Protestantism in Church and State.
WHAT was the true attitude of Protestantism to the doctrine of church and state? Were our Catholic friends to give the answer they would probably tell us that the type of Protestantism was that of Henry VIII. It is thus that “The Western Watchman” refers to Protestantism and its relation to church and state in its issue of Nov. 19, 1908: “The very name ‘Protestantism’ means a union of church and state in its most brutal and repulsive form. Who were the original Protestants, and why did they call themselves so? It was because they denied and denounced the separation of church and state, when the state was Protestant; and admitted it only when the state was Catholic. In those days it was a political dogma that the religion of the prince must be the religion of the people. That was the war-cry of the Reformers. Was ever union of church and state more bestial?” But by Protestantism we do not mean the perversion of either Christianity on the one side, or Roman Catholicism on the other. Henry VIII did not know the first principles of Protestantism. He was simply a papist, with himself as pope rather than with the man in the Vatican. The Protestantism of the 16th century did not originate with Henry VIII. It receives its name from the Protest presented by the German princes at the Diet of Spires, 1529. And it is thus stated by the great Protestant historian D’Aubigne: “The principles contained in this celebrated Protest of the 19th of April, 1529, constitute the very essence of Protestantism. Now this Protest opposes two abuses of men in matters of faith: The first is the intrusion of the civil magistrate, and the second is the arbitrary authority of the church. Instead of these two abuses, Protestantism sets up above the magistrate the power of conscience, and above the visible church the authority of the word of God. It declines, in the first place, the civil power in divine things, and says with the prophets and apostles, We must obey God rather than man. In presence of the crown of Charles V it uplifts the crown of Jesus Christ. But it goes further, it lays down the principle that all human teaching should be subservient to the oracles of God.”11 As stated again: “The Gospel of the Reformers had nothing to do with the world and with politics.” And again, “The Reformation was accomplished in the name of the 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 ALLIANCE.” And very much more might be quoted from that time. When offered the help of the Elector of Saxony, Luther himself repudiated his help. The Elector was told that the cause of God needed not the power of earthly kings to support it. It is true that some of the Reformers thought otherwise; they had not yet gotten away from the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. Zwingli, therefore, perished with the sword to which he appealed. All these perversions of the true Gospel in the times of the Reformation were not because men adhered to the principles of Protestantism, but because they either did not see clearly what those principles meant, not yet having come out fully from the Roman Catholic Church; or they departed from those principles and sought worldly power. True Protestantism utterly repudiates all union of church and state; it matters not what that church may be, nor what the state may be; and in that principle alone lies the safety and liberty of all religious sects. It was a woful day for Protestantism when she sought to crystallize God’s truth into a creed; and it was a still more woful day when behind that creed was placed the power of the state. The remnant church of God must slough off every excrescence which has grown out of the perversions of truth since apostolic days, and stand free and clear from all worldly influences and entanglements whatsoever.