§ 1. The Turning Point of Modern History.

The Reformation of the sixteenth century is, next to the introduction of Christianity, the greatest event in history. It marks the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times. Starting from religion, it gave, directly or indirectly, a mighty impulse to every forward movement, and made Protestantism the chief propelling force in the history of modern civilization.

The age of the Reformation bears a strong resemblance to the first century. Both are rich beyond any other period in great and good men, important facts, and permanent results. Both contain the ripe fruits of preceding, and the fruitful germs of succeeding ages. They are turning points in the history of mankind. They are felt in their effects to this day, and will be felt to the end of time. They refashioned the world from the innermost depths of the human soul in its contact, with the infinite Being. They were ushered in by a providential concurrence of events and tendencies of thought. The way for Christianity was prepared by Moses and the Prophets, the dispersion of the Jews, the conquests of Alexander the Great, the language and literature of Greece, the arms and laws of Rome, the decay of idolatry, the spread of skepticism, the aspirations after a new revelation, the hopes of a coming Messiah. The Reformation was preceded and necessitated by the corruptions of the papacy, the decline of monasticism and scholastic theology, the growth of mysticism, the revival of letters, the resurrection of the Greek and Roman classics, the invention of the printing press, the discovery of a new world, the publication of the Greek Testament, the general spirit of enquiry, the striving after national independence and personal freedom. In both centuries we hear the creative voice of the Almighty calling light out of darkness.

The sixteenth century is the age of the renaissance in religion, literature, and art. The air was stirred by the spirit of progress and freedom. The snows of a long winter were fast, melting before the rays of the vernal sun. The world seemed to be renewing its youth; old things were passing away, all things were becoming new. Pessimists and timid conservatives took alarm at the threatened overthrow of cherished notions and institutions, and were complaining, fault-finding and desponding. A very useless business. Intelligent observers of the signs of the times looked hopefully and cheerfully to the future. "O century!" exclaimed Ulrich von Hutten, "the studies flourish, the spirits are awake, it is a luxury to live." And Luther wrote in 1522: "If you read all the annals of the past, you will find no century like this since the birth of Christ. Such building and planting, such good living and dressing, such enterprise in commerce, such a stir in all the arts, has not been since Christ came into the world. And how numerous are the sharp and intelligent people who leave nothing hidden and unturned: even a boy of twenty years knows more nowadays than was known formerly by twenty doctors of divinity."

The same may be said with even greater force of the nineteenth century, which is eminently an age of discovery and invention, of enquiry and progress. And both then as now the enthusiasm for light and liberty takes two opposite directions, either towards skepticism and infidelity, or towards a revival of true religion from its primitive sources. But Christianity triumphed then, and will again regenerate the world.

The Protestant Reformation assumed the helm of the liberal tendencies and movements of the renaissance, directed them into the channel of Christian life, and saved the world from a disastrous revolution. For the Reformation was neither a revolution nor a restoration, though including elements of both. It was negative and destructive towards error, positive and constructive towards truth; it was conservative as well as progressive; it built up new institutions in the place of those which it pulled down; and for this reason and to this extent it has succeeded.

Under the motherly care of the Latin Church, Europe had been Christianized and civilized, and united into a family of nations under the spiritual government of the Pope and the secular government of the Emperor, with one creed, one ritual, one discipline, and one sacred language. The state of heathenism and barbarism at the beginning of the sixth century contrasts with the state of Christian Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century as midnight darkness compared with the dawn of the morning. But the sun of the day had not yet arisen.

All honor to the Catholic Church and her inestimable services to humanity. But Christianity is far broader and deeper than any ecclesiastical organization. It burst the shell of mediaeval forms, struck out new paths, and elevated Europe to a higher plane of intellectual, moral and spiritual culture than it had ever attained before.

§ 2. Protestantism and Romanism.

Protestantism represents the most enlightened and active of modern church history, but not the whole of it.

Since the sixteenth century Western Christendom is divided and runs in two distinct channels. The separation may be compared to the Eastern schism of the ninth century, which is not healed to this day; both parties being as firm and unyielding as ever on the doctrinal question of the Filioque, and the more important practical question of Popery. But Protestantism differs much more widely from the Roman church than the Roman church differs from the Greek, and the Protestant schism has become the fruitful mother of minor divisions, which exist in separate ecclesiastical organizations.

We must distinguish between Catholicism and Romanism. The former embraces the ancient Oriental church, the mediaeval church, and we may say, in a wider sense, all the modern evangelical churches. Romanism is the Latin church turned against the Reformation, consolidated by the Council of Trent and completed by the Vatican Council of 1870 with its dogma of papal absolutism and papal infallibility. Mediaeval Catholicism is pre-evangelical, looking to the Reformation; modern Romanism is anti-evangelical, condemning the Reformation, yet holding with unyielding tenacity the oecumenical doctrines once sanctioned, and doing this all the more by virtue of its claim to infallibility.

The distinction between pre-Reformation Catholicism and post-Reformation Romanism, in their attitude towards Protestantism, has its historical antecedent and parallel in the distinction between pre-Christian Israel which prepared the way for Christianity, and post-Christian Judaism which opposed it as an apostasy.

Catholicism and Protestantism represent two distinct types of Christianity which sprang from the same root, but differ in the branches.

Catholicism is legal Christianity which served to the barbarian nations of the Middle Ages as a necessary school of discipline; Protestantism is evangelical Christianity which answers the age of independent manhood. Catholicism is traditional, hierarchical, ritualistic, conservative; Protestantism is biblical, democratic, spiritual, progressive. The former is ruled by the principle of authority, the latter by the principle of freedom. But the law, by awakening a sense of sin and exciting a desire for redemption, leads to the gospel; parental authority is a school of freedom; filial obedience looks to manly self-government.

The characteristic features of mediaeval Catholicism are intensified by Romanism, yet without destroying the underlying unity.

Romanism and orthodox Protestantism believe in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and in one divine-human Lord and Saviour of the race. They accept in common the Holy Scriptures and the oecumenical faith. They agree in every article of the Apostles’ Creed. What unites them is far deeper, stronger and more important than what divides them.

But Romanism holds also a large number of "traditions of the elders," which Protestantism rejects as extra-scriptural or anti-scriptural; such are the papacy, the worship of saints and relics, transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the mass, prayers and masses for the dead, works of supererogation, purgatory, indulgences, the system of monasticism with its perpetual vows and ascetic practices, besides many superstitious rites and ceremonies.

Protestantism, on the other hand, revived and developed the Augustinian doctrines of sin and grace; it proclaimed the sovereignty of divine mercy in man’s salvation, the sufficiency of the Scriptures as a rule of faith, and the sufficiency of Christ’s merit as a source of justification; it asserted the right of direct access to the Word of God and the throne of grace, without human mediators; it secured Christian freedom from bondage; it substituted social morality for monkish asceticism, and a simple, spiritual worship for an imposing ceremonialism that addresses the senses and imagination rather than the intellect and the heart.

The difference between the Catholic and Protestant churches was typically foreshadowed by the difference between Jewish and Gentile Christianity in the apostolic age, which anticipated, as it were, the whole future course of church history. The question of circumcision or the keeping of the Mosaic law, as a condition of church membership, threatened a split at the Council of Jerusalem, but was solved by the wisdom and charity of the apostles, who agreed that Jews and Gentiles alike are "saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus" (Acts 15:11). Yet even after the settlement of the controversy by the Jerusalem compromise Paul got into a sharp conflict with Peter at Antioch on the same question, and protested against his older colleague for denying by his timid conduct his better conviction, and disowning the Gentile brethren. It is not accidental that the Roman Church professes to be built on Peter and regards him as the first pope; while the Reformers appealed chiefly to Paul and found in his epistles to the Galatians and Romans the bulwark of their anthropology and soteriology, and their doctrine of Christian freedom. The collision between Paul and Peter was only temporary; and so the war between Protestantism and Romanism will ultimately pass away in God’s own good time.

The Reformation began simultaneously in Germany and Switzerland, and swept with astonishing rapidity over France, Holland, Scandinavia, Bohemia, Hungary, England and Scotland; since the seventeenth century it has spread by emigration to North America, and by commercial and missionary enterprises to every Dutch and English colony, and every heathen land. It carried away the majority of the Teutonic and a part of the Latin nations, and for a while threatened to overthrow the papal church.

But towards the close of the sixteenth century the triumphant march of the Reformation was suddenly arrested. Romanism rose like a wounded giant, and made the most vigorous efforts to reconquer the lost territory in Europe, and to extend its dominion in Asia and South America. Since that time the numerical relation of the two churches has undergone little change. But the progress of secular and ecclesiastical history has run chiefly in Protestant channels.

In many respects the Roman Church of to-day is a great improvement upon the Mediaeval Church. She has been much benefited by the Protestant Reformation, and is far less corrupt and far more prosperous in Protestant than in Papal countries. She was driven to a counter-reform which abolished some of the most crying abuses and infused new life and zeal into her clergy and laity. No papal schism has disgraced her history since the sixteenth century. No pope of the character of Alexander VI. or even Leo X. could be elected any more. She lives chiefly of the past, but uses for her defence all the weapons of modern warfare. She has a much larger membership than either the Greek or the Protestant communion; she still holds under her sway the Latin races of both hemispheres; she satisfies the religious wants of millions of human beings in all countries and climes; she extends her educational, benevolent and missionary operations all over the globe; she advances in proportion as Protestantism degenerates and neglects its duty; and by her venerable antiquity, historical continuity, visible unity, centralized organization, imposing ritual, sacred art, and ascetic piety she attracts intelligent and cultured minds; while the common people are kept in ignorance and in superstitious awe of her mysterious authority with its claim to open the gates of heaven and hell and to shorten the purgatorial sufferings of the departed. For good and evil she is the strongest conservative force in modern society, and there is every reason to believe that she will last to the end of time.

Thus the two branches of Western Christendom seem to hold each other in check, and ought to stimulate each other to a noble rivalry in good works.

The unhappy divisions of Christendom, while they are the source of many evils, have also the good effect of multiplying the agencies for the conversion of the world and facilitating the free growth of every phase of religious life. The evil lies not so much in the multiplicity of denominations, which have a mission to fulfil, as in the spirit of sectarianism and exclusivism, which denies the rights and virtues of others. The Reformation of the sixteenth century is not a finale, but a movement still in progress. We may look hopefully forward to a higher, deeper and broader Reformation, when God in His overruling wisdom and mercy, by a pentecostal effusion of His Holy Spirit upon all the churches, will reunite what the sin and folly of men have divided. There must and will be, in the fullest sense of Christ’s prophecy, "one flock, one Shepherd" (John 10:16).

