In Scotland the reforming impulses began with Patrick Hamilton about the same time that Cranmer and first appear active in England. Hamilton was educated in Paris and in Germany, and learned there the doctrines which he introduced into his native country. There was something, indeed, of the same popular movement, known under the name of Iollardism in Scotland, as iu England, and Hamilton's preaching may have served to kindle up the dying embers of this movement. His early delith, iu 1528, undoubtedly produced a great effect. "Men began," says Knox, "very liberally to speak." "The reik of Mr. Patrick Hamilton infected as many as it did blow upon." A fter Hamilton, George Wishart appears as the next hero-martyr of the Scottish refor mation; and in connection with him—as his reverend disciple and companion—we first hear of John Knox, who became finally the great leading spirit of the movement, by hose influence popery was extirpated, and the reformation established in Scotland in 1560. The Scottish reformation followed the type of the Calvinistic reformation in Geneva, where Knox had taken refuge during the period of persecution in Scotland, and acted for some years as the companion of Calvin. Episcopacy was abolished, and the fabric of the reformed kirk set up in every respect as far as possible in opposition to the papal system, which had become the opprobrium of the pcople.—Ranke's History of the 1h:formation in Germany; D'Aubigne's History of the Reformation; Waddington's His tory of time Reformation.
Such is the light in which this great religious revolution presents itself to the Protest ant. Catholic students naturally regard it very differently; and although the name REFonmiernm has come to be generally adopted as the historical destnation of the religions movement of the 16th c., this name is only accepted by Catholics under protest, and as a conventional phrase, the rigorous meaning of which they distinctly repudiate. The more strict writers among Catholics employ in its stead the name pseudo-reformation," or "so-called reformation." As regards the event itself, Roman Catholics, while they admit that many abuses existed in the church which called for reform, and many superstitions existed which deformed the true character of religion among the ignorant masses of the people, con tend nevertheless not only that the extent and the nature of these abuses and supersti tions are greatly exaggorat2d, but also that the task of reforming them did not imply either the necessity or the lawfulness of a separation from the church. They assert that
the conduct and character of many of those who were most prominently engaged in the movement prove them to have been influenced by corrupt and unworthy motives; that in their effort to throw off the obedience of Rome, they rather sought emancipation from moral and disciplinary restraint, than the purification of the religious system of the church; that the change in many of the countries in which it was effected was brought about mainly through the agency of the sovereign, with a view to the appropriation of the revenues of the church; and that in others it was brought about by appeal ing to the prejudices of excited and unreasoning multitudes, who were taught to confound the system with its abuses, and who were incapable of distinguishing the true doctrine of the church from the superstitions which were justly held up for reprobation. And thus in the view of Catholics, the true REFORMATION of the church was not that which has been described above. as carried out by the seceders of the 16th c., but that internal change which was effected by the decrees of the council of Trent, and by the religious revival which took place simultaneously with the sittings of that assembly. They dwell much on the fact, that all the notable successes of Protest autism were at its first origin, and that, in the words of lord Macaulay, if Protestantism had at its first onset "driven Catholicism to the Alps and Pyrenees," so Catholicism, in its turn, "rallied and drove back Protestantism even to the German ocean.".
As to the moral and religious results of the reformation, the same difference of opin ion exists. That the very necessity of action which it created had a beneficial influence on their own church, by the internal revival to..which it led, Catholics freely admit; but they look upon the revolt against authority, the inauguration of religious innovation and skepticism, the separation from the church, and the disruption of Christian unity, as fraught with moral and intellectual evil; and a work of much learning has been devoted, by the well-known Catholic theologian, Dr. Hollinger (q.v.), to establishing this point by the confessions of the first reformers themselves, and their immediate successors. Sue Die Reformation, are innere Entwieklung and hive Wir•ungen, von J. Dollinger (3 vols. 8vo, Regensburg, 1848).