Reformation, the historical name for the great religious movement of the 16th century, which divided the Latin Catholic church into two opposing sections, and resulted in the establishment of the various ecclesiastical organizations of evangelical or Protestant Christendom. There were many "reformers before the reformation," and almost every doctrine of Luther had its advocates long before him. The whole struggling of mediaeval Catholicism toward reform and liberty; the long conflict between the German emperors and the popes; the reformatory councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basel; the Waldenses and Albigenses in France and northern Italy; Wyclifl'e and the Lollards in England, Huss and the Hussites in Bohemia, Arnold of Brescia, and Savonarola with his politico-religious reform movement, in Italy; the spiritualistic piety and theology of the mystics of the 14th and 15th centuries; the theological writings of Wesel, Goch, and Wessel in Germany and the Netherlands; the rise of the national languages and letters in connection with the feeling of national independence; the invention of the printing press; the revival of letters and classical learning under the direction of Agricola, Reuchlin, and Erasmus; all these and many similar persons and movements were so many preparations for the reformation of the 16th century.

The reformation was originally neither a political nor a philosophical nor a literary, but a religious and moral movement. It started with the practical question: How can the troubled conscience find pardon and peace, and become sure of personal salvation? It retained from the Catholic system all the objective doctrines of Christianity concerning the Holy Trinity and the divine-human character and work of Christ - in fact, all the articles of faith contained in the apostles' and other oecumenical creeds of the early church. But it joined issue with the prevailing system of religion in soteriology, or in the doctrines relating to subjective experimental Christianity, especially the justification of the sinner before God, the true character of faith, good works, the rights of conscience, and the rule of faith. It asserted the principle of evangelical freedom as laid down in the epistles of Paul to the Romans and Galatians, in opposition to the system of outward legalistic authority which held the individual conscience and private judgment bound. It brought the believer into a direct relation and union with Christ as the one and all-sufficient source of salvation, in opposition to traditional ecclesi-asticism, and priestly and saintly intercession.

The Protestant goes directly to the word of God for instruction, and to the throne of grace in his devotions; while the pious Catholic always consults the teaching of his church, and often prefers to offer his prayers through the medium of the Virgin Mary and the saints. From this general principle of evangelical freedom and direct individual relationship of the believer to Christ proceed the two fundamental doctrines of Protestantism, the absolute supremacy of the word of Christ, and the absolute supremacy of the grace of Christ. The one is called the formal principle, or princi-pium cognoscendi; the other the material principle, or principium essendi. The former proclaims the canonical Scriptures (to the exclusion of the Apocrypha of the Old Testament), and more particularly the word of Christ and the apostles, to be the only and sufficient infallible source and rule of faith and practice, and asserts the right of private interpretation of the same; in distinction from the Roman Catholic view, which declares the Bible and tradition or church authority to be two coordinate sources and rules of faith, and makes tradition, especially the decrees of popes and councils, the only legitimate and infallible interpreter of the Bible. In its extreme form Chillingworth expressed this principle of the reformation in the well known formula: "The Bible, I say, the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants." Genuine Protestantism, however, by no means despises or rejects church authority as such, but only subordinates it to and measures its value by the Bible, and believes in a progressive interpretation of the Bible through the expanding and deepening consciousness of Christendom. Hence, besides having its own symbols or standards of public doctrine, it retained all the articles of the ancient Catholic creeds and a large amount of disciplinary and ritual tradition, and rejected only those doctrines and ceremonies of the Catholic church for which it found no clear warrant in the Bible, or which it thought contradicted its letter or spirit.

