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BR 305 .W32 1911 
 Wace, Henry, 1836- 
 Principles of the 
 Reformation practical and 
 
PRINCIPLES OF THE \^^ 
 
 REFORMATION^ 
 
 PRACTICAL AND HISTORICAL 
 
 THE VERY REV. HENRY WAGE D.D. 
 DEAN OF CANTERBURY 
 
 AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 
 
 150 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Preface v 
 
 The First Principles of Protestantism ... i 
 
 The course of Protestant Theology in the 
 
 Sixteenth Century 76 "^ 
 
 The Primary Principles of Luther's Life and 
 Teaching 154 
 
 Some urgent points in the Controversy at the 
 present time : 
 
 1. The Gospel and the Remission of Sins 206 
 
 2. The Sacrificial aspect of the Holy 
 Communion 222 
 
 3. The true authority in matters of Chris- 
 tian Faith and practice 236 
 
PREFACE 
 
 I have ventured to collect these studies in 
 the history and the practical principles of the 
 Reformation, in the hope that they may do 
 something to promote a better appreciation 
 among us of the depth and grandeur of that 
 great movement. They are the result of many 
 years' study of the v^ritings of Luther, and of 
 the chief sources in which the course of the 
 movement is to be seen ; and I hope that they 
 v^ill be found to indicate some of the deep 
 springs in human thought and experience 
 which brought a new life to the Christian 
 Church and to Europe at that time. 
 
 Like all great truths of a spiritual and moral 
 character, those of the Reformation will always 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 be liable to misunderstandings, and will always 
 encounter deadly opposition in some quarters. 
 The Roman Catholic Church, with its griev- 
 ous perversions of Christian truth, does but 
 exhibit in an extreme form permanent ten- 
 dencies of human nature, and we may always 
 have to contend against similar influences. 
 But the only effectual method for resisting 
 them is to maintain before the minds of men 
 and women, in full force, the momentous 
 realities and the profound truths from which 
 the Reformation drew back the Medieval veil. 
 I believe that those realities and truths lie at 
 the very foundation of the spiritual life and 
 the moral force of our people, and that the 
 Church will command confidence in pro- 
 portion as she teaches the cardinal truths of 
 Christian faith in the light of those principles. 
 In the following pages Luther and the great 
 Reformers will speak in great measure for 
 themselves, and I have confidence that in pro- 
 portion as they are heard, they will command 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 the gratitude and the allegiance of Christian 
 
 thought and belief. 
 
 I have ventured to add three papers, in 
 
 which some urgent controversies of the present 
 
 time are considered in the light of the same 
 
 principles. 
 
 H. Wage. 
 
THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF 
 PROTESTANTISM 
 
 I 
 
 In September 1896 Archbishop Benson of 
 Canterbury paid a visit to Ireland, and at the 
 first public meeting he attended, held in Dublin 
 in aid of the restoration of Kildare Cathedral, 
 he saw opposite the platform a motto, which 
 described the Church of Ireland as " Catholic, 
 Apostolic, Reformed, and Protestant." He 
 took occasion to say that we, in England, have 
 not been careful enough to teach our children 
 and the mass of our people the history of the 
 Church of England. " I hope,'' he said, " we 
 have awakened lately to this matter, and we 
 are now intending to do it far more thoroughly. 
 To you," he added, " the appeal comes most 
 strongly, and you cannot justify those four 
 words, ' Catholic/ ' Apostolic,' ' Reformed,' 
 
2 THE ORIGINAL PROTEST 
 
 and ' Protestant,' unless you teach everybody 
 you have to do with ' why you are what you 
 are.' " On October the 9th, two days before 
 his death, he attended, in the Ulster Hall, 
 Belfast, the last public meeting in which he 
 took part, and he recurred to the same thought 
 in very emphatic and impressive words. " I 
 reciprocate," he said, " with my whole soul 
 your most earnest desire that intercourse be- 
 tween our Churches should be constant and 
 complete ; that, as we look each other more 
 in the face, we will know each other the 
 better, and live equally in that true faith and 
 fear of God which I saw characterised by a 
 motto at Dublin — the faith taught by that 
 Church, which is at once Apostolic, Catholic, 
 Reformed, and Protestant. There was not 
 one," he proceeded, " of those words that 
 could be spared ; and if ever it was necessary, 
 if ever we began to doubt whether it was 
 necessary, to lay so much emphasis upon that 
 last word " — the word Protestant — " I think 
 that events which have been occurring in the 
 last few weeks, and the tone which has been 
 adopted towards this primeval Church of Ire- 
 land and England, are things which warn us 
 
THE ORIGINAL PROTEST 3 
 
 that that word is not to be forgotten." He was 
 referring to the Pope's Encyclical respecting 
 English Orders. " No/' he added, " it is not 
 a word to be forgotten ; but it is a word to be 
 understood — a word which must not be used 
 as a mere earthly, secular war-cry. Those are 
 words which have a deep meaning for our 
 children, which we should try to penetrate, 
 even better than now, and which we should 
 hand down to them to be cherished forever."^ 
 There are misconceptions now prevalent 
 respecting the meaning of the word Protestant^ 
 which render peculiarly necessary such an 
 endeavour to penetrate its meaning better 
 as Archbishop Benson desired. A clergyman 
 of great authority once spoke of " the 
 disastrous notion that we live in negations, as 
 Protestants, but are unable, or afraid, to put 
 forth positive truth as Catholics." It must be 
 supposed by any one who uses such language 
 that Protestantism consists in protesting against 
 error, and particularly against the errors of the 
 Church of Rome. This misapprehension of 
 
 ■^ ' Archbishop Benson in Ireland : a Record of his Irish 
 Sermons and Addresses, 1896.' London, 1896. Pp. 26, 
 27, no, III. 
 
4 THE ORIGINAL PROTEST 
 
 the meaning of the word has probably been 
 fostered by an unfortunate expression of 
 Burke, in his letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe 
 in 1792. In that letter he urges, in some 
 most instructive observations, that the settle- 
 ment at the time of the Revolution did not 
 bind the nation barely to a Protestant religion, 
 but to " the Protestant, Reformed religion, as 
 it is established by law^." The sovereign, says 
 Burke, by that settlement, " may inherit the 
 Crown as a Protestant, but he cannot hold it, 
 according to law, without being a Protestant 
 of the Church of England." In other words, 
 ' Protestant ' is an indispensable qualification 
 of the religion which the sovereign of England 
 is bound to profess, but it is only a qualification, 
 and the substance of that religion is the 
 Catholic form of the Christian religion as 
 established by law among us. But in the 
 course of these important observations he threw 
 out the oh'ter dictum that " a man is certainly 
 the most perfect Protestant who protests against 
 the whole Christian religion." So that the 
 idea to which Burke has thus helped to give 
 currency is that Protestantism is, at all events 
 in general, a protesting against something, and 
 
THE ORIGINAL PROTEST 5 
 
 in particular against more or less of the religion 
 taught by the Church of Rome. In other 
 words, it would thus be essentially a negative 
 attitude of mind. 
 
 Now, let us observe, in the first place, that 
 such an interpretation of the word is incon- 
 sistent with its Latin derivation. It is a post- 
 Augustan word, and is said, in one of the best 
 dictionaries, to mean " to declare publicly, to 
 bear witness, to testify, and so to protest." It 
 seems particularly important, in connection 
 with its historical use, to notice that this is its 
 meaning when employed by a jurist like 
 Ulpian ; as, for instance, in the phrase, " quippe 
 protestantur pietatis gratia se id facere." Ac- 
 cording to Dr Johnson, the predominant mean- 
 ing of the word, as used in English, is of the 
 same character. To protest^ he says, is "to 
 give a solemn declaration of opinion, or resolu- 
 tion ;" and protestation is " a solemn declaration 
 of resolution, fact, or opinion." This is the 
 primary meaning of the word. But, of course, 
 such a protestation may be made in opposition 
 to some other declaration or act, and so the 
 noun protest^ says Dr Johnson, had come to 
 mean " a solemn declaration of opinion, com- 
 
6 THE ORIGINAL PROTEST 
 
 monly against something, as, the Lords published 
 a protest." But the primary and predominant 
 idea of the word remains a public declaration 
 and attestation — -a declaration and attestation 
 of a truth and a resolve. " But to your 
 protestation," says Shakespeare, in the 'Winter's 
 Tale,' "let me hear what you profess." It is, 
 in fact, apart from the special association now 
 in question, a great word in our language, for 
 which, perhaps, no substitute could be found 
 to express a solemn declaration of conviction 
 or belief. 
 
 Such being the general meaning and use of 
 the word, let us turn to consider its application 
 in that religious sense with which we are 
 immediately concerned. The better under- 
 standing of the word which Archbishop Benson 
 desired will probably be best promoted by a 
 historical consideration of the circumstances 
 under which it arose, and of the principles 
 which it originally implied. The use of the 
 word in this religious sense dates from the 
 second Diet of Spires, held in March and 
 April 1529.^ To appreciate what then passed, 
 
 ^ For what passed at this diet, see Julius Ney's ^Geschichte 
 des Reichstages zu Speier im Jahre 1526,' Hamburg, 1880 ; 
 
THE ORIGINAL PROTEST 7 
 
 we must bear in mind that by the Edict of the 
 Diet of Worms of i 5 2 1 Luther had been placed 
 under the ban of the Empire, and his adherents 
 were to be seized and their goods confiscated. 
 The Emperor accordingly, in his hereditary 
 dominions, repressed by force all movements in 
 support of him, and expected the same course 
 to be taken in the dominions of the other 
 princes of the Holy Roman Empire. But 
 there were several of those princes, like the 
 Duke of Saxony, who were not prepared to 
 carry this edict into effect, and the Emperor 
 was too much engaged in foreign wars and 
 enterprises to be able to enforce the observance 
 of the Edict upon them. The consequence 
 was that Luther's opinions spread, and his cause 
 gained more adherents from year to year. But 
 when, in 1526, the Emperor summoned the 
 first Diet of Spires, he hoped to bring this 
 confusion to an end, and, as he said, " he 
 desired to restore the empire again to a happy 
 unity" — words characteristic of thoughts which 
 have been prominent in the minds of rulers 
 
 and his short narrative in ^ Schriften fur das deutsche Volk,' 
 entitled, " Die Protestation der Evangelischen Stande,' 
 Halle a/S, 1890. 
 
8 THE ORIGINAL PROTEST 
 
 from Constantine downwards. But the princes 
 who were on the side of the reformed doctrines 
 did not scruple to bring their preachers to 
 Spires ; and though the churches were closed 
 to them, they preached day by day in the inns 
 in which the reformed princes lodged, and 
 numbers of people came to hear them. Mean- 
 while the Pope quarrelled with the Emperor, 
 and it thus became impracticable to carry 
 through a strong papal policy in the Diet. It 
 was therefore thought better to temporise, and 
 it was resolved to send a special deputation to 
 the Emperor, begging him to return to Ger- 
 many, which he had left in 1521, and to take 
 measures for the speedy summoning of a free 
 General Council on German soil, or at least a 
 Provincial Council, to decide the ecclesiastical 
 questions at issue. But until such a Council 
 was summoned, every authority in the Empire 
 was to be at liberty " to live, to govern, and 
 generally to act, as each might hope and trust 
 to answer for himself before God and the 
 Imperial Majesty." In other words, each 
 State, each prince, or each free city was to be 
 left at liberty to carry out the Worms Edict 
 or not, on its own responsibility to God and 
 
THE ORIGINAL PROTEST 9 
 
 the Emperor. Thus already, in the first Diet 
 of Spires, the principle is recognised, though 
 only temporarily, that, in matters of faith and 
 religion, governing authorities must be left to 
 act on their own responsibility, and were not 
 to be compelled by force to carry into effect, 
 in those matters, a law which had been laid 
 down by the supreme authority. 
 
 It was the same principle, in substance, 
 which was destined to receive a more formal 
 and permanent assertion in the second Diet of 
 Spires, summoned in 1529. The situation 
 had become much more alarming for the Re- 
 formed States. A good understanding had been 
 established between the Emperor and the Pope; 
 and, in a treaty made the same year between 
 them, the Emperor and his brother Ferdinand, 
 King of Bohemia and Hungary, pledged them- 
 selves " to use all possible endeavours to resist 
 the pestilential disease of Lutheranism, and to 
 bring back to the true Christian Church those 
 who were in error. " There was no sign, 
 indeed, at the opening of the Diet, that the 
 princes thus denounced were the least disposed 
 to acknowledge themselves in error. They 
 bore on the arms displayed at their several 
 
lo THE ORIGINAL PROTEST 
 
 quarters the initial letters of the words which 
 had become their watchword, " Verbum Domini 
 manet in JEternum " — " The word of the Lord 
 endureth for ever " ; and again, in spite of a 
 direct remonstrance from the Emperor's brother 
 and representative, their preachers were heard, 
 day by day, in their own residences, by crowds 
 of people. The opening communication from 
 the Emperor commenced with a reference to 
 the danger with which the Empire was then 
 threatened by the Turks, and implicitly re- 
 proached the Reforming States, by saying that 
 the errors in the Christian faith had hitherto 
 prevented a unanimous resistance to this common 
 enemy. But the Emperor went on to declare, 
 more particularly, his extreme displeasure with 
 these errors, and his determination, as the 
 supreme head of Christendom, to endure them 
 no longer. He said that the long-promised 
 Council might soon be expected, and that the 
 Pope would gladly promote it. But mean- 
 while, under peril of the ban of the Empire, he 
 forbade any further promotion of the Reformed 
 doctrines and practices. He complained that 
 the Edict of the previous Diet of Spires had 
 been used against the interests of the Holy 
 
THE ORIGINAL PROTEST ii 
 
 Faith ; and, in the exercise of his supreme im- 
 perial authority, he declared that Edict to be 
 null and void ; and called on the authorities of 
 the Empire, then assembled in the Second Diet 
 of Spires, to adopt an edict which would repress 
 all religious innovations. 
 
 The consequence was that, in spite of strenu- 
 ous resistance on the part of several influential 
 princes, supported by some of the free cities, 
 the Diet at length adopted a resolution with 
 this object. It declared that the edict of the 
 former Diet, according to which every one 
 should act, in regard to the Edict of Worms, as 
 he was prepared to do on his own responsibility, 
 had been misunderstood, and had been misused 
 in the excuse of all kinds of horrible doctrines 
 and sects ; and therefore it was resolved that 
 those who had hitherto adhered to the Edict of 
 Worms should continue to do so until the 
 forthcoming Council, and should require their 
 subjects also to adhere to it. In other States, 
 in which the new doctrines had arisen, and in 
 which they could not be abolished without great 
 disturbance, inconvenience, and danger, there 
 should, at all events, be no further innovations 
 allowed until the Council met. More particularly. 
 
12 THE ORIGINAL PROTEST 
 
 doctrines and sects which were injurious to the 
 blessed sacrament of the true Body and Blood 
 of our Lord — a phrase which referred to the 
 doctrines of Zwingli as distinct from those of 
 Luther — should not be permitted by the author- 
 ities of the Holy Roman Empire, nor allowed 
 to be preached ; that the ofiSce of the Holy 
 Mass should not be suppressed, and that in 
 countries where the new doctrine had arisen, 
 no one should be prevented from hearing Mass. 
 By this decision of a majority of the Diet, 
 the progress of the Reformation would have 
 been brought to a standstill. It was to be 
 restrained by all the force of the Empire, even 
 in the States in which it had found a footing; 
 and while in all the Reformed States the Mass 
 was to be allowed, in Roman Catholic States 
 not only was the Reformed worship proscribed, 
 but any propagation of Lutheran doctrine was 
 to be prohibited. Consequently, the States 
 which adopted the Reformed belief had to 
 consider whether they would submit themselves 
 to the will of the majority in the matter, as 
 they were called upon to do by the Emperor 
 and his representatives, and so acknowledge 
 that they had been wrong in the past, and were 
 
THE ORIGINAL PROTEST 13 
 
 not free to act on their own convictions in the 
 future. They came to the conclusion that this 
 was impossible, and they were consequently 
 under the necessity of repudiating the right of 
 the Diet to exercise any such coercive author- 
 ity over them. They accordingly drew up, 
 first of all, on April 19, 1529, a Protestation, 
 and, further, on the 22nd, an Instrumentum 
 Appellationis^ presenting their protest with 
 greater completeness. This is a very long 
 document, but its substance is sufficiently pre- 
 sented by Gieseler in the following passage. ^ 
 He says : — 
 
 "In the great 'Instrumentum Appellationis' 
 the previous representations of the Evangelical 
 States, and their appeal, are embodied. They 
 demand that the previous imperial Edict of 
 I 526 should remain in force, since otherwise it 
 would be difficult for peace to be preserved ; 
 they say they cannot assent to the observance 
 of the Edict of Worms, nor to the maintenance 
 of the Mass, as they would then be condemning 
 their own doctrines. In all other points of 
 their responsibility they declare themselves 
 ready to render obedience to the Emperor. 
 ^ Kirchengeschichte, vol. iii. i, p. 231 note. Bonn, 1840 
 
14 THE ORIGINAL PROTEST 
 
 * But these,' they say, ' are matters which touch 
 and concern God's honour, and the salvation 
 and eternal life of the souls of each one of us, 
 and in which, by God's command, and for the 
 sake of our consciences, we are pledged and 
 bound to regard before all things the same our 
 Lord and God, in the undoubting confidence 
 that your Royal Serenity, our beloved fellow 
 Princes and the others, will in a friendly spirit 
 hold us excused that we are not one with you 
 therein, and that we cannot in such a matter 
 give way to the majority, as we have several 
 times been urged to do in this Diet, especially 
 having regard to the fact that the Edict of the 
 previous Diet of Spires specially states, in the 
 article in question, that it was adopted by a 
 unanimous vote, and in all honour, equity, and 
 right, such a unanimous decision can only be 
 altered by a similarly unanimous vote. But 
 besides this, in matters which concern God's 
 honour and the salvation and eternal life of our 
 souls, every one must stand and give account 
 before God for himself; and no one can excuse 
 himself by the action or decision of another, 
 whether less or more. . . .' Against the rejec- 
 tion of the Zwinglian doctrine of the Holy 
 
THE ORIGINAL PROTEST 15 
 
 Communion in the Imperial Edict, Luther and 
 Melanchthon had nothing to object ; but the 
 Landgrave, with Melanchthon's assent, managed 
 that a protest was also made against the issue 
 of such a decision by the Diet, especially as 
 those ' who are concerned in that question 
 have not been summoned nor heard ; and it is 
 a matter for much consideration and delibera- 
 tion that such grave and weighty articles should 
 be handled without reference to the forthcoming 
 Council, or that any decision or order should 
 be taken upon them without requisite and 
 fitting audience had of all those whom the 
 matter affects.' 
 
 This appeal is made 'to and before the 
 Roman Imperial and Christian Majesty, our 
 most gracious Lord ; and further, to and before 
 the forthcoming free Christian General Council, 
 before our National Assemblies, and further, 
 before every competent, impartial, and Christian 
 judge of these matters. ' In short, the burden 
 of this Protest is aptly summed up by the 
 eminent Church historian Karl von Hase. 
 " The Protest," he says,^ "is an assertion that 
 
 ^ Kirchengeschichte, 1891 ; Third Division, first part, 
 p. 118. 
 
1 6 THE ORIGINAL PROTEST 
 
 there are obligations against which no positive 
 legal right has any force ; or, as Minkwitz, the 
 Saxon delegate at the Diet, expressed it, ' In 
 matters of conscience, there can be no question 
 of majorities ' — ' In Sachen des Gewissens gibt es 
 keine majoritdt. ' But the legal foundation of the 
 Protest is not wanting, and is twofold : i . That 
 a decree unanimously passed by a previous Diet 
 can only be reversed by an equally unanimous 
 consent. 2. That in matters which concern 
 God's honour and the salvation of our souls, 
 every one must stand for himself. This," adds 
 Von Hase, " is precisely the point in which 
 the essence of Protestantism consists." 
 
 It will thus be apparent what is the spirit 
 and the essence of this momentous declaration, 
 from which the title of Protestant is derived. 
 Its authors were not then taking upon them- 
 selves to make any protest, either general or 
 particular, against the doctrines of the Roman 
 Church. The initiative, in the proceedings 
 of the Diet, did not rest with them. What- 
 ever protest there was in a negative sense 
 was made against them. They were denounced 
 as innovators against the order and peace of 
 the Church and the concord of the Empire, 
 
THE ORIGINAL PROTEST 17 
 
 and they were threatened with forcible control 
 and repression. Upon this they came forward 
 with a solemn positive protestation, before God 
 and the Empire and the Estates of Germany, 
 that they had acted in obedience to what they 
 believed to be the teaching of the Word of 
 God, which was the supreme authority, and in 
 accordance with their conscience, and that they 
 could not admit the right of a majority of the 
 Diet to coerce or control them in such a matter. 
 It is thus the first assertion by public author- 
 ities of the principle which Luther asserted for 
 himself, as an individual, at the Diet of Worms 
 in 1 52 1, when he declared that the only 
 authorities which he recognised as having a 
 binding obligation upon his conscience were 
 the Word of God and evident reason. " Unless, " 
 he said, "I am convinced by testimonies of the 
 Scripture, or by evident reason — for I neither 
 believe the Pope nor the Councils alone, since 
 it is clear that they have often erred and con- 
 tradicted one another — I am overcome by the 
 Scriptures I have quoted, and my conscience is 
 taken captive by the words of God, and I neither 
 can nor will retract anything, since it is neither 
 safe nor right to act against conscience." This 
 
1 8 THE ORIGINAL PROTEST 
 
 declaration, of the duty of abiding by the 
 authority of conscience, under the supreme 
 guidance and authority of the Word of God, 
 and of not yielding in such matters to any 
 human authority or majority, was carried by 
 the Protest of Spires a step farther : it was 
 extended from the individual to the community 
 and the ruler ; the right and the duty of the 
 independent assertion of what is believed to be 
 the truth in religious matters, by every State 
 and every Church, was publicly claimed, and, 
 by one great Protestation, was made the com- 
 mencement of a new order of things, in Church 
 and State. 
 
 It is, indeed, necessary to observe, if justice 
 is to be done to the Princes and States at 
 Spires, and to the true principle of the Protest, 
 that no general or easy assertion is made of 
 what is called "the right of private judgment. " 
 The princes do not claim any right to act 
 at once for themselves, on their own sole and 
 individual judgment, without regard to any 
 other authority. On the contrary, it is im- 
 portant to notice that they only reserve their 
 liberty of action until the matters in dispute 
 can be considered by a General, or even a 
 
THE ORIGINAL PROTEST 19 
 
 Provincial, Council. No doubt the principle 
 involved in their Protest, as in that of Luther, 
 precludes them from regarding themselves as 
 absolutely bound even by the decrees of such 
 a Council. They would still have to consider 
 v^hether their consciences would allow them, 
 under the supreme authority of the Word of 
 God, to submit to such decisions as might 
 be made. But they formally acknowledge 
 themselves bound to consult a Council, and 
 it is only in the last resort that they assert 
 the duty of independent decision and action. 
 Now, it is one thing to say that every man 
 has a right to judge for himself, and to go 
 his own way in religious matters, and a very 
 different thing to say that a man or a nation 
 cannot be justly required to follow other 
 people's judgment, and to go the way pre- 
 scribed to them by others, in a grave matter of 
 conscience, if, after appealing to the highest 
 existing or possible authority, they are still 
 unable to satisfy themselves that they can do 
 what is asked without violating their duty 
 to God. But the latter, and not the former, 
 is the principle of which the Reforming 
 princes at Spires made solemn protestation, and 
 
20 THE ORIGINAL PROTEST 
 
 it is in this that the essence of Protestantism 
 consists. 
 
 The original Protest, in short, is a mean 
 between two extremes — between the claim of 
 the Roman Church for the absolute submission 
 of all consciences to her authority, and the 
 claim of the extreme parties on the other side 
 for exemption in matters of conscience from 
 deference to any authority, and for absolute 
 individual freedom. The principle appears to 
 be exactly expressed in the careful statement of 
 Dr. Hawkins of Oriel, in his Bampton Lectures.^ 
 " I am constrained, " he says, " to disallow the 
 claim of infallibility and absolute authority, 
 whether advanced in behalf of any particular 
 Church, or of the Church Universal ; of the 
 ancient Church in the period of her comparative 
 unity, as well as of the modern Church in her 
 state of sad disunion; yielding, indeed, to use the 
 words of Dr. Jackson, ' a conditional assent and 
 a cautionary obedience, ' wherever it is justly 
 due ; but never in any case conceding, except 
 to the original messengers of revealed truth, 
 ' absolute assent and unqualified obedience. ' " 
 To the same effect. Dr. Hawkins adds that 
 
 ^ Bampton Lectures, 1840, p. 200. 
 
THE ORIGINAL PROTEST 21 
 
 " the English Church, while she accepts the 
 decrees of the four first Councils in matters of 
 faith, nevertheless confesses that ' General 
 Councils may err ' : ' Wherefore, ' she adds, 
 * their decrees have no authority, unless it may 
 be declared that they be taken out of Holy 
 Scripture ' ; and while she acknowledges that 
 ' the three Creeds ought thoroughly to be 
 received and believed,' yet does she not presume 
 to mention as the ground for her belief any 
 consent of Fathers, judgment of antiquity, or 
 authority of the Universal Church, but this 
 only basis of her pure and Scriptural faith : 
 ' For they may be proved by most certain i 
 warrants of Holy Scripture. ' " 
 
 The Protest of Spires, in a word, has justly 
 given its designation to the whole reforming 
 movement, because it laid down the principle 
 without which no action of individual Churches 
 in favour of Reform would have been possible. 
 It was the indispensable foundation of the 
 system of National Churches ; and the action 
 of Henry VIII was as much based on the 
 principle of the Protest of Spires as was the 
 action of the Duke of Saxony. It appears a 
 serious mistake to say, as is sometimes done, 
 
22 THE ORIGINAL PROTEST 
 
 that, in throwing off the Papal supremacy, 
 Henry VIII was only carrying farther a prin- 
 ciple which the Kings of England had always 
 asserted, as against the Popes. They had 
 asserted, in greater or less degree, the indepen- 
 dence of what we may call their administrative 
 and governing authority. But they had never 
 assumed, as Henry VIII did, that the National 
 Church under their own supremacy had power 
 to deal with matters of doctrine on its own 
 responsibility, independently of the authority 
 of the Roman Church and of the Pope. In 
 this respect Henry VIII was far more Protes- 
 tant than his daughter Elizabeth. He went 
 much beyond the decree of Spires ; and in 
 Elizabeth's time English statesmen and prelates 
 fell back upon its moderate and guarded posi- 
 tion : asserting, indeed, in the Articles that, in 
 the last resort, not even the authority of a 
 General Council can bind the conscience, but 
 yielding, as Dr. Hawkins says, " a cautionary 
 obedience," as far as possible, to such authorities, 
 and exhibiting an earnest desire to consult 
 them whenever they may be accessible. Pro- 
 testantism, therefore, as adopted at Spires, and 
 as embodied in English teaching and practice, 
 
THE ORIGINAL PROTEST 23 
 
 does not consist primarily in protesting against 
 particular doctrines or practices of Roman 
 theology or order, nor in the assertion of any 
 unqualified right of private judgment. It is 
 simply a solemn assertion of that fundamental 
 right, by which this Church and nation under- 
 took, on their own responsibility before God 
 and man, to reform themselves, and by which 
 they claim to act for themselves in matters of 
 faith and religion, independently of any such 
 authority as is claimed by the see of Rome, or 
 even, in extreme necessity, of any supreme 
 authority in the Church at large. 
 
 11. 
 
 The Protestation at Spires answered its pur- 
 pose. It gave the protesting States a firm 
 principle on which to stand, in resisting any 
 attempt to suppress by force the reform they 
 had introduced. It was destined, indeed, of 
 necessity, to work itself out to an extent on 
 which they had not calculated. For the pur- 
 pose of the Princes and the Councils of Free 
 Cities who made the Protest, the unit of 
 resistance to the supreme authority was the 
 
24 FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 
 
 ruling power in each State or city, and they did 
 not scruple to assert their own authority over 
 the individuals who were under their govern- 
 ment. But, as Luther's own example had 
 shown, their subjects had the same rights of 
 conscience against them as they had against the 
 Emperor and the Diet, and they found in due 
 time that, in their resistance to the Emperor, 
 they had surrendered some of their own power 
 within their own dominions. The practical 
 effect, in the long-run, was to render govern- 
 ment in religious matters a question of com- 
 promise between the various forces, individual 
 and governmental, which were concerned in 
 the matter. Henceforth, where the principles 
 of the Protest of Spires were admitted, no 
 Government, no authority, could claim the 
 right of absolute obedience. But some obe- 
 dience was essential for the conduct of human 
 affairs, and the problem of religious government 
 thus became, in each case, the practical one of 
 ascertaining the limits of reasonable obedience 
 on the one side, and of reasonable authority on 
 the other. The Protest set the various religious 
 forces of life as free as is possible under the 
 practical condition of human affairs ; and, from 
 
FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 25 
 
 that great moment, the recognition of relative 
 rights between the governors and the governed, 
 and their mutual adjustment, has been the law 
 of religious organisation. Even the Papacy 
 and the Empire hesitated thenceforth to assert, 
 or at least to practise, an unconditional sove- 
 reignty. The principle of absolute obedience 
 had to take refuge in a new Society, that of the 
 Jesuits, which at length succeeded in impress- 
 ing its spirit on the Roman Church. On the 
 Protestant side, the Calvinistic organisation, 
 which soon after sprang up, exhibited a some- 
 what similar reaction in favour of the principle 
 of obedience to authority. The Calvinistic 
 conception of God, as an absolute ruler, reflected 
 itself, as the conceptions of God's character 
 always do, upon the tone of thought, and the 
 habits, of those who were imbued with it; and 
 the Calvinistic Church promoted the ideal of a 
 theocratic rule, in which men were again subject 
 to the unbending authority of the Church. But, 
 nevertheless, the moderating principle of the 
 Spires Protest held its own, and made its way ; 
 and a just balance between freedom and authority 
 became, in an increasing degree, especially in 
 England, the ideal of religious government. 
 
26 FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 
 
 The first evidence of this result was afforded 
 by the Diet of Augsburg, which immediately 
 followed, in 1530, the Diet of Spires of the 
 previous year. In the interval, the Emperor 
 had made peace with the Pope, and had been 
 crowned by him in Italy ; but he nevertheless 
 found himself obliged to meet the Diet in a 
 spirit of far greater moderation than he had 
 shown at Spires. His opening communication 
 desired that the Diet should take measures for 
 appeasing the religious dissensions, but so that 
 every one's disposition, opinion, and view 
 should be heard in all love and gentleness, in 
 order to bring men to one united Christian 
 truth, to conciliate them, and to put aside 
 everything which had been unjustly charged 
 against either side. That they should be met 
 in this spirit, only a year after the second 
 Edict of Spires, was a remarkable triumph for 
 the Protestant States ; and it is to their honour 
 that they responded with a similar moderation. 
 The Emperor made public demonstration of 
 his own adherence to the old faith and practice 
 by taking part, in a conspicuous manner, on 
 the day after he arrived at Augsburg, in the 
 procession of Corpus Christi ; and the Pro- 
 
FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 27 
 
 testant princes similarly exhibited their adher- 
 ence to their own principles by abstaining from 
 the ceremony. But, on the other hand, they 
 abstained from having sermons preached under 
 their protection by their own preachers, and 
 submitted to the Emperor's direction that none 
 but persons appointed by himself should be 
 allowed to preach. 
 
 But above all, it was in this spirit of moder- 
 ation that they proceeded to comply with the 
 Emperor's desire that a statement should be 
 presented, to him and the Diet, of their beliefs 
 and claims in the religious questions at issue. 
 A statement for this purpose had been the 
 subject of much careful consideration by the 
 Lutheran theologians ; and, in consultation 
 with them, it was ultimately drawn up by 
 Melanchthon, and adopted by the great majority 
 of them, though four free cities, which could 
 not subscribe to the Lutheran assertion of the 
 real presence in the Holy Communion, present- 
 ed a separate confession, known as the Confessio 
 Tetrapolitana, But the Confession was signed 
 by the representatives of the other reforming 
 States, and became known as the Augsburg 
 Confession, or the Confessio Augustana, and 
 
28 FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 
 
 has ever since been the chief symboHc docu- 
 ment of the Lutheran Church. As the Protest 
 of Spires embodies the fundamental principle 
 of public and private action by v^hich religious 
 liberty was rendered possible, alike for nations 
 and for individuals, so the Augsburg Confession 
 embodies, in the simplest and clearest form, 
 the cardinal theological ideas of the reforming 
 movement. Various Churches and individuals, 
 as the movement proceeded, adopted variations 
 of opinion from it on special points. But these 
 variations, whether distinctively Lutheran, 
 Calvinistic, or English, did not affect the 
 central principles from which the whole move- 
 ment started ; and those principles are stated 
 in this Confession with all the responsibility 
 and gravity which became such an occasion. 
 For the first time, in the face of Europe, the 
 Protestants were to declare the truth that was 
 in them ; and they appreciated the obligation 
 of stating that faith in the manner which 
 would best commend it to the consciences alike 
 of their adversaries and of their friends. It is 
 here that Protestant principles should be studied, 
 if they are to be fairly and fully appreciated. 
 The germinal thoughts and experiences, out 
 
FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 29 
 
 of which the movement sprang, are, of course, 
 more vividly exhibited in the life of Luther, 
 and particularly in his early life, and his ex- 
 periences as a monk. But his strong personal 
 character gives them a colour which is apt to 
 lead to their misapprehension by some minds ; 
 whereas, in the Confession of Augsburg, these 
 personal peculiarities are eliminated, and the 
 great principles stand out in their permanent 
 meaning and order. At the same time, the 
 Confession is not merely a formal theological 
 statement like our Articles. It is instinct with 
 the deep earnestness and anxiety of that crit- 
 ical moment, when it was felt that the great 
 spiritual forces, which were dividing the world, 
 had come face to face with each other for the 
 final issue. 
 
 It is, in the first place, to be observed that 
 the Reforming states express their readiness, 
 and even anxious desire, to discuss amicably 
 with their opponents the difi^erences between 
 them ; and in the event of an agreement not 
 being eff^ected in the Diet, they offer to lay 
 their cause before the Council which had been 
 promised by the Emperor and the Pope. To 
 that General Council as well as to the Emperor, 
 
30 FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 
 
 they had already, in due form of law, made 
 their protestation and appeal ; and to that 
 appeal, they say, in the concluding words of 
 their preface to the Emperor, they still adhere, 
 and have neither the intention nor the power 
 of abandoning it, as they now once more 
 solemnly and publicly protest — de quo hie etiam 
 solenniter et pub lice protestamur. At the conclusion 
 of the Confession, they declare that, in doctrine 
 and ceremonies, nothing is received among 
 them contrary to the Scriptures or the Catholic 
 Church, and that it is evident they have most 
 diligently taken care that no new or impious 
 dogmas should creep into their Churches. 
 
