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Lessons from the Reformationis a book of sermons by Alonzo T. Jones, on one of the momentous happenings in the history of mankind.

A proverb regarded over the world, and down through the ages, as true, is the following: — “Power corrupts; total power totally corrupts.” The Reformation came because an institution assumed total power over the minds of men.

As all that exists is a part of the magnetic universe, and is in being for the purpose of development, no person or institution, has yet reached a state of divine perfection (or has become a part of God) sufficiently to be allowed “dictatorial” powers. “Divine Right of Kings, and Emperors, as well as Churches,” have been tried in ages past, and found lacking in truth and good works. “Walk humbly, saith the Lord.”

Lessons from the Reformation CHAPTER 1.

THE REFORMATION RENOUNCED In the City of Chicago, III., Dec. 5, 1912, an assembly of three hundred and nineteen clerical delegates from thirty-one professedly Protestant denominations intentionally and expressly repudiated the word “Protestant.”

That is an occurrence that can never mean less than much every way. It will be found to mean much more, and in more ways, than was thought of by the three hundred and nineteen who did it. And to the people of the United States it means the most of all.

The assembly by which this meaningful thing was done, was the “Second Quadrennial Meeting of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America.” It was held in the Hotel La Salle, Chicago, Ill., Dec. 4-9, 1912, and was composed of three hundred and nineteen actually present and participating delegates.

This “Federal Council” was then composed of thirty-one denominations, including all of the most prominent ones, having a total membership of “more than seventeen millions.” It was originally organized by five hundred delegates from twenty denominations, who met for the purpose in Carnegie Hall, New York City, Nov. 15-21, 1905.

In its original organization the “Federal Council of Churches” was expressly and distinctly Protestant. In the call under which the convention met in New York City, the object of the proposed meeting was distinctly stated to be “to secure an effective organization of the various Protestant communions of this country”, and “to form a bond of union that will enable Protestantism to present a solid front,” etc.

And then, in only the second meeting of the Council as such, and without any issue or crisis to demand it, spontaneously and voluntarily this professedly Protestant organization repudiated the word “Protestant” that gave them an existence as a Federal Council, that gave them an existence as denominations, and that gave them existence even as Christians! And this was done in the very first business session of the Council, and in dealing with the very first “Report” that was made to the Council: that is, at the first possible opportunity.

The occasion for it was this: The “Executive Committee” presented its report. In that report the committee expressed the “earnest hope that the Second Federal Council will make yet more clear certain fundamental facts as to the churches of the country, through their federation.” And the first of these was — “The fact of the substantial unity of the Christian and Protestant Churches of the nation.”

No sooner was opened the discussion of the report than that word “Protestant” was challenged as if it were a mortal enemy that had invaded the Council. “Why emphasize a word that is not a uniting but a dividing word? a word that recalls a most unhappy and trying experience,” said one. “By using this word, you make it more difficult for many of your Christian brethren to work with you,” said another.

Discussion was soon cut off by a motion to resubmit the report for revision, eliminating the word “Protestant.” And this was done thus: — “To express the fellowship and catholic unity of the Christian Church.”

Then the report was promptly adopted, and with applause.

All the circumstances of this action of the Council plainly show that there was a full and waiting readiness to do it. Indeed, preceding facts prove that all that was really new or sudden about it was the actual doing of it at the first possible opportunity. 1. In a “Moral and Religious Conference” held at Colorado Springs in May, 1908, in the opening address, there were spoken the following words: — “Once the church embraced all human activity. It was a great social structure. Then Luther proclaimed his doctrine of individual responsibility, and the social structure disintegrated. Individualism in the church produced individualism in economic relations and in the State. “But there is coming rapidly a change. The Christian Church must recognize this movement and be the leader in it.”

That was not officially a conference of the Church Federation; but prominent men were of it who in 1905 had aided in the formation of the Federal Council. And that it is strictly indicative of the spirit of the Council itself, is confirmed in the next item. 2. In December, 1908, at Philadelphia, Pa., in the first meeting of the Federal Council as such, the “right of private judgment” that was “emphasized,” and the Individuality” that was “developed in a notable manner,” by the Protestant Reformation,” was specifically abandoned as that which should “no longer blind the minds of believers to the need of combination and of mutuality in service.”

The right of private judgment in religion, and the principle of individual responsibility to God, are two essentials of the Protestant Reformation.

Without these there never would — there never could — have been any Reformation. But these are not only essentials of the Protestant Reformation. They are essentials of Christianity itself.

And yet in the keynote speech of the first meeting of the Federal Council that was ever held, the declaration was made and published as the standing word of the Council that these essentials of the reformation and of Christianity should “no longer blind the minds of believers.”

When the first meeting of the Council could publish such a statement as that, it is perfectly logical that the second meeting should eliminate altogether the word “Protestant” as in any way properly attaching to that organization. 3. In the public announcement of the date and place of holding that meeting in Chicago, it was plainly stated that this “United Protestantism is not to be construed as a demonstration against the Roman Catholic Church.”

When anything bearing the name “Protestant” is not even to be construed as a demonstration against the Roman Catholic Church, then that thing is not Protestant at all; and of course in honesty should no longer bear the title.

Accordingly when that open statement had been most widely made in behalf of the Council, again it was perfectly logical as well as only consistent that the Council should formally renounce the title of “Protestant.” 4. The Roman Church as represented or manifested in her Councils, especially in the Council of Nice, was openly the aspiration of this Council.

In his speech at the opening of the Council, the outgoing president said that by this assembly he was caused to — “think of the Council of Nice — the first General Council of the Christian Church. This Council has almost the exact number that composed the Council of Nice. The history of the Church is largely told in her great Councils.”

And when the number of the delegates who actually were present and officially acting in the Council was made up and announced as “three hundred and nineteen,” the statement was accompanied with the remark, “Just one more than the Council of Nice.”

Yes, the history of the Roman Church is largely told in her great Councils.

And beyond all question her conspicuously great Councils were those of Nice, Constantinople, Ephesus, Chalcedon, Second of Nice, Trent, and the Vatican.

In brief the story of these “great Councils” is this:

The net result of the first four was to put the dead formulas of human creed in the place of the living Word of God; a woman in the place of Christ; and a man in the place of God.

The Second Council of Nice, three hundred and fifty bishops, “unanimously pronounced that the worship of images is agreeable to Scripture and reason, to the Fathers and Councils of the Church.”

The Council of Trent put church-tradition above the Bible as “more sure and safe.”

The Vatican Council established the infallibility of the Pope.

And when the Federal Council in Chicago could count worthy of her aspiration such a record as that, then it certainly was about time that she were renouncing the name and title of Protestant.

All of this is fully confirmed by another act of this Council itself, at Chicago. The Council unanimously adopted a report in which it is declared that — “The business of the State is to bring about such economic conditions and environment that the idealism of the Gospel may have as clear and fair a field as possible. It is this that justifies the Church... in turning to the State for a cooperation which will enable her to do her sacred task.”

And that is in exact parallel with the instruction given by Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical of Jan. 6, 1895, to the hierarchy in America, saying that in this “American nation” the Catholic church — “would bring forth more abundant fruits, if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority.”

The Protestant Reformation neither had nor sought either the favor of the laws or the patronage of public authority.

The Protestant Reformation neither sought nor expected any State to bring about for her such economic conditions and environment as should give to the idealism of her Gospel any clear or fair field at all.

The Protestant Reformation never sought for any State, and there was none if she had, to which she could turn for a co-operation that would enable her to do her sacred task.

So also was it with Christianity at the first.

Yet not only without any, but actually against all of these, both the Protestant Reformation and Christianity in the beginning, did each her sacred task triumphantly and gloriously.

And as in the beginning, so also in the latter: when Christians lost their first love in the loss of the fulness of the Holy Spirit and His power, they were ready to dally with the world, to seek the co-operation of worldly power, and to tickle their fancy with “economic conditions” and “civic environments” as “aids” in the sacred task of preaching the Gospel of the blessed God!

But all of this was, and ever is, only to abandon the Reformation and Christianity. It is to cease to be Protestant and Christian, and to become papal only. “The Reformation was accomplished in the name of a spiritual principle. It had proclaimed for its teacher the Word of God; for salvation, faith; for King, Jesus Christ; for arms, the Holy Ghost; and had by these very means rejected all worldly elements. “Rome had been established by ‘the law of a carnal commandment’: the Reformation, by ‘the power of an endless life’. “The Gospel of the Reformers had nothing to do with the world and with politics. While the Roman hierarchy had become a matter of diplomacy and a court of intrigue, the Reformation was destined to exercise no other influence over princess and people than that which proceeds from the Gospel of peace. “If the Reformation, having attained a certain point, became untrue to its nature, began to parley and temporize with the world, and ceased thus to follow up the spiritual principle that it had so loudly proclaimed, it was faithless to God and to itself. Hence-forward its decline was at hand. “It is impossible for a society to prosper if it be unfaithful to the principles it lays down. Having abandoned what constituted its life, it can find naught but death.” — D’Aubigne.

There has been an apostasy from the Reformation, as truly as there was from Christianity at the first. This has been manifest in each form of Protestantism that has arisen. And now this apostasy has reached the point of open repudiation of the very title of Protestant, by the federation of thirty-one of them together.

The apostasy from Christianity at the first meant much to the world for it developed the papacy in all that it has ever been. This apostasy from Christianity revived in the Protestant Reformation can scarcely mean any less.

CHAPTER 2. F1 WHAT IS “PROTESTANT?”

What is the meaning of the word “Protestant?” How came it into the world?

The word “Protestant,” as expressing a religious distinction; the word “Protestant” with a capital P; the word “Protestant,” as dealt with by the Chicago Council of the Federated Churches; came into the world with the word “Protest” that was used in the Protest that was made at the Diet of Spires in Germany, April 19, 1529.

That Protest was made against the arbitrary, unjust, and persecuting procedure of the papacy in that Diet.

This procedure in the Diet of Spires of 1529 swept away the religious liberty that had been agreed upon and regularly established in the Diet of Spires of 1526.

The religious liberty established by the Diet of Spires of 1526 was the result of a deadlock in the proceedings of that Diet over the enforcement, by all the power of the then papacy, of the Edict of Worms that had been issued in 1521 commanding the destruction of Martin Luther, his adherents, his writings, and all who printed or circulated his writings, or who on their own part should print or circulate the like.

Thus the Protest in which originated the word “Protestant” was against the effort of the papacy to destroy the Reformation, and was in behalf of the Reformation and its principles.

And now for anybody to renounce, repudiate, or disown, the word or title “Protestant,” is to repudiate the Protest.

To repudiate the Protest, is to repudiate as unworthy the cause and the principles in behalf of which the Protest was made.

And that cause was the Reformation. Those principles were the principles of the Reformation.

Therefore, to renounce, repudiate, or disown, the word and title “Protestant” is nothing less and nothing else than to repudiate the Reformation.

And the Federal Council of Churches, thirty-one denominations, having “a membership of more than seventeen millions,” at Chicago, Ill., Dec. 5, 1912, did unanimously renounce, repudiate, and disown, the word and title “Protestant.”

And that this may be made so plain that all may see for themselves that just such is unquestionably the meaning of that action taken, let us now consider directly the facts, documents, and dates, in which rests the indisputable truth of the case.

In 1521 the Diet of Worms condemned Luther and the Reformation. There immediately followed the “Edict of Worms” that is the key to the proceedings that called forth the Protest in which originated the word “Protestant.”

The Edict of Worms was issued by the Emperor Charles V, “the ablest and most powerful monarch of the sixteenth century.” After denouncing Luther personally in sweeping terms, the imperial edict thus commands: — “We have therefore sent this Luther from before our face, that all pious and sensible men may regard him as a fool, or a man possessed of the devil; and we expect that after the expiry of his safe-conduct, effectual means will be taken to arrest his furious rage. “Wherefore, under pain of incurring the punishment due to the crime of treason, we forbid you to lodge the said Luther as soon as the fatal term shall be expired, to conceal him, give him meat or drink, and lend him, by word or deed, publicly or secretly, any kind of assistance. We enjoin you, moreover, to seize him, or cause him to be seized, wherever you find him, and bring him to us without any delay, or to keep him in all safety until you hear from us how you are to act with regard to him, and till you receive the recompense due to your exertions in so holy a work. “As to his adherents, you will seize them, suppress them, and confiscate their goods. “As to his writings, if the best food becomes the terror of all mankind as soon as a drop of poison is mixed with it, how much more ought these books, which contain a deadly poison to the soul, to be not only rejected, but also annihilated! You will therefore burn them, or in some other way destroy them entirely. “As to authors, poets, printers, painters, sellers or buyers of placards, writings or paintings, against the Pope or the church, you will lay hold of their persons and their goods, and treat them according to your good pleasure. “And if anyone, whatever be his dignity, shall dare to act in contradiction to the decree of our imperial majesty, we ordain that he shall be placed under the ban of the empire. “Let everyone conform hereto.”

And that the emperor meant every word of that edict, and that it should be enforced in full of all that it said, is made plain in the following sentences which he wrote with his own hand: — “Sprung from the Christian emperors of Germany, from the Catholic kings of Spain, the archduke of Austria, and the dukes of Burgundy, who are all illustrious as defenders of the Roman faith, it is my firm purpose to follow the example of my ancestors. A single monk, led astray by his own folly, sets himself up in opposition to the faith of Christendom! I will sacrifice my dominions, my power, my friends, my treasure, my blood, my mind, and my life, to stay this impiety.”

Before the Diet had assembled, the Pope had included Luther in the list of heretics denounced in the annual proclamation of the “Greater Excommunication.” The Edict of Worms was the movement of the “secular arm” that should give effect to that excommunication.

In the Diet, April 18, 1522, to the Emperor, to the papacy, to the Diet itself, to all Germany, to Europe, and to the world, Luther had given his “answer.” That answer, as summed up by Luther himself, after having spoken two hours, stands as follows: — “Since your most serene majesty, and your high mightinesses, call upon me for a simple, clear, and definite answer, I will give it. And it is this: “I cannot subject my faith either to the Pope or to Councils; because it is clear as day, that they have often fallen into error, and even into great self-contradiction. “If, then, I am not disproved by passages of Scripture, or by clear arguments, — if I am not convinced by the very passages which I have quoted, and so bound in conscience to submit to the Word of God, I neither can nor will retract anything. For it is not safe for a Christian to speak against his conscience. “Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.” f2 The personal presence of the Emperor and of the Pope’s nuncio in their known antagonism to it all, could not wholly restrain applause in response to that quietly brave and noble answer in the very moment of its giving.

And that applause, with the noble “answer” itself, presently resounded through the whole of Germany, inspiring multitudes to speak out the faith and truth of the Gospel.

In the Diet the papacy had been arraigned by loyal Roman Catholic princes no less vigorously than by Luther. As a result, a formulated list of one hundred and one grievances had been lodged with the Diet for redress.

This had given great force in the minds of all to the merit of Luther’s attacks, and above all to his plea for something better than a system that could produce only such grievous fruits. And his free answer to the Emperor and the Diet; and his plain refusal, alone, in the face of all the power of the empire and the papacy, to recede an inch or to retract anything, was the trumpet-sound of freedom that all were glad to hear.

April 26 Luther left Worms to return to his home at Wittemberg. April 28, at one of the stations on the way, he wrote to the Emperor a personal letter in which he said: — “God who is the searcher of hearts is my witness that I am ready with all diligence to obey your majesty, whether in honor or disgrace, whether by life or by death, and with absolutely no exception but the Word of God, from which man derives life. “In all the affairs of the present life, my fidelity will be immutable; for, as to these, loss or gain cannot at all affect salvation. But in regard to eternal blessings, it is not the will of God that man should submit to man. Subjection in the spiritual world constitutes worship, and should be paid only to the Creator.”

While he was on his homeward journey, May 4, 1521, Luther was “captured” by friendly hands and was carried to the Wartburg, where he remained out of the knowledge of the world till March 3, 1522. But in all this time the Reformation went triumphantly onward throughout Germany, and even to Denmark and other neighboring countries.

In spite of the Edict of Worms and all the power behind it, in the very year of its proclamation there issued from the press at Wittemberg more than two hundred evangelical publications that were scattered and read everywhere. They were even translated into French, Spanish, English, and Italian.

The progress of the Turkish armies in 1522 so occupied the attention of the empire that there was no room for any general enforcement of the Edict of Worms. Yet the Emperor was determined that the Reformation should not be lost sight of. October 31 he wrote to the Pope: — “It is necessary to arrest the Turks, and punish the partisans of the poisonous doctrines of Luther with the sword.”

In December, 1522, the imperial Diet assembled at Nuremberg, with its chief purpose, under instructions from the Emperor and the Pope, to deal with the Reformation.

The first thing that was put before the Diet was the demand from the Pope by his legate that Luther should be destroyed. With the papal brief in his hand the legate declared: — “It is necessary to amputate this gangrened limb from the body. The omnipotent God has caused the earth to open and swallow up alive the two schismatics, Dathan and Abiram. Peter, the prince of the apostles, struck Ananias and Sapphira with sudden death for lying against God. Your own ancestors at Constance put to death John Huss and Jerome of Prague, who now seem risen from the dead in Martin Luther . Follow the glorious example of your ancestors; and, with the assistance of God and St. Peter, carry off a magnificent victory over the infernal dragon.”

Yet the Pope thought to make sure of the favor of the Diet by confessing the corruptions of the papacy, and actually declaring the universal desire for the reformation of the papacy “both in the head and the members.” He said: — “We know well that for a considerable time many abominable things have found a place near the holy chair: abuses in spiritual things, exorbitant straining of prerogatives — everything turned to evil. The disease has spread from the head to the limbs — from the Pope to the prelates. We are all gone astray; there is none that has done rightly, no, not one. We desire the reformation of this Roman court, whence proceed so many evils. The whole world desires it.

And it was with a view to its accomplishment that we were resigned to mount the pontifical throne.”

It is true that this so much “desired reformation” was not to be wrought “too precipitately”; no one must be “too extreme”; it must “proceed gently and by degrees, step by step.” But for the Pope to pronounce such a thing at all, as he did, and in writing, officially to the whole imperial Diet, and under precisely that sort of attack! The papal party in the Diet could scarcely believe their ears. The evangelicals rejoiced.

Instead of this stroke’s winning the Diet to the papal side, it put a decided check upon the Edict of Worms, fully justified Luther and the Reformation, and encouraged the Diet to bolder measures.

The Diet therefore “resolved to collect into one body all the grievances which Germany complained of against Rome, and despatch them to the Pope.” To this even the ecclesiastics in the Diet offered no opposition.

When those grievances were formally listed, there were found to be eightyfour of them: a “terrible catalogue of the exactions, frauds, oppressions, and wrongs, that Germany had endured at the hands of the Popes.” And the presentation concluded with the significant sentence — “If these grievances are not redressed within a limited time, we will consider other means of escaping from this oppression and suffering.”

As to Luther the Diet informed the Pope that to enforce the Edict of Worms against him and put him to death for saying the very things that the Pope himself had just now said, would be both so unjust and so dangerous that it would be but madness. If theologically Luther were wrong, the proper thing to do was for the church to refute from the Scriptures his errors; and they knew of but one way effectually to do that, which was by a General Council. And they demanded that such a Council should be called to meet within a year in some free city of Germany; and decreed that “in the meantime the pure Gospel shall be freely preached piously and soberly, according to the exposition of Scripture received and approved by the Church.”

By this unexpected turn of affairs the legate was so displeased that he utterly abandoned the Diet, and left Nuremberg. And when the official account of the proceedings reached Rome, the Pope was filled with wrath; and gave vent to it in a scathing letter to the Elector Frederick, Luther’s sovereign, in which he blamed Frederick for all the wars, calamities, and evils, that afflicted the empire, because he had not destroyed Luther. He threatened the Elector with the vengeance of God here and hereafter, and of the “two swords of the empire and the popedom,” if in this thing he were not “speedily converted.”

This cry of the Pope awakened the enforcement of the Edict of Worms in the Catholic States of Germany. Duke George took the lead in this. He too wrote to Frederick, who was his own brother, urging him to enforce the Edict of Worms. The noble Elector replied: — “Whosoever shall do a criminal act within my States shall not escape condign punishment. But matters of conscience must be left to God.”

In 1524 the Imperial Diet met again in Nuremberg. The imperial commissioner came with the word of the Emperor, complaining that the Edict of Worms was not observed, and demanding that it be put into execution. The Pope’s legate, in his opening address, cited the Edict of Worms, called for its enforcement, and demanded that “the Reformation should be suppressed by force.”

Members of the Diet immediately inquired, “What has become of the grievances presented to the Pope by the Germanic nation?”

The legate answered that although three copies of the resolutions had reached Rome, — “the Pope and college of cardinals could not believe that they had been framed by the princes! They thought that some private persons had published them in hatred to the court of Rome!

Therefore I have no instructions as to that!”

That the solemn representations of the Diet should be ignored, and a slur cast upon the Diet itself, through such a subterfuge as that, caused a wave of just indignation to sweep the whole assembly. When their turn should come, they would know how to answer. And presently it came.

Both the legate and the imperial commissioner, each for his master, insisted on the full enforcement of the Edict of Worms. The Diet had no power to repeal it. They would not enforce it. Nor would they allow themselves to be put in the attitude of rebellion, by a flat refusal. Therefore they framed and adopted a decree that — “It is necessary to conform to the Edict of Worms and vigorously to enforce it as far as possible.”

And all knew, indeed a majority of the States had already declared, that it was not possible at all. But both Emperor and Pope had to be content with the “decree.”

Again the Diet demanded a General Council to be held on German soil.

They also agreed that a Diet should assemble at Spires in November of that same year, 1524. These acts offended both the Emperor and the Pope, each that he was not first consulted and deferred to. The Pope wrote to the Emperor: — “If I am the first to face the storm, it is not because I am the first to be threatened by it; but because I sit at the helm. The rights of the empire are attacked even more than the dignity of the court of Rome.”

The Emperor issued an edict declaring: — “It belongs to the Pope alone to assemble a Council, — to the Emperor alone to ask it. The meeting fixed to take place at Spires can not, and will not, be tolerated. It is strange in the German nation to undertake a work which all the other nations of the world, even with the Pope, would not be entitled to do. The proper course is to hasten the execution of the decree of Worms against the new Mohammed.”

Following the adjournment of the second Diet of Nuremberg, the Pope’s legate, in a conference at Ratisbon, formed a league, composed of the archduke of Austria, the dukes of Bavaria, the archbishop of Salzburg, and nine bishops, against the Reformation. This league engaged — 1. To execute the Edicts of Worms and Nuremberg. 2. To allow no change in public worship. 3. To give no toleration within their States to any married ecclesiastic. 4. To recall all the students belonging in their States who might be at Wittemberg. 5. To employ all the means in their power for the extirpation of heresy. 6. To enjoin upon all preachers that, in expounding difficult passages of the Scripture, they confine themselves to the interpretation given by the Latin Fathers Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great.

