, and that the forces that gathered behind Luther were political. There was the opportunity for reigning princes to become both the head of the Church and the State in their dominions and, above all, to get possession of the property of the Church and share it with the n.o.bility or creatures of their own, thus strengthening their hold upon the government and securing extension of power. We know in our day the all-persuasive power of political graft and how it saps honesty and corrupts character. Everywhere the track of it can be followed readily in the Reformation period.
Luther was not only the first but the most important of these reformers. There has been more controversy over the true import of his work than that of any of the others. He was undoubtedly the leader through whom the religious revolution of this period was brought about. He had had predecessors, but the work of none of them had anything like the significance of his. Within the past ten years his history has been revolutionized. Denifle, the great historian of the mediaeval universities, by publishing all the doc.u.ments that show the worse side of Luther"s character created a great commotion in Germany.
Grisar"s later life of the reformer is, in accordance with the traditions of his order, much more irenic, yet makes it very clear how many of the very generally accepted favorable impressions with regard to Luther are contradicted by the many lately unearthed materials with regard to his life now available. Only those who have read these books can have any pretence to know the realities of the history of the religious revolt in Germany, though even these probably must not be considered as representing ultimate truth.
With regard to Luther and the other reformers, as well as the significance of the whole movement, I have preferred to quote only Protestant authorities in order to avoid the almost inevitable bias of my own educational training and {249} environment. Even thus I can only hope to give an approximately impartial discussion of these men whose work as I see it did more to hurt human development in every line of thought than anything else in modern history.
The story of Luther"s early life, of the unhappiness of his home, of the sudden death of his friend which made him turn from a career at the bar to enter the monastery, all tend to show him by heredity and personal character as a man of strong impulses ruled by them. There is no doubt at all that during the early years of his career as a monk Luther was happy and that the stories of his unhappiness are founded on inconsiderate expressions of his own in later life, which are contradicted by doc.u.ments written in his earlier years. The doctrine of indulgences, against which he inveighed so vigorously, is as eminently open to abuse as religion itself--and had undoubtedly been abused in his time, but the teaching of the Church on the subject remains exactly what it was in Luther"s day and before it, yet has been accepted by the intelligent members of the Church ever since.
Converts like Newman or Manning, not to mention many others of our time, find no difficulty at all in accepting it, once they understand it. The Protestant arguments founded on it are due entirely to misunderstanding of the true significance of the Church"s position in the matter. Only those who _will_ not cannot understand it. Luther"s declaration that he found the doctrine of indulgences too hard to comprehend is shown to be one of those interesting ideas as to his earlier career that developed in his mind in all sincerity in later life, but which are contradicted by his own writings, for there is from him an admirable sermon on the subject of indulgences which contains an excellent exposition of the Church"s teaching.
Luther gradually developed into one of the men so common in the world"s history who are quite sure that the world is wrong in nearly everything and that they are born to set it right. They believe thoroughly in themselves, they have a great fund of energy to draw on, they usually have strong powers of expression and there are a large number of people waiting to be led by them and not a few quite willing to take {250} advantage for their own purposes of the movement that the restless create. It is well understood now that the great majority of men do not think for themselves, but stand ready to accept other people"s thoughts, and often are more willing to carry out such thoughts to their logical conclusions, or at least to try to fit them to practical life, than are the original thinkers. The fate of a generation depends on whom it chooses as its leaders. Unfortunately, the choice is not often quite voluntary, but is forced on men by conditions, or they are imposed upon by the genius appeal of the leader, and sometimes even more by those who gather round him at the beginning of a movement and help to give it momentum.
Luther"s relations with Zwingli, the Swiss reformer, show more clearly than anything else the character of the reformer, his a.s.surance of his divine mission and his absolute confidence that he has a Heaven-directed mission. Zwingli would not agree with Luther"s interpretation of the doctrine of the Last Supper. They proceeded to anathematize each other, and when induced by friends they met at a conference, each claimed the victory in the argument. The Zwinglians seem, indeed, to have recognized the force of Luther"s contentions, but dared not yield entirely, and when they returned to their homes Zwingli spoke very contemptuously of his antagonist"s arguments and loudly claimed that he had completely vanquished him. This drew from Luther some bitter denunciations, and among other things Luther wrote to Jacob Probst of Bremen as follows:
"In boasting that I was vanquished at Marburg the sacramentarians act as is their wont. For they are not only liars, but falsehood, deceit, and hypocrisy itself, as Carlstadt and Zwingli show both in deeds and words. They revoked at Marburg, as you can see from the articles drawn up there, the things. .h.i.therto taught in their pestilential books concerning baptism, the use of the sacraments, and the preaching of the word. We revoked nothing. But when they were conquered also in the matter of the Lord"s Supper they were unwilling to renounce their position even though they could see it was untenable, for they feared their people, to whom they could not have returned if they had recanted."
