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THE STRUGGLE FOR
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

Rev.Albert J.Lyman,

RESIDENCE SSS PRESIDENT STREET,
SOUTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH. BROOKLYN.
COR COURT St PRESIDENTSTS. N EW YORK.

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THE STRUGGLE FOR
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

IN THE FIFTEENTH AND
SIXTEENTH CENTURIES

BEING A SERIES OF SIX LECTURES DELIVERED ON SUNDAY EVENINGS
IN THE SOUTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH. BROOKLYN
IN THE WINTER OF 1903

BY

JOHN CHURCHWOOD WILSON
JUNIOR PASTOR OF THE CHURCH

NEW YORK
1905

Copyright, 1905, by
MRS. JOHN CHURCHWOOD WILSON

Press of J. J. Little & Co.
Astor Place, New York

But he
To whom a thousand memories call,
Not being less but more than all
The gentleness he seem'd to be,
Best seem'd the thing he was, and join'd
Each office of the social hour
To noble manners, as the flower
And native growth of noble mind. Tennyson

PREFATORY NOTE.
It has been a work at once of honor and of love
— for these two tones blend in every remembrance
of my Associate — to bring together in this volume
such notes as were accessible, recalling a series
of Six Lectures entitled, " The Struggle for Re
ligious Liberty," which were delivered by the
Reverend John Churchwood Wilson, during the
winter before his death, in the South Congrega
tional Church, Brooklyn, of which he was then
the Junior Pastor.
Perhaps a single word of explanation as to the
form of these addresses should in justice preface
them. They are not carefully finished essays, and
were in no degree intended or prepared for publi
cation by their author. They are rather groups
of memoranda, standing for familiar discourses
delivered to an assembly of friends and parishion
ers. Mr. Wilson was accustomed to accumulate,
but not to collate, a large mass of material in his
preliminary study of a theme. Then, after speak
ing, he would write out rapidly the main body of
his address, just as it left its warm record in his
mind, but with no pause for added literary finish,
and sometimes allowing gaps to remain in the
writing, which could only be filled afterward by

X PREFATORY NOTE.
citations from the earlier arid more scattered
notes. It is after some such informal fashion that the
following discourses have been arranged for this
publication. They have not indeed been " edited "
in any sense. No change has been permitted from
the manuscript. The paragraphs stand as their
gifted author spoke them ; but they have received
no revising touch from his hand.
Certain repetitions of phrase, certain colloqui
alisms of style, suited well enough for familiar
talk with one's own people, would, without doubt,
have disappeared from any page which a care
ful student and literary craftsman like Mr. Wil
son would have intended for permanency. But
I have thought it truest to him to let the ad
dresses, with this foreword of explanation, remain
as he left them. Even in this half extempora
neous form they reproduce to us, who knew and
loved him, something of the true picture of his
mind — genuine student, convincing preacher, de
voted pastor, chivalrous friend.
I venture to add the following brief record of
his life :
John Churchwood Wilson was born in Phila
delphia, May 9, 1862. His father was Thomas
Wilson, a native of Scotland, and his mother was
Ruth Anna Coy, whose Quaker ancestry had long
been resident in Philadelphia.
John's studies were pursued at the Philadelphia
academies of " Eastburn " and " Rugby." Enter-

PREFATORY NOTE. XI
ing Amherst College in Massachusetts, he was
graduated in the class of 1885. He studied
Theology at Yale Divinity School, graduating in
1888. Before his graduation he had been called
to the First Congregational Church, Stonington,
Conn., where he was ordained and installed pastor
May 23d of that year. He remained at Stoning
ton until called to the pastorate of the Centre
Congregational Church, Meriden, Conn., in No
vember of 1892. During this pastorate the
church edifice was remodeled. Thence, early in
1896, he removed to Brooklyn, New York, to
become pastor of the Puritan Congregational
Church, where also he accomplished a memor
able work of reconstruction and upbuilding.
In 1900, under repeated and stubborn attacks
of " grip," his health partially gave way, and al
though his people generously granted him a year's
leave of absence abroad, he was compelled to re
sign, and was dismissed in June of 1901. His
health, however, improved, and feeling himself
able to undertake the lessened responsibilities of
an Associate, he came in that capacity to the
South Church, and there remained its Associate
and Junior Pastor until his death, July 9, 1903.
This brief foreword cannot attempt to char
acterize him, or to dwell upon the volume and
value of his accomplishment in his vocation. He
was universally honored, and by all who knew
him equally admired and trusted. He was a true
scholar and gentleman, thoughtful, sensitive, lib-

Xll PREFATORY NOTE.
eral, consecrated, and though affable in manner,
brave to dauntlessness.
He possessed a spirit of unusual tone, in whose
foreground dwelt a rare wealth of noble ideals
and a most passionate love of liberty. His mental
and moral traits were in singular unison of action,
so that the painstaking search and utterance of
the scholar were in him reinforced by a certain
gallant and knightly fervor, imparting to all his
personality and work a distinction and a beauty
whose impression cannot fade from our memory.
Albert J. Lyman.
Brooklyn, June g, 1905.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

Prelude  i
Lecture I. General Condition of Eu
rope on the Eve of the Refor
mation  25
Lecture II. The Struggle for Re
ligious Liberty in England — Wyc
lif to Cromwell .... 39
Lecture III. The Struggle for Re
ligious Liberty in Germany —
Luther, the Hero of the Refor
mation  84
Lecture IV. The Struggle for Reli
gious Liberty in Italy — Savonarola 118
Lecture V. The Struggle for Re
ligious Liberty in Holland — The
Tragedy of the Reformation —
William the Silent . . . . 154
Lecture VI. The Struggle for Re
ligious Liberty — General Conclu
sion — The Practical Gains from
the Reformation to the World . 195

PRELUDE.
THE RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE STUDY OF HISTORY.
In any careful study of human affairs we
discover that the history of religion is in
separable from the history of human life ; that
it is, indeed, a part of the general life of man
kind; that it is indissolubly bound up with
learning, with politics, with commerce, with
finance; and is so involved in every phase of
human life that it cannot be eliminated from
any part.
In the fourteenth century what passed for
religion was the dominant power in the West
ern world. The Church everywhere occupied
a commanding and indisputable position.
Kings and princes paid tribute to her and ac
knowledged her lordship over them. They
were all the subjects of the Church of Rome.
To give to her sovereignty an authority which
she did not care to claim openly for herself
as a church, she had voluntarily associated
with her in her rule a military form of govern
ment, and professed to share with it the dig
nities and forms of a universal empire. This

2 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
associate was known as the Holy Roman Em
pire, which was nothing more than a fiction,
so far as authority and power went, and
which long served the purpose of saving the
Holy See from open scandal and revolt,
which would have certainly arisen had she as
sumed to exercise the military power and to
wield political sway ; and thus, under cover of
religious authority, the Church came to exer
cise for five hundred years the chief power.
The Empire fought the battles of the Papacy
and kept the peoples in check.
But apart from this universal and oftentimes
enforced dominance of the Papacy, there was
also, by common consent, a very general su
premacy of the priesthood throughout all
lands. The priests were the learned men
wherever there was any learning. They were
the wise men wherever there was any wis
dom. They were the able men for all kinds
of affairs. Hence, they rose easily and natu
rally to every kind of eminence among their
contemporaries. The universities were in
their hands. They established and presided
over the schools. They were the writers and
the statesmen of their time, and it was not
until the invention of the art of printing that
their dominance in Europe was or could have
been broken. Indeed, long after that they

RELIGIOUS VALUE OF STUDY OF HISTORY. 3
held control of the universities of the world,
had almost exclusive possession of its learn
ing, and were the tutors and guardians of its
princes. As late as the seventeenth century
France was ruled by a priest — the ablest and
most magnificent ruler she ever had in fact,
either before or after. It was Richelieu, the
Cardinal, that actually gave France her su
premacy in the councils of Europe in his own
day, and prepared the way and made possible
her achievements and glory under Louis
XIV., the " Grand Monarch." So also in
England, only a century before, a priest,
Cardinal Woolsey, had been the first to see
the need of a new policy for England, and had
created such a policy, both domestic and
foreign, which has continued to this day, and
served the purpose of laying, deep and
strong, the foundation for the Tudor suc
cesses, and by his statesmanlike conduct in
matters of education gave a mighty impulse
to the future greatness of England, which
has not yet spent itself.
The study of history is, of course, the study
of the story of man, that is to say, of the
whole course of his progress and develop
ment, his civilization, Christianization. It in
volves a study of his languages, customs, laws,
his literature, his art, and his sciences, his

4 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
philosophies and his religions. Man's his
tory is the history of his intellectual, moral
and spiritual development; not simply the
history of his wars, of the rise and fall of dy
nasties, of the intrigues of courts and the tri
umphs of armies. Those events used to con
stitute the greater part of what was called
history. It was supposed that history was
played out upon the narrow stage of the
king's palace and the battlefield; and books
that professed to deal with history were
largely confined to describing the life of the
court. They told us what were the personal
habits of the monarch ; who were the officers
of state who surrounded him ; how they minis
tered unto his convenience and amusement.
His receptions, levees, banquets and prog
resses through his kingdom were all elabor
ately described ; so that until recently the an
nals of history were a kind of court calendar,
all taken up with kings and queens, princes
and princesses, with dukes and duchesses,
with lords and knights and ladies, glitter and
glare and fashion, silks and velvets, satins
and furs, gold and diamonds, ivory and pearls.
It was one long-drawn panorama of stately
personages and puppets, who wore crowns
and sat on thrones and carried gold, silver or
ivory sticks, who rode on splendidly capari-

RELIGIOUS VALUE OF STUDY OF HISTORY. 5
soned steeds in coats of mail, with great
swords in their hands, or were drawn about
in chariots of ivory and gold by half a score of
milk-white horses. Occasionally the tedium
and monotony of this Arabian Nights show
was broken by the sound of the trumpet, the
clang of arms and the tramp of multitudes of
men ; and that in time was followed by a great
slaughter of the menials and servants of the
high and mighty rulers and who otherwise
were not considered worthy of so much as
mention in comparison with the grand and
gorgeous courts; but who, in time of battle,
were brought out and marshaled on the plains
to fight its battles and sustain its dignities
and powers.
When I speak of history, I do not refer to
the stage pageantry of courts, nor to the
ghastly horrors of the battlefields, which made
up the life of kings; but rather to the quiet,
steady, sober, somewhat unobtrusive life of
humanity, which flowed on outside the palace
precincts, often in spite of the palace influ
ences, and not infrequently tended to the de
feat and overthrow of the forces within the
palace itself, which sought to check and sup
press it. The history of the world is the his
tory of man in all the stages of his progress
and in all the tendencies and purposes of his

6 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
life. It is a stream that began low down and
rose higher with passing years. It is the
stream of the life of the whole people, not of
any particular few, be they never so great or
powerful or grand. As it goes on, it creates
institutions for itself, and then submerges
them as they decline to conform to its pur
poses, and demolishes them as they prove
inadequate to its demands. The pageantry
of courts is only one of these institutions.
Seen in the light of this age, such parades are
puppet shows; and the books that chronicle
them are to us no better than works of fiction
or the plays of a dramatist, so far as instruc
tion or inspiration is concerned. They read
well and are extremely interesting, but they
do not convey to us any adequate impression
of the times or inform us about the things we
need to know.
If you would know the history of any peo
ple you must go down among the people and
study them in their homes, their workshops,
their offices and stores and schools. The gov
ernment and the legislature are only two de
partments of a people's life. They represent
the people's relation to other peoples and their
internal state of order and freedom. But the
real life of the people is underneath all that
and upholds it. Their industries, their arts,

RELIGIOUS VALUE OF STUDY OF HISTORY. 7
their activities, their hopes and fears, their
struggles, their successes and failures, their
character, are the underlying basis upon
which ultimately all other things must rest;
the moulding and determining forces of gov
ernment and legislature alike, so that when
we come to study history in any true sense,
we are studying human nature — human na
ture at home and abroad — human nature in
all its activities, in all its phases. We are
studying character in the best possible way —
character in its living relations, not only as
it now is, but as it has been, and as it has been
from the beginning and always, in actual con
ditions, in circumstances that have actually
existed. The value of this sort of study is its
help to understand humanity. There is no
such help to the knowledge of men as a study
of those men who, in every variety and phase
of human life, and with every possible motive
to action, have lived out their lives on a great
scale and left us the whole, with its results,
to observe. The reading of fiction is sup
posed to serve this purpose, and when it is
good, healthful reading, it is beneficial in its
revelations of character. A writer like Dick
ens, who takes single traits of character and
studies them in the large and presents them

8 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
isolated and alone, personifying separate
traits in single individuals and setting them
over against each other, unmodified and un
relieved by modifying traits, has done a great
service to mankind by making good traits
attractive and evil ones repulsive. Still, even
of novels, it is true that many of the best of
them are historical novels, as are some of
Scott and Victor Hugo. The dramatist also
finds his greatest field in history. It is the
great stage on which great minds find room
adequately to stretch themselves ; and there is
no field of romance ever created in the brain
of the dreamer of fiction that can compare for
a moment with the field of history for great
themes, great characters, great occasions,
startling situations and marvelous occur
rences. The religious value of such a study is seen
at once when you consider how large a place
religion has played in the life of the world.
Recall how large a portion of the Bible is
historical. At least twenty-one books of the
Bible, making in all a good third of its con
tents, are historical books. The first ten
books of the Old Testament are among the
earliest history we have, and they are still the
most reliable, valuable and satisfactory rec
ords of those early times. The discoveries of

RELIGIOUS VALUE OF STUDY OF HISTORY. 9
ancient ruins in which are records on stones
have served only to corroborate these ancient
documents. The first five books in the New Testa
ment also are historical books. Any extended
study of the Scriptures of the Old or New
Testaments must of necessity involve a study
of history; and the reason for this is not
hard to find, for history is in the last analysis
God's way with man. It is a record and
a revelation of His laws for man. It is a
living illustration and demonstration of the
moral order. God's moral laws are seen in
history just as His physical laws are seen
in nature. The laws of nature are the laws
of God for organic and inorganic substances.
The moral laws are the laws of God for moral
beings. History shows the application and
the working out of these laws among men.
In those civilizations that have perished, the
empires that have dissolved and peoples that
have disappeared from off the face of the
earth, we trace in their rise and fall the causes
of their success and of their failure. The su
premacy of Greece, and afterwards of Rome,
for several centuries is seen to be due to the
qualities which in early and simple times min
istered to the growth of both peoples in
physical endurance, in mental force and vigor,

IO STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
and in moral purity and power. So, also,
with increasing prosperity, came the same
causes of disintegration and final dissolution.
Wealth gave leisure and leisure was turned to
idleness and idleness begat self-indulgence
and self-indulgence provoked vice and crime ;
and so corruption set in and undermined
the whole fabric of the national life. Once
moral vigor and integrity lost, the way was
open for the inroads of every form of decay.
Mental weakness soon followed and physical
degeneracy was not far behind, so that the
whole magnificent structures of Alexander's
and of Cassar's empires collapsed from pre
cisely the same causes — the loss of a real
manhood and a true character on the part of
the people. The laws of God concerning man
as a moral being are thus shown to us on a
large scale through the rise and fall of em
pires. Let us look now at the value of this kind of
study in some of its details. Let me name, in
the first place, the religious value of the study
of history in this, namely :
I. It takes one out of his present surround
ings and sets him down in the midst of af
fairs that have no immediate personal relation
to him, but which awaken his interest and ap
peal to his judgment. In that way he learns

RELIGIOUS VALUE OF STUDY OF HISTORY. II
to take an intellectual rather than an emo
tional interest in human affairs and to judge
candidly and impartially of persons, events,
motives and purposes. As we see things in
the present they have personal relations to
ourselves; they enlist our sympathies and
arouse our feelings, so that the judgment is
more or less obscured and prejudice is likely
to be aroused. This is manifest in all politi
cal and religious discussions.. Here we are
partisans, and the party slogan stirs the blood
to fever heat, so that the intellect and judg
ment are in abeyance for the time and preju
dice and passion rule supreme; or the appeal
is made to the party shibboleth and self-inter
est is aroused, and the judgment is warped
and conscience silenced, so that our personal
relations to affairs in the present often act to
raise us to the fever heat of passion or to chill
us to the freezing point of fear. But in study
ing these same problems in history we are
taken out of ourselves, as it were, and so the
personal element is removed and the bound
aries of self-interest, of prejudice and of pas
sion are transcended. We are thus able to
see clearly, to judge calmly, and to form
righteous judgments ; and that is a clear gain
to one's moral and religious nature, for it
helps to cultivate in him a sense of justice, of

12 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
righteousness, and of truth. It gives him a
sort of standard with which to compare things
in the present and helps to educate in him the
habit and use of impartial and dispassionate
judgment. It gives him precedents, as it were,
to go by. He knows when others have made
mistakes; he sees where were the slippery
places in the lives of others ; and is thus better
able to detect and avoid them when they
arise in his own course. He has learned to
condemn evil in others, and he can scarcely
condone it now in himself. He has learned to
admire courage and heroism in others, and
he will scarcely endure cowardice and sordid
ness. He has seen how in the long run evil
courses had miserable, even tragic, ends, and
how at last righteousness brings its blessed
rewards. And so he learns to be patient and
steadfast and enduring in the midst of storm
and tempest, in which all things rock.
II. Again, the study of history helps us to
estimate the relative value of present things
and so to distinguish the permanent from the
transient elements of life that we are not likely
to confuse them.
There are always these two elements pres
ent in every course of life; but it is not al
ways easy to distinguish between them. It is
this fact that creates confusion so often and

RELIGIOUS VALUE OF STUDY OF HISTORY. 1 3
makes it so difficult to decide in every ques
tion of alternatives which course to pursue,
which party to espouse, which cause to advo
cate in any particular case. As between a
good and an evil, we naturally desire to
choose the good; but how are we always to
know what is good? Of two evils, choose the
least ; but who is to decide which is the least ?
And good men, sincere men, are found on
both sides of every question. Men of char
acter and men of ability are pitted against
each other; and there is no doubt as to their
sincerity and loyalty to their convictions.
And how are you to account for it? It is man
ifest that they cannot both be right ; one must
be right and the other must be wrong. There
can be no moral distinction drawn between
the men. They are equally sincere and earn
est. But there is a moral distinction in their
positions, and what is the explanation of it?
The difference is an intellectual one. One
man has learned how rightly to estimate the
value of the question at issue, to distinguish
between its permanent and transient features,
and so he takes his stand on the ground of
the principle that is at stake and proceeds
according to the expediency of the case. The
other man does not distinguish between what
is expedient and what is necessary, and so he

14 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
gets tangled up in 'a web of sophisms which
he mistakes for principles. He mistakes, for
instance, the principle for the method. Be
cause there is but one principle, he argues
that there is but one way to secure that prin
ciple; so he confounds the method with the
principle, the expedient with the necessary,
and lays his emphasis on the wrong point.
The difficulty, I repeat, is an intellectual one.
He is not thinking clearly or straight. His in
tellectual processes have become entangled
and involved in a maze of difficulties. Thus
it is that so many events that seem of supreme
importance to some persons seem of so little
importance to others.
Some people think a principle is at stake
when nothing but a question of expediency or
of method is at issue. Many persons, for in
stance, declare the Constitution of the United
States to be endangered when nothing but
a question of governmental policy is under
discussion ; and so they take alarm at nothing
and are affrighted at spectres. Again, we hear
it declared that the truth is imperilled be
cause certain novel and hitherto unheard-of
views of the truth are being advanced. Men
do not distinguish in such cases between the
permanent and the transient. Truth is per
manent; it cannot be imperilled. Opinions
and views of things, whether they be old or

RELIGIOUS VALUE OF STUDY OF HISTORY. IS
new, are transient. And it is the truth that
threatens them, not they that threaten the
truth. Shallow and weak-minded persons who
do not know the course of religious thought
are taken captive by false religious teachings,
and men who are easily led about and swayed
by every wind of doctrine fall an easy prey
to fanciful and mystical views of things, from
which a Jittle knowledge of history could have
saved them. Ancient and long-exploded false
hoods are always being unearthed and their
skeletons dragged from their tombs or their
shades evoked and conjured with, even as
dead and Oriental philosophies now reappear
as Theosophy, Christian Science and Faith
Healing. Any one who knows the history of
thought knows that these are but the wraith
of long-buried philosophies, articulated and
galvanized anew and sent forth under a new
name to deceive the ignorant and unwary. A
student of history should not be deceived by
them. It is a mere question of time before
the truth overcomes the falsehood and drives
it in shame out of the world.
"Truth forever on the scaffold;
Wrong forever on the throne.
Yet the scaffold rules the future,
And behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow,
Keeping watch above His own."

1 6 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
That is the lesson that history teaches with
reference to all right and all true things. The
very stars in their courses fight against evil
and falsehood, and there is no question what
ever about the final victory. Or, take the
Bible, as an instance. Consternation is con
stantly being caused among faithful and con
servative Christians because of a new view
or method of treating the Bible, and the cry
goes up from conscientious and loyal souls
that the authority of the Bible is menaced
and its influence is being destroyed. And so
they hastened to take up cudgels in defense of
the Bible. And with what result? namely:
That they have disclosed at once the weakness
of their position, which is not so much a zeal
for the Bible as it is for some traditional or
particular view of the Bible. A little knowl
edge of history would have disclosed to them
that the Bible is not in any danger. Why ! the
Bible has stood every kind of test that can
possibly be applied to it. It has been under
fire ever since it has been a book. It was
burned in the third century as a book of black
arts, and for almost a thousand years the men
whose business it was to teach it and preach it
forbade its use to the people and made it a
capital crime for any but a priest to be found
with one in his possession. Men, women and

RELIGIOUS VALUE OF STUDY OF HISTORY. 1 7
children have been slain and burned and
drowned by the thousand all over Europe for
having Bibles in their possession or even hear
ing them read. And yet what was the first
book printed on a printing press after the art
of printing was invented but a Bible — the
most hated and most forbidden book of
those days. And whereas other books
which men valued and treasured above all
others and endeavored to preserve have
been irretrievably lost, this book has been
preserved to us through all kinds of op
position, and danger, too! If you had read
history you would know that you cannot
imperil the Bible, and neither can you de
stroy it. It has a self-preserving, self-prop
agating power, a kind of elastic and buoyant
quality that insures it against all persecution
and conflict.' Whatever is opposed to it and
whatever it condemns is bound sooner or
later to come to naught.
Now you may try to explain this on any
ground you please. It is the clear teaching
of history that the Bible not only cannot
be destroyed, but it cannot be imperilled,
for the more it is condemned, criticised,
ridiculed and forbidden, the faster it spreads
and the more deeply it takes hold on the
hearts of men. It teaches us to estimate

1 8 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
events at their true value — many events
which seem of the utmost importance while
they are taking place, but are soon forgotten
and occupy so small a place in the after ac
counts of the times. Why, the conflicts and
controversies and contentions which often
so deeply agitated the minds of men, excite
now only a passing interest in the student,
if indeed they ever come to his notice at all.
They were but petty, transient and insignifi
cant matters whose results were not worth
recording, and which failed to leave any per
manent impression on the general course of
events. It is thus also that men who figure
large in their own times are often forgotten
as soon as the earth closes over them, while
many a comparatively unknown man in his
day comes to have an importance to after ages
out of all proportion to the position which he
held in his own. He was a man of permanent
significance, while the other was a transient
meteor on the firmament of his age.
III. The study of history furnishes us with
the only possible field for the study of human
nature on a large scale and in all its possible
phases. It sets before us not only the actions
of men, but their motives for such actions, and
the consequences that flowed from them, and
thus, by demonstration, enables us to see what

RELIGIOUS VALUE OF STUDY OF HISTORY. 1 9
courses of life are good and what are evil ; what
are desirable and what are undesirable; what
are safe and beneficent, what unsafe and de
structive ; what is the way up in life and what is
the way down in life. Human nature remains
the same in all ages, in all its essential quali
ties, motives, passions, and powers. The
customs, languages, laws and conditions of
men change. Civilizations advance, knowl
edge grows, wealth and luxury increase, the
advantages and blessings of life multiply.
Under these advancements human nature im
proves and rises, becomes more refined and
cultivated, more intelligent and enlightened,
more noble, more divine. But through all
these changes the essential human qualities —
the qualities which have brought civilization
out of savagery, knowledge out of ignorance,
refinement out of gross animalism, and moral
and spiritual conditions of life out of grovel
ing sensualism; and those qualities which,
working in the opposite directions, have
wrought destructive decay and death, have
destroyed men, have ruined peoples, have dis
integrated empires — these same qualities are
still seen to be at work in and among the men
of this age, and by knowing what they have
done we can predict what they will do. Cer
tain laws of action are discovered in the af-

20 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
fairs of life which may be formulated and
trusted with the same accuracy and certainty
as the laws that govern the stars in their
courses or govern the tides in their ebb and
flow. There is a modern objection to the study of
history based upon the intensely practical na
ture of modern life, and the superiority of our
conditions to those of any other age. " Why
should we," asks the objector, " bother our
selves about the quarrels, the contentions, the
follies and the foibles, the struggles and the
battles, of our ancestors. Their hatreds, prej
udices and ideals are not ours; we have long
since outgrown them. Their quarrels are not
our quarrels, neither are their struggles our
struggles. Life is a processional, not a reces
sional. We should look forward, not back
ward, even as we think forward and work for
ward and not backward. Our look should
always be ahead with our face towards the fu
ture. The world is in the period of its youth ;
and it is not characteristic of a vigorous and
growing youth to fall into reminiscence and
grow pensive. The reminiscent stage of life
comes last and is characteristic of old age.
Let us, then, give our attention to the pres
ent and the future, which peremptorily de
mand our attention. Science, art, business

RELIGIOUS VALUE OF STUDY OF HISTORY. 21
and politics — these are the sufficient and all-
engrossing employments of the men of our
age. Let us, then, relegate history to the
lumber room of the past, where it belongs.
Let the dead past bury its dead, while we
" rise on stepping stones of our dead selves to
higher things."
" Not backward are our glances bent,
But onward to our Father's house."
All that sounds well and seems to be in
keeping with the modern spirit -of evolution
and progress ; but a little closer look will con
vince us, I think, that there is a grave error
underlying any such position, which renders
it utterly untenable, and it is this, namely, that
evolution and progress are possible only on
the condition that there has been a past, and
that the best of that past is possessed and pre
served by us. Of course, such possession and
preservation are possible only on the basis of
knowledge. Every science proceeds upon the
basis of its own history, and has for its study
a careful and minute investigation of the
course it has taken, no less than a close observ
ance of the field in which it is now working.
Leave out the past of astronomy, chemistry,
biology or any other modern science and you
leave out a large part of its most important

2 2 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
knowledge and results. It is only as a knowl
edge of the past of any art is preserved to us
that its present prosecution is possible; and
he who would use an art to its best effects
must possess a comprehensive and detailed
knowledge of its past.
The same is true of the manner and method
of all life. History, like Scripture, is writ
ten for our learning, that we, through the pa
tience and achievements of the past, may have
diligence in the present and hope of the fu
ture. It is a great thing to have a past, to
be the heir of a noble race; to know that there
runs in your veins the blood of heroes, of mar
tyrs, of patriots, and of saints; to feel the
throb of noble hearts through a long line of
unselfish and benevolent ancestry. If one
have any manhood or nobility in him, it will
surely be quickened into newness of life and
thrilled by an irresistible impulse to high re
solves and noble deeds, when he knows that
he is the offspring of those who laid down
their lives for God and truth and the freedom
of their conscience. That is the inheritance
which is " undefiled and that fadeth not
away." And we of this age and land, who hold the
Christian faith in simplicity with a pure heart
and an untrammelled conscience, are the off-

RELIGIOUS VALUE OF STUDY OF HISTORY. 23
spring of those who, in times past, passed
through fire and flood, through imprison
ments and persecutions ; lost houses and lands,
forsook their homes and friends, the loved
scenes of their childhood, the beloved fellow
ships of mature life, and either laid down
their lives for conscience' sake, or became vol
untary exiles in strange lands or faced the
dangers of primeval forests, inhabited by wild
beasts and savage men. The struggle for re
ligious liberty comprises the most heroic, the
most brilliant, the most inspiring chapters of
human history, from the days of the earliest
martyr, Socrates. And those who bear the
name of Protestant in this age are the legiti
mate heirs of these men. Their noble lives,
their heroic deeds, their immortal achieve
ments, are ours. They are our spiritual an
cestors. Their faith, their courage, their
dauntless perseverance, are our ensample in
all high-hearted and noble living. How can
the descendants of such men be pusillanimous,
craven or sordid? How can they grovel and
wallow in the mire that seems to be the na
tive element of those only whose ancestors
stoned the prophets and burned the martyrs?
How can we who know at what price our
liberties were bought for us ever betray such
a trust as that ? Let him who can answer, for
I cannot.

24 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
In the brief course of lectures that are to
follow on Sunday evenings I purpose to treat
of those pages of such memorials as are cov
ered by the title, "The Struggle for Re
ligious Liberty " in England, Germany, Italy
and the Netherlands, confining our attention
mainly to the period of the fifteenth and six
teenth centuries. It will embrace the times
of the Reformation as they are illustrated for
us by the names of Wyclif, Savonarola, Lu
ther and William of Orange. These men are
for us in this connection that " Choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars
And with their mild persistence urge man's search
to vaster issues."

