or the LUTHERAN CHURCH, the disciples and followers of Martin
Luther, an Augustine friar, who was born at Isleben, in Upper Saxony, in
the year 1483. He possessed an invincible magnanimity, and uncommon
vigour and acuteness of genius. He first took offence at the indulgences
which were granted in 1517, by Pope Leo X., to those who contributed
toward finishing St. Peter’s church at Rome, Luther being then professor
of divinity at Wittemberg. Those indulgences promised remission of all
sins, past, present, and to come, however enormous their nature, to all
who were rich enough to purchase them. At this Luther raised his warning
voice; and in ninety-five propositions, which he maintained publicly at
Wittemberg, September 30, 1517, exposed the doctrine of indulgences,
which led him to attack also the authority of the pope. This was the
commencement of that memorable revolution in the church which is styled
the Reformation; though Mosheim fixes the era of the Reformation from
1520, when Luther was excommunicated by the pope.
In 1523 Luther drew up a liturgy, that, in many things, differed but
little from the Mass Book; but he left his followers to make farther
reforms, as they saw them necessary; and, in consequence, the forms of
worship in the Lutheran churches vary in points of minor importance: but
they agree in reading the Scriptures publicly, in offering prayers and
praises to God through the Mediator in their own language, in popular
addresses to the congregation, and the reverend administration of the
sacraments.
The Augsburgh Confession (see _Confessions_) forms the established creed
of the Lutheran church. The following are a few of the principal points
of doctrine maintained by this great reformer, and a few of the
Scriptures by which he supported them.
1. That the Holy Scriptures are the only source whence we are to draw
our religious sentiments, whether they relate to faith or practice, John
v, 39; 1 Cor. iv, 16; 2 Tim. iii, 15–17. Reason also confirms the
sufficiency of the Scriptures; for, if the written word be allowed to be
a rule in one case, how can it be denied to be a rule in another?
2. That justification is the effect of faith exclusive of good works;
and that faith ought to produce good works purely in obedience to God,
and not in order to our justification; for St. Paul, in his Epistle to
the Galatians, strenuously opposed those who ascribed our justification,
though but in part, to works: If righteousness come by the law, then
Christ is dead in vain,” Gal. ii, 21. Therefore it is evident we are not
justified by the law, or by our works; but to him that believeth, sin is
pardoned, and Christ’s righteousness imputed. This article of
justification by faith alone, Luther used frequently to call _articulus
stantis vel cadentis ecclesiæ_;” that by which the church must stand or
fall.
3. That no man is able to make satisfaction for his sins; for our Lord
teaches us to say, when we have done all things that are commanded us,
We are unprofitable servants,” Luke xvii, 10. Christ’s sacrifice is
alone sufficient to satisfy for sin, and nothing need be added to the
infinite value of his atonement.
Luther also rejected tradition, purgatory, penance, auricular
confession, masses, invocation of saints, monastic vows, and other
doctrines of the church of Rome. Luther differed widely from Calvin on
matters of church discipline; and on the presence of Christ’s body in
the sacrament. His followers also deviated from him in some things;
but the following may be considered as a fair statement of their
principles, and the difference between them and the Calvinists: 1. The
Lutherans in Germany reject both Episcopacy and Presbyterianism, but
appoint superintendents for the government of the church, who preside
in their consistories, when that office is not supplied by a delegate
from the civil government; and they hold meetings in the different
towns and villages, to inquire into the state of the congregations and
the schools. The appointment of superintendents, and the presentation
to livings, is generally in the prince, or ecclesiastical courts. The
Swedes and Danes have an ecclesiastical hierarchy, similar to that of
England. 2. They differ in their views of the sacrament of the Lord’s
Supper. All the Lutherans reject _trans_-substantiation, but affirm
that the body and blood of Christ are _materially_ present in the
sacrament, though in an incomprehensible manner: this they called
_con-_substantiation. The Calvinists hold, on the contrary, that Jesus
Christ is only _spiritually_ present in the ordinance, by the external
signs of bread and wine. 3. They differ as to the doctrine of the
eternal decrees of God respecting man’s salvation. The modern
Lutherans maintain that the divine decrees, respecting the salvation
and misery of men, are founded upon the divine prescience. The
Calvinists, on the contrary, consider these decrees as absolute and
unconditional.
The Lutherans are generally divided into the moderate and the rigid. The
moderate Lutherans are those who submitted to the _Interim_ published by
the Emperor Charles V. Melancthon was the head of this party, and they
were called Adiaphorists. The rigid Lutherans are those who would not
endure any change in their master’s sentiments, of whom M. Flaccius was
the head. The Lutherans are partial to the use of instrumental music in
their churches, and admit statues and paintings, as the church of
England does, without allowing them any religious veneration; but the
rigid Calvinists reject these, and allow only the simplest forms of
psalmody. The modern Lutherans, about the close of the seventeenth
century, enlarged their liberality toward other sects, and gave up the
supposed right of persecution; confessing that Christians are
accountable to God only for their religious faith. They admit, also,
into their sacred canon the Epistle of St. James, which Luther rashly
rejected, because he could not reconcile it with St. Paul’s doctrine of
justification; and the Revelation of St. John, which Luther also
rejected, because he could not explain it.