The Cal-vinistic branches of Protestantism went further in their antagonism to the received traditions than the Lutheran and the Anglican reformation; but all united in rejecting the authority of the pope (Melanchthon for a while was willing to concede this, but only jure humano, as a limited disciplinary super-intendency of the church), the meritoriousness of good works, the indulgences, the worship of the holy Virgin and of the saints and relics, the seven sacraments with the exception of baptism and the eucharist, the dogma of tran-substantiation and the sacrifice of the mass, purgatory and prayers for the dead, and the use of the Latin language in public worship, for which the vernacular languages were substituted. The other fundamental doctrine of the reformation has reference to the personal appropriation of the Christian salvation, and has for its object to give all glory to Christ by declaring that the sinner is justified before God, i. e., acquitted of guilt and declared righteous, solely on the ground of the all-sufficient merit of Christ as apprehended by a living faith; in opposition to the theory, then prevalent and substantially sanctioned by the council of Trent, which makes faith and good works the two coordinate sources of justification.

Genuine Protestantism does not, on that account, by any means reject or depreciate good works; it only denies their value as sources or conditions of justification, but insists on them as the necessary fruits of faith and evidence of justification. To these two prominent principles of the reformation, which materially affect its theology and religious life, must be added the doctrine of the universal priesthood of believers, and the right and duty of the laity not only to read the Bible in the vernacular tongue, but also to take part in the government and all the public affairs of the church. - We now present an outline of the history of the reformation in the various countries in which it finally succeeded, leaving out Bohemia, Italy, and Spain, where it was suppressed by the combined opposition of the secular and ecclesiastical authorities.

I. The Reforma-Tion In Germany

The movement in Germany was directed by the genius and energy of Luther and the learning and moderation of Melanchthon, assisted by princes, especially the electors of Saxony, and sustained by the majority of the people in spite of the opposition of the bishops and the imperial government. It commenced in the university of Wittenberg with the protest against the traffic in indulgences, Oct. 31, 1517 (ever since celebrated in Protestant Germany as the festival of the reformation), and soon became a powerful popular movement. At first it moved within the bosom of Catholicism. Luther shrunk in holy horror from the idea of a separation from the religion of his fathers. He only attacked a few abuses, taking it for granted that the pope himself would condemn them if properly informed. But the irresistible logic of events carried him far beyond his original intentions, and brought him into irreconcilable conflict with the central authority of the church. Pope Leo X., in June, 1520, pronounced the sentence of excommunication against Luther, who burned the bull together with the canon law and several books of his opponents. The diet of Worms in 1521, where he made his memorable defence, added to the excommunication of the pope the ban of the emperor.

But the dissatisfaction with the various abuses of Rome and the desire for the free preaching of the gospel were so extensive, that the reformation both in its negative and positive features spread in spite of these decrees, and gained a foothold before 1530 in the greater part of northern Germany, especially in Saxony, Brandenburg, Hesse, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Lüneburg, Friesland, and in nearly all the free cities, as Hamburg, Lübeck, Bremen, Magdeburg, Frankfort, and Nuremberg; while in Austria, Bavaria, and along the Rhine it was persecuted and suppressed. Among the principal causes of this rapid progress were the writings of the reformers, Luther's German version of the Scriptures, and the evangelical hymns, which introduced the new ideas into public worship. The diet of Spire in 1526 left each state to its own discretion concerning the question of reform until a general council should settle it for all, and thus sanctioned the principle of territorial independence in matters of religion which prevails in Germany to this day, each sovereignty having its own separate ecclesiastical establishment and organization in close union with the state. But the next diet of Spire, in 1529, prohibited the further progress of the reformation.

Against this decree of the Catholic majority the evangelical princes entered, on the ground of the word of God, the inalienable rights of conscience, and the decree of the previous diet of Spire, the celebrated protest, dated April 19, 1529, which gave rise to the name of Protestants. The diet of Augsburg in 1530, where the Lutherans offered their principal confession of faith, drawn up by Melanchthon and named after that city, threatened the Protestants with violent measures if they did not return shortly to the old church. Here closes the first and most eventful period of the German reformation. The second period embraces the formation of the Protestant league of Smalcald for the armed defence of Lutheranism, the various theological conferences of the two parties for an adjustment of the controversy, the death of Luther, the imperial interims or compromises (the Ratis-bon, Augsburg, and Leipsic interims), and the Smalcaldian war, and ends with the success of the Protestant army under Maurice of Saxony and the peace of Augsburg in 1555, which secured to the Lutheran states the free exercise of their religion, but with a restriction on its further progress.