 In another connection they make a still 
 more remarkable statement. The Confession 
 is divided into two parts, the first of which 
 gives a summary of the doctrines taught 
 among them, and the second mentions certain 
 abuses which prevailed in practice in the 
 Church of their day, and which they had 
 removed ; and with respect to the former part 
 — the doctrines they teach — they declare, not 
 only that their doctrine does not differ from that 
 of the Catholic Church, but that it does not 
 differ from that of the Roman Church. "This," 
 
FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 31 
 
 they say in Article xxii., "is a general summary 
 of the doctrine which prevails among us, in 
 which it will be seen that there is nothing 
 which differs from the Scriptures, or from 
 the Catholic Church, or from the Roman 
 Church, as far as is known from writers. 
 This being so, it is a harsh judgment to claim 
 that we should be considered heretics. The 
 dissension relates to some abuses which have 
 crept into the Church without definite author- 
 ity, in which, even if there were some diver- 
 gence, nevertheless it might be hoped that the 
 Bishops, in view of the Confession of Faith we 
 have now made, would extend some toleration 
 to us ; for even the Canons are not so harsh 
 as to require the same rites everywhere, nor, 
 in fact, have the rites of all Churches ever 
 been quite similar. At the same time, among 
 us the ancient rites are in great measure dili- 
 gently preserved. It is a false calumny that all 
 ceremonies and all old institutions are abolished 
 in our Churches. On the other hand, it has been 
 a matter of public complaint that certain abuses 
 prevailed in the common rites ; and as these 
 could not be approved with a good conscience, 
 they have been in some measure corrected. " 
 
32 FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 
 
 It is apparent from these solemn statements 
 that the first Protestants — those from whom 
 the name is derived — were most earnest and 
 careful in claiming a Catholic position. They 
 reiterate again and again that their Churches 
 do not dissent from the Catholic Church in 
 any single article of faith. They not only 
 begin, in the first article of the Confession, by 
 declaring their adherence to the Nicene sym- 
 bol ; they claim for all the other doctrines they 
 assert that they are part of the ancient Catholic 
 faith. It is still more remarkable to find them 
 claiming, in the words just quoted, that there 
 is nothing in their teaching which diff^ers from 
 that of the Roman Church, " so far as it is 
 known from its writers. " But there is no 
 reason to doubt either that they were perfectly 
 sincere in making this claim, or that it is 
 capable of substantial defence, with the quali- 
 fication they annex to it, of judging that doc- 
 trine by authoritative writings. Our own 
 divine, Dean Field, in his great work on the 
 Church, maintains a similar position respecting 
 Protestant doctrine in his day, asserting that 
 the best divines of the Roman Church, before 
 the Reformation, were in agreement with the 
 
FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 33 
 
 Reformed doctrines, and were, as he says, 
 Protestants before us, and that the doctrine to 
 which the Roman Church pledged itself at the 
 Council of Trent represented the triumph of 
 an arrogant modern faction. But even if this 
 claim be a mistaken one, if it overlooks, at all 
 events, the steady drift of opinion in the later 
 Middle Ages, the fact that it should have been 
 so clearly asserted serves to emphasise the 
 earnest desire of the Protestants to maintain 
 their unity with the great lines of Catholic 
 tradition. Accordingly Canon Dixon points 
 out, in his History of the Church of Eng- 
 land, that the use of the word "Protestant" 
 in England, up to and including the time of 
 the Caroline divines, was understood to include 
 the designation of Catholic, and that Laud and 
 his friends called themselves Protestants, as 
 against the Puritans, to indicate that they were 
 Catholics. ^ Protestantism, in the great charter 
 
 ^ He says, vol. iv. p. 221 : " The word Protestant retained 
 its original and proper meaning in England (or a share of it) 
 when, in the next century, it was used to denote the High 
 Church or Laudian party in opposition to the Puritans ; but 
 unhappily it passed into vogue at last as the opposite not of 
 Papist but of Catholic : in which abused sense it is now 
 common to literature. This popular and literary miscon- 
 
34 FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 
 
 of its foundation, thus bound itself up with 
 true Catholicism, and any teaching which is 
 not Catholic is, by that fact, condemned as not 
 truly Protestant. 
 
 But this being so, what, it must be asked, 
 was the nature of the difference by which, as 
 a matter of fact, Europe had become divided 
 into two camps, ranged opposite each other, 
 in imminent danger of nothing less than civil 
 war ? The divergence must have been deep and 
 momentous which, in the space of little more 
 than ten years, had produced so profound a 
 division in Christendom. The answer is that, 
 in the view of the Reformers, certain cardinal 
 truths of the Catholic faith had been for a long 
 time ignored, or at least allowed to remain in 
 a very secondary position, and that the revival 
 of these truths, or the reassertion of their true 
 position and importance, had necessarily the 
 effect of altering the balance of doctrine and 
 
 ception has reacted on the history of the Reformation with 
 stupefying effect. The men who let themselves be called 
 Protestants, but were never weary of declaring themselves 
 Catholics, have been thought to have been not Catholic 
 because Protestant. The opposite of Catholic is not Pro- 
 testant but heretic ; the opposite of Protestant is not Catholic 
 but Papist. " 
 
FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 35 
 
 practice, and of bringing into prominence 
 aspects of Christian belief, and Christian prac- 
 tice, which, to the great disadvantage of 
 Christian life, had fallen into desuetude. In 
 order to apprehend the nature of this alteration 
 of view, or point of view, it is essential to 
 begin where the Augsburg Confession begins. 
 That commencement requires very careful 
 consideration. The Confession does not begin 
 with the doctrine of Justification by Faith, nor 
 with the assertion of any special views respect- 
 ing the Sacraments or the Church. But 
 immediately after the first article, De Deo^ 
 declaring the adherence of the Reformers to 
 the Nicene Creed, it lays down their teaching 
 respecting Original Sin. That is the real 
 point, from which the whole movement of 
 thought and spiritual experience starts. It is 
 very characteristic of the situation of the 
 moment that, not only does the Confession not 
 commence as our Articles do — after the intro- 
 ductory ones which correspond to the Augsburg 
 Article De Deo — with declaring that the Scrip- 
 ture is the sole Rule of Faith, but the Confession 
 contains no article at all on that subject. The 
 Reformers practically assume that the Rule of 
 
26 FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 
 
 Faith to which they appeal is the same as that 
 of their adversaries, and they do not think it 
 necessary to put prominently forward the sole 
 supremacy of the Scriptures. The circumstance 
 that the controversial part of our Articles, in 
 distinction from the Augsburg Confession, 
 commences with the assertion of the sufficiency 
 of the Scriptures, seems due to the fact that, 
 before the Articles were composed, the Roman 
 Church, in the Council of Trent, had laid 
 down, as the foundation of her whole position, 
 the co-ordinate authority of tradition with the 
 Scriptures. The Roman controversialists had 
 discovered, after the first twenty years of their 
 discussion with the Protestants, that they 
 could not hold their ground on the basis of the 
 Scriptures alone ; and accordingly, the first 
 thing they did, in the Council of Trent, was 
 to assert the traditions of the Church as a part 
 of the Rule of Faith. This " formal " principle 
 became of more and more importance as the 
 controversy proceeded ; but, at the stage we 
 are now considering, it is not the formal, but 
 the material, or substantial, principle which is 
 in the forefront of the controversy, and this 
 principle, as has been said, arises, according to 
 
FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 37 
 
 the Augsburg Confession, out of the truth of 
 Original Sin. The Reformers teach, in the 
 second article of the Confession, that " after 
 the fall of Adam, all men, who are naturally 
 engendered, are born with sin ; that is, without 
 fear of God, without trust towards God, and 
 with concupiscence ; and that this disease or 
 original corruption — vitium originis — is truly 
 sin, involving damnation, and bringing even 
 now eternal death upon those who are not born 
 again by baptism and the Holy Spirit. They 
 anathematise the Pelagians and others, who 
 deny that this original fault or corruption is 
 sin, and who diminish the glory of the merits 
 and benefits of Christ by maintaining that men 
 can be justified before God by the natural 
 powers of reason." It will be noticed how 
 closely in this, as in other things, our Articles 
 follow the general lines of this Confession, alike 
 in the substance of their statement respecting 
 original sin, and in the order in which they 
 place the article on the subject-^immediately, 
 that is, after the articles which define the Rule 
 of Faith, and thus at the head of the articles 
 which deal with the doctrinal matters of con- 
 troversy. 
 
38 FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 
 
 But what is the reason why this doctrine 
 assumes such prominence ? It is because the 
 whole movement started out of a deeper appre- 
 hension of the corruption and evil of human 
 nature than had, perhaps, prevailed in the 
 Church since the time of St. Augustine. The 
 main tendency of Middle Age theology was 
 Pelagian. Bradwardine, the Doctor Profundus^ 
 for a brief time Archbishop of Canterbury in 
 1349, declared that the whole world of his 
 day had gone after Pelagius ; and at the time 
 of the Reformation, though orthodoxy might 
 be saved by subtle distinctions, the practical 
 effect of the prevalent teaching was to throw 
 men upon their own efforts — upon their own 
 obedience, at all events, to the rules of religion 
 and of the Church — for their salvation, and 
 for their attainment of perfection. The mere 
 fact, the unquestionable fact, that forgiveness 
 could, under express Papal authority, be bought 
 for a price, is sufficient to prove that there 
 was, at all events, prevalent a grave obscuration 
 of the deadly nature of sin and of human evil. 
 The Reformers, however, did not approach 
 this subject as a technical theological doctrine. 
 They came to it as to a matter of deep personal 
 
FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 39 
 
 experience. They felt in themselves, and they 
 awakened in others, an intense feeling that 
 man was very far gone — quam longissime — from 
 original righteousness, from the nature and 
 the perfection for which he was intended, and 
 consequently that he must needs abandon all 
 idea of hope or help from his own powers. 
 For this purpose, it will be observed, they 
 bring into special prominence man's failure to 
 live in the due love and fear of God. They 
 say that men are born " with sin, that is, 
 without fear of God, without trust towards 
 God, and with concupiscence — cum peccato^ 
 hoc est sine metu Dei^ sine Jiducia erga Deum et 
 cum concupiscentiaT The lust of concupiscence 
 is not the starting-point of the evil, but its 
 consequence. In proportion as men do not 
 live in the love and fear of God, the passions 
 of their lower nature are inevitably let loose, 
 and fall into disorder. The characteristic 
 teaching of the later schoolmen on this point 
 was that the fall did but remove an addition 
 which had been made by God to the natural 
 endowments of man. But the Reformers re- 
 garded the fall as having removed the main- 
 spring, deprived human nature of its sun and 
 
40 FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 
 
 centre, and thus involved it in utter ruin and 
 confusion. For the mere functions of civil 
 life, it retains to a great extent the power of 
 free-will and self-government ; though even in 
 this sphere it can only be kept in tolerable 
 order by the stern administration of law, and 
 its evil impulses are perpetually at work. But 
 for the higher purposes of the soul, for its 
 ideal life, a fall from God was a fall from 
 everything. When they looked into their 
 own hearts, or when they looked around them, 
 and saw the widespread absence of the habit 
 of living in God, with God, and for God, it 
 appeared to them like a permanent solar eclipse 
 in the spiritual world, and they could not use 
 language strong enough to express their sense 
 of the fearful disaster which it involved. 
 
 The failure of their adversaries to appreciate 
 their point of view in this respect is strangely 
 exhibited in the official Confutation of the 
 Confession, which was drawn up at the time 
 by order of the Emperor. This Confutation, 
 prepared by Roman Catholic divines at the 
 Council, says that they approve the second 
 article of the Confession, so far as it states that 
 original corruption is really sin, bringing 
 
FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 41 
 
 damnation and eternal death to those who are 
 not born anew by baptism and the Holy Spirit. 
 But the statement, that it is a part of original 
 sin that men are born without fear of God, 
 and without trust in God, is altogether to be 
 rejected, since it is evident to every Christian 
 that to be without fear of God and trust in 
 God is rather the actual sin of the adult than 
 the fault of the new-born infant. As though 
 the Reformers had been concerned to settle 
 the exact relations between original and actual 
 sin ! As is said in the ' Apology of the Con- 
 fession,' written by Melanchthon in reply to the 
 ' Confutatio Pontificia, ' their simple object 
 was to recite the whole contents and conse- 
 quences which are involved in original sin. 
 They were concerned to urge that men not 
 only failed in acts of fear and love towards God, 
 but in the very capacity for it ; so that nature, 
 by itself, was possessed by concupiscence, and 
 could not manifest true fear and love towards 
 God. 
 
 This was the starting-point — an utter sense 
 of helplessness, a conviction that men and 
 women were so far gone from original right- 
 eousness that they had not even power " to turn 
 
42 FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 
 
 themselves, '' by any natural strength or good 
 works of their own, " to faith and calling upon 
 God. " After all, it is to be remembered that 
 this conviction was the result produced upon 
 earnest minds, like Luther's, by the practice 
 and experience of the Church of the Middle 
 Ages. The history of that Church is the 
 history of prolonged and heroic efforts to attain 
 perfection. The most unsparing asceticism, the 
 most unbounded self-sacrifice, an inexhaustible 
 energy and fertility in good works of all kinds, 
 new orders of monkery, rules of ever-increasing 
 severity, ceremonies heaped upon ceremonies, 
 had been produced by this insatiable craving 
 after perfection ; and what was the result ? 
 As to the general state of the Church, and the 
 Christian life, let Erasmus's ' Encomium Mo- 
 ri^, ' his satirical eulogy of folly, written in 
 1 510, before the commencement of the Luth- 
 eran movement, be a sufficient witness. The 
 corruption which that satire lays bare through- 
 out the Church, in the Clergy, the monastic 
 Orders, and the Court of Rome would be in- 
 credible, if it were not thus attested by a con- 
 temporary observer like Erasmus, who, when 
 the crisis came, stood aside from the Reform- 
 
FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 43 
 
 ing movement. It is no disparagement of the 
 persistent efforts of the doctors and saints of the 
 Middle Ages to say that, at the time the 
 Reformation commenced, their system was 
 bankrupt. It had failed, not only to produce 
 the perfection at which it had aimed, but even 
 to preserve the Church and the world from the 
 most intolerable corruptions. But if it had 
 failed publicly, it had not less conspicuously 
 failed in individual experience. Its high ideal 
 standard, its intense asceticism, the terrors with 
 which, not only in hell but in purgatory, it had 
 invested the idea of God and His righteousness, 
 had taken comfort and hope out of the hearts 
 of numbers of earnest souls. Few things, 
 accordingly, are more striking in the early 
 sermons of the preachers of the Reformation, 
 or in the Apology itself, than the stress which 
 is constantly laid upon the troubled and aff- 
 righted consciences to which they address 
 themselves. The 20th Article of the Confes- 
 sion, for instance, on good works, speaks of the 
 consolation brought by the Reformed doctrine 
 to pious and trembling consciences, which 
 could not be rendered tranquil by any works, 
 and it says that the whole of the Reformed 
 
44 FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 
 
 teaching is to be referred to the struggle of a 
 terrified conscience, and cannot be understood 
 without that struggle. Formerly, it goes on 
 to say, consciences were tormented by the doc- 
 trine of works, and did not hear the consolation 
 of the Gospel. Some were driven by their 
 conscience into the desert, or into monasteries, 
 hoping to merit grace there by a monastic life. 
 These statements, made in the face of the 
 world, before the Diet, and not denied by the 
 Papal Confutation, indicate what was the pre- 
 valent need and craving to which the Reformers 
 addressed themselves. In answer to this article 
 of the Confession, the Papal Confutation simply 
 asserts that good works do merit the remission 
 of sins. The contrary doctrine, they say, as it 
 has been formally rejected and condemned, 
 so it is now rejected and condemned. But 
 unfortunately, whether good works merited 
 remission of sins or not, the bitter experience 
 of the Reformers, and of the struggling men 
 and women whom they addressed, was sufficient 
 to show that they did not bring to men any 
 assurance of the remission of sins, and that they 
 left consciences struggling with the fear of 
 God's wrath, and of the judgments which they 
 
FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 45 
 
 had to encounter. It was this general sense of 
 helplessness which rendered possible such prac- 
 tices as that of indulgences. It was, to a great 
 extent, in a sort of despair that men and women 
 clutched at the extravagant promises held out 
 to them, of escaping the punishments to which 
 they were liable by buying the Pope's pardons, 
 and by helping to build St Peter's. But when 
 one great and genuine soul had wrestled with 
 these terrors of conscience for years in a monas- 
 tery, when the truth had been brought home 
 to the depths of his conscience, by a bitter 
 personal experience, that there was no hope in 
 himself and his own efforts, but that he must 
 look altogether outside himself for forgiveness 
 and for peace, and when he brought this 
 experience home to the hearts of others, the 
 long struggle of the Middle Ages had reached 
 its natural conclusion. Every door towards 
 peace and forgiveness had been tried which 
 human self-sacrifice could test, and every such 
 effbrt had failed ; and when that failure was at 
 length realised, men's hearts leapt up at the 
 renewed declaration of those " comfortable 
 words which our Saviour Christ saith to all 
 that truly turn to Him. " 
 
46 FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 
 
 If, in short, in one sense the Reformation 
 was a revolt against the teaching of the Middle 
 Ages, or at least its later teaching, in another 
 sense it is the natural result and product of that 
 teaching. The saints and doctors of the 
 Middle Ages, by the very heroism of their 
 efforts, by the strain to v^hich they had put the 
 pov^ers of human nature, had proved the inade- 
 quacy of those powers, and the necessity of 
 resorting to some other source of forgiveness, 
 peace, and new life. The Reformers, in vin- 
 dicating their doctrine and their messages, 
 might well have adapted to themselves, in 
 relation to the prevalent teaching of the Church, 
 the words of St. Paul : " Do we then make 
 void the teaching and the experience of the 
 past by our doctrine ? God forbid. Yea, we 
 recognise and establish the result of that 
 experience and that teaching. " Luther could 
 not have been the Reformer he was if he had 
 not been a monk ; and in the same way, no 
 one can appreciate the great message of the 
 Reformation who does not begin, in personal 
 experience, with an apprehension of the inten- 
 sity of the original sin and helplessness of his 
 nature. It remains to illustrate the answer 
 
FIRST PROTESTANT CONFESSION 47 
 
 given by the Reformers to this terrible sense 
 of human weakness and misery. 
 
 III. 
 
 We have seen that the Confession of Augs- 
 burg starts from the sad fact, w^hich a bitter 
 experience had forced upon the Reformers, and 
 which was too fully established by the expe- 
 rience of the Church at large, of the impotence 
 of human nature in spiritual things, and of its 
 consequent inability to obtain forgiveness, 
 peace, or holiness by its own efforts or sacrifices. 
 What, we are next to ask, was the remedy the 
 Reformers proposed for this bankruptcy of 
 human powers ? The foundation for the answer 
 is laid in the third article, following the second 
 on original sin. " We teach also," it says, in 
 words of which our own second article is an 
 echo, " that the Word, that is, the Son of God, 
 took human nature upon him in the womb of 
 the blessed Virgin Mary ; so that two natures, 
 the Divine and human, were joined together 
 in unity of person, never to be divided, one 
 Christ, very God and very man, born of the 
 Virgin Mary, who truly suffered, was crucified. 
 
48 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 
 
 dead, and buried, to reconcile His Father to 
 us, and to be a Sacrifice, not only for original 
 guilt, but also for all actual sins of men. The 
 same Christ descended into hell, and truly rose 
 again the third day, then ascended to the 
 heavens, to sit at the right hand of the Father, 
 and for ever to reign and be Lord over all 
 creatures, to sanctify those v^ho believe on Him, 
 by sending into their hearts the Holy Spirit, 
 who should govern, control, and quicken them, 
 and defend them against the Devil and the 
 power of sin. The same Christ will manifestly 
 come again, to judge the quick and the dead, 
 according to the Apostles' Creed." 
 
 The past and present work of Christ — His 
 sacrifice in the past, and His sanctification of 
 the faithful by His Spirit in the present — is 
 thus put forward as the sole source of our 
 forgiveness and redemption ; and to this state- 
 ment the Papal Confutation has no objection 
 to make. It is, however, remarkable, and is 
 perhaps an indication of the imperfect percep- 
 tion by its authors of the questions at issue, 
 that they do not notice the important clause, 
 repeated in our own article, that our Lord was 
 a sacrifice, " not only for original guilty hut also 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 49 
 
 for all actual sins of men''' When the question 
 recurs again, in the article respecting the Mass, 
 the Confession expressly alleges that " an opinion 
 prevailed — which had led to an infinite increase 
 of private Masses — that Christ, by His Passion, 
 had made satisfaction for original sin, but had 
 instituted the Mass as an oblation to be made 
 for daily sins, mortal and venial ; and that from 
 thence flowed the current opinion that the 
 Mass is a work putting away the sins of the 
 living and the dead, ex opere operatoT The 
 Papal Confutation, in dealing with that part 
 of the Confession, disputes this statement, but 
 practically admits it. " We do not teach," 
 they say, " that the Mass puts away — delet — 
 sins, which are taken away by penance, as 
 their proper medicine ; but it does put away 
 the punishment due for sin — delet pcenam pro 
 peccato debitam — and supplements satisfaction 
 for sins." It is at all events evident that the 
 words " not only for original guilt, but also for 
 all actual sins of men," are inserted by the 
 Reformers in their Confession with a deliberate 
 and important purpose, in order to state, in the 
 most comprehensive manner, that, in the words 
 of our Prayer of Consecration, our Lord, " by 
 
so JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 
 
 His one oblation of Himself once offered, made 
 a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, 
 and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole 
 world. " Nothing more can be required by 
 the divine justice in satisfaction for sin, in 
 addition to that one perfect and sufficient 
 sacrifice of Christ. The grace won by that 
 sacrifice has, indeed, to be applied and used, 
 and Christian life and Christian worship consist 
 in its use and application ; but as a satisfaction 
 for sin, for the sins of the whole world, it is 
 complete and final, and nothing whatever in 
 the way of satisfaction can be added to it. 
 
 Then it is, having laid this great foundation, 
 that the Reformers advance, in their fourth 
 article, to the doctrine in which this great 
 truth is apphed to the relief of that state of 
 helplessness, and desperation of self, in which 
 they felt themselves and their fellows immersed. 
 " We further teach, " they say, " that men 
 cannot be justified before God by their own 
 powers, merits, or works, but are freely — grafis 
 — justified for Christ's sake, by faith, when 
 they believe that they are received into grace, 
 and that their sins are remitted for Christ's 
 sake, who, by His death, made satisfaction for 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 51 
 
 our sins. This faith God imputes for right- 
 eousness before Him, as is stated in the 3rd 
 and 4th chapters of the Epistle to the Romans." 
 Here at length we come — not so much to the 
 cardinal principle of the Reformed teaching, 
 for that is rather contained in the previous 
 article, of the absolute sufficiency of the sacrifice 
 of Christ as a satisfaction for sin — but to its 
 practical application, and consequently to the 
 practical point which was at issue. Consider 
 before you, as I have said, all the troubled 
 consciences of those times, the earnest souls 
 who, by asceticism and self-denial, had tried to 
 conquer sin within them, and to win peace, 
 and had failed, and the mass of people in 
 ordinary life, who looked forward with dread 
 to the divine judgments, and were clutching 
 even at straws like indulgences to escape them 
 — how was the blessing of forgiveness or just- 
 ification to be obtained by them ? The Reform- 
 ers said, — It is there, and you can take it when 
 you will. You have no need to consider 
 whether you are fit for it ; you have not to 
 consider whether you have done and suff^ered 
 enough for it ; you never could do or suff'er 
 enough for it ; if any part of it, however small. 
 
52 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 
 
 depended upon your doing or suffering, you 
 could have no assurance of it. But it is given 
 you — given you by virtue of the one complete 
 sacrifice of Christ, and you have but to accept 
 it. The promise is made to you, and you have 
 but to believe it. Only believe the promise ; 
 and, in the faith of the promise, take up the 
 gift that is offered you, and it is yours. It is 
 a gift, and you are only asked to accept it ; but, 
 that you may accept it, you must, of course, 
 believe the promise ; and it is by faith, there- 
 fore, by faith in God's promise and God's offer, 
 and by that alone, that you can obtain peace 
 for your souls, and enter into full enjoyment 
 of God's favour and God's love." Of course, 
 as they go on to say in the sixth article, this 
 is but the beginning of the Christian life. We 
 are received into God's favour, and given His 
 grace, not only because of the infinite blessing 
 which that favour and forgiveness are in them- 
 selves, but in order that we may enter on a life 
 of new obedience. That sixth article, which 
 is entitled " Of the new obedience " — De nova 
 obedientia — says that " we teach that this faith 
 ought to produce good fruits, and that we are 
 bound to do good works commanded by God, 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 53 
 
 for the sake of God's will, though not that we 
 may have any confidence of deserving by those 
 works justification before God. " 
 
 The Papal Confutation, on this point, exhi- 
 bits a complete misapprehension of the question 
 at issue, and a reference to it will help to make 
 the point more clear. " It is, " they say, " a 
 Catholic truth, and in accordance with ancient 
 Councils, that men cannot merit eternal life 
 by their own powers, apart from the grace of 
 God. . . . But if it be intended to invalidate 
 the merits of men for works which are done 
 with the assistance of divine grace, the statement 
 is more suited to Manichaeans than to the 
 Catholic Church. " " It is, " they add, " alto- 
 gether contrary to the Scriptures to deny that 
 our works are meritorious, '' and they quote 
 such passages of Scripture as St. Paul's statement 
 that he had fought a good fight, and that hence- 
 forth there was " laid up for him a crown of 
 righteousness, which God, the righteous judge, 
 would give him in that day." But the Reform- 
 ers had no idea of questioning God's gracious 
 promises of reward for good works done by 
 men who enjoyed the assistance of His grace. 
 The question was. What brought them into 
 
54 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 
 
 that state of grace ? It is by virtue of their 
 forgiveness and adoption as children— in other 
 words, their justification — that they receive 
 His gracious assistance. That forgiveness, that 
 justification, constitutes the great revolution in 
 their condition ; and it was this which, the 
 Reformers declared, was offered to all men, 
 without any merits or work of their own, which 
 was bestowed upon them freely, and could be 
 accepted only as a gift. 
 
 It is because this can only be accepted, not 
 earned, that faith acquires its importance in the 
 matter. If you are told that a gift is at your 
 disposal, your enjoyment of it depends, not on 
 anything that you do, but on your belief of the 
 assurance, your trusting it, and acting upon it. 
 The strangest misconceptions have prevailed on 
 this point. It has been said that the Reformers 
 attributed some abstract virtue to Faith, — that 
 Faith, as an abstract quality, was elevated by 
 them to a novel supremacy, and that their 
 doctrine was simply, " Believe that you have and 
 you have it. " But there is nothing abstract, 
 nothing independent, in the faith of which the 
 Reformers spoke. It exists solely by virtue of 
 the antecedent promise and assurance of God ; 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH S5 
 
 and, as is urged again and again by the Confession 
 of Augsburg and the Apology for the Confession, 
 it is simply the response to that promise on the 
 part of man. A promise or assurance can only 
 be met by one of two things — belief or disbe- 
 lief. God gives us the assurance of His favour 
 and forgiveness, for Christ's sake; do you believe 
 Him or disbelieve Him ? There is no third 
 alternative. Of course, if we believe the assur- 
 ance and take the gift, and then misuse it, we 
 are liable to forfeit it. The object for which 
 a man is introduced into God's favour, and 
 given God's grace, is that he may live by that 
 grace, and may do God's will ; and if he does 
 not strive to do so, his nominal acceptance of 
 the gift is a mockery. But the gift is offered 
 to him absolutely, for Christ's sake ; it is for 
 him to take it or leave it. When he believes 
 it he has it, because it is there ; if he disbelieves 
 it, he does not have it, though it still remains 
 at his disposal ; and consequently there is no 
 possible way of stating the bare fact of the case, 
 but that a man is freely justified, through 
 Christ, when by faith he believes the offer 
 made him, and closes with it. 
 
 It should, therefore, be particularly noticed 
 
Se JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 
 
 that the phrase, Justification by faith^ is really 
 an abbreviated expression of the truth, and is 
 not the phrase originally used by the Reformers 
 in the Confession of Augsburg. They say, not 
 that men are justified by faith, but that they 
 2iVQ justified for Christ's sa^e through faith. Our 
 own article is in strict conformity with this 
 expression, and brings out its meaning still more 
 clearly, when it says that " we are accounted 
 righteous before God only for the merit of our 
 Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith, and 
 not for our own works or deservings. " That 
 we are justified by faith is a mere consequence 
 of the truth : the cardinal point is that we are 
 justified only for the merits of our Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ. That being so, our part 
 is reduced to the acceptance of the gift, by 
 virtue of a belief in the promise which off^ers 
 us the gift, and for this reason we are said to 
 be justified by faith only. 
 
 This aspect of the truth may be confirmed 
 and illustrated by another quotation from the 
 Confession, in the twentieth article, which is 
 one of its most famous passages. " As the 
 doctrine of faith," it says, " which ought to be 
 the chief doctrine in the Church, has so long 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 57 
 
 lain unknown — for all must confess that there 
 used in sermons to be the profoundest silence 
 respecting the righteousness of faith, and that 
 the doctrine of works was the only one heard 
 in Churches — our teachers have thus admon- 
 ished their Churches respecting faith : First, 
 that our works cannot reconcile God, or merit 
 the remission of sins, or grace, or justification, 
 but that this we receive only by faith, believing 
 that we are received into grace for Christ's sake, 
 who alone is set forth as our Mediator and our 
 propitiation, and by whom the Father is recon- 
 ciled. . . . This doctrine of faith is everywhere 
 treated in St. Paul, as he says: By grace ye are 
 saved^ through faith, and that not of yourselves, 
 it is the gift of God. . . . Men are also 
 admonished that this word faith does not sig- 
 nify merely a knowledge of history, such as 
 exists in the godless and in the devil, but 
 signifies a faith which believes not only the 
 history, but the effect of the history — namely, 
 this article of remission of sins, that is, that, 
 through Christ, we have grace, righteousness, 
 and the remission of sins. Now, he who knows 
 that through Christ he has the Father propi- 
 tious to him, he it is who truly knows God, is 
 
58 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 
 
 assured that he is a subject of God's care, and 
 calls upon Him in prayer. In short, he is no 
 longer without God, like the heathen. For 
 devils and the godless cannot believe this article 
 of remission of sins. Therefore they hate God 
 as an enemy, they do not call upon Him, they 
 do not expect any good from Him. Augustine, 
 in speaking of the v^ovA-faith^ similarly admon- 
 ishes the reader, and teaches that, in the Scrip- 
 tures, the v^ovdi faith is accepted, not for mere 
 knowledge, such as exists in the godless, but 
 for trust — -jiducia — which consoles and lifts up 
 terrified and troubled hearts. 
 
 " But, further, we teach that it is necessary 
 to do good works, not in order to trust to 
 merit grace by them, but for the sake of the 
 will of God. By faith alone we apprehend 
 the remission of sins and grace. But because 
 by faith the Holy Spirit is received, our hearts 
 also are renovated, and put on new affections, 
 so as to be able to produce good works. . . . 
 For human powers, without the Holy Spirit, 
 are full of godless affections, and are too feeble 
 to be able to do good works before God. 
 Moreover, they are under the dominion of the 
 devil, who impels men to various sins, to 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 59 
 
 godless opinions, to open crimes : as may be 
 seen in philosophers who have themselves tried 
 to live honourable lives, yet have not been able 
 to do it, but have been contaminated w^ith 
 many manifest sins. Such is the feebleness of 
 man v^hen he is without faith, and without 
 the Holy Spirit, and governs himself by human 
 strength alone. 
 
