RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Protestant Episcopalians Protestantism
protest. It was not necessarily applied in an opprobrious sense, however, so that the adherents of the new doctrines could interpret it as testifying to their steadfastness and courage. It has always been less common in Germany than elsewhere, though later, in the time of the Enlightenment (q.v.), the implication it carried that the type of Christianity which it designated stood for freedom and tolerance commended it to many. In the nineteenth century it became the shibboleth of the " liberal " ecclesiastical and theological schools; more recently the growth of ultramontanism as a political power has given it a wider currency; and it is very frequent for any non-Roman Catholic to term himself a Protestant, whether he professes Christianity or not.
The adherents of the Reformation at first preferred to call themselves " Evangelicals," while their opponents styled them " Lutherans," " Zwinglians," " Calvinists," etc., thereby emphasizing their sectarian and heretical character, and implying at best that they were a schismatic body separated from the true Catholic Church. The same names were employed by the Protestants themselves in their factional disputes. After 1530 the expression " Adherents of the Augsburg Confession " came into use. The French name, " Huguenots," originated, according to Beza, in Tours, where, the new religionists being compelled to assemble by night, the report spread that they met in honor of a nightspecter, le roi Huguet (cf. Huguenots, I., § 1).
It is significant that the early Protestants shrank from styling themselves a church, Luther asserting merely that he and his adherents belonged to the Church. The idea that the Evangelicals or the Lutherans were the Church arose in connection with the concept of the Church as a school (see below, IV., § 2), helped on by the course of events. It was customary to speak of " our churches " (congregations) and hence, after the churches of the states were consolidated and had adopted more or less generally one creed, the phrase " our Church " came into vogue, and was perverted into " we are the Church."
The German Protestants, when they found it necessary to speak of themselves as a distinct organization, used at first, and as late as the Formula of Concord, the term " Reformed Church." It was after 1580,and during the controversy over the doctrine of ubiquity (q.v.) that the " Lutheran Church " was first heard of, though circumstances did not tend to make the name popular. About 1600 the Calvinists and Philippists began to appropriate to themselves the name " Reformed," and to call those " Lutherans " who differed from them. During the Thirty Years' War this usage became general and was promoted by custom outside of Germany. In France and Holland the Protestants always called their churches " Reformed," implying that they were Calvinistic or Zwinglian rather than Lutheran; and in England other names were given non-Roman Catholic organizations, such as " Established Church," " Presbyterian Church," and the like, none of them being named after any of their leaders.
II. External Development and Present Status: About 1600, or at the outbreak of the Thirty Years'
War in 1618, the rising tide of the Reformation had reached the climax of its first impulse, even though the movement had not yet everywhere run its full
course, nor had the Counter-Reforma-
i. Terri- tion been unproductive of results. In
torial Germany, however, the Protestant
Conquests, estates were the more numerous and
the more powerful; the Huguenots in France had attained an assured position by the Edict of Nantes; the northern Netherlands had renounced Roman Catholicism; in England the only question was whether the Established Church or the Puritans should prevail; and the Scandinavian North had become thoroughly Lutheran. In general the Germanic countries retained the gains of Protestantism during the Reformation period. The secure position guaranteed to the Protestants of Germany by the Peace of Westphalia (see Westphalia, Peace of; Corpus Evangelicorum) remained substantially unaltered in the eye of the law till the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, and in other respects there was no essential change, the single event which foreboded Protestant loss, the conversion of the royal house of Saxony to Roman Catholicism, resulting merely in the transference of the leadership of Protestant Germany to Prussia; in England and in Scandinavia Roman Catholicism was, and remained, excluded. In France, on the other hand, Protestantism was well-nigh exterminated by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and there were losses to the east of Germany, in Poland, Bohemia, Austria, and Hungary.
The Enlightenment (q.v.) had great influence upon the external development of Protestantism; it created the idea of tolerance and wrought constantly increasing changes in the position of the
State churches. The Reformation had
2. Concept held to the old doctrine of a single
of Tolera- Christian Church and but one true
tion. Christian faith, and in its way it went
as far in actually constituting this Church and faith as the old Church had done. In the opinion of Luther the word of God and the sacraments were the marks of the Church and the faith; and, with Melanchthon's help, he thought he had formulated these marks in articles of faith which might serve as legal bases for deciding between conflicting parties, each of which claimed to represent the Church and the faith. Luther also believed that the Christian authorities should lend their aid to the Gospel, so that, with his approval, the medieval theory of the relations between the Church and the State was carried over into Protestantism. The Peace of Westphalia marked the beginning of the idea of toleration, decreeing that Roman Catholics and Protestants should no longer regard one another as heretics, and providing that in case a Protestant prince went over from the Lutheran to the Reformed confession or vice versa, his subjects should be free to follow or not. Furthermore, while in principle it excluded sects from the law, it left a certain measure of freedom to the territories in their treatment of them, thus positing a tacit allowance of toleration. In course of time Pietism and the progress of theological thought
Protestantism