neglected dogma," and was more of a moralist than a divine? It is not
even true that he "swept away at once the sacramental machinery" of
mediaeval and Lutheran teaching; Calvin writes of the Eucharist in
terms which would astonish some of his later followers. But what is the
reason why Mr. Pattison attributes to the historical Calvin so much
that does not belong to him, and, in spite of so much that repels, is
yet induced to credit him with such great qualities? The reason is to
be found in the intense antipathy with which Mr. Pattison regarded what
he calls "the Catholic reaction" over Europe, and in the fact that
undoubtedly Calvin's system and influence was the great force which
resisted both what was bad and false in it, and also what was good,
true, generous, humane. Calvinism opposed the "Catholic reaction"
point-blank, and that was enough to win sympathy for it, even from Mr.
Pattison.

The truth is that what Popery is to the average Protestant, and what
Protestant heresy is to the average Roman Catholic, the "Catholic
reaction," the "Catholic revival" in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries and in our own, is to Mr. Pattison's final judgment. It was
not only a conspiracy against human liberty, but it brought with it the
degradation and ruin of genuine learning. It is the all-sufficing cause
and explanation of the mischief and evil doings which he has to set
before us. Yet after the violence, the ignorance, the injustice, the
inconsistencies of that great ecclesiastical revolution which we call
by the vague name of Reformation, a "Catholic reaction" was inevitable.
It was not conceivable that common sense and certain knowledge would
submit for ever to be overcrowed by the dogmas and assertions of the
new teachers. Like other powerful and wide and strongly marked
movements, like the Reformation which it combated, it was a very mixed
thing. It produced some great evils and led to some great crimes. It
started that fatal religious militia, the Jesuit order, which,
notwithstanding much heroic self-sacrifice, has formed a permanent bar
to all possible reunion of Christendom, has fastened its yoke on the
Papacy itself, and has taught the Church, as a systematic doctrine, to
put its trust in the worst expedients of human policy. The religious
wars in France and Germany, the relentless massacres of the Low
Countries and the St. Bartholomew, the consecration of treason and
conspiracy, were, without doubt, closely conn