1. The Growth of Luther's Rebellion.—The thing most important, the one which drew with it the gravest consequences, and which led to the greatest good produced by the Reformation, was the rebellion of Luther against the authority of the pope. He did not come out in open rebellion at the first, but arrived at that state by gradual and imperceptible steps. When his opposition to the sale of indulgences met with reproof from the pontiff, he appealed from the pope ill-informed to the pope better-informed. When that pope better-informed still held him to be in error and refractory, he appealed to a general, free council of the whole church; but when no heed was taken of this appeal, and Leo, pressed by Eckius, Cajetan and others, excommunicated him, he then answered by burning the pope's bull of excommunication, and stood in open rebellion to the authority of the pontiff. When the pope appealed to Emperor Charles to make the excommunication of some force by the power of the secular authority vested in him, the emperor, contrary to the protests of the pope's legates, resolved to give the Reformer a hearing before proceeding against him. Accordingly Luther was summoned before the diet at Worms, where he not only insisted upon having a hearing before a free, general council of the church, but a council that would accept the Bible as the final authority upon the questions at issue between himself and the pontiff.

2. The Catholic Rule of Faith.—This was demanding more than the pope could grant; for the Catholics have never exalted the Bible above the church, but have always held that the scriptures must be accepted as construed by the church, and in the days of Luther the pope was the church. The Catholic rule of faith in respect to the laws by which the church is to be governed is: "The word of God, at large, whether written in the Bible or handed down from the apostles by tradition, and as it is understood and explained by the Catholic church."^[33] Besides their rule of faith, which is scripture and tradition, "Catholics acknowledge an unerring judge of controversy, or sure guide in all matters relating to salvation—viz., the church."^[34]

3. This rule employed to interpret the Bible and to settle controversies that might arise, Luther rejected. Writing in defense of his conduct in burning the papal bull of excommunication and the decretals of the popes, he said:

Let no man's good sense be so far seduced as to reverence the volumes I have burnt, on account of their great antiquity or their high titles. Let every one first hear and see what the pope teaches in his own books, and what abominable, poisonous doctrines are to be found among the sacred, spiritual laws; and then let him freely judge, whether I have done right or not in burning such writings.

4. Among the teachings in the decretals which Luther held up for special condemnation were the following:

(1) The pope has the power to interpret scripture, and to teach as he pleases; and no person is allowed to interpret in a different way. (2) The pope does not derive from the scripture but the scripture derives from the pope, authority, power and dignity.

He then affirms that comparing together the different parts of the canon law, its language amounts to this:

That the pope is God on earth; above all that is earthly or heavenly, temporal or spiritual; that all things belong to the pope; and that no one must venture to say, what doest thou?^[35]

It was against this arbitrary authority that Luther rebelled.

5. Attempted Settlement by a General Council.—At last when through the influence of the emperor the pope consented to appoint a council, a difficulty arose as to where it should be held. The pope on his part seemed determined to have it assemble in Italy, or in some country where his influence would predominate; the Reformers were equally determined to submit their cause to no council outside of Germany. The difficulty had arisen in Germany; they insisted it should be settled by a council in Germany, or by a diet of the empire. The cause was never fairly tried by a council of the whole church; the revolt against the authority of the pope was sustained by an appeal to arms, as related in section I, Part III, of this work.

6. Revolution, not Rebellion.—Had that revolt against the Catholic church been a revolt against legitimate authority it would have been rebellion: but as it was against a usurped and hence an illegitimate authority, it was a justifiable revolution. For in ecclesiastical government, no less than in civil government, if a long train of abuses renders it odious, and those who execute it are tyrannical and usurp authority which the law of God does not sanction, by which unrighteous dominion is exercised over the minds of men, it is the right of the people to resist such authority: and refuse to sustain those who exercise that unrighteous dominion to please their vanity or gratify their ambition.

7. True Position, but a Corrupt Church.—The position that the church, officered by inspired prophets and apostles—men having by virtue of their priesthood and official position a right to the inspiration and revelations of God—the position that the church of Christ so officered, has the right to decide upon all controversies and to determine the meaning of scripture, is, beyond all questioning, a true position. But the difficulty with the Roman Catholic church was that it was no longer the church of Christ, as already proven in Part II of this work. It had no prophets or apostles, no men who had a right to the revelations of God. The popes and bishops of the church taught that revelation had ceased, and they depended on scripture and tradition alone, interpreted by themselves, for their guide. The power the church possessed was usurped power merely, the growth of ages. It had become both arrogant and insolent, and at last intolerable, and when a man was found possessing the courage to resent its presumption and defy it, he found plenty to applaud and sanction his act.

8. True Cause of the Reformation.—We cannot ascribe the Reformation to accidents and mischances, such for instance as the jealousy of Luther because the sale of indulgences was entrusted to the Dominican monks instead of to the order of Augustine monks, to which he belonged^[36]—we cannot assign the cause of the Reformation to this, neither can we go to the other extreme and say that the great revolution of the sixteenth century resulted solely from a pure desire to reform the abuses that had arisen in the church or bring back Christianity to its primitive purity. Not a few of the princes that favored Luther in his revolt against the pope did so from other motives than those prompted by a desire to reform the church.

