Pelagianism taught
Quoting again from D’Aubigné: “ThePelagiandoctrine, expelled by Augustine from the church when it had presented itself boldly, insinuated itself as demi-Pelagianism, and under the mask of the Augustine forms of expression. This error spread with astonishing rapidity throughout Christendom. The danger of the doctrine was particularly manifested in this,—that by placing goodness without, and not within, the heart, it set a great value on external actions, legal observances, and penitential works.... Whilst Pelagianism corrupted the Christian doctrine, itstrengthened the hierarchy.... When it laid down a doctrine that man could attain a state of perfect sanctification, it affirmed also that the merits of saints and martyrs might be applied to the church.... Pelagianism multiplied rites and ceremonies.
“But it was especially by thesystem of penance, which flowed immediately from Pelagianism, that Christianity was perverted. At first,penancehad consisted in certain public expressions of repentance.... By degrees it was extended to every sin, even to the most secret.... Instead of looking to Christ for pardon, through faith alone, it wassought for principally in the church through penitential works....Flagellationswere superadded to these practices.... They accordingly invented that system of barter celebrated under the title ofIndulgences.... A bull of Clement VII declared it an article of faith.... The philosophers of Alexandria had spoken of a fire in which men were to be purified.Many ancientdoctors had adopted this notion; and Rome declared this philosophical opinion a tenet of the church.The pope by a bull annexed purgatory to his domain.”[82]“The Catholic Church was not the papacy,” says D’Aubigné. “The latter was the oppressor, the former the oppressed.” Draper tersely defines the papacy as “the tyranny of theology over thought.”
Summary
Men departed from the simplicity of a gospel by faith. Reason and scientific research took the place of faith in the Word. Education turned men’s minds from God to self, and reason was exalted. The papacy was thus formed. If we look for a visible union of the church and the state before recognizing it as the papacy, we shall find ourselves entrapped;for it is the working out of a system of education based on human philosophy that forms the papacy; and the bodywhich adopts this system of education naturally turns to the state for support.
Papacy overthrown by Christian education
It is because of the truth of this statement that the papacy wields its influence through its schools; this is why it has always feared a revival of learning more than the combined forces of all the armies of the world. A death-blow to the papacy can be struck only by introducing a system of education founded upon the teachings of Christ, placing God’s Word as guide, and inspiring faith as the one avenue to wisdom.
The development of the papacy led directly to the Dark Ages, for “the noontide of the papacy was the world’s moral midnight.” The papacy was the logical working out of an educational scheme; hence the moral darkness which spread over the world during the prophetic period of twelve hundred and sixty years was due to wrong methods of education. People do not sink into degradation and sin when properly educated. Truth elevates, and, when embodied in man, brings him nearer to his Maker. Faith is the ladder by which he climbs, and when that element has been lacking in an educational system, the masses have sunk lower and lower.
Papacy’s tyranny of theology over thought
Mind is a wonderful thing, the most profound study of the universe. It was designed to be free, to grasp the mighty laws of its own Creator, and a means was supplied by which that very thing could be done: “If any of you lack wisdom, lethim ask of God, ... but let him ask in faith, nothing wavering.”
In order to maintain the supremacy thus gained, it was necessary for the education of the young to lie wholly within the control of the papal hierarchy; and it is with their educational institutions and educational methods that we have now to deal. It is hoped that the study of the Dark Ages will so accentuate the importance of Protestants’ maintaining their own schools, that the tendency now so strong in the other direction may receive a check. The education begun in the schools of the early Christians has been followed into the monastic institutions of the Middle Ages. The life and power of Christianity departed, and form alone remained. It has been said that “paganism in the garb of Christianity walked into the church,” and it can truthfully be added thatit gained admittance through the schools.
Papal primary schools
In order to trace carefully the education offered by the papacy,—and that comprised all that was then offered,—the first quotations are concerning primary instruction. Laurie says: “Instruction beganabout the age of seven. Thealphabet, written on tables or leaves, was learned by heart by the children,then syllables and words. The first reading-book was the Latin psalter, and this was read again and againuntil it could be said by heart; and numerous priests, and even monks, were content all their lives with the mere sound of Latin words, which they could both read and recite, but did not understand.”[83]
Prominence of memory work
Note carefully that work for these children was almost whollymemorywork. They were tolearn by heartand torepeat without understanding. This was the first step in that great system which binds the minds of the masses to the will of one sovereign mind.