 " Hence it is readily apparent that our doc- 
 trine is not to be accused of prohibiting good 
 works, but much rather to be praised for 
 showing how we may be able to do good 
 works. For without faith human nature is in 
 no wise able to do the works of the first or 
 second commandment. Without faith it does 
 not call upon God, does not expect anything 
 from God, does not endure the cross, but 
 seeks for human aids, and trusts in human as- 
 sistance. Thus there reign in the heart all 
 lusts and human devices, when faith and trust 
 towards God are absent. Wherefore also Christ 
 said. Without me ye can do nothing ; and the 
 Church sings. Sine tuo numine nihil est in homine^ 
 nihil est innoxium. " 
 
 This classical passage, as it has been called, 
 brings out with great clearness the momentous 
 
6o JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 
 
 practical effect of the revival of this old 
 Catholic doctrine. It lifted all believers at 
 once into a state of confidence towards God, of 
 peace and joy, and set them free, w^ith un- 
 burdened hearts, to serve God, and to do good 
 to their neighbours. Men had been living 
 under a cloud, v^ith doubtful hearts, burdened 
 with fear of mysterious future judgments and 
 penalties, perplexing and tormenting their con- 
 sciences to make satisfaction for their sins, and 
 when they died, leaving money to buy masses 
 to be said for their release from the pains of 
 purgatory. But, by this great proclamation, 
 the cloud was suddenly lifted, the face of God 
 was revealed as gracious and propitious to them 
 in Christ, and they were only asked, for His 
 love, and for their Saviour's sake, to try to do 
 His will, and to live in faith and trust towards 
 Him, and in love towards their neighbour. It 
 was a complete transformation of life, like that 
 which was produced in the prodigal son, when, 
 after struggling back in fear and shame to his 
 Father's house, his Father saw him a great way 
 oif, and ran, and fell on his neck and kissed 
 him, and took him, though he had done nothing 
 to deserve it, back into his love and favour. 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 6i 
 
 Accordingly, wherever this doctrine was re- 
 ally grasped, we witness the development of a 
 characteristic type of free, confident, generous, 
 energetic, and childlike Christianity. The 
 word which is perhaps most characteristic of 
 the spirit fostered by the Reformers' teaching, 
 especially in Germany, is the word child — the 
 tender German word kind — with all the re- 
 lations of childlike trust and confidence, and 
 fatherly love and protection, which it evokes. 
 We feel this spirit, for instance, in the exquisite 
 morning and evening prayers which Luther 
 taught the German nation in his Shorter Cate- 
 chism : " I thank thee, my heavenly Father, 
 through Jesus Christ, Thy dear Son, that Thou 
 hast preserved me this night from all harm and 
 danger, and I pray Thee Thou wouldst also 
 protect me this day from sin and all evil, that 
 all my deeds and my life may be pleasing in 
 Thy sight. For I commend myself, my body 
 and soul, and all, into Thy hands. Let Thy 
 holy angel be with me, that the evil one may 
 have no power over me ; " and " then, " he 
 adds, " go joyfully to thy work, and sing some 
 hymn, or the Ten Commandments, or whatever 
 thy devotion may suggest. " So at night, for 
 
62 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 
 
 an evening blessing, he bids you, when you go 
 to bed, " sign thyself with the holy cross, and 
 say : " In the name of the Father, and of the 
 Son, and of the Holy Ghost ; then, kneeling 
 or standing, repeat the Creed and the Lord's 
 Prayer ; and, if thou wilt, thou mayest add this 
 short prayer : I thank Thee, my heavenly 
 Father, through Jesus Christ, Thy dear Son, 
 that Thou hast graciously protected me through 
 this day ; and I beseech Thee Thou wouldst 
 forgive me all my sins, wherever I have done 
 wrong, and graciously protect me this night. 
 For I commend myself, my body and soul, and 
 all, into Thy hands ; let Thy holy angel be 
 with me, that the evil one may have no power 
 over me ; and then, " he adds characteristically, 
 " quickly and cheerfully to sleep. " 
 
 But the same childlike spirit breathes through- 
 out the whole devotional literature, especially in 
 Germany, which has been produced under this 
 influence. I take, for instance, almost at hap- 
 hazard, from the so-called Housebook^ author- 
 ised by the General Lutheran Conference,^ the 
 following characteristic prayer : " I render 
 
 ^ Allgemeines Gebetbuch, ein Haus und Kirchenbuch, ' 
 5th edition, 1887, Leipzig. * Hausbuch, ' p. 46. 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 63 
 
 Thee, O true and faithful God, praise, honour, 
 and thanks, for Thy goodness and gracious- 
 ness, which Thou hast showed me this day, 
 although I am a poor sinner, and not worthy 
 to be called Thy child. But I know that Thy 
 mercy is very great, and far greater than my 
 sins, or the sins of the whole world. Therefore 
 I confess to Thee all my sins and misdeeds, 
 which I have committed this day, yea, and 
 from my youth up, against Thee, and beseech 
 Thee Thou wouldst forgive me, and pardon them, 
 and of Thy grace have mercy upon me, as Thy 
 dear child, and give me into the protection of 
 Thy holy angels, that they may graciously 
 protect me this night, and all future time, from 
 all harm to body and soul. To Thee I commit 
 myself, to be entirely Thine own, in death and 
 life. Let me for ever be and abide with 
 Thee. '' In such utterances love and trust 
 have cast out fear, and, in reliance on Christ's 
 promise, men and women live in perfect confi- 
 dence with their Father and their Saviour. A 
 similar consequence of the same faith is a 
 robust and manly spirit, in which men go 
 through the world with their heads up, looking 
 God and man in the face, prepared to meet the 
 
64 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 
 
 troubles of life, and to bear the penalties which 
 must, while this world lasts, attach to their 
 sins ; but fearing nothing, here or hereafter, 
 because they know, by faith, that they have 
 God's favour and forgiveness. " It is God's 
 design, " said Luther, " to have dauntless, 
 calm, and generous sons in all eternity and per- 
 fection, who fear absolutely nothing, but, in 
 reliance on His grace, triumph over and des- 
 pise all things, and treat punishments and 
 deaths as sport. He hates all the cowards, 
 who are confounded with the fear of every- 
 thing, even with the sound of a rustling leaf." ^ 
 It must suffice, in this Essay, to indicate 
 briefly the effect of this apprehension of the 
 privilege of the Christian, as the forgiven and 
 justified child of God, upon his relation to the 
 ordinances of the Gospel, and to the ministry 
 of the Church. While this doctrine was ob- 
 scured, the inevitable tendency was to regard 
 
 ^ Deus autem proposuit habere filios impavidos, secures, 
 generosos, eternaliter et perfecte, qui prorsus nihil timeant, 
 sed per gratiae suae fiduciam omnia triumphent atque con- 
 temnant, pcenasque et mortes pro ludibrio habeant; caeteros 
 ignavos odit, qui omnium timore confunduntur, etiam a 
 sonitu folii volantis. (Luther 'Resolutiones Disputationum,' 
 Conclusio xix.) 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 65 
 
 those ordinances as acts, or sacrifices, on our 
 part, by which men hoped to procure the for- 
 giveness or grace of which they felt the need. 
 They were of the nature of works, by which 
 that grace was won or merited. But from the 
 point of view of the Reformed doctrine, they 
 appeared rather as the manifestations and 
 channels of God's gifts and graces to His 
 redeemed and justified children. Instead of 
 losing in importance, they became still more 
 precious, because we could approach them, 
 submit ourselves to them, and use them, in 
 full assurance of faith. Thus the Confession, 
 after the fourth article, on Justification, goes 
 on to speak of the Ministry in the Church, 
 and says that, " in order that we may obtain 
 the faith " of which it has spoken, " the 
 ministry has been appointed of teaching the 
 Gospel and administering the Sacraments: 
 ' For by the Word and Sacraments, as by 
 instruments, the Holy Spirit is bestowed, who 
 produces faith, where and when it seems good 
 to God, in those who hear the Gospel. ' " 
 Respecting the use of the Sacraments, it says 
 fin the thirteenth article, that they were insti- 
 tuted — in words again echoed in our Articles — 
 
66 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 
 
 " not only to be badges or tokens of men's 
 profession, but rather that they should be the 
 signs and testimonies of the will of God 
 towards us, set forth to arouse and conlSrm 
 faith in those who use them. And therefore 
 the Sacraments must be so used that faith may 
 be applied to them, which believes the pro- 
 mises exhibited and shown forth in the Sacra- 
 ments. " Of Baptism, it is said in the ninth 
 article " that It is necessary to salvation, and 
 that by baptism the grace of God is bestowed; 
 and that children are to be baptised, in order 
 that, being offered to God in baptism, they 
 may be received into the favour of God." Of 
 the Lord's Supper it is said in the tenth article 
 " that the body and blood of Christ are really 
 present, and are distributed to those who par- 
 take of the Supper of the Lord. " 
 
 But it is in relation to the latter Sacrament 
 that the great change, or alteration of balance, 
 produced by the Reformed doctrine, becomes 
 most conspicuous. In the second part of the 
 Confession the abuses are mentioned which 
 the Reformers desired to see removed in respect 
 to the Mass. Their anxiety to avoid, if pos- 
 sible, any breach with their opponents is il- 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 67 
 
 lustrated by their retention of this current 
 name for the Holy Communion. They urge 
 that their Churches are falsely accused of 
 abolishing the Mass, for, they say, " it is 
 retained among us, and is celebrated with the 
 greatest reverence. Moreover, the accustomed 
 ceremonies are almost all preserved, except 
 that, for the instruction of the people, German 
 prayers or hymns are used, in addition to the 
 Latin ; for this is the great use of ceremonies, 
 to teach the unlearned ; and not only does Paul 
 prescribe that a tongue understanded of the 
 people should be used in the Church, but it is 
 so ordered by human law. Our people are 
 accustomed to use the Sacrament together, 
 if any are fit to receive it, which increases 
 the reverence and the religious use of public 
 ceremonies ; for none are admitted to the 
 Sacrament unless they have been previously 
 examined. Men are also admonished of the 
 dignity and the use of the Sacrament, what 
 consolation it brings to fearful consciences, 
 that they may learn to believe God, and to 
 expect and seek for all good things from God. 
 This is the worship with which God is well 
 pleased ; this use of the Sacrament cherishes 
 
68 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 
 
 piety towards God ; and therefore Masses are 
 not seen to be celebrated among our adversaries 
 with more rehgiousness than among ourselves." 
 They go on, hov^ever, to denounce the sale of 
 Masses, and the multiplication, partly from 
 this cause, of private Masses. The abuse 
 springs, they say, from the false supposition 
 " that the Mass is a v^ork v^hich does away 
 the sins of the living and the dead, ex opere 
 operato,'' Any such opinion, they say, "is in- 
 consistent with the Scriptures, and injurious to 
 the glory of the Passion of Christ. For the 
 Passion of Christ was an oblation and satisfac- 
 tion, not only for original guilt but also for 
 all other sins. . . . Christ commands that we 
 should do this in remembrance of Him ; 
 wherefore the Mass was instituted in order 
 that, in those who use the Sacrament, faith 
 might remember what benefits it receives 
 through Christ, and might raise and console 
 the fearful conscience. For to remember Christ 
 is to remember His benefits, and to feel that 
 they are truly offered to us. Nor is it enough 
 to remember the history, for this even the 
 Jews and the godless can do. But the Mass 
 is to be celebrated for this purpose, that in it 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 69 
 
 the Sacrament may be offered to those who 
 have need of consolation ; as Ambrose says, 
 Because I always sin, I ought always to receive 
 the remedy. And since the Mass is thus a 
 communication of the Sacrament, there is ob- 
 served among us one common Mass on every 
 holy day, and also on other days, if any desire to 
 receive the Sacrament, and it is given to those 
 who seek it. And this is no new custom in 
 the Church, for the ancients, before Gregory, 
 make no mention of private Mass, but speak 
 everywhere of the common Mass. Chrysostom 
 says, that the priest stands daily at the altar, 
 and invites some to the Communion and warns 
 others away. . . . And Paul gives this direction 
 respecting the Communion, that they should 
 wait one for the other, so that there might be 
 a common participation." 
 
 It is observable, and is made a matter of 
 complaint in the ' Papal Confutation, ' that 
 nothing is directly said of a sacrifice being 
 offered in the Mass ; and it is explained in the 
 ' Apology for the Confession ' that this omis- 
 sion was deliberately made on account of the 
 ambiguity of the word ' sacrifice '. " It may 
 mean," says the ' Apology,' " either a sacrifice 
 
70 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 
 
 of propitiation or a sacrifice of thanksgiving, " 
 and it is there explained that the Reformers 
 denied that there was any sacrifice of propit- 
 iation, or of satisfaction for sin, ofi^ered in the 
 Mass, but only a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and 
 of ourselves, our bodies and souls, in response 
 to the gracious sacrifice of Christ v^hich we are 
 commemorating. 
 
 It will, therefore, be clearly seen, upon the 
 whole, what was the eff^ect of the Reformed 
 doctrine upon the view taken of this great 
 central mystery of the Church, according to the 
 Confession of Augsburg. While retaining the 
 belief that it was in a certain sense a sacrifice, 
 the Lutheran Reformers denied that it was in 
 any sense a propitiatory sacrifice, and they 
 regarded it primarily as the means for making 
 Christians partakers of the Body and Blood of 
 our Lord, which, they say, is really present and 
 really distributed to those who partake. In 
 short, the idea of Communion, and of the 
 blessings received in Communion, is made the 
 predominant idea ; and accordingly, as a natural 
 consequence, the word Mass^ inseparably asso- 
 ciated with the old conception, falls into disuse, 
 and the Sacrament becomes more and more 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 71 
 
 known as the Holy Communion or the Holy 
 Supper. 
 
 A similar transformation passed over other 
 ceremonies and practices. Private confession, 
 for instance, was retained by the Lutherans ; 
 but the important part of it became, not the 
 confession, but the absolution. The object 
 which became predominant in the practice was 
 not that a man should enumerate his sins, which 
 was expressly stated to be unnecessary ; but that 
 he should receive the promise of God's absolu- 
 tion at the hands of God's minister, and thus 
 have his faith confirmed in God's forgiveness. 
 The mischief of monastic vows is taught to 
 consist in the belief, on which they were at 
 least too largely founded, that their observance 
 was a specially meritorious work, so as to be 
 the means of obtaining forgiveness, not only 
 for those who professed them, but for others. 
 Rules about the use of food are taught to be 
 mischievous, if they are looked on as meritor- 
 ious, and not as simple means of discipline. In 
 short, every state of life, lay as well as eccle- 
 siastical, the life and work of the father and 
 mother, the child and the servant, as much as 
 that of the priest or the monk, was brought 
 
72 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 
 
 under this wide heaven of the grace and forgive- 
 ness of God; and thus the whole of life, with 
 all its functions and duties, was made a school 
 of perfection. The practical effect is sum- 
 marily stated in the following passage from the 
 Confession,^ with which this review of the 
 original and essential principles of Protestantism 
 may be fitly concluded : — 
 
 " The precepts of God and the true worship 
 of God are obscured, when men hear that 
 monks alone are in a state of perfection ; for 
 Christian perfection is seriously to fear God, 
 and further to conceive great faith in Him, and 
 to trust, for Christ's sake, that we have God 
 appeased ; to ask of God, and surely to expect 
 His help in all things we do, according to our 
 vocation, and meanwhile diligently to do good 
 works abroad, and to serve in our vocation. In 
 these things is true perfection and the true 
 worship of God, not in celibacy, or mendicity, 
 or in a sordid dress. . . . There are examples 
 of men who have abandoned marriage, deserted 
 the administration of their country, and hidden 
 themselves in monasteries. This they called 
 flying from the world, and seeking a kind of 
 
 ^ Part ii., art. vi. 
 
ENGLISH PROTESTANTISM 73 
 
 life which would be more pleasing to God ; 
 and they did not see that God is to be served in 
 those commands which He has Himself deliv- 
 ered, not in commands which have been 
 invented by men. That is a good and perfect 
 life which has the command of God. " 
 
 Such is the Protestant ideal, as stated in its 
 original and primitive documents. This is the 
 ideal which, in its great outlines, commended 
 itself to Englishmen at the time of the Refor- 
 mation, and of which the adoption proved the 
 commencement of a new era in the life of the 
 nation as well as in the life of individuals. It 
 is in this sense that the English nation is a 
 Protestant nation, and that a Church which is j 
 to be the National Church of England must be 
 Protestant too. In days when this Protestant 
 character of the Church of England is quest- 
 ioned, it is a satisfaction to remember that it 
 has been solemnly asserted, not only in Statutes 
 of the Realm, but by both Houses of the 
 Convocation of Canterbury, at a critical mo- 
 ment of the history of the English Church. 
 In 1689, in response to a message from King 
 William III, the Bishops had proposed to thank 
 his Majesty for the zeal he showed " for the 
 
74 ENGLISH PROTESTANTISM 
 
 Protestant religion in general and the Church 
 of England in particular. " In this expression 
 they were echoing the words of the king him- 
 self, in whose mouth they were very natural. 
 The Lower House, not less naturally, preferred 
 that the Church of England should be foremost 
 in the thoughts of a King of England, and 
 induced the Upper House to vary the phrase. 
 But they went even further than the Upper 
 House had proposed in asserting their Protestant 
 sympathies. The address, as finally agreed to 
 and subscribed by both Houses, says that, 
 " We, the Bishops and Clergy of the Province 
 of Canterbury, in Convocation assembled, ha- 
 ving received a most gracious message from 
 your Majesty, hold ourselves bound in duty and 
 gratitude to return our most humble acknow- 
 ledgments for the same, and for the pious zeal 
 and care your Majesty is pleased to express 
 therein for the honour, peace, advantage, and 
 establishment of the Church of England, where- 
 by^ we doubt not^ the interest of the Protestant 
 religion in all other Protestant Churches^ which is 
 dear to us, will be the better secured. " ^ Thus 
 formally, in those critical days, did the Church 
 
 ^ Cardwells Synodalia, pp. 696-698. 
 
ENGLISH PROTESTANTISM 75 
 
 of England associate itself with " all other 
 Protestant Churches, '' and thus distinctly did 
 its representatives proclaim that " the interest 
 of the Protestant religion " was "dear to them. " 
 May that interest now and ever be dear to it, 
 and may it never cease to be similarly associated 
 with " all other Protestant Churches. " 
 
THE COURSE 
 
 OF PROTESTANT THEOLOGY IN 
 
 THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 In the sixteenth century the chief religious 
 forces which have since moved the v^orld 
 burst into action with a primal energy. It was 
 a century during which, in a singular degree, 
 the chief motive powers of Europe were 
 simultaneously at work ; in which German 
 originality, and Swiss independence, and French 
 organization, and English comprehensiveness, 
 were all brought into action on the same 
 supreme subject ; the controversies being dif- 
 fused, and the conflicts at the same time con- 
 centrated, by the use of a single learned 
 language ; so that all the various national and 
 personal influences, which now, notwithstand- 
 ing all our means of communication, it takes 
 
IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 77 
 
 years to bring face to face with one another, 
 were in immediate contact. The presence of 
 foreign professors, like Erasmus and Peter 
 Martyr, at our own Universities, is but a 
 striking illustration of the manner in which all 
 the elements of life and thought were brought 
 together in one long struggle at that time ; 
 only, alas ! to be too much separated again, 
 by the action of the Reformation itself in 
 developing national churches and national im- 
 pulses, and thus breaking the bonds, both of 
 language and religion, by which Europe had 
 become so closely united. An attempt to 
 sketch, even in outline, this vast scene of 
 theological convulsion would be involved in 
 inextricable difficulties, amidst which all prac- 
 tical interest would too probably be lost. It 
 is proposed, therefore, in the following pages, to 
 endeavour to illustrate, by means of the leading 
 controversies, some of the great principles which 
 were at work, and thus to point out, perhaps, 
 the cardinal truths and realities which, though 
 often unconsciously, are the real centres of our 
 struggles at the present day. A writer of 
 distinction spoke not long ago of " the arid 
 theology " of the sixteenth century. The 
 
78 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 expression recalls a criticism of the historian 
 Hallam on " Romeo and Juliet, " which he 
 describes as full of " frigid conceits. " They 
 are conceits, no doubt ; but the man must be 
 singularly constituted who regards them as 
 frigid. In the same way the sixteenth century 
 is full of theologies ; but a man must have a 
 strange view of human nature and human 
 history who can call them arid. At all events, 
 they split Europe into two great camps, which 
 have been more or less at war ever since ; they 
 evoked new and momentous forces in the 
 Roman camp as well as in the Protestant ; they 
 opened the springs of new religious ideals, new 
 literatures, new devotions — in a word, new 
 worlds. It is not from arid sands that such 
 fruits spring. Let us endeavour to appreciate 
 in some measure the influences which gave 
 birth to such results. 
 
 Consider, in the first place, as a matter of 
 fact, the impulse from which the whole move- 
 ment started. If we look at it from the point 
 of view of a statesman, it is obvious that the 
 first great public act in the momentous history 
 is the Diet of Worms of ij;2i. From that 
 moment the authority, not only of the Pope, 
 
IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 79 
 
 but of the Emperor, was challenged, and was 
 successfully held in check in one at least of the 
 great States of the Empire, not merely by a 
 religious reformer, but by the powerful and 
 authoritative Prince who was at the head of 
 that State. From, that moment the Empire, 
 and the Church within the Empire, was no 
 longer at one, and the long series of public 
 acts commenced by which the Protestant world 
 was called into existence and consolidated. 
 Upon that followed in the next ten years the 
 memorable Diets of Augsburg and Spires, and 
 upon them the various leagues, treaties, wars, 
 councils, and synods in which the principles 
 and results of the Reformation were developed 
 and settled. But the Diet of Worms centres 
 around Luther, and it is in the action taken with 
 respect to him, by the Pope and the Emperor 
 on the one side and the Elector of Saxony 
 on the other, that its vital importance consists. 
 This, however, is but the political aspect 
 of the fact that the motive ideas of the 
 Reformation arose out of Luther's teaching 
 and experience. No other influence had re- 
 ally threatened either the Pope's authority or ^ 
 Roman doctrine. The new learning of hu- 
 
8o PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 manism, even in the keen and satirical hands 
 of Erasmus, had not been able to effect any 
 practicable breach in the great fortifications of 
 antiquity, wealth, and power within which the 
 existing ecclesiastical system was entrenched. 
 That system had a profound hereditary hold on 
 the minds and the spiritual apprehensions of 
 men. They might distrust it or dislike it ; 
 but, in Butler's phrase, they were not so certain 
 that there was nothing in it ; and when any 
 dispute with it came to the final issue, they 
 were not prepared to defy it, with all the 
 possible consequences. But Luther succeeded 
 in convincing a number of strong men that it 
 might be defied ; he defied it himself, and he 
 laid down the principles on which his sup- 
 porters might stand in maintaining a similar 
 .4efiance. We have to look, therefore, to the 
 (cardinal principles of Luther's teaching if we 
 jare to understand the germ from which the 
 iReformation sprang. In a still higher degree 
 must we look to that teaching if we are to 
 appreciate the main currents of the reformed 
 theology. There were other theblogical in- 
 fluences, of course, side by side with his ; but 
 until his death, in i 546, his voice was certainly 
 
IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 8i 
 
 the most potent in the theological controversies 
 of his day ; and even after his death his teach- 
 ing became, in great measure, the touchstone 
 by which a large part of the reformed theology 
 was tested. 
 
 What, then, were the great principles with 
 which Luther gave this new influence to the 
 world ? It is a received maxim on this subject 
 that the Reformation rests on two principles 
 — a formal and a material one ; the formal one -^ 
 being the supreme authority of the Scriptures,'/ ^^* 
 and the material one being the doctrine ofjj ^^ 
 justification by faith. That maxim is true' ""^ 
 enough as far as it goes, but it does not take 
 us to the root of the matter. As to the formal 
 principle, that of the supreme authority of the 
 Scriptures, not only had it been asserted by 
 men like WyclifFe and Hus, but we find 
 St. Thomas Aquinas, under the first question 
 of his " Summa, " in Article VIII, laying 
 down that the authority of the Scriptures in 
 any discussion carries with it the weight of 
 necessary argument, whereas the authority of 
 the doctors of the Church has merely the force 
 of subsidiary and probable argument ; and he 
 quotes the saying of St. Augustine which 
 
82 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 played so large a part in subsequent Protestant 
 discussion : " Solis eis Scripturarum libris^ qui 
 canonici appellantur^ didici hunc timorem 
 honoremque deferre, ut nullum auctorem eorum 
 in scribendo errasse a liquid Jirmissime credam,,. 
 alios autem ita lego^ ut quantalibet sanctitate 
 doctrinaque prcepolleant^ non ideo verum putem 
 quod ipsi senserunt^ vel scrip serunty Perhaps, 
 indeed, it was not until the Council of Trent 
 J^ that this principle was formally disregarded 
 by the Church of Rome. It was a principle 
 which came to the front in the course of con- 
 troversy, but it did not constitute the vital 
 germ of Reformation life and thought. That 
 is to be seen in the other principle, justly 
 called the material one, of justification by faith, 
 which accordingly became of necessity the 
 watchword of the controversy. 
 
 But it is requisite to look even beyond this 
 principle, to its first apprehension in Luther's 
 experience, if we are duly to appreciate its 
 import. What had brought this principle 
 into such prominence and intensity in Luther's 
 ^. consciousness ? It was not any theological con- 
 troversy, not the pressure of any scholastic 
 argument, not the dispute about indulgences. 
 
IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 83 
 
 nor any other public occasion whatever; it was ^^ 
 simply his personal spiritual experience in 
 realizing the relation of his soul to God. The 
 craving of his soul, to which every other was 
 secondary, was for peace with God, and for 
 assurance of the love of God. To obtain this 
 peace he had entered a monastery, and submitted 
 himself for years, with the utmost strictness, to 
 its hard discipline ; but he failed to assure him- 
 self of peace with God. He remained sensible 
 of his sin, of the deep imperfection attaching to 
 all his efforts, even the best ; and he felt him- 
 self unworthy of God's favour and love. The 
 main point was that it was not enough for 
 him that his faults and sins should be forgiven, 
 in the sense of due satisfaction being made for 
 them, either here or hereafter, in this life or 
 in purgatory. For the penalties of sin he 
 cared comparatively little ; the great trouble 
 was that sin stood between himself and 
 God, and prevented his living in the assured 
 sense of God's favour. The forgiveness he 
 cared for was not a material but a personal 
 forgiveness. As he himself put it, in one of 
 his paradoxical sayings : " A man forgiven by 
 God would feel himself in heaven although in 
 
84 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 hell, and a man not forgiven by God would 
 feel himself in hell although in heaven." The 
 personal relation of mutual love and trust 
 between himself and God was what he cared 
 for, and what he was striving for, and this 
 seemed to him to be rendered impracticable 
 by his inveterate sin and corruption. 
 y It is the idea of this personal relation which 
 it is essential to grasp with full distinctness and 
 intensity if the cardinal doctrine of the Refor- 
 mation is to be realized. It is quite possible/ 
 to work out a whole system of theolog)j 
 without apprehending this personal relation, 
 or taking any practical account of it. God 
 may be regarded as the Supreme Judge, the 
 Father of our spirits, but at an unapproachable 
 distance ; and the soul's relation to Him may 
 be mainly regarded as that of a subject to a 
 sovereign, or, if that of a child to a father, 
 yet of a child held at too great a distance to 
 have intimate personal relations with its parent. 
 So far as this is the case, the sense of sin and 
 guilt becomes the sense of having incurred an 
 incapacity or a penalty, and the urgent question 
 is in what way each particular sin or failure 
 can be atoned for, or have amends made for it. 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 85 
 
 The sense of intimate personal relationship may 
 be hardly realized as possible, and the absence of 
 it, consequently, may not be a perpetual grief. 
 
 This is really the key to the whole of that ^ 
 Roman and ecclesiastical system of penance, 
 confession, and satisfaction, against which the 
 Reformation waged such war. It was a system 
 for making amends and procuring pardon for 
 particular sins ; and from that point of view 
 it had a certain reasonableness, or could at 
 least be presented in a fairly reasonable form. 
 But to the great mass of men and women who 
 submitted to it, the question of their personal 
 relation to God no more arose in their minds 
 than the question of their personal relation to 
 the Emperor in the case of their violating some 
 imperial ordinance. The Emperor personally 
 was nothing to them, nor they to him, except 
 so far as they came into conflict with his 
 authority in respect to the particular ordinance 
 in question ; and all that he expected of them 
 was that they should bear the punishment, or 
 make the amends, which the law or the ordi- 
 nance required. Even the recognised and 
 important distinction between culpa and pcena^ 
 guilt and punishment, did not necessarily touch 
 
86 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 the central point of the matter. Culpa^ or guilt, 
 might be regarded as simply a standing liability 
 to poena^ or punishment, until the requisite 
 amends were made. It need not involve, and 
 under the prevalent feeling now under conside- 
 ration it did not involve, that sense of personal 
 disfavour, of the loss of peace and communion 
 with a beloved person, which is the craving from 
 which the reformed principle takes its rise. A 
 similar point may be considered in reference to 
 \}ci^ v^oxdi forgiveness^ which has practically two 
 meanings, or a double meaning. It may mean 
 the remission of a penalty, the passing over of 
 an offence, with scarcely any reference to per- 
 sonal relations between the person who forgives 
 and the person who is forgiven. But it may 
 also mean the restoration of personal relations, 
 with scarcely any reference to the remission or 
 removal of the material consequences of the 
 offence. In family relations there may be of- 
 fences of which the consequences are irreparable, 
 and for which the offender must permanently 
 suffer, but which may, nevertheless, be perfectly 
 forgiven, in the sense of entire love, confidence, 
 and favour being re-established between the 
 offending and the offended relatives. 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 87 
 
 Now, this is the distinction which was 
 brought out with a new vividness by Luther's 
 consciousness and Luther's experience, and 
 which gave rise to the revived apprehension 
 of St. Paul's doctrine of justification. He 
 wanted to know whether he could be assured 
 of his personal acceptance with God ; whether 
 he could be taken again to his Father's heart, 
 and live in the light of his Father's counte- 
 nance. That, he was sure, he could not know, 
 he could not claim, upon the ground of his 
 own condition, or upon the basis of any obe- 
 dience of his own. Justification meant being 
 forgiven in the personal sense of the word — 
 taken into favour, given the position of a good 
 child in the heavenly Father's household, or, 
 in technical language, accounted righteous 
 
 // before God. _It did not mean, and does not 
 
 '^fnean, forgiveness in the mere material sense 
 of being relieved from all the penalties of sin. 
 Many of those penalties may be permanent in 
 this world, and may have their efi^ect on our 
 position in the final judgment ; but they need 
 not interfere with the blessed personal relations 
 towards God of filial confidence, trust, love, 
 and perfect peace. 
 
88 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 Now, justification, conceived in this sense, 
 can only be an act of personal grace, and it 
 may be, and in human relations it often must 
 be, granted from motives which are quite 
 independent of the merits or acts of the person 
 to whom it is offered. It may be offered to 
 a son for the sake of his mother, to a husband 
 or wife for the sake of a child, to another for 
 the sake of a friend ; but whatever the cause 
 for which it is offered, there is one thing 
 indispensable to its enjoyment, which is at the 
 same time the only means by which it can be 
 enjoyed. It must be believed and accepted. 
 Not to believe or accept a forgiveness thus 
 offered is, indeed, a renewed offence of the 
 highest kind ; it is a refusal of love, an act of 
 ingratitude, which must cause a greater personal 
 separation than ever. But, on the other hand, 
 if it is accepted, it must be accepted simply as 
 an act of grace ; and, though it involves the 
 highest obligations for the future, yet to 
 attempt, in accepting it, to plead any merits 
 of one's own, past, present, or future, would be 
 felt among human beings to be evidence of a 
 total want of appreciation of the grace with 
 which the forgiveness is offered. Such is the 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 89 
 
 gracious, natural, human analogy, by which 
 the doctrine of justification for Christ's sake by- 
 faith only may be best illustrated. If a father 
 may offer forgiveness to a son for his mother's 
 sake, we may well conceive of God as offering 
 us forgiveness for Christ's sake, for Christ's 
 love, Christ's suffering, Christ's perfect obe- 
 dience ; and in this sense the righteousness of 
 Christ may well be regarded as covering us, 
 and being imputed to us, not in any fictitious 
 sense, but as the offering for the sake of which 
 God receives us again into His favour, and 
 admits us to communion with Him, if we do 
 but believe Him and accept His love, with all 
 it involves and requires. It may, perhaps, be 
 said, in passing, that there seems something 
 more natural and reasonable than appears often 
 to be realized in the old theological language 
 respecting our Saviour's having fulfilled the 
 law for us, not only by His death, but by His 
 life, and having thus given satisfaction to God's 
 justice. It seems evident, at least, that if the 
 human race had not presented one single 
 instance of the fulfilment of the law of its 
 nature, if every being in human form had 
 failed to realize the Divine ideal, it would have 
 
90 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 been impossible for Divine satisfaction to have 
 rested on such a race. Whereas, on the other 
 hand, when that ideal had once been realized, 
 an earnest had at least been afforded of the 
 Divine purpose, and God could once more say 
 of the nature, at least, which He had created, 
 that it was very good. 
 
 But we are not here concerned, as a matter 
 of controversy, with the arguments on which 
 the doctrine of justification by faijh rests, except 
 so far as is necessary to illustrate its meaning 
 . as the starting-point of the reformed theology. 
 The considerations which have been adduced 
 are of importance as illustrating the fact, that 
 the cardinal principle of the Reformation was 
 the revival in men of a sense of their personal 
 relation to God, as the beginning and the end, 
 the Alpha and the Omega, of their religious 
 life. But unless it could be proclaimed to 
 them that that relation was one of peace and 
 love, it would have been impracticable to 
 revive such a sense. Unless men have the 
 assurance that they are at peace with God, 
 they inevitably shrink from Him. They hide 
 themselves among the trees of the garden of 
 the world whenever they hear His voice. 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 91 
 
 They may set up, and may develop infinitely, 
 ecclesiastical systems for acquittal and discharge 
 from His judgments ; but they will not dare 
 to take His hand, as it were, and look up to 
 Him face to face, and live in assured trust and 
 love towards Him. Yet it is this latter feeling 
 which is necessary to bring out the full strength 
 of the human soul. It is only when a man can 
 say, in the full sense of the words, " O Lord, 
 my Strength and my Redeemer, " when he is 
 assured that the eternal God is his refuge, and 
 that underneath him are the everlasting arms, 
 that the full truth, energy, and independence of 
 his nature can be exerted. But this is the new 
 life which was revived in Christendom by the 
 exhibition of the truth of justification by faith. 
 It was not merely proclaimed, it was exhibited 
 in action. The denunciation of indulgences, 
 and the long controversy which followed, had 
 the eff^ect of gradually familiarizing the minds 
 of all thoughtful and earnest men with the grand 
 truth, that they could all claim the forgiveness, 
 the favour and the love of God, whenever they 
 believed His promises for Christ's sake, and 
 would accept them. An enormous cloud of 
 apprehension was lifted oiF their minds, and they 
 
92 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 were able to look even the Papal system in the 
 face, and to act on their own consciences, in 
 defiance of all consequences, whether in this 
 world or in the next. 
 
 This revived sense of peace with God became 
 everything to them, and altered all the propor- 
 tions of their religious and moral life. It 
 explains the reason for much that might other- 
 wise seem barren controversy respecting such 
 questions as the relation of faith and good 
 j works. What was really at issue, in all the 
 I disputes which prevailed on that subject during 
 / the sixteenth century, was not so much the 
 truth as the balance of truth. The history of 
 religion exhibits a perpetual oscillation between 
 the relative attractions of the first Command- 
 ment and the second. Our Lord said that the 
 first of all the Commandments is : " Thou shalt 
 love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 
 with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. '' 
 " This, " He said, " is the first and great Com- 
 mandment, and the second is like unto it, Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. " That 
 first Commandment is so high an ideal that 
 human nature is constantly inclined to do un- 
 consciously what an eminent and beautiful 
 
THE NEW LIFE 93 
 
 writer — the author of " Ecce Homo " — act- 
 ually printed, and to act as if our Lord had 
 said : " The first of all the Commandments is, 
 Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. '* ^ 
 It is possible, at all events, to pursue so earnestly 
 a religion of good works towards our neigh- 
 bour, as to put practically in the second place 
 a religion of love towards God. That was in 
 the Middle Ages, and is now, one of the dangers 
 of the Roman system. Its orders of monks, 
 with their lives of self-sacrifice for the good of 
 others, may so dazzle the minds of men and 
 women as to make them forget that the true 
 law of human nature, as declared by our Lord, 
 is not that we should love our neighbour more 
 than ourselves, but that we should love God 
 with the whole heart and soul, and our neigh- 
 bour as ourselves. What was aimed at by the ^ 
 \ first principle of the reformers was to restore 
 I the true balance in this respect — to make trust 
 [ in God, love of God, peace with God, the 
 supreme object of men's lives. j 
 
 In this effort their temptation, perhaps, was 
 
 ^ " Ecce Homo, " fifth edition, p. 156 : "To love one's 
 neighbour as one's self was, Christ said, the first and greatest 
 law. " 
 
94 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 to overweight the balance in the other direc- 
 tion. As Archbishop Benson once said, if you 
 make a ship roll too far on one side, it can 
 hardly be saved from sinking without rolling 
 back, in the first instance, too far on the other. 
 But, at all events, this is the key to the whole 
 reformed teaching on the subject of good 
 works, and when duly applied, it guards effec- 
 tually against any danger in that respect. 
 " Love God, " said the Reformers, " with all 
 your heart and soul, and love to your neigh- 
 bour will follow " ; but it is too possible, if 
 you forget the proportion which our Lord 
 establishes between love to God and love to 
 your neighbour, that your very enthusiasm 
 for good works, your very " enthusiasm of 
 humanity, " as it was called by the writer 
 just mentioned, may be so exclusively devel- 
 oped, as to blind your eyes to the nature 
 of your relation to God, and thus gradually 
 to weaken all those higher qualities of the 
 human soul which depend on your duly 
 realizing that relation. 
 