The League also offered as a reform that priests should be forbidden — 1. To engage in trade. 2. To haunt taverns. 3. To frequent dances. 4. To engage over the bottle in discussing articles of faith.

May 5, 1525, died the Elector Frederick. Immediately Duke George set about to form in north Germany a league similar to that of Ratisbon in the south, against the Reformation. In July this was consummated at Dessau. It was composed of the Electors of Mentz and Brandenburg, two dukes of Brunswick, and Duke George.

Just at this time there arrived in Germany from Spain, a decree of the Emperor appointing that a Diet be held at Augsburg in November of that year, to take measures — “to defend the Christian religion, and the holy rites and customs received from their ancestors; and to prohibit all pernicious doctrines and innovations.”

Under this appointment the attendance at Augsburg was so small that the Diet adjourned to meet at Spires in midsummer of 1526.

In this intervening time a church convention at Mentz sent a deputation to the Emperor and one also to the Pope, asking them to “save the Church.”

About the same time Duke George and two other members of his league conferred together and decided to send one of their number personally to the Emperor to beg his assistance, because “the detestable doctrine of Luther makes rapid progress.”

The Emperor gave to their deputy a special commission to assure them that — “with deep grief he had learned of the continual progress of Luther’s heresy; and that, neglecting every other affair, he was going to quit Spain and repair to Rome to make arrangements with the Pope, and then return to Germany to combat the detestable pest of Wittemberg.”

The Leagues of Ratisbon and Dessau, with the reawakening of the Emperor and the Pope, all unitedly to enforce the Edict of Worms everywhere, amounted to a general alliance against the Reformation.

This of necessity caused that the Princes who had received the Gospel, and such others as would not afflict their own people nor war upon their own States should stand in mutual sympathy and support against that thing being forced upon their States or their people.

The Princes who had decidedly accepted the Gospel, made public their agreement in a signed document running as follows: — “God Almighty having, in His ineffable mercy, caused His holy and eternal Word, the food of our souls and our greatest treasure here below, to appear again amongst men: and powerful maneuvers having been employed on the part of the clergy and their adherents to annihilate and extirpate it; we being firmly assured that He who has sent it to glorify His name upon the earth is able to maintain it, engage to preserve this holy Word to our people: and for this end to employ our goods, our lives, our States, our subjects, all that we possess — confiding not in our armies, but solely in the omnipotence of the Lord, whose instruments we desire to be.”

The Elector of Saxony and ten other powerful Princes signed this document. Upon their banners and escutcheons, and upon the liveries of their retainers and servants, they emblazoned and embroidered the full five initials “V. D. M. I. AE.” of their motto — Verbum Domini Manet in AEternum” — The Word of the Lord abideth eternally.

This Christian courage of the evangelical Princes, and the expressive inaction of those Princes who were willing to be neutral, put a check upon the papal leagues and general alliance; and still suspended the force of the Edict of Worms. Thus matters stood at the time of the assembling of the Diet of Spires, June 25, 1526.

On arrival at Spires the evangelical Princes immediately asked the Bishop of Spires for the use of a church in which to worship and to listen to the preaching of the Gospel. The bishop, resenting such temerity, indignantly refused: “What would be thought of me at Rome?”!

The Princes complained of the injustice, for the churches belonged as much to them as to the bishops and were properly for the religious benefit of all the people.

Not being allowed any church, the evangelical Princes had the Gospel preached daily in the halls of their palaces. Immense crowds, of people from both city and country, attended the preaching of the Gospel, while the mass was said in empty churches. Evangelical writings were abundantly distributed, and eagerly read by both princes and people. The whole city and region round was moved more by the Reformation than by the Diet.

An immediate effect of all this was that the Princes who had been only neutral as to the enforcement of the Edict of Worms, now in the Diet stood decidedly against any enforcement of it. The Diet did not say that the Edict of Worms should be enforced “as far as possible.” It said plainly, not only that the enforcement of the Edict was impossible, but also that if the Emperor were present he himself would be of the same mind.

Next, against the opposition of the ecclesiastical section of the Diet, a resolution was adopted that the Diet should consider the church-abuses.

The deputy from the City of Frankfort said: “The clergy make a jest of the public good, and look after their own interests only.”

The deputy from Duke George the rabid enemy of Luther, said: “The laymen have the salvation of Christendom much more at heart than the clergy.” “Never had the towns spoken out more freely; never had the Princes pressed more urgently for a removal of their burthens.” — Ranke.

Several cities, by their representatives, presented to the Diet a paper containing a list of abuses from which they asked relief. They asked that the law of forbidden meats should be abolished: that as to ceremonies all men should be left at liberty, till a General Council should meet: that till then also there should be the free preaching of the Gospel.

They complained of the church holidays, which, of course, were all compulsory. They said — “The severe penalties which forbid useful labor on these days, do not shut out temptations to vice and crime; and these periods of compulsory idleness are as unfavorable to the practice of virtue, as to the habit of industry.”

These complaints too were entertained, and “the Diet was divided into committees for the abolition of abuses.” August 1 a general committee reported “the necessity of a reform of abuses.” Finally “the proposal was made that the books containing the new statutes should be forthwith burned without reserve, and that the holy Scriptures should be taken as the sole rule of faith. Although some opposition arose, yet never was a resolution adopted with more firmness.” — Ranke.

The tide was flowing strongly in the unexpected direction. The Diet that was confidently convoked to speak the last word to the heretics, and if not heard was to deal the finishing blow to the Reformation, was speaking weighty words and dealing body blows to the papacy.

The situation was desperate. Something telling must be done. “Fanatical priests, monks, ecclesiastical princes, all gathered round Ferdinand.

Cunning, bribery, nothing was spared.”

The reason that Ferdinand was the centre of effort was this: Ferdinand was the Emperor’s brother. He was the voice of the Emperor in the Diet. He had in his possession a document of “instructions” from the Emperor to the Diet, dated March 23, 1526, four months before the Diet had assembled. In this document the Emperor — “willed and commanded that they should decree nothing contrary to the ancient customs, canons, and ceremonies, of the Church; and that all things should be ordered within his dominions according to the form and tenor of the Edict of Worms.”

The papal party in the Diet knew that Ferdinand had this document. The evangelical Princes and the deputies from the cities did not know that he had it. In the hope that the course of things in the Diet should be such that he might not have to use it, Ferdinand had not given it to the Diet at the beginning; and now that the Diet had gone so far in the opposite direction, he hesitated to publish it, knowing that in the present circumstances it amounted almost to a declaration of war.

Those who surrounded Ferdinand urged that he now bring forth the Emperor’s “instructions.” “To refuse their publication was to effect the ruin of the Church and the Empire! Let the voice of Charles oppose its powerful veto to the dizziness that is hurrying Germany along, and the Empire will be saved!”

Ferdinand yielded, and August 3 put the document before the Diet. The immediate effect of its promulgation was just what Ferdinand had feared.

But presently the date of the document was asked for. When it was given, “March 23,” all breathed freely again; for the whole effect of it was gone.

The Diet calmly replied that since that time the Emperor and the Pope had fallen out and were now at war, and this fact itself vitiated the force of the instructions; for they were founded on concert with the Pope. Indeed the document itself said that the Emperor was “about to proceed to Rome to be crowned,” and that he would then “consult with the Pope touching the calling of a General Council.” And since these parts of the document were now inoperative, so were all.

Further investigation developed the even more decisive fact that the Emperor had actually written to Ferdinand lately, saying in so many words, “Let us suspend the Edict of Worms. Let us bring back Luther’s partisans by mildness, and by a good council cause the triumph of evangelical truth.”

This proposal was only a political turn taken by the Emperor to play against the Pope. But it perfectly fitted the necessity of the Diet; for it both suspended the Edict of Worms, and sanctioned all that the Diet had done to “cause the triumph of evangelical truth.”

The result was a deadlock in the proceedings in the Diet. Yet the way out was another advance of the Reformation, and further “triumph of evangelical truth.” That way was the way of religious liberty and the supremacy of the Word of God. There was unanimous agreement to — “Let every man do as he thinks fit: until a council shall re-establish the desired unity by the Word of God.”

This conclusion was framed into a formal decree of the Diet. This decree was called “the Recess of the Diet of Spires.” It was dated Aug. 17, 1526, and was officially signed by Ferdinand on the part of the Emperor. It provided that — 1. A universal, or at least a national free, Council should be convoked within a year. 2. The Emperor should be invited to return speedily to Germany. 3. “As to religion and the Edict of Worms, in the meanwhile till a General or National Council can be had, all shall so behave themselves in their several provinces as that they may be able to render an account of their doings both to God and the Emperor.”

The expected Council was not called within the year suggested, nor at all.

This allowed the religious liberty established by the Diet to continue, with no check nor limitation: except in the rigidly Romish States.

The Emperor’s war with the Pope occupied all the attention of both. After that war had brought upon the City of Rome such a sacking by the imperial troops as it had never known since that by the Goths and the Vandals, if even then, the Emperor and the Pope concluded a “peace,” June 29, 1528.

Of course this “peace” meant only destruction to the Christians of the Reformation. An article of the treaty stipulated that the Emperor should re- establish the authority of the Pope in Germany. The Emperor promised that “with all his might” he would put down the heretics.

However, this should be done by means of the action of a Diet and the power of the States, if possible. But if that should fail, then it must be done by the power of the imperial armies. Accordingly, Aug. 1, 1528, the imperial letters were sent out appointing the meeting of the Diet Feb. 21, 1529, at Spires.

To attack the Reformation through the action of a Diet was now more difficult than ever, because the present order of religious liberty was of the direct and unanimous action of the Diet signed with the names and sealed with the oaths of all. By every formal and constitutional sanction that act was the law of the empire. Yet in the “peace” between the Emperor and the Pope, these considerations should count for nothing. All must be swept away, to give place to the Edict of Worms. The Reformation must be put down.

When the time came for the assembling of the Diet, everything was made to bear the impress of the purpose of the new compact. The papal party attended in greater numbers than ever before, and distinctly manifested a superior and confident air. The evangelical Princes were now forbidden to have the preaching of the Gospel even in their own halls. However, they did not respect this command. The Elector of Saxony wrote that about eight thousand people attended morning and evening worship in his chapel on Palm-Sunday.

Upon the formal opening of the Diet, the imperial commissioners conveyed the information that — “It is the Emperor’s will and command that the Diet repeal the Edict of Spires.”

The papal party of course insisted that this should be done immediately, because, as they said, that Edict of religious liberty — 1. Protected all kinds of abominable opinions. 2. Fostered the growth of heretical and disloyal communities. (Meaning evangelical congregations.) 3. It was the will of the Emperor. 4. Whoever opposed the repeal was not the friend of the Emperor.

The evangelical Princes maintained that — 1 . The Edict of religious liberty had been unanimously adopted, signed and sworn to, by the members of the Diet, and by Ferdinand on behalf of the Emperor. 2. It was thus a part of the constitution of the empire. 3. For only a majority now to presume to repeal it, would be an open breach of national and constitutional faith. 4. If such procedure were to be adopted, there could never be any security in anything. 5. Also a centralized authority would thus be established that would sweep away the local. 6. The independence of the individual States would be destroyed. 7. Yet after all, there would yet remain the right of each State to resist such an order of things in its own territory. 8. Therefore the demand of the Emperor meant nothing less than revolution and war.

These arguments were so forceful, and the dangerous consequences of repeal were so manifestly logical, that even Catholic princes were won.

The Emperor’s proposal did not carry. The Diet refused to repeal the Recess of Spires.

Then the papal party played a bold stroke. The imperial commissioners announced that — “By virtue of his supreme power, the Emperor has annulled the Edict of Spires.”

This was worse yet. The Emperor’s action in this was wholly unconstitutional and arbitrary. For a majority of the Diet to do such a thing would be arbitrary and revolutionary. But for the Emperor alone to do it of his own arbitrary will and power, was more so. The Diet — not the evangelical Princes only, but the main body of the Diet — met this new assertion with calmness and courage. They refused to recognize it.

But this being a part of the settled program, the papal party proceeded as if the Emperor’s arbitrary act were fully and formally legal. And with the Edict of Spires presumed thus to be out of the way, they demanded that the Diet now order the full enforcement of the Edict of Worms.

The Diet would not itself repeal the Recess, nor would it recognize the Emperor’s annulment of it. With it standing, the Edict of Worms could not be revived. Then the papal party took a course seemingly to propose the continuance of the Edict of Spires and the avoidance of the Edict of Worms; but really to undermine the Edict of Spires, and to smother the Reformation, instead of to crush it.

April 7 they secured a majority vote in the Diet in favor of a resolution that — 1. In all places where the Edict of Worms had been enforced, every religious innovation should continue to be interdicted. 2. In all places where the Edict of Worms had not been, or could not be, enforced, there should be no new reform. 3. The reformers should not touch any controverted point. 4. They should not oppose any celebration of the mass. 5. They should not permit any Catholic to embrace the doctrines of Luther. 6. They should acknowledge the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church. 7. They should not tolerate any Anabaptists nor any Sacramentarians.

This on its face was a proposal for the positive smothering of the Reformation; for it stopped every activity of the reformers, and gave full scope to every activity of the Catholics.

Against the new proposal the evangelical Princes contended that — “This Diet is incompetent to do more than to preserve the religious liberty established by the former Diet, until the Council shall meet according to the original agreement embodied in the provision of the Recess. Therefore we reject this decree. We reject it also because, in matters of faith the majority have no power.”

The passage of the new proposal, April 7th, was but the first step: others had to follow before it could be a law. But bearing down all pleas or considerations of right or justice, it was jammed through the remaining stages; for “Ferdinand and the priests were determined on vanquishing what they called a ‘daring obstinacy.’ “They commenced with the weaker States. They began to frighten and divide the cities, which had hitherto pursued a common course.

On the 12th April they were summoned before the Diet. In vain did they allege the absence of some of their number, and ask for delay.

It was refused, and the call was hurried on. Twenty-one free cities accepted the proposition of the Diet, and fourteen rejected it. “On the 18th April it was decreed that the evangelical States should not be heard again; and Ferdinand prepared to inflict the decisive blow, on the morrow. “When the day came, the king appeared in the Diet surrounded by the other commissaries of the empire and several bishops. He thanked the Roman Catholics for their fidelity, and declared that the resolution, having been definitely agreed to, was about to be drawn up in the form of an imperial decree. “He then announced to the Elector and his friends, that their only remaining course was to submit to the majority. The evangelical Princes, who had not expected so positive a declaration, were excited at this summons; and passed, according to custom, into an adjoining chamber to deliberate. “But Ferdinand was not in a humour to wait for their answer. He rose and the imperial commissioners with him. Vain were all endeavors to stop him. ‘I have received an order from his imperial majesty,’ replied he; ‘I have executed it. All is over.” — D’Aubnigne.

When the Princes returned from their deliberation and found Ferdinand and his party gone, they sent to him a deputation entreating him to return. He replied only, “It is a settled affair. Submission is all that remains.”

Then the evangelical Princes, seeing that the whole matter had been decided against them, and the meeting adjourned to prevent their answering, and all this in their absence, decided “to appeal from the report of the Diet to the Word of God, and from the Emperor Charles to Jesus Christ the King of kings and Lord of lords.”

Accordingly the next day, April 19, 1529, the evangelical Princes appeared before the Diet, and, for himself, for the princes, and for the whole evangelical body, the Elector John of Saxony read the declaration of Protest that put the word “Protestant” in the world, and gave to the Reformation the name and title of Protestant.

That noble, just, and Christian Declaration runs as follows: — “Dear Lords, Cousins, Uncles, and Friends! — “Having repaired to this Diet at the summons of his majesty, and for the common good of Christendom, we have heard and learnt that the decisions of the last Diet concerning our holy Christian faith are to be repealed, and that it is proposed to substitute for them certain restrictive and onerous resolutions. “King Ferdinand and the other imperial commissioners, by affixing their seals to the last Recess of Spires, had promised, however, in the name of the emperor, to carry out sincerely and inviolably all that it contained, and to permit nothing that was contrary to it. In like manner, also, you and we, electors, princes, prelates, lords, and deputies of the empire, bound ourselves to maintain always and with our whole might every article of that decree. “We cannot, therefore, consent to its repeal: — “ Firstly , because we believe that his imperial majesty (as well as you and we) is called to maintain firmly what has been unanimously and solemnly resolved. “ Secondly , because it concerns the glory of God and the salvation of our souls, and that in such matters we ought to have regard, above all, to the commandment of God, who is King of kings and Lord of lords; each of us rendering Him account for himself, without caring the least in the world about majority or minority. “We form no judgment on that which concerns you, most dear Lords; and we are content to pray God daily that He will bring us all to unity of faith, in truth, charity, and holiness, through Jesus Christ, our throne of grace, and our only Mediator. “But in what concerns ourselves, adhesion to your resolution (and let every honest man be judge) would be acting against our conscience, condemning a doctrine that we maintain to be Christian, and pronouncing that it ought to be abolished in our States, if we could do so without trouble. “This would be to deny our Lord Jesus Christ, to reject His holy Word, and thus give Him good reason to deny us in turn before His Father, as He has threatened. “What! we ratify this edict! We assert that when Almighty God calls a man to His knowledge, this man cannot, however, receive the knowledge of God! Oh! of what deadly backslidings should we not thus become the accomplices, not only among our own subjects, but also among yours! “For this reason we reject the yoke that is imposed on us. And although it is universally known that in our States the holy sacrament of the body and blood of our Lord is becomingly administered, we cannot adhere to what the edict proposes against the Sacramentarians, seeing that the imperial edict did not speak of them, that they have not been heard, and that we cannot resolve upon such important points before the next Council. “Moreover, the new edict declaring the ministers shall preach the Gospel, explaining it according to the writings accepted by the holy Christian Church, we think that, for this regulation to have any value, we should first agree on what is meant by the true and holy Church. Now, seeing that there is great diversity of opinion in this respect; that there is no sure doctrine but such as is conformable to the Word of God; that the Lord forbids the teaching of any other doctrine; that each text of the Holy Scriptures ought to be explained by other and clearer texts; that this holy book is in all things necessary for the Christian, easy of understanding, and calculated to scatter the darkness, we are resolved, with the Grace of God, to maintain the pure and exclusive preaching of His holy Word, such as is contained in the biblical books of the Old and New Testament, without adding anything thereto that may be contrary to it. This Word is the only truth; it is the sure rule of all doctrine, and of all life, and can never fail or deceive us. He who builds on this foundation, shall stand against all the powers of hell: whilst all the human vanities that are set up against it, shall fall before the face of God. “For these reasons, most dear lords, uncles, cousins, and friends, we earnestly entreat you to weigh carefully our grievances and our motives. If you do not yield to our request, we Protest by these presents, before God, our only Creator, Preserver, Redeemer, and Saviour, and who will one day be our Judge, as well as before all men and all creatures, that we, for us and for our people, neither consent nor adhere in any manner whatsoever, to the proposed decree, in anything that is contrary to God, to His Holy Word, to our right conscience, to the salvation of our souls, and to the last decree of Spires. “At the same time we are in expectation that his imperial majesty will behave towards us like a Christian prince who loves God above all things; and we declare ourselves ready to pay unto him, as well as unto you, gracious lords, all the affection and obedience that are our just and legitimate duty.” “Thus, in the presence of the Diet, spoke out those courageous men whom Christendom will henceforward denominate The Protestants.”

And that is the origin of the word “Protestant.” That is the true story of the word “Protestant” as dealt with and repudiated by the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, thirty-one denominations with “a membership of more than seventeen millions.”

And now, having looked the story through, — What is there in it anywhere from beginning to end, that should cause anybody but a papist to want to repudiate the word “Protestant,” or the principle, or the idea, of it?

What is there anywhere in the story that “serves to recall” such a “most unhappy and trying experience” that anybody but a papist should now want to repudiate the word “Protestant?”

What is there anywhere in the story that can be so compromising or discreditable to anybody but a papist, that he must needs repudiate it in order that his “Christian brethren may work with him?”

Please look that story over again, yes even over and over and again and again; analyze it: examine each particular phase of it: distinguish each particular principle in it. Then upon the straight and simple story ask yourself, — In fact and in truth, what does the word “Protestant” indicate? What does it tell? What does it mean?

And by the open evidence of the plain, straight, and simple, story, the answer comes.

It means protest against the burning or otherwise destroying of either the men or the writings of the men who are found to disagree in religion or faith with other men either in a church or a State.

It means protest against arbitrary and unjust procedure of ecclesiastical combines.

It means protest against any denunciation or condemnation of men in their absence, or without their being heard.

It means protest against any alliance or connection whatever between the ecclesiastical and the civil power.

It means protest against any assertion or claim of any power or right of any majority in matters of religion or faith.

It means protest against any intrusion whatever of the civil power, under whatever plea, in any matter that in any way partakes of religion or faith.

It means protest against all arbitrary authority of the church under whatever form, name or claim.

In this it means protest against any exercise of ecclesiastical authority or power in any other wise than only by the ministry of the word of God.

It means protest against any restriction whatever, of any kind, on the full preaching of the word of God, even on “controverted points,” to every creature everywhere and always.

It means protest against any restriction whatever, of any kind, on the full and free exercise and enjoyment of the right of any individual at any time to embrace any doctrine that he may choose to believe.

It proclaims and defends the full and complete liberty of every individual, himself alone.

In this it proclaims and defends the perfect individuality of every soul.

And in this it proclaims and defends the sole and complete responsibility of the individual soul to god only, in all things pertaining to religion or faith.

It rests in and proclaims the word of God alone, as in the Bible of the Old and New Testaments, as all-sufficient in all things pertaining to religion and faith.

That, all of that, and nothing less than that, in truth and in fact, is what the word “Protestant” means. That is what it means to be a Protestant. And that is what was repudiated by the Federal Council of Churches, when it unanimously repudiated the word “Protestant.”

Are you a Protestant?

CHAPTER 3. F3 WHAT “PROTESTANT” MEANS IN AMERICA.

The development of the splendid word “Protestant” was not for that day only. The principle of it was then, and always has been, a very practical thing. “It was this noble resolution that gained for modern times liberty of thought and independence of faith.” — D’Aubigne.

And in and for all modern times the liberty of thought and independence of faith — the Religious Liberty — established as a natural and unalienable right of mankind by the Constitution of the United States, is the truest expression of the principle of the Protest that there is in any organic connection in the world.

Yet it was at a great price, and only through a long and strenuous contest that in this New Nation there was gained at last for mankind this freedom.

It was not many years after the Protest was presented at Spires, before, in principle, it had to be repeated and maintained even against those who professed to be Protestants. For when the original and true Protestants had passed away, many ceased to be Protestants and became only Lutherans, Zwinglians, etc. They ceased to think only on the truth of God, and cared only for the truth of Luther or some other.

The Reformation and the Protest appealed only to the plain Word of God as it stands in the Scriptures. This Word was steadily and faithfully preached; and each one was free to believe and to preach the Word as he found it.

