Chapter IV: The Counter-Reformation (20)

§ 199.3. =Conflict in the Diocese of Basel-Soleure,
1870-1880.=--Bishop Lachat of Soleure, whose diocese comprised
the Cantons Bern, Soleure, Aargau, Basel, Thurgau, Lucerne, and
Zug, had been previously in conflict with the diocesan conference,
_i.e._ the delegates of the seven cantons entrusted with the
oversight of the ecclesiastical administration, on account of
introducing the prohibited handbook on morals of the Jesuit Gury
(§ 191, 9), which ended in the closing of the seminary aided
by the government, and the erection of a new seminary at his
own cost. Although the diocesan conference next forbad the
proclamation of the new Vatican dogma, the bishop threatened
excommunicated Egli in Lucerne in 1871, and Geschwind in
Starrkirch in 1872, who refused. The conference ordered the
withdrawal of this unlawful act, and on the bishop’s refusal,
deposed him in January, 1873. The dissenting cantons, Lucerne and
Zug, indeed declared that after as well as before they would only
recognise Lachat as lawful bishop, the chapter refused to make
the required election of administrator of the diocese, the clergy
in Soleure and in =Bernese Jura= without exception took the
side of the bishop, as also by means of a popular vote the
great majority of Catholics in Thurgau. But amid all this the
conference did not yield in the least. Lachat was compelled by
the police to quit his episcopal residence, and withdrew to a
village in Canton Lucerne. The council of the Bernese government
resolved to recall the refractory clergy of the Jura, took their
names off the civil register and forbad them to exercise any
clerical functions. The outbreaks incited by rebel clergy in
the Jura were put down by the military, sixty-nine clergymen
were exiled, and, so far as the means allowed, replaced by
liberal successors introduced by the Old Catholic priest Herzog
(§ 190, 3) in Olten. In November, 1875, permission to return home
was granted to the exiles in consequence of the revised Federal
constitution of 1874, according to which the banishment of Swiss
burghers was no longer allowed. The Bernese government felt all
the more disposed to carry out this enactment of the National
Council, as it believed that it had obtained the legal means for
checking further rebellion and obstinacy among those who should
return. On January, 1874, by popular vote a law was sanctioned
reorganizing the whole ecclesiastical affairs of the =Canton
Bern=. By it all clergy, Catholic as well as Protestant, are
ranked as civil officers, the choice of whom rests with the
congregations, the tenure of office lasting for six years. All
purely ecclesiastical affairs for the canton rest in the last
instance with a synod of the particular denomination, for the
several congregations with a church committee, both composed of
freely elected lay and clerical members. But if a dispute in a
particular congregation should arise about a synodal decree, the
congregational assembly decides on its validity or non-validity
for the particular congregation. All decrees of higher church
courts and pastorals must have state approval, which must never
be refused on dogmatic grounds. If a congregation splits over any
question, the majority claims the church property and pastor’s
emoluments, etc. And this law was next extended in October 31st,
1875, in the matter of penal law by the so-called Police
Worship Law. It imposes heavy fines up to 1000 francs or a
year’s imprisonment for any clerical agitation against the law,
institutions or enactments of the civil courts, as well as for
every outbreak of hostilities against members of other religious
bodies, refuses to allow any interference of foreign spiritual
superiors without leave granted by government in each particular
case, forbids all processions and religious ceremonies outside
of the fixed church locality, etc. In the same year the first
Catholic Cantonal Synod declared its attachment to the Christian
or Old Catholic church of Switzerland. But it was otherwise
after the newly elected Grand Council of the canton of its
own accord, on September 12th, 1878, granted the returned Jura
clergy complete amnesty for all the past, and on the assumption
of future submission to existing laws of state, recognised
them again eligible for election to spiritual offices which had
previously been denied them. Not only did the Roman Catholic
people regularly take part in elections of priests, church
councils, and synods, undoubtedly with the approval of the new
pope Leo XIII., who had in February addressed a conciliatory
letter to the members of the Federal Council, but also the
extremest of the Jura now submitted without scruple to the new
election required by the law, and won therein for the most part
the majority of votes. In the Catholic Cantonal Synod convened in
Bern, in January, 1880, were found seventy-five Roman Catholics
and only twenty-five Old Catholic deputies. The latter were
naturally defeated in all controversies. The synod declared
that the connexion with the Christian Catholic national bishopric
was annulled, that auricular confession was obligatory, that
marriages of priests were forbidden, etc. Since now the law
assigns the state pay of the priest as well as all the church
property in the case of a split to the majority for the time
being, the inevitable consequence was that Old Catholics of the
Jura district were deprived of all share in these privileges,
and had to make provision for their own support. Also in Canton
=Soleure=, the law that all pastors must be re-elected after
the expiry of six years, came in force in 1872, and then the
thirty-two Roman Catholic clergymen concerned were with only two
exceptions re-elected, while, on the other hand, the Old Catholic
priest Geschwind of Starrkirch was rejected.--But all efforts
to restore the bishopric of Basel-Soleure came to grief over the
person of Bishop Lachat, whom the curia would not give up and the
Federal Council would not again allow, until at last a way out of
the difficulty was found. The canton Tessin, which previously in
church matters belonged to the Italian dioceses of Milan and Como,
was, in 1859, by decree of the Federal Council, detached from
these. But Tessin insisted on the founding of a bishopric of its
own, while the Federal Council wished to join it to the bishopric
of Chur. Thus the matter remained undecided, till in September,
1884, the papal curia came to an understanding with the Federal
Council that Lachat should be appointed vicar-apostolic for
the newly founded bishopric of Tessin, and that to the vacated
bishopric of Basel-Soleure the “learned as well as mild” Provost
Fiala of Soleure should be called. In this way all the cantons
referred to, with the exception of Bern, were won.[552]