The third period, from 1555 to 1580, is remarkable for the violent internal controversies of the Lutheran church: the Osiandrian controversy, concerning justification and sanctification; the adiaphoristic, arising originally from the fruitless compromises or interims; the synergistic, concerning faith and good works; and the crypto-Calvin-istic or sacramentarian controversy about the real presence. These theological disputes led on the one hand to the full development of the doctrinal system of Lutheranism as laid down in the "Book of Concord" (first published in 1580), which embraces all the symbolical books of that church, namely, the three oecumenical creeds, the Augsburg confession and its "Apology" by Melanchthon, the two catechisms of Luther and the Smalcald articles drawn up by him in 1537, and the "Formula of Concord," composed by six Lutheran divines in 1577. But on the other hand, the fanatical intolerance of the strict Lutheran party against the Calvinists and the. moderate Lutherans, called after their leader Melanchthonians or Philippists, drove a large number of the latter over to the Reformed church, especially in the Palatinate (1560), in Bremen (1561), Nassau (1582), Anhalt (1596), Hesse-Cassel (1605), and Brandenburg (1614). The German Reformed communion adopted the Heidelberg catechism, drawn up by two moderate Calvinistic divines, Zacharias Ursinus and Kaspar Olevianus, in 1562, by order of the elector Frederick III. or the Pious, as their confession of faith.

The 16th century closes the theological history of the German reformation; but its political history was not brought to a final termination until after the terrible thirty years' war, by the treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which secured to the Lutherans and the German Reformed churches (but to no others) equal rights with the Roman Catholics within the limits of the German empire. Those two denominations, either in their separate existence or united in one organization (as in Prussia and other states since 1817), are to this day almost the only forms of Protestantism recognized and supported by the German governments, all others being small self-supporting sects, regarded with little sympathy by the popular mind. But within those ecclesiastical establishments Germany has bred and tolerated during the present century almost every imaginable form of theoretic belief, from the strictest old school orthodoxy to the loosest rationalism and skepticism. Since the third jubilee of the reformation (1817), however, there has been a gradual and steady return from neology to the original evangelical Protestantism.

II. The Reformation In Switzerland

This was contemporaneous with, but independent of, the German reformation, and resulted in the formation of the Reformed communion as distinct from the Lutheran. In all the essential principles and doctrines, except that on the mode of Christ's presence in the eucharist, the Helvetic reformation agreed with the German; but it departed further from the received traditions in matters of government, discipline, and worship, and aimed at a more radical moral and practical reformation of the people. It naturally divides itself into three periods: the Zwinglian, from 1516 to 1531; the Calvinistic, to the death of Calvin in 1564; and the period of Bullinger and Beza, to the close of the 16th century. The first belongs mainly to the German cantons, the second to the French, the third to both jointly. Zwingli began his reformatory preaching against various abuses at Einsiedeln in 1516, and then with more energy and effect at Zürich in 1519. His object was to "preach Chirist from the fountain," and to "insert the pure Christ into the heart." At first he had the consent of the bishop of Constance, who assisted him in putting down the sale of indulgences in Switzerland, and he stood even in high credit with the papal nuncio.

But a rupture occurred in 1522, "when Zwingli attacked the fasts as a human invention, and many of his hearers ceased to observe them. The magistrates of Zürich arranged a public disputation in January and another in October, 1523, to settle the whole controversy. On both occasions Zwingli, backed by the authorities and the great majority of the people, triumphed over his papal opponents. In 1526 the churches of the city and the neighboring villages were cleared of images and shrines, and a simple, almost puritanic mode of worship took henceforward the place of the Roman Catholic mass. The Swiss diet took a hostile attitude to the Reformed movement, similar to that of the German diet, with a respectable minority in its favor. To settle the controversy for the republic, a general theological conference was arranged and held at Baden, Aar-gau, in May, 1526, with Dr. Eck, the famous antagonist of Luther, as the champion of the Roman, and (Ecolampadius of the Reformed cause. Its result was in form adverse, but in fact favorable to the cause of the reformation.

