RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Protestantism
of both Lutheran and Reformed views and practise),
although, as a matter of fact, the bitter controversy
was concerned chiefly with differences
5. Lord's in the form of the ceremony. The Supper and theory of worship differs throughout in
Liturgy, the two Churches. Here also Calvinism claimed to follow the Biblical pattern. Calvin tried to arrange all festivals according to the New Testament, but in so doing he had to introduce many " necessary " innovations — Sunday (from the seventeenth century, first among the Puritans, = the Sabbath) as the only holy day (no more saints' days, and scarcely a trace of Christmas), no pictures or images, no candles, no altar (only a table), no vestments, no organ, no hymns (only the Psalms), no liturgy, or a most meager one. Lutheranism, on the other hand, retained all of the old and familiar service that could be interpreted as Evangelical and modeled its liturgy for Sunday and for the Eucharist on the service of the mass. The Reformed Lord's Supper, on the contrary, is held to be based simply upon the apostolic pattern.
A noteworthy fact in Reformed church history is the continued production of creeds or " confessions " (as the Reformed prefer to call them). It shows a different attitude toward symbols from that of the Lutherans; the confessions are regarded as actual statements of the chief doctrines, and of late it has sometimes been declared in credal form that this or that tradition is no longer believed in. The great weight laid on the forms of life as well as of the service and constitution of the Church has promoted the growth of sects, since where such things are supposed to be derived from the Bible alone, there is often much room for difference of opinion as to what the Bible requires. Lastly it may be noted that in the time of orthodoxy the Reformed Church was much more productive in scholarship than the Lutheran.
VI. Internal Development of Protestantism since the Enlightenment: In tracing the later development of Protestantism one must guard against praising or blaming it for what has belonged to the progress of civilization and thought in general. Protestantism has contributed some new ideas and has accepted others; while it has taught, it has also learned. A joy and confidence in the evolution of civilization have been manifest among Protestant peoples which have repeatedly brought them into conflict with orthodoxy (see Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy) and with current concepts of morality. The later history of this type of Christianity can here be given only in the barest outline, the views and systems of 'individual leaders, who have been no less influential than in earlier periods, being treated in the special articles on the personages in question.
The great movement of Pietism (q.v.) was, properly speaking, only an earnest attempt to give practical realization to the standards of the time of orthodoxy, especially in private life. The Bible was not made the sole authority of faith and life to the satisfaction of many earnest but one-sided souls. The Protestant Church was distrusted as having become in its way as much bound to its system and as authoritative as the Roman. The
Reformed Church, however, for all its precision of
definition, had a vein of underlying mysticism,
while Lutheranism had an impulse
1. Pietism from its founders to interpret repentand the En- ance and conversion as a violent change lightenment. in the individual life. The result was that form of Pietism which is, perhaps, the most important — the painful striving of individuals to make their Christian calling sure> and strenuous efforts to attain personal Christianity, true inwardness, and depth. As a whole, however, Pietism exercised a conservative influence on Protestantism, and afforded orthodoxy the new strength to arise to a veritable renaissance after the decline of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century.
The Enlightenment (q.v.) gave Protestantism a distinctly new character. It signified for Protestantism as such the letting loose of its secular interests, and in spirit was more akin to the Renaissance than to the Reformation. Clericalism and orthodoxy it regarded as its foes because of their claim to possess an authoritative, divine truth which the human mind might not criticize. The rapid growth of the commerce of England and Holland in the seventeenth century and the wealth which followed brought to these non-Roman Catholic lands questions of all sorts — social, political, philosophical, and religious. Bacon's attempt to found a new practical science was in part a reaction against Melanchthon's method. The time had come for Protestantism to have a deductive philosophy, at least of the world, and it is hardly an accident that, with the exception of the Jew, Spinoza, all great philosophers since Descartes have sprung from Protestantism, and that most of them have had a certain sympathy with it.
As a system Protestantism is intellectual and spiritual rather than liturgical and legalistic. Protestant theology of the seventeenth 2. The century addressed itself to the com- Passing of mon people. One might say that it Orthodoxy, aimed to make every Christian a theologian. The specific endeavor was to make the Bible plain and widely known, since only thus, it was believed, could piety be rightly grounded and real. Before the end of the century, however, theologians were rudely disturbed in this work by the demand to judge the results of reason simply by the weight of the evidence for them. When this was applied to orthodox notions of natural knowledge of God and his law, a yawning chasm opened, for theology regarded natural knowledge as a remnant of an earlier knowledge which was supernatural in its origin as was all truth, which is revealed in full in the Bible; and in the background lurked the conviction that the unaided mind is impotent. The doctrines of the Enlightenment set up a new kind of mind, confident in itself, and feeling no need of instruction from religion. There was a revival of the spirit of the Renaissance, which had been repressed by the Reformation, although sympathy with the Reformation was not lacking. Luther had appealed to his experience as a witness to truth (see above, III., § 2), but his time was not able to understand and explain fully the functions of experience in relation to religion. The Enlight-
ProteBtantism