But ere long it came to be required that all must believe and preach the word as some one else had found it: and that none should preach except he preach this.

This renewal by professed Protestants of the same old attitude, inevitably brought renewal of the Protest by every one who would be a true Protestant.

The continuance of the Protest, against the continuance of the papacy among professed Protestants, brought again intolerance, excommunication, and persecution even by means of the civil power, on the part of those who would not advance with the ever advancing truth of God. ”The principles which had led the Protestants to sever themselves from the Roman Church, should have taught them to bear with the opinions of others and warned them from the attempt to connect agreement in doctrine or manner of worship with the indispensable forms of secular government. Still less ought they to have enforced that agreement by civil penalties; for faith, upon their own showing, had no value save as it was freely given. “A church which does not claim to be infallible, is bound to allow that some part of the truth may possibly be with its adversaries. A church which permits or encourages human reason to apply itself to revelation, has no right first to argue with people and then to punish them if they are not convinced. “But whether it was that men only half saw what they had done, or that finding it hard enough to unrivet priestly fetters, they welcomed all the aid a temporal prince could give; the actual consequence was that religion, or rather theological creeds, began to be involved with politics more closely than had ever been the case before.... “In almost every country the form of doctrine which triumphed associated itself with the State, and maintained the despotic system of the Middle Ages while it forsook the grounds on which that system had been based. “It was thus that there arose National Churches, which were to be to the several Protestant countries of Europe that which the Church Catholic had been to the world at large; churches, that is to say, each of which was to be co-extensive with its respective State, was to enjoy landed wealth and exclusive political privilege, and was to be armed with coercive powers against recusants. “It was not altogether easy to find a set of theoretical principles on which such churches might be made to rest. For they could not, like the old church, point to the historical transmission of their doctrines; they could not claim to have in any one man or body of men an infallible organ of divine truth; they could not even fall back upon general councils, or the argument, whatever it may be worth, ‘Securus indicat orbis terrarum.’ “But in practice these difficulties were soon got over. For the dominant party in each State, if it did not claim to be infallible, was at any rate quite sure that it was right; and could attribute the resistance of other sects to nothing but moral obliquity. The will of the sovereign, as in England; or the will of the majority, as in Holland, the Scandinavian countries, and Scotland; imposed upon each country a peculiar form of worship, and kept up the practices of medieval intolerance without their justification. “Persecution, which might be at least palliated in an infallible Catholic and Apostolic Church, was peculiarly odious when practiced by those who were not Catholic, who were no more apostolic than their neighbors, and who had just revolted from the most ancient and venerable authority in the name of rights which they now denied to others. “If union with the visible church by participation in a material sacrament be necessary to eternal life, persecution may be held a duty, a kindness to perishing souls. But if the kingdom of heaven be in every sense a kingdom of the spirit; if saving faith be possible out of one visible body and under a diversity of external forms; if the sense of the written revelation of God be ascertainable by the exercise of human reason guided by the Divine breath which bloweth where it listeth; persecution becomes at once a crime and a folly.” — Bryce.

Yet, against all the principles of the Protest, in spite of consistency and justice, and in defiance of plain Christianity and common sense, that execrable crime and egregious folly persisted among professed Protestants in all their States and countries except in the one little blessed spot of Rhode Island, until the rise of the New Nation in 1776.

When, July 4, 1776, the notable Declaration proclaimed that “these colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent States,” every one of these new-born States, except Rhode Island only, had an establishment of religion. In New England it was Congregationalism. In others it was the Church of England. In yet others it was “the Christian religion” — a sort of “general Christianity” that any religious fanatic or heathen magistrate might enforce by “the Common Law.”

In Virginia was begun the Protest and the contest for Religious Liberty in this land. There the Church of England was the form of the religious establishment. All the people were taxed to support the preachers and to build the meeting-houses of that denomination. The will of that church was a part of the law of the State, to which all must conform or pay harassing and heavy fines.

No sooner had the Declaration of Independence been made than the Baptists, the Quakers, and the Presbyterians of the Presbytery of Hanover, in Virginia, presented to the General Assembly a Memorial pleading for Religious Liberty. They said in substance: We have declared ourselves free and independent of the government of England. Now let us also be free and independent of the church of England.

Their plea was heard. And after two months of what Jefferson said was the severest contest in which he was ever engaged, the cause of freedom prevailed. Dec. 6, 1776, by a legislature “of which the majority were Protestant Episcopalians,” a law was enacted repealing all the laws and penalties prejudicial to dissenters, releasing them from any further compulsory contributions to the Episcopal Church, and discontinuing all State support to the clergy after Jan. 1, 1777.

The church was disestablished. Virginia was free. Yet the contest for Religious Liberty was not ended. Immediately there was a combine of all the denominations in Virginia, except the Presbyterians, the Baptists, and the Quakers, to secure the establishment of “the Christian religion” by law.

In the very Assembly that had disestablished the Episcopal Church, there was made a motion to levy a general tax for the support of “teachers of the Christian religion.” The matter was postponed to the consideration of “a future Assembly.” To the next Assembly petitions were sent by the Episcopalians and the Methodists, pleading for a law levying a general tax for the support of “teachers of the Christian religion.”

These petitions and associated efforts were vigorously opposed by the Presbyterians in their original memorial renewed with additions; by “the strenuous efforts of the Baptists”; and by the loyal strength of the Quakers.

In 1779 the bill for the general assessment for the support of teachers of “the Christian religion” was defeated, though it had been carried to the third reading.

Then Jefferson prepared with his own hand a document entitled “An Act for Establishing Religious Freedom,” and proposed that it be adopted by the General Assembly “as a part of the Revised Code” of Virginia. This proposed law was submitted to “the whole people of Virginia” for their “deliberate reflection,” before the vote should be taken upon it in the Assembly.

This was in 1779; and the war for independence had now become so allabsorbing that the movement for the establishment of “the Christian Religion” had to be suspended. And Jefferson’s bill for “Establishing Religious Freedom” was before the whole people for such consideration as the times might allow.

However, no sooner had peace come to the land than under the lead of “The Protestant Episcopal Church” the demand for established religion was again forced to the front. Petitions were presented to the General Assembly and a bill was framed, proposing a legal “provision for teachers of the Christian Religion.” Patrick Henry was its patron; and “many others of the foremost men” supported it.

Personally Jefferson was out of the country as minister to France. But his place on the ground, in the General Assembly and everywhere, was most worthily filled by Madison as the leader in the cause of Religious Liberty.

Madison declared: “The assessment bill exceeds the functions of civil authority. The question has been stated as if it were, Is religion necessary?

The true question is, Are establishments necessary to religion? And the answer is, They corrupt religion.”

In spite of all opposition the bill was successfully carried to the third reading. It was certain to pass if it should come to the vote. Therefore the opposition fought for time.

Using as a base the fact that the bill “Establishing Religious Freedom” had been submitted to “the whole people,” and was at that moment still before them, Madison and his associates moved that the bill “Establishing a Provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion” be likewise submitted to the whole people for their deliberate reflection.

This motion was so evidently just that it gained the majority and was carried. “Thus the people of Virginia had before them for their choice the bill of the revised code for ‘Establishing Religious Freedom,’ and the plan of desponding churchmen for supporting religion by a general assessment.” “All the State, from the sea to the mountains and beyond them, was alive with the discussion. Madison, in a Remonstrance addressed to the Legislature, embodied all that could be said against the compulsory maintenance of Christianity, and in behalf of religious freedom as a natural right, the glory of Christianity itself, the surest method of supporting religion, and the only way to produce harmony among its several sects.”

Washington cast his mighty influence in behalf of Religious Liberty. The outcome of the contest was that “when the Legislature of Virginia assembled, no person was willing to bring forward the Assessment Bill; and it was never heard of more. Out of a hundred and seventeen articles of the revised code which were then reported, Madison selected for immediate action the one which related to Religious Freedom. “The People of Virginia had held it under deliberation for six years.

In December, 1785, it passed the House by a vote of nearly four to one. Attempts in the Senate for amendment produced only insignificant changes in the preamble, and on the 16th of January, 1786, Virginia placed among its statutes the very words of the original draft by Jefferson, with the hope that they would endure forever: — “‘No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.... The rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right’.”

Of this blessed result of that splendid campaign in Virginia, Madison happily exclaimed, as he had well earned the right to exclaim, “Thus in Virginia was extinguished forever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind.”

Yet this grand result in Virginia did not end either the story or the campaign of Religious Liberty in this land. Before the campaign in Virginia had closed in that triumph of Religious Liberty, the first steps had been taken for the calling of a convention to consider the forming of a national government by and for the people of all the States. And out of that campaign of Religious Liberty which they had made triumphant in Virginia, Madison and Washington went directly into the campaign for the forming of a national government. And into the new campaign they carried with them and finally fixed in the National Constitution the very principles of Religious Liberty which they had carried to such a triumphant issue in Virginia.

All that was said on this subject in the Constitution as originally framed was the closing clause of Article VI: — “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office of public trust under the United States.”

The National Government being one only of delegated powers, if nothing had been said on the subject, this itself would have excluded the government from any and all connection with or cognizance of religion.

But then such power might have been usurped on the plea that the subject was forgotten. The insertion of that clause proved both that the subject had been considered and that it had been decided: and that it had been decided in the way of excluding religion entirely.

Yet this did not satisfy the people. The discussion of the subject in Virginia had spread through all the other States, and had awakened there an interest that now found expression. When the Constitution was submitted to the people for ratification, objection was made everywhere that it did not fully secure Religious Liberty. Only negative expression was not enough. What was intended should be positively asserted.

Accordingly the ratification of the Constitution was with the distinct understanding that there should immediately be appended articles of the nature of a Bill of Rights. By the first Congress that ever met under the Constitution, this was done in the form of the first ten Amendments. And the very first clause of all is the one that positively assures the complete Religious Liberty that had all the time been intended: — “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Yet even that did not quite finish the story. In 1797 there was made and signed by President Washington regularly “by and with the advice and consent of the Senate” according to the Constitution, a treaty in which it was declared — “The government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian religion.”

And by the Fourteenth Amendment, this Religious Liberty is extended and guaranteed to all the people in all the States: for — “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.”

Such is the straight and plain story of The Fact of the establishment of full and complete Religious Liberty as a natural and constitutional right in this New Nation of the United States.

It is now necessary to cite from the same sources The Principles upon which all of that was done. And herein lies the great importance to all the people of the United States and of the world, of that action of the Federal Council of Churches in repudiation of the word “Protestant”: when in the Protest there was wrapped up the Reformation. For, people who are capable of repudiating the Protest are already qualified to abandon the results of it.

The men who erected this noble temple of Religious Liberty, first made clear what they meant, and what is to be understood, by the word “Religion.” They said: — “Religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence, and is nowhere cognizable but at the tribunal of the universal Judge.”

Then they distinguished and declared the Principles upon which they claimed for themselves and advocated for all, perfect Religious Liberty.

They said: — “To judge for ourselves, and to engage in the exercise of religion agreeably to the dictates of our own consciences, is an unalienable right, which, upon The Principles on which The Gospel was first propagated and The Reformation from Popery carried on, can never be transferred to another.”

Further they said: “In the event of a statute for the support of the Christian religion, are the courts of law to decide what is Christianity? and as a consequence to decide what is orthodoxy and what is heresy?” “Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish, with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects?” “It is impossible for the magistrate to adjudge the right of preference among the various sects that profess the Christian faith, without erecting a claim to infallibility which would lead us back to the Church of Rome.”

Upon the principles on which the Gospel was first propagated and the Reformation carried on, they declared against any governmental recognition of any religion. And they declared specifically against any governmental recognition of “the Christian religion,” expressly in order that this Nation and people should forever be kept from being led back to the Church of Rome.

Other splendid sentences from the documents of that campaign, equally show that the men who wrought for Religious Liberty had ever in mind the distinction between the principles of the papacy and those of the Reformation.

Of that “Bill Establishing a Provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion,” they said: “What a melancholy mark is this bill, of sudden degeneracy! Instead of holding forth an asylum to the persecuted, it is itself a signal of persecution.... Distant as it may be in its present form from the Inquisition, it differs from it only in degree. The one is the first step, the other is the last in the career of intolerance.” “During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.... “What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on civil society! In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of civil authority. In many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny. In no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people.” “Torrents of blood have been spilt in the Old World in consequence of vain attempts of the secular arm to extinguish religious discord by proscribing all differences in religious opinion. Time has at length revealed the true remedy. Every relaxation of narrow and rigorous policy... has been found to assuage the disease. “The American theatre has exhibited proofs that equal and complete liberty, if it does not wholly eradicate it, sufficiently destroys its malignant influence on the health and prosperity of the State. If, with the salutary effects of this system under our own eyes, we begin to contract the bounds of religious freedom, we know no name which will too severely reproach our folly.”

These quotations are sufficient to show that in their contention for Religious Liberty, those noble men held steadily before them the principles of the Protest and the Reformation; and that they held consistently to those principles.

And they blended in one with these, “the principles on which the Gospel was first propagated.” In this too they held consistently, and were eminently correct and true to the truth.

The Lord Jesus, the Author of the Gospel as it was first propagated, proclaimed from God this perfect Religious Liberty, in the sweeping words, “If any man hear my words and believe not, I judge him not.” John 12:47.

When the Creator and Lord of all declares every man’s freedom not to believe even His words, then that utterly excludes all other persons, potentates, and powers, from ever judging or condemning anybody for any dissent or variance in any matter of religion or faith.

And that is the American and Constitutional principle, from the Christian and Reformation principle.

And so says the Scripture again: “Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? To his own Master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up; for God is able to make him stand. “So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.” Romans 14:4,12.

And from the Christian and Reformation principle that is the American and Constitutional principle; for Washington said: “Every man who conducts himself as a good citizen is accountable alone to God for his religious faith; and should be protected in worshiping God according to the dictates of his conscience.”

Again Jesus said: “Render to Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” Matthew 22:21.

When that word was spoken, in all the “civilized” world Caesar and God, religion and the State, were held to be one and inseparable. But by that word Jesus split in two that heathen and Satanic thing, and set them as far apart as are the world and Christ, and Satan and God.

And from the Christian and Reformation principle, that is the American and Constitutional principle.

In the same sense of “revolt” being “to turn away in horror or disgust, to be repelled or shocked,” the Reformation was a revolt from the papacy.

And it was much more than that. It was a revival of original Christianity.

And in that it was the revival of the divine principle of Individuality.

In this respect also the American and Constitutional principle of Liberty is the truest expression that there is in any organic connection in all the world, of “the principles upon which the Gospel was first propagated and the Reformation from popery carried on.” “No one thought of vindicating religion for the conscience of the individual, till a voice in Judea, breaking day for the greatest epoch in the life of humanity by establishing a pure, spiritual, and universal, religion for all mankind, enjoined to render to Caesar only that which is Caesar’s. The rule was upheld during the infancy of the Gospel for all men. “No sooner was this religion adopted by the chief of the Roman Empire than it was shorn of its character of universality and enthralled by an unholy connection with the unholy State. And so it continued, till the New Nation — the least defiled with the barren scoffings of the eighteenth century, the most general believer in Christianity of any people of that age, the chief heir of the Reformation in its purest form — when it came to establish a government for the United States, refused to treat faith as a matter to be regulated by a corporate body, or having a headship in a monarch or a State.” “The Constitution establishes nothing that interferes with equality and individuality. It knows nothing of differences by descent, or opinions, or favored classes, or legalized religion, or the political power of property. It leaves the individual alongside of the individual. “No nationality of character could take form, except on the principle of individuality: so that the mind might be free, and every faculty have the unlimited opportunity for its development and culture.... The rule of individuality was extended as never before...

Religion was become avowedly the attribute of man, and not of a corporation. “Vindicating the right of individuality even in religion, and in religion above all, the New Nation dared to set the example of accepting in its relations to God the principle first divinely ordained in Judea.”

It is important especially to emphasize the fact and the truth that the American and Constitutional principle of Religious Liberty is the separation of the Christian religion and the State, the separation of Christianity and the State, and not merely the separation of Church and State.

The separation of Church and State was a question already settled, and was in the past, before there was even begun the contest that ended only in the establishment of the Religious Liberty of the Constitution.

And when that contest was begun it was not over any revival of the union of Church and State; but distinctly over an attempt to form a union of “Christianity” and the State, in the proposal to establish the legal recognition and support of “the Christian religion.”

The sole question from beginning to end of the whole campaign, was as to whether “the Christian religion should have governmental recognition and support, or whether it should be excluded from all governmental support, connection, or recognition.

In all the documents that are the essential features of the issue, there is not once found the phrase “Church and State” nor any phrase of kindred import.

Throughout, the phrases are “religion” — in the abstract, “the Christian religion,” “Christianity,” “the legal establishment of Christianity.” This is what was opposed, in the interests of Religious Liberty.

They said that the proposal for the legal recognition and support of “the Christian religion” was “entirely subversive of Religious Liberty.”

They said that it was “a contradiction to the Christian religion.”

They said that it was “a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion”; because “Almighty God hath created the mind free,” and He “being Lord both of body and mind yet chose not to propagate His religion by coercions on either, as was in His Almighty power to do.”

And the campaign ended with the whole question summed up in the plain word of Washington in the supreme law of the Nation, — “The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”

That and that alone is the American and Constitutional principle of Religious Liberty. And it is the Protestant and Christian principle.

That is, the Christian principle absolutely excludes Christianity from all governmental support, connection, or recognition.

Thus by the facts and essential documents of the whole record, nothing can be plainer than that the American Constitutional principle of Religious Liberty is not merely the separation of Church and State, but it is specifically the separation of Christianity and the State.

Yet plain as that is in the essential history of the Nation and the Constitution, plain as it is by Protestant and Christian principle, it is safe to say that hardly one in a thousand of the professed Protestant preachers in the United States recognizes it or will allow it.

For illustration, in the month of March, 1912, more than a hundred professed Protestant preachers of Washington City met together to adopt a resolution to be presented to President Taft against the wearing of the garb of the Roman Church by teachers in government schools. Yet in that meeting, for that purpose, and on that question, it was distinctly declared, and endorsed by the whole body with applause, that — “We mean the separation of Church and State: not the separation of Christianity and the State.”

Benjamin Franklin said that “he who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity, will change the face of the world.”

Jefferson, Madison, Washington, and the people of the United States did introduce into public affairs in this Nation the principles of primitive Christianity that are specially for the guidance of States and nations as such — the principle of the exclusive jurisdiction of God alone in all affairs of religion, the principle of the exclusion of the government from all things pertaining to religion, the principle of freedom of conscience, the principle of Individuality, the principle of perfect Religious Liberty.

And this has changed the face of the world.

Not till the planting of this newest nation did these principles ever find any place of recognition in government — except always upon the little theatre of Rhode Island. The principles had always been in the Bible for recognition by every government. The principles were ordained of God for the recognition of governments and of men everywhere. But to this New Nation alone of all the world befell the splendid distinction of taking the divinely ordained way of genuine Religious Liberty as a fundamental governmental principle.

When this great thing had been done by this New Nation, there was not another nation in the world that would consent that it was in any wise a sound or safe thing to do. But now every nation in the world has accepted and officially proclaimed Religious Liberty as a governmental principle. It is not in all of them practically applied in its true measure; but it has in all of them been adopted and proclaimed as a governmental principle.

And thus by making these principles of primitive Christianity, and of primitive Christianity revived in the Reformation, a fundamental fixture in public affairs — by this one thing alone this New Nation has wrought a revolution of this whole world. She has changed the face of the world.

But Rome never wanted the face of the world thus to be changed. It meant to her, weakening of influence and loss of power. It was all done in spite of her, and against all her principles and interest. And now that it has been done, she is determined to reverse it. And since by the New Nation it was done, upon this Nation Rome centres all her energies for the reversal of it.

Accordingly, as far back as 1892, in a letter direct from the Vatican, there was published in the United States the will and hope of the papacy concerning this Nation. The following are some of the expressive sentences of that letter: “What the church has done in the past for others, she will do for the United States.” “That is the reason the Holy See encourages the American clergy to guard jealously the solidarity, and to labor for the fusion, of all the foreign and heterogeneous elements into one vast national family.” “Like all intuitive souls, he [Leo XIII] hails in the united American States and in their young and flourishing church the source of new life for Europeans.” “He wants America to be powerful, in order that Europe may regain strength from borrowing a rejuvenated type.” “What can we borrow, what ought we to borrow, from the United States for our social, political, and ecclesiastical, reorganization?” “If the United States succeed in solving the many problems that puzzle us, Europe will follow her example, and this outpouring of light will mark a date in the history not only of the United States, but of all humanity.”

In 1893, by his “apostolic delegate” in this country the same pope sent to the Catholics of America the special message and command — “Bring your fellow-countrymen, bring your country into immediate contact with that great secret of blessedness — Christ and his Church.” “For here in America do we have, more than elsewhere, the key to the future.”

To that ambitious and pernicious end, all since has been and ever is most diligently worked. The chief stroke so far was the appointing in 1912 of three American cardinals all at once. And if the sinking of the Titanic had not put the etiquette of the thing at the bottom of the sea, the American cardinals would even now be parading their papal pomp as “princes of the blood” in precedence of every official, native or foreign, in this land.

And to all that papal program for marring the now fair face of the world, the Federal Council of Churches in America — in America, think of it! — swings her influence, by that public repudiation of the word and idea of “Protestant.”

For to Rome herself in her wicked encroachments what greater encouragement could be given; and on principle what greater favor could be shown to the papacy in every way; than in the fact that there are thirtyone denominations — “more than seventeen millions” of people — who are thus distinctly pledged to silence, whatever Rome may do?!

No worse betrayal of a nation and people was ever played in the world than in that blind and thoughtless action of the Federal Council of the Churches in America, in repudiating that splendid word “Protestant.”

CHAPTER 4. F4 WHAT CAUSED THE REFORMATION?

The Roman Church filled Europe. The Papacy ruled all.

The Roman Church was an ecclesiastical structure that embraced all the people of Europe: claiming dominion over every activity of human life — mental, moral, and spiritual; over every interest of mankind — temporal and eternal; and over all regions — heaven, earth, and hell.

The Papacy was the Roman Church permeating and possessing all the power of State and Empire: bending all to her own use; and controlling all in her own interests; to the making of her claimed dominion over mankind and the world absolutely effective, and effectively absolute. “The whole fabric of medieval Christianity rested upon the idea of the Visible Church”; and “The Holy Empire is but another name for the Visible Church.” “Thus the Holy Roman Church and the Holy Roman Empire are one and the same thing, seen from different sides.” — Bryce.

The ecclesiastical structure consisted of — 1. The gradation of priests, bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and the Pope. 2. The monks of every order, subject only to their respective superiors and to the Pope.

By ages of possession this church had succeeded in filling all the people with the superstition that the church had full control of eternal Salvation: that this Salvation rested peculiarly in the “sacraments,” and that of her own will the church could bestow or withhold the “sacraments.”