§ 199.4. =The Protestant Church in German Switzerland.=--Among
all the German cantons, =Basel= (§ 172, 5), which unweariedly
prosecuted the work of home and foreign missions, fell most
completely under the influence of rationalism and then of the
liberal Protestant theology. While pietism obtained powerful
support and encouragement in its missionary institutions and
movements, and there, though developing itself on Reformed soil,
assumed, in consequence of its manifold connection with Germany,
a colour almost more Lutheran than Reformed, the university by
eminent theological teachers of scientific ability represented
the Mediation school in theology of a predominantly Reformed type.
In the Canton =Zürich=, on the other hand, the advanced theology,
theoretical and practical, obtained an increasing and finally
an almost exclusive mastery in the university and church. But
yet, when in 1839 the Grand Council called Dr. David Strauss
to a theological professorship, the Zürich people rose to a man
against the proposal, the appointment was not enforced, the Grand
Council was overthrown, and Strauss pensioned. The victory and
ascendency of this reaction, however, was not of long continuance.
Theological and ecclesiastical radicalism again won the upper
hand and maintained it unchecked. In the other German cantons the
most diverse theological schools were represented alongside of
one another, yet with steadily increasing advantage to liberal
and radical tendencies. The theological faculty at =Bern=
favoured mainly a liberal mediation theology, and an attempt
of the orthodox party in 1847, to set aside the appointment of
Professor E. Zeller by means of a popular tumult, miscarried.
From 1860 ecclesiastical liberalism prevailed in German
Protestant Switzerland, frequently going the length of
the extremest radicalism and showing its influence even in
the cantonal and synodal legislation. The starting of the
“_Zeitstimmen für d. ref. Schweiz_,” in 1859, by Henry Lang,
who had fled in 1848 from Württemberg to Switzerland, and died
in 1876 as pastor in Zürich, marked an epoch in the history of
the radical liberal movement in Swiss theology. In Fred. Langhans,
since 1876 professor at Bern, he had a zealous comrade in the
fight. During 1864-1866, Langhans published a series of violent
controversial tracts against the pietistic orthodox party in
Switzerland, which zealously prosecuted foreign missions, and in
1866 he founded the _Swiss Reform Union_, while Alb. Bitzius, son
of the writer known as Jer. Gotthelf (§ 174, 8) started as its
organ the “_Reformblätter aus d. bernischen Kirche_,” which was
subsequently amalgamated with the _Zeitstimmem_.--After more or
less violent conflicts with pietistic orthodoxy, still always
pretty strongly represented, especially in the aristocracy, the
emancipation of the schools from the church and the introduction
of obligatory civil marriage were accomplished in most cantons,
even before the revised Federal constitution of 1874 and the
marriage law of 1875 gave to these principles legal sanction
throughout the whole of Switzerland. In almost all Protestant
cantons the re-election or new election to all spiritual offices
every six years was ordained by law, in many the freeing of
the clergy from any creed subscription with the setting aside
of confessional writings as well as of the orthodox liturgy,
hymnbooks and catechisms was also carried, and the withdrawing
of the Apostles’ Creed from public worship and from the baptismal
formula was enjoined. The Basel synod in 1883, by thirty-six to
twenty-seven votes, carried the motion to make baptism no longer
a condition of confirmation; and although the Zürich synod in
1882 still held baptism obligatory for membership in the national
church, the Cantonal Council in 1883, on consulting the law of
the church, overturned this decision by 140 against 19 votes.

