contrary to his conception of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ. On 31 Oct. 1517 he posted his 95 theses, in this way stating his own position on the subject and challenging to a debate. This brought him into conflict with the papal authorities and it was found that there were great numbers in Germany who accepted his views. Efforts were made to bring him back to the Church but in vain. His further study of the New Testament and the Church Fathers led him to take views directly antagonistic to the papacy. He taught that a general council could make mistakes, that all Christians were priests before God and that in matters of doctrine the papacy had departed from the teachings of the Bible. He was excommunicated and at the will of Emperor Charles V, placed under the ban of the empire but continued to be the leading spirit in the German Reformation. His most important assistant was his fellowteacher at Wittenberg, Phillip Melancthon, the thinker and scholar of the Reformation as Luther was the aggressive leader. The Reformation spread rapidly after 1517 but was somewhat checked in 1524-25 by the Peasant Revolt because, in the minds of many, Luther's preaching led directly to such outbreaks. Luther's marriage also alienated some of his followers who did not believe that monastic vows ought to be broken. Efforts were made repeatedly at the German diets to come to some agreement but in vain. Feeling between Catholics and Lutherans became more bitter till war broke out between them, which was settled by the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 by which it was agreed that each prince should have it in his power to decide the religion of his people. The principle was expressed in the words cujus regio ejus religo. Another part of the agreement was the Ecclesiastical Reservation, according to which if an ecclesiastical prince changed his religion he must resign his benefices. This settled the ecclesiastical question in Germany for nearly a hundred years, but was unsatisfactory because it gave no room for the growing numbers of Christians outside of the Catholic and Lutheran bodies.

Meanwhile a similar movement was going on in Switzerland under the leadership of Ulrich Zwingli. He was a humanist and a great admirer of Erasmus. His study of the Bible led him to question some of the teachings of the Church and while preaching at the cathedral at Zürich he presented his new views. To settle the kind of preaching which should be allowed at Zürich a public disputation was held and the city government decided in favor of the Reformation. Similar action was taken by other cities of German Switzerland. The Lutheran and Swiss reformatory views were much alike, but with some striking differences. In order that there might be united and harmonious action by the two, a conference was arranged between the leaders of the two divisions at Marburg in 1529. They could agree on all points except on the Lord's Supper, the followers of Zwingli looking upon it as a memorial, while the Lutherans insisted upon the literal sense of the words, "This is my body," holding to the actual presence of the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine but not to the change of the elements into the body and blood. All later attempts to bring about an agreement between the Swiss or Reformed

branch and the Lutherans failed. The Swiss forest cantons remained Catholic while the city cantons accepted the Reformation. There were other disagreements of a political nature so that war broke out and Zwingli was killed at the battle of Cappel in 1531. Zürich continued to be important as a centre for the propagation of the Reformation, but the leadership of the Reformed Church passed to Geneva.

There were many who believed that the Lutherans and Reformed did not go far enough in their rejection of error, and dependence upon the New Testament. These radical reformers were known as Anabaptists, because most of them rejected infant baptism and held that believers only should be baptized. They varied in life and belief from the learned and saintly humanist, Hubmaier, to the fanatic, John of Leyden. They were persecuted by Protestants and Catholics and many of them died as martyrs. The worst side of the movement appeared in the city of Münster, where an Anabapist kingdom was established and polygamy was introduced. The large majority of the Anabaptists were sincere Christians, intent upon following the simple teaching of the Bible. They are the spiritual ancestors of millions of our presentday Christians.

In France there was no leading figure in the early days of the Reformation corresponding to Luther and Zwingli. The nearest approach to this was Jean Jacques Lefèvre, better known perhaps by his Latinized name, Faber Stapulensis, who was the leading humanist of his day in France. He came to a belief in justification by faith rather than by works before Luther did, and his translation of the New Testament into French greatly aided the Reformation. One of his pupils was Briçonnet, bishop of Meaux, who undertook reformatory work in his own diocese and invited preachers of Reformed views to assist. He never went so far as to break with Roman Catholicism and when protests were made against the preachers he had brought in he ordered them to withdraw. But the work which had been begun went on in secret in Meaux and in other parts of France. Faber never withdrew from the Roman Catholic Church.