 These controversies, in short, were not con- 
 troversies on points of abstract theology, but 
 between two great conceptions and systems of 
 
THE NEW LIFE 95 
 
 life. The reformed ideal was that of the life 
 of men justified by faith, living, all alike, clergy 
 or laity, men or women, in the faith and love, as 
 well as the fear, of God, clinging to His peace 
 and His communion as the supreme privilege of 
 their lives, and serving their neighbour in their 
 ordinary vocations as their duty might require. 
 On the other side, taken as a whole, was a 
 system of life in which men and women lived, 
 indeed, in the fear of God, but without full 
 assurance of peace with Him, never assured of 
 their personal forgiveness, always apprehensive 
 of the punishments, in this world and the next, 
 due to their particular sins, and striving, by 
 heroic and often admirable efforts of self- 
 sacrifice for their neighbours, to make amends 
 for their faults, and to win some remission of 
 evil for themselves and others. The struggle, 
 however disguised under various forms of con- 
 troversy, is a struggle as to the preponderance 
 of the first or the second Commandment. But 
 the first Commandment can never retain the 
 preponderance which, is given to it by our 
 Saviour except on the basis of the assurance 
 of the free personal forgiveness of the soul 
 for Christ's sake. When it knows that that 
 
96 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 forgiveness is freely offered to its faith, it can 
 give its v^hole heart to God v^ithout reserve, 
 and then its duties to its neighbour appear in 
 their natural form and proportion, and it devotes 
 itself to them without exaggeration, in pursu- 
 ance of the ordinary claims of life. 
 . This consideration, it may be observed, will 
 explain the keenness, and, alas ! sometimes the 
 bitterness, of some of the controversies respect- 
 ing the nature of justification by faith which 
 arose, in the course of the century, among the 
 Reformers themselves, and to which it will 
 be sufficient, from this point of view, briefly 
 to refer, without pursuing them in detail. 
 Such, in particular, was the remarkable contro- 
 versy with Osiander. He, although firmly 
 asserting the truth of our justification for 
 Christ's sake, and not for any merits of our 
 own, yet urged that it must be for the sake, 
 not of what Christ had done for us, but for 
 the sake of that which He produced in us, by 
 the infusion of His own righteousness, that 
 we were accounted righteous before God ; in 
 fact, he practically revived that interpretation 
 of justification which treats it as meaning to 
 make righteous, instead of to account righteous. 
 
THE NEW LIFE 97 
 
 Our Saviour, he represented, had redeemed the 
 world by His Hfe and death, and had thus 
 made our justification possible ; but we can 
 enjoy that justification only when, by union 
 with Christ through faith. His Divine life 
 becomes our righteousness. In technical lan- 
 guage, this amounted to teaching justification 
 by infused, instead of by imputed, righteous- 
 ness, and it was at once opposed with the 
 greatest earnestness by the leading Reformers, 
 including Melanchthon. He urged at once 
 that such a doctrine made our justification or 
 forgiveness dependent, after all, on ourselves, 
 on our own condition, and not on the sacrifice 
 made for us by Christ. Osiander's teaching, 
 he said, withdraws the honour due to the 
 Mediator, obscures the grievous nature of the 
 sin which remains even in those who are par- 
 takers of the righteousness of Christ, destroys 
 the chief consolation of pious souls, and leads 
 them into a state of perpetual doubtfulness. In 
 fact, Osiander's theory struck at the very nerve of 
 the reformed doctrine, because it deprived men 
 of the right of claiming God's favour and peace 
 with God for the sake of Christ alone, and 
 consequently of entering into the enjoyment of 
 
98 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 that peace immediately and without reserve.*^ 
 A man must wait, according to any such 
 theory, until he can satisfy himself that the 
 righteousness of Christ is duly working in him, 
 before he can look up to God in full confi- 
 dence as His justified child. The danger and 
 mischief of it was not that it was a technical 
 theological error, but that it barred the way to 
 that life in the light of God's countenance 
 which, from the first moment of awakening in 
 the soul, the Reformers desired men to realize. 
 So, again, the contention of others, like Major, 
 that good works were necessary to justification, 
 was similarly resisted at the outset ; not because 
 there was the slightest question, in the minds 
 of any but a few fanatics, that good works and 
 righteousness are an essential part of a Christian 
 life, but because it was essential, for the purpose 
 of maintaining a free relation of trust in God, 
 that His forgiveness should be recognised as 
 offered to us of His own grace and favour, 
 antecedently to anything that we have done or 
 might do. In one instance after another, the 
 Reformers of the first half of the sixteenth 
 century checked with the utmost earnestness 
 any tendency to misapprehend the nature of 
 
THE NEW LIFE 99 
 
 the forgiveness and justification, of the free 
 admittance to God's favour, which they pro- 
 claimed, or to obscure our claim to it by- 
 putting forward any conditions for it but the 
 merits of the Saviour Himself. What they 
 were guarding against was not a mere erroneous 
 doctrine respecting the terms of salvation, but 
 the danger of weakening that sense of peace 
 and free communion with God, which was 
 the very ground on which they stood and the 
 air in which they breathed. 
 
 It will be considered in the sequel how 
 this principle worked itself out, in the course 
 of the century, upon other great theological 
 questions, such as the Sacraments and present 
 predestination ; but, as a conclusion to this 
 discussion, it may be pointed out that these 
 considerations materially affect the practical 
 character of that " formal principle " of the 
 Reformation to which reference was made at 
 the outset. " The Word of God " assumes a 
 new character to men under the conscious 
 belief of their immediate communion with 
 Him, and of their living in the daily light of 
 His countenance. It was one thing to uphold 
 the Scriptures as the supreme authority, the 
 
lOo PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 ultimate law of the Church, and another thing 
 to regard them as a daily lamp to the feet, and 
 a light to the paths, of those who were under 
 God's direct guidance and who looked up to 
 Him for that guidance, day by day. The 
 astonishing feat by which, at the very com- 
 mencement of the German movement, the New 
 Testament, and soon afterwards the Old Testa- 
 ment, were placed, in the vernacular, at the 
 command of the German people, had an im- 
 mense influence in deepening and maintaining 
 this result. Within a few years after the first 
 note had been struck, every man and woman 
 who understood Luther's German had the means 
 of living under the daily influence of the Word 
 of God, as contained in the Holy Scriptures. 
 'That expression, the Word of God^ did not mean 
 in Luther's mouth, nor in the mouths of the 
 Reformers, merely the canon of Scripture. It 
 was not the mere letter of the canon which 
 they had in view, as a fixed and, as it were, 
 legal authority. But God Himself was re- 
 cognised as speaking in those Scriptures ; the 
 words of our Lord in the New Testament, the 
 words which He spake by holy men and 
 prophets in the Old Testament, were felt to be 
 
THE NEW LIFE loi 
 
 His voice, bringing those who read them into 
 direct communion with him. The Scriptures 
 thus established and maintained a relation be- 
 tween God and man by the same means as 
 that by which such personal relations are main- 
 tained among ourselves — by mutual voices and 
 assurances. There was thus a greater elasticity 
 about the conception than has often prevailed 
 in later times. But one thine was the centrel^ 
 
 if 
 
 of all the life and all the teaching of the *^ 
 Reformers — that God was speaking to them 
 as their reconciled Father, and that they were 
 in direct communion with Him ; and in that 
 faith they felt themselves independent of any 
 human power, whether embodied in Church 
 or State. It was this feeling, above all, which 
 gave to human life that new impulse and 
 energy, which constituted the Reformation so J 
 momentous an epoch in human history. 
 
 II 
 
 Let us proceed to consider the manner in 
 which these cardinal principles of the Reformed 
 Theology affected in the course of their 
 development the general system and the 
 
I02 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 ordinances of the Church. Of course, they 
 had at once the momentous effect of remov- 
 ing any sense of necessary dependence on 
 the Hierarchy for the highest of all spiritual 
 blessings — that of peace with God, and for 
 eternal salvation. When peace v^ith God v^as 
 recognised as open for Christ's sake to every- 
 one v^ho v^ould seek it and accept it by faith, 
 it follov^ed that no one v^as dependent for 
 his salvation upon Pope, Bishop, or Priest. 
 It w^as the removing of this apprehension 
 from the popular mind, by means of the 
 primary principle of the Reformation, v^hich 
 rendered it possible to effect reforms opposed 
 by the Hierarchy. If, in any sense, the 
 Pope, v^ith the clergy under his jurisdiction, 
 held the keys of Heaven, then, although they 
 might be resisted, yet, in the last resort, it 
 w^as impracticable to disobey them ; and it v^as 
 this apprehension which lay, like a paralysis, 
 upon the nations of Europe for some centuries. 
 Episcopal and priestly organization might be 
 indispensable to the best welfare of the Church; 
 and Melanchthon, in his signature to the Smal- 
 caldic Articles, expressed his willingness even 
 to recognise the Primacy of the Pope, as a 
 
THE CHURCH AND CLERGY 103 
 
 matter of human order, if only he would allow 
 the Gospel to be preached. But for the sal- 
 vation of individual souls, and consequently for 
 the existence of a community of " those that 
 were being saved, " here and hereafter, neither 
 Pope nor Bishop was essential. In the familiar 
 language of English divines of the Stuart 
 period. Episcopacy might be of " the bene esse^' 
 but not of the esse of a Church. The Roman 
 idea of a Church was that it was a visible body 
 in communion with the Roman See, and in 
 which the ministers derived their whole author-: 
 ity through that See. For this conception the! 
 reformed principle substituted at once the idea 
 which is expressed in the Augsburg Confession, 
 and, in very similar terms, in our own Nine- 
 teenth Article, that the visible Church is a 
 congregation of faithful or believing men, " in 
 the which the pure word of God is preached, 
 and the Sacraments be duly ministered accord- 
 ing to Christ's ordinance in all those things 
 that of necessity are requisite to the same. " 
 It was also recognised in all reformed Churches, 
 including the English Church as represented 
 even by such men as Laud and Cosin, that 
 Episcopal Orders, however desirable, were not 
 
I04 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 essential for that due ministration. On all 
 hands, therefore, within the Reformed Com- 
 munions, whether in Germany, Switzerland, 
 France, or England, it was acknowledged that 
 a true Church might subsist, although the im- 
 mediate and regular connection of its ministry 
 with the ancient episcopal succession was 
 broken. 
 
 This momentous conclusion involved one 
 danger which, perhaps to the great advantage 
 of the Reforming Movement, was soon made 
 apparent. If, without sacrificing the highest 
 interests of their spiritual salvation, men could 
 be independent of one external organization, 
 why not of all external ceremonies ? Why not 
 of the Sacraments, or of the Scriptures them- 
 selves ? Why could they not be saved by the 
 simple, immediate operation of the Spirit of 
 God upon their souls, working in them faith 
 in Christ, and bringing them into union with 
 Him ? This was the Anabaptist tendency, 
 which broke out very early in the course of 
 the Reformation, and led not merely to grievous 
 religious fanaticism, but to violent social and 
 civil tumults, which had to be suppressed by 
 fire and sword. The effect was to lead Luther 
 
THE WORD AND SACRAMENTS 105 
 
 and his fellow reformers to reassert with the 
 utmost energy the principle, on which they 
 had insisted from the first, that the external 
 agencies of God's Word and the Sacraments 
 were, by God's ordinance, indispensable to 
 spiritual life, to the very existence of a Church, 
 and consequently to the saving efficacy of the 
 Gospel. The main principle of this assertion 
 is put by Luther with characteristic practical 
 force in his observations on Baptism in his 
 larger catechism. " Our wiseacres " he says, ^ 
 " with their modern ideas, make out that faith 
 alone will save us, and that work and outward 
 things cannot effect anything. Our answer is 
 that assuredly nothing works in us but faith, 
 as we shall see from what follows. But these 
 blind leaders will not see that faith must have 
 something to believe — that is, to which it can 
 cling, on which it can stand and rest. So faith 
 clings to the water, and believes that Baptism 
 confers salvation and life, not through the 
 water (as has been sufficiently said), but because 
 it embodies God's Word and command, and 
 because His name is attached to it. Now, in 
 
 ^ " Luther's Primary Works, " edited by Waceand Buch- 
 keim, p. 134. 
 
io6 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 believing this, what else do I believe but on 
 God, as on Him who has added His Word to 
 it, and given us this outward sign, so that we 
 may understand what a treasure we possess 
 in it ? 
 
 " But there are some people mad enough to 
 separate faith from the sign to which the faith 
 is joined and attached, because it is an outward 
 thing. Yea, it is and must be outward, in 
 order that we may grasp it with our senses and 
 understand it, and thus have it impressed on 
 our hearts, just as the whole Gospel is an out- 
 ward sermon by word of mouth. In brief, 
 whatever God does and effects in us He accom- 
 plishes through such outward means ; and, 
 whenever He speaks, and wherever and through 
 whatsoever He speaks, let faith look to it and 
 hold fast to it. " 
 
 So again, in a classical passage in his treatise 
 " Against the Heavenly Prophets, concerning 
 Images and the Sacrament, " he says : ^ " God 
 of His great goodness has again given us the 
 pure Gospel, the noble and precious treasure of 
 our salvation ; and upon this gift must follow 
 inwardly Faith and the Spirit in a good con- 
 ^ " Luther's Works," Erlangen Edition, vol. xxix, p. 208. 
 
THE WORD AND SACRAMENTS 107 
 
 science. . . . But the matter goes thus : 
 When God sends His Holy Gospel to us, He 
 deals with us in two ways. In the first place, 
 externally ; in the second place, internally. 
 Externally He deals with us through the spoken 
 Word of the Gospel, and through corporal 
 signs, such as Baptism and the Sacrament. 
 Inwardly He deals with us through the Holy 
 Spirit and faith, with other gifts ; but all in 
 due measure and order, so that the external 
 things should and must come first, and the 
 inner ones come afterwards and through the 
 external ones ; so that He has resolved to give 
 no man the internal things except through the 
 external, and He will give no one the Spirit or 
 faith without the external word and sign which 
 He has appointed. " 
 
 Thus in Luther's view, with which all the 
 great Reformed Churches were in harmony, it 
 is an unalterable Divine ordinance that spiritual 
 life and Salvation, and the faith which lays hold 
 upon them, are bound up with the use of the 
 Word of God, and of the Sacraments which 
 were instituted by Christ. The continuity of 
 the Church, from its foundation by our Lord 
 to the present day, is thus guaranteed by these 
 
io8 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 external ordinances, which, from the first, have 
 been passed on from generation to generation. 
 That continuity does not depend upon the 
 perpetual succession of a special order of indi- 
 viduals, but upon the perpetual succession of a 
 Society, all the members of vs^hich are marked 
 by these seals, of the Word of God and the 
 Sacraments. 
 
 This consideration points to the reason v^hy 
 special emphasis was given, in all the Reform- 
 ed Churches, to the two Sacraments of Baptism 
 and the Lord's Supper. It arose, not from a 
 depreciation of the Sacramental idea, but from 
 the very opposite cause — the exaltation of the 
 conception of a Sacrament as a Divine Ordin- 
 ance. The primary impulse at work, as shown 
 in the previous discussion, was to bring men 
 into direct communion with God, to awaken in 
 their minds the sense of that communion, and 
 to induce them to live in reliance on it. For 
 this purpose a solemn ceremony, expressly es- 
 tablished by Christ Himself, and expressly 
 ordered by Christ Himself to be repeated to 
 all time, appeared of the highest conceivable 
 value. Baptism in Christ's name, and by 
 Christ's authority, conveyed a direct message 
 
THE WORD AND SACRAMENTS 109 
 
 from Christ, and the celebration of the Lord's 
 Supper in the words in which our Saviour 
 instituted it, the offering to the faithful, by 
 His express command, of the sacred gifts which 
 He promised with those words, could not but 
 have the supreme value of a direct message and 
 offer from Him. 
 
 It is here that there was, from the first, a 
 cardinal difference between the school of the 
 Swiss Reformer (^2wingli and the main body 1 
 of the Reformed Communions, whether Lu- 
 theran or Calvinistic. Zwingli's mind, like 
 that of his countrymen in general, was plain 
 and practical, and indisposed to the more 
 mysterious aspects of the Christian revelation. 
 Luther, on the contrary, was marked by the 
 deep sense of mystery characteristic of the 
 highest German mind ; and while Zwingli7 
 would bring down heaven to earth, within the I 
 compass of the intelligence of a Swiss citizen, j 
 Luther clung to those aspects of Christian j 
 truth which lifted men above themselves, into 
 spiritual and heavenly spheres of thought andj 
 faith. The Swiss confessions, indeed, under 
 the constantly-increasing influence of Calvin, 
 approximated to the other Reformed Churches 
 
no PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 in their general view of the Sacraments ; but 
 Zwingli's own disposition of mind towards 
 them was of a far lower character, as may be 
 illustrated from his treatise " De Vera et falsa 
 Religione. " ^ "A Sacrament, " he says, " can 
 be nothing else than an initiation or public 
 consignation, and can have no power to set the 
 conscience free ; for the conscience can only be 
 set free by God, for it is only known to Him, 
 and He alone can penetrate into it ; . . .so 
 that it is an utter error to suppose that the 
 Sacraments have a purifying effect. . . . They 
 are signs or ceremonies by which a man 
 approves himself to the Church as a candidate 
 or soldier of Christ, and it is the Church which 
 they assure of your faith rather than yourself. 
 . . . Christ has left us two Sacraments — 
 Baptism and the Supper of the Lord — and by 
 these we are so consecrated that by the one we 
 bestow a Christian name ; by the other, in 
 memory of the victory of Christ, we approve 
 ourselves to be members of His Church. In 
 Baptism we receive a symbol that we will frame 
 our life according to the rule of Christ ; in the 
 Lord's Supper we give evidence that we trust 
 ^ Op. iii. 229-231. 
 
THE WORD AND SACRAMENTS iii 
 
 in the death of Christ, when we are thankfully 
 and joyfully present in the assembly of those 
 who are rendering thanks to the Lord for that 
 benefit of redemption which He bestowed on 
 us by His death. " The Spirit, he maintained, 
 needs no medium, and the Sacraments, there- 
 fore, should not be regarded as channels of 
 Spiritual grace. 
 
 Some question has been raised of late as to 
 the real nature of Zwingli's views on this 
 subject, and attempts have been made to 
 vindicate for him a higher conception of the 
 office of the Sacraments than is generally as- 
 signed to him. He gave way, it may be, from 
 time to time, to the loftier views which were 
 pressed upon him in the course of his contro- 
 versies with the German Reformers. But the 
 tendency of his thought is clearly indicated in 
 such a passage as that just quoted. The truth 
 is, Zwingli had never gone through Luther's 
 intense spiritual experience. He was a hu- 
 manist rather than a theologian, and his mind 
 was more congenial with Erasmus than withl 
 Luther. He was asserting his countrymen's] 
 independence of the Pope in much the same; 
 spirit in which his ancestors had vindicated 
 
112 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 I their independence of the House of Austria. 
 I He was earnestly and honestly desirous of 
 getting rid of the superstitions and abuses with 
 which in his native country the Roman Church 
 was discredited ; but he does not exhibit that 
 I profound religious impulse, towards reviving a 
 1 personal relation with God, which was the 
 (moving impulse of the German Reformation. 
 ■Consequently the Sacraments are to him only 
 external signs and symbols which must be freed 
 I of superstitious accessories ; but they have no 
 special preciousness in his eyes. To Luther 
 I — and to Calvin also in a great degree, but to 
 Luther above all — they, with the Word of 
 God, are the most precious things on earth. 
 They are the very touch of God's hand, the 
 direct message of Christ. Where they are 
 administered, and two or three are gathered 
 together in His name, there is He in the 
 midst of them, dispensing His grace, offering 
 forgiveness, or bestowing His very flesh and 
 blood to be the food of the soul. They are, 
 in the first instance, acts of God, not acts of 
 man. It is not we, in the first instance, who 
 offer anything to God in them ; it is He who 
 offers every spiritual blessing to us. 
 
THE WORD AND SACRAMENTS 113 
 
 But this being so, no ceremony which does 
 not rest upon a similarly direct appointment of 
 Christ could be admitted on a level with the 
 two Sacraments which did rest upon that 
 appointment. A state of life allowed in the 
 Scriptures, a ceremony due to the appointment 
 of the Apostles, such as Confirmation, could 
 not for a moment be admitted as similar in 
 authority and importance to ceremonies which 
 had Christ's express word for them and with 
 them. The distinction, therefore, between 
 the two Sacraments and " those five commonly 
 called Sacraments, " which is characteristic of 
 all the Reformed Churches, will be deemed of 
 importance, just in proportion as it is felt to be 
 of importance to assert that principle of direct 
 relation to God, which lies at the root of the 
 Reformation. Under the Romish conception, 
 and others allied with it, the Sacraments are 
 channels through which a mysterious spiritual 
 force or grace is derived into the soul ; and, 
 according to the Roman system, that force or 
 grace may be so derived by the mere operation 
 of the ceremony, without any apprehension by 
 the recipient of his personal relation to Christ 
 and to God. Under that view, the conception 
 
 8 
 
114 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 of Sacraments may be indefinitely extended, and 
 there seems no reason in the nature of things 
 why they should be restricted to the number of 
 seven. But the moment you regard it as 
 essential to the idea and the blessing of a Sacra- 
 ment that it should be a direct pledge and 
 message from Christ to the individual — an act 
 continually repeated by His express command 
 and in His name — then the restriction of the 
 number of ceremonies properly called Sacra- 
 ments to twro becomes no arbitrary arrange- 
 ment, but a v^itness to one of the highest 
 Christian privileges. To put the matter in 
 another form, which is eminently characteristic 
 of Luther's thought, the two Sacraments are 
 ceremonies which embody words or promises 
 of God. They contain the whole word of 
 God, the whole Gospel in brief, and whoever 
 believes the promises they bring assuredly re- 
 ceives the grace so promised. God speaking 
 to men and giving to men, and men receiving 
 in thankfulness and faith — this is the gracious 
 reality which, according to the reformed 
 theology, the Sacraments exhibit. 
 
 It is unnecessary to follow out this view in 
 detail in respect to the Sacrament of Baptism. 
 
THE LORD'S SUPPER 115 
 
 It is sufficiently illustrated by the brief passage 
 from Luther's larger catechism which has been 
 already quoted ; and it is a happy circumstance 
 that, if we put aside the purely Zwinglian view 
 and the exceptional case of the Anabaptists, we 
 may say that there was no material controversy 
 among the Reformers with respect to the bless- 
 ing conveyed in baptism, or the means by 
 which it is received. Baptism gave rise, at all 
 events, to none of that intense division which 
 was occasioned by the controversies respecting 
 the Lord's Supper. That sacred ordinance di- 
 vided the Churches of the Reformation at 
 least as much as, alas ! it now divides ourselves. 
 The controversies of those days are still alive 
 among us, and it is important to have some 
 clear conception of the chief views which were 
 then maintained. 
 
 Now, there was one point on which all the 
 Reformed Churches were agreed, and that was 
 that this Sacrament did not bear that character 
 of a sacrifice, in some sense propitiatory, offered 
 to God, which the Roman Church assigned to 
 it. That a sacrifice is off^ered in it was, indeed, 
 asserted, but it is a " sacrifice of ourselves, 
 our souls and bodies, " and there is no sacrifice 
 
ii6 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 of a propitiatory character in the act of cele- 
 bration. That is the point at which the vital 
 question respecting the sacrificial character of 
 the Eucharist arises. Is the act of consecration 
 a sacrifice i To say that there is a sacrifice of 
 thanksgiving connected with the celebration is 
 one thing, and is not denied ; it is distinctly 
 admitted in the " Apology for the Augsburg 
 Confession. " But what is denied is that the 
 ceremony which our Saviour instituted, and in 
 which His words are employed, has a propi- 
 tiatory, or semi-propitiatory character, as a 
 Sacrifice. Melancthon's statement in that 
 authoritative document affords, perhaps, the 
 clearest exposition of the teaching of the best 
 Reformed Churches on the subject : " Sacra- 
 ments," he says, under the Twelfth Article, on 
 the Mass, " are signs of the goodwill of God 
 towards us, and are not simply signs of men 
 among one another, and the Sacraments of the 
 New Testament are rightly defined as signs of 
 grace. And there being two things in a Sacra- 
 ment — the sign and the word — the word of 
 the New Testament is the promise of grace — 
 the promise of the remission of sins. As our 
 Lord said, ' This is My body, which is given 
 
THE LORD'S SUPPER 117 
 
 for you ; this cup is the New Testament in 
 My blood, which is shed for many for the re- 
 mission of sins. ' The word, therefore, offers 
 the remission of sins, and the ceremony is Hke 
 a picture of the word, or seal .... It was 
 instituted that the exhibition of it to our eyes 
 might move our hearts to faith .... and to 
 this end Christ instituted it, when He bids us 
 do this in remembrance of Him. For to 
 remember Christ is not the idle celebration of 
 a spectacle, nor was such a celebration instituted 
 as a mere example .... but it is to remember 
 the benefits of Christ, and to accept them by 
 faith, that we may be renewed by means of 
 them .... Then comes the sacrifice. After 
 the conscience, raised up by faith, is sensible 
 from what terrors it has been liberated, then 
 it earnestly returns thanks for the benefit and 
 passion of Christ, and uses the ceremony to 
 the praise of God, and by its obedience shows 
 its gratitude, and testifies that it magnifies 
 the grace of God ; . . . . and so the ceremony 
 becomes a sacrifice of praise. " This is in 
 harmony with the cardinal idea respecting the 
 Sacraments which we have been reviewing, 
 that they are acts of God towards us, more 
 
ii8 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 than acts of ourselves towards God. In the 
 Holy Communion we " show forth the Lord's 
 death till He come, " recalling and exhibiting 
 to the congregation the memorials of His 
 death and passion, and so assuring them of 
 His love and forgiveness, in order that they 
 may lay hold of that forgiveness and love with 
 ever-increasing faith and fervour. That is one 
 great object of the Holy Communion. By 
 showing forth Christ's death it proclaims in the 
 most solemn manner the remission, for His 
 sake, of the sins for which He died, and en- 
 courages us to plead His merits, and rest upon 
 them in seeking that remission from God. The 
 ceremony, with the accompanying words, 
 brings from Christ Himself an assurance that 
 His Body was given and His Blood shed for us ; 
 and it is our part thankfully to believe and to 
 accept that assurance, and in return for it to 
 offer our whole souls and bodies to His service. 
 Such is the first gift, according to the re- 
 formed theology, bestowed in the Holy Com- 
 munion ; but there is another, which is the 
 chief subject of controversy among the Churches 
 of the Reformation — that of the Saviour's 
 Body and Blood. In what sense is that gift 
 
THE LORD'S SUPPER 119 
 
 given ? Here again we may put aside Zwingli, 
 as falling much below the level of the views 
 accepted by the Reformed Churches generally, 
 even in his native Switzerland. The real 
 question lies between the teaching of Luther 
 and his followers on the one side, and that of 
 Calvin and his school on the other. The 
 cardinal point to which Luther held, in spite 
 of all temptations and all opposition, was that 
 the very Body and Blood of Christ are ex- 
 hibited " in, with, and under, " the forms of 
 bread and wine. Of the manner of the Pre- 
 sence he would say nothing, except that Tran- 
 substantiation is unnecessary as an explanation, 
 and is unscriptural. He is concerned only 
 with the fact that the sacred Body and Blood 
 are verily present, verily given, verily received, 
 by the mouth. He can only say it is not a 
 local Presence, but a Presence beyond human 
 understanding, which he can only call " Sacra- 
 mental. " That latter word, however, used in 
 this connection, is but an evasion of the diffi- 
 culty. It simply says that the Presence in the 
 Sacrament is such a Presence as is possible in a 
 Sacrament, and it does not take us one step 
 further. 
 
I20 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 The formal teaching of the Lutheran Church 
 may, perhaps, best be learned from the " Form- 
 ula Concordiae, " which was published in 1580. 
 That formula was occasioned by the fact that 
 grave disputes arose, after Luther's death in 1 546, 
 between the divines who regarded themselves 
 as the special custodians of his teaching and 
 others who followed Melancthon. The tendency 
 of Melancthon had for some time been to soften 
 down the vehement statements of Luther on 
 this mysterious subject, and practically to 
 iassimilate the teaching of his Church more and 
 more to that of Calvin. The " Formula of 
 Concord " expresses the understanding arrived 
 at by the Lutheran divines, in view of this and 
 other controversies respecting the main points 
 in dispute. It thus embodied the final result 
 of these controversies, and has ever since been 
 one of the symbolical books of the Lutheran 
 Church. 
 
 The following, then (quoting with occasional 
 abridgment), are the affirmative principles 
 which it lays down. " We believe and teach," 
 it says, " that in the Supper of the Lord the 
 Body and Blood of Christ are verily and sub- 
 stantially present, and are truly distributed, and 
 
THE LORD^S SUPPER 121 
 
 taken together with the bread and wine. We 
 teach that the words of Christ's Testament are 
 to be no otherwise received than as they sound 
 to the letter ; so that the bread does not signify 
 the absent body of Christ, nor the wine the 
 absent blood of Christ, but that by virtue of a 
 Sacramental union the bread and wine are re- 
 ally the Body and Blood of Christ. As to the 
 consecration, we teach that no human work, 
 nor any pronouncement by the minister of the 
 Church, is the cause of the Presence in the 
 Supper of the Body and Blood of Christ ; but 
 that this is solely to be attributed to the omni- 
 potent power of our Lord Jesus Christ. At 
 the same time, we are unanimous in teaching 
 that the recitation of the words of institution 
 should be maintained. . . . Further, the found- 
 ations on which we rest in respect to this 
 Sacrament are as follows : (i) That our Lord 
 is true God and Man ; (2) that the right hand 
 of God at which He sits is everywhere, and 
 that in respect of His human nature, as well 
 as His Divine, He rules and governs all things; 
 
 (3) that the Word of God is not deceitful ; 
 
 (4) that God knows various modes by which 
 He is able to be present anywhere, and is not 
 
122 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 bound to that particular mode of presence 
 which the philosophers are wont to call local 
 or circumscribed. We believe, accordingly, 
 that the Body and Blood of Christ are received 
 with the bread and wine, not merely spiritually 
 and by faith, but actually by the mouth ; not, 
 however, in a Capernaitic manner, but in a 
 supernatural and heavenly manner, by means of 
 a sacramental union ; and that not only those 
 who truly believe in Christ, but even the un- 
 worthy and the unbelieving, receive the true 
 Body and Blood of Christ, so, however, that 
 they receive neither consolation nor life there- 
 from, but judgment and condemnation, unless 
 they repent. We condemn the opinion which 
 maintains that the Body of Christ is so included 
 in heaven that it can by no means be present 
 simultaneously in many, or in all, places where 
 the Supper of the Lord is celebrated. We deny 
 that the external elements of bread and wine in 
 the Sacrament are to be adored. Finally, we 
 reject and condemn the Capernaitical mandu- 
 cation of the Body of Christ, which the Sacra- 
 mentaries maliciously allege of us, as though we 
 taught that the Body of Christ was torn by the 
 teeth, and digested, like other food, in the 
 
THE LORD^S SUPPER 123 
 
 human body. For we believe and assert, ac- 
 cording to the clear words of the Testament of 
 Christ, a true, but supernatural, manducation 
 of the Body of Christ, as there is a true but 
 supernatural drinking of the Blood of Christ. 
 But this is a truth which no one can understand 
 by the human senses or by reason ; wherefore 
 in this matter, as in other articles of faith, we 
 submit our intellect to the obedience of Christ. 
 For this mystery is revealed in the Word of God 
 alone, and is comprehended solely by faith. " 
 
 We cannot fail to be reminded, in perusing 
 these statements, of the suggestion made by the 
 late Archbishop Temple, that the views assert- 
 ed by a certain school in our Church at the pre- 
 sent day are really Lutheran in their character. 
 But it will be observed that this statement asserts 
 neither Transubstantiation nor Consubstantia- 
 tion ; and it is important to remember that 
 Consubstantiation is not the formal doctrine of 
 the Lutheran Church. For instance, one of the 
 most authoritative manuals of that Church, for 
 a long period after 1 6 1 o, when it was published, 
 was Leonhard Hutter's " Compendium '' ; and 
 in answer to the question, " In what way are 
 the Body and Blood of Christ exhibited and 
 
124 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 received with the bread and wine in the Sacra- 
 ment ? '* Hutter explicitly states : " Not cer- 
 tainly by Transubstantiation .... nor does it 
 come to pass by Consubstantiation, or the local _ 
 inclusion of the Body and Blood of Christ in 
 the bread and wine, nor by any durable con- 
 junction, apart from the actual use of the 
 Sacrament. But it comes to pass by Sacra- 
 mental union, which, by virtue of the promise 
 of Christ, provides that, when the bread is 
 offered, the Body of Christ is simultaneously 
 present and truly exhibited ; and when the 
 wine is offered, there is simultaneously truly 
 present and exhibited the Blood of Christ. " 
 
 Now, certain important points will be ob- 
 served in this doctrine which distinguish it 
 broadly from every other upon this subject. In 
 the first place, as contrasted with all other 
 doctrines of the so-called Real Presence, it has 
 this important characteristic : that, as Hutter 
 states, no durable union is conceived to exist 
 between the bread and wine and the sacred 
 Body and Blood. They are really present, but 
 only in the act of reception. There could, 
 therefore, under this doctrine, be no question of 
 reservation of the elements, for there is nothing 
 
THE LORD'S SUPPER 125 
 
 permanently attached to the elements to be 
 reserved. The sacred food is present in the act 
 of giving and receiving, and in that alone. In 
 the next place, although no attempt is made to 
 explain the nature of the conjunction at that 
 moment, yet it is deemed to be dependent on 
 a belief, very difficult to apprehend, respecting 
 some sort of ubiquity, or ubiquitous influence, 
 of the Body of our Lord, derived from its 
 intimate conjunction with His Divine nature 
 in the hypostatic union. Luther v^as solely 
 concerned to assert the fact that the bread and 
 wine, according to the literal sense of Christ's 
 words, were His Body and Blood ; and in the 
 defence of that belief he was led to dwell, in a 
 manner which is in many respects instructive, 
 on the intimate relation between the Divine 
 and the human natures of our Lord. There 
 can be little doubt, however, that the ubiqui- 
 tarian view has a dangerous tendency in a 
 Eutychian direction ; and its close association 
 with the doctrine of the Real Presence, as 
 taught by Luther, exposed that doctrine to 
 further attacks from the Swiss and French Re- 
 formers. 
 
