30

THE REFORMATION AND CIVIL LIBERTY.

[CHAP. XLII. It seemed at this period as if the French, under the conduct of Labourdonnaye and Dupleix, would have appropriated India; but the bad understanding between those commanders prevented the success which they might otherwise have achieved. Labourdonnaye captured Madras in 1746, which, however, was restored to the English by the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. The conquests of Dupleix and Bussi were still more extensive and important. They obtained the circars or circles of Condavir, Mustapha-Nagar, Ellora, Radja-Mundri, and Tehicacobé, with Masulipatam as capital, together with large districts near Carical and Pondicherry, &c.; in a word, the French, about the middle of the eighteenth century, held at least a third of India. But the recall of Dupleix, who was succeeded by the unfortunate Lally, and the appearance of Lawrence and Clive, secured the preponderance of the English domination. Masulipatam was taken by the English in 1760, Pondicherry in 1761, when its fortifications were razed; and though Pondicherry was restored by the peace of 1763, it never recovered its former strength and importance. In like manner, the success of the English in the war which broke out in America in 1754, and especially the taking of Quebec by General Wolfe in 1759, compelled the French to abandon all their possessions on the American continent, except Louisiana, at the same peace.

No great alteration was experienced during this period by the colonies of other European nations. Though the English had taken Porto Bello and Havannah, they were restored to Spain at the Peace of Paris. Brazil, after the Peace of Utrecht, had increased in prosperity and wealth. The Dutch experienced no sensible diminution of their East India commerce before the Peace of Versailles in 1783. The colonial transactions of other nations are unimportant. The Danes, who had occupied the West India island of St. Thomas since 1671, purchased St. Croix from the French in 1733. In the East Indies they had obtained possession of Tranquebar. The Swedes also established an East India Company in 1731, but merely for trading purposes.

We will now turn our view for a moment on the inward and domestic life of the European States after the close of the great struggle for religious freedom. It does not appear that the Reformation was immediately favourable to civil liberty, except in the case of the Dutch Republic. The reasons for this it might not perhaps be difficult to discover. The principles of the Reformation had been introduced into Holland against the will of the Sovereign, and while the Dutch people had become universally

CHAP. XLII.] CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY CONNECTED. 31 Protestant, their ruler was one of the most bigoted Papists in Europe. Hence persecution on the part of the Government, resistance on that of the subject, brought the question of civil obedience, as well as of religious submission, to an immediate issue. Liberty of conscience could not be enjoyed unless supported by political freedom; and, after a glorious struggle of eighty years, both were confirmed to the Dutch by the Peace of Westphalia. But in other countries where the principles of the Reformation had been generally adopted, they had been introduced at least with the connivance, if not with the direct support of the Government. Such was the case in England and in the Northern States of Europe. The immediate effect of this was to strengthen the power of the Monarch, by throwing into his hands a vast amount of ecclesiastical property and patronage. He no longer shared with a foreign potentate the allegiance of his subjects, and diverted into his own exchequer tributes which had formerly flowed to Rome. Hence chiefly it was that the Tudors became the most absolute monarchs that had ever swayed the English sceptre. It was also in a great measure from this cause that the Electorate of Brandenburg was developed into the powerful Kingdom of Prussia. In those countries also where the Reformation, though partially introduced, did not succeed in establishing itself, its effects, like the quelling of an ineffectual rebellion, were at first favourable to the power of the Sovereign. We have already adverted to this effect, in the case of some of the German Sovereignties; and the reader has seen how the religious wars of France enabled the King to reduce the power of the great nobles, and to concentrate the strength of the kingdom in his own hands; a work at length consummated by the policy of Richelieu. Hence, generally speaking, and with regard more especially to the European Continent, never was monarchial power displayed in greater fulness than in the period extending from the Peace of Westphalia to the first French Revolution. Most of the wars of that era, certainly all the larger and more devastating ones, were waged for dynastic interests and kingly glory.

It was impossible, however, that the impetus given to the human mind by the bursting of its religious bonds should be altogether arrested and destroyed. It could not be that the spirit of inquiry, when once awakened, and directed to all the branches of human knowledge, should not also embrace the dearest interests of man-the question of his well-being in society, of his right to civil liberty. This question, as we have

32

RELIGIOUS SECTS.

[CHAP. XLII. said, was first practically solved in Holland. Yet it was not a solution calculated to establish a theoretical precedent. The revolt of the Dutch can hardly be called a domestic revolution. It was an insurrection against a foreign Sovereign; nor was it in its essence an appeal to the people, as the only legitimate source of power. To establish a Commonwealth, so far from being the object of the Dutch, was not even at first contemplated by them. They became republicans only because they could find no eligible master, and because it was the only method by which they could maintain their ancient rights. The true solution was first given in England. The absurd theories respecting kingly power, ostentatiously ventilated by a Sovereign with more pretensions, but less strength of character, than the Tudors, as well as his affectation of High Church principles, verging upon Romanism, incited the ultra, or Calvinistic, followers of the Reformation to a course of resistance which cost Charles I. his Crown and his life, and ultimately, through a long chain of consequences, resulted in establishing constitutional monarchy. It was these precedents, and the debates and discussions with which they were attended, the free utterances of the only truly national assembly in Europe, and the writings of men like Milton, Sidney, Locke, and others, which established not only for England, but all Europe, the true model of liberty combined with law and order. Thus the most striking instances and most influential examples of civil liberty in modern times were mainly the offspring of the Reformation; nor can it be doubted that the impulse of that great movement is still in operation, although its effects may not be so easily traceable.

