§ 3. The Reformed type of Doctrine

If the type of doctrine professed by the Protestants in those countries be considered (confessedly a partial, one-sided, and imperfect standard), it may be said that they all refused to accept some of the distinctive Lutheran dogmatic conclusions, and that they all departed more widely from some of the conceptions of the Mediæval Church. Their national confessions in their final forms borrowed more from Zurich and Geneva than from Wittenberg, and they all belong to the Reformed as distinguished from the Lutheran or Evangelical circle of creeds. It was perhaps natural that differences in the ritual and theory of the Holy Supper, the very apex and crown of Christian Public Worship, should be to the general eye the visible cleavage between rival forms of Christianity. In the earlier stages of the Reformation movement, the great popular distinction between the Romanists and Protestants was that the one refused and the other admitted the laity to partake of the Cup of Communion; and later, within an orthodox Protestantism, the thought of ubiquity was the dividing line. The Lutherans asserted and the Reformed denied or ignored the doctrine; and those confessions took the Reformed view.