Good and useful work was done by some of the Protestant scholars who edited the writings of the Fathers.
Thus Luther, for instance, encouraged Bugenhagen to edit certain works of St. Athanasius on the Trinity and himself wrote (1532) a Preface to them which is well worth reading.[1599] The Patristic labours subsequently undertaken by Catholics, even the great work of Marguérin de la Bigne,[1600] that forerunner of the French Maurists of the 17th century, had their raison d’être in the very ideas which Luther had set forth in his above-mentioned Preface to Bugenhagen’s work.
The worksomeness of the Catholic Church showed that people were beginning to understand the new era and to mould themselves to its requirements. “How can one deny,” asks Adolf Harnack, “that Catholicism, as soon as it pulled itself together for the counter-reformation … was for over a century in far closer touch with the new era than Luther’s Protestantism? Hence the many converts from Protestantism to Catholicism, particularly among learned Protestants, down to the days of Queen Christina of Sweden and even after.”[1601]
As for the ideas, however, which constituted the essence of the religious innovations the Catholic Church could not accept them short of being untrue to herself and betraying what had been committed to her custody. Whereas she gradually found a way to comply with all just demands for betterment and progress, she was nevertheless obliged relentlessly to close her ears to proposals for the subversion of her dogma and the alteration of her constitution.
She steadfastly refused to make her own the new and mistaken conception of the Church, of Bible interpretation, of faith, justification and good works. In spite of the heart-rending sight of the growing apostasy around her, she kept her eyes fixed on the promises of her Founder and remained true to her olden conception of the Church as a visible society controlled by Chief Pastors who are the vicars of Christ.
Ulrich Zasius of Freiburg in Baden, one of the greatest lawyers and humanists of the 16th century, who had for a while dallied with some of the demands of the innovators, afterwards repudiated as follows any idea of going over to their side:
“I shall remain true to the doctrines and decisions of the Church even should all the host of heaven command me otherwise.” “Such an insult I will on no account offer to the Lord of Truth as to believe He had deceived us for so many hundreds of years”—by permitting the Church to fall into error in spite of the promise that the Spirit of truth would always remain with her.
“For more than a thousand years the Church has taught us by the voice of her Doctors who all take their stand on Holy Scripture. But you twist the Gospel about as you please. Is Luther then to be set above all the Doctors of the past? Our forefathers, who also were authorities and all the wise men, would have called such a demand sheer madness.” “You, however, argue that the Spirit leads and guides you. But what sort of Spirit is it that teaches you to scold and calumniate as you do? In the Epistle of James I have read on the contrary that wisdom is peaceable and modest.”
“Give me a man who renounces all earthly things, keeps all the precepts of Christ, loves his enemies from his heart and does them good, abuses none and is cheerful in adversity. Such a man I will call worthy of the Evangel. But among the ranks of such men you can scarcely reckon Luther.”