Fraternity-Testvériség, 1959 (37. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1959-01-01 / 1. szám

8

FRATERNITY

HISTORY

OF THE

HUNGARIAN REFORMED CHURCH

By

IMRE REVESZ, Th. D.

Translated by

GEORGE A. F. KNIGHT I

THE CENTURY OF THE REFORMATION

1520—1608

(Continuation)

The Rise of Unitarianism

The young Reformed Church had now to face an unhappy decade of bitter struggle with those who were diverging from the main stream of the Reformation. In central and western Europe the great reformers were in the position to build the new cult of humanism into the fabric of the newly reconstituted Church, and they never allowed humanism to divert the Reformation from its task of proclaiming the salvation of men. Luther, for example, carried on a constant debate with Erasmus to this end. No reformer, on the other hand, arose in the original home of humanism, viz., in northern Italy, to lead and guide this cultural movement, and to induce it to seek a harmony with Reformed theology. Instead, north Italian humanism developed along rationalistic lines, and actually was more attractive in its Italian form to doctors, lawyers and linguists, than it was to ministers, theologians and preachers of the Word.

When, however, the free thought of Italy began to seep into central Europe, this whole new approach to the world of knowledge was taken under the general umbrella of the Reformed and Lutheran Churches, and developed as a religious movement rather than a secular. It did