OUTWORKING OF PROTESTANTISM. 25 Church, spite of its birth-right of freedom! how largely helped by the alliance of a degenerate Roman Church, with its instinct of servility! -- The ecclesiastical life of Protestantism is thus weak and narrow. Its strength and its glory have been in another field. The history of Protestant nations is the history, with scarce any exception, of the enterprise, discovery, arts, science, invention, learning, and philanthropy most characteristic of modern times. Set aside the one great enterprise of the Jesuit missions, whose best strength was spent two hundred years ago, it would be hard to show one great movement of the last three centuries, of permanent and marked success, affecting deeply the welfare of mankind at large, dating from the Roman Church or from any people within its communion, to set off against the great political reforms of England, the colonizing of free States in America and Australia, the thought and skill given to popular education, the revolution in commerce wrought by steam, the conquest of nature inaugurated by modern science. All these are not, of course, to be credited to Protestantism consciously working out as such. They are not its product as an organized spiritual force. Far from it. But they are trophies of the emancipated energy, the wider intelligence, the individual force of conviction, the moral courage, which it was the mission of Protestantism to set free as an agency in the world's affairs. And widely as the spell of Rome has remained unbroken, so widely this energy has continued latent, inert, impossible. THE TWO REFORMS. 27 But, in fact, two very genuine reformations were going on together, impelled by the same general motive, though radically different in their method. We have seen how that which we call Protestant was staked on individual conviction and justification by faith. Even the reactionary moods in Luther's own life, even the surprising compromises accepted by Melanchthon, do not alter the main fact. Reform within the Church, on the contrary, — as demanded by Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, I was staked on the reinforcing of discipline, the expanding and fixing of dogma, and the perfecting of the ecclesiastical system considered as a piece of religious machinery. Looking at the tremendous passions and obstinate convictions arrayed upon the field, and the life-anddeath struggle in which they felt themselves engaged, nothing seems at first sight more pitiably irrelevant and weak than the plan of campaign laid down by the Catholic authorities, and developed into the weary technicalities of the Acts and Canons of the Council of Trent. But to judge the situation so would be a hasty judgment. We must still keep in view that image of the forces of the Church as of an Army trained in fixed rules of discipline, and acting under a single recognized command. Whatever makes that discipline more perfect, adds so much to the power of attack and defence. Whatever makes more clear the plan of the campaign which is to be fought, does so much to make the officers intelligent, resolute, and united. Whatever exalts the authority of the supreme command, goes so far to make the force a |