What was the Counter-Reformation?

We can easily conceive that the enemies of the Reformation were now at their wits' end. What was to be done? That which had been looked forward to for thirty years, as the sure means of crushing it, had not only failed, but ceased to be an opposing power, while the Reformation was rapidly increasing its area and multiplying its adherents. The pope had lost immensely in dignity, influence, and revenues in the contest, and the imperial power could no more be appealed to. The friars, black, white, and grey, were dispersed and their monasteries destroyed: what was next to be done? was a grave question for the evil heart of Jezebel, and those with whom she took counsel. Men-at-arms had failed; peace and persuasion must be our tactics now, suggested the presiding spirit. An army must be raised whose uniform should be the priestly garb, whose vows must be poverty, chastity, the care of Christians, and the conversion of infidels; and the character of whose mission must be persuasive and pacific. Under these appearances a counter-work to the Reformation must be immediately instituted. This plausible proposal was unanimously agreed to; and never was suggestion more plainly from beneath-even from the depths of Satan; and never was there one more satanically executed, as the history of the Jesuits proves. The springs of human feeling, sympathy, and pity seem to have been dried up in every member of that society, and the hell-inspired springs of bigotry and cruelty, which have no parallel in history, most surely possessed them.

The Gunpowder Plot, which was planned to destroy at one blow the nobility and gentry of England, is attributed to Jesuitical influence; and so are many other plots which were intended to accomplish the death of Queen Elizabeth. The gigantic wickedness of the Spanish Armada, and the crowning slaughter of the St. Bartholomew massacre, to say nothing of the many seditions, torturings, poisonings, assassinations, and massacres on a smaller scale, must be attributed to the policy, and to the seed sown by the Jesuits. So mighty did their power become, and so ruinous, that it was often found necessary for the government to suppress them. According to modern history, they were expelled from Portugal in 1759; France 1764; Spain and Spanish America, 1767; the two Sicilies, 1768; and in 1773 suppressed by the pope Ganganelli, Clement XIV. But soon after he had signed the order for their banishment, he fell a victim to their vengeance, and died by poison. In 1801 they were restored by Pius VII.; in 1860 they were dismissed from Sicily; but we need scarcely add, that they soon found ways and means to return. The late pope, Pius IX., confirmed the restoration of the order; so that they now occupy a very proud position in Rome. They have the command of most of the collegiate establishments in the city, and in so many other places, that merely to name them would fill a page.*

Thus was the enfeebled power of popery greatly revived — its deadly wound was healed. By means of the Reformation, many of the most opulent and powerful kingdoms of Europe had thrown off their allegiance to the pope. This was a fatal blow to his grandeur and power. It abridged his dominions, abolished his jurisdiction within their territories, and diminished his revenues. But more than this, it is well known that Charles V. seriously contemplated the reduction, if not the subversion, of the papal power. Such was the low, and almost expiring condition of the papacy, when the army of the Jesuits came to its help, which may be viewed as an illustration of Revelation 13:3, though far from the full accomplishment of those solemn prophecies.

The history of the papal influence was this — when there were emperors, they ruled; but the pope's influence was growing ecclesiastically, though often resisted. When the empire fell, they were the chief influence (except the Arian Goths in Italy), and did pretty freely what they pleased, increasing in power in respect of Constantinople. However the Gothic kings confirmed them, and interfered, and were appealed to, as we have seen. When for a time the eastern empire reconquered Italy, the popes were servile and submissive to the emperors; they could not help it. When these were driven out again, they were oppressed by Lombards, but established in Rome by the Franks, Charlemagne however fully holding his own, and ruling at Rome. When the succeeding Carlovingian emperors were weak and divided, their power grew. Powerful emperors contended for the right of confirmation of popes and local investiture of prelates; and the history of the middle ages is the history of this conflict, the popes raising Italy against them (Guelphs and Ghibelines), and the emperors sometimes doing as they pleased. But the German emperors having to contend with subject princes as powerful as themselves, and jealous of them, the pope and they coalesced against the emperors: the popes even supported the rebellion of a son against his father the Emperor. In Boniface the eighth's time they laid their hand on France; but this was more united, and there was a signal failure. The pope had to give way. The next pope had his seat at Avignon, under French influence — the Avignon popes and the court being degraded to the last degree. At the end they had one pope at Rome and another at Avignon, this giving rise to the question whether the authority of a council were not superior to that of a pope, and to the three councils of Pisa, Basle (Florence, Lausanne), and Constance, which so puzzle Roman Catholic theorists. There was a universal cry for reformation in head and members, always avoided. At last came the Reformation, which threw the whole power into the pope's hands, the bishops holding only under him. And though Louis XIV maintained Gallican liberties, as they are called, yet the clergy are simply slaves to the pope. The Jesuit society sprang up at that time more powerful than the pope himself, and recovered southern Germany to popery.