§ 199.5. =The Protestant Church in French Switzerland.=--The
French philosophy of the eighteenth century had given to the
Reformed church of =Geneva= a prevailingly rationalistic tendency.
Notwithstanding, or just because of this, Madame Krüdener, in
1814, with her conventicle pietism, found an entrance there,
and won in the young theologian Empaytaz a zealous supporter and
an apostle of conversion preaching. In the next year a wealthy
Englishman, Haldane, appeared there as the apostle of methodistic
piety, and inspired the young pastor Malan with enthusiasm for
the revival mission. Empaytaz and Malan now by speech and writing
charged the national church with defection from the Christian
faith, and won many zealous believers as adherents, especially
among students of theology. The _Vénérable Compagnie_ of the
Geneva clergy, hitherto resting on its lees in rationalistic
quiet, now in 1817 thought it might still the rising storm by
demanding of theological candidates at ordination the vow not to
preach on the two natures in Christ, original sin, predestination,
etc., but thereby they only poured oil on the fire. The adherents
of the daily increasing evangelical movement withdrew from
the national church, founded free independent communities and
_Réunions_ under the banner of the restoration of Calvinistic
orthodoxy, and were by their enemies nicknamed _Momiers_, _i.e._
mummery traders or hypocrites. The government imprisoned and
banished their leaders, while the mob, unchecked, heaped upon
them all manner of abuse. The persecution came to an end in
1830. Thereafter settling down in quiet moderation, it founded
in 1831 the _Société évangélique_, which, in 1832, established
an _Ecole de Théologie_, and became the centre of the Free church
evangelical movement. From that time the _Eglise libre_ of Geneva
has existed unmolested alongside of the _Eglise Nationale_, and
the opposition at first so violent has been moderated on both
sides by the growth of conciliatory and mediating tendencies.
Since 1850, two divergent parties have arisen within the bosom
of the free church itself, which without any serious conflict
continued alongside of one another, until in May, 1883, the
majority of the presbytery resolved to make a peaceful separation,
the stricter forming the congregation of the _Pelisserie_, and
the more liberal that of the _Oratoire_. At the same time a
committee was appointed to draw up a confession upon which both
could unite in lasting fellowship. But when this failed, a formal
and complete separation was agreed upon at the new year.--From
Geneva the Methodist revival spread to =Vaud=. The religious
movement got a footing, especially in Lausanne. The Grand
Council, however, did not allow the contemplated formation of
an independent congregation, and in 1824 forbad all “sectarian”
assemblies, while the mob raged even more wildly than at Geneva
against the “_Momiers_.” The excitement increased when, in 1839,
by decision of the Grand Council, the Helvetic Confession was
abrogated. When in 1845 a revolutionary radical government came
into office at Lausanne, the refusal of many clergymen to read
from the pulpit a political proclamation, caused a thorough
division in the church, for the preachers referred to were in
a body driven out of the national church. A Free church of Vaud
now developed itself alongside of the national church, sorely
oppressed and persecuted by the radical government, and spread
into other Swiss cantons. It owed its freedom from sectarian
narrowness mainly to the influence of the talented and thoroughly
independent Alex. Vinet, who devoted his whole energies and
brilliant eloquence to the interests of religious freedom and
liberty of conscience and to the struggle for the separation
of church and state. Vinet was from 1817 teacher of the French
language and literature in Basel, then from 1837 to 1845
professor of practical theology at Lausanne, but on the
reconstruction of the university he was not re-elected. He died
in 1847.[553]--In the canton =Neuchatel= the State Council in
1873 introduced a law, which granted unconditional liberty of
conscience, freedom in teaching and worship without any sort
of restriction on clergy, teachers and congregations. The Grand
Council by forty-seven votes to forty-six gave it its sanction,
notwithstanding the almost unanimous protest of the evangelical
synod, and refused to appeal to a popular vote. When an appeal
to the Federal Council proved fruitless, somewhere about one half
of the pastors, including the theological professors and all the
students, left the state church, and formed an _Eglise libre_;
while the other half regarded it as their duty to remain in the
national church so long as they were not hindered from preaching
God’s word in purity and simplicity. Both parties had a common
meeting point in the _Union évangélique_, and a law originally
passed in favour of the Old Catholics, which secured to all
seceders a right to the joint use of their respective churches,
proved also of advantage to the Free church.--The canton =Geneva=
issued, in 1874, a Protestant law of worship, which with dogma
and liturgy also threw overboard ordination, and maintained that
the clergy are answerable only to their conscience and their
electors. Yet at the new election of the consistory in 1879,
at the close of the legal term of four years, the evangelical
and moderate party again obtained the supremacy, and a law
introduced by the radical party in the Grand Council, demanding
the withdrawal of the budget of worship and the separation of
church and state, was, on July 4th, 1880, thrown out by universal
popular vote, by a majority of 9,000 to 4,000.

§ 200. HOLLAND AND BELGIUM.

Among the most serious mistakes in the new partition of states at the Vienna Congress was the combining in one kingdom of the United Netherlands the provinces of Holland and Belgium, diverse in race, language, character, and religion. The contagion of French Revolution of July, 1830, however, caused an outbreak in Brussels, which ended in the separation of Catholic Belgium from the predominantly Protestant Holland. Belgium has since then been the scene of unceasing and changeful conflicts between the liberal and ultramontane parties, whose previous combination was now completely shattered. And while, on the other hand, in the Reformed state church of Holland, theological studies, leaning upon German science, have taken a liberal and even radical destructive course, the not inconsiderable Roman Catholic population has fallen, under Jesuit leading, more and more into bigoted obscurantism.

§ 200.1. =The United Netherlands.=--The constitution of the
new kingdom created in 1814 guaranteed unlimited freedom to all
forms of worship and complete equality of all citizens without
distinction of religious confession. Against this the Belgian
episcopate protested with bishop Maurice von Broglie, of Ghent,
at their head, who refused, in 1817, the prayers of the church
for the heretical crown princess and the _Te Deum_ for the
newborn heir to the throne. As he went so far as to excite
the Catholic people on all occasions against the Protestant
government, the angry king, William I., summoned him to answer
for his conduct before the court of justice. But he eluded
inquiry by flight to France, and as guilty of high treason
was sentenced to death, which did not prevent him from his
exile unweariedly fanning the flames of rebellion. The number
of cloisters grew from day to day and also the multitude of
clerical schools and seminaries, in which the Catholic youth
was trained up in the principles of the most violent fanaticism.
The government in 1825 closed the seminaries, expelled Jesuit
teachers, forbad attendance at Jesuit schools abroad, and founded
a college at Louvain, in which all studying for the church were
obliged to pass through a philosophical curriculum. The common
struggle for maintaining the liberty of instruction promised by
the constitution made political radicalism and ultramontanism
confederates, and the government, intimidated by this combination,
agreed, in a concordat with the pope in 1827, to modify the
obligatory into a facultative attendance at Louvain College.
The inevitable consequence of this was the speedy and complete
decay of the college. But the confederacy of the radicals
and ultramontanes continued, directing itself against other
misdeeds of the government, and was not broken up until in 1830
it attained its object by the disjunction of Belgium and Holland.

