Protestantism and Catholicity

From the point of view where we have now placed ourselves, we can see Protestantism such as it is. From this commanding position we see every thing in its place, and it is possible for us to appreciate its dimensions, to perceive its relations, calculate its influence, and explain its anomalies. Men there assume their true position; as they are seen in close proximity with the great mass of events, they appear in the picture as very small figures, for which others may be substituted without inconvenience; which may be placed nearer or farther off, and the features and complexion of which are not of any consequence. Of what importance, then, are the energy of character, the passion, and boldness of Luther, the literary polish of Melancthon, and the sophistical talents of Calvin? We are convinced, that to lay stress upon all this, is to lose our time, and explain nothing.

What were these men, and the other coryphæi of Protestantism? Was there any thing really extraordinary about them? We shall find men like them everywhere. There are some among them who did not surpass mediocrity; and it may be said of almost all, that if they had not obtained an unhappy celebrity, they would hardly have been celebrated at all. Why, then, did they effect such great things? They found a mass of combustibles, and they set them on fire. Certainly this was not difficult, and yet it was all they did. When I see Luther, mad with pride, commit those extravagances which were the subject of so many lamentations on the part of his friends – when I see him grossly insult all who oppose him, put himself in a passion, and vomit forth a torrent of impure words against all those who do not humble themselves in his presence, I am scarcely moved by any other feeling than pity. This man, who had the extraordinary mania of calling himself the Notharius Dei, became delirious; but he breathed, and his breath was followed by a terrible conflagration: it was because a powder-magazine was at hand on which he threw a spark. Nevertheless, like a man blinded by insanity, he cried out, "Behold my power! I breathe, and my breath puts the world in flames!"

But, you will ask me, what was the real influence of abuses? If we take care not to leave the point of view where we now are, we shall see that they were an occasion, and that they sometimes afforded food, but that they did not exercise all the influence which has been attributed to them. Do I wish, then, to deny, or to excuse them? Not at all. I can appreciate the complaints of some men, who are worthy of the most profound respect; but while lamenting the evil, these men never pretended to detail the consequences. The just man when he raises his voice against vice, the minister of the sanctuary when he is burning with zeal for the house of the Lord, express themselves in accents so loud and vehement, that they must not always be taken literally. Their whole hearts are opened, and, inflamed as they are with a zealous love of justice, they make use of burning words. Men without faith interpret their expressions maliciously, exaggerating and misrepresenting them.

It appears to me to be clear, from what I have just shown, that the principal cause of Protestantism is not to be found in the abuses of the middle ages. All that can be said is, that they afforded opportunities and pretexts for it. To assert the contrary would be to maintain that there were always numerous abuses in the Church from the beginning, even in the time of her primitive fervor, and of that proverbial purity of which our opponents have said so much; for even then there were swarms of sects who protested against her doctrines, denied her divine authority, and called themselves the true Church. The case is the same, and the inference cannot be denied. If you allege the extent and rapid propagation of Protestantism, I will remind you that such was also the case with other sects; I will repeat to you the words of St. Jerome, with regard to the ravages of Arianism: "All the world groans, and is full of astonishment at finding itself Arian." I will repeat, again, that if you observe any thing remarkable and peculiar belonging to Protestantism, it ought not to be attributed to abuses, but to the epoch when it appeared.

I believe I have said enough to give an idea of the influence which abuses could exert; yet, as it is a subject which has occupied much attention, and on which many mistakes have been made, it will be well to revert to it once more, to make our ideas on the subject still clearer. That lamentable abuses had crept in during the course of the middle ages, that the corruption of manners had been great, and that, consequently, reform was required, is a fact which cannot be denied. This fact is proved to us, with respect to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, by irreproachable witnesses, such as St. Peter Damien, St. Gregory VII., and St. Bernard. Some centuries later, even after many abuses had been corrected, they were still but too considerable, as is witnessed by the complaints of men who were inflamed with a desire of reform. We cannot forget the alarming words addressed by Cardinal Julian to Pope Eugenius IV., on the subject of the disorders of the clergy, especially those of Germany.

