How Providence Intervened
By W. A. S.
We have lately seen the truth making progress amid tumult and confusion in certain lands. In fact, we have seen God’s providence overruling strife and political disturbance, to give greater liberty in the work of the gospel. We may find a helpful lesson for the stormy times before us in the story of early Reformation days. Again and again it seemed as if the young reform movement was about to be crushed out; and again and again the aims of opposing elements were frustrated, and God’s work protected. It often came according to the psalmist’s word: “Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee: the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain.” Ps. 76: 10. The Lord overruled wars and political rivalries to divert those who meant to oppress his children. The following plain instances of such interposition in critical years of the Reformation are gathered from Johnson’s “Europe in the Sixteenth Century:”— The year 1521.—The Diet of Worms had condemned Luther, and Charles expected to enforce the decree. But—at this moment the attention of Charles was directed to the war against Francis [king of France]. The humiliation of his rival, and the conquest of Italy, were the first essentials; till these were attained, the affair of Luther might wait. In the meantime Luther wrote and published, and the leaven of reform was scattered far and wide. 1524.—The emperor now fiercely denounced Luther, and the congress of Ratisbon forbade the reading of his books. If only the pope and the emperor had acted in concert, says the historian, something might now have been done. The record continues:— But this was prevented by the political issues which once more drove them apart and so monopolized Charles’s attention that, as he said, “this was no time to speak of Luther.”
1525.—This year brought the complete victory of Charles over Francis at Pavia. It also witnessed the collapse of the peasants’ revolt in Germany, under the fanatical Munzer, which brought great reproach upon the cause of the6Reformation. Convinced that “heresy and rebellion were synonymous,” says the record, Charles now “determined to crush out heresy, and the victory of Pavia seemed to offer him a brilliant opportunity.” But now immediately intervened the trouble with Italy that led to the sack of Rome itself, while the Moslem invasion of Hungary and Austria, under Solyman, threatened the empire on the east. As the history states:— In the midst of the troubles of the Italian campaign, and in the face of the hostility of the pope, any decisive action against the Reformers had been out of the question. It was at least necessary to procrastinate.
1530–32.—Steadily the reform movement was all the time growing into organized Protestantism. In 1529 came the protest of the princes at Spires. Next year, at the Diet of Augsburg, Charles determined to have done with this Lutheran trouble. “Italy was at his feet; Francis had accepted his terms.” The Protestants were given till the next April, 1531, to return to the Catholic Church, and after that time “measures were to be taken for the extirpation of their sect.” The Protestant princes answered this by forming the defensive League of Schmalkalde. But by the following year this was the situation that again defeated the aims of the persecutors:— Had Charles’s hands been now free, doubtless he would have appealed to the arbitrament of the sword. But here again his political necessities stood in his way. The peace with France was by no means secure; nay, Francis was even intriguing with the League of Schmalkalde. Solyman was again threatening to invade his dominions. . . . As head of the Holy Roman Empire, it was his duty to defend the unity of the church, to put down heresy, and to support the papal authority. Yet his position as king of Germany forced him to postpone the suppression of heresy to the imperative necessity of gaining the support of the Protestants against the Turk.
Thus designs against the Protestants were still frustrated, and their numbers and strength increased. 1539.—By the close of 1539 most of the German princes had embraced the Protestant cause, several in that very year. “The crisis demanded instant action. But this was impossible, unless the neutrality of France could be secured.” In the fresh haggling over this, Francis “determined to appeal to arms once more. With the prospect of war before him, the emperor recognized the impossibility of using force against the Protestants.” Again the peril was warded off. 1544.—In this year the treaty of Crespi made peace between Charles and Francis. “On the signature of the Peace of Crespi,” says the history, “the hands of the emperor were at last free to deal with the Protestants in Germany.” All these years the emperor had been getting to it, but never found a time to take the sword to really crush the reform movement. And now he had waited so long that the sword could scarcely touch the cause of reform. Whole countries had grown into Protestantism. Things had gone too far now for the blaze to be violently smothered. In 1546 Luther died. He had labored to keep the Protestant princes from taking up arms in defense of the church. But when, just after his death, Charles invaded Germany to bring the German princes to his own terms, there was war. The princes contended for the political integrity of their states in the empire. At first it seemed that the emperor’s arms would bring all Germany to his feet, and give reaction the power to oppress and harry the Protestants. But his unwieldy plan of empire broke down in the midst of his campaigns. Enemies sprang up in various quarters. He was forced to abandon the idea of a revival of the Roman Empire of the West. That empire had been divided, according to the image of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, never again to be welded into one. In this last effort to bring Germany into line, we see the same interposition of Providence using the wrath of men to thwart designs against truth and human liberty. The history says of Charles at this period:— Had he been less ambitious, and confined his attention to Germany, he might possibly have succeeded in crushing out Lutheranism. But the very magnificence of his aims prevented their realization. Again and again, when he was about to strike, some exigency of politics intervened to thwart him. . . . Henceforth [after the Peace of Augsburg, 1555] Germany abandoned all hope of reconciling the two religions by means of a general, or even a national, council in Germany. The Lutheran Church obtained a legal recognition, and the Protestant states claimed to pursue their course without the intervention of any external ecclesiastical authority.
Those who had the heart, and apparently the power, to crush the truth to earth, were continually prevented from carrying out their plans. The Reformers could say with the psalmist, “If it had not been for Jehovah who was on our side, when men rose up against us; then they had swallowed us up alive.” But God was on the side of truth, and not all the power of earth could hold it down when the time of reformation had come. In our own days, in this last reformation, we shall surely see God’s deliverances similarly multiplied. Many a time, as the truth meets trial in various lands, it will no doubt seem as if we shall be swallowed up; but there will always be found a way out; for Jehovah is still on the side of his own word and work. Nothing can stop the progress of this message. W. A. S.