Chapter IV

CHAPTER IV

PROTESTANTISM AND POLITICO-SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS

THE, circumstance which strikes the eye first and foremost is that Protestantism, by breaking up the absolute autocracy of the Catholic Church, broke the power of Church civilisation, in spite of its temporary revival, once and for all. Three infallible "Churches," unchurching and anathematising one another, discredited the idea of the Church, for which there is no plural. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are no longer the Middle Ages, but neither are they "Modern Times." They are the "Confessional" Age of European history, and it is only as a consequence of the mutual attrition----by no means, it must be said, com-

plete---of these three supernatural bodies that the modern world has arisen, a world which knows, indeed, the supersensible, but not the supernatural in the medieval sense. Thus Protestantism disintegrates the Christian Church-system and its supernatural foundation, wholly against its will, but by its actual and ever more clearly apparent influence. The plurality of the Churches and their embittered struggle did more than anything else to multiply the "Libertinists and Neutralists," while in France the policy of the Chancellor L'HOpital, and in the Netherlands that of the Orange party, and the Pacification of Ghent, tended to the same result. Special stress has rightly been laid by Richard Rothe upon the influence and significance of Protestantism in this respect.

Another point which has to be taken into account is that the inner ecclesiastical structure of the Protestant Churches, and especially of Lutheranism, is considerably weaker than that of Catholicism, and therefore when confronted with the modern world of ideas, has less

resisting power than Catholicism. That is the point on which Paul de Lagarde has constantly insisted with a one-sided intensity of emphasis. Once the supreme miracle of the incarnation of God in Jesus and in the Bible is present, the continuation of this miracle in the hierarchy and the sacraments is a logical eon- sequence; nothing short of the complete deification of the Church as an Institution can really prevent the humanisation of the doctrines and truths. Hence, even among the Protestant Churches, Calvinism, which retains a remnant of the jus divinum in its Church-organisation, has, down to the present day, in England and America, offered a stronger resistance to the disintegrating influence of modern science than have the idealistic Church arrangements of Luther. When disgust at the Confessional confusions, combined with the development of humanistic science, caused an attack to be made upon the Churches generally, Protestantism was not able to maintain its previous position---has, indeed, in many

respects endeavoured to come into inner relations with the new forces, and in this way has variously and profoundly altered its inner religious character.

That is, of course, only the most external and only a provisional view of the matter. The weakened powers of resistance were not responsible for everything. It is rather that Protestantism has many tendencies drawing it towards the modern world, and these enabled it, instead of simply being overwhelmed in the struggle, to amalgamate with the new element, and to amalgamate with it much more solidly than Catholicism---which did in its own fashion amalgamate with it in the civilisation of the Counter-Reformation, and in its modern development---has been able to do. I shall show this first in the different departments of civilisation, postponing to the last the most important thing, the question how far the transformation of the religious

idea, which has taken place in Protestantism, signifies the creation of a form of religion essentially adapted to the modern world with its new aspirations. The reason for this procedure is apparent from what has been said above. If we were to begin with this last point, we should be immediately plunged into the midst of the most precarious generalisations, and of all the controversial questions of modern religious thought.

Take, first, the primary element in all morality, the family. Here Protestantism abolished the monastic and clerical view of the conjugal relation, encouraged the increase of population, so important for the rise of the modern State, created in its pastorate a new social order and a pattern of family life as Protestantism understood it. By abolishing the sacramental character of the married state, it put marriage on the basis of a more

ethical and personal relation, made possible divorce and remarriage, and thus prepared the way for a freer movement of the individual. The ideal of virginity entirely disappears from religion and ethics. Marriage and the family, on the other hand, are the highest and most specialised form of love to one's neighbour, the germ-cell of all industry, the archetype of human sociological relations, the primal form of the Church, the most general state, ordained by God in Paradise, into which it is everyone's duty to enter. It provides, in conjunction with public order and property, the conditions established by the Law of Nature under which Christian love is to display itself. But all the same, in respect to the ideal of the family itself, the distinction from Catholicism and the approximation to modern ways of thinking are less marked than is often supposed. Protestantism retained the old patriarchalism with the complete subordination of the wife and children, and its doctrine of original sin affixed

