STATE OF RELIGION IN GERMANY DURING THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES.
Vagueness of the word Protestantism-Chancellor Gerson's Distinction between the Catholic and Roman Church - Gradual Progress of Evangelical Protestantism.
IN contemplating the German Reformation of the nineteenth century, the mind instinctively turns to its great predecessor of the sixteenth, involuntarily instituting a comparison of the circumstances and actors connected with both, in order to discover points of resemblance or dissimilarity, and naturally recurs to the religious and ecclesiastical state of affairs by which each was preceded. In doing so, one cannot help being struck by a kind of cycle in ecclesiastical events, seeming to mark out three centuries as the ever-recurring epoch, at which a revolutionary phase is appointed to enter. Thus the recognition of Christianity by Constantine, is the memorable event with which the fourth century commences. The lapse of other three centuries is marked by the promulgation of the Mohammedan imposture. The termination of the ninth, and commencement of the tenth centuries, witnessed the introduction and rapid spread of Christianity among the northern nations of Europe. The beginning of the thirteenth is painfully distin