Church History.

Church History. The history of the Christian Church includes its external history, which treats of the extension of the Church, and its relation to the state; and internal history, which is concerned with the Church's inner life, doctrine, worship, and constitution. With respect to time, the Church's history is usually divided into three periods—Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. Its Medieval History may be dated from its establishment in union with the new empire founded by Charles the Great in 800. Modern Church History begins with the Reformation (in the view of Roman Catholic historians, with the Humanistic movement, or the discovery of America). Each of these periods may be divided into two: Ancient Church History, at the complete victory of Christianity over Greek heathenism under Constantine the Great; Medieval, at the culmination of the papal power under Innocent III.; and Modern, at the close of the Thirty Years' War by the Treaty of Westphalia.

The first of these periods extends from Christ to Constantine. The beginning of the Christian Church dates from the departure of Jesus Christ from the earth and the Pentecostal effusion of the Holy Spirit (about 33 A.D.), the time when the first confessors of Christ exceeded the limits of a private society, and began to form a public community. Its nucleus was the first Jewish Christian community at Jerusalem under the 'pillar-apostles' James, Cephas, and John. The spiritual conception of the Messiah which the disciples had received from the personal influence of Jesus was sealed on their minds by their faith in his resurrection; and their comprehension of his gospel is seen in the wide aims of their first missions, in their progressive deliverance from legalism, and in the belief that faith is the essential element of salvation. As members were quickly added to the Church, especially from the Jews of the Dispersion (called Hellenists, because they spoke Greek), a beginning of its organisation was made in the appointment of seven deacons, including the Hellenist Stephen, the protomartyr of the Church. The elements of the primitive faith were unified and systematised by the Apostle Paul, the aim of whose life was the conversion of the whole world to Christ. He succeeded in emancipating the Gentile Christian world from the ceremonial law, and in his three great missionary journeys (about 40–58 A.D.) began the evangelisation of Europe. The destruction of Jerusalem (70 A.D.) completed the deliverance of Christianity from Judaism, and gave the Church the consciousness of a world-wide mission. The Judaising Christians were thenceforth an insignificant sect.

The Roman empire maintained the pre-Christian view that there could be no worship of God apart from the corporate life of the state, and, when the early Christian Church refused to take part in the state worship, it became a religio illicita, and was proscribed and persecuted as dangerous to society. To the distinguished and learned Christianity was a gloomy infatuation, to the populace the Christians' contempt for the gods seemed the cause of every public calamity. The tyrannical caprice of Nero charged them with the burning of Rome (64 A.D.), and persecuted them with revolting cruelty. Under Domitian Christianity was punished as a form of high-treason. The first regular decree for legal procedure against the Christians was issued by Trajan. Under the more tolerant rule of the emperors from Hadrian to Marcus Aurelius (117–161), the Christian congregations were organised as Collegia tenuiorum ('poor men's guilds'), or Collegia funeraticia ('funeral societies'), and as such enjoyed a sort of legalised existence. The vast cities of their dead in the catacombs of this period nowhere preserve memorials of martyrdom or persecution. The Christians had to suffer many a local persecution, but, apart from the temporary and thoughtless cruelties of Nero and Domitian—who, according to Tertullian, was 'a piece of Nero for cruelty'—they had the toleration, and sometimes the protection, of the emperors. Ranke ascribes such action especially to Antoninus Pius—'the best-intentioned and most peaceable among them, and perhaps not without sympathy for Christianity'—whose reign he regards as the culmination of the Roman empire. A consequence of this tolerant bearing of the imperial power was the peaceful behaviour of the Christians, who in general rejected the principles of Montanus, which aimed at the subversion of the state. This condition of affairs came to an end under Marcus Aurelius, who, no longer able to resist the popular outcry, suffered a persecution to take place in several provinces.

About the middle of the 2d century the Christian congregations in the Roman empire were consoli- dating themselves into a confederacy, which called itself the 'Great' or 'Catholic' (i.e. universal) Church. By the middle of the 3d century the confederation was accomplished. The Church was now organised with a hierarchical constitution and an elaborately regulated worship, while the New Testament canon was regarded as equally authoritative with the Old. From 250 the emperors whose political aims were most akin to the traditional policy of Rome struggled for life and death with the growing power. Of the times before Decius Origen testifies (Contra Celsum, iii. 8) 'few and very easy to count are those who have died on account of the Christian religion;' and Lactantius says (De Morte Persecutorum, iii. 4), 'after the acts of the tyrant (Domitian) had been rescinded, the Church was not only restored to her pristine state, but shone forth much more brightly; and, times following when many good emperors held the helm of government, she suffered no attacks from enemies. . . . But thereafter the long peace was broken. For after many years the accursed beast (excrabile animal) Decius arose to vex the Church.' Under Decius began the first universal and systematic persecution of Christianity as a part of the military and religious policy of the state. The sufferings of the Christians continued under Gallus and Valerian till 260, when Gallienus declared Christianity a religio licita. For forty years the Church had peace, and grew mightily on every side. Diocletian by four edicts of progressive severity, from February 303 to March 304, when he decreed torture for all Christians, put forth a desperate effort to annihilate Christianity in the whole empire. At his abdication (May 305) the horrors of the persecution ended, except in the East, where they were continued without mercy by Maximin Daza. The victory of Constantine in 313 delivered Christendom from this its last and most relentless persecutor.