Having fully avowed the truth on this point, and my opinion that the cause of Catholicity does not require dissimulation or falsehood to defend it, I shall devote a few words to examining some important questions. Are we to blame the court of Rome or the bishops for these great abuses? I venture to think that they were to be attributed to the evils of the time alone. Let us call to mind the events which had taken place in the midst of Europe; the dissolution of the decrepit and corrupt empire of Rome; the irruption and inundation of northern barbarians; their fluctuations, their wars, sometimes with each other, and sometimes with the conquered nations, and that for so many ages; the establishment and absolute reign of feudalism, with all its inconveniences, its evils, its troubles, and disasters; the invasion of the Saracens, and their dominion over a large portion of Europe; now, let any reflecting man ask himself whether such revolutions must not of necessity produce ignorance, corruption of morals, and the relaxation of all discipline. How could the ecclesiastical society escape being deeply affected by this dissolution, this destruction of the civil society? Could she help participating in the evils of the horrible state of chaos into which Europe was then plunged?

But were the spirit and ardent desire of reforming abuses ever wanting in the Church? It can be shown that they were not. I will not mention the saints whom she did not cease to produce during these unhappy periods; history proves their number and their virtues, which, so vividly contrasting with the corruption of the age, show that the divine flames which descended on the Apostles had not been extinguished in the bosom of the Catholic Church. This fact proves much; but there is another still more remarkable, a fact less subject to dispute, and which we cannot be accused of exaggerating; a fact which is not limited to individuals, but which is, on the contrary, the most complete expression of the spirit by which the whole body of the Church was animated; I mean, the constant meeting of councils, in which abuses were reproved and condemned, and in which sanctity of morals and the observance of discipline were continually inculcated. Happily this consoling fact is indisputable; it is open to every eye; and to be aware of it, one only needs to consult a volume of ecclesiastical history, or the proceedings of councils. There is no fact more worth our attention; and I will add, that perhaps all its importance has not been observed.

Let us remark what passes in other societies: we see that in proportion to the change of ideas and manners, laws everywhere undergo a rapid modification; and if manners and ideas come to be directly opposed to laws, the latter, reduced to silence, are soon either abolished or trodden under foot. Nothing of this sort has happened in the Church. Corruption has extended itself everywhere to a lamentable degree; the ministers of religion have allowed themselves to be carried away by the stream, and have forgotten the sanctity of their vocation; but the sacred fire did not cease to burn in the sanctuary; the law was there constantly proclaimed and inculcated; and, wonderful spectacle! the men who themselves violated it frequently assembled to condemn themselves, to censure their own conduct, and thus to render more public and more palpable the contrast which existed between their instructions and their actions. Simony and incontinence were the prevailing vices; if you open the canons of councils, you will find them everywhere anathematized. Nowhere do you find a struggle so prolonged, so constant, so persevering, of right against wrong; you always see, throughout so many ages, the law, opposed face to face to the irregular passions, maintain itself firm and immovable, without yielding a single step, without allowing them a moment of repose or peace until they were subjugated. And this constancy and tenacity of the Church were not useless. At the commencement of the sixteenth century, at the time when Protestantism appeared, we find abuses comparatively less numerous, morals perceptibly improved, discipline become more strict, and observed with sufficient regularity. The time when Luther declaimed was not like that when St. Peter Damien and St. Bernard deplored the evils of the Church. The chaos was reduced to form; order, light, and regularity had made rapid progress; and an incontestable proof that the Church was not then plunged in such ignorance and corruption as is alleged, is, that she produced the great assemblage of saints who shed so much lustre on the age, and the men who displayed their eminent wisdom at the Council of Trent. Let us remember that great reforms require much time; that they met with much resistance both from the clergy and laity; that for having undertaken them with firmness, and urged them with vigour, Gregory VII. has been charged with rashness. Let us not judge of men without regard to times and places; and let us not pretend to measure every thing according to our own limited ideas; ages move in an immense orbit, and the variety of circumstances produces situations so strange and complicated that we can hardly form an idea of them.