We say "one flock" (μία ποίμνη) not "one fold" (which would require μία αὐλή). The latter is a strange mistranslation which has passed from the Latin version (ovile) into King James’s version, and has often been abused as an argument for the papacy and ecclesiastical uniformity. It is corrected in the Revision. The two flocks, Jews and Gentiles, became one flock in the one Shepherd (ποίμην), not by entrance into the αὐλή of the Jews. There may be one flock in many folds or ecclesiastical organizations. The prophecy was no doubt already fulfilled in the Apostolic Church (Eph. 2:11-22), but awaits a higher fulfillment when "the fulness of the Gentiles shall come in, and all Israel shall be saved." Rom. 11:25, 26.

§3. Necessity of a Reformation.

The corruption and abuses of the Latin church had long been the complaint of the best men, and even of general councils. A reformation of the head and the members was the watchword at Pisa, Constance, and Basel, but remained a pium desiderium for a whole century.

Let us briefly review the dark side in the condition of the church at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

The papacy was secularized, and changed into a selfish tyranny whose yoke became more and more unbearable. The scandal of the papal schism had indeed been removed, but papal morals, after a temporary improvement, became worse than ever during the years 1492 to 1521. Alexander VI. was a monster of iniquity; Julius II. was a politician and warrior rather than a chief shepherd of souls; and Leo X. took far more interest in the revival of heathen literature and art than in religion, and is said to have even doubted the truth of the gospel history.

No wonder that many cardinals and priests followed the scandalous example of the popes, and weakened the respect of the laity for the clergy. The writings of contemporary scholars, preachers and satirists are full of complaints and exposures of the ignorance, vulgarity and immorality of priests and monks. Simony and nepotism were shamefully practiced. Celibacy was a foul fountain of unchastity and uncleanness. The bishoprics were monopolized by the youngest sons of princes and nobles without regard to qualification. Geiler of Kaisersberg, a stern preacher of moral reform at Strassburg (d. 1510), charges all Germany with promoting ignorant and worldly men to the chief dignities, simply on account of their high connections. Thomas Murner complains that the devil had introduced the nobility into the clergy, and monopolized for them the bishoprics.

In his Narrenbeschwörung (1512):

"Aber seit der Teufel hat

Den Adel bracht in Kirchenstat,

Seit man kein’ Bischof mehr will han

Er sei denn ganz ein Edelmann," etc.

Plurality of office and absence from the diocese were common. Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz was at the same time archbishop of Magdeburg and bishop of Halberstadt. Cardinal Wolsey was archbishop of York while chancellor of England, received stipends from the kings of France and Spain and the doge of Venice, and had a train of five hundred servants. James V. of Scotland (1528–1542) provided for his illegitimate children by making them abbots of Holyrood House, Kelso, Melrose, Coldingham and St. Andrews, and intrusted royal favorites with bishoprics.

Discipline was nearly ruined. Whole monastic establishments and orders had become nurseries of ignorance and superstition, idleness and dissipation, and were the objects of contempt and ridicule, as may be seen from the controversy of Reuchlin with the Dominicans, the writings of Erasmus, and the Epistolae Virorum Obscurorum.

Theology was a maze of scholastic subtleties, Aristotelian dialectics and idle speculations, but ignored the great doctrines of the gospel. Carlstadt, the older colleague of Luther, confessed that he had been doctor of divinity before he had seen a complete copy of the Bible. Education was confined to priests and nobles. The mass of the laity could neither read nor write, and had no access to the word of God except the Scripture lessons from the pulpit.

The priest’s chief duty was to perform, by his magic words, the miracle of transubstantiation, and to offer the sacrifice of the mass for the living and the dead in a foreign tongue. Many did it mechanically, or with a skeptical reservation, especially in Italy. Preaching was neglected, and had reference, mostly, to indulgences, alms, pilgrimages and processions. The churches were overloaded with good and bad pictures, with real and fictitious relics. Saint-worship and image-worship, superstitious rites and ceremonies obstructed the direct worship of God in spirit and in truth.

Piety which should proceed from a living union of the soul with Christ and a consecration of character, was turned outward and reduced to a round of mechanical performances such as the recital of Paternosters and Avemarias, fasting, alms-giving, confession to the priest, and pilgrimage to a holy shrine. Good works were measured by the quantity rather than the quality, and vitiated by the principle of meritoriousness which appealed to the selfish motive of reward. Remission of sin could be bought with money; a shameful traffic in indulgences was carried on under the Pope’s sanction for filthy lucre as well as for the building of St. Peter’s Dome, and caused that outburst of moral indignation which was the beginning of the Reformation and of the fearful judgment on the Church of Rome.

This is a one-sided, but not an exaggerated description. It is true as far as it goes, and needs only to be supplemented by the bright side which we shall present in the next section.

Honest Roman Catholic scholars, while maintaining the infallibility and consequent doctrinal irreformability of their church, admit in strong terms the decay of discipline and the necessity of a moral reform in the sixteenth century.

So Bellarmine and Bossuet. Möhler also (in his Kirchengesch. III. 99) says: "We do not believe that the period before the Reformation was a flourishing period of church history, for we hear from it a thousand voices for a reformation in the head and members (wir hören aus derselben den tausendstimmigen Ruf nach einer Verbesserung anHaupt und Gliedern uns entgegentönen)" Even Janssen, the eulogist of mediaeval Germany, devotes the concluding section of the first volume of his Geschichte des deutschen Volkes (p. 594-613) to a consideration of some of the crying evils of those times.

The best proof is furnished by a pope of exceptional integrity, Adrian VI., who made an extraordinary confession of the papal and clerical corruption to the Diet of Nürnberg in 1522, and tried earnestly, though in vain, to reform his court. The Council of Trent was called not only for the extirpation of heresy, but in part also "for the reformation of the clergy and Christian people;"

Sess. I. (held Dec. 13, 1545): "ad extirpationem haeresium , ad pacem et unionem ecclessiae, ad reformationem cleri et populi Christiani." See Smets, Concilii Trident. Canones et Decreta, p.10.

and Pope Pius IV., in the bull of confirmation, likewise declares that one of the objects of the Council was "the correction of morals and the restoration of ecclesiastical discipline."

"Ad plurimas et perniciosissimas haereses extirpandas, ad corrigendos mores, et restituendam ecclesiasticam disciplinam" etc. See Smets, l.c. 209.

On the other hand, it must be admitted that the church was more than once in a far worse condition, during the papal schism in the fourteenth, and especially in the tenth and eleventh centuries; and yet she was reformed by Pope Hildebrand and his successors without a split and without an alteration of the Catholic Creed.

Why could not the same be done in the sixteenth century? Because the Roman church in the critical moment resisted reform with all her might, and forced the issue: either no reformation at all, or a reformation in opposition to Rome.

The guilt of the western schism is divided between the two parties, as the guilt of the eastern schism is; although no human tribunal can measure the share of responsibility. Much is due, no doubt, to the violence and extravagance of the Protestant opposition, but still more to the intolerance and stubbornness of the Roman resistance. The papal court used against the Reformation for a long time only the carnal weapons of political influence, diplomatic intrigue, secular wealth, haughty pride, scholastic philosophy, crushing authority, and bloody persecution. It repeated the course of the Jewish hierarchy, which crucified the Messiah and cast the apostles out of the synagogue.

But we must look beyond this partial justification, and view the matter in the light of the results of the Reformation.

It was evidently the design of Providence to develop a new type of Christianity outside of the restraints of the papacy, and the history of three centuries is the best explanation and vindication of that design. Every movement in history must be judged by its fruits.

The elements of such an advance movement were all at work before Luther and Zwingli protested against papal indulgences.

§ 4. The Preparations for the Reformation.

C. Ullmann: Reformatoren vor der Reformation. Hamburg, 1841, 2d ed. 1866, 2 vols. (Engl. trans. by R. Menzies, Edinb. 1855, 2 vols.). C. de Bonnechose: Réformateurs avant réforme du xvi. siècle. Par. 1853, 2 vols. A good résumé by Geo. P. Fisher: The Reformation. New York, 1873, ch. III. 52–84; and in the first two lectures of Charles Beard: The Reformation, London, 1883, p. 1–75. Comp., also the numerous monographs of various scholars on the Renaissance, on Wiclif, Hus, Savonarola, Hutten, Reuchlin, Erasmus, etc. A full account of the preparation for the Reformation belongs to the last chapters of the History of Mediaeval Christianity (see vol. V.). We here merely recapitulate the chief points.

Judaism before Christ was sadly degenerated, and those who sat in Moses’ seat had become blind leaders of the blind. Yet "salvation is of the Jews;" and out of this people arose John the Baptist, the Virgin Mary, the Messiah, and the Apostles. Jerusalem, which stoned the prophets and crucified the Lord, witnessed also the pentecostal miracle and became the mother church of Christendom. So the Catholic church in the sixteenth century, though corrupt in its head and its members, was still the church of the living God and gave birth to the Reformation, which removed the rubbish of human traditions and reopened the pure fountain of the gospel of Christ.

The Reformers, it should not be forgotten, were all born, baptized, confirmed, and educated in the Roman Catholic Church, and most of them had served as priests at her altars with the solemn vow of obedience to the pope on their conscience. They stood as closely related to the papal church, as the Apostles and Evangelists to the Synagogue and the Temple; and for reasons of similar urgency, they were justified to leave the communion of their fathers; or rather, they did not leave it, but were cast out by the ruling hierarchy.

The Reformation went back to first principles in order to go forward. It struck its roots deep in the past and bore rich fruits for the future. It sprang forth almost simultaneously from different parts of Europe and was enthusiastically hailed by the leading minds of the age in church and state. No great movement in history—except Christianity itself—was so widely and thoroughly prepared as the Protestant Reformation.