to the sexual relation sin's penalty of concupiscence, and to procreation the stigma of perpetuating original sin, exactly like the old doctrine. Marriage remains for it also mainly a prophylactic against the sinful depravity of lust, and is accepted by Christian obedience as a state and vocation which has now, at any rate, been ordained by God. Calvinism, in accordance with its rational spirit, placed in the foreground its purpose in the begetting and bringing up of children, and by that very fact made the sexual emotions purely a means to an end-if it did not entirely exclude them. In either case, however, there is a strong contrast with the modern development of the family ideal and of sexual ethics. The modern individualism, the humanity and freedom of education, the independence of woman, are lacking-indeed, the abolition of the cloister still further discredited the position of the unmarried woman as compared with the married. In contrast with that stands a spiritual and social independence of woman

among the humanists and in the Renaissance, the religious emancipation of woman among the Anabaptists, Independents, Quakers, and Pietists; while in the education of children it was Rousseau and Pestalozzi who first struck out new paths. Then, too, the emotional refinement of the sexual relation and the complete severance of sexual feeling from the thought of original sin have only been effected by modern art and poetry, above all by the poetry of sentiment, which is nothing else than the secularisation of the intense religious emotions and the direction of them towards natural interests. On the other hand, the dangers of over-population, the rendering difficult of the family life by economic causes, the problem of celibacy imposed by social

conditions, the sexual problem in relation to the vast masses of population in the big towns, and many others, are still remote from early Protestantism. It was not called on to give an answer to many questions which now imperatively demand one. It recommended early marriage, and regarded the light-hearted beget- ting of children as a proof of belief in Providence, a numerous progeny as a blessing from God. That is a healthy and courageous view of the matter, agreeing, moreover, with that of Jewish and Catholic ethics. But everyone knows that in modern conditions of life these matters are much more complicated.

Another element of fundamental importance consists in the legal relations of society. Here, too, Protestantism has not been without influence. It is true that in the department of criminal law it carried on the traditions of the old barbaric justice, and further, on its own part, based it on the thought of original sin and of the civil authority as the representative of the retributive justice of God. Vengeance and

retribution in the name of God by the civil authority which is charged therewith, whose function in relation to sinners is in fact that of "the sword": such is the character of this justice. With the prevailing conception of the Lex Nature as creating the earthly authorities in the natural course of things under the direction of the Divine providence, and as receiving its particular form in view of the duty of repressing original sin, they could, also regard this criminal law as derived from the Lex Naturae, and confirm this from Biblical examples of the working of the Lex Nature, which is itself expressly testified to in the Old Testament. That trial for witchcraft and sorcery continued is a familiar fact. The humanisation of punitive justice and the abolition of trial for witchcraft are, as is well known, the work of the period of Illuminism. The punishment of witchcraft was opposed only by isolated mystics and spiritualists.

In Civil Law, also, it is impossible to speak of any kind of innovations of principle. Luther himself, under the impression of the Sermon on the Mount, had scruples about the Christianity of law in general, and looked on it as only a concession to the conditions of the present sinful state; but for that he demanded, with simple peasant shrewdness, at least popular and equitable laws. Calvin, a jurist and man of the world by early training, was not inspired with any scruples on this head by the Sermon on the Mount, but, on the contrary, regarded a good and well developed legal system as one of the chief instruments of a sound social order, such as should conduce to the realisation of the ends of the Christian life. Only an indirect significance is here to be ascribed to the Reformation, in so far, namely, as it contributed to the adoption of Roman Law. That, it is true, was more due to the influence of the Protestant humanists than of the Protestant spirit, which has nothing to do with Roman Law as such. The Protestant humanists, how-

