CHAPTER II.

OF PROTESTANTISM.

Ir was natural for a revolution, prepared by ideas, to take place in Germany; for the prominent trait of this thinking people is the energy of internal conviction. When once an opinion has taken possession of German heads, their patience, and their perseverance in supporting it, do singular honor to the force of human volition.

When we read the details of the death of John Huss, and of Jerome of Prague, the forerunners of the Reformation, we see a striking example of that which characterized the Protestant leaders in Germany, the union of a lively faith with the spirit of inquiry. Their reason did no injury to their belief, nor their belief any to their reason; and their moral faculties were always put into simultaneous action.

and

Throughout Germany we find traces of the different religious struggles, which, for many ages, occupied the whole nation. They still show, in the cathedral at Prague, bas-reliefs where the devastations committed by the Hussites are represented; that part of the church which the Swedes set fire to in the Thirty Years' War is not yet rebuilt. Not far from thence, on the bridge. is placed the statue of St. John Nepomucenus,1 who preferred

"The massy bridge over the Moldau, connecting the Altstadt with the Kleinseite, begun in the reign of the Emperor Charles IV, 1358, finishes 1507, is celebrated as the longest in Germany; it measures one thousand seven hundred and ninety German feet, and is ornamented on each side with twenty-eight statues of saints. The eighth on the right, in going om the Altstadt, is a well-executed bronze statne of St. John Nepomuk (Nepomucenus), who, according to the Popish legend, was thrown from he bridge into the river and drowned (1383) by order of King Wenceslaus IV, because he refused to betray the secrets confided to him by the queen n the holy rite of confession. The spot whence he was cast into the river is still marked by a cross with five stars on the parapet, in imitation of the

perishing in the waves to revealing the weaknesses which an unfortunate queen had confessed to him. The monuments, and even the ruins, which testify the influence of religion over man, interest the soul in a lively manner; for the wars of opinion, however cruel they may be, do more honor to nations than the wars of interest.

Of all the great men produced by Germany, Luther is the one whose character is the most German: his firmness had something rude about it; his conviction rose even to obstinacy; the courage of mind was in him the principle of the courage of action; what there was passionate in his soul did not divert him from abstract studies; and although he attacked certain abuses, and considered certain doctrines as prejudices, it was not a philosophical incredulity, but a species of fanaticism, that excited him.

Nevertheless, the Reformation has introduced into the world inquiry in matters of religion. In some minds its result has been skepticism; in others, a stronger conviction of religious truths: the human mind had arrived at an epoch when it was necessary for it to examine in order to believe. The discovery of printing, the multiplicity of every sort of knowledge, and the philosophical investigation of truth, did not allow any longer that blind faith which was formerly so profitable to its teachers. Religious enthusiasm could not grow again except by inquiry and meditation. It was Luther who put the Old Testament and the Gospel into the hands of all the world; it was he who gave its impulse to the study of antiquity; for in learning Hebrew to read the Old, and Greek to read the New

miraculous flames, which, three days after he was drowned, were seen lickering over the place where his body lay under the water. They continued unextinguished until curiosity was excited, the river dragged, and the body recovered. The honor of being enrolled in the calendar was deferred for centuries after his death. It was not till 1729 that St. John was received among the saints, and his body encased in the gorgeous silver shrine placed in the cathedral. From the circumstances of his death, this saint has become the patron of bridges in all Catholic countries, and his statue usually occupies elsewhere the same situation as at Prague.". 'Murray's Hand-book for Southern Germany, p. 62.)—Ed.

Testament, the students cultivated the ancient languages, and their minds were turned towards historical researches.1

Examination may weaken that habitual faith which men do well to preserve as much as they can; but when man comes out of his inquiries more religious than he was when he entered into them, it is then that religion is built upon an immutable basis; it is then that harmony exists between her and knowledge, and that they mutually assist each other.

Some writers have declaimed much against the system of perfectibility; and, to hear them, we should think that it was a real crime to believe our species capable of perfection. It is enough in France that an individual of such a party should have maintained this or that opinion, to make it bad taste to adopt it; and all the sheep of the same flock, one after the other, hasten to level their wise attacks at ideas, which still remain exactly what they are by nature.

