THE REFORMATION A RELIGIOUS AND HISTORICAL SKETCH. By REV. J. A. BABINGTON, M.A. ASSISTANT MASTER AT TONBRIDGE SCHOOL; FORMERLY SCHOLAR OF NEW LIBRARY OF THE CALIFORN . LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 1901 PREFACE. WHEN an unknown author comes before the public with a book on one of the most important periods of history, an apology is needed. It is doubly needed when he is conscious of the manifold imperfections and shortcomings of his work. I can only plead that the history and theology of the Reformation have constantly occupied my thoughts and engrossed much of my leisure time for more than twenty-five years, that I have attempted to treat it comprehensively, that I have endeavoured to look at it from every point of view, and that it has been my constant effort to write of it, not as a member of any particular Church, but as one who can sympathize deeply with all the Evangelical Churches, and who can recognize and admire the distinctive merits of each of them. Though the Reformation was before all else a religious movement, and though for this reason its moral, theological, and ecclesiastical aspects claim the special attention of the student, yet I have attempted, so far as my limits would allow, to point out that it indirectly produced political, national, and international results of the highest importance. As this book does not claim to be more than a sketch, I have not thought it necessary to load my pages with explanatory or controversial notes, nor to give a list of the works in English, Latin, German, French, Dutch, Danish, and Italian which I have studied or consulted. I cannot pretend to have exhausted the vast literature of the subject, 211143 but I trust that I have not suffered anything of real importance to escape my notice. In some countries, such as Italy, Spain, Poland, Austria, Bavaria, and Ireland, the Reformation only penetrated skin deep, or had only a partial influence, or gained only a partial success. To trace the progress of the Evangelical doctrines in these countries would have contributed little to the real knowledge of the Reformation, and I have, therefore, thought it advisable to pass them over in the following sketch. It is, perhaps, needless to add that this book is not intended for professed students of history or theology, who will find in it nothing which they did not know already, but for thoughtful members of the Protestant Churches who are interested in religious questions, who are anxious to understand the Reformation better, and who wish to know what the aims, the principles, and the methods of the Reformers were. If the following pages enable any of them to realize that they have achieved together a great spiritual emancipation, that they possess in common an inalienable heritage of religious truth, and that the invisible bonds of Christian fellowship which unite them are incomparably mightier than the visible differences which still divide them, I shall have fulfilled a wish which I have long cherished. JOHN ALBERT BABINGTON. TONBRIDGE, 1901. |