The reformatory Councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basel; the conflict of the Emperors with the Popes; the contemplative piety of the mystics with their thirst after direct communion with God; the revival of classical literature; the general intellectual awakening; the biblical studies of Reuchlin, and Erasmus; the rising spirit of national independence; Wiclif, and the Lollards in England; Hus, and the Hussites in Bohemia; John von Goch, John von Wesel, and Johann Wessel in Germany and the Netherlands; Savonarola in Italy; the Brethren of the Common Life, the Waldenses, the Friends of God,—contributed their share towards the great change and paved the way for a new era of Christianity. The innermost life of the church was pressing forward to a new era. There is scarcely a principle or doctrine of the Reformation which was not anticipated and advocated in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Luther made the remark that his opponents might charge him with having borrowed everything from John Wessel if he had known his writings earlier. The fuel was abundant all over Europe, but it required the spark which would set it ablaze.

Violent passions, political intrigues, the ambition and avarice of princes, and all sorts of selfish and worldly motives were mixed up with the war against the papacy. But they were at work likewise in the introduction of Christianity among the heathen barbarians. "Wherever God builds a church, the devil builds a chapel close by." Human nature is terribly corrupt and leaves its stains on the noblest movements in history.

But, after all, the religious leaders of the Reformation, while not free from faults, were men of the purest motives and highest aims, and there is no nation which has not been benefited by the change they introduced.

§ 5. The Genius and Aim of the Reformation.

Is. Aug. Dorner: On the formal, and the material Principle of the Reformation. Two essays, first published in 1841 and 1857, and reprinted in his Gesammelte Schriften, Berlin, 1883, p. 48–187. Also his History of Protestant Theology, Engl. trans. 1871, 2 vols.

Phil. Schaff: The Principle of Protestantism, Chambersburg, Penn., 1845 (German and English); Protestantism and Romanism, and the Principles of the Reformation, two essays in his "Christ and Christianity," N. York, 1885. p. 124–134. Also Creeds of Christendom, Vol. I. 203–219.

Dan. Schenkel: Das Princip des Protestantimus. Schaffhausen, 1852 (92 pages). This is the concluding section of his larger work, Das Wesen des Protestantismus, in 3 vols.

K. F. A. Kahnis: Ueber die Principien des Protestatismus. Leipzig, 1865. Also his Zeugniss von den Grundwahrheiten des Protestantismus gegen Dr. Hengstenberg. Leipzig, 1862.

Charles Beard: The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in its relation to Modern Thought and Knowledge. Hibbert Lectures for 1883. London, 1883. A Unitarian view, written with ample learning and in excellent spirit.

Henry Wace and C. A. Buchheim: First Principles of the Reformation, or the 95 Theses and three Primary Works of Dr. M. Luther. London, 1885.

The literature on the difference between Lutheran and Reformed or Calvinistic Protestantism is given in Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, l. 211.

The spirit and aim of evangelical Protestantism is best expressed by Paul in his anti-Judaistic Epistle to the Galatians: "For freedom did Christ set us free; stand fast, therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage." Christian freedom is so inestimable a blessing that no amount of abuse can justify a relapse into a state of spiritual despotism and slavery. But only those who have enjoyed it, can properly appreciate it.

The Reformation was at first a purely religious movement, and furnishes a striking illustration of the all-pervading power of religion in history. It started from the question: What must a man do to be saved? How shall a sinner be justified before God, and attain peace of his troubled conscience? The Reformers were supremely concerned for the salvation of the soul, for the glory of Christ and the triumph of his gospel. They thought much more of the future world than of the present, and made all political, national, and literary interests subordinate and subservient to religion.

What Dr. Baur, the critical Tübingen historian, says of Luther, is equally applicable to all the other Reformers: "Dass für Luther die Reformation zur eigensten Sache seines Herzens geworden war, dass er sie in ihrem reinsten religiösen Interesse auffasste, getrennt von allen ihr fremdartigen blos äusserlichen Motiven, dass es ihm um nichts anderes zu thun war, alsum die Sache des Evangeliums und seinerseligmachenden Kraft, wie er sie an sich selbst in seinem innern Kampf um die Gewissheit der Sündenvergebung erfahren hatte, diess ist es, was ihn zum Reformator machte."Gesch. der Christl. Kirche, vol. IV. 5 (ed. by his son, 1863). Froude says of Luther: "He revived and maintained the spirit of piety and reverence in which, and by which alone, real progress is possible."Luther, Preface, p. vi.

Yet they were not monks, but live men in a live age, not pessimists, but optimists, men of action as well as of thought, earnest, vigorous, hopeful men, free from selfish motives and aims, full of faith and the Holy Ghost, equal to any who had preceded them since the days of the Apostles. From the centre of religion they have influenced every department of human life and activity, and given a powerful impulse to political and civil liberty, to progress in theology, philosophy, science, and literature.

The Reformation removed the obstructions which the papal church had interposed between Christ and the believer. It opened the door to direct union with him , as the only Mediator between God and man, and made his gospel accessible to every reader without the permission of a priest. It was a return to first principles, and for this very reason also a great advance. It was a revival of primitive Christianity, and at the same time a deeper apprehension and application of it than had been known before.

There are three fundamental principles of the Reformation: the supremacy of the Scriptures over tradition, the supremacy of faith over works, and the supremacy of the Christian people over an exclusive priesthood. The first may be called the objective, the second the subjective, the third the social or ecclesiastical principle.

German writers distinguish usually two principles of the Reformation, the authority of the Scriptures, and justification by faith, and call the first the formal principle (or Erkenntnissprincip, principium cognoscendi), the second the material principle (principium essendi); the third they omit, except Kahnis, who finds a third principle in the idea of the invisible church, and calls this the Kirchenprincip. The Lutheran Church gives to the doctrine of justification by faith the first place; and the Formula of Concord calls it "articulus praecipuus in tota doctrina Christiana." But the Reformed confessions give the first place to the doctrine of the normative authority of Scripture, from which alone all articles of faith are to be derived, and they substitute for the doctrine of justification by faith the ulterior and wider doctrine of election and salvation by free grace through faith. The difference is characteristic, but does not affect the essential agreement.

They resolve themselves into the one principle of evangelical freedom, or freedom in Christ. The ultimate aim of evangelical Protestantism is to bring every man into living union with Christ as the only and all-sufficient Lord and Saviour from sin and death.

§ 6. The Authority of the Scriptures.

The objective principle of Protestantism maintains that the Bible, as the inspired record of revelation, is the only infallible rule of faith and practice; in opposition to the Roman Catholic coordination of Scripture and ecclesiastical tradition, as the joint rules of faith.

The teaching of the living church is by no means rejected, but subordinated to the Word of God; while the opposite theory virtually subordinates the Bible to tradition by making the latter the sole interpreter of the former and confining interpretation within the limits of an imaginary consensus patrum. In the application of the Bible principle there was considerable difference between the more conservative Lutheran and Anglican Reformation, and the more radical Zwinglian and Calvinistic Reformation; the former contained many post-scriptural and extra-scriptural traditions, usages and institutions, which the latter, in its zeal for primitive purity and simplicity, rejected as useless or dangerous; but all Reformers opposed what they regarded as anti-scriptural doctrines; and all agreed in the principle that the church has no right to impose upon the conscience articles of faith without clear warrant in the Word of God.

Every true progress in church history is conditioned by a new and deeper study of the Scriptures, which has "first, second, third, infinite draughts." While the Humanists went back to the ancient classics and revived the spirit of Greek and Roman paganism, the Reformers went back to the sacred Scriptures in the original languages and revived the spirit of apostolic Christianity. They were fired by an enthusiasm for the gospel, such as had never been known since the days of Paul. Christ rose from the tomb of human traditions and preached again his words of life and power. The Bible, heretofore a book of priests only, was now translated anew and better than ever into the vernacular tongues of Europe, and made a book of the people. Every Christian man could henceforth go to the fountain-head of inspiration, and sit at the feet of the Divine Teacher, without priestly permission and intervention. This achievement of the Reformation was a source of incalculable blessings for all time to come. In a few years Luther’s version had more readers among the laity than ever the Latin Vulgate had among priests; and the Protestant Bible societies circulate more Bibles in one year than were copied during the fifteen centuries before the Reformation.

We must remember, however, that this wonderful progress was only made possible by the previous invention of the art of printing and by the subsequent education of the people. The Catholic Church had preserved the sacred Scriptures through ages of ignorance and barbarism; the Latin Bible was the first gift of the printing press to the world; fourteen or more editions of a German version were printed before 1518; the first two editions of the Greek Testament we owe to the liberality of a Spanish cardinal (Ximenes), and the enterprise of a Dutch scholar in Basel (Erasmus); and the latter furnished the text from which, with the aid of Jerome’s Vulgate, the translations of Luther and Tyndale were made.

The Roman church, while recognizing the divine inspiration and authority of the Bible, prefers to control the laity by the teaching priesthood, and allows the reading of the Scriptures in the popular tongues only under certain restrictions and precautions, from fear of abuse and profanation. Pope Innocent III. was of the opinion that the Scriptures were too deep for the common people, as they surpassed even the understanding of the wise and learned. Several synods in Gaul, during the thirteenth century, prohibited the reading of the Romanic translation, and ordered the copies to be burnt. Archbishop Berthold, of Mainz, in an edict of January 4th, 1486, threatened with excommunication all who ventured to translate and to circulate translations of sacred books, especially the Bible, without his permission. The Council of Constance (1415), which burnt John Hus and Jerome of Prague, condemned also the writings and the hopes of Wiclif, the first translator of the whole Bible into the English tongue, to the flames: and Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury and chancellor of England, denounced him as that "pestilent wretch of damnable heresy who, as a complement of his wickedness, invented a new translation of the Scriptures into his mother tongue." Pope Pius IV. (1564), in the conviction that the indiscriminate reading of Bible versions did more harm than good (plus detrimenti quam utilitiatis), would not allow laymen to read the sacred book except by special permission of a bishop or an inquisitor. Clement VIII. (1598) reserved the right to grant this permission to the Congregation of the Index. Gregory XV. (1622), and Clement XI. (in the Bull Unigenitus, 1713), repeated the conditional prohibition. Benedict XIV., one of the liberal popes, extended the permission to read the Word of God in the vernacular to all the faithful, yet with the proviso that the translation be approved in Rome and guarded by explanatory notes from the writings of the fathers and Catholic scholars (1757). This excludes, of course, all Protestant versions, even the very best. They are regarded as corrupt and heretical and have often been committed to the flames in Roman Catholic countries, especially in connection with the counter-Reformation of the Jesuits in Bohemia and elsewhere. The first edition of Tyndale’s New Testament had to be smuggled into England and was publicly burnt by order of Tunstall, bishop of London, in St. Paul’s church-yard near the spot from which Bibles are now sent to all parts of the globe. The Bible societies have been denounced and condemned by modern popes as a "pestilence which perverts the gospel of Christ into a gospel of the devil." The Papal Syllabus of Pius IX. (1864), classes "Societates Biblicae" with Socialism, Communism, and Secret Societies, calls them "pests frequently rebuked in the severest terms," and refers for proof, to several Encyclicals from November 9th, 1846, to August 10th, 1863.

Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, II. 218; Köllner, Symbolik II. 351, sqq.; Hase, Handbuch der Protestant. Polemik, fourth ed., 1878, p. 68 sqq. There were indeed vernacular translations of the Bible long before the Reformation; but it is a most astounding exaggeration when Perrone, as quoted by Hase, asserts (Praelect. Theol. III. § 317): "Per idem tempus 800plus minus editiones Bibliorum aut N. T. ante Reformationem prodierant, ac per universam Europam catholicam circumferebantur, antequam vel protestantis nomen agnosceretur. Et ex his 200 versiones in linguis vernaculis diversarum gentium omnium manibus libere versabantur."

Such fulminations against Protestant Bible societies might be in some measure excused if the popes favored Catholic Bible societies, which would be the best proof of zeal for the spread of the Scriptures. But such institutions do not exist. Fortunately papal bulls have little effect in modern times, and in spite of official prohibitions and discouragements, there are zealous advocates of Bible reading among modern Catholics, as there were among the Greek and Latin fathers.

See L. Van Ess,Auszüge über das nothwendige und nützliche Bibellesen aus den Kirchenvätern und anderen kathol. Schriften, second ed., 1816; also the preface to his translation of the New Testament.

Nor have the restrictions of the Council of Trent been able to prevent the progress of Biblical scholarship and exegesis even in the Roman church. E pur si muove. The Bible, as well as the earth, moves for all that.

Modern Protestant theology is much more just to ecclesiastical tradition than the Reformers could be in their hot indignation against the prevailing corruptions and against the papal tyranny of their day. The deeper study of ecclesiastical and secular history has dispelled the former ignorance on the "dark ages," so called, and brought out the merits of the fathers, missionaries, schoolmen, and popes, in the progress of Christian civilization.

But these results do not diminish the supreme value of the sacred Scripture as an ultimate tribunal of appeal in matters of faith, nor the importance of its widest circulation. It is by far the best guide of instruction in holy living and dying. No matter what theory of the mode and extent of inspiration we may hold, the fact of inspiration is plain and attested by the universal consent of Christendom. The Bible is a book of holy men, but just as much a book of God, who made those men witnesses of truth and sure teachers of the way of salvation.

§ 7. Justification by Faith.

The subjective principle of Protestantism is the doctrine of justification and salvation by faith in Christ; as distinct from the doctrine of justification by faith and works or salvation by grace and human merit. Luther’s formula is sola fide. Calvin goes further back to God’s eternal election, as the ultimate ground of salvation and comfort in life and in death. But Luther and Calvin meant substantially the same thing, and agree in the more general proposition of salvation by free grace through living faith in Christ (Acts 4:12), in opposition to any Pelagian or Semi-pelagian compromise which divides the work and merit between God and man. And this is the very soul of evangelical Protestantism.

Only in this sense can it be called Augustinian; for otherwise Augustin’s conception of justificatio is catholic, and he identifies it with sanctificatio. Moreover he widely differs from the Protestant conception of the church and its authority. Luther felt the difference in his later years.

Luther assigned to his solifidian doctrine of justification the central position in the Christian system, declared it to be the article of the standing or falling (Lutheran) church, and was unwilling to yield an inch from it, though heaven and earth should collapse.

Articuli Smalcaldici, p. 305 (ed. Rechenb., or 310 ed. Müller): "De hoc articulo [solam fidem nos justificare] cedere or aliquid contra illum largiri aut permittere nemo piorum potest etiamsi coelum et terra et omnia corruant. (Acts 4:12; Isa. 53:3). Et in hoc articulo sita sunt et consistunt omnia, quae contra papam, diabolum et universum mundum in vita nostra docemus, testamur et agimus. Quare opportet nos de hac doctrina esse certos, et minime dubitare, alioquin actum est prorsus, et papa et diabolus et omnia adversa jus et victoriam contra nos obtinent." Luther inserted in his translation of Rom. 3:28, the word allein (sola fide, hence the term solifidianism), and the revised Probebibel of 1883 retained it. On the exegetical questions involved, see my annotations to Lange on Romans 3:28.

This exaggeration is due to his personal experience during his convent life. The central article of the Christian faith on which the church is built, is not any specific dogma of the Protestant, or Roman, or Greek church, but the broader and deeper truth held by all, namely, the divine-human personality and atoning work of Christ, the Lord and Saviour. This was the confession of Peter, the first creed of Christendom.

The Protestant doctrine of justification differs from the Roman Catholic, as defined (very circumspectly) by the Council of Trent, chiefly in two points. Justification is conceived as a declaratory and judicial act of God, in distinction from sanctification, which is a gradual growth; and faith is conceived as a fiducial act of the heart and will, in distinction from theoretical belief and blind submission to the church. The Reformers derived their idea from Paul, the Romanists appealed chiefly to James (2:17–26); but Paul suggests the solution of the apparent contradiction by his sentence, that "in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love."

Faith, in the biblical and evangelical sense, is a vital force which engages all the powers of man and apprehends and appropriates the very life of Christ and all his benefits. It is the child of grace and the mother of good works. It is the pioneer of all great thoughts and deeds. By faith Abraham became the father of nations; by faith Moses became the liberator and legislator of Israel; by faith the Galilean fishermen became fishers of men; and by faith the noble army of martyrs endured tortures and triumphed in death; without faith in the risen Saviour the church could not have been founded. Faith is a saving power. It unites us to Christ. Whosoever believeth in Christ "hath eternal life." "We believe," said Peter at the Council of Jerusalem, "that we shall be saved through the grace of God," like the Gentiles who come to Christ by faith without the works and ceremonies of the law. "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved," was Paul’s answer to the question of the jailor: "What must I do to be saved?"

Protestantism does by no means despise or neglect good works or favor antinomian license; it only subordinates them to faith, and measures their value by quality rather than quantity. They are not the condition, but the necessary evidence of justification; they are not the root, but the fruits of the tree. The same faith which justifies, does also sanctify. It is ever "working through love" (Gal. 5:6). Luther is often charged with indifference to good works, but very unjustly. His occasional unguarded utterances must be understood in connection with his whole teaching and character. "Faith" in his own forcible language which expresses his true view, "faith is a living, busy, active, mighty thing and it is impossible that it should not do good without ceasing; it does not ask whether good works are to be done, but before the question is put, it has done them already, and is always engaged in doing them; you may as well separate burning and shining from fire, as works from faith."

The Lutheran doctrine of Christian freedom and justification by faith alone, like that of St. Paul on which it was based, was made the cloak of excesses by carnal men who wickedly reasoned, "Let us continue in sin that grace may abound" (Rom. 6:1), and who abused their "freedom for an occasion to the flesh" (Gal. 5:13). All such consequences the apostle cut off at the outset by an indignant "God forbid."

The fact is undeniable, that the Reformation in Germany was accompanied and followed by antinomian tendencies and a degeneracy of public morals. It rests not only on the hostile testimonies of Romanists and separatists, but Luther and Melanchthon themselves often bitterly complained in their later years of the abuse of the liberty of the gospel and the sad state of morals in Wittenberg and throughout Saxony.

The weight of Döllinger’s three volumes on the Reformation (1848) consists in the collection of such unfavorable testimonies from the writings of Erasmus, Wizel, Haner, Wildenauer, Crotus Rubeanus, Biblicanus, Staupitz, Amerpach, Pirkheimer, Zasius, Frank, Denk, Hetzer, Schwenkfeld, Luther, Melanchthon, Spalatin, Bugenhagen, and others. They give, indeed, a very gloomy, but a very one-sided picture of the times. Janssen makes good use of these testimonies. But both these Catholic historians whose eminent learning is undeniable, wrote with a polemic aim, and make the very truth lie by omitting the bright side of the Reformation. Comp. on this subject the controversial writings of Köstlin and Ebrard against Janssen, and Janssen’s replies, An meine Kritiker, Freiburg i. B. 1883 (Zehntes Tausend, 227 pages), and Ein zweites Wort an meine Kritiker, Freib. 1883 (Zwölftes Tausend, 144 pages).

But we should remember, first, that the degeneracy of morals, especially the increase of extravagance, and luxury with its attending vices, had begun in Catholic times in consequence of discoveries and inventions, the enlargement of commerce and wealth.

Even Janssen admits this, but is silent about the greater corruption in Rome. See his Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes I. 375 sqq. Comp. his Ein zweites Wort an meine Kritiker, p. 82.

Nor was it near as bad as the state of things which Luther had witnessed at Rome in 1510, under Pope Julius II., not to speak of the more wicked reign of Pope Alexander VI. Secondly, the degeneracy was not due so much to a particular doctrine, as to the confusion which necessarily followed the overthrow of the ecclesiastical order and discipline, and to the fact that the Lutheran Reformers allowed the government of the church too easily to pass from the bishops into the hands of secular rulers. Thirdly, the degeneracy was only temporary during the transition from the abolition of the old to the establishment of the new order of things. Fourthly, the disorder was confined to Germany. The Swiss Reformers from the start laid greater stress on discipline than the Lutheran Reformers, and organized the new church on a more solid basis. Calvin introduced a state of moral purity and rigorism in Geneva such as had never been known before in the Christian church. The Huguenots of France, the Calvinists of Holland, the Puritans of England and New England, and the Presbyterians of Scotland are distinguished for their strict principles and habits. An impartial comparison of Protestant countries and nations with Roman Catholic, in regard to the present state of public and private morals and general culture, is eminently favorable to the Reformation.

§ 8. The Priesthood of the Laity.

The social or ecclesiastical principle of Protestantism is the general priesthood of believers, in distinction from the special priesthood which stands mediating between Christ and the laity.

The Roman church is an exclusive hierarchy, and assigns to the laity the position of passive obedience. The bishops are the teaching and ruling church; they alone constitute a council or synod, and have the exclusive power of legislation and administration. Laymen have no voice in spiritual matters, they can not even read the Bible without the permission of the priest, who holds the keys of heaven and hell.

