Volume II Part 11 (1/2)

[Sidenote: End of patristicism.] Criticism had thus, in its earlier stage, produced well-marked results. As it developed it lost none of its power. It had enthroned patristic theology; now it wrenched from its hand the sceptre. In the works of Daille it showed that the fathers are of no kind of use--they are too contradictory of one another; even Jeremy Taylor speaks of their authority and reputation as clean gone for ever. In a few years they had sunk into desuetude, a neglect shared by many cla.s.sical authors, whose opinions were now only quoted with a respectful smile. The admiration for antiquity was diminis.h.i.+ng under the effect of searching examination. Books were beginning to appear, turning the old historians into ridicule for their credulity. [Sidenote: The burning of Servetus by Calvin.] The death of Servetus was not without advantage to the world. There was not a pious or thoughtful man in all reformed Europe who was not shocked when the circ.u.mstances under which that unhappy physician had been brought to the stake at Geneva by John Calvin were made known. For two hours he was roasted in the flames of a slow fire, begging for the love of G.o.d that they would put on more wood, or do something to end his torture. Men asked, with amazement and indignation, if the atrocities of the Inquisition were again to be revived. On all sides they began to inquire how far it is lawful to inflict the punishment of death for difference of opinion. It opened their eyes to the fact that, after all they had done, the state of civilization in which they were living was still characterized by its intolerance. In 1546 the Venetian amba.s.sador at the court of Charles V.

reported to his government that in Holland and Friesland more than thirty thousand persons had suffered death at the hands of justice for Anabaptist errors. From such an unpromising state of things toleration could only emerge with difficulty. It was the offspring, not of charity, but of the checked animosities of ever-multiplying sects, and the detected impossibility of their coercing one another.

[Sidenote: The Reformation continued in America.] The history of the Reformation does not close, as many European authors have imagined, in a balanced and final distribution of the north and south between the Protestant and the Catholic. The predestined issue of sectarian differences and dissensions is individual liberty of thought. So long as there was one vast, overshadowing, intolerant corporation, every man must bring his understanding to its measure, and think only as it instructed him to do. As soon as dissenting confessions gathered sufficient military power to maintain their right of existence--as soon as from them, in turn, incessant offshoots were put forth, toleration became not only possible, but inevitable, and that is perhaps as far as the movement has at this time advanced in Europe. But Macaulay and others who have treated of the Reformation have taken too limited a view of it, supposing that this was its point of arrest. [Sidenote: Separation of Church and State.] It made another enormous stride when, at the American Revolution, the State and the Church were solemnly and openly dissevered from one another. Now might the vaticinations of the prophets of evil expect to find credit; a great people had irrevocably broken off its politics from its theology, and it might surely have been expected that the unbridled interests, and instincts, and pa.s.sions of men would have dragged everything into the abyss of anarchy. Yet what do we, who are living nearly a century after that time, find the event to be? Sectarian decomposition, pa.s.sing forward to its last extreme, is the process by which individual mental liberty is engendered and maintained.

A grand and imposing religious unity implies tyranny to the individual; the increasing emergence of sects gives him increasing lat.i.tude of thought--with their utmost multiplication he gains his utmost liberty.

In this respect, unity and liberty are in opposition; as the one diminishes, the other increases. [Sidenote: Emergence of liberty of thought.] The Reformation broke down unity; it gave liberty to ma.s.ses of men grouped together in sufficient numbers to insure their position; it is now invisibly, but irresistibly making steps, never to be stayed until there is an absolute mental emanc.i.p.ation for man.

[Sidenote: The American clergy.] Great revolutions are not often accomplished without much suffering and many crimes. It might have been supposed before the event, perhaps it is supposed by many who are not privileged to live among the last results, that this decomposition of religious faith must be to the detriment of personal and practical piety. Yet America, in which, of all countries, the Reformation at the present moment has farthest advanced, should offer to thoughtful men much encouragement. Its cities are filled with churches built by voluntary gifts; its clergy are voluntarily sustained, and are, in all directions, engaged in enterprises of piety, education, mercy. What a difference between their private life and that of ecclesiastics before the Reformation! Not, as in the old times, does the layman look upon them as the cormorants and curse of society; they are his faithful advisers, his honoured friends, under whose suggestion and supervision are inst.i.tuted educational establishments, colleges, hospitals, whatever can be of benefit to men in this life, or secure for them happiness in the life to come.

CHAPTER VII.

DIGRESSION ON THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND AT THE END OF THE AGE OF FAITH.

RESULTS PRODUCED BY THE AGE OF FAITH.