§ 200.2. =The Kingdom of Holland.=--In the prevailingly =Reformed=
national church rationalism and latitudinarian supernaturalism
had to such an extent blotted out the ecclesiastical distinctions
between Reformed, Remonstrants, Mennonites, and Lutherans,
that the clergy of one party would unhesitatingly preach in the
churches of the others. Then rose the poet Bilderdijk, driven
from political into religious patriotism, to denounce with
glowing fury the general declension from the orthodoxy of Dort.
Two Jewish converts of his, the poet and apologist Isaac da Costa,
and the physician Cappadose, gave him powerful support. A zealous
young clergyman, Henry de Cock, was theological mouthpiece of
the party. Because he offended church order, especially by
ministering in other congregations, he was suspended and finally
deposed in 1834. The greater part of his congregation and four
other pastors with him formally declared their secession from the
unfaithful church, as a return to the orthodox Reformed church.
As separatists and disturbers of public worship, they were fined
and imprisoned, and were at last satisfied with the recognition
granted them of royal grace in 1839, as a separate or =Christian
Reformed Church=. It consists now of 364 congregations, embracing
about 140,000 souls, with a flourishing seminary at Kampen. The
=Reformed State Church=, with three-fourths of all the Protestant
population, persevered in and developed its liberalistic
tendencies. The State Synod of 1883 expressly declared that
the Netherland Reformed Church demands from its teachers not
agreement with all the statements of the confessional writings,
but only with their spirit, gist, and essence; and the synod
of 1877, by the vote of a majority, stated that no sort of
formulated confession should be required even of candidates for
confirmation. Yet even amid such proceedings from various sides,
a churchly and evangelical reaction of considerable importance
set in. Three great parties within the state church carried on
a life and death struggle with one another:

1. The Strict Calvinists, whose leader is Dr. Kuyper, formerly
pastor in Amsterdam;

2. The so-called Middle Party, which falls into two divisions:
the, just about expiring, Ethical Irenical Party, with
the Utrecht professor Van Oosterzee (died 1882), and the
Evangelical Party with the Gröningen professor Hofstede de
Groot, since 1872 Emeritus, as leaders, of which the former,
subordinating the confession, regards the Christian life
as the main thing in Christianity, and the latter declares
itself prepared to take the gospel alone for its creed and
confession; and

3. The so-called Modern Party, which, with Professors Scholten
and Kuenen as leaders, has its centre at Leyden, and in
theology carries out with reckless energy the destructive
critical principles of the school of Baur and Wellhausen
(§ 182, 7, 18).

The “_Moderns_” are also the founders and leaders of the
“_Protestant Federation_” after the German model (§ 180),
with its annual assemblies since 1873, in opposition to which
a “_Confessional Union_” holds its annual meetings at Utrecht,
and operates by means of evangelists and lay preachers in places
where there are only “Modern” pastors. The higher and cultured
classes in the congregations mostly favour the Gröningen and
some also the Leyden school, but the great majority of the middle
and lower classes are adherents of Kuyper, and have frequently
secured majorities in the Congregational Church Council.--The
Dutch school law of 1856 banished every sort of confessional
religious education from public schools supported by the state,
and so called forth the erection of numerous denominational
schools independent of the state, and the founding of a “_Union
for Christian Popular Education_,” which has spread through
the whole country. The university law sanctioned, after violent
debates in the chamber, in 1876, establishes in place of the old
theological faculties, professorships for the science of religion
generally, with the exception of dogmatics and practical theology,
and left it with the Reformed State Synod to care for these two
subjects, either in a theological seminary or by founding for
itself the two theological professorships in the universities
and supporting them from the sums voted for the state church.
The synod decided on the latter course, and appointed to the new
chairs men of moderate liberal views. The adherents of the strict
Calvinistic party, however, founded a Free Reformed University
at Amsterdam, which was opened in autumn, 1880. Its first rector
was Kuyper.--The =Lutheran Church= of fifty congregations and
sixty-two pastors, with about 60,000 souls, has also had since
1816 a theological seminary. In it neological tendencies prevail.

