Luther by J. Clarke

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 10, 1866

Luther.

By J. Clarke

THERE was much of genius, much of learning, much of strength, in the elements of this man's usefulness. He was not an intriguing, planning character, for he became, at every important step in life, just what he had never intended to be.

To secure his personal salvation, he left the university, where he stood high as a scholar, and as a man, and entered the cloister, where he sought to find salvation. Finding here dissolute, wicked men, and discovering, too, that retirement did not lessen the evil of his own heart, he had nearly sunk down and despaired of hope of life. In the practice of the rites and ceremonies of Romanism, he sought consolation; but in vain he fasted and did penance, and his physical system was fast sinking into the grave. At this point, God raised up for him a spiritual guide, (for a few lights remained in the gloomy darkness of the Roman church), and pointed out to Luther the distinction between faith and works.

The secret of Luther's difficulty was discovered. Catholicism offered salvation to all who complied with her ritual. Luther had complied with, and fully satisfied the most rigorous exactions of the Catholic masters. He was a most devoted monk, and a rigid ascetic, but all in vain. He still grew more and more burdened with sin. His fellow monks rallied him with scoffs and ridicule, and accused him of associating with the Devil.

Staupitz pointed him away from works, and showed him the grand and fundamental principle of the gospel, justification by faith. Soon light burst in upon the mind of Luther, and his load of sin was gone, and he became free.

This doctrine of justification by faith, was destined to be in the case of this reformer, the dividing sword which should sever him from the Papal church, and afterward, the grand rallying cry, the watchword of the Reformation. Why? Because that if it could be proven that the works of penance, and the varied rites and ceremonies of the Papal church, were ineffectual to salvation; if faith was essential to good works, then Papal indulgences, and the various forms then considered as constituting the life of religion, were at most, but of secondary importance; and such an admission is fatal to Romanism, which is ever confident and assuming.

The infamous Tetzel sold indulgences for future sins, and when the purchaser came to his confessional, and Luther, then a monk, exhorted penitence, the offender insisted upon having full absolution, and to prove that there was no need of further agitation of the matter, presented his indulgence from the Pope, with the receipt of the money. The pardon was full, and what need was there of faith? Thus it was in effect with Rome, her rites, and ceremonies, and decrees, were declared holy and acceptable to God, through the Pope, who clothed his legates with the same power.

Luther had tested the virtue of dead forms in his cell, and found them cumbersome and powerless; the doctrine of justification by faith he had tested, and found it life, and joy, and peace. He stood up and proclaimed to the world and the church, to Tetzel and to his master, the Pope, that no unrighteous man could do a good act; that a man must himself become righteous, that is, have a living faith, before he could do a righteous act; and his repentance must be accompanied with faith, to insure pardon and acceptance.

Rome, to secure her power, denied this doctrine. The mighty reformer sustained it; and Romanism fell. J. CLARKE.