N*. There is a sense, though I do not like the terms, in which that is true; but you forget, Mr. O., that we have not yet found the true church, so that your warnings can have no effect at all. Every true Christian belongs to the church of God, and has to seek to live in its unity; but Romanism you have not shewn to be that church. As yet we have found, outside scripture, no solid foundation for anything. Popes and councils have striven for superiority. The popes seeking ambitiously for the universal authority, the pretension to which they once condemned, and when the progress of Mahometanism in the East, and the decay of the Greek church, left them free, plunging into such wickedness and oppression as roused the clergy, supported by the princes of Europe, to seek to assert the superiority of a council over them, which they confirmed because they could not help it, evaded as soon as the councils were over, and by their wickedness, and at last specially by their sale of indulgences, which was really selling permission to sin, brought about the Reformation, that is, the breaking loose of half western Europe from their sway, Eastern Europe having never been under it. This brought on the Council of Trent, which, in fixing the Romanist in his errors, gave a deeper character of apostasy from the truth to Rome, and left the separation of Northern Europe where it was.

XX. Trent, in 1545-63, to condemn the Reformation. At this council was settled what was to be the future doctrine of the church of Rome; and its Catechism is now always appealed to as the standard authority of that church.

In December 1545 the General Council, so long called for, and which was to settle the question of the Reformation, was opened at Trent; but the pope managed to get the council entirely into his own hands and to do almost entirely as he pleased. It continued with intervals for eighteen years, and its decrees and its catechism, so called, are constantly appealed to as the standard of the Roman Catholic religion.

The Council of Trent

At the famous Council of Trent, which met in 1545, and continued its sittings till 1563, during which the events we have rapidly described were in progress, the laws of the Roman Catholic church were more accurately defined, and measures were devised for the more effectual suppression of heresy. Their deliberations and decisions must have been greatly affected by the general state of Europe at that particular moment. But as the original object and character of this council have been already noticed, we need only add what has not been previously mentioned.

One of the major battle cries of the Protestant Reformation was sola scriptura "Scripture alone." The reformers rejected many Roman Catholic traditions and practices and argued for a Church that would base its doctrines and practice strictly on what the Bible teaches. But at the Council of Trent (1545 - 1563), the Roman Catholic Church rebuffed this teaching and retained the right and power to interpret the Holy Scriptures according to what it believed the Bible says.

During Vatican Council II (1962‑1965), the claims of Trent were simply upheld in a little different form. Among the Vatican Council II documents is the "Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation" (Dei Verbum). A careful reading of the Del Verbum shows that the Roman Catholic Church believes that the apostles passed on their authority to succeeding bishops in the churches of the first century and the centuries that followed. As the years went by, the Church added certain teachings based on what it calls Sacred Tradition. Because the bishops supposedly possessed the same apostolic insight and wisdom as the apostles, the traditions they began to pass on were given equal weight with Scripture. Instead of sola scriptura (the Bible alone), the Catholic Church assumed and claimed the correct approach to be Scripture plus tradition.

Until the Church of Rome went so far as dogmatically to raise the Apocrypha to the same level as the Books of the Hebrew Canon, it would seem that Jerome's views retained some hold upon the more enlightened theologians of that communion. Westcott (p.253) cites Cardinal Cajetan, Luther's opponent at Augsburg in 1518, who in his 'Commentary on all the Authentic Historical Books of the Old Testament' (1532), inscribed to Clement VII, says, 'The language of Councils and Doctors must alike be revised by the judgment of Jerome.' But with ripening opposition to the Reform movement, the Council of Trent (1546) canonized all the contents of the Vulgate as now issued, including that is, the Apocrypha, with the exception of 3 and 4 Esdras (as they are usually called), and the Prayer of Manasses.

The council commenced its deliberations-though only a few Spanish and Italian bishops had arrived-with examining the first and chief point in controversy between the church of Rome and the Reformers, concerning the rule which should be held as supreme and decisive in matters of faith; and, by its infallible authority, determined, "That the books to which the designation of Apocryphal hath been given, are of equal authority with those which were received by the Jews and Primitive Christians into the sacred canon; that the traditions handed down from the apostolic age, and preserved in the church, are entitled to as much regard as the doctrines and precepts which the inspired authors have committed to writing; that the Latin translation of the scriptures, made or revised by Jerome, and known by the name of the Vulgate translation, should be read in churches, and appealed to in the schools as authentic and canonical."