The attitude of the French king, Francis I, varied from time to time according to political exigencies, but became more hostile to Protestantism as time went on. He was greatly disturbed by the Peasant Revolt in Germany, fearing that the spread of the new faith_might bring anarchy into his own country. In his closing years the laws against heresy were rigidly enforced but Protestantism continued to spread. The great growth of Protestantism in France came after the Frenchman, John Calvin, became master of Geneva and made that city the centre of the Reformed branch of Protestantism. Frenchmen went to Geneva and returned to their homeland to distribute copies of the New Testament and to preach, when they knew that they risked their lives by so doing. The persecuted Christians were organized into churches under the direction of Calvin. Presbyterian system was established and even in the days of persecution a national organization was effected. The French Protestants were called Huguenots and became a political as well as religious party. As in so many other nations of Europe, war broke out between the

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followers of the two faiths. These wars succeeded each other rapidly for a period of half a century with varying results. Finally Henry of Navarre became king. He was a Protestant, but to put an end to the civil wars he became a Roman Catholic. In 1598 he published the Edict of Nantes which gave a limited toleration to the Huguenots and under which they increased in numbers for nearly a century.

A second and more important branch of the French Reformation was that which had Geneva as its centre. Geneva had accepted the Reformation principally through the efforts of French evangelists of whom William Farel was the leader. He attempted to make the people of Geneva live up to their professions but was unable to do so. The work which he began was carried on by John Calvin in such a way that Geneva became the model city of Protestant Christendom. John Calvin was famous before his coming to Geneva as the author of the Institutes, a book which more than any other became the textbook of the Reformed Church. Calvin fled from France because of the persecution and hoped to find some city where he could spend his life in scholarly work for the Reformation. On his journey he chanced to come to Geneva to pass the night. Farel was trying to organize the Church and he persuaded Calvin to assist him. After a prolonged conflict Calvin gained control of the city. He reorganized the Church under the eldership system by which ministers and lay elders had control of the spiritual affairs of the city. He established theological lectureships, thus making possible an educated ministry. Geneva became the educational centre of the Reformed Church and large numbers of men, fleeing from persecution in England, the Netherlands, France and other parts of Europe, came to Geneva, studied under Calvin and carried his theology and form of Church organization back to their home lands.

The Reformation came early into the Netherlands because of its close commerical and political connection with Germany. Charles V attempted to put a stop to the spread of the movement but the laws against heresy were not executed with strictness in his reign. His son Philip II entered upon a more vigorous policy of persecution and through the Duke of Alva and his successors tried in vain to suppress the political and religious liberties of the Netherlands. The great leader in the struggle for independence was William of Orange, at first a Catholic and in his later years a member of the Reformed Church. The inquisition of the Spanish type was introduced and the laws of the country were suspended. Persons accused of heresy were executed by the hundreds. Philip resolved to root out heresy even if it meant the ruin of the country. In vain the best generals in Spain were sent to overcome the resistance of the people. Under the guidance of William of Orange the northern provinces which were almost wholly Protestant declared their independence of Spain, which was finally established at the close of the Thirty Years' War.

England had been influenced by the Humanistic movement through the work of More, Colet, Erasmus and other leaders of the Renaissance but their effort was rather to purify the Old Church than to form a separate organiza

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tion. The immediate cause of the separation was the act of the king who desired a divorce from his queen, Catherine. The Pope was not willing to grant this and so Henry took the matter into his own hands and declared himself the supreme head of the Church of England, obtaining his divorce through Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury. Parliament, under the control of Henry VIII, passed a law which took all authority in England away from the Pope and the king became supreme in all matters relating to the temporal affairs of the Church in England. No appeal could be taken on any ecclesiastical matter to any power outside the realm. It was the plan at first to make no changes in doctrine but there was a strong Protestant tendency under the leadership of Archbishop Cranmer. This was made evident by the publication of the Ten Articles which formed the first statement of belief of the separated English Church. Henry encouraged the reading of the Bible because he thought this would strengthen the movement away from Rome, not realizing that the study of the Bible would bring independence and diversity of belief amongst his people. There was a strict understanding that all the people should walk in the ecclesiastical path which Henry had marked for them. Those who refused to do so were subjected to the king's displeasure and in a few instances were executed for refusing to acknowledge him as supreme head of the Church in England or for declining to follow him in his doctrinal changes. One of his most drastic changes was the dissolution of the monasteries. A royal commission was appointed to investigate their condition and this commission brought in an adverse report so that they were dissolved, the smaller ones at first and the larger ones later in his reign. The property of the monasteries was used in part for educational and religious purposes but the larger part was used to enrich the king and the landed gentry. Henry's reign closed in 1547, and he was succeeded by his 10 year-old son, Edward VI, who because of his youth was under control of regents. The movement toward a Reformation of the Continental type was rapid in his reign under the leadership of Cranmer. Theologians from the Continent were brought in to assist in the movement. The first Prayer Book of Edward VI was published largely through the influence of Cranmer. This is the basis of the present Book of Common Prayer. Forty-two articles of Faith, afterward reduced to Thirty-nine, formed the doctrinal basis of the Church.

