When, in the course of human events, we behold a people emerge from slavery, and "assume, among the powers of earth, the separate and equal station, to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them," the sight is one of no ordinary interest; for slavery is odious, the civil rights and privileges of a nation are valuable, and new scope is given for the development of mind in the prosecution of moral, social and political principles. But, my brethren, should we behold a revolution, in which the yoke of bondage is thrown off, not by one people, but in rapid succession, by a whole family of nations, and that yoke not only one of civil, but also of religious bondage, the spectacle would rise to incalculably greater interest; because the effects are far more extensive, the principles involved far more elevated, and the privileges conferred such as appertain, not only to the temporal, but also to the eternal interests of men. Such was the glorious Reformation of the sixteenth century, effected by God himself, not miraculously, but in accordance with the analogies of his Providence, through a band of intrepid, noble-minded, yet imperfect men. The fruits, both civil and religious, of this Revolution, we, in these United States, most richly enjoy; but its origin and incidents, we are prone too often to forget, and too seldom to inculcate on the popular mind.
'Tis littel more than three hundred years, since Luther,1 confessedly the most prominent of these mortal heroes, the chieftain of this Spartan band, was born; and about six weeks afterwards his illustrious coadjutor, Zuingle,2 first saw the light. At that time all the civilized nations of Europe--Germany, France, England, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Italy, &c. &c., however diverse their languages, and habits, and political interests and institutions, were consolidated into one religious despotism, having one man, the pope at Rome, the pretended vicegerent of Christ on earth, at his head! Papal Rome was then the mistress of the earth, in a far more important sense than in the days of her pagan glory, when she swayed the sceptre of political dominion, but suffered her vanquished foes to worship their own gods. Then she controlled civil interests and outward acts, now she gave laws to the intellect of half the known world, regulated their social intercourse, prescribed their religious duties, and made her power felt in the inmost recesses of her soul. The pretended successor of St. Peter, still claimed the right
"Of raising monarch to their thrones,
Or sinking them with equal ease!"
Forgetting that "no man can forgive sins but God only,"3 he sacrilegiously pretended that like "the Son of man, he had power on earth, to forgive sins."4 And when thwarted in his purpose, he claimed the right of placing whole nations under papal interdict, and thus as he pretended, and an ignorant, superstitious people believed, of closing the gates of heaven against them!
1 Luther was born Nov. 10th, 1483
2 Zuingle was born Jan. 1st, 1484.
3 Mark 2:7 Luke 5:21 Ephes. 4:32 Psalm 130:4 Isaiah 43:25 44:22 Jer. 50:20
4 Matth. 9:6
Such was the galling yoke of spiritual tyranny under which the civilized world was groaning, when He, who purchased the church with his own blood, and in prophetic vision revealed to John, the downfall of Babylon, the mother of harlots, sent deliverance. Now, how is she fallen! Stript of her most valuable dominions, and wooed with little ardour by her flatterers that remain! Now she is seen begging favour at the feet of monarchs, who once trembled at her nod, and seeking by a desperate effort in this new world, to retrieve the losses and recover from the shocks inflicted on her by the still lingering effects of the Reformation in the old. That Reformation stands unique on the tablets of universal history; there has been no other equal to it, and there cannot be. For the papal hierarchy will never regain such a colossal magnitude, nor such despotic sway over the civilized world; and the nations of Europe will never again bow to such an iron yoke. That marvellous and wide-spread revolution in the church stands authenticated as the peculiar work of God, and exhibits the most brilliant displays of his providential guidance, as well as verifications of the promise: "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world."
The Period for This Event Was Wisely Chosen by the Head of the Church.
As changes in the character of individuals and of nations are by the laws of mind generally gradual; so the meridian light of the Reformation did not immediately burst in upon the midnight gloom of the dark ages. The two centuries preceding the Reformation may be regarded as the dawn of that glorious day, as preparatory and introductory to it. In Prague, the capital of Bohemia, not more than about seventy miles from Wittenberg, Conrad Stickna,5 and John Milicz,6 had publicly inveighed against the corruption of both priests and people, and especially against the mendicant friars, a century and a half before the Reformation of Luther; and Mattias von Janow, the confessor of Charles IV., had even gone so far in several instances as to administer the holy supper in both kinds, although he was soon compelled to recant. Wicklife in England, and Peter d'Ailly, Chancellor of the University at Paris, bore similar testimony against Romish corruption.
