Pre-Reformation

“ But while looking for progress, it seeks to accomplish it by reformation and not by revolution.
Reformation works by the power of the Word, of doctrine, cultivation and truth; while revolution, or rather revolt, operates by the power of riot, of the sword, and of the club. ”

“ Revolution, not Reformation.—It is absurd to say that the revolution of the sixteenth century was a reformation, if by that it is meant that it re-established the primitive doctrines of Christianity, purified the morals of the people, or gave birth to a better ecclesiastical government. ”

“ Another instructive theme which this Institution proposes, on a future occasion, to embrace in its course of lectures, is the history of the 16th century. Passing over the Reformation—the great event certainly of this period—it was about this time that the struggles among the different nations of Europe gave rise, and by degrees gave consolidation, to the system of the balance of power. ”

“ Modern revolutionism has developed since the reformation and the renaissance. The religious and ecclesiastical reformation was revolutionary, and led by a natural development to the social and political transformation of Europe. ”

“ Thus the popular passions, the cause of revolution, the interests of a radical equality, were quelled in the empire; but the Reformation did not yield. These two movements, which many have confounded with each other, were clearly marked out by the difference of their results. The insurrection was from below; the Reformation, from above. A few horsemen and cannon were sufficient to put down the one; but the other never ceased to rise in strength and vigor, in despite of the reiterated assaults of the empire and the Church. ”

“ That such revolution or, as we prefer to call it, reformation is ardently desired by the millions everywhere cannot be doubted. The existing condition of every country in Europe—our own included—affords unmistakable evidence of it. ”

“ Political reforms of western civilization date from the Reformation and the Renaissance. Economic reforms were speeded by the industrial revolution. Together they are often described as the bourgeois revolution, which resulted in the power shift from landlords, ecclesiastics and knights in armor to businessmen, protected and assisted by the state, the church, channels of information and propaganda, the police and other armed forces. ”

“ The Reformers before the Reformation, though vanquished, had indeed not lived in vain. The European peoples were outgrowing feudal vassalage, and moving toward nationalization and separation between the secular and ecclesiastical powers. Travel, exploration, and discovery had introduced new subjects of human interest and contemplation. ”

“ The great revolutions which have issued in the fall of a monarchy, and the change of a whole political system, or which have thrown the human mind on a new course of development, were slowly and gradually prepared. ”

“ RESTORATION.—REFORMATION. The elements had been well shaken together during the civil wars and interregnum under the Long Parliament and Protectorate; and nothing but the cowardliness and impolicy of the Nonconformists, at the Restoration, could have prevented a real reformation on a wider basis. But the truth is, by going over to Breda with their stiff flatteries to the hollow-hearted King, they put Sheldon and the bishops on the side of the constitution. ”

“ CHAPTER I THE MAIN CURRENT OF THE REFORMATION I One of the greatest tragedies in Christian history is the division of forces which occurred in the Reformation movements of the sixteenth century. Division of forces in the supreme spiritual undertakings of the race is of course confined to no one century and to no one movement ”

“ The Reformation in the sixteenth century narrowed Reform. As soon as men began to call themselves names, all hope of further amendment was lost. ”

“ In this predicament, I seriously wished—selfish as it may appear—that the reformation of society had been postponed about half a century, or, at all events, to such a date as should have put my intermeddling with it entirely out of the question. ”

“ After organizing the victory of the humanists over the scholastic obscurantists of the day, their leader lived to see his 'tranquil' home ruthlessly plundered by a Protestant mob, at a time when the quiet waters of Humanism had been overwhelmed by the stronger stream of the Reformation. ”

“ If this avenue be shut to the call of sufferance, it will make itself heard through that of force, and we shall go on, as other nations are doing, in the endless circle of oppression, rebellion, reformation; ”

“ So rapid is the progress of political life and opinion that even these great subjects are becoming quickly extinct or lost influences among the crowds of new ones. The Reform History has come to be regarded no longer as a grand revolution, of which its chief agents could predicate perfection and finality, but merely as a single stage in a progress the present velocity of which would have made the projectors dizzy. ”

“ I shall make no comment upon the origin of the Revolution which, for the last three months, has been in progress in several of the Southern States, nor shall I enumerate the causes which have hastened its advancement or exasperated its temper. The scope of the questions submitted by the House will be sufficiently met by dealing with the facts as they exist, irrespective of the cause from which they have proceeded. That Revolution has been distinguished by a boldness and completeness of success rarely equaled in the history of Civil Commotions. ”

“ As the horrors of the French Revolution lead us when we reflect on them to examine with a new interest the last age of the old régime because the explanation of them must lie there, so do the successes of 1866 and give a new interest to the period that precedes them in German history. ”

“ When the historian has described the rise and fall of empires and dynasties, and has recounted with care and exactness the details of the great political movements that have changed the map of continents, there remains the question: What was the cause of these revolutions in human society--what were the real motives that were operative in the hearts and minds of the persons in the great drama of history that has been displayed? The mere chain of events as they have passed before the eye as it surveys the centuries does not give an explanation of itself. ”

“ Such men consider the Revolution as a reform, imperfect indeed, but still most beneficial to the English people and to the human race, as a reform which has been the fruitful parent of reforms, as a reform, the happy effects of which are at this moment felt, not only throughout our own country, but in half the monarchies of Europe, and in the depths of the forests of Ohio. ”

“ I question if in all the Histories of Empire there is one Instance of so bloodless a Revolution as that in England in 1688, wherein Whigs, Tories, Princes, Prelates, Nobles, Clergy, common People, and a Standing Army, were unanimous. ”

