gain to the angry exit of Henry VIII. from the mediaeval
council of Europe. It is easy to exaggerate the part played in the
matter by that great and human, though very pagan person, Martin Luther.
Henry VIII. was sincere in his hatred for the heresies of the German
monk, for in speculative opinions Henry was wholly Catholic; and the two
wrote against each other innumerable pages, largely consisting of terms
of abuse, which were pretty well deserved on both sides. But Luther was
not a Lutheran. He was a sign of the break-up of Catholicism; but he was
not a builder of Protestantism. The countries which became corporately
and democratically Protestant, Scotland, for instance, and Holland,
followed Calvin and not Luther. And Calvin was a Frenchman; an
unpleasant Frenchman, it is true, but one full of that French capacity
for creating official entities which can really act, and have a kind of
impersonal personality, such as the French Monarchy or the Terror.
Luther was an anarchist, and therefore a dreamer. He made that which is,
perhaps, in the long run, the fullest and most shining manifestation of
failure; he made a name. Calvin made an active, governing, persecuting
thing, called the Kirk. There is something expressive of him in the fact
that he called even his work of abstract theology "The Institutes."

In England, however, there were elements of chaos more akin to Luther
than to Calvin. And we may thus explain many things which appear rather
puzzling in our history, notably the victory of Cromwell not only over
the English Royalists but over the Scotch Covenanters. It was the
victory of that more happy-go-lucky sort of Protestantism, which had in
it much of aristocracy but much also of liberty, over that logical
ambition of the Kirk which would have made Protestantism, if possible,
as constructive as Catholicism had been. It might be called the victory
of Individualist Puritanism over Socialist Puritanism. It was what
Milton meant when he said that the new presbyter was an exaggeration of
the old priest; it was his _office_ that acted, and acted very harshly.
The enemies of the Presbyterians were not without a meaning when they
called themselves Independents. To this day no one can understand
Scotland who does not realise that it retains much of its mediaeval
sympathy with France, the French equality, the French pronunciation of
Latin, and, strange as it may sound, is in nothing so French as in its
Presbyterianism.