Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 684

660

§104.

DEVELOPMENT OF MULTIFORMITY

form and expression. of the unity of the

And

[Div. Ill

while the rigorous maintenance

Church rendered

this result possible, the

very thought of a certain multiformity for the life of the Church could not commend itself to any one. This conception of unity had entered so deeply into the public consciousness of those times, that while multiformity was already in

existence de facto^ and caused

its effects

to be felt, they still

argued and acted as though there were never anything but the single, uniform Church. It did not enter into the common consciousness of that day that the uniformity of the Clmrch had found its logical expression in the papal idea, and that with the refusal of obedience to the Pope that uniformity was broken In the days of the inforever, never again to be restored. terim the dream was still dreamed, to restore by mutual consent, a unity which would also include the papal Church. The numberless conferences between Lutherans and Reformed, and between Reformed and Anabaptists proceeded without distinction, from the desire to unite in the unity of the faith everything that had broken with Rome. The Byzantine spirit, which had come upon the German princes, rejected the idea of all multiformity in the

Church within the

boundaries of each, so resolutely and definitely that at length the principle of cuius regio eius religio, of the

crown must be the

i.e.

" that the religion

religion of the people," could for a

while rule as the leading thought.

And when

finally, yield-

ing to the force of facts, and compelled by the European-

Romish league

to political cooperation, the correlation of the

Lutheran and Reformed elements could no longer be neglected, their mutual recognition resulted more from the impulse of self-protection than from the impulse of a clearly self-conscious conviction.

That this delusion of unity assumed with the Lutheraiis forms that were so much more sharply outlined than with the Reformed, leading first to the rejection of the Reformed

—

on the coast of the North Sea, and finally to the decapicannot be attributed to the fact that the Reformed already occupied on principle a far wider standpoint, but was exclusively the result of their clearer insight exiles

tation of Crell in 1601,

—

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