Constantine saw in the unity of the Church a new foundation for the unity of the empire, and placed Christianity on an equality with Paganism: under his sons it became predominant. The reaction under Julian ended with his death. It was the struggle with Gnosticism that had first led the Church to the remarkable development of its dogmatic system, which gives its characteristic stamp to the history of the second period of the ancient church. The simple baptismal confession had become transformed into a rule of faith giving fixity to the ecclesiastical tradition. Justin, Irenæus, Tertullian, and Hippolytus had been among its first exponents. While in the scriptures of the New Testament canon the Church possessed an abiding witness to the 'simplicity that is in Christ,' the rule of faith in the course of the 3d century had been built up in the forms of the Greek philosophy of Clement and Origen. The first church synods had been held in Asia Minor in connection with the Montanist controversy about 170; and by the 3d century such assemblies were common in various provinces of the empire. The institution of œcumenical councils, in which only bishops were entitled to vote, originated with Constantine. The controversy with respect to the Easter festival had disturbed the Church for a century and a half. The universal practice in Asia was to observe the exact day of the month (the 14th Nisan), while the usage of Alexandria and Palestine and the West was to celebrate the Passion always on a Friday, and the Resurrection on a Sunday. This controversy was finally laid at rest by the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325. Trinitarianism gained its first victory over Arianism at Nicaea by the combined influence of Athanasius and Constantine, and completed its triumph at the second Ecumenical Council (at Constantinople) in 381.

After this the Church was distracted with controversies about the views of Origen (394-438), the Apollinarian controversy (362-381), the disputes between the schools of Antioch and Alexandria (381-428), the Nestorian controversy (428-444), the Monophysite controversy (444-553), the Monothelete controversy (633-680), and the Iconoclastic controversy (726-842). These discussions originated in the Eastern Church, while in the West the theological interest centred on the great conflict between Augustinianism and Pelagianism (412-529). The tyrannical interference of the Eastern emperors in the controversies of the Church, their supremacy in the ecclesiastical councils, and their penal enforcement of doctrinal decrees, led to infinite confusion in the relations between church and state, and prepared the way for the ambitious policy of the popes, and for the final breach between the churches of the East and West.

While these age-long controversies kept the relations of church and state continually strained, Paganism was steadily suppressed. Orthodox Christianity in union with the state soothed the declining years of the ancient empire; but could not prevent the conquest of Rome by Alaric the Goth. Its advance in Persia was checked by political persecution before the advent of Islam, which subsequently overwhelmed the Christianity of the East. In the West, however, Christianity rose with renewed vigour from the ruins of the old empire, by the conversion of the Teutonic and Slavonic nations. The Teutonic conquerors of Gaul and Italy were Christians before their invasion of those countries. The Anglo-Saxon conquerors of England were heathens. A century and a half after their settlement Christian missionaries gained a footing in the south and north, and within a century from the landing of Augustine the English kingdoms had embraced Christianity. In the general declension of political faith under the decaying Roman empire, the social power once held by the officials of Rome had gradually passed into the hands of the Christian bishops. In the lawlessness and disorder of the barbarian invasions, these representatives of the claims of moral order and human brotherhood were the trusted mediators between the conquerors and the conquered, and exercised a constant influence during peace and war. But this great authority over the new nations brought along with it much injury to religion. Discipline declined as the power and wealth of the clergy increased.

The third period of the Church's history extends from Charles the Great to Innocent III. 'At the commencement of the 8th century,' says Ranke, 'on the one side Mohammedanism threatened to overspread Italy and Gaul, and on the other the ancient idolatry of Saxony and Friesland once more forced its way across the Rhine. In this peril of Christian institutions, a youthful prince of Teutonic race, Charles Martel, arose as their champion.' By his great victory of Tours (732) a final check was given to the advance of the Saracens in the West, and Christendom and civilisation were rescued from the grasp of Islam. The subjugation of the Saxons by Charles the Great was the toilsome work of thirty-two years (772-804), and their Christianisation was secured by the castles, towns, mission-stations, and monasteries which the conqueror planted in their country. Under the Carolingian kings of the Franks from the middle of the 8th century, the temporal dominion of the Papacy was founded. The legend of the 'Donation of Constantine,' bestowing imperial power and dignities upon the pope, together with the sovereignty over Rome and all Italy, and the countries of the West, was invented at Rome about 730, and embodied in the Pseudo-Isidorian decretals (about 850). It was contested by few in the middle ages, till Laurentius

Valla demonstrated its untenability. For centuries this clumsy forgery formed one of the supports of the Papacy in its struggle for universal supremacy. The connection between the churches of the East and West had been already loosened by the schism of 484-519 during the Monophysite controversy, and by the iconoclastic policy of the emperors from Leo to Theophilos (717-842). At length the progressive centralisation of the Western Church under the Roman see, to whose authority the 'œcumenical bishops' of Constantinople could not submit, and in the 11th century the transfer by the Bulgarians of their allegiance from Constantinople to Rome, led to a final rupture. The patriarch Photius already in 867 laid down the dogmatic basis of the Schism as consisting in the western deviations from the dogmas, customs, and constitutional forms of the ancient church, especially the addition of the 'filioque' clause to the creed of Nicæa and Constantinople, teaching that the Holy Spirit proceeds not only from the Father, but also from the Son. The severance was completed on the 16th July 1054, when the papal legates laid the anathema on the altar of St Sophia in Constantinople.

