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4i6 VIII. THE MODERN PERIOD (A.D. 18121910).
age to the bishops of the Stormaktstid, and helped the
armies of Gustavus Adolphus to fight for their faith with
no "
transient heroism."
39
In order to illustrate this point I cannot do better than
quote some words of that great champion of the Church,
Johannes Rudbeckius, spoken at the Council of State on
the 22nd June, 1636:
"
Ever since the Reformation our
religion has been ill-treated Li Germany. As the prince
has gone, so the province has had to follow. But, thanks
be to God, we have here stood well hitherto. If the govern
ment (magistratus) has desired to have something done
which it ought not to have desired, the clergy have kept
the government back. The government for its part has
kept the clergy in its eye for the last hundred years. . . .
We must not adopt German manners if we wish to escape
their ill-fortune and avoid the peril in which they are."
40
The result is that Sweden has at this moment an
established Church which has a better theoretical and in
some ways practical relation to the State than any except
perhaps the established Church of Scotland, and which
surpasses that Church by its greater hold upon primitive
order and certain elements of worship.
On the other hand, the peculiar circumstances of the
Church, to which I have referred, working themselves out
as they did under Rudbeckius and others in the struggle
with the crown, which ended with Charles XL s Acts of
Uniformity, have produced a certain stiffness and narrow
ness of orthodoxy, which have led to constant reaction ever
since the time of Pietism. Rudbeckius own voluntary
activity became a hard type, which was impressed upon
the clergy by law, and has made them in certain depart
ments of their work seem to others, and often perhaps to
themselves, more like government officials than Christian
89
Cp. a fine passage in Professor Soderblom s address : Den
Enskilde och Kyrkan, p. 26.
40
This passage is quoted by H. Lundstrom : Laurentius
Paulinus Gothus, Part IIL, p. 15.
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