LECTURE I.
GENERAL CONDITION OF EUROPE ON THE EVE OF
THE REFORMATION.
Let me suggest at the outset that the
struggle for religious liberty and what is
known as the Reformation are not in all re
spects identical movements. The Reforma
tion was a great tidal wave which swept over
Europe in the sixteenth century, out of the
vast and troubled sea of the centuries whose
waters had always been greatly agitated by
the struggle for religious liberty. It was the
culmination of that struggle. It asserted the
fundamental principles upon which that
struggle had proceeded, and succeeded in lay
ing broad and secure foundations upon which
true religious liberty could be built; but it
left some of the higher standards and finer
ideals unattained. In that respect there is
much yet to be desired.
In view of the fact that the Reformation
split Europe into two great warring religious
camps, it is necessary to remind ourselves
that up to that time there had been but one

2 6 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
Christian Church in Western Europe. And
the struggle for religious liberty had gone on
within that church and not outside of it, nor
against it, after the first three centuries.
Whatever glory and whatever shame at
tached to that church during the first fifteen
centuries is shared equally by us all, Protes
tants and Roman Catholics alike. The Ref
ormation itself originated within the Roman
Catholic Church and was led by men bred in
her schools and cloisters. We should also
remember that the Roman Catholic Church
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is not
the Roman Catholic Church of the twentieth
century and in the United States.
From a very early age religious differences
have engendered strife and stirred the most
violent passions of men. Although the Jews
tasted the bitterness of persecution, that did
jnot prevent them from pressing the same cup
to the lips of the early Christians, and, with
the aid of the Romans, making them drink it
to its dregs.
Then were written the first pages in the
most sanguinary and thrilling story — a story
of unutterable suffering and grim endurance
for conscience' sake — which history's pages
record. It can scarcely be called a struggle.
It was as impossible for the obscure and de-

EUROPE ON EVE OF THE REFORMATION. 27
fenceless sufferers to resist their enemies as
for a fly to resist the hand that crushes it.
Judged from appearances, it was a remorse
less massacre, which crushed its victims into
the earth. But the real forces that were
working out the problem were not on the
surface. The odds against which the early
Christians were matched drove them to seek
refuge in the mountain fastnesses and in the
subterranean caverns known as catacombs.
Here they cherished their faith and worship
until the violence of their enemies abated.
After two centuries they came forth from
their hiding places, disciplined by hardship,
trained to prudence and foresight by the peril
in which they had lived, and with a compact
and efficient organization. Their leaders had
improved their long seclusion to cultivate let
ters and arts and soon took leading places
among scholars and men of affairs; so that
when Constantine succeeded to the undivided
possession of supreme power in the Roman
Empire, prudence, if not preference, moved
him to an alliance with them.
Then began a new phase in the struggle
for religious liberty. The despised and per
secuted Christians, now risen to places of
power and possessing the throne in the per
son of the Emperor, did not abuse their trust.

28 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
Such was the spirit of sweet reasonableness
which animated them that the first Christian
emperor issued an edict of religious tolera
tion, known as the Edict of Milan, which
granted religious liberty within the empire
on the basis of the sacred rights of con
science; only those religious rites were pro
hibited which involved immorality, magic or
sorcery. Not until the fatal passion for
power had been aroused in them by its pos
session did the Christians resort to persecu
tion. The organization of the Christian
Church kept pace with its spread in Europe.
From Rome as a center the missionaries
penetrated to all parts of Europe. They car
ried with them the love of the mother church
from which they went and bound the churches
which they planted to her in gratitude and
Christian fellowship. The confidence and af
fection which she won by her generosity and
self-sacrifice in the Gospel, she soon came to
demand as her right, and when at length the
Bishop of Rome secured the political power
of his city, he aspired to make the traditional
capital of the world its ecclesiastical capital
also; then, with the policy of military Rome,
the Christian Church adopted also the ambi
tions and relentless spirit of the Caesars.
Ecclesiastical Rome usurped the rights of

EUROPE ON EVE OF THE REFORMATION. 29
mankind and perverted their liberties as ruth
lessly as did political Rome.
Through successive stages the Church
mounted to the throne of its power until it
was more absolute than the empire had ever
essayed to be. Men like Gregory the Great,
Leo III and Hildebrand made the most as
tonishing claims to absolute supremacy in
human affairs, and treated with the utmost
severity all who withstood their claims. Un
availing protests against their astounding pre
tensions were raised by men like John Scotus,
Abelard, Arnold of Brescia and Wyclif; and
in the humbler walks of life opposition
showed itself in such sects as the Albigenses
and the Waldenses, neither of which desired
to separate itself from the Catholic Church.
Both of them desired that its pretension
should be moderated and its abuses re
formed according to the Scriptural require
ments of apostolic simplicity and purity.
These men were simple-minded and their
lives were pure, but they were subjected to
the most remorseless persecution. Their
heroic endurance and unfaltering faith have
covered their memory with a halo of glory
like unto that which surrounds the early
Christian martyrs. During the massacre of
the Albigenses was born the order of the

30 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
Dominicans, into whose hands was intrusted
the institution known as the Inquisition, the
most diabolical engine of intolerance and per
secution that human ingenuity ever devised.
It is the fate of all despotisms to work their
own destruction by a fatal disregard of the
limits of human endurance, and when the
papacy added the horrors of the Inquisition
to the usurpation of the most sacred of hu
man rights, and aggravated her offenses by
the flagrant immorality of the clergy, she
transcended her limits and invoked the long
slumbering and now accumulated wrath of
centuries, which burst forth in the Reforma
tion, disrupted her solid empire and caused
her the loss of two-thirds of her spiritual
children. Two great movements in the Middle Ages
contributed to hasten the triumph of relig
ious liberty in Europe. They were the Cru
sades and the Renaissance. The religious
enthusiasm of Europe, dormant for centuries,
was kindled by the fiery eloquence of Peter
the Hermit as he preached a crusade against
the " infidel Turks " for the purpose of rescu
ing the Holy Sepulcher from their hands. It
was as when a door is suddenly opened into
a house where a fire has long been smolder
ing, smothered in its own smoke, the whole

EUROPE ON EVE OF THE REFORMATION. 3 1
building is wrapped in a sudden conflagra
tion; or, as when a volcano long extinct
bursts into sudden activity. A spontaneous
uprising, as of one man, unparalleled in his
tory, took place among all classes of people.
Kings and peasants, priests and lawyers,
merchants and bankers, were swept by the
same mighty impulse and fired by the same
zeal, which for the time burned alike in every
breast and submerged calculations and self-
interest. All alike were moved to venture
life and fortune in the holy cause.
During the space of two hundred years,
seven upheavals of the populations took place
known as the Crusades, five of them prodig
ious and two of them only relatively lesser,
all of them mighty. Before the frenzy kin
dled by Peter the Hermit died out immense
treasure was squandered, multitudes of lives
were sacrificed and apparently nothing ac
complished; total and disastrous failure
seemed to attend it all.
But here again we are mistaken if we judge
by appearances. For although the Crusaders
whitened the plains of Asia Minor with their
bones and dyed the grass of Northern Africa
with their blood without achieving any per
manent results in either Asia or Africa, their
exodus from Europe and their return to

32 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
their former homes were attended by conse
quences in Europe far greater than would
have been the conquest of all the East and
the rescue of the relics of all the saints.
In the first place, they had broken the
power of the Saracens by successive impacts
upon them, by prolonged conflict with them.
They had fought fire with fire. Religious
fanaticism was matched against religious
fanaticism, and it inflicted such punishment
upon the rapacious and cruel Mussulman that
he has never been able to rally from it. Al
though he reached the shores of Europe later
on, he was exhausted with the struggle and
has continued in a state of languishing im-
potency ever since.
In the second place, the Crusades had a
marked and lasting effect upon the Crusad
ers themselves, and in spite of their suffer
ing' and losses the gain was greater than
the loss, for it brought them into direct
and immediate contact with the East, at that
time the cultivated and refined portion of
the world. Constantinople and Antioch,
the two great storehouses of ancient art
and learning, and the centers of the wealth
and culture of the East, had become familiar
to them. Antioch was for a time in their
hands. The splendid buildings, fine fabrics,

EUROPE ON EVE OF THE REFORMATION. 33
beautiful statues, costly gems, were a revela
tion to the Crusaders, and served as ob
ject lessons; while the elegant refinements,
splendid courtesy, magnificent manners and
ancient learning of the East were not without
their effect upon the coarse, rude and un
tamed barbarians of the West. Those who
survived the conflict returned with new ideas
of the character of the world in which they
lived, of the meaning of civilization, of the
possibilities of humanity, and of the defects
of Europe. They had been to school and
had traveled. Their view of life had been
broadened and their minds enriched by con
tact with superior conditions of life and a
great mental and moral revolution had been
wrought in them.
But the Crusades had also an immediate
and lasting effect upon Europe itself. For
by enlisting in the Crusades the serf bought
his freedom from the soil. The debtor was
freed from his creditor. He that went out a
slave came back a free man, with gold coin
in his pocket and some new ideas of the world
in his head. Serfdom and slavery were prac
tically abolished in Europe. The cities also
had been able, by immense sums of money
paid to the hereditary princes, who held
lordship over them, to buy their freedom

34 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
and secure charters for themselves which
made them independent of the control of
petty rulers; and by the long absence of the
nobles in the East, the middle classes had
learned to administer their own affairs, and
so the backbone of the feudal system was
broken and the period of freedom and en
lightenment came in. Modern industrialism
was inaugurated. New ideas sprang up and
a redistribution of wealth and privileges took
place, together with a new sense of their own
place in the world and new wants and ambi
tions in the common people. The immediate
results to Europe of the Crusades were in
calculable. A new spirit of humanity and of
enterprise, of hope and of ambition, had
sprung up, and the death warrant was signed
of the ancient regime of ignorance, supersti
tion and terror which had reigned for a
thousand years.
The second great movement that hastened
the final conflict for religious liberty was the
Renaissance, or revival of learning, in Europe,
which followed upon the taking of Constan
tinople by the Turks in 1453. That was a
momentous event for Western Europe. It
sent hundreds of Greek scholars and literati
to find refuge in the West. The learning and
the manuscripts which they brought with

EUROPE ON EVE OF THE REFORMATION. 3 J
them created a great stir. Schools, academies
and universities sprang up everywhere, and
the Church ceased to be the sole custodian of
knowledge. It was as a part of that move
ment that the University of Wittenberg was
established by the Elector of Saxony, to
which one Martin Luther came in 1508 as
preacher and professor of theology. We
shall hear more about that later on. A spirit
of inquiry was awakened, investigations were
instituted and historical and scientific studies
were taken up in real earnest. The cold and
lifeless formalism that had characterized the
logic of the Schoolmen disappeared. The
study of the Greek and Roman classics be
came a passion. Princes and potentates vied
with one another in securing eminent scholars
and elegant literati to adorn their courts ; and
the rich and the great became the profuse
patrons of learning and spared no pains and
no expense in collecting manuscripts and
creating libraries and schools of learning.
The minds of men already liberated from
their ancient thraldom by the Crusades were
quickened and enlightened by the new learn
ing, which soon spread among all classes of
the people.
In addition to these great movements, and
perhaps as a consequence of them, was the

36 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
spirit of adventure which now broke out
simultaneously in Italy and Spain, France and
England, Germany and Holland. Inspired
by Columbus, a native of Genoa, Italy, hun
dreds of adventurers braved the perils of the
untraversed seas in search of new lands or
new passages to the East. New continents
were discovered and the globe was circum
navigated. Invention also was quickened,
printing by movable types and the manufac
ture of paper from rags had but recently been
invented. The mariner's compass came into
general use in navigation. The telescope was
invented and the heavens explored for new
worlds, as the seas for new lands. The whole
period was one of unprecedented mental ac
tivity and ferment. Copernicus, by his new
system of astronomy, and Kepler, by his laws,
were soon revolutionizing astronomy.
All of these things had their effects upon
the minds of men. The discovery of the size
and shape of the earth, and its relation to
other bodies in space as well as of the im
mense distances in the heavens and the vast
systems of worlds in space; the changes of
men's ideas as to the center of the universe
and the revelation that it was not the earth,
but that the earth was only an insignificant
member of a system whose center was the

EUROPE ON EVE OF THE REFORMATION. 37
sun — all served to teach men the uncer
tainty and instability of things they had
been accustomed to regard as established
beyond the peradventure of doubt, and led
them to expect and prepared them to receive
changes in other spheres of thought and
realms of life. A spirit of skepticism became
general and invaded even the Church, and
everything seemed to converge upon and con
spire toward a single point, until nothing
could withstand the conjunction of forces
which worked to free the human mind from
bondage and the human spirit from thral
dom. How this struggle culminated in the Refor
mation and worked itself free at last we shall
see in succeeding lectures. Suffice it to say,
in closing, that the greatest blessings we now
possess, the sanctity of our homes, our per
sonal security "and freedom, and the right
to make the most of ourselves, have been se
cured to us as the result of that world-long
struggle for religious liberty. The freedom
of the press, the right of every man to wor
ship God in his own way, the democratic
principles of government, the right of a man
as such, regardless of his place or position in
the social scale, or of his worldly possessions,
and the demand for absolute justice for all

38 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
men, equality irrespective of race, sex or con
dition of life — these and many of the great
principles now taking front rank among the
objects devotedly to be sought in the twenti
eth century have been made possible to us by
the Reformation.
Beginning with the struggle for religious
liberty, that struggle ran on to compass the
liberty of the whole man, and was destined
not to stop until he was every whit free. It
has already secured for us the liberty of con
science, the right of private judgment, polit
ical and personal freedom. But the end is not
yet, and what it shall be no man knoweth.
But as great and good men as ever fought in
any cause fight still in these ranks, which are
constantly increasing in numbers, in resolute
ness, and in power.

LECTURE II.
THE STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN ENG
LAND  WYCLIF TO CROMWELL.
The English Reformation divides itself nat
urally into three parts :
(i) From the days of Wyclif to those of
Henry VIII., a period of about 150 years, or,
in round numbers, from 1360 to 1530. That
was a time of preparation.
(2) Then came a period of 120 years, or
from 1530 to 1650; or from the act of the
Royal Supremacy in England to the death of
Charles I., when the fight of the Reformation
was actually joined and its various parties
were locked in the death grapple for the mas
tery; and
(3) The period from 1650 to 1688, when
William of Orange landed and took posses
sion of the crown, the final settlement upon
an unassailable foundation of the actual work
of the Reformation.
The results were: (1) the separation of
England from the Papal See and its independ
ence of all foreign power; (2) the establish-

40 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
ment of the right of every man to worship
God according to the dictates of his own
conscience, without fear of molestation from
civil or ecclesiastical authority ; (3) the secur
ing of freedom for the individual conscience
from all priestly intermeddling of any sort
whatsoever; (4) the purging of the national
church from superstitious practices, idola
trous worship and pagan doctrines; (5) the
introduction of the use of the Scriptures as
the basis of faith and practice and as the final
court of appeal in all matters of doctrine; (6)
the translation of the Scriptures into the ver
nacular, and their distribution among the
people, to be read without note or comment
or any form of priestly prohibition.
The actual events of the English Reforma
tion lie within a period of about three hun
dred years, between the dates 1360 and 1660,
to put it in round numbers. To England be
longs the credit for the origin of the Refor
mation movement, and there its best results
were secured. But the struggle was more
prolonged in England and was less violent
and dramatic than on the Continent. The
heroic figure of Luther and the swift, violent,
decisive character of the movement which he
led have given to that phase of the Reforma
tion a prominence and a fascination possessed

ENGLAND  WYCLIF TO CROMWELL. 4 1
by no other, so that we usually speak of the
whole movement as the German Reforma
tion; but it was from England that Luther
received his first impulse to his work. The
writings of Wyclif had reached him by way
of Bohemia through John Huss, the Bohe
mian martyr ; and Luther never went quite so
far in his work as Wyclif did in his.
The Struggle for Religious Liberty in Eng
land is the subject of our reflections this even
ing. Great events move slowly and cast their
shadows long before them. Wise and far-see
ing minds are able to discern their coming
from afar and to herald their approach.
Great and noble spirits contribute to hasten
their coming and often precipitate the events
themselves. In England, in the fourteenth
century, the ecclesiastical heavens were over
cast with dark and ominous portents. The
lightnings were playing along the horizon,
and the deep-toned thunders were rolling
which threatened a storm, distant as yet, but
approaching and increasing in anger and
violence as it moved. We hear its first deep
muttering in the early English literature.
William Langland, in his vision, " Piers the
Ploughman," inveighs against the worldliness,
the hypocrisy and the immoralities of the

42 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
monks, declares popes' pardons to be of small
value, and exhorts men to lead righteous and
pure lives. Chaucer, in his " Canterbury
Tales," pilloried the mendicant orders in the
" Pardoner," who comes from Rome laden
with relics and wallet,
" Brim full of pardons come from Rome all hot,"
and who confesses that he preaches against
" avarice and such cursedness," not in order
that he may correct sin, but in order that men
may give their pence unto him, for his object
is to win. He heaps his scorn on the higher
clergy, and in contrast draws a picture of a
simple, faithful parish priest, rich in holy
thought and work.
Eminent scholars and investigators de
parted from the ancient and traditional logic
of the Schoolmen and started out in ways
of their own to pursue knowledge and acquire
learning. But William of Occam went
farther. He not only declared theories of
knowledge at variance with the traditions of
the Schoolmen which had been adopted by
the Church, but he attacked the claim of
papal infallibility and the absurd pretensions
of the pope to absolute power and universal
rule.

ENGLAND  WYCLIF TO CROMWELL. 43
By far the greatest actor, however, in this
drama, and the man destined to take the
leading part, was John Wyclif, Professor of
Theology at Oxford and rector of Sutter-
worth. He was the greatest scholar of his
time and the man of greatest weight in his
day. It happened in the Reformation, as so
often happens in the great movements in hu
man affairs, that the men of studious habits
and thoughtful lives were called upon to give
impulse and direction to the men of action
who fought the battles of progress and
marched at the head of the advancing col
umns. Wyclif, Huss, Savonarola, Luther, Calvin,
Erasmus and Melancthon were all men of let
ters who preferred the scholarly seclusion of
their studies to the active warfare of reform.
The same is true of Cranmer and of John
Milton. But the conditions of the times were
such as demanded of these recluses the sacri
fice of their preferences and an active partici
pation in the affairs of life.
What, then, was the condition at this epoch
of religious affairs in England? At the open
ing of the fourteenth century Christianity was
practically a lost treasure, and the Christian
life a lost art. The teachings of Christ had
been so overlaid by foreign accretions, pagan

44 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
philosophies and superstitions, the Christian
worship by pagan rites and ceremonies, and
the example of Christ by the legendary lives
of the saints, that the germs of the original
truth were scarcely discernible in the midst
of the rank growths of fiction and falsehood
that choked and blighted it. Instead of fir
tree, had come up the thorn; instead of
myrtle, had come up the brier; and instead
of the rose, had come up the thistle.
At that time about one-half of the wealth
of the kingdom was in the hands of the
Church and about two-thirds of its annual
product of wealth, and the Pope derived from
revenues out of England an annual income
greater than that of the English Crown and
much greater than that of the wealthiest
Prince in Europe. The monastic orders had
at first sprung up in protest against the sor
didness and sensuality of the times, and the
monasteries had, for a time, served as the
cities of refuge for sensitive and aspiring
souls who desired to escape from the con
taminations of an evil world, and to give
themselves up to a life of devotion and self-
sacrificing service.
But the religious orders and the monas
teries after a time outlived their original pur
pose and departed from it. They were in-

ENGLAND — WYCLIF TO CROMWELL. 45
vaded by the spirit of the surrounding world.
In earlier times, by their lives of toil, self-
sacrifice, devotion and service, the monks had
greatly endeared themselves to the people.
Their pure lives, austere habits, exemplary in
dustry and frugality had won the confidence
of all classes of society. The rich remem
bered them in their wills generously. Princes
richly endowed their houses, and the poor
gladly shared with them their frugal fare.
For nearly two hundred years the monastic
orders were the sole teachers of the people
in religion, in agriculture, in science, in litera
ture, and in the arts. The monks were the
scholars, the preachers, the authors, the meta
physicians, the theologians, the philosophers,
the painters, the musicians and the statesmen
of Christendom. Whatever works there were,
were on the shelves of monastic libraries ; and
whatever learning there was, was sheltered
within monastic cloisters. The monasteries
were the arks which sheltered and carried the
learning and the piety of Europe for almost
a thousand years, and preserved them from
being swept away by the flood of barbarism
and illiteracy which prevailed in the Dark
Ages. By this great service they won the con
fidence, the loyal support and the deepest af-

46 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
fections of the people, but at length they came
to trade upon this affection and betray it. The
monks became idle, illiterate, sordid and self-
indulgent. Dust gathered upon the books in
their libraries, moth and mildew destroyed
them. Priceless manuscripts were used for
kindling fires — their value and their use alike
having been forgotten — or they were used as
palimsests, and written over again with the
fictions and legends of the Saints. The
preaching of the Friars, which at the start had
been salutary and stimulating, and was wel
comed throughout England with a burst of
popular enthusiasm, their work among the
poor and the sick, their rescue work in the
slums of the towns and cities, and their eco
nomic labors in draining marshes and re
claiming waste lands to tillage, and in im
proving the methods of agriculture, had all
greatly endeared them to the people. Then
came the period of prosperity for them, and
with it riches and degeneracy. Marble halls
supplanted their mud and wood huts; sump
tuous fare their plain living; luxury and
self-indulgence their simple lives of activity
and devotion. It is said that in the year 1300
not only had two-thirds of the entire revenue-
producing wealth of the whole kingdom
passed into the hands of the monastic orders,

ENGLAND  WYCLIF TO CROMWELL. 47
but that, incredible as it now seems, a sum
five times greater than the income of the
crown went every year to the coffers of the
Vatican. At the same time, the richest benefices and
Bishoprics in England were held by Italians,
and all ecclesiastics alike claimed immunity
from the ordinary taxes of the realm. The
usual method of procedure was somewhat
as follows: A Black Friar or a Grey Friar
arrived in town with his universal license
to preach, for the monks were the peripa
tetic evangelists of those days. He rang
the bell of the Parish church, and all who
heard it assembled in the church or the
church-yard to hear him preach. He then
received the contribution of each in his open
hand, and afterwards confessed those who so
desired. The rite of confession carried with
it a fee, and by means of the confessional he
became possessed of the secrets of the people.
For those who had committed any grave sins
or heinous crimes preferred to confess to a
travelling Friar rather than to the parish
priest. He passed on and carried their secret
with him; and to them it was as though it
was not known. They escaped exposure and
punishment, and thus a scandal arose in the
land over the escape of great criminals and

48 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
the vast increase of crime throughout the
realm. But, although the Friar passed on, and
carried, the secret with him, that secret was
not forgotten. It was cherished by him and
his associates in order for future use. And
when the time arrived that the secret was of
use and value to the order, it was used against
the criminal. In that way the secrets of all
the great families of Europe came into the
possession of the monks, and gave them un
limited power. Under threat of exposure,
they were able to extort moneys, lands, privi
leges or any other boon they chose to de
mand from nobles and princes, and to press
into service the rich and the great. And so
they swarmed like the plagues of Egypt, tres
passing upon the most sacred precincts of
private life, violating the most treasured
sanctities of domestic privacy, infesting the
nuptial chamber and the kneading troughs
alike with their pestiferous meddling. Their
preaching had degenerated into a mere ex
hibition of coarse jests and ribald buffoonery,
so that they were the travelling clowns and
actors of their day, in lieu of the circus and
the players, and it all too often happened that
their jest and buffoonery was scandalous and
demoralizing; so that they fostered crime and
encouraged vice.

ENGLAND  WYCLIF TO CROMWELL. 49
It was at this juncture, when the church had
sunk to the lowest depths of moral degener
acy and spiritual decay, that the voice of Wyc
lif was heard. It was at once the voice of a
scholar, a philosopher, a saint and a states
man. Wyclif came as near being an inde
pendent reformer as it is possible to conceive
of any man being. He seems not to have had
any precursor. It is true that " Piers the
Ploughman," William Langland, Duns Sco-
tus, Roger Bacon and William of Occam all
preceded him. It is true that he owed much
to these men for their earnest and uncompro
mising protests against abuses — especially to
Occam for his strenuous efforts at church re
form. But in his own way, Wyclif was com
pelled to blaze for himself a path through the
dense forests of mediaeval superstition and
tyranny, and let in the light of truth upon soil
from which it had been excluded for cen
turies. That was hard and hazardous work;
but he performed his herculean labors with
superhuman wisdom and power. No one
could have predicted in the year 1350 that the
spare, emaciated Oxford scholar, the greatest
scholar of his time, prematurely aged at forty
by his great labors, and very weak of body,
would by his immense wisdom, his immovable
conviction, unshaken integrity, his tireless en-

SO STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
ergy, his dauntless intrepidity, his keen in
sight and irreproachable purity shake the ex
isting institutions of society and systems of
government and practices of religion to their
foundations, and start such a rent within them
as would prove irreparable and, slowly widen
ing, bring them all in ruins to the ground at
last. Yet that is just what he did.
The event that first called Wyclif from his
lecture room at Oxford, where he had long
been an object of great interest to the scholars
of Europe, and whither students from all
over Europe had flocked in great numbers to
hear him lecture, occurred in 1365. A par
liament was called in that year by Edward
III., one of the greatest of English monarchs,
to consider the bull of Urban V., in which he
demanded of Edward the payment of a tribute
said to have been incurred by the contempti
ble King John when he bought the favor of
the papacy as against his barons, and when
by his abject and grovelling submission to
the Pontiff, he had shocked and shamed all
England. England had never submitted
tamely to the demands of the papacy; and
this tribute had been permitted to lapse, so
that it was greatly in arrears. The Statute
of Praemunire, passed by Parliament in 1353,
had prohibited the introduction or execution

ENGLAND — WYCLIF TO CROMWELL. 51
of papal bulls within the realm; and the stat
utes of Provisors made it unlawful for the
papal authorities to dispose of English bene
fices. When the Parliament assembled it soon ap
peared that the representative of the Univer
sity of Oxford, John Wyclif by name, the pale-
faced and emaciated scholar, was the most
clear-headed, far-sighted man among them.
His wisdom and his prudence caused the reply
to the papal bull to be committed into his
hands. His reply is a noble document for its
wisdom and courage. He begins with a state
ment of grievances, sharply arraigns the pope
for his rapacities and robberies in England,
and goes on to consider the abuses of the
Church in England. That must have been
startling and stimulating reading in the Vati
can in that day of its most absolute power and
insolent effrontery. It was a brave and dar
ing thing for a man in those days to defy the
pope, even if he were a king and had his
country behind him.
But Wyclif did not stop with speaking
anonymously under cover of Parliament. His
soul was kindled and his mind fired by the con
flict into which he now found himself plunged,
and he girded himself to the work — and a
strong work it was. He now went beyond

52 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
any of his predecessors in his attacks upon the
papal claims and abuses, and laid his sharp
axe at the root of the matter. He saw clearly
the relation between the hierarchal abuses and
the sacerdotal doctrines of the Church, and
set himself to correct the latter in order to
abolish the former. When he saw that no
reforms were to be expected from the au
thorities, he went about that work himself
strenuously. He appealed to the English
people in their vernacular. He issued pam
phlet after pamphlet in a language that every
body could understand; and he gathered
about him, first at Oxford, and afterwards at
Sutterworth, bands of young men whom he
trained, and he taught them the Scriptures,
and how to preach, indoctrinated them with
his own principles and sent them forth among
the people. They went everywhere, like Wes
ley's field preachers and the Salvation Army
street preachers. In spite of the bitter perse
cution to which they were subjected, they con
tinued to flourish until at one time it was said
that every other man in England was a Lol
lard. He struck at sacerdotal doctrine as the root
of ecclesiastical evils. He denied the doc
trines of transubstantiation, of purgatory, of
supererogation, of the invocation of the

ENGLAND — WYCLIF TO CROMWELL. 53
saints, of confirmation and extreme unction;
and of auricular confession. He denounced
pilgrimages, indulgences, the use of images
in worship, and other traditional practices.
He made his appeal to the Bible as the ulti
mate authority in all questions of Christian
faith and practice, and asserted the sacred
rights of conscience, free from all priestly co
ercion or control in personal concerns. The
character of the man appears in the calm,
firm words with which he closes his reply to
John of Gaunt, when he commanded him to
be silent — " I believe that in the end the truth
will prevail."
Wyclif undertook the translation of the Bi
ble into the vernacular, and gathered about
him a body of earnest-minded, pure-souled,
heroic-spirited men like himself, whom he in
spired with his own enthusiasm and taught
his own great doctrines. The work of these
men went on long after he was dead. They
spread everywhere the knowledge of the
Scriptures, and put the books of the Bible
into the people's hands, and taught them to
read. A people known as " The Lord's "
arose, who were the result of that work — a
God-fearing, Bible-reading, truth-loving peo
ple, who obeyed God and feared not man;
and kept the altar fires of love to Him aflame

54 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
with their faith, even as with their bodies
they fed the flames which illumined Smith-
field, and made the place holy ground for
liberty-loving Englishmen.
The work of Wyclif discloses a man of im
mense and varied intellectual powers. He is
the founder of our modern English tongue,
the inaugurator of our modern English liter
ature. He was a master of simple, sinewy,
comprehensive prose, and first used the ver
nacular as a vehicle of conveying profound
philosophic and religious truth to the people.
At Sutterworth he prepared a new edition of
the English Bible for the common people,
which gave tone and character to English
speech by its simple dignity and stately form.
He was a bold and unsparing opponent of
falsehood and corruption, an indefatigable
reformer, and a skillful organizer of a new
religious movement. In him there was a
blending of many diverse qualities. He was
like Luther in his boldness, fearlessness and
force of character; in the sharpness of his
irony and the power of his invective. He was
like Melancthon in the thoroughness and ripe
ness of his scholarship. In personal charm,
amiability of temper and finish of literary
quality he resembled Erasmus; and was like
Calvin in his dialectic skill, metaphysical acu-

ENGLAND — WYCLIF TO CROMWELL. 55
men, restless energy, patient persistence, in
flexible fortitude and the unsullied spirit of his
life. The effect of Wyclif's work appeared later
on, when Henry VIII. came to his dispute
with the papacy. Henry found the nation
learned with Wyclif's doctrines and enlight
ened by the reading of the Scriptures. What
ever Henry's motives may have been in his
break with Rome, there could be no doubt as
to those which animated such men as Cranmer,
Latimer and Ridley and their associates, and
swayed the people. The universities were in
a ferment with the new learning. Men like
Erasmus and Colet had aroused the spirit of
inquiry and fired the minds of students with
an eager desire for learning; had opened the
sources of information by translations of an
cient documents and were guiding groping
minds by their lectures and commentaries.
Sir Thomas Moore wrote " Utopia," and gave
England a most impressive lesson in the evils
of her own time by furnishing her a standard
of comparison in the imaginary state where
justice, liberty and right prevailed. Hugh
Latimer also was " laying his whole body into
the bow," as he says his father taught him to
do in archery, and, with an irresistible force,
sending his swift-winged, fire-tipped, sun-

