Calvin, like Luther, placed the ultimate criterion of religious truth within the individual soul: every faithful Christian experi-enced within himself a marvellous conviction of heavenly
Trang 1the presence of Christ in the Eucharist and of the decrees through which God chose the elect Calvin, like Luther, placed the ultimate criterion of religious truth within the individual soul: every faithful Christian experi-enced within himself a marvellous conviction of heavenly revelation which was more reassuring than any reasoning could ever be But how could one tell who were faithful Christians? If one counted only the reformed, then Calvin’s criterion was question-begging; on the other hand, if one counted all those who had been baptized, it led to an anarchy of belief
Protestants argued that the Church could not be the ultimate authority because its claims rested on biblical texts Catholics, quoting Augustine, claimed that the only reason for accepting the Bible was that it had been given us by the Church The questions at issue in Europe at the Reforma-tion were in the end settled neither by raReforma-tional argument nor by interior enlightenment In country after country conXicting answers were imposed
by force of arms or by penal legislation In England Henry VIII, irked by Vatican refusal to free him from a tedious marriage, broke with Rome and executed More for his loyalty to the pope The country then lurched from his schismatic version of Catholicism to Calvinism under his son Edward
VI, to Counter-Reformation Catholicism under his daughter Mary, and
Wnally to an Anglican compromise under her sister Elizabeth This che-quered history produced hundreds of martyrs, both Protestant and Cath-olic; but England was spared the sanguinary wars of religion which raged for many decades in continental Europe
By the mid-sixteenth century doctrinal positions had hardened into a form that they were to retain for some 400 years Luther’s lieutenant Melancthon formulated at Augsburg in 1530 a confession of faith to provide the test of orthodoxy A concordat agreed in the same city in
1555 provided that the ruler of each state within the Holy Roman Empire could decide whether his subjects were to be Lutheran or Catholic: the principle later known as cuius regio, eius religio Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536) provided the standard for Protestants in Switzerland, France, and later Scotland In Rome Pope Paul III (1534–9) promoted a Counter-Reformation, instituting a new religious order of Jesuits, and convening a Council at Trent to reform Church discipline The council condemned the Lutheran doctrine of justiWcation by faith alone, and the Calvinist doctrine that God predestined the wicked to hell prior to any sin Free will, it insisted, had not been extinguished by Adam’s Fall It reaYrmed the
S I X T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y P H I L O S O P H Y
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