In the New Testament every believer is called a saint, a priest, and a king. "All Christians," says Luther, "are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them, save of office alone. As St. Paul says, we are all one body, though each member does its own work, to serve the others. This is because we have one baptism, alike; one gospel, one faith, and are all Christians for baptism, gospel and faith, these alone make spiritual and Christian people." And again: "It is faith that makes men priests, faith that unites them to Christ, and gives them the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, whereby they become filled with all holy grace and heavenly power. The inward anointing—this oil, better than any that ever came from the horn of bishop or pope—gives them not the name only, but the nature, the purity, the power of priests; and this anointing have all they received who are believers in Christ."

This principle, consistently carried out, raises the laity to active co-operation in the government and administration of the church; it gives them a voice and vote in the election of the pastor; it makes every member of the congregation useful, according to his peculiar gift, for the general good. This principle is the source of religious and civil liberty which flourishes most in Protestant countries. Religious liberty is the mother of civil liberty. The universal priesthood of Christians leads legitimately to the universal kingship of free, self-governing citizens, whether under a monarchy or under a republic.

The good effect of this principle showed itself in the spread of Bible knowledge among the laity, in popular hymnody and congregational singing, in the institution of lay-eldership, and in the pious zeal of the magistrates for moral reform and general education.

But it was also shamefully perverted and abused by the secular rulers who seized the control of religion, made themselves bishops and popes in their dominion, robbed the churches and convents, and often defied all discipline by their own immoral conduct. . Philip of Hesse, and Henry VIII. of England, are conspicuous examples of Protestant popes who disgraced the cause of the Reformation. Erastianism and Territorialism whose motto is: cujus regio, ejus religio, are perversions rather than legitimate developments of lay-priesthood. The true development lies in the direction of general education, in congregational self-support and self-government, and in the intelligent co-operation of the laity with the ministry in all good works, at home and abroad. In this respect the Protestants of England, Scotland, and North America, are ahead of the Protestants on the Continent of Europe. The Roman church is a church of priests and has the grandest temples of worship; the Lutheran church is a church of theologians and has most learning and the finest hymns; the Reformed church is a church of the Christian people and has the best preachers and congregations.

§ 9. The Reformation and Rationalism.

G. Frank: De Luthero rationalismi praecursore. Lips., 1857.

S. Berger: La Bible an seizième siècle; étude sur les origines de la critique. Paris, 1879.

Charles Beard: The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in relation, to Modem Thought and Knowledge (Hibbert Lectures). London, 1883. Lect. V.

Comp. also Lecky: History of Rationalism in Europe. London, 4th ed. 1870, 2 vols. George P. Fisher: Faith and Rationalism. New York, 1879, revised 1885 (191 pages).

The Roman Catholic Church makes Scripture and tradition the supreme rule of faith, laying the chief stress on tradition, that is, the teaching of an infallible church headed by an infallible Pope, as the judge of the meaning of both.

"I am the tradition" (la tradizione son io), said Pope Pius IX., during the Vatican Council which substituted an infallible papacy for an infallible council, in conflict both with oecumenical councils and popes who officially denounced Pope Honorius III. as a Monotheletic heretic. See vol. IV. 500 sqq.

Evangelical, Protestantism makes the Scripture alone the supreme rule, but uses tradition and reason as means in ascertaining its true sense.

Rationalism raises human reason above Scripture and tradition, and accepts them only as far as they come within the limits of its comprehension. It makes rationality or intelligibility the measure of credibility. We take the word Rationalism here in the technical sense of a theological system and tendency in distinction from rational theology. The legitimate use of reason in religion is allowed by the Catholic and still more by the Protestant church, and both have produced scholastic systems in full harmony with orthodoxy. Christianity is above reason, but not against reason.

The Reformation is represented as the mother of Rationalism both by Rationalistic and by Roman Catholic historians and controversialists, but from an opposite point of view, by the former to the credit, by the latter to the disparagement of both.

The Reformation, it is said, took the first step in the emancipation of reason: it freed us from the tyranny of the church. Rationalism took the second step: it freed us from the tyranny of the Bible. "Luther," says Lessing, the champion of criticism against Lutheran orthodoxy, "thou great, misjudged man! Thou hast redeemed us from the yoke of tradition: who will redeem us from the unbearable yoke of the letter! Who will at last bring us a Christianity such as thou would teach us now, such as Christ himself would teach!"

Roman Catholics go still further and hold Protestantism responsible for all modern revolutions and for infidelity itself, and predict its ultimate dismemberment and dissolution.

This charge is sanctioned by several papal Encyclicals; it is implied, negatively, in the Syllabus of Pius IX. (1864), and, positively, though cautiously, in the Encyclical of Leo XIII Immortale Dei (Nov. 1, 1885), which characterizes the Reformation movements (without naming them) as "those pernicious and deplorable revolutionary tendencies which were aroused in the sixteenth century, and which, after introducing confusion into Christendom, soon, by a natural course, entered the domain of philosophy, and from philosophy into all the lines of civil society. Hasak, in his book—Dr. M. Luther (Regensburg, 1881), takes as his motto: " Be reconciled to the Church of God, the old mother church, which, for these eighteen hundred years, has been the preserver of the eternal truth, before the bloody flood of atheism and the socialistic republic breaks upon us as a true judgment of the world."

But this charge is sufficiently set aside by the undeniable fact that modern infidelity and revolution in their worst forms have appeared chiefly in Roman Catholic countries, as desperate reactions against hierarchical and political despotism. The violent suppression of the Reformation in France ended at last in a radical overthrow of the social order of the church. In Roman Catholic countries, like Spain and Mexico, revolution has become a chronic disease. Romanism provokes infidelity among cultivated minds by its excessive supernaturalism.

The Reformation checked the skepticism of the renaissance, and the anarchical tendencies of the Peasants’ War in Germany and of the Libertines in Geneva. An intelligent faith is the best protection against infidelity; and a liberal government is a safeguard against revolution.

The connection of the Reformation with Rationalism is a historical fact, but they are related to each other as the rightful use of intellectual freedom to the excess and abuse of it. Rationalism asserts reason against revelation, and freedom against divine as well as human authority. It is a one-sided development of the negative, protesting, antipapal and antitraditional factor of the Reformation to the exclusion of its positive, evangelical faith in the revealed will and word of God. It denies the supernatural and miraculous. It has a superficial sense of sin and guilt, and is essentially Pelagian; while the Reformation took the opposite Augustinian ground and proceeded from the deepest conviction of sin and the necessity of redeeming grace. The two systems are thus theoretically and practically opposed to each other. And yet there is an intellectual and critical affinity between them, and Rationalism is inseparable from the history of Protestantism. It is in the modern era of Christianity what Gnosticism was in the ancient church—a revolt of private judgment against the popular faith and church orthodoxy, an overestimate of theoretic knowledge, but also a wholesome stimulus to inquiry and progress. It is not a church or sect (unless we choose to include Socinianism and Unitarianism), but a school in the church, or rather a number of schools which differ very considerably from each other.

Rationalism appeared first in the seventeenth century in the Church of England, though without much effect upon the people, as Deism, which asserted natural religion versus revealed religion; it was matured in its various phases after the middle of the eighteenth century on the Continent, especially in Protestant Germany since Lessing (d. 1781) and Semler (d. 1791), and gradually obtained the mastery of the chairs and pulpits of Lutheran and Reformed churches, till about 1817, when a revival of the positive faith of the Reformation spread over Germany and a serious conflict began between positive and negative Protestantism, which continues to this day.

1. Let us first consider the relation of the Reformation to the use of reason as a general principle.

The Reformation was a protest against human authority, asserted the right of private conscience and judgment, and roused a spirit of criticism and free inquiry in all departments of knowledge. It allows, therefore, a much wider scope for the exercise of reason in religion than the Roman church, which requires an unconditional submission to her infallible authority. It marks real progress, but this progress is perfectly consistent with a belief in revelation on subjects which lie beyond the boundary of time and sense. What do we know of the creation, and the world of the future, except what God has chosen to reveal to us? Human reason can prove the possibility and probability of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, but not the certainty and necessity. It is reasonable, therefore, to believe in the supernatural on divine testimony, and it is unreasonable to reject it.

The Reformers used their reason and judgment very freely in their contest with church authority. Luther refused to recant in the crisis at Worms, unless convinced by testimonies of the Scriptures and "cogent arguments."

"Scripturae sacrae testimoniis vel evidenti ratione," or "evidentissimis rationibus; in the German form, as repeated by him on the occasion, "durch Zeugnisse der heil. Schrift und durch helle Gründe."See Köstlin II. 452 sq. and 800. The words seem to assign to reason an independent position by, the side of the Scriptures, but in case of conflict Luther always allowed the decision to the Scriptures.

For a while he was disposed to avail himself of the humanistic movement which was skeptical and rationalistic in its tendency, but his strong religious nature always retained the mastery. He felt as keenly as any modern Rationalist, the conflict between natural reason and the transcending mysteries of revelation. He was often tormented by doubts and even temptations to blasphemy, especially when suffering from physical infirmity. A comforter of others, he needed comfort himself and asked the prayers of friends to fortify him against the assaults of the evil spirit, with whom he had, as he thought, many a personal encounter. He confessed, in 1524, how glad he would have been five years before in his war with papal superstition, if Carlstadt could have convinced him that the Eucharist was nothing but bread and wine, and how strongly he was then inclined to that rationalistic view which would have given a death blow to transubstantiation and the mass. He felt that every article of his creed—the trinity, in unity, the incarnation, the transmission of Adam’s sin, the atonement by the blood of Christ, baptismal regeneration, the real presence, the renewal of the Holy Spirit, the resurrection of the body—transcended human comprehension. In Aug. 2, 1527, during the raging of the pestilence at Wittenberg, he wrote to Melanchthon, who was absent at Jena: "For more than a week I have been tossed about in death and hell; so that, hurt in all my body, I still tremble in every limb. For having almost wholly lost Christ, I was driven about by storms and tempests of despair and blasphemy against God. But God, moved by the prayers of the saints, begins to have pity upon me, and has drawn my soul out of the lowest hell. Do not cease to pray for me, as I do for you. I believe that this agony of mine pertains to others also."

Briefe, ed. de Wette, III. 189: "Ego sane ... plus tota hebdomada in morte et inferno jactatus, ita ut toto corpore laesus adhuc tremam membris," etc. Comp. Luther’s letters to Spalatin, July 10th and Aug. 19th, 1527, l.c. III. 187, 191.