_Condition of England at the Suppression of the Monasteries._

_Condition of England at the close of the seventeenth Century.--Locomotion, Literature, Libraries.--Social and private Life of the Laity and Clergy.--Brutality in the Administration of Law.--Profligacy of Literature.--The Theatre, its three Phases.--Miracle, Moral, and Real Plays._

_Estimate of the Advance made in the Age of Faith.--Comparison with that already made in the Age of Reason._

[Sidenote: Results of the Age of Faith.] Arrived at the commencement of the Age of Reason, we might profitably examine the social condition of those countries destined to become conspicuous in the new order of things. I have not s.p.a.ce to present such an examination as extensively as it deserves, and must limit my remarks to that nation which, of all others, is most interesting to the English or American reader--that England which we picture to ourselves as foremost in civilization, her universities dating back for many centuries; her charters and laws, on which individual, and therefore social, liberty rests, spoken of as the ancient privileges of the realm; her people a clear-headed race, lovers and stout defenders of freedom. [Sidenote: The social condition produced in England.] During by far the greater part of the past period she had been Catholic, but she had also been Reformed--ever, as she will always be, religious. A correct estimate of her national and individual life will point out to us all that had been done in the Age of Faith. From her condition we may gather what is the progress made by man when guided by such theological ideas as those which had been her rule of life.

The following paragraphs convey an instructive lesson. They dissipate some romantic errors; they are a verdict on a political system from its practical results. What a contrast with the prodigious advancement made within a few years when the Age of Reason had set in! How strikingly are we reminded of the inconsequential, the fruitless actions of youth, and the deliberate, the durable undertakings of manhood!

For many of the facts I have now to mention the reader will find authorities in the works of Lord Macaulay and Mr. Froude on English history. My own reading in other directions satisfies me that the picture here offered represents the actual condition of things.

[Sidenote: Condition at the suppression of the monasteries.] At the time of the suppression of the monasteries in England the influences which had been in operation for so many centuries had come to an end. Had they endured a thousand years longer they could have accomplished nothing more. The condition of human life shows what their uses and what their failures had been. There were forests extending over great districts; fens forty or fifty miles in length, reeking with miasm and fever, though round the walls of the abbeys there might be beautiful gardens, green lawns, shady walks, and many murmuring streams. In trackless woods where men should have been, herds of deer were straying; the sandy hills were alive with conies, the downs with flocks of bustards. The peasant's cabin was made of reeds or sticks plastered over with mud. His fire was chimneyless--often it was made of peat. In the objects and manner of his existence he was but a step above the industrious beaver who was building his dam in the adjacent stream. There were highwaymen on the roads, pirates on the rivers, vermin in abundance in the clothing and beds. The common food was peas, vetches, fern roots, and even the bark of trees. There was no commerce to put off famine. Man was altogether at the mercy of the seasons. The population, spa.r.s.e as it was, was perpetually thinned by pestilence and want. Nor was the state of the townsman better than that of the rustic; his bed was a bag of straw, with a hard round log for his pillow. If he was in easy circ.u.mstances, his clothing was of leather, if poor, a wisp of straw wrapped round his limbs kept off the cold. It was a melancholy social condition when nothing intervened between reed cabins in the fen, the miserable wigwams of villages, and the conspicuous walls of the castle and monastery. Well might they who lived in those times bewail the lot of the ague-stricken peasant, and point, not without indignation, to the troops of pilgrims, mendicants, pardoners, and ecclesiastics of every grade who hung round the Church, to the nightly wa.s.sail and rioting drunkenness in the castle-hall, secure in its moats, its battlements, and its warders. The local pivots round which society revolved were the red-handed baron, familiar with scenes of outrage and deeds of blood, and the abbot, indulging in the extreme of luxury, magnificent in dress, exulting in his ambling palfrey, his hawk, his hounds. Rural life had but little improved since the time of Caesar; in its physical aspect it was altogether neglected. As to the mechanic, how was it possible that he could exist where there were no windows made of gla.s.s, not even of oiled paper, no workshop warmed by a fire. For the poor there was no physician, for the dying the monk and his crucifix. The aim was to smooth the sufferer's pa.s.sage to the next world, not to save him for this. Sanitary provisions there were none except the paternoster and the ave. In the cities the pestilence walked unstayed, its triumphs numbered by the sounds of the death-crier in the streets or the knell for the soul that was pa.s.sing away.

Our estimate of the influence of the system under which men were thus living as a regulator of their pa.s.sions may at this point derive much exactness from incidents such as those offered by the history of syphilis and the usages of war. For this purpose we may for a moment glance at the Continent.

[Sidenote: Moral state indicated by the spread of syphilis,] The attention of all Europe was suddenly arrested by a disease which broke out soon after the discovery of America. It raged with particular violence in the French army commanded by Charles VIII. at the siege of Naples, A.D. 1495, and spread almost like an epidemic. It was syphilis.