It remains to view some religious phases of the period under consideration. In conformity with its general spirit, fanaticism itself seemed to assume a milder and more chronic form than in the exciting period of the Reformation. Instead of the Anabaptists and their atrocious absurdities, we find the Pietists and the Moravian Brethren. Even the Roman Catholic Church had its sects of a somewhat analogous kind.

2

The Pietists were founded by Philip Jacob Spener. Born at Rappoltsweiler in Upper Alsace, in 1635, Spener became a preacher at Strasburg, and subsequently principal minister at Frankfort. Instead of the dogmatical subtleties which had been the chief themes of the Lutheran preachers, he endeavoured to

1 See Vol. II. p. 430 sq.

2 Mr. Carlyle, in his Hist. of Friedrich II., vol. ii. p. 18, erroneously ascribes the foundation of the Pietists

to August Herman Franke, instead of Spener. Franke, a much younger man, was one of Spener's followers.

CHAP. XLII.]

PIETISTS AND MORAVIAN BRETHREN.

33

introduce a more practical system of Christianity; and with this view he began, in 1670, to hold private prayer meetings, which he called Collegia Pietatis-whence the name of his followers. In these meetings, texts from the Bible were discussed in a conversational manner. His system, which is explained in his work entitled Pia Desideria, was intended to put the finishing hand to Luther's Reformation, which he considered as only half completed. Such a system naturally led to separatism, or dissent, which, however, he himself disclaimed. His sect may be regarded as a sort of German Methodists, or, as we might say, Low Church party. In 1686 John George III., Elector of Saxony, invited Spener to Dresden. The old Lutheran orthodoxy, by laying too much stress upon the saving power of faith, had caused many of its followers to neglect altogether the practice as well as the doctrine of good works. If they attended church punctually, communicated regularly, and discharged all the other outward observances of religion, they considered that they had done enough for their justification, and were not over strict about the morality of their conduct. The Elector himself may be included in this category, and some remonstrances of Spener's, which were considered too free, caused his dismissal from Dresden in 1691. Spener now went to Berlin, and in 1705 he died at Halle.

One of Spener's most celebrated followers was Count Nicholas Louis von Zinzendorf, born at Dresden in 1700. The inclination which Zinzendorf displayed in early youth towards the sect of the Pietists, induced his friends to send him to Paris, with the view of diverting his mind from such thoughts. But his stay in that capital (1719-21) was precisely the period when the Jansenist controversy was at its height; the discussion of which subject, as well as his intercourse with Cardinal Noailles, only served to increase his religious enthusiasm. After his return to Dresden Zinzendorf began to hold Collegia Pietatis in imitation of Spener's. At these meetings he became acquainted with Christian David, a journeyman carpenter of Fulneck in Silesia. It was in the neighbourhood of Fulneck that the Bohemian Brethren, the last remnants of the Hussites, had contrived to maintain themselves, by ostensibly complying with the dominant Church, whilst in private they retained the religion of their forefathers.1 Some inquisitions, made by the Imperial Government in 1720, having compelled the members of this sect to emigrate, Christian David proceeded to 'Menzel, B. iii. S. 481; B. iv. Kap. 39. Ꭰ

IV.

34

JANSENISM.

[CHAP. XLII. Dresden, where, as we have said, he became acquainted with Count Zinzendorf, and obtained permission to settle with some of his brethren on that nobleman's estate of Bertheldsdorf in the neighbourhood of Zittau in Lusatia. The first colony was planted on the Hutberg in 1722, and was called Herrn-hut (the Lord's care). The creed of the Moravian Brethren seems to have been an indiscriminate mixture of Lutheran and Calvinistic tenets with those of their own sect. Count Zinzendorf added to these some peculiar notions of his own; establishing as his main dogma the wounds and sacrifice of Christ; or, as he styled it, the Blood and Cross Theology. In 1737 he procured himself to be named bishop of this new sect. Frederick II. of Prussia, after his conquest of Silesia, protected the rising colony, and allowed it the open and independent exercise of its worship. The numbers of the Herrnhuter, or Moravian Brethren (so called from the first members being refugees from Moravia), soon wonderfully increased, and they spread themselves in most parts of the world. Count Zinzendorf died in 1760, at Herrnhut, which is still a flourishing little town.

Of the sects which sprung up in the Roman Catholic Church, the most celebrated was that of the Jansenists, so called from its founder, Cornelius Janssen, a Fleming. Educated at Louvain, which he quitted in 1617, Janssen ultimately became Bishop of Ypres. The distinguishing feature of his system was the adoption in their most rigid form of the tenets of St. Augustine respecting predestination and absolute decrees. In fact, Jansenius and his followers, except that they retained some of the sacraments of the Romish Church, and especially that of the Eucharist, approached more nearly the doctrines of Calvin than those of Rome. Jansenius explained his views in his book entitled Augustinus.

Jansenism was introduced into France by Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, the friend and fellow-collegian of Janssen. Duvergier, by birth a Basque, became abbot of the little monastery of St. Cyran, in Provence; an office which he refused to exchange for the episcopal mitre. In 1635 St. Cyran became the spiritual director of Mother Angelica (Angelica Arnaud), the Superior of Port Royal, the celebrated Parisian convent of Benedictine nuns.1 Under the auspices of St. Cyran, Jansenism became the creed of the Society. Like other apostles, however, St. Cyran had to

The original Port Royal was at Chévreuse, about eighteen miles west of Paris. In 1626 the community was transferred to the Rue de la Bourbe in the Faubourg St. Jacques of that capital;

and subsequently it was divided into two establishments, Port Royal de Paris and Port Royal des Champs. For the history of this celebrated institution, see the works of Racine and Sainte Beuve.