“Writing followed.” “The elements of arithmetic were also taught, but merely with a view to the calculation of church days and festivals.”[84]
Early use of Latin
“Latin was begun very early (apparently immediately after the psaltery was known), with thelearning by heartof declensions and conjugations and lists of vocables.The rule was to use Latin in the school in conversing.... In the eleventh century, if not earlier, Latin conversation-books ... were not only read, but, like everything else,learned by heart.”[85]Their method of studying Latin emphasizes the thought of the formal abstract way of teaching, which tended to conservatism and mental subjection. “Memory is the faculty that subordinates the present under the past, and its extensive training develops a habit of mind that holds by what is prescribed, and recoils from the new and untried. In short, the educational curriculum that lays great stress on memorizing, produces a class of conservative people.”[86]The papal schools employed methods which, in themselves, in the course of a few generations would develop dependent rather than independent thinking; therefore methods are as important as the subject taught.
Result of universal language
Again it is well to remember that there was a deep design in making the Latin tongue universal. It was one of the ways by which the papacy kept its control of all nations and tongues. Draper explains it thus:—
“The unity of the church, and, therefore,its power, required the use of Latin as a sacred language. Through this Rome had stood in an attitude strictly European, and was enabled to maintain a general international relation. It gave her far more power than her asserted celestial authority.... Their officials could pass without difficulty into every nation, and communicate without embarrassment with each other, from Ireland to Bohemia, from Italy to Scotland.”[87]
Fables and traditions of men
The character of the youth was formed, says Painter, from memorizing “thefables of Æsopand collections of maxims and proverbs. After this, Virgil was usually the text-book, and was handled in the same style.”
Studies of Monastic schools
Of the monastic schools Mosheim says: “In most of the schools, the so-called seven liberal arts were taught. The pupil commenced with grammar, then proceeded to rhetoric, and afterward to logic or dialectics. Having thus mastered the Trivium, as it was called, those who aspired to greater attainments proceeded with slow steps through theQuadrivium[a course including arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy] to the honor of perfectly learned men.”[88]
Says Painter: “Seven years were devoted to the completion of the course in liberal arts [the Trivium and the Quadrivium].... Dialectic or logic was based somewhat remotely on the writings of Aristotle. At a later period, logic was rigidly applied to the development of theology, and gave rise to a class of scholars called the schoolmen.... Arithmetic was imperfectly taught, importance being attached to the supposed secret properties of numbers. Geometry was taught in an abridged form, while astronomy did not differ materially from astrology. The study of music consisted chiefly in learning to chant the hymns of the church.”[89]
Greater emphasis on logic
Mosheim thus continues his description of the work of the schools in the eleventh century: “This course of study, adopted in all the schools of the West, was not a little changed after the middle of this century. For logic, ... having been improvedby the reflection and skill of certain close thinkers, and being taught more fully and acutely, acquired such an ascendency in the minds of the majority, that they neglected grammar, rhetoric, and the other sciences, both the elegant and the abstruse, and devoted their whole lives to dialectics, or to logical and metaphysical discussions. For whoever was well acquainted with dialectics, or what we call logic and metaphysics, was supposed to possess learning enough, and to lose nothing by being ignorant of all other branches of learning.... In this age, the philosophy of the Latins was confined wholly to what they called dialectics; and the other branches of philosophy were unknown even by name. Moreover their dialectics was miserably dry and barren.”[90]
Patristical Geography
This is sufficient, perhaps, on the use of language and logic, and we turn to geography and some of the sciences. Even the children to-day will smile at the teachings of some of the Church Fathers on the subject of geography. Says Draper: “In the Patristic Geography the earth is a flat surface bordered by the waters of the sea, on the yieldingsupport of which rests the crystalline dome of the sky. These doctrines were for the most part supported by passages from the Holy Scriptures, perversely wrested from their proper meaning. Thus Cosmas Indicopleustes, whose Patristic Geography had been an authority for nearly eight hundred years, triumphantly disposed of the sphericity of the earth by demanding of its advocates, how, in the day of judgment, men on the other side of a globe could see the Lord descending through the air!”[91]
The beneficial work of explorers
It was in opposition to such theories, and a hundred absurdities concerning the ocean, the boiling waters of the equator, the serpents in the West, etc., that Columbus, De Gama, and other explorers had to contend; and one of the most wonderful effects of the work of these navigators was the thrust given papal education. A wound was then received which was incurable.