In 1553 Mary the daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine became queen and attempted to undo all that had been done in the direction of Protestantism in the preceding reigns. She tried to have the men who had been enriched by the abbey lands give back these lands to their former owners, but in this she did not succeed. The nation returned to allegiance to the Pope with an ease that made it clear that England was not yet ready for the change to Protestantism. Mary enforced the heresy laws, especially against those who had been prominent in the overthrow of Roman Catholicism, some of the leading Churchmen of England being included in the list of her victims. The fortitude of these unfortunate ones as they were burned at the stake did much to turn the

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minds of England to a study of the Reformation. More and more in the reign of Mary, England was becoming Protestant and the queen had the consciousness in her closing years that her efforts to turn the nation to the Old Church had been a failure. When Elizabeth succeeded to the throne in 1558 she found conditions which required the exercise of great wisdom to keep the nation from civil war. She was herself a Protestant by taste if not by conviction. The changes introduced by Mary were quickly abolished. A new Act of Supremacy was passed which made her Supreme Governor on Earth of the Church in England. With her accession the Protestant leaders who had fled to the Continent when Mary began her prosecutions came back and brought with them ideas which were in conflict with the thoughts of Elizabeth in regard to the royal supremacy. These Puritans as they came to be called were not opposed to the idea of Episcopacy but they did object to what they considered the remnants of popery in the system which still retained forms and customs suggestive of Roman Catholicism. They desired a State Church purified from all that had suggestion of popery and one in which there was a large degree of freedom in the way of forms and ceremonies. In the later years of Elizabeth there was a party believing in Presbyterianism as the only proper form of Church government and they desired to have one established State Church but of the Presbyterian type. There also appeared the various independent movements out of which the Congregationalists and Baptists later arose.

While we associate John Knox more than anyone else with the Reformation in Scotland, there were several men who prepared the way for him. One of these was Patrick Hamilton, a young nobleman who studied at different universities on the Continent and came to the Protestant position. He returned to Scotland and preached the new views. Cardinal Beaton was primate of Scotland and resolved to suppress heresy. Hamilton refused to change his views and was burned at the stake. George Wishart was another enthusiastic preacher of the Protestant views. He was protected by the nobles who were friendly to his teachings and he made evangelistic journeys in different parts of Scotland. One of his followers was John Knox. Wishart was captured and executed for heresy and Knox became the leader of the Scotch Reformation. He had obtained a priestly education and soon showed marked ability as a Protestant leader. He worked in England in the reign of Edward VI and went to the Continent when the persecution broke out in the reign of Mary. He studied at Geneva and adopted Calvin's views in regard to Church organization and theology. On his return to Scotland in 1559 he became virtually the head of the Protestant movement in that country. He gave his support to the Lords of the Congregation in their attempt to maintain Protestantism against the wishes of Mary Stuart, who desired to hold the nation to Catholicism. The conflict resulted in a victory for Protestantism and Presbyterianism was established by law. After Knox's death in 1572 his work was ably carried on by Andrew Melville.

The Reformation was also introduced into Denmark, Sweden and Norway. The leaders were men who had been pupils of Luther and

the Reforamiton was under state control. It was in some cases forced upon the people before they had been thoroughly informed of the meaning of the change. Educational work was carried on later so that the Scandinavian countries became thoroughly Protestant.