On some of the doctrines of the early German reformers the
following remarks by Archbishop Laurence are entitled to high
consideration:--Against the church of Rome, which always, when
attacked, fled for protection to the shield of scholastical
sophistry, Luther had waged a dauntless, unwearied, and effectual
warfare. He entered the field of contest without distrust or
apprehension, under a rooted persuasion that the victory over
superstition would prove easy at an era when learning had already
begun to extend itself in every direction, and was become closely
allied to theological attainments. When the light of day appeared,
the genuine doctrines of Scripture and the primitive opinions of
antiquity began to be more distinctly perceived, and more
accurately investigated. With an attachment to classical pursuits
arose a zeal for Biblical inquiries. Taste and truth went hand in
hand. Luther, than whom no one was more capable of infusing energy
into the cause in which he had embarked, was of all men the worst
adapted to conduct it with moderation: he was calculated to
commence, but not to complete, reformation. Prompt, resolute, and
impetuous, he laboured with distinguished success in the
demolition of long established error; he also hastily threw
together the rough and cumbrous materials of a better system. But
the office of selecting, modelling, and arranging them was
consigned to a correcter hand. Melancthon was of a character
directly opposite to that of Luther, possessing every requisite to
render truth alluring and reformation respectable; and hence upon
him, in preference, the princes of Germany conferred the honour of
compiling the public profession of their faith. But it ought not
to be concealed, that, previously to the time when Lutheranism
first became settled upon a permanent basis, and added public
esteem to public notice, tenets were advanced, which retarded the
progress of truth more than all the subtleties of scholastic
argument, or the terrors of papal anathema. At the beginning of
the Reformation, as Melancthon frankly observed to Cranmer, there
existed among its advocates stoical disputations respecting fate,
offensive in their nature, and noxious in their tendency. The
duration, however, of these stoical disputations was but short;
and the substitution of a more rational as well as practical
system, for the space of more than twenty years before the
appearance of our Articles, prevented the founders of our church
from mistaking, for the doctrines of the Lutherans, those which
they themselves wished to forget, and were anxious to obliterate.
As we descend to particulars, it will be necessary to keep our eye
upon one prominent doctrine, which was eminently conspicuous in
all the controversies of the Lutherans,--the doctrine of COMPLETE
REDEMPTION BY CHRIST, which in their idea their adversaries (the
Papists) disregarded, who denied in effect the depravity of our
nature, believed the favour of Heaven in this life recoverable by
what was denominated _merit of congruity_, and, in the life to
come, by that which was termed _merit of condignity_, and founded
predestination upon merits of such a description; thus in every
instance, while retaining the name of Christians, rendering
Christianity itself superfluous. In opposition to opinions so
repugnant in many respects to reason, and in almost all so
subversive of Scripture, the Lutherans constantly pressed the
unsophisticated tenet of the atonement, not contractedly in a
Calvinistical, but comprehensively in a Christian, point of
view,--in one in which both Calvinists and Arminians alike embrace
it.
Upon original sin the doctrine of the schoolmen was no less fanciful and
remote from every Scriptural idea, than flattering to human pride. They
contended that the infection of our nature is not a mental but a mere
corporeal taint; that the body alone receives and transmits the
contagion, while the soul in all instances proceeds immaculate from the
hands of her Creator. This disposition to disease, such as they allowed
it to be, was considered by some of them as the effect of a peculiar
quality in the forbidden fruit; by others, as having been contracted
from the poisonous breath of the infernal spirit which inhabited the
serpent’s body. On one point they were all united; by preserving to the
soul the bright traces of her divine origin unimpaired, they founded on
a deceitful basis an arrogant creed, which, in declaring peace and
pardon to the sinner, rested more upon personal merit than the
satisfaction of a Saviour. In commenting upon the celebrated _Book of
Sentences_, a work once not much less revered than the Scriptures
themselves, the disciples of Lombard never failed to improve every hint
which tended to degrade the grace of God and exalt the pride of man.
Original sin the Romish schoolmen directly opposed to original
righteousness; and this they considered not as something connatural with
man, but as a superinduced habit or adventitious ornament, the removal
of which could not prove detrimental to the native powers of his mind.
When, therefore, they contemplated the effects of the fall, by confining
the evil to a corporeal taint, and not extending it to the nobler
faculties of the soul, they regarded man as an object of divine
displeasure, not because he possessed that which was offensive, but
because he was defective in that which was pleasing to the Almighty.
Adam, they said, received for himself and his posterity the gift of
righteousness, which he subsequently forfeited; in his loins we were
included, and by him were virtually represented: his will was ours, and
hence the consequence of his lapse is justly imputable to us his
descendants. By our natural birth, therefore, under this idea, we are
alienated from God, _innocent_ in our individual persons, but _guilty_
in that of him from whom we derived our existence; a guilt which,
although contracted through the fault of another, yet so closely adheres
to us that it effectually precludes our entrance at the gate of
everlasting life, until the reception of a new birth in baptism. Thus
they contended, that the sin of Adam conveys to us solely imputed guilt;
the corporeal infection which they admitted not being sin itself, but
only the subject matter of it,--not _peccatum_, but, according to their
phraseology, _fomes peccati_, a kind of fuel which the human will
kindles or not at pleasure. Such was the outline of the doctrine
maintained in the church of Rome. The tenet of the Lutherans, on the
other hand, is remarkable for its simplicity and perspicuity. Avoiding
all intricate questions upon the subject, they taught that original sin
is a corruption of our nature in a general sense, a depravation of the
mental faculties and the corporeal appetites; that the resplendent image
of the Deity, which man received at the creation of the world, although
not annihilated, is nevertheless greatly impaired; and that, in
consequence, the bright characters of unspotted sanctity, once deeply
engraven on his mind by the hand of the living God, are become
obliterated, the injury extending to his intellect, and affecting as
well his reason and his will as his affections and passions. To conceive
that inclination to evil incurs not in itself the disapprobation of
Heaven, appeared to them little better than an apology for crime, or at
least a dangerous palliation of that which the Christian’s duty compels
him not only to repress but abhor.