The growth of Monasticism, from the beginning a lay movement in pursuit of the old ideal of Christian perfection, which men felt that a worldly priesthood no longer represented, entered at first into competition with the clergy, but gradually became subservient to Catholic aims. In the East, where the contemplative life prevailed, the best function of the monasteries was as nurseries of the priesthood, while the monks of the West christianised Germany and Britain, cultivated wildernesses, preserved the classic treasures of antiquity, and were the diligent teachers of the common people. Above all the monastic orders, the Benedictines can claim the glory of conspicuous services to Christian missions and intellectual culture. 'In the 9th and 10th centuries,' says Gibbon, 'the reign of the gospel and of the Church was extended over Bulgaria, Hungary, Bohemia, Saxony, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Poland, and Russia. . . . The admission of the barbarians into the pale of civil and ecclesiastical society delivered Europe from the depredations by sea and land of the Normans, Hungarians, and Russians. The establishment of law and order was promoted by the influence of the clergy; and the rudiments of art and science were introduced into the savage countries of the globe.' In the West, men held that the Holy Roman Empire, consolidated by Charles and Otto the Great, was the embodiment of the ideal state, and that God had two vicars on earth, the emperor in temporal things, and the pope in spiritual things. 'The analogy of the two,' says Bryce, 'made them appear parts of one great world-movement towards unity; the coincidence of their boundaries, which had begun before Constantine, lasted long enough after him to associate them indissolubly together, and make the names of Roman and Christian convertible. . . . The Holy Roman Church and the Holy Roman Empire are one and the same thing in two aspects; and Catholicism, the principle of the universal Christian society, is also Romanism; that is, rests upon Rome as the origin and type of its universality, manifesting itself in a mystic dualism which corresponds to the two natures of its Founder. As divine and eternal, its head is the pope, to whom souls have been intrusted; as human and temporal, the emperor, commissioned to rule men's bodies and acts.' In the first half of the middle ages the Church believed herself to be co-extensive with the Kingdom of God, the realisation of the noblest ethical ideal, and her servants conceived it their highest duty to labour to make the whole field of human life subject to her supremacy. Not even the moral declension of the Papacy in the centuries succeeding Charles the Great, especially during the sixty years' so-called Pornocracy (904-963), could quench the ardour of the Church's faith in that ideal; and the cloister, purged and strengthened by successive reforms, saved the authority of the Church by uniting in Gregory VII. the monastic ideal of self-renunciation with the ecclesiastical ideal of the conquest of the world.

At the great Lateran Council under Pope Innocent III. in 1215, the Catholic Church was at the zenith of its power. Innocent was the sun, and from him the princes of Christendom held their light in fee. The Crusaders, though unable to hold Jerusalem, had enhanced the prestige of the Papacy; and Scholasticism placed its skill and learning at the service of the Church. The Waldenses and Albigenses were to be crushed relentlessly, and the Inquisition was now established for their permanent repression. No persecutions which the Church had ever suffered are to be compared for determined cruelty with those which in this period she inflicted on the heretics of southern France and of the Netherlands. Emperors and kings might contend with Rome for temporal authority; they were ready to decree the burning of heretics as much as she desired. But this unrestricted sway brought its own downfall. After the Papacy in the Avignon sojourn (1305-77) had become the tool of French policy, and after all the contrivances of pious fraud had been resorted to, during the Schism of 1378 to 1409, to fill the coffers of rival popes at Avignon and at Rome, the people began to lose faith in the holiness of the hierarchy, and the ever louder cry for 'reformation of the Church in its head and members' became irresistible. The Schism of thirty years, during which two popes claimed the same divine prerogative, was the most direct contradiction of the doctrine that had obtained in the Catholic Church since the time of Hildebrand, that the Papacy was the unifying centre of Christendom. The conviction gained ground that even its authority was subject to that of an œcumenical council. In the development of this idea a twofold tendency presented itself. One party, that of Gerson and D'Ailly, which prevailed at the councils of Pisa and Constance, regarded the council as representative only of the hierarchy, and, while recognising the Papacy as a divine institution, aimed at restricting the absolutism of the papal see by the co-rule of a spiritual aristocracy, consisting of the bishops and the doctors of the universities. The other, mainly composed of German theologians, made the first attempt within the medieval Church to undermine the Roman Catholic conception of the Church by a distinction between the ecclesia universalis—the spiritual community of all believers—and the ecclesia Romana, of which the pope was head. The second party regarded this una catholica ecclesia alone as infallible, and held that the council represented not only all classes of the hierarchy, but all classes of Christendom; and that church reform was a duty that fell to the secular power, not only the princes, but also the entire body of the laity. But all the resolutions of the three great reforming councils were made void by the pitiful issue of the Council of Basel in the Concordat of Vienna in 1448, when the fathers of the council recognised Nicholas V., and received the holy father's forgiveness. Thus ended the last attempt towards the reformation of the Church on its old foundations.

At length the teaching of the Lollards and Hussites, the failure of the councils, and the shameless traffic in indulgences; the impotent conclusion of Scholasticism that philosophy and religion might both be true, though contradic- tory; the new art and learning of the Renaissance; the awakening of the spirit of nationality; and the widespread longing of the poor for redress from the exactions of priests and nobles—had prepared men's minds for that great movement in the 16th century, which issued in the Protestant churches and in the division of the whole of western Christendom into two hostile camps down to the present day. Luther, Zwingli, Melanchthon, and Calvin were its greatest leaders. The Reformation called forth a thousand changes in human existence. As it passed from country to country in all northern Europe, it broke the cloister-vow, abolished celibacy, confiscated the property of the Church, founded secular schools for the people, stripped the clergy of their privileges; and the philanthropic duties and the tasks of civilisation, which for centuries had been incumbent on the servants of the Church, it gradually transferred to the state and the community. Where it triumphed, and even where it was successfully resisted, there was no sphere of life in which its influence was not felt. The communistic movement of the Anabaptists, which had been developed in the midst of the religious perplexities of Germany, was crushed in the ruins of Münster in 1535, and with the death of 'this prodigal child of the Reformation' passed away the premature political socialism of the Reformation period. The aims of the Papacy, all centred on its political interests, were wholly irreconcilable with the Reformers' doctrine of the priesthood of all believers and the sole authority of Scripture in matters of faith. The political and humanistic period of the Papacy was succeeded by a régime of passionate zeal, under which every nerve was strained to win back the territories which had shaken off the Roman yoke. The resolutions of the Council of Trent (1545-63), subscribed by 255 prelates, separated for ever the Protestant and Catholic churches, and obtained in the latter the authority of a symbolical book.