56 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
aimed arrows straight against the evils of the
time from many pulpits. The children on the
street cried after him, " Have at them, Mas
ter Latimer, have at them ! "
Wyclif's work had told at last. A majority
of the people stood ready to support the King
in a break with Rome. They might or might
not approve of his motives and object; but
they did approve of the fact itself. It is doubt
ful whether any such move could have been
sustained earlier, or whether it could have
been deferred much longer. Certain it is that
the initial movement to it did not originate
with the King or with his minister. Woolsey
was driven from power, and Moore lost his
head rather than sanction it. It was Cranmer
who suggested that the King appeal from the
Pope to the universities the question of his
divorce from Catherine of Aragon. And it
was Cranmer who, on taking the office of
Archbishop of Canterbury, set the example
of revolt to the English clergy by declining
tp take the oath of allegiance to Rome and
took the oath of the Royal Supremacy in
stead. He was the first Protestant Arch
bishop of Canterbury.
For there had now come a time of transi
tion in England. The Romanist power was
still strong, but waning; the Protestant in-

ENGLAND  WYCLIF TO CROMWELL. 57
fluence was also strong, but not supreme, and
the King was able to hold the balance of
power and play off the one party against the
other, as suited his interests or caprices. And
that he did with such skill as to make him
self absolute in all matters, both temporal and
spiritual. He permitted the abuses of the
Church to be corrected, but always to his own
profit. Corrupt ecclesiastics were deposed
and powerful ecclesiastic institutions sup
pressed, such as their courts of law and mon
asteries. These latter being immensely
wealthy, had all their possessions confiscated
to the crown, and so greatly enriched both
the King and his favorites.
In I533 Cranmer became Archbishop of
Canterbury, and in him Henry had a subtle
and powerful ally, and the people a wise and
judicious leader. He was a Protestant and a
diplomat. He soon reached a stage in doc
trine equal to that at which he had arrived in
polity, and set himself diligently not only to
translate the Bible but to compile also the
English Prayer Book. This he did with the
cooperation and assistance of Hugh Latimer
and Master Ridley. At his suggestion and
by his request, the objectionable features of
the Roman Catholic doctrine and worship
were discontinued in England. The refusal

58 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
of the Pope to confirm the decision of the
universities in favor of the King's divorce led
Henry to secure from Parliament the statute
which severed the English Church from
Rome by vesting its headship in the crown.
That was the change in the English Church
which Henry wanted, and it was the only
change which either he or Elizabeth ever
willingly endorsed.
During the brief reign of Edward VI.,
Cranmer was by far the most influential man
in the kingdom, and his Protestant views be
came established, both at court and among
the people, so that when Mary came to the
throne and undertook to extirpate Protestant
ism in England with fire and sword, and sent
Cranmer and his associates to the stake, she
found that it would be necessary to depopu
late the land and exterminate the nation in
order to accomplish her designs.
Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558, and
held a middle course throughout her reign.
Her bias, as it appears in several overtures to
the Papal See, and in her wily vacillation be
tween Protestant and Roman Catholic sym
pathies, was undoubtedly towards Romanism ;
but her personal interests kept her from
openly deserting the Protestant cause.
Throughout her long and eventful reign she

ENGLAND — WYCLIF TO CROMWELL. 59
held a highly conservative and judicial course,
which enabled the Protestant sympathies and
tendencies of her subjects to take form and
develop, and secured to the succeeding cen
tury the indestructible permanency of Pro
testantism in England and the leadership of
England in the Protestantism of the world.
The later agitations and conflicts in Eng
land for a century and a half after Henry and
Cranmer arose over those points not secured
by the Reformation under Henry. The royal
headship of the church — the connection be
tween State and Church — was an offence to
many. The demand arose for the substitu
tion of the communion table for the altar.
The use of any vestments whatever was
strongly opposed; and later on the prayer-
book was included in the protest, and finally
Episcopacy itself was attacked.
In the time of Elizabeth two parties arose
to push the matter of church reform — the
Puritans and the Separatists. The Puritans
were Church of England men; did not desire
to separate from it; but agitated for its re
form. They were called Puritans because
they wanted the church purified of its remain
ing abuses. They wanted a godly ministry,
the observance of the Sabbath day as a holy
day, not as a holiday, and a simpler form of

60 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
worship, such as was used by their Protestant
brethren on the Continent. The opposition
which these demands met drove some of the
Puritans to a separation from the church and
the creation of a new party known as the
Separatists. They, like Wyclif, saw no hope
of having their demands met, and so they set
about the work of reform themselves, with
drew from the established church, and formed
independent congregations of their own on
the principles which they despaired of seeing
enforced in the Establishment. These were
the ecclesiastical ancestors of the Congrega-
tionalists in England and America. Them
Elizabeth hated and persecuted with all her
heart. She was never more than half a Prot
estant, and, as we know from her negotiations
with Rome, was only prevented from becom
ing a Romanist openly by the refusal of the
Papacy to recognize her title to the throne.
In her own chapel she went as far as she could
in observing the Romish ritual, and as far as
she dared she showed her disapproval of all
reforming tendencies in the church at large.
But Elizabeth, like all the Tudors, was a
diplomat, and used moderation and judgment
in her dealings, so that the fruit of the Refor
mation born in Henry's time ripened and mel
lowed during her long and magnificent reign,

ENGLAND  WYCLIF TO CROMWELL. 6 1
and was prepared for gathering in the follow
ing century.
One of the greatest misfortunes that ever
befell a nation came upon England in the
accession of the house of Stuart to the
throne in the person of James I. He
was a man of considerable intellectual abil
ity and attainments, but of a mean and
contemptible spirit. Brought up in Scot
land, under the Presbyterian form of church
life, he had conceived a deep and unalterable
hatred for its strict discipline and high
moral requirements. The Scottish clergy did
not hesitate to rebuke their King for his
drunkenness and denounce him for his licen
tiousness. But he found the English clergy
hat in hand, obsequious and fawning. And
along with his idea of the Divine right of
Kings, he soon originated also the Divine
right of Bishops. His well-known phrase was,
" No Bishop, no King." In consequence of
such declarations, a bishop declared James in
spired of the Holy Ghost ; and the doctrine of
absolute and unqualified submission to the
royal will began to be preached in the
churches. All forms of dissent began to be
hunted down with unsparing severity. Inde
pendent and thoughtful men foreboded disas
ter, and those who could began to quit Eng-

62 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
land. It was at that time that the Pilgrim
Fathers went to Holland and afterwards came
to America, and that the first Parliament
called by James felt called upon to remon
strate with him, which they did, as follows:
" Your Majesty would be misinformed if any
man should deliver that the kings of England
have any absolute power in themselves either
to alter religion or to make any laws concern
ing the same otherwise than as in temporal
causes by consent of Parliament ; " and again :
" Let your Majesty be pleased to receive pub
lic information from your Commons in Par
liament as well of the abuses in the church as
in the civil state and government." One
would think that such a communication
would serve as a gentle reminder to the
King of the state of mind, the disposition and
the temper of the people among whom he had
come. But there is a cast of mind which seems
to be utterly oblivious to the effect of its own
actions upon others. There are men who
speak and act in such total disregard for
other men's thoughts and feelings as to
suggest an entire and total absence from
them of anything like sympathy with or
understanding of human nature. They are so
absorbed in the workings of their own minds

ENGLAND — WYCLIF TO CROMWELL. 63
that it never occurs to them to observe how
the minds of other men work — self-centered
men who are not only a law unto themselves,
but who seek to make themselves a law unto
others. Infatuated with their own personal
ity, they assume the role of omniscience and
infallibility. Such men, if they are placed in
any position of authority and command, are
tyrants; and if they, by any chance, come to
the supreme power in a nation, they are
despots. The Stuarts were men of that sort.
In James I. and Charles II. the iron hand was
gloved with the velvet of amiability and a
ready, nimble, genial wit; but in Charles I.
and James II. it lurked beneath a flimsy tissue
of cold reserve, sphynx-like stupidity and
clumsy falsehood, which was constantly re
vealing the designs it was meant to hide, as
the stupidity of deception is always bound to
do. The state and church policy of James I.
brought Charles I. into open conflict with the
nation as represented in Parliament. With
such ministers as Buckingham and Went-
worth, and with Laud as Archbishop of Can
terbury, who not only seconded him in his
effort at absolutism, but went beyond him in
every measure calculated to enslave the peo
ple and establish the throne in an impossible

64 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
despotism ; and with a people like the English
free-born, with centuries of freedom behind
them, loving freedom more than life, and as
determined to be free as the King was to be
absolute, there could be but one issue to the
strife, and that was the destruction of the one
or the other party; and since the people were
not of a kind to annihilate themselves, it
meant finally the destruction of the King.
But that was later, as we shall see. At first,
after the accession of the Stuarts, despotism
increased. The Star-Chamber took the place
of Parliament, and the high commission took
the place of ecclesiastical courts and convoca
tions; the reign of tyranny was established.
It was during that time that a young man
named John Milton was prevented from tak
ing orders in the church, because, as he said,
" to take orders meant to subscribe yourself a
slave," and it was then that he wrote his great
protest " Comus " ; and that Hampton sent a
thrill of new life and. hope through England
by his resistance of the illegal levy and des
potic collection of ship money. And when
Parliament at last assembled, the threat of the
King to dissolve it if it did not refrain from
meddling with affairs of state and undoing the
work of fifteen years of tyranny by declaring
his acts illegal, and sending his ministers and

ENGLAND — WYCLIF TO CROMWELL. 65
prelates to prison and the block, as it did in
the cases of the chief of them, caused Parlia
ment to pass a bill declining to be dissolved
save by its own consent, and later another,
in which it declared to the House of Lords,
whose policy of obstruction came well-nigh
undoing all the good work of the Commons,
"The Commons will be glad to have your
concurrence and help in saving the kingdom,
but if they fail of it, it should not discourage
them of doing their duty; and whether the
kingdom be lost or saved, they shall be sorry
that the story of this present Parliament
should tell-tale posterity that in so great a
danger and extremity the House of Com
mons should be enforced to save the kingdom
alone." And although a warning voice was
sounded in the ears of Charles to the effect,
" They who go about to break Parliament are
broken by Parliament," he turned a deaf ear
to wisdom. He at once proceeded to raise
troops by Royal commission to be used
against Parliament, and Parliament in turn
was forced to arms. Already the men had
sailed from Dover with the crown jewels to
buy munitions of war, and attempts were be
ing made to raise an army in the North.
But even though controversy had taken the
form of armed hostility, the Parliament was

66 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
reluctant to conquer. It did not want to con
quer or humiliate its King. Essex and Man
chester, who headed the Parliamentary army,
were agreed in declining to come to a de
cisive battle with the Royal forces and so end
the war. They thought to teach the King a
lesson and bring him to his senses by showing
him where the real power of the kingdom lay.
And so they refused to take him captive when
it was perfectly clear, both at Northampton
and at Edge Hill, that they might easily do
so. Charles interpreted their hesitancy as
weakness and fear, and was the more resolved
to fight. Although he had forbidden freedom
of speech in Parliament, and had put its lead
ers in prison; although he had robbed his
subjects disastrously and illegally imperilled
their lives, they were still ready to forgive
their King and restore him to favor on the
slightest return of reason to its bereft throne.
But Charles was as incapable of reason as he
was of generosity or justice; and it was not
until the battle of Naseby, when the King's
baggage and all his papers were captured, and
the depth of his perfidy was revealed in a con
spiracy to bring in a Roman Catholic army,
and his solemn promise to grant all the de
mands of the Roman Catholic party, that his
fate was sealed.

ENGLAND — WYCLIF TO CROMWELL. 67
Let us, however, go back a little. With
Charles I. pandemonium had again returned
to England and reigned supreme. He was at
heart a Romanist, and was pledged to Louis
XIV. of France to re-establish Roman rule in
England. His oath to maintain religious toleration in
England was never kept nor meant to be. He
played off the Episcopalians, the Presbyteri
ans and the Independents against one another,
and protected the Romanists as far as he
dared ; his unblushing sensuality, frivolous na
ture and trifling spirit outraged and exasper
ated the nation. James IL, who succeeded him,
was as cold-blooded and morose as Charles
had been good-natured and frivolous ; but no
less a sensualist and far more wrong-headed
a-nd obstinate. A fatal Nemesis in the form of
short-sightedness, wrong-headedness and ob
stinacy, together with a total inability to learn
by experience, attended the Stuart race from
the beginning, brought them into increas
ingly greater difficulties, as though by the de
sign of some evil genius; and finally made an
end of them. So malignant and unrelenting
was James in his determination to re-establish
Romanism, that he placed in the Chief Justice
ship the brutal tool known to history as the
" Bloody Jeffries " — who was also placed at

68 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
the head of the illegal High Commission —
who went everywhere in England, shutting up
in prison, hanging, beheading, and burning
the noblest, the ablest, the most virtuous, and
the most loyal subjects on the flimsiest of pre
tences, because they were not found conform
able to the Royal will in the matter of re
establishing Romanism in the land. His per
sistent attempt to subvert the Protestant re
ligion brought at length upon James a just
judgment. The people were unreconcilably
alienated from him and his house. Twice he
fled for his life, and the second time before
the advancing army of his son-in-law, William
of Orange, who, at the invitation of the peo
ple, came over from Holland, where he was
Stadtholder, to share the throne with his wife ;
and Protestantism was at last firmly and in-
contestably established in England. On his
accession the Act of Toleration secured prac
tical religious liberty to England. The Ro
manists were excluded from its privileges, it
is true, but that was due more to political than
to religious causes; for they formed a small but
resolute political party under a religious guise
bent on the subversion of English liberties
and constitutional government. The welfare
of the state demanded that they be held in
check ; but it was unfortunate, and their own

ENGLAND — WYCLIF TO CROMWELL. 69
fault, that pressure had to be brought to bear
on the side of religion. But the real issues
of the Reformation had been established and
fixed, and it required only a century of peace
and justice so to work them out that they
would appear at their real value to all men,
even as they did in the latter part of the
eighteenth century by statute laws, when re
ligious disabilities were removed.
At Marston Moor, however, a new force
and a new man appeared. It was the first ap
pearance on any battlefield of a brigade which
was to grow into an army, was to be known
as the " Ironsides," and was never to know
defeat on any battlefield. The general of these
brave men was one Cromwell, a Yorkshire
farmer of some means, and of a famous ances
try. His forbears had sat in the Parliaments
of Elizabeth, and himself in those of James.
On his mother's side, he was connected with
the Hampdens, and with Sir John Oliver.
When his father died, he was a student at
Cambridge; but returned home to take up
the duties of head, of the family.
Oliver Cromwell saw that the fight was not
between the King and his Parliament, but be
tween warring and irreconcilable religious fac
tions. A religious principle was at stake. It
was a moral, not a civil issue. And so, on his

70 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
own responsibility, and at his own expense,
Cromwell raised a regiment of one thousand,
every one of them picked according to his
view; which was, as he wrote to Hamp
den, that religious enthusiasm alone could
meet and defeat the Cavaliers. In other
words, they were not mercenary troops, not
soldiers of fortune; neither were they the
idlers and stragglers and adventurers of the
city. They were, on the contrary, sturdy and
substantial yeomen, neighbors of their gen
eral, and of his religious persuasion and aus
tere manner of life. They were " men of
religion," as Cromwell called them, who ad
ventured their earthly all for their convictions,
and looked for nothing in return but freedom
of conscience and liberty to worship God ac
cording to their convictions. Such men were
greatly to be feared in a religious war. They
could forgive Charles that he had taxed
them contrary to the law and even oppres
sively; that he had interfered with the free
dom of speech in Parliament, and put its lead
ers in the Tower; and that he threatened the
personal liberty and the lives of every subject
who disagreed with him ; and three-fourths of
his subjects did so disagree with him, and were
so threatened by him. But they could not
forgive him that he should set himself in the

ENGLAND  WYCLIF TO CROMWELL. 7 1
place of God to them, and seek to make his
will and the wills of his court favorites, Buck
ingham, Wentworth and Laud, supreme, and
above the will of God. When they saw that to
be his purpose, they rose in a body and said
with Elliot, " Danger enlarges itself in so great
a measure that nothing but Heaven shrouds
us from despair." " The Gospel," said Elliot,
in a speech in Parliament, " is that truth in
which this kingdom has been happy in a long
and rare prosperity. This ground, therefore,
let us lay for a foundation of our building,
that that truth, not with words, but with ac
tions, we will maintain : " and the following :
" there is a ceremony used in the Eastern
churches of standing at the repetition of the
creed, to testify the purpose to maintain it,
not only with their bodies upright, but with
their swords drawn — give me leave to call that
a custom very commendable."
If the infatuated and obdurate Charles had
but had ears, he would have heard in those
and similar speeches from Elliot and Hamp
den and Vane; from Cromwell and Sells and
Pym; from Sidney and Victon Hollis and
Strode and Haselrig, words of warning; and
had he but had wisdom, he would have taken
knowledge in time of the temper and spirit of
the people.

72 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
The success of Cromwell led to a reorgani
zation of the Parliamentary army on his basis,
which was called the new model, and his dar
ing brought him rapidly to the front. At
Newbury, the King might have been cap
tured; but Manchester declined, and Crom
well accused him to Parliament of " being
afraid to conquer," and he declared, " If I met
the King in battle, I would fire my pistol at the
King as at another." There was a new basis
on which to fight. That was the beginning
of the end. In less than a year's time Naseby
was fought to win, the King's forces were
broken, his troops surrounded, his baggage,
papers and ordnance fell into the hands of
Parliament. Charles took refuge with the
Scots, who, in turn, handed him over to Par
liament. The army of the New Model or
dered to disband, Cromwell returned to the
pursuits of peace. The army, instead, how
ever, of disbanding, as ordered by Parlia
ment, lay, as it were, with arms, to watch the
course of affairs ; and when it saw that Parlia
ment was bent on despotism, just as the King
had been, and would force Presbyterianism
on the country, as he had tried to force Ca
tholicism, it rallied to Triploe Heath, and
raised the cry of justice. Civil war broke out
afresh; but there were now three parties to

ENGLAND — WYCLIF TO CROMWELL. 73
fight — the King, Parliament and the army.
Cromwell now returned to the army, and in
three days it was in full march upon London,
with a demand for the settlement of the peace
of the kingdom, the preservation of the rights
and liberties of the subjects, the freedom of
conscience, and religious toleration secured.
These demands neither Parliament nor the
King were minded to grant; but each in his
own way was determined to subvert. The
army finally took possession of London and
of the Parliament, and proceeded to negotiate
with the King on a basis of great moderation.
Charles, however, was dead to all appeals. He
temporized and evaded. " Playing off," as he
wrote to a friend, " one party against the
other," until the soldiers), exasperated and
suspicious, cried out for a complete reorgani
zation of the government, the abolition of the
House of Lords and of monarchy. In the
crisis Cromwell stood alone, insisting upon
negotiations with the King and the most con
servative measures.
During all this time Charles was endeavor
ing to embroil the English and the Scotch,
hoping to get advantage of the army in that
way ; and finally, becoming impatient, he took
flight while the negotiations were at their
height. Cromwell found that he had been

74 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
duped, and wrote, " The King is a man of
great parts and great understanding, but so
great a dissembler and so false a man that he
is not to be trusted." Civil war now broke
out afresh, and with its coming all thought of
reconciliation with the King was swept from
the minds of the army and its leaders. They
gathered in a solemn prayer-meeting, and en
tered into a solemn resolution and covenant,
" that it was our duty, if ever the Lord
brought us back again to peace, to call
Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to account
for the blood he has shed and the mischief he
has wrought to his utmost against the Lord's
cause and the people in this poor nation."
In the midst of the turmoil and strife,
Cromwell appears as the commanding genius,
the presiding spirit of the nation — the real
king of England. The boldness of his policy,
and the celerity of his movements, confounded
and defeated all opposition. It was a time
when lawlessness was rife in England. A half
century of misrule and other disregard for
law on the part of the King and his ministers,
together with their strenuous and stubborn
attempts to break down all constitutional re
straints upon the throne, had made England
drunk with the usurpation of powers, and mad
with defiance of law. A certain recklessness

ENGLAND — WYCLIF TO CROMWELL. 75
had seized all the classes of the people, and in
the midst of the wreck of law and order the
question for each party became that of actual
power. All rights and privileges were in
abeyance. Cromwell had the power and the
ability to use it. He seized the King, and
then marched upon London. A court was
formed for the trial of the King, who denied
its jurisdiction. He was none the less found
guilty, at the mouths of thirty-two witnesses,
and condemned to death, as a tyrant, a traitor,
a murderer, and enemy of his country. And
thus was brought to pass the saying of " They
who go about to break Parliaments are sure
to be broken by them."
Parliament now proceeded to appoint a
Council of State, to take the place of the
King, then to abolish the House of Lords,
and then to establish a free state, with the
authority of the nation vested in " The repre
sentatives of the people in Parliament." The
army proceeded to lay down the program
of procedure, insisted upon the dissolution
of the old Parliament and the election of a
new one, on the basis of a redistribution of
seats, such as would give representation to
all towns of importance, and election to all
house-holders even among the poor. The
House accepted the proposal, but hesitated to

76 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
disband. Disorders arose in the army in con
sequence. Charles II. soon landed upon the
coast of Scotland, and Cromwell, who had
meanwhile wreaked summary justice in Ire
land, started for the North, spreading a whole
some respect for the army as he marched. At
Dunbar and Winchester, he routed the Loyal
ist forces and cut them to pieces, and sent
Charles flying once more across the seas. But
Parliament still reigned, and meditated meas
ures for the disbandment of the army, in spite
of its pledges to disband itself. It even, in the
person of Sir Harry Vane, introduced a bill
for the continuance of its own members in the
next Parliament, with the right of revision of
all elections reserved to them. In other
words, it was trying to make of itself a self-
perpetuating body, with the supreme power in
its own hands. It was while Sir Harry Vane
was pressing this bill upon the House, in spite
of a compact made the evening before with
the Council of State, that neither side should
do anything without another conference, that
Cromwell exclaimed, when he heard of it,
" This is perfidy ! " and summoning thirty
musketeers to follow him, went to the House.
He sat through Vane's speech, and at the
moment of putting the motion to the House,
he rose and spoke against the bill. He waxed

ENGLAND  WYCLIF TO CROMWELL. 77
warm as he spoke of the injustice, self-interest
and delay of the Commons, and finally cried
out, " Your hour is come ! " Then, amidst an
uproar, he clapped his hat upon his head, and
advanced to the middle of the floor, his voice
rising above the tumult, he was heard to cry :
" The Lord hath done with you ! Come,
come, we have had enough of this. I will put
an end to your prating. It is not fit that you
should sit here any longer; you should give
place to better men ; you are no Parliament."
And as the musketeers entered, at a signal
from their general, he called to the members
as they passed him such invectives as their
conduct merited, and to Vane's protest he
cried out: "Ah, Sir Harry Vane, Sir Harry
Vane, you might have prevented all this, but
you are a juggler, and have no common hon
esty! The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry
Vane!" When all had departed, and Cromwell had
sent the men away, he locked the door of the
chamber, and put the key in his pocket. He
next proceeded to disperse the Council of
State, and so was left as Captain-General of
the forces, solely responsible for the order of
the realm. He had committed violence
against the Rump Parliament, as it was called ;
but he had prevented them from a far greater

78 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
act of violence, that of disfranchising half of
England. And the country at large accepted
and applauded his act. " We did not hear a
dog bark at their going," he said afterwards.
The power, thus left in Cromwell's hands, was
used wisely and well, without a trace of the
military despot or self-created dictator. A
new Council of State was appointed, with
Cromwell at its head, and it proceeded to
summon a new Parliament. A constituent
convention was called, to which was deputed
the task of settling the manner of calling a
new Parliament, which, after floundering and
drifting about in the shoals and quicksands
of debate for six months, died of exhaustion,
and yielded up into the hands of the Lord
General the powers he had deputed to them
at their coming together. The Council of State
and of Officers then proceeded to convene
a Parliament on a reform basis of repre
sentation. They meanwhile drew up a con
stitution for government, and named Crom
well Protector of the Commonwealth, which
office he accepted only on the ground that it
limited his powers and made him responsible
to the Council, and so took away the re
sponsible dictatorship which attached to his
position of Lord General of the Army. This
provision was generally acceptable to the

ENGLAND — WYCLIF TO CROMWELL. 79
English people, and the Parliament which met
confirmed it. But Cromwell, not satisfied
with the proceedings of the Parliament, dis
solved it, and proceeded to govern with the
Council of State. In order to do this, he had
to resort to high-handed measures, which
brought him into open conflict with ancient
laws, and not seldom with the will of the
people. He resumed, deliberately, a dictator
ship which he had previously voluntarily re
signed, and resolutely declined. That he did
so for sufficient reasons, we cannot doubt.
He probably saw that Parliament was unable
to cope with the situation. Their discordant
councils and dilatory methods were calculated
to keep the country in turmoil, and embroil it
in new difficulties. The manner in which he
used his power, and the evils which befell the
nation, when his strong hand no longer held
the helm, must be his justification. He as
sumed the reins of government when England
was at her lowest ebb as a nation, rent by in
ternal factions and beset by foreign foes; the
government disorganized and disbanded, the
army unpaid and mutinous. He created a
government de novo, assumed the responsibil
ity for the administration, united and har
monized the three kingdoms, suppressed
insurrection and revolt, stamped out incendi-

80 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
arism, and made favorable treaties with for
eign powers ; all in the course of a few months.
He pacified the State, so that the ravages of
war were soon forgotten. Prosperity set in in
full force. Reforms were everywhere insti
tuted, order restored throughout the king
dom, the laws respected and obeyed. The
civil courts were reformed and reorganized
on a basis of religious toleration and an edu
cated and Godly ministry. In a word, the
land had rest, and prospered as it had never
done before.
Cromwell's foreign policy equalled the
vigor and enterprise of his home office. He
aimed at nothing short of placing England at
the head of a great Protestant alliance. To
this end, he concluded treaties with Holland,
Sweden and Denmark. When the Duke of
Savoy ruthlessly massacred his Protestant
subjects in the Valleys of Piedmont, he sent
his army with stern demands of redress, and
the promise of instant war if the demands
were not met. Ten thousand men stood ready
to descend from the Swiss Alps upon the
north of Italy at the signal from the Lord
Protector of England. He was able to pro
tect a Protestant or a subject of England in
any part of Europe as well as at home, for
his power was feared from the Atlantic to the

ENGLAND — WYCLIF TO CROMWELL. 8l
Black Sea, and from the Arctic to the Med
iterranean. Never had England been so
firmly or so finely governed, and never did a
king use his power and state with more wis
dom and grandeur than did Cromwell. A
second Parliament, called in 1657, pressed
upon him the title of king, after it had con
firmed and commended his rule; but that he
steadily declined. They empowered him,
however, to name his successor, and when,
three years later, he died, worn out with la
bors and disease, so great was his power still
that a reported nomination which lacked con
firmation was sufficient to set his son, Rich
ard, firmly and indisputably in his seat, and
would have maintained him there if there had
been anything in him to maintain. But Rich
ard, being what his father would have called
a man of straw, practically left the office va
cant ; and, there being no head to the govern
ment or the army, it fell, without a struggle,
into the hands of the Royalists, and Charles
II. returned to England without a blow and
occupied the palaces and the thrones of his
ancestors, remarking as he did so, with char
acteristic wit, that it was his own fault he had
not done so long before, since everybody he
saw assured him that they had always wished
him there.

82 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
Cromwell was a born ruler of men, and pos
sessed all the strange, mysterious powers by
means of which one man is able to mould a
nation into conformity and likeness with him
self. He was a man of mighty spirit, capa
cious understanding, indomitable will, and
absolute fearlessness. He had an intense na
ture, quick, urgent, powerful, undeniable im
pulses, a large resolute purpose, and a strong,
indefatigable body.
The wisdom, power and grandeur of Crom
well's rule, together with its justice, mag
nanimity and beneficence, is its own best
justification. He was the most absolute
and despotic ruler England ever had; but
England never enjoyed greater liberty than
under his reign. He called the learned and
enlightened John Milton to be his secre
tary. He stoutly maintained religious liberty,
equality of justice, the incorruptibleness of the
courts, the personal freedom and security of
every citizen. Peace, prosperity and happi
ness reigned in England as it had not done
even under Elizabeth. While there was some
opposition, the great mass of the people sup
ported him joyfully. Abroad, his name was
dreaded. He set himself at the head of the
Protestant interests in Europe, protected his
brethren from persecution and adopted con-

ENGLAND  WYCLIF TO CROMWELL. 83
ciliatory measures. His ships, under the
command of his friend, Blake, swept the Med
iterranean free of pirates and bombarded
Algiers, their stronghold. He secured the
island of Jamaica in the West Indies, and that
gave him a base of naval operations against
Spain in America; and when he died, the
weak and contemptible son who succeeded to
his office without opposition, might have held
it in his father's name if he had had a tithe
of his father's worthiness.