If, in the mind of the reader, the question arises, Why should the papal schools teach such things? simply consider that the whole system of papal theology was intended to make the people feel thatthe world was the center of the universe, and that the pope was the center of the world. Christ and his position in creation were usurped by the head of the church.This was the papacy.
Modern schools cling to papal methods
This could be brought aboutonly by education, and could be maintained only as generation after generation wastaughtfrom infancy to old age to place faith in man, not God. Not only the subjects taught, but the manner of teaching them, served well the purpose of the papacy. Only within the last few years, comparatively speaking, have our own schools seen the necessity of breaking away from some of those relics of the educational system of the Dark Ages.
Detection of wrong methods
Memory work, pure and simple, has given way in a great measure to research and experiment, even in the primary grades. The alphabet is no longer driven into the childish mind by the ferule, nor kept there by mere force of repetition. The advanced methods in dealing with the mind are a step in the right direction. The pity is that educators, while groping for light, while casting off some of the moth-eaten garments of past ages,have failed to see the cause of the evil, and deal so largely with results instead of removing the cause. The evil began by renouncing the Scriptures and faith in Holy Writ as a part of education. The spirit and power will accompany reform only when these are replaced in their proper setting.
New books
While educators of the world are realizing the need of a change in methods, it is time for them to see also the need of a change in subject matter and text-books.Protestantsin particularshould arouseto the times. If the study of paganism, instead of Christianity or truth, produced the Dark Ages, and if wrong methods held the minds of men and prolonged that darkness, forbidding the shining of the light, it is time for bothmethods and materialto be reconstructed in the schools of to-day.
Science in the papal schools
We can with profit notice the attitude of the papal schools toward some of the sciences, taking for example that most practical of modern branches, the science of medicine. What was the work of the physician during the Dark Ages? Draper says: “Physicians were viewed by the church with dislike, and regarded as atheists by the people, who held firmlyto the lessons they had been taught, that cures must be wrought by relics of martyrs and bones of saints, by prayers and intercessions.”[92]
True healing forsaken
It is well to remember that Christ was the Great Physician, healing not only soul maladies, but physical infirmities as well; and to the apostles was given the commission to heal the sick and restore sight to the blind. Gradually, however, as the power of the gospel in its purity was lost by the substitution of error for truth, the leaders of the church introduced miracle cures, and preached the efficacy of the bones of saints, etc., in the cure of disease. This became popular, and increased throughout the Dark Ages.
