The conflicting views of the conservatives and progressives were apparent from the start. During the first session, the progressives wanted to change the liturgy of the church to allow for modern languages instead of the traditional Latin and to encourage the participation of laypeople in the mass. The conservatives, predictably, objected.
To spread their views, the Oxford group launched in 1833 a series of Tracts for the Times, brief publications that gave rise to the label Tractarians. In these writings the Oxford leaders published their convictions on a single article of the creed: belief in “one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church.”
As an ideal for the church of England, they held up the church of the first five Christian centuries. It was there, they said, that the Christian church was undivided and truly catholic. They called themselves Catholics, on the ground that they were in agreement with this early catholic Christianity, and they shunned the name Protestant because it referred to a division in the church.
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In some cases, states maintained confessional orthodoxy by suppressing nonconformity and persecuting heresy. In other cases, when conflicting doctrines could not be reconciled, states pursued a policy of inclusiveness. They allowed latitude in doctrinal views so long as the church followed a minimum of formal unity. Nonconformity was tolerated, though not sanctioned. This was the route of the Church of England
The most aggressive opposition to the Jesuits came from a movement called Jansenism. Cornelius Jansen (1585–1638) was a Dutchman who had adopted St. Augustine’s views of sin and grace at the University of Louvain. He came to believe that the best way to defend Catholicism against the Calvinist challenge was to return to the doctrines of the great North African and establish a rigorous moral code for the Catholic clergy to combat the easygoing ethics of the Jesuits.
Luther’s conservative political and economic views arose from his belief that the equality of all people before God applied to spiritual not secular matters. While alienating the peasants, such views were a boon to alliances with the princes, many of whom became Lutheran in part because Luther’s views allowed them to control the church in their territories, thereby strengthening their power and wealth.
After successfully repulsing the Muslim armies in their second major attack on Constantinople (717–18), Leo openly declared his opposition to icons for the first time. An angry mob murdered the official who was sent to replace the icon of Christ with a cross over the Bronze Gate. Whole sections of the empire rebelled vigorously. Mosaics were gouged from the walls; icons were daubed with whitewash. Leo secured the retirement of the patriarch of Constantinople and the consecration of a new one who favored Leo’s views. The iconoclasts (or image breakers) wanted to replace the religious icons with the traditional Christian symbols of the cross, the Book (Bible), and the elements of the Lord’s Supper. These objects alone, they insisted, should be considered holy.