The great
Jesuit theologian, Bellarmin, did indeed try to deny the reality
of this baptism; but this can only be regarded as a piece of
casuistry suited to Protestant hardness of heart, or as strategy
in the warfare against heretics.[347]
Forms of baptism were laid down in various manuals sanctioned
directly by papal authority, and sacramental efficacy was
everywhere taken for granted.[347b] The development of this idea
in the older Church was too strong to be resisted;[347c] but, as
a rule, the Protestant theologians of the Reformation, while
admitting that storms were caused by Satan and his legions,
opposed the baptism of bells, and denied the theory of their
influence in dispersing storms. Luther, while never doubting
that troublesome meteorological phenomena were caused by devils,
regarded with contempt the idea that the demons were so childish
as to be scared by the clang of bells; his theory made them
altogether too powerful to be affected by means so trivial. The
great English Reformers, while also accepting very generally the
theory of diabolic interference in storms, reproved strongly the
baptizing of bells, as the perversion of a sacrament and
involving blasphemy.
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