GERMANY TO THE DEATH OF LUTHER.
CHAPTER I.
PROGRESS OF THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY.
(1520—1536.)
The light of the Gospel had risen upon Europe, and had already pervaded the central and southern portions of this quarter of the world. A new age had begun. The work of the Reformation was not done like that of a council, by articles of discipline; but by the proclamation of a Saviour, living and ever-present in the church; and it thus raised Christendom from its fallen state. To the church in bonds in the rude grasp of the papacy it gave the freedom which is to be found in union with God; and withdrawing men from confessionals and from cells in which they were stifled, it enabled them to breathe a free air under the vault of heaven. At the time of its appearance, the vessel of the church had suffered shipwreck, and the Roman Catholics were tossed about in the midst of traditions, ordinances, canons, constitutions, regulations, decretals, and a thousand human decisions; just as shipwrecked men struggle in the midst of broken masts, parted benches, and scattered oars. The Reformation was the bark of salvation which rescued the unhappy sufferers from the devouring waters, and took them into the ark of the Word of God.
The Reformation did not confine itself to gathering men together, it also gave them a new life. Roman Catholicism is congealed in the forms of the Middle Ages. Destitute of vitality, possessing no fertilizing principle, humanity lay buried in its old grave-clothes. The Reformation was a resurrection. The Gospel imparts a true, pure, and heavenly life, a life which does not grow old, nor fade, nor disappear like that of all created things, but is continually renewed, not indeed by its own efforts, but by the power of God, and knows neither old age nor death. Time was needed for the Gospel, after being buried for ages by the papacy, to throw off all its swaddling-clothes, and resume its free and mighty progress; but its advance was made by an impulse from on high. After having restored to Europe primitive Christianity, the church which sprang from the Reformation overthrew the ancient superstitions of Asia, and of the whole world, and sent a life-giving breath over the fields of death. Churches everywhere called into existence, assemblies of men abounding in good deeds, these are the testimonies of its fertility. The missionaries of this Gospel, although they lived in poverty, spent their days in obscurity, and often encountered death even in a cruel form, nevertheless accomplished a work more beneficial and more heroic than princes and conquerors have done. Rome herself was moved at the sight of all the stations established, all the Bibles put into circulation, all the schools founded, all the children educated, and all the souls converted.
There is, however, one point on which the papacy imagines that it may claim a triumph, that is, unity; and yet on this very point it fails. Roman Catholics know no other unity than that of the disciples of human science,—of mathematics, for example. Just as all the pupils in a school are agreed about the theorems of Euclid, the papacy requires that all the faithful, who in her opinion ought to be nothing but pupils, should be agreed about the dogmas which she establishes in her councils or in her Vatican retreats. Unity, she says, is the assertion of the same decrees. The Gospel is not satisfied with this scholastic uniformity; it demands a union more intimate, more profound, more vital—at once more human and more divine. It requires that all Christians should 'be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind;' a true 'fellowship of the Spirit;'[478] and this union it founds upon Christ, on the truth—'that there is no salvation in any other,' and on the fact that all those who are saved have in Him the same righteousness, the same redemption.[479] Christ reveals the divine nature of Christian unity,—'I in them,' he said, 'that they may be one as we are one.'[480] This is assuredly something different from the mechanical and scholastic unity of which the Roman doctors make their boast. The unity of the Gospel is not a crystallization like the unity of Rome, it is a movement full of life.
EFFECTS OF THE REFORMATION.
All kinds of human progress date from the Reformation. It produced religious progress by substituting for the forms and the rites which are the essence of Romish religion, a life of communion with God. It produced moral progress by introducing, wherever it was established, the reign of conscience and the sacredness of the domestic hearth. It produced political and social progress by giving to the nations which accepted it, an order and a freedom which other nations in vain strive to attain. It produced progress in philosophy and in science, by showing the unity of these human forms of teaching with the knowledge of God. It produced progress in education, the well-being of communities, the prosperity, riches, and greatness of nations. The Reformation, originating in God, beneficially develops what pertains to man. And if pride and passion sometimes happen to impede its movement, and to thrust within its chariot wheels the clubs of incredulity, it presently breaks them, and pursues its victorious course. Its pace is more or less speedy; various circumstances make it slow or swift; but if at one time it is slackened, at another time it is accelerated. It has been in action for three centuries, and has accomplished more in this time than had been effected in the preceding sixteen centuries. It is upheld by a mighty hand. If the truth which was again brought to light in the sixteenth century should once more be entombed, then the sun being veiled the earth would be covered with darkness; it would no longer be possible to discern the way of salvation; moral force would disappear, freedom would depart, modern civilization would once more sink into barbarism, and humanity, deprived of the only guide competent to lead it on, would go astray and perish hopelessly in the desert.
We have narrated in our early volumes the great achievements of the Reformation in Germany, at Worms, Spire, Augsburg, and elsewhere. While these events were astonishing all Europe, the Spirit of God was gently breathing, souls were silently awakening, churches were forming, and the Christian virtues were springing up afresh in Christendom. What took place at that period was very much like what frequently happens in the world of nature. In the higher regions there are great gales, clouds charged with electricity, thunders, lightnings, and torrents of rain. Then in the lower regions, in the valleys and on the plains, the fields refreshed, reviving, grow green again, 'and the earth brings forth first the fruit, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.'