The Counter-Reformation, led everywhere by the Jesuits, and favoured in Germany by the Peace of Augsburg (1555), went on with great success till the middle of the 17th century. It began in Bavaria in 1563, and quickly spread over southern Germany. But it was in France that the revived Roman Catholicism of the 16th century won its first great victory. The number of the 'Religionnaires' or 'Huguenots' in France had, in 1558, amounted to 400,000. From the massacre at Vassy by François of Guise in 1562 to the Massacre of St Bartholomew (August 23-24, 1572), four religious wars had lacerated France, and during the reign of Henry III. there were yet five of these desolating civil wars. The crafty see-saw policy of Popes Sixtus V., Gregory XIV., and Clement VIII. secured every advantage afforded by the vicissitudes of the conflict, and it was not till after Henry IV. had gone over to Roman Catholicism that the pope in 1595 recognised him as the king of France. Liberty of conscience was extended to the French Protestants by the Edict of Nantes in 1598. From 1555 the ecclesiastical position of each German territory was dependent on the religious convictions of its ruler, and the members of the Lutheran Church had political equality with 'the old religion'; but the exclusion of the Reformed from that provision led to the isolation of Lutheranism from the great struggles of Protestantism in France, the Netherlands, and England. The principle cujus regio, ejus religio, by which subjects should follow the confession of their rulers, unavoidably led, in the political condition of Germany in the 16th and 17th centuries, to the breaking up of the Lutheran Church into a number of small national churches, and confused the development of Lutheran theology with the dynastic and family interests of the several courts. Stability was only attained after the fearful struggle of the Thirty Years' War, when, at the Peace of Westphalia, Catholics and Protestants agreed to recognise each other's right to existence. The excellences of the Lutheran Church were the depth and power of its ascetic elements and its religious literature, especially its hymns, the noble expression of German mysticism. But the continuation and political maintenance of the Reformation has been mainly the work of the Reformed or Calvinistic churches. 'In a time,' says Häusser, 'when, of all the creations to the Reformation, Europe presented nowhere else any solid or lasting bulwark, the little Genevan state of Calvin sent out year after year its apostles into the world, and was the most dreaded foe of Rome, when nowhere else was there any resistance to her might.' In the Lutheran Church many of the Romish ceremonies were retained, and congregational organisation was neglected; whereas in the Reformed churches the congregations were organised on a democratic basis, that had nothing akin to the traditional principles of monarchical power. 'With the passive resistance of Luther men could not counteract the Caraffas, the Philips, and the Stuarts; that needed a school prepared for war to the knife; the only such school was Calvin's, and it everywhere took up the glove—in France, in the Netherlands, in Scotland, and in England.' Lutheranism has been established in Scandinavia and the countries along the Baltic, while the Reformed Church, which has throughout evinced a more radical character than the Lutheran, has especially prevailed in South Germany, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, and Scotland.

In England, Edward VI., the successor of Henry VIII.—who had been recognised by the parliament in 1534 as 'the only supreme head in erthe of the Churche of England'—with the help of Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, completed the Reformation. The Common Prayer-book was introduced, and a confession of faith in 42 articles drawn up as the standard of the church's doctrine. After a period of persecution under Mary, the Anglican Church was established under Elizabeth in the closest union with the state. By Elizabeth all ecclesiastical disobedience was regarded as treasonable, and the legislation of her later years was directed against those who took offence at the ritual and the hierarchy, and were known as Nonconformists. English Puritanism (which may be dated from 1567, when its adherents began to separate from the Established Church) was at first only an opposition to the ceremonial elements which the Church of England still retained after its separation from Rome. The principle of Puritanism was reformation through the members of the church itself, as opposed to reformation originating with the crown. It aimed at the overthrow of the episcopal system, and the establishment of a strict system of discipline in the spirit of Calvin. Under Charles I. the Puritans were severely persecuted, and many of them emigrated to America, and were the early settlers of New England. English Puritanism in alliance with Scottish Presbyterianism gained in the Great Rebellion a complete victory over the monarchy, but in England the fruits of the victory fell to the Independents, who were the most consistent section of the party. The Synod of Dort in Holland (1618-19), which was regarded as an oecumenical council of the churches of the Calvinistic Reformation, had decided the controversy between the Arminians and Calvinists entirely in favour of the latter. The Westminster Assembly (1643-49), called by the Long Parliament, drew up the confession of the Puritans, which is closely akin to the resolutions of Dort, and is still the standard in the churches of Scot- land. Later phases of Puritanism developed a great variety of sects, the Baptists and the Society of Friends, or 'Quakers,' being the most notable.

The Reformation in Scotland had received from John Knox a strictly Calvinistic stamp. The Protestant nobles (called the 'Lords of the Congregation') entered in 1557 for the first time into a 'Covenant,' and the Scotch Confession of Faith was ratified by the Scottish parliament in 1560. All the efforts of Mary, Queen of Scots, to win Scotland back to Roman Catholicism were fruitless. The first National Covenant 'against all kind of Papistry' was signed by king and people in 1581, and frequently renewed. In 1592 the Presbyterian constitution was established. Yet under James I. and his successors determined efforts were put forth to make the Church of Scotland a province of the Anglican Church. The obtrusion of the Liturgy in 1637 was met by the Solemn League and Covenant in 1638.

