alike have to admit that the immediate effects of the Reformation were a dissolution of morals, a careless neglect of education and learning, and a general relaxation of the restraints of religion.  In passage after passage, Luther himself declared that the last state of things was worse than the first; that vice of every kind had increased since the Reformation; that the nobles were more greedy, the burghers more avaricious, the peasants more brutal; that Christian charity and liberality had almost ceased to flow; and that the authorised preachers of religion were neither heeded, respected nor supported by the people:  all of which he characteristically attributed to the workings of the devil, a personage who plays a most important part in Luther’s theology and view of life.

Thus, to judge by its immediate effects, the Reformation appears to have been conducive neither to moral, to social, nor to political progress.  And yet to-day we know that the intellectual movement of which it was the outcome contained within itself inspiring conceptions of social justice, political equality, economic freedom, aye, even of religious toleration and moral purity, unknown to any preceding age, and the full fruits of which have yet to be harvested to elevate and to bless mankind.

FOOTNOTES: 

[4:1] Luther’s Works, ed.  Walch, viii. 2043:  “Erklaerung der Ep. an die Galater.”  Quoted by Beard, The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, p. 163.

[7:1] See Thorold Rogers’ Six Centuries of Work and Wages, p. 389.

[8:1] See Appendix A.

[10:1] Beard, loc. cit. p. 146.

CHAPTER II

THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND

“It was in the name of faith and religious liberty that, in the sixteenth century, commenced the movement which, from that epoch, suspended at times but ever renewed, has been agitating and exciting the world.  The tempest rose first in the human soul:  it struck the Church before it reached the State.”—­GUIZOT.

In Germany, as we have seen, from a religious and popular, the Reformation degenerated into a mere scholastic and political movement, favourable to the pretensions of the ruling and privileged classes, opposed to the aspirations of the industrial classes, and conducive neither to moral, social, religious, nor political progress.  In England, on the other hand, it ran a very different course.  From a merely political, it gradually rose to the height of a truly religious and popular movement, infusing new life into the nation and lifting it into the very forefront of the van of progress, curbing the insolent pretensions of king, priest and noble, purifying the minds of the people of time-honoured but degrading conceptions of the functions of Church and of State, inspiring and uplifting them with new conceptions of political freedom, social justice, moral purity and religious toleration, which, despite temporary periods of reaction, have never since entirely lost their sway over the hearts nor their influence over the destinies of the British nation.