The case of Cornelius, whose prayers and alms are said to have ascended
up for a memorial before God, was often quoted, by the advocates of the
church of Rome, to prove the merit of works before the reception of
grace; to prove the human will capable, by its own inherent rectitude,
of deserving the favour and approbation of Heaven. The Lutherans, on the
other hand, contended, that the argument supported not the conclusion
drawn from it, and was therefore irrelevant; that the works of Cornelius
were not the _causes_ but the _effects_ of grace; and that this is
sufficiently apparent from the context, in which he is described as a
devout man, who feared God and prayed continually.” The disciples of
Lombard, in whatever mode disposed to pervert reason and annihilate
Scripture, universally held, that neither before nor after the fall was
man in himself capable of meriting heaven; that by the gratuitous
endowments of his creation, even in paradise, he was only enabled to
preserve his innocence, and not to sin; and that he was utterly
incompetent to proceed one step farther, efficaciously to will a
remunerable good, and by his natural exertions to obtain a reward above
his nature; original righteousness being reputed not a connate quality,
but a supernatural habit. Thus, he could resist evil, but not advance
good to perfection; could in some sense live well, by living free from
sin, but could not without divine aid so live as to deserve everlasting
life. For such a purpose they asserted that grace was necessary, to
operate upon his will in its primary determinations, and to co-operate
with it in its ultimate acts. It was, therefore, in the loss of this
celestial aid, this superadded gift, and not in any depravity of his
mind, that they supposed the principal evil derivable from his lapse to
consist; a loss, however, which, by a due exertion of his innate
abilities, they deemed to be retrievable; and hence sprung that
offensive doctrine of human sufficiency which, in the Lutheran’s eye,
completely obscured the glory of the Gospel, and which, when applied to
the sinner’s conscience, taught the haughty to presume, and the humble
to despair. According, then, to the system under consideration, the
favour of God in this life, and his beatific vision in the life to come,
are both attainable by personal merit; the former by _congruous_, as it
was termed, the latter by _condign_; the one without, the other with,
the assistance of grace. By our natural strength, it was said, we can
fulfil the commands of God as far as their obligation extends; yet was
it added, that we cannot fulfil them according to the intention of the
divine Legislator; an intention of rewarding only those who obey them in
virtue formed by charity, under the influence of a quality rather
regulating the tendency, than augmenting the purity, of the action. They
stated, that we may so prepare ourselves for grace as to become entitled
to it congruously, not as to a debt which in strict justice God is bound
to pay, but as to a grant which it is congruous in him to give, and
which it would be inconsistent with his attributes to withhold. This
favourite doctrine was supported by every denomination of scholastics,
and by every individual of the church of Rome. Congruous merit was
universally esteemed a pearl above all price, the intrinsic value of
which attracted the regard, and conciliated the benevolence, of the
Almighty. According to their conception, we are endowed with an innate
propensity to good, which vice itself can never obliterate, and are able
not only to reverence and adore the supreme Being, but to love him above
other objects. They supposed man competent no less to the efficient
practice, than to the barren admiration, of holiness; enabled as well to
obey the laws, as to love the goodness, of the Almighty; and, if not to
deserve the rewards, at least to discharge the obligations, of religion.
Impressed, therefore, with such exalted notions of human ability, and
forgetful of the Christian propitiation for sin, the sophists of the
schools maintained, that the soul of man possesses in the freedom, or
rather in the capacity, of her WILL a faculty almost divine. Stimulated
by the most upright propensities, and undepraved in her noblest powers,
she directs her progress in the path of truth and the road to bliss, by
the pure and inextinguishable light of an unperverted reason. Although
mutable in her decisions, nevertheless complete controller of her
conduct, she becomes at pleasure either the servant of righteousness or
the slave of sin; and, disdaining to be anticipated by God himself,
prevents him in his supernatural gifts by a previous display of her own
meritorious deeds, challenging, as a congruous right, that which only
could have been otherwise conferred as a favour undeserved. By the bare
observance of my holy order,” exclaimed the secluded devotee, I am able
not solely to obtain grace for myself, but, by the works which I then
may do, can accumulate merit sufficient both to supply my own wants and
those of others; so that I may sell the superabundance of my acquired
treasure.” Can we be surprised that a reformer of Luther’s manly
disposition, who wrote without reserve and reasoned without control,
when adverting to opinions of so noxious a tendency, should sometimes,
from excess of zeal, lose sight of moderation in his censures? The
Lutherans commenced the attack upon these unscriptural dogmas, under a
persuasion that the position of their opponents militated against the
leading principles of Christianity. If man,” they said, be capable of
pleasing God by his own works abstractedly considered, without divine
assistance, where is the necessity, and what is the utility, of that
assistance?” They argued, that, were it possible for the moral virtues
of the mind by their own efficiency to render our persons acceptable to
God and obtain his lost favour, no need would exist of any other
satisfaction for sin, and thus the whole scheme of Gospel redemption
would have been fruitless, and Christ have died in vain. While,
therefore, the doctrine of the atonement presented nothing but _a cloud
and darkness to their adversaries, it gave light by night to these_; on
them it shone, amidst surrounding gloom, with lustre unobscured. Luther
advanced a proposition which proved highly offensive to the Papists, and
which they never ceased to condemn and calumniate. His assertion was,
that he who exerts himself to the utmost of his ability still continues
to sin. On the other side, unassisted man was thought incapable of
performing an action remunerably good, or, as it was usually termed,
condignly meritorious, even before his lapse; and that consequently, in
his fallen state, all to which he was conceived competent by his innate
strength was _not to sin_. When Luther therefore drew up his thesis for
public disputation against the tenet of congruous works, if little
delicacy, yet some caution, and much discrimination, appeared requisite.
