What was the Protestant Reformation?

The results of the unhallowed power in the hands of the Romish priesthood became utterly intolerable to all classes of society about the beginning of the sixteenth century. A protest was raised; it soon overspread the whole of Christendom; the Bible was appealed to as of absolute authority justification by faith alone without the deeds of the law became the watchword of the reformers. The galling yoke of Rome was thrown off. This was the work of God's Spirit, and the energy that accomplished the Reformation was all of Him. One result of this great revolution, and that which characterized it, was the transfer of power and importance from the church to the individual. The idea of the church as the dispenser of blessing was rejected, and every man was called upon to read the Bible for himself, examine for himself, believe for himself, be justified for himself, serve God for himself, as he must answer for himself. This was the new-born thought of the Reformation — always right, but it had long been denied by the usurpation of Romanism — individual blessing first, church formation afterwards, was the new order of things; but alas! the true idea of the church of God was then completely lost, and not recovered till the present century, as we shall see by-and-by, the Lord willing.

ACCORDING to the old Catholic principle, it was the church that made the Christian. There was no pardon of sin, no salvation for the soul, outside of her communion. No matter how genuine a man's faith and piety might be, if he did not belong to the holy Catholic church and enjoy the benefit of her sacraments, salvation was impossible. On the Protestant principle, Christians make the church. One result of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, and that which characterised it, was the transfer of power from the church to the individual. The idea of the church as the sole dispenser of blessing was rejected; and every man was called upon to read the Bible for himself, examine for himself, believe for himself, as he must answer for himself. This was the new-born thought of the Reformation — individual blessing first, church formation afterwards.

So far, the Reformers were right. But they forgot to look into scripture as to how it was formed. The true idea of the church of God as the body of Christ, livingly united to Him by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, was completely overlooked, though abundantly taught in the epistles. The Lord's own place and work in the assembly by the Holy Ghost being thus lost sight of, men began to unite and build churches, so called, after their own minds. A great variety of churches or religious societies speedily sprang up in many parts of Christendom; but each country carried out its own notion as to how the church should be formed and governed: some thought that church power should be vested in the hands of the civil magistrate; others thought that the church should retain that power within herself; and this difference of opinion resulted in the national and innumerable dissenting bodies which we see everywhere around us. Individual faith, as the grand saving principle for the soul, was insisted upon, thank the Lord; and men's souls were saved and God was thereby glorified; but that being secured, men might combine and make churches to suit their own mind. Great Sardis was the result; of which church the Lord says, "I know thy works, that thou hast a name, that thou livest, and art dead." This is the condition of that which is known as Protestantism, after the days of the first Reformers. A great name to live — a high profession and appearance of Christianity, but no vital power.

— “I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.” The Lord’s omniscience is again asserted in the words, “I know thy works.” Thus He Who walks in the midst of the churches searches Sardis, and pronounces this judgment, “Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.” Such was, and is, Protestantism. The Reformation was the result of the energy of the Spirit of God. Historically we trace that mighty intervention of God to its human instruments, Luther, Melanchthon, etc., and to the various causes which contributed to the grand result, as the invention of printing, etc., but behind all these the great operating cause was the Holy Ghost. We regard the papacy as the greatest curse and the Reformation as the greatest blessing since the introduction of Christianity. We distinguish between the Reformation and Protestantism; the former was a divine work, the latter a human system.

When the energy of the Reformers succeeded in breaking the chains and shackles of the worst tyranny which history records the crucial question arose: Will the energy and zeal be maintained? Will victory succeed victory? Alas, the Reformation, like every movement begun in the Spirit, soon lapsed into a cold, formal, lifeless, orthodox thing. The Reformers, and notably those who succeeded them, commenced the system of making churches instead of searching Scripture, from which they could alone learn what the Church of God is. Spiritual power was well-nigh gone; it might be found in individuals here and there, but, as a general and characteristic condition of the Church soon after the Reformation, the personal presence of the Holy Ghost in the Church (1 Cor. 3:17) and in the individual believer (1 Cor. 6:19) was either unknown, or, where a glimmering of the truth had penetrated, ignored. Yet things seemed fair enough, but within the power, the life, was not there. We refer to the general state. In Protestantism we have not the horrors nor gross corruption of the Middle Ages, but rather the sleep of death. There is a name to live, but only a name. The change from the papacy to Protestantism, from Thyatira to Sardis, may be described as a step out of the “chamber of horrors” into the “cell of death”. There is the appearance of life, but He Whose eyes search all things and pierce through the outward covering says “art dead.”