LECTURE III.
THE STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN GER
MANY  LUTHER, THE HERO OF THE
REFORMATION.
On the left bank of the Rhine, about half
way between the cities of Maintz and Heidel
berg, is the little city of Worms. It has no
present political or commercial interest for
the world; but its historic importance is of
the first order, for here was enacted one of
the great events of the world, which "lifted
empires off their hinges and turned the chan
nels of history from their courses."
A massive and magnificent monument ex
plains that event, and stands near the spot
where it took place. On a broad, central plat
form, each on its own pedestal, in heroic size,
sit the figures of Wyclif, Huss, Savonarola
and Peter Waldo, the forerunners of Refor
mation. Above them are Frederick the Wise,
Phillip the Generous, Melancthon the Scholar,
and Reuchlin the Humanist. Below them are
the allegorical figures of the cities of Mar
burg, Augsburg and Speyer. There are also

GERMANY — LUTHER. 85
medallion portraits of Luther's contempo
raries who contributed to the Reformation,
and the arms of the twenty-four towns that
first received it. Towering above all, on the
central pedestal, is the heroic figure of Lu
ther himself, an open Bible in his left hand,
with his right laid emphatically upon it, while
courage and faith, the two qualities for which
he was most remarkable, are admirably de
picted upon his face.
Massive and grand as this monument is in
itself, its chief interest for the American
Protestant is in the event which made it ap
propriate to this spot, and the four centuries
of history which it summarizes.
On the 17th day of May, 1521, if you had
been in Worms, as was all Germany that
could get there, and much of Europe besides,
you might have witnessed the grandest spec
tacle of history (save only that which took
place in Pilate's hall fifteen hundred years
before and which made this one inevitable)
and the most important event for the world
since that day.
The Diet or assemblage of the empire was
in session. It was composed of the digni
taries and notables, lay and ecclesiastic, of
Christendom. This particular assemblage was
one of the most remarkable that had ever

86 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
been held. It was called for a particular pur
pose, then of the most vital interest to Eu
rope — the condemnation of heresy and the
burning of heretics, at that time quite numer
ous and bold in Germany, of whom one Mar
tin Luther, an Augustinian monk, was the
chief offender. There was the Emperor
Charles V., the practical owner of all Europe
and America, to whom Germany was but a
small province, and on his right his brother,
Archduke Ferdinand. They were surrounded
by a brilliant retinue of kings, princes and no
bles from all parts of Europe, and the most
famous and powerful of the ecclesiastical
princes — the Pope himself being represented
by special envoys. Luther's own sovereign,
Frederick the Wise, was there, and in all
about five thousand persons, of high degree
and of every rank, representatives of sover
eigns and delegates of imperial cities, were
gathered in and about the hall. About four
o'clock in the afternoon you might have seen,
being led through back streets and by a cir
cuitous route, so as to avoid the press and be
able to reach the hall, a tall, spare man, in a
monk's habit of the Dominican order. Now,
the out-of-the-way streets through which he
passes unexpectedly are lined with silent spec
tators and crowded with people. At last he

GERMANY — LUTHER. 87
reaches the hall and stands uncovered in the
presence of the brilliant throng, at the call of
the herald, to answer the charge of heresy and
disloyalty to the Church of Rome.
He is a plain and humble man, about thirty-
eight years of age, and, as can be seen by his
demeanor, not accustomed to such an assem
blage. He is dazed and bewildered by the
experience he has just passed through and
the spectacle that now surrounds him. He
carries himself with dignity and self-restraint,
but he asks for time. He is not prepared to
answer the unexpected charges, nor to com
ply with the extraordinary request. There is
a soldier-like bearing and a sense of sup
pressed energy in his frame, and a strange,
unusual light in his eyes as he addresses the
assemblage — a light which one of the papal
emissaries had once seen there in the cloister
at Erfurt and warned the prior to have a care
for that monk, for he was bound to make
trouble. The same scene was repeated at the same
hour on the following day, but with a far
different ending. A complete set of Luther's
writings was piled upon the table before him,
and he was asked to recant them each sep
arately and by name. He rose to address the
council.

88 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
He speaks in German and in Latin. His
voice is strong and manly, and rings in every
part of the great hall. His speech is rapid,
but clear and distinct. He quotes from the
Fathers, the Scriptures and the records of
councils, and shows himself a master in the
subtleties of theology and philosophy. He
divides his works into three classes: (i) Those
upon faith and morals, based upon the Scrip
tures. These he could not retract. (2) Those
upon the Papacy and its doings, which he
said had ruined Christendom, body and soul.
These he must not retract. (3) Those which
he had written against certain opponents of
his. These he would not retract. But in all
he stood ready, if any one would prove his
error from Scripture, to retract.
The papal delegate, unable to endure longer
the boldness of the monk, rose and declared
they were not there to hear matters discussed
that had already been settled, and demanded
that he give them a plain answer — " Yes or
no ! without any horns. Do you recant ? "
" Well, then," replied the imperturbable
monk, " if your Imperial Majesty and your
Graces require a plain answer, I will give you
one without either horns or teeth. It is this :
I must be convinced, either by the witness of
Scripture or by clear argument, for I do not

GERMANY  LUTHER. 89
trust either Pope or councils by themselves,
since it is manifest that they have often erred
and contradicted themselves."
The brilliant assemblage was dazed and con
founded by such language, for they had
never heard it in that wise before; and the
Emperor gave the signal to end the matter.
Luther, supposing that his own end had come
when he saw the signal, exclaimed : " Here
stand I. I can do naught else. God help me.
Amen." The Emperor sat silent and abashed upon
his throne. The papal envoys fumed with
rage, but were silent and baffled. The hearts
of the great assemblage were thrilled, and they
were awed into silence ; a great hush fell upon
them, like the stillness of death. Hundreds
of eyes, unused to tears, were moistened, and
hundreds of young hearts, not accustomed
to serious emotions, leaped with a bound of
joy, withal with sympathy and purpose of
protection for the simple, honest, fearless,
godly monk.
Luther walked out of that assemblage free
from danger. He seemed to live something
like what, in superstitious days, was known
as a charmed life. Though a price was set
upon his head, and armed assassins went
about in bands to take him, and the papal

90 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
representative in every city was charged to
apprehend him, and the force of the empire
itself was enlisted to compass and secure his
death, yet he walked openly among men and
did his work, preaching where he would, for
twenty-five years, and died a natural death at
last at Eisleben, the place of his birth.
The thrill that ran through the assembly
at these words passed over Germany like the
shock of an earthquake, and divided the na
tion into two religious factions. Two-thirds
of the Pope's spiritual children were lost to
him in that hour, and the Roman Catholic
Church has not been able to recover from
that shock. A new epoch in the world's his
tory then began.
Let us consider now some of the events
that led up to the council at Worms. In the
month of November, 1483, or just about 420
years ago, there was born in Eisleben, of
John and Margaret Luther, peasants, a son,
who was shortly after baptized by the parish
priest as Martin Luther. He was baptized
according to the rites of the Romish Church.
There was no other then anywhere in Eu
rope. His parents were poor, God-fearing,
pious folk, as his ancestors were known to
have been such three generations back, and,
after the fashion of their day, they were

GERMANY — LUTHER. 9 1
strictly religious, according to the faith of the
Romish Church. They reared their son in the
same faith, with a rigor and remorselessness
that made a deep impression upon his youth
and somewhat saddened his sensitive spirit;
but he was of a robust nature, and perhaps
needed to be kept well within bounds. His
whole career shows him to have been by na
ture of a fiery, fearless, impetuous, headlong
temper, kept in bounds only by reason of the
severe and unrelenting training and discipline
to which he subjected himself. This part of
the work his parents seem to have begun for
him, and taught him how to do for himself.
They were wise as well as severe with their
son, for they discerned in him marks of prom
ise which caused them to destine him for a
university education, with all that meant of
labor and self-denial for themselves. His
father was a poor miner, and it required
heroic self-sacrifice on the part of them all to
keep the oldest son at school and send him to
the university. But that is what they did.
He was brought up an orthodox Catholic,
and was of a devout disposition. At the age
of fourteen he wanted to make a pilgrimage
to Rome, as a means of expiating his sins ; but
his father had destined him for a lawyer or
other profession, and had no patience what-

92 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
ever with Martin's leaning toward a religious
life, so that when the crisis came, as it did, in
1505, it resulted in a complete rupture be
tween father and son.
That was a fateful year for the world. Lu
ther was a devout and scrupulous man. He
assumed the religious life for the purpose of
being a religious man. He had studied law
and was not interested in it. He had studied
medicine, and took no interest in that. He
had found a Bible at Erfurt, and had become
engrossed in that, and be a monk he would
and give his time to that. Being what he was,
Luther could not be anything by halves. Had
he stuck by the Catholic ecclesiasticism of his
youth, he would probably have risen to the
highest dignity in the Church, for he was, of
all the men of his age, and it was a great age,
a born leader of men. He had a commanding
genius, which was destined either to lead the
world in its chosen paths, or to dig out new
channels for the world's life to flow in.
At the age of twenty-five he had already be
come a marked man, and was called to a
chair of the University of Wittenberg and to
the pulpit of its great church. He became at
once the idol of the students who thronged his
lectures, and of the populace, who crowded
the church to the chancel rail whenever he
preached.

GERMANY — LUTHER. 93
Now that was a strange age and one fo
menting with intellectual and physical activ
ity, as no other age that preceded it had ever
been; and it was also characterized by eccle
siastical profligacy beyond any other age.
You will recall that it was the age of Erasmus
and Raphael and Michael Angelo and Albert
Diirer; the age of Columbus and Vasco Da
Gama. It was a period of inventions and dis
coveries. The art of printing by movable
types had just been established. The discov
ery of gunpowder had revolutionized the art
of war and, by making every peasant equal
to a knight, had overthrown the order of
knighthood. The discovery of new continents
in a new hemisphere and the invention of the
magnetic compass had opened an entirely new
field for human activity and a new door for
human liberty. Copernicus had explored the
heavens with his telescope and discovered the
true order of the universe. Descartes had
added to the liberty and richness of human
thought. The crusades had opened up the
eastern world to exploration and commerce.
Industries had greatly increased in conse
quence and commerce extended its sphere.
The writings of ancient sages, long buried in
ancient eastern monasteries, had been un
earthed and brought into use. The several

94 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
nationalities of Europe were crystallizing and
taking form. France and Italy, Spain and
England, had already laid the foundations for
a national life.
In the midst of all this movement in so
many directions for the betterment of man
kind and the permanent improvement of the
race, one institution alone remained station
ary, untouched by the flow of intellectual and
political influences of quickening and awaken
ing all about her, and that institution was the
hierarchy at Rome. The new life was felt in
all her monasteries and universities through
out Europe, and its impulseand direction came
from them; but Rome, the Papacy, was un
touched. She sat secure in her splendor and
wealth, and cared not. But she did want mon
ey ; and money she must have, for St. Peter's
was building and vast improvements were
being constantly made at the Vatican; besides,
Leo X.was upon the papal throne, a profligate
and spendthrift of the most prodigal type. In
order to keep up a steady and voluminous flow
of coin into the coffers of the Vatican, a new
and ingenious device had been invented by
Pope John XXII., of infamous memory. He
had originated the sale of indulgences and the
system of taxation for every sin. This system
Innocent VIII. had perfected by inventorying

GERMANY — LUTHER. 95
every sin and scheduling it with a fixed price.
Immunity could be purchased from purgatory
for the sins of sensuality at 12 ducats, of sac
rilege at 9 ducats, of murder at 7 ; for murder
of parents or kin, 4 ducats. The indulgence
consisted of a ticket, on which was printed
the figure of a monk, with cross, crown of
thorns and flaming heart. In the upper right-
hand corner there was a nailed hand of the
Saviour; in the lower left a foot. On the
front were the words : " Pope Leo X.
Prayer. This is the length and breadth of the
wounds of Christ. As often as one kisses it,
he has seven years indulgence." How much
he would have had to pay for that offense
under the term sacrilege deponent saith not.
These tickets were deposited with various
bankers throughout Europe, and in the less
populated regions they were hawked about
in carts, like cabbages, by monks and priests,
and sold by the millions.
Between the years 1500 and 1517, five ex
traordinary issues of indulgences were made,
and the text of those who hawked them was,
" God willeth not the death of a sinner, but
that he shall pay and live." They hung such
notices on their carts as this : " The red in
dulgence cross, with the Pope's arms sus
pended on it, has the same virtue as the cross

96 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
of Christ. The dealer in pardons saves more
souls than Peter."
Thus the sacrilege went on until it became
madness. The people of Europe, but espe
cially of Germany at that time, were steeped
in ignorance, in superstition, and in licentious
ness. Nevertheless, they had hearts and con
sciousness, and desired the favor of God and
the hope of heaven, and they knew no other
way to get them than to buy the indulgences
the Church offered them. The Bible had
never been read in their hearing, nor had any
religious service ever been performed among
them in a tongue that they understood. They
were harangued from time to time from the
pulpits by drunken and licentious priests, but
always in the interests of the superstitions
being perpetrated upon them for the sake of
gain, and, knowing themselves to be sinful,
they actually believed that the purchase of
these indulgences would purchase for them
the pardon for which they longed. Hence
they thronged about the indulgence carts
whenever they appeared, and these clumsy
vehicles fairly groaned under the weight of
gold they carried to the strongholds of the
Church. Among these sacrilegious traffickers there
were none so brazen and shameless as one

GERMANY — LUTHER. 97
Tetzel, a sub-commissioner of the Archbishop
Albert of Maintz, within whose jurisdiction
lay the city of Wittenberg, where at that time
Luther was stationed. Said Archbishop was
not deeply trusted in money matters by those
who knew him best, nor did he himself trust
his emissaries in finance, perhaps from a kin
dred feeling. At any rate, it was stipulated
that the proceeds from the sale of indulgences
in his diocese should be equally divided be
tween himself and the Pope, and that its safe
keeping and division should rest with the
agents of the banking house of Augsburg.
Thus escorted and equipped, the shameless
Tetzel, a Dominican monk, went his rounds;
but no sooner had he got well started
than a warning voice was lifted in the pulpit at
Wittenberg, cautioning the people against the
robbery and the imposture and warning them
to have nothing to do with the infamous busi
ness. At the same time the preacher, for it
was Luther, wrote earnestly to the Arch
bishop and the Pope, begging them to desist
from the evil and to call off their emissaries.
One letter followed another, entreating, be
seeching, praying in the name of God and
Christ, that the evil be stopped ; but all to no
purpose. Tetzel drew near to Wittenberg, and Lu-

98 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
ther, in despair, sat down and wrote out his
reasons against the iniquity — ninety-five in
number — and in the form of propositions, and
challenged the world to debate them, in order
to free his own conscience and gain further
light upon the subject. Early on the morn
ing of October 31, 15 17, the sound of a ham
mer was heard on the church door of Witten
berg, as Martin Luther, with his own hand,
nailed the document containing his ninety-five
propositions against the sale of indulgences
to the door of the church, waking the echoes
within and resounding deep in the hearts of
multitudes who gathered to see what was go
ing on.
The document was read, and its contents
began to spread and be discussed. When at
length Tetzel set up his shop at Leipsie, near
Wittenberg, he found a cool reception for
himself and no market for his indulgences.
Great indignation was aroused among the
hierarchy. Efforts were made to remonstrate
with Luther, but he would have nothing short
of a cessation of the abominable traffic and a
repudiation of what he termed " the indul
gence preacher's shameless and wanton
words." Then he was summoned to answer for his
words at Augsburg. Then he wrote his cele-

GERMANY— LtfTHER. 9$
brated letter, "An Appeal from the Pope
badly informed to the Pope well informed."
As this had no effect, he appealed from the
Pope to a council. The result was that Mil
titz, a celebrated diplomatist, was dispatched
from Rome to see Luther and patch up the
quarrel, for the Pope, the elegant voluptuary,
Leo X., considered the matter to be nothing
but, as he said, " a squabble of monks." Mil
titz addressed himself to the task with great
skill, disavowed the actions of the vendors of
indulgences, and agreed that if Luther would
say nothing more about the matter, the ob
jectionable practice should be stopped.
There were two clauses in the agreement:
1. Both parties are forbidden to preach or
write on the subject, or to take any further ac
tion upon it. 2. The exact position of affairs is
to be communicated to the Pope, and a learned
bishop will be appointed to investigate the
points at issue and report. That was a flag
of truce, you see, as between two equal pow
ers. Abroad, Luther was a power that had to be
reckoned with. For far less than he had done
Huss had been burned. Then said Luther,
" Let them convict me of my error, and I will
retract, and not till then." But the papal au
thorities having secured, as they thought, Lu-

IOO STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
ther's silence, proceeded to take advantage of
it by opening a discussion at Leipsic between
Eck, a celebrated scholar and debater, and
Carlstadt, a man somewhat infected with Lu
ther's views. Luther was wise enough to dis
cover the ruse at once. He writes : " The
wrong-headed fellow is fuming against me
and my writings, but he challenges some one
else as his adversary and attacks him. But
this discussion will turn out badly for the Ro
man claims and usages, and they are the staffs
upon which the Church is leaning."
He at once made his way to Leipsic and
joined in the discussion, but with little prac
tical result, except the easy overthrow of his
antagonist in argument.
In despair of accomplishing anything
through the Church or its authorities, he
turns now to the German people. He tells
the princes that they must take the work of
reform into their own hands; that it belongs
to them ; and that God will hold them respon
sible for it; that the people constitute the
Church and not the priests, and the authority
rests with them.
He attacked the Catholic doctrines of tran
substantiation and asceticism and emphasized
the necessity of Christian liberty.
One step followed another in quick succes-

GERMANY — LUTHER. 101
sion at this period of Luther's development.
He had no intention whatever of breaking
with the Church, but was determined upon its
reform, and, as he said, he " would sooner die,
be burned, be banished, be anathematized,"
than yield.
With all his greatness, Luther was not a
prudent man. His contempt of all expedi
ents for his own safety, and bold daring in the
face of danger, constantly exposed him and
his cause to the plots and conspiracies of his
unscrupulous foes. Had there not been a
watchful eye always on him, a solicitous and
resourceful mind on the alert, and a powerful
arm always extended over him, he would
doubtless have gone the way of Savonarola
and Huss, as Henry VIII. told him that he
would, and as the edict of the Diet of Worms
declared that he should. But the good and
wise Frederick took care of the monk, and
saw to it that no harm befell him. Knowing
the temper of the man, he knew better than
to offer him an asylum ; but when his enemies
were lying in wait for him on his way home
from Worms, the Elector had his retainers fall
upon him in the road and carry him off bodily
to his strong castle, the Wartburg, where he
managed to hold him until the danger was
past. The loyalty of this great prince to the

102 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
blunt and outspoken monk, in spite of the
reprimands he sometimes administered to
him, is beautiful and touching.
While Luther was in the Wartburg trou
bles arose in Wittenberg among his follow
ers, the more intense and extreme of whom
had become fanatical and were making them
selves ridiculous by their extravagances.
Luther could not see the cause so near his
heart jeopardized or disgraced by violence
and fanaticism — he was himself an ardent en
thusiast — but blind fanaticism was abhorrent
to him, and he saw at once that the attempts
of the fanatics violently to sweep away the
ancient usages and customs of religion would
react harmfully upon the effort at reform, so
he left the castle, where he was under guard,
and returned to his pulpit to set things right,
and he risked his life in so doing.
The Elector warned him that he could not
protect him in Wittenberg, and Luther re
plied, " Since I now perceive that your Elec
toral Grace is still very weak in the faith, I
can by no means regard your Electoral High
ness as the man who is able to shield or to
save me." And so he assures him not to fear
for him, for that he goes forth under a far
higher protector than his own, and that he
was engaged in a cause not to be aided by the
sword.

GERMANY  LUTHER. IO3
The incident is a tribute not only to Lu
ther's simplicity of faith, but also to the Elec
tor's greatness and loftiness of mind, for he
never relaxed his vigilance for Luther's safety
nor resented, in the slightest degree, what to
some men would have seemed like gross in
gratitude and unpardonable rudeness. Only
two truly great souls could have so under
stood each other as to have maintained a
friendship unbroken on such a basis of abso
lute frankness.
Luther's was a swift-moving, relentlessly
logical and fearlessly bold mind. For him to
arrive at a conviction was to act upon it; to
perceive a truth was to declare it. So rapid
were his motions and so daring his utterances
that, in 1520, three years after the posting of
his theses, he was excommunicated by a bull
from Rome.
The dauntless courage of the man, and the
decision of his character, come into full relief
in his treatment of the bull of excommunica
tion. When it arrived in Wittenberg, he
called it an execrable bull of Antichrist, and,
assembling the faculty and students of the
university, led them in solemn procession to
the public square, where, in the presence of a
great concourse of people, he solemnly
burned the papal bull. A more daring act

104 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
than that was never committed. It flung de
fiance in the face of the highest dignitary in
Christendom, and challenged him to do his
worst. The best of Leo X. was bad, and his
worst could not be exceeded. He immedi
ately entered into an agreement with the Em
peror, Charles V., by which Luther was to
be laid under the ban of the empire. That
meant that a price was upon his head, and
whoever harbored him or administered to him
or held intercourse with him was subject to
the penalty of death.
The Diet of Worms was again assembled
for the purpose of pronouncing that sentence.
Luther's friends warned him that he ought
not to go there when the Emperor sent for
him, and especially when it was known that
his works had been condemned to be burned
before he arrived. They tried to prevent him
from going on, but he boldly declared, " I
will ride in, if there are as many devils in
Worms as there are tiles on the housetops."
Just as he had declared, when they tried to
prevent him from going to Leipsic, when
duty called him there, and it was shown that
the Duke was hostile to him, Luther said, " I
will go to Leipsic, though it rained Duke
Georges nine days."
Although paid assassins went about to at-

GERMANY — LUTHER. 105
tack him, and many would have been glad to
purchase heaven and a rich reward at the
same time by his death, none assaulted him.
His very daring, the boldness and dauntless-
ness of his bearing, was enough to overawe
the boldest spirits of his time, to say nothing
of the miserable caitiffs that sought his death.
In the early days at Erfurt the papal visitor
had warned the prior to be careful of the
monk with the strange light in his eyes, for
he was sure to make trouble, and when, in
1 5 18, Capitan, the papal legate, met him, he
declared, " I could scarcely look the man in
the face, such a diabolical fire darted out of
his eyes."
Luther was never conscious of danger in
his great work, and if he had been, he would
still have braved it in the spirit with which he
braved the Emperor's wrath. " If I had a
thousand heads," he said, " they should all be
cut off, one at a time, before I would recant."
Nothing but that kind of courage could have
served him in the great battle of freedom
upon which he was now launched. A timid
man or a compromiser, a time-server or a
self-seeker, a man whose own life was dear
unto him, with all Luther's genius, could not
have done anything by way of reformation.
It was long the case of one man against the

106 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
world ; only the lion-hearted could have faced
it. Luther's iron will and absolutely unre
lenting persistency carried the day against
Pope and Emperor.
Of course, Luther was not alone in his
great work. His boldness soon encouraged
and inspired others. The greatest scholar of
the time was Erasmus, and he welcomed
Luther's work at the beginning as though it
was allied with his own. Certainly he did
much to help Luther by his keen satires
against the prevailing ecclesiastical customs.
Even his own later attacks upon the Reformer,
inspired as they were from the Vatican, could
not undo what he had already done. But Me
lancthon was Luther's chief helper. A pre
cocious scholar, he was an expert in Greek
and in theology at twenty. Luther called him
" the little Greek," and said, " He surpasses
me in theology, too." Taking his manu
scripts, which the little Greek's modesty had
prevented him from publishing, the great
hearted Luther sent them to the press. He
was the originator of the Protestant exegesis
of the Scriptures and of Protestant systematic
theology. He was indeed a greater technical
theologian than Luther himself.
Certain general conclusions in respect to
the Struggle for Religious Liberty in Ger
many may be here in order.

GERMANY  LUTHER. 107
The Reformation movement assumed three
aspects — it was political, moral and theologi
cal. It is sometimes said that in England it
was political ; in Italy, so far as it went, it was
moral, and in Germany, we may say that it
was theological. But these terms are appli
cable only as characterizing the most conspic
uous phase of the movement in each case.
As a matter of fact, they were all three of
them present, in some degree, in all. The
exigency of the time and the character of the
men in control of affairs determined the par
ticular direction the movement was to take.
Your German is a man of speculative habit
of mind, strongly subjective in his mental
processes, thorough and critical in his in
quiries. To him the truth of a thing is of the
first importance, irrespective of its bearings;
and the logical conclusions of truth, as far as
he knows it, are imperative and controlling.
He has a deathless love of freedom, an un
quenchable thirst for righteousness, and the
heroic virtues of fortitude, endurance and
fearlessness, and withal a sound moral nature
and great sagacity. To this German charac
ter Luther's method was perfectly adapted.
1. Luther's position as a reformer is per
fectly clear in his defense before the Diet. He
there made his appeal from the Pope and the

108 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
Church to the Scriptures and his own con
science. The Scriptures were his ultimate au
thority in religion, and his conscience bound
him to these. The wonder of that position,
even to us, arises from the fact that at this
time Luther was a Roman Catholic, and there
was no other Church in Europe. He had
been brought up in the Catholic doctrine that
the Church and the Pope were infallible. Lu
ther pinned his faith to no human helpers,
however great and powerful. He believed
that his work was of God, and if it was not, he
wanted it to come to naught ; hence he never
would sanction the use of the sword in the
cause of the Reformation.
In 1529, at the Diet of Spires, the Em
peror succeeded in dividing the German
princes, securing a decree which forbade the
spread of the new doctrine in those states
where it was not already in control, but which
secured liberty to the Catholics in those states
where the new doctrine was in control. That
action was taken in violation of a treaty al
ready made at Spires in 1526, which secured
practical religious liberty throughout Ger
many. The adherents of Luther immediately
raised a protest, and from that came the name
Protestant. Not from their opposition to

GERMANY  LUTHER. IO9
Rome itself, but from their indignant protest
against the duplicity and fraud with which
Rome carried on the warfare with the Lu
therans came the name Protestants, which has
ever since been the honorable title of those
who think with Luther. Nothing but his
strenuous opposition at that time prevented
the Protestant princes from declaring war
against the Emperor.
The Emperor was deceived by the Protes
tant moderation at that time, and took it for
weakness or cowardice, and at the Diet of
Augsburg, in 1530, he gave them until Octo
ber 31 of the following year in which to re
turn to the Catholic fold or be annihilated.
Then they saw their danger, and formed the
defensive league of Smalcald, which, in spite
of internal dissensions and treason, was able
to hold the Emperor in check and secure the
Protestant cause from damage until 1555,
when the Diet of Augsburg conceded entire
religious liberty to the Protestants.
Charles V., foreseeing the issue of that as
semblage, declined to take any part in it, and
shortly after abdicated, because of his chagrin
over the disappointment he suffered in not
being able to crush Protestantism. He was
the most powerful emperor the Holy Roman
Empire ever had, and, after Charlemagne, the

IIO STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
ablest of all the emperors. But here was a
power against which he was powerless, and
after a vain struggle of thirty-five years, he
yielded up his sword. The battle for religious
liberty in Germany had been fought and won
against the allied powers of the world by the
force of one intrepid spirit, a poor miner's
son, unarmed, and with nothing but a Bible in
his hand.
It seemed that all Germany would become
Protestant ; but a Judas arose within their
ranks in the person of Maurice, Duke of Sax
ony, who, out of personal pique against the
Elector of Saxony, went over to the Emperor,
and so weakened the Protestant forces. Al
though he afterwards returned to the Protes
tant ranks, he was not able, even by a victory
over the Emperor, to remedy the disaster his
secession had caused. Although Charles was
compelled, at the Diet of Augsburg, to grant
liberty to the Protestants, a heavy blow had
been struck at the Reformation, for at Augs
burg it was also stipulated that every prelate
who became a Protestant was to resign his
benefice. That practically marked the limits
of Protestantism geographically in Germany
for centuries.
In all this work, which took two-thirds of
Germany out of the hands of the Pope in a

GERMANY — LUTHER. Ill
space of twenty-eight years, Luther was the
moving spirit and the presiding genius. He
not only dictated the policy of the princes
who espoused his cause in their relations with
the empire, and directed the theological de
bates at the Diets, but he guided his follow
ers in all matters pertaining to their spiritual
and temporal life. The formation and man
agement of new churches, the creation of new
moral standards and of a new ideal of domes
tic life; the settlement of disputes between
neighbors ; the creation of a system of general
education for his Germans ; provision for their
religious instruction; the translation of the
Bible; the writing of hymns, commentaries
and pamphlets; the conduct of great theo
logical debates, and the preaching of sermons
were some of the labors with which he occu
pied himself during those twenty-eight years
— labors so prodigious as to seem beyond the
strength of any one man. And yet he accom
plished them all with a good-natured ease and
jocose indifference to labor that make it im
possible for us to think of him as an over
burdened man.
The power of the Bible as a fighting weapon
is brilliantly seen in the execution which it
wrought in Luther's hands. Its effect upon
himself we have already seen, in that it set him

112 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
in opposition to the established order and
nerved him for the fight. Its effect upon the
Germans, for whom he translated it, was
equally marvelous. He began the work in the
Wartburg, and kept it up with incredible care
and labor, until the whole Bible was trans
lated into the German.
" No fine, courtly words," he wrote to one
of his helpers. " This book must be under
stood by the mother in the house, the children
in the street, and the common man in the mar
ket." It was notto be wondered atthat the people
were soon talking about that book upon the
streets and in the family circle. Apart from
its religious influence, Luther's Bible gave the
Germans what they never had had before — a
standard for their language. A national
tongue began to frame itself upon the vital,
sinewy, idiomatic language of the Bible, and
to supplant the local dialects. It also gave rise
to a German literature. It furnished mental
stimulus and instruction to the people. It
entered into the life of the people with an
exciting, reviving, transforming energy, and
became a part of their national heritage.
A demand soon arose for general education,
and Luther set himself at work to devise
a system of general popular education, the

GERMANY  LUTHER. II3
beneficial effects of which are seen at this
day. Luther was a man of varied gifts and pro
digious labors, as preacher, teacher, organ
izer, translator, commentator and general ad
ministrator. He did enough work in each
department to have made the reputation of no
ordinary man.
Aside from his greatest work, and that
which had the most far-reaching and perma
nent result of all that he did, his translation of
the Bible, he did many other things which
had immediate and lasting results. In a
single year he is said to have issued one hun
dred and eighty-three publications. Com
mentaries, pamphlets, tracts and letters flowed
from his pen like water from a faucet, and, be
sides, he was traveling and preaching, plant
ing churches and guiding them in their early
struggles. He was constantly in controversy
with some opponent of his teachings, and al
ways embroiled with his adversaries. At
councils and diets and conventions he did yeo
man's service for the great cause, and he was
equally accessible to princes and to peasants,
and was equally desired and sought after by
them for counsel.
He complains at one time that he is wast
ing his time in acting as justice of the peace,

114 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
and has just been reckoning with a baker for
his false weights.
Now we see him at the council board of
kings, discussing treaties, alliances and state
policies ; now from his study directing the dis
cussions of the diet or convention ; again, ;
from the pulpit, quieting the tumult of a
people, and still again, taking a long journey
that he may settle a family dispute, and in
that beneficent mission he died, in 1546, per
haps from exposure.
At another time he is busy translating
^Esop's fables for his Germans, and again it
is hymns that he is composing for use in
church worship or in the family circle, and in
all this the accuracy and painstaking care of
his work is as remarkable as the quantity of it.
In the midst of his own family circle, with
his sensible wife, whom he playfully called
Doctress Luther, and his children, he was the
gentlest of husbands, the kindest of fathers,
and the merriest of playfellows. He kept
open house for all comers, and the songs
which he composed for his children to sing,
and the talk that sparkled at his table, made
his home the center of attraction and influ
ence. For humor and wit he has never been
excelled. Goethe's conversation, as reported
by Eckermann, is not more brilliant; nor is

GERMANY  LUTHER. 1 15
the " Autocrat " of the " Breakfast Table "
more humorous or witty. He was an ac
complished musician, and so with the children
he spent his time of relaxation in music,
singing and frolic, and with his friends in
witty talk. " Junker George," as he humor
ously styles himself, in his doublet, with a
sword at his side, writes to his friend Me
lancthon directions as to the care of his " little
body," and such letters as he wrote his own
son, son seldom has received from father.
The fine mingling of jest and earnest in Lu
ther's letters is one of the rarest of charms.
He puts up a practical joke upon a fastidi
ous musical critic by passing off a composi
tion, partly his own, as a performance in
Augsburg, to celebrate the entrance of the
Emperor and his brother.
Martin Luther was a true son of the Ger
man people. He had, besides their mental
traits and moral qualities, their peculiarities of
temper. In him a certain childlikeness of dis
position was accompanied by a lion-hearted
courage. Great cheerfulness of temper was
united with a mystical and melancholy vein.
He was gentle and tender, but passionate and
defiant on occasion.
The career of Martin Luther was the won
derful career of a great soul. His boldness,

Il6 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
his courage and his daring were equalled by
his gentleness, his tenderness and his affec
tion, and when no great principle was at stake,
he was humble, meek and conciliatory alike
to friends and foes. In mental processes, he
was prompt and swift, brilliant and practical,
with almost unerring judgment and sound
common sense, but his intellectual genius, ex
traordinary as it was, was equalled by his
moral character and spiritual grandeur. In
him were mingled all the elements of man in
huge proportions. Indeed, he was a human
colossus, gifted with the tongue and voice of
a Jupiter tonans, and above all he was a
man of unlimited and invincible faith. He
stands out upon the pages of history as in
comparably its most sublime character since
Christ and Paul. He was a man destined to
set up a new doctrine and reform the world,
as his superior said of him long before there
were any signs of its coming. He had a voice
of thunder and a pen of fire.
And in all this he was a true son of his own
people, a German of the Germans. Of inde
pendent spirit, inquiring mind, loving liberty
and truth, they had kept alive the spirit of
freedom when it was not to be found else
where. Of a critical, speculative habit of
mind, they were also logical and thorough in

GERMANY — LUTHER. 1 1 7
their mental processes. With a tendency to
mysticism and ascetic views of life, they have
also a strong, practical faculty and great
cheerfulness of temper. There is childlike
guilelessness about them, together with a de
fiant and passionate spirit and an inflexible
will. They are sound in body, in mind and in
spirit. Such a man among such a people was
bound to move the world. Germany is the
most prosperous and enlightened country on
the Continent to-day, because of Luther's
work.

