underlying them what we have seen was characteristic of monastic piety generally. It had no social or ethical significance apart from the general Roman Catholic teaching at this point.

1

The elements of inwardness and trustful relationship with God, which give such books as "Teutsche Theologie" 1 and the "Imitation of Christ" permanent value, are not inseparably connected with the Neoplatonic conceptions which underlie them both, and which in the last analysis they falsely (historically considered) identify with the teachings of the New Testament. In a history of mysticism it would be proper to trace the ethics taught by the several mystics to their source, but mysticism has no important contribution of its own, nor is it in point of fact in a position to render such service,-for reasons already pointed out (see page 350). Hence we pass over what is an important chapter in the history of Roman Catholic piety but which has no special ethical interest.'

'Well translated by Susanna Winkworth, "Theologia Germanica," Andover, 1856, etc.

'The reader should recall the author's definition of mysticism (p. 342). It is the failure to keep to some consistent definition of mysticism that renders most discussion of it so irritating and fruitless. Even Baron von Huegel, in his interesting second volume on "The Mystical Element of Religion," is constantly talking of elements common to all religious experience as if they were peculiar to the mystical type of that experience.

CHAPTER VII

THE ENGLISH REFORMATION AND ITS ETHICS

Note of Introduction.-(a) General Conditions of the Reformation; (b) The Special Conditions in England-I. The Ethics of the Forerunners of the Reformation-II. The Ethics of Puritanism-III. The Ethics of Anglo-Catholicism-IV. The Ethics of Independency -V. The Ethics of Philosophical Protestantism (in England).

NOTE OF GENERAL INTRODUCTION

THE HISTORICAL CONDITIONS OF THE REFORMATION

It is only for temporary human purpose that history can be divided into chapters and sections. The Reformation, from one point of view so dramatic and sudden, was in reality but the fitting climax to a long series of innovations. There are no single causes and no single effects. The historian can only describe the conditions under which history works itself out. In the description great personalities will always be in the foreground, partly because the dramatic element is strong in us all, but chiefly because every historical movement has its highest interest for us when it becomes incarnate in a great personality.

It is alike vain and unscientific to ask whether history is the creation of great men or of the conditions under which all men work. It is neither one nor the other. It is the story of the actions and reactions of human purposes upon the conditions under which alone those purposes can realize themselves. The age that gives us genius is not the creation of that genius, but an age has only its highest interest for us when some child of genius formulates and incarnates its manifold purpose, and to the outlooker the thousand-and-one conditions which made the

work of genius possible are hidden by the interest of the personality.

From one point of view the Reformation may be said to have begun with the Council of Constance (1414), or the nailing of Luther's theses to the church door (1517) over a hundred years later; but these are only important episodes in the birth of a new human spirit, steps which the race in western Europe was taking to a larger, diviner freedom and life. We cannot regard it as our special task to describe the historical conditions that made Wyclif or Luther possible. The standard histories are in a much better position to do this than the special historian of ethics. Nevertheless, we must, however briefly, glance at the outward conditions under which that new world was forming, which sought intellectual and ethical formulation in the Reformation period.

One of the foremost factors in the determination of Europe's political character was the fundamental struggle between the East and the West. In the growth of Mahometanism the West was challenged, and the crusades bore this special mark because, amid great and growing diversity of tongue, of interest as well as of race, religion still gave the largest and firmest basis for united action. Not that the crusades were wholly religious. The most eloquent preaching of Peter the Hermit and the most convincing arguments of the Pope could not have aroused Europe had not material interests, such as a growing trade, increasing population, and political restlessness given the crusades1 an especial significance. As Europe ceased to seem homogeneous and began visibly to separate