In such trials and temptations he clung all the more mightily to the Scriptures and to faith which believes against reason and hopes against hope. "It is a quality of faith," he says in the explanation of his favorite Epistle to the Galatians, "that it wrings the neck of reason and strangles the beast, which else the whole world, with all creatures, could not strangle. But how? It holds to God’s Word, and lets it be right and true, no matter how foolish and impossible it sounds. So did Abraham take his reason captive and slay it, inasmuch as he believed God’s Word, wherein was promised him that from his unfruitful and as it were dead wife, Sarah, God would give him seed."

This and many similar passages clearly show the bent of Luther’s mind. He knew the enemy, but overcame it; his faith triumphed over doubt. In his later years he became more and more a conservative churchman. He repudiated the mystic doctrine of the inner word and spirit, insisted on submission to the written letter of the Scriptures, even when it flatly contradicted reason. He traced the errors of the Zwickau prophets, the rebellious peasants, the Anabaptists, and the radical views of Carlstadt and Zwingli, without proper discrimination, to presumptuous inroads of the human reason into the domain of faith, and feared from them the overthrow of religion. He so far forgot his obligations to Erasmus as to call him an Epicurus, a Lucian, a doubter, and an atheist. Much as he valued reason as a precious gift of God in matters of this world, he abused it with unreasonable violence, when it dared to sit in judgment over matters of faith.

He called reason "the mistress of the devil,"" the ugly devil’s bride,"" a poisonous beast with many dragons’ heads," "God’s bitterest enemy." The coarsest invective against this gift of God is found in the last sermon he preached at Wittenberg, in the year of his death (1546), on Rom. 12:3. He here represents reason as the fountain of gross and subtle idolatry, and says: Wucherei, Säuferei, Ehebruch, Mord, Todtschlag, etc., die kann man merken, und verstehet auch die Welt, dass sie Sünde sein; aber des Tuefels Braut, Ratio, die shöne Metze, fähret herein, und will klug sein, und was sie saget, meinet sie, es sei der heilige Geist; wer will da helfen? Weder Jurist, Medicus, noch König oder Kaiser. Denn es ist die höchste Hure die der Teufel hat!’ And again:" Derohalben wie ein junger Gesell muss der bösen Lust wehren, ein Alter dem Geiz: also ist die Vernunft von Art und Natur eine, schädliche Hure."... " Die Vernunft ist und soll in der Taufe ersäuft sein."" Höre auf, du verfluchte Hure; willst du Meisterin sein über den Glauben, welcher sagt, dass im Abendmahl des Herrn sei der wahre Leib und das wahre Blut; item dass die Taufe nicht schlecht Wasser ist ... Diesem Glauben muss die Vernunft unterthan und gehorsam sein."And much of the same sort, with vehement denunciations of the Schwärmergeister and Sacramentirer (the sectaries and Zwinglians). See Werke, ed. Walch XII. col. 1530 sqq. It is noteworthy that Luther first abused reason in his book on the Slavery of the Human Will against the semi-Pelagianism of Erasmus. But his assaults on Aristotle and the scholastic theology began several years earlier, before 1517.

Certainly, Luther must first be utterly divested of his faith, and the authorship of his sermons, catechisms and hymns must be called in question, before he can be appealed to as the father of Rationalism. He would have sacrificed his reason ten times rather than his faith.

Zwingli was the most clear-headed and rationalizing among the Reformers.

Luther felt this when he told him at Marburg: "You have a different spirit."

He did not pass through the discipline of monasticism and mysticism, like Luther, but through the liberal culture of Erasmus. He had no mystic vein, but sound, sober, practical common sense. He always preferred the plainest sense of the Bible. He rejected the Catholic views on original sin, infant damnation and the corporeal presence in the eucharist, and held advanced opinions which shocked Luther and even Calvin. But he nevertheless reverently bowed before the divine authority of the inspired Word of God, and had no idea of setting reason over it. His dispute with Luther was simply a question of interpretation, and he had strong arguments for his exegesis, as even the best Lutheran commentators must confess.

Calvin was the best theologian and exegete among the Reformers. He never abused reason, like Luther, but assigned it the office of an indispensable handmaid of revelation. He constructed with his logical genius the severest system of Protestant orthodoxy which shaped French, Dutch, English and American theology, and fortified it against Rationalism as well as against Romanism. His orthodoxy and discipline could not keep his own church in Geneva from becoming Socinian in the eighteenth century, but he is no more responsible for that than Luther for the Rationalism of Germany, or Rome for the infidelity of Voltaire. Upon the whole, the Reformed churches in England, Scotland and North America, have been far less invaded by Rationalism than Germany.

2. Let us now consider the application of the principle of free inquiry to the Bible.

Comp. here the Critical Introductions to the Bible, and especially Reuss, Histoire du Canon des Saintes Écritures, Strasbourg, 1863. Ch. XVI. p. 308 sqq.; Hunter’s Engl. transl. (1884) p. 290 sqq.

The Bible, its origin, genuineness, integrity, aim, and all its circumstances and surroundings are proper subjects of investigation; for it is a human as well as a divine book, and has a history, like other literary productions. The extent of the Bible, moreover, or the Canon, is not determined by the Bible itself or by inspiration, but by church authority or tradition, and was not fully agreed upon till the close of the fourth century, and even then only by provincial synods, not by any of the seven oecumenical Councils. It was therefore justly open to reinvestigation.

The Church of Rome, at the Council of Trent, settled the Canon, including the Apocrypha, but without any critical inquiry or definite theological principle; it simply confirmed the traditional usage, and pronounced an anathema on every one who does not receive all the books contained in the Latin Vulgate.

Sess. IV. (April 8th, 1546): "Si quis autem libros ipsos integros cum omnibus suis partibus, prout in ecclesia catholica legi consueverunt, et in veteri Vulgata Latina editione habentur, pro sacris et canonicis non susceperit et traditiones praedictas sciens et prudens contempserit, anathema sit." Schaff, Creeds II. 82. There were, however, protesting voices in the council: some desired to recognize the old distinction between Homologumena and Antilegomena; others simply an enumeration of the sacred books used in the Catholic church, without a dogmatic definition. Sarpi censures the council for its decision, and there are Catholic divines (as Sixtus Senensis, Du Pin, Jahn), who, in spite of the decision, make a distinction between protocanonical and deuterocanonical books.

She also checked the freedom of investigation by requiring conformity to a defective version and a unanimous consensus of the fathers, although such an exegetical consensus does not exist except in certain fundamental doctrines.

The Reformers re-opened the question of the extent of the Canon, as they had a right to do, but without any idea of sweeping away the traditional belief or undermining the authority of the Word of God. On the contrary, from the fulness of their faith in the inspired Word, as contained in the Scriptures, they questioned the canonicity of a few books which seem to be lacking in sufficient evidence to entitle them to a place in the Bible. They simply revived, in a new shape and on doctrinal rather than historical grounds, the distinction made by the Hebrews and the ancient fathers between the canonical and apocryphal books of the Old Testament, and the Eusebian distinction between the Homologumena and Antilegomena of the New Testament, and claimed in both respects the freedom of the ante-Nicene church.

They added, moreover, to the external evidence, the more important internal evidence on the intrinsic excellency of the Scripture, as the true ground on which its authority and claim to obedience rests; and they established a firm criterion of canonicity, namely, the purity and force of teaching Christ and his gospel of salvation. They did not reject the testimonies of the fathers, but they placed over them what Paul calls the "demonstration of the Spirit and of power" (1 Cor. 2:4).

Luther was the bold pioneer of a higher criticism, which was indeed subjective and arbitrary, but, after all, a criticism of faith. He made his central doctrine of justification by faith the criterion of canonicity.

"This," he says in the Preface to the Epistle of James, " is the true touchstone (der rechte Prüfstein) of all books, whether they make Christ their sole topic and aim" [literally " drive Christ,"Christum treiben], " or not; since all Scripture shows Christ (Rom. 3), and St. Paul wishes to know nothing but Christ (1 Cor. 2). That which does not teach Christ is not apostolic, though St. Peter and Paul should teach it; again, that which preaches Christ is apostolic, though Judas, Annas, Pilate and Herod should say it."The devil himself can quote Scripture.

He thus placed the material or subjective principle of Protestantism above the formal or objective principle, the truth above the witness of the truth, the doctrine of the gospel above the written Gospel, Christ above the Bible. Romanism, on the contrary, places the church above the Bible. But we must remember that Luther first learnt Christ from the Bible, and especially, from the Epistles of Paul, which furnished him the key for the understanding of the scheme of salvation.

He made a distinction, moreover, between the more important and the less important books of the New Testament, according to the extent of their evangelic purity and force, and put Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation at the end of the German Bible.

In this distinction Carlstadt had preceded him in his book, De Canon. Scripturis (Wittenb. 1520, reprinted in Credner’s Zur Gesch. des Kanons, 1847, p. 291-412). Carlstadt divided the books of the canon into three ordines: (1) libri summae dignitatis (the Pentateuch, though not written by Moses, and the Gospels); (2) secundae dignitatis (the Prophets and 15 Epistles); (3) tertiae dignitatis (the Jewish Hagiographa and the seven Antilegomena of the New Testament).

He states his reason in the Preface to the Hebrews as follows: "Hitherto we have had the right and genuine books of the New Testament. The four that follow have been differently esteemed in olden times." He therefore appeals to the ante-Nicene tradition, but his chief objection was to the contents.

He disliked, most of all, the Epistle of James because he could not harmonize it with Paul’s teaching on justification by faith without works,

He rejects the epistle first of all, "because it gives righteousness to works in flat contradiction to Paul and all other Scriptures;" secondly, "because, while undertaking to teach Christian people, it does not once mention the passion, the resurrection, the Spirit of Christ; it names Christ twice, but teaches nothing about him; it calls the law a law of liberty, while Paul calls it a law of bondage, of wrath, of death and of sin." He offered his doctor’s cap to any who could harmonize James and Paul on the subject of justification, and jests about the trouble Melanchthon took to do it. He made the contradiction unnecessarily stronger by inserting his allein (sola) before durch den Glauben in Rom. 3:28. He first attacked the Epistle of James in his book De Captivitate Babylonica, in 1520, where he calls it an epistle unworthy of the apostolical spirit. Carlstadt seems to have fallen out with Luther in the same year on this question; for he defended the Epistle against the frivola argumenta of a bonus sacerdos amicitiae nostrae (who can be no other than Luther), in his book De canonicis Scripturis, Wittenbergae, 1520.

and he called it an epistle of straw as compared with the genuine apostolic writings.