During the Civil War and the Protectorate of Cromwell, Independency increased in numbers and in influence. Two fanatical sections of the party, the 'Fifth-Monarchy Men,' and the 'Levellers,' who aimed at complete separation of the church from the state, which they maintained should preserve an attitude of religious indifference—were repressed by the iron hand of Cromwell on their attempt to establish their principles by force of arms. The declaration of faith and order issued by the Synod of the Independents in 1658 is not different in its doctrine from the Westminster Confession. After the accession of Charles II. Episcopacy was re-established both in England and Scotland. On the 24th August 1662 two thousand ministers were ejected from their livings in the Church of England, because they refused to subscribe the second Act of Uniformity, which enjoined all ministers in England to declare their unfeigned assent and consent to the entire Book of Common Prayer. In the same reign, the successive Convective, Five Mile, Corporation, and Test Acts increased the civil disabilities of both Nonconformists and Catholics. The persecutions did not cease till the Revolution, when the Act of Toleration in 1689 extended religious liberty to dissenters, only requiring from them the payment of tithes to the Established Church.

In the 17th century a middle party within the Church of England, known as the 'Latitudinarians,' had endeavoured to exercise a mitigating influence on the violence of the disputes between the extreme Episcopalian and the rigid Puritans. Hales and Chillingworth were in the first half of the century the leading exponents of the party, which later included the 'Cambridge Platonists,' Whitchote, John Smith, Cudworth, More, and even Simon Patrick and Tillotson. About the middle of the 17th century another movement began in England as a reaction against the religious extremes of the Great Rebellion. The principles of the English 'Deists' originated undoubtedly in the reaction from the religious excesses of the Cromwell period, but were more largely due to the progress of philosophy and the historical and natural sciences. They passed over to France, where they found a congenial soil under Louis XIV. and Louis XV., and, in presence of the Dragonnades and the persecutions of the Protestants after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, developed into the Atheism and Materialism of the Encyclopédistes. These afterwards bore bitter fruit in the French Revolution—'the religious issue of which proved,' says Hase, 'not only the necessity of religion for a civilised people, but also the national indispensability of a church.'

In Germany the reaction from the fanatical violence of the Thirty Years' War and the lifeless orthodoxy of the 17th century took the form of Pietism. It began with the collegia pietatis founded by Spener about 1670, and the similar collegia philobiblica of Francke, professor at the university of Halle from its foundation in 1694. Halle became the centre whence Pietism spread on every side, and its influence, like that of Geneva under Calvin, extended to all the Protestant countries of Europe. The church of the Moravians, in the form in which it was renewed by Zinzendorf, is a daughter of Pietism, and the founder of Methodism testified that Moravianism was the first medium of his own inspiration. Pietism, with Moravianism, which inwardly rests on the same foundation, is, says Weingarten, 'the last fruit of that heart-religion, springing originally from Franciscanism, which consists in the closest vital fellowship of the individual Christian with Christ.' It laid great weight on strictness of conduct, and dwelt rather on regeneration and sanctification than on the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith. During the reign of Rationalism it appeared quiescent, but it revived in the present century, and in alliance with the orthodoxy which it formerly combated forms the predominant party in the Evangelical Church of Germany.

The founders of English Methodism did not aim at any new doctrine or order, but only sought, like the German Pietists, to deepen spiritual life, and make it more practical and fruitful. Methodist societies began to be organised in 1739, after Wesley and Whitefield had been excluded from the pulpits of the Established Church. These two leaders separated in 1748 on the question of predestination, Wesley holding the Arminian, and Whitefield the Calvinistic view. Ten years after Wesley's death his followers numbered 40,000, and in twenty years more increased to upwards of 100,000. Wesleyan Methodism and its numerous offshoots have been distinguished both in this country and in America for their evangelistic zeal and their influence over the common people; and their earnestness and success have been the means of imparting a healthful stimulus to the Church of England. About the end of the 18th century the influence of the Methodist movement extended into the Established Church, and issued in the formation of the 'Evangelical party,' which, centring in Cambridge, soon became the most energetic party in the Church of England. At Oxford, which from Laud's time had been the centre of the old 'High Church' party, began about 1833 the Tractarian movement, of which the first impulse came from the Evangelical revival; while in one of its sides, at least, it was a kind of æsthetic outcome of the Romantic revival in literature and art. No fewer than 150 of the clergy and leading laymen connected with the movement followed Ward and Newman (in 1845 and 1846) into the Roman Catholic Church, but the party, held together for nearly fifty years under the leadership of Pusey, has now fully identified itself with the Anglican Church as the 'Catholic Church planted in England.' Though 'Anglo-Catholicism' has driven large numbers into the Roman communion, it has succeeded in doing what Methodism a hundred years before attempted, and has brought new life into the Church of England. It bears a close affinity to Roman Catholicism in ritual and doctrine, but refuses to acknowledge the universal supremacy of the Bishop of Rome. The 'Broad Church' party, the third in the modern Church of England, traces its beginning to Colebridge, but in spirit and to a large extent also in teaching, is substantially identical with the old Latitudinarians and the Cambridge Platonists, who, with great spiritual earnestness and honesty, maintained for over a hundred years a large and tolerant theology. The modern Broad Church party agrees with the Evangelical or 'Low Church' party in minimising the importance of apostolic succession and sacramental grace, and in attaching no intrinsic value to particular forms of ritual or clerical vestments; but unlike it demands a more liberal interpretation of dogmatic definitions, and a greater freedom in the subscription to creeds. In its preaching it aims at guidance rather than conversion, frankly contradicting the prevailing Evangelical teaching that attributes everything to sovereign grace and emphasises the complete corruption of unregenerate human nature. It has throughout advocated a bolder view of the applicability to Scripture of methods of criticism and exegesis that have found favour in Germany. One of its earliest leaders was the famous Dr Arnold, who advocated the great Hooker's theory of the identity of church and state—a kind of spiritualised Erastianism—as the only means of fully carrying out the realisation of Christianity on earth. It has added many illustrious names to the roll of English churchmen, among them Whately, Maurice, Frederick Robertson, Julius Hare, Kingsley, Thirlwall, and Stanley.