Whether, therefore, any person could be partaker of Salvation depended upon his attitude and degree of submission to the church. This submission was held under threat not only of the loss of eternal Salvation, but also the incurring of Perdition hereafter, and this accompanied by as large a measure as possible of perdition present, in unescapable and unappeasable persecution. “Step by step the supremacy of the Roman see had been asserted and enforced, until it enjoyed the universal jurisdiction which enabled it to bend to its wishes every prelate, under the naked alternative of submission or expulsion. The Papal mandate, just or unjust, reasonable or unreasonable, was to be received and implicitly obeyed; for there was no appeal from the representative of St. Peter. “In a narrower sphere, and subject to the Pope, the bishop held an authority which, at least in theory, was equally absolute; while the humbler minister of the altar was the instrument by which the decrees of Pope and bishop were enforced among the people: for the destiny of all men lay in the hands which could administer or withhold the sacraments essential to salvation. “It would be difficult to set bounds to the intrusion upon the concerns of every man, which was thus rendered possible, or to the influence thence derivable. Not only did the humblest priest wield a supernatural power which marked him as one elevated above the common level of humanity, but his person and possessions were alike inviolable. No matter what crimes he might commit, secular justice could not take cognizance of them and secular officials could not arrest him.” “Holy orders were become a full protection for all enormities.” — Hume. “The church militant was thus an army encamped on the soil of Christendom, with its outposts everywhere, subject to the most efficient discipline, animated with a common purpose, every soldier panoplied with inviolability and armed with the tremendous weapons which slew the soul. There was little that could not be dared or done by the commander of such a force, whose orders were listened to as oracles of God from Portugal to Palestine and from Sicily to Iceland.” — Lea.

The church held in full possession an absolute monopoly. And as with every other monopoly, this one was held primarily and principally for power and profit.

As to Profit.

Carrying such dignities and such immunities — such powers — all ecclesiastical offices were the objects of wholly selfish ambition: of every cardinal to be Pope, of every archbishop to be cardinal, of every bishop to be an archbishop, of every priest or monk to be a bishop.

And to attain the object of ambition each one was ready to employ the means most likely to win. And this was money. “Under these circumstances simony, with all its attendant evils, was almost universal.” For not only were the principal dignities thus obtained, but likewise all the minor offices or positions of trust within the jurisdiction of these.

Naturally the thing was worked from both sides: by the one who would obtain the office, and by the one who had the office to bestow. The one would had get the office, must pay high for it. But if what this one would pay seemed, to the one who had the office to bestow, not to promise enough, then the office was given to the one who would most largely share with the superior the plunder of the office — often even to boys of fourteen, ten, or even seven years, and to the most worthless characters.

Of course, at the final turn all of this money must come from the people.

Thus money, money, money, money, was the one chief subject of though and of administration.

Money and how to get it, was the one chief activity of the clergy from highest to lowest. Money was the one chief thing kept before the people and ever pressed upon them. Whoever could invent some new form of exaction, some new trick to turn money, some new device to wring out yet more money, was immediately distinguished.

To the local priest and his assistants fell the regular and perpetual presentation of the demand for money. Whenever the bishop made his visitation, it was a new occasion for money. When the archbishop made a progress, it meant more money. When a cardinal came, it meant still more money. When a Pope’s nuncio came, it meant yet more money. And when the Pope himself came, it meant most money of all.

In addition to all these, there were many agents traversing the countries bearing papal letters “empowering them to exercise judicial functions and enforce them with the last dread sentence of excommunication. Europe was thus traversed by multitudes of men armed with these weapons, which they used without remorse for extortion and oppression. These letters thus afforded a carte blanche through which injustice could be perpetrated and malignity gratified to the fullest extent. “An additional complication which not unnaturally followed was the fabrication and falsification of these letters. It was not easy to refer to distant Rome to ascertain the genuineness of a papal brief confidently produced by its bearer; and the impunity with which powers so tremendous could be assumed, was irresistibly attractive.... To the people, however, it mattered little whether they were genuine or fictitious: the suffering was the same whether the papal chancery had received its fee or not.”

Another addition was in the crowds of monks, “bearded and tonsured, and wearing the religious habit, who traversed every corner of Christendom, living by begging and imposture, peddling false relics and false miracles.”

Yet another was an equally widely distributed and industrious horde of pardoners, bearing “papal or episcopal letters by which they were authorized to issue pardons for sins in return for contributions. Though these letters were cautiously framed, yet they were ambiguous enough to enable the pardoners to promise, not only the salvation of the living, but the liberation of the damned from hell — for a few small coins. “Needy bishops and popes were constantly issuing such letters; and the business of the pardoner became a regular profession, in which the most impudent and shameless were the most successful.”

This invention and enlistment of travelling pardoners to carry to the most remote and the poorest, indulgences for cash, was for the purpose of getting the money of those who could not make the pilgrimages nor attend the jubilees that had been invented for the same purpose.

Births were taxed, marriages were taxed, deaths were taxed, burials were taxed, purgatory was taxed, and hell was taxed.

By a trick even excommunication was made a source of revenue. For if a demand or a command, however unjust, were resisted, excommunication was inflicted. Then to obtain “reconciliation” with “the church” the victim must render the original demand, and pay an additional levy besides.

From this it is easy to see how readily every failing as well as every offense of every person was made a means of revenue. Pope John XXII actually reduced to specific formulae the rates to be levied on the sins of all. The list is sufficient to cover almost every sin that mankind might commit. Yet all these are levied upon at set rates of so many “livres,” “francs,” and “sous.” Thus it is literally and undeniably true that no small portion of the vast revenues of the papacy was derived from a direct and specific tax upon sinning.

Nor was it a tax for prohibition, or to induce cessation, of the sinning. It was expressly for “absolution,” “free dispensation,” “assurance against all pursuit,” “guaranteed from all pursuit and all infamy.” Such are the words that are used throughout: with no word or implication of prohibition or cessation.

The condition of society revealed in this awful list, is fearful in its blackness. But when it is seen that the whole purpose of the scheme was to secure revenue, and this for “absolution,” “free dispensation,” “assurance,” and “guarantee” of immunity from all pursuit or penalty, the evil was palliated and encouraged rather than checked or forbidden, and the blackness is intensified rather than relieved, by any agency or ministration of Pope or church.

In strict consonance is the fact that litigation of differences and quarrels of the people was cultivated: this also for the revenue that it would bring through the church-courts by the costs of the case, and the fines exacted. “When a priest was inducted into a benefice, it was customary to exact of him an oath that he would not overlook any offenses committed by his parishioners, but would report them to the Ordinary, that the offenders might be prosecuted and fined; and that he would not allow any quarrels to be settled amicably.”

Of course it was necessary for the church to have something with which to satisfy impertinent inquiry from the victims, as to what caused the need of all this money, and what was done with it.

One of the principal things so employed, was the building of grand cathedrals and great churches and abbeys that were kept always under construction — any one of them continuing unfinished from a hundred to five hundred years. It is well known that “the building of St. Peter’s” was the ostensible basis of the indulgence market that aroused Luther.

Peter Cantor affirms that these magnificent structures with their wonderful works of art in stained glass, paintings, and sculpture, “were built out of exactions on the poor, out of the unhallowed gains of usury, and out of the lies and deceits of the pardoners.”

Another successful blind was the crusades for the confirmation of “the faith” against the invasions of “the devil” by means of heresy. Then a source of immense revenue was found in the confiscation of all the possessions of heretics.

The inquisitors were gliding everywhere. The universal oppressions and exactions of the church caused universal discontent among the people.

There were many genuine heretics. The teachings of these with the widespread discontent excited double diligence and activity to detect and prosecute heretics.

Then appeared another unquestionable proof of the church’s essential hatred of righteousness and love of iniquity. The genuine heretics preached and practiced the righteousness of the faith of Jesus and the keeping of the commandments of God: producing a truly pure and correct manner of life.

These were bitterly and uncompromisingly persecuted. Any one therefore who held really a correct life was subject to suspicion of heresy, and was in danger of prosecution by the inquisition.

For instance: A certain Catholic cleric of Spire by his sincere preaching “led certain women to lay aside their vanities of apparel, and behave with humility.” He escaped being burnt as a heretic only by the special intercession of a churchman who could be trusted.

A genuine Catholic was by mistake brought before the tribunal of the Inquisition. The proof, in his own words, that effectually purged him of even suspicion of heresy, was, “I eat flesh, and lie, and swear, and am a faithful Christian.”

Another fruitful source of revenue was divorce. For kings, princes, and nobles, who could pay enormous sums and swing political influence, the divorce market was always open. And through god-fathers, god-mothers, etc., the degrees of “spiritual relationship” were almost boundlessly extended; and all of these degrees were of equal force with those of the flesh and blood.

For a sufficient price, therefore, it was easy to find that a marriage was within the forbidden degrees of relationship; and, therefore, void. Peter Cantor was a Catholic churchman of such standing as to have influence even with Innocent III. And he asserts that “the most holy sacrament of matrimony, owing to the remote consanguinity coming within the prohibited degrees, was made a subject of derision to the laity by the venality with which marriages were made and unmade to fill the pouches of the episcopal officials.”

Of course all this was held not to be divorce; but only the finding of the fact that the marriage was within the forbidden degrees: and, so, that it never was a valid marriage. And if never a marriage, then the severance of it couldn’t be divorce!

But this was only another phase of the infinite casuistry by which any truth or principle of righteousness could be avoided. For the forbidden degree was never discovered till after the marriage: and the marriage according to all the many rules, formulae, and forms, of the church. And even then it was never discovered except for a price.

The church rigidly forbade marriage of the clergy, and forbade divorce to all who were married. Under these prohibitions, those who were married could do everything but be divorced — except for a sufficient price; and the clergy could do everything but be married.

To the clergy marriage was the one unpardonable offense. For this there was no “absolution,” nor “free dispensation,” nor “assurance against pursuit,” nor “guarantee from all pursuit and from all infamy.” “The records of the Middle Ages are accordingly full of the evidences that indiscriminate license of the worst kind prevailed throughout every rank of the hierarchy.” No small portion of the tax-list of John XXII was devoted to the many phases of activity in this field of iniquity. “The personal evil wrought by a dissolute priesthood was a wide-spreading contagion.” “The abuse of the lawful authority given by the alter and the confessional was a subject of sorrowful and indignant denunciation in too many synods for a reasonable doubt to be entertained of its frequency, or of the corruption which is spread through innumerable parishes and nunneries. “The almost entire practical immunity with which these and similar scandals were perpetrated, led to an undisguised and cynical profligacy; which the severer churchmen acknowledged to exercise a most deleterious influence on the morals of the laity, who thus saw the exemplars of evil in those who should have been their patterns of virtue.” “There is no injustice in holding the church responsible for the lax morality of the laity. It had assumed the right to regulate the consciences of men, and to make them account for every action and even for every thought. “When it promptly caused the burning of those who ventured on any dissidence in doctrinal opinion or in matters of pure speculation, it could not plead lack of authority to control them in practical virtue. Its machinery was all-pervading, and its power was autocratic. “It had taught that the priest was to be venerated as the representative of God, and that his commands were to be implicitly obeyed. It had armed him with the tearful weapon of the confessional; and by authorizing him to grant absolution and to pronounce excommunication, it had delegated to him the keys of heaven and hell. By removing him from the jurisdiction of the secular courts, it had proclaimed him as superior to all temporal authority. “Through ages of faith the populations had humbly received these teachings, and bowed to these assumptions, until they entered into the texture of the daily life of every man. “While thus grasping supremacy, and using it to the utmost possibility of worldly advantage, the church could not absolve itself from the responsibilities inseparably connected with power. And chief among these responsibilities is to be numbered the moral training of the nations thus subjected to its will.”

As to Power.

The office, the dignity, the authority, and the wealth, of the Pope, had been raised higher than all else in the world. This pinnacle of papal absolutism was attained in Pope Boniface VIII, and was proclaimed by him in the two notable sentences: — 1. “There is no other Caesar, nor king, nor emperor, than I, the sovereign pontiff and successor of the apostles.” 2. “We assert, define, and pronounce, that it is necessary to salvation to believe that every human being is subject to the pontiff of Rome.”

The Pope asserted claim to equality with God. He exercised powers far beyond God. To be Pope, then, became the supreme object of iniquitous ambition.

This development had been greatly aided by the almost constant wars between the popes and the emperors. The emperor, the more to further his cause against the Pope, would resort to the expedient of bringing about the election of a rival Pope: and sometimes the rival Pope became fully the Pope.

Many times had this occurred. But when a plurality of Popes became a fixture for fifty years, no emperor nor king had any part in it. It was wholly of the church, and was strictly ecclesiastical procedure.

April 8, 1378, the cardinals elected Pope Urban VI. Becoming displeased with him, September 20 the same year the same cardinals elected Pope Clement VII.

This threw all Europe into confusion that not only continued but increased for fifty years. Not only were the nations divided, but “even private families: some adhering to one of the competitors, and some to the other.

Urban was received as lawful Pope in Italy and almost all over Germany, in England, Portugal, Hungary, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Prussia, Norway, Bohemia, Tuscany, Lombardy, and the duchy of Milan.

Clement was acknowledged in France, Spain, Lorraine, Savoy, Scotland, Sicily, and in the islands of Rhodes and Cyprus. “As nothing could be certainly determined in favor of either of the pretenders, some sided at one time with one, and at another time with another: as their interests directed them. Indeed both had amongst their partisans some of the most eminent men of the age for their integrity as well as their knowledge in the civil and canon law; and by those of one party, new pieces were daily published, and answered by those of the other.” — Bower.

The division and confusion was not confined to the field of opinion and literary discussion. “Anathemas, interdicts, depositions, and maledictions, were the prelude to the bloody strife which was soon to overwhelm the Western nations. “Urban launched a bull against his competitor, and cited him to appear before the court of Rome to be judged and condemned as antipope. “Clement, on his side, fulminated a terrible decree against his enemy, and cited him to appear before the consistory of Avignon to be judged for the usurpation of the apostolic chair. “Finally, both having refused to appear, they anathematized each other by the ringing of bells and the light of torches, declaring each other apostates, schismatics, and heretics. “They preached crusades against each other, and called to their aid all the banditti and malefactors of Italy and France; and let them loose like wild beasts on the unfortunate inhabitants who recognized Clement or preferred Urban. “In the States of the church the Clementists made horrible havoc: ruined castles, burned villages, and even several cities. They penetrated as far as Rome, under the lead of Budes, a Breton captain, seized on the fortress of St. Angelo and committed atrocities in all parts of the city. “In Naples and Romagna the Urbanists, commanded by an Englishman named Hawkwood, took their revenge and committed reprisal. “Everywhere pillage, rape, incendiarism, and murder, were committed in the name of Clement, or in the honor of Urban. The unhappy cultivators fled with their wives and children, to escape the satellites of the Roman pontiff, and were massacred by the soldiery of the Pope of Avignon.” — De Cormemin. “Everywhere might be found divisions, spoliations, even bloodshed; ejected and usurping clergy, dispossessed and intrusive abbots and bishops; feuds, battles for churches and monasteries. “Among all other causes of discord, arose this the most discordant: to the demoralizing and unchristianizing tendencies of the times was added a question on which the best might differ, which to the bad would be an excuse for every act of violence, fraud, or rapacity.” — Milman.

The anarchy continued under the successors of the original two Popes. In 1398 the king of France took the lead and was joined by the kings of Hungary, Bohemia, England, Aragon, Castile, Navarre, and some of Germany, in an effort to relieve their dominions of the anarchy. They demanded that both Popes resign.

The Pope in Rome replied: — “Pope I am, and Pope will I remain: despite all entreaty of the kings of France and Germany.”

The Pope in Avignon made answer: — “I have been invested by God in the papacy. I will not renounce it for count, nor duke, nor king. Let the king of France issue what ordinances he will, I will hold my office and popedom till I die.”

Next, both colleges of cardinals united against both Popes. This, with the influence of the kings, secured the assembling of a General Council at Pisa in 1409. This Council declared both Popes deposed, all their acts null and void, and the cardinals at full liberty to proceed to an entirely new election.

The cardinals elected Pope Alexander V, June 26, 1409. “All this procedure of Council and cardinals was intended to restore the papacy to only one Pope. But it did not work that way. Instead of the afflicted world having now only one Pope, the discovery was soon made that it had three. And Europe, instead of being divided between only two Popes, was divided among the same two and another one.

The triple-headed monstrosity of the papacy now stood: — Pope Gregory XII in Gaeta: acknowledged by the king of Sicily, the Emperor Rupert, and some of the cities of Italy.

Pope Benedict XIII in Avignon: acknowledged by the kings of Aragon, Castile, and Scotland, and the earl of Armagnac.

Pope Alexander V first at Pisa and then at Bologna: acknowledged by the remaining kings and princes of Europe.

Alexander V died in less than eleven months after his election. He was succeeded by John XXIII — the last and worst of the Johns, and one of the worst even of the Popes.

In former times this John, as Balthasar Cossa, had been a pirate on the Mediterranean Sea. Now he was chief pirate of the Papal See, and of the deepened sea of papal anarchy that flooded Europe.

Pope John and the king of Sicily were at deadly enmity, and their warring desolated vast regions of Italy. To strengthen himself against the king of Sicily, John sought an alliance with the Emperor Sigismund. To secure this he had to agree to the assembling of a General Council, and this in the imperial city of Constance: to quench the schisms of the Popes and heal the miseries of Christendom.

Accordingly, an imperial letter and a papal bull were sent throughout Christendom summoning “the General Council of Christendom to meet at Constance” Nov. 1, 1414. The Council met on that date, and continued till April 22, 1418.

At the opening of the Council, John XXIII was present in person, and presided. Both the other Popes sent deputies: not to be of the Council, nor to recognize the Council; but to be watchful of the interests of those Popes respectively. Pope Gregory’s deputies lodged with the emperor a petition that John should not be permitted to preside in the Council.

Gregory’s deputies announced to the Council on his behalf, that he was ready to resign the popedom provided both the other Popes would resign at the same time.

To consider this subject, there was appointed, apart from the Council as such, an assembly of the heads of the nations who were present. This assembly unanimously agreed and recommended that all three of the Popes resign.

John made a show of accepting the recommendation. He himself wrote a form of his own, promising to resign, provided the other two would resign at the same time.

This was not satisfactory to the assembly, and they wrote one for him to accept. Yet this was so written that it was not of itself actually a resignation; and John made a most impressive show of accepting it. In the presence of the whole Council, on his knees at the “altar” with his hand on his breast, he declared, vowed, promised, and swore to God that he would accept it.

All this he did with such an air of sincerity, that the emperor was so carried away with it as to take off his imperial crown, prostrate himself before John, kiss his feet, and in the name of the whole Council thank him for his “good resolution.”

But lo! as soon as John saw that the Council was really going to put the recommendation into immediate effect, he with his cardinals ran away in the night.

This he did for the purpose of breaking up the Council. For the Popes held, and he supposed that the Council would consent, that without the Pope the Council would be powerless and would of necessity dissolve.

But his calculation missed entirely. The Emperor Sigismund, attended by the marshal of the empire, and with trumpets sounding before him, personally rode through the city proclaiming that the Council was not dissolved by the flight of the Pope; and that he would defend the Council with the last drop of his blood.

Before the emperor and the assembly of the heads of the nations, the chancellor of the University of Paris presented an argument proving to their satisfaction that a General Council is superior to the Pope; and that its deliverances hold good, with or without the Pope or his approval.

Accordingly the Council met in regular session and adopted these articles: — “I. That the Council had been lawfully assembled in the city of Constance. “II. That it was not dissolved by the withdrawal of the Pope and the cardinals. “III. That it should not be dissolved till the schism was removed and the church reformed in its head and members. “IV. That the bishops should not depart, without a just cause approved by the deputies of the nations, till the Council was ended; and if they obtained leave of the Council to depart, they should appoint others to vote for them as their deputies or proxies.”

From his retreat, John sent to the Council a notification that his pledges, oaths, and agreements, in the presence of the Council, had been made under duress and because of fear; therefore he was not obliged to be bound by them.

Then the Council in regular session made the following declaration: — “The present Council, lawfully assembled in the city of Constance, and representing the whole church militant, holds its power immediately of Jesus Christ, and all persons of whatever state or dignity (the papal not excepted) are bound to obey it in what concerns the faith, the extirpation of the schism, and the reformation of the church in its head and members.”

Then the Council unanimously deposed John XXIII because of his “scandalous conduct,” his “highest degree of maladministration in both temporals and spirituals,” his “detestable behavior,” his having “shown himself incorrigible,” and “other crimes.”

Gregory XII did really resign: but only by being allowed to convene the Council anew, as a Council of his jurisdiction.

Benedict XIII was deposed: but he persisted till his last breath — about seven years — that he was the only true and lawful Pope, and that “the only holy catholic and apostolic church was to be found at Peniscola” where he was. Dying, he charged his cardinals to elect another Pope to succeed him. This they did; but he immediately abdicated in favor of the Pope, Martin V, who had been elected by the Council of Constance, Nov. 8, 1417.

Thus by the efforts, the authority, and the power, of the emperor and the heads of the nations, the open anarchy of the Roman Church was ended and she was saved from herself.

It is particularly to be remarked and remembered that it was not by the papacy, nor by the church as such, that this was accomplished.

From beginning to end the initiative was in the heads of the nations.

It was the emperor, through Pope John’s necessity who secured the calling of the Council of Constance.

It was the emperor’s determination and public proclamation, that held the Council together after the flight of the Pope with the direct purpose of dissolving it.

It was the “assembly of the heads of the nations,” apart from the Council as such, that took the initiative and held the helm throughout the term of what was the Council of Constance in fact.

Thus it was by the heads of the nations — the “secular estate” — and by these alone, that the Council of Constance was made a fact, when by all that was the church — the “spiritual estate” — it would have been made only a fizzle.

And under the determination of and guidance of these the Council was made a fact without the presence of any Pope, or Pope’s legate, or Pope’s representative in any way whatever.

And under the determination and guidance of the emperor and the heads of the nations — “the secular state” the Council was made a fact expressly for the one chief purpose of “the reformation of the church in its head and members.”

Now all those who did this were only of the “laity.” In the theory and practice of the Roman Church, these were the worldly or “secular estate,” while the “clergy” and the monastic orders were the church proper or “spiritual estate.”

The sum of the situation, therefore, is that the laity must reform the clergy: the secular must save the spiritual — the world must save the church!

But The Church is in the world to save the world.

The Roman Church professed that she was in the world to save the world, and that Salvation was only of her. But lo! this church had sunk herself so low, and was so certainly dragging the world with her to perdition, that by an effort of very desperation the world must first save itself from the church, and then save the church from herself.

The Church of right being in the world to save the world; the Roman Church professing to be the only and true Church and the only way of Salvation for the world; and that church so reversing the order that she herself must be saved by the world and from herself — in this she demonstrated in perfection that she is not in any sense the true Church, and that she is not only the worst thing in the world but that she is worse than the very world itself.

