HE Reformation, which in its immediate development
consisted of the unleashing of a variety of forces and pos-
sessed unity only in the sense that all the reformers were attack-
ing the organization and authority of the Catholic Church,
produced and furthered in its course certain new political in-
stitutions and evolved some amount of political philosophy in
justification thereof. Yet from the point of view of the theory
of politics it is the later consequences of the Reformation rather
than its immediate products that are significant. It is pri-
marily because of these developments that it is necessary to
investigate the movement and in particular the theories of the
two leading reformers, Luther and Calvin.

The Protestant Reformation started out as an agitation for
ecclesiastical reform and theological reinterpretation. In the
first of these aspects it was at most a continuation of the Con-
ciliar Movement, involving a denial of papal claims, urging a
broader basis for church authority, and insisting on the neces-
sity for the representation of the diverse interests, products of
the new nationalism, in the church. The Conciliar Movement
had failed, as we have shown, owing to the diplomacy of the
Pope and his continuous contacts with church affairs on the
one hand, and the division in the ranks of the conciliarists on
the other. It should not, however, be assumed that the con-
ciliar spirit died, that there ceased to be men aware of the

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