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ever, construed the Lex Naturae as the basis of the whole of the natural life, as the order which under the Divine providence issues from reason and the course of things, and identified the Lex Naturae, again, with the Decalogue. But since they also, with a truly humanistic valuation of antiquity, and following hints given by the Roman jurists, regarded the Roman Law as the law of reason and ratio scripta, it became for them an expression of the Lex Naturae and hence a development of the Decalogue. Melanchthon went so far as to identify Roman Law with the Decalogue, as did also the Genevan theologians, whose chief ambition it was to have alongside of the theological faculty a juristic faculty formed of pupils of the great French school of Jurisprudence. In Germany the needs of the Territorial State and of Absolutism, in Calvinistic countries economic conditions, supported this theologico-hurnanistic theory. The learned professional judiciary eagerly used these formulas in support of its influence and

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position. All this, of course, does not apply to Anglo-Saxon countries, where the adoption of the Roman Law did not take place.

If a general transformation of civilisation necessarily finds expression in a change of legal theory and in new legal forms given to the practical relations of life, then Protestantism is no new civilisation. In essentials it continued the medieval conditions, and, where it allowed itself to be influenced by changes proceeding from general circumstances, that was a learned application, but not the direct action, of its spirit. In contrast with this, both the medieval and the modern world have produced for themselves a system of law and a distinctive legal consciousness-a clear indication that the Confessional Protestantism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was not a new and distinctive principle of civilisation. The "Law of Nature" movement, with which the modern legal development begins, is not, particularly

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in the departments of criminal and civil law, an offspring of the spirit of Protestantism. On the other hand it did, of course, introduce important innovations in the domain of Church Law. It was not merely that Luther cast off the Canon Law; the whole spirit of the Reformation is directly opposed to the idea of a divinely established ecclesiastical legal Institution with a world-ruling and world- embracing Organisation. But here, too, things are extraordinarily complicated. A new form of law for the newly-arisen religious society was not, in truth, discovered by Lutheranism. After all kinds of confusions, it finally had recourse to the Canon Law again, and, striking out what was specifically Catholic, adapted it to Protestant circumstances; a solution of the question which, after the Interconfessionalising of the States, was no longer tenable, but which, with all its illogicalities and inconsistencies, continues to the present day. Calvinism created for itself, in the framework of its church-session, "classis" [presbytery].

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and synod, an Organisation inspired by its own spirit, and, by appealing to its Divine institution in the Bible, gave it a victorious strength. But this Organisation also was dependent, one side, on the Confessional unity of the State and an indissoluble union of the interests of State and Church. On another side it is dependent on the exclusion of any conception of the Bible as human and historically developed; and with its jus divinum it contradicted the genuine Protestant spirit. Consequently, its Church Law also, since the period of Illumination and the break-up of the Confessional State, has fallen into desuetude. Outwardly it has in the main become independent of the State, and inwardly it has for the most part given up the jus divinum. The main thing is that neither Confession has been able to solve the problem of Protestant Organisation, the reconciliation of the free inwardness, regulated by conscience, of individual religious conviction with thd requirements of a Society based on a common cultus and

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administration. In this respect they reverted completely to the analogy of Catholicism, the compulsory maintenance of orthodox Church doctrine, and revived prosecution for heresy. Indeed, as it was now belief and not cultus which stood in the centre, the compulsory imposition of doctrine was stricter, more universal, and more pedantically exact than in Catholicism. If the general tendency of modern Protestantisrn is in the direction of a Free-Church system loosed from the State, and if it seeks to provide within the Church room for freedom of movement and the constant communication of life by the Spirit, these aims are not derived from the great Confessions, but partly from the Anabaptist movement, which was not without influence in the turning of Calvinism towards Free Churchism, partly from the Spiritualistic Mysticism, which stood for the free and unmediated action of the Spirit. But these tasks awaiting a new Organisation of Protestant religious life have scarcely been recognised

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and formulated down to the present day, and are infinitely difficult to discharge, difficult especially because we have here everywhere to contend with the remnants of Catholicising Church Law, which, on its part, has its basis in very familiar and influential characteristics of average humanity. But if Protestantism had really been so clear and comprehensive a new principle of thought and action as is often asserted, then the most difficult problem of civilisation, the delimitation of the spheres of the religious and secular societies, and the defining of the relations of the religious society towards individual freedom of belief, would long ago have been much more energetically, courageously, and successfully taken in hand.

