A History of the Reformation Volume 2 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3but brigands, and that brigands were the enemies of the whole human race. At a time when persecution was prevalent everywhere, the Commentary of the young Humanist pleaded for tolerance in language as lofty as Milton employed in his textit{Areopagitiea. He was not blind to the defects of the stoical morality displayed in the book he commented upon. He contrasted the stoical indifference with Christian sympathy, and stoical individualism with the thought of Christian society; but he seized upon and made his own the loftier moral ideas in Stoicism, and applied them to public life. Luther was great, none greater, in holding up the liberty of the Christian man; but there he halted, or advanced beyond it with very faltering step. Humanism taught Calvin the claims and the duties of the Christian society; he proclaimed them aloud, and his thoughts spread throughout that portion of the Reformation which followed his leadership and accepted his principles. The Holy Scriptures, St. Augustine, and the imperial ethics of the old Roman Stoicism coming through Humanism, were a trinity of influence on all the Reformed Churches. The Reformation in Spain and Italy was only a brief episode; but in its shortlived existence in these lands, Humanism was one of the greatest forces supporting it and giving it strength. In both countries the young life was quenched in the blood of martyrs. So quickly did it pass, that it seems surprising to learn that Erasmus confidently expected that Spain would be the land to accomplish the Reformation without " tumult" which he so long looked forward to and expected; that the Scriptures were read throughout the Spanish peninsula, and that women vied with men in knowledge of their contents, during the earlier part of the sixteenth century. 6. textit{What the Reformed Churches owed to Lut...