No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Reformation Historically Explained
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 January 2009
Extract
By many scientists as well as by the pragmatist philos-ophers we are told that the best, if not the only possible, test of a given thing is what it does. From physics we learn that whereas the nature of matter or of electricity defies definition, it is possible to describe the operation or effect that each has. In a book of economics I have read the definition “money is what money does.” Apparently the same test must be applied to historical phenomena. If we would know the real nature of a given invention or a new ideal we must inquire exactly what was the change in human life that it introduced. It is this test that I propose to apply to the Reformation. I propose to show that of seven great changes which came over the people of Western Europe in the sixteenth century the Reformation was the ideal expression; in part effect, in part cause, in part so intimately connected with some social, philosophical, political or economic movement, that it is hard to say which it is.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © American Society for Church History 1923
References
page 112 note 1 Represented by Beza, , Histoire Écclésiastique, John Foxe, Merle d'Aubignè (1835), and many others until the present time.Google Scholar
page 112 note 2 Even a philosopher like Bacon, Francis—see his essay on Vicissitudes—considers this the main cause of the Reformation. It has been given in most histories.Google Scholar
page 112 note 3 Cambridge Modern History, i, p. 653.
page 113 note 1 Bax, Belfort, German Culture Past and Present, 1915, repeating his earlier works.Google Scholar
page 113 note 2 ProfHarvey, A. E. of Chicago University in Lutheran Survey, Aug. 1, 1917.Google Scholar
page 113 note 3 Sleidani, J.De statu religionis et reipublica Carolo Quinto Cœsare, Preface to edition of 1561.Google Scholar
page 113 note 4 Both names are often found in the older historians. Seebohm, F. and Hulme, E. M. have entitled their works “The Protestant Revolution.” J. H. Robinson proposes “Protestant Revolt,” Encyclopedia Britannica, s. v. “Reformation.”Google Scholar
page 114 note 1 Hobbes, T., Works, ed. Molesworth, iii, 1839, pp. 697 f. Harnack, What is Christianity? 1901, pp. 263 ff. Maitland, Canon Law in the Church of England, p. 100.Google Scholar
page 114 note 2 That Luther had fleeting ideas of congregational ecclesiastical polity cannot be denied. If Dr. Kerr D. Macmillan—see his Protestantism in Germany, 1917—is right in saying that Luther would have preferred congregational government but was unable to establish it, that is another and stronger proof that the Reformers could only succeed where they fell in with the spirit of the time. We often think of Calvinism as predominantly congregational, but it only attained that character, under Anabaptist influence, in the seventeenth century.
page 115 note 1 Reden an die deutsche Nation, ed. of 1871, p. 68.
page 115 note 2 Of many references that might be given I select two. J. Dewey, German Philosophy and Politics, 1915; George Santayana, Egotism in German Philosophy, 1917.
page 116 note 1 It is suggestive that the “romantic” historians and philosophers, Carlyle, Froude, Michelet, Motley, estimated the value of the Reformation and the character of the Reformers extremely high.
page 116 note 2 Werke, Weimar, vi, p. 409. Many other references could be given.
page 117 note 1 Primarily, the great princes and electors, and finally the imperial government profited.
page 119 note 1 Reason in Religion, 1906.
page 120 note 1 Pirenne, H., Histoire de Belgique, vol. iii, 1907.Google Scholar
page 121 note 1 Weber, M., “Die protestantische Ethik und der ‘Geist’ des Kapitalismus,” in Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, XX, XXI, 1905.Google Scholar
page 122 note 1 Faulkner, J. A.. “Luther and Toleration,” Papers of the American Society of Church History, 2d. series, vol. iv, 1914, pp. 129 ff, and vol. v, 1917, pp. I ff.Google Scholar
page 123 note 1 Burr, G. L. in American Historical Review 1914, pp. 710–726, and 1917, PP- 253 ff.Google Scholar
page 123 note 2 Opus Epistolarutn Erasmi, ed. Allen, P. S., 1906, i, p. 239.Google Scholar
page 125 note 1 “Wider die Himmlischen Propheteu,” Part ii, Werke, Weimar, xviii, pp. 182 S. Hulda was the old Germanic goddess of love and beauty who had, in medieval times, degenerated into a witch and the devil's paramour.
page 126 note 1 Letter to Pirckheimer, Erasmi Opera, 1703, iii, col. 1138, commonly dated 1528. On the true date of the letter and for other comment on it see Luther's Correspondence and other contemporary Letters, translated and edited by Preserved Smith and C. M. Jacobs, vol. ii, 1918, let. 821.
page 128 note 1 Lamprecht, , Deutsche Geschichte, Band v, Einleitung.Google Scholar
page 128 note 2 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. lix.