It was now introduced in the majority of the cantons, at the wish of the magistrates and the people; by oecolampadius in Basel and Haller in Bern, also in part in St. Gall, Schaffhausen, Glarus, Appenzell, Thurgau, and the Grisons; while in the French portions of Switzerland William Farel and Viret prepared the way for Calvin. But the small cantons around the lake of Lucerne, Uri, Schwytz, Unterwalden, Lucerne, and Zug, steadfastly opposed every innovation. At last it came to an open war between the Reformed and Catholic cantons. Zwingli's policy was overruled by the apparently more humane, but in fact more cruel and disastrous policy of Bern, to force the poor mountaineers into measures by starvation. The Catholics, resolved to maintain their rights, attacked and routed the small army of Zürichers in the battle of Cappel, October, 1531. Zwingli, who had accompanied his flock as chaplain and patriot, met a heroic death on the field of battle, and Oecolampadius of Basel followed him in a few weeks. Thus the progress of the reformation was suddenly arrested in the German portions of Switzerland, and one third of it remains Catholic to this day. But it took a new start in the western or French cantons, and rose there to a higher position than ever.

Soon after this critical juncture the great master mind of the Reformed church, who was to carry forward, to modify, and to complete the work of Zwingli, and to rival Luther in influence, began to attract the attention of the public. John Calvin, a Frenchman by birth and education, but exiled from his native land for his faith, found providentially a new home in 1536 in the little republic of Geneva, where Farel had prepared the way. Here he developed his extraordinary talents and energy as the greatest divine and disciplinarian of the reformation, and made Geneva the model church for the Reformed communion, and a hospitable asylum for persecuted Protestants of every nation. His theological writings, especially the "Institutes" and "Commentaries," exerted a formative influence on all Reformed churches and confessions of faith; while his legislative genius developed the presbyterian form of government, which rests on the principle of ministerial equality and of a popular representation of the congregation by lay elders, aiding the pastors in maintaining discipline and promoting the spiritual prosperity of the people.

Calvin died after a most active and devoted life in 1564, and left in Theodore Beza (died 1605) an able and worthy successor, who partly with Bullinger, the faithful successor of Zwingli in Zürich, and author of the second Helvetic confession (1566), labored to the close of the 16th century for the consolidation of the Swiss reformation and the spread of its principles in France, Holland, Germany, England, and Scotland.

III. The Reformation In France

While the reformation in Germany and Switzerland carried with it the majority of the population, it met in France with the united opposition of the court, the hierarchy, and the popular sentiment, and had to work its way through severe trial and persecution. The tradition in that country was favorable to a change, as France had always maintained a certain degree of independence of Rome, and as the university of Paris, once the centre of European intelligence and culture, had strongly urged a thorough reformation in capite et membris on the councils of the 15th century. The first professed Protestants in France were Lefèvre, Wolmar, Farel, Viret, Marot, Olivetan, Calvin, and Beza, all men of distinguished learning and ability; but most of them had to seek safety in exile. It was only after the successful establishment of the reformation in French Switzerland that the movement became serious in the neighboring kingdom. Calvin and Beza may be called the fathers of the French Reformed church. Their pupils returned as missionaries to their native land.