Medical study discouraged
Draper describes the fanaticism of the monastic schools, and finally assigns a reason for the exclusion from them of the study of physiology and anatomy and the science of medicine. “The body,” he says, “was under some spiritual charge,—the first joint of the right thumb being in the care of God the Father, the second under that of the blessed Virgin, and so on of other parts. For eachdisease there was a saint. A man with sore eyes must invoke St. Clara, but if it were an inflammation elsewhere, he must turn to St. Anthony.... For the propitiation of these celestial beings it was necessary that fees should be paid, and thus the practice of imposture—medicine became a great source of profit. In all this there was no other intention than that of extracting money.”[93]
Doctors in secret
While such was the teachings of the papacy, the Jews and Mohammedans were achieving wonderful success, and making discoveries of lasting benefit to mankind in Spain and Asia Minor. “Bishops, princes, kings, and popes had each in private his Hebrew doctor; though all understood that he was a contraband luxury, in many countries pointedly and absolutely prohibited by the law. In the eleventh century nearly all the physicians in Europe were Jews.” One reason for this was: “The church would tolerate no interference with her spiritual methods of treating disease, which formed one of her most productive sources of gain; and the study of medicine had been formally introduced into the rabbinical schools.”[94]
Jewish physicians prohibited
The bitter hatred of the papacy toward independence of mind is well illustrated in the treatment that the Jewish physicians received from the popes. Draper says: “The school at Salerno was still sending forth its doctors. In Rome, Jewish physicians were numerous, the popes themselves employing them.... At this period Spain and France were full of learned Jews; and perhaps partly by their exerting too much influence upon the higher classes with whom they came in contact (for the physician of a Christian prince was very often the rival of his confessor), and partly because the practice of medicine, as they pursued it, interfered with the gains of the church, the clergy took alarm, and caused to be re-enacted or enforced the ancient laws. The Council of Beziers (A.D.1246) and the Council of Alby (A.D.1254) prohibited all Christians from resorting to the services of an Israelitish physician.”[95]
Hatred of physicians
To show that this was a matter which concerned theschools, and in proof of the statement that papal schools still adhere to formalism, miracle cure, and relic worship,we need only to notice that “the faculty of Paris [University], awakening at last to the danger of the case, caused,A.D.1301, a decree to be published prohibiting either man or woman of the religion of Moses from practicing medicine upon any person of the Catholic religion. A similar course was pursued in Spain. At this time the Jews were confessedly at the head of French medicine. It was the appointment of one of their persuasion, Profatius,as regentof the faculty of Montpellier,A.D.1300, which drew upon them the wrath of the faculty of Paris.”
Jews banished
“The animosity of the French ecclesiastics against the Jewish physicians at last led to the banishment of all the Jews from France,A.D.1306.”[96]The papal universities were unwilling to teach medicine, and finding that the Jewish schools of science were greatly weakening papal authority in France, this race was banished bodily.
Position of physiology
Comparing this history with the present work of the medical fraternity, and especially with that class of medical students whose life work is to spread the gospelwhile relieving the body, one better understands that physiology should be the basis of every educational effort, and the place that it and kindred sciences should occupy in the courses of instruction pursued by our children, youth, and maturer minds; and also the cause of that spiritual darkness which is even now hanging over the world, and for centuries held Europe in its clutches; but it shall be pierced by Christian education.
Papal method of meeting opposition
The papacy, in case of opposition which threatened her authority, had two methods of procedure. The first was an attempt to annihilate both the trouble and the troublers. Thus she simply banished all Jews from France that her own universities might not be overshadowed by the light of truth. Her second method of procedure was a counter-reformation; that is, if a reform in education arose outside the church which threatened to undermine her doctrines, it might be met by a partial reform within her borders, the reform going only so far as was absolutely necessary to satisfy the cravings of minds that dared think for themselves.
Papacy can compromise
It was not always possible to completely crush a reformation, or the reformers; and as was quite often the case in the schools, studies which could not be entirely banished, were taught, but in such a way as best to conserve the needs of the church. That medicine, as well as law, was taught in the higher papal schools, can not be denied. Says Mosheim: “The seven liberal arts [The Trivium and the Quadrivium] were gradually included under the termphilosophy; to which were addedtheology,jurisprudence, andmedicine. And thus these fourfaculties, as they are called, were in the next century formed in the universities.”[97]
Medical study corrupted
But in the study of medicine, as in philosophy or law, memory work devoid of understanding—the form without the spirit—was the characteristic. As the saints and martyrs in theology had taken the place of the Greek gods and goddesses, so in the study of other branches a multitude of pagan terms, clothed with what was then known as the “Christian spirit,” was made to satisfy the longing for real mental culture. The simplicity of the gospel was laid aside. What God had revealed was madeto appear too complex for the human mind, and the secret things which are known only to God were pried into. In theology, dialectics, or logic, became the study of endless queries, difficult syllogisms, meaningless quibbles. Men delighted in propounding such questions as, “How many angels can stand on the point of a needle?” and others prided themselves on the acuteness of their reasoning powers in arguing such questions. Likewise in medicine, the study of the simple needs of the body and the rational treatment of disease was obscured by hundreds ofLatin terms, and these were memorized to the neglect of the simple philosophy of the science. It is with this multitude of names, hoary with age, and savoring strongly of their pagan origin, that the student of medicine is still compelled to grapple.