It is very probable that the human species is susceptible of education, as well as each man in particular; and that there are epochs marked for the progress of thought in the eternal career of time. The Reformation was the era of inquiry, and of that enlightened conviction which inquiry produces. Christianity was first established, then altered, then examined, then understood; and these different periods were necessary to its development; they have sometimes lasted a hundred, some

1 Madame de Staël forgets Reuchlin, and the Seminary of St. Agnes. "The character of Reuchlin." says Sir Wm. Hamilton (Discussions, pp. 211, 212), “is one of the most remarkable in that remarkable age; for it exhibits in the highest perfection, a combination of qualities which are in general found incompatible. At once a man of the world and of books, he excelled equally in practice and speculation; was a statesman and a philosopher, a jurist and a divine. Nobles, and princes and emperors honored him with their favor, and employed him in the most difficult affairs; while the learned throughout Europe looked up to him as the 'trilingue miraculum,' the 'phoenix litterarum,' the 'eruditorum λpa.' In Italy, native Romans listened with pleasure to his Latin declamation; and he compelled the jealous Greeks to acknowledge that 'Greece had overflown the Alps.' Of his countrymen, he was the first to introduce the study of ancient literature into the German Universities; the first who opened the gates of the East, unsealed the word of God, and unveiled the sanctuary of Hebrew wisdom."-Ed.

times a thousand years. The Supreme Being, who draws time out of eternity, does not economize that time after our man

ner.

When Luther appeared, religion was no more than a politi cal power, attacked or defended as an interest of this world. Luther recalled it to the land of thought. The historical progress of the human mind, in this respect, in Germany, is worthy of remark. When the wars occasioned by the Reformation were set at rest, and the Protestant refugees were naturalized in the different northern states of the German empire, the philosophical studies, which had always made the interior of the soul their object, were naturally directed towards religion; and there is no literature of the eighteenth century in which we find so many religious books as in the literature of Germany.

Lessing, one of the most powerful geniuses of his nation never ceased to attack, with all the strength of his logic, that maxim so commonly repeated, that there are some dangerous truths. In fact, it is a singular presumption, in certain individuals, to think they have the right of concealing the truth from their fellow-men, and to arrogate the prerogative of placing themselves, like Alexander before Diogenes, in a situation to veil from the eyes that sun which belongs alike to all; this pretended prudence is but the theory of imposture; is but an attempt to play the juggler with ideas, in order to secure the subjection of mankind. Truth is the work of God; lies are the works of man. If we study those eras of history in which truth has been an object of fear, we shall always find them when partial interests contended in some manner against the universal tendency.

The search for truth is the noblest of employments, and its promulgation is a duty. There is nothing to fear for society, or for religion, in this search, if it is sincere; and if it is not sincere, truth no longer, but falsehood, causes the evil. There is not a sentiment in man of which we cannot find the philosophical reason; not an opinion, not even a prejudice, generally diffused, which has not its seat in nature. We ought ther

to examine, not with the object of destroying, but to build our belief upon internal, not upon borrowed conviction.

We see errors lasting for a long time; but they always cause a painful uneasiness. When we look at the tower of Pisa, which leans over its base, we imagine that it is about to fall, although it has stood for ages; and our imagination is not at its ease, except in the sight of firm and regular edifices. It is the same with our belief in certain principles; that which is founded upon prejudices makes us uneasy; and we love to see reason supporting, with all its power, the elevated conceptions of the soul.

The understanding contains in itself the principle of every thing which it acquires by experience. Fontenelle has justly said, that “we think we recognize a truth when first we hear it." How then can we imagine, that sooner or later just ideas, and the internal conviction which they cause, will not reappear? There is a pre-established harmony between truth and human reason, which always ends by bringing each nearer to the other.

Proposing to men not to interchange their thoughts, is what is commonly called keeping the secret of the play. We only continue in ignorance because we are unconsciously ignorant; but from the moment that we have commanded silence, it appears that somebody has spoken; and to stifle the thoughts which those words have excited, we must degrade Reason herself. There are men, full of energy and good faith, who never dreamt of this or that philosophical truth; but those who know and conceal their knowledge, are hypocrites, or, at least, are most arrogant and most irreligious beings. Most arrogant; for what right have they to think themselves of the class of the initiated, and the rest of the world excluded from it? Most irreligious; for if there is a philosophical or natural truth, a truth, in short, which contradicts religion, religion would not be what it is, the light of lights.

We must be very ignorant of Christianity, that is to say, of the revelation of the moral laws of man and the universe, to recommend to those who wish to believe in it, ignorance, se

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