In the century immediately preceding the Reformation, Huss and Jerome arose at witnesses for the truth under very favourable circumstances. They dwelt in the same city where Stickna and Milicz had taught before them. And the University of Prague, in which they were professors, was at that time the most celebrated in all Europe, except that in Paris, and was frequented by thousands of young men from every part of Germany. John Gerson also distinguished himself as an advocate for reform. Accordingly a partial Reformation had commenced in Bohemia. A liturgy in the vernacular tongue was there extensively used, and the council convened at Basil, in 1433, even sanctioned its use, and allowed the Bohemians to administer the cup to the laity. Nor were the views of these Reformers entirely superficial. If we concentrate the different rays of their light, they will amount to a distinct preparative to the glorious Reformation which followed. The positions maintained by the Hussites and Taborites of
5 Obiit. A.D. 1369.
6 A.D. 1374 obiit.
that century, were the unrestricted preaching of God's word; the restoration of the cup to the laity; that the priesthood should be divested of its secular power and wealth; the introduction of a more rigid and scriptural church discipline; the abolition of monasteries, the images in worship; the rejection of the doctrine of Purgatory, and of Auricular Confession. This light, though circumscribed in its influence, being confined to Bohemia, served, in connexion with scattered rays in other countries, to prepare the Catholic world for the meridian splendour of the Reformation, and doubtless assisted even Luther himself in investigating the foundations of Papacy.
Such was the state of things when Martin Luther was born, Nov. 10, 1483, a year which witnessed alike the unabated pretensions, and the waning power of Romanism, in the unexecuted papal bull and interdict against the Republic of Venice; and in the memorable Auto de Fe, at Seville in Spain, which soon succeeded, at which a number of individuals who rejected some of the Romish errors, were publicly committed to the flames by the misnamed holy Inquisition. Thus we see, that the fearful and wide-spreading machinery of Papal despotism, had indeed been not a little impaired by the friction of ages, and some of its wheels no longer revolved in effective concert with the whole; but it remained for the monk of Wittenberg, placing his lever on the fulcrum of the Bible, to ungear the whole machine, and shatter a large portion of it to atoms!
The period from Luther's birth till the public commencement of the Reformation on the 31st of October, 1517, was rich in events preparatory to the great conflict. The irreligious and profligate character of the popes was well calculated still farther to impair the moral energy of the whole ecclesiastical machinery; for though unconverted men will be satisfied with unconverted ministers, there is a general sense of moral propriety pervading our race, which demands of the priests of our holy religion exemption from flagrant immorality. But the popes of this period were a disgrace to humanity. Innocent Viii. and in a still more flagrant manner, Alexander VI. who was himself the illegitimate son of Pope Calixtus III. squandered the papal treasures on the offspring of their licentiousness. Alexander VI. is styled by an eminent historian "a monster of a man, inferior to no one of the most abandoned tyrants of antiquity."7 And Julius II. was a restless, ambitious soldier, who, though the pretended vicegerent of the Prince of Peace, involved in war successively, the Venetians, the Swiss, the Spaniards, and the French. If such was the character of the Holy Fathers themselves, there can be nothing surprising in the corruption of the great body of the priests and people, and nothing dubious in the alleged necessity of a reformation both in the head and members of the Romish church. Indeed, so glaring was this necessity, that it had been long acknowledged by priests, and councils, and emperors, and was not directly denied by the popes themselves. As early as 1409, the council of Pisa decreed a Reformation of the church in her head and members; and let it be remembered, that this was a general council, attended by twenty-four cardinals, a great many bishops, archbishops, and other prelates, three hundred doctors of divinity and of canon law, and representatives of thirteen universities. The same necessity was reiterated by three or four subsequent councils in this century, but the work itself was as often defeated by the intrigue of the popes, who did not relish the salutary discipline, aimed at their infallible holinesses!