Bossuet, in his History of the Variations, after having differently classed the spirit which guided certain men, before the thirteenth century, in their attempts at reform, and having cited the threatening words of Cardinal Julian on the subject of abuses, adds: "It is thus that, in the fifteenth century, this cardinal, the greatest man of his times, deplored these evils, and foresaw their fatal effects; by which he seems to have predicted those that Luther was about to bring on all Christianity, and in the first place on Germany; and he was not deceived when he thought that the neglect of reformation, and the increased hatred against the clergy, was about to produce a sect more dangerous to the Church than the Bohemians." (Hist. des Variat. liv. i.) It is inferred from these words that the illustrious Bishop of Meaux found one of the principal causes of Protestantism in the omission of a legitimate reform made in time. Nevertheless, we must not suppose from this that Bossuet meant, in any degree, to excuse the promoters of it, or that he had any idea of sanctioning their intentions; on the contrary, he ranked them as turbulent innovators, who, far from promoting the real reform which was desired by wise and prudent men, only served to render it more difficult, by introducing, by the means of their erroneous doctrines, the spirit of disobedience, schism, and heresy.

In spite of the authority of Bossuet, I cannot persuade myself to look upon abuses as one of the principal causes of Protestantism; but it is not necessary to repeat what I have said in support of this opinion. It may not, however, be useless to repeat, that the authority of Bossuet is misapplied when used to justify the intentions of the reformers, since the illustrious prelate is the first to declare them highly culpable, and to observe, that if abuses were in existence, their intention was not to correct them, but rather to make them a pretext for abandoning the faith of the Church, throwing off the yoke of lawful authority, breaking the bands of discipline, and introducing thereby disorder and licentiousness.

How, indeed, can we attribute to the reformers the real spirit of reform, when almost all of them proved the contrary by the ignominy of their own conduct? If they had condemned, by the austerity of their morals, or by devoting themselves to a severe asceticism, the relaxations of which they complained, there might be a question whether their extravagances were not the effects of exaggerated zeal, and if some excess in the love of virtue had not drawn them into error. But they did nothing of the kind. Let us hear on this point an eye-witness, a man who certainly cannot be accused of fanaticism, since the connection which he had with the leaders of Protestantism has rendered him culpable in the eyes of many. Behold what Erasmus said, with his usual wit and bitterness: "The reform, as far as it has gone, has been limited to the secularization of a few nuns and the marriage of a few priests; and this great tragedy finishes with an event altogether comic, since every thing is wound up, as in comedies, by a marriage."

This shows to conviction the true spirit of the innovators of the sixteenth century. It is clear that, far from wishing the reformation of abuses, they wished rather to increase them. This bare consideration of facts has led M. Guizot, on this point, into the path of truth, when he rejects the opinion of those who pretend, that the Reformation was "an attempt conceived and executed simply with the intention of reconstructing a pure and primitive Church. The Reformation," he said, "was not a mere attempt at religious amelioration, or the fruit of a Utopian humanity and virtue." (Histoire Générale de la Civilisation en Europe, douzième leçon.)

We shall have now no difficulty in appreciating at its just value the explanation which the same writer gives of this phenomenon. "The Reformation," says M. Guizot, "was a great attempt at the liberation of human thought – an uprising of the mind of man." This attempt, according to M. Guizot, arose out of the energetic movement given to the human mind, and the state of inaction into which the Roman Church had fallen; it arose from this, that the human mind advanced rapidly and impetuously, while the Church remained stationary. Explanations of this kind, and this one in particular, are very apt to draw admirers and proselytes; these ideas are high, and placed on a level so lofty and extended, that they cannot be looked at closely by the generality of readers; and, moreover, they appear in brilliant imagery, which blinds the sight and prejudices the judgment.