{251}
He never forgave Zwingli, and when some time later the Swiss reformer, acting as a chaplain to the Swiss Protestant Army in a battle with the Swiss Catholic cantons, was killed, Luther p.r.o.nounced this event a special dispensation of Providence. He was fully persuaded that the special spirit of prophecy had come down over him and that he had been inspired to denounce Zwingli and to declare that his doom was not far off. After the news of Zwingli"s sad, untimely end, he wrote to his friend Link:
"We see the judgment of G.o.d a second time--first in the case of Munzer, and now of Zwingli. I was a prophet when I said, G.o.d will not long endure these mad and furious blasphemies with which they overflow, laughing at our G.o.d-made bread, and calling us carnivora, savages, drinkers of blood, and other horrible names."
This exaggeration of his own importance and conviction of his intimate relations with the Deity became more and more manifest as time goes on. The spectacle is not at all unfamiliar, though it is usually pathological, and the surprise always is how many followers such characters are able to gather around them at any time in the history of the race. It is this aspect of Luther"s life and the psychic development of his career that have attracted the special attention of historians in recent years and received ample ill.u.s.tration from hitherto unused original doc.u.ments.
Some of the recent studies of Luther, written by those who are making out just as good a case as possible with all the contemporary information that now is available, have some very illuminating pa.s.sages as to the character of the reformer, who has been traditionally set up as a great religious leader. For instance, the explanation of how Luther came to permit the Landgrave Philip of Hesse to take a second wife is very disturbing to those who think of him as a reformer of religion. McGiffert, in his "Martin Luther, the Man and His Work" (New York, 1912), has much to say with regard to the permit undoubtedly granted not only by Luther, but also by Melanchthon for this bigamy, and then the proposed denial of the marriage, which is, if possible, more disturbing to the modern world than the permit itself. McGiffert said (p. 364):
{252}
"The proposed denial of the marriage, which seems to throw so sinister a light upon the whole affair, Luther justified somewhat sophistically by an appeal to the traditional maxim of the inviolability of the confessional, requiring the priest, if necessary, to tell an untruth rather than divulge its secrets. He justified it also by the more fundamental principle that the supreme ethical motive is regard for our neighbor"s good, and it is better to lie than to do him harm. To this principle, taught not by a few ethical teachers of our own as well as other ages, he gave frequent expression."
McGiffert, with all his obvious effort to defend Luther, frankly finds this whole incident too much. He said (p. 366):
"Regarded from any point of view, the landgrave"s bigamy was a disgraceful affair, and Luther"s consent the gravest blunder [!] of his career. He acted conscientiously [!], but with a lamentable want of moral discernment and a singular lack of penetration and foresight. To approve a relationship so derogatory to the women involved, and so subversive to one of the most sacred safeguards of society, showed too little fineness of moral feeling and sureness of moral conviction; while to be so easily duped by the dissolute prince was no more creditable to his perspicacity than thinking such an affair could be kept secret to his sagacity."
The same biographer has summed up the closing years of Luther"s life, from which we have so many records in the shape of letters and doc.u.ments of various kinds. As McGiffert says: "There is little sign of flagging powers in his later writings. The same Luther still speaks in them with all the racy humor, biting satire and coa.r.s.e vituperation of his best days." He continues (p. 373):
"Despite the multiplicity of his occupations, his closing years were far from happy. As time pa.s.sed, he became more censorious, impatient and bitter. He seems to have been troubled less frequently than in earlier life with doubts as to his own spiritual condition and divine mission, but he grew correspondingly despondent over the results of his labors and the unworthiness of his followers. Instead of finding the world transformed into a paradise by his gospel, he saw things continuing much as before, and his heart grew sick with {253} disappointment. The first flush of enthusiasm pa.s.sed, and the joy of battle gone, he had time to observe the results of his work, and they were by no means to his liking.