“ The revolution, which not only exchanged one dynasty for another, but metamorphosed the very system of English government, merely followed in the path of a remarkable intellectual and social transformation, without which the political reversal would have been impossible. ”

“ And he is quite certain that, since this Revolution has not attained its object, those in power refusing to see anything in it but a change of dynasty, a new revolution is unavoidable, "and may be expected without fail." ”

“ To future generations the period in American history, of most absorbing interest and profound inquiry, will be that embracing the incipiency, progress, and termination of the revolution which had its most pronounced phase in the memorable war of 1861. Historians rarely concur in their estimates of the limits of a revolution, and usually we find quite as much divergence in their views of the scope of its operations, as in their speculations as to its origin and causes, and their statements of its incidents and results. ”

“ For, with the fall of the ancient governments which rested like an incubus upon the people of the central empires, has come political change not merely, but revolution; and revolution which seems as yet to assume no final and ordered form. ”

“ This is a revolution of sufficient magnitude to be regarded as politically the opening of a new era. It had been long preparing in the economic and administrative decline of the Empire, and in the steady influx of Germanic peoples into Roman territory for over two centuries; but the power of the old civilization to absorb the new races was exhausted by the 5th century, and the political history of Europe was turned into a different path. ”

“ The Revolution has become divided into three parts which have nothing in common between them: the Republic, the Empire, and the Restoration; those three different worlds, each as completely finished as the others, seem separated by centuries. ”

“ The French Revolution, which coincided with its first stages, helped to break the continuity between the old order and the new, and both by its direct influence and by the vigorous reactions which it generated cleft society into conflicting elements. ”

“ The varying phases of the struggle between progress and centralization on the one side, and chivalry and feudalism on the other, were exceedingly well marked in France, and as the materials for tracing them are abundant, a more detailed account of the gradual reform may perhaps have interest, as illustrating the long and painful strife which has been necessary to evoke order and civilization out of the incongruous elements from which modern European society has sprung. ”

“ It is an acknowledged fact, that every revolution requires a provisional power to regulate its disorganizing movements, and to direct the methodical demolition of every part of the ancient social constitution.— Such ought to be the revolutionary power. ”

“ So it is that the great revolutions, “predestined unto us and we predestined,” take on a double power; not only do they turn the current of human action, but to the later comer they seem to modify that which was irrevocably fixed and past. ”

“ But the old order of things, fortified in customs and prejudices and deeply-rooted institutions, does not surrender at the first blast of trumpets. The grand but fearful struggle of the reformatory movement plunges all Europe into endless confusion. The very wheel of progress seems to grind and crush one generation after another. ”

“ The theoretical historic outlook and historic enlightenment are intimately associated with practical endeavours towards reform, and in the new era history becomes vitae magistra, history guides practical life, guides politics. Strengthening of the historic sense and a belief in progress manifest themselves as an impulse towards reform, as an effort to bring about the essential reconstruction of social organisation. This impulse, this endeavour, leads to revolution, to the great revolution. ”

“ Such Revolutions as that of 1688, notwithstanding the glorious character that belongs to it, are better as beacons for rulers than as precedents for the people, since a change of dynasty, however constitutionally effected, must be at all times an unpleasant, not to say a deplorable process. ”

“ I am firmly convinced that if the Latin peoples, being Southerners, are more ready for revolt, which may suffice for purely political transformations, the peoples of the North, the Germans and Anglo-Saxons are better prepared for the tranquil and orderly but inexorable process of the true revolution, understood as the critical phase of an organic, incomplete, preparatory evolution, which is the only effective process for a truly social transformation. ”

“ The French Revolution, with its dramatic overthrow of tyranny and its splendid watchword, ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,’ made its own appeal to the hope as well as the imagination of the English people, although the sanguinary incidents which marked it retarded the movement for Reform in England, and as a matter of fact sent the Reformers into the wilderness for the space of forty years. ”

“ These facts, and the harmony with which the inexperienced multitude took this first great step toward national regeneration, excited throughout aristocratic Europe amazement and alarm. Kings and nobles alike trembled. All the states of Europe, like France, were oppressed by feudal despotism. All the people of Europe might, like the French, demand reform. ”

“ It is at least pleasing to turn from the general horrors of the revolution, and suppose, for a moment, that the social affections were not yet entirely banished, and that gallantry still retained some empire, when every other vestige of civilization was almost annihilated. ”

“ Why, we should dearly love the late revolution we have seen below—it is no longer called Reform—were it to fling up to free light from fettered darkness a few fine bold original spirits, who might give the whole world a new character, and a more majestic aspect to crouching life. ”

“ England passed through her revolutionary storms in the 17th century, and there were then two revolutions: the first, among other things, led to the execution of Charles I, while the second ended with an animated banquet and the rise of a new dynasty. ”

“ Any country could have a Revolution—every country had had one. A Restoration was merely what a revolution involved, and the Empire had been for the French but a revolutionary incident, in addition to being by good luck for the novelist an immensely pictorial one. ”

“ In some cases, as in France, the change in institutions was immediate and sweeping; in others, as in Germany and Italy, the transformation was more gradual; but in all, the old state of things was doomed.
The thirty years or so just preceding the Revolution are those that most concern us in this study, though we shall often have occasion to look back to the early eighteenth century — and sometimes to the seventeenth.
To realize the conditions under which men lived in the eighteenth century is not easy. ”