That which restrains freedom of thought, as understood by M. Guizot and other Protestants is, authority in matters of faith: it was, then, against this authority that the uprising of the mind declared itself; or, in other words, the mind rebelled, because it advanced, while the Church, immovable in her doctrines, was, according to the expression of M. Guizot, "in a stationary state."

Whatever may be the disposition of mind of M. Guizot towards the dogmas of the Catholic Church, he ought, as a philosopher, to have seen that it was a great mistake to point out as the distinctive characteristic of one period, that which had been at every time a glorious title for the Church. For more than eighteen hundred years the Church has been stationary in her dogmas, and it is no equivocal proof that she possesses the truth: the truth is unchangeable, because it is one.

What the Church was in the sixteenth century, she had been before, and she has been since. She had nothing particular, she adopted no new characteristic. The reason, then, by which it is attempted to explain this phenomenon, viz. the uprising of the mind, cannot advance the explanation a single step; and if this be the reason why M. Guizot compares the Church to governments grown old, we will tell him that she has had this old age from her cradle. M. Guizot, as if he had himself felt the weakness of his reasoning, presents his thoughts in groups, and as it were pêle-mêle; he parades before his readers ideas of different kinds, without taking pains to classify or distinguish them; one would be inclined to think that he meant to distract them by variety, and confound them by mixture. Judging, indeed, from the context of his discourse, the epithets inert and stationary, which he applies to the Church, do not appear, according to his intention, to relate to matters of faith; and he gives us to understand that he speaks rather of the pretensions of the Church with regard to politics and state economy. He has taken pains, elsewhere, to repel as calumnies, the charges of tyranny and intolerance which have been so often made against the court of Rome.

We find here an incoherence of ideas which was not to be expected in so clear a mind; and as many persons may scarcely be inclined to believe how far this incoherence extends, it is necessary to give his words literally: they will show us into what inconsistencies great minds can fall when they are placed in a false position.

"The government of the human mind, the spiritual power," says M. Guizot, "had fallen into an inert and stationary condition. The political influence of the Church, of the court of Rome, was much diminished; European society no longer was ruled by it; it had passed under the control of lay governments. Nevertheless, the spiritual power preserved all its pretensions, all its éclat, all its external importance. There happened in this respect, what has more than once happened to old governments. The greater part of the complaints made against it were hardly better founded."

It is evident that M. Guizot, in this passage, does not point out any thing which is at all connected with liberty, any thing which is not quite of another kind: why does he not do so? The court of Rome, he tells us, had seen its political influence diminished, and yet it preserved its pretensions; the direction of European society no longer belonged to it, but Rome kept its pomp and its external importance. Is any thing here meant besides the rivalries of which political affairs had been the subject? Did M. Guizot forget what he himself said some pages before, viz. that it did not appear to him to be reasonable to assign the rivalry of kings with the ecclesiastical power as the cause of Protestantism, and that such a cause was not adequate to the extent and importance of the event?

Although all this has no direct connection with freedom of thought, still, if any one be inclined to attribute the uprising of the mind to the intolerance of the court of Rome, let him listen to M. Guizot: "It is not true," says he, "that in the sixteenth century the court of Rome was very tyrannical; that abuses, properly so called, were then more numerous, more crying, than they had been at other times; never, perhaps, on the contrary, had the ecclesiastical power been more easy, more tolerant, more disposed to let things go their own way. Provided that it was not itself called in question, provided that the rights which it had formerly enjoyed were allowed in theory, that the same existence was secured, and the same tributes were paid to it, it would willingly have allowed the human mind to remain at peace, if the human mind had done the same in respect to it."

Thus M. Guizot seems to have forgotten what he had urged with the view of showing that the Protestant Reformation was a great attempt at the liberation of human thought – a rebellion of the mind of man. He does not allege any thing which was an obstacle to the freedom of man's thoughts; and he himself acknowledges that there was nothing to provoke this rebellion, as, for example, intolerance or cruelty; he has himself just told us that the ecclesiastical government of the sixteenth century, far from being tyrannical, was easy and tolerant, and that, if left to itself, it would willingly have allowed the human mind to remain tranquil.

