Reformation

Subsequent history, again, seems to point even more decisively in this same direction. We have seen that the real question at issue was that of private judgment. Nearly all reformers had two fundamental points in common with the orthodox; they wanted to save souls and they believed in the inerrancy of the Bible. But on one fundamental point they differed; is the Bible to be interpreted by the individual for his own soul's sake, or by the Church for the individual's soul's sake? The reformers acted on the former principle ; and this opened the floodgates for the rest; so, although the full claim of private judgment was not the basis on which the reformers consciously took their stand, yet it was implicit in their original theories and in their original actions.

Private Judgment.

Between authority and private judg ment, no agreement seems possible except the agreement to differ; yet even that was essentially impossible under the mediaeval re gime. To differ publicly from any solemn pronouncement of the Church was a crime ; obstinately to differ was a capital crime. Therefore no orthodox mediaeval churchman could grant to others the right of nonconformity, or could really escape from the re sponsibility (however much he might personally shrink from it) of denouncing and punishing all dissenters. Yet, by 1500 at least, it was becoming quite obvious that considerable numbers of Chris tians were trusting more to private judgment, confessedly or implicity, than to the traditional teaching of their priests.

The Inquisition had driven the nonconformists underground for nearly three centuries, very much as early Christianity had been driven underground for nearly three centuries by imperial perse cution; but it was now emerging with irresistible force. The pope could not now do what Constantine had done in 324, reversing at a single stroke the policy of his predecessors. To Constantine, this religious question had been only one of many debatable issues, and he may even have looked upon it as one of the least important of his political problems; therefore, a reversal at that point need not in the least imply reversal of the whole imperial machine. To the pope, on the other hand, this question of private judgment was absolutely fundamental.

Moreover, even the strongest of popes was always far more at the mercy of his predecessors' traditional policy, of his court and of his officials, than a strong emperor. The pope had no means of coming to terms with Protestantism but by accepting the basic tenet of Protestantism ; the Protestants, again, could have come to terms only by abandoning a tenet which, implicitly at least, was absolutely necessary to their position. And the fact that, after a century of strife, Christendom was, and has since remained, pretty equally divided between these two irreconcilable principles, would seem to prove that no human ingenuity could have kept the parties permanently within one single fold.

And, indeed, this division of parties seems to have worked more than any other factor towards that tolerance which is one of the greatest gains of modern civilization. The general mass of Euro pean society had improved greatly, in many important respects, between iioo and i500; but in this one matter of toleration there had been painful and continual retrogression. The Reformers,

again, at their earliest stage, were compelled to plead for im punity; but, once in power, they proved as untrue to this principle as the Christian Church had proved when the emperors raised it from a persecuted minority to a persecuting majority.

Mutual Toleration.

Lord Acton, in one of his most plain spoken essays, has insisted on the wickedness of this volte-face, and has pointed out that the innovators Luther and Calvin lacked that palliation which may be pleaded for persecutors who had persecuted in defence of tradition. But, whether we agree or dis agree with him in condemning the individual persecuting Protes tant more severely than the individual Catholic, the fact remains that the principle of private judgment is logically inseparable from the principle of toleration, and that no institution can sur vive, in the face of a powerful enemy, if it acts in public and systematic and continual violation of its own fundamental prin ciple. There is a painful truth in the contention that both sides have learned toleration only under outside pressure ; yet that pressure itself has resulted from the assertion of a principle irre concilable with mediaeval theory and practice.

Private judgment brought half of Europe into conflict with the traditions of centuries ; the resultant wars were indecisive ; it became evident that neither side could exterminate the other; thenceforward both were obliged to seek some way of living to gether in the same world. The one party has never granted the individual's right to interpret Scripture otherwise than it was interpreted by the mediaeval hierarchy. Even Protestantism, for many generations, did not advance from the claim for individual interpretation of the Bible to the wider modern claim of rejecting, when necessary, some things that are plainly written in the Bible. But Catholics and Protestants and men of many other creeds live together nowadays in far less discord than that which often reigned in the middle ages among professing Catholics.

The Reformation thus becomes one of the most remarkable episodes in world-history, whether we regard it in bulk or in detail. It is rich in striking incidents and in display of human character, both on the Catholic and on the Protestant side ; we may find here the loftiest heroism and the lowest depths of turpitude. It exemplifies all the problems of daily life, magnified in proportion to the greatness of the issues here involved. And from the heat of this conflict between two irreconcilable ideals one principle has slowly emerged, theoretically repudiated by one side and too often violated by the other in practice, yet finally victorious through the mere force of circumstances; the principle of religious toleration. The experience of centuries has now suggested that the main dif ferences which separate many minds from the teaching of the mediaeval Church are rooted in human nature itself ; and that, however near the two parties may draw to each other in the dis tant future, no such modus vivendi was possible in 1517.