 Calvin accordingly propounded another 
 
126 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 theory, which is far more profound than that 
 of Zwingli, and which closely approaches, in 
 practical effect, the Lutheran view, without in- 
 volving its ubiquitarian difficulties. He started 
 from the declarations of our Lord in the sixth 
 chapter of St. John's Gospel, which he recog- 
 nised as clearly teaching that a participation of 
 our Lord's Flesh and Blood is essential to eternal 
 life ; and he felt that the words in which our 
 Lord instituted the Lord's Supper must have 
 been meant to declare that it was a special 
 means for that participation. But he considered 
 that such participation might be effected by 
 spiritual means, and that the virtue of the 
 glorified Saviour's Body and Blood might be 
 communicated to the soul by the action of the 
 Holy Spirit, in conjunction with the partici- 
 pation of the sacred elements. " The Flesh 
 of Christ, " he says in the " Institutes, " ^ " is 
 like a rich and inexhaustible fountain, which 
 transfuses into us the life which is supplied by 
 His Divinity to itself. " " I confess, " he says 
 elsewhere, " that our souls are fed by the sub- 
 stance of the flesh of Christ. " He denied that 
 faith constituted the actual eating of the Flesh 
 'iv., 17, 3, 5, 8, 9. 
 
THE LORD'S SUPPER 127 
 
 and Blood of Christ, and considered the eating 
 to be rather the effect and fruit of faith. More 
 particularly he says : ^ " We cannot doubt that, 
 in accordance with the unalterable nature of 
 the human body, our Lord's finite being is 
 contained in heaven, where it was, once for all, 
 received until He returns to judgment, and 
 consequently it seems inadmissible to suppose 
 that He Himself is contained under these cor- 
 ruptible elements, or that He can be regarded as 
 universally present in His human nature. Nor 
 is this necessary in order that we may enjoy 
 the participation of Him, for our Lord bestows 
 this benefit upon us by His spirit, so that we 
 become one with Him in body, soul, and spirit. 
 The link, accordingly, of that conjunction is 
 the Spirit of Christ, by which we are conjoined 
 with Him, and His Spirit is, as it were, the 
 channel by which is derived to us whatever 
 Christ is or has." Calvin, therefore, taught a 
 real participation of the Flesh and Blood of 
 Christ in the Holy Communion, by means 
 of the supernatural operation of the Spirit 
 of God, in conjunction with the participation of 
 the Sacrament ; and this is a doctrine which 
 
 ^ § 12, p. lOI. 
 
 ,5^ 
 
 
128 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 may well be regarded as receiving countenance 
 from the prayer in the ancient Liturgies, by 
 which the descent of the Holy Ghost upon 
 the Elements was invoked, " that they may 
 become unto us " the Body and Blood of our 
 Lord. 
 
 But, however this may be, it is evident that 
 the result of the controversies respecting the 
 Holy Communion during the sixteenth century 
 in the teaching of Calvin and of Luther, who 
 were together predominant throughout the 
 Reformed Communions, was to assert in the 
 strongest manner the fact that the Holy Com- 
 munion is a special means ordained by our Lord 
 for the participation of His Flesh and Blood, 
 and that it is thus a perpetual witness to, and a 
 means for, maintaining that intimate union with 
 Him and His Father, which, as we saw, was 
 the cardinal motive and object of the Re- 
 formation. The effect, with respect to the 
 Sacraments, was to restore to them, in a degree 
 which they had not enjoyed in the later 
 practice of the Church, the character of means 
 of communion with God. Communion had 
 ceased to be, in the Roman Church, the 
 predominant characteristic of the Mass. It 
 
THE LORD'S SUPPER 129 
 
 had become an oiFering from man to God, less 
 than a means by which God imparted Himself 
 to men. The theology of the Reformation 
 re-established the aspect of the Sacraments as a 
 means of union and participation with the 
 person and nature of our Lord, and thus 
 supplied a practical guarantee of the reality of 
 that union and communion. 
 
 Ill, 
 
 It is a striking fact that the Protestant 
 theology of the sixteenth century both began 
 and ended in strict theories of fPredestination/, 
 The first attempt at a comprehensive treatment 
 of theology from the point of view of the 
 Reformation was Melanchthon's " Loci Com- 
 munes Rerum Theologicarum, " which was 
 published in 1521. The treatise which was 
 the predominant exposition of the Reformed 
 theology at the close of the century was Calvin's 
 " Institutio Christianas Religionis. " The severe 
 doctrine of Calvin on the subject of predesti- 
 nation is notorious; but it should be remembered 
 that the teaching of Melanchthon in the first 
 edition of his work was not less severe. The 
 
 9 
 
I30 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 history of that work is in great measure the 
 history of theology in the German Protestant 
 Churches up to the time of Melanchthon's 
 death in 1560. It passed through a great 
 number of editions, and remained for at least 
 half a century the great text-book of theology 
 for the Protestant Churches ; but it underwent 
 during that time various important changes at 
 the hands of its author. Originally, in 1521, 
 it was a little work occupying less than 200 
 modern octavo pages, and it corresponded 
 exactly to its second title, " Hypotyposes 
 Theological, " or Theological Outlines. Mel- 
 anchthon was then a young man, only twenty- 
 four years old ; and that he should have 
 produced at that age a comprehensive review of 
 the revived theology, which took its place at 
 once as its most satisfactory statement, affords 
 a wonderful illustration, alike of his genius, and 
 of the profound impression made upon him by 
 Luther, after little more than three years of 
 that Reformer's public activity. But the book 
 derives a special interest from the fact that its 
 successive stages mark the gradual development 
 of the Reformed theology and of Melanchthon's 
 teaching. In its earliest form — that of 1521 
 
PREDESTINATION 1 3 1 
 
 — the Reformed teaching is exhibited in its 
 first vivid, and in some respects immature, if 
 not crude, elements ; and it was enlarged and 
 modified as the Reformed theology v^as deve- 
 loped and extended in scope, and as Melanch- 
 thon's own thoughts grew more mature and 
 well balanced. In its final form it is one of 
 the most instructive, comprehensive, and mod- 
 erate treatises to be found in the literature of 
 the Protestant Churches, and is comparable 
 only to Calvin's " Institutes. " But it is in 
 many respects more interesting in its first form, 
 in which the thoughts out of which the great 
 movement of the Reformation sprang may be 
 seen forming, as it were, in the minds of its 
 authors. Now, as has been said, it is remark- 
 able that this treatise commences with as strong 
 a statement of the dependence of all things on 
 Divine predestination as is found in the great 
 treatise of Calvin. It lays down, at the very 
 outset, that " since all things which happen 
 necessarily happen according to Divine pre- 
 destination, there is no liberty of our will. " ^ 
 
 ^ Die Loci Communes Philipp Melanthons in ihrer Urge- 
 stalt herausgegeben und erlautert von G. L. Plitt. Erlangen, 
 1864 : p. 109. 
 
132 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 Melanchthon was not a man of a stern dog- 
 matic nature like Calvin, nor a man who 
 approached questions with the intense vehe- 
 mence of Luther. What, we must ask, is the 
 reason why he should thus anticipate, at the 
 commencement of the century, the character- 
 istic teaching with which it ended ? 
 
 The answer is apparent from this very 
 treatise, and it casts a light upon the general 
 bearing of the doctrines of predestination, which 
 gives them at once a more intelligible and a 
 more human character, than when we approach 
 them simply from the side of theological 
 philosophy. Melanchthon explains that the 
 great purpose of his book is to give assistance 
 in apprehending the practical, as distinct from 
 the speculative, doctrines of Christianity. He 
 enumerates the chief heads of theology as 
 follows : God ; Unity and Trinity ; Creation ; 
 Man and Man's Powers ; Sin ; the Fruits of 
 Sin, and Vices ; Punishments ; the Law ; Pro- 
 mises ; Regeneration by Christ ; Grace ; the 
 Fruits of Grace ; Faith ; Hope ; Charity ; 
 Predestination ; Sacramental Signs ; the Con- 
 dition of Man ; Magistrates ; Bishops ; Con- 
 demnation ; Bliss. It may be noticed that in 
 
PREDESTINATION 133 
 
 this enumeration predestination is one of the 
 latter topics mentioned ; but the main prin- 
 ciples respecting it are laid down from the 
 outset, and form the starting-point. Mel- 
 anchthon goes on to say that there is no oc- 
 casion for him to spend much labour upon those 
 supreme questions respecting God, His Unity 
 and Trinity, the mystery of Creation, and the 
 mode of the Incarnation. The scholastic 
 theologians, he says, have been discussing 
 them for centuries, and he does not know 
 what practical benefit has been gained. " Have 
 they not, " he asks, " as St. Paul says, ' become 
 vain in their imaginations, ' while they have 
 been trifling all their lives about universals, 
 formalities, connotations, and I know not what 
 other inane words and expressions ? " But, he 
 says, " as to the other loci^ respecting the 
 power of sin, the law and grace, I do not 
 know how a man can expect to be called a 
 Christian who is ignorant of them. For it is 
 from these that Christ is properly known, if at 
 least the true knowledge of Christ is to know 
 His benefits, and not, as the Schoolmen teach, 
 to know His natures and the modes of His 
 Incarnation. Unless you know for what pur- 
 
134 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 pose He assumed our flesh and was nailed to 
 the cross, what benefit will it be to know of His 
 history ? .... St. Paul, in his Epistle to the 
 Romans " — on which Melanchthon had been 
 giving lectures, which were the germ of this 
 treatise — " when he wrote a compendium of 
 Christian doctrine, did not philosophise about 
 the mysteries of the Trinity, about the mode 
 of the Incarnation, about active and passive 
 creation. What is it that he treats of ? 
 Certainly of the law, of sin, of grace, which are 
 the topics on which alone a knowledge of 
 Christ depends. " 
 
 This was the first impulse of the Reformed 
 teaching — to make theology human, to bring it 
 home to men's business and bosoms, and to 
 explain its bearing on their lives and their 
 practical necessities. Accordingly, with this 
 brief introduction, Melanchthon goes on at 
 once, and before everything else, to the question 
 of human powers, and consequently of free 
 will : " De hominis viribus, adeoque de libero 
 arbitrio. " That was the first practical question 
 which had to be considered by a teacher who 
 wanted to bring home to men the nature of 
 the Gospel and the benefits which it offered. 
 
PREDESTINATION 1 3 5 
 
 It is remarkable that this is precisely the order 
 in which, some ten years later, Melanchthon 
 explained the teaching of the Reformed Church 
 in the formal statement he drew up for pre- 
 sentation to the Emperor Charles V, and 
 which, under the name of the Augsburg Con- 
 fession, became the cardinal Protestant symbol. 
 In that Confession the first article is T)e T)eo^ 
 declaring the acceptance by the Reformers of 
 the Nicene faith ; and the very next — the 
 second — is "De ^eccato Originis^ which says that 
 all men who, after the fall of Adam, are natur- 
 ally engendered, are born " with sin — that is, 
 without fear of God, without trust towards 
 God, and with concupiscence " ; and it denies 
 that men can be justified before God by the 
 natural powers of reason. That Confession, 
 however, is content to state this as a fact, 
 without considering its cause. The character- 
 istic of the teaching of the "Loci Communes" 
 is that it traces the cause of this fact to the 
 Divine predestination, and rests it upon that 
 foundation. " Liberty, " says Melanchthon, 
 " is the power to act or not to act, the power 
 to act in one way or another ; and the question 
 is : Has the will this liberty, and how far ? " 
 
136 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 The answer is that " Since all things which 
 happen, necessarily happen according to Divine 
 predestination, there can be no liberty of our 
 will, " and the discussion is concluded with the 
 following four statements : 
 
 " If you regard the human will in reference 
 to predestination, there is no liberty either in 
 external or internal works ; but all things 
 happen according to Divine determination. 
 
 " If you consider the will in reference to 
 external acts, there appears, in the judgment of 
 nature, to be a certain liberty. 
 
 " If you consider the will in reference to the 
 affections and passions, there is clearly no 
 liberty, even in the judgment of nature ; 
 
 " And when the affections and passions have 
 begun to rage and burn within us, they cannot 
 be restrained from breaking forth. " 
 
 Now, as has been said, as Melanchthon grew 
 more mature and moderate, he became content 
 to assert the fact of the corruption of the 
 human will, without ascribing that corruption 
 thus absolutely to Divine decrees. But what 
 it is important to observe is that the purpose 
 with which the idea of predestination is intro- 
 duced is to afford some explanation of the 
 
PREDESTINATION 137 
 
 helplessness of man's will, and of the hopeless- 
 ness of his condition by nature. It is intro- 
 duced, that is, for a practical purpose, and arises 
 out of the contemplation of our moral and 
 religious weakness. Melanchthon and those 
 who felt with him found themselves, accord- 
 ing to their bitter experience, in a condition 
 of spiritual feebleness and moral corruption. 
 That unhappy state seemed to them a part of 
 the present constitution of things, and they 
 could only attribute it to Divine ordination. 
 The argument is the same in Luther's char- 
 acteristic treatise, " De Servo Arbitrio, " which 
 he wrote three years after the first publication 
 of Melanchthon's " Loci, " in answer to the 
 treatise of Erasmus, " De libero Arbitrio. " 
 He, similarly, in asserting the servitude of the 
 will, lays down the principle that all things 
 which happen, even if they seem to us to 
 happen under conditions of mutability and 
 contingency, nevertheless really come to pass 
 necessarily and immutably, if we look to the 
 will of God. He says that God works all 
 things in all things and is alone free, and from 
 hence it follows irresistibly that there is no 
 freedom in the human will. "Hoc fulmine 
 
138 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 sternitur et conteritur penitus Liberum Ar- 
 bitrium. " The will of man is ever deter- 
 mined and led by some other. Luther even 
 compares it to a beast of burden, which is 
 ridden either by God or by the devil. Now, 
 we may again observe in this treatise that the 
 motive, from which this extreme theory starts, 
 is that of illustrating and confirming the fact 
 of the free grace of God, and the complete in- 
 capacity of the human will to work or do 
 anything of its own initiative, in matters which 
 pertain to salvation. Luther himself describes 
 this as the purpose of his treatise. He, too, 
 with further reflection and experience, ceased 
 to assert predestination in this extreme form, 
 and the Lutheran Church, in the " Formula 
 Concordias, " finally determined the matter in 
 a sense which is closely parallel to our own 
 Article on the subject. But what it remains 
 important and instructive for us to observe is, 
 that the ideas of predestination took their rise 
 in the sense of human feebleness and incapacity 
 for good. 
 
 It will be found that it has been so throughout 
 Church history. It is St. Augustine who was 
 the first great representative of predestinarian 
 
PREDESTINATION 139 
 
 teaching, and how did he arrive at it ? His 
 teaching arose out of his controversy v^ith 
 Pelagius on free v^ill. The error of Pelagius 
 arose from his very goodness in a moral sense. 
 He did not realize the weakness of human 
 nature, and thought that it had natural powers 
 still left to it which were capable of doing 
 good. As Luthardt has remarked, it was by 
 no moral levity that the course of Pelagius's 
 thought was prompted, but, on the contrary, 
 by a certain moral earnestness. He was aiming 
 at a moral reform of life, and was vindicating 
 the monkish efforts at self-discipline, charity, 
 poverty, and the like, and he thought Augustine 
 was cutting the sinews of such moral endeav- 
 ours. But Augustine, in a terrible experience, 
 had realized the utter weakness of human 
 nature, and felt that it was solely by the grace 
 of God, and not by any moral effects of his 
 own, that he had been delivered. But if, as 
 he felt, his salvation had been entirely God's 
 work, he could not but go on to ask why it 
 was that he had been saved from his own evil, 
 and not others ; why should grace be effectual 
 in some cases and not in all .? There seemed 
 no answer to this question except in the 
 
I40 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 absolute power and will of God, which works 
 irresistibly in some cases and not in others. 
 Melanchthon and Luther were but following 
 precisely the reasoning and the experience of 
 Augustine, in passing from a sense of human 
 helplessness, and of the absolute dependence of 
 the Christian on the grace of God, to the con- 
 clusion that God's will is supreme, and that all 
 things are predestinated by Him. 
 
 There is a striking passage in Coleridge's 
 " Aids to Reflection, " a work particularly 
 instructive on this and the cognate subjects, in 
 which this train of thought is illustrated with 
 great force and beauty. It is in his comment 
 on his Second Aphorism on Spiritual Religion. 
 He begins by observing that " no impartial 
 person, competently acquainted with the history 
 of the Reformation, and the works of the 
 earlier Protestant divines, at home and abroad, 
 even to the close of Elizabeth's reign, will deny 
 that the doctrines of Calvin on redemption and 
 the natural state of fallen man are in all essential 
 points the same as those of Luther, Zwinglius, 
 and the first Reformers collectively. " Then, 
 after some discussion of the philosophical prob- 
 lems involved, he goes on to consider the case 
 
PREDESTINATION 1 4 1 
 
 of a man who has reason to believe, from his 
 spiritual experience, that he has received the 
 grace of God, and is " on the right road to the 
 life promised under these conditions." "Now," 
 he says, " I dare assert that no such man, how- 
 ever fervent his charity and however deep his 
 humility may be, can peruse the records of 
 history with a reflecting spirit, or look round 
 the world with an observant eye, and not find 
 himself compelled to admit that all men are 
 not on the right road. He cannot help judging 
 that even in Christian countries many — a fear- 
 ful many — have not their faces turned towards 
 it. This, then, is a mere matter of fact. Now 
 comes the question. Shall the believer, who 
 thus hopes on the appointed grounds of hope, 
 attribute this distinction exclusively to his own 
 resolves and strivings — or, if not exclusively, 
 yet primarily and principally 1 Shall he refer 
 the first movements and preparations to his 
 own will and understanding, and bottom his 
 claim to the promises on his own comparative 
 excellence ? If not, if no man dare take this 
 honour to himself, to whom shall he assign it, 
 if not to that Being in whom the promise 
 originated, and on whom its fulfilment depends.? 
 
142 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 If he stop here, who shall blame him ? By 
 what argument shall his reasoning be invalida- 
 ted, which might not be urged with equal force 
 against any essential difference between obedient 
 and disobedient. Christian and worldling — that 
 would not imply that both sorts alike are, in 
 the sight of God, the sons of God by adoption?" 
 
 In these observations of Coleridge it will be 
 found, perhaps, that we have the secret of the 
 earnest discussions with which the sixteenth 
 century is occupied respecting the relations 
 between free will and grace, liberty and pre- 
 destination — the so-called Synergistic contro- 
 versies, or those which concern the question 
 of the mutual relations and actions of the 
 human will and the Spirit of God in the con- 
 version and salvation of men. They are con- 
 troversies which arose out of the moral and 
 religious experience of the men of that day, 
 and they are the expression, less of their 
 thoughts, than of their spiritual struggles. 
 
 This is indeed a characteristic of all contro- 
 versies respecting subjects of this class — those 
 which relate to the moral nature of man — 
 which it is essential to bear in mind, if they 
 are to be at all adequately apprehended. Res- 
 
PREDESTINATION 143 
 
 pecting such controversies, it may well be 
 doubted whether they ever will be, or, rather, 
 whether they ever can be, settled. They are 
 not controversies respecting abstract or eternal 
 truths, like those respecting mathematics, on 
 the one hand, or those respecting the attributes 
 of God, on the other. They are controversies 
 respecting matters of human experience, and 
 the premises from which men argue vary with 
 that experience. Pelagius sees one side of that 
 experience ; St. Augustine sees another ; and 
 neither can quite appreciate the facts which 
 his antagonist has in view. So, in the century 
 we are considering, Erasmus is arguing from 
 the point of view of the experience of a suc- 
 cessful and somewhat cold-blooded scholar, 
 who is looking at the human will from an 
 abstract and philosophical point of observation. 
 Luther was arguing from the point of view 
 of a man immersed, from his youth up, in intense 
 moral and spiritual struggles, sensible of the 
 tremendous temptations against which he has 
 to contend, and feeling that, if God be not for 
 him, if he be not chosen by God and upheld 
 by God, he has no hope of victory and deli- 
 verance. 
 
144 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 It may be a question in this controversy on 
 which side is the best philosophy ; but there 
 can be little question on which side is the best 
 experience. As Coleridge puts the case in his 
 comments, in the " Aids to Reflection ", on a 
 passage from Bishop Jeremy Taylor on Origi- 
 nal Sin : " What less than disease can we call 
 a necessity of error and a predisposition to sin 
 and sickness ? Taylor, indeed, asserts that 
 though perfect obedience became incompar- 
 ably more difficult" (after Adam's fall), "it 
 was not, however, absolutely impossible. Yet 
 he himself admits that the contrary was univer- 
 sal — that, of the countless millions of Adam's 
 posterity, not a single individual ever realized 
 or approached to the realization of this possibi- 
 lity ; and (if my memory does not deceive me) 
 Taylor himself has elsewhere exposed — and, if 
 he has not, yet commonsense v/ill do it for him 
 — the sophistry in asserting of a whole what 
 may be true of the whole, but is in fact true 
 only of each of its component parts. Anyone 
 may snap a horsehair ; therefore anyone may 
 perform the same feat with the horse's tail. 
 On a level floor (on the hardened sand, for 
 instance, of a sea-beach) I chalk two parallel 
 
PREDESTINATION 145 
 
 straight lines, with a width of eight inches. 
 It is possible for a man, with a bandage over 
 his eyes, to keep within the path for two or 
 three paces ; therefore it is possible for him to 
 walk blindfold for two or three leagues without 
 a single deviation ! And this possibility would 
 sufiSce to acquit me of injustice, though I had 
 placed man-traps within an inch of one line, 
 and knew that there were pitfalls and deep wells 
 beside the other ! " 
 
 In short, in proportion to the depth of men's 
 moral and spiritual struggle, in proportion to 
 the intensity with which they apprehend the 
 height of the Divine righteousness and the 
 Divine ideal, must there arise in them a sense 
 of the utter feebleness of their own powers, of 
 the weakness and servitude of their wills, and 
 of their absolute dependence on Divine grace 
 and the Divine will. They are driven to that 
 sense of utter incapacity, and of entire depen- 
 dence upon God, which St. Paul expresses so 
 forcibly in the Epistle to the Romans. But, 
 unfortunately, they are almost always impelled, 
 as Melanchthon, Luther, and Calvin were, to 
 step byond that practical statement of their 
 experience, and to speculate on the ultimate 
 
 10 
 
146 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 philosophical, or metaphysical, causes of their 
 condition ; and then their moral conclusions 
 become entangled in the meshes of a specula- 
 tive and uncertain philosophy. As Coleridge, 
 again, says, after the first of the two passages 
 just quoted : 
 
 " If the self-examinant will abandon this 
 position, and exchange the safe circle of religion 
 and practical reason for the shifting sand-wastes 
 and fnirages of speculative theology ; if, instead 
 of seeking after the marks of Election in him- 
 self, he undertakes to determine the ground 
 and origin, the possibility and mode of Election 
 itself in relation to God — in this case, and 
 whether he does it for the satisfaction of cur- 
 iosity, or from the ambition of answering those 
 who would call God Himself to account, why 
 and by what right certain souls were born in 
 Africa instead of England, " and similar pro- 
 blems, " in this case, I say, we can only regret 
 that the inquirer had not been better instructed 
 in the nature, the bounds, the true purposes and 
 proper objects of his intellectual faculties, and 
 that he had not previously asked himself, by 
 what appropriate sense, or organ of knowledge, 
 he hoped to secure an insight into a nature 
 
PREDESTINATION 147 
 
 which was neither an object of his senses, nor 
 a part of his self-consciousness ; and so leave 
 himself to ward off shadowy spears with the 
 shadow of a shield, and to retaliate the non- 
 sense of blasphemy with the abracadabra of 
 presumption. He that will fly without wings 
 must fly in his dreams : and till he awakes will 
 not find out that to fly in a dream is but to 
 dream of flying. " 
 
 These observations of Coleridge are an 
 admirable commentary alike on the strength 
 and on the weakness of the predestinarian 
 theories of the Reformers. Only let us remem- 
 ber that, when men are in the thick of a mor- 
 tal struggle for great spiritual and moral truths, 
 they naturally lay hands on any weapon that 
 is within their grasp ; and that they are almost 
 forced to become philosophers and speculative 
 theologians, against their will, if they are to 
 maintain 'what they feel to be the most vital 
 moral truths, against the assaults that are made 
 on them from all sides. 
 
 There is, however, a special aspect of Cal- 
 vin's doctrine of predestination which deserves 
 distinct recognition, and which distinguishes 
 it, in great measure, from those of Luther 
 
148 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 and Melanchthon. There does not seem evi- 
 dence that Calvin was drav^n into his theory 
 by such intense moral experience as we have 
 traced in Augustine, Luther, and others, and 
 there seems to be another impulse operating 
 in him. He is a man with a profound sense 
 of the necessity of law and government. His 
 conversion, he says, was sudden ; and as soon 
 as he is converted and convinced of the truth 
 of the Reformed theology, his dominant idea is 
 that of obedience to the will of God. It has 
 been said of him that obedience was the watch- 
 word of his life. He is the Protestant Loyola ; 
 and as Loyola taught that every Jesuit should 
 be as a staff in the hand of his superior, so Cal- 
 vin's idea was that every Christian should be 
 at the absolute command of God — as, in fact, 
 every man really is, whether consciously or not. 
 God is regarded by him, not so much in the 
 character of a Father, which is Luther's fa- 
 vourite conception, but as a Lord and Judge. 
 He is the Lord of lords, who, according to 
 His unrestricted will, disposes of the destinies 
 of men. Accordingly, in his view of the rela- 
 tion of God to the world, the emphasis is laid 
 upon the power of God, and the relation of 
 
CALVINISM 149 
 
 men to Him is pre-eminently that of obedience. 
 Calvin's work at Geneva was to realize this 
 aspect of Christianity and of the Church. 
 Luther leaves the utmost possible amount of 
 freedom to the renewed and sanctified will. 
 " Christian Liberty " — the title of Luther's 
 most beautiful and least controversial work — 
 is also the watchword of his practical concep- 
 tion of the Church. He would have as much 
 liberty as possible, within the bounds of Chris- 
 tian life and love. But Calvin's conception 
 was that of a strictly regulated life. " Under 
 his influence Geneva is transformed into a 
 theocracy. The Church lays down the rules 
 and regulations for faith and life, and the State 
 enforces them. . . . Amusements are forbidden ; 
 the very discipline of the family is brought 
 under control ; attendance at church and Com- 
 munion at stated times are made obligatory. " ^ 
 No doubt Calvin rendered a great service to 
 the Protestant cause at a critical juncture by 
 thus insisting, even with this exaggeration, 
 upon the necessity of discipline and order in 
 the Christian life. But by that inevitable 
 
 ^ Cf. Thomasius' Dogmengeschichte^ ed. Seeberg, vol. ii., 
 p. 639 ; edit. I 
 
I50 PTOTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 tendency by which men transfer, in some 
 degree, their own image and similitude to their 
 conception of God, so Calvin conceives of the 
 world as regulated by definite and immutable 
 Divine decrees. All is determined by God 
 beforehand, all is regulated by precise decisions ; 
 and the place and fate of every individual has 
 been assigned to him. Carried to this specu- 
 lative length, it was an exaggeration which 
 provoked a dangerous reaction ; yet we have 
 only to look to our sister Church in Scotland 
 in order to see that such a view exhibits a real 
 side of human experience, and has worked out 
 magnificent results. Human nature disregards, 
 in practice, the extreme points in such theories 
 and systems, and assimilates their excellences. 
 It may be, as Calvin himself confessed, a hor- 
 ribile decretum that some men are everlastingly 
 predestinated to damnation, as others are to 
 salvation. In some cases such a doctrine leads 
 men to the desperation of which our Article 
 speaks ; but the great mass of men instinctively 
 disregard the supposition that they themselves 
 may be among the condemned. They hope 
 for the best for themselves ; and then there 
 remain for them only the grand and fortifying 
 
CALVINISM 151 
 
 elements of the system. There remains for 
 them the spectacle of a firm, holy, unbending 
 law, to which they must conform if they are 
 to be in harmony with the truth and reality of 
 things. There remain for them those concep- 
 tions of the eternities, the infinities, the immu- 
 tabilities of life, which Carlyle, for instance, 
 brought out of his Scottish training and habits, 
 though he discarded their Christian form. 
 Calvin was to the men of his day something 
 of what Carlyle was, though in so diff^erent a 
 shape, to the last generation of Englishmen. 
 He deepened immeasurably their sense of the 
 eternal and unalterable realities of life, and 
 impressed upon them the absolute necessity of 
 conformity with the will of God. Had not 
 such a proclamation of universal predestination 
 and immutable law been combined with the 
 more gracious message of the Gospel, it would 
 have been intolerable to the feebleness of 
 human nature. But, with whatever inconsis- 
 tencies, it was in fact combined with that 
 message ; and men and women learned, at one 
 and the same time, their insignificance amidst 
 tha vast and eternal system of decrees and laws 
 with which they were surrounded, and the 
 
152 PROTESTANT THEOLOGY 
 
 grace of God, by which they were saved from 
 the effects of such crushing and awful powers. 
 It is hoped that even these sHght sketches 
 of the vast and profound subjects, with which 
 the theology of the sixteenth century was 
 occupied, may have served to illustrate the 
 intense human interest by which that theology 
 was prompted and animated. Whatever the 
 cause may be, something in that century stirred 
 human nature to its very depths, threw up 
 to the surface all its struggling forces, and 
 challenged the theologians of the day to inter- 
 pret them and to bring them into order. To 
 some thoughtful readers^ Shakespeare, at the 
 end of the sixteenth century, has seemed an 
 isolated phenomenon, concerned only with the 
 passions and affections of human nature, and 
 standing calmly aloof from the controversies 
 of his day. But it may be, on the other hand, 
 that he is but the final illustration of the 
 whole character of the century — a century in 
 which human nature, too long confined in the 
 swathing-bands of medieval discipline and 
 philosophy, cast them aside, burst into the 
 realities of the great world of man and nature, 
 
 -^ Brewer's ** English Studies," p. 271. 
 
THE HUMAN INTEREST 153 
 
 asked itself what they meant, what nature 
 meant, what God meant, what Christ was, not 
 to theologians, but to common men and women; 
 not to theological virtues and vices, but to 
 common struggles, common passions, common 
 experiences. The theologies of the sixteenth 
 century are the record of this experience 
 and of its interpretation. They are marked 
 by errors and exaggerations, like the human 
 beings who threw them up to the surface of their 
 hearts and minds in that battle of giants. But 
 considered from the point of view here sug- 
 gested, they cast an intense light upon the 
 needs of the human heart and upon the Divine 
 answer to them; and it may be added, in con- 
 clusion, that their best results, and the truest 
 record of the experience they have won for us, 
 are embodied in our own Thirty-nine Articles, 
 which are, as it were, the aphorisms of the 
 Novum Organum of a new religious world. 
 
THE PRIMARY PRINCIPLES 
 OF LUTHER'S LIFE AND TEACHING 
 
 AS EXHIBITED IN HIS 
 " THREE GREAT REFORMATION TREATISES " ^ 
 
 Much has been written about Luther, and 
 the general history of his life and work has been 
 sketched by able pens. But in the works here 
 translated, he speaks for himself to English- 
 men by his greatest and most characteristic 
 writings. The three works which, together 
 with the Ninety-five Theses, are included in 
 the volume here reviewed, are well known in 
 Germany as the Drei Grosse 'Reformations-Schrif- 
 ten^ or " The Three Great Reformation Trea- 
 tises " of Luther ; but they seem never yet to 
 have been brought in this character before the 
 English public. The Treatise on Christian 
 Liberty has indeed been previously translated, 
 
 ^ Luther's Primary Works, edited by Henry Wace D. D., 
 and C. A. Buchheim Ph. D., Hodder and Stoughton, 1896. 
 
LUTHER'S PRIMARY WORKS 155 
 
 though not of late years. But from an examina- 
 tion of the catalogue in the British Museum, 
 it would appear that no complete English trans- 
 lation is accessible, even if any has yet been 
 published, of the Address to the German Nobi- 
 lity or of the Treatise on the Babylonish 
 Captivity of the Church. Yet, as is well under- 
 stood in Germany, it is in these that the whole 
 genius of the Reformer appears in its most 
 complete and energetic form. They are bound 
 together in the closest dramatic unity. They 
 were all three produced in the latter half of the 
 critical year i 520, when nearly three years' con- 
 troversy, since the publication of the Theses, on 
 Oct. 31st, I 5 17, had convinced Luther of the 
 falseness of the Court of Rome and the hoUow- 
 ness of its claims ; and they were immediately 
 followed by the bull of excommunication in 
 the winter of the same year and the summons 
 to the Diet of Worms in 1521. Luther felt, 
 as he says at the commencement of his Address 
 to the German Nobility, that " the time for 
 silence had passed, and the time for speech had 
 come. " He evidently apprehended that recon- 
 ciliation between himself and the Court of 
 Rome was impossible ; and he appears to have 
 
156 LUTHER'S PRIMARY WORKS 
 
 made up his mind to clear his 
 whatever the cost. Accordingly, in these three 
 works, with a full heart and with the con- 
 sciousness that his life was in his hand, he spoke 
 out the convictions which had been forced on 
 him by the conduct of the papacy and of the 
 papal theologians. 
 
 Those convictions had been slov/ly, and even 
 reluctantly, admitted ; but they had gradually 
 accumulated in intense force in Luther's mind 
 and conscience ; and when " the time for 
 I speech had come " they burst forth in a kind 
 [/of volcanic eruption. Their maturity is proved 
 by the completeness and thoroughness with 
 which the questions at issue are treated. An 
 insight into the deepest theological principles 
 is combined with the keenest apprehension of 
 practical details. In the Treatise on Chris tian 
 Liberty, we have the most vivid of all embo- 
 diments of that Life of faith to which the 
 Reformer recalled the Church, and which was 
 the mainspring of the Reformation. In the 
 Appeal to the German Nobility, he first assert- 
 ed those rights of fiTe laity and of the tempo- 
 ral power without the admission of which no 
 reformation would have been practicable, and 
 
LUTHER'S PRIMARY WORKS 157 
 
 he then denounced with burning moral indig- 
 nation the numerous and intolerable abuses 
 which were upheld by Roman authority. In 
 the third Treatise, on the Babylonish Captivity 
 of the Church, he applied the same cardinal 
 principles to the elaborate sacramental system of 
 the Church of Rome, sweeping away by means 
 of them the superstitions with which the 
 original institutions of Christ had been overlaid, 
 and thus releasing men's consciences from a 
 vast network of ceremonial bondage. The rest 
 of the Reformation, it is not too much to say, 
 was but the application of the principles vindi-.i 
 cated in these three works. They were applied' 
 in different countries with varying wisdom and 
 moderation ; but nothing essential was added 
 to them. Luther's genius — if a higher word 
 be not justifiable — brought forth at one birth, 
 " with hands and feet, " to use his own image, 
 and in full energy, the vital ideas by which 
 Europe was to be regenerated. He was no mere 
 negative controversialist, attacking particular 
 errors in detail. His characteristic was the mas- 
 culine grasp with which he seized essential and 
 eternal truths, and by their central light disper- 
 sed the darkness in which men were groping. 
 