Had he stated them to be thus good in a scholastic sense, he would have
completely lost sight of his object, and allowed more than even his
opponents themselves. Had he described them as not demeritorious, or, in
other words, not sinful, he would have precisely maintained the adverse
position, and might consequently have spared his labour, at the same
time that he would have tacitly acknowledged them to possess, what he
could not consistently with truth attribute to them, every natural
perfection of virtue and holiness. Under what denomination, then, could
he class them, except under that of _sinful_? a denomination which he
the more readily adopted because, even among his adversaries themselves,
the words SIN and GRACE, as he remarked, were in general immediately
opposed to each other. Anxious to rescue Christian theology from the
grasp of those who embraced only to betray, the Lutherans laboured to
restore that importance to the doctrine of redemption with which the
Scriptures invest it, but of which, by a subtle perversity, it had been
deprived. The principal object, therefore, in their view evidently was,
to Christianize the speculations of the schools; and the principal drift
of their argument is to prove, that human virtue, how extravagantly
soever extolled by a vain philosophy, is wholly insufficient (because
imperfect) to merit the favour of Heaven. Allowing no medium between
righteousness and unrighteousness, the approbation and disapprobation of
the Almighty, characterizing that as sinful which is confessedly not
holy, and thus annihilating every ground of self-presumption, they
inculcated the necessity of contemplating with the eye of faith those
means of reconciliation which Christianity alone affords. But it has
been insinuated, that the Lutheran doctrine went to prove man’s total
inability to extricate himself from crime, until the arrival of some
uncertain moment, which brings with it a regeneration from on high, the
sudden transfusion of a new light and new virtues. But those who thus
conceive of it are not probably aware, that Melancthon, the venerable
author of the Augsburgh Confession, warmly reprobates this precise idea,
which he denominates _a Manichean conceit and a horrible falsehood_.
Upon the abstract question of free will it is indeed true, that
Melancthon, no less than Luther, at first held opinions which he was
happy to retract. But when this is acknowledged it should be added, that
he made ample amends for his indiscretion by not only expunging the
offensive passages from the single work which contained them, but by
introducing others of a nature diametrically opposite. And although the
more inflexible coadjutor of Melancthon was too lofty to correct what he
had once made public, and too magnanimous to regard the charge of
inconsistency which his adversaries urged against him; yet what his
better judgment approved clearly appears from a preface written not long
before his death; in which, while he expressed an anxiety to have his
own chaotic labours, as he styled them, buried in eternal oblivion, he
recommended in strong terms, as a work admirably adapted to form the
Christian divine, that very performance of his friend which was
remarkable for something more than a mere recantation of the opinions
alluded to. It was not against any conceived deficiency in the quality
of our virtue that they argued, but against its supposed competency,
whether wrought in or out of grace, with greater or less degrees of
purity, to effect that which the oblation of Christ alone accomplishes.
Upon both points Luther treated the doctrine of his adversaries as
altogether frivolous, and incapable of corroboration by a single fact.
Futile, however, as the scholastical tenet appeared to be, although
deficient in proof and unsupported by example, upon this, he remarked
with indignation and grief, was founded the whole system of papal
delusion.
Justification was on both sides supposed to consist entirely in the
remission of sins. The popish scholastics, on this head, were
remarkably distinct in their ideas, and express in their language.
They represented it as an effect produced by the infusion of divine
grace into the mind; not as a consequent to a well spent life, but as
preceding all remunerable obedience, as the intervening point between
night and day, the gloom of a guilty and the light of a self-approving
conscience; or, in other words, and to adopt their own phraseology, as
the exact boundary where merit of congruity ends and where merit of
condignity begins, the infallible result of a previous disposition on
our part, which never fails of alluring from on high that supernatural
quality which, being itself love, renders the soul beloved. While the
Lutherans, however, adhered to the general import of the term as
understood in the schools, they waged an incessant warfare upon
another point; while they allowed that justification consists in the
remission of sin, they denied that this remission is to be acquired by
the merit of the individual. Their scholastic opponents maintained
that man is justified in the sight of God in consequence of his own
preparation, and on account of his personal qualities. They, on the
other band, argued with an inflexibility which admitted of no
compromise, that, possessing not merits of his own to plead, man
freely received forgiveness through the mercy of God solely on account
of the merits of Christ. The effective principle, therefore, or
_meritorious cause of justification_, was the great point contested.
The doctrine of the popish divines, explained more at large, was this:
When the sinner, conscious of his past transgressions, inquired where
he was to seek the expiation of his crime, and deliverance from the
dreadful consequences of it, the general answer was, _In the merit of
penitence_; a merit capable of annihilating guilt, and appeasing the
anger of incensed Omnipotence. He, they argued, who, having disobeyed
the laws of Heaven, is desirous of returning into that state of
acceptance from which he has fallen, must not expect free forgiveness;
but previously by unfeigned sorrow of heart deserve the restoration of
grace, and, with it, the obliteration of his offences. To effect this
desirable purpose he is bound strictly to survey and detest his former
conduct, accurately to enumerate his transgressions and deeply feel
them; and, impressed with a due sense of their magnitude, impurity,
and consequences, to condemn his folly and deplore his fault, which
have made him an outcast of Heaven, and exposed him to eternal misery.