LECTURE IV.
THE STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN ITALY 
SAVONAROLA.
The course of thought which we are pur
suing in these lectures brings us to-night to
consider the Reformation in Italy. In no
other country, except Spain, did it have so
little effect or produce such transient results.
Our attention would scarcely be attracted in
that direction in pursuing the subject of re
ligious liberty were it not for the life and work
of a single person, who stands conspicuous
among the reformers of the world for the sin
gular beauty of his character, the remarkable
powers of his genius, and the startling effects
of his eloquence — Fra Girolamo Savonarola,
a Dominican monk, Prior of San Marco in
Florence, who lived between the years 1452-
98. Apart from this remarkable man, whose
name it is scarcely possible to pronounce even
at this late day without a feeling of wonder
and of awe, the only marked effect of the Ref
ormation movement in Italy was the develop-

ITALY — SAVONAROLA. 1 1 9
ment of the most effective forces that were set
at work against it. These were the Inquisi
tion and the Order of Jesuits, or Society of
Jesus, founded by Ignatius Loyola, a Spaniard,
for the sake of extending the power and au
thority of Rome. That society espoused the
doctrine that the end justifies the means, and
by their casuistry so confused the distinction
between right and wrong that in their hands
a question of morals became a question of ex
pediency. Such was the effect of their im
moral philosophy upon their characters, that
they adopted courses of conduct offensive to
the moral sense of Christendom. They be
came obnoxious even to the Church to which
they had rendered most signal service, and
in whose defense they were organized. The
order was suppressed in the eighteenth cen
tury, but it has since been revived.
Let us look a little into the condition of re
ligious affairs in Italy previous to the appear
ance of Savonarola.
The downfall of the Hohenstaufens in the
middle of the thirteenth century liberated
Italy from the control of the German emper
ors. The cities regained their independence
and prosperity, letters were cultivated, the arts
flourished, commerce rapidly increased, trade
expanded, schools, academies and univer-

120 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
sities sprang up, and learning was eagerly
sought, so that when, in 1453, the Turks took
Constantinople, Italy furnised the most in
viting and profitable field for the scholars
and artists who had inherited and treasured
the Greek learning and art, but who were
forced to flee before the barbarous Turk.
The Greek learning and literature, as well
as the Greek art and the Greek spirit, had
long before perished in Europe. The division
of the East and the West had left Constantino
ple the undisputed queen of the East and the
great treasury of Greek antiquities. With the
fall of the Empire, and the invasion of the
barbarians, culture, learning and art had
largely disappeared from Europe. What re
mained was cherished in secret or hidden away
in the cloister of some secluded convent,
where the art of using it was lost.
In Italy, freedom from foreign oppression
left her people free to develop their native
talents. Fra Angelico began to paint ; poetry
revived with Dante ; science began to be culti
vated. Guizot tells us that at this time Italy " gave
herself up to all the pleasures of an indolent,
elegant, licentious civilization; to a taste for
letters, the arts and social and physical en
joyments." He goes on to compare Italy

ITALY  SAVONAROLA. 121
of that day with France in the eighteenth cen
tury, just before the revolution, and says:
" There was the same desire for the progress
of intelligence, and for the acquirement of
new ideas ; the same taste for an agreeable and
easy life, the same luxury, the same licen
tiousness ; there was the same want of politi
cal energy and of moral principles, combined
with singular sincerity and activity of mind."
It was during that time that Machiavelli
wrote his famous treatise known as the
" Prince " — a work which gave its author's
name to the world as a new word representa
tive of the most flagitious immorality openly
avowed and even advocated. In that notori
ous work he laid down the principle afterward
assumed as the keystone of the Jesuit's arch
of casuistry, that "the end justifies the means,"
that treachery and dissimulation are a merit
when skillfuly practiced. It set at defiance
all the principles of Christian ethics, and ad
vocated actions so flagrant and degrading as
to be unworthy the name even of pagan ; and
yet he was the friend and favorite of two
popes and of Lorenzo de Medici.
The fatal defect of character which under
mined the pagan civilizations of the past had
come, with their philosophy and moral and
religious teachings, into Italy, as it afterwards

12 2 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
showed itself in France, and was the certain
precursor, as it was also the fatal cause, of her
disintegration, decay and long-time bondage.
Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio had seen
and warned Italy of her danger. Dante had
faithfully withstood the childish pretensions
and unseemly luxury of the papacy, and had
suffered exile and persecution in consequence.
He bewailed the corruption of the papal court
and the assumptions of temporal power by the
popes. In his work on Monarchy, he advo
cated the separation of the Church and the
State, and the Ghibelline doctrine of the inde
pendence of each. To its greed of temporal
power, Dante refers the evils and abuses
which have arisen within the Church.
The protests of the poets and prose writers
were illustrated and emphasized for the com
mon people by the painters. Fra Angelico
and Fra Bartolommeo, in their paintings of
the judgment, place popes, cardinals and
bishops, in full canonicals, in the lowest re
gions of eternal torment, or on their way
thither, in the midst of the vilest sinners and
among the meanest of mankind. Michael An
gelo, also, in his painting of the judgment in
the Sistine Chapel, the principal place of wor
ship in the Vatican itself, did not hesitate to
pillory the highest of ecclesiastical dignitaries

ITALY — SAVONAROLA. 1 23
in the midst of the worst torments and in such
living likeness that they recognized their
own faces. It is said of one of them that
he complained to the pope that the great
masters had placed him in the region of
eternal torment, and the pope replied, " If
he had placed you in purgatory, I might
be able to do something for you; but since
he has placed you in hell, I have no juris
diction there." And there the great cardinal
remains to this day.
The ideal works of the great masters who
now appeared in Italy had much to do with
awakening the spiritual natures of men and
quickening the moral sense. Such beatific
visions as Fra Angelico and Raphael threw
upon their canvases, and such mighty reve
lations of spiritual genius as Leonardo da
Vinci and Michael Angelo gave in their great
works, were not without their effect on a peo
ple the most sensitive and responsive in Eu
rope to the effects of artistic beauty. The
sweet dignity and noble grace of Raphael, and
the colossal power of the Jove-like Angelo,
deeply impressed and strongly moved the
people. The immediate effect of the revival of learn
ing in Italy was to awaken an inquiring spirit
and create a critical method. Under the in-

I24 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
fluence of Dante, Petrarch and Brescia, a cer
tain intellectual awakening had already taken
place. Men had been shaken out of their long
time intellectual lethargy; but the activity
which it created was mostly in the direction of
poetry and romance. Works of the imagina
tion and the fancy were chiefly the result, and
it was not until the Greek scholars of Con
stantinople, with their invaluable manuscripts,
invaded Italy that the spirit of inquiry and of
criticism awoke. History and science began
to be cultivated. The result of historical in
vestigations was to undermine the credit of
the great ecclesiastical system, which had
based its stupendous claims upon reputed his
torical events. Laurentius Valla exposed the
fiction of the so-called Donation of Constan
tine, which Dante had previously said Con
stantine had no right to make. Other studies
revealed the identity beneath Christian names
of many of the ecclesiastical customs and
practices with the ancient superstitions and
paganisms, which the Church of Rome so
fiercely denounced as of the devil.
The study of the Scriptures in the Hebrew
and Greek tongues, which now became pos
sible, familiarized students with the original
sources of the Christian religion and revealed
the yawning chasm between the apostolic

ITALY — SAVONAROLA. 125
simplicity of the Early Church and the gor
geous pomp and splendor of the papacy.
All of these influences combined to create
a spirit of unrest and discontent among the
better classes of Italians. The leading men
and some illustrious women began to assem
ble for worship and prayer in the simple faith
and forms of the New Testament. At Ven
ice, Pisa, Genoa, Milan, Modena, Padua,
Ferrara, Florence, Rome and Naples, some
among the princes and higher ecclesiastics
united in a kind of evangelical party. At
Rome, fifty or sixty such persons, among
whom were four or five who afterwards be
came cardinals, and one of them a pope, Paul
IV., formed what was known as the " Oratory
of the Divine Love." They held for the most
part to the Protestant doctrine of justifica
tion, and were urgent in their demands for
the purification of the Church. They gained
many converts among the common people
and the middle classes, and, on one occasion,
addressed a memorial to the pope, in which
they likened the state of the Church to " a
pestiferous malady," and recommended meas
ures of reform.
The reigning pope, Paul III., was friendly
to the evangelical party and made its leaders
cardinals. It is probably due to him that such

126 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
slight reforms as took place within the Italian
Church were secured, for his successor re
scinded his own acts as a leader of the evan
gelical party, and was as strenuous and in
flexible as Alexander Borgia himself for the
ancient regime.
By the efforts of this party a meeting was
had between the representatives of the
Protestant reformers in the North and the
representatives of the pope at Ratisbon, in
1541, with the design of bringing about a
better understanding between the Protestants
and the Romanists and of uniting them again
in one church organization. They were able
to agree on the nature of man, original sin,
redemption and justification; but on the two
points of the primacy of the pope and the doc
trine of the Eucharist they could not agree,
and hence the union could not be made.
That conference revealed, as perhaps noth
ing else during the Reformation controversy
did, how impassable was the gulf that
yawned between the Protestant reforms and
the Catholic Church. It resulted in a strong
reaction in Italy against Protestantism and a
revival of zeal in the Italian Church, and the
development of the two forces already men
tioned — the Jesuits and the Inquisition —
which were to prove in its hands the might-

ITALY — SAVONAROLA. 127
iest agent and the most terrible instrument
for the check of Protestantism and the re-
establishment of Romanism in Europe.
Two things are essential to the success of
any great cause : one is a person large enough
to embody the principles of the cause, power
ful enough to command a hearing for it, in
stinct with a contagious enthusiasm, and ir
resistible in the impact of his own personality
upon others, a kind of prophet to mankind.
That is one essential. The other is a people
prepared to receive the message of the
prophet, to respond to his call, and to act
upon the convictions he imparts to them.
Given the prophet without the people, and
you have a voice crying in the wilderness ;•
given the people without the prophet, and you
have the blind groping in darkness and falling
into the ditch.
Italy had the first, but not the second, of
these two requisites in the struggle for re
ligious liberty in the person of Savonarola, a
veritable John the Baptist, who appeared in
Italy in the fifteenth century, thirty years
before Luther appeared in Germany. His
was the spirit of a true Hebrew prophet. The
clearness of his vision, the singleness of his
purpose, the intensity and fervor of his na
ture; his austere morality and lofty spiritual

128 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
attainments make him conspicuous among
the great and the good of mankind. But the
people to whom he preached were not pre
pared to receive his message. They heard
him gladly and in vast throngs. They were
swept by his impassioned eloquence, as a for
est is swayed by a tempest, and bowed and
wept at his appeals. For a time they were
even compelled to go with him and obey his
voice against their will, so persuasive and
overwhelming was his personality. They
purged their vile city of its vices and its
crimes, its traitors and its despots, so that
from being the most profligate city in Italy
Florence became a model of virtue. But the
haste with which the people returned to their
iniquities when his voice was silenced goes
to show how unprepared they were for the
truth which he proclaimed and how shallow
their hearts were towards it. Had Savon
arola wrought in England or in Germany, the
results of his work would probably have been
different. As it was, he was a voice crying
in the wilderness.
The peculiar character of the Italian people
is responsible for the failure of Savonarola's
efforts. A stranger is liable to err here and
should be careful how he speaks; but, judged
from their history, they seem to be a versa-

ITALY  SAVON AR0LA. 1 2 9
tile, partisan people, esthetic and artistic,
emotional and volatile, fond of show and
pleasure, richly endowed in many fine senti
ments, but lacking in the finest sensibilities
and somewhat deficient in moral sense — a
certain immaturity of mind and character.
They have the childish virtues of quickness,
buoyancy and hopefulness, and the childish
vices of fickleness, capriciousness and wilful
ness. They love the forms of freedom rather
than the fact. The veriest despot might ca
jole them out of their liberties and lull them
into insensibility of their slavery by a display
of magnificence. A splendid tyranny was far
more welcome to them than a quiet, orderly
and prosperous republic. Their best friends
might not seriously offend their esthetic
sense or trifle with their love of pleasure.
They lack the critical faculty and a close,
stern, logical power which is indispensable to
mental stability and integrity and civic free
dom. For this reason they rejected men like
Rienzi, Dante, Arnold of Brescia, and Savon
arola — pure patriots and lovers of Italy, and
allied themselves with men like the Medici
and the Borgia, moral monsters and political
despots. During the long struggle between the Em-

130 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
pire and the Papacy, the Guelphs and the Ghi-
bellines, the cities of Northern Italy had man
aged, for the most part, to maintain their
freedom, so that when the Empire fell, in the
middle of the thirteenth century, a period of
unexampled prosperity set in, and the chief
cities rose to great magnificence. For a
period of four hundred years the history of
Italian cities, of which Genoa, Venice and
Florence are chief, read like a romance. They
are comparable only with the three ancient
cities of Athens, Rome and Carthage.
But the heroic virtues and unquenchable
love of liberty with which these cities fought
their early battles for freedom had in the
fifteenth century given place to a supine and
craven acquiescence in the supremacy which
rich and powerful citizens had acquired in the
State. Of these cities, Florence is to us the most
important. The events that transpired within
her walls during two centuries have made her
conspicuous in history, as they made her the
wonder and admiration of her time. The men
whom she produced, both for good and for
evil, stand among the greatest in history.
Dante, Savonarola, Michael Angelo, to say
nothing of Raphael, Giotto, Ghiberti, Bru-
nelleschi and Galileo, form in themselves a

ITALY  SAVONAROLA. 131
brilliant constellation. But Florence also
produced men of a very different type. Under
the fostering influence of her free institu
tions, the humble and obscure often grew
rich and powerful by diligence and intelligent
enterprise, and not seldom they used their
wealth and power to undermine the freedom
which had enabled them to acquire it. Among
these the family of the Medici is notorious
for the manner in which it subverted the lib
erties of Florence and usurped the supreme
authority. It is also remarkable for the num
ber of brilliant intellects and moral monsters
it produced in the course of three centuries.
Of these, Lorenzo was, perhaps, in both re
spects, the most remarkable, and he was in
control of Florence when Savonarola arrived
there at the Convent of San Marco, in 1490.
He was a cultivated, refined scholar, phi
losopher and artist; and at the same time an
abandoned libertine and heartless tyrant. He
was a man of versatile gifts and great accom
plishments, and shone with equal brilliancy in
an assembly of philosophers discussing the
Platonic idea of virtue, in a society of artists
criticising the productions of genius in paint
ing and sculpture, in a company of poets dis
puting about literature or reading their own
verses, and in the garden of San Marco dis-

132 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
cussing theology and religion. He was sur-
named " The Magnificent," and justly so, for
no man was ever more munificent in his pat
ronage of letters, arts, sciences and religion
than he. In his own library was trained the
youth who afterwards laid the foundations of
the great Vatican library, now one of the
priceless collections of the world. He com
posed verses to be sung at religious services,
and others to be sung at the Carnival, the
most abandoned revel of drunken orgies im
aginable. He was, in fact, the man of his
age, and embodies on a large scale its virtues
and its vices. With his affable, cultivated,
polished manner and peerless magnificence,
he cajoled the people and narcotized them
into a state of civic comatoseness, so that he
was able to rob them of the few rights and
liberties his grandfather had not absorbed.
He maintained the forms of liberty under
which the city had prospered and grown rich,
and his own family had risen to power, but
destroyed the power which had made them
beneficent. The constitution of the city was
perverted by securing the election of his own
creatures to office, and so centering all power
in himself. He thus came to be absolute, and
he maintained his absoluteness by a series of
bloody reprisals upon his enemies and by a

ITALY — SAVONAROLA. 133
system of spies who ferreted out and brought
to summary punishment all opposition. The
resources of the city were soon turned into
his own treasury, and he was complete master
of the city and its treasure. He did not scru
ple to rifle trust funds for purposes of his
ambition or pleasure, and on one occasion he
diverted a fund of 100,000 florins, established
for the purpose of providing orphan girls with
marriage dowry, according to the custom of
the time in Italy, in consequence of which
scores of young girls were deprived of hon
orable marriage and thrown upon the streets.
That was the kind of man who was in pos
session of Florence when Savonarola arrived
there in 1490. And yet it is a tribute to some
thing in Lorenzo betraying a certain great
ness of mind that he not only permitted the
friar to preach without molestation, but that
on his deathbed he sent for him to render
him the last rites of the Church.
Savonarola was a man of equal intellectual
genius with Lorenzo, but a man of stain
less life and exalted moral nature, keenly
alive to the vices of his age and painfully sen
sitive of them. At the age of twenty-three
he entered the Dominican convent at Bo
logna, driven thither by an unbearable sense
of the wickedness of the world and an irre
sistible impulse to escape from it.

134 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
He had always been noted for a reserved,
modest disposition and studious habits, and
for what was in those days a singular purity
and exaltation of life. At the age of twenty
he wrote a poem on " The Ruin of the
World," in which he describes the condition
of the world at the time. He says that virtue
has everywhere perished and that decent cus
toms have ceased to be observed. The shame
less vice and hideous crimes he was obliged to
witness inflicted upon him the greatest suf
fering, and he prayed to be " taken out of
the mire," as he says. He was destined for
the medical profession, in which his ances
tors had long been eminent, and he struggled
hard to meet the wishes of his parents by
preparing himself for that profession ; but the
conviction grew upon him that he had a mis
sion in the world which could only be ful
filled by his becoming a monk. He was at
that time very fond of Plato, and displayed
great metaphysical acumen and power in
preparing himself for that profession; but he
had also learned to love Thomas Aquinas,
and it was not long after he entered the con
vent that we find him becoming absorbed in
the Scriptures. Soon they have become his
chief book, and it was said of him that he
had committed to memory the whole of the
Old and New Testaments.

ITALY — SAVONAROLA. 135
Savonarola first came into public notice as
a man of mark at a convention of the brethren
in Lombardy, where he startled and amazed
the assembly by the boldness of his speech
against the prevailing wickedness, and the
intensity of his manner. He arraigned the
Church for her profligacy, called upon her to
repent, and threatened her with the direst ca
lamities if she did not. " Time was," said he,
" when the Church had wooden chalices and
golden prelates; but now she has golden
chalices and wooden prelates. Repent you,
wash you, make you clean, lest a worse evil
befall you."
The moral aspect of the world assumed the
place of first importance in his thoughts and
subordinated all other interests. Trained in
his youth for the medical profession, he had
manifested great aptitude for the study of
philosophy and science and had exhibited a
strongly speculative habit of mind. So well
furnished was he in these particulars that one
of his accusers at his trial urged that so great
a genius in science ought not to be put to
death, but kept in- prison, that the world
might profit by his labors. But all these in
terests were swallowed up for him in the
interest which he now acquired in the Scrip
tures and in human life, and in Florence that

136 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
interest was so intensified that it grew into a
consuming passion. He was never at vari
ance with the Roman Catholic Church in mat
ters of doctrine, but attacked it solely on the
grounds of moral character.
In order to understand this man we should
study his face. Fortunately, we have it
painted by a great master from life. Barto-
lommeo's portraits of Savonarola present al
together a most remarkable face. His fea
tures are as clear cut and sharply defined as
the most carefully cut cameo, but as bold and
massive as a face in the mountainous rock —
altogether the most remarkable face I ever
looked upon, a sort of combination of the
eagle and the lion. The craggy brow and the
crater-like depths of the great eyes, the mas
sive but shapely nose and chin, and the sweet,
large but fine, melancholy, firm but flexible,
strong but beautiful mouth, together with
the rugged, mobile countenance, all bespeak
the mighty, intrepid, fiery, impetuous soul that
wrought in building such a structure of bone
and sinew. There is no superfluous flesh, no
weak or deficient line, no excessive growth,
but a harmony and symmetry of rugged,
craggy strength, lit up with gleams of tender
ness and gentleness, as of a mountainside
touched by passing gleams of sunlight. It

ITALY — SAVONAROLA. 1 37
is a perfectly ideal face for massive grandeur
— unimaginable, indescribable — surpassing
anything I have ever seen in the form of a
face — one of the rare products of life which
she never repeats and never imitates; it is
perfectly unique and without a class. As one
looks upon the portrait, he readily under
stands the stories of the monks about its shin
ing for hours in the darkness of the church
where he was accustomed to sit long after
service in rapt meditation.
The soul of the Hebrew prophets was in
this man. His chief characteristics were
great, good common sense, amounting to
genius, moral earnestness and spiritual fer
vor. He was not a poet or theologian, as Lu
ther was, nor a scholar and thinker, like Wyc
lif; but in moral and spiritual genius he
equalled, if he did not surpass, them both. He
had in a remarkable degree the faculty of
prevision which enabled him to predict with
surprising exactness events which actually
came to pass. He predicted, among other
things, the death of Lorenzo, the invasion of
Italy by Charles VIII., and his own death by
burning at the hands of the pope.
That rare and, as it seemed to the people
of his day, supernatural power, together with
the austerity of his life, his strange power

138 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
over the spirits of men, his bold defiance of
the Medici and the pope, and his burning elo
quence, have surrounded his memory with
a strange, weird atmosphere, as of some wild
fanatic, blazing and thundering, blindly and
aimlessly, at he knows not what. Nothing
could be farther from the truth.
Savonarola had a burning zeal for right
eousness and a soul-consuming hunger for
truth; but he was not of a speculative or im
aginative turn of mind. Doctrine as such did
not attract him, and he had no taste for the
orizing. Summoned to a council of his order,
in which the great doctors of theology dis
cuss the deep questions of theology, he has
nothing to say, but sits apart brooding until
the questions of discipline and the moral con
dition of the Church come up. That brings
him to his feet, and his fiery, fulgurous soul
leaps to his eyes and lips and there burns and
flames until it astounds and confounds the
easy-going, luxurious prelates. With a burn
ing eloquence he scathes and scorches the
profligate and plundering magnates of the
Church, by whom he is surrounded, and ex
horts them to repentance and cleansing of
life. He explicitly threatens them with divine
punishment, if they do not speedily turn from
their evil ways.

ITALY — SAVONAROLA. 1 39
It was inevitable that a man like that
should come into sharp conflict with the pow
ers that ruled. The profligate Lorenzo at
Florence, and the flagitious Alexander VI.
at Rome, were not likely to win his ap
probation or to relish his rebukes. His fiery
spirit and uncompromising nature could not
quietly submit to abuses that were ruining
the Church and the State.
His sermons made such an impression upon
the people that the cathedral could not hold
his audience, but it overflowed even there
and filled the surrounding space whenever
he preached. His favorite themes were the
vices of the age and their consequences ; the
wickedness of the priests, whom he held re
sponsible for them, and the profligacy of the
tyrant, whose arts and wiles he condemned.
From these themes neither threats nor prom
ises would turn him aside.
Lorenzo was cunning and crafty and tried
to conciliate this terrible being, who alone
among men dared to call him to account.
" Go, tell your master," replied the intrepid
monk to his friendly messengers, " to pre
pare to repent of his sins ; for the Lord spares
no one, and has no fear of the princes of the
earth." A fire burned within him, as he ex
pressed it, and would not let him keep si-

140 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
lent or modify his utterance, and his words
were like molten lava, and burned their
way into the hearts of the people. But Lo
renzo was enough of a man to honor him
whom he could neither intimidate nor mollify,
and on his deathbed he sent for the prior
of San Marco to administer to him the last
rites of his church. The monk laid down
three conditions: i. Repentance from his
sins and a lively faith in God. To this " The
Magnificent " immediately assents. 2. The
restoration of all ill-gotten gain, either by
himself or by enjoining it upon his sons.
There is reluctance here, but the haughty
spirit of the tyrant yields. 3. The restoration
to Florence of her ancient rights and liber
ties. The tyrant groans and turns his back
upon the friar. The inflexible monk draws
his cowl over his face and leaves the palace,
and Lorenzo the Magnificent dies uncon-
fessed. The year after Savonarola began to preach
in Florence the infamous Rodrigo Borgia se
cured the papal throne by bribery. He was a
man of undoubted ability, but of most scan
dalous life. No pope has ever more thor
oughly disgraced the chair of St. Peter. His
ambition was to amass wealth and secure
thrones for his children. For this purpose he

ITALY — SAVONAROLA. 141
sold the offices of the Church and used all the
rites and prerogatives of the papacy for the
purpose of securing revenue. One of Boc
caccio's stories is applicable to this time.*
It was not to be expected that Savonarola
would suffer such abuses as these to go un-
rebuked, nor that a man like the pope would
long endure his rebukes with patience. At
first he treated him with contempt, then he
tried to conciliate him with flattery, then he
endeavored to bribe him with the offer of
dignities; but the wise monk knew too well
the motives that animated the potentate to
be caught with any of his wiles. He declined
to go to Rome and refused the offer of a car
dinal's hat with the words, " Tell your master
that the only hat I shall ever receive from him
* He tells of a Jew who lived in Paris and had a
Christian friend anxious for his conversion. The
Jew finally announced his intention to go to Rome
and see the Christian religion at its headquarters.
That dismayed the Christian, for he well knew the
riot and dissipation he would find at Rome and,
most of all, with the pope and cardinals. In due
time the Jew returned to Paris a Christian, and ex
plained his conversion by saying that what he saw
at Rome had convinced him that the Christian religion
must have a supernatural origin and a divine sup
port, else it would have been driven out of the world
by the profligacy and folly of its guardians.

142 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
will be the red hat of flames." Alexander
then set himself at open war with the friar and
determined upon his destruction.
Savonarola was at that time by far the most
eloquent, powerful, influential and famous
preacher in Christendom, as for ten years,
from 1488 to 1498, he was the foremost man
of all Italy. His influence at that time was
felt strongly at the universities in England,
and students who returned to be lecturers and
professors at Oxford and Cambridge brought
back something of the fire they had lighted at
his torch. He used his power wisely and well.
He taught the people the Scriptures, a pure
morality and a high spirituality. He admon
ished the wicked and encouraged the weak. He
called all men to repentance and preached to
them the Christ of the Gospels. He spared
none, and he had no respect for persons. He
treated prince and peasant alike, and knew
no fear for emperor or pope, but for God
only. Indeed, for a time he ruled Florence as
no monarch ever ruled a State. The people
daily thronged the cathedral and crowded the
surrounding space, and were swept and fired
by the mighty tides of passion which rose from
his soul as streams from a burning volcano,
and poured forth from his lips like fiery tor
rents burning their way into every heart.

