Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/743

 its scope; its primary datum was the Eternal God, and its secondary was the created universe, especially the man who bore the image of his Maker. This man was no mere individual or insulated unit, but a race- a connected, coherent, organic unity. The human being was local, but human nature was universal; before the individual could be, the whole must exist; and so man must be interpreted in terms of mankind rather than mankind in the terms of the single and local man. And this signified that in character, as well as in nature, the race was a unity; the past made the present, the heir became as his inheritance; and so any change in man had to be effected by the Maker and not by those He had made. And here Augustine pointed the way to the goal which Paul had reached: the will of God had never ceased to be active, for it was infinite; and it could not cease to be gracious, for it was holy and perfect; therefore, from this will, since man's nature was by his corporate being and his inevitable inheritance evil, all the good he could ever be or achieve must come. This fundamental idea was common to the types most characteristic of the Teutonic Renaissance. It was expressed in Luther's Servum Ârbitrium, in Zwingli's Providentiel Actuasa, in Calvin's Decretum Absolu-tum. These all signified that the sole causality of good belonged to God, that grace was of the essence of His will, and that where He so willed, man could not but be saved, and, where He did not so will, no amelioration of state was possible. But this must not be interpreted to mean that man had been created and constituted of God for darkness rather than light; on the contrary, these thinkers all agree in affirming a universal light of nature, i.e. ideas implanted in us by the Creator, or, as Melanchthon phrased it, "Notitiae nobiscum nascentes divinittts sparsae in mentibus nostris." In this position they were more influenced by Paul than by Augustine; with the Apostle, they argued that the moral law had been written in the heart before it was printed on tables of stone, and that without the one the other could neither possess authority nor be understood. But they also argued that knowledge without obedience was insufficient; and therefore they held God's will to be needed to enable man both to will and to do the good. But their differences of statement and standpoint were as instructive as their agreements. When Luther affirmed the absolute bondage of the will and Calvin the absolute decree of God, the one looked at the matter as a question of man's need, the other as a question of God's power; and so they agreed in idea though they differed in standpoint. Yet the difference proved to be more radical than the agreement. And so, when Zwingli said "he would rather share the eternal lot of a Socrates or a Seneca than that of the Pope," he meant that God willed good to men who were outside the Church or the covenants, without willing the means which both Luther and Calvin conceived to be necessary to salvation. It is through such differences as these that the types and tendencies of Teutonic thought must be conceived and explained.