UN

were firmly established at Geneva by Calvin; but their principal triumph was in Great Britain *.

The Roman Catholics themselves are ready to admit, that the papal doctrines and authority would have soon fallen into ruin in all parts of the world, in consequence of the opposition made to them by Luther and his adherents, had not the force of the secular arm and the fire of the Inquisition been employed to support the tottering edifice. In the Netherlands, particularly, the most grievous persecutions took place; so that, by the Emperor Charles V., upwards of 100,000 were destroyed +, while still greater cruelties were exercised upon the people there by his son Philip II. And the formidable ministers of the Inquisition put so many to death, and perpetrated such horrid acts of cruelty and oppression, in Italy, &c. that most of the Reformed consulted their safety by a voluntary exile, while others returned to the religion of Rome, at least in external appearance.

In France, too, the Huguenots were persecuted with unparalleled fury; and though many princes of the blood, and of the first nobility, had embraced their sentiments, yet in no part of the world did the reformers suffer more.

Charles IX., King of France, having inveigled the Protestant leaders to Paris, by a feigned accommodation, and by the most insidious testimonies of favour, above 500 men of rank, and nearly 10,000 persons of inferior condition, were cruelly massacred there, on the eve of the festival of St. Bartholomew, A. D. 1572. Orders were dispatched to all the provinces for a similar execution; and Rouen, Lyons, and many other cities, emulated the horrors of the capital: so that about 70,000 Protestants throughout France were butchered, with circumstances of aggravated cruelty. The survivors flew to arms, and five years afterwards the famous Catholic League was formed against the Protestants; who, under Henry King of Navarre, withstood its fiercest efforts. This prince was assisted with money by Queen Elizabeth: but on his succeeding to the throne of France, in 1589, with the title of Henry IV., he soon sacrificed conscience to policy, and renonnced the Protestant faith, which he had so ably de

* See the articles "GERMAN LUTHERAN CHURCH," and the "UNITED CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND," below.

ti. e. In the Netherlands, and other parts of his dominions. This fact is asserted by the correct Grotius, who had the best means of ascertaining it, although ridiculously, if not maliciously, misunderstood by Mr. Gibbon. See an account of this massacre in Sully's "Memoirs," and also a fine description of it in the second canto of Voltaire's "Henriade."

fended. However, in 1598 he granted to the Protestants, by the Edict of Nantes, the secure enjoyment of their religion and their civil rights; yet this Edict was revoked by Cardinal Mazarine, in 1685, during the minority of Louis XIV., when the Protestants were exposed to fresh cruelties, as they have often been since that time; nor was the open profession of the reformed religion in France so safe at any time, before the late Revolution, as in most other countries of Europe.

There is reason to think that Protestantism has made few additions to its extent of territory on the continent of Europe, since the latter end of the sixteenth century. It has, however, been widely extended throughout both the East and West Indies, and in North America, whither many professing Christians, of various denominations, have fled, or emigrated, to escape from the persecutions to which they were exposed at home, in some instances, from members of the Church of Rome*, and in others, from their Protestant brethren, in open violation of the leading principles of Protestantism†.

DISTINGUISHING DOCTRINES.

The active spirit of inquiry, natural to men who had just broken loose from the despotism of Popery, operating differently on different intellects and dispositions, almost necessarily produced a variety of sects; and, in some cases, gave birth to extreme wildness and extravagance of unscriptural doctrine and practice.

The manner in which the body and blood of Christ are present in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, which was instituted as a bond of peace and union, became the first bone of contention, and occasioned the first division among Christians; and another great source of contention respected Church Government and Ceremonies. Some Protestant churches, regarding with abhorrence whatever had been an appendage of the Romish religion, renounced, together with ancient rites, the primeval institution of Episcopacy. Others

A severe persecution of the Protestants in the Archbishoprick of Saltzburg took place about 1732, justified by the Archbishop, when upwards of 20,000 became exiles, and many, emigrating to America, formed the settlement of Ebenezer in Georgia. See" An Account of the Suf ferings of the persecuted Protestants in the Archbishoprick of Stheir Confession of Faith," &c.; or Rapin's History, 8vo. vol. viii. and 183.

with

pp. 123

† See Bishop Burnet's "History of the Reformation;" Dr. Robertson's "History of Charles the Vth;" the fourth volume of Mosheim's" Ecclesiastical History ;" and the fourth and fifth volumes of Milner's "History of the Church of Christ."

were of opinion, that it was more wise to preserve whatever was in itself innocent, and to be content with the removal of corruptions. Points of doctrine, too, caused divisions. And these controversies among the Reformers, some of whom long retained a portion of the virulent spirit of Popery, were too often conducted, even when they related to matters of secondary importance, with the violence and acrimony by which, in opposing the Roman Catholics, a good cause had been disgraced. They afforded no small matter of triumph to the adherents of the Church of Rome, and impeded in no small degree the progress of the Reformation.

We are not to expect, then, that Protestants are unanimous in all points of Doctrine, Worship, Church Government, or Discipline: on the contrary, while they agree only in receiving the Scriptures as the supreme rule of their faith and practice, and in rejecting the distinguishing doctrines of the Church of Rome, particularly the authority ascribed by her members to tradition as a rule of faith, in many other respects they still differ not more widely from that church than they do from one another. And to ascertain their doctrines, it will be necessary to examine their several Libri Symbolici, or the Confessions and Articles of the different churches, sects, and parties into which the professors of the Reformed religion are now subdivided *.