Between the periods of time in the history of Christendom, which were characterized by Thyatira and Sardis conditions, there was the mighty work of the Spirit of God which is known as The Reformation. This developed over a period of several hundred years and reached its fullness and climax in the early part of the sixteenth century. At this time the Protestant movement came into being. It is important to notice that the Church at Sardis does not prophetically represent the Reformation itself, but rather the state and condition into which Protestantism afterwards fell when the power and impulse of that mighty movement of the Spirit of God had died down.

230 In Leo's time light had come in; the condemning of popes by councils had weakened confidence; the people were weary of the iniquity long ago, but the authority that sanctioned it had now lost a great deal of its influence, and the excessive insult to conscience, shewn in the present sale of indulgences, filled the cup. The princes were angry at their oppression by the pope; they had long complained, though they had not dared to stir. But when God raised up Luther to apply the word of God to the conscience, and shew the iniquity of all this and after some time the want of foundation for the pope's power, all was providentially prepared. People came to confess to him, guilty of all sorts of crimes; and when he insisted on putting practical penance on them, they produced their letters of indulgence, and were easy in their sin. My business here is not to pursue the history of the Reformation. For my own part, I do not for a moment think it established the church on its original basis; nor did its leaders see this any more than Dr. Newman does; but it was the righteous rising up of faith, with the power of the truth and word of God, as far as it was possessed, against the most iniquitous system that ever the sun looked on, of which nations and conscience were alike weary. I challenge Dr. Newman, or any one else, to shew me a like system of iniquity in the world. That gave rise to Protestantism. If natural conscience even was not to have been finally destroyed by the heads and authorities of Christendom, it must have protested. That protest first made by Luther's faith was Protestantism.

Of the men, too, who were the dear and honoured instruments in handing them down to us we cannot speak with enough affection and esteem. God honoured them - how many! - taking them to Himself in fiery chariots, from which their voices come, thrilling us with the accents of the heaven opening to receive them. Those who disparage them will have to hear, one day, their names confessed and honoured by Him they served, as those of whom the world was not worthy. But on the other hand, we must not make, as many are doing, the Reformation the measure of divine truth. They are not loyal to the Reformation really who accept any thing beside Scripture as the measure and test of this. The broken and conflicting voices which are heard the moment it is a question no longer of the gospel but of the church and its government, assure us that if here Scripture has spoken, the churches of the Reformation do not in the same sense convey to us its utterances. Lutherism is not Calvinism, the Church of England is not the Church of Geneva here. We must needs, whether we will or not, take Scripture to decide amid claims so conflicting; and when we do so, we find, with no great difficulty, that no one of these takes us back to the Church as it was at the beginning - the body of Christ, or the house of living stones - at all. Instead of this, as is well known, the churches of the Reformation were essentially national churches. Not in every country, of course, able to attain the full ideal, - as in France , where Rome retained its ascendency by such cruel means, - but always of that pattern. Rome had herself prepared the way for this. The nations of Europe were already professedly Christian nations, and it was not to be expected that those who escaped from Jezebel's tyranny would give up their long hereditary claim to Christianity. The adoption of an evangelical creed did not and could not change the reality of what they were. They learned the formula, put their names upon the church-books as Protestants, learned to battle fiercely for the gospel of peace, and how could you deny their title to be Christians? Yet, as to the many, it was but the "name to live." We must learn to distinguish two elements in the ecclesiastical revolution of those times. There was, first of all, a most mighty and most manifest work of God. The Scriptures, released from their imprisonment in a foreign tongue, began to speak to responsive human hearts with the decision and persuasiveness that the Word of God alone can have. Christ began once more to teach as one having authority, and not as the scribes. The blessed doctrine of justification by faith every where brought souls held fast in bondage into liberty and the knowledge of a Saviour-God. The ecclesiastical yoke could not hold any longer those whom the truth had freed; and where Christ had become thus the soul's rightful Lord, the yoke of Rome was but the tyranny of Antichrist. This was the first and most powerful element in Protestantism; not a political movement, but a movement of faith. Luther, solitary at Worms , in the presence of the mightiest political power in Europe , was the testimony that the work was of Him. His strength was manifest in human weakness. Had that place of weakness been retained all through, - had but God been allowed to show that power was of Him alone, how different would have been the result! And it is due to the foremost name of Protestantism to acknowledge that, as far as carnal weapons were concerned, Luther would have rightly refused them a place in a warfare which was God's. At any rate, to think of Protestantism as essentially a political movement is to do it glaring injustice, and to contradict the plainest facts. On the other hand, we cannot ignore the political element which so soon entered into it. Rome had made the nations every where feel the iron hand of her despotism, and the national reaction against her was the natural result of her intolerable and insolent oppression. The notorious wickedness of her chiefs had long destroyed all real respect. Her power stood now in an excessive and degrading superstition She lived upon men's vices and their fears, and where the light fell and removed the darkness, the fears were removed also, where the vices were not. Men learned to look upon the power they had cringed to with contrary feelings, deep in proportion to their depth before. Their interests, political and otherwise, coincided with the spiritual movement which divine power had produced. Soldiers, politicians, governments, made common cause with the men of faith. It was hard not to welcome such apparently God-sent allies, when on every side persecution raged. The movement increased in external power and importance, but its character was in just that proportion lowered and perverted. And now there was need of defined principles to give cohesion to elements which the Spirit of God no longer sufficed to bind together.

