PROTESTANTISM. A term which has be come a general designation for the system adopted by the Reformers in the sixteenth cen tury and followed by their successors in later times. The name Protestant was first applied to the adherents of Luther, from their protesting, against the decree passed by the Catholic States at the second diet of Speyer in 1529. Thus decree had forbidden any further innovations in religion and enjoined those States that had adopted the new principles so far to retrace their steps as to reintroduce the mass. order their ministers to avoid disputed questions, and use and ex plain the Scriptures only as they had hitherto been used and explained in the ('hurch. The es sential principles involved in the protest, aml in the arguments on which it was grounded. were I 1 ) that the Roman Catholic Church cannot be the judge of the reformed churches, which are no longer in communion with her; (2) that the au thority 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 language and connection. As this doctrine. that the Bible, explained independently of all external tradition, is the, sole authority in all matters of faith awl discipline. is really the foundation stone cf the Reformation, the term Protestant was extended from those who signed the Speyer protest to all who embraced the fun damental principle involved in it. The essence
of Protestantism, therefore, does not consist in boiling any special system of doctrines and disci pline. but in the source from which and the way in which it proposes to seek for the truth in all matters of faith and practice; and thus a Church might. in the progress of research, see reason to depart from special points of its hitherto re ceived creed, without thereby ceasing to be Prot estant. The symbols or confessions of the Prot estant 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 them into unchangeable standards of true doctrine, this was a renunciation of the first principle of Prot estantism, and a retirn 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 au thority of the reformers is set above that of the Bible, and a new tradkion of dogmas and inter pretation is created which differs from the Catho lic tradition only in beginning with Luther and Calvin, instead of with the Apostolic Fathers. The Protest at Speyer has been translated in the "Historical Leatlets," published by Crozier The ological Seminary, Chester, Pa. (No. 1, 1901). See REFoamAnox.