The first Protestant congregation was formed at Paris in 1555, and the first synod held in the same city in 1559. In 1561 the theological conference at Poissy took place, where Theodore Beza eloquently but vainly pleaded the cause of the Protestants before the dignitaries of the Roman church, and where the name Reformed originated. In 1571 the general synod at La Rochelle adopted the Gallican confession and a system of government and discipline essentially Calvinistic, yet modified by the peculiar circumstances of a church not in union with the state, as in Geneva, but in antagonism with it. The movement here unavoidably assumed a political character, and led to a series of civil wars which distracted France till the close of the 16th century. The Roman Catholic party, backed by the majority of the population, was headed by the dukes of Guise, who derived their descent from Charlemagne and looked to the throne, then occupied by the house of Valois. The Protestant (or Huguenot) party, numerically weaker, but containing some of the noblest blood and best talent of France, was headed by the princes of Navarre, the next heirs to the throne and descendants of Hugh Capet. The queen regent Catharine, during the minority of her sons, Francis II. and Charles IX., although decidedly Roman Catholic in sentiment, tried to keep the rival parties in check in order to rule over both.

But the champions of Rome took possession of Paris, while the prince of Condé occupied Orleans. Three civil wars followed in rapid succession, when the court and the duke of Guise resorted to treason, and concerted a wholesale slaughter of the Huguenots, Aug. 24, 1572, the leaders of the party having been expressly invited to Paris to attend the marriage of Prince Henry of Navarre with a sister of Charles IX. as a general feast of reconciliation. (See Bartholomew, Saint, Massacre of, and Huguenots.) But the party was only diminished in number, by no means annihilated. Other civil wars followed with varying fortune, and terminated at last in the victory of Prince Henry of Navarre, who, after the assassination of Henry III. in 1589 by a Dominican monk, became king of France as Henry IV. This seemed to decide the triumph of Protestantism in France. But the Roman party, still more numerous and powerful, and supported by Spain and the pope, elected a rival head and threatened to plunge the country into new bloodshed.

Then Henry, from political and patriotic motives, but apparently not from religious conviction, abjured the Protestant faith, in which he had been brought up, and professed the Roman Catholic religion (1593), saying that Paris and the peace of France were "worth a mass." At the same time, however, he secured to his former associates, then numbering about 760 congregations throughout the kingdom, in spite of the remonstrance of the pope and the bishops, a legal existence and the right of the free exercise of religion, by the celebrated edict of Nantes in 1598, which closes the stormy period of the French reformation. But the Reformed church in France, after flourishing for a time, was overwhelmed with new disasters under the despotism of Richelieu, and finally the revocation of the edict of Nantes by Louis XIV. in 1685 reduced it to a "church of the desert;" yet it survived the most cruel persecutions at home, and enriched by thousands of exiles the population of every Protestant country in Europe and America.

IV. The Reformation In The Netherlands

The Reformation In The Netherlands was kindled partly by Lutheran influences from Germany, but mostly by Reformed and Calvinistic influences from Switzerland and France. Its first martyrs, Esch and Voes, were burned at Antwerp in 1523. The despotic arm of Charles V. and his son Philip II. resorted to the severest measures for crushing the rising spirit of religious and political liberty. The duke of Alva surpassed the persecuting heathen emperors of Rome in cruelty, and, according to Grotius, destroyed the lives of 100,000 Dutch Protestants during the six years of his regency (1567-73). Finally the seven northern provinces formed a federal republic, first under the leadership of William of Orange, and after his assassination (1584) under his son Maurice, and after a long and heroic struggle accomplished their severance from the church of Rome and the Spanish crown. The southern provinces remained Roman Catholic and subject to Spain. The first Dutch Reformed synod was held at Dort in 1574, and in the next year the university of Leyden was founded.

The Protestantism of Holland is predominantly Calvinistic, and adopts as its doctrinal and disciplinary standards the Heidelberg catechism as published (in Latin and German) in 1563, the Bel-gic confession of 1561, and the articles of the synod of Dort of 1618-19. This important synod was held in consequence of the Armin-ian controversy, which violently agitated the country at that time. The Arminians or Remonstrants, differing in five points from the Calvinists, and holding to the freedom of the will and a conditional predestination, were condemned by the synod of Dort, but continued as a tolerated sect, and exerted, through the writings of their distinguished scholars and divines, Arminius, Hugo Grotius, Episcopius, Limborch, and Le Clerc (Clericus), considerable influence upon Protestant theology in England, France, and Germany during the 18th century. The orthodox church of Holland has been represented in the United States since 1609 by the Reformed Protestant Dutch church (now the "Reformed church in America"), the oldest save one of the denominations in the United States.

