In less than thirty years, the indifferent, joking and
laughing world of the Renaissance had been transformed into
the arguing, quarrelling, back-biting, debating-society of the
Reformation. The universal spiritual empire of the Popes
came to a sudden end and the whole Western Europe was
turned into a battle-field, where Protestants and Catholics
killed each other for the greater glory of certain theological
doctrines which are as incomprehensible to the present generation
as the mysterious inscriptions of the ancient Etruscans.
RELIGIOUS WARFARE
THE AGE OF THE GREAT RELIGIOUS
CONTROVERSIES
THE sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the age of
religious controversy.
If you will notice you will find that almost everybody
around you is forever ``talking economics'' and discussing
wages and hours of labor and strikes in their relation to the
life of the community, for that is the main topic of interest
of our own time.
The poor little children of the year 1600 or 1650 fared
worse. They never heard anything but ``religion.'' Their
heads were filled with ``predestination,'' ``transubstantition,''
``free will,'' and a hundred other queer words, expressing
obscure points of ``the true faith,'' whether Catholic or
Protestant. According to the desire of their parents they were
baptised Catholics or Lutherans or Calvinists or Zwinglians
or Anabaptists.
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