The Lutheran Reformation also extended into Bohemia, Hungary and Poland. In Bohemia the way had been prepared by Huss and his followers. It spread rapidly here but was almost entirely overthrown by the work of the Jesuits and the Thirty Years' War. In Hungary and Poland the progress of the Reformation was greatly hindered by the rivalries of Lutherans, Calvinists and Unitarians.

Attempts were made by the Roman Catholic Church to recover the ground lost and to gain new territory in the non-Christian world. The principal agency in this effort was the Society of Jesus, an organization founded by the Spanish monk, Ignatius Loyola. The new religious order placed itself under the power of the Pope to be used unreservedly by him in the service of the Church. It worked along two lines educationl and missionary and was so successful that in some parts of Europe the Reformation was held in check, in other places large numbers who had been Protestants were won back to Catholicism. In non-Christian lands the members of the Society worked as missionaries and thousands were won to Catholicism. (See COUNTER REFORMATION). Consult Fisher, History of the Reformation' (1893); Newman, Manual of Church History) (1903); Walker, The Reformation (1900); Lindsay, History of the Reformation (1907); The Reformation' in the Cambridge Modern History) (1907).

CURTIS M. GEER, Professor of Church History, Hartford Theological Seminary.

REFORMATORIES. See PENOLOGY.

REFORMATORY SCHOOLS, schools instituted for the training of juvenile offenders who have been convicted of an offense punishable by imprisonment. The first reformatory managed under legislative control was the one established in New York in 1824, known as the New York House of Refuge. Its success was so marked that at present there are 56 institutions in the United States for the reformation of juvenile offenders. Among them are a number of admirably conducted establishments under the control of religious denominations, to which children are sent, according to the religious creed of their parents, when the same can be ascertained.

REFORMED CATHOLIC CHURCH, a religious body established in New York in 1879 by several priests who had left the Roman Catholic Church, and under the leadership of Rev. James A. O'Connor. It adopted the Protestant doctrine as expounded in the Evangelical churches, and protested against the doctrine, government, discipline, practice and sacramental system of the Roman Catholic Church. They believe that the believer finds salvation through faith in God through Christ and needs no mediation through the church. They have six churches, eight ministers and about 3,000 members. The sect is established in New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Illinois.

REFORMED CHURCH

REFORMED CHURCH. See CALVIN, JOHN: CALVINISM; REFORMED CHURCH IN AMERICA; REFORMATION.

For

REFORMED CHURCH IN AMERICA, The, is one in denominational polity and doctrinal type with the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of the Netherlands, and bore that name until the year 1867. The beginnings of distinctive Reformed Church theology should be credited to "The Brethren of the Common Life." This was a unique organization of Christian community-life throughout the Netherlands, indirectly inspired by the consecrated mystic, John Ruysbroek of Brussels, designed and formally established at Deventer and Zwolle in North Holland by Ruysbroek's devoted pupil and friend, the enthusiastic evangelist-missionary, Gerard de Groote, in the last year of his life, 1384, and fully organized and developed by de Groote's like-minded fellow-worker, Florentius Radewyn, during the last 16 years of the 14th century, which were also the closing and crowning years of the life of this truly diligent and admirable man. Absolute loyalty to the will and person of the Lord Jesus Christ in everything, as necessarily exemplified in continual personal study and obedience of the Holy Scriptures, was the one all-important purpose in the daily life of these single-hearted Christian leaders. the more practical and complete realization of their one supreme purpose many varied personal and community activities were developed; conspicuous among these were transcribing and multiplying copies of the Old and New Testaments, the early Church Fathers and other truly good books; the grouping of these "copyists" in community-families of not more than 20 persons under the same roof; daily study of the Scriptures, the classic languages and the simpler sciences; the establishing and employing of schools, academies and colleges for the educating of the youth; providing needed teachers as well as needy students in already flourishing schools with the special design of encouraging and helping every ambitious boy to an education anywhere in the Netherlands; and daily, ordered and useful work of some kind for every person; for preaching Christ and Christian duty, teaching, publishing, farming, gardening, sharing handiwork of any and every useful kind, made up the regular program of the "Brethren of the Common Life.» This carefully organized Christian system, during the century preceding the dawn of the great Reformation, produced such men as Thomas a'Kempis, saintly author of 'The Imitation of Christ; Rudolph Agricola, famous for reviving classical studies and freeing learning from scholastic fetters; Alexander Hegius, the greatest educational reformer of his age; Desiderius Erasmus, the foremost humanist, scholar and author of the Renaissance; and John Wessel, more popularly known as Wessel Gansfort, philosopher, physician and pioneer organizer of the earliest Protestant theological system.