This is evident from the plain facts. And it is abundantly confirmed by unquestionable authority.

Cardinal Baronius is the standard annalist of the Roman Church. He lived 1538-1607. Of the papacy in the ninth century, he says: — “Never had divisions, civil wars, the persecutions of pagans, heretics and schismatics caused it to suffer so much as the monsters who installed themselves on the throne of Christ by simony and murders. The Roman Church was transformed into a shameless courtezan, covered with silks and precious stones, which publicly prostituted itself for gold. “The palace of the Lateran was become a disgraceful tavern, in which ecclesiastics of all nations disputed with harlots the price of infamy. Never did priests, and especially Popes, commit so many adulteries, rapes, incests, robberies, and murders; and never was the ignorance of the clergy so great, as during this deplorable period.... “Thus the tempest of abomination fastened itself on the church, and offered to the inspection of men the most horrid spectacle. The canons of councils, the creed of the apostles, the faith of Nice, the old traditions, the sacred rites, were buried in the abyss of oblivion; and the most unbridled dissoluteness, ferocious despotism, and insatiable ambition, usurped their place. “Who could call legitimate pontiffs the intruders who seated themselves on the chair of the apostles? and what must have been the cardinals selected by such monsters?”

Of the papacy in the tenth century the same writer says: — “In this century the abomination of desolation was seen in the temple of the Lord; and in the See of St. Peter, reverenced by angels, were placed the most wicked of men: not pontiffs, but monsters. “And how hideous was the face of the Roman church, when filthy harlots governed all at Rome, changed Sees at their pleasure, disposed of bishoprics, and intruded their gallants and their bullies into the See of St. Peter!”

Of the twelfth century Baronius avows that “it appeared as if Antichrist then governed Christendom.” He wrote as a historian; but Bernard, of Morlaix, a monk of Cluny, lived at the time, and he wrote of it thus: — “The golden ages are past. Pure souls exist no longer. We live in the last times. Fraud, impurity, rapine, schisms, quarrels, wars, treasons, incests, and murders, desolate the church. Rome is the impure city of the hunter Nimrod. Piety and religion have deserted its walls. Alas! the pontiff, or rather king, of this odious Babylon, tramples under foot the Gospels and Christ, and causes himself to be adored as a god.”

Honorius of Antron, a priest, also lived at the time; and he declared: — “Behold these bishops and cardinals of Rome! These worthy ministers who surround the throne of the Beast! They are constantly occupied with new iniquities, and never cease committing crimes.... “Thus, in all the churches, the priests neglect divine service; soil the priesthood by their impurities; deceive the people by their hypocrisy; deny God by their works; render themselves the scandal of nations; and forge a chain of iniquities to bind men.... “The reign of God has finished, and that of Antichrist has commenced. A new law has displaced the old. Scholastic theology has sallied from the depths of hell to strangle religion. Finally there are no longer morality, tenets, nor worships — and lo! the last times announced in the Apocalypse have come.”

Hadrian IV was Pope from Dec. 4, 1154, till Sept. 1, 1159. He was an Englishman. His countryman John of Salisbury visited him, and was received on terms of intimacy. One day, in an exchange of confidences, the Pope asked John to tell him freely and honestly what opinion the world entertained of him and the Roman Church.

John did so: telling him with all the freedom of a friend what he had heard expressed in the countries through which he had travelled. And this is what he said: — “They say, holy father, that the Roman church, the mother of all churches, behaves toward other churches more like a step-mother than a true mother: “that scribes and Pharisees sit in her, laying heavy weights upon men’s shoulders, which they themselves touch not with a finger: “that they domineer over the clergy, but are not an example to the flock nor do they lead the right way to life: “that they covet rich furniture, load their tables with silver and gold, and yet, out of avarice, live sparingly: “that they seldom admit or relieve the poor, and when they relieve them it is only out of vanity that they do it: “that they plunder the churches, sow dissensions, set the clergy and people at variance, are not affected with the miseries and sufferings of the afflicted, and look upon gain as godliness and piety: “that they do justice, not for justice’ sake, but for lucre: “that all things are venal — that for money you may obtain today what you please, but the next day you will get nothing without it. “I have heard them compared to the devil, who is thought to do good — when he ceases from doing mischief: “I except some few, who answer the name of pastors and fulfill the duty. “The Roman pontiff himself is, say they, a burden to all almost insupportable. “All complain that, while the churches that the piety of our ancestors erected are ready to fall, or already lie in ruins while the altars are neglected, he builds palaces and appears gorgeously attired in purple and gold. “The palaces of the priests are kept clean, but the Church of Christ is covered with filth. “They plunder whole provinces, as if they aimed at nothing less than the wealth of Croesus. “But the Almighty treats them according to their deserts, often leaving them a prey to the very refuse of mankind; and while they thus wander out of the way, the punishment they deserve must and will overtake them; the Lord saying, ‘With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged,’ and ‘With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.’ “This, holy father, is what people say: since you want to know it.”

When honest John had finished, the Pope asked him to give his own opinion. John did, thus — “We must obey your commands, but must not imitate you in all your actions. “Why do you inquire into the lives of others, and not into your own? “All applaud you and flatter you, all call you lord and father: if father, why do you expect presents from your children? “If lord, why not keep your Romans in awe and subjection? “You are not a father in the right way. “Give freely what you have received freely. “If you oppose others, you will be more grievously opposed yourself.”

In the thirteenth century Robert Greathead, bishop of Lincoln in England made earnest Christian effort to reform the clergy of his diocese. He found himself baffled at every turn by appeals to Rome. Robert himself went to Rome to make a personal appeal to Pope Innocent IV for a check on this practice. But he found every attempt utterly to fail, because every channel was blocked before him with bribes. And in the very presence of Pope Innocent, Robert indignantly exclaimed, — “Oh, money, money, how much thou canst effect! especially in the court of Rome.”

In an address before Pope Innocent and his cardinals Robert told them plainly that — “The clergy were a source of pollution to the whole earth: they were antichrists and devils masquerading as angels of light, who made the house of prayer a den of robbers: and the Roman curia was the source of all the vileness which rendered the priesthood a hissing and a reproach to Christianity.”

Gregory X was Pope 1268-1276. In his speech of dismissal of the Council of Lyons in 1274, he told the assembled clergy that they were “the ruin of the world.”

In the fourteenth century we come to the times of John XXII with his systematic tax on sins, for “absolution,” “free dispensation,” “assurance,” and “guarantee against all pursuit and all infamy”; and the times of the double- and triple-headed papacy.

Of that John’s scheme of making capital of sinning, the abbot of Upsberg exclaimed: — “Rejoice now, O Vatican! all treasures are open to thee. Thou canst draw in with full hands. Rejoice in the crimes of the children of men, since thy wealth depends on their abandonment and iniquity!...

Now the human race are subject to thy laws! Now thou reignest — through depravity of morals and the inundation of ignoble thoughts.

The children of men can now commit with impunity every crime, since they know that thou wilt absolve them for a little gold.

Provided he brings thee gold, let him be soiled with blood and lust.

Thou wilt open the kingdom of heaven to debauchees, Sodomites, assassins, parricides — what do I say? Thou wilt sell God himself for gold!”

In the time of the double popedom of Boniface IX and Clement VII the doctors of the University of Paris addressed a letter to the king of France, in which they said: — “Two Popes elevate to prelacies only unworthy and corrupt ministers, who have no sentiments of equity or shame, and who think only of satiating their passion. “They rob the property of the window and the orphan, at the same time that they are despoiling churches and monasteries. “Sacred or profane, nothing comes amiss to them, provided they can extract money from it. “Religion is for them a mine of gold, which they work to the last vein. “They sell everything from baptism to burial. “They traffic in pyxes, crosses, chalices, sacred vases, and the shrines of saints. “One can obtain no grace, no favor, without paying for it. “It is not the worthiest, but the richest, who obtain ecclesiastical dignities. “He who gives money to the Pope can sleep in safety though he may have murdered his own father; for he is assured of the protection of the church. “Simony is publicly exercised, and they sell with effrontery to the highest and last bidder, dioceses, prebends, or benefices. “Thus do the princes of the church. What shall we say of the lower clergy, who no longer administer the sacraments but for gold? “What shall we say of the monks, whose morals are more corrupt than those of the inhabitants of ancient Sodom? “It is time, illustrious prince, that you should put an end to this deplorable schism, proclaim the freedom of the Gallican church, and limit the power of the pontiffs.”

And when the popedom became triple-headed, all forms and phases of the incubus were proportionately intensified. Then came the Council of Constance, with the effort of the heads of the nations for deliverance.

In complete and horrible measure it had been demonstrated to all the world that the essence of the papacy and the ultimate of the power and rule of the Roman church is only anarchy — the complete undoing of men and nations.

At the height of her power the Roman church had everything her own way.

All the nations were absolutely subject to her will. Nobles, princes, kings, and emperor, all moved at her bidding. Her dominion over mankind was complete and absolute. The power and legitimacy of her empire there was none to dispute.

In that position of absolute supremacy, with simply nothing to restrain her from doing exactly as she pleased and what she would, then whatsoever she did, that is only what was in her to do.

And what did she do? — There is the record: the blackest in all the history of the world. She compelled mankind to sin; she filled her world to the sinking point with iniquity and woe; she so afflicted the nations with her anarchy that they must rise up against her to save themselves from her, and to save her from herself.

And the climax of all that is of her, of herself, is that when all had been subdued unto her then she could only tear her own vitals by first a double and then a triple rending of herself.

She must rule all the world, only to prove that she could not rule herself.

And when there remained nothing but to rule herself, she could only destroy herself.

And than that there could be no more certain evidence that the power and rule of the Roman church is essentially anarchistic — the very mystery of iniquity.

And that — that church itself, what that church showed itself essentially to be, that is what caused The Reformation.

All the world was calling for a reformation, and God sent The Reformation.

When the Council of Constance declared the necessity of a “reformation of the church in its head and members,” The Reformation had already begun.

Indeed that Council itself met The Reformation — and unmercifully, that is papistically, condemned it.

The Council of Constance burnt at the stake both John Huss and Jerome of Prague — the then two chief sounding voices of The Reformation.

And the absolute necessity that a complete revolution should be wrought in the minds of men, no less than in their manners, is sufficiently indicated in the awful fact that the same Council — the same identical men — that in order to accomplish “a reformation,” deposed the three Popes because of palpable, notorious, and specified, enormities, consumed out of the world the two saints of God whom He sent to it with His message of The Reformation which essentially consists only in Regeneration.

CHAPTER 5. f5 THE REFORMATION: AND THE ROMAN CHURCH.

How came The Reformation?

The Reformation did not and does not consist in exposure and denunciation of the iniquities of the Roman church.

That is included in The Reformation, as an incident; because it is of the essence of Christianity to hate iniquity, as it is to love righteousness.

It was the iniquities, enormities, and desolations, wrought by the Roman church, that caused the universal desire and the pressing demand that there should be a reformation. Yet The Reformation was not wrought by magnifying or dwelling upon those things.

The Reformation springs from another principle, lives in another atmosphere, and works in another field, than that.

If exposure and denunciation of the iniquities of that church could have wrought reformation, then The Reformation would have been in the world more than five hundred years before it was.

The quotations in the preceding chapter of the many scathing words of denunciation and exposure of the Roman church on her own part, and of the papacy as a whole, and all by men of standing in that church itself, are sufficient to show that if that could work reformation there was enough of it to have accomplished the most complete and perfect reformation.

Yet all that is only a little of what could just as easily be quoted. And all of it said by men who lived all their days and died in full and honored membership in that church: some of them now saints of that church.

The men whose preaching made The Reformation could have said all that they ever said, and more, in denunciation of the iniquity in the church, and the enormities of the Popes; and yet could have remained in good standing in that church, all their days: if they had still held that church to be the only and true church, and have held themselves in conformity with her accordingly.

All men saw the iniquities practiced. They actually felt them on every side.

Nobles, kings, emperors, priests, bishops, cardinals, and councils, called for reformation. Even Popes confessed the sore need of it.

Princes and peoples wanted it for relief. The more observant of the clergy wanted it because of the fear that without it there would be such an universal uprising of the people in wrathful retaliation as would literally wipe out the whole order of the clergy.

But from whatever cause a reformation was desired, it was always attempted without righteousness. It was from men only, and not from God.

And it was in this way from the very men who were essentially the cause of the demand for reform, and were essentially of the thing that must be reformed: that is, the church.

Inevitably all such attempts must be flat failures. How dismal was the effort — the failure — of the Council of Constance at reformation, when what was considered the best that it could do to save the church, — the burning of Huss and Jerome — was the worst thing that it could possibly do, for any cause or for any reason!

The explanation of this blank incongruity, and the key of the whole vicious circle of self-involved contradictions, is in the fact that all those men who denounced the Popes and their evil practices, and the extortions and oppressions of the clergy, held that the church of which all these evils were but the expression, was the true and only church!

Even when they were compelled to admit that the church was inextricably involved in it all, and when they were thus required to reflect even upon the church, this was always done with the reservation and apology that in spite of all this she was the true and only church.

They denounced the men and the activities of the men, even of the Popes and the papal court, but still apologized and pleaded for the machine.

They condemned the evil practices, but justified the system by which alone it was possible that those practices could not only be perpetuated, but could even exist.

The times were evil, but “the church,” which made the times what they were, was “righteous!”

Church-men were bad; but “the church,” whose members and the expression of whose like those churchmen essentially were, was “good!”

Customs were pernicious; but “the church,” whose the customs essentially were, was “the abode of sanctity!”

Practices were abominable; but “the church,” which invented many and profited by all of these practices, was “holy!”

Popes were demoniac; but “the church,” of which the Popes were “the head” — the acting will, the guiding mind — was “divine!”

See the grand churches and magnificent cathedrals! Hear the “heavenly” music of the “divine” chants! Catch the impressive odor of the “holy” incense! Feel the awe of the “solemn” services, as the richly-robed ecclesiastics minister at the “altar,” kneel before the “host,” and move in “holy” procession! Think of the wide extent of her “missions!” Behold her “perfect organization,” by which she executes as by one man the wonders of her will, holds empires in awe, and rules the world! Isn’t that the true and only holy church?

The church was “the ark of God,” the “ship of Salvation.” The pilot, the captain, and the crew, might all be pirates, and use every motion of the ship only for piratical purposes, and load her to the sinking point with piratical plunder, and keep her ever headed straight toward perdition, yet “the grand old ship” herself was all right and would come safely to the heavenly port.

Therefore, “cling to the ark,” “stand by the old ship,” and you will be safe and will land at last on the heavenly shore.

Such in essence is the conception held, and that for ages had been inculcated. For instance, in the very passage quoted on page 93 from Cardinal Baronius, in which he describes the fearful conditions of that church in the ninth century, there stand the cardinal’s words as follows: — “Christ was then assuredly sleeping a profound sleep in the bottom of His vessel whilst the winds buffeted it on all sides, and covered it with the waves of the sea. And what was more unfortunate still, the disciples of the Lord slept more profoundly than He, and could not awaken Him either by their cries or clamors.”

And in the General Council of Basle, 1432, the Pope’s legate exhorted the Bohemians that — “In the time of Noah’s flood, as many as were without the ark perished.”

So long as this delusion was systematically inculcated, blindly received, and fondly hugged, of course reformation was impossible.

But as soon as there arose men with the courage of conviction and the confidence of truth, and spoke out plainly and flatly that the Roman system is not The Church at all in any feature or in any sense, then The Reformation had begun.

That is how The Reformation came. And without that The Reformation never could have come.

The Reformation as in the sixteenth century — the times of Luther — is not in fact the beginning of The Reformation. That was more the revival of it than the beginning.

The Reformation in truth began near the middle of the fourteenth century.

And it takes that of both the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries to make The Reformation indeed.

The Reformation arose practically at the same time in England and in Bohemia: in England by Wicklif, 1360-1384; in Austria and Bohemia by Conrad of Waldhausen, 1350-1369; in Bohemia by Militz, 1360-1374; by Matthias of Janow, 1370-1394; and all of these were summed up in John Huss in Bohemia, 1398 July 6, 1415, and Jerome of Prague through the greater part of Europe, 1374-May 30, 1416.

These men saw the Roman church as it is. They were compelled to contemplate the deplorable scene of exactions, oppressions, and devastations, wrought by the church, and the anarchy of the popedom. It was ever before their eyes.

They considered this universal and deepening sea of iniquity, of all of which the Roman church more than anything else was the chief cause.

They considered that church herself, in what she claimed to be, and in what she had proved herself to be. And upon thoughtful consideration, and in sober view, of it all, they were compelled to ask — Is that, can that be, the true Church?

Is that the Church that Jesus sent into the world, to bless and save the world?

Is it the best that Christ the Lord could do to save the world, to put in the world a system and a power that proved itself only an unmitigated and deepening curse to the world?

Then they studied anew the Scriptures to know what is The Church according to the word, the thought, and the purpose, of God.

They asked of the living personal Christ that He make plain to them His own truth as to just what is His Church.

They asked that the Holy Spirit of promise should guide them into this truth: that in this, He should take the things of Christ and of God and show unto them.

Here is a prayer of Militz, that is good for every person in the world for all time: “I prayed often that Almighty God would give me the Holy Spirit, and anoint me with His unction, that I might not fall into any error, and might enjoy the taste and perfume of true wisdom, so that I might deceive none and be deceived by none, and wish no longer to know anything but what is necessary for me and the Holy Church.”

And here is a touch of the experience of Matthias which is met with an answering glow in the heart of every Christian: “Once my mind was encompassed with a thick wall. I thought of nothing but what delighted the eye and the ear, till it pleased the Lord Jesus to draw me as a brand from the burning. And while I, worst slave of my passions, was resisting him in every way, he delivered me from the flames of Sodom, and brought me into the place of sorrow, of great adversities, and of much contempt. “Then first I became poor and contrite; and searched with trembling the Word of God. I began to admire the truth in the holy Scriptures, to see how, in all things, it must be fulfilled. Then first I began to wonder at the deep wiles of Satan: to see how he darkened the minds of all, even those who seemed to think themselves wisest. “And there entered into me, that is into my heart, a certain unusual, new, and powerful fire; but a very blessed fire, and which still continues to burn within me and is kindled the more in proportion as I lift up my soul in prayer to God and to our Lord Jesus the crucified. And it never abates or leaves me: except when I forget the Lord Jesus Christ, and fail to observe the right discipline in eating and drinking! then I am enveloped in clouds, and unfitted for all good works, till, with my whole heart and with deep sorrow I return to Christ, the true physician, the severe judge, He who punishes all sin, even to idle words and foolish thoughts.”

Those earnest Christian words fairly indicate the Spirit and source of The Reformation. It is only from the Spirit and Word of God, manifested in the regeneration of men: not in any revamping of a system, nor even in a renovation of manners.

Wicklif taught in the University of Oxford. The king of England married Anne, a sister of the king of Bohemia. Queen Anne received the Gospel.

She read the Wicklif Bible, and recommended it to the high ones of the kingdom about her.

The University of Oxford, the University of Paris, and the University of Prague, were at that time the three great universities of Europe. Anne of Bohemia being England’s queen formed a connecting link between Prague and Oxford.

Bohemian youth went to Oxford to study “ and were there seized with enthusiasm for the doctrines of Wicklif”; and young English theologians went from Oxford to Prague where they spread the truths which they had learned from Wicklif. The writings of Wicklif were owned and studied by professors of the University of Prague.

Also the English students who went to Prague, met there the preaching and writings of the Bohemian Reformers; and the students who went to Oxford from Bohemia carried there these writings and teachings. Thus The Reformation in England and Bohemia became one. Jerome studied in Oxford. Huss studied the writings of Wicklif in the University of Prague.

Wicklif’s teachings centred in the keeping of the Commandments of God and the Faith of Jesus. The teaching of the Bohemian Reformers included that, but centred more in the prophecies of Daniel and the Revelation, Matthew 24, and 2 Thessalonians 2, and other scriptures concerning the second coming of the Lord, and The Church: the Church, true and false.

By the work of Militz, Conrad, Matthias, and their disciples, evangelical truth was spread throughout Bohemia; and the field was thus prepared for the writings of Wicklif.

The mingling of the students of the two countries was the means of the blending of the great features of the respective teachings: each becoming the complement of the other.

Thus the teachings in the two countries of England and Bohemia became a symmetrical whole in the evangelical message that sounded throughout Europe, that was the rise of The Reformation.

Then the papacy arose in her wrath to put it down.

The burning of Huss and Jerome kindled a flame that speedily spread over all Bohemia. “Within four years from the death of Huss, the bulk of the nation had embraced the faith for which he died.” The papacy attempted by the force of mighty imperial armies to quench it; but at every turn she was miraculously defeated. “Miraculous” is the word to use. No other would tell the whole truth.

Crusade after crusade was pushed upon devoted Bohemia. The armies of 70,000; 80,000; 100,000; 130,000; 180,000; were of the veterans of Europe. They were led by the emperor and the Pope’s legate-a-latere. They were officered by electors, dukes, landgraves. and princes. They were directed by the best and most practiced generals that Europe knew.

The Bohemians were mostly innocent peasants armed with flails and such other implements as they might gather — till they were supplied with arms from the defeated crusaders. Their general was a man totally blind — John Ziska. And yet, besides many skirmishes and sieges, in sixteen pitched battles that blind man and his peasants defeated the imperial armies. They never lost a single battle, siege, or skirmish.

Ziska died of the plague in 1424. He had named Procopius as his successor. The victories continued: and, in some sense, in even a more miraculous way.

In 1427 the crusading army of 180,000 was at the river that flows by Meiss prepared to attack the town. The Hussites marched up to the river on the opposite bank, and stood still. “It was only for a moment that the invaders contemplated the Hussite ranks. A sudden panic fell upon them. They turned and fled in the utmost confusion.”

In 1431 the crusading army of 130,000, marching from Nuremberg, invaded Bohemia. They were encamped at a point near Reisenberg. The Hussites were not yet in sight; but the sound of their wagons and the chanting of their host were heard. The Pope’s legate stood on an eminence to see the great battle that was impending. But instead of his expected battle he saw a stampede of his whole army.

He was “startled by a strange and sudden movement in the host. As if smitten by some invisible power, it appeared all at once to break up and scatter. The soldiers threw away their armor and fled, one this way, another that; and the wagoners, emptying their vehicles of their load, set off across the plain at full gallop. “The panic extended to the officers equally with the soldiers. The Duke of Bavaria was one of the first to flee. He left behind him his carriage: in the hope that its spoil might tempt the enemy to delay their pursuit. Behind him, also in inglorious flight, came the Elector of Brandenberg; and following close on the elector were others of less note, chased from the field by this unseen terror. “The army followed: if that could be styled an army which had so lately been a marshalled and bannered host; but was now only a rabble rout, fleeing when no man pursued.”