The standard of Anglican doctrine is fixed by acts of parliament in the Thirty-nine Articles of 1571, and in the Book of Common Prayer (1552, revised in 1559 and 1661). Not till the present century has the church's close connection with the state been loosened by a series of laws removing the civil and political disabilities of dissenters. The Church of England includes at most two-thirds (some say only one-half) of the population, and possesses the whole of the ecclesiastical endowments of the country. Its comprehensiveness is altogether unexampled; within no historic church in the world is to be found such divergence of honest opinion. Its enormous revival of activity during the last fifty years has struck its roots deeper into the religious heart of England, and though its disestablishment has often been proposed, the Church of England is so closely interwoven with the other institutions of the nation, and is so dear to the majority of the English people, that such a contingency must seem remote. In any event, the solidity and dignity of the Episcopal Church would retain for it the chief place among the ecclesiastical societies of England. Such hindrances to its efficiency as pluralities and non-residence have long been removed, the episcopate within England has been largely extended, and missionary bishops appointed to organise and extend foreign missions, while no less than thirty millions have been spent within thirty years upon the building and restoration of churches at home. Such agencies for relieving poverty and distress as sisterhoods and special missions have leaped into life, and in the Church Congresses (first, 1861) and Diocesan Conferences (first, at Ely, 1864) the door has been opened to the co-operation of laymen in church work. The growing demand for greater freedom of action on the part of the church, resulted (1852, and 1856) in an attempt to revive the powers of Convocation, in abeyance since 1717. In 1867 was inaugurated the first Lambeth Conference of prelates of the Anglican rite from all quarters of the world.

James I. gave the whole ecclesiastical endowment in Ireland into the hands of the Anglican clergy. The Irish branch of the Anglican Church, which only embraced one-eighth part of the population, was disestablished and disendowed in 1871 by the Irish Church Act of 1869. In the census of 1891 the Catholics of Ireland numbered 3,547,307; Episcopalians, 600,103; Presbyterians, 444,974; other non-Episcopal Protestants, 80,660.

Patronage had been abolished in Scotland in 1690, but was restored under Queen Anne in 1712.

The repeated protests of the General Assembly were disregarded, but with the gradual ascendancy of the 'moderate' party in the church itself, were discontinued, and the dissatisfied seceded from the Establishment, forming the 'Secession' and 'Relief' churches. In 1834 the Assembly passed the Veto Act, declaring that no pastor should be 'intruded on any congregation contrary to the will of the people,' and giving the congregation the right to veto the appointment of a presentee of whom they disapproved. After a ten years' conflict between the 'non-intrusionist' and 'moderate' parties, the former seceded from the Established Church, and formed the Free Church of Scotland in 1843. The United Presbyterian Church arose from the union of the Secession and Relief churches in 1847, and is now the third in importance in Scotland.

In the United States it is a part of the constitution that 'no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust,' and that 'congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.' 'This separation between church and state,' says Schaff, 'is not a separation of the nation from Christianity. . . . The American nation is as religious and Christian as any other in the world, and shows this plainly by its voluntary support of so many churches and sects; by its beneficent societies of every kind; by its church-going, and respect for the clergy, who are inferior to no class in respect and influence; by its strict sabbath-keeping, which has its equal only in Scotland; by its zeal for home and foreign missions; by its reverence for the Bible; by a veritable flood of religious books, tracts, and periodicals; and by the whole tone of its public morality.' Of Protestants, the Methodists and Baptists are the most numerous, especially among the lower classes and in the southern states; while the Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Episcopalians have the greatest influence among the middle and higher classes. In 1891 the Roman Catholics had 6,257,871 members; Methodists (Episcopal and non-Episcopal), 4,589,284; Baptists of various communions, 3,712,468; Presbyterians, 1,278,332; Lutherans, 1,231,072; Congregationalists, 512,771; and Episcopalians, 540,509.

A great development of missionary zeal took place in the Protestant churches of Europe and America during the 19th century, leading to a vast expenditure of life and money. Among civilised races like the Jews, Chinese, and Hindus, the success attained has been small compared with that among races to which the Christian missionaries have brought, along with the preaching of the gospel, a vastly superior civilisation, such as the natives of Madagascar and Polynesia. There are now a hundred missionary societies in Protestant Christendom, with about 5000 European and American missionaries, and about 30,000 native assistants, and raising every year more than 2½ millions sterling for the evangelisation of the heathen world. The Roman Catholic Church has by its colonies and conquests in the New World endeavoured to redress the balance of the Old. In South and Central America, Hayti, and the Spanish and French West Indies, the population is almost exclusively Roman Catholic; while in British North America the proportion of Roman Catholics is 42 per cent., and in Australia and Polynesia about 15 per cent. The largest and most important missionary institute of the Roman Catholic Church is the Propaganda, founded by Gregory XV. in 1622. The missions of the Benedictines, Cistercians, Premonstratensians, and especially of the mendicant orders, who penetrated Africa and North and South America, were from the 16th and 17th centuries almost eclipsed by those of the Jesuits. In the East and

West Indies, Japan, China, and Abyssinia, they have won over thousands to their society and church. While Protestant missions have aimed at saving individual souls, they have used every possible means to effect conversions, and have counted their converts in crowds. Their constant policy has been to ingraft Catholic ideas and usages on traditional prejudices and customs. In India they commended themselves to the great as Christian Brahmins and to the poor as apostles of freedom; in Japan they sided with the native nobility against the luxurious priestly class; in China they made their way to favour through geometry and astrology; in Spanish South America they took the oppressed natives under their protection, contended against slavery, and founded in Paragnay a socialistic theocracy of their own.