Though there have been medical authors who supposed that it was only an exacerbation of a malady known from antiquity, that opinion cannot be maintained after the learned researches of Astruc. That it was something recognized at the time as altogether new seems to be demonstrated by the accusations of different nations against each other of having given origin to it. Very soon, however, the truth appeared. It had been brought by the sailors of Columbus from the West Indies. Its true character, and the conditions of its propagation, were fully established by Fernel.

[Sidenote: and by the usages of war.] Now, giving full weight to the fact that the virulence of a disease may be greatest at its first invasion, but remembering that there is nothing in the history of syphilis that would lead us to suppose it ever was, or indeed could be infectious, but only contagious, or communicated by direct contact from person to person; remembering also the special circ.u.mstances under which, in this disease, that contagion is imparted, the rapidity of its spread all over Europe is a significant ill.u.s.tration of the fearful immorality of the times. If contemporary authors are to be trusted, there was not a cla.s.s, married, or unmarried, clergy or laity, from the holy father, Leo X., to the beggar by the wayside, free from it. It swept over Europe, not as Asiatic cholera has done, running along the great lines of trade, and leaving extensive tracts untouched, settling upon and devastating great cities here and there, while others had an immunity. The march of syphilis was equable, unbroken, universal, making good its ground from its point of appearance in the south-west, steadily and swiftly taking possession of the entire Continent, and offering an open manifestation and measure of the secret wickedness of society.

If thus the sins man practises in privacy became suddenly and accidentally exposed, that exposure showing how weak is the control that any system can exercise over human pa.s.sions, we are brought to the same melancholy conclusion when we turn to those crimes that may be perpetrated in the face of day. The usages of war in the civil contests of the fifteenth century, or in the religious conflicts of the sixteenth and seventeenth, are perfectly appalling; the annals of those evil days are full of wanton and objectless barbarities, refusal of quarter, murder in cold blood, killing of peasants. Invading armies burnt and destroyed everything in their way; the taking of plunder and ransom of prisoners were recognized sources of wealth. Prosperous countries were made ”a sea of fire;” the horrible atrocities of the Spaniards in America were rivalled by those practised in Europe; deliberate directions were given to make whole tracts ”a desert.” Attempts had been made to introduce some amelioration into warfare again and again, either by forbidding hostilities at certain times, as was the object of the ”truces of G.o.d,” repeatedly enforced by ecclesiastical authority, or by establis.h.i.+ng between the combatants themselves courtesies which are at once the chief grace and glory of chivalry; but, to judge by the result as offered, even so late as the eighteenth century, those attempts must be regarded as having proved altogether abortive.

[Sidenote: Backward condition of England.] England, at the close of the Age of Faith, had for long been a chief pecuniary tributary to Italy, the source from which large revenues had been drawn, the fruitful field in which herds of Italian ecclesiastics had been pastured. A wonderful change was impending. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the island was far more backward intellectually and politically than is commonly supposed. Its population hardly reached five millions, and was stationary at that point, not so much because of the effects of civil and foreign war as merely through the operation of ordinary economical causes. There was no reason to call more men into existence. It was regarded as good statesmans.h.i.+p to maintain the population at a constant standard. The munic.i.p.al policy corresponded to the national; it was not so much advanced as that contemporaneously existing in Peru. [Sidenote: Apparent decline of her prosperity.] Swarms of idle ecclesiastics had set such a pernicious example that the indisposition among common people to work had become quite a formidable difficulty. In every village there were stocks for the punishment of ”valiant beggars,” as they were termed. By the act of 1531, vagrants ”whole and mighty in body” caught begging for the first time might be whipped at the cart-tail; the second time their ears were to be slit; by the act of 1536, if caught the third time they were to be put to death. In all directions large towns were falling into decay, a misfortune popularly attributed to the laziness of the lower orders, but in reality due to causes of a very different kind.

Hitherto land had been the representative of authority and the source of power. Society had been organized upon that imperfect basis; a descending scale of landed proprietors had been established, and in that system every man had a place a.s.signed to him, just as in Peru, though less perfectly. It was a system of organized labour, the possession of land being a trust, not a property. But now commerce was beginning to disturb the foundations on which all these arrangements had been sustained, and to compel a new distribution of population; trading companies were being established; men were unsettled by the rumours or realities of immense fortunes rapidly gained in foreign adventure.

Maritime enterprise was thus not only dislocating society, but even destroying its spirit, subst.i.tuting self-interest for loyalty.

[Sidenote: It is imputed to the clergy.] A nation so illiterate that many of its peers in Parliament could neither read nor write, was hardly able to trace the troubles befalling it to their proper source; with one voice it imputed them to the bad example and shortcomings of the clergy.

