The Reformation Author:George Park Fisher Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ening of religious zeal within the Catholic body. Laurent himself elsewhere affirms that in the sixteenth century, religion was in a state of decadence and threa... more »tened with ruin;1 that Luther effected a religious revolution in the mind of an age that was inclined to infidelity and moving toward it at a rapid pace ;2 that he was a reformer for Catholicism as well as for Protestantism; that the Reformation was the foe of infidelity and saved the Christian world from it. But we cannot pursue the topic in this place. Let it suffice here to interpose a warning against incautious generalization. The Reformation, whatever may have been its latent tendencies and ulterior consequences, was an event within the domain of religion. From this point of view it must first, and prior to all speculation upon its indirect and remote results, be contemplated. What was the fundamental characteristic of this revolution ? Before, a vast institution had been interposed between the individual and the objects of religious faith j,and hope. The Reformation changed all this; it opened I to the individual a direct access to the heavenly good offered him in the Gospel. The German nations which established themselves on the ruins of the Roman Empire, received Christianity with docility. But it was a Christianity, which, though it retained vital elements of the primitive doctrine, had become transformed into an external theocracy with its priesthood and ceremonies. It was under this mixed system, this combination of the Gospel with characteristic features of the Judaic dispensation, that the new nations were trained. Such a type of Christianity had certain advantages in relation to their uncivilized condition. Its externality, its legal character, as well as its gorgeous ritual, gave it a peculiar powe...« less