'For the literature, consult Emerton, Ephraim: "Medieval Europe, 8141300," Boston, 1894, chap. 14, pp. 477-508; Kugler, Bernhard: "Geschichte der Kreuzzüge," Berlin, 1880 (in Wilhelm Oncken's "Allgemeine Geschichte in Einzeldarstellungen," abt. II, vol. V); Prutz, Hans: "Kulturgeschichte der Kreuzzüge," Berlin, 1883; Henderson, Ernest F.: "Secret Historical Documents of the Middle Ages," book III pp. 333, etc., London, 1896 (Bohn's "Antiquarian Library"); Robinson, James H.: "An Introduction to the History of Western Europe," Boston, 1903, chap. 15; Duruy, Victor: "The History of the Middle Ages" (English translation of the 12th edition by Whitney, with notes by Professor Adams, New York, 1891, book VII, pp. 261-304.

into organized and differing groups, trade routes and access to the sea became determining elements of the social and political life. The church, like imperial Rome, had stamped a certain cosmopolitan character upon her agents. She alone was in a position to summon Europe to a defence of Western culture. Yet even while she did this, the crusades both weakened Rome and strengthened nationality. They weakened Rome by the exaltation of the military power and by bringing again an Eastern culture into direct contrast and contact with her own life (Arabic scholarship, etc.). Nationality was strengthened by the actual losses on the battle-field of the cosmopolitan military ruling class. The story of the relationship between commercial Judaism and the crusades, and of the growing power of this intellectually and spiritually highly gifted race from the time of Agobard's first anti-semitic outbursts (see page 290) to the time of Reuchlin, who was accused by his Catholic enemies of being paid by the Jews, has yet to be written. Instinctively ecclesiasticism recognized the Jews as a rival power, in that they offered a commercial cosmopolitanism as a substitute for the ecclesiastical bond. The enormous development of trade routes and seaport towns due to the crusades laid the foundation for that new industrial Europe which is even now transforming human thought and ideals.

The crusaders brought back from the East new science, new art, and many new inspirations, but also new vices and new doubts. On the principle that the best defence is a swift attack the crusades were not wholly failures, although at the end the Holy Sepulchre was still in Moslem hands. The crusades did, in fact, break the power of Mahometan invasion and stay the onward rush of Eastern culture.

They also shook the imperial papacy, partly by their relative failure, but still more by transferring the power of government to the armed secular force. Heroism and demoralization walked hand in hand. The saint and the runaway serf both fastened the cross to their sleeves, and democracy advanced as the fearful mortality of the Eastern wars carried off the flower of feudalism.

The trading free city grew from the lowly beginnings of fortified camps and centres for protection along the main thoroughfares, until it became a menace to the feudal land-owning nobility. The Middle Ages are full of the struggle for freedom and selfregulation on the part of the city, a struggle which not even the concessions of von Stein1 have yet quite ended in Germany. The crusades undoubtedly aided the growth of these centres, and the seaport republics, like Venice and Genoa, almost owed their greatest days to the supplying the needs of crusading armies.

Feudalism was weakened by the encroachments of the free city on its life, and the increasing power of nationalism has never been a strength to cosmopolitan imperial Romanism. True it is that she has at times played off nation against nation, but in the end she has always lost the game. When one reads of Cardinal Richelieu making war one year on the Huguenots and the next year a treaty with Christian IV to save what was left of Protestantism in the north of Europe, one realizes how far the national and dynastic interest, even in Roman Catholic France, outweighed the imperial dreams of Rome.

With this feudalism Roman Catholicism is firmly knit together. In every land where feudalism has been overthrown her ecclesiastical polity is an exotic (United States, England, France, and even Italy), and the weakening of feudalism in the lands she still dominates goes hand in hand with diminishment of her power.

The fixing of the final boundary between East and West by the fall of Constantinople (1452) and the recapture of Granada (1492) cleared, as it were, the way for the internal revolution, which we call the Reformation. Men's minds were so far set at rest and the fear of Moslem invasion has never since gravely affected the nerves of Europe. Now men began to seriously ask questions both of nature and of history. The spread of a new spirit of inquiry has been called the Illumination. And

1 Maurenbrecher, Max.: "Die Hohenzollern-Legende, Kulturbilder . . . aus dem 12 bis zum 20 Jahrhundert," vol. II, pp. 624–634, Berlin, 1905 and 1906.