The cardinal legate tried to stem the tide. He threw himself in the path of flight, exhorting that they stand and fight “for Christ and the salvation of souls,” and urging that they had “a better chance of saving their lives” by fighting than by flying.

He succeeded in rallying a few. “But it was only for a few minutes. They stood their ground only till the Bohemians were within a short distance of them. Then that strange terror again fell upon them, and the stampede became so perfectly uncontrollable that the legate himself was borne away in the current of bewildered and hurrying men... “He left behind him his hat, his cross, his bell, and the Pope’s bull proclaiming the crusade — that same crusade that had come to so ridiculous a termination. “This is now the second time the strange phenomenon of panic had been repeated in the Hussite wars.... There is here the touch of a Divine finger — the infusion of a preternatural terror. “So great was the stupefaction with which the crusaders were smitten that many of them, instead of continuing their flight into their own country, wandered back into Bohemia. While others of them, who reached their homes in Nuremberg, did not know their native city when they entered it; and began to beg for lodgings as if they were among strangers.”

Then the papacy turned to new tactics. She proposed negotiations. And the Bohemians allowed themselves to be lured with her wiles and to be taken in her net!

The council of Basle was in session, 1432. The Bohemians were invited to come to the Council for a conference. Three hundred of them went; and in a discussion continued through three months, held their ground. Then they went home.

Next the Council sent “a proposal to renew at Prague the negotiations that had been broken off at Basle.” “The Bohemian chiefs returned answer to the Council, bidding them to send forward their delegates to Prague.”

The Diet of Bohemia was convoked, in 1434, with special reference to this matter. The outcome of the meeting was that the Bohemians agreed to a compromise. And of all things, a compromise of such character as revealed that they had already forgotten The Reformation; and that they now cared far more for peace with Rome than they cared for divine truth and the peace of God for which the Bohemian Reformers had so nobly contended, and for which Huss and Jerome had gone to death at the stake.

The compromise was that the four articles on which the Bohemians insisted, were accepted by the Council: the right of explaining the articles, to belong to the Council! f6 This was only to give everything away to Rome. Rome knew this, and so intended it. The secretary of the Council, who himself drafted the document, said of it: — “This formula of the Council is short, but there is more in its meaning than in its words. It banishes all such opinions and ceremonies as are alien to the faith, and it takes the Bohemians bound to believe and to maintain all that the Church Catholic believes and maintains.”

And when this same man became Pope — Pius II — he “repudiated his own handiwork, and launched excommunication against Podiebrad [king of Bohemia] for attempting to govern on its principles.”

Why could not the Bohemians see that this compromise was nothing but a complete surrender to Rome? — They had turned from the light to the darkness, from God to Rome.

God could fight for them and wondrously deliver them from all the power and expectation of Rome. He had abundantly shown to all the world that He would do this — while they stood with Him against Rome.

But when they allowed themselves to be lured from Him by the wiles of Rome and drawn into negotiations for “peace” with Rome, He could not fight for them in that. He could only not let them have their own chosen way — and that the way of Rome!

The Reformation which had been so nobly begun and so wondrously maintained in Bohemia, was given away. It was not sold for a price. It was not even bartered, for a consideration. It was thoughtlessly given away.

This surrender was made by those who professed to be of The Reformation, but did not know The Reformation in spirit and in truth: those who had espoused “the cause” of The Reformation, but not The Reformation itself: those who had never received the divine principle and truth of The Church of the living God, but in whose minds and hearts there still lurked the superstitious fallacy that the Roman church is the true and only church: those who were glad to be freed from the exactions and oppressions of Rome, but cared not most of all to be freed from Rome herself.

When these met what seemed to them to promise the privilege of enjoying the benefits brought by The Reformation, and also the fellowship of Rome, of course they accepted it; for that is just what they had always wanted.

Yet there were those who were faithful. These utterly rejected the compact in which all was surrendered to Rome. Of those who accepted that compact, these said — “In this manner they receded from the footsteps of Huss, and returned to the camp of Antichrist.”

These who were true to The Reformation became the object of bitter attack from all parties, and of persecution from all sides. Those who had professed to be of them, but had given themselves away to Rome, were the first to make war upon them.

By the cruel persecutions poured upon them, “they were dispersed in the woods and mountains. They inhabited dens and caves. And in these abodes they were ever careful to prepare their meals by night, lest the ascending smoke should betray their lurking places. “Gathering round the fires which they kindled in these subterranean retreats in the cold of winter, they read the Word of God, and united in social worship.” As they read and worshipped, and year after year went by; their numbers few, and the persecution ever persistent; and the reign of Rome universal; they were led to wonder how fared it with Christians otherwhere, or whether there were any others. “Were they alone all the witnesses of truth left on the earth? or were there others: companions with them in the faith and patience of the kingdom of Jesus Christ? They sent messengers into the various countries of Christendom, to inquire secretly and bring them word again. “These messengers returned to say that everywhere darkness covered the face of the earth; but that nevertheless, here and there, they had found isolated confessors of the truth — a few in this city and a few in that — the object like themselves of persecution.”

Yet they remembered the words of promise of coming day, that had been left them.

Wicklif had written that from amongst the monks “some brothers whom God may vouchsafe to teach, will be devoutly converted to the primitive religion of Christ, and, abandoning their false interpretations of genuine Christianity, after having demanded, or acquired of themselves, permission from Antichrist, will freely return to the original religion of Christ; and they will build up the Church like Paul.”

Matthias of Janow, as he was dying, said to his sorrowing friends: “The rage of the enemies of the truth now prevails against us; but it will not be forever. There shall arise one from among the common people, without sword or authority, and against him they shall not be able to prevail.”

Huss, in the dungeon in chains, just before his death, dreamed that certain persons had resolved to destroy in the night all the pictures of Christ that were on the walls of Bethlehem chapel in Prague where he used to preach: and that, indeed, they did destroy them.

But the next day many painters were engaged in drawing more pictures, and more beautiful ones, than were there before: upon which Huss gazed in rapture. When the painters had finished, they turned to the company of people who were looking on, and said: “Now let the bishops and priests come and destroy these pictures.”

And a great multitude of people joyed over it; and Huss rejoiced with them. And in the midst of the laughter and rejoicing, he awoke.

There were no real pictures of Christ on the walls of Bethlehem chapel.

There were inscribed only the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and single verses of precious Scripture.

Of the dream, Huss said: “I hope that the life of Christ which, by my preaching in Bethlehem, has been transcribed upon the hearts of men, and which they meant to destroy there, — first by forbidding preaching in the chapels and in Bethlehem, next by tearing down Bethlehem itself — that this life of Christ shall be better transcribed by a greater number of better preachers than I am: to the joy of the people who love the life of Christ.

Over which I shall rejoice when I awake: that is, rise from the dead.”

And as he stood at the stake, made fast to it by a chain, he said: “It is thus that you silence the goose; but a hundred years hence there will arise a swan whose singing you shall not be able to silence.” f7 The hundred years passed. And then came from among the monks the “brother” of Wicklif, the one from “the common people” of Matthias, and the “swan” of Huss — Martin Luther.

On the morning of Oct. 31, 1517, the Elector Frederick of Saxony, in his castle of Schweinitz, about eighteen miles from Wittemberg, related to his brother, Duke John, and his chancellor, the following experience:- The Elector. — “Brother, I must tell you a dream which I had last night: the meaning of which I should like much to know. It is so deeply impressed on my mind, that I will never forget it were I to live a thousand years. For I dreamed it thrice, and each time with new circumstances.

Duke John. — “Is it a good or a bad dream?”

The Elector . — “I know not: God knows.”

Duke John. — “Don’t be uneasy at it; but be so good as to tell it to me.”

The Elector. — “Having gone to bed last night, fatigued and out of spirits, I fell asleep shortly after my prayer, and slept quietly for about two hours and a half. I then awoke, and continued awake till midnight — all sorts of thoughts passing through my mind. Among other things, I thought how I was to observe the feast of All Saints. I prayed for the poor souls in purgatory; and supplicated God to guide me, my counsels, and my people, according to truth. “I again fell asleep, and then dreamed that Almighty God sent me a monk, who was a true son of the Apostle Paul. All the saints accompanied him by order of God, in order to bear testimony before me and to declare that he did not come to contrive any plot; but that all that he did was according to the will of God. They asked me to have the goodness graciously to permit him to write something on the door of the church of the castle of Wittemberg.

This I granted, through my chancellor. “Thereupon the monk went to the church, and began to write in such large characters that I could read the writing at Schweinitz.

The pen which he used was so large that its end reached as far as Rome, where it pierced the ears of a lion that was crouching there; and caused the triple crown upon the head of the Pope to shake. All the cardinals and princes, running hastily up, tried to prevent it from falling. You and I, brother, wished also to assist; and I stretched out my arm — but at this moment I awoke, with my arm in the air, quite amazed, and very much enraged at the monk for not managing his pen better. I recollected myself a little; it was only a dream. “I was still half asleep, and once more closed my eyes. The dream returned. The lion, still annoyed by the pen, began to roar with all his might so much so that the whole city of Rome and all the States of the holy empire ran to see what the matter was. The Pope requested them to oppose the monk, and applied particularly to me on account of his being in my country. I again awoke, repeated the Lord’s Prayer, entreated God to preserve his holiness, and once more fell asleep. “Then I dreamed that all the princes of the empire, and we among them, hastened to Rome, and strove, one after another, to break the pen. But the more we tried, the stiffer it became — sounding as if it had been made of iron. We at length desisted. I then asked the monk (for I was sometimes at Rome, and sometimes at Wittemberg) where he got his pen, and why it was so strong. ‘The pen,’ replied he, ‘belonged to an old goose of Bohemia — a hundred years old. I got it from one of my old schoolmasters. As to its strength, it is owing to the impossibility of depriving it of its pith or marrow; and I am quite astonished at it myself.’ “Suddenly I heard a loud noise — a large number of other pens had sprung out of the long pen of the monk. I awoke a third time: it was daylight.”

Duke John. — “Chancellor, what is your opinion? Would we had a Joseph or a Daniel enlightened by God.”

The Chancellor. — “Your highnesses know the common proverb, that the dreams of young girls, learned men, and great lords, have usually some hidden meaning. The meaning of this dream, however, we will not be able to know for some time, — not till the things to which it relates have taken place. Wherefore, leave the accomplishment to God, and place it wholly in His hand.”

Duke John. — “I am of your opinion, Chancellor: ‘tis not fit for us to annoy ourselves in attempting to discover the meaning. The God will overrule all for His glory.”

The Elector. — “May our faithful God do so. Yet I will never forget this dream. I have indeed thought of an interpretation; but I keep it to myself. Time, perhaps, will show if I have been a good diviner.”

At noon of that very day the interpretation of the dream began, and the meaning to be made plain. For at that hour, without having made known to anybody his intentions, the monk, Martin Luther, nailed to the door of Wittemberg church his ninety-five theses against Rome.

The Reformation had arisen again.

And it had risen, nevermore to be put down. Luther in Germany, Zwingle in Switzerland, and soon others with these and everywhere, to the joy of a great multitude were engaged in restoring the image of Christ in the lives of men.

And among the laughing and rejoicing peoples there were two hundred congregations of Reformation Christians in Bohemia, who were descended through the long night and had watched eagerly for the promised day.

What it meant to all, was summed up in the words and sounded forth in the voice of one in curious garb, holding aloft a large cross, and chanting in a tone that seemed fitted to cause the dead to hear, as Luther entered the City of Worms — “Thou art come, O desired one! — thou for whom we have longed and waited in the darkness!” f9 Through a hundred years the Roman church had demonstrated that for The Reformation, for The Church and the Christianity which The Reformation revealed, she holds only perpetual enmity. In this additional field — the field of the strictly spiritual — the Roman church had further proved to all the world the truth that the Reformers preached, that she is not the true church in any feature nor in any sense.

The conditions in Europe were now barely less deplorable than when The Reformation first arose. The hundred years between, had been but a hundred years more of all that the Roman church could show herself to be.

The promise and effort of the Council of Constance to “reform the church in its head and members,” had amounted to nothing more than the ending of the open anarchy of the church, and the bringing back of the popedom to only one Pope at a time. All of the other evils of the church held steadily onward.

The speech that was made by Duke George in the Diet of Worms, and that was put in writing for the action of the Diet, will be sufficient evidence here that the church was still the same — simply incorrigible: and this simply because that church being “infallible” is “irreformable of itself.”

Duke George said: — “The Diet must not forget the grievances of which it complains against the court of Rome. “What abuses have crept into our States! “The annats which the emperor granted freely for the good of Christendom, now demanded as a debt; “the Roman courtiers every day inventing new ordinances in order to absorb, sell, and farm out, ecclesiastical benefices; “a multitude of transgressions winked at; “rich offenders unworthily tolerated, while those who have no means of ransom are punished without pity; “the Popes incessantly bestowing expectancies and reversions on the inmates of their palace, to the detriment of those to whom the benefices belong; “the commendams of abbeys and convents of Rome conferred on cardinals, bishops, and prelates, who appropriate their revenues, so that there is not one monk in convents which ought to have twenty or thirty; “stations multiplied without end, and indulgence shops established in all the streets and squares of our cities — shops of St. Anthony, shops of the Holy Spirit, of St. Hubert, of St. Cornelius, of St.

Vincent, and many others besides; “societies purchasing from Rome the right of holding such markets, then purchasing from their bishop the right of exhibiting their wares, and, in order to procure all this money, draining and emptying the pockets of the poor; “the indulgence, which ought to be granted solely for the salvation of souls, and which ought to be merited only by prayers and fastings, sold at a regular price; “the officials of the bishops oppressing those in humble life with penances for blasphemy, adultery, debauchery, the violation of this or that feast-day, while, at the same time, not even censuring ecclesiastics who are guilty of the same crimes; “penances imposed on the penitent, and artfully arranged so that he soon falls anew into the same fault, and pays so much the more money. “Such are some of the crying abuses of Rome. “All sense of shame has been cast off, and one thing only is pursued — money! money! “Hence, preachers who ought to teach the truth, now do nothing more than retail lies — lies, which are not only tolerated, but recompensed, because the more they lie, the more they gain. “From this polluted well comes forth al this polluted water. “Debauchery goes hand in hand with avarice. “The officials cause women to come to their houses under divers pretexts, and strive to seduce them, sometimes by menaces, sometimes by presents, or, if they do not succeed, injure them in their reputation. “Ah! the scandals caused by the clergy precipitate multitudes of poor souls into eternal condemnation! “There must be a universal reform, and this reform must be accomplished by summoning a General Council. “Wherefore, most excellent princes and lords, with submission I implore you to lose no time in the consideration of this matter.”

That he should retract what he had written in denunciation of the Roman church in all these things, was part of the demand that was made upon Luther at the Diet of Worms.

He replied: “I have composed books against the papacy — books in which I have attacked those who, by their false doctrine, their bad life, and scandalous example desolate the Christian world, and destroy both body and soul. Is not the fact proved by the complaints of all who fear God? Is it not evident that the human laws and doctrines of the Popes entangle, torture, martyr, the conscience of the faithful; while the claimant and never-ending extortions of Rome engulf the wealth and riches of Christendom, and particularly of this illustrious kingdom? “Were I to retract what I have written on this subject, what should I do? — What but fortify that tyranny, and open a still wider door for these many and great iniquities? Then, breaking forth with more fury than ever, these arrogant men would be seen increasing, usurping, raging,more and more. “And the yoke which weighs upon the Christian people would, by my retraction, not only be rendered more severe, but would become, so to speak, more legitimate; for by this very retraction, it would have received the confirmation of your most serene majesty, and of all the States of the holy empire. “Good God! I should thus be, as it were, an infamous cloak, destined to hide and cover all sorts of malice and tyranny.”

And because he would not retract, and so confirm the papacy in all that she is, there was published against him the Edict of Worms, which brought, in opposition to it, the Protest that put into the world the word Protestant which the Federal Council of Churches did retract.

And the retraction of the word Protestant, by the Federal Council of Churches, carries in it, the sanction of all that the retraction by Luther that day would have sanctioned. This means the same as that would have meant.

It means the making choice of Rome, not merely instead of, but against, The Reformation.

And this creates the situation in which every person in America must now make his choice of — THE REFORMATION OR ROME And the impetus given to the Romeward trend, and the encouragement given to Rome herself, in this Nation, by that retraction of Protestant — that choice of Rome against The Reformation — by the Federal Council, will soon develop the situation in which every person will be compelled to make his choice of — ROME OR THE REFORMATION.

CHAPTER 6.

THE REFORMATION CHURCH.

The men who made The Reformation were not men who started out with an ambition to be Reformers, nor even heretics.

Their sole ambition and one supreme aim was simply to be Christians:

Christians according to the truth of God as in His Word and Spirit.

This became the life of each one of them. And this made them to be both heretics and Reformers: heretics first of all, and throughout all their days and afterward, in that age; but later and now Reformers.

The Roman church claims that “the church” is rightly defined to be:- “The society of the validly baptized faithful united together in one body by the profession of the same faith, by the participation of the same sacraments, and by obedience to the same authority, Christ, its invisible head in heaven, and the Roman Pontiff, the successor of St. Peter, Christ’s visible representative and viceregent upon earth.” — “Christian Apologetics,” Section 300.

The condition of tyranny and misery that had been forced upon the world by the Roman church, of which these men were members, caused these men who, above all things else, would be Christians according to the Word and Spirit of God, to inquire of God in His Word and by His Spirit — What, in God’s truth, is God’s Church?

And in God’s Word, and by His Spirit, they found the answer.

They found this answer so full and complete, and of such transcendent glory, that it carried them with calm and confident rejoicing through all the cruelty of persecution and flame that Rome and her spirit could kindle.

And what is this answer? What did they find The Church of God’s truth to be?

Wicklif said: “Holy Church is the congregation of just men for whom Christ shed His blood.” “All who shall be saved in the bliss of heaven are members of Holy Church, and no more.” “There is one only universal Church: consisting of the whole body of the predestinate.”

Matthias of Janow said: “All Christians who possess the Spirit of Jesus the Crucified, and who are impelled by the same Spirit, and who alone have not departed from their God, are the one Church of Christ: His beautiful bride, His body.” “The Church is the body of Christ, the community of the elect.” “All who have been sanctified, have been sanctified by the anointing grace and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus. Hence it follows that every Christian is a saint, and every saint a Christian. So one cannot be a Christian and at the same time not a saint.” “Do not object to me the bad Christians, who have lost the first grace by reason of their misuse of it; for these are not Christians.”

Huss said: “The Church is the community of the elect. ‘Where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am in the midst of them.’ There, then, would be a true particular church: and, accordingly, where three or four are assembled, and up to the whole number of the elect. In this sense, the term ‘Church’ is often used in the New Testament. “And thus all the righteous who now, in the archbishopric of Prague, live under the reign of Christ, are the true Church of Prague. But the Catholic Church is the predestinate of all times.” “The true Church lies in nothing else than the totality of the elect.”

Luther did not begin with this truth. But the fundamental truth of Justification by Faith only — the Righteousness of God which is by Faith — with which he did begin, inevitably led him presently to this. And in his discussion with Eck, before he had been excommunicated by Rome, Luther said: “Certain of the tenets of John Huss and the Bohemians are perfectly orthodox. This much is certain. For instance, ‘that there is only one universal Church’; and again, ‘that it is not necessary to salvation to believe the Roman church superior to all others.’ Whether Wicklif or Huss has said so, I care not. It is the truth.”

Later he said: “The Pope, the bishops, the monks, and the priests need not make a noise. We are the Church. There is no other Church than the assembly of those who have the Word of God and are purified by it.”

And Zwingle said: “The Church universal is diffused over the whole world, wherever there is faith in Jesus Christ — in the Indies as well as in Zurich. “And as to particular churches, we have them — at Berne, at Schaffhausen, here also. “But the Popes, their cardinals, and their councils are neither the Church universal, nor the church particular.” “In every nation whosoever believeth with the heart in the Lord Jesus Christ, is saved. This is The Church out of which no man can be saved.”

Those men made not these statements in collusion. The last two of them were hundreds of miles apart, and had no communication with each other; and were both more than a hundred years after the first three.

Of the first three, while Matthias and Wicklif lived at the same time, they were apart the wide distance between Oxford and Prague, and they worked entirely independently. Huss was a student during the latter years of the life of Matthias, and arrived at the same truth by his own personal study.

Yet all of these found in the Bible the same identical view of the truth of The Church. That itself is strong evidence that such is the Scripture view of The Church.

But we have the Scriptures, and can test this for ourselves. Is that, then, the truth of the Word of God as to The Church? Let us see.

The plain statement of Inspiration as to what The Church is, is this: “The Church which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.” Ephesians 1:22,23.

That is the Lord’s own definition of His own expression “The Church.” It is a double definition.

First , it defines The Church to be “His body.”

Secondly , it defines the expression “His body,” to be “the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.”

Who is He who filleth all in all? — Plainly, God.

What, then, is the extent of “the fulness of Him?” — Plainly, nothing less than infinity.

And The Church is that — “the fulness of Him who filleth all in all.” Plainly then, The Church is nothing less than an infinite thing.

Accordingly, anything ever in the world that claims to be The Church, but is anything less than infinite, is a fraud and an imposture. It is a fraud in the claim, and an imposture upon those who accept the claim.

Of this “fulness of Him,” it is written: “Do not I fill heaven and earth, saith the Lord? Jeremiah 23:24.

He fills heaven and earth. The Church is “the fulness of Him.” Plainly then The Church fills heaven and earth.

Anything then claiming to be The Church that comes in any wise short of filling heaven and earth, comes just so far short of being The Church in truth.

Now the Roman church never filled even the earth, much less heaven and earth. When The Reformation arose, that church did fill Europe. But Europe is a very small part of the earth.

And when that church was the fulness of even Europe, it was such fulness only in overtopping wickedness. But the fulness which The Church is, is a fulness in righteousness, not in wickedness. It is the fulness of God, not of the Devil.

But there are others in the world claiming to be The Church. Is there any one of these that is the fulness of heaven and earth? It is the same again: none of them fills even the earth, much less heaven and earth. Not all of them together fill even the earth.

Therefore, not one of them is The Church. Not all of them together compose The Church. And each of them alone, and all of them together as one, comes as far short of being The Church as each and all come short of filling heaven and earth: that is infinitely far.

Even though all the denominations in the world were completely one, and that one completely Christian, yet even this would come far short of filling the earth, and infinitely far short of filling heaven and earth. And it would all come just that far short of being The Church, which is “the fulness of Him who filleth all in all.”

That would be of the Church; but it would not be The Church. The Church is a larger thing than that would be.

Yet more: Even though all the people in the world were such Christians as John and Paul, and were all united in truest fellowship, that would not fill the earth: and still less would it fill heaven and earth. Thus even that would not be The Church.

It would be of The Church; but it would not be The Church. The Church is infinitely a larger and grander thing than even that would be.

