The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth | Page 2

truth, the
outward manifestation in the religious world of this development.
Prior to the Reformation, wherever a man might turn his steps in
Western Europe, he found himself confronted with what was proudly
termed the Universal Church: one hierarchy, one faith, one form of
worship, in which the officiating priests were assumed to be the
indispensable mediators between God and man, everywhere confronted

him. Religion was then much more intimately blended with the life of
man than it is now; and on all matters of religion, Western Europe
seemed to present a united front and to be impervious to change.
Appearances, however, are proverbially deceitful. Beneath this
apparent uniformity and general conformity, there lurked countless
forces, spiritual, intellectual, social and political, making for change.
Dissent and dissatisfaction, with myriads of tiny teeth, had undermined
and weakened the stately columns that upheld the imposing structure of
the Universal Church. Even within the Church itself there was seething
inquietude, and thousands of its purest souls longed, prayed and
struggled for its practical amendment. To emancipate the Church from
the clutches of the autocracy of Rome; to remove the abuses that, in the
course of centuries, had grown round and sullied its primitive purity; to
lighten the fiscal oppression of the Papacy and to check the rapacity of
the Cardinals; to reform and discipline the priesthood; even to modify
certain doctrines and dogmas: such were the aspirations of some of the
most devout, eminent and cultured sons of the Church. Outside its
communion there were many forms of heresy, which, though generally
regarded as disreputable and often treated as criminal, the apparently
all-powerful Church had never been able entirely to eradicate. And, at
first at least, both these forces favoured the efforts of the early Lutheran
Reformers.
The influence of the Reformation, of "the New Learning," on
theological, ethical, social and political thought can scarcely be
overestimated. Under the supremacy of the Church of Rome, men,
educated and uneducated, had come to rely almost entirely on authority
and precedent, and had lost the habit of self-reliance, of unswerving
dependence on the dictates of reason, which was one of the
distinguishing characteristics of the classical philosophers and their
disciples, as it is of the modern scientific school of thought. In short,
concerning matters spiritual and temporal, Faith had usurped the
function of Reason. Hence any innovations, whatever their abstract
merit, were regarded not only with justifiable suspicion and caution,
but as entirely unworthy of consideration, unless, of course, they could
be shown to be in accordance with accepted traditions and doctrines, or
had received the sanction of the Church. But even the Church itself was

popularly regarded as bound by tradition and precedent; and when the
Papacy sanctioned any departure from established custom, it was
understood to do so in its capacity of infallible expounder of
unalterable doctrines.
The habits of centuries still enthralled the early Reformers.
Circumstances compelled them to attack some of the doctrines and
customs of their Mother Church, of which at first they were inclined to
regard themselves as dutiful though sorrowful sons. The logic of facts,
however, soon forced them outside the Church. Then, but then only, for
the authority of the Church, they substituted the authority of the
Scriptures. To apply to them Luther's own words, "they had saved
others, themselves they could not save." In their eyes Reason and Faith
were still mortal enemies,--as unfortunately they are to this day in the
eyes of a steadily diminishing number of their followers,--and they did
not hesitate to demand the sacrifice of reason when it conflicted, or
appeared to conflict, with the demands of faith: and that, indeed, as "the
all-acceptablest sacrifice and service that can be offered to God." In a
sermon in 1546, the last he delivered at Wittenberg, Luther gave vent,
in language that even one of his modern admirers finds too gross for
quotation, to his bitter hatred and contempt for reason, at all events
when it conflicted with his own interpretation of the Scriptures, or with
any of the fundamental dogmas and doctrines he had himself
formulated or accepted. While even in milder moments he did not
hesitate to teach that[4:1]--
"It is a quality of faith that it wrings the neck of reason and strangles
the beast, which else the whole world, with all creatures, could not
strangle. But how? It holds to God's word: lets it be right and true, no
matter how foolish and impossible it sounds. So did Abraham take his
reason captive and slay it.... There is no doubt faith and reason mightily
fell out in Abraham's heart, yet at last did faith get the better, and
overcame and strangled reason, the all-cruelest and most fatal enemy to
God. So, too, do all other faithful men who enter with Abraham the