9. Many of the temporal monarchs and princes were jealous of the power exercised within their dominions by the Roman pontiffs, as it lowered the dignity of their own position. They were tired, moreover, of the assumed right of the pope to enter their dominions, and, under one pretext or another, tax their subjects and thus not only impoverish the people, but reduce the revenue of the temporal ruler. It will be found, therefore, that the jealousy, ambition and interest of these princes, and not a desire to establish pure religion, made them factors in the great revolution. (See note 1, end of section.)

10. The people also were tired of the dominion asserted over their minds by the papal authority, and were only too glad to escape from that thraldom under any pretext whatsoever. The preceding century had brought a great intellectual awakening to Europe, and men were no longer content to have questions of fact and belief decided by the authority of the church. (See note 2, end of section.) They insisted that human reason and individual judgment had a right to investigate and to be satisfied on these questions; and the securing of that freedom was not only the leading principle of the sixteenth century revolution, but its greatest achievement. (See note 3, end of section.)

11. Revolution, not Reformation.—It is absurd to say that the revolution of the sixteenth century was a reformation, if by that it is meant that it re-established the primitive doctrines of Christianity, purified the morals of the people, or gave birth to a better ecclesiastical government. It did no such thing. The Reformers declaimed against some of the abuses of the Catholic church, such as denying the sacramental cup to the laity, the celibacy of the clergy, the absurdities of the mass, fasts and ceremonies of human invention, the whole system of monkery, and the great usurpation of authority by the church; and consequently did not include any of these abuses—except perhaps the last—in the system of religion they founded. Still their doctrines led them into serious errors and great disorders.

12. Private Interpretation of the Bible and its Effects.—The evils that arose from the doctrine of justification by faith alone, we have already noticed.^[37] The disorders that grew out of the doctrine of private interpretation of scripture is yet to be considered. When Luther refused to longer recognize the authority of the church in matters of doctrine, he still was aware that men would need some authority to decide controversies that would arise, consequently he held up the Bible as the final arbiter of all questions touching faith and morals. But the Bible had to be construed, its meaning made plain, and as each one was left to explain it in his own way, the utmost confusion prevailed. On the great fundamental principle of the Protestants—justification by faith alone—Osiander, a Lutheran, says:

There are twenty several opinions, all drawn from scriptures, and held by different members of the Augsburg, or Lutheran Confession.^[38]

When the Reformers from the several parts of Germany consulted together, and with them the Reformers from other states met with a view to come to some understanding in respect to religion and modes of worship, it was soon apparent that they were hopelessly divided, not only upon matters unimportant, but also upon fundamental principles. Luther had rejected the authority of the church and set up the tribunal of private interpretation of scripture in its stead. A number of his disciples proceeding on the same principle, rejected some of his doctrines and undertook to prove from the scripture that he was in error and that the Reformation needed reforming.

13. Carolstadt, [says the author of the "End of Religious Controversy] Zuinglius, Okolampadius, Muncer and a hundred more of his followers, wrote and preached against him and against each other with the utmost virulence, whilst each of them still professed to ground his doctrine and conduct on the written word of God alone. In vain did Luther denounce hell fire against them; in vain did he threaten to return back to the Catholic religion; he had put the Bible into each man's hand to explain it for himself, and this his followers continued to do in open defiance of him, till their mutual contradictions and discords became so numerous and scandalous as to overwhelm the thinking part of them with grief and confusion."^[39] (See note 4, end of section.)

14. The Multiplication of Sects.—The division of the Reformers into numerous sects has ever been a reproach to Protestants and likewise an evidence of the weakness of their position. Men of different capacities and dispositions examined the Bible; they found it no systematic treatise upon religion and morals, but a miscellaneous collection of inspired writings, dealing with historical events, connected, in the main, with the people of God; prophecies, dreams, revelations, doctrines, and morals; written at different times, to different peoples, and under a great variety of circumstances. In addition to all this, many plain and precious parts have been taken away from it;^[40] other parts have doubtless been purposely changed by designing men;^[41] which, with the imperfections arising from its translation from the original languages in which it was written, has made it an uncertain guide, taken alone, for the church or for individuals; and as Protestants insisted upon the right of private judgment in the interpretation of the Bible, it is not surprisingg that a great variety of opinions were entertained, or that numerous sects were founded upon them. It was a great evil; much confusion and disorder arose out of it; but it was an evil that could not be avoided. It was one of those periods of time when liberty was a cause of disorder, but the attainment of liberty through that disorder more than outweighed the evils that arose from it.

15. The Error of the Reformers.—The great error which the Reformers made was in not giving full application to their principle of the right of private judgment in matters of religion. They claimed the right to revolt from the Catholic church, to interpret the Bible for themselves, and to found their mode of worship upon their own conceptions of what was required by the revelations of God; but when others differed from them, and desired to exercise the same liberty, the Reformers were themselves intolerant, and attempted to compel men by force to accept their religious faith and modes of worship. It is this intolerance which is the chief reproach applied to the Reformation by its enemies, and it must be admitted that it somewhat sullies the glory of its achievements. (See note 5, end of section.)