ITALY — SAVONAROLA. 143
Like another Paul, " he reasoned with them
of truth and righteousness and a judgment
to come." He dealt with the common sins
of the day, the vices, the crimes, the iniqui
ties, the abuses of every class of society, the
dishonesty of the merchants, the untruthful
ness of the professional classes, the gambling
and drunkenness and licentiousness of all ; and
he did it with a swift, trenchant, pungent
earnestness which sent his flaming words to
the hearts of all, like arrows tipped with fire,
there to lodge and kindle a kindred flame.
The people bowed themselves and wept at his
accusations and appeals and went forth hum
ble and penitent, to lay aside the sins which
had caused their ruin. Gambling disappeared
and drunkenness ceased, and for three years
Florence, from being the most profligate city
in Europe, became the most orderly and
righteous. It was during that time as near
perhaps as any city ever was to being a Puri
tan city.
But a city that had been enslaved to men
and demons for a century was not to be re
stored by a single revolution, nor in a night.
This remarkable man had the gift of vision
and of prediction. He early came to a sense
of a mission in the world, which grew upon
him until he began to expect some particular

144 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
message of the work he was to do; and in
1484 the message came. The heavens seemed
to open before him and a voice commanded
him to proclaim three things: (1) that the
Church should be scourged for its wicked
ness; (2) that it should be renovated, and (3)
that this should come to pass soon.
Other visions followed this, and soon he
began to predict, with remarkable accuracy,
coming events.
While he was yet but a lecturer, as he
stood in the pulpit lecturing one Saturday,
he hesitated, reflected and finally announced
that to-morrow he would begin to preach and
would continue to preach eight years; and
that actually occurred. On one occasion,
when Lorenzo sent a friend to talk with him
about his attacks upon the tyrant, with a sug
gestion of danger, the strange monk divined
the inspiration of the messenger, and said,
" Go, tell Lorenzo that not I, but he, shall
leave Florence, and that very soon." Within
a few months " The Magnificent " was dead.
So, also, he predicted the speedy death of the
pope, which soon followed; and three years
before it happened, when there was absolutely
no prospect of it, he had foretold the coming
of the French into Italy. So, also, he pre
dicted his own death.

ITALY — SAVONAROLA. 1 45
These and other prophecies which actually
were fulfilled in a brief space, with remark
able accuracy, caused him to be regarded with
a reverence amounting to awe, as of one pos
sessed with superhuman powers.
The charge has sometimes been made
against Savonarola that he was a visionary
and blind fanatic. While it is true that he
had visions and made predictions, it is also
true that his visions were of the nature of
revelations of the true inwardness of things,
and his predictions actually were fulfilled. His
sermons, in the light of subsequent history,
read like inspired prophecies, and his conduct
in the midst of the gravest dangers shows him
to have been a man of the most solid judg
ment and the most capacious understanding
— the most colossal man of his time.
When the French invaded Italy, as he had
predicted, Piero de Medici, who was then in
control, basely betrayed Florence into their
hands. The people determined not to submit
to such a disgrace, and they turned to Savon
arola for advice. He called them together in
the cathedral and counseled an embassy to
the French king, and after all efforts to se
cure favorable terms for the city had failed, he
took his way to the French camp, admonished
the king of his duties, warned him to have a

I46 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
care of his actions, and threatened the direst
penalties if he abused his power. The obdu
rate and unscrupulous despot, who would
hearken to neither the voice of conscience nor
of humanity, who neither feared God nor re
garded man, quailed before the mighty spirit
of the monk and swore friendship to the city ;
and when he seemed in danger of forgetting
his oaths, the indomitable monk sought him
out again, reminded him of his pledges, and
ordered him to leave the city. Charles put
himself at the head of his victorious army and
marched away.
In this marvelous magic of his spirit Savon
arola closely resembles Bernard of Clairvaux;
and whether any one else has equaled these
two in that respect, I am doubtful. The effect
of Demosthenes' Philippics I do not think
equal to the effect of Savonarola's sermons,
by which he held Florence against the com
bined powers of the world in Church and
State for four years.
The events of the invasion left the city
panic-stricken and its chief men paralyzed. In
the midst of the confusion and despair the
great Dominican alone was calm, self-pos
sessed, equal to the emergency. The Medici
did not dare to show their faces, and when
they were gone the ruling spirit was seen to

ITALY — SAVONAROLA. 1 47
be the prior of San Marco. In their extremity
the people turned to him. He outlined a con
stitution for them, and the successive steps in
the development of the new government can
be traced in his sermons during four years.
He was the mind, the conscience, and the will
of Florence.
So long as he could occupy his pulpit there
was no question of his supremacy in Florence.
Enemies and friends alike bowed to the subtle,
irresistible magic of his eloquence. (It is said
that a letter of admonition which he addressed
to the wicked pope, who was already com
mitted to the monk's destruction, caused that
shameless potentate to pause for a time and
reflect on his career. It was the only thing
that ever did.) He could hold Florence
against any foe as long as he had his pulpit ;
but, weakened at length by the long struggle
and by his vigils and fastings, and forbidden
by the pope to preach, he was glad to relax his
labors for a time. Then his enemies began
to work. The plague fell upon the city to
help them, and injudicious friends and parti
sans played into the hands of his enemies.
No man knew better than the preacher the
danger of his position. The prelates and aris
tocrats were a unit against him. The pope
and the emperqr were agreed in the necessity

148 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
for his overthrow. Among the people them
selves many had been deprived of their in
comes by the suppression of vice, and many
more chafed uneasily under the unaccus
tomed and unwelcome restraint the new
regime had forced upon them, and sighed for
the former days. Every vile thing within the
city that had been suppressed or restrained
chafed and fumed in its bondage and clam
ored for release. Paid emissaries from the
Medici and the pope went about at the elec
tions seeking plans in the council that they
might betray the prior, whom they could not
otherwise reach, and overthrow the republic,
which was impossible while he occupied the
pulpit in the cathedral.
All this the wonderful man knew and de
clared. He saw the darkness thicken about
his path, the plots multiply, and the con
spiracies coming to completion. The end was
approaching, dark and terrible, but he held
steadily on his way.
In spite of his visions Savonarola was not a
visionary; no mental hallucinations afflicted
him — he was a mystic but not a maniac. They
wanted him to be king, but he refused all
public office, and set up over his pulpit the in
scription, " Jesus Christ is King of Florence."
Unable longer to endure his rebukes, the

ITALY — SAVONAROLA. 149
pope decided, in 1497, to silence the irre
pressible monk in the only possible way. He
had disregarded his briefs, spurned his offers
of dignities, and ignored the sentence of ex
communication. Peremptory orders for his
arrest were now forwarded to Florence, where
the government had come into the hands of
his enemies. His sentence was also prepared
at Rome and sent by special envoys.
Humane sentiment compels us to draw a
veil over the inhuman cruelty with which he
was tortured in the name of a trial. I have
never been able to read that account a second
time. It was a shocking and terrible end;
the rack for days, so that every bone in his
body was crushed, every joint dislocated,
and his flesh torn until the mutilated muscles
could scarce hold the broken body together.
Delirious with pain, he raved wildly, and
his enemies make much of it, but he declined
till the last to write his recantation with
his right hand, which alone of his members
had been kept unmaimed for that purpose.
When it was seen that his tortured body
could no longer endure, he was haled to the
stake and suspended by the neck, yet so as
not to strangle, and a slow fire kindled be
neath him. Thus ascended, in his chariot of
fire, the mightiest spirit of the fifteenth cen
tury.

ISO STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
It is sometimes said that Savonarola's work
perished with him. He who thinks so does
not understand the history of Florence or of
Italy since his day. Some of the best features
of the municipal government in Florence to
day are the survivals of his constitution. The
Medici were not permitted to return to Flor
ence for some years after his death. Michael
Angelo was a diligent student of his writings,
and the evangelical party in Italy under the
title of the " Oratory of the Divine Love,"
which numbered some of the most influen
tial princes and cardinals among its mem
bers, secured the calling of the Council of
Trent, which, while it reaffirmed Catholic
doctrine and denounced Protestantism, in
augurated measures of reform within the
Church which did away with its worst abuses,
and made it forever impossible for a pope to
buy his election or maintain a profligate and
scandalous court.
Savonarola's influence upon the people also
was not without results. No memory is more
green in Italy than his, and every year, on the
anniversary of his death, floral offerings are
heaped profusely about the doors of the
cathedral. His teachings and his hopes sur
vived and came to their fruit in men like Maz-
zini and Garibaldi. It is true that he founded

ITALY — SAVONAROLA. 151
no school, established no church, and that
no institution or society bears his name; but
he left his works and the example of his life
and death for liberty, and these have proved
a deathless flame in the hearts of many. I
doubt whether united Italy could have been
accomplished as it was without his work; or
whether a state government in Italy, free from
ecclesiastical control, could now be peacefully
maintained in the face of determined oppo
sition. Neither do we forget that Master Co-
let carried something of his influence to Eng
land and imparted it to the attendants at his
lectures there.
Three great names adorn Italian history,
as they also still continue to inspire her march
— Dante, Savonarola and Michael Angelo.
The mighty spirits of these three pure patriots
have survived their own day and work and
have informed and heartened the best of Ital
ians to this day. The truths they set forth
have been the principles on which Italy's best
minds have worked, and the measure in which
they wrought and suffered for those truths
has kept the fires of patriotism and self-sac
rifice alive in thousands of hearts. The un
sullied purity of their lives has served as a salt
to the noblest of its subsequent heroes; and
of these three no memory is more green in

152 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
Italy or name more cherished than the name
and memory of Savonarola. We may even
say that there is no name in Christendom to
day, apart from Him whose name is above
every name, that commands a more instant
and spontaneous response — none, not even
among our own beloved heroes, that exerts
a greater charm upon the imagination, or
throws a stronger, more alluring spell over
the spirits of men. The lives of such men are
never lost; their work is never ended, their
influence never dies. They are allied with the
eternal forces which work perpetual progress,
and though the stream of time bears them
away, it gathers up and carries forward their
work, as the sea holds the waters of the
streams that empty into it.
The dream of these three men and the am
bition of their lives were to see Italy freed
from the control of the Church in all tem
poral affairs and united into one kingdom.
That dream, so impossible then, is an accom
plished fact to-day, and the spirit of the great
three burned in the hearts of the men who
brought it to pass.
The good that men do lives after them.
History is wax to receive and marble to retain
the impression of a great soul. Secret and
subtle forces are silently but irresistibly at

ITALY — SAVONAROLA. 153
work diffusing the influence of such a man
and transmitting it to successive generations.
Those long dead and forgotten live again in
lives made better by their presence. For men
like the great Dominican live
" In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude; in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man's search
To vaster issues."

LECTURE V.
THE STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN HOL
LAND  THE TRAGEDY OF THE REFORMA
TION  WILLIAM THE SILENT.
The two great arenas of the Reformation
were, as we have seen, England and Germany.
In both of these countries the battle for re
ligious freedom was fought on a vast field and
with tremendous forces. The splendor of
these conflicts is likely to blind our eyes to
others that were being waged at the same
time and for the same purpose, though on
more contracted theatres and with less bril
liant results, but not with less heroism or less
disregard of temporal considerations.
The Reformation in Switzerland, under the
leadership of the great-souled and enlightened
Ulrich Zwingli, stands among the noblest ef
forts of nations to free themselves from po
litical and ecclesiastical bondage.
In France, the Protestants, under the lead
ership of the great Coligny, grew to consid
erable proportions among all classes of the
people, in spite of systematic and bitter perse-

HOLLAND — WILLIAM THE SILENT. 155
cution; and even the atrocious crime of the
massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the policy
of extermination which followed, were not
able to stamp them out. Norway, Sweden
and Denmark became Protestant, and Prot
estants secured religious toleration among
the Slavonic peoples, and in Bohemia and
Hungary. One of the remarkable features of the great
religious movement known as the Reforma
tion is the number and variety of great men
that it called forth. A perfect galaxy of lumi
nous names spans those three centuries, as
the milky way " rends the azure robe of
night." Among them are many that pierce
the night like stars of the first magnitude:
scholars, orators, statesmen, soldiers, poets
and artists; men of thought and men of ac
tion, who for capacity and power rank with
the greatest in history and are surpassed by
none, either in exalted genius or excellence of
character. It may be said that the greatest
minds of three centuries, beginning with
John Wyclif and ending with William III. of
England, were enlisted in the great Protestant
movement, and that the movement itself crys
tallized in them and rallied upon them.
It was, of course, a movement of principles
in the sphere of religion — a religious move-

156 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
ment, as we say — the religious truths of the
time coming to their birth and working them
selves clear. But they had their birth in in
dividuals, and the personal qualities and plas
tic agencies of individuals capable of creating
and sustaining in others the vital quickening
of the powers of the world to come, of which
they themselves had first been the subjects,
must be taken into account in any adequate
estimate of the movement itself. Men as in
trepid, as dauntless, as self-sacrificing and
heroic as they were large-minded and
prophetic-spirited, were as conspicuous in the
struggle as the truths and principles for which
they contended were novel and commanding.
In the sixteenth century two opposite prin
ciples of life, two kinds of civilization and re
ligion, diametrically opposed to each other,
met and contended for the mastery. Feudal
ism and ecclesiasticism, absolutism in the
State and absolutism in the Church, were the
order of the day. But democracy and individ
ualism began to appear. The spirit of the
modern time met and came in conflict with
the spirit of mediaevalism. They could not
coalesce; compromise was impossible. Each
recognized in the other its implacable, deadly
foe. They locked in the death grapple and
poured out their blood without stint. There

HOLLAND — WILLIAM THE SILENT. 157
could be no truce in that war; it was war to
the death. Absolutism could give no quarter
to democracy; ecclesiasticism to the freedom
of conscience; mediaevalism to the right of
private judgment. At the opposite poles of
thought and civilization they acted like the
opposite poles of electricity. When brought
together, they struck fire and burned as long
as the currents flowed.
The fierceness and sanguinariness of the
great struggle was due to that fact, and not
alone to the fact that it was a religious revo
lution. It was not until the religious principle
of freedom and righteousness met the political
and ecclesiastical principles of absolutism and
conformity, which sought to hold down the
truth with violence, that the spark was struck
and the fire kindled.
The first half of the sixteenth century was
comparatively peaceful and bloodless. Men
for a time fought their battles with the intel
lectual weapons of debate and edicts; but as
the controversy proceeded the real nature of
the new doctrines began to appear, and with
it the absolute impossibility of light and dark
ness to maintain fellowship. Then men fell by
the ears and blood began to flow like water.
Two things are to be noted at the outset
in connection with the Reformation in Eu-

158 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
rope in the sixteenth century. They are, first,
the manner in which the movement organized
itself about and rallied upon great persons,
in its political aspects; second, the way in
which it adapted itself to the mental traits
•and moral qualities of the nations among
whom it wrought.
Just because it was a religious movement,
its tendencies and consequences were not re
stricted, but its influence extended to every
domain of human life. It revolutionized not
only religion, but education, literature, sci
ence, art, philosophy, methods of thought
and habits of life, governments, domestic and
social life.
And this it did largely through the charac
ter and personality of the men who espoused
its principles and guided its course.
A surprising number of great men sprang
up as leaders of Reformation forces. Where
the leaders were early and effectually crushed,
as in Italy, Austria and France, the cause it
self languished and failed ; but when they were
able to maintain themselves, as in the north of
Europe and in England, the cause succeeded.
The political aspect of the Reformation is
everywhere prominent, because of the close
and intimate connection of the Church of
Rome with political affairs. It has always been

HOLLAND — WILLIAM THE SILENT. 159
a political institution far more jealous of its
temporal than its spiritual prerogatives, and
therefore anxious to maintain uniformity in
the Church, so as to secure unity among
States. Disaffection in the one meant disrup
tion in the other. So long as the spiritual su
premacy of the Church could be maintained,
there was no question as to its temporal domi
nation. The Empire of the Middle Ages was
but the right arm of ecclesiastical despotism.
To question her spiritual claims was to aim
at her domination of princes. Hence, wher
ever the Reformation took any deep hold upon
the people, it raised at once the political ques
tion, and its success was always followed by
political disruption. And when the move
ment had run its course, there was no longer
any excuse for the existence of even the fig
ment of the Roman Empire. It died from
want of breath, because its native air was ex
hausted. Owing to the peculiar circumstances under
which it culminated and was fought out, the
Reformation in the Netherlands was more dis
tinctively political than in any other country,
and its great hero was a political and military
rather than a theological leader. Indeed, it
is one of the peculiarities of the Reformation
in Holland that it developed no great theo-

160 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
logical or distinctively religious leader. It re
quired the services of a statesman and a sol
dier, and the man whom it found was so
great in these realms and his achievements so
marvelous that his fame has eclipsed that of
all his associates, even as his single power and
influence excelled them all at the time.
William of Orange was one of the princes of
the earth, but his work was done entirely at
the council board and in the camp. He was
neither a speaker nor a writer upon religious
subjects. Apart from such references to
these things in his State papers and letters as
were inevitable (and which show what he
might have done in religion and theology),
he took no part in the theologic discussions of
the time.
The need of such a leader is to be explained
chiefly by the condition of the country and
the foe against whom he had to fight.
Philip II. inherited from his father all his
vast possessions, in 1555. They constituted
the most splendid empire of modern times.
As King of Spain he was master of the richest
part of the New World, of Italy, of the Span
ish Hapsburg interests in Austria and Ger
many, of Burgundy and the Netherlands.
The wealth, the military, and the naval powers
of the world were his. He possessed the most

HOLLAND — WILLIAM THE SILENT. 161
splendid navy the world had ever seen, and
was master of the seas, while his armies were
composed of trained and veteran troops, com
manded by the most renowned generals of the
age. Along with his magnificent possessions
Philip also inherited his father's absolute pol
icy and his imperious temper ; but none of his
intellectual ability or genial manners. Philip
II. was possessed by two ruling ideas. The
first was to make himself absolute in Europe ;
the second to re-establish the unity and uni
versal supremacy of the Roman Church. Be
sides these two ideas, the most skilful opera
tion of intellectual surgery could not succeed
in gaining entrance for any others into his
mind. The tenacity with which he held these
two resolves, and the reckless ferocity with
which he pursued them, made him notorious
in history as the immediate cause of the re
volt of the Netherlands, and so the instigator
of the darkest tragedy in the history of
nations. He belonged to that large class of persons
who can learn nothing by experience and for
whom the severest calamities have no lessons.
In personal appearance he was unprepos
sessing. Below the average height, he had a
corpulent body set upon very disproportion-

1 62 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
ate legs. He had the projecting Burgundian
under jaw, which descended as inevitably in
that line as their hereditary titles and estates.
He had also the dull, heavy Spanish eye, and
the Hapsburg coarse, irregular features. His
manners were cold and distant. He was ar
rogant and gloomy. His chief pleasures were
eating and drinking and sensual indulgence,
in all of which he ran to excess. His appe
tites and passions had absolute control of him.
He was so inordinately fond of pastry and
ate it in such quantities that he suffered for
many years from constant pains in his stom
ach in consequence. His mind was sluggish ;
his will vacillating and uncertain, and his
methods mechanical and arbitrary.
Such a man and the Dutch people were to
each other like the negative and positive poles
of electricity. They could not come together
without striking fire; it only needed that the
pressure should be steady and prolonged in
order to kindle a conflagration that would
shock and stupefy the world.
According to his most trustworthy biog
rapher, the only time that Philip II. was ever
heard to laugh aloud was when the massacre
of St. Bartholomew was reported to him.
By far the most flourishing and enlightened
portion of Philip's vast domains was the

HOLLAND — WILLIAM THE SILENT. 163
Netherlands. When the commercial and
financial supremacy of the world had been
driven from the cities of Northern Italy by
political and ecclesiastical tyranny, it took up
its abode in the Netherlands. Antwerp be
came the cosmopolitan city of the world, and
a score of other cities became famous for their
wealth and industries. Factories dotted the
land and invention flourished.
The people of the North, what is now the
kingdom of Holland, were of ancient Frisian
blood, who alone among the German races
had developed, besides local self-government,
a democracy without a trace of royalty or no
bility. They were a sturdy, thrifty, intelligent
people, who had reclaimed their land from the
sea and knew how to say to it, " Thus far
shalt thou go and no farther; and here shall
thy proud waves be stayed." Their long con
flict with the elements had inured them to
hardship and cultivated the qualities of enter
prise and independence. They were also in
telligent, had excellent schools, and the Bible
had been translated into their vernacular
in the early part of the fourteenth century.
It is said by a contemporary historian that
the fishermen discussed the Scriptures like
men from the university. Their universities
were at that time the best, and were always

164 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
thronged with students. Erasmus, the great
est of the humanists, was a native of Rotter
dam. The people of the southern provinces, now
the kingdom of Belgium, were of a different
origin and different mental and moral traits.
Flemish; Walloon and French blood predom
inated there and they used the French lan
guage. Among the people of the North the ideas
of the Reformation found early and free ac
cess, secured general acceptance and enthusi
astic support, and, aided by local self-govern
ment, they took deep root in the minds of the
people. The people of the southern provinces
were less hospitable towards them, but they
found many warm advocates and staunch sup
porters even in Flanders, and in Brussels the
first martyrs were burned as early as 1526.
Severe edicts had been issued by Charles
V. and the Inquisition established to prevent
the progress of Lutherism in the Netherlands.
The country had suffered severely in conse
quence, but the new religious views and
practices had continued to spread. Philip,
however, was determined to stamp them out
at any cost to himself or the Netherlands. In
capable of devising any original or effective
measures for such an undertaking, he was yet

HOLLAND  WILLIAM THE SILENT. 1 65
possessed of the power to inflict unlimited
injuries upon any foe against whom his wrath
was kindled, but whom he did not possess the
requisite sagacity to conquer. His whole reign
was one long attempt to secure, by brute
force, what nothing but the most far-seeing
statesmanship and the most skilful diplomacy
could have accomplished. It was therefore a
series of humiliating defeats and irretrievable
disasters. In the Netherlands he aroused a
spirit of revolt which precipitated the tragedy
of the Reformation and the ultimate ruin of
Spain. There in the Netherlands his ponder
ous brute force was pitted against a states
manship of the highest order, a diplomacy of
the most accomplished finesse, and a heroism
and enthusiasm as exalted and devoted as it
was pure and unselfish. No people, however,
were ever more unprepared for a struggle in
defense of their own liberties than were the
Dutch people at that time.
In the person of William of Orange they
found a champion who was also a national
representative, both in moral qualities and
mental traits. Although born upon German
soil and Duke of Nassau in Germany and
Prince of Orange in France, he yet held vast
possessions in the Netherlands, where his
family had held high office for some genera-

l66 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
tions, and he always considered himself as be
longing to that country. Charles V. had
made him Stadtholder of Holland and Zealand
when he was but twenty-one years of age,
and commander of the army of the Nether
lands the following year, and when in that
year Charles took leave of the Netherlands,
after his abdication, it was upon the shoulder
of the Prince of Orange that he leaned at the
public ceremony.
William at that time is described by Motley
as a tall and handsome youth, with dark
brown hair and eyes. His portraits show him
to have had a lofty, spacious brow, regular
features, with a look of wisdom and a mouth
expressing great firmness. His face a little
later was deeply marked with the lines of care
and thought, and wistful anxiety filled the
eyes. Later on a certain paternal kindness
characterizes his look. The word " silent "
was applied to him, not because he was re
served or taciturn in manner, but because of
the discretion and judgment which distin
guished him. He was of athletic build, with
great powers of endurance, fond of active
sports, with a cheerful disposition, easy good
humor, and polished, affable manners, which,
together with his sprightly wit and extraor
dinary abilities, made him the favorite of

HOLLAND  WILLIAM THE SILENT. 167
every court in Europe. He was descended
from an ancient family of sovereign rank,
brought up at the imperial court, as the cus
tom was for great nobles of the empire, and
his superior talents and trustworthy char
acter greatly endeared him to Charles V.,
who had a genius for discovering talent and
estimating men.
When William was but a youth Charles had
recognized his promise and in his twentieth
year had employed him in diplomatic missions
of importance, and even of great difficulty
and delicacy. It was William that the Em
peror selected when he abdicated the empire
to be the bearer of the imperial insignia to his
brother, who was his successor in the im
perial dignity. It was William who secured
for Philip, after his first war, which was with
Henry II. of France, a favorable treaty with
that monarch, with whom he was an especial
favorite, and he remained for a time at the
court of France as a pledge of Philip's good
faith in keeping the terms of the peace.
One day, while hunting with the King in
the forest of Fontainebleau, his royal host dis
closed to the young prince a secret compact
into which he and Philip had entered, for the
extermination of heresy within their realms,
a measure which involved the wholesale

1 68 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
slaughter of all their Protestant subjects.
William was at that time a gay young prince,
not deeply interested in religion. Like all
the young nobles of his time, his only serious
interest was in politics and military affairs,
employments for which his talents and train
ing eminently fitted him. But apart from
these his chief pursuit was pleasure. Hunt
ing and the banquet were his pastimes. He
maintained upon his estates in Nassau and at
his palace in Brussels a perfectly regal state,
unequaled by any of the great nobles, and
surpassed only by members of the imperial
and royal households. He kept open house
the year round. His great hall was always
open, and relays of cooks furnished forth the
richly laden tables. Motley is authority for
the statement that cooks were trained in his
kitchens for royal cuisines; and his stables
and kennels were the envy of many a crowned
head. In so far as he was religious at this time, he
was a Romanist. His parents were Protes
tant, but he had been brought up a Romanist
at the court of Charles V., and might naturally
be expected to sympathize with the policy
of Protestant extermination unfolded to him
by Henry II. But, pleasure-loving and luxu
rious and irreligious man of the world though

HOLLAND — WILLIAM THE SILENT. 1 69
he was, he was yet a man of high character
and humane sentiments, and he was horrified
by the deep perfidy and satanic cruelty which
the compact of the kings implied. It was ut
terly in violation of all the edicts which se
cured the rights of Protestants.
He kept his own counsel at the time, but
registered an oath that he would do what he
could to thwart the nefarious project. He
saw clearly that it was aimed chiefly at the
Netherlands, and that upon them its worst
consequences were bound to fall, and he de
termined to do what he could to " drive the
Spanish vermin " from what he regarded as
his own land.
Two things soon made it clear to William
that Philip had launched his policy of exter
mination. The means essential to its accom
plishment were, first, an increased body of re
liable troops, and, second, a numerous and
well-organized body of clergy, devoted to the
work of the Inquisition. Neither of these
could be legally secured without the consent of
the States General. Philip, however, was not
a man to be deterred from anything upon
which he had set his heart by so small a mat
ter as a question of law. He ordered the
troops at the close of the war with France
to take up their quarters in the Netherlands,

170 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
and quieted the fears of the people by ex
plaining that it was only a temporary meas
ure, and assured them that they would soon
be recalled. But as month after month passed
and he failed to keep his promise, popular
outbreaks occurred, which increased to such
an extent that the regent, Margaret of Parma,
was compelled to find a pretext for sending
the soldiers away.
The second necessity was the increase of
the clergy in connection with the Inquisition.
There had never been but four bishops in the
Netherlands, and the laws forbade an increase
of the number of the clergy without the con
sent of the States General. Philip appointed
twelve new bishops, with the requisite number
of clergy, and clothed them with inquisitional
power. The only explanation he deigned to
give was that heresy was so rapidly increasing
that they were necessary to deal with it.
Already thousands of persons had suffered
by the Inquisition in the Netherlands. Philip
himself had declined to change it, when Gran-
velle requested that its severities be decreased,,
because, he said, it was already more severe
than that of Spain; and the Queen of Hun
gary, who was regent when Charles V. issued
his edict establishing it, found it necessary
to make a long journey in order to personally

HOLLAND  WILLIAM THE SILENT. 171
remonstrate with him against its inhuman
cruelty. Even the Roman Catholics of the Nether
lands were horrified at the sufferings of their
Protestant brethren. The nobles were all
Romanists, and the three chief among them,
Orange, Egmont and Horn, were unalterably
opposed to the policy of the government.
They were men of humane sentiments and,
unlike the Spaniard, did not enjoy the sight
of human agony. But Philip was obdurate,
and the work of death began in earnest.
It now became evident to the people of the
Netherlands that they were dealing with a
false tyrant, to whom oaths and pledges, laws
and obligations, meant nothing. The whole
story as it now runs from 1560 is a sickening
mass of duplicity, fraud, lies, treachery and
unbridled ferocity, coupled with a wily,
stealthy, panther-like cunning and malicious
satisfaction in human suffering and a people's
ruin, unexampled in history. The regent,
Margaret of Parma, and Cardinal Granvelle,
her chief adviser, took a diabolical pleasure
in playing into Philip's hand against each
other, and both together against the people
of the country they pretended to rule, and
Philip gloats over the discomfort and sus
pense of both, and makes fair promises which

172 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
he never means to fulfil, in order to keep them
both quiet and faithful in their work of de
struction, until he shall see fit to supplant
them by a more energetic and terrible instru
ment of his deadly purpose. We now know
that Philip is responsible for the whole catas
trophe. The publication of the Spanish
archives during the last fifty years has re
vealed the fact that the whole nefarious
scheme for the extermination of a nation — the
most peaceable, law-abiding, intelligent,
loyal and prosperous of all his subjects — must
rest with Philip alone. There at his desk,
where he spent most of his time and carried
on his senseless, unsteady, fatal but persistent
and dogged office administration, he hatched
his dark projects and directed their execution,
without a minister, counselor or adviser of
any sort. Neither Granvelle nor Alva were
anything more than the pawns in the hand of
the master on the chessboard of his game
of ruin and desolation. He had a fatal genius
for blundering, and it does not appear that
he had any genius in any other direction.
Born to rule according to the accident of
birth, he Was born to ruin according to the
eternal law of incompetency, stupidity and
brutish obstinacy. He could not recognize
the inevitable. He lacked the wisdom which

