Already in the beginning of the fifteenth century many of
the ancient dogmas had begun to awaken incredulity, and sceptics learned
to mock at that claim to infallibility upon which the priesthood based
their right to command the blind obedience of the Christian world. Between
such adversaries compromise was impossible; and those who afterward
revolted against the authority of the traditions of Rome sought refuge
under the shelter of the Bible, which they grew to reverence with a
passionate devotion, believing it to have been not only directly and
verbally inspired by God, but the only channel through which he had made
known his will to men.
Thus the movement was not toward new doctrines; on the contrary, it was
the rejection of what could no longer be believed. Calvin was no less
orthodox than St. Augustine in what he accepted; his heresy lay in the
denial of enigmas from which his understanding recoiled. The mighty
convulsion of the Reformation, therefore, was but the supreme effort of
the race to tear itself from the toils of a hierarchy whose life hung upon
its success in forcing the children to worship the myths of their
ancestral religion.
Three hundred years after Luther nailed his theses to the church door the
logical deduction had been drawn from his great act, and Christendom had
been driven to admit that any concession of the right to reason upon
matters of faith involved the recognition of the freedom of individual
thought.
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