Besides these eminent men, the schools of the "Brethren of the Common Life" trained a great number of lesser leaders, who were influential for better things in education, and morals and spiritual life. De Groote and Florentius appreciated the value of the spiritual treasures bequeathed to them by the great

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est of all the mystics, Ruysbroek, the venerable abbot of Gruenthal, and Tauler, the impassioned evangelist of the Rhine Palatinate; and realizing clearly the supreme crisis of their time, and their own supreme obligation through the service of fellow-men to seek the greater glory of God, they established wisely and permanently their efficient brotherhood of Christian communities, which directly for nearly two centuries, and indirectly for all succeeding time, was influential in making Holland pre-eminently the home of civil, intellectual and religious liberty. And to these founders and trained leaders of the "Brethren of the Common Life" the Reformed Church in Holland and in America is indebted above all othersfor a religious faith always scriptural, simple and spiritual, which exalts to supreme place the salvation and imitation of the Divine Redeemer, the imperial authority of Holy Scripture, the Fatherhood of God and the true love and service of mankind. These men in Holland shared with Wyclif of England and Huss of Bohemia the honor of faithful preparatory work in the 14th and 15th centuries as evangelical reformers before the Reformation.

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Early in the development of 16th century reform the people of Holland showed marked preference for the doctrinal system of Zwingli and Calvin rather than that of Luther. This may have been partly due to their long-time neighborly intercourse and friendship with the Evangelicals living on the banks of the Rhine, and partly due to their sympathy with the persecuted disciples of Calvin in France; but chiefly due, it may well be urged, to the clear, convincing and fearless propaganda of Wessel Gansfort a man of such culture, conviction and persuasive power that his two years' professorship at Heidelberg University established a virile and abiding evangelical influence in those academic halls which had marked effect upon Ursinus and Olivianus and the Heidelberg Catechism. Without doubt also Gansfort directly, or indirectly, helped to shape the Belgic Confession as truly as that great symbol influenced the countrymen of Gansfort in later years. It may be remembered that Martin Luther himself wrote concerning the writings of Gansfort: "If I had read his works earlier, my enemies might think that Luther had absorbed everything from Wessel, his spirit is so in accord with mine."

The persecutions for heresy under Charles V of Spain (1519-55), and his son Philip II (1555-98), brought long-continued distress and suffering to the Netherlands people, and continued with occasional brief intervals for more than half a century. The period of horrors, par excellence, was the bloody six years' régime of Alva (1567-73), during which time, as the princely butcher boasted, there were more than 18,000 authorized executions; and it is claimed that in this little country more than 100,000 persons gave up life rather than faith. The more cruelly they were persecuted, however, the more inflexibly the Hollanders refused the obedience their Spanish king demanded. In 1584 William of Orange, the shrewd, self-sacrificing, invincibly fearless and confident defender of Holland's faith and freedom, was treacherously assassinated by Balthazar Gerard; yet his son Maurice proved himself a skilful military leader, and with some little help from

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England the struggle with the oppressor continued for some years; but finally in 1609 the "twelve years' truce was agreed upon and Holland's long-protracted agony for conscience's sake was over. Yet during the darkest days of persecution proscribed evangelists continued their fervent preaching in the fields, and the people prayed and sang praises to God, after the example and spirit of the imprisoned apostles the appeals of the field-preachers and the inspiring hymns of Beza and Marot continually strengthening them all to persevere in "witnessing a good confession."