So far he can proceed by that operation of the mind which they
denominated ATTRITION, and which, being within the sphere of his
natural powers, they regarded as _congruous piety meritorious of
justification_, as a preparation of the soul more or less necessary to
receive and merit justifying grace. When, therefore, he is arrived at
this point, ATTRITION ceases and CONTRITION commences; the habit of
sin is expelled, while that of holiness is superinduced in its stead,
and with the infusion of charity, the plastic principle of a new
obedience, justification becomes complete. But even here it was not
conceived that a total deliverance takes place; a liberation from
guilt and _eternal_ punishment is effected, but not from _temporal_,
which is never remitted unless either by the infliction of some
personal suffering or satisfactory compensation required of him who is
already justified and approved by Heaven. However, to accomplish this
remaining object, nothing more is wanting than a continuation, to a
sufficient intensity, of that compunction of heart which is now
denominated CONTRITION, grace supplying the defects of nature, and
enabling penitential merit not only to justify, but to obtain
exemption from punishment of every species. But so great appeared to
the popish scholastics the frailty of man and the severity of God,
that no inconsiderable difficulty occurred in the due application of
this favourite doctrine to individuals; for the means of expiation,
they imagined, ought always to be proportionate to the magnitude of
the offences. How,” they reasoned, are we to be assured that our
contrition has been either sufficient or sincere, and whether it has
been so in the obliteration not only of one crime, but of all; whether
it has atoned for past transgressions of every kind, the number of
which may perplex, as well as their guilt confound, us?” Instead,
therefore, of penitence in its strictest acceptation as a perfect
virtue, God, they said, in condescension to human infirmity, has
substituted for general practice _the sacrament of penitence_, which,
for the attainment of full remission, requires only a moderate
compunction of soul, with confession to the priest, and the discharge
of such satisfaction as he may enjoin. And, still lower to reduce the
terms of acceptance, they even argued that it is not absolutely
necessary for the penitent to experience an entire conversion of
heart, but only not to oppose the impediment of mortal crime, to feel
some displeasure at his past conduct, and to express a resolution of
amending it in future. But, after all, and in spite of the boasted
authority of the keys, complete confidence in divine forgiveness was
never inculcated; for it was neither the interest nor the inclination
of the church of Rome to teach the simple doctrine of Christian faith,
but rather to involve it in metaphysical obscurity. Under the pretext,
therefore, of relieving the throbbing breast from its apprehensions,
they had recourse to numerous inventions for propping the insecure
fabric of penitential hope; asserting, among other extravagancies,
that the sacraments are in themselves efficacious by virtue of their
own operation, exclusively of all merit in the recipient; and that the
sacrament of the altar, in particular, acts so powerful in this
respect as to communicate grace not only to those who partake of it,
but to others from whom it is received by substitution, provided its
operation be not hindered by confessedly flagrant immorality. So
deeply rooted in the minds of the papists had become the persuasion of
its thus effecting the best of purposes, and that even without the
necessity of an actual participation of it by him upon whom the
benefit is conferred, that the celebration of the mass was universally
regarded as the means of appeasing the anger of Heaven, and obtaining
pardon and peace, of procuring divine assistance for the living, and,
for the dead, deliverance from the bitter pains of purgatory. Nor by
the sacraments alone, but by every good external work, as well as
internal disposition, was justifying grace supposed to be merited
_congruously_, and satisfaction for sin to be made _condignly_. In
monastical institutions, likewise, were found no mean materials for
similar purposes; for in those feigned religions,” as the homily _On
Good Works_ describes them, the devotees boasted of having lamps which
ran always over, able to _satisfy_ not only for their own sins, but
also for all other their benefactors, brothers and sisters of
religion, as most ungodly and craftily they had persuaded the
multitude of ignorant people; keeping in divers places marts or
markets of merits, being full of their holy relics, images, shrines,
and works of overflowing abundance, ready to be sold.” Yet, whether
the dubious penitent was instructed to derive consolation from the
efficacy of the sacraments, from his own personal qualities, or from
any of what Cranmer aptly termed “the fantastical works of man’s
invention,” it should be observed that he was not directly taught to
consider these as wholly superseding the virtue of repentance, but as
supplying his deficiencies in the performance of it; an incongruous
system of atonement, fabricated by the avarice of Rome, and the
obsequiousness of scholastical philosophy, to augment the treasures
and extend the influence of the church, to extinguish the light of
Gospel truth, and, while keeping the world at large in ignorance, to
hold the conscience of the individual in slavery. Upon the whole,
then, the scholastics maintained that justification is unattainable
without repentance, at least, without some degree of attrition on our
part; but in the common apprehension of the doctrine even this seems
to have been forgotten, and merit of congruity considered in a general
point of view as alone efficacious. Thus good works of every species
preceding grace were said to deserve it, and, by deserving grace, to
deserve the justifying principle. And always were they careful to
impute the cause of forgiveness, not to the mercy of God in Christ,
but to the sole change in the individual, to his transmutation from a
state of unrighteousness to one of righteousness, to his possession of
a quality which renders him a worthy object of divine approbation. For
in every instance personal merit was conceived to be the solid basis
upon which rests the complete remission of sin. Upon no one point,
perhaps, has the opinion of Luther been more misrepresented than upon
this. Some have ascribed to it a solifidian tendency, if not of the
most enthusiastical, at least, of the most unqualified, description.