158 LUTHER'S PRIMARY WORKS 
 
 It occurred therefore to my colleague at 
 King's College, London, and myself, on the 
 occasion of the celebration of the fourth cen- 
 tenary of Luther's birth in 1883, that a per- 
 manent service might perhaps be rendered to 
 Luther's name, and towards a due appreciation 
 of the principles of the Reformation, if these 
 short but pregnant Treatises were made more 
 accessible to the English public ; and in the 
 following remarks an endeavour will simply be 
 made to indicate the nature and the bearings 
 of the central principles of the Reformer's life 
 and work, as exhibited in the accompanying 
 translations. 
 
 j It is by no mere accident of controversy 
 that the Ninety-five Theses mark the starting- 
 point of Luther's career as a Reformer. The 
 subject with which they dealt was not only in 
 close connection with the centre of Christian 
 truth, but it touched the characteristic thought 
 of the Middle Ages. From the beginning to 
 the end, those ages had been a stern school of 
 moral and religious discipline, under what was 
 universally regarded as the Divine authority of 
 the Church. St. Anselm, with his intense 
 apprehension of the Divine righteousness and 
 
THE NINETY-FIVE THESES 159 
 
 of its inexorable demands, is at once the noblest 
 and truest type of the great school of thought 
 of which he was the founder. The special 
 mission of the Church since the days of Gre- 
 gory the Great had been to tame the fierce 
 energies of the new barbarian world, and to 
 bring the wild passions of the Teutonic races 
 under the control of the Christian law. It 
 was the task to which the necessities of the 
 hour seemed to summon the Church, and she 
 roused herself to the effort with magnificent 
 devotion. Monks and schoolmen performed 
 prodigies of self-denial and self-sacrifice, in 
 order to realise in themselves, and to impose 
 as far as possible on the world at large, the 
 laws of perfection which the Church held 
 before their vision. The glorious cathedrals 
 which arose in the best period of the Middle 
 Ages are but the visible types of those splen- 
 did structures of ideal virtues, which a monk 
 like St. Bernard, or a schoolman like St. Tho- 
 mas Aquinas, piled up by laborious thought 
 and painful asceticism. Such men felt them- 
 selves at all times surrounded by a spiritual 
 world, at once more glorious in its beauty and 
 more awful in its terrors than either the plea- 
 
i6o THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 sures or the miseries of this world could ade- 
 quately represent. The great poet of the 
 Middle Ages affords perhaps the most vivid 
 representation of their character in this respect. 
 The horrible images of the Inferno^ the keen 
 sufferings of purification in the Purgatorio^ 
 form the terrible foreground behind v^hich the 
 Paradiso rises. Those visions of terror and 
 dread and suffering had stamped themselves on 
 the imagination of the medieval v^orld, and 
 lay at the root of the pov^er with which the 
 Church overshadowed it. In their origin they 
 embodied a profound and noble truth. It was 
 a high and Divine conception that the moral 
 and spiritual world with which we are encom- 
 passed has greater heights and lower depths 
 than are generally apprehended in the visible 
 experience of this life ; and Dante has been 
 felt to be in a unique degree the poet of 
 righteousness. But it is evident, at the same 
 time, what a terrible temptation was placed in 
 the hands of a hierarchy who were believed, 
 in whatever degree, to wield power over these 
 spiritual realities. It was too easy to apply 
 them, like the instruments of physical torture 
 with which the age was familiar, to extort 
 
THE MIDDLE AGES i6i 
 
 submission from tender consciences, or to 
 make a bargain with selfish hearts. But in 
 substance the menaces of the Church appealed 
 to deep convictions of the human conscience, 
 and the mass of men were not prepared to defy 
 them. 
 
 Now it was into this world of spiritual 
 terrors that Luther was born, and he was in an 
 eminent degree the legitimate child of the 
 Middle Ages. The turning-point in his his- 
 tory is that the awful visions of which we have 
 spoken, the dread of the Divine judgments, 
 brought home to him by one of the solemn 
 accidents of life, checked him in a career which 
 promised all worldly prosperity, and drove him 
 into a monastery. There, as he tells us, he was 
 driven almost frantic by his vivid realisation 
 of the demands of the Divine righteousness on 
 the one hand, and of his own incapacity to 
 satisfy them on the other. With the intense 
 reality characteristic of his nature, he took in 
 desperate earnest all that the traditional teach- 
 ing and example of the Middle Ages had 
 taught him of the unbending necessities of 
 Divine justice. But for the very reason that 
 he accepted those necessities with such earnest- 
 
 II 
 
1 62 LUTHER AS A MONK 
 
 ness, he did but realise the more completely 
 the hopelessness of his struggles to bring him- 
 self into conformity with them. It was not 
 because he was out of sympathy with St. Anselm 
 or St. Bernard or Dante that he burst the bonds 
 of the system they represented, but, on the 
 contrary, because he entered even more deeply 
 than they into the very truths they asserted. 
 Nothing was more certain to him than that 
 Divine justice is inexorable ; no conviction was 
 more deeply fixed in his heart than that 
 righteousness is the supreme law of human life. 
 But the more he realised the truth, the more 
 terrible he found it, for it seemed to shut him 
 up in a cruel prison, against the bars of which 
 he beat himself in vain. In one of his most 
 characteristic passages, in the Introduction to 
 his Latin Works, he describes how he was 
 repelled and appalled by the statement of 
 St. Paul respecting the Gospel that " therein 
 is the righteousness, " or justice, " of God 
 revealed. " For, he says, " however irrepre- 
 hensible a life I had lived as a monk, I felt 
 myself before God a sinner, with a most rest- 
 less conscience, and I could not be confident 
 that He was appeased by my satisfaction. I 
 
LUTHER AS A MONK 163 
 
 could not therefore love — nay, I hated — a 
 God who was just and punished sinners ; and 
 if not with silent blasphemy, certainly with 
 vehement murmuring, I was indignant against 
 God. As if, I said, it were not enough that 
 sinners, miserable and eternally ruined by 
 original sin, should be crushed with all kind 
 of calamity by the law of the Decalogue, but 
 God in the Gospel must needs add grief to 
 grief, and by the Gospel itself must inflict still 
 further on us His justice and anger. I raged 
 with this savage and disturbed conscience, and 
 I knocked importunately at Paul in that place, 
 with burning thirst to know what St. Paul 
 could mean. " Such an experience is not a 
 mere revolt against the Middle Ages. In great 
 measure it is but the full realisation of their 
 truest teaching. It is Dante intensified, and 
 carried to the inevitable development of his 
 principles. 
 
 But if this be the case, what it meant was 
 that the Middle Ages had brought men to a 
 deadlock. They had led men up to a gate so 
 strait that no human soul could pass through 
 it. In the struggle, men had devised the most 
 elaborate forms of self-torture, and had made 
 
1 64 THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 the most heroic sacrifices, and in the very des- 
 peration of their efforts they had anticipated 
 the more vivid insight and experience of 
 Luther. The effort, in fact, had been too 
 much for human nature, and the end of it had 
 been that the Church had condescended to 
 human weakness. The most obvious and easy 
 way out of the difficulty was to modify, by 
 virtue of some dispensing authority, the 
 extreme requirements of Divine justice, and by 
 a variety of half-unconscious, half-acknowledg- 
 ed devices, to lessen the severity of the strait 
 gate and of the narrow way. Such a power, 
 as has been said, was an enormous temptation 
 to unscrupulous Churchmen, and at length it 
 led to the hideous abuses of such preaching of 
 indulgences as that of Tetzei. In this form 
 the matter came before Luther in his office as 
 parish priest and confessor ; and it will be 
 apparent from the Theses that what first 
 revolts him is the violation involved of the 
 deepest principles which the Church of his day 
 had taught him. He had learned from it the 
 inexorable character of the Divine law, the 
 necessity and blessedness of the Divine disci- 
 pline of punishment and suffering ; he had 
 
LUTHER'S EXPERIENCE 165 
 
 learned, as his first Thesis declares, that the law 
 of Christian life is that of lifelong penitence ; 
 and he denounced TetzeFs teaching as false to 
 the Church herself, in full confidence that he 
 would be supported by his ecclesiastical 
 superiors. When he found that he was not — 
 when, to his surprise and consternation, he 
 found that the Papal theologians of the day, 
 under the direct patronage of the Pope and the 
 bishops, were ready to support the most 
 flagrant evasions of the very principles on 
 which their power had originally been based 
 — then at length, though most reluctantly, 
 he turned against them, and directed against 
 the corrupted Church of the close of the 
 Middle Ages the very principles he had learned 
 from its best representatives and from its 
 noblest institutions. 
 
 Luther, in the course of his spiritual struggles, 
 had found the true deliverance from what we 
 have ventured to call that deadlock to which 
 the grand vision of Divine righteousness had 
 led him. He realised that the strait gate was 
 impassable by any human virtue ; but he had 
 found the solution in the promise of a super- 
 natural deliverance which was offered to faith. 
 
1 66 LUTHER'S EXPERIENCE 
 
 To quote again his words in the preface to his 
 Latin works already referred to : " At length 
 by the mercy of God, meditating days and 
 nights, I observed the connection of the words, 
 namely, ' Therein is the righteousness of God 
 revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, 
 The just shall live by faith. ' Then I began 
 to understand the justice of God to be that by 
 which the just man lives by the gift of God, 
 namely, by faith, and that the meaning was 
 that the Gospel reveals that justice of God by 
 which He justifies us beggars through faith, as 
 it is written, ' The just shall live by faith. ' 
 Here I felt myself absolutely born again ; the 
 gates of heaven were opened, and I had entered 
 paradise itself. From thenceforward the face 
 of the whole Scriptures appeared changed to 
 me. I ran through the Scriptures, as my 
 memory would serve me, and observed the 
 same analogy in other words — as, the work of 
 God, that is, the work which God works in us ; 
 the strength of God, that with which He 
 makes us strong ; the wisdom of God, that with 
 which He makes us wise ; the power of God, 
 the salvation of God, the glory of God. And 
 now, as much as I had formerly hated that 
 
LUTHER'S EXPERIENCE 167 
 
 word the 'justice of God,' so much did I now 
 love it and extol it as the sweetest of words 
 to me ; and thus that place in Paul was to me 
 truly the gate of paradise. " In other words, 
 Luther had realised that the Gospel, while 
 reasserting the inexorable nature of the moral 
 law and deepening its demands, had revealed 
 a supernatural and Divine means of satisfying 
 and fulfilling it. All barriers had thus been 
 removed between God and man, and men had 
 been placed in the position of children living 
 by faith on His grace and bounty. He offers 
 to bestow upon them the very righteousness 
 He requires from them, if they will but accept 
 it at His hands as a free gift. Their true 
 position is no longer that of mere subjects, 
 living under a law which they must obey at 
 their peril. They may, indeed, by their own 
 act remain in that condition, with all its ter- 
 rible consequences. But God invites them to 
 regard Him as their Father, to live in the light 
 of His countenance, and to receive from Him 
 the daily food of their souls. The most 
 intimate personal relation is thus established 
 between Himself and them ; and the righteous- 
 ness, which by their own efforts they could 
 
1 68 LUTHER'S EXPERIENCE 
 
 never acquire, He is ready to create in them, if 
 they will but live with Him in faith and trust. 
 That faith, indeed, must needs be the begin- 
 ning, and the most essential condition, of this 
 Divine life. Faith is the first condition of all 
 fellowship between persons ; and if a man is to 
 live in personal fellowship with God, he must 
 trust Him absolutely, believe His promises, 
 and rest his whole existence here and hereafter 
 upon His word. But let a man do this, and 
 then God's law ceases to be like a flaming 
 sword, turning every way, with too fierce an 
 edge for human hearts to bear. It assumes 
 the benignant glow of a revelation of perfect 
 righteousness which God Himself will bestow 
 on all who ask it at His hands. 
 
 This belief is essentially bound up with a 
 distinction on which great stress is laid in the 
 Theses. It touches a point at once of the 
 highest theological import and of the simplest 
 practical experience. This is the distinction 
 between guilt and punishment, or, in other 
 words, between personal forgiveness and the 
 remission of the consequences of sins. In our 
 mutual relations, a son may be forgiven by his 
 father, a wrong-doer by the person whom he 
 
GUILT AND PUNISHMENT 169 
 
 has injured, and yet it may neither be possible 
 nor desirable that the offender should be at 
 once released from the consequences of his 
 offence. But to all generous hearts the personal 
 forgiveness is infinitely more precious than the 
 remission of the penalty, and Luther had 
 learned from the Scriptures to regard our 
 relation to God in a similar light. He realised 
 that he must live, here and hereafter, in 
 personal relationship to God ; and the forgive- 
 ness of God, the removal from him, in God's 
 sight, of the imputation and the brand of guilt, 
 his reception into God's unclouded favour — 
 this was the supreme necessity of his spiritual 
 existence. If this v^ere assured to him, not 
 only had he no fear of punishment, but he 
 could welcome it, whatever its severity, as part 
 of the discipline of the Divine and loving 
 hand to which he had trusted himself. His 
 deepest indignation, consequently, was aroused 
 by preaching which, under official sanction, 
 urged men to buy indulgence from punishment, 
 of whatever kind, as practically the greatest 
 spiritual benefit they could obtain ; and he 
 devoted his whole energy to assert the supreme 
 blessing of that remission from guilt, of which 
 
lyo GUILT AND PUNISHMENT 
 
 the preachers of indulgences said practically 
 nothing. It is this remission of guilt, this 
 personal forgiveness, which is the primary 
 element in the justification of which he spoke. 
 It involves of course salvation from the final 
 ruin and doom which sin, and the moral 
 corruption of our nature, would naturally 
 entail ; but its chief virtue does not consist in 
 deliverance from punishment, nor does it in 
 any way derogate from the truth that " we 
 must all appear before the judgment-seat of 
 Christ, that every one may receive the things 
 done in his body, according to that he hath 
 done, whether it be good or bad. " What it 
 taught men was, to accept all God's judgments 
 and discipline in perfect peace of soul, as being 
 assured of His love and favour. 
 
 No divine, in fact, has ever dwelt with 
 more intense conviction on the blessedness of 
 the discipline of suffering and of the Cross. 
 The closing Theses express his deepest feelings 
 in this respect, and a passage in one of his 
 letters, written before the controversy about 
 indulgences had arisen, affords a most interest- 
 ing illustration of the manner in which the 
 principles he came forward to assert had grown 
 
PEACE AND THE CROSS 171 
 
 out of his personal experience. " Away," he 
 says in the Ninety-second and Ninety-third 
 Theses, " with all those prophets who say to 
 the people of Christ, ' Peace, peace, ' and there 
 is no peace. Blessed be all those prophets 
 who say to the people of Christ, ' The Cross, 
 the Cross,' and there is no cross." These 
 somewhat enigmatic expressions are at once 
 explained in the letter referred to, written to 
 a prior of the Augustinian order on the 22nd 
 of June, 1516.^ He says, — 
 
 " You are seeking and craving for peace, but 
 in the wrong order. For you are seeking it as 
 the world giveth, not as Christ giveth. Know 
 you not that God is ' wonderful among His 
 saints, ' for this reason : that He establishes His 
 peace in the midst of no peace, that is, of all 
 temptations and afflictions .? It is said, ' Thou 
 shalt dwell in the midst of thine enemies. ' 
 The man who possesses peace is not the man 
 whom no one disturbs — that is the peace of 
 the world ; he is the man whom all men and 
 all things disturb, but who bears all patiently, 
 and with joy. You are saying with Israel, 
 ' Peace, peace, ' and there is no peace. Learn 
 
 ^ Letters, edited by De Wette, i. 27. 
 
172 PEACE AND THE CROSS 
 
 to say rather with Christ, ' The Cross, the 
 Cross, * and there is no cross. For the Cross 
 at once ceases to be the Cross as soon as you 
 have joyfully exclaimed, in the language of the 
 hymn, — 
 
 " ' Blessed Cross, above all other, 
 One and only noble tree. 
 
 One other extract of the same import it may 
 be well to quote from these early letters, as it 
 is similarly the germ of one of the noblest pas- 
 sages in Luther's subsequent explanation of the 
 Ninety-five Theses. ^ The letter was addressed 
 to a brother Augustinian on the 1 5th of April, 
 15 1 6. Luther says, — 
 
 " The Cross of Christ has been divided 
 throughout the whole world, and every one 
 meets with his own portion of it. Do not 
 
 ^ It is a pleasure to be able to refer for this passage to the 
 new Critical Edition of Luther's Works, now in course of 
 publication, in Germany, vol. i, p. 613, line 21. This 
 magnificent edition, prepared under the patronage of the 
 German Emperor, is the best of all contributions to the 
 Commemoration of 1883. It must supersede all other edi- 
 tions, and it ought to find a place in all considerable libraries 
 in England. A translation of the passage in question will be 
 found in the Bampton Lectures of the present writer, p. 186. 
 
THE CROSS AND JOY 173 
 
 you therefore reject it, but rather accept it as 
 the most holy rehc, to be kept, not in a gold 
 or silver chest, but in a golden heart, that is, 
 a heart imbued with gentle charity. For if, 
 by contact with the flesh and blood of Christ, 
 the wood of the Cross received such consecra- 
 tion that its relics are deemed supremely pre- 
 cious, how much more should injuries, perse- 
 cutions, sufferings, and the hatred of men, 
 whether of the just or of the unjust, be regarded 
 as the most sacred of all relics — relics which, 
 not by the mere touch of His flesh, but by the 
 charity of His most bitterly tried heart and of 
 His Divine will, were embraced, kissed, blessed, 
 and abundantly consecrated ; for thus was a 
 curse transformed into a blessing, and injury 
 into justice, and passion into glory, and the 
 * Cross into joy. " ^ 
 
 The few letters, in fact, in our possession, 
 written by Luther before he came forward in 
 1 5 17, are sufficient to afford the most vivid 
 proof both of the mature thought and expe- 
 rience in which his convictions were rooted, 
 and of their being prompted, not by the spirit 
 of reckless confidence to which they have 
 
 ^ Letters^ edited by De Wette, i. 19. 
 
174 JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 
 
 sometimes been strangely ascribed, but by the 
 deepest sympathy with the lessons of the Cross. 
 The purport of his characteristic doctrine of 
 justification by faith was not to give men the 
 assurance of immunity from suffering and 
 sorrow, as the consequence of sin, but to give 
 them peace of conscience and joy of heart in 
 the midst of such punishments. What it 
 proclaimed was that, if men would but believe 
 it, they could at any moment grasp God's for- 
 giveness, and live henceforth in the assured 
 happiness of His personal favour and love. 
 Of this blessing His promise was the only pos- 
 sible warrant, and, like all other promises, it 
 could only be accepted by faith. Every man 
 is invited to believe it, since it is offered to all 
 for Christ's sake ; but, by the nature of the 
 case, none can enjoy it who do not believe it. 
 The ground, however, on which this promise 
 was based affords another striking illustration 
 of the way in which Luther's teaching was 
 connected with that of the Middle Ages. 
 Together with that keen apprehension of the 
 Divine judgments and of human sin just men- 
 tioned, the awful vision of our Lord's sufferings 
 and of His atonement overshadowed the whole 
 
THE TRUE SACRIFICE 175 
 
 thought of those times. St. Anselm, in the 
 Cur Deus Homo^ had aroused deeper meditation 
 on this subject than had before been bestowed 
 upon it ; and in this, as in other matters, he is 
 the type of the grand school of thought which 
 he founded. As in his mind, so throughout 
 the Middle Ages, in proportion to the appre- 
 hension of the terrible nature of the Divine 
 justice is the prominence given to the sacrificial 
 means for averting the Divine wrath. The 
 innumerable Masses of the later Middle Ages 
 were so many confessions of the deep-felt need 
 of atonement; and, formal as they ultimately be- 
 came, they were, in intention, so many cries for 
 forgiveness from the terror-struck consciences 
 of sinful men and women. Luther was a true 
 child of the Church in his keen apprehension 
 of the same need, and it was precisely because 
 be realised it with exceptional truth and depth 
 that he was forced to seek some deeper satis- 
 faction than the offering of Masses could aff^ord. 
 He reasserted the truth that the need had been 
 met and answered once for all by the sacrifice on 
 the Cross ; and by proclaiming the sufficiency 
 of that one eternal off^ering he swept away all 
 the " sacrifices of masses, " while at the same 
 
176 THE TRUE SACRIFICE 
 
 time he provided the answer to the craving to 
 which they testified. The doctrine of the 
 Atonement, as asserted at the Reformation, is 
 the true answer to that cry of the human con- 
 science which the Church of the preceding age 
 had vainly endeavoured to satisfy. The Sacra- 
 ment, of which the Mass was a perversion, was 
 thus restored to its true character as a pledge 
 and an instrument of blessing bestowed by God, 
 instead of a propitiatory offering on the part 
 of men. The cross of Christ, the favourite 
 symbol of the medieval Church, was thus held 
 aloft by the Reformer in still deeper reality, as 
 the central symbol of the Church's message, 
 and as the one adequate ground for the faith 
 to which he called men. 
 
 Now the view of the Christian life involved 
 in this principle of justification by faith found 
 its most complete and beautiful expression in 
 the treatise On Christian Liberty^ and a brief 
 notice of the teaching of that treatise will best 
 serve to explain the connection between Luther's 
 cardinal doctrine and the other principles which 
 he asserted. As is explained at the close of the 
 introductory letter to Leo X, he designed the 
 treatise as a kind of peace-offering to the Pope, 
 
ON CHRISTIAN LIBERTY 177 
 
 and as a declaration of the sole objects he had at 
 heart, and to which he desired to devote his life. 
 " It is a small matter, " he says, " if you look 
 to its bulk, but unless I mistake, it is a sum- 
 mary of the Christian life in small compass, if 
 you apprehend its meaning. " In fact, it pre- 
 sents the dearest view of Luther's theology, 
 alike in its principles and in its practice, 
 almost entirely disembarrassed of the contro- 
 versial elements by which, under the inevitable 
 pressure of circumstances, his other works, and 
 especially those of a later date, were disturbed. 
 Perhaps the only part of his works to compare 
 with it in this respect is the precious collection 
 of his House-postills, or Exposition of the 
 Gospels for the Sundays of the Christian Year. 
 They were delivered within his domestic circle, 
 and recorded by two of his pupils, and though 
 but imperfectly reported, they are treasures of 
 evangelical exposition, exhibiting in a rare 
 degree the exquisitely childlike character of 
 the Reformer's faith, and marked by all the 
 simplicity and the poetry of feeling by which 
 his mind was distinguished. It is by such 
 works as these, and not simply by his contro- 
 versial treatises or commentaries, that Luther 
 
 12 
 
178 ON CHRISTIAN LIBERTY 
 
 must be judged, if we wish either to understand 
 his inner character, or to comprehend the vast 
 personal influence he exerted. But in its 
 essence the Gospel which he preached, the 
 substance of what he had learned from the 
 temptations, the prayers, the meditations — ten- 
 tationes^ orationes^ jneditattones — of his life as a 
 monk, is sufficiently embodied in the short 
 Treatise on Christian Liberty. 
 
 The argument of the treatise is summed up, 
 with the antithetical force so often character- 
 istic of great genius, in the two propositions 
 laid down at the outset : " A Christian man is 
 the most free lord of all and subject to none ; 
 a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of 
 all and subject to every one." The first of 
 these propositions expresses the practical result 
 of the doctrine of justification by faith. The 
 Christian is in possession of a promise of God 
 which in itself, and in the assurance it involves, 
 is a greater blessing to him than all other 
 privileges or enjoyments whatever. Everything 
 sinks into insignificance compared with this 
 Word and Gospel. " Let us," he says, " hold 
 it for certain and firmly established that the 
 soul can do without everything except the 
 
ON CHRISTIAN LIBERTY 179 
 
 word of God, without which none of its wants 
 are provided for. But, having the word, it is 
 rich and wants for nothing, since it is the 
 word of life, of truth, of light, of peace, of 
 justification, of salvation, of joy, of liberty, of 
 wisdom, of virtue, of grace, of glory, and of 
 every good thing." If it be asked, " What is 
 this word ? " he answers that the Apostle Paul 
 explains it, namely, that " it is the Gospel of 
 God concerning His Son, incarnate, suffering, 
 risen, and glorified through the Spirit, the 
 Sanctifier. To preach Christ is to feed the 
 soul, to justify it, to set it free, and to save it, 
 if it believes the preaching. . . . For the word 
 of God cannot be received and honoured by 
 any works, but by faith alone. " This is the 
 cardinal point around which not merely 
 Luther's theology, but his whole life, turns. 
 God had descended into the world, had spoken 
 to him by His Son, His Apostles, the Scrip- 
 tures, and the voice of the Church, and 
 promised him forgiveness in the present, and 
 final deliverance from evil in the future, if he 
 would but trust Him. The mere possession 
 of such a promise outweighed in Luther's 
 view all other considerations whatever, and 
 
i8o ON CHRISTIAN LIBERTY 
 
 absolute faith was due to it. No higher 
 offence could be offered to God than to reject 
 or doubt His promise, and at the same time 
 no higher honour could be rendered Him than 
 to believe it. The importance and value of 
 the virtue of faith is thus determined entirely 
 by the promise on v^hich it rests. These 
 " promises of God are words of holiness, truth, 
 righteousness, liberty, and peace, and are full 
 of universal goodness, and the soul which 
 cleaves to them with a firm faith is so united 
 to them, nay, thoroughly absorbed by them, 
 that it not only partakes in, but is penetrated 
 and saturated by, all their virtue. For if the 
 touch of Christ was health, how much more 
 does that most tender spiritual touch, nay, 
 absorption of the word, communicate to the 
 soul all that belongs to the word ! In this 
 way therefore the soul through faith alone, 
 without works, is by the word of God justified, 
 sanctified, endued with truth, peace, and 
 liberty, and filled full with every good thing, 
 and is truly made the child of God. ... As is 
 the word, such is the soul made by it, just as 
 iron exposed to fire glows like fire on account 
 of its union with the fire." Moreover, jusc 
 
ON CHRISTIAN LIBERTY i8i 
 
 as it is faith which unites husband and wife, 
 so faith in Christ unites the soul to Him in 
 indissoluble union. For " if a true marriage, 
 nay, by far the most perfect of all marriages, 
 is accomplished between them — for human 
 marriages are but feeble types of this one great 
 marriage — then it follows that all they have 
 becomes theirs in common, as well good things 
 as evil things; so that whatsoever Christ possess- 
 es the believing soul may take to itself and 
 boast of as its own, and whatever belongs to 
 the soul Christ claims as His. . . . Thus the 
 believing soul, by the pledge of its faith in 
 Christ, becomes free from all sin, fearless of 
 death, safe from hell, and endowed with the 
 eternal righteousness, life and salvation of its 
 Husband Christ.'' 
 
 It is essential to dwell upon these passages, 
 since the force of the Reformer's great doctrine 
 cannot possibly be apprehended as long as he 
 is supposed to attribute the efficacy of which 
 he speaks to any inherent quality in the human 
 heart itself. It is the word and promise of 
 God which is the creative force. But this 
 summons a man into a sphere above this world, 
 bids him rest upon the Divine love which 
 
1 82 ON CHRISTIAN LIBERTY 
 
 speaks to him, and places him on the eternal 
 foundation of a direct covenant with God 
 Himself in Christ. As in the Theses, so in 
 this treatise, Luther reiterates that this in no 
 way implies exemption from the discipline of 
 suffering. " Yea, " he says, " the more of a 
 Christian any man is, to so many the more 
 evils, sufferings, and deaths is he subject, as 
 we see in the first place in Christ the first-born, 
 and in all His holy brethren." The power of 
 which he speaks is a spiritual one " which 
 rules in the midst of enemies, in the midst of 
 distresses. It is nothing else than that strength 
 is made perfect in my weakness, and that I 
 can turn all things to the profit of my salva- 
 tion ; so that even the cross and death are 
 compelled to serve me and to work together 
 for my salvation. " " It is a lofty and eminent 
 dignity, a true and almighty dominion, a 
 spiritual empire, in which there is nothing so 
 good, nothing so bad, as not to work together 
 for my good, if only I believe. " 
 
 If we compare this language with those 
 conceptions of spiritual terror by which Luther 
 had been driven into a monastery, and under 
 which, like so many in his age, he had groaned 
 
ON CHRISTIAN LIBERTY 183 
 
 and struggled in despair, we can appreciate the 
 immense deliverance which he had experienced. 
 The Divine promise had lifted him " out of 
 darkness and out of the shadow of death, and 
 had broken his bonds in sunder. '* It is this 
 which is the source of the undaunted and 
 joyful faith which marks the whole of the 
 Reformer's public career. " Whose heart, " 
 he exclaims, " would not rejoice in its inmost 
 core at hearing these things ? Whose heart, 
 on receiving so great a consolation, would not 
 become sweet with the love of Christ, a love 
 to which it can never attain by any laws or 
 works ? Who can injure such a heart, or 
 make it afraid ? If the consciousness of sin or 
 the horror of death rush in upon it, it is 
 prepared to hope in the Lord, and is fearless 
 of such evils and undisturbed, until it shall 
 look down upon its enemies. " Such a con- 
 viction, uttered in such burning language, 
 lifted the same cloud of darkness and fear from 
 the hearts of the common people of that day, 
 and was welcomed as good tidings of great joy 
 by multitudes of burdened and terror-stricken 
 hearts. Nothing is more characteristic of 
 Luther's preaching, and of the Reformers who 
 
i84 ON CHRISTIAN LIBERTY 
 
 follow him, than the sense they display that 
 they have before them souls " weary and 
 heavy-laden. " Their language presupposes 
 the prevalence of that atmosphere of spiritual 
 apprehension and gloom already described, and 
 their grand aim is to lead men out of it into 
 the joy and peace and liberty of the Gospel. 
 The consequence is that a new confidence, 
 hope, and energy is infused into the moral and 
 spiritual world of that day. The tone of 
 unbounded joy and hope which marks the 
 earliest Christian literature, particularly in the 
 Apostolic Fathers, reappears in such a treatise 
 as we are considering, and in the whole 
 religious thought of the Reformers ; and it 
 would almost seem as if the long agony of the 
 Middle Ages had but enhanced the joy of the 
 final deliverance. 
 
 It is unnecessary, for our present purpose, to 
 dwell long upon the second point of the trea- 
 tise, in which Luther illustrates his second 
 proposition : that " a Christian man is the most 
 dutiful servant of all and subject to every one. " 
 It will be enough to observe that Luther is 
 just as earnest in insisting upon the application 
 of faith in the duties of charity and self-disci- 
 
ON CHRISTIAN LIBERTY 185 
 
 pline, as upon the primary importance of faith 
 itself. The spirit of faith, he says, " applies 
 itself with cheerfulness and zeal " to restrain 
 and repress the impulses of the lower nature. 
 " Here works begin ; here a man must not take 
 his ease ; here he must give heed to exercise 
 his body by fastings, watchings, labour, and 
 other reasonable discipline, so that it may be 
 subdued to the spirit, and obey and conform 
 itself to the inner man and to faith. " Simi- 
 larly he will give himself up to the service of 
 others, and it is partly with a view to rendering 
 them such service that he will discipline his 
 body and keep it in due energy and soundness. 
 He starts from the belief that God, without 
 merit on his part, has of His pure and free 
 mercy bestowed on him, an unworthy creature, 
 all the riches of justification and salvation in 
 Christ, so that he is no longer in want of 
 anything except of faith to believe that this is 
 so. For such a Father then, who has over- 
 whelmed him with these inestimable riches of 
 His, must he not freely, cheerfully, and from 
 voluntary zeal, do all that he knows will be 
 pleasing to Him and acceptable in His sight ? 
 " I will therefore, " he says, " give myself as a 
 
1 86 ON CHRISTIAN LIBERTY 
 
 sort of Christ to my neighbour, as Christ has 
 given Himslf to me ; and will do nothing in 
 this life except what I see will be needful, 
 advantageous, and wholesome for my neighbour, 
 since by faith I abound in all good things in 
 Christ. " These practical considerations will 
 afford the measure by which a man determines 
 the discipline to which he subjects himself, and 
 the ceremonies which he observes. They will 
 not be observed for their own sake, but as 
 means to an end, and therefore will never be 
 practised in excess, as though there were some 
 merit in the performance of them. They are 
 like the scaffoldings of builders, valuable only as 
 a temporary assistance in the construction of 
 the building itself. " We do not condemn 
 works and ceremonies ; nay, we set the highest 
 value on them. We only condemn that opinion 
 of works which regards them as constituting 
 true righteousness. " In asserting these prin- 
 ciples, Luther was certainly putting the axe to 
 the root of the portentous growth of ascetic 
 and ceremonial observances which prevailed in 
 his day, and which were too generally regarded 
 as of the very essence of religion. He enabled 
 men, as it were, to look on such ceremonies 
 
ON CHRISTIAN LIBERTY 187 
 
 from the outside, as a thing external to them, 
 and to reduce or rearrange them with a simple 
 view to practical usefulness. But no more 
 earnest exhortations to due self-discipline, and 
 to true charity could well be found than are 
 contained in the second part of the De Libertaie, 
 It will be evident, however, what a power- 
 ful instrument of reformation was placed in 
 men's hands by the principles of this treatise. 
 Every Christian man, by virtue of the promise 
 of Christ, was proclaimed free, so far as the 
 eternal necessities of his soul were concerned, 
 from all external and human conditions what- 
 ever. Nothing, indeed, was further from 
 Luther's intention or inclination than the over- 
 throw of existing order, or the disparagement 
 of any existing authority which could be 
 reasonably justified. His letter to Pope Leo, 
 prefixed to the treatise we have been consi- 
 dering, shows that, while denouncing unspar- 
 ingly the abuses of the Court of Rome, he was 
 sincere in his deference to the see of Rome 
 itself. But the principle of Justification by 
 Faith enabled him to proclaim that if that see, 
 or any existing Church authority, misused its 
 power, and refused to reform abuses, then, in 
 
1 88 ON CHRISTIAN LIBERTY 
 
 the last resort, the soul of man could do without 
 it. In that day at all events — and perhaps in 
 our own to a greater extent than is sometimes 
 supposed — this conviction supplied the fulcrum 
 which was essential for any effectual reforming 
 movement. As is observed by the Church 
 historian Gieseler, in his admirable account 
 of the early history of the Reformation, the 
 papacy had ever found its strongest support in 
 the people at large. In spite of all the dis- 
 content and disgust provoked by the corruption 
 of the Church and the clergy, an enormous, 
 though indefinite, authority was still popularly 
 attributed to the Pope and the ecclesiastical 
 hierarchy. The Pope was believed to be, in 
 some sense or other, the supreme administrator 
 of spiritual powers which were effectual in the 
 next world as well as in the present ; and 
 consequently, when any controversy with the 
 Church came to a crisis, men shrank from direct 
 defiance of the papal authority. They did not 
 feel that they had any firm ground on which 
 they could stand if they incurred its formal 
 condemnation ; and thus it always had at its 
 command, in the strongest possible sense, the 
 ultima ratio of rulers. The convictions to which 
 
ON CHRISTIAN LIBERTY 189 
 
 Luther had been led at once annihilated these 
 pretensions. " One thing, and one alone, " he 
 declared, " is necessary for life, justification, 
 and Christian liberty ; and that is the most 
 holy Word of God, the Gospel of Christ. " 
 As we have seen, he proclaimed it " for certain, 
 and firmly established, that the soul can do 
 without everything except the word of God. " 
 It is the mission of the Christian ministry, in 
 its administration of the word and sacraments, 
 to convey this Gospel to the soul, and to arouse 
 a corresponding faith. But the promise is not 
 annexed indissolubly to that administration, 
 and the only invariable rule of salvation is that 
 " the just shall live by faith. " By this prin- 
 ciple, that vague fear of the spiritual powers 
 of the hierarchy was removed, and men were 
 endowed with real Christian liberty. 
 
