Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/269

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REFORMED CHURCH 253 guishing between the Old and New Testaments. Both adopted the presbyterian polity ; but the Lutherans insisted more on the territorial rights of princes, while the Reformed empha- sized the rights of the people. The Reformed movement began in Switzerland, under the lead of Zwingli, the hero of Zurich, as early as 1516; in Basel it was headed by CEcolam- padius; Geneva was aroused by the intrepid Farel, and taught and organized by Calvin, who came thither, a refugee from France, in 1536. Switzerland was revolutionized by a grand popular movement. The same form of faith was planted in the Palatinate, where was formed the German Reformed church, under the elector Frederick III., combining the spirit of Melanchthon with that of Cal- vin. It was accepted in Bremen, 1561-'81 ; in Nassau, 1582; in Anhalt, 1596; in Hesse- Cassel, 1605; and even the elector of Bran- denburg, John Sigismund, adopted it in 1614. Its churches were also scattered in Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland. The first reforms in Spain and Italy, soon suppressed, were nour- ished in part under its teachings. In France it attained such vigor that in 1559 a general synod was formed at Paris, and its churches numbered about 2,000. But here they were decimated by religious wars, and by the mas- sacre of St. Bartholomew's, 1572, and en- feebled by the abjuration of Protestantism by Henry IV. The revocation of the edict of Nantes, Oct. 22, 1685, deprived 2,000,000 French Protestants of their religious securi- ty, and drove out half a million into all parts of Europe and America before the close of the century. The Reformed system was also introduced into Holland, where the reforma- tion found martyrs as early as 1523. The fierce struggle of the United Netherlands with Philip II. of Spain (1555-'98) was both for civil and religious freedom. The peace of "Westphalia in 1648 confirmed the rights and liberties of the Dutch church. In England the reformation at first advanced more slow- ly. Cranmer gave it shape, mainly in the sense of the Reformed symbols, under Ed- ward VI. The persecutions under Mary sent the most ardent of England's reformers to Zurich and Geneva, whence they brought back the seeds of Puritanism. But the Anglican church, though allied to the Reformed faith in its articles of religion, retained the epis- copate, and in its prayer book taught the ele- ments of the sacramental system. The act of uniformity (1559) led to a strong Puritan re- sistance ; and the conflict passed over into the 17th century, coming to its height in the civil war of 1642-'9, and the beheading of Laud and of King Charles. But the success under Cromwell was of short duration; and the strength of the Reformed influence was removed from England to America. In Scot- land it was firmly established under Knox's influence after his return from the continent in 1559, and organized by the " Solemn League and Covenant ;" and this land has never swerved from its loyalty to the faith of Geneva. In the form of Congregationalism, the same sys- tem of faith was transplanted to the new world by the pilgrims who landed on Plymouth rock, and by large subsequent immigrations ; in the form of Presbyterianism (including the German and Dutch Reformed churches), it was established in the middle and southern colonies by emigrants from Scotland, Ireland, England, and Holland ; and at no period since has it ceased to exert a strong and vital influence upon the principles and history of this coun- try. The Baptist churches of England and America adopt in the main the same system of faith. In other parts of the world, by colo- nization and emigration, the Reformed church is also widely diffused. In correspondence and harmony with this wide geographical diffusion, the Reformed church has also shown great productive power in respect to confessions of faith and systems of theology, which, while retaining the same essential features, have set forth different types of doctrine. In this re- spect it is distinguished from the Roman Cath- olic and the (orthodox) Lutheran communions. At the very beginning of the Reformed move- ment we find Zwingli and Calvin differing in their modes of expounding the common faith, the former resolving original sin into a natural defect, and cultivating theology more in the spirit of the man of letters. Even in Switzerland, besides the stricter traditional and scholastic method, exemplified by Heideg- ger, and brought to its consummation in Tur- retin, Stapfer also taught, in his able "Po- lemics," the mediate and not exclusively im- mediate imputation of Adam's sin. The fa- mous school of Saumur in France, under the impulse of the Scotchman Cameron and the guidance of Amyraut, abandoned the dog- ma of a limited atonement in favor of the scheme of a hypothetical universalism of di- vine grace. But the most fruitful seminary of these Calvinistic systems in the 17th century was Holland. Its divines were at first divi- ded between the supralapsarian and the infra- lapsarian schemes. The great Arminian con- troversy led to the convocation of the synod of Dort, 1618-'! 9, at which representatives attended from the English church as well as from other reformed communions ; and where, against the Remonstrants, the five points of Calvinism were articulately defined, viz. : 1, unconditional election ; 2, particular redemp- tion ; 3, total depravity ; 4, grace irresistible ; 5, the perseverance of the saints. Three prom- inent types of theology were represented in the subsequent religious development in the Netherlands : 1, the scholastic, advocated by Maresius, Wendelin, Gomarus, and Voetius ; 2, the federal theology, or the theology which takes the idea of covenants as its central con- ception, which received its fullest exposition in the works of Cocceius and Witsius, modify- ing the rigidity of the scholastic formulas by