"Conditions even in Wittenberg itself were little to his liking. In this centre of gospel light he felt there should be a devotion and purity seen nowhere else. Instead, as the town grew in size and importance, and manners lost somewhat of their earlier simplicity, it seemed to his exaggerated sensibilities that everything was going rapidly to the bad."
Calvin, like Luther, was another of these vigorous active spirits so common in this time of the Renaissance who felt that he had a special call from on High to teach the world doctrines very different from those received before. Like Luther, he too used his native tongue in speech and writing with a forcefulness and originality that makes him one of the founders of the prose of his language. From his earliest youth of a very serious disposition, caring nothing for the games and sports in which his fellow-scholars indulged, shunning society and its pleasures, and p.r.o.ne to censure anything that was not deeply serious and to condemn everything that smacked of frivolity, he found abundant opportunity for reform. Severe to himself in the highest degree, relaxation seemed almost sinful. He insisted that others should follow the same regime and imputed even the ordinary amus.e.m.e.nts of life to sin. He was lacking entirely in that disposition for healthy, happy and hearty amus.e.m.e.nt which is a sign of good health of mind and body and the best possible proof of absolute sanity. The old Church had encouraged the recreations and amus.e.m.e.nts of the people. Calvin made it a cardinal principle of religion that there were to be none of them. He is probably no more to be held responsible for this, since it was due to the lack of something in him, than is the color-blind person for failure to perceive colors.
Poor Calvin, with no faculty for relaxation, insisted that others should not indulge theirs, and made it the basis of his religion that any such indulgence was sinful. From this to the doctrine of predestination to eternal punishment was not difficult. A G.o.d who meant life to be pa.s.sed without recreation would surely not scruple to condemn most of His creatures {254} quite without their own fault to an eternity of punishment. Why is it when men make their G.o.ds they make them worse than themselves? Even the wise Greeks did not escape this pitfall.
There are always a number of people who are ready to follow anyone who announces any doctrine, no matter how unreasonable it may seem to be, if only he insists emphatically on his belief and if he evidently is a sincere believer in it himself. Calvin was one of the dominant spirits who readily gain control over others, and his severity to himself won many of the sombre people around him to a devotion to his cause that partook of worship. They even permitted themselves to be ruled by his rigid hand, and there probably never has been a place where less allowance was made for human nature than at Geneva during the days when Calvin ruled there with a rod of iron and when his particular mode of the reformation of religion was so completely accepted. To the dour Scots this austere doctrine appealed particularly, and Calvin"s disciple, Knox, secured almost as much authority in Edinburgh as did his master down at Geneva.
Like Luther, Calvin before the end of his life was profoundly disillusioned with regard to the Reformation and its effect upon mankind. The unfortunate divisions of the Protestants among themselves, their readiness to persecute each other, their refusal to permit anything like religious toleration, above all their rejection, except for very limited numbers, of his own doctrines, made him foresee nothing but evil for the future. He knew that he had stirred mankind deeply in the West of Europe, but he could not foretell anything but unfortunate results from the conditions that he saw around him. He once said: "The future appals me. I dare not think of it. Unless the Lord descends from heaven, barbarism will engulf us."
[Ill.u.s.tration: HOLBEIN, HENRY VIII (LONDON)]
The blot on Calvin"s name through the execution of Servetus has been extenuated by his adherents, but the certainty of his complete hostility to the unfortunate physiologist, who insisted in dabbling in theology at a dangerous time, is now settled. Long before Servetus"
execution at Geneva, Calvin actually secured through his well-developed system of {255} espionage and delation, extending even into Catholic countries, the persecution of Servetus by the Catholic ecclesiastical authorities in France. The details of this have now been traced very clearly. When Servetus, thinking to find protection where freedom of interpretation of Scriptures was preached, came to Geneva his fate was sealed. Calvin himself made it a personal matter to secure his conviction and bring about his execution. A number of the reformers are on record agreeing that Calvin"s action in this case was eminently right, and even the gentle Melanchthon would not condemn it. Nothing makes so perfectly clear as this that the claim made for the Reformation of fostering or encouraging liberty of thought is founded entirely on a misconception of what the reformers were trying to do. The reformers wanted liberty of religious thinking for themselves, but they were not ready to grant it to others. After all, we in America do not need to appeal to foreign history in order to understand that very well, for the Puritan disciples of Calvin, driven out of England by Anglican religious persecution and intolerance, made a home for themselves in New England, where they practised the bitterest intolerance and absolutely refused to allow anyone to live in their communities unless he or she, as Ann Hutchinson learned to her cost, conformed unquestioningly to their religious tenets and practices.