 But the principle went still further ; for it 
 vindicated for the laity the possession of spirit- 
 ual faculties and powers similar in kind to 
 those of the clergy. All Christian men are 
 admitted to the privilege of priesthood, and 
 are " worthy to appear before God to pray for 
 others, and to teach one another mutually the 
 things which are of God. " In case of neces- 
 
I90 ON CHRISTIAN LIBERTY 
 
 sity, as is universally recognised, Baptism can 
 be validly administered by lay hands ; and 
 English divines, of the most unimpeachable 
 authority on the subject, have similarly recog- 
 nised that the valid administration of the Holy 
 Communion is not dependent on the ordination 
 of the minister by episcopal authority.^ Luther 
 urges accordingly that all Christians possess 
 virtually the capacities w^hich, as a matter of 
 order, are commonly restricted to the clergy. 
 Whether that restriction is properly dependent 
 upon regular devolution from apostolic author- 
 ity, or v^hether the ministerial commission 
 can be sufficiently conferred by appointment 
 from the Christian community or congregation 
 as a v^hole, becomes on this principle a second- 
 ary point. Luther pronounced with the 
 utmost decision in favour of the latter alter- 
 native ; but the essential element of his teaching 
 is independent of this question. By v^hatever 
 right the exercise of the ministry may be 
 restricted to a particular body of men, v^hat he 
 asserted was that the functions of the clergy 
 are simply ministerial, and that they do but 
 
 ^ See, for instance, Bishop Cosin's Worh, Appendix, vol. 
 i, p. 31, in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology. 
 
RIGHTS OF THE LAITY 191 
 
 exercise, on behalf of all, powers which all 
 virtually possess. 
 
 This principle Luther proceeded to assert in 
 the momentous treatise translated in the volume 
 under review : the Address to the Christian 
 Nobility of the German Nation respecti?2g the Re- 
 formation of the Christian Estate, This treatise is 
 perhaps the one which appealed most widely 
 and directly to the German nation at large. 
 Luther completed it at the very moment when 
 the bull of excommunication against him was 
 being prepared ; and it contributed^ perhaps 
 more than anything, to paralyse the influence 
 of that bull with the mass of the people and 
 their lay leaders. It appeared in August, i 5 20, 
 and by the 1 8 th of that month more than four 
 thousand copies had been already dispersed — a 
 prodigious circulation, considering the state of 
 literature at that day. The reader, however, 
 will not be surprised at this popularity of the 
 treatise, when he sees with what astonishing 
 vigour, frankness, humour, good sense, and at 
 the same time intense moral indignation, Luther 
 denounces in it the corruptions of the Church, 
 and the injuries inflicted by the Court of Rome 
 on the German people. So tremendous an 
 
192 APPEAL TO THE NOBILITY 
 
 indictment, sustained with such intense and 
 concentratred force, could hardly be paralleled 
 in literature. The truth of the charges alleged 
 in it could be amply sustained by reference to 
 Erasmus's works alone, particularly to the 
 Encomium Morice ; but Erasmus lacked alike the 
 moral energy necessary to rouse the action of 
 the laity, and the spiritual insight necessary to 
 justify that action. Luther possessed both ; 
 and it was the combination of the two which 
 rendered him so mighty a force. It is this 
 perhaps which essentially distinguishes him 
 from previous reformers. They attacked par- 
 ticular errors and abuses, and deserve unbounded 
 honour for the protest they raised ; and Wycliffe, 
 in particular, merits the homage of Englishmen 
 as one of the chief motive powers in the first 
 reforming movement. But they did not assert, 
 at least with sufficient clearness, the central 
 principles without which all reform was imprac- 
 ticable — that of the equal rights of laity and 
 clergy, and that of the soul's independence of 
 all human power, by virtue of the truth of 
 justification by faith. Luther's doctrine of 
 Christian liberty was the emancipation alike of 
 individuals and of the laity at large. It vindi- 
 
LAY PRIVILEGES 193 
 
 cated for the whole lay estate, and for all ranks 
 and conditions of lay life, a spiritual dignity, 
 and a place in the spiritual life of the Church. 
 It restored a sense of independent responsibility 
 to all natural authorities ; and it reasserted the 
 sacredness of all natural relations. Practically, 
 even if not theoretically, the Roman system 
 had disparaged the ordinary relations of life, as 
 compared with the so-called " religious " or 
 ecclesiastical. Luther, by placing all men and 
 women on the same spiritual standing-ground, 
 swept away any such privileges ; and gave men 
 as clear a conscience, and as great a sense of 
 spiritual dignity, in the ordinary duties of 
 marriage, of fatherhood, of government, and in 
 the common offices of life, as in any ecclesias- 
 tical order. 
 
 The Address to the Nobility of the German 
 Nation exhibits these principles, and their 
 application to the practical problems of the 
 day, in the most vigorous and popular form ; 
 and if some expressions appear too sweeping 
 and violent, due allowance must be made for 
 the necessity which Luther must have felt of 
 appealing with the utmost breadth and force 
 to the popular mind. But it remains to 
 
 13 
 
194 THE CHURCH EMANCIPATED 
 consider a further aspect of these principles 
 which is illustrated by the third treatise trans- 
 lated in this volume : that on the Babylonish 
 Captivity of the Church, Luther, as has been 
 seen, was appealing to laity and clergy alike, 
 on the ground of their spiritual freedom, to 
 abolish the abuses of the Roman Church. 
 But it became at once a momentous question 
 by what principles the exercise of that liberty 
 was to be guided, and within what limits it 
 was to be exerted. In a very short time 
 fanatics sprang up, who claimed to exercise 
 such liberty without any restrictions at all, 
 and who refused to recognise any standard but 
 that of their own supposed inspiration. But 
 the service which Luther rendered in repelling 
 such abuses of his great doctrine was only 
 second to that of establishing the doctrine 
 itself. The rule of faith and practice on 
 which he insisted was, indeed, necessarily 
 involved in his primary principle. Faith, as 
 has been seen, was with him no abstract 
 quality, but was simply a response to the word 
 and promise of God. That Word, accordingly, 
 in its various forms, was in Luther's mind the 
 creative power of the Christian life. In the 
 
THE CHURCH AND SCRIPTURE 195 
 
 form of a simple promise, it is the basis of 
 justification and of our whole spiritual vitality ; 
 and similarly in its more general form, as 
 recorded in the Holy Scriptures, it contains all 
 truths, alike of belief and of practice, which 
 are essential to salvation here and hereafter. 
 The word of God, in whatever form, whether 
 a simple promise, or a promise embodied in a 
 sacrament, or a series of revelations made by 
 God's Spirit to the soul of man, as recorded in 
 the Bible, is the grand reality which, in 
 Luther's view, dwarfed all other realities on 
 earth. It must needs do so, if it be a reality 
 at all ; but scarcely any one has grasped this 
 truth with such intense insight as Luther. 
 Consequently, in his view, the Anabaptist, 
 who held himself emancipated from the 
 authority of God's word on the one side, was 
 as grievously in error as the Romanist on the 
 other, who superseded its authority by that of 
 the Church ; and in applying his great prin- 
 ciple and working out the Reformation, 
 Luther's task consisted in upholding the due 
 authority of the Scriptures against the extremes 
 on both sides. 
 
 Now in the treatise on the Babylonish 
 
196 THE SACRAMENTS 
 
 Captivity of the Church he applies this rule, in 
 connection with his main principle, to the 
 elaborate sacramental system of the Church of 
 Rome. Of the seven sacraments recognised 
 by that Church, he recognises, strictly speaking, 
 only two : Baptism and the Lord's Supper ; 
 and the connection of this conclusion with the 
 central truth he was asserting is a point of 
 deep interest. Here, too, the one consideration 
 which, in his view, overpowers every other is 
 the supreme import of a promise or word of 
 God. But there are two institutions under 
 the Gospel which are distinguished from all 
 others by a visible sign, instituted by Christ 
 Himself, as a pledge of the Divine promise. 
 A sign so instituted, and with such a purpose, 
 constitutes a peculiarly precious form of those 
 Divine promises which are the life of the 
 soul ; and, for the same reason that the Divine 
 word and the Divine promise are supreme in 
 all other instances, so must these be supreme 
 and unique among ceremonies. The distinc- 
 tion, by which the two sacraments acknowledged 
 by the Reformed Churches are separated from 
 the remaining five of the Roman Church, was 
 thus no question of names, but of things. It 
 
THE TWO SACRAMENTS 197 
 
 was a question whether a ceremony instituted 
 by Christ's own command, and embodying 
 His own promise in a visible pledge, could for 
 a moment be put on the same level with cere- 
 monies, however edifying, which had been 
 established solely by the authority or custom 
 of the Church. It was of the essence of 
 Luther's teaching to assert a paramount 
 distinction between these classes of ceremonies, 
 and to elevate the two Divine pledges of 
 forgiveness and spiritual life to a height 
 immeasurably superior to all other institutions. 
 He hesitates, indeed, whether to allow an 
 exception in favour of absolution, as conveying 
 undoubtedly a direct promise from Christ ; but 
 he finally decides against it, on the ground 
 that it is without any visible and Divinely 
 appointed sign, and is after all only an appli- 
 cation of the Sacrament of baptism. 
 
 If, moreover, the force of his argument on 
 this subject is to be apprehended, due attention 
 must be paid to the efficacy which he thus 
 attributes to the two sacraments. The cardinal 
 point on which he insists in respect to them is 
 that they are direct pledges from God, through 
 Christ, and thus contain the whole virtue of 
 
198 THE TWO SACRAMENTS 
 
 the most solemn Divine promises. They are, 
 as it were, the sign and seal of those promises. 
 They are messages from God, not mere acts of 
 devotion on the part of man. In baptism the 
 point of chief importance is not that men dedi- 
 cate themselves or their children to Him, but 
 that He, through His minister, gives them a pro- 
 mise and a pledge of His forgiveness and of His 
 fatherly goodwill. Similarly in the Holy Com- 
 munion the most important point is not the 
 offering made on the part of man, but the 
 promise and assurance of communion with the 
 Body and Blood of Christ made on the part of 
 God. It is this which constitutes the radical 
 distinction between the Lutheran and the so- 
 called Zwinglian view of the sacraments. Under 
 the latter view they are ceremonies which 
 embody and arouse due feelings on the part of 
 men. On the former principle, they are cere- 
 monies which embody direct messages and 
 promises from God. 
 
 It may be worth while to observe in passing 
 the position which Luther assumes towards the 
 doctrine of Transubstantiation. What he is 
 concerned to maintain is that there is a real 
 presence in the Sacrament. All he is concerned 
 
TRANSUBSTANTI ATION 1 99 
 
 to deny is thattransubstantiation is the necessary- 
 explanation of that presence. In other words, 
 it is not necessary to believe in transubstan- 
 tiation in order to believe in the Real Presence. 
 There seems a clear distinction betw^een this 
 view and the formal doctrine of consubstan- 
 tiation as afterwards elaborated by Lutheran 
 divines ; and Luther's caution, at least in this 
 treatise, in dealing with so difficult a point, is 
 eminently characteristic of the real moderation 
 with which he formed his views, as distin- 
 guished from the energy with which he asserted 
 them. Another interesting point in this treatise 
 is the urgency with which he protests against 
 the artificial restraints upon the freedom of 
 marriage which had been imposed by the 
 Roman see. It would have been too much to 
 expect that in applying, single-handed, to so 
 difficult a subject as marriage, the rule of reject- 
 ing every restriction not expressly declared in 
 the Scriptures, Luther should have avoided 
 mistakes. But they are at least insignificant 
 in comparison with the value of the principle 
 he asserted that all questions of the marriage 
 relation should be subjected to the authority of 
 Holy Scripture alone. That principle provid- 
 
200 MARRIAGE 
 
 ed, by its inherent force, a remedy for any 
 errors in particulars which Luther or any 
 individual divine might commit. The Roman 
 principle, on the contrary, admitted of the most 
 scandalous and unlimited elasticity ; and of all 
 the charges brought by Roman controversialists 
 against Luther's conduct, none are marked by 
 such effrontery as their accusations on this 
 point. While there are fevsr dispensations wrhich 
 their Church is not prepared, for what it con- 
 siders due causes, to allow, Luther recalled 
 men's consciences to the Divine law on the 
 subject. He reasserted the true dignity and 
 sanctity of the marriage relation, and estab- 
 lished the rule of Holy Scripture as the standard 
 for its due control. 
 
 Such are the main truths asserted in the 
 treatises here reviewed, and it is but recognis- 
 ing a historical fact to designate them " first] 
 principles of the Reformation. " From them, 
 and by means of them, the whole of the 
 subsequent movement was worked out. They 
 were applied in different countries in different 
 ways ; and we are justly proud in this country 
 of the wisdom and moderation exhibited by 
 our Reformers. But it ought never to be 
 
LUTHER'S INITIATIVE 201 
 
 forgotten that for the assertion of the principles 
 themselves we, like the rest of Europe, are 
 indebted to the genius and the courage of 
 Luther. All of those principles — -justification 
 by faith, Christian liberty, the spiritual rights 
 and powers of the laity, the true character of 
 the sacraments, the supremacy of the Holy 
 Scriptures as the standard of belief and 
 practice — were asserted by the Reformer, as 
 these three treatises bear testimony, almost 
 simultaneously, in the latter half of the year 
 1520. At the time he asserted them, the 
 Roman Church was still in full power ; and 
 in the next year he had to face the whole 
 authority of the papacy and of the empire, and 
 to decide whether, at the risk of a fate like 
 that of Huss, he would stand by these truths. 
 These were the truths — the cardinal principles 
 of the whole subsequent Reformation — which 
 he was called on to abandon at Worms ; and 
 his refusal to act against his conscience at once 
 translated them into vivid action and reality. 
 It was one thing for Englishmen, several 
 decades after 1520, to apply these principles 
 with the wisdom and moderation of which we 
 are proud : it was another thing to be the 
 
202 LUTHER AND LIBERTY 
 
 Horatius of that vital struggle. These grand 
 facts speak for themselves, and need only to be 
 understood in order to justify the honours now- 
 paid to the Reformer's memory. 
 
 It may not, hov^ever, be out of place to 
 dwell in conclusion upon one essential charac- 
 teristic of the Reformer's position, which is in 
 danger at the present day of being disregarded. 
 The general effect of this teaching upon the 
 condition of the world is evident. It restored 
 to the people at large, to rulers and to ruled, 
 to clergy and to laity alike, complete indepen- 
 dence of the existing ecclesiastical system, 
 within the limits of the revelation contained 
 in the Holy Scriptures. In a word, in 
 Luther's own phrase, it estabhshed Christian 
 Liberty. But the qualification is emphatic, 
 and it would be to misunderstand Luther 
 utterly if it were disregarded. Attempts are 
 made at the present day to represent him as a 
 pioneer of absolute liberty, and to treat it as a 
 mere accident of his teaching and his system 
 that he stopped short where he did. But, on 
 the contrary, the limitation is of the very 
 essence of his teaching, because that teaching 
 is based on the supremacy and sufficiency of 
 
CHRISTIAN LIBERTY 203 
 
 the Divine word and the Divine promise. If 
 there were no such word and promise, no 
 such Divine revelation, and no living God to 
 bring it home to men's hearts and to enforce 
 His own laws, Luther felt that his protest 
 against existing authority, usurped and tyran- 
 nical as it might be, would have been perilous 
 in the extreme. But when men shrank from 
 the boldness of his proclamation, and urged 
 that he was overthrowing the foundations of 
 society, his reply was that he was recalling 
 them to the true foundations of society, and 
 that God, if they would have faith in Him, 
 would protect His own word and will. The 
 very essence of his teaching is summed up in 
 the lines of his great Psalm, 
 
 " Das Wort sie sollen lassen stahn 
 
 Und kein Dank dazu haben, 
 Er ist bei uns wohl auf dem Plan 
 Mit seinem Geist und Gaben. " 
 Luther believed that God had laid down the 
 laws which were essential to the due guidance 
 of human nature, that He had prescribed 
 sufficiently the limits within which that nature 
 might range, and had indicated the trees of 
 which it could not safely eat. To erect any 
 
204 CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 rules beyond these as of general obligation, to 
 restrict the free play of nature by any other 
 limitations, he treated as an unjust violation of 
 liberty, which would provoke a dangerous 
 reaction. But let men be brought face to face 
 with God, and with His reasonable and merciful 
 laws, let them be taught that He is their 
 Father, that all His restrictions are for their 
 benefit, all His punishments for their reforma- 
 tion, all His restraints on liberty for their 
 ultimate good, and you have then established 
 an authority which cannot be shaken, and under 
 which human nature may be safely left to 
 develop. In this faith, but in this alone, he 
 let loose men's natural instincts ; he taught 
 men that married life, and lay life, and all 
 lawful occupations, were holy and Divine, 
 provided they were carried on in faith and in 
 obedience to God's will. The result was a 
 burst of new life wherever the Reformation 
 was adopted, alike in national energies, in 
 literature, in all social developments, and in 
 natural science. But while we prize and 
 celebrate the liberty thus won, let us beware 
 of forgetting, or allowing others to forget, 
 that it is essentially a Christian liberty, and 
 
CHRISTIAN LIFE 205 
 
 that no other liberty is really free. Luther's 
 whole work, and his whole power, lay in his 
 recognition of our personal relation to God, 
 and of a direct revelation, promise, and com- 
 mand, given to us by God. Any influences, 
 under whatever colour, which tend to obscure 
 the reality of that revelation, which would 
 substitute for it any mere natural laws or 
 forces, are undoing Luther's work, and con- 
 tradicting his most essential principles. If he 
 was a great Reformer, it was because he was 
 a great divine ; if he was a friend of the 
 people, it was because he was the friend of 
 God. 
 
SOME SPECIAL POINTS IN 
 THE REFORMATION CONTROVERSY 
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE REMISSION OF SINS 
 
 " And when He had said this He breathed on them, 
 and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost : whosesoever 
 sins ye remit, they are remitted unta them ; and whosesoever 
 sins ye retain, they are retained. ^^ — St. John xx. 22, 23. 
 
 Upon the interpretation and application of 
 these words depends the decision between two 
 conceptions of the office of the Christian 
 ministry and two ideals of the Christian life. 
 On the one hand they have been so interpreted 
 as to apply only to the Apostles and their 
 successors in the ministry, and as giving them 
 special authority to convey to men the for- 
 giveness of their sins by personal absolution. 
 It is held by those who maintain this view, to 
 
FORGIVENESS OF SINS 207 
 
 put the claim at the lowest, that, although 
 sins may be and are forgiven without such 
 personal absolution, yet that, if men and 
 women desire to be assured of the forgiveness 
 of their sins, the ordinary course, and the best 
 course, for them to take, is to confess them to 
 one who holds a commission for that purpose 
 derived from the Apostles. But it naturally 
 follows that, if forgiveness is to be conveyed 
 by this personal assurance, the priest who is to 
 pronounce the absolution must be informed, 
 by confession, of the nature of the sins of 
 which he is to declare the forgiveness ; and 
 thus the peace of mind of every man and 
 woman is rendered practically dependent upon 
 continual confession of all sins to the priest, 
 and the reception of the priest's absolution. 
 
 This system, of course, reaches its full 
 development in the Roman Church, which 
 presents the most complete form of what is 
 described as the sacerdotal system, the system, 
 that is, in which the spiritual welfare of men, 
 for time and for eternity, is rendered dependent 
 in the main on a priestly order, for the purpose 
 of absolution. The history of Europe for the 
 centuries which immediately preceded the 
 
2o8 SACERDOTALISM 
 
 Reformation offers the fullest illustration of 
 the practical working of such a system. The 
 key to that history is that men were under an 
 apprehension, even where it did not amount to 
 a belief, that their ultimate welfare and salva- 
 tion depended in some manner upon the autho- 
 ritative action of the Pope and the clergy ; 
 and they could not therefore make up their 
 minds to act in defiance of them. Europe 
 was groaning under acknowledged evils, not 
 only in the State but in the Church ; the cry 
 for generations had been for reform of the 
 Church " in head and members ; " Council 
 after Council was called together to provide 
 an answer to that cry ; but whenever the 
 question came to the point of action, when — 
 if anything effectual was to be done — it was 
 necessary to override the authority of the 
 Clergy, the strongest laymen and the ablest 
 kings were checked, in the presence of the 
 mysterious powers which the Pope and his 
 Clergy might be supposed to possess over their 
 spiritual fate. Numbers of men might in 
 their hearts disbelieve those powers ; but, to 
 use a memorable phrase, they felt it was " not 
 so certain that there was nothing in it," and 
 
LUTHER'S EXPERIENCE 209 
 
 they could not face all that might be meant 
 by a papal excommunication. That menace, 
 moreover, was not merely that of a general 
 censure and denunciation ; but, through the 
 power of absolution believed to reside in every 
 priest, it extended to the daily experience of 
 every man and woman ; and the fear of passing 
 out of this world without that absolution, 
 without the last Sacraments of the Church, 
 maintained for the Church and the clergy 
 an indefinable supremacy over the mass of 
 mankind. 
 
 It may be briefly recalled how this supremacy 
 was broken, and how the consciences of men 
 were emancipated. It was in the first instance 
 brought home to Luther, from his experience 
 as a parish priest, how grievously the exercise 
 of this priestly power of absolution obscured 
 to simple souls the deep gravity of sin, and 
 the profound nature of true absolution. He 
 found that in practice it operated, to a grievous 
 extent, to shelter men and women from that 
 direct contact with God Himself, which alone 
 could make them duly sensible of the depth of 
 their evil on the one hand, and of the profound 
 and blessed nature of God's forgiveness, and 
 
 14 
 
2IO CONFESSION TO GOD 
 
 God's justification, on the other. Given, 
 perhaps, an ideal priest, this consequence might 
 be avoided, at least in great degree. But 
 taking human nature as it is, and consequently 
 taking any priesthood as it must be on the 
 average, the temptation is to grant absolution 
 too lightly, to be satisfied with imperfect and 
 formal confessions, and thus to give men and 
 women a sense of assurance in a most imperfect 
 state of repentance, and to let them rest in a 
 peace which is not real peace. The remedy 
 was found in directing them beyond the priest, 
 to the great Judge to Whom it was the office 
 of the priest to bear witness, to bid them 
 examine their consciences as in His sight, to 
 seek for the help of His Spirit to convince 
 them of sin, of righteousness and of judgment, 
 to induce them to realize, in solemn prayer 
 and self-examination, the operation of His 
 penetrating eye and His strict judgment ; and 
 it then became necessary for them to go beyond 
 the priest once more, for the assurance of God's 
 forgiveness, and for peace to their consciences. 
 If the Spirit of God brought home to their 
 hearts the conviction of their sin and evil, that 
 Spirit also, acting through the word of Christ 
 
GOD'S ABSOLUTION 211 
 
 in the Scriptures and in the Sacraments, could 
 alone bring home to their hearts the assurance 
 of God's pardon and the sense of His sancti- 
 fying grace. But the moment this was 
 realized, that deep apprehension of the power 
 of the Church and the clergy over the unseen 
 world of their spirits vanished from men's 
 minds like a bad dream. The parts of Europe . 
 to which the Gospel of the Reformation 
 spread were sensible of a sudden and blessed 
 emancipation. The Reformer's appeal to " the ^ 
 Christian laity of the German nation " at once ' 
 received a fearless response. Men and women 
 dared to look the Pope and the clergy in the 
 face, even though they might still retain the 
 power of condemning them to torture and 
 death ; and the Protestant countries of Europe 
 entered on a career of freedom and fearless 
 energy, which has created the civilization, the 
 literature, and the science of the last three 
 centuries. At the same time the sense of 
 direct responsibility to God Himself, the more 
 complete realization of direct communion with 
 Him, the abolition of the notion that any 
 human power, any visible human authority, 
 could protect men from His direct judgment. 
 
212 MANLINESS 
 
 or take the place of His direct guidance, has 
 had the effect of producing, and maintaining 
 generally in Christian life, a higher individual 
 standard of piety and morality than was 
 generally presented in the period before the 
 Reformation. It has been shown by experience 
 on the largest scale that, subject to the excep- 
 tions incidental to any systems and principles, 
 the tendency of a sacerdotal system is at once 
 to weaken the apprehension of sin, and to 
 undermine the sense of individual responsibi- 
 lity, and at the same time to diminish the 
 faith and the courage which are called for in 
 the great struggles of life. As the late Lord 
 Salisbury said on one public occasion, the effect 
 of the general system of Confession is to under- 
 mine the virility of any nation which submits 
 to it. 
 
 What, then, is the true construction of our 
 text, which is generally relied upon in justifi- 
 cation of the system in question .? In answer, 
 let it first be clearly realized that, as is pointed 
 out by the most authoritative commentators, 
 the commission it contains was not addressed to 
 the Apostles only, but to all the disciples then 
 assembled, and consequently to the Church as' 
 
THE CHURCHES COMMISSION 213 
 
 a body. It is the Saviour's description of the 
 office of His Church in the world. He gave 
 it a commission to proclaim to all the world 
 the forgiveness of sins, with the conditions on 
 which sins could be remitted. He promised 
 the Holy Ghost, at once to teach His Ministers 
 the nature and the means of that remission of 
 sins, and to enable them to bring these truths 
 home to the hearts of those whom they address- 
 ed; and He assured them, in this solemn and 
 authoritative form, that their work, in thus 
 remitting the sins of those who believed their 
 message, would be ratified in heaven, that 
 whosesoever sins they thus remitted were remit- 
 ted to them, and whosesoever sins they retained 
 were retained. It is important we should ever 
 bear in mind the fact that our Saviour, again 
 and again after His Resurrection, insisted on 
 this being the great message which His Church 
 was to bring to the world. It is not perhaps 
 always realized, as it needs to be, what an 
 extraordinary promise it is, and what authori- 
 tative assurance it needs. When men think it 
 difficult to believe in miracles, it is strange they 
 should find it easy to believe in the forgiveness 
 of sins. As a mere matter of personal feeling 
 
214 MIRACLE OF FORGIVENESS 
 
 indeed, that forgiveness may not be so difficult 
 to realize, although the urgency with which 
 our Lord insisted on the duty of forgiveness in 
 this sense, embodying the necessity of it in His 
 short prayer, may indicate that, even in this 
 simple aspect, it is not so easy as is sometimes 
 supposed. But forgiveness in the full sense of 
 the word, forgiveness in the sense in which it 
 is most precious to us, forgiveness in the sense 
 of the blotting out of what is past, the undoing 
 the daily wrongs that have been done, forgive- 
 ness in the sense of justification, forgiveness 
 in the sense which renders possible the obliter- 
 ation of an evil past and the renewal of the 
 soul by regeneration, this is nothing less than 
 a miracle, a supernatural operation, which none 
 but a Divine Hand can eff'ect. The question 
 was profoundly just which the Pharisees raised, 
 " Who can forgive sins but God only ? '* But, 
 if so, then nothing but an express Divine 
 authority can enable us to believe in the for- 
 giveness of sins, the forgiveness of our own sins, 
 the forgiveness of the sins of all who accept the 
 grace which the Saviour offers. Accordingly, 
 in passage after passage, our Saviour assures His 
 Apostles and His disciples of this supreme and 
 
THE DIVINE PROMISE 215 
 
 supernatural blessing ; for this reason He cou- 
 ples the assurance of it with the promise of the 
 gift of the Holy Ghost, to bring it home to 
 the hearts of those who proclaim it, and of 
 those to whom it is proclaimed. For this 
 reason He speaks of it so often after His rising 
 from the dead, as though it were the ultimate 
 result of His death and of His Resurrection, 
 and thus concentrates upon it the thoughts of 
 His Apostles. When He finally " opened 
 their understanding, that they might understand 
 the Scriptures, He said unto them. Thus it is 
 written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, 
 and to rise from the dead the third day : and 
 that repentance and remission of sins should be 
 preached in His Name among all nations, 
 beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses 
 of these things. " 
 
 Accordingly we find that, from the very 
 first, it was upon this great promise that the 
 preaching of the Apostles was concentrated. 
 When, after St. Peter's first sermon, the Jews 
 were pricked in their hearts and said unto Peter 
 and the rest of the Apostles. " Men and brethren, 
 what shall we do " ? then Peter said unto them, 
 " Repent, and be baptised every one of you in 
 
2i6 JUDGMENT AND REMISSION 
 
 the Name of Jesus Christ for the remission of 
 sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy 
 Ghost. " In his address to Cornelius, he sum- 
 med up the message with which he was com- 
 missioned in two things — the proclamation of 
 judgment and the promise of remission. " He 
 commanded us to preach unto the people and 
 to testify that it is He which was ordained of 
 God to be the Judge of quick and dead. To 
 Him give all the prophets witness, that through 
 His Name whosoever believeth in Him shall 
 receive remission of sins. " The same is the 
 conclusion of St. Paul's first sermon. " Be it 
 known unto you therefore, men and brethren, 
 that through this Man is preached unto you 
 the forgiveness of sins : and by Him all that 
 believe are justified from all things, from which 
 ye could not be justified by the law of Moses." 
 That, according to the Apostles, is the central 
 point, the sum and substance of the Gospel — 
 not philosophical theories about God, not the 
 creation of social Utopias, not temporal benefits 
 — except so far as they are the natural conse- 
 quences of spiritual blessings — but first and 
 above all the conviction of sin, and next the 
 conviction and the faith of forgiveness. " Re- 
 
THE PRIEST'S COMMISSION 217 
 
 pentance and remission of sins. " It is well 
 known that the introduction of the words of 
 this text into the commission given to a 
 Priest at his ordination is not of primitive 
 origin, and their use for the purpose is open to 
 misinterpretation. But they cannot be taken 
 to mean anything more than, or anything 
 different from, that which they mean in the 
 Gospel, anything different from that which our 
 Saviour intended by them ; and if understood 
 in this sense, if understood as reminding the 
 priest over whom they are pronounced that his 
 great work is to convince men of sin, of right- 
 eousness, and of judgment, to proclaim repent- 
 ance and remission of sins to all people com- 
 mitted to his charge — that this is the commis- 
 sion of Christ to His Church, of which he in 
 his turn is a commissioned Minister — they may 
 then be a fitting summary of the duties of his 
 ofKce. 
 
 Unhappily in the present day there is an 
 earnest and systematic attempt to revive in 
 the English Church that sacerdotal conception 
 of the function of the Church and of the 
 duties of the priesthood, which I commenced 
 by recalling. It may not be so strongly and 
 
2i8 CONFESSIONAL REVIVED 
 
 authoritatively formulated as it is in the 
 Roman Church ; those who promote it may 
 be formally justified in declaring that they 
 are not introducing the Roman system. But 
 when Clergymen urge people to confession by 
 all the moral influence in their power, when 
 they teach, as is now openly done in the reli- 
 gious Press, that a peace of mind is attainable 
 by confession and priestly absolution which is 
 not attainable otherwise, when we find an 
 experienced and unprejudiced observer like the 
 Bishop of St. Albans saying, as he recently did 
 in his Charge, that it occasions him uneasi- 
 ness to find that in many cases confession is 
 regarded as almost necessary for the highest 
 form of spiritual life — when this is the case, it 
 is too evident that the principle and the method 
 of Sacerdotalism have acquired a strong hold 
 in our Church, and that the time has come 
 when it must be both vigorously and openly 
 resisted by those who believe that it is incon- 
 sistent with the highest form of Christian truth 
 and Christian life, and is fatal in the long run 
 to the welfare of either a Church or a nation. 
 It remains true that the doctrine of justification 
 by faith, of absolute faith in God and God's 
 
THE PRAYER BOOK RULE 219 
 
 Word, as alone sufficient for the salvation, for 
 the daily health and the ultimate safety of the 
 soul, is the attribute of a standing or a falling 
 Christianity ; and that if we would maintain 
 the pure and primitive character of our Church 
 and the virility of our nation, the practice of 
 private Confession and Absolution must be 
 reduced, as our Prayer-Book reduces it, to the 
 position of an exceptional practice, not to be 
 encouraged, but to be superseded by a larger 
 and firmer and more direct faith in the Saviour. 
 The temptations to adopt the other system are, 
 indeed, deeply rooted in human nature ; the 
 system has an attraction for some forms of 
 spiritual weakness : and to some men of earnest 
 spiritual character among the Clergy it presents 
 an ideal of guidance and direction which has a 
 strange and dangerous fascination. But it has 
 never stood the test of time ; there is no trace 
 of it in the practice of the Apostles or in the 
 teaching of the New Testament ; it has no 
 example in those primitive ages when the faith 
 and the practice of the Church were purest, 
 and when her saints were most saintly ; and it 
 is the glory of our Church to have reverted, 
 as the general characteristic of her system, to 
 
220 SENSE OF SIN 
 
 those Scriptural and primitive ideals, and thus 
 to encourage her children to come boldly to 
 the Throne of Grace itself, and to kneel at the 
 feet of the One great High Priest, " that we 
 may obtain mercy and find grace to help in 
 time of need. " 
 
 But let it ever be remembered that it is 
 only by leading men and women to that High 
 Priest that we can enable them to dispense 
 with the secondary priestly aid which is so 
 earnestly pressed upon them. It is only by 
 keeping Christ, and the words of Christ, and 
 the comfort of the Holy Ghost, before the 
 minds of our people that we can meet their 
 daily needs, and enable them to live in the 
 sense of peace with God. In the hearts of 
 the great majority of men and women there is 
 one aching pain and one yearning need — the 
 pain of a sense of sin, of things undone which 
 should have been done, and of things done 
 which should not have been done, and a 
 craving for the forgiveness of those sins, and 
 for deliverance and purification from them. 
 The reason why the Apostles directed all their 
 exhortations, no matter whom they addressed, 
 to the proclamation of repentance and remission 
 
THE UNIVERSAL CRAVING 221 
 
 of sins, was because this is the one universal 
 craving of humanity. It has been observed 
 by Professor Monier WilHams that all the 
 religions of the East, and all their supersti- 
 tions, arise from a sense of sin and a craving 
 for deliverance from it. Part of the v^ork of 
 the ministry, the beginning of it, is to deepen 
 and maintain that sense of sin and of repen- 
 tance ; and the craving for forgiveness and 
 guidance thus aroused must needs be satisfied 
 in one way or another. If not in the right 
 way, it will be satisfied in the wrong ; if not 
 by direct communion with Christ and the 
 Holy Spirit, then by weak human substitutes, 
 and by mortal and fallible priests. But it is 
 the glory of the Ministry, as the witness to the 
 great Evangelical truths of our faith, to point 
 men and women to Christ Himself, to enable 
 them to rely on His words and assurances, 
 and to trust His Spirit. That can only be 
 done by the full and free preaching of His 
 Word, by throwing our whole energies into 
 the study of the Scriptures, and by so entering 
 into their message and their spirit ourselves, 
 as to be able to impress it on the hearts of 
 our people. In proportion as the Clergy do 
 
222 THE HOLY COMMUNION 
 
 that will they fulfil the commission of this 
 text, and shall we help to maintain in our 
 Church and in our nation that true sense of 
 sin, and that manly and womanly faith in 
 Christ's forgiveness and redemption, which 
 were won back for us at such a price at the 
 Reformation. 
 