Naturally, with this alteration of Church Law went a similar alteration in the domain of politics and Public Law, and this change became

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of really high significance for the development of the modern State. But here, too, we must guard against current exaggerations; the secular State and the modern idea of the State, and an independent political ethic, are not creations of Protestantism. What is true is that it freed the State from all and every kind of subordination to the hierarchy; it taught men to regard civil callings as direct service of God and not as indirect service through the intermediary of the Church. That signifies the final----both formal and theoretical---independence of the State. But it nevertheless is not yet equivalent to the modern idea of the State. So far from that, Protestantism regarded the State as a religious institution, and saw its end and aim in the protection of the Christian commonwealth and the moral law. Since the proper end of life lies only in

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redemption and the religious ethic, there remains for the State only the character of protector of the disciplina externa and of justitia eivilis, together with the practical care of the material existence of its subjects; in performing these duties it is only discharging the functions of the Lex Naturae, which is summed up in the Decalogue. Beyond maintaining these external pre-conditions of the Christian life, its highest office is the loving service of the Church, whereto the civil authority is bound, both by the Law of Nature as the protector of the embodiment of the Law of Nature in the Decalogue, and by Christian principle as the most important member of the Christian community. The Protestant theory of the State is in both Confessions based on that very same Christian "Law of Nature " which, in the Middle Ages, was compounded out of Stoicism, Aristotle, and the Bible, and which Protestants continued carefully to build up with a view to their biblico-rational conception of the State. The

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only difference is that the authority now does all this from an independent understanding of the Biblico-rational demand, in virtue of its own divinely ordained commission, and in a wholly free co-operation with the professional experts in Biblical knowledge, the bearers of the spiritual office. Of course, that implies an advance in the autonomy and independence of the idea of the State, and a step forward towards the secularisation of the State, the recognition of a natural ethical worth properly belonging to it, and needing no ecclesiastical sanction. The principles which Machiavelli and Bodin developed, in opposition to the Christian consciousness, here become capable of combining with it and being strengthened by it. Protestantism intervened in the development of the State in the direction of autonomy, and powerfully furthered it. In particular, it invested the expanding civil officialdom with the character of a God-ordained calling, which plays its part in the execution of the Divine will; and it thus gave to the new centralised

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administration a strong ethical reinforcement. Then too, by directly inciting the State to work for the advancement of civilisation, spiritual and material, in the interests of the Christian commonwealth, it inspired the civil government to set before it the widest civilising aims, and put into its hands the care of education, moral order, oversight of food supply, and spiritual and ethical well-being. This is not quite the modem idea of the State as the organ of civilisation, for all this is done by the State in its -joint exercise of spiritual authority and in the discharge of Christian duty. But out of it, by the separation of civilisation from the Church, while the civilising functions are retained by the State, there arises the modern idea of the State as the organ of civilisation. Enlightened "minor's guardian" absolutism, after the Prussian style, grows out of the Protestant patriarchalism. The latter, indeed, was met with chiefly on the soil of Lutheranism, which directly assigned Church functions to the State; Calvinism

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distinguished the Church's care of spiritual interests and general welfare more sharply from that of the State, and from the first, in Geneva, kept the Academy under Church supervision. Nevertheless, it also-at least where the Genevan ideal prevailed-gave the State a direct and generous share in the work of spiritual and ethical elevation and the pursuit of the ideals of civilisation. Of course, as soon as the State refused these duties in their spiritual aspect, Calvinism took them back into the hands of the Church, leaving the State in the main only the rule of a guardian responsible for safety and discipline, thus preparing the way for the idea of the State held by the earlier Liberalism. In America, the Churches themselves to this day maintain this purely utilitarian idea of the State; and the Dutch theological Minister, Kuyper, actually made it a fundamental principle of the Reformed Church.