The Church is the fulness of God. He fills heaven and earth. What is this fulness of Him? Read it: “Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance... . All nations before Him are as nothing; and they are counted to Him less than nothing, and vanity.” “Before Him” — as to Him, as to the fulness of Him — all the nations are as a drop of a bucket. Think of the largest bucket. Let it be filled to overflowing. Then take from it a drop. What proportion will be that drop to the fulness of the bucket?

Yet that illustrates what are all the nations in proportion to “the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.”

Therefore, if all of all the nations were as perfectly Christian as John and Paul, and not a soul in the world otherwise, yet all of that would be as far short of being The Church, as a drop of a bucket is short of being the fulness of the bucket; or as the “small dust of the balance” is short of being the fulness of the dust of the earth.

The Word says that “to Him,” not by Him, all the nations are counted as nothing, and even “less than nothing.” As counted by Him, a man is more precious than gold and is more than a world. But as “counted to Him,” in proportion to the fulness of Him, all the nations are “less than nothing.”

And The Church is “the fulness of Him.” Only that is The Church.

Anything that is less than that cannot possibly be The Church.

What an infinite deception, then, is that with which Rome has filled the professed Christian world — that a little 7 x 9, or 2 x 4, structure, or a thing of the conception of the pinhead capacity, of finite-minded, sinful man, could be The Church of the infinite God!

No, no. The Church is the glorious conception of the infinite, the living God.

Its structure is the expression of “the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

It is perceived only by means of “the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.”

No eye ever saw, no ear ever heard, it never entered into the heart of man to conceive, what The Church is, nor what in The Church God hath prepared for them that love Him. 1 Corinthians 2:9-12. “But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit.” Knowledge of The Church itself,knowledge of the structure of The Church, and knowledge of the things of The Church, is found only by finding the thought of God in His Word. And this is found only through the Spirit of revelation in the knowledge of Him. Ephesians 1:16-23.

To receive this Spirit, to be taught by this Spirit, to be led by this Spirit, was the prayer that led to The Reformation, and that led in The Reformation. And that is the prayer that must lead now in this time when there is forced upon all the people the choice of The Reformation or Rome.

In this prayer let us proceed in the study of the Word, to know in Spirit and in Truth what is The Church.

The first Scripture that occurs is the beginning of a prayer. And the prayer is in view of this very feature, this transcendent feature, of the Mystery of God. The prayer begins with the words, “And for this cause.”

And the “cause” of the prayer is this: “Unto me who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given that I might preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and make all see what is the fellowship of the Mystery which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God who created all things by Jesus Christ.”

And this preaching is “to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by The Church” — that is, by means of The Church, through The Church, unto these might be known — “the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” “And for this cause I bow my knees unto the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.” Ephesians 3:8-11,14.

Note that it is not the families in heaven and earth, as if there were two or more. It is specifically singular — “the whole family” — as of one in heaven and earth. That is, all the children of God,all creatures who are His, in heaven and earth, compose just one family — God’s family. And that family is The Church — God’s Church.

An earthly family might be not all at home, at the birth-place — one there, another in Ohio, another in California, another in Florida. Yet they would be the one family of the father, and of the birth-place. And the father could speak truly of them as his whole family, at home, in Ohio, California, and Florida.

So the children of our heavenly Father are all the one family. Some of us are not at home: we are in a foreign land, amongst strangers, and even enemies. But bless the Lord, we are all members of the one family of the heavenly Father.

And, oh! joy, we are all going home one of these days. There is going to be a grand home-coming, an eternal reunion, when He comes to receive to Himself His own. And when He thus comes to take His children all home, it is then that He presents to Himself the “glorious Church,... holy and without blemish.” Ephesians 5:27.

Again, it is written: “Ye are no more strangers and foreigners; but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.” Ephesians 2:19.

A household is an organized family, those who are at home in the same house. And though some of God’s children are in a foreign country, and strangers here, we are not foreigners to the country of promise, we are not aliens from the commonwealth of the Princes of God, we are not strangers in “the house of God which is The Church of the living God.” And they that be planted in the house of the Lord, shall flourish in the courts of our God.” Psalm 92:13.

The arms of the cross of Jesus the Crucified embrace heaven and earth. “For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell. And having made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself. By Him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.” Colossians 1:19,20.

All in earth who are reconciled to God by the blood of the Cross, are of The Church. And all in heaven who are reconciled to God by the blood of the same Cross, are equally and as truly of the same Church. And all these in both heaven and earth compose The Church: one, only, true, and ever the same Church, “growing unto an holy temple in the Lord, for an habitation of God through the Spirit. Ephesians 2:22.

Not only does The Church itself as a whole embrace heaven and earth. The Church, even only as it relates to the earth, is found only in heaven and earth. For there are some who used to be of The Church as in the earth, who are now alive on the other side and are of The Church as in heaven.

Some of these, as Enoch and Elijah, went alive from here to there without any touch of death at all. Moses, the four and twenty elders, and the multitude of those who came out of the graves after Christ’s resurrection, and formed the train in His triumphal ascension, went to the other side through a resurrection from the dead. Jude 1:9; Revelation 5:9; Matthew 27:52,53; Ephesians 4:8 with margin; Colossians 2:15.

All of these were members of The Church when they were on this side.

And when they went through to the other side, it was not necessary in any sense for any one of them to change his church-membership, nor in any way to change his relation to The Church.

Each one of all that glorified number was just as much a member of The Church while he was here as he has been since he went over there. Elijah was a member of The Church while he was on this side, he was a member of The Church in the moment of his translation,he has been a member of The Church every moment since, and will be the same forevermore: and always the same member of the same Church. And so with all the others of that glorified company: for The Church is one and the same everywhere in the universe.

And now suppose that Elijah were to return to this side to live through the last days with those who shall be translated as was he from the wrath of “that woman “Jezebel.” Revelation 2:21. What “church” would he need to “join,” of what denomination must he be a member, in order to be a member of the “true church?”

Plainly, just none of them at all: and for the simple and sufficient reason that he is already and forever a member of The One True and Only Church.

Wherever he may go in the wide universe, he is still and ever a member of that One Church. And yet that is but The Church of which he was a member when he was here.

Thus by every evidence and every consideration of Scripture, it is certain that The Church is a higher, nobler, grander, thing — indeed that it is by far another thing — than is anything that has ever been thought of as The Church by churchmen of all this world.

And so it is written that Christ is “the Head of The Church, that” — so that, in order that — “in all things He might have the pre-eminence.” Colossians 1:18. That is to say that if Christ were Head of everything in the universe except The Church, He would not in all things have the preeminence.

But just by the one thing of being the Head of The Church, this one thing alone gives Him “in all things the pre-eminence.”

That one single expression of the Scripture reveals the truth that The Church is the biggest thing in the universe. It is the universe of intelligences, who live with God and in God.

That one thought alone reveals The Church as the fulness of the universe — “the fulness of Him who filleth all in all.” Indeed, the very next word of the Scripture stands thus: “that in all things He might have the preeminence.

For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell.”

Also, in another place, it is written that God has “made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure, which He hath purposed in Himself.” And this purpose is, “That in the dispensation of the fulness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in Him.” Ephesians 1:9,10.

That is to say: In and through Christ by the Holy Spirit God is unifying the universe.

And that unified universe is “The Church,” “the Household,” “the whole family” of the living God.

And that is the accomplishing of the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord before there was ever a creature or any creation.

And when this unification of the universe shall have been accomplished in Christ, “then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him.” And all this in order “that God may be all in all. Corinthians 15:28.

And this is The Church into which — to the fellowship and infinite and eternal benefits of which — all people are kindly called and graciously invited in tenderest tones of the compassionate pleadings of divine love.

And see the wonderful associations and Associates that are found in this Church by all who come. “Ye are come — unto “Mount Zion; and unto the City of the living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem; and to an innumerable company of angels; to the general assembly and Church of the Firstborn which are written in heaven; and to God the Judge of all; and to the spirits of just men made perfect; and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant; and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel.” Hebrews 12:22,23.

All these associations and Associates are heavenly, and nothing but heavenly. Whosoever is of The Church of the Bible is of this heavenly company; and all these heavenly associations are his, to help and cheer him on the way, and for him to enjoy as he goes. “And the Spirit and the Bride say, Come, And let him that is athirst, come. And let him that heareth, say Come. And whosoever will, let him come. This is The Church which Christ loved, and for which He gave Himself, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word, that He might present it to Himself a glorious Church.” Ephesians 5:25-27.

This is The Church of which Christ speaks to God, when He says to Him, “In the midst of The Church will I sing praise unto thee.” Hebrews 2:12.

The Lord Jesus, the Son of God, the Head of The Church, has never yet had a chance to be in the midst of The Church.

In The Church as it was in heaven, the pride and self-exaltation of Lucifer wrought division and confusion.

As soon as He had started The Church in the earth, the same proud and self-exalted one insinuated the same confusion here.

In The Church as carried over the Flood, the mischievous one wrought to confusion again.

In “The Church in the wilderness” and in the land of Canaan, the same one still wrought division and confusion.

In The Church as brought back from Babylon, the same vicious schemer and ever antagonist of The Church wrought to the same end (Zech.3), and so continued that when the Lord Jesus “came unto His own” He was rejected by His own professed Church, and was crucified out of the world.

In The Church as Christ renewed it in the earth, the same arch-enemy of The Church wrought more insidiously than ever: this time unto the great “falling away” and the revelation of “that man of Sin, the son of Perdition,” “the mystery of Iniquity,” opposing and exalting himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped, even sitting in the temple of God and passing off himself for God. Galatians 2:12,13; Acts 21:18-24; Acts 20:17,29,30; Revelation 2:1,4,5; 3 John 1:9,10; Thessalonians 2:3, 4.

And in The Church as renewed in The Reformation, the same original antagonist of The Church again so wrought that he at last persuaded even those who professed the name and principles of Protestant to renounce that very word: and this in order that they might not even seem to antagonize the Roman church — that most inveterate antagonist of The Protestant Reformation!

But thank the Lord, He again renews His Church in the earth: and this time, against all the wiles and all the power of the Devil, to stand true and pure unto the end. For it stands written: “In the days of the voice of the Seventh Angel when he is about to sound, The Mystery of God shall be finished.” Revelation 10:7.

And now in this final effort of the arch-enemy against The Church, in this time of the finishing of the Mystery of God, she is to arise and shine with the glory of the Lord risen upon her unto the finishing of the Mystery in the blending of her glory with that of the King of glory at His glorious appearing in the glory of His father and His own glory and that of all the angels and glorified ones with Him. Isaiah 59:19; 2 Thessalonians 2:9,10; Isaiah 60:1,2; Matthew 16:27.

For then it is that He presents to Himself His glorious Church.

And then, with all the heavenly ones with Him, with all of His that are in their graves hearing His voice and coming forth, and all of His who are alive “caught up together with them to meet Him” — then it is that He is “in the midst of The Church.” 1 Thessalonians 4:16,17.

And then in the infinite joy of “the travail of His soul” satisfied in God’s eternal purpose in Him actually accomplished, His divine soul bursts forth in that long-awaited song of praise to God.

None but He can sing that song, and so the words of it are nowhere given.

None but He has the experience; none but He knows the awful cost; and none but He can know the joy. Hebrews 12:2.

None but He can sing the song; but all the others can respond.

And then there peals forth the voice of the “great multitude of all them that fear Him, both small and great, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings,” “Loud as from numbers without number, Sweet as from blest voices utt’ring joy, The heavens of heavens ring with jubilee, And loud Hosannas fill th’ eternal regions.” “Alleluiah. Salvation, and glory, and honor, and power, unto the Lord our God. “Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia. “For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. “Let us be glad and rejoice and give honor to him; for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready.” Revelation 19:1-7.

And over all and to all, the eternal God responds — with joy and singing.

For He says: “The Lord thy God... will rejoice over thee with joy; “He will rest in His love; “He will joy over thee with singing.” “The Household of God” is all assembled. “The whole Family in heaven and earth” is all at home. The Church is herself. The universe is singing. “Christ is all and in all,” and “God is all in all.” CHAPTER 7.

THE REFORMATION HEAD OF THE CHURCH.

When the Reformers once saw The Church, it was easy for them to see The Head of The Church.

When Wicklif, Militz, Matthias, Huss, and Jerome, saw The Church of the Scriptures, it was not difficult for them to see that the Roman Church is the infinite imposture that she is.

Then also it was just as little difficult for them to see how infinitely impossible it is for anybody but the Divine Christ Himself in Person to be The Head of The Church. Therefore, Wicklif said: “The Church stands in no need of a visible head.” “So long as Christ is in heaven, The Church hath in Him the best pope. And that distance hindereth Him not in doing His deeds: as He promiseth that He is with His always to the end of the world.” “We dare not put two heads, lest The Church be monstrous.

Therefore the Head above is alone worthy of confidence.”

Huss said: “Christ is the all-sufficient Head of The Church: as He proved during three hundred years of the existence of The Church, and still longer, in which time The Church was most prosperous and happy.” “Why should not Christ be more present to The Church, than the Pope, who, living at a distance of more than eight hundred miles from Bohemia, could not himself act directly on the feelings and movements of the faithful in Bohemia, as it is incumbent on The Head to do?” “Christ, who is seated at the right hand of the Father, must necessarily govern the militant Church as its Head. Christ can better govern His Church... without such monsters of supreme heads.” “He alone is the secure, unfailing, and all-sufficient refuge for His Church, to guide and enlighten it.” “It injures not The Church, but benefits it, that Christ is no longer present to it after a visible manner: since He Himself says to His disciples, and therefore to all their successors ( John 16:7), ‘It is good for you that I go away; for if I went not away the Comforter would not come to you; but if I go I will send Him unto you.’ “It is evident from this, as the truth itself testifies, that it was a salutary thing for the Church militant that Christ should ascend from it to heaven: that so His longer protracted bodily and visible presence on earth might not be prejudicial to her.

In the Leipsic disputation occurred the following: — Dr. Eck. — “The Church militant is an image of The Church triumphant. But the latter is a monarchical hierarchy rising step by step up to the sole Head who is God. “Accordingly Christ has established the same gradation on earth. “What kind of a monster would The Church be if she were without a head?”

Luther . — “The doctor is correct in saying that the universal Church must have a Head. If there is any one here who maintains the contrary, let him stand up! The remark does not at all apply to me.”

Dr. Eck. — “If the church militant has never been without a monarch, I should like to know who that monarch is if he is not the pontiff of Rome?”

Luther . — “The Head of The Church militant is not a man, but Jesus Christ Himself. This I believe on the testimony of God. Christ must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. “We cannot, therefore, listen to those who would confine Christ to The Church triumphant in heaven. His reign is a reign of faith. We cannot see our Head, and yet we have Him.”

After His rising from the dead, the Lord Jesus was here on the earth forty days personally and bodily with His disciples, “seen of them.”

In these forty days He walked with His disciples, He ate with them, He talked with them. He talked with them “of the things concerning the kingdom of God”: that is the things concerning The Church.

Beyond all question then, during that period of forty days The Church as on earth had a “visible Head.” And that visible Head was her own, true, only, Head: visibly with her and in her, teaching and counselling.

Why did He not stay thus with His Church until now? Why did He not continue always as the visible Head of The Church?

If in any degree or under whatever plea a visible head could ever by any possibility be needed, then He should have continued as that visible Head while He was so: and not to do so would plainly be to deprive The Church of that which she needed.

As visible Head, could not He have guided The Church as in the world, in all her affairs? Could not He have done this from Jerusalem while Jerusalem was the religious centre of the world, and then from Rome when Rome became the religious centre?

And could not He have done this infinitely better than ever could any pope or king or president or committee or board that ever sat in Jerusalem, or Rome, or London, or Washington, or Salt Lake City, or Chicago?

Yet He did not stay in the world as visible Head of The Church here.

But did He leave, did He cease to be visible Head of The Church here, in order to give that place and opportunity to men, as popes or kings or presidents or superintendents or committees or boards, to do their worldly, political, fantastic, fiddling, sinful tricks?

Did He care so little as that for The Church which He had loved to the point of giving Himself for it?

Did He care so little as that for any solitary individual of The Church, when each of these individuals He had loved to the point of giving Himself for Him in the agonies of the Cross?

No, no, no. “Having loved His own, He loved them to the end.” “I have loved thee with an everlasting love,” “the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

In this love He had left heaven and all its glory and joy, to be with men on the earth because they needed Him.

In this love He had stayed with men on the earth, as long as they would allow Him to stay.

And when men would not let Him stay any longer, but crucified Him out of the world — after all that, in only three days He came back again: back to His own because they needed Him.

And He stayed there with them forty days, when any minute He might have gone straight to heaven and stayed there in all its beauty and glory and joy.

All this proves over and over that of His own free choice the Lord Jesus would rather be on earth with needy men than to be in heaven with the perfect God.

Yet against all this He went away from being visible Head of His Church here. And this proves beyond all possibility of question that however great may be the need of men — even His own men in His own Church — there never can be any need of Him as visible Head of His Church here.

And when there can be no need of Him as visible Head, then beyond all conception there can never be any need of any other.

And He did not go away to be away: for He said, “I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you.” John 14:18.

Therefore His going away from being visible Head of His Church here, was just because of the need of His people and Church here. This again certifies that instead of His people and Church ever needing Him to be visible Head, their constant need is precisely that He shall not be that.

And this need of The Church that He should not be visible Head was so great that it could overcome all His overwhelmingly demonstrated desire to be here with His people and Church.

He did not say, It is expedient for Me that I go away.

He did not say, It is expedient that I go away.

But He did say, “It is expedient for you that I go away.”

Therefore, His going away from being visible Head of His Church, or of any individual, was altogether on our behalf.

And so He said: “It is expedient for you that I go away. For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you. But if I depart, I will send Him unto you.” John 16:7.

And here is why that is: “I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever. “Even the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him. “But ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you and shall be in you. “I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you.”

That is to say: When the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, comes to you, by Him I myself will come to you.

The Holy Spirit does not come, to be here apart from Christ; but to bring to us the personal presence of the living Christ Himself. As it is written — “Strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man.”

And this is in order “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.”

And this in order “that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.”

Thus the Holy Spirit comes, He is sent, not that He may be here of Himself; but that by Him both the Father and the Son may be with each believer and with The Church.

So completely is this so that the Spirit never speaks as of Himself, or from Himself, but only what He hears through Christ From God, As it is written: “He shall not speak of Himself; but what He shall hear, that shall He speak.” “He shall glorify Me; for He shall receive of mine and shall show it unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine. Therefore said I that He shall take of Mine and shall show it unto you.” John 16:13-15.

When Jesus was in the world, He was not here to be in the place of God; but that God might be here Himself, in His own place.

Jesus emptied Himself, that God might appear to men. And so “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.” Philippians 2:5-7; Corinthians 5:19.

Jesus emptied Himself and became in all things one of us, so that God with Him should be “God with us.” Hebrews 2:11,14,17; Matthew 1:23.

Accordingly, He said, “I came not to do mine own will; but the will of Him that sent me.” “The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself.” “The Father which sent me, He gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. Whatsoever I speak, therefore, even as the Father said unto me so I speak.” John 6:38; 14:10; 12:49, 50.

Just so it is with the Spirit of Truth now. He is here not to do His own will; but the will of Him who sent Him. The words that He speaks are not His; but the words of Him who sent Him. In His teaching us all things, He does it only by bringing to our remembrance all things that Christ has said unto us. John 14:26.

As God was in Christ in the world, so Christ is in the Spirit in the world.

As Christ came to us so that God with Him might be God with us, so the Spirit comes to us and is in us, in order that Christ may come to us and be in us, and in The Church.

And when, on Pentecost, Christ thus came to His disciples, and took up His abode with them, and in The Church, He was then the Head of The Church no less and no less personally than He was in the forty days when He was visibly with them. Yea, not merely no less, but much more.

And He was just so much the more the visible Head now than He was in those forty days.

It is only the fallacy of men spiritually blind to argue since Pentecost about the “visible” and the “invisible” Head of The Church, or about the “visible” and the “invisible” Church.

In that period of forty days He was visible Head of the Church, in the sense of His being visible to their natural eyes and discernible with their natural sensibilities.

And He was that only because that as yet they were unable to see with spiritual eyes and discern with the spiritual sensibilities.

But the Pentecostal baptism translated them out of the natural into the spiritual. And what before was invisible was now visible. Now they could see the invisible.

Thus to them Christ was now more visible, and more truly visible, than ever He was before. And they never talked about any “invisible” Head of The Church, nor any “invisible” Church. There was no such thing, to them.

And now to those who know that baptism, and so know The Church, there is no such thing.

Jesus said that “the world cannot receive” the Spirit of Truth “because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him.” And the world knows Him not, because it sees Him not. “The world” must see — must see with the world’s eyes, and in the world’s way — or else it will not know.

And worldly men and the worldly church — the church of “the world” — must see something: must see a “visible church,” and a “visible head of a visible church”: or else they never can know anything of the church. And so they never do either see or know anything of The Church.

But thank the Lord, to all who are His, the Lord Jesus says, “But ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.”

And by receiving Him, by His dwelling with us, and being in us, we see.

Therefore, to all people the gracious word is spoken, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” “Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

But whosoever receives the Holy Spirit in the heavenly baptism in the power that brings forth a new creature — he knows and sees.

He can see spiritual things. He can see The Church. He can see the Head of The Church. For the Head of The Church says plainly: “Yet a little while and the world seeth Me no more. But ye see Me.” John 14:19.

To the Christian — the spiritual man — there is neither invisible Church, nor invisible Head of The Church: for he can see the invisible. To him the invisible is visible.

But to the natural man, to the man of “the world,” everything that is real and abiding is invisible, because he cannot see. To all these there must be a “visible church” and then a “visible head” of the “visible church” and then a “visible” representative of the “visible” head of that “visible” church. And in the dizzying whirl of this fallacious thing the church, the head, and all becomes invisible and he never sees anything.

For of all the dull tricks of the “sleight of men” in their “cunning craftiness,” this of a “visible” church is the dullest and the dumbest.

Nobody ever saw a “visible church.” Nobody ever saw the Roman church; nobody ever saw the Episcopal church; nobody ever saw the Methodist church; not any other such thing that is called a church.

When brought down from etherialism to plain fact of sober inquiry and sound sense, the elusive thing is always invisible.

Any person can test this for himself any minute. There is not such a dearth of them that for that reason it should be difficult to see one. There are thirty-one of them in the Federal Council alone.

Let any person look for only one of these — largest or smallest. Let him ask the aid of some one who is of one of these “visible churches”: Please sir, I wish to see the “visible church.” Can you show it to me? or direct me to where I can see it?

He would not know what either to say or do.

Possibly he might tell you to wait till the meeting of the General Council or the General Synod, or the General Assembly, or the General Conference, or the General Convention. “Then the representatives of the church from all parts of the world will be assembled,” and you can see it.

