UNION
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UNION
tion, the other which strove perseveringly for a root-
and-branch subversion of the Elizabethan settlement
and the substitution of one conformed to the Genevan
model. During the Commonwealth the latter party
obtained for the time the upper hand, but with the
Restoration it was extruded altogether and became
the parent of those Nonconformist sects whose pro-
gressive divisions and subdivisions have always been
the gravest scandal of English religious hfe. The
other party meanwhile, with some oscillations to the
right or to the left (under the names of the High and
Low Church parties), maintained itself with approxi-
mate consistency as exhibiting the distinctive spirit
of the Established Church of the country.
Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, however, two quite novel tendencies asserted them- selves in that communion (and these have since become so influential that before long they are Ukely to divide between themselves the race of Anglican Churchmen), one based on a far-reaching appreciation (but with some reservations) of the Cathohc system, dehghting to call itself Catholic, and striving to assimilate the national worship to the Catholic pattern, the other, which calls itself Liberal and, pushing to its bitter end the application of the Protest- ant principle of private judgment, has by its ration- ahstic criticism diffused a widespread scepticism as to the authenticity of the Christian records and the truth of the most fundamental articles of the Chris- tian creed. This theological Liberahsm has likewise exercised a disastrous influence on the Enghsh Non- conformist bodies, and one more deadly still on Con- tinental Protestantism, Germany being the primary source from which it has sprung. Of Germany, in fact, it must now be said that, as in the sixteenth century it gave birth to what is called orthodox Prot- estantism, so in the present age it is engaged in throttUng its off.spring in the tight grasp of its criti- cism. Of the forms which Protestantism has assumed in the United States, Canada, and other countries colonized from Europe, it is sufficient to say that the immigrants have taken their beliefs and forms of worship with them to their new homes, and, the world of ideas being now one, this many-headed hydra has displayed in the new countries the same diversities as in the old.
Except for its Puritan variety, which depended for its propagation chiefly on the powers of physical coercion its leaders could dispose of. Protestantism was an easy-going religion which had aboUshed many of the ascetic observances and restrictions on Uberty and hcense that held in the old Church. It was to be expected, therefore, that it should spread rapidly in an age when manners were alarmingly corrupt, nor must we be surprised that, with such a start, it was enabled soon to present the appearance of a group of Churches peopled by very many thousands of adher- ents. Since those early days, however, it cannot be said to have extended its conquests much, and the milUons to which it has now grown are due not much to conversions, but rather to the natural increase of populations. In the present day the total number of Protestants is estimated at about 166,000,000, an enormous number, no doubt, but one which, unlike the 260,000,000 Catholics who all stand together, is only an aggregate made up of a multitude of separate commimions, under separate governing bodies, which not only differ among themselves as to important points of doctrine, hut — such is the increasing individ- ualism among their members — are fast approaching a goal in which each member will have become a Church and a creed to himself.
Summary. — It will be useful, as in the cases of the primitive and the great Eastern divisions, to fix attention on the forces making for disintegration which have brought these Protestant divisions into being. If the effocl of such a summary is to
show the essential similarity of the forces at work in
aU these cases, that wiU be advantageous, for it will
reveal to us how few are these disintegrating forces,
and how elemental is their character; how, in fact,
they spring from the very heart of human nature,
which can only hope to counteract the divisions
towards which they tend if sustained and elevated by
some other forces of a different order altogether. In
two respects, then, these separatist bodies to which
Protestantism has given birth need to be considered,
in their separations from the parent communions and
in their cohesion among themselves, as corporate
bodies enduring for a certain time and in a certain
degree. The principle of private judgment has been
the undoubted cause of their separations and incessant
subdivisions, for the principle of private judgment is
essentially disintegrating. The cause of such cohe-
sion as they have exhibited has been, as their history
shows, of the following nature. First, under the
influence of private judgment, one or more strong-
willed men have conceived a doctrinal system antag-
onistic to that of the religious communions to which
they originally belonged, have gathered a party of
others like-minded around them, and have undertaken
on behalf of their system a propaganda which has
attained a certain success. Next, wishing to establish
a Church which shall be an embodiment of their
system, but finding themselves unable by pure persua-
sion to hold the multitude to their views, they have
had recourse to the civil power, or some dominant
faction of nobles or democrats, and have induced it,
in view of the temporal advantages to be gained, to
impose their sj-stem on the people and sustain it by
physical force. Or, ex converse, resistance to the
ruling power or its estabUshed Church, when it has
been able to maintain itself with comparative success,
has caused the separatists to reahze that they must
unite together under definite rule and government if
they are to make their resistance effectual — as has
been the case with the English Nonconformist bodies.
Thirdly, realizing that no system imposed by violence
can hope to be lasting unless the mass of its people
can be brought round to voluntarj' acceptance of it,
they have exploited the passions and prejudices of
the people, particularly its race and class exclusivisms,
and sought to foment these by campaigns of bitter
controversy and calumny. Fourthly, where this
pohcy has succeeded in the earlier stages of a schism,
a more internal and durable principle of cohesion has
eventually been generated under the influence of
custom and heredity, of antagonisms and misconcep-
tions hardened by long-continued isolations and
estrangements, of affections deepened by long-
continued intimacies, cherished memories, experi-
ences, and associations, and of the good faith and even
high spirituality nourished by the detached truths
retained in such false creeds, which can prevail
under these later conditions.
Such, speaking generally, has been the chain of causes which has welded into churches and congre- gations with definite creeds and organizations the bodies of men that have preferred the principle of private judgment as a rule of faith to that of submis- sion to the authority of the Catholic Church. But the species of unity thus attained is always in its outer relations separative, in its inner relations precarious; for the very motives that cause the members of such a body to cohere among themselves are those that separate them from other similar bodies; whilst within it, eating away its structure, there is alwa3-s the latent consciousness among its members that their ruling body and its doctrinal formula^ have no valid title to enforce submission; and it only needs a crisis, or that spirit of radical inquiry which is now so common, to arouse this consciousness to activity. (See Prot- estantism; Lutiikranism; Calvinism; Anglican- ism; Nonconformists; Hitualist.s; R.^tionalism.)