V. The Reformation In Hungary

This country was first brought into contact with the reform movement by disciples of Luther and Melanchthon, who had studied at Wittenberg, after 1524. Ferdinand I. granted to some magnates and cities liberty of worship, and Maximilian II. (1564-'7'6) increased it. The synod of Erdöd in 1545 organized the Lutheran, and the synod of Csen-ger in 1557 the Reformed church. The German settlers mostly adopted the Augsburg confession, the national Magyars the Helvetic. Rudolph II. having suppressed religious liberty, Prince Stephen Bocskay of Transylvania, strengthened by his alliance with the Turks, reconquered by force of arms (1606) full toleration for the Lutherans and Calvinists in Hungary and Transylvania, which, under his successors Bethlen Gábor and George Rákóczy I., was confirmed by the treaties of Nikolsburg (1622) and Linz (1645). In Transylvania So-cinianism also found a refuge, and has maintained itself to this day.

VI. The Reformation In Poland

Fugitive Bohemian Brethren or Hussites and the writings of the German reformers started the movement in Poland. King Sigismund Augustus (1548-72) favored it and corresponded with Calvin. The most distinguished Protestant of that country was Jan Laski, or John à Lasco, a Cal-vinist, who fled from Poland for his faith, was called back by the Protestant nobility, aided by several friends translated the Bible, and labored for the union of the Reformed and Lutherans (died 1560). A compromise between the two parties was effected by the general synod of Sandomir (Consensus Sendomiriensis) in 1570; but subsequently internal dissensions, the increase of Socinianism, and the efforts of the Jesuits greatly interfered with the prosperity of Protestantism in that country. The German provinces now belonging to Russia, Courland, Livonia, and Esthonia, opened likewise the door to the reformation, and adopted the Augsburg confession.

VII. The Reformation In Scandinavia

The reformers of Sweden were two brothers, Olaf and Lars Peterson, or Petri, disciples of Luther, who after 1519 preached against the existing state of the church. Gustavus Vasa, who delivered the country from the Danes and became king in 1523, favored Protestantism from political and mercenary motives; the whole country, including the bishops, followed without much difficulty. He appropriated a large portion of the wealth of the church to meet the expenses of his wars and administration. The synod of Örebro in 1529 sanctioned the reform, and the synod of Upsal in 1593, after a fruitless attempt to reconcile the country to Rome, confirmed and completed it. Sweden adopted the Lutheran creed, to the exclusion of every other, and retained the episcopal form of government in the closest union with the state. It did great service to the cause of Protestantism in Europe, through its gallant king Gustavus Adolphus, in the thirty years' war; and recently the intolerant laws against dissenters have been almost completely abolished.

Denmark became likewise an exclusively Lutheran country, with an episcopal form of state-church government, under Christian III. A diet at Copenhagen in 1536 destroyed the political power of the Roman clergy, and divided most of the church's property between the crown and the nobility. The remaining third was devoted to the new ecclesiastical organization. Bugenhagen of Wittenberg was then called to complete the reform. From Denmark the reformation passed over to Norway about 1536. The archbishop of Drontheim fled with the treasures of the church to Holland; another bishop resigned; a third was imprisoned; and the lower clergy were left the choice between exile and submission to the new order of things, which most of them preferred. Iceland, then subject to Danish rule, likewise submitted to the Danish reform.