HOLLAND  WILLIAM THE SILENT. I 73
Carlyle indicated in his famous retort. When
it was reported to the Sage of Chelsea that
Margaret Fuller accepted the universe, he re
plied, "Gad, she'd better!"
The cruel edict of Charles V. was revived,
and it ran as follows : " All persons are for
bidden to print, copy, multiply, have, buy, sell
or give away any work of any heretic." No
indignity or lack of reverence might be shown
to any image of the Virgin or saints. It was
forbidden to attend any heretical gathering
of any sort; to read the Scriptures, or take
any part in or be present at any discussion of
them ; and all under pain of a variety of bar
barous punishments. All miscreants called
heretics were to be put to death. If they re
canted, the men were to die by the sword,
the women to be buried alive; if obdurate,
they were all to be burned alive after tor
ture. Any persons who had any dealings
with heretics or even omitted to accuse
others of heresy were to be regarded
as heretics themselves and treated accord
ingly. Persons who were accused of heresy,
but against whom nothing could be proven,
might escape with their lives if they abjured
such heresy; but they lost their property, and
if accused a second time, their lives also. An
informer against any who were convicted of

174 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
heresy was rewarded by a large percentage
of the confiscated property.
None but a nation of slaves could ever be
expected to submit to such barbarities.
Charles V. knew better than to rigidly en
force them, and for years they had been in
abeyance; yet 50,000 persons perished under
them in his long reign of forty-five years, and
thousands of those who could left the country
under his comparatively mild rule. But when
it was seen that Philip meant rigidly to en
force these edicts, the irritation and distrust
which they had always occasioned became
greatly aggravated and inflamed. Factories
began to close, industries to languish; for
eign merchants closed their offices, and all
who could prepared to leave the country, and
insurrections broke out. A grim determina
tion gradually settled upon the people to re
sist the monster who had now usurped all
their liberties and abolished even their name
and form.
They first sent Egmont to Madrid to pre
sent their grievances to the king and pray for
redress, since all their complaints to the re
gent had resulted only in increased severities.
The king promised redress and sent Egmont
home in high spirits. The same day he wrote
to the Pope of his purpose to enforce the

HOLLAND — WILLIAM THE SILENT. 1 75
edicts more rigidly than ever, and sent a dis
patch to the regent to redouble her severities.
The national rejoicing which met Egmont
on his return was soon turned into mourning
by the execution of an unusual number of the
harshest decrees with unusual severities.
Orange had watched all these proceedings
with the eye of a statesman and the discern
ment of a prophet. He had long known the
designs of Philip, and he knew his character
better than any other man in Europe. He
had sought to dissuade Egmont and the peo
ple from a mission to Madrid, in which they
had been duped and humiliated, and when
that failed he warned them explicity of their
danger. It is said that Egmont mocked him
for his fears, and parted from him with the
words, " Adieu, my prince without a heart,"
to which Orange replied, " Adieu, my count
without a head." Within six- months of that
time the count's head had rolled from the
block. Than him the king had no more de
voted, faithful and brave subject.
One day, when the edicts were under dis
cussion at the council board, Orange rose and
delivered such a speech against the enormities
of the government as caused the president
of the council, one of the king's tools, a stroke
of apoplexy, which came near terminating the

176 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
caitiff's life. The country now broke out in
open revolt. The nobles forsook the govern
ment and made common cause with the peo
ple. About five hundred young nobles en
tered into a compact to resist the devil that
was working the destruction of their country.
They made a demonstration and marched to
the palace to present their grievances. The
regent, panic-stricken and helpless, turned to
her minister for advice, and he remarked that
he would " kick the beggars downstairs."
The gay young bloods caught at the term
" beggars," and forthwith adopted it as a title
of their union, and with the beggar's pouch
and bowl for their sign, put themselves at the
head of the people. They placed a fleet upon
the seas which soon became terrible under
the name " Sea Beggars."
The printing presses were set at work, and
floods of tracts, and pamphlets were issued,
before which all the vigilance and censorship
of the government were helpless. The people
massed themselves in bodies ten and twenty
thousand strong, and marched out into the
fields, forming into solid squares, with the
women and children and aged ones within,
surrounded by the able-bodied men, armed
with pitchforks, scythes, axes, clubs and fire
arms, and whatever else could serve as a

HOLLAND  WILLIAM THE SILENT. 177
weapon to a desperate and determined man.
In the center stood the ministers. And thus
drawn up in battle array the gospel was
preached, the Scriptures were read and ex
pounded, prayers were offered, psalms sung,
baptism and the Lord's Supper were adminis
tered, and the ceremony of marriage was per
formed, according to the simple rites of the
Protestant faith, edicts or no edicts, Inquisi
tion or no Inquisition.
They presented so formidable an array that
even the armed hosts did not offer to attack
them, and the government, under Orange's
persuasion, was compelled to withdraw its op
position to the field-preaching.
The Catholic clergy, however, were not
willing that the Protestants should be per
mitted to defy the edicts, even though now
they could not be enforced; so they made a
senseless and pompous display of themselves
in the streets of Antwerp, which acted upon
the people like a flame of fire to a train of
gunpowder, and caused a national explosion.
Hitherto the Protestant outbursts had been
peaceable, and only in the form of protest and
demonstration ; but now the unruly members
and lewd fellows of the baser sort among
them broke loose and raged in their fury
against the foe that had at last overstepped

I78 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
the bounds of endurance. Goaded to despera
tion, the Protestants arose. They invaded
the cathedral at Antwerp and devastated it
like a whirlwind. All its beautiful painted
glass, its splendid images and pictures, its
gold and silver and ivory statues, vessels and
ornaments, glittering with jewels, were
strewed a formless mass of rubbish upon the
floor, and no man deigned to stoop and pick
one up. The fury spread like wild fire over
the country, and in a single province four
hundred churches were stripped and all their
images demolished; but no personal violence
was offered, nor was there any complaint of
theft. Thoroughly frightened by this universal
uprising, the regent granted Orange's request
to check the Inquisition in return for his
promise to quell the insurrection. His in
fluence with the " Beggars," as they were
called, and his power over the mob, put down
the disturbance, and the leaders agreed to
keep the peace as long as the regent kept her
promise. But Philip was filled with bound
less rage when he heard of it, and resolved
upon summary vengeance upon all concerned.
His plan involved the deposing of the regent,
the removal of the Council of State, the be
heading of all the nobles, the confiscation

HOLLAND  WILLIAM THE SILENT. 179
of all their property, and the indiscriminate
slaughter of the people. And the third act in
the dark tragedy was begun.
The man selected to execute this mild and
gentle policy of the clement king of Spain
was no less a person than the now notorious
Duke of Alva. He was in Italy at the time,
at the head of veteran troops, himself Spain's
most famous general. His subsequent career,
however, deserves no especial mention in his
tory except for the odium with which he
covered himself by the manner in which he
played out his part in the tragedy of the Neth
erlands. He was at one time estimated to be
the greatest of Spanish soldiers, but it now
seems clear that Charles V.'s estimate of him
is correct: that he was competent to com
mand only small bodies of men in positions
where military skill was not required. When
he came to contend with skilful generals, he
either declined to give battle or suffered de
feat. With all his veteran troops, which
greatly outnumbered the largest army of
mercenaries and raw recruits that Orange
was ever able to put in the field, he could not
stand before the prince or his brothers Louis
or Henry.
In personal appearance he was tall, thin
and angular ; his head was small, his face long,

l8o STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
slender and sallow ; his eyes were small, badly
set, flittering and restless, with a cold, steel
like glare.
In the position of ruler he did not mani
fest any of the qualities of rulership, but only
those of a robber and murderer. His regency
of the Netherlands can be described only as
one long series of massacres and extortions.
His senseless arrogance and inordinate van
ity gave expression to itself in a statue of him
self which he had set up in Brussels, in which
he was represented standing with each foot
upon the neck of a prostrate human form, the
victims representing the crushed estates of the
Netherlands. He was a man of narrow intel
lect, boundless rapacity, and a heart of stone,
incapable of constructive or fostering meas
ures, but capable of a reckless ferocity in de
struction and a savage delight in pillage sel
dom or never equalled in the annals of civil
ized warfare. And in all this he was only the
tool, the exact counterpart, of his master,
Philip II.
When he arrived in the Netherlands at
the head of 20,000 veteran troops, in August,
1567, the country had been quiet for almost
a year, and the people had regained heart
and returned to their regular employments.
Signs of prosperity once more appeared and

HOLLAND — WILLIAM THE SILENT. I$I
restoration of confidence was seen in the re
newal of business. But with Alva's coming
a pall fell over the land. Orange resigned all
his offices and betook himself to his estates
in Nassau, saying as he did so to a friend,
" The most extraordinary tragedy that the
world has ever seen is now about to begin."
The character and policy of the man were
at once apparent. He came armed with ex
plicit instructions to turn the property of the
country into the royal treasury and to exter
minate the people. The laws were at once
suspended, the courts were closed, a council
was established, which earned for itself the
title of " The Council of Blood," and eighteen
hundred persons were sent to the block in
three months. The country was under mili
tary rule, and literally held down by large
bodies of Spanish troops, which were being
constantly reinforced.
Alva boasted that he was sending a stream
of gold into Spain " fathoms deep," and the
work of burying and burning alive was going
merrily on. The Council of Blood, with Alva
at its head, sat from eight to twelve hours a
day for the sole purpose of trying capital
cases, and although the headsmen in every
town were busy from sunrise to sunset, the
prisons were overcrowded. It soon became

1 82 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
too arduous a task to keep up the appearance
of trials and that needless formality was dis
pensed with, as was also the irksome courtesy
of arresting persons on legal process. The
seine was thrown and they were gathered in
by scores and hundreds. As many as five hun
dred were taken at one time and marched to
the block, the ditch or the stake, as fast as
room could be made for them, without the
preliminary precaution to ascertain who were
Romanists and who Protestants.
Horrible as it is to relate, and incredible
as it may appear, this is Alva's own descrip
tion of the work of death to his master, and
it went on for more than five years. Alva
boasted that he had put to death in that time
twenty thousand persons by judicial pro
cedure alone.
The first check he received was from
William's brother Louis, who invaded the
North with a small army of mercenaries, and
by a fortunate division afforded a happy relief
to the stricken country, upon which the
blight of death had now fallen. He called off
the bloody monster from his favorite sport of
slaughtering unarmed citizens and hanging
merchants up before their shop doors to the
necessity of taking the field and defending
himself with arms. But before he set out,

HOLLAND  WILLIAM THE SILENT. 1 83
Alva made good his title in history to being
the most senseless tyrant that has ever under
taken the work of ruining a people. He
adopted the policy of cutting off the heads of
all the probable leaders of the people in the
towns, and issued an edict that only those
persons were to be exempt from death against
whom nothing had yet been charged, pro
vided they made haste to conciliate the gov
ernment and received absolution from the
Church. He followed it up with another,
which condemned to death indiscriminately.
Spain has been remarkable for the number
and variety of human monsters she has pro
duced, both in ancient and in modern times.
But after Philip II. himself and Torquemada,
it is difficult to match, even in her annals, the
" bloodthirsty hangman " of the Netherlands.
A Dahomey chief could not be worse, and a
wild beast of the jungles could not be more
ferocious. It was as though he had become
drunk with blood and, as if maddened by the
thirst it excited, a perfect frenzy of slaughter
had seized him, so that he could not be pla
cated as long as a possible victim of his mur
derous passion remained alive.
Orange was watching all this gorge of
blood from a safe distance, but with the fires
of an inextinguishable wrath burning in his

184 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
heart and the lightnings of the day of judg
ment flaming from his terrible eyes. Orange
had now abjured the Catholic faith and
openly espoused the Protestant cause. He set
himself at once, on the coming of Alva, to
use all his vast influence for the rescue of his
country. His estates were already encum
bered to the extent of a million florins, in
curred in the services of Charles and Philip.
Besides that, the richest part of his posses
sions were in the Netherlands, and they were
now confiscated to the crown. But in spite
of all that, he was still very rich, and he pro
ceeded to mortgage his properties in order
to raise troops. He entered into alliances with
foreign Protestant powers. He married one
of Coligny's daughters, then the most power
ful noble in France, and, although but a sub
ject, able to enter into treaties with foreign
powers and to declare war or make peace
with his own sovereign. And when the great
admiral fell, on the awful night of St. Barthol
omew, William lost his noblest, most powerful
and most faithful friend, who was about to
come to his relief with fifteen thousand
troops, and was left once more to face alone
his and Protestantism's most relentless foe.
But, in spite of the loss of his friends and
of his three brothers, all of whom fell on

HOLLAND — WILLIAM THE SILENT. 185
the field at the head of their troops; in spite
of the treachery of his allies and the in
efficiency of the mercenary troops they sent
him, the mighty heart of the great prince
never failed him. Defeat followed defeat ; re
volt and treachery beset him on every hand,
but he never faltered in his determination to
drive the Spanish vermin from the land. His
son was carried away captive from the uni
versity, and his life held as a threat over his
father. The furrows upon his face deepened,
the mouth set more firmly, and the light of
his dark eyes burned deeper and flashed more
terribly; but the father sacrificed his plate as
a last resort and raised a fresh army.
In 1570, Orange took the field in person,
resolved upon victory or death. In order to
justify himself in the eyes of the world, he
issued a proclamation in which he says : " The
tyrant will dye every river and stream with
our blood and hang the corpse of a Dutch
man on every tree before he ceases to slake
his revenge and to gloat over our miseries.
If he is too strong for us, we are ready rather
to die an honorable death than to bow our
necks to the yoke and give our country to
slavery. We are therefore prepared, if need
be, to set fire to our houses and perish in the
flames, rather than ever submit to the man
dates of this bloodthirsty hangman."

1 86 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
Defeated again, he had lost his land, his
retainers and his property. All his hereditary
estates were mortgaged to the last florin.
Destitute of means, forsaken by his allies,
with his credit exhausted, his family broken up
and his son a captive, his friends in the Neth
erlands besought him to abandon them and
save himself. But William had lost every
thing except his dauntless spirit and his faith
in the great God in whose cause he believed
himself enlisted. Disguised as a peasant, he
made his way through the Spanish lines, ad
dressed an appeal to the Protestant princes,
and a letter of encouragement to his own
people. Inspired by the example of their in
domitable prince, and convinced that their
cause was the cause of Protestantism in Eu
rope, the provinces of which he had long been
Stadtholder in Holland and Zealand resolved
to perish to a man with William rather than
give up the fight. They elected William
Stadtholder and, under his instruction,
adopted a constitution and voted men and
money for the war.
The death grapple was now joined between
an impoverished, heart-broken and decimated
people and the world power of the age. A
struggle ensued to which history records no
parallel, and in which Orange was to prove

HOLLAND  WILLIAM THE SILENT. 187
himself more than a match for all the com
bined powers of the world's greatest monarch
and potentate. The statesmanship, the gen
eralship and the wealth of the age were pitted
against him. He outwitted the statesmen,
circumvented the diplomats, and discomfited,
under arms, with vastly disproportionate
forces of raw and mercenary troops, the
greatest generals of the age, and held them
all successfully at bay for fifteen years.
It was now in vain that Philip tried concili
ation and poured his treasure like water into
the Netherlands; that he concentrated all his
forces there, and followed Alva by Parma and
him by Requessus and him by Don John of
Austria. William made use of the swamps
and marshes to engulf and ruin them all.
During those fifteen desperate years he or
ganized victory out of defeat, kept the Catho
lic powers from combining with Spain against
him, held the Protestant princes together in
a forced and reluctant alliance, and secured
from them from time to time grudging and
meager but timely help. And so he fought his
way, inch by inch, through the country, driv
ing the Spaniards before him, until he suc
ceeded at last in clearing the seven north
ern states from their venomous plague and
united them together in a federated republic,

1 88 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
known as the " United Provinces of the
Netherlands." The pacification of Ghent and
the union of Brussels secured the cooperation
of all seventeen provinces, when he dictated
terms of peace and compelled Philip to prom
ise religious liberty to the Netherlands. And
it was because he broke that promise that
the war broke out afresh which devastated the
south and laid it in ruins haunted by wild
beasts for a century, establishing, however,
the new Protestant republic in the North, to
which all subsequent federated republics are
more or less indebted, our own not the least
of them all. Orange was appointed hereditary
Stadtholder of this republic, and by reason of
his great services obtained the title of the
" Father of his Country," which he alone of
men deserves to wear along with our own
Washington. Nothing can better illustrate the benefits
that attended those who accepted the Refor
mation and the miseries that awaited those
peoples who rejected it than the subsequent
history of these two sections of the Nether
lands. The north went on to increasing pros
perity and the south to increasing wretched
ness and misery, and although the north after
wards rescued the south from its degradation,
it is still far inferior to its northern neighbor.

HOLLAND  WILLIAM THE SILENT. 1 89
Philip's reckless ferocity had at length
goaded a peaceful, industrious people into a
nation of unconquerable heroes. They placed
a fleet upon the sea, which harried the coast
and sailed all waters in search for Spanish
booty, and became the terror of the Spanish
Main. Alva, who had made his boast on com
ing to the country, " I, who have tamed men
of iron, will soon manage this people of but
ter," found it uncomfortable to appear on the
streets. The camp became a more desirable
dwelling place for him than his palace at Brus
sels. Everywhere he was met with such looks
of hatred and scorn, and greeted by the de
risive cry of the people, " Down with Alva !
Down with Alva ! " that his position became
intolerable even to him. He saw that his part
of the tragedy was played out, and found it
convenient to petition for a recall. Philip, as
his manner was, let him slink out of the coun
try in disgrace.
A single instance must suffice to show the
temper of the people and the spirit that ani-,
mated them in this war. It is the celebrated
siege of Leyden. The Spaniards sat down
before Leyden in 1574. Provisions were short,
and all attempts to relieve the city failed. At
last Orange, now ill from exhaustion and
hardship, from his sick bed advised that they

19° STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
cut the dykes and let in the sea. Three great
sea walls, the work of generations through
centuries, protected their homes and their
harvests, which were just ripening, from the
sea. It was a terrible sacrifice, but still they
set themselves to the work with a will. The
work was difficult, the winds adverse, and as
the days lengthened into weeks and the weeks
into months, the suffering became indescrib
able. Provisions gave out, and cats, rats and
mice became delicacies and rarities at that.
Pestilence broke out and mowed down the
people. The Spaniard offered them favorable terms
of surrender, but they mocked him from
their walls and declared that death by starva
tion or pestilence was preferable to Spanish
clemency. " So long as a mouse runs or a
cat mews within our walls," said a burgomas
ter, " we will not surrender." And yet again
one is reported to have said, " When there
are neither cats nor mice to eat, we will eat
the flesh off our left arms and with our right
defend our women and children."
After four months of indescribable suffer
ing the sea came in and bore to their walls
the ships laden for their relief, and the Span
iards fled for their lives. William asked what
favor he should grant the citizens of Leyden

HOLLAND — WILLIAM THE SILENT. 191
for their heroic defense of the city, and, starv
ing and impoverished as they were, they
asked for a " university where their sons might
be educated," and William founded the Uni
versity of Leyden, which stands to this day
as a monument to the courage and wisdom
of the city.
It was here also that the Pilgrim Fathers
found refuge and a hospitable welcome dur
ing the ten years between their leaving Eng
land and sailing for America.
The long patience of this phlegmatic people
was now exhausted. The ancient Frisian
blood was up. Better were it for that man
who undertook to trifle with the defiant, pas
sionate Dutch phlegm when it was roused
that he had never been born. One might as
well try to fight an earthquake or a whirl
wind or a volcano in eruption as the fury of a
long-suffering, patient, peace-loving people
once it is kindled for revolt. And so Spain
found. The resolution was now taken — bet
ter a drowned country than an enslaved one
— and the people stood ready to cut the dykes
if need were.
Not being able to cope with his great
enemy by lawful means, Philip now had re
course to the last resort of cowards. He of
fered 25,000 golden crowns to any one who

I92 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
would rid him of his unconquerable foe, a
pardon for all crimes, and a patent of nobility.
Six attempts were made upon William's life,
and the seventh succeeded, in 1584. It was a
story of duplicity and treachery to the end.
The miserable wretch who committed the
deed had gained entrance to William's house
under pretense of being a Protestant refugee,
seeking his protection, and it was character
istic of Philip not to pay the reward to the
heirs until he was compelled to, and then in a
greatly reduced form.
But before he died William had created a
power that could not be assassinated, and
which was gloriously to avenge his death.
As it were out of the sea a Protestant
nation had arisen, and under his guidance
had taken a foremost place among the na
tions. The persecuted of all lands found
shelter in its free institutions and protec
tion in its strong right arm. They in turn
contributed their intelligence and skill, their
moral courage and spiritual fervor, to aug
ment the strength of their adopted coun
try. There and there alone on the earth flour
ished civil and religious liberty, like goodly
cedars, and in their peaceful shade human
energy and enterprise found for the first time
their full scope and power. A world power

HOLLAND  WILLIAM THE SILENT. 1 93
was fast growing up, against which Spain was
to hurl herself with all her prodigious strength
and with no other result than to solidify and
consolidate the new state and dash herself to
pieces. William's son Maurice wisely fostered the
institutions his father had founded, and ably
continued the struggle he had begun. The
people increased their prosperity, their
minds were stimulated, and their characters
purified by the fierce conflict they had so long
been compelled to wage and were still in a
measure compelled to maintain.
Amsterdam succeeded to the place of first
importance among cities of the world, and
became the center of wealth and culture, of
art and literature, and for two centuries held
the undisputed supremacy in the commercial,
financial and political life of the world. Her
town hall, built by the burgesses as their pub
lic building, is now a royal palace and one of
the finest in Europe, and abundantly attests
the wealth and magnificence of that city three
hundred years ago.
The army and navy were so ably adminis
tered that the Netherlands became inviolable
soil. Her fleets destroyed what was left of
the Spanish navy after the destruction of the
Armada, prevented the formation of a new

194 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
navy, and swept the Spanish shipping from
the seas. Under Tornx and De Witt, she de
fied England, sailed up the Thames to Lon
don, and struck terror into the heart of that
brave country, and then sublimely sailed the
seas, like the jaunty little queen she was, with
a broom at her masthead, in token of her
absolute and undisputed maritime supremacy.
The Dutch East and West India Com
panies were formed, and Dutch ships carried
the commerce of the world. They took pos
session of new lands and carried Dutch colo
nists and Dutch manufactures to all parts of
the world, and brought back to the Nether
lands the choicest products of all lands. They
broke the power and humbled the pride of
Spain to such an extent that she was never
able to recover from the blow. Philip was
brought to bankruptcy. He repudiated his
debts at the last, and a collection was taken
for him from house to house in his impover
ished country to defray his personal expenses.
Spain was ruined, her best sons sacrificed, and
her resources exhausted by the most sense
less devotion to a blind passion that ever in
fatuated the empty head of an unreasoning
despot.

LECTURE VI.
THE STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY  GENERAL
CONCLUSION — THE PRACTICAL GAINS FROM
THE REFORMATION TO THE WORLD.
In the previous lectures on the general sub
ject of the Reformation, we have traced,
briefly and hastily, the course of the great
struggle for religious liberty. This general
review was of necessity confined to historical
events. It was impossible to dwell upon the
principles which underlay them or to describe
the results that flowed from them, except in
a local and particular way. It must have been
evident to you all that here was a very
serious and grave omission. No movement
great enough to cover all Europe, vital
enough to continue over a period of two hun
dred years, powerful enough to convulse
every European nation, and pervasive enough
to affect equally politics and religion, could
possibly have sprung from purely local causes
or have left behind it purely local results.
It is my purpose this evening to speak of
some of the practical results of the Reforma-

196 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
tion as it affected the world at large and made
permanent contributions to the welfare of
mankind. We are not only justified in such
an inquiry, but we are impelled to it by the
thought of the prodigious sacrifices which
alone made the Reformation possible. The
incalculable cost in suffering and in human
life of that great struggle which reduced pop
ulous regions to howling wildernesses, as in
Bohemia, Hungary and Belgium, and in
flicted upon a country like Germany physical
injuries, as in the Thirty Years' War, and
upon France moral wrongs, as in the Mas
sacre of St. Bartholomew, from which these
countries have not yet recovered, forces upon
us the query — cui bono? to what purpose all
this waste and suffering? What has it done
for the world? Any success secured at such
incalculable cost, as in Bohemia, for example,
where the population was reduced from
4,000,000 to 80,000 in thirty years, must dis
close within itself some permanent visible re
sults in order to justify that outlay.
In order rightly to estimate those results,
we must go back to the condition of things
before the struggle began, at the beginning
of the sixteenth century, when the Roman
Catholic Church was the only church in Eu
rope, excepting in Russia, which was then an

GAINS FROM THE REFORMATION. 197
insignificant and unimportant semi-barbarous
state, which for all practical purposes may be
entirely ignored. Two great powers divided
the world between them, but professed to rule
it in conjunction — the Holy Roman Empire
and the Roman Catholic Church. The day
had long passed when the spiritual preroga
tives of the Church served as a check to
the tyranny of the temporal powers. The
Church and the temporal powers were now
either united or divided, as the interests of
one or the other dictated, for the purpose of
maintaining their own supremacy and the more
completely subjecting the common peoples.
Absolutism in the State was fast usurping and
destroying the ancient rights and liberties of
the peoples, and ecclesiastical domination was
stamping out the last vestige of intellectual
freedom and moral liberty. The rulers had
played into the hands of the priests to secure
political despotism, and the priests had in turn
played into the hands of the rulers to estab
lish ecclesiastical tyranny, and the people were
between them as between the devil and the
deep sea. They were robbed by the Church
and beaten by their rulers and left half dead.
They were ground to powder between the
upper and the nether millstones.
As a result, darkness and desolation reigned

198 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
supreme. The revival of learning illuminated
for a time the higher walks of life, but left
the great body of the people in a darkness
deepened by the contrast. None of the ameli
orating effect, either of the Renaissance or of
the discovery of the New World, reached to
the great mass of the common people. They
were ignorant, and no attempt was made to
teach them. They were degraded, and no
hand was reached out to uplift them. They
were wretched and miserable, but no effort
was made to relieve their distress. On the
contrary, their utter helplessness invited fresh
assaults upon their liberties and renewed ef
forts to increase the burdens under which they
groaned, and to rivet more rigidly the yoke
which galled them.
In that century Pope Pius II. made a jour
ney to Britain, and he describes the condition
of things as he saw them. He says that the
peasants (and nine-tenths of the people were
peasants) lived in houses of stones piled up
without cement, the conical roofs of which were
secured against the weather by layers of turf.
There was an opening at the top for smoke to
escape, but no chimneys and no windows. A
low opening served for a doorway, which was
closed at night, if at all, by the stiffened skin
of an animal. The garments of the common

GAINS FROM THE REFORMATION. 1 99
people were of the coarsest and rudest sort,
made of hemp, and their food consisted of
roots and herbs and a kind of bread made
of wheat. The floors of their miserable
huts were of beaten earth, and they were
themselves the serfs of the soil. The cities
were, if that were possible, worse off than
the country. They consisted of a few palaces
built like fortresses, with blank walls to the
streets, and surrounded by collections of hu
man sties. The streets were narrow and un-
paved, without drainage or sidewalks, the
dumping" places of refuse from the houses and
hovels, and, unlighted by night, they were
the scenes of violence and brigandage, while
by day they were filled with turmoil and con
fusion. They were the breeding places of
vice and crime, of disease and pestilence.
The common people everywhere were uni
formly ignorant.
There were no schools for them. Their
persons and labor belonged to the nobles;
their intellects and consciences to the priests.
To question the absurd and ridiculous claims
of kings or priests meant swift and certain
death. There was no science to speak of.
Crass superstition connected with the relics
of the saints and amulets blessed by the Pope,
and the use of holy water, consecrated oils,

200 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
priestly anointing and incantations, signs and
miraculous words, stood in the place of medi
cine. Instead of chemistry, there was al
chemy and the black art; instead of astron
omy, astrology. Religion had degenerated
into a gross and grovelling superstition, in
which the visiting of shrines, the worship of
images, and the relics of the saints — the do
ing of penances and the purchasing of in
dulgences, were the chief functions. Art
had degenerated into a fulsome flattery of
the great and powerful, a glorification of
wanton princes and abandoned popes and
their panders and satellites. Darkness cov
ered the earth and gross darkness the people.
Social bonds were relaxed and 'gross and ter
rible licentiousness and besottedness pre
vailed among all classes. A fatal mental and
moral lethargy possessed the people. The
churches were magnificent specimens of art
and architecture, but they were filled with
gaudy shrines and grotesque images of the
saints, which were the objects of superstitious
romance on the part of the people. Medi
cal science did not exist in any proper sense,
as indeed no other science did, and illness
/was regarded as a kind of possession of the
devil, to be cured by incantations, magic
signs or influence of the celestial bodies or

GAINS FROM THE REFORMATION. 201
heavenly spirits, a visit to the shrine of a
saint, or contact with the relics of a saint.
Necromancy held the place that science now
holds. The people were everywhere sunk in
sloth, in ignorance, in poverty, in filth, and
in crime. Tyranny and oppression under the
sacred sanctions of religion had combined to
rob and oppress the people, and whoever had
the hardihood or dared to question the divine
right of kings or the divine authority of
priests, found himself the helpless and de
fenseless victim of both. The people had no
rights that either rulers or priests were bound
to respect.
It was then that the voice of Luther broke
forth and rang like a clarion through Europe,
waking men out of their long sleeps rous
ing them from their lethargy and inciting
them to break the fetters that had so long
bound them, and shake themselves free from
their ancient and hereditary foes. The revival
of learning had already run its course and
spent its force. It had stimulated the minds
of students and quickened an interest in
ancient culture. It had made polite learn
ing fashionable, roused the flagging energies
of the universities to renewed efforts and
given an impulse to more serious studies ; but
it had not deeply affected humanity as a whole

