Philological and Historical Criticism [pp. 205-224]

PHILOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM:
ITS PLACE IN MODERN LIFE.
FTER the rise, the progress, and the victory of Christianity
in ancient civilization, there are no events of more profound and lasting interest than the origin and development of
the reformation in Western and North-western Europe, the
circumstances which made it possible at the time when it became
an acknowledged fact, the causes which retarded it and wellnigh reversed it, the spirit which it evoked and is still evoking,
and the mechanism by which, in the Old World, the principles
with which it is animated, have still to carry on the struggle.
For that which mnay be quite obsolete in new countries is still
vigorous in old ones, and the successors of Hildebrand and
Innocent III. are still striving against the forces which the
successors of Luther, Calvin, and Cranmer arrayed in their
attack on the See of Rome. In the old world the battle between
authority and reason is still being waged, and virtually with the
same weapons; and tho the strife is not so savage and vindictive, the stake which is the issue of the victory is as large as
it was, nay, is even still larger than when Wiklif first began to
dispute the pope's authority and Luther openly defied it.
In the middle of the twelfth century a great awakening of
intellectual activity took place. The papacyhad reformed itself
under the influence of Hildebrand, Germany was governed by
the genius and daring of Frederic the Great, the constitution
of England was being shaped by Henry II., France was
being consolidated by the patience of Louis VII. and the
policy of his son, Philip Augustus, while the Italian republics,
after the great victory of Legnano, were embarked on that career
of opulence and intellectual vigor which seemed likely to make