Long before Henry VIII., England was ready for the suppression of the monasteries. She regarded them as the very hot-beds of her evils. There were incessant complaints against the clergy for their scandalous l.u.s.ts, for personal impurities such as in modern times we do not allude to, for their holding livings in plurality, for their extortion of exorbitant profits, and neglect in the discharge of their duty. [Sidenote: Causes of irritation of the laity against the clergy.] In public opinion, to so great an extent had these immoralities gone that it was openly a.s.serted that there were one hundred thousand women in England made dissolute by the clergy. It was well known that brothels were kept in London for their use. It was affirmed that the confessional was shamefully abused, and, through it, advantage taken of females; that the vilest crime in an ecclesiastic might be commuted for money, six s.h.i.+llings and eightpence being sufficient in the case of mortal sin. Besides these general causes of complaint, there were some which, though of a minor, were not of a less irritating kind; such for instance, as the mortuary, soul-shot, or corpse present, a claim for the last dress worn by persons brought to a priest for burial, or some exaggerated commutation thereof.

[Sidenote: Accusation against the clergy by the House of Commons.] That such was the demoralized condition of the English Church, and such its iniquitous relations to the people, we have the most unimpeachable evidence, under circ.u.mstances of an imposing and solemn character. The House of Commons brought an accusation against the clergy before the king. When Parliament met A.D. 1529, that House, as its very first act, declared to the sovereign that sedition and heresy were pervading the land, and that it had become absolutely necessary to apply a corrective.

It affirmed that the troubles into which the realm had fallen were attributable to the clergy; that the chief foundation, occasion, and cause thereof was the parallel jurisdiction of the Church and State; that the incompatible legislative authority of convocation lay at the bottom of the mischief. Among other specific points it alleged the following:--That the houses of convocation made laws without the royal a.s.sent, and without the consent or even the knowledge of the people; that such laws were never published in the English language, and that, nevertheless, men were daily punished under them without ever having had an opportunity to eschew the penalties; that the demoralization extended from the Archbishop of Canterbury down to the lowest priest, that dignitary having tampered with the despatch of justice in his Court of Arches; that parsons, vicars, priests, and curates were in the habit of denying the administration of the sacraments save upon the payment of money; that poor men were harra.s.sed without any legal cause in the spiritual courts for the mere purpose of extortion, and exorbitant fees were exacted from them; that the probate of wills was denied except on the gratification of the appet.i.te of prelates and ordinaries for money; that the high ecclesiastics extorted large sums for the induction of persons into benefices, and that they did daily confer benefices on ”young folk,” their nephews and relatives, being minors, for the purpose of detaining the fruits and profits in their own hands; that the bishops illegally imprisoned, sometimes for a year or more, persons in their jails, without informing them of the cause of their imprisonment or the name of their accuser; that simple, unlearned men, and even ”well-witted” ones, were entrapped by subtle questions into heresy in the ecclesiastical courts, and punishment procured against them.

These are serious charges; they imply that the Church had degenerated into a contrivance for the extortion of money. The House of Commons pet.i.tioned the king to make such laws as should furnish a remedy. The king submitted the pet.i.tion to the bishops, and required of them an answer.

[Sidenote: Reply of the bishops to that accusation.] In that answer the ecclesiastical manner of thought is very striking. The bishops insist that the laws of the realm shall give way to the canon law, or, if incompatible, shall be altered so as to suit it; they identify attacks on themselves with those on the doctrine of the Church, a time-honoured and well-tried device; they affirm that they have no kind of enmity against the laymen, ”their ghostly children,” but only against the pestilent poison of heresy; that their authority for making laws is grounded on the Scriptures, to which the laws of the realm must be made to conform; that they cannot conscientiously permit the king's consent to the laws, since that would be to put him in the stead of G.o.d, under whose inspiration they are made; that, as to troubling poor men, it is the Holy Ghost who inspireth them to acts tending to the wealth of his elect folk, that, if any ecclesiastic hath offended in this respect, though ”in multis offendimus omnes,” as St. James hath it, let him bear his own fault, and let not the whole Church be blamed; that the Protestants, their antagonists, are lewd, idle fellows, who have embraced the abominable opinions recently sprung up in Germany; that there are many advantages in commuting Church penances and censures for money; that t.i.thes are a divine inst.i.tution, and that debts of money owing to G.o.d may be recovered after one hundred or seven hundred years of non-payment, since G.o.d can never lose his rights thereto; that, however, it is not well to collect a t.i.the twice over; that priests may lawfully engage in secular occupations of a certain kind; that the punishments inflicted on the laymen have been for the health of their souls, and that, generally, the saints may claim powers to which common men are not ent.i.tled.