The history of Henry VIII has less in it to make historians disagree.
His uxoriousness represents the explanation of the revolutionary changes that took place in the government and the religion of England.
He fell in love with a younger, handsomer woman than the elderly wife, who for more than twenty years had been, as he confessed himself, his faithful, loving spouse, and then his first marriage got on his conscience. The succeeding marriages are the best commentary on this explanation. His father, Henry VII, had left him a full treasury, and the son had spent liberally during the early years of his reign, and finally the famous Field of the Cloth of Gold had almost exhausted the crown"s resources. Many a n.o.bleman had literally carried his estates on his back and returned from France so heavily mortgaged that the power of the n.o.bles was broken. This made most of them thoroughly {256} dependent on the King. When the trouble with the Church came then, the King himself and most of the n.o.bles were rather glad of the opportunity to obtain possession of the Church properties, the estates of the great monasteries, and the many foundations for charitable and social purposes that existed in connection with Church societies. All of these might well be brought under the law of the confiscation so as to fatten the Royal treasury, or at least fall to an expectant sycophantic n.o.bility.
The question that many have been unable to answer satisfactorily for themselves is how could the religion of a whole people be taken from them under such sordid circ.u.mstances if they really held it. It has been supposed that the change was made possible only by the fact that for centuries there had been a growing feeling in England of opposition to a foreign spiritual ruler, the Pope, and that this culminated in Henry VIII"s time and enabled him to a.s.sume the headship of the English Church. James Gairdner has, however, dispelled this idea completely, though himself an Anglican, and like Augustus Jessop continuing in his adherence to the English Church. He shows in his book on Lollardism that there was no widespread growing feeling of opposition to Rome, and that while of course occasionally, when there were difficulties between the crown and the Pope, mutterings of spiritual insubordination were heard, which took the form expressed by Shakespeare through the mouth of King John in his play, these were but temporary and individual and not at all a growing sentiment of wide diffusion. England up to Henry"s time had been one of the most faithful countries of Europe in the support of the Papacy, and continued to be so until the change actually came.
As a matter of fact, the people of England were deprived of their religion by fraud at first, and then by violence. They did not change it voluntarily. They were deeply attached to their church and clergy.
Augustus Jessop, in his book "Before the Great Pillage," has told the story of the clergy before the reformation. He said: "Take them all in all I cannot resist the impression which has become deeper and deeper upon me the more I have read {257} and pondered, that the parochial clergy in England during the centuries between the Conquest and the Reformation numbered amongst them at all times some of the best men of their generation." He reechoes Chaucer"s picture of the village parson who "did as well as taught." Jessop adds: "Not once, nor twice in our history these parish priests are to be found siding with the people against those in power and chosen by the people to be their spokesmen when their grievances were becoming unbearable." As to the pretended corruption of the monasteries, that has been disproved by all the careful investigation of recent years, until it has become perfectly clear that the abuses were no greater than may be expected at any time, since men are only human. The evidence for corruption was very slight, and what there is was manifestly gathered in such a way as to enable the government authorities to justify their settled purpose to confiscate the property. It was the need of money that was important.
Nearly a century ago Cobbett, in his "History of the English Reformation," had found it almost impossible to select words quite strong enough to express his feeling with regard to the people who brought about the English reformation. His expressions were considered at that time as grossly exaggerated and the result of his tendency to use strong language. In our time they still remain radical in mode, but most writers now agree as to the essential truth of the facts on which they are based. When it is recalled that millions of people have for centuries thought of the Reformation as one of the greatest blessings to mankind and the source of nearly every good that we have in the modern time, it is indeed startling to read Cobbett"s words, yet Cobbett had made a special study of his subject, he was a great practical-minded investigator, who knew his historical sources well, who had gone directly to them and who had been shocked by the difference between ordinary impressions as fostered for religious and political purposes by historians and the realities that he found. No wonder that he burst forth in his strong way:
"The Reformation, as it is called, was (in England) engendered in beastly l.u.s.t, brought forth in hypocrisy and {258} perfidy, and cherished and fed by plunder, devastation and rivers of innocent English and Irish blood."
