394
ESSAYS ON LIBERTY
the Reformation. The defective account of the Albi. gensian theology, which he had sent to one of his trans- lators, never appeared in GenTIan. At Paris he searched the library for the missing information, and he asked Rességuier to make inquiry for the records of the In- quisition in Languedoc, thus laying the foundations of that Se!.:tengeschichte which he published fifty years later. Munich offered such inexhaustible supplies for the Re- formation that his collections overran all bounds. He completed only that part of his plan which included Lutheranism and the sixteenth century. The third volume, published in 1848, containing the theology of the Reformation, is the most solid of his writings. He had miscalculated, not his resources, of which only a part had come into action, but the possibilities of con- centration and compression. The book was left a fragment when he had to abandon his study for the Frankfort barricades. The peculiarity of his treatment is that he contracts the Reformation into a history of the doctrine of justification. He found that this and this alone \vas the essential point in Luther's mind, that he made it the basis of his argument, the motive of his separation, the root and principle of his religion. He believed that Luther was right in the cardinal importance he attributed to this doctrine in his system, and he in his turn recognised that it was the cause of all that followed, the source of the reformer's popularity and success, the sole insurmountable obstacle to every scheme of restoration. It was also, for him, the centre and the basis of his antagonism. That was the point that he attacked when he combated Protestantism, and he held all \other elements of conflict cheap in comparison, deeming that they are not invariable, or not incurable, or not supremely serious. Apart from this, there \vas much in Protestantism that he admired, much in its effects for which he was grateful. With the Lutheran view of imputation, Protestant and Catholic were separated by an abyss. Without it, there was no lasting reason why they should be separate at all. Against the
