284

CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY CONNECTED.

[Book V. that the Tudors became the most absolute monarchs that had ever swayed the English sceptre. It was also in a great measure from this cause that the Electorate of Brandenburg was developed into the powerful Kingdom of Prussia. In those countries also where the Reformation, though partially introduced, did not succeed in establishing itself, its effects were at first favourable to the power of the sovereign, on the same principle that the quelling of an ineffectual rebellion is so. We have already adverted to this effect, in the case of some of the German monarchies; and the reader has seen how the religious wars of France enabled the crown to reduce the power of the great nobles, and to concentrate the strength of the kingdom in its own hands; a work at length consummated by the policy of Richelieu. Hence, generally speaking, and with regard more especially to the European continent, never was monarchical power displayed in greater fullness than in the period comprised in the present volume, extending from the Peace of Westphalia to the first French Revolution. Most of the wars of that era, certainly all the larger and more devastating ones, were waged for dynastic interests and kingly glory.

It was impossible, however, that the impetus given to the human mind by the bursting of its religious bonds should be altogether arrested and destroyed. It could not be that the spirit of inquiry, when once awakened, and directed to all the branches of human knowledge, should not also embrace the dearest interests of manthe question of his well-being in society, of his right to civil liberty. This question, as we have said, was first practically solved in Holland. Yet it was not a solution calculated to establish a theoretical precedent. The revolt of the Dutch can hardly be called a domestic revolution. It was an insurrection against a foreign sovereign; nor was it in its essence an appeal to the people, as the only legitimate source of power. To establish a commonwealth, so far from being the object of the Dutch, was not even at first contemplated by them. They became republicans only because they could find no eligible master, and because it was the only method by which they could maintain their ancient rights. The true solution was first given in England. The absurd theories respecting kingly power, ostentatiously ventilated by a sovereign with more pretensions, but less strength of character, than the Tudors, as well as his affectation of high church principles verging upon Romanism, incited the ultra, or Calvinistic, followers of the Reformation to a course of resistance that cost Charles I. his crown

19

19 See Vol. II. P. 310 sq.

CHAP. VIII.]

RELIGIOUS SECTS.

285

and his life, and ultimately, through a long chain of consequences, resulted in establishing constitutional monarchy. It was these precedents, and the debates and discussions with which they were attended, the free utterances of the only truly national assembly in Europe, and the writings of men like Milton, Sidney, Locke and others, that established not only for England, but all Europe, the true model of liberty combined with law and order. It was from this source that France chiefly derived the principles which led to the Revolution; but the inquiry how she derived, and how she perverted, them, must be postponed to the next volume. Our object here was merely to show that civil liberty in modern times was mainly the offspring of the religious freedom established by the Reformation; nor can it be doubted that the impulse of that great movement is still in operation, although its effects may not be so easily traceable.

It remains to view a few religious phases of the period under consideration. In conformity with its general spirit, fanaticism itself seemed to assume a milder and more chronic form than in the exciting period of the Reformation. Instead of the Anabaptists and their atrocious absurdities, we find the Pietists and the Moravian Brethren. Even the Roman Catholic Church has its sects of a somewhat analogous kind.

20

The Pietists were founded by Philip Jacob Spener.2 Born at Rappoltsweiler in Upper Alsace, in 1635, Spener became a preacher at Strasburg, and subsequently principal minister at Frankfort. Instead of the dogmatical subtleties which had been the chief themes of the Lutheran preachers, he endeavoured to introduce a system of practical Christianity; and with this view he began in 1670 to hold private prayer meetings, which he called Collegia Pietatis-whence the name of his followers. In these meetings, texts from the Bible were discussed in a conversational manner. His system, which is explained in his work entitled Pia Desideria, was intended to put the finishing hand to Luther's Reformation, which he considered as only half completed. Such a system naturally led to separatism, or dissent, which, however, he himself disclaimed. His sect may be regarded as a sort of German Methodists, or, as we might say, Low Church party. In 1686 John George III., Elector of Saxony, invited Spener to Dresden. The old Lutheran orthodoxy, by laying too much stress upon the saving power of faith, had caused many of its followers to neglect alto

20 Mr. Carlyle, in his Hist. of Friedrich II., vol. ii. p. 18, erroneously ascribes the foundation of the Pictists to

August Hermann Franke, instead of Spener. Franke, a much younger man, was one of Spener's followers.