§ 200.3. The founding of the Free University at Amsterdam,
referred to above, led to a series of violent conflicts
which threatened to break up the whole Reformed church of
the Netherlands by a wild schism. The Reformed State Synod,
consisting mainly of Gröningen theologians, but also numbering
many members belonging to the Modern or Leyden school, and
constituting the supreme ecclesiastical court, had, in spite of
its eleventh rule, which makes “the maintenance of the doctrine”
a main task of all church government, for a long time admitted
the principle of unfettered freedom of teaching, and ordained
that even evidence of orthodoxy on the part of candidates for
confirmation would no longer be regarded as a condition of their
acceptance, their examination referring only to their knowledge,
the examining clergy and not the assisting elders being judges
in this matter. When now the Free University had been founded
in direct opposition to the synod, the latter resolved to reject
all its pupils at the examination of candidates, and when, in
the summer of 1885, its first student presented himself, actually
carried out this resolution. Thereupon the university transferred
the examination to a committee, elected by itself, consisting
of orthodox Reformed pastors and elders, and a small village
congregation agreed to elect the candidate for its poorly
endowed, and so for seventeen years vacant, pastorate. But the
synod refused him ordination. Therefore the director of a strict
Calvinistic Gymnasium, formerly a pastor, performed the ceremony,
and the congregation announced its secession from the synodal
union. At the same time in Amsterdam a second conflict arose over
the question of candidates for confirmation. Three pastors of the
“modern” school demanded the elders subject to them, among them
Dr. Kuyper, to take part as required in the examining of their
candidates; but these refused to give their assistance, because
the previous training had not been according to Scripture and the
confession, and also the majority of the church council approved
of this refusal, as the parents had complained, and declared
that the certificate of morality demanded by other pastors could
be made out only if candidates for confirmation had previously
formally and solemnly confessed their genuine and hearty faith in
Jesus Christ as the only and all-sufficient Saviour, which these,
however, in accordance with the Dutch practice of the eighteenth
century, declined to do. The controversy was carried by appeal
through all the church courts, and finally the State Synod
ordered the church council to make delivery of the certificates
within six weeks on pain of suspension. But this was brought
about before the expiry of that period by the outbreak of a
far more serious conflict over matters of administration. In
Amsterdam the administration of church property lay with a
special commission, responsible to the church council, consisting
of members, one half from the church council and the other half
from the congregations. If in the beginning of January, 1886,
the threatened suspension and deposition of the church council
should be carried out, in accordance with proper order until
the appointment of a new council all the rights of the same,
therefore also that of supervising that commission, would fall
to the “classical board” (§ 143, 1) as the next highest court.
In order to avoid this, the fateful resolution was passed on
December 14th, 1885, to alter § 41 of the regulations, so that,
if the church council in the discharge of its duty to govern
the community in accordance with God’s word and the legalized
church confession, it would be so hindered therein that it
might feel in conscience obliged to obey God rather than man
and accept suspension and deposition, and a church council should
be appointed, the administrative commission would be obliged
to remain subject, not to this, but to the original commission.
The “classical board” annulled this resolution, suspended on
January 4th, 1886, for continued obstinacy the previous church
council, and constituted itself, pending decision on the part of
discipline, interim administrator of all its rights and duties.
The suspended majority, however, called a meeting for the same
day, and when it found the doors of its meeting place closed,
sent for a locksmith to break them open. They were prevented by
the police, who then, by putting on a safety lock, strengthening
the boards of the door by mailed plates, and setting a watch,
greatly reduced the chances of an entrance. But the opposition
sent to the watchers a letter by a policeman demanding that
the representatives of the church council should be allowed to
pass; upon which these, regarding it as an order of the police,
withdrew. They then had the mailed plates sawn, took possession
of the hall and the archives and treasure box lying there, and
refused admission to the classical board. While then the question
of law and possession was referred to the courts of law, and
there the final decision would not be given before the lapse
of a year, the disciplinary procedure took its course through
all the ecclesiastical courts and ended in the deposition of all
resisting elders and pastors. The latter preached now to great
crowds in hired halls. From the capital the excitement increased
by means of violent publications on both sides, spread over the
whole land and produced discord in many other communities. Wild
and uproarious tumults first broke out in Leidendorf, a suburb of
Leyden. The pastor and the majority of the church council refused
to enter on their congregational list two girls who had been
confirmed by liberal churchmen elsewhere, and with by far the
greater part of the congregation seceded from the synodal union.
The classical board now, in July, 1886, declared the pastorate
vacant, and ordered that a regular interim service should be
conducted on Sundays by the pastors of the circuit. The uproar
among the people, however, was thereby only greatly increased,
so that the civil authorities were obliged to protect the deputed
preachers, by a large military escort, from rude maltreatment,
and to secure quiet during public worship by a company of police
in church. And similar conflicts soon broke out on like occasions
and with similar consequences in many other places throughout
all parts of the land. In December, 1886, the Amsterdam church
council also declared its secession from the state church, and a
numerously attended “Reformed Church Congress” at Amsterdam, in
January, 1887, summoned by Kuyper in the interests of the crowd
of seceders, resolved to accept the decision of the law in regard
to church property.[554]

§ 200.4. Even after the separation of Belgium there was still
left a considerable number of =Catholics=, about three-eighths of
the population, most numerous in Brabant, Limburg, and Luxemburg,
and these were, as of old, inclined to the most bigoted
ultramontanism. This tendency was greatly enhanced when the new
constitutional law of 1848 announced the principle of absolute
liberty of belief, in consequence of which the Jesuits crowded
in vast numbers, and the pope in 1853 organized a new Catholic
hierarchy in the land, with four bishops and an archbishop at
Utrecht, under the control of the propaganda. The Protestant
population went into great excitement over this. The liberal
ministry of Thorbecke was obliged to resign, but the chambers
at length sanctioned the papal ordinance, only securing the
Protestant population against its misapplication and abuse.--On
the withdrawal of the French in 1814 there were only eight
cloisters remaining; but in 1861 there were thirty-nine for monks
and 137 for nuns, and since then the number has considerably
increased.--The Dutch =Old Catholics= (§ 165, 8), on account
of their protest against the dogma of the Immaculate Conception
(§ 185, 2), enjoined upon the Catholic church by the pope, were
anew excommunicated, and joined the German Old Catholics in
rejecting the decrees of the Vatican Council (§ 190, 1).

§ 200.5. =The Kingdom of Belgium.=--Catholic Belgium obtained
after its separation from Holland a constitution by which
unlimited freedom of religious worship and education, and the
right of confessing opinion and of associating, were guaranteed,
and to the state was allowed no interference with the affairs
of the church beyond the duty of paying the clergy. Also in
Leopold I., 1830-1865, of the house of Saxe-Coburg, it had a king
who though himself a Protestant was faithful to the constitution,
and, according to agreement, had his children trained up in
the Roman Catholic church. The confederacy of radicalism and
ultramontanism, however, was broken by the irreconciliable enmity
and violent conflict in daily life and in the chambers among
clerical and liberal ministers. The ultramontanes founded
at Louvain in 1834 a strictly Catholic university, which was
under the oversight of the bishops and the patronage of the
Virgin; while the liberals promoted the erection of an opposition
university for free science at Brussels. That the Jesuits used
to the utmost for their own ends the liberty granted them by the
constitution by means of missions and the confessional, schools,
cloisters, and brotherhoods of every kind is what might have been
expected. But liberalism also knew how to conduct a propaganda
and to bring the clergy into discredit with the educated classes
by unveiling their intrigues, legacy-hunting, etc., while
these exercised a great influence chiefly upon bigoted females.
The number of cloisters, which on the separation from Holland
amounted only to 280, had risen in 1880 in that small territory
to 1,559, with 24,672 inmates, of whom 20,645 were nuns.