The Arabs as educators
The history of the rise of European universities throws light on the attitude of the papacy toward education. While Europe was overspread by spiritual and intellectual darkness, God used another people to disseminate truth. When faith in God was lost, and in its place was substituted that blind faith in man and obedience to the church which is knownin European history as the age of faith, learning was propagated by the Arabs. That power which had failed to conquer the world by the sword, now gained by intellectual culture what the arms of Mohammed and his immediate successors failed to achieve. Spain, while in the hands of the Moors, contributed more to European civilization than at any other time in her history; and it was as aneducatorand through theinfluence of her schoolsthat the papacy received its blow from the south which made her more readily succumb to the revolt of Germany under Luther. By the Arabs “flourishing schools were established in all the principal cities, notably at Bagdad and Damascus in the East, and at Cordova, Salamanca, and Toledo in the West. Here grammar, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, chemistry, and medicine were pursued with great ardor and success. The Arabians originated chemistry, discovering alcohol, and nitric and sulphuric acids. They gave algebra and trigonometry their modern form; applied the pendulum to the reckoning of time; ascertained the size of the earth by measuring a degree, and made catalogues of the stars.”[98]And all this was done when Europe as a whole waslying in darkness, when the chemist was considered a wizard, when astronomy was merely astrology, and whatever learning existed was formal and spiritless.
Arabs and papal schools
But the discoveries of the Arab teachers could not long remain with them alone, and it is with the spread of their ideas through the schools by means of the students that we are concerned. “For a time they [the Arabs] were the intellectual leaders of Europe. Their schools in Spain were largely attended by Christian youth from other European countries, who carried back with them to their homes the Arabian science, and through it stimulated intellectual activity in Christian [papal] nations.”[99]
Arabs and universities
The specialization of studies such as theology, medicine, or philosophy, together with the impulse derived from the Mohammedans in Africa and the Arabs in Spain, led to the establishment of the universities, which were, as before stated, composed of four faculties, or colleges. “They arose independently of both church and state.” The University of Paris “became the most distinguishedseat of learning in Europe. At one time it was attended by more than twenty thousand students.”
Papacy seized universities
The growth of the universities was very rapid, and they threatened speedily to revolutionize the society of Europe and overthrow the papal hierarchy. “The influence and power of the universities were speedily recognized,” says Painter; “and though originally free associations, they were soon brought into relation with the church and the state, by which they were officially authorized and endowed.” If learning could not be suppressed, then it must be controlled by the church; and the “church sought to attach them [the universities] to itself, in order to join to the power of faith the power of knowledge. The first privileges that the universities received proceeded from the popes.” “While Rome was not the mother, she was yet the nurse of universities.” Scientific investigation had by this time received such an impulse from youth who had been students in the Arab schools that the church could not hope to crush it. The only hope of the papacy was to so surround the truth withfables and mysteries, and to so conduct the schools, that again the spirit of progress would be lost in its labyrinthine wanderings through empty forms.Monopoly in educationworks havoc in the same way that a monopoly in commerce leads to oppression. And so it was.
Character of students
“The students led a free and uncontrolled life, seeking and finding protection in their own university authorities even from the civil power.”[100]
Origin of courses and degrees
Youth from the age of twelve and upward attended these universities, making it necessary to teach the secondary studies which terminated in a bachelor’s degree. “Boys ... attended the Parisian university merely for instruction in ... grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic; and after three or four years’ study they received the title of Baccalaureus.” “When he reached ... the age of seventeen or eighteen, he then began the study for the mastership.”[101]
It will be remembered that the schools established by the early church were marked for thesimplicity of their methods, and their singleness of purpose. Their object was to educate workers for the spread of the gospel. For the accomplishment of this object the course of instruction was arranged, and students were sent forth into the world commissioned of God, as were the disciples after their ordination. There was no call for the granting of degrees. These, it is true, were used in the pagan schools, and indicated that the receiver had been initiated, after years of study, into the hidden mysteries of Greek wisdom. Among the pagans, indeed, the principle of degrees and diplomas dated back to the days of Egyptian and Babylonian supremacy, where it was indicative of fellowship in the grossest forms of licentiousness.