286

PIETISTS AND MORAVIAN BRETHREN.

[Book V. gether the practice as well as the doctrine of good works. If they attended church punctually, communicated regularly, and discharged all the other outward observances of religion, they considered that they had done enough for their justification, and were not over strict about the morality of their conduct. The Elector himself may be included in this category, and some remonstrances of Spener's, which were considered too free, caused his dismissal from Dresden in 1691. Spener now went to Berlin, and in 1705

he died at Halle.

One of Spener's most celebrated followers was Count Nicholas Louis von Zinzendorf, born at Dresden in 1700. The inclination which Zinzendorf displayed in early youth towards the sect of the Pietists, induced his friends to send him to Paris, with the view of diverting his mind from such thoughts. But his stay in that capital (1719-21) was precisely the period when the Jansenist controversy was at its height; the discussion of which subject, as well as his intercourse with Cardinal Noailles, only served to increase his religious enthusiasm. After his return to Dresden, Zindendorf began to hold Collegia Pietatis in imitation of Spener's. At these meetings he became acquainted with Christian David, a journeyman carpenter of Fulnek in Moravia. It was in the neighbourhood of Fulnek that the Bohemian Brethren, the last remnants of the Hussites, had contrived to maintain themselves, by ostensibly complying with the dominant church, whilst in private they retained the religion of their forefathers.21 Some inquisitions made by the Imperial Government in 1720 having compelled the members of this sect to emigrate, Christian David proceeded to Dresden, where, as we have said, he became acquainted with Count Zinzendorf, and obtained permission to settle, with some of his brethren, on that nobleman's estate of Bertholdsdorf in the neighbourhood of Zittau in Lusatia. The first colony was planted on the Hutberg in 1722, and was called Herrn-hut (the Lord's care). The creed of the Moravian Brethren seems to have been an indiscriminate mixture of Lutheran and Calvinistic tenets with those of their own sect. Count Zinzendorf added to these some peculiar notions of his own; establishing as his main dogma the wounds and sacrifice of Christ; or, as he styled it, the Blood and Cross Theology. In 1737 he procured himself to be named bishop of this new sect. Frederick II. of Prussia, after his conquest of Silesia, protected the rising colony, and allowed it the open and independent exercise of its worship. The numbers of the Herrnhüter, or, as we call them,

21 Menzel, B. iii. S. 481; B. iv. Kap. 39.

CHAP. VIII.]

JANSENISM.

287

Moravian Brethren, soon wonderfully increased, and they spread themselves in most parts of the world. Count Zinzendorf died in 1760, at Herrnhut, which is still a flourishing little town.

Of the sects which sprang up in the Roman Catholic Church, the most celebrated was that of the Jansenists, so called from its founder, Cornelius Janssen, a Fleming. Educated at Louvain, which he quitted in 1617, Janssen ultimately became Bishop of Ypres. The distinguishing feature of his system was the adoption in their most rigid form of the tenets of St. Augustine respecting predestination and absolute decrees. In fact Jansenius and his followers, except that they retained some of the sacraments of the Romish Church, and especially that of the Eucharist, approached more nearly the doctrines of Calvin than those of Rome. Jansenius explained his views in his book entitled Augustinus.

