PROTESTANT, a term first applied to the adherents of Luther, from their protesting against the decree passed by the Catholic states at the second diet of Speier in 1529'. This decree had forbidden any further innovations in religion, and enjoined those states that had adopted the reformation so far to retrace their steps as to reintroduce the Mass, and order their ministers to avoid disputed questions. and to use and explain'the Scrip tures only as they had hitherto been used and explained in the church. The essential principles involved in the protest, and in the arguments on which it was grounded, were: 1. That the Catholic church cannot be the judge of the reformed churches, which are no longer in communion with her. 2. That the authority of the Bible is supreme. and above that of councils and bishops. 3. That the Bible is not to be interpreted and used according to tradition or use and wont, but to be explained by means of itself—its own languasse and connection. As this doctrine, that the Bible, explained independently of all external tradition, is the sole authority in all matters of faith and discipline, is really the foundation stone of the reformation, the term Protestant was extended from those who signed the Speier protest, to all who embraced the fundamental principle involved in it ; and thus Protestant churches became synonymous with reformed churches.
The essence of Protestantism, therefore, does not consist in holding any special system of doctrines and discipline, but in the source from which, and the way in which it pro poses to seek for the truth in all matters of faith and practice; and thus a church in the progress of research, see reason to depart from special points of its hitherto received creed, without thereby ceasing to be Protestant. The symbols or confessions of tile Protestant churches were not intended as rules of faith for all time, but as expressions of what was then believed to be the sense of Scripture. When, at a later time, it was sought to erect than into unchangeable standards of true doctrine, this was a renunciation of the first principle of Protestantism, and a return to the Catholic principle; for, in making the sense put upon Scripture by the reformers the standard of truth, all further investigation of Scripture is arrested, the authority of the reformers is set above that of the Bible, and a new tradition of dogmas and interpretation is created, which differs from the Catholic tradition only in beginning with Luther and Calvin, instead of with the apostolic fathers. See REFORMATION.