The comparison must not be overlooked. He says: gegen sie, i.e., as compared with the Epistles of Paul, Peter and John, previously mentioned. See the passage in full below. He could not be blind to the merits of James as a fresh, vigorous teacher of practical Christianity.

He objected to the Epistle to the Hebrews because it seems to deny (in Heb. 6, 10 and 12) the possibility of repentance after baptism, contrary to the Gospels and to Paul, and betrays in 2:3, a post-apostolic origin. He ascribed the authorship to Apollos by an ingenious guess, which, though not supported by ancient tradition, has found great favor with modern commentators and critics,

Bleek, de Wette, Tholuck, Lünemann, Kendrick (in Lange), Hilgenfeld, de Pressensé, Davidson, Alford, Farrar, and others.

chiefly because the authorship of any other possible writer (Paul, Barnabas, Luke, Clement) seems to offer insuperable difficulties, while the description of Apollos in Acts 18:24–28, compared with the allusions in 1 Cor. 1:12; 3:6; 4:6; 16:12, seems to fit exactly the author of this anonymous Epistle.

He called the Epistle of Jude an "unnecessary epistle," a mere extract from Second Peter and post-apostolic, filled with apocryphal matter, and hence rejected by the ancient fathers.

He could at first find no sense in the mysteries of the Apocalypse and declared it to be "neither apostolic nor prophetic," because it deals only with images and visions, and yet, notwithstanding its obscurity, it adds threats and promises, "though nobody knows what it means"; but afterwards he modified his judgment when the Lutheran divines found in it welcome weapons against the church of Rome.

The clearest utterance on this subject is found at the close of his preface to the first edition of his German version of the New Testament (1522), but it was suppressed in later editions.

See note at the end of this section. His Table Talk contains bold and original utterances on Esther, Ecclesiastes and other books of the Old Testament; see Reuss on the Canon, 330 sqq. While Luther on the one hand limited the canon, he seemed disposed on the other hand to extend it, when he declared Melanchthon’s Loci Theologici to be worthy of a place in the canon. But this was merely an extravagant compliment.

Luther’s view of inspiration was both strong and free. With the profoundest conviction of the divine contents of the Bible, he distinguished between the revealed truth itself and the human wording and reasoning of the writers. He says of one of the rabbinical arguments of his favorite apostle: "My dear brother Paul, this argument won’t stick."

Comp. his comments on the allegory of Sarah and Hagar in his Latin Com. on Gal. 3:25 (Erl. ed. II. 252).

Luther was, however, fully aware of the subjective and conjectural character of these opinions, and had no intention of obtruding them on the church: hence he modified his prefaces in later editions. He judged the Scriptures from an exclusively dogmatic, and one-sidedly Pauline standpoint, and did not consider their gradual historical growth.

A few Lutheran divines followed him in assigning a subordinate position to the seven Antilegomena of the New Testament;

Brentius, Flacius, Urbanus Regius, the authors of the Magdeburg Centuries, and Chemnitz.

but the Lutheran church, with a sound instinct, accepted for popular use the traditional catholic Canon (not even expressly excluding the Jewish Apocrypha), yet retained his arrangement of the books of the New Testament.

None of the symbolical books of the Lutheran church gives a list of the canon, but the Formula of Concord (p. 570) declares that the "prophetica et apostolica scripta V. et N. T. " are the "unica regula et norma secundum quam omnia dogmata omnesque doctores aestimari et judicari opporteat."

The Rationalists, of course, revived, intensified, and carried to excess the bold opinions of Luther, but in a spirit against which he would himself raise the strongest protest.

The Reformed divines were more conservative than Luther in accepting the canonical books, but more decided in rejecting the Apocrypha of the Old Testament. The Reformed Confessions usually enumerate the canonical books.

Zwingli objected only to the Apocalypse and made no doctrinal use of it, because he did not deem it an inspired book, written by the same John who wrote the fourth Gospel.

"Us Apocalypsi nehmend wir kein Kundschafft an, denn es nit ein biblisch Buch ist." Werke, ed. Schuler and Schulthess, II. 1. p. 169. In another place he says: "Apocal. liber non sapit os et ingenium Joannis." De clar. Verbi Dei, p. 310.

In this view he has many followers, but the severest critical school of our days (that of Tübingen) assigns it to the Apostle John. Wolfgang Musculus mentions the seven Antilegomena, but includes them in the general catalogue of the New Testament; and Oecolampadius speaks of six Antilegomena (omitting the Hebrews), as holding an inferior rank, but nevertheless appeals to their testimony.

See Reuss, p. 315 sq. Eng. ed.

Calvin had no fault to find with James and Jude, and often quotes Hebrews and Revelation as canonical books, though he wrote no commentary on Revelation, probably because he felt himself incompetent for the task. He is silent about Second and Third John. He denies, decidedly, the Pauline authorship, but not the canonicity, of Hebrews.

In the introduction to his Com. on Hebrews: "Ego ut Paulum auctorem agnoscam adduci nequeo." His reasons are, the difference of style and of the docendi ratio, and because the writer counts himself with the disciples of the Apostles (Heb. 2:3); but nevertheless he accepts the book as inspired and canonical, because it more clearly than any other book treats of the priesthood and sacrifice of Christ.

He is disposed to assign Second Peter to a pupil of Peter, who wrote under the auspices and by direction of the Apostle; but he guards in this case, also, against unfavorable inferences from the uncertainty of origin.

In Argum. Ep. Sec. Petri, he notes "manifestum discrimen" between the first and second Epistle, and adds: "Sunt et aliae probabiles conjecturae ex quibus colligere licet alterius esse potius quam Petri," but he sees in it, "nihil Petro indignum"

Calvin clearly saw the inconsistency of giving the Church the right of determining the canon after denying her right of making an article of faith. He therefore placed the Canon on the authority of God who bears testimony to it through the voice of the Spirit in the hearts of the believer. The eternal and inviolable truth of God, he says, is not founded on the pleasure and judgment of men, and can be as easily distinguished as light from darkness, and white from black. In the same line, Peter Vermilius denies that "the Scriptures take their authority from the Church. Their certitude is derived from God. The Word is older than the Church. The Spirit of God wrought in the hearts of the bearers and readers of the Word so that they recognized it to be truly divine." This view is clearly set forth in several Calvinistic Confessions.

The Second Helvetic confession, c. 1 and 2, and the Belgic Confession, art. 5, combine the testimony of tradition and that of the Holy Spirit, but lay chief stress upon the latter. So the Gallican Conf., art. 4: "We know these books to be canonical and the sure rule of our faith, not so much by the common accord and consent of the church (non tant par le, commun a ord et consentement de l’eglise), as by the testimony and inward illumination of the Holy Spirit, which enables us to distinguish them from other ecclesiastical books, upon which, however useful, we cannot found any articles of faith." The Westminster Confession, ch. I. 4, sets aside the testimony of tradition, saying: "The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the Author thereof; and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God." The Scripture proofs given are, 2 Pet. 1:19, 21; 2 Tim. 3:16; 1 John 5:9; 1 Thess. 2:13; but they have no bearing upon the question of canonicity.

In its exclusive form it is diametrically opposed to the maxim of Augustin, otherwise so highly esteemed by the Reformers: "I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Church."

"Ego evangelio non crederem, nisi me moveret ecclesiae auctoritas," Contra Ep. Fundam., c. 5. A thoroughly Roman catholic principle in opposition to the Manichaen heresy. But the testimony of the church is indispensable only in the history of the origin of the several books, and the formation of the canon.

But the two kinds of evidence supplement each other. The human authority of tradition though not the final ground of belief, is indispensable as an historical witness of the genuineness and canonicity, and is of great weight in conflict with Rationalism. There is no essential antagonism between the Bible and the Church in the proper sense of the term. They are inseparable. The Church was founded by Christ and the apostles through the preaching of the living Word of God, and the founders of the Church are also the authors of the written Word, which continues to be the shining and guiding light of the Church; while the Church in turn is the guardian, preserver, translator, propagator, and expounder of the Bible.

3. The liberal views of the Reformers on inspiration and the canon were abandoned after the middle of the sixteenth century, and were succeeded by compact and consolidated systems of theology. The evangelical scholasticism of the seventeenth century strongly resembles, both in its virtues and defects, the catholic scholasticism of the Middle Ages which systematized and contracted the patristic theology, except that the former was based on the Bible, the latter on church tradition. In the conflict with Romanism the Lutheran and Calvinistic scholastics elaborated a stiff, mechanical theory of inspiration in order to set an infallible book against an infallible pope. The Bible was identified with the Word of God, dictated to the sacred writers as the penmen of the Holy Ghost. Even the classical purity of style and the integrity of the traditional text, including the Massoretic punctuation, were asserted in the face of stubborn facts, which came to light as the study of the origin and history of the text advanced. The divine side of the Scriptures was exclusively dwelled upon, and the human and literary side was ignored or virtually denied. Hence the exegetical poverty of the period of Protestant scholasticism. The Bible was used as a repository of proof texts for previously conceived dogmas, without regard to the context, the difference between the Old and New Testaments, and the gradual development of the divine revelation in accordance with the needs and capacities of men.

4. It was against this Protestant bibliolatry and symbololatry that Rationalism arose as a legitimate protest. It pulled down one dogma after another, and subjected the Bible and the canon to a searching criticism. It denies the divine inspiration of the Scriptures, except in a wider sense which applies to all works of genius, and treats them simply as a gradual evolution of the religious spirit of Israel and the primitive Christian Church. It charges them with errors of fact and errors of doctrine, and resolves the miracles into legends and myths. It questions the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch, the genuineness of the Davidic Psalms, the Solomonic writings, the prophecies of Deutero-Isaiah and Daniel, and other books of the Old Testament. It assigns not only the Eusebian Antilegomena, but even the Gospels, Acts, the Catholic Epistles, and several Pauline Epistles to the post-apostolic age, from a.d. 70 to 150.

