CHAPTER IX.
Reforms—All Saints Church—Fall of the Mass—Learning—Christian Schools—Learning extended to the Laity—The Arts—Moral Religion—Esthetical Religion—Music—Poetry—Painting.
PUBLIC WORSHIP REFORMED.
While the nations and their rulers were thus hastening forward to the light, the reformers were endeavouring to regenerate everything, to interpenetrate everything with the principles of Christianity. The state of public worship first engaged their attention. The time fixed by the reformer, on his return from the Wartburg, had arrived. "Now," said he, "that men's hearts have been strengthened by Divine grace, we must put an end to the scandals that pollute the kingdom of the Lord, and dare something in the name of Jesus." He required that men should communicate in both kinds (the bread and wine); that everything should be retrenched from the ceremony of the eucharist that tended to make it a sacrifice;[370] that Christians should never assemble together without having the Gospel preached;[371] that believers, or at least the priests and scholars, should meet every morning at five or six o'clock to read the Old Testament; and at a corresponding hour in the evening to read the New Testament; that every Sunday, the whole Church should assemble in the morning and afternoon, and that the great object of their worship should be to sound abroad the Word of God.[372]
THE CHURCH OF ALL SAINTS.
The church of All Saints at Wittemberg especially excited Luther's indignation. Seckendorf informs us that 9901 masses were there celebrated yearly, and 35,570 pounds of wax annually burnt. Luther called it "a sacrilegious Tophet." "There are only three or four lazy-bellies," said he, "who still worship this shameful mammon, and if I had not restrained the people, this house of All Saints, or rather of all devils, would have made such a noise in the world as has never before been heard."
The struggle began around this church. It resembled those ancient sanctuaries of paganism in Egypt, Gaul, and Germany, which were destined to fall that Christianity might be established.
Luther, desiring that the mass should be abolished in this cathedral, addressed a petition to the chapter to this effect on the 1st of March 1523, and a second on the 11th of July.[373] The canons having pleaded the elector's orders, Luther replied, "What is the prince's order to us in this case? He is a secular prince; the sword, and not the preaching of the Gospel, belongs to him."[374] Here Luther clearly marks the distinction between the State and the Church. "There is but one sacrifice that taketh away sins," said he again, "Christ, who offered himself up once for all; and in this we are partakers, not by works or by sacrifices, but solely by faith in the Word of God."
The elector, who felt his end drawing near, was opposed to new reforms.
But fresh entreaties were added to those of Luther. "It is time to act," said Jonas, provost of the cathedral, to the elector. "A manifestation of the Gospel, so striking as that which we now have, does not ordinarily last longer than a sunbeam. Let us make haste then."[375]