Just before the coming of Alva, in 1566, a few Dutch and Walloon pastors organized the first evangelical Church Synod at Antwerp; and with the aid of a few noble laymen a complete Church organization was effected. The Belgic Confession, written by Guido de Brey five years before, was adopted, with slight changes; and the Heidelberg Catechism, now for three years the authorized symbol of the Palatine reformers, was accepted tentatively, to be fully and finally adopted a few years later. Yet it was distinctly professed, whatever doctrinal standards were honored or endorsed, that the Word of God was the only recognized rule of faith. The Synod of Wesel in 1568 somewhat modified and adopted Calvin's Presbyterian polity; the necessity for a learned and consecrated ministry, loyal to the Word of God and the Church standards, was plainly set forth, and the various classes and duties of church officers were clearly defined. In 1571 came the Synod of Emden, which endorsed the acts of previous synods and formulated certain new features of church government. The first Synod of Dort, 1576, defined the four grades of ecclesiastical bodies as follows: the General Synod, the highest court, its members delegated from the Classes, and meeting once a year; the Particular Synod, also a delegated assembly of ministers and elders, meeting annually; the Classis, a permanent body including the pastors and one elder each from a number of nearby churches, and meeting twice a year, and the Consistory, the court of the individual church, consisting of an equal number of elders and deacons elected by the church, with the pastor as president. The same Synod also limited certain conditions of church membership. Five years later the Synod of Middleburg assembled in 1581 to complete the organization of the Church and to determine certain matters relating to schoolmasters, professors of theology, liturgy and creed. A month later the sovereignty of Philip II was formally renounced, and the Reformed Church was declared the established Church of the Netherlands. The great Arminian controversy early in the 17th century made necessary the calling of the second Synod of Dort in 1618, to which all the Reformed Churches of Europe were invited, and most of them consented, to send delegates. James I commis sioned as England's representatives the bishop of Llandaff, Samuel Ward, professor of Cambridge, and Joseph Hall, afterward a bishop of Salisbury. Foreordination, perseverance of the saints, man's conversion and free will and the divine atonement were elaborately discussed; under the leadership of Episcopius (Arminius having died before the Synod convened), the

Remonstrants warmly favored the system of Arminius, which, in certain points, was finally adjudged contrary to sound doctrine; the Arminian Remonstrants were excluded from office in the Reformed Church, as consciously and wilfully traversing their Own solemn pledges of loyalty to the Church and its standards; and in an elaborate formula known as the "Canons of the Synod of Dort," the Synodal decisions concerning the great doctrines of grace were carefully defined. The "Post Acta" of the later sessions of the Synod set forth authoritatively certain important details concerning the call to the ministry, festival days, hymns for worship, baptism of adults and the sick, professors of theology and their relations to the Church, a new translation of the Bible into Dutch, foreign missions, the Liturgy and ministers' salaries. The Heidelberg Catechism was again heartily adopted, and a "Compendium" of its teachings was prepared that it might be included with the other standards of the Church.

Four years before this time the Hollanders began emigrating to America; for that newdiscovered world became increasingly attractive year by year, since the Holland government had formally annexed the country discovered and partially explored as "New Netherland," and had issued a charter to the East India Company, with specified rights of trading, settling and colony improvement. Within a half dozen years after Henry Hudson, in 1609, had discovered the river that bears his name the Dutch trading posts at New York and Albany had the services of specially qualified and ordained Christian laymen (Jan Huyck_and Sebastiaen Jansen Krol by name) as "Comforters of the Sick" and leaders of public worship on Sundays. A distinctly aggressive religious influence was also due to the consecrated personality of the first director of the colony, Peter Minuit, who had been for years an ordained elder of the French Reformed Church of Wesel.

In seeking their comfort and growth, spiritual as well as temporal, at both Albany and New York, these three Christian laymen served their fellow-colonists for some years before the coming of the first missionary minister of the Dutch colony, the Rev. Jonas Michaelius, in the year 1628. Soon after the coming of this minister the first Reformed church was organized with 50 communicants. Many of the early settlers of New Netherland were French Huguenots, more commonly called "Walloons." The name of the Long Island locality, "Wallabout," shows the nationality of most of the people who settled there. In 1642 the people of Albany (Fort Orange) were no longer obliged to content themselves with the spiritual ministry of the "Comforters of the Sick," for Kiliaen van Rensselaer, the first patroon of Rensselaerswyck, secured for them the services of a well-qualified minister, the Rev. Johannes Megapolensis, and in August of 1642 the first minister of Albany began his seven years' pastorate. It is worthy of note that the Classis of Amsterdam (having sole ecclesiastical jurisdiction over New Netherland), which commissioned Megapolensis for his work, also specified in his "call" that his duty was to minister to the spiritual needs of the Indians as well as