All those Protestants who are Trinitarians, and, I believe, most Protestant churches, receive the Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds, or the substance of the doctrines contained in them; together with the first four General Councils-viz. the first assembled at Nice, A. D. 325; the first of Constantinople, in 381; that of Ephesus, which met in 431; and that of Chalcedon, held in 451.

The learned Mr. Chillingworth, addressing himself to a writer in favour of the Church of Rome, speaks of the religion of Protestants in the following terms, worthy, as has been well observed, to be inscribed in letters of gold:

"Know then, sir, that when I say the religion of Protestants is, in prudence, to be preferred before yours; on the one side, I do not understand by your religion the doctrine of Bellarmine, or Baronius, or any other private man amongst you, nor the doctrine of the Sorbonne, or of the Jesuits, or of the Dominicans, or of any other particular company among

*Their standards are collected in the "Corpus et Syntagma Confessionum Fidei quæ in diversis Regnis et Nationibus, Ecclesiarum nomine, fuerunt authenticè editiæ," &c. 4to.; and some of the most noted of them in the Oxford "Sylloge Confessionum sub tempus Reformandæ Ecclesiæ editarum," 8vo. 1804. See also" the Harmony of Confessions,” 12mo. Camb. 1586.

you, but that wherein you all agree, or profess to agree, The doctrine of the Council of Trent' so accordingly, on the other side, by the religion of Protestants I do not understand the doctrine of Luther, or Calvin, or Melancthon, nor the Confession of Augsburg, or Geneva, nor the Catechism of Heidelberg, nor the Articles of the Church of England, no, nor the Harmony of Protestant Confessions; but that wherein they all agree, and which they all subscribe with a greater harmony, as a perfect rule of faith and action, that is,—the Bible.

"The Bible, I say, the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants. Whatsoever else they believe besides it, and the plain, irrefragable, indubitable consequences of it, well may they hold it as a matter of opinion; but as a matter of faith and religion, neither can they, with coherence to their own grounds, believe it themselves, nor require belief of it of others, without most high and most schismatical presumption.

"I, for my part, after a long, and (as I verily believe and hope) impartial search of the true way to eternal happiness, do profess plainly, that I cannot find any rest for the sole of my foot, but upon this rock only. I see plainly, and with my own eyes, that there are popes against popes, and councils against councils; some fathers against other fathers, the same fathers against themselves; a consent of fathers of one age, against a consent of fathers of another age. Traditive interpretations of Scripture are pretended, but there are few or none to be found: no tradition, but that of Scripture, can derive itself from the fountain, but may be plainly proved either to have been brought in in such an age after Christ, or that in such an age it was not in. In a word, there is no sufficient certainty but of Scripture only, for any considering man to build upon. This, therefore, and this only, I have reason to believe. This I will profess: according to this I will live; and for this, if there be occasion, I will not only willingly, but even gladly, lose my life, though I should be sorry that Christians should take it from me.

66

Propose me any thing out of this book, and require whether I believe or no, and, seem it never so incomprehensible to human reason, I will subscribe it with hand and heart, as knowing no demonstration can be stronger than this, God hath said so, therefore it is true. In other things, I will take no man's liberty of judging from him; neither shall any man take mine from me*.

* Chillingworth's Works, fol. 1742. It may be proper to observe here, that Mr. Chillingworth, who lived about the middle of the seventeenth

But though the Bible is, properly speaking, their only symbolic book, or the only sure foundation upon which all true Protestants build every article of the faith which they profess, and every point of doctrine which they teach, whereby they may be said to unite in subscribing to the sixth Article of the United Church of England and Ireland; and though all other foundations, whether they be the decisions of councils, the confessions of churches, the rescripts of popes, or the expositions of private men, are considered by them as sandy and unsafe, or as in no wise to be ultimately relied on; yet, on the other hand, they do by no means fastidiously reject them as of no use. For while they admit the Bible, or the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, to be the only infallible rule by which we must measure the truth or falsehood of every religious opinion, they are sensible that all men are not equally fitted to apply this rule; and that the wisest men want, on many occasions, all the helps of human learning, to enable them to understand its precise nature and to define its certain extent. These helps are great and numerous, having been supplied, in every age of the church, by the united labours of learned men in every country, and, I may add, particularly in Protestant communions.

The Protestants, at the Reformation, unhappily retained one of the most unchristian tenets of the Church of Rome, -the spirit and the practice of persecution ;-insomuch that "toleration was no part of the system at the Reformation, in any country." But Protestants in general are, since that period, in this respect much reformed. Many of them have even extended the right, which all Christians have, to dissent from a corrupt body of the Christian church, to dissenting from one not corrupt, which is schism.

For the various and discordant sentiments which Protestants have lately adopted respecting the Object of religious worship, see above, p. 36, &c.

century, had himself embraced the doctrines of the Church of Rome, through the influence of Fisher, the noted Jesuit; but, on mature deliberation, and more full examination, he returned to the communion of the Church of England; and, being severely attacked by the adherents of the Church of Rome, whom he had deserted, he vindicated his conduct, and the religion which he now embraced, in an able work, entitled "The Religion of Protestants a safe Way to Salvation;" which see, bound up with his Sermons, in folio.

See also Fell's "Four Letters on genuine Protestantism," and an excellent defence of Protestantism by Dr. Sturges, in his answer to Mr. (now Bishop) Milner, who, in his "History of Winchester," takes every opportunity of reprobating the Protestant religion, and of erecting on its ruins his beloved edifice of Popery.