7 Murdock's Mosheim, vol. iii. p. 9.
Nor should we forget to enumerate, among the preparatives of the Reformation, the revival of learning in the West, the increased facility of influencing the intellect of Europe by the recently invented art of printing, and the emigration of many of the Greek literati, after the capture of Constantinopole by Mohamed II. in 1453, and the downfall of the Greek empire. The light of science and literature is ever hostile to superstition and intellectual bondage.Numerous writers had thus sprung up, who constituted a liberal party,8 and were strenuously opposed by the friends of ignorance and superstition. They ridiculed the vices and ignorance of the church and priesthood, pouring into their moral wounds the most mordacious salt of satire; but they were destitute of that moral principle necessary to bear them through the perils and privations of the Reformation, and, like their leader Erasmus, turned traitors to the cause in the day of fiery trial. Nor was this surprising. For, although the popular reverence for the papal hierarchy had much abated, the mightiest monarchs of Europe regarded the popes as formidable enemies, on account of their influence on the oath of allegiance of every Catholic subject. The few individuals who had attempted to carry forward the standard of reform, were unceremoniously crushed beneath the thunderbolts of the Vatican. The blood of Huss and Jerome yet proclaimed aloud the tendencies of the holy mother towards reformers, and the inquisitorial agonies and dying groans of the pious, but enthusiastic Savonarola,9 of whom Luther remarked that "Christ had canonized him," though papists burned him;10 served as a beacon to deter others from the paths of reform.
Amid these circumstances it was, that God, in his own time, raised up an illustrious band of reformers in the very heart of the church, who, endowed with the extraordinary power called for by the occasion, declared open war against her manifold corruptions. Germany was the theatre on which this great conflict was commenced, and Luther the first of the warriors who took the field. God had by the special teachings of his Providence and Spirit, tutored him for the work, and on the 31st October, 1517, after Tetzel, a Dominican friar, had been vending the papal indulgences, in the vicinity of Wittenberg, with the most barefaced impudence, Luther in the fear
8 To this party belonged Reuchlin, Erasmus, Parkheimer, Herman von Bush, Ulrich von Hutten, and all the more enlightened minds of the age.
9 "Jerome Savonarola was born at Ferrara, Oct. 12, 1452; religiously educated, and early distinguished for genius and learning. His father intended him for his own profession, that of physic; but he disliked it; and, unknown to his parents, became a Dominican monk, A.D. 1474. For a time, he taught philosophy and metaphsics; and then was made a preacher and confessor. He soon laid aside the hearing of confessions, and devoted himself wholly to preaching, in which he was remarkably interesting and successful. In 1489, he went to Florence, where his preaching produced quite a reformation of morals. He attacked vice, infidelity, and false religion, with the utmost freedom, sparing no age or sex, and no condition of men, monks, priests, popes, princes, or common citizens. His influence was almost boundless. But Florence was split into political factions; and Savonarola did not avoid the danger. He was ardent, eloquent, and so enthusiastic, as almost to believe, and actually to represent what he taught, as being communicated to him by revelation. The adverse faction accused him to the pope, who summoned him to Rome. Savonarola would not go; and was ordered to cease preaching. A Franciscan inquisitor was sent to confront him. The people protected him. But at length, vacillating about putting his cause to the test of a fire ordeal, he lost his popularity in a measure. His enemies seized him by force, put him to the rack, and extorted from him some concessions, which they interpreted as confessions of guilt; and then strangled him, burned his body, and threw the ashes into the river. Thus he died, May 23, 1498.--His character has been assailed and defended, most elaborately, and by numerous persons both Catholics and Protestants. His writings were almost all in Italian. They consist of more than three hundred sermons, about fifty tracts and treatises, and a considerable number of letters; all displaying genius and piety, and some of them superior intellect."
