WE have lately given in these columns, some proofs from Scripture and from current events, showing that the Third Angel’s Message of Revelation 14 is now “the present truth” to the world, and that it is the most important question that the people of this world can consider. We have shown that now is the time of the Third Angel’s Message, and that now the truths made prominent by it must be considered by the world. This message is just as much a part of the Reformation, as is any other step that has been taken since Luther nailed his theses to the church-door in Wittemberg. This we now propose to show, in a short series of articles in which we shall sketch the course of controversy from the Reformation onward; tracing the successive steps of Truth in her progress from the deep obscurity into which she had been plunged by the Papal supremacy, to the clear shining of this period of the nineteenth century. By this we shall prove that there is actually a historical, a logical, and a theological, necessity for the Third Angel’s Message to complete the work of the Reformation.SITI March 2, 1888, page 135.1

Although the Reformation was actually begun in France by Farel, and in Switzerland by Zwingle, before Luther began his great work, yet as Luther’s work was more positively aggressive than any other, and as he was singled out by the Papacy as the one object of its direct attack, any view of the Reformation, to be just, must be taken from the point of Luther’s appearance upon the scene. Besides, any attempt to strike a balance, or draw a comparison, between the degrees of merit attaching to these great men, would be unjust. D’Aubigne has well expressed the truth on this point, in these words: “The Reformation existed not in Luther only; it was the offspring of his age.”—Hist. Ref., book 3, chap. 4. And as it was the offspring of the age, so it existed in no man; and any attempt to institute a comparison between men is to detract from the dignity of the work, and to imply that it was the work of men instead of the work of God. At the same time we would not, in the slightest measure, attempt to rob any of these men of the tribute that is justly their due. Noble heroes they were, and all honor to them as such; yet the Reformation was the work of God, and these men were only his instruments.SITI March 2, 1888, page 135.2

As the Reformation was “the offspring of the age,” so the leading doctrine of the Reformation, i.e., justification by faith, was the logical deduction from the premises laid down by the age. And in view of the times and the events, it is difficult to conceive of any other doctrine that mighty properly have been the leading one.SITI March 2, 1888, page 135.3

At the date of the Reformation, the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Papacy had, from Gregory the Great, through Zacharias and Stephen III., Hildebrand and Innocent III., Alexander VI. and Leo X., reached that pinnacle of abusive power where she held the sway over this world and the world to come, and over the eternal destinies of the human race; and where she could traffic in immortal bliss, selling it for money,—where, in the energetic words of another, “The church was omnipotent, and Leo was the church.”SITI March 2, 1888, page 135.4

In the exercise of that omnipotency, Leo proceeded to the sale of indulgences, covering both worlds for the past, present, and future. And now began the Reformation. Luther resisted the sale of indulgences, and the claims upon which they were sold. It is plain that if both sides stood firmly to their principles, nothing else could have come out of it but renunciation of the church of Rome, on the part of Luther, the adoption of Christ, instead of the Pope, as the head of the church, and justification by faith, instead of by money in the purchase of indulgences. For (1) if the Pope cannot grant remission of sin by an indulgence, can he grant remission at all? (2) If he cannot grant remission at all, can be bestow upon another the power to remit sin? (3) If he has not the authority, and those who receive authority from him have it not, then is such authority possessed by any one on earth? (4) If it stand thus with the Pope, is he head of the church? (4) If he be not the head of the church, is not Christ alone the head of the church, on earth as well as in Heaven? (6) If Christ alone be the head of the church, and the one alone through whose intercession and merits forgiveness of sin can be obtained, and if this forgiveness is to be obtained from God alone, through Christ alone, without the intervention of priest, bishop, or Pope, must not every one go to Christ himself, for himself, for justification? And therefore the logical consequence is justification by faith.SITI March 2, 1888, page 135.5

And such was the course through which Luther was led. Not that Luther saw or realized it all when he began. Not at all. Had he realized even the half of it, doubtless he would have stood aghast. When he opposed the indulgences, he saw only the wickedness of the indulgences as ministered by their venders, and of the manner in which Tetzel conducted the traffic. And as the Pope, persisted in this course and Luther persisted in his opposition, this first step carried him logically to the second, and, as events shaped the course, finally to the logical consequence of all, justification by faith, and therefore the Reformation.SITI March 2, 1888, page 135.6