It is, then, evident, that the great attempt at the liberation of the human mind is, in M. Guizot's mouth, only a vague, undefined expression, – a brilliant veil with which he seems to have wished to cover the cradle of Protestantism, even at the risk of being inconsistent with his own opinions. He reverts to the political rivalries which he before rejected. Abuses have no importance in his eyes; he cannot find in them the real cause; and he forgets what he had just asserted in the preceding lecture, viz. that if necessary reform had been made in time, the religious revolution might have been avoided.

He tries to give a picture of the obstacles to the liberty of thought, and endeavours to rise to the general considerations which embrace all the importance and influences of the human mind; but he stops at éclat, at external importance, and political rivalries; he lowers his flight to the level of tributes and services.

This incoherence of ideas, this weakness of reasoning, and forgetfulness of assertions previously made, will appear strange only to those who are accustomed rather to admire the high flights of talented men than to study their aberrations. It is true that M. Guizot was in a position in which it was very difficult to avoid being dazzled and deceived. If it be true that we cannot observe attentively what passes on the ground around us without narrowing our view of the horizon, – if this method leads the observer to form a collection of isolated facts rather than compare general maxims, it is not less certain that, by extending our observations over a larger space, we run the risk of many illusions. Too great generalization borders on hypothesis and fancy. The mind, when taking an immoderate flight in order to get a general view of things, no longer sees them as they really are; perhaps sometimes even loses sight of them altogether. Therefore it is that the loftiest minds should frequently remember the words of Bacon: "We do not want wings, but lead." Too impartial not to confess that abuses had been exaggerated, – too good a philosopher not to see that they could not have had so great an effect, – M. Guizot, who was prevented by his sense of dignity and decency from joining the crowd who incessantly raise the cry of cruelty and intolerance, has made an effort to do justice to the Church of Rome; but, unfortunately, his prejudices against the Church would not allow him to see things in their true light. He was aware that the origin of Protestantism must be sought in the human mind itself; but, knowing the age and epoch when he was speaking, he thought it was necessary to propitiate his audience by frequent appeals to liberty, in order that his discourse might be well received. This is the reason why, after having tempered the bitterness of his reproaches against the Church by a few soft words, he reserves all that is noble, grand, and generous for the ideas which produced the Reformation, and throws on the Church all the shadows of the picture.

While acknowledging that the principal cause of Protestantism is to be found in the human mind, it is easy to abstain from these unjust comparisons; and M. Guizot might have avoided the inconsistency to which we have alluded. He might have discovered the origin of the fact in the character of the human mind; he might, at the same time, have shown the greatness and importance of it, while simply explaining the nature and position of the societies in which it appeared. In fine, he might have observed that it was no extraordinary effort, but a mere repetition of what has happened in every age; and a phenomenon, the character of which depended on the particular state of the atmosphere in which it was produced.

This way of considering Protestantism as an ordinary event, increased and developed by the circumstances in which it arose, appears to me to be as philosophical as it is little attended to. I shall support it by another observation, which will supply us with reasons and examples at the same time.

The state of modern society for three hundred years has been such, that all the events that have occurred have acquired a character of generalization, and consequently an importance, which distinguishes them from all the events of a similar kind which occurred at other times and in a different social state. If we examine the history of antiquity, we shall see that all the events therein occurring were isolated in some sort from each other; this was what rendered them less beneficial when they were good, and less injurious when they were bad. Carthage, Rome, Sparta, Athens, all these nations more or less advanced in the career of civilization, each followed its own path, and progressed in a different way. Ideas, manners, political constitutions, succeeded each other, without our being able to perceive any influence of the ideas of one nation on those of another, or of the manners of one nation on those of another; we do not find any evidence of a tendency to bring nations to one common centre.