THE REFORMATION by J. Clarke

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 7, 1862

THE REFORMATION.

By J. Clarke

THE reformation from Papal errors of the sixteenth century, led on by Luther and his associates, was the dawn of the glorious light that now shines upon the world. The wasted, worn-out saints, driven into the wilderness of error, then began to emerge from the wilderness. The reformers only began the work; it falls to the lot of the present generation to fully complete what was then so gloriously begun.

Already do we see the man of sin revealed in all his hideous deformity. Pride, spiritual pride, laid the superstructure of the Romish church. Man would steal the glory of God and appropriate it to himself. This monstrous evil has fully developed itself in the Papal church; and Luther, as he tore off the mask from this mother of harlots, began by bringing to light the true principles of christianity, the glory of the reformation. Thus,

"The helplessness of man, the omnipotence of God, were the two truths that Luther desired to re-establish. That is but a sad religion, and a wretched philosophy, by which man is directed to his own natural strength. Ages have tried in vain this so much boasted strength; and while man has, by his own natural powers, arrived at great excellence in all that concerns his earthly existence, he has never been able to scatter the darkness that conceals from his soul the knowledge of the true God, or to change a single inclination of his heart. The highest degree of wisdom attained by ambitious minds, or by souls thirsting with the desire of perfection, has been to despair of themselves. It is therefore a generous, a comforting, and supremely true doctrine, which unveils our own impetency, in order to proclaim a power from God by which we can do all things. That truly is a great reformation which vindicates on earth the glory of heaven, and which pleads before man the rights of the almighty God."

"No one knew better than Luther the intimate and indissoluble bond that unites the gratuitous salvation of God with the free works of man. No one showed more plainly than he that it is only by receiving all from Christ that man can impart much to his brethren. He always represented these two notions—that of God and that of man—in the same picture."

"And thus it is, that after explaining to the friar Spenlein what is meant by saving righteousness, he adds, 'If thou firmly believest these things, as is thy duty (for cursed is he who does not believe them), receive thy brethren who are still ignorant and in error, as Jesus Christ has received thee. Bear with them patiently. Make their sins thine own; and if thou hast any good thing, impart it to them. Receive ye one another, says the apostle, as Christ also received us to the glory of God. Rom. xv, 7. It is a deplorable righteousness that can not bear with others because it finds them wicked, and which thinks only of seeking the solitude of the desert, instead of doing them good by long-suffering, prayer, and example. If thou art the lily and the rose of Christ, know that thy dwelling-place is among thorns. Only take care lest by thy impatience, by thy rash judgment, and thy secret pride, that thou dost not thyself become a thorn. Christ reigns in the midst of his enemies. If he had desired to live only among the good, and to die only for those who loved him, for whom, I pray, would he have died, and among whom would he have lived?'"

"It is affecting to see how Luther practiced these charitable precepts. An Augustine monk of Erfurth, George Liffer, was exposed to many trials. Luther became informed of this, and within a week after writing the preceding letter to Spenlein, he came to him with words of comfort. 'I learn that you are agitated by many tempests, and that your soul is tossed to and fro by the waves. The cross of Christ is divided among all the world, and each man has his share. You should not, therefore, reject that which has fallen to you. Receive it rather as a holy relic, not in a vessel of silver or of gold, but in what is far better, in a heart of gold, in a heart full of meekness.' D'Aubigné's Hist. of Ref., Vol. I, chap. 8, pp. 217, 218."

The great and prominent truth of the reformation was that of grace, the grace of God, not of man, for the whole fabric of the Papal church was founded in human pride, man was exalted to be the head of the church, to pardon sins, and to dispense blessings to all mankind.

At this radical error, Luther discharged the artillery of truth. He placed man in his true position, as a helpless, unworthy being, dependent upon an omnipotent God for grace and pardon, and that this grace was not to come by proxy, through priests and popes, but immediately from heaven in answer to the prayer of faith; and the proclamation of this simple but mighty truth caused the pope of Rome to tremble, and the pillars of Romanism were shaken by the mighty thunders of the reformation.

Those reformers broke the ground and sowed the seed. It grew and became a mighty tree, and now as the fruit is filling in the topmost boughs, let not cavilers cavil, and despise, and wonder, if the fruit is as radical as the root. Let no one be surprised if the mature fruit of such a tree should comprise in itself all the pith and marrow of both dispensations, the old and new. Let no one wonder if the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus should be the great and mighty principles which are to make a final end of evil.

God did not require of Luther and Melanchthon to do more than prepare the ground, and sow the seed. He reserved for the last generation of the reformers to preach the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, as foretold in the third message. See Rev. xiv, 9-12.

God hath made everything beautiful in its season, or his time [see Eccles. iii, 11], and to everything there is a season and a time. See verse 1. So in every age, as sin and Satan develop the matured fruits of sin, at such times certain mighty truths of revelation are brought from the armory of heaven to bear upon such errors until they are battered to the dust. And then as again Satan tries new arts, so in like manner are other weighty truths brought from the arsenal of truth to destroy the works of Satan. Thus the great testing truth in Athens when Paul was there, upon Mars Hill, was the resurrection, and by this he tested them; for they, by teaching the immortality of the soul, denied (in effect) the resurrection. Some mocked, and generally they turned away from him, for this great truth of the resurrection struck athwart their favorite tenet.

At the time of the reformation the doctrines of grace were buried under such a heap of human merits and religious forms, that it was enough for one generation of mighty men to do to remove this collection of rubbish, and bring to light the doctrines of grace, and display them to a world whose eyes were weakened by long dwelling in darkness and the shadow of death. More light would have dazzled those eyes so long accustomed to midnight darkness.

But to minds enlightened by the rays of light emanating from heaven in the nineteenth century, a greater light has appeared. Upon us has beamed a great and glorious light. The Bible, scattered everywhere among people early taught the rudiments of learning, with additional light from various and divers sources, has prepared the public mind to appreciate in some degree the message of the angel who stood in 1844 with his right foot upon the sea and his left foot upon the earth, and sware that there should be time no longer [see Rev. x; xiv, 6, 7]; and the increasing light since developed is now preparing a people to appreciate and improve the reforming influence of the principles of the third message of Rev. xiv, 9-12.

These reformatory principles, the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, are only the ripe fruit of the seed sown by the early reformers. See Luther's discourse on the first commandment, Hist. of the Ref. chap. 8, p. 210. That Luther and his associates did not arrive at the matured conclusions and results of their own teachings, is no more surprising than that a college freshman is not a senior, or that a child is not a man.

J. CLARKE.