But it seems indeed impossible accurately to comprehend the position
which he maintained, if we examine it in an insulated point of view,
unless we connect it with that of which in the church of Rome it
properly formed a part, and from which he never intended to separate
it,--the doctrine of penitence. In opposing the absurdity of papal
indulgences, (the first impiety against which his manly mind
revolted,) a ray of light, before unnoticed, darted upon him, and
opened a completely new scene, which, while it stimulated his efforts
as a reformer, animated his hopes as a Christian. Hence, averting with
disdain from the speculations of sophists, and turning to the sacred
page of revelation, he there beheld an affiance very different from
what the schools inculcated; and thus, while _their_ vain language
was, Repent, and trust to the efficacy of your contrition, either with
or without extraneous works, according to the degree of its intensity,
for the expiation of your offences;” _his_, more Scriptural and more
consoling, became simply this: Repent, and trust not for expiation to
your own merits of any kind, but solely to those of your Redeemer.”
Rejecting the dreams of their adversaries with respect to the nature
and effects of this important duty, they represented it as consisting
of two essential parts, CONTRITION and FAITH, the latter as always
associated with the former. Hence, in the Apology of their Confession,
they repeatedly declared a disavowal of all faith, except such as
exists in the contrite heart. Far was it from their intention to
encourage the presumptuous or fanatical sinner in a false security;
their object was very different and laudable,--they laboured to fix
the eye of him who both laments and detests his offences, upon the
only deserving object of human confidence and divine complacency.
Properly, then, as they frequently remarked, their doctrine of
justification was appropriated to troubled consciences, at every
period of true repentance, and particularly at the awful hour of
death, when the time for habitual proofs of amendment has elapsed, and
when the past appears replete with guilt and the future with terror.
At such moments, they taught not, with the schools, an affiance in
human merit, but in the gratuitous mercy of God through Christ: to
contrition, as a preparatory qualification or previous requisite, they
added faith; and from faith they deemed every principle of real piety
and virtue inseparable. Good works, or the outward fruits of an inward
renovation of mind, were said to _follow_ remission of sins;
_internal_ necessarily preceding _external_ reformation. For the
individual, they argued, must himself be good before the action can be
so denominated, be justified before it can be deemed just, and
accepted before it can prove acceptable,--distinguishing between the
primary admission into God’s favour, and the subsequent preservation
of that favour.
The unfathomable depths of divine predestination and predetermination
human reason in vain attempts to sound, finite faculties to scan
infinite, or the limited intellect of man to comprehend the immensity of
the Godhead. Erasmus, a peculiar favourite with the reformers of our own
country, when contemplating this inexplicable subject, observed, that in
the Holy Scriptures there are certain secret recesses, which God is
unwilling for us too minutely to explore; and which, if we endeavour to
explore, in proportion as we penetrate farther, our minds become more
and more oppressed with darkness and stupefaction; that thus we might
acknowledge the inscrutable majesty of the divine wisdom, and the
imbecility of the human mind.” Congenial, also, with the feelings and
sentiments of Erasmus upon this point were those of Luther. To acquire
any knowledge,” he remarked, of a deity not revealed in Scripture, to
know what his existence is, his actions and dispositions, belongs not to
me. My duty is only this; to know what are his precepts, his promises,
and his threatenings. Pernicious and pestilent is the thought of
investigating causes, and brings with it inevitable ruin, especially
when we ascend too high, and wish to philosophize upon predestination.”
How differently Calvin felt upon the same subject, and with what little
reserve, or rather with what bold temerity, he laboured to scrutinize
the unrevealed Divinity, is too well known to require any thing beyond a
bare allusion to the circumstance. His sentiments, however, were much
less regarded than some are disposed to allow; and upon this particular
question, so far were they from having attained their full celebrity at
the period when the articles of the church of England were framed, that
they were not taught without opposition even in his own unimportant
territory of Geneva. For at that precise era he was publicly accused (by
Sebastian Castellio) of making God the author of sin; and although, not
contented with silencing, he first imprisoned and afterward banished his
accuser, yet he could not expel the opinions of his adversary. While the
church of Rome maintained a predestination to life of one man in
preference to another individually _on account of personal merit_, the
Lutherans taught a gratuitous predestination of Christians collectively,
of those whom God has chosen in Christ out of mankind; and by this
single point of difference were the contending opinions principally
contradistinguished. With us the system of Calvin still retains so many
zealous advocates, that to a modern ear the very term PREDESTINATION
seems to convey a meaning only conformable with _his_ particular system.
It should, however, be observed that this word was in familiar use for
centuries before the Reformation, in a sense, very different from what
Calvin imputed to it, not as preceding the divine prescience, but as
resulting from it, much in the same sense as that in which it has since
been supported by the Arminians. Yet, obvious as this appears, writers
of respectability strangely persuade themselves, that, immediately prior
to the Reformation, the doctrines of the church of Rome were completely
Calvinistical; a conclusion to which, certainly, none can subscribe who
are sufficiently conversant with the favourite productions of that time.
