Out of this Dutch life, a life far more varied and less phlegmatic than we may sometimes think, there came two distinct tendencies. The first was the tendency for the State to tolerate deliberately side by side with an established Church other religious bodies, usually though not invariably Christian, and to tolerate the printing of any religious opinions not actually blasphemous. This represents the attitude of William III, and it is quite clearly opposed to the originally theocratic character of the Genevan polity. The second tendency found its expression in the Pietists. The word 'Pietist', which was at first used in German as a term of reproach, nearly corresponds with our word Evangelical', and not with the present German meaning of the word 'Evangelical'. It is wrong to identify Pietism at all exclusively with Germany, and it is also wrong to think that it began in Holland. It was international, and it was the outcome of the devotional books, mainly English, which appeared in the seventeenth century like springs in the desert. Behind it there is the Pilgrim's Progress of John Bunyan, the Saint's Everlasting Rest of Richard Baxter, the Spiritual Guide of the Spanish mystic Molinos, the book Wahres Christentum by John Arndt, a devout Lutheran, and especially the Practice of Piety by Lewis Bayly, Bishop of Bangor, which was translated into at least five Continental languages besides Welsh and the language of the Indians of Massachusetts.1 Nevertheless, Holland may be said to have nursed this international Pietism. Gisbert Voet (d. 1676), one of the leading Dutch theologians of this period, a learned opponent of Labadie and Descartes, and a sturdy Calvinist, had a mystical element in his religion, and he hailed as a second Thomas

1 The Practice of Piety was first published in or before 1613; the English editions are almost numberless. It is marred by occasional coarseness but is both vigorous and devout. It advocates fasting, monthly communion, and private confession. In the Epistle Dedicatory, addressed to Charles, Prince of Wales, mention is made of 'Tobacco pipes' in 'Bibbing houses'.

à Kempis his compatriot Teellinck, whose Calvinism was combined with a spirit of brotherly forbearance and a love of the divine Redeemer like the love manifested by St. Bernard. Teellinck had studied in England and lived with English Puritans. And Spener, the celebrated founder of German Pietism, is known to have been influenced by the work of Bayly.

The Pietists differed from the mystics principally by the greater stress which they laid upon the gravity of sin and man's need of the atoning death of Christ. They thought more of obtaining peace with God through the death of Christ than of gaining immediate union with God through the indwelling Word within our soul. They took for granted the Deity of Christ and revived the mediaeval devotion to His Person and His Passion. They read the Bible, reverenced it, and tried to obey it. In Holland their plain dress, strict observance of Sunday, and avoidance of plays and public games recalled the habits of the English Puritans. Spener himself was not a rigorist in doctrine like Voet, but he was a rigorist in morals. Humble and learned, he was the principal of a seminary at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and then was made head court preacher at Dresden (1686). He was expelled from Dresden on account of his religious zeal, but was given a position in Berlin and there used all his influence to secure good appointments being made to the theological faculty in the new university at Halle. His Pia Desideria, published in 1675, touched upon the corruption of Protestantism in Germany and expounded to the people the remedies which he proposed, foremost among which was the diffusion of the word of God. He was a man of faith and charity, and made the university of Halle a centre of religion.

Moved by the example of Spener three young graduates of Leipzig founded Bible classes, collegia philobiblica, for the practical study of the Bible. These classes were suppressed by the university. Leipzig treated the Pietists very much

as Oxford treated the six Evangelical students at St. Edmund Hall in 1768 and the Tractarians at a later time. The three friends were obliged to go, but their work went on. One of them was August Hermann Francke (d. 1727), whose strongly practical theology, illustrated by his care for the poor, his orphanage and his hostel for students at Halle, spread his name far and wide, and that which he loved better than his name. It was Francke who rolled away from Lutheranism one of its greatest stones of reproach by persuading his co-religionists to begin missionary work among the heathen.