It was a natural and an easy step to the next point, the Lord’s Supper instead of the Papal mass. And here opened a new scene of controversy. Opposition was not confined between the reformers and the Papacy; on this subject it opened among the reformers themselves. And the zeal that ought to have been exerted unitedly in maintaining a solid front in attacking the Papacy, was in a great measure spent in opposing one another. The contending parties on this subject were Luther on one side, and Carlstadt and Zwingle on the other. The Papal doctrine of the mass is, that the bread and the wine in the sacrament are veritably the actual flesh and blood of the Lord; and that either is as much so as both together; and that therefore it is superfluous to administer both to the laity; and so the bread alone is given instead of bread and wine. This is Trans-substantiation; i.e., change of substance. Luther renounced this, and held that although the bread and wine are not the real body and blood of the Lord, yet Christ is really present with the bread and wine. This is Con-substantiation; i.e., with the substance. Carlstadt and Zwingle denied both, and held, as is now held by Protestants almost everywhere, that the bread and win are only memorials of the broken body and shed blood of the Lord Christ. But Carlstadt was impetuous, and while Luther was a captive in the Wartburg, Carlstadt, being deprived of his counsels, went too far for that present time, and in a measure endangered the Reformation.SITI March 2, 1888, page 135.7

In every great religious movement, when the minds of men are unusually stirred, fanaticism is ever ready to break forth and bring reproach upon the truth. It was so in the first days of the Reformation, and there has been no exception from that time to the present. And in this way the Reformation was endangered by these premature movements under the leadership of Carlstadt. At that very time fanaticism was showing itself in Wittemberg; and when the Reformers spoke against images, with other errors of the Romish Church, the slightest spark was soon blown by the fanatics into a most behement flame; they rushed into the churches, tore down the images and crucifixes, broke them to pieces, and burned them. One excess led to another; the fanatics pretended to be illumined by the Spirit; despised the Supper, and held internal communion instead; claimed to have no need of the Bible, nor of human learning; began to prophesy the destruction of all but the saints; and that when that should be accomplished, the kingdom of God would be established upon the earth, the chief fanatic would be put in supreme authority, and he would commit the government to the saints.SITI March 2, 1888, page 136.1

Carlstadt was to a certain extent influenced for awhile by these enthusiasts; but only for a while, and then only so far as to despise learning, and advise his students at the college to return to their homes. Luther was informed of the state of affairs, and left his retreat, and returned to Wittemberg; and it fell upon him to quench this flame of enthusiasm, to put down the rule of fanaticism.SITI March 2, 1888, page 136.2

In these events lies the secret of the difference of opinion between the Reformers on the Lord’s Supper. In the beginning Luther had inclined to the symbolical explanation of the Supper, and even at this time was not decidedly against it. But now that Carlstadt preached it, and the fanatics pushed the symbolism to the length of despising the Supper entirely; and Carlstadt being in a measure, however slight, mixed up with them—Luther having to meet all this, rejected all idea of any symbolical meaning in the words, “This is my body,” and adopted that view from which, to use his own words, he would not be moved by “reason, common sense, carnal arguments,” nor “mathematical proofs.”SITI March 2, 1888, page 136.3

In the way in which the subject was brought prominently before Luther it appeared to him that to hold the view that the bread and wine are symbols was akin to fanaticism, if not fanaticism itself. And when Carlstadt, after being banished from Saxony, went to Switzerland, and was admitted as pastor and professor of divinity at Basel; and when before this Zwingle’s writings, maintaining the same views, had reached Luther, the whole company was held by Luther to be opponents of the truth; and he being as strenuous against this as anything else that he deemed to be error, and his opponents in this matter holding the truth, and necessarily defending it, it could not but be that the result must be division.SITI March 2, 1888, page 136.4

It is true that in this controversy Luther was stubborn; but in view of all the circumstances amidst which it arose, surely our charity will not be unduly taxed in excusing it. If he had been less strenuous in defending what he held to be true, the world would not have had the Reformation then. But however worthily our charity be bestowed in this instance, it fails to be so, when the scenes and the actors have all passed from the stage, when the Reformation has escaped the breakers and rides securely, and his successors stubbornly resist the truth for no other reason than that “Luther believed thus, and so do we;” and so cease to be reformers, and become rigid Lutherans. J.SITI March 2, 1888, page 136.5

(To be continued.)

February 24, 1888

March 9, 1888