Page:Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889) Vol 2.djvu/128

 For them, therefore, the Bible had to be translated into the vulgar tongues, and thus placed in their own hands; and they had to be called upon to read and to judge for themselves, whether that which the Reformers found in the Scriptures is not clearly contained therein. These means could not but succeed. The people were flattered by the privilege conferred upon them, and eagerly availed themselves of it on every opportunity; and by means of this principle, indeed, the Reformation would certainly have spread over the whole of Christian Europe, had not the authorities set themselves against it, and hit upon the only certain antidote to its progress; i.e. to prevent the Protestant translations of the Bible, and the other writings of the Reformers, from falling into the hands of the people.

It was only through this zeal for Christianity, as represented by the Bible, which Protestantism called forth, that the printed letter acquired the high and universal value which it has possessed since the Reformation: it became the almost indispensable means of salvation; and without being able to read, a man could no longer, properly speaking, be a Christian, or be tolerated in any Christian and Protestant State. Hence the prevailing notions on the subject of popular education; hence the universality of reading and writing. We need not be surprised that the primary object,—Christianity,—was afterwards forgotten, and that what was at first only the means became in itself the end: this is the common fate of all human arrangements after they have endured for any length of time.

This abandonment of the end for the means was more particularly promoted by a circumstance which, for other reasons, we cannot leave untouched. The Old Church, wherever she was enabled to maintain herself against the first assaults of the Reformation, soon discovered new means of defence, whereby she was relieved from all