You go to one of these assemblies of the “visible” church. You look it over. You ask: — “Is this the____church? “Oh! no. This is not the church itself; this is a very small part of the church. But this represents the church. “I do not want to see a representative nor a representation of the church. I have seen that many times. What I want now is to see the____church itself. “But, brother, you cannot do that. In that sense the church cannot be seen. It is all over the world. “Is your church a visible church? “W-e-l-l, why of course every denomination and ‘organized church’ is a visible church. “But just now you told me that what is really your church cannot be seen. Is it visible, then? Is that visible that you confess cannot be seen? “But the official, organized, representative body — that can be seen. “But is that the real church? Is that the visible church? “N — n — o — o — it is not really that. “Then your church is not a visible church, is it? “Well, it does seem so.”

And that is the truth of everything ever in the world that has been held or claimed to be a “visible church.”

There is no such thing. It is a sheer delusion.

But under cover of that deluding sleight of cunningly crafty ecclesiastics, the Roman church has rung in on men and the world that visible head that is the papacy in all that it ever was.

And under cover of that same sleight continued from the same source, every other denomination has been able to ring in on men in one from or another, the same thing in principle, of a visible head as nearly like the Romish original as it can be carried without general revolt.

There is no such thing as the “visible church.” Everything claiming to be the church, is invisible.

The Church in truth, is truly and properly invisible because it is wholly spiritual. It is Christ’s body and His body is invisible.

But this truly and rightly invisible Church is invisible only to those who are not spiritual, those who cannot see the invisible.

Yet the true and only possible Head of this truly and rightly invisible Church has freely poured out upon all flesh His Holy Spirit, and is ever graciously inviting all people to receive this Divine Spirit that they may know the things of the Spirit, the things of God.

Thus every soul in the world is shut up to the one single alternative of — The invisible church that is a delusion and an imposture, or The truly and rightly invisible Church that is an eternal excellency, and whose glorious Head is He whose goings forth have been from the days of eternity and who bestows the inestimable gift of eternal life, and rewards with eternal glory the acceptance of the gift.

CHAPTER 8.

THE REFORMATION BUILDING OF THE CHURCH.

THE REFORMERS KNEW THE CHURCH.

THEY KNEW THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH.

THEY KNEW ALSO THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH.

Matthias said of Christ, “Other Foundation can no man lay than that is laid.”

Huss said: “I place myself on the immovable Foundation, the Chief Corner-Stone, which is the Truth, the Way, and the Life, — our Lord Jesus Christ.” “Christ Himself is the Rock which Peter professed, and on which Christ founded The Church, who will therefore come forth triumphant out of all her conflicts.”

Luther said: “It is undeniable that St. Augustine has, again and again, said that the rock is Christ: and he may, perhaps, have once said that it was Peter himself. “But even should St. Augustine and all the fathers say that the apostle is the rock of which Christ speaks. I would combat their view on the authority of an apostle — in other words, Divine authority; for it is written: No other foundation can any man lay than that is laid, namely, Jesus Christ. “ Peter himself calls Christ the chief and cornerstone, on which we are built up a spiritual house.”

Zwingle said: “The Foundation of The Church is that Rock, that Christ who gave Peter his name because he confessed Him faithfully.”

Long before either Paul or Peter wrote, the great evangelical prophet had written: “Thus saith the Lord God, Behold I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.” Isaiah 28:16.

Peter himself cites this prophecy as referring to Christ and not in any sense to Peter himself. He says: “Wherefore also it is contained in the Scripture, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner-stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on Him shall not be confounded.” 1 Peter 2:6.

There The Foundation of The Church. And every member of The Church is built on that Foundation. For so says the Word of God by Peter: “To Whom coming as unto a Living Stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious, ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house.”

Whoever disallows Christ as The Foundation is of those “who stumble at the Word, being disobedient.” But those who believe the Word, these believe on Him as The Foundation whom God has chosen and laid “for a foundation.”

These coming to Him the Living Stone, and living from Him, and living by Him, and living in Him, are built up a spiritual house which is “The Church of the Living God.” 1 Timothy 3:15.

And all these, built upon Christ who is The Foundation of apostles, prophets and all, grow unto an holy temple in the Lord, in whom all are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit. Ephesians 2:20-22.

And other foundation can no man lay. Whoever thinks of any other foundation, or accepts of any other foundation, is only of the blind stumblers at the Word being disobedient. 1 Peter 2:8.

The whole building of The Church is from Christ only. “I will build My Church.” Each stone in the building is one who first has come to Him the Living Stone, and from Him and by Him has become a living stone.

The same thought is expressed in connection with Him as The Head: “From Whom the whole Body fitly joined together, by joints and bands having nourishment ministered and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God.”

And the consequence of having any other foundation or any other head, is only “voluntary humility,” “worshipping of angels,” “will-worship,” “ordinances, commandments, and doctrines, of men” “and neglecting or punishing of the body.” Colossians 2:20-23.

The Lord Jesus “came to His own, and His own received Him not.

But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God: even to them that believe in His name. Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God.” John 1:11-13.

Note that it is those who receive Him — not those who receive creeds and doctrines of men about Him — to whom He gives the power to become the sons of God.

It is not even those who receive the Scriptures that tell about Him, but those who receive Him — the Personal Christ.

Those to whom He came had the Scriptures that tell about Him. They greatly prided themselves on being the possessors of the Scriptures, and being “the people of the Book.” But they rejected and crucified Him.

He said to them, “Ye search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life. And ye will not come to Me that ye might have life.” “Ye search the Scriptures, and they are they which testify of Me; and ye will not come to me.” John 5:39,40.

They received the Scriptures, instead of by the Scriptures receiving Him.

They put the Scriptures in the place of Him, and then against the Scriptures rejected Him.

There is no sonship of God, there is no Christianity, in any such way as that even with the Scriptures. How much less with the ordinances, doctrines, and commandments of men!

No. It is those who receive Him, the Personal Living Christ: it is those who receive Him in His own Personal presence by the Holy Spirit: it is only these to whom He gives power, it is only these to whom He can give power, right, and privilege, to become the sons of God. And to these He does give that power. “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.”

He, as The Foundation and The Head, coming to us; the believer coming to Him; and thus each coming to the other in the fulness of the Spirit, the union is accomplished in which alone is the building of The Church.

And so it is written that in the preaching and ministry of the Gospel by the apostles “believers were added to the Lord.” Acts 5:14.

Note that they were added to the Lord: not to The Church. Not by any man, not by any ministry of men, is anybody ever added to The Church.

By the preaching of the Word men are brought to believe on Christ, and to receive Him. Then by baptism in water the believer is joined to Christ in the spiritual union symbolized in the thought of marriage. “Ye are become dead to the Law by the body of Christ, that ye should be married to another: even to Him that is raised from the dead.” Romans 7:4.

Baptism is the marriage ceremony by which the believer and Christ are united, that they may live together and bring forth fruit unto God. “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” Galatians 3:27; Romans 6:4,5,8.

The believer being thus “added to the Lord,” then “the Lord added to The Church daily such as should be saved” — “such as were being saved.” For “God hath set the members every one of them in the Body” — The Church — “as it hath pleased Him.” Acts 2:47; 1 Corinthians 12:18.

And as by faith in Christ and baptism in water, believers are “added to the Lord,” so by faith in Christ and baptism of the Holy Ghost, the Lord adds them to The Church. “For by one Spirit we are all baptized into one Body” — The Church. And “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” 1 Corinthians 12:13; John 3:5.

No man nor any combination or association of men can ever by any possibility add anybody to The Church which is Christ’s Body the fulness of Him who filleth all in all. That is accomplished only by the baptism of the Holy Spirit; and none but the Lord can baptize with the Holy Spirit.

No man can add anybody to The Church, and thank the Lord no man nor any combination or association of men can ever cut off, “excommunicate,” or cast out, anybody from The Church.

It is The Church of God, it is The Body of Christ, it is the home of the Holy Spirit; and only God, and Christ, and the Spirit rule there. And these rule only in righteousness and holiness and in the tenderness of infinite love and compassion.

Men do add people to what they call “the church,” as pleases them. And men do cast out of such “churches” those who do not please them. And so such things are only men’s “churches,” and it is far better to be out of all such things than in them.

Not so in The Church of the living God. For He himself says, “He that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.” And of His Body “the Head cannot say to the feet” nor to any other member, “I have no need of you.” John 6:37; 1 Corinthians 12:21.

He has so much need of every soul that He gave Himself on the Cross for each one. And He never can say to anyone, “I have no need of you.”

But men — cruel, hard-hearted, church-officials — can say it glibly and readily. These never died for anybody: and they never will. These feed themselves, but feed not the flocks.

These eat the fat and clothe themselves with the wool, and kill them that are fed: but they feed not the lock.

These strengthen not the diseased, nor heal that which is sick, neither bind up the broken, nor bring again that which is driven away, nor seek that which is lost; but with force and cruelty do they rule them.

These thrust with the side and with shoulder, and push all the diseased with their horns, till they have scattered them abroad. Eze. 34.

But with the gracious Lord it is not so. When one is thus cast off and driven out by men, He immediately goes seeking for him. And when He has found him, He reveals Himself to him, and teaches him how to believe on Him and how to worship Him as never before. John 9:34-38.

And to such His gracious message is, “Hear the word of the Lord, ye that tremble at His word: Your brethren that hated you, that cast you out for My name’s sake, said, Let the Lord be glorified; but He shall appear to your joy and they shall be ashamed.” Isaiah 66:5.

Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake. “Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy; for, behold your reward is great in heaven: for in like manner did their fathers unto the prophets.” Luke 6:22,23.

In the Lord’s Church, it is only after everything possible has been done to keep him in The Church, and when against all this he will go — it is only then that the fixed separation which he himself has thus made is sorrowfully recognized by the congregation and in The Church. Matthew 18:10-20; Galatians 6:1; Titus 3:10,11; <471301> Corinthians 13:1.

Here, then, is the individual believer: by the ministry of the Gospel “added to the Lord” and by “the Lord added to The Church.” Wherever any such individual may be, he is a member of The Church.

Wherever two or three of these may be together, He, their Head, is in the midst of them; and there is a church, and there is the church in that place.

Four times in the New Testament these are spoken of as “the church that is in their house,” “the church which is in his house,” “the church in thy house.” Romans 16:3,5; 1 Corinthians 16:19; Colossians 4:15; Philemon 1:2.

Not the church which meets in their house, his house, or thy house — not once. Every time it is “the church that is in their house,” his house, thy house.

That is, Christians dwelling together in a house compose a church in that house.

This is seen certainly to be the truth by the facts connected with the several statements. 1. The first letter to the Corinthians was written from Ephesus. Chap. 16:8, 9. There was a church in Ephesus. Aquila and Priscilla were in Ephesus, and were members of that church. Yet in addition to this there was a church “in their house” in Ephesus. 2. When the letter to the Romans was written, Aquila and Priscilla were in Rome. There was a church in Rome. Aquila and Priscilla were members of the church in Rome. Yet in addition to this there was a church “in their house” in Rome. 3. At Laodicea there was the church of the Laodiceans. In Laodicea Nymphas was a member of that church. Yet in addition to this there was a church “in his house.”

These facts put beyond all question the truth that by the Scriptures Christians dwelling together in the same house compose a church, and are the church, in that house.

Next is the larger assembly of Christians in a place: instead of two or three there may be two or three dozen, or two or three score. These compose the church in that place: as “the church of God which is at Corinth,” “the church of the Thessalonians,” “the church that was at Antioch.”

And now comes a remarkable fact. And though it stands all through the New Testament without a single exception, it is hardly recognized at all among Christians and denominations.

This is the fact that in the New Testament, Christians in private houses, and congregations or assemblies in cities or other places, are never spoken of collectively as the church: but always as “the churches.” There is not one exception. “Then had the churches rest.” Acts 9:31. “So ordain I in all churches.” 1 Corinthians 7:17. “We have no such custom, neither the churches of God.” 1 Corinthians 11:16. “God is not the author of confusion; but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.” 1 Corinthians 14:33. “The care of all the churches.” 2 Corinthians 11:28. “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches:” said the Lord Jesus seven times in the second and third chapters of Revelation.

It is not accident, it is not inadvertence, it is of design, and the design of Inspiration, that all the congregations or assemblies of Christians in the world are invariably spoken of collectively as “the churches.”

And it being the invariable use, even in places where, if there were any such thing, it would be fitting to use the expression “the church,” this proves beyond all valid question that in truth there is no such thing as all Christians and congregations in the world forming The Church. The Church goes far beyond all that.

Therefore, in the truth of the Bible all Christians and all assemblies and congregations of Christians in the world do not compose The Church of the Scriptures, and cannot be correctly spoken of as The Church; but only as “the churches.”

This establishes the integrity and individuality of the single assembly, whether of “two or three” or more, as being of the divine order. And this single assembly, the local congregation, in the divine order has no earthly ecclesiastical organization above it.

And any person or any thing that ever in any way or under any plea or pretext comes in between “the churches” and “The Church which is His Body the fulness of Him” and is passed off as “the church” or the “administration” or “organization” is an iniquitous interloper, a fraud and an imposture.

It breaks up the divine order. It severs “the churches” and Christians from their Head and from The Church. It puts man between Christ and His churches, and between Him and His own members. It puts man in the place of Christ and of God. It is of Satan, not of Christ whom God gave to be The Head over all things to The Church.

In the divine order, the next step beyond the single assemblies which are the churches is — “The Church which is His Body. “The Church of the Firstborn which are written in heaven.” “The Church of the living God.”

The Church of which Christ is The Head, The Foundation, the all in all, of which each individual is a member — being set in the Body by the Lord Himself as it hath pleased Him.

And just as the single assemblies of Christians are invariably spoken of by the Spirit of Inspiration as “the churches,” so the expression “the church” as relating to The Church in general, is invariably used with sole reference to “The Church which is His Body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.”

Accordingly the divine order of God’s building of The Church is this: 1. The Foundation-Stone — Christ. 2. Individual believers who come to that Foundation and “as lively stones” are built upon Him. 3. The church in a private house. 4. The church in a city or other place. 5. The churches of God. 6. The Church which is His Body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. 7. The Head-Stone — Christ.

Christ is the Foundation; Christ is the Head; the whole Building is built upon Him and in Him; and so “groweth unto an holy Temple in the Lord.”

The natural body of man is the divinely chosen illustration of the structure of the spiritual Body of Christ, which is The Church.

The natural body of man is “fearfully and wonderfully made.” It is a mystery of God. <19D913> Psalm 139:13-16.

The spiritual Body of Christ is more fearfully and wonderfully made. It is “the Mystery of God.”

Only God through Christ by the Holy Spirit built the natural body of man.

Only He could possibly do it. Genesis 1:26; Job 33:4.

Only God through Christ by the Holy Spirit builds the spiritual Body of Christ, which is The Church. Only He could possibly do it. Ephesians 4:12-16.

Not all the ecclesiasticism of bishops, presidents, Popes, boards, committees, Councils, in all the ages could ever have taken the first true thought toward building the natural body of man.

Infinitely less could they ever have taken the first true thought toward building the spiritual Body of Christ, which is The Church. Isaiah 55:8,9.

The natural body of man is the crown of God’s natural creation.

The spiritual Body of Christ, which is The Church, is the crown of God’s spiritual creation.

CHAPTER 9.

THE REFORMATION GUIDANCE OF THE CHURCH.

The Reformers knew Christ’s Guidance of The Church as truly as they knew His Headship of The Church.

They knew that by the Holy Spirit the Lord Jesus personally guides The Church and personally guides each individual person who is of The Church.

In this they knew that the Holy Spirit is given to each individual Christian, and that by the Spirit the Lord Jesus gives Himself personally to each individual Christian.

The Roman doctrine is that the Holy Spirit is given to “the church” and that “the church” bestows the Spirit on the individual in the ceremony of “confirmation.”

By the light and power of God’s truth, the Reformers were made free from that Romish superstition and monopoly.

Wicklif said: “Christ ever lives near the Father and is the most ready to intercede for us, imparting Himself to the soul of every wayfaring pilgrim who loves Him.”

Matthias said: “It is Jesus Christ Himself, who, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever dwells in His Church, and in each, even most insignificant portion of it, holding together, sustaining and vitalizing the whole and all the parts, directly and from within, giving growth outwardly to the whole and to each, even the most insignificant part. “He is, therefore, Himself the spirit and life of His Church, His mystical body.”

Huss said: “Christ alone, on whom the heavenly dove descended as a symbol of the Holy Spirit, can bestow the baptism of the Spirit.” “The Holy Spirit, in the absence of a visible Pope, inspired prophets to predict the future bridegroom of The Church, strengthened the apostles to spread the Gospel of Christ through all the world, led idolaters to the worship of the one only God, and ceases not, even until now, to instruct the Bride and all her sons, to make them certain of all things and guide them in all things that are necessary for salvation. “The Church has all that it needs, in the guidance of the Holy Spirit; and ought to require nothing else. Nothing else can be a substitute for that. “Accordingly, The Church is sufficiently provided for in the invisible guidance, and should need no visible one by which she might be made dependent.”

Let us see in the Scriptures how truly and how fully in this they had the truth of God.

At Pentecost, in the presence of that great outpouring of the Spirit, Peter said to the multitude: “The promise is to you and to your children, and to all them that are afar off: even as many as the Lord our God shall call.” Acts 2:38,39.

And further it is written: “The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal... dividing to every man, severally, as He will. “We have been all made to drink into one Spirit.” 1 Corinthians 12:7,11,13. “If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him!” Luke 11:13.

All that Christ is to The Church He is to each individual who is of The Church.

He is the Head of The Church. He is likewise the Head of each individual in The Church? “I would have you know that the Head of every man is Christ.” 1 Corinthians 11:3. “He is the Head of The Body.” And in the very nature of things, in that He is Head of each particular member of The Body. “Now ye are The Body of Christ, and members in particular.” “For we are members of His Body, of His flesh and of His bones.” 1 Corinthians 12:27; Ephesians 5:30.

When Christ shed forth the Spirit at Pentecost, He gave Him to all — to each individual personally, as well as to The Church as a whole.

When He by the Spirit came to The Church here, He came to each individual as truly as He came to The Church, and became the Head of each individual as truly as He is Head of The Church.

Indeed He is Head of The Church by being Head of each individual who is of The Church. First, Head of the individual; then Head of the assembly of these, of whom He is already the Head individually. “The Head of every man is Christ.” “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” “Ye are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.” And He is the Head of The Body — The Church which is the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. Matthew 18:20; Ephesians 2:22; 1:22, 23.

Thus Christ is not Head of The Church in only a general sense, but in the most particular sense.

He is not Head by occupying the chief position and having charge of “the large affairs” of The Church, with the “details” left to others.

He is Head of The Church in the widest and most intricate sense; for God “gave Him to be Head over all things to The Church.” Ephesians 1:22.

He is the Head of everything that can ever pertain “to” The Church.

Anything of which He is not the Head in the direct and full sense in which He is Head of The Church — that thing does not reach The Church.

Even though it be done in the name of the church, and as if in behalf of the church, if He is not the Head of it, it pertains to something else, it springs from somebody else, and comes just so far short of being of The Church or of pertaining “to” The Church.

And this is eternally right. In the eternal purpose, The Church is to be the expression of the fulness of all the perfections of God. To The Church this is expressed, and can be expressed, only from Christ in whom all fulness dwells.

For anything of which He is not the Head and spring to reach The Church, or to be of The Church, would be only to mar or stain the divine perfection of The Church. And Christ is now engaged in sanctifying and cleansing The Church from all these things “with the washing of water by the Word, that He may present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot nor wrinkle not any such thing, but holy and without blemish.”

The blessed work of preparing The Church for this glorious presentation, the Lord Jesus began with the beginning of The Reformation, and He will now finish it. For we are now in the time of the finishing of the Mystery of God. He began it according to the original standard in His Word, and He will so finish it.

And by that Word the whole operation in, the whole administration of, the affairs and interests that pertain to The Church — of “all things to The Church” — is Christ’s from God through the Spirit. As it is written — “There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. “There are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. “There are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all.”

By gracious gifts from God through the Spirit, Christ Himself, Personally and directly, keeps His own divine mind and hand “over all things to The Church.”

Therefore, in The Church of the Scriptures every responsibility is the gift of Christ direct by the Spirit; and is thus set in The Church by God Himself Personally, “Wherefore when He ascended up on high, He gave gifts unto men.

And He gave some — “apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers.” Ephesians 4:8,11.

And so “God hath set some in The Church. First — “apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.” 1 Corinthians 12:28. “For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge, by the same Spirit; to another faith by the same Spirit; to another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues. But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will.” 1 Corinthians 12:8-11.

The responsibility of “elders” or “bishops” is included in the gift of “governments”; for the word denotes a helmsman or pilot, who guides a ship. Yet in addition to this we are told plainly that this responsibility, as the others, is the gift of the Spirit. Paul, talking to elders only, said to them: “Take heed, therefore, to yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers.” Acts 20:17,28.

The responsibility of “deacon” is included in the gift of “helps”; for the word “deacon” signifies “a servant.” Romans 16:1.

And all of this care of Christ in these gracious gifts, is for a double purpose. First — “for the perfecting of the saints, “for the work perfecting of the ministry, “for the edifying of The Body of Christ.”

And this, “Till we all come, in the unity of the faith, and the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”

And the second purpose, the consequence of the first, is “That ye be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive.” Ephesians 4:12-14.

Thus Christ supplies all that is needed to bring The Church to perfection, and so protect her from all the powers of deception, and thus prepare her for the glorious Presentation.

It should be repeated, that it may not be forgotten, that every responsibility in The Church is the direct gift of God by Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.

And the membership of The Church, by the Spirit are to be able to recognize the gift upon the individual and accordingly to recognize that individual in the place and work in The Church for which the gift has prepared him. Acts 13:2-4; 6:3-5.

For The Church is The Body of Christ. And the will of the Head can be truly manifested as that will is in Him, only by the response, in spirit and in the Spirit, of the members of The Body. Matthew 6; 10; <19A320> Psalm 103:20; Ezekiel 1:20.

The failure of James and the church in Jerusalem to recognize Christ’s gift of Paul and in Paul to The Church, put Paul in Roman prisons to the day of his death (except a very short interval near the end), robbed the churches of Christ’s wonderful revelations in the Mystery of God, and hastened the rise of the mystery of iniquity. Galatians 2:13 Acts 21:18 — Timothy 1:15; 4:16; Galatians 1:15,16, Ephesians 3:2-5; Colossians 1:26-29; 2 Thessalonians 2:3-10.

And the failure of professed Christians to recognize Christ’s spiritual gifts, is always of the mystery of iniquity. For it is but the manifestation of the natural against the spiritual, of the will of man against the will of Christ, and of man instead of Christ — of man in the place of God — in The Church.

Therefore, again let it be said: In the Scriptures and according to the order of God every responsibility in The church is the direct gift of God by Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.