In all this, Protestantism is only strengthening impulses which were already present. Of

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a more marked character was its influence on the State in regard to form and constitution. That applies, however, in the main, only to Calvinism. In this point the two Confessions differ fundamentally. Everything depends here upon the form given, in the one case and the other, to the Law of Nature as adopted in the Churches, just as that had been the decisive factor previously in the Catholic system. Lutheranism, in its conception of the Law of Nature, is thoroughly conservative; and in its complete confidence in God's providence it regards the powers called into being in the natural course of things as ipsofacto instituted by God and commissioned to be the protectors of the justitia eivilis. The Old Testament, moreover, supported this theory, by representing Saul and David as appointed by God. God is the cause remota of the constituted authorities, and consequently men owe them, as powers whose authority is directly or indirectly directly derived from God, an unconditional obedience. In virtue of this conception

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Lutheranism facilitated the transition from the State-authority of the privileged orders to a Territorial absolutism; and by putting Church authority also into its hands, immensely increased the resources of this absolutism. Nevertheless, it preserves the spirit of the orders, since, while it requires of them subordination to the central authority, it also, on the other hand, accords to them, within their jurisdiction, a similar status as God-ordained authorities, and recognises their claim to passive obedience. Lutheranism is thus far politically favourable to absolutism, but, on the whole, is essentially conservative and politically neutral; it destroys the powers of the orders in the upward direction, but preserves them in the downward. The doctrines of Stahl and the Prussian conservatism still express its spirit; only, it must not be forgotten that in the older Lutheranism "By the grace of God" applied not only to the sovereign but also to the magistracy of the Imperial cities, and represents simply a religious interpretation

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of natural events, unconnected with feudal romanticism.

Quite different was the development of the political spirit of Calvinism. Generally speaking, its State-adaptation of the Law of Nature is at bottom also conservative, though where it has open to it the possibility of the free choice and constitution of new authorities, it prefers a modified aristocracy, as is not surprising in view of its original connexion with the Genevan republic, and the prominence which it gives to the aristocratic idea of predestination. But in its great struggles with the Catholic governments which proscribed the pure word of God, that is to say, the Huguenot, Netherlandish, Scottish, and English struggles, Calvinism gave a much more radical development to its Law of Nature. It successfully established the principle of the right of resist-

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ance, which must be exercised on behalf of the word of God in the face of ungodly authorities, the exercise of which becomes the duty of the magistats inferieurs as the next in order as holders of the Divine commission, while, failing these, it must be put in practice even by the individual; indeed, in virtue of a special individual call thereto, the assassination of a tyrant is permissible, as in the case of Jael and Sisera.

This more radical conception gives to the Calvinistic Law of Nature a tendency towards progress, an impulse to reorganise governmental conditions when these were of an "ungodly" character. Moreover, in these attempts at reorganisation themselves, there appears a specifically Reformed idea of the State. For in all such reorganisations the germ-cell was the Reformed presbyterial and synodical Church-order, with its representative system. Thus, in the natural course of things, this system tended towards the theory that the State ought to be reorganised---the State

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itself must be built up on representative lines and ruled by a collegium consisting of those put forward as the "best" by the choice of the electors. Under the influence of these ideas, as has been pointed out especially by Gierke, the Calvinistic conception of the Law of Nature took up into itself the idea of the State-contract. On these lines the Lex Naturae leads by the logic of events to a constitution and choice of authorities based on contract. These can then, as deriving their status from God as the causa remota, be regarded in a wholly religious aspect as Godappointed, and can lay claim to absolute obedience so long as they do not offend against the word of God. The Old Testament confirmation of this doctrine of the Law of Nature, which Calvinism characteristically seeks in a different direction from Lutheranism, is found in Israel's covenants, from which its kings and its ordinances are derived. Hence the Protestant "Covenants." This is still, however, an essentially religious and aristocratic

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idea, sharply distinguished from the pure rationalism of the conception of the Law of Nature in the period of Illuminism, and from the democratic sympathies of Rousseau's teaching. In every case where the theory has come to practical application, it has led to an aristocracy based on a limited franchise. Democracy in the strict sense is everywhere foreign to the Calvinistic spirit, and could only develop out of it where, as in the New England States, the old class-system of Europe was absent and political institutions grew directly out of those of the Church. But there, too, it developed into the strictest theocracy. It required as a condition of eligibility to office, Church-membership voluntarily professed, subsequently to baptism, combined with moral worth, while the chosen rulers regarded themselves as having the right to exercise in patriarchal fashion the strictest ethico-religious discipline. The democratising of the modern world ought not, therefore, to be solely and directly referred to Calvinism.