§ 200.6. After the ultramontane party had enjoyed eight years
of almost unchallenged supremacy, the Malou ministry favourable
to it was overthrown in June, 1878, and a liberal government,
under the presidency of Frère-Orban, took its place. Then began
the =Kulturkampf= in Belgium. The charge of public education was
taken from the ministry of the interior, and a special minister
appointed in the person of Van Humbeeck. He began by changing
all girls’ schools under the management of sisters of spiritual
orders into communal schools, and in January, 1879, brought in
a bill for reorganizing elementary education, which completely
secularized the schools; deprived the clergy of all official
influence over them, and relegated religious instruction to the
care of the family and the church, the latter, however, having
the necessary accommodation allowed in the school buildings.
The chambers approved the bill, and the king confirmed it, in
spite of all protests and agitation by the clergy. The clerical
journals put a black border on their issue which published it;
the provincial councils under clerical influence nullified as
far as possible all money bequests for the public schools, and
the bishops assembled in August at Mechlin resolved to found
free schools in all communities, and to refuse absolution to all
parents who entrusted their children to state schools and all
teachers in them, in order thus to cause a complete decay of the
public schools, which indeed happened to this extent that within
a few months 1,167 communal schools had not a single Catholic
scholar. On complaint being made by the government to Leo XIII.,
he expressed through the Brussels nuncio his regret and
disapproval of the proceedings of the bishops; but, on the
other hand, he not only privately praised them on account of
their former zeal in opposing the school law, but also incited
them to continued opposition. When this double dealing of the
curia was discovered, the government in June, 1880, broke off
all diplomatic relations with the Vatican by recalling their
ambassador and giving the nuncio his passports. The ministerial
president publicly in the chamber of deputies characterized
the action of the Holy See as “_fourberie_.” Whereupon the pope
at the next consistory called princes and peoples as witnesses
of this insult. In May, 1882, the results of the inquiry into
clerical incitements against the public was read in the chamber,
where such startling revelations were made as these: Priests
taught the children that they should no longer pray for the king
when he had committed the mortal sin of confirming the school law;
the ministers are worse than murderers and true Herods; a priest
even taught children to pray that God might cause their “liberal”
parents to die, etc. Amid such conflicts the Catholic party
in parliament split into the parties of the _Politici_, who
were willing to submit to the constitution, and that of the
_Intransigenti_, who, under the direction of the bishops and the
university of Louvain, held high above everything the standard
of the syllabus. The latter fought with such passionateness, that
the pope felt obliged in 1881 to enjoin upon the episcopate “that
prudent attitude” which the church in such cases always maintains
in “enduring many evils” which for the time cannot be overcome.
But undeterred, the government continued to restrict the claims
of the clergy, so far as these were not expressly guaranteed by
the constitution.--In June, 1884, as the result of the elections
for the chamber of deputies, the clerical party again were in
power. Malou was once more at the head of a ministry in favour of
the clericals, caused the king to dissolve the senate, and in the
new elections won there also a majority for his party. No sooner
were they in power than the clerical ministry, in conjunction
with the majority in the chambers, proceeded with inconsiderate
haste, amid the most violent, almost daily repeated explosions
from the now intensely embittered liberal and radical section
of the population, which only seemed to increase their zeal,
to employ their absolute power to the utmost in the interest of
clericalism. The restoration of diplomatic relations with the
papal curia in the spirit of absolute acquiescence in its schemes
was the grand aim of the reaction, as well as a new school law
by which the schools were completely given over again to the
clergy and the orders. But when at the next communal elections
a liberal majority was returned, and protests of the new communal
councils poured in against the school law on behalf of the vast
number of state certificated teachers reduced by it to hunger and
destitution, the Malou ministry found itself obliged to resign in
October, 1884. Its place was taken by the moderate ultramontane
Beernaert ministry, which sought indeed to quiet the excitement
by mild measures, but held firmly in all essential points to the
principles of its predecessor.

§ 200.7. An exciting episode in the Belgium _Kulturkampf_ is
presented by the appearance of Bishop =Dumont of Tournay=, who,
previously an enthusiastic admirer of Pius IX. and a vigorous
defender of the infallibility dogma, also a zealous patron of
stigmatization miracles at Bois d’Haine (§ 188, 4), now suddenly
turned round on the school question and refused to obey the papal
injunction. For this he was first suspended, and then in 1880
formally deposed by the pope. He afterwards wrote letters in the
most advanced liberal journals with violent denunciations of the
pope, whom he would not recognise as pope, but only as Bishop of
Rome, and so styled him not Leo, but only Pecci. In these letters
Dumont makes the interesting communication that the virgin Louise
Lateau, favoured of God, has threatened with excommunication the
“intruder” Durousseaux, nominated by the pope as his successor,
because she continues to reverence Dumont as the only legitimate
Bishop of Tournay. The Vatican pronounced him insane, and the
chapter appealed to the civil authorities to have him declared
incapable in the sight of the law, which, however, they refused,
because they could not regard Dumont’s insanity as proved. On
the other hand, Dumont refused to renounce his episcopal office,
and accused Durousseaux of having by night, with the help of a
locksmith, obtained entrance to his episcopal palace, and having
taken forcible possession of a casket lying there, which, besides
the diocesan property to the value of five millions, contained
also about one and a half millions of his own private means.
Pending the issue of the conflict, as to which of the two should
be regarded as the true bishop, the palace was now officially
sealed up. The attempt to arrest the robbed casket had to be
abandoned, because meanwhile the canon Bernard, as keeper of the
treasures of the diocese, had fled with its contents to America.
He was, however, on legal warrant imprisoned in Havanna and
brought back to Belgium in 1882. In April, 1884, the dispute
of the bishops was definitively closed by the judgment of
the supreme tribunal, according to which Dumont, having been
legitimately deposed, has no more claim to the title and revenues
of his earlier office; and in 1886 the supreme court of appeal
at Brussels condemned Bernard “on account of serious breach of
trust” to three years’ imprisonment.

