lysis evi the course movement. § 8. The Reformation, then, can only be con- This anasidered a fresh conception of the faith and doctrine dent from of the Gospel, a regeneration of the Christian life of the and spirit; the fruit, indeed, of the history of the Church, with its attendant corruptions of letter and spirit, practice and doctrine, yet in effect a return to the primary teaching of Christianity. It contained, accordingly, distinct elements wrought out by different agencies, by the men of thought and the men of purpose. The first furnished, out of an advance in Scriptural knowledge' due in part to the revival of classical learning, those first principles of doctrine which were the grounds of action to the practical reformers of existing abuses. On these last attention has often nearly wholly, but not unnaturally, turned. As the The pracprime agents, the martyrs and confessors of the of the Re tical aspect formation has been since gone to God to answer it; to Whom I leave them."-Laud, the most Confer., xxiv. 5. In the words of Leibnitz, "Ce sont les défauts des studied. hommes, et non pas ceux des dogmes." The fanaticism of the Anabaptists belongs, as Dorner has shown, not to the principles of the Reformation carried to excess, but rather to the social and religious maladies of the pre-Reformation period. See some good remarks of Hallam, Lit. of E., I. 371, on the passions which were instrumental in the Reformation, and Dean Hook, Lives, New Ser., I. 20. 1 Such, e. g., was Nicolaus Lyranus, a Franciscan monk, who as early as 1330 completed his Postille perpetuæ. It was of this exposition it was said: Si Lyra non lyrasset See Mosheim, II. 644. On the Biblical factor in the Reformation, noticeable as early as the Waldenses, and traceable through Wycliffe (1380) and the various vernacular translations of the Bible in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, see Dorner, u. s., I. 63, 441. Lastly, the labours of Reuchlin, Erasmus, &c., must be taken into account. movement, they have enlisted sympathy and won admiration. Doubtless at such crises decision and self-sacrifice are of more apparent value than the results of slow and just reflection. Yet, on looking back, it is now sufficiently clear that, the doctrines for which men died, the contributions of patient thought and learning,' form the abiding results of this great epoch in religion, and were the true preparation for it. If, then, this view be correct, ance as a the very essence of the Reformation lay, not in Its true import crisis of belief. any practical correction of abuses, nor in a moral advance, but in its theology and belief. It has been called the reaction of Christianity, as a teaching of the Gospel, against Christianity, as a declaration of Divine Law. It was, indeed, a free doctrine of grace and faith, of love and spirit, leading to the fulfilment of legal and moral righteousness, as a prompting of the heart restored to fresh union with the God of its salvation, and conscious of its own restoration; ideas once 1 Such were the labours of the Reformers before the Reformation, Johann von Goch, Johann Wessel, who held explicitly the doctrine of justifying faith, Gerhard Groot, Jacob von Jüterbock, &c. Of Wessel Luther said: "If I had read Wessel first, mine adversaries might have imagined that Luther had taken everything from Wessel."— Werke, ed. Walch, xiv. 220. He also claimed kindred with the efforts of the earlier Mystics, Tauler, Eckhart, and the Friends of God. 2 It was a saying of Luther's, that "the law and the Gospel are as far apart from one another as heaven and earth." 3 Luther thus distinguishes between fides, fiducia, and certitudo salutis. Cf. Dorner, I. 149, 230, who well remarks on the fruitfulness of this principle from a scientific or philosophic point of view, as regards the subsequent history of Protestantism; while the Greek and Roman future familiar to the Christian mind,' and at no time excluded from its potential teaching, yet which had long been disused or misapplied. The principles it has secured to mankind are those of faith, of a true spiritualism, of individual accountability for belief and practice, as inherent elements of our common Religion. These are the pledges which it Full of has supplied to Christianity of its future share in efficacy. the advance of human civilization. What has been called the principle of private judgment is, in truth, an element of indefinite, though not as is often urged, of unrestricted progress. It is true. that the Reformation assumed essentially the obligation of a continual purifying and perfecting alike of practice and doctrine," of the Church and Not inof the world, of Religion and of Science. And this is a principle of vital progress. But, then, this advance is always to be made upon the foundation Churches in no way insist upon personal assurance. Calvin (Inst., III. ii. 6) says: “Cardo fidei in eo vertitur, ut promissiones intus amplectendo nostras faciamus." 