It is always a relief to the mind, in studying the history of the church, to be able to trace with any measure of certainty the silver line of grace, and the operations of God's Spirit in those who have taken a prominent part in its affairs. This was a rare privilege during the long dark night of the middle ages; but with the dawn of the Reformation the working of the Holy Spirit became increasingly manifest. The word of God was appealed to as the only authority in matters of faith and salvation; and the great christian doctrine of "Justification by faith alone" became the foundation and corner-stone of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. By means of this truth the power of popery was subverted, and the nations of Europe delivered from its tyranny.

21 Moreover, brethren, Luther was not alone, but it pleased the God of all grace to raise up, in order to give to the world the fullest testimony that it was His own work, at the very same time, at a distant place, the monastery of Einsiedeln, a member of that monastery, named Zwingle, to preach the truths of the gospel, and protest against the wickedness of the pope and practices of Rome. And God was pleased so to order it, that these two men, Zwingle and Luther, were never united in sentiment to the day of their death. And so far was Luther from agreeing with Zwingle in his opinion on one point, that he was so angry with him about it that he would never join churches with him. And the truth is, that it rather seems that Zwingle began to preach the gospel before Luther. The cause of the Reformation was God's mercy and grace, the time for which was now fully come. The occasion of it, under God's providence was this: Pope Leo the tenth wanted to finish a very splendid church in Rome, commonly called St. Peter's; and in order to raise money for it, he set indulgences for sin to sale without limit. And this it was which made Luther and Zwingle both at the same time begin to protest against the conduct of the church: though Luther at first did not charge the pope with it, but only preached against the indulgences. When they tried to silence him, he went on to search the scriptures in order to defend himself, and find out where the truth of the matter lay; and there he found that the papacy of Rome had no foundation for its assumed authority, and afterwards he was persuaded that it was indeed that Babylon which it is expressly foretold should rise in the Christian church, and corrupt everything herself, and persecute all faithful witnesses to God's truth. Would to God, brethren, and it is my earnest prayer and trust, that many amongst you may be led by the same means of searching the scriptures to discover the same truths; and above all, that your souls may find their way by the teaching of God's Spirit, by the means of God's word, to the full power of eternal life and unfeigned holiness of heart and life through the knowledge of Jesus Christ therein revealed; that you may enter with unmixed joy into the presence of your God.

On the other hand, God brought about by the reformers, 1, Freedom from the control and bondage of Rome. 2, The scriptures were placed in each man's hands in his own tongue. 3, The gospel of His grace was proclaimed in opposition to merit, penance, etc. 4, Justification by faith was taught, in opposition to works, etc. 5, God forgave sins, not the priests. 6, The Roman Catholic church was not the true church. 7, There was salvation outside the church of Rome.

To this church the Lord is presented as the One "that has the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars." However much Romanism may have assumed "power over the nations," it still remains true that the fulness of power, set forth by "the seven Spirits of God," is with the Lord; and, however great the departure from the truth, there are those, symbolised by the seven stars, through whom He can give heavenly light to His people. Thus we know that in spite of the power and assumption of Rome, there arose those who withstood the evils of this system. Alas! whatever resistance to error, and whatever revival of truth there was in this movement, which we speak of as the Reformation, in the hands of man it has broken down. As ever man fails in responsibility. The result has been the development of Protestantism which has indeed "a name" that it lives, and thus stands for the truth before men, but the Lord has to say, as to fact, that in His sight, "Thou … art dead." We may, indeed, be thankful that through this stand against Romanism an open Bible has been won for God's people and the great truth of justification by faith re-asserted. But, alas! content with mere orthodoxy, the Bible has become to the mass little more than a dead letter, and its truths not being received in personal faith, leave the lives of the mass unchanged. One has said, "Nothing is more common among Protestants than to admit a thing to be perfectly true because it is in the word of God, without the smallest intention of acting upon it."