VIII. The Reformation In England

The struggle between the old and the new religion lasted longer and raged more fearfully in England and Scotland than on the continent, and continued in successive shocks even down to the end of the 17th century, for Puritanism was a second reformation; but it left in the end a very strong impression upon the character of the nation, and affected deeply its political and social institutions. In theology English Protestantism was dependent upon the continental reform, especially the ideas and principles of Calvin; but it displayed greater practical energy and power of organization. It was from the start a political as well as a religious movement, and hence it afforded a wider scope to the corrupting influence of selfish ambition and violent passion than the reformation in Germany and Switzerland; but it passed also through severer trials and persecutions. In the English reformation we distinguish five periods. The first, from 1527 to 1547, witnessed the abolition of the authority of the Roman papacy under Henry VIII. This was merely a negative and destructive process, which removed the outward obstruction and prepared the way for the reform.

Henry VIII. quarrelled with the pope on purely personal and selfish grounds, because the pope properly refused consent to his divorce from Catharine of Aragon and his marriage to Anne Boleyn. "The defender of the faith," a title given him by the pope for the defence of the seven sacraments against Luther, remained in doctrine and religious sentiment a Roman Catholic to the end of his life; and at his death the so-called "bloody articles," which enjoined under the severest penalties the dogma of transubstantiation, auricular confession, private masses, and the celibacy of the priesthood, were yet in full force. The only point of radical difference was the royal supremacy. He simply substituted a domestic for the foreign, and a political for an ecclesiastical papacy, and punished with equal severity Protestant as well as Roman Catholic dissenters who dared to doubt his supreme headship of the church of England. But while he thus destroyed the power of the pope and of mo-nasticism in England, a far deeper and more important movement went on among the people under the influence of the revived traditions of Wycliffe and the Lollards, the writings of the continental reformers, and the English version of the Scriptures commenced by Tyndale, carried on by Coverdale and Rogers, and revised by Cranmer. The second period embraces the reign of Edward VI., from 1547 to 1553, and contains the positive introduction of the reformation by the cooperation mainly of the duke of Somerset, protector and regent during the king's minority, and Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, who by his pliable conduct and subserviency to the will of Henry had preserved the idea and hope of a reformation through that reign of terror.

Cranmer was assisted in the work by Ridley and Latimer, and by several Reformed divines from the continent whom he called to England, especially Martin Bucer of Strasburg, now elected professor at Cambridge, and Peter Martyr of Zürich (originally from Italy), for some time professor at Oxford. The most important works of this period, and in fact of the whole English reformation, next to the English version of the Bible, are the 42 articles of religion (subsequently reduced to 39), or a new and moderately Calvinistic confession of faith, and the "Book of Common Prayer," or a new directory of worship in the vernacular tongue, on the basis of the old Latin service, but with essential changes. The third period is the reign of Queen Mary, from 1553 to 1558, and presents to us the unsuccessful attempt of that queen and her friend Cardinal Pole, now made archbishop of Canterbury after the deposition of Cranmer, to undo the reformation and to restore the Roman Catholic religion and the authority of the pope.

This Catholic interim did more to consolidate the reformation in England than Henry, Edward, and Elizabeth. Hundreds were martyred in this short reign, among them the three British reformers, Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer, who were publicly burned at Oxford in 1555 and 1556. Many others fled to the continent, especially to Geneva, Zürich, Basel, and Frankfort, where they were hospitably received and brought into closer contact with the Reformed churches of Switzerland and Germany. The fourth period is the restoration and permanent establishment of the Anglican reformation during the long reign of Elizabeth, 1558 to 1603. The Roman Catholic hierarchy was replaced by a Protestant, and the articles of religion and the common prayer book of the reign of Edward were introduced again, after a revision. The ecclesiastical supremacy of the crown was likewise renewed, but under a modified form, the queen refusing the title "supreme head" of the church of England, and choosing in its place the less objectionable title "supreme governor." The convocation and parliament readily sanctioned all these changes; but 'the Anglican church as established by Elizabeth was semi-Catholic in its form of prelatical government and liturgical worship, a sort of via media between Rome and Geneva. It suited the policy of the court and the taste of the majority of the English people, but was offensive to the severer school of strict Calvinists who had returned from their continental exile.