Macaulay described the character of those who were most responsible for the change of religion, the so-called reformation in England, in words that are pa.s.sing strange, considering that he himself would never think of submitting to "the yoke of Rome" and seems even to have felt that a great good had been accomplished, though by such vile means. He says, in his "Essay on Hallam"s Const.i.tutional History,"
that the reformers were:
"A king whose character may be described best by saying that he was despotism itself personified; unprincipled ministers; a rapacious aristocracy; a servile parliament. Such were the instruments by which England was delivered from the yoke of Rome. The work which had been begun by Henry, the murderer of his wives, was continued by Somerset, the murderer of his brother, and completed by Elizabeth, the murderer of her guest."
Some of the most unworthy motives and adjuvants were mixed up in the reform movement. Indeed, it is possible to collect from non-Catholic sources more bitter excoriations of the men who made the Reformation possible than with regard to almost any group of men who accomplished any other purpose in history. Frederic Harrison, for instance, said: "It is not to be denied that the origin of the (English) Establishment is mixed up with plunder, jobbery and intrigue, that stands out even in the tortuous annals of the sixteenth century; that the annals run black with red, along some of the blackest and reddest pages of royal tyranny and government corruption."
Andrew Lang quotes Professor F. York Powell in a description of how the reformation in Scotland was brought about in language that is, if possible, stronger than this of Frederic Harrison: "The whole story of Scottish Reformation, hatched in purchased treason and outrageous intolerance, carried on in open rebellion and ruthless persecution, justified only in its indirect results, is perhaps as sordid and disgusting a story as the annals of any European country can show."
Almost needless to say, though the Reformation was a {259} religious movement and therefore might be expected to be intimately a.s.sociated with personal holiness on the part of its leaders, probably no one would think for a moment of suggesting the t.i.tle of saint for any of those whose names are most prominent in the movement. To John Wesley, who came two centuries and a half later, the name saint might readily be attributed. He was one of those kindly characters, thoughtful for others, thoughtless of himself, thoughtful especially of the poor, whose personal winningness meant much for his cause. The reformers of the sixteenth century, however, were egoistic leaders of men, with the self-consciousness of a great purpose and determination to put that through regardless of the suffering of others involved in it. There was little that was sympathetic about them, though all of them had certain compelling qualities of mind but not of heart which won men to them. Saintliness of character, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, would scarcely be thought of even distantly in connection with them. All of them were fighters, and if others suffered in the conflict they cared little, for they felt that they were in the right and must do the work of the Lord cost what it might. It is no wonder that in our own time Professor Briggs of the Union Theological Seminary, New York, whose own religious experience must have been so illuminating for him, reviewing the Reformation period, has suggested that there were other and more saintly reformers alive at this time whose influence unfortunately was not strong enough to turn the tide of revolution once it had begun.
In an article in the _Independent_ (New York) ent.i.tled "How May We Become More Truly Catholic," Professor Briggs said:
"There were other and in some respects greater reformers in the sixteenth century than the more popular heroes Luther, Zwingli and Calvin. Sir Thomas More, the greatest jurist of his time, Lord Chancellor of England, a chief leader of reform before Cranmer, resigned his exalted position and went to the block rather than recognize the supremacy of the King in ecclesiastical affairs; a true knight, a martyr to the separation of civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Erasmus, {260} the greatest scholar of his age, regarded by many as the real father of the Reformation, the teacher of the Swiss reformers, was unwilling to submerge learning and morals in an ocean of human blood. He urged reformation, not revolution. He has been crucified for centuries in popular Protestant opinion as a political time-server, but undoubtedly he was the most comprehensive reformer of them all.
"John von Staupitz, doctor of theology, and Vicar-General of the German Augustinians, the teacher of Luther and his counsellor in the early stages of his reform, a man without a stain and above reproach, a Saint in the common estimation of Protestant and Catholic alike, the best exponent of the piety of his age, was an Apostle of Holy Love and good works, which he would not sacrifice in the interests of the Protestant dogma of justification by faith only. These three immortals who did not separate themselves from the Roman Catholic Church, who remained in the Church to patiently carry on the work of reform therein--these three were the irenic spirits, the heroic representatives of all that was truly Catholic, the beacons of the greater reformation that was impending."
[Ill.u.s.tration: FILIPPINO LIPPI, MADONNA WITH FOUR SAINTS]
This position taken by Professor Briggs has come to be more and more recognized as the true one from the historical standpoint in recent years. What has been called the Reformation had in it so many unfortunate political elements that its force for good was frittered away by the abuses inevitably connected with political a.s.sociations.