NOTES.

1. Motives Back of the Reformation.—The Protestant historian, Mosheim, with whom Hume agrees, admits that several of the principal agents in this revolution were actuated more by the impulse of passion and views of interest than by a zeal for true religion. (Maclaine's Mosheim, vol. iv. p. 135.) He had before acknowledged that King Gustavus introduced Lutheranism into Sweden in opposition to the clergy and bishops, not only as agreeable to the genius and spirit of the gospel, but also as favorable to the temporal state and political constitution of the Swedish dominions. He adds that Christiern, who introduced the Reformation into Denmark, was animated by no other motives than those of ambition and avarice. Grotius, another Protestant, testifies that it was sedition and violence which gave birth to the Reformation in his own country—Holland. The same was the case in France, Geneva and Scotland. It is to be observed, that in all these countries the Reformers, as soon as they got the upper hand, became violent persecutors of the Catholics. Bergier defies Protestants to name so much as a town or village in which, when they became masters of it, they tolerated a single Catholic.—End of Religious Controversy, note, p. 105.

2. Desire for Freedom the Moving Cause in Reformation.—The strength of the Protestant party had been derived, both in Germany and England, far less from their superiority in argument, however decisive this might be, than from that desire which all classes, and especially the higher, had long experienced to emancipate themselves from the thraldom of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.—Hallam's Const. Hist. of Eng.

3. The Cause and Leading Principle of the Reformation.—In my opinion the Reformation neither was an accident, the result of some casual circumstance, or some personal interests, nor arose from unmingled views of religious improvement, the fruit of Utopian humanity and truth. It had a more powerful cause than all these; a general cause to which all the others are subordinate. It was a vast effort made by the human mind to achieve its freedom; it was a new-born desire which it felt to think and judge, freely and independently, of facts and opinions which, till then, Europe received or was considered bound to receive from the hands of authority. It was a great endeavor to emancipate human reason, and to call things by their right names; it was an insurrection of the human mind against the absolute power of spiritual order. Such, in my opinion, was the true character and leading principle of the Reformation. * * * Not only was this the result of the Reformation, but it was content with this result. Whenever this was obtained no other was sought for; so entirely was it the very foundation of the event, its primitive and fundamental character! * * * I repeat it; whenever the Reformation attained this object, it accommodated itself to every form of government and to every situation.—Guizot.

4. Unhappy Divisions Among Reformers.—Capito, minister of Strasburg, writing to Forel, pastor of Geneva, thus complains to him: "God has given me to understand the mischief we have done by our precipitancy in breaking with the pope. The people say I know enough of the gospel. I can read it for myself. I have no need of you." In the same tone Dudith writes to his friend Beza: "Our people are carried away with every wind of doctrine. If you know what their religion is today, you cannot tell what it will be tomorrow. In what single point are those churches which have declared war against the pope agreed amongst themselves? There is not one point which is not held by some of them as an article of faith, and by others as an impiety!" In the same sentiment, Calvin, writing to Melanchthon, says: "It is of great importance that the divisions which subsist among us should not be known to future ages: for nothing can be more ridiculous than that we who have broken off from the whole world, should have agreed so ill among ourselves from the very beginning of the Reformation."—End of Religious Controversy, Page 101.

5. The Reproach of the Reformation.—What were the reproaches constantly applied to the Reformation by its enemies? Which of its results are thrown in its face, as it were, unanswerable? The two principal reproaches are, first, the multiplicity of sects, the excessive license of thought, the destruction of all spiritual authority, and the entire dissolution of religious society; secondly, tyranny and persecution. "You provoke licentiousness," it has been said to the Reformers: "you produce it; and, after being the cause of it, you wish to restrain and repress it. And how do you repress it? By the most harsh and violent means. You take upon yourselves, too, to punish heresy, and that by virtue of an illegitimate authority."—Guizot.

REVIEW.

1. What was the matter of chief importance in the Reformation?

2. Describe the growth of Luther's conflict with the pope.

3. Describe the Catholic rule of faith.

4. What demands contrary to that rule did Luther make?

5. What difficulty arose in respect to settling the controversy by an appeal to a general council?

6. What can you say of the revolt of Luther to the Catholic church authority?

7. What can you say of the right of the true Church of Christ to settle controversies and determine the meaning of scripture?

8. Why was the Catholic church unqualified to render decisions on such matters?

9. What several causes are assigned for the Reformation by Catholics and Protestants respectively? (Note.)

10. What was the true cause?

11. What several considerations aided the Reformation?

12. Was the religious movement of the 16th century a reformation or a revolution?

13. What can you say of the evils which arose from the private interpretation of the Bible?

14. What caused the multiplication of sects among the Protestants?

15. What makes the Bible an insufficient guide in matters of faith and worship?

16. What was the great error of the Reformers?