§ 200.8. =The Protestant Church= was represented in Belgium
only by small congregations in the chief cities and some Reformed
Walloon village congregations. But for several decades, by the
zealous exertions of the Evangelical Society at Brussels with
thirty-four pastors and evangelists, the work of evangelization
not only among Catholic Walloons, but also among the Flemish
population, has made considerable progress, notwithstanding all
agitation and incitement of the people by the Catholic clergy,
so that several new evangelical congregations, consisting mostly
of converts, have been formed. In two small places indeed the
whole communities, roused by episcopal arbitrariness, have gone
over.--The pastor Byse employed by the Evangelical Society at
Brussels has taken up the idea that all men by the fall have
lost their immortality, and that it could be restored again by
faith in Christ, while all the unreconciled are given over to
annihilation, the second death of Revelation ii. 11, xx. 15. So
long as he maintained this theory merely as a private opinion
the society took no offence at it, but when he began to proclaim
it in his preaching and in his instruction of the young, and
declined to yield to all advice on the matter, the synod of 1882
resolved upon his dismissal. But a great part of his congregation
still remain faithful to him.

§ 201. THE SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES.

Notwithstanding the common Scandinavian-national and Lutheran-ecclesiastical basis on which the civil and religious life is developed, it assumed in the three Scandinavian countries a completely diversified course. While in Denmark the civil life bore manifold traces of democratic tendencies and thereby the relations between church and state were loosened, Sweden, with a tenacity almost unparalleled in Protestant countries, has for a long period held fast in exclusive attachment to the idea of a state church. On the other hand Denmark was far more open to influences from without hostile to the church, on the one side those of rationalism, on the other, those of the anti-ecclesiastical sects, especially of the Baptists and Mormons, than Sweden, which in its certainly barren, if not altogether dead orthodoxy till after the middle of the century was almost hermetically sealed against all heterogeneous influences, but yet could not altogether over-master the pietistically or methodistically coloured movements of religious yearning that arose among her own people. Norway, again, although politically united with Sweden, has, both in national character and in religious development, shown its more intimate relationship with Denmark.

§ 201.1. =Denmark.=--From the close of last century rationalism
has had a home in Denmark. In 1825 Professor Clausen, a moderate
adherent of the neological school, published a learned work on
the opposition of “Catholicism and Protestantism,” identifying
the latter with rationalism. First of all in that same year
Pastor =Grundtvig= (died 1872), “a man of poetic genius, and
skilled in the ancient history of the land,” inspired with
equal enthusiasm for the old Lutheranism of his fathers and for
patriotic Danism, entered the lists and replied with powerful
eloquence, lamenting the decay of Christianity and the church.
He was condemned by the court of justice as injurious, after he
had during the process resigned his pastoral office. A like fate
befell the orientalist Lindberg, who charged Clausen with the
breach of his ordination vow. The adherents of Grundtvig met
for mutual edification in conventicles, until at last in 1832
he obtained permission again to hold public services. Not less
influential was the work of Sören =Kierkegaard= (died 1855), who,
largely in sympathy with Grundtvig, without ecclesiastical office,
in his writings earnestly pled for a living subjective piety
and unweariedly maintained an uncompromising struggle against
the official Christianity of the secularized clergy. The wild,
unmeasured Danomania of 1848-1849, during the military conflict
with Germany, drew opponents together and made them friends.
Grundtvig declaimed against everything German, and of the two
factors, which he had formerly regarded as the pivots on which
universal history turned, Danism and Lutheranism, he now let
go Lutheranism as of German origin. He therefore proposed the
abrogation of the distinctive German-Lutheran confessions, placed
the Apostles’ Creed before and above the Bible and, pressing
in a one-sided manner the doctrine of baptismal grace, demanded
a “joyous Christianity,” denied the necessity of continued
preaching and exercise of repentance, and wished especially to
introduce into the schools the Norse mythology as introductory
to the study of Christianity. His adherents wrought with the
anti-church party for the abolition of the union of church
and state. The Danish constitutional law of 1849 abolished
the confessional churches of the state church, and Catholics,
Reformed, Moravians, and Jews were granted equal civil rights
with the Lutherans. Since then the Catholic church has made slow
but steady progress in the country, and the increasing Baptist
movement was also favoured by a law of the Volkthing of 1857,
which abolished compulsory baptism, and only required the
enrolment of all children in the church books of their respective
districts within the period of one year. Civil marriage had also
been granted to dissenters in 1851, and in 1868 the peculiar
institution of “electing communities” was founded, by means of
which twenty families from one or more parishes which declare
themselves dissatisfied with the pastors appointed them,
may, without leaving the national church, form an independent
congregation under pastors chosen by themselves and maintained
at their own cost. The =Schleswig-Holstein= revolution in
1848, occasioned enormous confusion and disturbance in the
ecclesiastical conditions of the district. Over a hundred German
pastors were expelled and forty-six Schleswig parishes deprived
of the use of the German language in church and school. In 1864
both provinces were at last by the Austrian and Prussian alliance
rent from the Danish government, and in consequence of the German
war of 1866 were incorporated with Prussia.

