kes one strange and damaging
admission, namely that though, according to his theory, or, as he puts
it, "according to the natural order," the "most civilized countries
should be Protestant and the most uncivilized Catholic [sic]," it has
not always been so. In general Buckle adopts the theory of the
Reformation {723} as an uprising of the human mind, an enlightenment,
and a democratic rebellion.

Whereas Henry Hallam, who wrote on the relation of the Reformers to
modern thought, is a belated eighteenth-century rationalist, doubtless
Lecky is best classified as a member of the new school. His _History
of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism_ is partly
Hegelian, partly inspired by Buckle. His main object is to show how
little reason has to do with the adoption or rejection of any theology,
and how much it is dependent on a certain spirit of the age, determined
by quite other causes. He found the essence of the Reformation in its
conformity to then prevalent habits of mind and morals. But he thought
it had done more than any other movement to emancipate the mind from
superstition and to secularize society.

[Sidenote: Protestants]

It is impossible to do more than mention by name, in the short space at
my command, the principal Protestant apologists for the Reformation, in
this period. Whereas Ritschl gave a somewhat new aspect to the old
"truths," Merle d'Aubigne won an enormous and unmerited success by
reviving the supernatural theory of the Protestant revolution, with
such modern connotations and modifications as suited the still lively
prejudices of the evangelical public of England and America; for it was
in these countries that his book, in translation from the French, won
its enormous circulation.[1]

[Sidenote: Doellinger]

An extremely able adverse judgment of the Reformation was expressed by
the Catholic Doellinger, the most theological of historians, the most
historically-minded of divines. He, too, thought Luther had really
{724} founded a new religion, of which the center was the mystical
doctrine, tending to solipsism, of justification by faith. The very
fact that he said much good of Luther, and approved of many of his
practical reforms, made his protest the more effective. It is
noticeable that when he broke with Rome he did not become a Protestant.

[1] The preface of the English edition of 1848 claims that whereas,
since 1835, only 4000 copies were sold in France, between