26 ORIENTATION.
is: cujus regio, ejus religio, are perversions rather than legitimate developments of lay-priesthood. The true development lies in the direction of general education, in congregational self-support and self-government, and in the intelligent co-operation of the laity with the ministry in all good works, at home and abroad. In this respect the Protestants of England, Scotland, and North America, are ahead of the Protestants on the Continent of Europe. The Roman church is a church of priests and has the grandest temples of worship; the Lutheran church is a church of theologians and has most learning and the finest hymns; the Reformed church is a church of the Christian people and has the best preachers and congregations.
§9. The Reformation and Rationalism.
G. Frank: De Luthero rationalismi precursore. Lips., 1857. S. Bercer: La Bible au seiziéme siecle; étude sur les origines de la critique. Paris, 1879.
CHARLES BEARD: The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in relation to Modern Thought and Knowledge (Hibbert Lectures). London, 1883. Lect. V. Comp. also Lecky: History of Rationalism in Europe. London, 4th ed. 1870, 2 vols. GrorGE P. Fisher: Faith and Rationalism. New York, 1879, revised 1885 (191 pages). ;
The Roman Catholic Church makes Scripture and tradition the supreme rule of faith, laying the chief stress on tradition, that is, the teaching of an infallible church headed by an infallible Pope, as the judge of the meaning of both."
Evangelical Protestantism makes the Scripture alone the supreme rule, but uses tradition and reason as means in ascertaining its true sense.
Rationalism raises human reason above Scripture and tradition, and accepts them only as far as they come within the limits of its comprehension. It makes rationality or intelligibility the measure of credibility. We take the word Rationalism. here in the
1“T am the tradition” (la tradizione son io ), said Pope Pius IX., during the Vatican Council which substituted an infallible papacy for an infallible coun-
cil, in conflict both with cecumenical councils and popes who officially denounced Pope Honorius III. as a Monotheletic heretic. See vol. [V. 500 864.
§ 9. THE REFORMATION AND RATIONALISM. 27
technical sense of a theological system and tendency, in distinction from rational theology. The legitimate use of reason in religion is allowed by the Catholic and still more by the Protestant church, and both have produced scholastic systems in full harmony with orthodoxy. Christianity is above reason, but not against reason.
The Reformation is represented as the mother of Rationalism both by Rationalistic and by Roman Catholic historians and confroversialists, but from an opposite point of view, by the former to the credit, by the latter to the disparagement of both.
The Reformation, it is said, took the first step in the emancipation of reason: it freed us from the tyranny of the church. Rationalism took the second step: it freed us from the tyranny of the Bible. “Luther,” says Lessing, the champion of criticism against Lutheran orthodoxy, “thou great, misjudged man! Thou hast redeemed us from the yoke of tradition: who will redeem us from the unbearable yoke of the letter! Who will at last bring us a Christianity such as thou would teach us now, such as Christ himself would teach !”
Roman Catholics go still further and hold Protestantism responsible for all modern revolutions and for infidelity itself, and predict its ultimate dismemberment and dissolution.’ But this charge is sufficiently set aside by the undeniable fact that modern infidelity and revolution in their worst forms have appeared chiefly in Roman Catholic countries, as desperate reactions against
1 This charge is sanctioned by several papal Encyclicals; it is implied, negatively, in the Syllabus of Pius IX. (1864), and, positively, though cautiously, in the Encyclical of Leo XIII. Immortale Det (Nov. 1, 1885), which characterizes the Reformation movements (without naming them) as “those pernicious and deplorable revolutionary tendencies which were aroused in the sixteenth century, and which, after introducing confusion into Christendom, soon, by a natural course, entered the domain of philosophy, and from philosophy into all the lines of civil society.” Hasak, in his book—Dr. M. Luther (Regensburg, 1881), takes as his motto: “ Be reconciled to the Church of God, the old mother church, which, for these eighteen hundred years, has been the preserver of the eternal truth, before the bloody flood of atheism and the socialistic republic breaks upon us as a true judgment of the world.”