Greece, the country which united the learning of Babylon and the wisdom of Egypt, and offered it to Europe in the form of Platonism, naturally enough made use of diplomas and degrees. And the fact that her wisdom was so complicated in its nature made it necessary to spend long years in mastering her sciences.
Paganism, moreover, has but one model for all men; its aim is ever to crush individuality and mold all characters alike. To accomplish this purposethe schools arranged their studies in courses, demanding that each student should pass over the same ground. This is characteristic of all educational systems aside from that one, the true education, which comes from God. If you look to China, you find it there, as it develops the disciples of Confucius; India educates her Brahmans in the same manner; the priests and wise men of Egypt were taught in schools of a similar type. The Jews had aped the fashion of the pagan world, and it was from this custom that Christ called his disciples. One of the surest signs that the schools established in the days of Christian purity had lost the spirit which characterized the apostolic teaching, is the fact that the schools of the Middle Ages had adopted this pagan custom.
Students were called into the universities when mere boys, and by hundreds and thousands were run through the “grind” which we term “course of instruction,” and were turned out at the end of ten, twenty, and sometimes even forty years with a degree, which, in dignity, corresponded to the years spent in completing the course.
This custom is papal. It is opposed to the very spirit of Christianity; and any institution of learningwhich deigns to accept the approval of the state, while at the same time passing as a Christian institution, is not only linking itself with the papacy, but with paganism as well. Of His followers Christ says, “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”
“Older students, those especially in the theological faculty, with their fifteen or sixteen years’ course of study, achieved in this respect far greater notoriety. At the age of thirty or forty the student at the university was still a scholar.”[102]The idea of long courses is not, then, a modern one, and American colleges can truthfully point to the university of Paris for the precedent in this respect as in some others. In the granting of degrees another interesting subject is approached. Laurie continues: “Up to the middle of the twelfth century, anyone taught in the infant universities who thought he had the requisite knowledge.... In the second half of the twelfth century, when bishops and abbots, who acted, personally or through their deputies, as chancellors of the rising university schools, wished to assume to themselves exclusively the right of granting the license, ... Pope Alexander III forbade them, on the groundthat the teaching faculty was a gift of God.”[103]This, however, must have been the work of a liberal pope, for earlier,—that is, in 1219,—“Pope Honorius III interfered with the granting of degrees; and in order to impose a check on abuses, directed that they should be conferred not by, but by permission of, the archdeacon of the cathedral, and under his presidency.”[104]
The church had gained control of the universities, and through her representative, usually the chancellor,granted degrees. Now, in order to keep the authority well in her own hands, no one was allowed to teach who did not hold a license granted by the university after an examination. Thus the educationaltrustdeveloped, and the iron hand of Rome, though concealed in a silken glove, clinched her victories, and strove to crush all opponents.
Degrees and the papacy
Our modern B.S., M.A., LL.D., D.D., etc., were adopted into the universities at this stage of educational history. “Itter informs us,” says Laurie, “that ... a complete university course was represented byfour degrees—bachelor,master,licentiate, and finallydoctor, which last was usually taken at the age of thirty or thirty-five.” “The next development of the degree system was the introduction of thegrades of bachelorandmaster, or licentiate, into each of the higher faculties—theology, law, and medicine. Thus a man who had finished his preliminary art studies, generally at the age of twenty-one, and wished to specialize in theology, medicine, or law, had to pass through the stages ofbachelorof theology, or of medicine, or of law, and then ofmasteror licentiate, before he obtained the title ofdoctor. Thebachelorshipof medicine or law was reached in three years, of theology in seven. Four years’ further study brought thedoctor’s degree.”[105]“The conferring of degrees was originated by a pope.”[106]The educational monopoly appeared quite complete; and having gained the form of godliness and the civil power, the old scheme of killing the life and substituting those things which would recognize the papal hierarchy, were again introduced. Leading educators are awakening to the true situation. Christian education alone can deliver.