 II 
 
 THE SACRIFICIAL ASPECT OF THE HOLY COMMUNION 
 
 It may, I think, be observed with thankful- 
 ness that, during recent discussions, much 
 approach has been made towards agreement 
 between authorities in the various Schools of 
 thought in the Church. In the Fulham Con- 
 ference, a statement of the late Mr. Dimock on 
 the subject, somewhat amended in discussion, 
 received the assent of all Members of the 
 Conference, except in respect to four words. 
 That statement was that, " as one aspect of 
 the ordinance, there may be truly said to be a 
 submitting to the Divine view of the Sacrifice 
 of the Death of Christ [in representation, not 
 rf-presentation], not as making, but as having 
 
SACRIFICIAL ASPECT 223 
 
 made once for all, the perfect propitiation for 
 the sins of the world." The four words in 
 this statement which were not accepted, and 
 which in fact were not practically discussed, 
 are the bracketed words " in representation, 
 not i?6'-presentation." But some subsequent 
 statements by Canon Gore, in his book entitled 
 " The Body of Christ,'* would seem to show 
 that he is substantially in harmony with Mr. 
 Dimock on the point involved in those words. 
 Thus he says, on p. 175, " We have thus a 
 solemn commemoration before God of the 
 sacrificial death of Christ. But the death, or 
 the humiliation which belongs to the death, is 
 commemorated only, not renewed or repeated. 
 When the Fathers speak of an ' immolation ' 
 — i.e. a fresh sacrificing of Christ in the 
 Eucharist, they are referring only to the sym- 
 bolism of the sacrament, not to its inward 
 reality ; and this, in the language of the Church 
 taken as a whole, is quite unmistakable, and 
 continues to be so as late as the theology of 
 St. Thomas Aquinas." In illustration. Canon 
 Gore quotes these statements from St. Thomas 
 Aquinas : " It is called a sacrifice with refer- 
 ence to what is past, inasmuch as it is com- 
 
224 NOT PROPITIATORY 
 
 memorative of the Lord's Passion, which was 
 the true Sacrifice ; " and again, " It is a repre- 
 sentative image of Christ's Passion, as the altar 
 represents the Cross on which he was immo- 
 lated." We have, therefore, the admission, on 
 the part of the most learned member of the 
 Evangelical School, that one aspect of the 
 Eucharist is that of a representation, to the 
 Divine view, of the sacrifice of the death of 
 Christ, and, on the other hand, a clear statement, 
 by so learned and able a member of the opposite 
 School as Canon Gore, that the representation 
 of our Lord's sacrifice in the Eucharist is not 
 a r^'-presentation. In other words, these two 
 representative Divines agree in the statement 
 of St. Chrysostom, quoted by Canon Gore, 
 that " we off^er, but as making for ourselves a 
 
 memorial of His Death We make always 
 
 the same sacrifice, or rather we effect a me- 
 morial of the Sacrifice." 
 
 We may also welcome thankfully some 
 further observations of Bishop Gore, in which 
 he says (p. 176), that " the Eucharist is not in 
 the stricter sense of the term propitiatory. It 
 is certainly in accordance with the language of 
 the New Testament to reserve this term for 
 
THE ONE SACRIFICE 225 
 
 the initial act by which Christ gave humanity 
 a new standing before God, and opened the 
 kingdom of heaven to all believers." He 
 observes that Bishop Jeremy Taylor allows 
 that the Eucharist " is ministerially, by appli- 
 cation, an instrument propitiatory ; " and says 
 that " the use of the word propitiatory of the 
 Eucharist, or the refusal to use it, may thus be 
 said to be a mere matter of language." But 
 Bishop Gore adds that " there are deep reasons 
 of religion, as well as Scriptural authority, to 
 move us to restrict its application ; and of 
 course still deeper reasons for guarding the 
 truth, which the restriction expresses, of the 
 uniqueness and all-sufficiency of the sacrifice of 
 Calvary." 
 
 We cannot, I think, but thankfully recognise 
 that these various statements mark a considerable 
 degree of approximation — it might even be 
 said, of practical agreement, between Mr. 
 Dimock and Bishop Gore, as to the view to 
 be taken of the Eucharist as a commemoration 
 and representation of the Sacrifice of our Lord. 
 But another important statement, in the same 
 direction, has been made by a conspicuous 
 representative of the High Church view on 
 
 15 
 
226 AN OLD DOCTRINE 
 
 this subject — The late Professor Moberly, of 
 Christ Church. He pubhshed an interesting 
 and important article on the Fulham Con- 
 ference in the yournal of Theological Studies, 
 In the outset of that article (p. 322) he says 
 he desires " to acknowledge from the begin- 
 ning that the position which is thus cardinal 
 to modern Evangelical theology" — as main- 
 tained at the Conference — " is in its origin 
 neither new nor partisan. A doctrine/' he 
 says, " strenuously maintained as cardinal to 
 Eucharistic truth by Archdeacon Freeman and 
 by Canon Trevor, based by both upon emphatic 
 words of Bishop Andrewes, and by Canon 
 Trevor upon a long catena of passages from 
 distinctive and distinguished Anglican Divines, 
 is no device of modern ' Low Churchmanship.* 
 It has a long history and many-sided support. 
 It is no more partisan than it is new." These 
 are handsome acknowledgments, and in the 
 interesting discussion which follows, Professor 
 Moberly goes still further in his acceptance of 
 the Evangelical position as stated at the Con- 
 ference. Thus he says (p. 334) " with much 
 of the Evangelical meaning I can heartily 
 concur. When Dr. Wace says that ' The 
 
EVANGELICAL DOCTRINE 227 
 
 Holy Communion is a commemoration, as well 
 on the part of God, by whom it was instituted, 
 as on the part of man, of the one-sufficient 
 sacrifice off^ered by our Lord on the Cross, and 
 a visible means for assuring and conveying to 
 us the benefits of that Sacrifice,' I could accept 
 his saying, not indeed without some added 
 explanation, but without the alteration of a 
 word. When Mr. Dimock urges the extreme 
 importance of ' bearing witness to the truth, 
 that for outcast, lost sinners, there was no 
 access to life in Communion with God, save 
 by the reconciliation which we have by the 
 death of His Son — no way of entering into 
 fellowship with the resurrection life of Christ 
 except by being made partakers of His Body 
 and Blood, as sacrificed for the remission of 
 sins,' I am, so far as those words go, with him 
 entirely. Even when Dr. Moule urges that it 
 is ' involved in the terms of institution that 
 our Lord put forward His Body and Blood as 
 sacrificed — the Body as dead, and the Blood as 
 shed — to be participated in as a sacrifice,' I 
 could still adopt the words, if only I may put 
 my own interpretation on Mead ;' making it 
 clear that I mean the Body which died and is 
 
228 BISHOP ANDREWS 
 
 not dead, not the body in a state of death ; and 
 again, that by the ' Blood as shed, ' I mean really 
 the shed Blood, not the blood as now in a state 
 of separation from the Body. " 
 
 Upon a general review of these statements, 
 we seem to come to this result — that the 
 view of the relation of the Eucharist to the 
 sacrifice of our Lord, maintained by such 
 Evangelical representatives as Mr. Dimock 
 and Bishop Moule, is acknowledged to be 
 that of so representative an Anglican Divine 
 as Bishop Andrews, and that Dr. Moberly 
 himself admits the truth of the modern Evan- 
 gelical statement of it, subject to the qualification 
 — no doubt an important one — that the Eucha- 
 rist refers to the Body and Blood of our Lord, 
 not as in the state of death upon the cross, 
 but in their present glorified condition. But 
 it may be observed that this point of difference, 
 though a grave one, does not aff^ect the main 
 point of agreement now in question. Dr. 
 Moberly seems to adopt the view that our 
 Lord's Body and Blood, as represented in the 
 Eucharist, are representative of His Body and 
 Blood as now represented or exhibited by Him 
 in Heaven. He maintains that the essence of 
 
BISHOP WESTCOTT 229 
 
 the Sacrifice lies in that present exhibition, 
 and as it were sprinkling, of the Blood of 
 Christ in Heaven. But he acknowledges most 
 fully (p. 332), "that the Eucharist immediately 
 connects us with the Atoning Sacrifice of Christy 
 with the Blood of Atonement, with the body 
 that died. ... I would say, '' he adds, " as 
 strongly as Dr. Moule, or Mr. Dimock, or 
 Dr. Wace could say it, that it is with nothing 
 so much as the sacrifice as sacrifice, the atone- 
 ment as atonement, that the Eucharist was 
 ordained to associate us. '* It is not practicable, 
 in this Paper, to discuss adequately the distinc- 
 tive view which Dr. ^Moberly thus puts 
 forward ; and it will be enough, for our 
 immediate purpose, to quote an observation of 
 Bishop Westcott, in his commentary on the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews (p. 230), where he 
 says that " The modern conception of Christ 
 pleading in Heaven His Passion, ' offering His 
 Blood,' on behalf of men, has no foundation 
 in the Epistle. His glorified humanity is the 
 eternal pledge of the absolute efficiency of His 
 accomplished work. He pleads, as other 
 writers truly expressed the thought, by His 
 presence on His Father's throne. Meanwhile 
 
230 SUBSTANTIAL AGREEMENT 
 
 men on earth in union with Him enjoy con- 
 tinually through His Blood what was before the 
 privilege of one man on one day in the year. '' 
 This,: however, for the purpose of the point of 
 view to which this Paper is to be addressed, 
 appears to be a side issue. It is a difference 
 as to the manner in which, in the Eucharist, 
 we are made partakers of the sacrifice of Christ. 
 But there is a substantial, if not an entire, 
 agreement between Dr. Moberly, Bishop Gore 
 and Evangelical Divines, as to the momentous 
 fact, that the Eucharist is an appointed means 
 for participation in the Sacrifice of Christ. 
 It is agreed, on both sides, that by partaking 
 of the Consecrated Elements, we are brought 
 into union and communion with the Lamb as 
 slain. Dr. Moberly only objects to saying, 
 with Bishop Andrews, " the Lamb as dead '' ; 
 but he fully recognises that we are brought 
 into communion with the Lamb as slain. 
 Comparing the two views, it seems striking to 
 reflect that the connexion of the Eucharist 
 with the Sacrifice of Christ is more thoroughly 
 represented by the Evangelical view than by 
 that of Dr. Moberly and his School. In the 
 teaching of Bishop Andrews and Dr. Moule, 
 
SACRIFICE AND FEAST 231 
 
 it is with Christ, in His actual propitiatory 
 Sacrifice on the Cross, that we are brought 
 into communion in the Eucharist. In the 
 other view, it is rather with the application of 
 that Sacrifice in Heaven that our Communion 
 is maintained. Still, in either case, the Eucha- 
 rist is not a bare commemoration of the 
 Sacrifice. It makes us in a special manner 
 partakers of it, and we renew and deepen our 
 relation to it in every act of reception. 
 
 We seem after all, then, to be brought back 
 by these discussions to the view so clearly 
 explained by Cudworth, and supported by 
 Waterland, that " the true notion of the Lord's 
 Supper " is that of a feast upon a sacrifice. 
 Cudworth's admirable learning has anticipated, 
 in substance, much of what is put forward by 
 Bishop Gore as the result of recent investigation 
 into the meaning of sacrificial rites and sacrifi- 
 cial banquets, not only among Semitic races, 
 but among Pagans generally. A Sacrifice, and 
 a feast upon a Sacrifice, were almost universally 
 associated. As Cudworth states, " having thus 
 shown that both among the Jews under the 
 law, and the Gentiles in their Pagan worship. . . 
 it was ever a solemn rite to join feasting with 
 
232 A SACRIFICIAL FEAST 
 
 sacrificing, and to EAT oi those things that 
 had been offered up, the very continuity and 
 harmony of the thing itself leads me to con- 
 ceive, that that Christian Feast under the 
 Gospel, called the Lord's Supper, is the very 
 same thing, and bears the same notion, in 
 respect of the true Christian Sacrifice of Christ 
 upon the Cross, that those did to the Jewish 
 and Heathenish sacrifices, and so is Epulufn 
 Sacrificiale ^ a Sacrificial Feast ; I mean a Feast 
 upon Sacrifices ; or Epulum ex oblatis^ a Feast 
 upon things offered up to God, only this 
 difference arising in the parallel, that because 
 those Legal Sacrifices were but Types and 
 Shadows of the true Christian Sacrifice, they 
 were often repeated and renewed, as well as 
 the Feasts that were made upon them. But 
 now the true Christian Sacrifice being come, 
 and offered up once for all, never to be 
 repeated, we have therefore no more Typical 
 Sacrifices left amongst us, but only the Feasts 
 upon the true Sacrifice still symbolically conti- 
 nued, and often repeated, in reference to that 
 One Great Sacrifice, which is always as 
 present in God's sight and as efficacious as if 
 it were but now offered up for us. " 
 
THE PASCHAL LAMB 233 
 
 It would seem difficult to improve upon 
 this statement of the true notion of the Lord's 
 Supper. Cudworth, in fact, was right in 
 seeing that the true point of departure, for a 
 consideration of the Lord's Supper, is to be 
 taken from the Paschal meal, which our Savi- 
 our was sharing with his disciples. In that 
 meal, the body of the Lamb was eaten, as a 
 means and an assurance to the Israelite of his 
 participation in the deliverance and the cove- 
 nant which ensued upon the sacrifice of the 
 Lamb. The immediate connexion of our 
 Lord's words is with the Lamb so sacrificed 
 and eaten. He says, in effisct, to His disciples, 
 with the plainest allusion to the meal of 
 which they had been partaking, " I am 
 the Passover which is about to be sacrificed 
 for you ; and this bread shall be to you, to all 
 intents and purposes, my Body ; and this wine 
 shall be, to all intents and purposes, the blood 
 of the New Covenant ; and by partaking of 
 that bread and drinking of that wine, you shall 
 enjoy participation in the benefits of the Sacri- 
 fice I am about to off^er." Consequently, in 
 the view intimated by what Dr. Moberly has 
 called Bishop Andrews' " biting phrase," ad 
 
234 SACRIFICE AND COMMUNION 
 
 cadaver^ and in Dr. Moule's statement, that 
 " the occasion, the action, the full words of 
 the institution, all define the Sacred Body, in 
 our Lord's thought, to be the Body as in 
 death ; " there is not, as Bishop Gore and 
 Dr. Moberly seem to suppose, any such 
 strange idea as that by " a new and unnecessary 
 miracle '' (p. 3 2 3 , journal of Theological Studies^ 
 " there is postulated in the Eucharist some real 
 presence of the flesh and blood of Christ as 
 they were when he was dying or dead upon 
 the Cross" (The Body of Christ, p. 181-2). 
 The simple idea is that, by virtue of our 
 Saviour's institution, the consecrated bread and 
 the consecrated wine are the means of enabling 
 us " so to eat the flesh of Christ and to drink 
 His blood, that our sinful bodies may be made 
 clean by His body, and our souls washed 
 through His most precious blood, and that we 
 may evermore dwell in Him and He in us." 
 
 It is in this sense, of being a Feast on the one 
 Eternal Sacrifice, that the Holy Communion 
 commemorates that sacrifice ; and this consi- 
 deration, as is pointed out by Bishop Gore, in 
 a manner for which the Church has reason to 
 be grateful to him, is the true safeguard against 
 
SACRIFICE AND COMMUNION 235 
 
 the mischievous practice of separating the 
 commemoration of the Sacrifice from the act 
 of Communion. It tends, in his words, to 
 keep " in clear view that our real fellowship 
 in the Sacrifice of Christ is only maintained by 
 Communion." (p. 197). But at the same 
 time, it brings before us in the most profound 
 and touching manner, and represents before 
 God with the deepest solemnity, how, "of His 
 tender mercy He gave His only Son, Jesus 
 Christ, to suffer death upon the Cross, for our 
 redemption," and how our Lord " made there, 
 by His one oblation of Himself once offered, 
 a full, perfect and sufHcient sacrifice, oblation 
 and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole 
 world." I would only add, that the sense thus 
 brought home to us, by participation of the 
 symbols of the Saviour's Body and Blood, of 
 the Sacrifice which he made for us is the most 
 effectual means of evoking, on our part, that 
 sacrifice of " ourselves, our souls and bodies," 
 which our Church teaches us to make im- 
 mediately after our participation in the Savi- 
 our's Sacrifice. In this aspect — to which on 
 the present occasion only a brief reference can 
 be made, there can be no doubt of the sacrificial 
 
236 SACRIFICIAL CHARACTER 
 
 character of the Eucharist. We are taught 
 by our Church, in response to the Saviour's 
 Sacrifice, first to desire God's fatherly goodness, 
 " mercifully to accept this our sacrifice of 
 praise and thanksgiving," and finally to " offer 
 and present unto Him ourselves, our souls and 
 bodies to be a reasonable, holy, and lively 
 sacrifice unto Him." The sacrificial aspect 
 of the Holy Communion is thus the key to 
 its significance, first as communicating to us 
 the benefits of the Sacrifice of Christ, and 
 secondly as evoking from ourselves an answer- 
 ing sacrifice. Rightly understood, v^e prize 
 that aspect as of supreme value, and we shall 
 not allow ourselves to be diverted, by the 
 errors and abuses with which it has been 
 overlaid, from asserting and cherishing it. 
 
 Ill 
 
 THE TRUE AUTHORITY IN MATTERS OF CHRISTIAN 
 FAITH AND PRACTICE 
 
 " When He the Spirit of Truth is come, He will 
 guide you into all truth." — John xvi.^ 13. 
 
 A question which seems of great practical 
 
AUTHORITY 237 
 
 consequence at the present moment is that of 
 the authority by which Christian men, and 
 especially Christian ministers, ought to be 
 guided in matters of faith and worship. It is 
 the common impression of thoughtful observers, 
 especially among men experienced in public 
 affairs, that our Church, at the present moment, 
 exhibits a painful aspect of anarchy ; and if 
 that be so, the reason probably is, not merely 
 that there is an anarchical spirit abroad, but 
 that there is no general agreement as to the 
 true standard of authority. Men and women 
 seem to be feeling after some such authority 
 with a dim instinctive craving, and it is their 
 very longing for it that, too often, renders 
 them the victims of the first bold authoritative 
 voice which asserts a claim over them. This '- 
 constitutes, to a large extent, the strength of 
 the Roman Catholic Church, and of that 
 section of our own Church which so nearly , 
 approaches the Roman Church in character. / 
 In each case, the alleged authority is that of 
 the Church. In the case of the Romanist, 
 that authority is plain, visible and accessible. 
 The Roman Church is now concentrated in 
 the Pope, and every Bishop or Priest represents 
 
238 CHURCH AUTHORITY 
 
 and enforces his authority. For the section 
 of our own Church to which I refer, there is 
 no such visible and definite authority to be 
 appealed to ; but none the less, the word 
 " Church," and the supposed authority of what 
 is called " The Church," exercises an almost 
 magical influence. Practices are introduced 
 among us, and enforced as matters of moral 
 obligation, on no other ground than that they 
 have the alleged authority of the Church. 
 Other practices, which have seemed to many 
 good men not merely convenient and harmless, 
 but highly conducive to the maintenance of 
 spiritual life among large and laborious classes, 
 are not only discouraged, but vehemently 
 denounced, on no other ground than the alleged 
 authority of the Church. Above all, a certain 
 system of doctrine, and a certain tone and 
 character of worship, are alleged to be " Cath- 
 olic," or in a special sense characteristic of 
 " The Catholic Church " ; and those who do 
 not adopt this system and these customs are 
 treated as defaulters to a recognised ideal. 
 This ideal of the Church, or of the Catholic 
 Church, assumes an imposing shape in the 
 imagination, and Societies are formed, and 
 
PRIMITIVE AUTHORITY 239 
 
 religious newspapers conducted, with the 
 definite object of making this ideal supreme 
 in the English Church. 
 
 And yet, let me say at once, there exists no 
 reality, and since early times there has existed 
 none, for which this ideal authority can be 
 claimed. For a period, indeed, which has 
 been limited by the present Margaret Professor 
 at Oxford — no harsh judge on such matters — 
 to about four centuries after Christ, concluding 
 with the year 451 a.d.,^ there was a sufficient 
 unity and continuity in the teaching, practice, 
 and government of the Church to render it 
 possible to recognise that that teaching, prac- 
 tice, and government had the marks of 
 Catholicity. Such Catholicity may reasonably 
 be pleaded for the allowance among us of 
 teaching and practice which can be shown to 
 have prevailed within the period in question ; 
 and accordingly our great apologist against the 
 Roman Church, Bishop Jewel, was content to 
 stake the cause of our Church on the issue 
 that none of the doctrines and practices he 
 denounced could be vindicated by the authority 
 
 ^ See Dr. Sanday's Letter in the Report of the Fulham 
 Conference^ 1900, p, 40. 
 
240 PRIMITIVE PRACTICES 
 
 " of any old Catholic orator or father, or out 
 of any old general council, or out of the Holy 
 Scriptures of God, or any one example of the 
 primitive Church... for the space of six hun- 
 dred years after Christ." At the same time, 
 it cannot for a moment be admitted that the 
 rites and ceremonies then prevailing are, by 
 reason of their Catholicity within that period, 
 binding upon ourselves now. Some of the 
 most conspicuous ceremonies then practised, 
 alike at Baptism and at the Lord's Supper, 
 are by general consent disused, and their re- 
 introduction would never be suggested, even 
 by those who are most urgent in asserting the 
 authority of the Catholic church. Many of 
 the early Canons are quite impracticable 
 for enforcement among ourselves; and on 
 some important doctrines, such as the Atone- 
 ment and the Resurrection of the body, views 
 were put forward, even by Fathers of high 
 authority, which no English theologian of 
 any school in the present day would support. 
 The utmost that can be justly said, respecting 
 doctrines and practices which prevailed at 
 that period, is that there is, prima facie^ 3. 
 presumption in favour of them. But even 
 
THE VISIBLE CHURCH 241 
 
 with respect to a peculiarly solemn document, 
 the Creed of Chalcedon, the Western Church 
 has not scrupled, without the authority of 
 any similar council, to introduce momentous 
 words, by which the East has ever since been 
 divided from the West. If it be consistent 
 with due reverence for the Catholic authority 
 of the early Church to modify its definition 
 of the doctrine of the Trinity, what statement 
 or ordinance of that Church can there be, 
 with respect to which a similar modification 
 is not permissible ? 
 
 But pass beyond this period of substantial 
 unity and Catholicity, and where is the 
 Church, the one visible Church, to whose 
 authority and voice we can appeal ? In the 
 words of the Margaret Professor, " from the 
 date 451 A.D. onwards the Christian world 
 came to be so broken up into its several parts 
 that the movement of the whole has practically 
 lost its containing unity. Although the formal 
 separation of East and West was delayed, the 
 development of each was continued on more 
 and more divergent lines. " Before long, the 
 East was actually divided from the West, and 
 except from the point of view of the Roman 
 
 16 
 
242 THE CHURCH DIVIDED 
 
 Catholics, neither can be said to be " The 
 Church. " They are divided halves of " the 
 whole congregation of Christian people dis- 
 persed throughout the whole world," and 
 neither of them can claim that exclusive 
 guidance of the Spirit of God, which is the 
 necessary basis for any such unquestionable 
 authority as is tacitly assumed. After some 
 six more centuries the whole congregation of 
 Christian people suffered another deep division; 
 and, since the Reformation, half of Christian 
 Europe, and not the least spiritual or least 
 enlightened half, has renounced communion 
 with the other. Amidst these divided com- 
 munities of Christian men, where, except upon 
 the theory of the Romanist, is that Church, 
 that special Catholic Church, to be found, 
 which is to be recognised as having a right to 
 a predominant authority over all our belief 
 and our practice ? Does it not seem as if, in 
 the Providence of God, after the Church had 
 once begun to admit error in doctrine and 
 practice, He had allowed the fair unity of 
 the primitive Church to be shattered into 
 fragments, expressly in order to prevent men 
 falling into the Roman error, and settling on 
 
THE ENGLISH CHURCH 243 
 
 some one visible community of fallible men as 
 their supreme authority, and so supplanting 
 an ideal by an idol ? If, moreover, an appeal 
 is to be made to the general authority of the 
 Christian Church, by what right do you cut 
 out of the continuous life of that Church four 
 whole centuries, since the Reformation, of the 
 history of some of the most vigorous and 
 devoted Communions which the whole history 
 of Christianity can show? The English Church, 
 in particular, has existed in this land for 
 thirteen centuries. By what right do you cut 
 out of the experience and example of that 
 Church nearly one-third of its whole existence, 
 the four hundred years since the Reformation, 
 and say that they shall not be taken into 
 account in determining what Catholic practices 
 and doctrines are ? This supposed Catholic 
 Church, to which appeal is made by the ex- 
 treme High Churchmen of our day, is, except 
 so far as it can be identified with the primitive 
 Church, a phantom of the imagination. In 
 the mouth of the Romanist, the appeal to the 
 Catholic Church has a clear and definite 
 meaning. To adapt Bellarmine's words to the 
 present day, a Romanist appeals to a Com- 
 
244 AUTHORITY IN PRACTICE 
 
 munion and an authority which is as visible 
 and tangible as the Republic of France or the 
 Kingdom of Italy. But in the mouth of an 
 English Churchman, an appeal to the Catholic 
 Church is an appeal to an authority which 
 does not exist as a real authority, except so 
 far as it is an appeal to the primitive Church ; 
 and even that Church, as we have seen, is not 
 
 sj an absolute authority, even in its Creeds. 
 
 Where, then, are we to look for that 
 authority for which, as has been said, men and 
 women are so earnestly craving ? The answer 
 must be twofold. There are two authorities 
 to which our allegiance is due, and due in 
 different degrees — a proximate and an ultimate 
 authority. The proximate authority is that 
 
 J of the branch of the Church Universal to which 
 we ourselves belong. On any practicable 
 principles of organisation — on the principles 
 which universally prevailed in the early 
 Church — a man's first allegiance is due to the 
 authority immediately placed above him, sub- 
 ject only to an appeal to any lawful superior 
 authority. As an English Churchman, there- 
 fore, my obedience is dae, in the first instance, 
 to my own Bishop, subject to the laws and 
 
ENGLISH AUTHORITY 245 
 
 ordinances of the whole Church of England. 
 I have a right to appeal from him to the 
 Archbishop ; but, in the present state of 
 the Church as a whole, I have no right, 
 or power, to appeal any further ; for there 
 exists no living authority, and there exists no 
 code of Church Law, to which, by the Law 
 of God, the authorities of the Church of 
 England are bound to submit themselves. The 
 ideal, no doubt, of the Christian Church is 
 that the whole congregation of Christian people, 
 dispersed throughout the whole world, should 
 be so united in Christian charity, as to be able 
 to bring their united wisdom and spiritual 
 experience together in council, and thus to 
 guide, under the influence of the Spirit of God, 
 the belief and the practice of the various local 
 Churches. But no such authority has existed 
 since the time of the primitive authority already 
 mentioned. No General Council can possibly .^ 
 be appealed to ; and in the absence of such 
 general authority, each Church must exercise 
 its own authority, on its own responsibility. 
 But this being the case, the authority of my 
 own Church is the only one that exists for me ; 
 and the only way in which I discharge the 
 
246 LIVING AUTHORITY 
 
 duty of obedience to those who are set over me 
 in the Lord, which is the acknowledged obU- 
 gation of every Christian man, is by dutifully 
 submitting myself to this authority, so long as it 
 requires nothing of me which I may be per- 
 suaded, on my conscience, is absolutely contrary 
 to the Law of God. The only hope for the 
 establishment of order in the Church at large 
 ^ consists in the cultivation of the habit of 
 obedience to the authorities immediately over 
 us. To appeal, from that authority, to some 
 imaginary authority which has now no real 
 existence, and which has had none for at least 
 1400 years, is simply to shelter the spirit of 
 disobedience under an imaginary and fictitious 
 ideal. 
 
 But if we thus, in the true spirit of Evan- 
 gelical Churchmen, act on the principle of 
 our Articles that our own Church " hath 
 power to decree rites and ceremonies and 
 authority in controversies of faith "; and if, in 
 , the present divided state of Christendom, the 
 I sole responsibility for the exercise of that 
 power and authority rests with our national 
 Church, acting by itself, it remains to ask, by 
 what ultimate authority is that church itself to 
 
AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE 247 
 
 be guided ? This is the second point of which 
 I spoke formerly, as that of the ultimate 
 authority to which our allegiance is due. 
 This question, however, is not less clearly 
 decided by our Articles than the other. " It 
 is not lawful " they declare, " for the Church 
 to ordain anything that is contrary to God's 
 word written "; and thus, " although the 
 Church be a witness and keeper of holy Writ, 
 yet, as it ought not to decree anything against 
 the same, so besides the same ought it not to 
 enforce anything to be believed for necessity 
 of salvation "; and again, " Holy Scripture 
 containeth all things necessary to salvation, so 
 that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may 
 be proved thereby, is not to be required of any 
 man that it should be believed as an article of 
 faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to 
 salvation. " Our Church thus acknowledges 
 that Holy Scripture is the sole authority for 
 the faith which she requires from her members, 
 and that in the practice she imposes on them 
 she may not ordain anything that is contrary 
 to God's word written. Even for the Creeds, 
 as Dr. Hawkins observed in his Bampton 
 Lectures, she appeals, not to any authority 
 
248 THE CHURCH AND SCRIPTURE 
 
 supposed to reside in the Catholic Church, but 
 /to Scripture alone. "The three Creeds" she 
 says, " ought thoroughly to be received and 
 believed, for they may be proved by most 
 certain warrant of Holy Scripture '\ 
 
 Is it not then entirely inconsistent with 
 this principle of our Church to say, as is 
 constantly said by many among us, that the 
 Prayer Book and Articles were to be read and 
 interpreted in the light of the belief and 
 practice of the Catholic Church ? Her prin- 
 ciple demands, on the contrary, that our 
 formularies, and more particularly our Articles, 
 should be interpreted in the light of Holy 
 Scripture, rather than in that of mediaeval 
 theology. In defence of this reference to 
 what is called, from the imaginative point 
 V-of view already spoken of, " the mind of the 
 j^^ Church," we are sometimes told that the Church 
 was before the New Testament. In the mere 
 sense that the Church was in existence before 
 the New Testament was written, this is, 
 of course, a mere truism. But in any other 
 than this mere chronological sense, the state- 
 ment is not true. The men who wrote the 
 New Testament, were the men who made the 
 
/THE NEW TESTAMENT 249 
 
 Church; and the authors of the New Testa- 
 ment, representing the teaching of the New 
 Testament, were thus anterior to the Church,/ 
 and superior to it. The Old Testament existed 
 before the birth of the Christian Church; and 
 the New Testament existed in Hving form, in 
 the persons of its authors, contemporaneously 
 with the birth of the Church. In point of 
 fact, as is acknowledged by a distinguished 
 writer of the High Church school, in a re- 
 markable volume recently published,^ The New 
 Testament Scriptures " represent the mind of the 
 Church at its best and freshest ; they represent 
 the utterance of its highest inspirations. " 
 Consequently, whatever value attaches to the 
 authority of the Church " at its best and 
 freshest," attaches to the New Testament, and 
 is to be found only there. But when this writer 
 goes on, in the next sentence, to say, that 
 " none the less the spirit of the Church as a 
 whole is the same spirit which inspired the 
 Apostles"; when he accordingly (p. 241) 
 requires that " the New Testament should be 
 read in the light of this ancient Catholic 
 tradition, " he is taking away with one hand 
 
 ^ The Body of Christy by Bishop Gore, p. 242. 
 
250 THE CHURCH AND THE BIBLE 
 
 what he had given with the other. After 
 Apostolic times, though the Spirit of God was 
 still at work in the Church, the Church did 
 not respond to the voice of that Spirit as it 
 did in its " best and freshest " time ; and it 
 cannot be said that the degree of inspiration 
 vouchsafed to the Church as a whole was 
 either of the same kind or degree as that 
 vouchsafed to the Apostles. 
 
 There is, therefore, a profound fallacy in 
 the " old formula " which this writer, like 
 others of his school, would enforce upon us : — 
 " The Church to teach : the Bible to prove." 
 Teaching, no doubt, is the function specially- 
 assigned to the Church by our Lord's commis- 
 sion, " Go ye and teach all nations." But if 
 the Church would fulfil aright her mission of 
 teaching, she must first herself be taught of 
 God ; and the only means by which she can 
 receive that teaching is through the Holy 
 Scriptures, under the guidance of the Spirit 
 of God. The Bible is not to be kept in the 
 background, as a document to be referred to 
 for the proof of doctrines, as a witness is called 
 into court for the purpose of some special 
 piece of evidence. It must, on the contrary, 
 
TRUE CHURCHMANSHIP 251 
 
 be our constant teacher, the one perpetual 
 source of our knowledge of Divine things, 
 under the guidance of the Spirit who inspired 
 it, and who is ever at hand to illuminate the 
 hearts and minds of those who seek His aid in 
 prayer, and who look up to Him as the guide 
 of every Christian into all the truth. If to be 
 called Low Churchmen means that we look to 
 the Bible as an authority anterior to the Church, 
 and still superior to it, we have no occasion 
 to shrink from the name. But if it be under- 
 stood to mean that we are indifferent to Church 
 authority and Church organisation, we repudiate 
 it with a clear conscience. We are loyal to 
 the only Church authority which is accessible 
 to us — loyal to the authority of our Prayer 
 Book and our Articles ; loyal to the ecclesias- 
 tical authorities to whom the interpretation of 
 those formularies and the administration of 
 our Church are committed ; and loyal also in 
 seeking in the Scriptures, as the supreme source 
 of authority, the spirit and the meaning of 
 those formularies, and of the Church system 
 which we have inherited. It is by steadfast 
 adherence to these principles, by loyal and 
 cheerful obedience to those set over us in the 
 
 / 
 
252 TRUE CHURCHMANSHIP 
 
 Lord and to the teaching of the Church to 
 which we belong and by a faithful and prayerful 
 endeavour to live in the light of those Scrip- 
 tures to which our Church has absolutely 
 submitted herself — it is by such means as these 
 that we hope to remove the anarchy by which 
 we are at present menaced, and to realise, in 
 our own Communion at all events, the unity 
 for which our Saviour prayed. 
 
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