The Reformation Historically Explained

Abstract

By many scientists as well as by the pragmatist philos-ophers we are told that the best, if not the only possible, test of a given thing is what it does. From physics we learn that whereas the nature of matter or of electricity defies definition, it is possible to describe the operation or effect that each has. In a book of economics I have read the definition “money is what money does.” Apparently the same test must be applied to historical phenomena. If we would know the real nature of a given invention or a new ideal we must inquire exactly what was the change in human life that it introduced. It is this test that I propose to apply to the Reformation. I propose to show that of seven great changes which came over the people of Western Europe in the sixteenth century the Reformation was the ideal expression; in part effect, in part cause, in part so intimately connected with some social, philosophical, political or economic movement, that it is hard to say which it is.