Form had replaced the life
“The moral tone of the universities was low,” says Painter; “there were brawls, outbreaks, and abominable immoralities. ‘The students,’ say the Vienna statutes, ‘shall not spend more time in drinking, fighting, and guitar playing than at physics, logic, and the regular courses of lectures; and they shall not get up public dances in the streets. Quarrelers, wanton persons, drunkards, those that go about serenading at night, or who spend their leisure in following after lewd women; thieves, those that insult citizens, players at dice—having been properly warned and not reforming, besides the ordinary punishment provided by law for those misdemeanors, shall be deprived of their academical privileges and expelled.’ These prohibitions give us a clear insight into university life of the time, for it was not worse at Vienna than at Paris and elsewhere.”[107]
Could some of those medieval students be resurrected and placed in some of the universities of the nineteenth century, they might feel quite at home, not only as far as courses of study and the granting of degrees is concerned, but in revelings,parties, etc., judging from the reports of the hazing, drinking, and general carousing of the students in our university towns.“[108]The conduct of students is the reflex of the instruction given. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that the instruction of the universities, containing as it did the form without the life, should fail to develop stability of character in its students.
“The true Catholic attitude to all investigation was, and is, one admitting of great advances in every department of learning, while checking all true freedom of thought.”[109]
TheNorth American Reviewfor October, 1842, expresses in concise language the relation of students and schools to the general government and consequent state of society. It says: “In the colleges is determined the character of most of the persons who are to fill the professions, teach the schools, write the books, and do most of the business of legislation for the whole body of the people. The general direction of literature and politics, the prevailing habits and modes of thoughtthroughout the country, are in the hands of men whose social position and early advantages have given them an influence, of the magnitude and permanency of which the possessors themselves are hardly conscious.”
Recognizing this fact, the papacy controlled the education of the Middle Ages, and is to-day seeking to do the same thing. Luther and other reformers, also recognizing this fact, sought to overthrow the tyranny of the papacy by establishing new schools where freedom of thought would be fostered through faith in God’s Word.
Work for Protestants to-day
Protestants to-day, looking upon the system of education as it now exists, and tracing there the same long courses in the classics and the sciences; the same degrees granted in a manner similar to the Dark Ages, the text-book containing the same theories, the same terms, the same doctrines of philosophy; the same tendency toward monarchism, or the monopoly of education by certain universities, and through them by the same power that has borne sway, should, for the sake of their government, and for the sake of their faith, establish schools of their own. As the papacy, bythe subjection of thought, builds up a monarchy in place of democracy; as she in the same way overthrows faith in God, substituting faith in man or the church, soProtestant schools should educate childrenin the pure principles of that gospel freedom which recognizes the equality of every man in the sight of heaven, and makes it possible for the government to be of, for, and by the people by developing the Christian character through faith in Jesus Christ.
While following the history of education through the Dark Ages, we have often been compelled to recognize that an influence was at work slowly but surely undermining the structure which the papacy was, with the greatest perseverance, erecting, and which that power purposed should withstand all the attacks brought against it. The papacy had calculated well; it had, in absorbing the educational system of the times, laid its hand on the very tap-root of society, and, in its education as well as in its doctrines, woven about the human race meshes which only the Prince of heaven could rend with the sword of eternal truth.
Secret of papal strength
Never has the world seen such an enduring system as the papacy. Patterned so nearly after the truth of God, and resembling so closely, both in church government and educational principles, the plan deliveredto the chosen nation, that only an expert, guided by the Spirit of truth, could judge between the true and the counterfeit, it had, as had the Jews before them, replaced the life by the mere form. Nevertheless, so firmly laid was the foundation, and so substantially built were the walls, that for centuries it baffled all attempts at overthrow.
This structure had as its foundation aneducational system; the mortar which held the bricks in the wall waseducational methods, and should the building fall, the foundation itself must be attacked.
As a civil power, the papacy was periodically attacked by ambitious kings and princes; but these shocks scarcely disturbed the serenity of the papal head, so firm was his throne. The sword of the Mohammedans was broken at Tours; and the Crescent, instead of advancing to the full by encircling the Mediterranean, waned as its light receded to the shores of Africa and the west of Asia.