The Reformation was concerned both with God and man: its aim was to restore the paths by which God and man unite, by which the Creator enters again into the creature. This path, opened by Jesus Christ with power, had been blocked up in ages of superstition. The Reformation cleared the road, and reopened the door.
We willingly acknowledge that the middle ages had not ignored the wonderful work of redemption: truth was then covered with a veil rather than destroyed, and if the noxious weeds be plucked up with which the field had gradually been filled, the primitive soil is laid bare. Take away the worship paid to the Virgin, the saints, and the host; take away meritorious, magical, and supererogatory works, and other errors besides, and we arrive at simple faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. It is not the same when we come to the manner in which God enters again into man. Roman catholicism had gone astray in this respect; there were a few mystics in her fold who pretended to tread this mysterious way; but their heated imaginations misled them, while in the place of this inward worship the Roman doctors substituted certain ecclesiastical formalities mechanically executed. The only means of recovering this royal road was to return to the apostolical times and seek for it in the Gospel. Three acts are necessary to unite man again with God. Religion penetrates into man by the depths of his conscience; thence it rises to the height of his knowledge, and finally pervades the activity of his whole life.
The conscience of man had been seared not only by the sin which clings to our nature, but also by the indulgences and mortifications imposed by the Church. It required to be vivified by faith in the atoning blood of Christ.
Tradition, scholasticism, papal infallibility, mingling their confused questions and numerous superstitions with the natural darkness of the heart, man’s understanding had been completely obscured. It needed to be enlightened by the torch of God’s word.
A society of priests, exercising absolute dominion, had enslaved christendom. For this theocratic and clerical society it was necessary to substitute a living society of the children of God.
With Luther began the awakening of the human conscience. Terrified at the sin he discovered in himself, he found no other means of peace but faith in the grace of Christ Jesus. This starting-point of the German reformer was also that of every Reformation.
To Zwingle belongs in an especial manner the work of the understanding. The first want of the Swiss reformer was to know God. He inquired into the false and the true, the reason of faith. Formed by the study of the Greek classics, he had the gift of understanding and interpreting Scripture, and as soon as he reached Zurich he began his career as a reformer by explaining the New Testament.
Calvin perfected the third work necessary for the Reformation. His characteristic is not, as the world imagines, the teaching of the doctrines to which he has given his name; his great idea was to unite all believers into one body, having the same life, and acting under the same Chief. The Reform was essentially, in his eyes, the renovation of the individual, of the human mind, of christendom. To the Church of Rome, powerful as a government, but otherwise enslaved and dead, he wished to oppose a regenerated Church whose members had found through faith the liberty of the children of God, and which should be not only a pillar of truth, but a principle of moral purification for all the human race. He conceived the bold design of forming for these modern times a society in which the individual liberty and equality of its members should be combined with adhesion to an immutable truth, because it came from God, and to a holy and strict, but freely accepted law. An energetic effort towards moral perfection was one of the devices written on his standard. Not only did he conceive the grand idea we have pointed out; he realised it. He gave movement and life to that enlightened and sanctified society which was the object of his noble desires. And now wherever churches are founded on the twofold basis of truth and morality—even should they be at the antipodes—we may affirm that Calvin’s sublime idea is extended and carried out.
It resulted from the very nature of this society that the democratic element would be introduced into the nations where it was established. By the very act of giving truth and morality to the members of this body, he gave them liberty. All were called to search for light in the Bible; all were to be taught immediately of God, and not by priests only; all were called to give to others the truth they had found. ‘Each one of you,’ said Calvin, ‘is consecrated to Christ, in order that you may be associated with him in his kingdom, and be partakers of his priesthood.’[416] How could the citizens of this spiritual republic be thought otherwise than worthy to have a share in its government? The fifteenth chapter of the Acts shows us the brethren united with the apostles and elders in the proceedings of the Church, and such is the order that Calvin desired to reestablish. We have already pointed out some of the reasons by virtue of which constitutional liberty was introduced into the bosom of the nations who received the Reform of Geneva. To these must be added the reason just mentioned.
Disunited from each other, the three great principles of Luther, Zwingle, and Calvin would have been insufficient. Faith, if it had not possessed for its foundation the knowledge of the Word of God, would have easily degenerated into a mystical enthusiasm. The abstract authority of Scripture, separated from a living faith, would have ended in a dead orthodoxy; and the social principle, deprived of these two foundations, would have succeeded only in raising one of those artificial edifices in the air which fall down as soon as built.