the hands of selfish and rapacious princes, were deeply deplored by Melanchthon, who would have
consented to the restoration of the episcopal hierarchy on condition of the freedom of gospel
preaching and gospel teaching.
The Reformed church in Switzerland secured at first a greater degree of independence than
the Lutheran; for Zwingli controlled the magistrate of Zurich, and Calvin ruled supreme in Geneva
under institutions of his own founding; but both closely united the civil and ecclesiastical power,
and the former gradually assumed the supremacy.
Scandinavia and England adopted, together with the Reformation, a Protestant episcopate
which divides the ecclesiastical supremacy with the head of the state; yet even there the civil ruler
is legally the supreme governor of the church.
The greatest Protestant church-establisbments or national churches are the Church of England,
much weakened by dissent, but still the richest and most powerful of all; the United Evangelical
Church of Prussia which, since 1817, includes the formerly separated Lutheran and Reformed
confessions; the Lutheran Church of Saxony (with a Roman Catholic king); the Lutheran Churches
of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway; the Reformed Churches of Switzerland, and Holland; and the
Reformed or Presbyterian Church of Scotland.
Originally, all evangelical Protestant churches were embraced under two confessions or
denominations, the Lutheran which prevailed and still prevails in Germany and Scandinavia, and
the Reformed which took root in Switzerland, France, Holland, England and Scotland, and to a
limited extent also in Germany, Bohemia and Hungary. The Lutheran church follows the larger
portion of German and Scandinavian emigrants to America and other countries, the Reformed
church in its various branches is found in all the Dutch and British colonies, and in the United
States.
From these two confessions should be distinguished the Anglican Church, which the
continental historians from defective information usually count with the Reformed Church, but
which stands midway between evangelical Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, and may therefore
be called Anglo-Catholic. She is indeed moderately Reformed in her doctrinal articles,^40 but in
polity and ritual she is much more conservative than the Calvinistic and even the Lutheran confession,
pays greater deference to the testimony of the ancient fathers, and lays stress upon her unbroken
episcopal succession.
The confessional division in the Protestant camp arose very early. It was at first confined
to a difference of opinion on the eucharistic presence, which the Marburg Conference of 1529 could
not remove, although Luther and Zwingli agreed in fourteen and a half out of fifteen articles of
faith. Luther refused any compromise. Other differences gradually developed themselves, on the
ubiquity of Christ’s body, predestination, and baptismal regeneration, which tended to widen and
perpetuate the split. The union of the two Confessions in Prussia and other German states, since
1817, has not really healed it, but added a third Church, the United Evangelical, to the two older
Confessions which, still continue separate in other countries.
(^40) The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, as revised under Elizabeth (1563 and 1571), are borrowed in part, verbatim, from the Augsburg
Confession of 1530 and the Würtemberg Confession of 1552, but are moderately Calvinistic in the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, and on
predestination; the five Lambeth Articles of 1595, and the Irish Articles of Archbishop Ussher (1615) are strongly Calvinistic, and the
latter furnished the basis of the Westminster Confession. But the Lambeth Articles and the Irish Articles were gradually forgotten, and
the Book of Common Prayer which is based on the office of Sarum, has practically much greater influence than even the Thirty-nine
Articles. See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom vol. I. 624 sqq., 630 sqq., 658 sqq., 662 sqq.