Ever since the Reformation the Roman Catholic Church has been growing more and more ultramontane, and this tendency has become most marked in the second half of the 19th century, largely through the increasing influence of the Jesuits. That order, suppressed in Portugal (1759), in France (1764), in Spain and Naples (1767), in Parma (1768), and by the bull 'Dominus ac Redemptor Noster' of Clement XIV. in 1773, was restored by Pius VII. in 1814. The golden days of the Jesuits were under Pius IX. (1846-78), who gradually passed entirely under their influence. The Jesuit generals, Father Roothaan (1829-53) and Father Beckx (1853-84), called the 'black popes,' reigned in Rome side by side with the 'white pope,' Pius IX. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which the Jesuits maintained against the Dominicans, was promulgated by the pope in 1854, and ten years later the Encyclica and Syllabus proclaimed to the world that the political and ecclesiastical theories of Jesuitism were accepted by the holy see. The Jesuits acquired considerable influence in France under Napoleon III., but were expelled in 1880. In Italy, since the downfall of the pope's temporal power (1871), they are restricted to Rome, and they were excluded from Spain and Mexico (1868), from Germany (1872).

The famous canon expressed by Vincent of Lerinum in 434: 'Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est,' has been the formal principle of Catholicism throughout its history. At first it fell to the bishops in the synods to decide whether any particular doctrine bore these three marks of Catholicity. Sometimes one synod set aside the resolutions of another, and even at the oecumenical councils the whole Church was never represented in the same proportions. The supreme authority of the pope was the only means to secure absolute unity, and neither the defenders of the 'episcopal system' at the medieval councils nor the Gallicanism of the French clergy (set forth in their declaration of 1682) were able to interpose an effective resistance. To secure the Papacy from all such opposition in future, the Jesuits persuaded Pope Pius IX. to have it decreed by the Vatican council that only the pope is the infallible head of the Church. Leo XIII. has set his seal upon the work of Pius IX. by restoring, in 1886, to the order of the Jesuits all the privileges it enjoyed before its dissolution. The ancient conflict between emperor and pope, recently revived in the 'Kulturkampf,' ended (1883-86) in a victory for the Papacy, by the withdrawal of the 'May Laws' and the reversal of the German ecclesiastical policy pursued since 1872.

To-day Roman Catholics are reckoned at from 150 to 200 millions; Greek Catholics at from 75 to 85 millions; Protestants at from 100 to 120 millions; while non-Christians number about 1450 millions.

The primary sources of Church History are: (1) Original documents, such as the records and decrees of church councils; the official publications of bishops and popes (pastoral epistles, bulls, briefs, decretals, and constitutions); laws relating to ecclesiastical affairs, issued by sovereigns, chancellors, or parliaments; liturgies and service-books, rules of religious orders, symbolical books and confessions of faith, sermons and treatises of theologians and ecclesiastical leaders, journals and reports of eye-witnesses, and letters of contemporaries eminent in church or state. (2) Monuments, such as ecclesiastical buildings, pictures, sculptures, inscriptions, vessels, &c. Among the secondary sources are calendars, martyrologies, and necrologies; traditions, annals, and chronicles—all requiring to be sifted by criticism, the farther their date from the period to which they refer.

The earliest church historian whose writing is extant is Eusebius of Cæsarea, who made use of the earlier works of Hegesippus (about 150 A.D.) and Julius Africanus (3d century). The history of Eusebius, extending to 324 A.D., was continued by Socrates to 439, Sozomen to 423, Theodoret to 428, Philostorgius to 425, Theodore to 527, and Evagrius to 594. The chronicle of Eutychius of Alexandria, written in Arabic, comes down to 937. Nicephorus Callisti (1330) closes the series of the Greek church historians. The Byzantine civil historians from 500 to 1500 contain valuable materials for church history. The earliest Latin historians of the Church were Rufinus, who wrote a translation of Eusebius, and brought it down to 395; Sulpicius Severus, 'the Christian Sallust,' extending to 400; Orosius to 416; Cassiodorus, who combined Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret into a text-book, the famous Historia Ecclesiastica tripartita, which was the standard down to the Reformation; and Jerome, whose translation of Eusebius, and continuation to 378, was followed by the chroniclers Prosper of Aquitaine, Idacius, and Marcellinus. Of medieval writers of special histories the most notable are Jornandes (550); Gregory of Tours (540-595), who wrote the chronicles of the French Church in the 5th and 6th centuries; Bede, the father of English church history, which he narrated to the year 731; Paul the deacon (760), author of a history of the Lombards; and Adam of Bremen, the chief authority on the northern churches from 788 to 1072. The Dialogus Miraculorum of Cesarius of Heisterbach throws great light on his own age (first half of 13th century). Besides the Liber Pontificalis, a history of the popes to 885, which was probably the work of various authors, general church history was written by Anastasius of Rome and Haymo of Halberstadt in the 9th century, by the Norman monk Ordericus Vitalis, and the cardinals Petrus Pisanus, Pandulf, and Boso in the 12th century; in the 13th, by Martinus Polonus, whose Chronica summorum Pontificum Imperatorumque was the most popular history-book of the middle ages; in the 14th, by Ptolemy of Lucca; and in the 15th, by Antoninus of Florence, whose work comes down to 1459. Laurentius Valla's attack on the legend of the 'Donation of Constantine' appeared in 1440.

