The Reformation prevented this euthanasia of Christianity. It
re-expressed the unenlightened absolutism of the old religion; it
insisted that dogma was scientifically true, that salvation was urgent
and fearfully doubtful, that the world, and the worldly paganised
church, were as Sodom and Gomorrah, and that sin, though natural to
man, was to God an abomination. In fighting this movement, which soon
became heretical, the Catholic church had to fight it with its own
weapons, and thereby reawakened in its own bosom the same sinister
convictions. It did not have to dig deep to find them. Even without
Luther, convinced Catholics would have appeared in plenty to prevent
Caesar Borgia, had he secured the tiara, from being pope in any novel
fashion or with any revolutionary result. The supernaturalism, the
literal realism, the other-worldliness of the Catholic church are too
much the soul of it to depart without causing its dissolution. While
the church lives at all, it must live on the strength which these
principles can lend it. And they are not altogether weak. Persons who
feel themselves to be exiles in this world--and what noble mind, from
Empedocles down, has not had that feeling?--are mightily inclined to
believe themselves citizens of another. There will always be
spontaneous, instinctive Christians; and when, under the oppression of
sin, salvation is looked for and miracles are expected, the
supernatural scheme of salvation which historical Christianity offers
will not always be despised.
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