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The Rationalism which, wholly dissociated from religious considerations, appealed to the pure Law of Nature, has in this connexion a much stronger significance; but all the same, Calvinism took a prominent part in preparing the way for the upgrowth of the democratic spirit.

Another fundamental idea of modern political life is that of the "rights of man" and freedom of conscience. That is to say, the theoretical inviolability of the life, freedom, and property of the individual apart from regular process of law, and the respecting of the individual's religious beliefs and expressed convictions. These rights have passed from the French constitution into all other modern constitutions, and are therefore everywhere bound up with the ideas of democracy and representative government. But for the understanding of these rights of the individual,

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and especially for our present inquiry, it is of importance that these two, the rights of man and, democracy, are not simply coincident, and are therefore not to be explained by the historical derivation of one from the other. It is quite possible for the rights of the individual to exist apart from demaocracy, under any form of government which recognises and protects them, just as, conversely, there can be a democracy in which terrorism and fanatical zeal for equality, or, again, dogmatic prejudice, preclude freedom of conscience. The English constitutional monarchy of the " Glorious Revolution " practically recognised the rights of the individual and liberty of conscience, without democracy, while the Calvinistic New England States, and, for that matter, Rousseau's majority-rule, had democracy without liberty of conscience. The two ideas have to be kept separate, and only coalesce where the demcratic shaping of the ideas of the State is held to be itself an inalienable human right; which, however, neither is nor was by any means a

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logical necessity. It is the old and well-known antithesis between freedom and equality, which in general differentiates the Anglo-Saxon from the Latin conception of Society. Attention has been called to this point by Jellinek, who also showed that in the French constitution these two elements are separate and strongly distinguished. But then the question arises: Whence comes the idea of the rights of the individual ? Following out this question, Jellinek shows that it is derived from the Constitutions of the North American States, and in part verbally taken over from them. And in the North American States themselves he derived these declarations from their Puritan religious principles, which, not content with the old practical character of English liberties, regarded the freedom of the person, and especially of religious conviction, as a right conferred absolutely by God and Nature, which is essentially inviolable by any State. It was only in virtue of being thus put on a religious basis that these demands became

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absolute, and consequently admitted of and required a theoretic legal exposition. It was thus that they first passed into Constitutional law was a fundamental doctrine, finding their way from the North American State-constitutions into the French, and thence into almost all modern constitutions. What the purely practical English Law, utilitarian and sceptical toleration, and abstract literary theorising, had either not felt to be necessary, or not succeeded in securing, was now secured by the energy of a principle based on religious conviction. It was due to the circumstances of the time that the penetration into the legal code of this demand for religious freedom carried along with it the democratic constitutional-law guarantees which had been formulated with a view to confirming the fundamental claim, and in conformity with the special character of Anglo-American life; so that the official list of the 11 rights of man " contains, besides, a series of democratic political claims. In the latter, moreover, the influence of the literature of European Illuminism is

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unmistakable. If all this is correct, we should certainly be in presence of an extremely important influence of Protestantism, for it must be held to have introduced into practical politics a fundamental law and a fundamental ideal of modern existence, and secured its general acceptance as a legal principle. The fact is that Jellinek's treatment of the subject represents, on the whole, a really illuminating discovery, but there is just one point in which it needs closer definition, and that point is of decisive importance for our inquiry. That is in respect to the Puritanism which he asserts to have been the parent of this idea and the creator of these legal formula. For this Puritanism is not Calvinistic, but is a sublimated essence of 11 Free-Church " Anabaptist and Spiritualistic-subjectivist ideas, in combination with the old Calvinistic idea of the inviolability of the Divine Majesty, the former being essentially connected with the transition to a rationalistic mode of basing these claims. The Calvinistic ]Puritan States of North