Jansenism was introduced into France by Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, the friend and fellow-collegian of Janssen. Duvergier, by birth a Basque, became abbot of the little monastery of St. Cyran, in Provence; an office which he refused to exchange for the episcopal mitre. In 1635, St. Cyran became the spiritual director of Mother Angelica (Angelica Arnaud), the Superior of Port-Royal, the celebrated Parisian convent of Benedictine nuns.22 Under the auspices of St. Cyran, Jansenism became the creed of the Society. Like other apostles, however, St. Cyran had to endure persecution. Neither the political nor the religious tenets of the Jansenists were agreeable to Cardinal Richelieu. The Bishop of Ypres had violently opposed and denounced Richelieu's designs upon Lorraine and the Spanish Netherlands in a pamphlet entitled Mars Gallicus. St. Cyran himself, suspected on account of his connection with an enemy of France, had opposed the cassation of the marriage of the king's brother, Gaston d'Orléans, with Margaret of Lorraine.23 His own freely expressed opinions and those of his disciples of Port Royal respecting kings were but ill suited to royal ears in those days. He had also offended Richelieu by haughtily repulsing all his advances and repeatedly refusing the offer of a bishopric. In May 1638 a lettre de cachet transferred St. Cyran to the dungeon of Vincennes. Persecution, however, as usual, served only to attract attention and add a new interest to his life and opinions. Port Royal acquired more influence than ever. It was now that

22 The original Port Royal was at Chévreuse, about eighteen miles west of Paris. In 1626, the community was transferred to the Rue de la Bourbe in the Faubourg St. Jacques of that capital; and subsequently it was divided into two

establishments, Port Royal de Paris and Port Royal des Champs. For the history of this celebrated institution, see the works of Racine and Sainte Beuve.

23 For these occurrences, see Vol. II. p. 586 sqq.

283

PORT ROYAL.

[Book V. the distinguished recluses began to gather round it to whom it chiefly owes its fame. The first of these were relations of the abbess her nephew Antony Lemaistre, her brother Antony Arnaud, the author of the celebrated treatise De la fréquente communion. These hermits, as they were called, and their pupils, inhabited a separate building called La maison des hommes. It was Arnaud and his colleague Nicole who published those works on grammar, logic, and other branches of education that still preserve their reputation. The Jesuits found themselves worsted in their own peculiar domain as instructors. A still greater champion appeared rather later in the Society-Blaise Pascal,24 the author of the Pensées, the redoubtable adversary of the Jesuits. Pascal, who had become a convert to Jansenism in 1646, entered Port Royal in 1654. His Lettres Provinciales (Letters to a Provincial) were a terrible blow to the Jesuits. It was after this period that they began to direct their attention more to worldly affairs and commerce, to their ultimate ruin, as we shall have to relate in a subsequent chapter.

The dangerous tendency of Jansenism had not escaped the vigilance of Rome and the more orthodox clergy. Jansenius's work Augustinus, was condemned by a bull of Pope Urban VIII. in 1643. In 1644, at the instigation of the Jesuits, eighty-five French bishops presented to Urban's successor, Innocent X., five propositions, extracted, as they said, from the Augustinus, for condemnation as heretical. Only a small minority of prelates stood up in their defence, but it was not till 1653 that Innocent condemned them. The Papal bull was received by Anne of Austria and Mazarine, by the bishops and the Sorbonne; Port Royal and the Jansenists seemed on the verge of destruction, when they were saved by the Provincial Letters.

In spite of the hostility of Louis XIV. repeatedly manifested, the Jansenists were destined to survive his reign, though Port Royal, as already briefly indicated, fell before its close. The imprudence and disputatious humour of the Jansenists brought their doctrines again into question in 1702. The King's antipathy to them was increased by some papers seized at Brussels in the house of their chief, Father Quesnel; from which it appeared that they had formerly purchased the Isle of Nordstrand, on the coast of Holstein, to form an asylum for their sect; and also that they had endeavoured to get themselves comprised in the truce of Ratisbon in 1684, under the name of the "Disciples of St. Augustine," as

24 Born at Clermont in Auvergne in 1623. St. Cyran was released from Vincennes after the death of Richelieu.