202 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
— a few choice spirits out of the great mass of
mankind were alone influenced by it. It had
wrought no amelioration to society. . It did
not deal with humanity as such ; but with an
cient learning. Philosophy and belles-lettres
were its chief subjects. It did not concern
itself with the problems of the day, nor in
terest itself in the state of the common peo
ple. Its attitude towards religion was skepti
cal, and towards life in general satirical or
pessimistic. It had no new truth to disclose
and no new impulse to impart to life. It
quickened men's minds for a time and within
a limited range, arid then it left them.
But the Reformation which began with
Wyclif a hundred years before the revival
of learning, and which came to its maturity
in Martin Luther after the Renaissance had
declined, was a popular movement, born of
the crying needs of the people and bent on
securing their good. It proceeded upon a
basis of learning and of thought; but it
reached practical conclusions. Its leaders
were scholars, and after Erasmus all the
greatest scholars of the sixteenth century
were enlisted in its success. But it was not
primarily an intellectual movement. It was
primarily a religious movement, and because
of that it soon became a moral movement, a

GAINS FROM THE REFORMATION. 203
social movement, a political movement, and
an intellectual movement.
To illustrate what I mean, compare those
parts of Europe where the Reformation was
successful with portions where it failed, and
remember that it succeeded in those countries
where the revival cf learning had had least
effect, and failed in those that were its strong
holds. Italy, France and Spain were the chief
centers of intellectual activity in the fifteenth
century. Germany and England were but
slightly affected by the Renaissance, and in
the south of Europe it continued to hold its
sway for two centuries after the intellectual
life of Germany and England had taken an
entirely new direction. And what has been
the result? Contrast Northern with South
ern Europe and see. Southern Europe was,
in the fifteenth century, the fairest part of the
earth, with the single exception of the Nether
lands. Northern Europe was rude and bar
barous. To-day the situation is exactly re
versed. Southern Europe has declined in
civilization, in culture, in art and literature
and wealth. Northern Europe has steadily
advanced in everything that makes for human
happiness and well-being.
The United Netherlands rose, as it were,
out of the sea, a Protestant republic, in the

204 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
midst of the strife and feud of Roman domina
tion, took at once the leading place in the
world's affairs, and became the center of its in
dustries, its commerce, it finance, its literature,
its art, and its politics, while Spain descended
from the proud position of the leadership of
nations to the lowest place in the scale of na
tional influence. Germany has risen under
Protestant influences from being a collection
of petty principalities at war with each other,
having a sterile soil and proverbial for barbar
ism, to the intellectual leadership of the world,
with a roll call of great names in scholarship
unequaled by any other country of the world,
and is to-day the most united, prosperous,
progressive and powerful nation on the conti
nent of Europe. Once she had worked her
self clear of the rubbish of Rome, England
forged to the front and took and long kept
the leadership in the world's affairs. Under
Protestant leadership, from the days of Ed
ward III., she has always taken a position in
European affairs out of all proportion with
the size and importance of the country itself ;
but under Roman influences she has always
sunk down again into insignificance and has
become a mere island dependency of France.
Says Macaulay, " Whoever, knowing what
Italy and Scotland naturally are, and what
four hundred years ago they actually were,

GAINS FROM THE REFORMATION. 205
shall now compare the country round Rome
with the country round Edinburgh, will be
able to form some judgment of the tendency
of papal domination. Whoever passes in
Germany from a Roman Catholic to a Protes
tant principality; in Switzerland from a Ro
man Catholic to a Protestant canton; in Ire
land from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant
county, finds that he has passed from a lower
to a higher grade of civilization. The Protes
tants of the United States have left far be
hind them the Roman Catholics of Mexico,
Peru and Brazil. The Roman Catholics of
Lower Canada remain inert, while the whole
continent round them is in a ferment of activ
ity and enterprise. The French have doubt
less shown an energy and an intelligence
which, even when misdirected, have justly en
titled them to be called a great people; but
this apparent exception, when examined, will
be found to confirm the rule, for in no coun
try that is called Roman Catholic has the Ro
man Catholic Church, during several genera
tions, possessed so little authority as in
France." During all those years a steady decay is
observable in the Roman Catholic countries
which at the outbreak of the Reformation
were the great world powers. They are
seen to have been afflicted with a kind of pro-

206 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
gressive paralysis which pursued its irresisti
ble course until all the vital centers were pal
sied. Civilization decayed in Spain. Art
ceased to flourish in Italy. Austria lost her
political supremacy, and France pressed on
her reckless course from the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew to the French Revolution and
the Reign of Terror.
These great changes have been brought
about by an entirely new conception of life.
It was not only a reformation, but it was a
revolution as well. It brought out and pro
claimed a whole new set of principles for hu
man life. Some of you may think that I go
too far when I say that the Christian ideas
and principles of life had been ignored and
forgotten for a thousand years, and the an
cient pagan ideas and ideals prevailed still
over Europe. They had been adopted by and
incorporated into the Roman Catholic
Church. A significant illustration of this fact
is seen at St. Peter's, Rome, in the famous
statue of St. Peter, which is the object of ro
mance and adoration to devout Catholics to
this day. It is an ancient pagan statue of
Jupiter renamed for the patron saint of Rome.
It is a good illustration of what went on, not
only at Rome, but throughout Europe for
centuries. The pagan temples were taken over

GAINS FROM THE REFORMATION. 207
by the Christians and given Christian names ;
the pagan idols became the statues of Chris
tian saints ; the pagan rites were rechristened
into Christian names, as the pagans them
selves were, and with them the pagan cus
toms, laws and ideas. The Pope superseded
the Emperor, St. Peter, Jupiter, St. Mary, the
Magnus Mater, the mass, the sacrifice of Hec
atombs. The Pope took the title of the priest
of Jupiter, " Pontifex Maximus," and based
his authority upon the same principles of force
and fear. The names of the days of the week,
of the months, of the year and of the great
Christian festivals, as well as the manner in
which they are still observed, show how
deeply the pagan ideas were rooted in the
minds of the people, how persistent they were,
and how deeply they succeeded in stamping
themselves upon Roman Catholicism, in
which the man is made to serve the institu
tion; while in the true state the institution
is made to serve the man. That is the differ
ence between the pagan and the Christian
civilizations. The fitting symbols of the one
are the Inquisition, the censorship of the
press, and the Order of Jesuits, three of the
most diabolical engines of despotism that
human ingenuity ever invented. The symbols
of the other are the open Bible and the print-

208 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
ing press — the two most effective agents of
human advancement known to man.
The two ideas upon which ancient civiliza
tions were established were force and fear.
Force on the part of the rulers and fear on
the part of the people. Might made right.
Power meant despotism, and strength meant
the subjugation of the weak to the strong.
The sense of personal or moral obligation did
not enter into the structure of human society.
Government was based upon the principle
that the weak must serve the strong ; that the
unfortunate were the legitimate prey of the
successful, and that government and author
ity were the chief instruments for subjecting
and enslaving the governed. The theory of
human society that prevailed held that God
had set up two classes of persons to repre
sent Him on the earth — they were priests and
rulers. To the latter he had given authority
over the bodies and the lives of men, and to
the former power over their minds and con
sciences. To question the authority of either
was to question the authority of God. It
was impious and perilous ; the audacious cul
prit who presumed to question the grounds
upon which such stupendous claims were
based found himself speedily under the ban
of both Church and State, an outlaw among

GAINS FROM THE REFORMATION. 209
men, his property confiscated, his life at stake,
with no one willing to offer him shelter or
succor, to give him food or clothing, to min
ister to him in sickness, or defend him before
the law. Treated as a wild beast, he was
hunted and hounded out of every refuge and
subjected to the bitterest persecution until
brought to bay, when he was flung upon the
rack and crushed and mangled until the suf
fering body could barely contain the spark of
life, when he was given to the flames or wild
beasts. To maintain society upon these principles,
two of the most diabolical engines of oppres
sion ever invented by human ingenuity were
established in the Middle Ages — one the In
quisition, the other the censorship of the press.
The first was to control the consciences of
men and keep their moral sense subject to
the dictation of the priest; the other was to
control the intellects of men and keep them
in subjection to the same powers. Their su
preme object was to secure mental and moral
darkness, and cause both to prevail among
mankind. Only so could rulers hope to main
tain their supremacy, to preserve their privi
leges, to uphold their power over the masses
of men. A more inhuman or satanic design
could not be conceived. The binding up of

2IO STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
the feet of little children to prevent their
growth, the maiming and deforming of sound
and healthy children to make cripples of them
for purposes of gain, are innocent and harm
less amusements compared with the atrocity
of which the Church and the State of the
Middle Ages were guilty when they conspired
to stultify the intellect and dwarf the con
science of mankind, in order to prevent men
from thinking their way out of degradation
and slavery to kings and priests into intellec
tual and moral freedom and integrity.
But nature is sincere, impartial and un
corruptible, and works with an unerring and
unfailing certainty. You can no more per
manently repress the intellect or conscience
of mankind than you can cement over the
ocean. The emissaries of the two great insti
tutions just alluded to, aided and abetted by
the Jesuits, spread over Europe like the
plague of locusts, infested every household,
invaded the most sacred privacies of family
and individual life, violated all the laws of
honor and decency, mastered all the arts
of falsehood and duplicity, for the sole pur
pose of riveting more tightly the fetters
of men and rendering them a more easy
prey. Those who yielded to these enslavers
descended still deeper into the slough and

GAINS FROM THE REFORMATION. 311
morass of misery and wretchedness. Italy,
Spain, Austria and France, having killed off
all their Protestants, yielded themselves up
willing victims, and all the world knows what
these countries are to-day. While those who
fought the triple Nemesis, fought their way
through seas of blood, but to safe harbors
and habitable lands.
It is worthy of note in this connection that
the term Protestant did not arise from the
differences of doctrine between the Reformers
and the Roman Catholics, but because of the
protest which the Reformers made against an
act of treachery on the part of the Roman
ists who broke faith with them at the Diet of
Spires in 1529. The characters of the men who
led the Romanist party stand in glaring con
trast with the characters of the men who led
the Protestant party. The difference in moral
character is one of the striking features of
the whole movement. The Protestant leaders
were by no means perfect men, but with one
or two notable exceptions, they were men of
staunch moral character, unselfish men, capa
ble of great self-sacrifice, men who sunk their
personal interests in the general good. The
effect of the movement, on the whole, upon
the people at large had that effect— it begot
in them a self-sacrificing spirit, a noble, gen-

212 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
erous spirit. It infused them with the spirit
of heroes and martyrs. Calculation and self-
seeking disappeared for the time, and multi
tudes identified themselves with the great
cause. But their opponents were animated
by ignoble and ungenerous sentiments and
displayed the basest qualities. Treachery,
deceit, duplicity and double dealing were
cultivated and became a fine art in the Roman
Catholic camp. The Society of the Jesuits,
who were the teachers in morals and the
leaders in persecution, had for their motto,
"The end justified the means," and they
illustrated the doctrine in their practice.
The most sacred oaths were violated; the
basest treacheries were perpetrated, like the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew, for instance,
and the vilest crimes committed under cover
of hospitality or flags of truce.
Over against the ideas of force and fear
upon which the ancient regime was founded,
the Protestant reformers set up the opposite
and antagonistic principles of individual re
sponsibility and personal freedom. Luther's
ninety-five theses were the Declaration of In
dependence to the sixteenth century. His
doctrine that the just shall live by faith was
the emancipation proclamation of mankind.
It was the root idea which blossomed two

GAINS FROM THE REFORMATION. 2 13
hundred and fifty years later in the Declara
tion of Independence in America, which as
serted the inalienable right of every man to
life, to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
It was a religious principle at the outset, but
it soon came to have bearings on all the rela
tions of life. For, if it be true that a man is
justified by faith in God alone, then it is
equally true that he has no need of the inter
vention. of priests or the rites of sacerdotalism
or the services of the hierarchy. It was a
blow at the most stupendous system of or
ganized religious tyranny the world had ever
seen. And with the hierarchical system went
also that other doctrine of the Divine right
of kings, which was its alter ego, its logical
shadow. It soon became evident that the
single principle of justification by faith and
not by absolution from a priest once estab
lished, a reconstruction of society from the
bottom upwards, became inevitable. The
priest horde must go, the hierarchy must dis
appear, the Church must be reorganized, the
State reconstituted, and all the institutions of
society revised. It is not only true, as Burke
said, " Society is impossible without religion,"
but it appears from the effects of the Reforma
tion that religion is related to society as the
root to the branches of the tree.

214 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
I. It is thus one of the first and most notice
able gains of the Reformation that a new type
of character had appeared in Europe. A class
of men had arisen to whom the words honor,
integrity, uprightness, truth and righteous
ness were not mere high-sounding phrases,
borrowed from an illustrious past, and used
as a cloak to cover a multitude of sins against
all truth and honor, but to whom they repre
sented living realities and personal qualities
essential to any form of character that would
stand the tests of time and do the real work
of the world.
II. The political gains also of the Reforma
tion are not the least of its benefits to man
kind. The fundamental principle of Protes
tantism is the right of the individual to use his
own judgment in all matters that concern his
personal interests. That principle was gener
ally favorable to liberty when it was adopted.
Under its influence the people began to think
for themselves. As we have seen, the doc
trine of the divine right of kings and the vice
regal quality of priests came generally into
question, and priests and kings equally feared
and hated the opposite idea of personal free
dom, because of the seeds of political revolu
tion which it held. The denial of sacerdotal
authority, and the consequent blow, at hier-

GAINS FROM THE REFORMATION. 215
archal pretensions which the Reformation
involved, were only the beginning of the gen
eral revolution in human society that it was
to work. Like a great oak tree, the prin
ciple of the right of private judgment which
Protestantism espoused went to work at
once to feel among the foundations of hu
man society for its false and unwarranted
supports. Society as then constituted began
to tremble. There was not at that time a
single good government on the face of the
earth, a single country ruled in equity or
judged in righteousness, a single spot of earth
in which justice, liberty or humane sentiments
prevailed, not a single republic or democracy
or constitutional monarchy. The first Prot
estant State was the Dutch Republic. The
battle of constitutional liberty was fought
out in England by the Protestant against the
Roman Catholic royalist, and a constitutional
monarchy was the result. In Germany, Prus
sia took the lead as a constitutional monarchy,
as the result of the Reformation, and De
Tocqueville says, " North America was set
tled by men who brought with them a demo
cratic and republican religion. This con
tributed powerfully to the establishment of a
republic and democracy in public affairs."
The " town system " and the " town spirit "

2l6 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
which lie at the root of our national system
of federated republics were the direct out
growths of the church politics which the early
settlers brought with them to this country.
The northern portion of our country was set
tled, not by commercial or industrial colonists,
nor by political or other adventurers, but by
churches as such — worshipping congregations
who came hither to find the liberty to wor
ship God according to their own way of
worship. They were each of them independ
ent units, who chose their own officers and
elected them out of their own number, and on
finding themselves in America without civil
government or magistrates, they elected
magistrates from their number and proceeded
to adapt their church polity to their civil
necessities. With a true instinct, the kings
had divined in this religious polity a threat
of their own existence. James I. had declared
" No Bishop, no King." The laity of these
independent churches at Boston, Salem,
Plymouth, Hartford, Windsor, New Haven
and other places, settled in the same manner
or by offshoots from the original congrega
tions, became strongholds of democratic sen
timent and liberty-loving patriots. They
planted the tree of liberty wherever they
planted a church, and the seed of that tree

GAINS FROM THE REFORMATION. 217
soon flourished as in its own native soil. Now
and again a man appeared, even in the old
world, like the Elector Frederick of Saxony,
the Landgrave of Hesse, Phillip, William of
Orange, and Gustavus Adolphus, who had the
people's interests at heart, and both sacrificed
his means and risked his life in the cause,
wholly from a sincere conviction of its justice
and righteousness. But, on the whole, the
rulers of the earth set themselves, and princes
took counsel together, against it, because they
saw in it the doom of their own absolutism.
Even Henry of Navarre (IV.) abjured Prot
estantism in order to become King of France,
and upheld Romanism as a foundation of the
throne. III. Religious liberty is another boon
which the Reformation secured to the world,
only partially, it is true, at first, for even the
Reformers were not always magnanimous,
and the fair escutcheon of Protestantism is
not unstained by some foul blots. But the
root of the matter was there, and it was bound
to grow until it reached its fruition. As a
matter of fact, religious liberty in any form
exists only in Protestant countries, or in other
countries where it has been forced by Protes
tant influences. No Roman Catholic country
has, while it was under strictly Roman Catho-

2l8 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
lie control, ever yet enacted any laws that
permitted the practice of any other religion in
any form. And if we find in France, Spain
and Italy to-day any approximation to re
ligious liberty, it is only because the authority
of Roman Catholicism is relaxed and other
influences have predominated. On the con
trary, Protestant countries have been steadily
working towards complete religious freedom
and have approached most nearly to it in
those countries where the principles of
the Reformation have most completely tri
umphed. The Roman Catholic Church steadily and
stubbornly repudiates the principles of the
right of private judgment and the liberty of
conscience in everything, religion and politics
alike. It reprobated these doctrines and de
nounced them as pestilential heresies and
fatal errors.
It is interesting to note in this connection,
in view of the objection often urged against
Protestantism as a creator of anarchy and re-
laxor of due respect for law and government,
that Protestant countries that have experi
enced the gradual and natural development
of free institutions are to-day the most law-
abiding and orderly portions of the world,
while under Roman Catholicism anarchy

GAINS FROM THE REFORMATION. 2 19
breeds, and revolutionary horrors are the
affliction of every Roman Catholic country in
the Old and the New World.
The principle of religious liberty is a purely
Christian principle.
When Constantine espoused Christianity,
and when not only was the persecution of the
Church brought to an end but Christians
were exalted to positions of influence and
power, even to the supreme command in the
empire of the world, their sudden release
from persecution and their unexpected exal
tation from a state of outlawry to the highest
position in the government did not corrupt
them nor change them from humble followers
of the meek and lowly Nazarene into fierce
and bloodthirsty persecutors of their enemies.
On the contrary, they put in force the prin
ciples they had always maintained, and
showed that they had actually formed their
characters upon the model of Christ. Per
suaded by the Christian leaders, Constantine,
as one of his first acts after he became a
Christian, issued the Edict of Milas, which
granted entire and absolute religious free
dom to the whole empire and prohibited only
cruel and impure rites in pagan worship, and
the edict was observed for almost a century,
until a barbarous emperor ascended the

2 20 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
throne and stirred up religious bitterness be
tween the different religions.
With that single exception, there had never
been any religious liberty among men.
Every man was expected to conform to the
religion of his country, whatever that might
be, and not to suggest any change in it, much
less any departure from it. The early Chris
tians incurred persecution because they were
considered to be either a new sect of the Jews
or a new religion, and in either case they
were amenable to the law. But the Roman
Catholic Church of the Middle Ages con
ceived the ambitious design of subduing all
peoples unto itself and of supplanting all re
ligions by its own. It could tolerate no dif
ferences. It created the doctrine of salva
tion by the Church and it taught that salva
tion out of the Church was impossible. The
Reformation was a return to primitive Chris
tian principles in religion. It aimed to create
a condition of things in which it would be
possible for every man to worship God under
his own vine and fig tree, with none to molest
or make him afraid.
IV. Not the least of the benefits of Protes
tantism has been its effect upon the intellec
tual life of its adherents. It acted at once as
an intellectual tonic and invigorator. It

GAINS FROM THE REFORMATION. 221
aroused the investigating spirit and gave rise
to the critical method of study as opposed to
the submission to authority which preceded it.
The Renaissance acted as an intellectual stim
ulus and quickening in Southern Europe upon
the minds of a few, but it neither nourished a
sustained and vigorous intellectual life nor ac
complished release from long-established au
thority, and in those countries where Protes
tantism was rejected it did not long continue,
but proved to be a fitful, waning light, which
went out within the century. In both France
and Spain it degenerated into literary drivel
and deformity. In France, intellectual life
took the form of lawlessness and extrava
gance, and in Spain that of servility, and obse
quious effrontery marks the literary product
of the subsequent times. The influence of the
Roman Catholic Church upon the human
mind for four hundred years and more has
been to stultify it. Since the Reformation she
has produced few great scholars, and the
cramped and crippled condition of the minds
of her recent writers is the surest possible
arraignment of her system of education.
Protestantism throws open wide the doors
of knowledge, of investigation, of thought
and of inquiry. It bids man search and find.
The whole wide world is before him, with all

222 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
its secrets, and the intellect with which God
endowed him is his for the purposes of finding
it out. Protestantism imposes upon him the
obligation of developing every faculty of his
mind, and seeks to impress him with the cul
pability of neglecting opportunity to increase
his power to think. He is in this world as a
learner, and it is his duty to know as far as he
can. He is to try and prove all things. No ex
cathedra utterance and no arbiter dictum are
to be regarded as final. He is to investigate,
inquire and find but all he can in every sphere,
and not to rest satisfied with any stage of
knowledge in which he may happen to be at
any time.
The effect of that sort of teaching was im
mensely quickening to the human mind. It
necessitated at the outset provisions for the
education of all the people, and that Luther
saw; and Puritans and Pilgrims in England
and America, as Well as the Dutch people, set
themselves at work to devise a general sys
tem of popular education. The intellectual su
premacy of Protestant countries to-day is due
to that fact. Holland first came into promi
nence for the intelligence and culture of her
people as she emerged from the baptism in
blood at the hands of Roman Catholic Spain.
England reached the golden age of literature

GAINS FROM THE REFORMATION. 223
when the Protestant ferment was at its height,
and such men as Bacon and Shakespeare,
Raleigh and Milton, were its ripened products.
Scotland has been remarkable for the num
ber and magnitude of the really great names
she has contributed to letters, to the fine arts,
to science, to philosophy, to statesmanship,
to poetry and religion. The immense erudi
tion of her scholars and the general intelli
gence of her people for the last three hundred
years and at the present day are surprising,
when we consider the generally impoverished
condition of the country at the outbreak of
the Reformation; and it can be attributed to
no other cause than the heartiness and una
nimity with which she adopted the principles
of the Reformation and the strenuousness
with which she has lived up to those princi
ples. Her covenant with Protestantism was
the covenant of blood, signed and sealed with
the best blood of the nation. Germany has
earned the title of the land of scholars. Since
the middle of the eighteenth century the
achievements of the German mind in all
branches of scholarship have surpassed those
of all other nations of ancient or modern
times, and she still holds the palm for scholar
ship. Melancthon, the great scholar of the
Reformation, gave particular attention to ed-

224 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
ucation, and he is still honored, and justly so,
with the title, " Preceptor of the Nation."
And Luther gave to Germany her first general
system of education, and the principles upon
which it has grown and expanded were first
established by the great leader of the Refor
mation. Time fails me to speak of the effect upon
philosophy, how the Reformation revolution
ized the principles of human knowledge, and
in Bacon first established the true principle
of investigation upon which modern science
rests, and upon which our advancing knowl
edge in history and religion is developed and
is alone possible. It has taught us to think
on a basis of facts, not of fancies or theories,
to base all our theories upon facts, not to
conform our facts to theories. It has pro
duced a new system of philosophy, beginning
with Descartes and culminating in Kant and
Hegel. Out of it arose the new sciences of
commerce, of government, of industrial and
social life. Political economy and sociology
also are born of the very genius of Protes
tantism. It also rescued the Copernican sys
tem of astronomy from the blighting con
demnation of the Inquisition before there had
been time utterly to crush out its life, and
while Galileo was yet a prisoner at Rome,

GAINS FROM THE REFORMATION.

225

because of his adherence to that system, it
found adherents and advocates in all Prot
estant countries. All natural sciences were
encouraged by Protestant liberty of thought
and investigation, and the study of interna
tional law arose as a new creation.
V. But it is in the realm of religion that we
perceive the chief benefits of the Reformation.
When Protestantism appeared, a state of gen
eral irreligion prevailed throughout Europe
among all the thinking, educated classes, and
of gross superstition among the lower
classes. Atheism itself sat upon the papal
throne in the person of at least one pope. The
chief effect of the Renaissance had been to
weaken the hold of the Church upon the edu
cated and thinking classes; but it had left
them without anything better in its place.
The Roman Catholic Church has always
recognized the danger to herself of general
education and, therefore, has discouraged it;
has never permitted it to prevail where she
could prevent it, and has established a modi
fied form of education in her own parochial
schools under the supervision of the Church.
Wherever general education is established
and compulsory, either she will not have her
children go to school at all, or she will see to
it that they receive no instruction but that

226 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
which she authorizes and approves. And the
result is a reaction against the Church on the
part of the independent and thinking portions
of her own children as soon as they begin to
acquire knowledge for themselves or come in
contact with those who have it.
The Reformation met the rising tide of
skepticism which was beginning to sweep
over Europe, and wherever successful, stayed
the course of that skepticism for a hundred
years. It was preeminently the era of faith in
all Protestant countries, and the period of
rationalism which followed it was mild and
harmless compared with the rank infidelity
which prevailed in Southern Europe at the
same time and gave rise to such men as Vol
taire and Rousseau, while it was France,
Catholic France, that was and still is the home
of atheism.
Protestantism's first service in religion was
in providing man with the greatest textbook
of the spiritual life in existence. It called from
its seclusion the Bible, and gave it its right
ful place in religious instruction. It estab
lished the Bible as the perfect rule of religious
faith and practice, and made it the touch
stone of conduct. The translation and dis
tribution of the Scriptures in the vernacular
among the peoples of Protestant countries

GAINS FROM THE REFORMATION. 227
were attended by immediate and marked re
sults, in the sincerity, simplicity, depth and
power of the religious life. Intelligent inquiry
and diligent study of religious truths were ac
companied by deep religious feeling and sim
ple, childlike faith and profound reverence.
The kind of devotion which consisted in grov
elling prostration and obeisance before images
vanished before the sincere homage which the
heart rendered to God alone. The worship of
shrines and images and saints and angels, the
superstitious regard for amulets and relics and
magic signs and symbols, incantations " and
genuflexions, disappeared, and a simple and
pure spiritual worship of God took its place.
The Protestant doctrine of worship is, " God
is a spirit and desireth such to worship Him
as shall worship Him in spirit and in truth."
The Protestant position in worship is that no
priest or ceremony can come between the
soul and God ; that the worshipper enters into
the immediate presence of God by the new
and living way opened up by Christ, and that
no intermediary agents or instruments are
permissible or possible ; that every man is re
sponsible to God for his conduct; that he
stands or falls to God alone, and that unto
God alone must he give an account, and from
God alone can he receive absolution of sin.

2 28 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
Under such a religious system, spiritual
tyranny and moral slavery is forever utterly
impossible. The man who accepts it and lives
in it has attained the glorious liberty of the
children of God. Let us, therefore, to whom
it is given as a precious heritage, stand fast
in this liberty in which Christ hath made us
free — a liberty in which we are all brethren,
in which none can lord it over God's heritage,
and in which he who would be first among us
must be our servant.
The result of this change in religion ap
peared also in a new form of character. Per
haps nothing is more marked in all the last
four hundred years than the growth and
prevalence of a new manhood. Character has
assumed a new station, a new dignity, a new
solidity and a new worth. The coupling of
the Christian graces with the heroic virtues
is practically a new achievement. The wed
ding of generosity with justice; of kindness
with firmness; of entire truthfulness with un
failing grace; of the utmost integrity with
the most unfaltering affection as it exists to
day in what is known as Christian character,
is one of the immediate outcomes of the Ref
ormation. The qualities of endurance, stoi
cism and firmness which characterized the
Spartan are wedded to the graceful qualities

GAINS FROM THE REFORMATION. 229
of keen sensibility, quick insight, and aes
thetic delicacy characteristic of the Athenian.
The Spartan heroism and the Athenian deli
cacy and grace are met. The Hebrew con
science and the Greek exquisiteness of sensi
bility are united here ; or, to be more general,
the delicate grace and beauty that we are ac
customed to associate with woman and the
strength and fortitude we call masculine are
become one. A true Christian character, as
it appears to us, is a full-rounded, symmetri
cal character, having fortitude, endurance, in
tegrity, sensibilities and grace. That is our
idea of saintliness, " Which without hardness
can be sage, and gay without frivolity."
" Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re."
And Protestantism has produced multi
tudes of such characters. Among the Quak
ers and the Methodists they are of frequent
occurrence, perhaps of greater frequency than
among any other bodies, but they are found
among all Christians. The gentle, tender,
sweet, pure, strong, enlightened, energetic,
firm and dauntless champions of truth and
right are illustrators of the mind that was in
Christ, with none of the restrictions which
characterized a man like a Kempis, or Fran
cis of Assisi, or Brother Lawrence, or Tauler.
They are full-rounded and symmetrical, giv-

230 STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
ing the impression of a fullness of stature of
manhood in Jesus Christ. The genius of Prot
estantism is not the mere effort to escape
hell and get into heaven by some means at
last, but it is to make men better in this pres
ent world, and to help men make this world
better; it is to teach men how to make a
heaven on earth; it is to be clean and straight
and true; to be men and not animals; to come
out of the sty and quit meanness; and the
success Protestantism has had in this alone,
as seen by the comparison between a Catholic
and Protestant community to-day, is enough
to justify all the Reformation has cost.
In a word, the immense amelioration of
society in modern times is a Protestant pro
duction, through its influence upon the in
tellectual, civil and religious life of man, and
so upon human character. No Roman Cath
olic state has by itself ever yet developed a
just or humane government, an enlightened
or progressive community, an elevated or
aspiring type of public character. Exalted
and pure souls there have been among Ro
manists, not a few, but even they often seem
to lack the intellectual balance and symmetry
essential to the ideal character.
And this result has been accomplished by
exalting and emphasizing Christ as the ob-

GAINS FROM THE REFORMATION. 23 1
ject of worship and emulation. Next to the
restoration of the Bible to its rightful place
in the thought and study of men is the res
toration of Christ to his rightful place of
authority in the heart and over the mind of
man. The ultimate authority in Protestant
ism as it stands to-day is not an institution
called the Church, nor a book called the Bible,
but a person called the Christ. Christ is su
preme in the Protestant's heart, high over all,
God-blessed forevermore. The re-enthrone
ment of Christ in the hearts and over the
lives of men in these last days is the chief
service of Protestantism to the world.
" I live for those who need me,
For those who need the truth,
For the heaven that smiles above me
And waits my coming too;
For the wrong that needs resistance,
For the right that needs assistance,
For the future in the distance,
And the good that I can do."

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