So far, indeed, was this from being the fact, that Calvin peculiarly
prided himself on departing from the common definition of the term,
which had long been adopted by the adherents of the schools, and
retained with a scrupulous precision. For while they held that the
expression _predestinati_ is exclusively applicable to the elect, whom
God, foreknowing as meritorious objects of his mercy, predestinates to
life; and while they appropriated that of _præsciti_ to the non-elect,
whose perseverance in transgression is simply foreknown; Calvin, on the
other side, treating the distinction as a frivolous subterfuge,
contended that God, decreeing the final doom of the elect and non-elect
irrespectively, predestinates both, not subsequently but previously to
all foreknowledge of their individual dispositions, especially devotes
the latter to destruction through the medium of crime, and creates them
by a fatal destiny to perish. Whatever, therefore, modern conjecture may
have attributed to the popish scholastics, it is certain that, abhorring
every speculation which tends in the remotest degree to make God the
author of sin, they believed that only salutary good is predestinated;
grace to those who deserve it _congruously_, and glory to those who
deserve it _condignly_. They maintained that almighty God, before the
foundations of the world were laid, surveying in his comprehensive idea,
or, as they phrased it, in his prescience of simple intelligence, the
possibilities of all things before he determined their actual existence,
foresaw that, if mankind were created, (although he willed the salvation
of all, and was inclined to assist all indifferently, yet) some would
deserve eternal happiness, and others eternal misery; and that therefore
he approved and elected the former, but disapproved or reprobated the
latter. Thus, grounding election upon foreknowledge, they contemplated
it, not as an arbitrary principle, separating one individual from
another under the influence of a blind chance or an irrational caprice;
but, on the contrary, as a wise and just principle, which presupposes a
diversity between those who are accepted and those who are rejected.
Hence it was, that in order to systematize upon this principle of
election, and to show how consistent it is as well with the justice as
the benevolence of the Deity, the will of God was considered in a double
point of view, as _absolute_ and _conditional_, or, in the technical
language of the schools, as _antecedent_ and _consequent_. In the first
instance, by his absolute or antecedent will, he was said to desire the
salvation of every man; in the latter, by his conditional or consequent
will, that only of those whom he foresaw abstaining from sin and obeying
his commandments: the one expressed his general inclination, the other
his particular resolution upon the view of individual circumstances and
conditions. To the inquiry, why some are unendowed with grace, their
answer was, Because some are not willing to receive it, and not because
God is unwilling to give it.” He,” they said, offers his light to all.
He is absent from none; but man absents himself from the present Deity,
like one who shuts his eyes against the noon-day blaze.” To the
foregoing statement it should be added, that they held an election, or
rather an ordination, to grace (which they expressly asserted to be
defectible) distinct from an election to glory; that according to them,
a name may be written in the book of life at one period, which at
another many be erased from it; and that predestination to eternal
happiness solely depends upon final perseverance in well doing. On the
whole it is evident, that they considered the dignity or worthiness of
the individual as the meritorious basis of predestination; merit of
congruity as the basis of a preordination to grace, and merit of
condignity as that of a preordination to glory. Thus, not more
fastidious in the choice of their terms than accurate in the use of
them, while they denied that the prescience of human virtue, correctly
speaking, could be the primary cause of the divine will, because nothing
in time can properly give birth to that which has existed from eternity,
they strenuously maintained it to be a secondary cause, the ratio or
rule in the mind of the Deity which regulated his will in the formation
of its ultimate decisions. Although in the established confession of
their faith the Lutherans avoided all allusion to the subject of
predestination, it was nevertheless introduced into another work of
importance, and of considerable public authority, the _Loci Theologici_
of Melancthon, a production which was every where received as the
standard of Lutheran divinity. Both Luther and Melancthon, after the
Diet of Augsburgh, kept one object constantly in view,--to inculcate
only what was plain and practical, and never to attempt philosophizing.
But to what, it may be asked, did the Lutherans object in the theory of
their opponents when they themselves abandoned the tenet of necessity?
Certainly, not to the sobriety and moderation of that part of it which
vindicated the justice, and displayed the benevolence, of the Almighty;
but, generally, to the principles upon which it proceeded; to the
_presumption_, in overleaping the boundary which Heaven has prescribed
to our limited faculties, and which we cannot pass without plunging into
darkness and error; and to its _impiety_ in disregarding, if not
despising, the most important truths of Christianity. A system of such a
nature they hesitated not to reject, anxious to conduct themselves by
the light of Scripture alone, nor presuming to be wise above what God
has been pleased to discover. Maintaining not a particular election of
personal favourites, either by an absolute will, or even a conditional
one, dependent upon the ratio of merit, but a general election of all
who, by baptism in their infancy, or by faith and obedience in mature
years, become the adopted heirs of Heaven; they conceived this to be the
only election to which the Gospel alludes, and, consequently, the only
one upon which we can speak with confidence, or reason without
presumption. If it be observed, that the selection of an integral body
necessarily infers that of its component parts, the answer is obvious:
The latter, although indeed it be necessarily inferred by the former, is
nevertheless not a prior requisite, but a posterior result of the divine
ordination. What they deemed absolute on the part of God was his
everlasting purpose to save his elect in Christ, or real Christians
considered as a whole, and contrasted with the remainder of the human
race; the completion of this purpose being regulated by peculiar
circumstances, operating as inferior causes of a particular segregation.