In its later developments, however, Rationalism has been obliged to retreat and make several concessions to orthodoxy. The canonical Gospels and Acts have gained by further investigation and discovery;

Thus Mark is regarded by many Rationalists as the primitive Gospel based on Peter’s sermons. Matthew has received valuable testimonies from the discovery of the Greek Barnabas who quotes him twice, and from the discovery of the Didache of the Apostles, which contains about twenty reminiscences from the first Gospel. On the Johannean question the Tübingen critics have been forced to retreat from 170 to 140, 120, 110, almost to the life time of John. The Acts have received new confirmation of their historical credibility from the excavations in Cyprus and Ephesus, and the minute test of the nautical vocabulary of chapter 27 by an experienced seaman. On all these points see the respective sections in the first volume of this History, ch. XII. p. 569 sqq.; 715 sqq.; 731 sqq; and 853 sqq.

and the apostolic authorship of the four great Epistles of Paul to the Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians and the Apocalypse of John is fully admitted by the severest school of criticism (that of Tübingen). A most important admission: for these five books teach or imply all the leading facts and truths of the gospel, and overthrow the very foundations of Rationalism. With the Christ of the Gospels, and the Apostle Paul of his acknowledged Epistles, Christianity is safe.

Rationalism was a radical revolution which swept like a flood over the Continent of Europe. But it is not negative and destructive only. It has made and is still making valuable contributions to biblical philology, textual criticism, and grammatico-historical exegesis. It enlarges the knowledge of the conditions and environments of the Bible, and of all that belongs to the human and temporal side of Christ and Christianity. It cultivates with special zeal and learning the sciences of Critical Introduction, Biblical Theology, the Life of Christ, the Apostolic and post-Apostolic Ages.

5. These acquisitions to exegetical and historical theology are a permanent gain, and are incorporated in the new evangelical theology, which arose in conflict with Rationalism and in defense of the positive Christian faith in the divine facts of revelation and the doctrines of salvation. The conflict is still going on with increasing strength, but with the sure prospect of the triumph of truth. Christianity is independent of all critical questions on the Canon, and of human theories of inspiration; else Christ would himself have written the Gospels, or commanded the Apostles to do so, and provided for the miraculous preservation and inspired translation of the text, . His "words are spirit, and are life." "The flesh profiteth nothing." Criticism and speculation may for a while wander away from Christ, but will ultimately return to Him who furnishes the only key for the solution of the problems of history and human life. "No matter," says the world-poet Goethe in one of his last utterances, "how much the human mind may progress in intellectual culture, in the science of nature, in ever-expanding breadth and depth: it will never be able to rise above the elevation and moral culture which shines in the Gospels."

Notes.

The famous close of the Preface of Luther’s edition of the German New Testament was omitted in later editions, but is reprinted in Walch’s ed. XIV. 104 sqq., and in the Erlangen Frankf. ed. LXIII. (or eleventh vol. of the Vermischte Deutsche Schriften), p. 114 sq. It is verbatim as follows:

"Aus diesem allen kannst du nu recht urtheilen unter allen Büchern, und Unterschied nehmen, welchs die besten sind. Denn, naemlich, ist Johannis Evangelion, und St. Pauli Episteln, sonderlich die zu den Römern, und Sanct Peters erste Epistel der rechte Kern und Mark unter allen Büchern; welche auch billig die, ersten sein sollten, und einem jeglichen Christen zu rathen wäre, das er dieselben am ersten und allermeisten läse, und ihm durch täglich Lesen so gemein mächte, als das täglich Brod.

"Denn in diesen findist [findest] du nicht viel Werk und Wunderthaten Christi beschrieben; du findist aber gar meisterlich ausgestrichen, wie der Glaube an Christum Sünd, Tod und Hölle überwindet, und das Leben, Gerechtigkeit und Seligkeit gibt. Welchs die rechte Art ist des Evangelii, wie du gehöret hast.

"Denn wo ich je der eins mangeln sollt, der Werke oder der Predigt Christi, so wollt ich lieber der Werke denn seiner Predigt mangeln. Denn die Werke helfen mir nichts; aber seine Worte, die geben das Leben, wie er selbst sagt (Joh 5.V.51). Weil nu Johannes gar wenig Werke von Christo, aber gar viel seiner Predigt schreibt; wiederumb die andern drei Evangelisten viel seiner Werke, wenig seiner Worte beschreiben: ist Johannis Evangelion das einige zarte, recht(e) Hauptevangelion, und den andren dreien weit fürzuzichen und höher zu heben. Also auch Sanct Paulus und Petrus Episteln weit über die drei Evangelia Matthai, Marci und Lucä vorgehen.

"Summa, Sanct Johannis Evangel. und seine erste Epistel, Sanct Paulus Epistel(n), sonderlich die zu den Römern, Galatern, Ephesern, und Sanct Peters erste Epistel. das sind die Bücher, die dir Christum zeigen, und alles lehren, das dir zu wissen noth und selig ist ob du sohon kein ander Buch noch Lehre nummer [nimmermehr] sehest and horist [hörest]. Darumb ist Sanct Jakobs Epistel ein recht strohern(e) Epistel, gegen sie, denn sie doch kein(e) evangelisch(e) Art an ihr hat. Doch davon weiter in andern Vorreden."

§ 10. Protestantism and Denominationalism.

Denominationalism is, I believe, an American term of recent origin, but useful and necessary to express the fact, without praise or blame, that Protestant Christianity exists in various ecclesiastical organizations, some of which are large, others small, some differing in doctrine, others only in polity and worship, some liberal and catholic, others contracted and exclusive. I use it in this neutral sense, in preference to Confessionalism which implies confessional or doctrinal difference, and Sectarianism which implies bigotry and is a term of reproach.

The Greek Church exists as a patriarchal hierarchy based on the first seven oecumenical Councils with four ancient local centres: Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople; to which must be added, since 1725, St. Petersburg where the Holy Synod of orthodox Russia resides. The patriarch of Constantinople claims a primacy of honor, but no supremacy of jurisdiction over his fellow-patriarchs.

The Roman Church is an absolute monarchy, headed by an infallible pope who claims to be vicar of Christ over all Christendom and unchurches the Greek and the Protestant churches as schismatical and heretical.

The Reformation came out of the bosom of the Latin Church and broke up the visible unity of Western Christendom, but prepared the way for a higher spiritual unity on the basis of freedom and the full development of every phase of truth.

Instead of one organization, we have in Protestantism a number of distinct national churches and confessions or denominations. Rome, the local centre of unity, was replaced by Wittenberg, Zurich, Geneva, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh. The one great pope had to surrender to many little popes of smaller pretensions, yet each claiming and exercising sovereign power in his domain. The hierarchical rule gave way to the caesaropapal or Erastian principle, that the owner of the territory is also the owner of its religion (cujus regio, ejus religio), a principle first maintained by the Byzantine Emperors, and held also by the Czar of Russia, but in subjection to the supreme authority of the oecumenical Councils. Every king, prince, and magistrate, who adopted the Reformation, assumed the ecclesiastical supremacy or summepiscopate, and established a national church to the exclusion of Dissenters or Nonconformists who were either expelled, or simply tolerated under various restrictions and disabilities.

Hence there are as many national or state churches as there are independent Protestant governments; but all acknowledge the supremacy of the Scriptures as a rule of faith and practice, and most of them also the evangelical confessions as a correct summary of Scripture doctrines. Every little principality in monarchical Germany and every canton in republican Switzerland has its own church establishment, and claims sovereign power to regulate its creed worship, and discipline. And this power culminates not in the clergy, but in the secular ruler who appoints the ministers of religion and the professors of theology. The property of the church which had accumulated by the pious foundations of the Middle Ages, was secularized during the Reformation period and placed under the control of the state, which in turn assumed the temporal support of the church.

This is the state of things in Europe to this day, except in the independent or free churches of more recent growth, which manage their own affairs on the voluntary principle.

The transfer of the episcopal and papal power to the head of the state was not contemplated by the Reformers, but was the inevitable consequence of the determined opposition of the whole Roman hierarchy to the Reformation. The many and crying abuses which followed this change in the hands of selfish and rapacious princes, were deeply deplored by Melanchthon, who would have consented to the restoration of the episcopal hierarchy on condition of the freedom of gospel preaching and gospel teaching.

The Reformed church in Switzerland secured at first a greater degree of independence than the Lutheran; for Zwingli controlled the magistrate of Zurich, and Calvin ruled supreme in Geneva under institutions of his own founding; but both closely united the civil and ecclesiastical power, and the former gradually assumed the supremacy.

Scandinavia and England adopted, together with the Reformation, a Protestant episcopate which divides the ecclesiastical supremacy with the head of the state; yet even there the civil ruler is legally the supreme governor of the church.

The greatest Protestant church-establisbments or national churches are the Church of England, much weakened by dissent, but still the richest and most powerful of all; the United Evangelical Church of Prussia which, since 1817, includes the formerly separated Lutheran and Reformed confessions; the Lutheran Church of Saxony (with a Roman Catholic king); the Lutheran Churches of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway; the Reformed Churches of Switzerland, and Holland; and the Reformed or Presbyterian Church of Scotland.

Originally, all evangelical Protestant churches were embraced under two confessions or denominations, the Lutheran which prevailed and still prevails in Germany and Scandinavia, and the Reformed which took root in Switzerland, France, Holland, England and Scotland, and to a limited extent also in Germany, Bohemia and Hungary. The Lutheran church follows the larger portion of German and Scandinavian emigrants to America and other countries, the Reformed church in its various branches is found in all the Dutch and British colonies, and in the United States.

From these two confessions should be distinguished the Anglican Church, which the continental historians from defective information usually count with the Reformed Church, but which stands midway between evangelical Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, and may therefore be called Anglo-Catholic. She is indeed moderately Reformed in her doctrinal articles,

The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, as revised under Elizabeth (1563 and 1571), are borrowed in part, verbatim, from the Augsburg Confession of 1530 and the Würtemberg Confession of 1552, but are moderately Calvinistic in the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, and on predestination; the five Lambeth Articles of 1595, and the Irish Articles of Archbishop Ussher (1615) are strongly Calvinistic, and the latter furnished the basis of the Westminster Confession. But the Lambeth Articles and the Irish Articles were gradually forgotten, and the Book of Common Prayer which is based on the office of Sarum, has practically much greater influence than even the Thirty-nine Articles. See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom vol. I. 624 sqq., 630 sqq., 658 sqq., 662 sqq.

but in polity and ritual she is much more conservative than the Calvinistic and even the Lutheran confession, pays greater deference to the testimony of the ancient fathers, and lays stress upon her unbroken episco