rief but admirably expressed articles of
Professor George L. Burr, and that of Lemonnier, who places in a strong
light the battle of the Renaissance, intellectual, indifferent in
religion and politics, but aristocratic in temper, and the Reformation,
reactionary, religious, preoccupied with medieval questions and turning,
in its hostility to the governing orders, to popular politics.

The reaction of the Reformation on religion was noticed by the critics,
who thus came to agree with the conservative estimate, though they
deplored what the others had rejoiced in. Long before Nietzsche, J.
Burckhardt had pointed out that the greatest danger to the papacy,
secularization, had been adjourned for centuries by the German
Reformation. It was this that roused the papacy from the soulless
debasement in which it lay; it was thus that the moral salvation of the
papacy was due to its mortal enemies.

[Sidenote: Troeltsch]

The twentieth century has seen two brilliant critiques of the Reformation
from the intellectual side by scholars of consummate ability, Ernst
Troeltsch and George Santayana. The former begins by pointing out, with
a fineness never surpassed, the essential oneness and slight differences
between early Protestantism and Catholicism. The Reformers asked the
same questions as did the medieval schoolmen and, though they gave these
questions somewhat different answers, their minds, like those of other
men, revealed themselves far more characteristically in the asking than
in the reply. "Genuine early Protestantism . . . was an authoritative
ecclesiastical civilization (kirchliche Zwangskultur), a claim to
regulate state and society, science and education, law, commerce, and
industry, according to the supernatural standpoint of revelation." The
Reformers separated early and with cruel violence from the humanistic,
philological, and philosophical {733} theology of Erasmus because they
were conscious of an essential opposition. Luther's sole concern was
with assurance of salvation, and this could only be won at the cost of a
miracle, not any longer the old, outward magic of saints and priestcraft,
but the wonder of faith occurring in the inmost center of personal life.
"The sensuous sacramental miracle is done away, and in its stead appears
the miracle of faith, that man, in his sin and weakness, can grasp and
confidently assent to such a thought." Thus it came about that the way
of salvation became more importan