10 Ammon's Geshichte de Homiletik, vol. i. p. 183.
of God, raised the standard of Reformation, by affixing to the church-door, his ninety-five theses against indulgences. From that day the commencement of the Reformation is usually dated, the day, which has ordinarily been celebrated in commemoration of that glorious event. Having thus placed himself in opposition to the holy mother church, without entertaining the least idea of the extent and importance of the work which God designed to accomplish by him, Luther devoted himself with increased ardour to the continued study of that sacred volume, a copy of which had providentially fallen into his hands ten years before. The change in his own views was gradual, and he was simultaneously as well the subject as the agent of the Reformation. In the preface to his works, written eighteen years after this time, he remarks: "Let all who read my books remember that I am one of those, who, as St. Augustine says, improved myself by writing and by teaching others, and belong not to those who in the twinkling of an eye were transformed from nothing into learned doctors."11 And who does not behold the hand of Providence in this? As his publications were, successively, one but a step in advance of the other, his former readers could the more easily enter into the spirit of each, and bear the gradations of light successively revealed. This circumstance, at the same time, accounts for the fact, that many of his earlier productions contain doctrines which he abandoned in the latter part of his life.
The successive incidents of the great ecclesiastical revolution, which grew out of this small commencement, we cannot stop to detail. Suffice it to say, that in less than two weeks, Luther's Theses had traversed nearly all Germany; the attention of the greater part of Europe was soon arrested, and remained fixed on this conflict. For thirteen years was the work of reform carried forward, until all the prominent corruptions of Romanism were successively exposed, and the Reformation attained some maturity in Germany, as exhibited in the Confession presented to the Diet at Augsburg in 1530. But the conflict was not yet at an end. Various and disastrous were the persecutions and trials, which the Protestant princes and their people, who avowed those doctrines, had to endure from the intolerance of the Pope, and of the Emperor at his instigation, for twenty-five years more, until the 25th of September, 1555, nine years after Luther's death, when the pacification of Augsburg for the first time gave imperial permission to the Protestants, to worship God after the dictates of their own consciences.
But no sooner had the Reformation commenced in Germany, than it began to spread in other countries, with electric rapidity, and the intellect of all Europe felt the shock. Two years after Luther published his Theses, Ulrick Zwingle, one of the most learned and distinguished reformers, whose personal views of Papal corruptions had even been in advance of Luther's, also began the work of public reformation, at Zurich in Switzerland, which he prosecuted with great ability and success, until 1531, when he lost his life in a battle between the Swiss Protestants and the Catholics who invaded their country. Into Sweden the Reformation was introduced by Olaus Petri, a disciple of Luther, powerfully seconded by Gustavus Vasa, from 1523 to 1527. In Denmark also, the power of the papal hierarchy was destroyed at an early day. About the same time numerous advocates of Luther's doctrines were found in Spain, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, Britain and the Netherlands. In England papacy received a fatal blow in 1533, from Henry VIII., who had before so zealously defended the holy mother church against Luther, as to acquire the title of "Defender of the Faith," still retained by his successors. Into Scotland the Reformed religion was introduced mainly by the inflexible and distinguished servant of God, John Knox,
11 Seckendorf, p. 89
about the year 1559. Nor can we pass unnoticed among the honoured instruments of divine providence, John Calvin, who, though not the means of originally introducing the Reformation into any country, exerted a most extensive influence on all the Reformed churches of Europe, and contributed more than any other man, to confer order, maturity and stability on them all. Commencing his public labours in Geneva, in 1536, about twenty years after Luther arose, he continued, for thirty years, by his correspondence and publications, to advance the cause of Reformation throughout different portions of Europe; so that for learning, influence and usefulness, he may be classed at the side of Luther himself.
But instead of detailing the circumstances of this glorious work of God, to which we owe our liberty, civil and religious, let us contemplate a few features by which this Reformation is distinguished, that a more distinct impression of its value may rest upon our minds.
„Discourse in commemoration of the glorious reformation of the sixteenth century“ von Samuel Simon Schmucker († 1873), Gould and Newman, 1838 · Text nach einer digitalen Abschrift des Drucks, gemeinfrei · Originalscan bei archive.org · Titelbild schlicht selbst gestaltet