§ 201.2. =Sweden.=--In Sweden there was formed in 1803, in
opposition to the barren orthodoxy of the state church, a
religious association which, if not altogether free of pietistic
narrowness, was yet without any heretical doctrinal tendency,
and exercised a quiet and wholesome influence. From the diligent
_reading_ of Scripture and the works of Luther that prevailed
among its members it obtained the name of _Läsare_. The state
proceeded against its members with fines and imprisonment,
according to the old conventicle law of 1726, and the mob treated
them with insults and violence. But in 1842 a fanatical tendency
began to show itself under the leadership of a peasant, Erich
Jansen, who induced many “_Readers_” to quit the church and to
cast into the fire even Luther’s Postils and Catechism as quite
superfluous alongside of Holy Scripture. They mostly emigrated
to America in 1846. The law of the land since 1686 threatened
every Swede who seceded from the Lutheran state church with
imprisonment and exile, loss of civil privileges and the right
of inheritance. As might therefore be supposed the French Marshal
Bernadotte, who in 1818, under the name of Charles XIV., ascended
the throne of Sweden, had been previously in 1810 obliged to
repudiate the Catholic confession. Even in 1857 the Reichstag
rejected a royal proposal to set aside the Secession as well
as the Conventicle Act. But in the very next year, the holding
of conventicles under clerical supervision, and in 1860, the
secession to other ecclesiastical denominations, were allowed by
law. The constitution of 1865 still indeed made adherence to the
Lutheran confession a condition of qualification for a seat in
either of the chambers. The Reichstag of 1870 at last sanctioned
the admission of all Christian dissenters and also of Jews to all
offices of state as well as to the membership of the Reichstag.
On behalf of dissenters, especially of the numerous Baptists
and Methodists, the right of civil marriage was granted in
1879. In 1877, Waldenström, head-master of the Latin school
at Gefle, without ecclesiastical ordination, began zealously
and successfully by speech and writings (to secure the widest
possible circulation of which a joint stock company with large
capital was formed) to work for the revival of the Christian life
in the Lutheran national church. He vigorously contended against
the church doctrine of atonement and justification, repudiating
the idea of vicarious penal suffering, and broke through all
church order by allowing the sacrament of the Lord’s supper to
be dispensed by laymen. He thus put himself, with his numerous
following, directed by lay preachers in their own prayer meetings
and mission halls, into direct opposition to the church, but by
the wise forbearance of the ecclesiastical authorities he has not
yet been formally ejected.[555]

§ 201.3. =Norway.=--In Norway, toward the end of last century,
rationalism was dominant in almost all the pulpits, and only a
few remnants of Moravian revivalism raised a voice against it.
But in 1796, a simple unlearned peasant =Hans Nielsen Hauge=,
then in his twenty-fifth year, made his appearance as a revival
preacher, creating a mighty spiritual movement that spread among
the masses throughout the whole land. He had obtained his own
religious knowledge from the study of old Lutheran practical
theology, and arising at a period of extraordinary spiritual
excitement, “his call,” as Hase says, “to be a prophet was
like that of the herdsman of Tekoa.” From 1799 he continued
itinerating for five years, persecuted, reproached, and
calumniated by the rationalistic clergy, ten times cast into
prison, under a law of 1741, which forbad laymen to preach, and
then set free, until he had gone over all Norway even to its
farthest and remotest corners, preaching unweariedly everywhere
in houses and in the open air often three or four times a
day, and nourishing besides the flame which he had kindled by
voluminous writings and an extensive correspondence. He directed
his preaching not only against the rationalism of the state
clergy, but also against the antinomian religion of feeling, of
“Blood and Wounds” theology introduced in earlier days by the
Moravians, with a one-sided emphasis and exaggeration indeed, but
still in all essentials maintaining the basis and keeping within
the lines of Lutheran orthodoxy. In 1804 he was charged with
tendencies dangerous to church and state, obtaining money from
peasants on false pretences, inciting the people against the
clergy, etc., and again cast into prison. The trial this time was
carried on for ten years, until at last in 1814 the supreme court
sentenced him on account of his invectives against the clergy to
pay a fine, but pronounced him not guilty on the other charges.
Broken down in spirit and body by his long imprisonment, he could
not think of engaging again in his former work. He died in 1824.
Numerous peasant preachers, however, issuing from his school
were ready to go forth in his footsteps, and till this day the
salutary effects of his and their activity are seen in wide
circles. The law of 1741 which had been made to tell against them
was at last abrogated by the Storthing in 1842. In 1845 the right
of forming Christian sects was recognised, and in 1851 even the
Jews were allowed the right of settlement previously refused them,
and the security of all civil privileges. Since that time even
in Norway the Catholic church has made considerable progress;
in June, 1878, it had eleven churches and fourteen priests.

§ 202. GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.

During the course of the century a breach from without was made upon the stronghold of the Anglican established church and its legal standing throughout the United Kingdom. The strong coherence of the Anglican episcopal church had already been weakened internally by the rise within its own bosom of High, Low, and Broad tendencies. The advance of the first-named party to tractarianism and ritualism opened the door to Romish sympathies, while in the last-named school German rationalism and criticism found favour, and the low church party was not ashamed to go hand-in-hand with the evangelical pietistic and methodistic tendencies of the dissenters. There followed numerous conversions to Rome, especially from the aristocratic ranks of the upper ten thousand. The Emancipation Act of 1829 opened the door to both Houses of Parliament to the Catholics, and in 1858 the same privileges were extended to the Jews. Also the bulwarks which the state church had in the old universities of Oxford and Cambridge were undermined, and in 1871 were completely overthrown by the legal abolition of all confessional tests. Down to 1869 the hierarchy of the episcopal state church, though clearly alien to the country, maintained its legal position in Catholic Ireland, till at last the Irish Church Bill brought it there to an end. Repeatedly have bills been introduced in the House of Commons, though hitherto without success, by members of the incessantly agitating Liberation Society, to disestablish the churches of England, Scotland, and Wales.[556]