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LEFT REFORMATION 473 BEFOBMATION the differences between the old faith and the new, and as far as possible to main- tain the continuity of the religious tradi- tion in the country. The other, which drew its inspiration from Calvin and Geneva, and was afterward known as the Puritan party, aimed at a root and branch rejection of papal Christianity, as at once in the interest of what they thought a purer creed, and as the only safeguard against a return to the old constitution. It was owing to her politic handling of these conflicting f)arties that at Elizabeth's death Eng- and was of one mind regarding the question of the papal supremacy, and that the severance from Rome became a definitive fact in the development of the country. By happy turns of events, such as her excommunication by Pius V. in 1570, and by the extraordi- nary issue of the Spanish Armada in 1588, not only was the number of Cath- olics reduced, but such as still clung to the ancient faith thenceforward put their allegiance to their native prince before any claim of the Roman see. It was this final triumph of the Protestant revolution in England that saved the movement in all the other countries of Europe. The triumph of the Protestant move- ment in Scotland is likewise a fact of the first importance in European history. In Scotland from the very beginning of Luther's revolt, we find the presence of the same elements which elsewhere led to revolution. As in other countries, the Scotch clergy had lost the respect of the country. As early as 1525 Lutheran books were so widely read that an act of Parliament was passed forbidding their importation. The very efforts of the Church to stamp out the new heresy, as in the burning of Patrick Hamilton in 1528, and of George Wishart in 1546, served only to hasten the turn of affairs which it had dreaded. Jealousy of the wealth and political influence of the clergy disposed the nobility to throw in their lot with the party of revolution. When in 1559 Knox returned from his long sojourn abroad, his unflinching zeal and personal force supplied the momen- tum that was needed to complete a rev- olution already in full course; and in the following year Protestantism was for- mally established as the religion of the country. The consequences of this rev- olution extended far beyond Scotland. Had Mary on her return in 1561 found Scotland united in the Catholic faith, she would have commanded the destinies of England. Elizabeth could never have effected a religious settlement, and. with England paralyzed. Protestantism could not have held its own against the vnited forces of Catholicism. Thus, by the middle of the 16th cen- tury, it seemed as if the revolution must sweep all before it, and the papal system be as completely effaced by Protestantism as paganism had been effaced by Chris- tianity. At the beginning of the revolt the authorities of the ancient Church did not fully realize that the forces ar- rayed against them menaced their very existence. When the true extent of th€ danger was realized the Church dis- played all the resources of an institution whose roots were in the Tery heart of Christendom, and which, alike by its traditions and by its special adapta- tions to the wants of the human spirit, appealed to the deepest instincts of a large section of all the peoples of west- ern Europe. The Society of Jesus, founded in 1540, supplied an army of enthusiasts, whose policy and devotion saved Rome from dissolution. By the de- crees of the Council of Trent (1545- 1563), inspired by the spirit and aims of the Jesuits, the Church reaffirmed its traditional teaching, conceding nothing either to renaissance or reform; and a succession of Popes during the later half of the 16th century carried out with the zeal worthy of the better ages of the papacy the policy marked out for them by the Jesuits. Through the disunion of the Protestants and the strenuous efforts of the papacy, the middle of the 16th century saw the tide of revolution checked; and in certain countries, more especially in Germany, the Jesuits even gained ground which had been lost. By the close of the same century Europe was portioned between the two religions almost by the same dividing lines as exist at the present day. It has been said that the central fact of the religious revolution of the 16th century was the severance of the Prot- estant nations from the Roman see; but the great schism inevitably led to issues of which the Protestant reformers never dreamed, and which they would have de- nounced in as unqualified terms as any theologian of the medisval Church. The reform of religion preached by Luther or Calvin implied no real change in the modes of thought that distinguished mpdirevalism. Their theology was but another form of scholasticism, their at- titude to the classical tradition or to any departure from their own conception of the scheme of things was precisely that of the Schoolmen trained on the De- cretals and Aristotle. For an infallible Church they substituted the Bible as the unerring expression of God's re- lation to man; the interpretation of the Bible they left to the individual con- sciousness. Thi'^ freedom was of neces- sity only nominal, since the members of