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America were, it is true, democratic, but, so far from recognising liberty of conscience, they explicitly rejected it as implying a godless Scepticism. Liberty of conscience obtained only in Rhode Island, and this State was Baptist, and was therefore hated by all the neighbour States as a hotbed of anarchy. Its great organiser, Roger Williams, actually went over to Baptist beliefs, and thence passed to an undogmatic Spiritualism. And the second home of liberty of conscience in North America, the Quaker State of Pennsylvania, was also of Baptist and Spiritualist origin. In other places where the claim to toleration and liberty of conscience is found, it has political and utilitarian motives-in the end, indeed, the merchants of the Massachusetts theocracy yielded to this indifferentism. The parent of the "rights of man" was therefore not actual Church Protestantism, but the Sectarianism and Spiritualism which it hated and drove forth into the New World. And this can surprise no one who understands the

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inner structure of orthodox Protestant, and of Baptist and Spiritualist, thought.

But at this point, now that our attention has been directed to these groups, there opens out before us a much wider range of vision. The North American Baptist and Quaker movements are derived from the great religious movement of the English Revolution, viz. Independency. This Independency was itself most strongly interpenetrated with Baptist influences, which, arising from the remnants of the earlier English Anabaptists, from Holland---the Continental asylum of the Anabaptists---and from the American refugees, reacted upon England. Not less strongly did

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the mystical Spiritualism exercise an influence tending to disintegrate ecclesiastical systems and to strengthen the demand for liberty of conscience. It was now at last the turn of the step-children of the Reformation to have their great hour in the history of the world. Baptist Free-Churchism, democratic and communistic ideas, Spiritualistic non-Churchism, ]Pietistic Calvinism with a radical bent-all these tendencies entered into alliance with the consequences of the political catastrophe and the implications of earlier English Law. From this coalition arose, urged on by the army of the Saints, the demand for a Christian State, which should leave the form of the worship of God free to the different independent congregations, while securing Christian morality by strict regulations, and employing the civil power in the service of the Christian cause. The Cromwellian Commonwealth, which was avowedly intended to be a Christian State, for a short time realised this idea; and short as was the time during which this grandiose edifice

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lasted, its influence on the history of the world was extraordinarily great. For. as a legacy from this momentous episode there remained the great ideas of the separation of Church and State, toleration of different Church societies alongside of one another, the principle of Voluntaryism in the formation of these Church-bodies, the (at first, no doubt, only relative) liberty of conviction and opinion in all matters of world-view and religion. Here, are the roots of the old liberal theory of the inviolability of the -inner personal life by the State, which was subsequently extended to more outward things; here is brought about the end of the medieval idea of civilisation, and coercive Church-and-State civilisation gives place to individual civilisation free from Church direction. The idea is at first religious. Later, it becomes secularised, and overgrown by the rationalistic, sceptical, and utilitarian idea of toleration. On the Continent it received a purely rationalistic and Illuminist under-pinning. But its real foundations were

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laid in the English Puritan Revolution. The momentum of its religious impulse opened the way for modern freedom. But this is not, properly speaking, the work of Protestantism, but of the revived Baptist and Spiritualist movements, in combination with Calvinism of a radical tendency. The former now received a belated compensation for the immense sufferings which the religion of toleration and respect for conscientious conviction had had to undergo at the hands of all the Confessions in the sixteenth century.

Further political consequences, beyond those now enumerated, are hardly to be ascribed to Protestantism. The break-up of the Catholic Romano-Gerrnanic Empire, and the transformation of Western Christendom into a system of equipoise between the Great Powers, was, of course, facilitated and confirmed by

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it; but the process was already in progress before Protestantism arose. With the principle of nationality its system of national Churches has no connexion whatever. This contributed, no doubt, to the concentration of power in the hands of the central authorities, but the principle of nationality was the product of two completely modern, though in some respects, contrasted forces-the democratic awakening of the masses and the Romantic idea of the National Spirit.