RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Keaen oacner Reformation
was graduated at King College, Bristol, Tenn. (A.B., 1873), and at Union Theological Seminary, Hampden-Sidney, Va. (1876); became pastor at Charlotte Court House, Va., 1877; Franklin, Tenn., 1885; of the Second Presbyterian Church, Charlotte, N. C, in 1889; and of Woodland Street Church, Nashville, Tenn., in 1892. Since 1898 he has been professor of church history in the Presbyterian Theological Seminary at Columbia, S. C. In theology he is a conservative, " loyal to the Calvinistic system as contained in the Westminster Standards." He has written The Gospel as Taught by Calvin (Richmond, Va., 1896); History of the Presbyterian Churches of the World (Philadelphia, 1905) ; John Knox, his Field and his Work (Richmond, 1905); and Presbyterian Doctrines (1906).
REESE, ris, FREDERICK FOCKE: Protestant Episcopal bishop of Georgia; b. at Baltimore, Md.,
Oct. 23, 1854. He was educated at the University of Virginia (1872-75) and Berkeley Divinity School, Middletown, Conn. (1875-76), and was ordered deacon in 1878 and advanced to the priesthood in the following year. He was minister and priest in charge of All Souls', Baltimore, as well as curate at the Church of the Ascension in the same city (1878-85). and rector of Trinity, Portsmouth, Va. (1885-90)- Christ Church, Macon, Ga. (1890-1903), and Christ Church, Nashville, Tenn. (1903-08). He was a deputy to six general conventions (1892-1907), and also a trustee of the University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn. In 1908, on the division of the diocese of Georgia into the sees of Atlanta and Georgia, he was consecrated bishop of the latter.
REEVE, JOHN. See Mtjggleton, Lodowick,
AND THE MuGGLETONIANS.
I. Theories of the Reformation.
1. The Historical View.
2. Views Antagonistic to the Reforma-
tion. Prelatical Assault on Reformers'
Characters and Motives (§ 1). Minimizing of Religious Element
(§2). II. Principles of the Reformation. Its Basis (§ 1).
THE REFORMATION.
Three Principles of Protestantism (§2). III. The Reformation in the Different Countries.
1. Germany.
First Period (§ 1). From 1630 to the Thirty Years' War (§ 2).
2. Switzerland.
3. France.
4. Netherlands.
5. Bohemia.
6. Hungary.
7. Poland.
8. Scandinavia.
9. England.
10. Scotland.
11. Italy.
12. Spain.
13. The United States.
The Reformation is the historical name for the 'eligious movement of the sixteenth century, the greatest since the introduction of Christianity. It livided the Western Church into two opposing secions, and gave rise to the various Evangelical or Protestant organizations of Christendom. It has , ihree chief branches: the Lutheran, in Germany;, he Zwinglian and Calvinistic, in Switzerland, France, Holland, and Scotland; and the Anglican, in England. Each of these branches has again become he root of other Protestant denominations, notably n England and the United States, under the fosterag care of civil and religious freedom (for statistics ee Protestantism, II., § 4). Protestantism has aken hold chiefly of the Germanic or Teutonic aces, and is strongest in Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia, Holland, the British Empire, and forth America, and extends its missionary operaions to all heathen lands.
I. Theories of the Reformation. 1. The Historical fiew: It was a salutary religious movement, on the me hand protesting against abuses in the Church nd, on the other, involving a return to Scripture n its simple sense. It was primarily neither poitical, philosophical, nor literary, but religious and Qoral. It was not an abrupt revolution, but had ts roots in the Middle Ages. There were many
Reformers before the Reformation." The contant pressure in the medieval Church toward rearm and liberty; the startling tracts of such pamphleteers as Marsilius of Padua (q.v.) and George of leimburg; the long conflict between the German mperors and the popes; the reformatory councils f Pisa, Constance, and Basel; the heretical sects | IX.— 27
such as the Humiliati, Waldenses (qq.v.), and Albigenses (see Manicheans, II.) in France, northern Italy, and Austria; Wyclif and the Lollards in England; Huss, the Hussites, and the Bohemian Brethren (qq.v.), in Bohemia; Arnold of Brescia and Savonarola in Italy (qq.v.) ; the spiritualistic piety and theology of the mystics of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; the theological writings of Wesel, Goch, and Wessel (qq.v.) in Germany and the Netherlands; [the Brethren of the Common Life (see Common Life, Beethern of the) in the Netherlands and Southern Germany]; the rise of the national languages and letters in connection with national self-consciousness; the invention of the printing-press; Humanism (q.v.) and the revival of letters and classical learning under the direction of Agricola, Reuchlin, and Erasmus (qq.v.), — all these were preparations for the Reformation. In all these and similar movements the impulse was manifesting itself in favor of a more spiritual conception of Christianity, of the devotional as opposed to the sacramental view, of the individualistic as opposed to the hierarchical, and in favor of the immediate communion of all Christians with God apart from the sacerdotal aid of the priesthood. The Evangelical churches claim a share in the inheritance of all preceding history, and own their indebtedness to the missionaries, schoolmen, fathers, confessors, and martyrs of former ages, but insist on the immediate authority of Christ and his inspired organs as final. The Reformation is related to medieval Catholicism as was the Apostolic Church to the Jewish synagogue, or the Gospel dispensation to the dispensation of the law.
Reformation