1 Comp. Ep. ad Diogn. c. xii. Ἤτω σοι καρδία γνῶσις· ζωὴ δὲ λόγος aλnons, xwpovμevos. Under Catholicism the personal yearning after salvation and closer communion with God, had too often to find refuge in conventual retirement. We have already noticed the intrinsic selfishness which lay at the root of this system. 26 "In our own times there is a constant disposition to consider the liberty of the Reformation as an abstract form; to fancy that any imaginable substance may be put into it; and hence to conceive Protestantism as implying a principle of progress absolutely unrestricted, and it matters not whether beyond the pale of Christianity, or even in direct opposition to it. No such tenet has any foundation upon the idea of liberty as conceived by the Reformers and their predecessors."-Ullmann, Reformers, I. xviii. definite. The Reformation presents no break tinuity of Christianity as that is already laid, the testimony of the Gospel, and the rule of strictly primitive tradition.1 2 It § 9. It is further evident that the Reformation, rightly considered, presents no interruption of the in the con- continuity of human affairs, no founding over again of the Church of Christ. In its truest and a system. best development there was no breaking with the past. It called for no belief that the Church had been at any time wholly forsaken by the Spirit of her Lord, or disinherited of His promises. never renounced the historical basis of Christianity. No phase It was no mere phase of negation or of destruction, but rather a reconstruction; a transition apparently spontaneous from beliefs, themselves transitional and relative to new modes of religious thought and belief, limited by the canons of Apostolic teaching. The very idea of a Re-formation implies a return to a standard or point of outset already known and fixed. It is a spiritual re-edification; and, as such, a recall to primitive Christianity, to the words and examples of Christ. For Chris of nega tion. 1 Comp. the concluding declaration of the Confession of Augsburg: "Tantum ea recitata sunt quæ videbantur necessario dicenda esse, ut intelligi possit in doctrina ac cæremoniis, apud nos nihil esse receptum contra Scripturam aut Ecclesiam Catholicam.”—Syllog. Conf., pp. 158, 232. 2 "Protestantism in all its movements and antitheses preserved the steadiness or continuity of a historical and growing formation."-Dorner, Hist. Prot. Th., I. 9, and the excellent remarks in p. 50. "The Reformation would lose its historical basis and connection, if, in order to furnish a triumphant justification of it, we were to see nothing but darkness before it." 3 Gal. i. 7, 8, 9. For there cannot be two Gospels. fruitful balance of tianity itself was at the beginning a purely spiritual No unreligion, a strong invincible conviction of renewed reaction. individual fellowship with a merciful God and Father, effected by the Incarnation and Sacrifice of His Son. It was no less as the offspring and product of this conviction in the believer; or, in other words, of this living faith, a life of love and spontaneous morality.' Its body is, indeed, the Church animated ever by the vital presence of Christ and of His Spirit, yet liable to admixture and deterioration, subject to the conditions of earthly things, the results of time and succession, of political issues, and historical development. The balance of com- The true plementary doctrines may, in the course of affairs, doctrine become overthrown, without, however, those doctrines being severally contradicted or lost; such, for example, as the parallelism of a dogma of Justification with that of Sanctification; of Christ's Atonement with the need of personal holiness; of subjective faith with objective righteousness; of grace with works; of positive commands with moral obligations; of external symbolism with a living consciousness of its significance; of ecclesiastical constitution with spiritual worship. This balance Its contrithe Reformation sought to restore. It has left the future some truths clearly defined as its contribution to Chrisfuture ages of the Church, more especially man's need of individual regeneration; that this cannot Compare Ullmann, Reformers, I. p. 4. restored. bution to career of tianity, |