Pietism gradually deprived itself of the power of doing more effective work for the kingdom of God by its sentimentalism, by its neglect of learning, by its disapproval of innocent recreation, by its practice of fostering little associations which kept themselves to themselves, and by regarding as an impossible ideal the leavening of the whole body of society with a Christian spirit. Yet it left a mark upon many who had little sympathy with its hard discipline. The mistaken notion that religion is in essence a feeling, a longing, a sentiment, was strengthened by Pietism, and a long line of German writers from Lessing to Schleiermacher derived from it some impulse towards their conviction that there is an eternal Gospel free from dogma, a Gospel in which enthusiasm and morality have met together. A more genuine' Practice of Piety' which came from England returned to England. Through the German Moravians and the Methodists a testimony to Jesus Christ, a love of the Bible, and a zeal for souls were handed on. If these Christians were wrong in not believing that all secular things can be hallowed to the Christian man, and if we in some sense draw nearer to the world than they, let us yet seriously consider whether we are overcoming the world or the world is overcoming us, and whether in some things where we differ from the Pietists, we differ for the better or for the worse.

IV

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH FROM

1700 TO 1854

Eph. iv. 4-6: There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century the position of the Roman Catholic Church was still magnificent. It is true that the political prestige of the Papacy was waning, and the new thought which had begun to stir in Italy was not allied with zeal for Christianity but with the shallow poetry of the society known as the Arcadian Academy. In Great Britain the folly of the Jesuits had proved the ruin of King James II and blasted the hopes of their wiser co-religionists.1 But in many countries victory seemed well assured. Great numbers of the German people had left Lutheranism for Rome. Most of the Poles who had favoured Calvinism or Socinianism had forsaken their new creed. Opposition had been quelled in Bohemia. Amsterdam was dotted with Roman Catholic churches, though they were built to look like private houses.2 In Spain the last remnants of Mohammedanism and Judaism appeared to be nearly extirpated, after generations of persecution, almost simultaneously with the erection of the beautiful little Spanish synagogue that still remains like a forgotten stowaway in the city of London.3 The new world of America promised to be almost wholly Roman Catholic. The Jesuit

1 For this, see Ethelred L. Taunton, The History of the Jesuits in England (Methuen & Co., London, 1901); and for the method of governing the English Roman Catholics by Vicars Apostolic and not by Bishops, see another Roman Catholic authority, Joseph Berington, quoted below, p. 269. 2 See app. note 13, p. 267. See app. note 14, p. 267.

missionaries in Canada had been fearless pioneers of the Cross. There was already a cathedral church in Quebec and a shrine for Canadian pilgrims at St. Anne de Beaupré.1 The Indians of Mexico revered Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the churches of Central and Southern America were buildings of massive grandeur. Louis XIV had expelled from France the Protestants of all ranks including members of the old nobility. It was believed in England that this expulsion of the Huguenots was contrary to the wishes of the Pope,2 and Archbishop Fénelon refused to preach to them till Louis had withdrawn his troops, saying that if missionaries and soldiers worked side by side people would be willing even to accept the Koran. Be that as it may, Louis could boast that his kingdom, like himself, was outwardly most Catholic, though the moral and material resources of France were diminished, and London and The Hague gained what France had lost.

Not only was Roman Catholicism outwardly victorious over Protestantism and able to dispatch missionaries to China, India, and Ceylon, as well as to America; it was also skilfully undermining the ancient ramparts of Eastern Christendom. Among the Slavs the political power of Poland favoured the creation and extension of a great Uniat Church, acknowledging the supremacy of the Pope and the decrees of Trent, while permitted to retain almost unaltered the liturgies and the ceremonies of Eastern Orthodoxy. For the masses of the people the transition was not difficult so long as they saw the same icons and the same

This lecture was delivered on March the 19th, 1922: a few days later the beautiful modern church of St. Anne at Beaupré was destroyed by fire. • See Verney Memoirs, vol. ii, p. 446 (Longmans, London, 1907).

By the Union of Brest (1596), a great body of Russians within the kingdom of Poland (named later Ruthenians) submitted to Rome. Finally the archdiocese of Lemberg came into union with Rome May the 5th, 1700, and many more thousands of Ruthenians then became members of the Uniat Church. In recent times frequent efforts have been made, largely under Polish influence, to give a Western character to their services.