Hence the agitation in the bosom of the reformed church of England, and the growing conflict between the Episcopalian majority and the puritanic minority. Elizabeth's reign was as intolerant against Puritan as against papal dissenters, and passed the severest penal laws against both. But while the Catholic party was almost annihilated in England, the Puritan party grew more powerful under the successors of Elizabeth, and overthrew the dynasty of the Stuarts, and even the Episcopalian establishment, although the latter revived from the shock. These troubles and agitations constitute the fifth period in the history of English Protestantism, which in some respects is the most important and interesting, but lies beyond the age of the reformation proper.

IX. The Reformation In Scotland

The first impulse to the reformation in Scotland proceeded from Germany and Switzerland. Copies of the writings of the continental reformers and of Tyndale's English Testament found their way to the far north. The first preacher and martyr of Protestantism in that country was Patrick Hamilton, a youth of royal blood, and for some time a student at Wittenberg and Marburg, who was condemned to death by Archbishop Beaton and burned at the stake. The movement gradually increased in spite of persecution, especially after the rupture of England with the pope, and was carried to a successful conclusion under the guidance of John Knox. He was a disciple and admirer of John Calvin, with whom he spent several years. He returned after the accession of Elizabeth to his native country, resolved to reform the Scotch church after the model of the church of Geneva. After a short civil war the parliament of 1560 introduced the reformation, and adopted a Calvinistic confession of faith, drawn up by Knox, Spottswood, Row, and others (superseded afterward by the Westminster standards), and prohibited under severe penalties the exercise of the Roman Catholic worship.

In 1561 the first "Book of Discipline" was issued, and gave the new church a complete presbyterian organization, culminating in a general assembly of ministers and elders. The mode of worship was reduced to the greatest simplicity, with a decided predominance of the didactic element. When the unfortunate Mary Stuart, of French education, tastes, and manners, and in no sympathy with the public opinion of Scotland, began her reign in August, 1561, she made an attempt to restore the Roman Catholic religion, to which she was sincerely devoted. But her own imprudences and the determined resistance of the nation frustrated her plans, and after her flight to England (1568) Protestantism was again declared the only religion of Scotland, and received formal legal sanction under the regency of Murray. - Among the numerous historians of the reformation, in whole or in part, the following deserve special mention: Sleidan, De Statu Religionis et Reipublicoe Carolo V. Coesare (Strasburg, 1555); Beza, L'Histoire ecclésiastique des églises réformées au royaume de France, etc. (3 vols., Lille, 1580); Burnet, "Reformation in England" (3 vols. fol., London, 1679-1714); Seckendorf, Commentarius Historicus et Apologeticus de Lutheranismo (3 vols. fol., Leipsic, 1686-'92); Strype, "Annals of the Reformation" (4 vols. fol., London, 1709-'31), and "Ecclesiastical Memorials" (3 vols. fol., 1721), and his lives of Cranmer, Parker, Knox, McCrie, Hetherington, and others; Schröckh, Christliche Kirchengeschichte seit der Reformation (10 vols., Leipsic, 1804-12); Marheineke, Geschichte der deutschen Reformation (4 vols., Berlin, 1816-34); Hottinger, Geschichte der schweizerischen Kirchentren-nung (2 vols., Zürich, 1825-7); Ruchat, His-toire de la réformation de la Suisse (6 vols., Geneva, 1727); Merle d'Aubigné, Histoire de la réformation au XVIe siècle (5 vols., Paris, 1835-53), and Histoire de la réformation au temps de Calvin (5 vols., 1862-'8; vol. vi., 1875), both works translated into English; the English translation of vol. iv. of Gieseler's Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte (New York, 1858), valuable for its extracts from original authorities; L. Haüsser, Geschichte des Zeital-ters der Reformation (Berlin, 1868; English translation, 1874); and George P. Fisher, "History of the Reformation" (New York, 1873).