The Reformation, at first more productive in exegesis than in history, awoke to the necessity of justifying itself by the Church's development in the past, as well as by the statements of Scripture. After the Peace of Augsburg, a society of Lutheran theologians at Magdeburg, headed by Matthius Flacius (Illyricus), compiled a comprehensive history, arranged in 13 folio vols., each embracing a century. The Magdeburg Centuries was answered by the Annals of Cæsar Baronius, in 12 folio vols., which was followed by the histories of Hottinger, Spanheim, and Samuel and Jaques Basnage in the Reformed Church, and of Pagi, a Franciscan monk, who also criticised Baronius. The history of the Council of Trent was written by Sarpi and Pallavicino. Church history was afterwards cultivated in the Roman Catholic Church chiefly by the Benedictines of St Maur and the Oratorians in France. Alexander Natalis, Fleury, Bossuet, and the Jansenist Tillemont, were the most celebrated writers. Protestant historians had been for nearly a century employed in polemical writing, and the compilation of dry summaries of events and dates, when Georg Calixtus gave a new impulse to the study by a series of dissertations urging the value of unprejudiced investigation. The mystic Gottfried Arnold maintained the right of heretics against the Church in his 'Impartial History' (1699), and was answered by Weismann, George and Franz Walch, and S. J. Banngarten. From the 16th century down to the 18th the Church of England was ably vindicated in the light of history by Jewel, Hooker, Pearson, Beveridge, Cave, and Bingham. Strype's Annals and Ecclesiastical Memorials, and Neal's History of the Puritans, are the authorities for the Reformation and the Puritan movement in England. Of the other English writers of church history down to the present century, the chief names are those of the martyrologist Foxe and Archbishop Parker in the 16th century; Usher, Fuller, Dugdale, and Burnet in the 17th; and Jeremy Collier, Echard, Calamy, Bower, Lardner, and Milner in the 18th. Knox's History (1586) is the authority for the Reformation in Scotland. Scottish church history was written in the 17th century by Row, Spottiswood, and Calderwood; and in the 18th by Defoe and Wodrow. Mosheim was the first to establish the study of ecclesiastical history on a scientific basis, and the sceptical Semler, though, according to Hase, 'without all style and feeling for the peculiar conditions of antiquity,' founded the criticism of the sources. The huge work of Schröckh, in 35 vols., begins the so-called 'pragmatical' school of church historians, which laboured to collect external facts and relate them to their causes, and was also represented by Spittler, the elder Henke, Stäudlin, and Planck. In the early part of the 19th century, Ernst Christian Schmidt, in 6 vols., presented an impartial statement of facts. Gieseler produced a masterpiece of scientific investigation, with the most valuable extracts from the sources accompanying the text, a method which had been previously employed by Danz, and was also cultivated by Niedner. In modern Protestant church history the greatest work is that of Neander, which, in contrast with the pragmatical histories, dwells mainly on the inner development of the Church in doctrine, worship, and religious life. He has been followed by Jacobi and Hagenbach. Among academic treatises on church history the most notable are those of Gnericke, H. Schmid, Lindner, and Kurtz, all from the Lutheran point of view; those of Herzog and Ebrard in the Reformed Church; and the very able and interesting lectures of Hase, Hasse, and Rothe. Recent church history dates from F. C. Baur, who in separate treatises covered the whole field. The effect of his work on the first three centuries has been to turn the attention of many writers for more than a generation to the study of the early church. The contention of Baur, and his disciples Schwegler and Zeller, which represented the original apostles of Christ as persistently struggling for the perpetuity of 'Petrinism' against Paulinism, and interpreted the New Testament to prove this theory, has been considerably discredited by the investigations of Ritschl, Weiszäcker, Lechler, Harnack, Weiss, and De Pressensé.

In the Roman Catholic Church the study of church history has been pursued with great energy. The Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists, begun in the 17th century, have reached their 63d volume.

Of the councils, the chief collection is that of Mansi, in 31 vols., and history that of Hefele in 7 vols. In the earlier part of the 19th century the chief writers in Germany were Comt Stolberg (whose work in 15 vols., extending to 430 A.D., has been brought down to 1300 in other 17 vols. by Kerz), Katercamp, and Möhler, who was the first of a new school of thoroughly scientific historians, to which Ritter, Locherer, Döllinger, Alzog, and Kraus belong, while the works of Cardinal Hergenröther and of Brück have a strong ultramontane bias.

English writers on general church history are still largely dependent on the labours of German scholars. There is no English church history worthy of a place beside the works of Neander, Gieseler, and Hagenbach.

Of other 19th-century writers may be mentioned Hinds, Burton, Kaye, T. Price, Marsden, Lathbury, Hardwick, Maurice, Blunt, Milman, Hook, Newman, Stanley, Creighton, Robertson, Wordsworth, Abbey and Overton, Haddon, Stubbs, Perry, and Stoughton in England; Cook, M'Crie, Hetherington, Welsh, Lee, Grub, Tulloch, Skene, and Cunningham in Scotland; Reeves and Killen in Ireland; Schaff, Allen, and Fisher in America; Gfrörer, Ranke, Henke, Henke, Overbeck, Hansrath, Keim, Häusser, Kahnis, Schürer, Lipsius, Hilgenfeld, and Langen in Germany; and Matter, Bungener, Capefigue, De Montalembert, Aubé, D'Aubigné, Renan, De Broglie, Michaud, and Chastel in France.

For the remarkable development of the literature on the life of Christ during the last fifty years, see the article on JESUS.

See the extensive bibliography in Hagenbach's Encyclopædie (11th ed. by Kautsch, 1884); also see Weingarten, Zeittafeln und Ueberblicke der Kirchengeschichte (3d ed. 1888); F. C. Baur, Die Epochen der Kirchlichen Geschichtsschreibung (Tübingen, 1852); Ter Haar, De Historiographie der Kerkgeschiedenis (Part I., from Eusebius to Laurentius Valla; Part II., from Flaccus to Semler; Utrecht, 1870-71); Wattenbach, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter bis zur Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts (4th ed. 2 vols. 1877); and Lorenz, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen seit der Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts (2d ed. 2 vols. 1876-77). The reader is also referred to the various articles in this work on the subjects mentioned in the preceding pages, and especially to the following: