Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 15.djvu/172

 UNION

142

UNION

striving to destroy, for, if in the last resort the judg- ment of the individual be for him the supreme author- ity in matters of rehgion, it is impossible that any external authority can be entitled to demand his sub- mission to its judgments when contrary to his own. The early Reformers probably realized this, but they felt the necessity of building up some sort of a Church which could bind together its members into a corpo- rate body professing unity of beUef and worship, and which, in contrast with the pope's Church, which they called apostate, could be called the true Church of God. And so, regardless of the contradictions in which they were involving themselves, they set to work to excogitate a theory of church-constitution to suit their purposes. This theory is exhibited in the seventh article of the Augsburg Confession of 1530, to which type the other Protestant Confessions, both Lutheran and Reformed (that is, Calvinistic), of the next few decades conformed. "The Church of Christ", says the Augsburg Confession, "is, in its proper meaning, the congregation of the members of Christ, that is of the Saints, who truly beUeve and obey Christ; although in this hfe many evil men and hypocrites are intermixed with this congregation until the day of judgment. This Church, properly so termed, has, moreover, its signs, namely, the pure and sound teaching of the Gospel and the right use of the sacraments. And for the true unity of the Church it is enough to agree as to the teaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments."

This idea of the Church lias some surface resem- blance to the Cathohc idea, but is in reahty its exact converse. The Catholic, too, would say that his Church is the home of true teaching and true sacra- ments, but there the resemblance ends. The Catho- lic first asks himself which is the true Church that Christ has set to be the guardian of His Revelation, the teacher and ruler of his people. Then, having identified it by the marks set upon its face — by its continuity with the past, which, in virtue of its inde- fectibiUty, it must necessarily possess, its unity, cath- ohcity, and sanctity — he submits himself to its author- ity, accepts its teaching, and receives its sacraments, in the full assurance that just because they are sanc- tioned by its authority its teaching is the true teaching and its sacraments are the true sacraments. The Prot- estant, on the other hand, if he follows the course marked out for him by these Protestant confessions, begins by asking himself, and decides by the applica- tion of a wholly distinct and independent test, what are the true doctrines and true sacraments. Then he looks out for a Chiirch which professes such doc- trines and uses such sacraments; and having found one, regards it as the true Church and joins it. The fatal tendency to di-sunion inherent in this latter method appears when we ask what is that distinct and independent test by which the Protestant decides as to the truth of his doctrines and sacraments, for it is, as the whole history of the Reformation movement declares, that very rule of the Bible given over to the private interpretation of the individual which is inconsistent with any real submission to an external authority. Important, however, and fundamental as this point is, the Augsburg Confession passes it over without the slightest mention. So, too, do most of the other Protestant Confessions, and none of them dare to go to the root of the difficulty.

The Scottish Confession of 1.560 (of which the Westminster Confession drawn up in England during the Commonwealth is an amplification) is the most explicit in this respect. After claiming that the Presbyterian Church recently established by .John Knox and his friends holds the true doctrine and right sacraments, it gives as its reason for so affirming that "the ddclrine which we u.se in our Churclics is contained in the written Word of (iod ... in which we affirm that all things that must be behoved by men

for their salvation are sufficiently expressed". It then goes on to declare that "the interpretation of Scripture belongs neither to any private or pubUc person, or to any Church. . . but this right and authority of interpretation belongs solely to the Spirit of God by whom the Scri])tures were committed to writing". This, no doubt, is what the other Re- formers in Germany, Switzerland, and elsewhere would also have said, but they prudently passed the point over in their confessions, half conscious that to claim the right of interpretation for the Spirit of God was but a misleading way of claiming it for each individual who might conceive himself to have caught the mind of the Spirit; foreseeing, too, that, if no Church could claim the right to interpret with author- ity, no Church, Protestant any more than Cathohc, could claim the right to impose its doctrines or worship on others.

However, the Reformation leaders knew what they were about. They meant to have a Protestant Church, or at aU events Protestant Churches, to oppose to the pope's Church, and they intended that these new Churches should profess a very definite creed, and enforce its acceptance, together with sub- mission to its disciphnary arrangements, on all whom they could reach by the exercise of a very effective and coercive jurisdiction. Accordingly, these Protestant confessions of faith, which were the formal expression of their doctrinal creeds, contained and prescribed, quite after the manner of Catholic professions of faith or decrees of councils, hsts of very definite articles, often with added anathemas directed against those who should venture to deny them. The ministers were to be "called" before they could exercise their functions, those entitled to call them being governing bodies consisting of clergy and laity in fixed propor- tions, and formed hierarchically into local, regional, and national consistories. To these governing bodies appertained also the right of administration, of decid- ing controversies, and of excommunicating. The difficulty was to equip them with coercive power, but for this the German Reformers had recourse to the secular power. The secular power was, they assured their princes, bound to use its sword for the defence of right and the suppression of evil; and it apper- tained to this department of its functions that in times of religious crisis it should take upon itself to further the cause of the Gospel — that is, of the new doctrines — and root out the old errors.

The German princes had hitherto stood off from the new evangelists, whose democratic tendencies they suspected, but this appeal for their intervention was baited with the suggestion that they should take away from the Catholics their rich endowments, and apply them to more becoming uses. The bait took, and within a few years, one after another, the princes of Northern Germany — no very edifying class — declared themselves to be on the side of the Gospel and ready to take over the responsibihty for its administration. Then, from 1,'J2.5 onwards, following the lead of PhiUp, Landgrave of Hesse, one of the most immoral men of the age, they seized the abbeys and bishoprics within their dominions, the revenues of which they mostly applied to the increase of their own, and pro- ceeded to found national Churches, biised on the prin- ciples shortly afterwards accepted by the Augsbm^g Confession, which should be autonomous for each dominion under the supreme spiritual as well as tem- poral rule of its secular sovereign. For these national Churches they (h-cw up codes of doctrine, schemes of worship, and orders of ministers, observance of which they enjoined on all their subjects under penalty of exile, a penalty which was at once inflicted on those of the (^atholic c!erg>' who remained faithful to the religion of their ancestors, as well as on multitudes of Catholic laymen.

This system of national Churches did not necessa-