For, persuaded of his good will toward all men without distinction, of
his being indiscriminately disposed to promote the salvation of all, and
of his seriously (not _fictitiously_, as Calvin taught) including all in
the universal promise of Christianity, they imputed to him nothing like
a partial choice, no limitation of favours, no irrespective exclusion of
persons; but assuming the Christian character as the sole ground of
individual preference, they believed that every baptized infant, by
being made a member of Christ, not by being comprised in a previous
arbitrary decree, is truly the elect of God, and, dying in infancy,
certain of eternal happiness; that he who, in maturer years, becomes
polluted by wilful crime, loses that state of salvation which before he
possessed; that nevertheless by true repentance, and conversion to the
Father of mercy and God of all consolation, he is again reinstated in
it; and that, by finally persevering in it, he at length receives the
kingdom prepared for every sincere Christian before the foundation of
the world. Can any man, whom prejudice has not blinded, rank these
sentiments with those of Calvin? It may seem almost unnecessary to
subjoin, that the Lutherans held the defectibility of grace; its
indefectibility being a position supported but by those who think that
the Redeemer died for a selected few alone. Upon the whole then it
appears, that the Lutherans, affecting not in any way to philosophize,
but committing themselves solely to the guidance of Scripture, differed
from the church of Rome in several important particulars. For, although
on some points they coincided with her, although they inculcated, with
equal zeal and upon a better principle, both the universality and the
defectibility of grace, as well as a conditional admission into the
number of the elect, they nevertheless were entirely at variance with
her upon the very foundation of the system. Thus while their opponents
taught, that predestination consists in the prospective discrimination
of individuals by divine favour, according to the foreseen ratio of
every man’s own merit,--works of congruity deserving grace here, and
works of condignity eternal life hereafter, and that in this way it
principally rests upon human worth; the Lutherans, disclaiming every
idea of such a discrimination, placed it upon the same basis as they
assumed in the case of justification,--that of an effectual redemption
by Christ. Instead, therefore, of holding the election of individuals as
men _on account of personal dignity or worthiness_, they maintained the
election of a general mass as Christians _on account of Christ alone_;
adding that we are admitted into that number, or discarded from it, in
the eye of Heaven, proportionably as we embrace or reject the salvation
offered to all, embracing it with a faith inseparable from genuine
virtue, or rejecting it by incredulity and crime. For neither in this,
nor in the instance of justification, did they exclude repentance and a
true conversion of the heart and life, as _necessary requisites_, but
only as _meritorious causes_, from the contemplation of God’s omniscient
intellect. Let those,” said Luther, who wish to be elected avoid an evil
conscience, and not transgress the divine commandments.” Instructed then
by the unerring page of truth, they asserted no other predestination
than what is there expressly revealed; that of the good and gracious
Father of mankind, who from eternity has been disposed to promote the
happiness and welfare of all men, has destined Christ to be the Saviour
of the whole world, and withholden from none the exalted hope of the
Christian calling. Convinced that this is the only predestination which
Christianity discloses, and consequently the only one which we can
either with safety or certainty embrace, they discouraged every attempt
at investigating the will, out of the word, of God; every attempt at
effecting impossibilities, at unveiling the secret counsels of Him who
shrouds his divine perfections in darkness impervious to mortal eyes.
With such investigations, indeed, the world had already been
sufficiently bewildered by the scholastics, who, endowed with a ready
talent at perplexing what before was plain, and at rendering
abstruseness still more abstruse, had made the subject totally
inexplicable, vainly labouring to develope with precision that
mysterious will upon which the wise must ever think it _folly_, and the
good _impiety_, to speculate. Disquisitions of this presumptuous nature,
from a personal experience of their mischievous tendency, Luther abjured
himself, and deprecated in others. Are we, miserable men,” he exclaimed,
“who as yet are incapable of comprehending the rays of God’s promises,
the glimmerings of his precepts and his works, although confirmed by
words and miracles, are we, infirm and impure, eager to comprehend all
that is great and glorious in the solar light itself, in the
incomprehensible light of a miraculous Godhead? Do we not know, that God
dwells in splendour inaccessible? And yet do we approach, or rather do
we presume to approach it? Are we not aware, that his judgments are
inscrutable? And yet do we endeavour to scrutinize them? And these
things we do, before we are habituated even to the faint lustre of his
promises and precepts, with a vision still imperfect, blindly rushing
into the majesty of that light which, secret and unseen, has never been
by words or miracles exhibited. What wonder, then, if, while we explore
its majesty, we are overwhelmed with its glory?” For a farther account
of the Lutheran views on predestination, see the last pages of the
article CALVINISM.
After this very ample exposition of the sentiments of the German
reformers on the chief points of Christian doctrine, it is only
necessary to give a few additional particulars in corroboration of some
portions of the preceding statement. The high estimation in which Luther
held the productions of the judicious Melancthon is apparent from a
passage in the preface to the first volume of Luther’s works, dated
1545. In that year also appeared the last amended edition of
Melancthon’s Common Places,” to which he alludes. Long and earnestly,”
he says, have I resisted the importunity of those who have wished me to
publish my works, or, to speak more correctly, my confused and
disorderly lucubrations; not only because I was unwilling that the
labours of the ancients should be turned aside by my novelties, and that
the reader should be hindered from perusing them, but likewise because
now, by the grace of God, a great number of methodical books are extant;
among which the _Common Places_ of our Philip claim the preference, for
by them a divine and a bishop may be abundantly and satisfactorily
confirmed, so as to become powerful in the word of the doctrine of
piety, especially when the Holy Bible itself can now be procured in
almost every language. But the want of order in the matters to be
discussed in my books induced, nay compelled, me to render them a sort
of rude and indigested chaos, which it would now require even on my part
no small exertion to digest into a methodical form. Under the influence
of such motives as these, I was desirous that all my productions should
be buried in perpetual oblivion, that they might give place to others of
a better description.” In this preface Luther also gives the following
testimony to the general usefulness of Melancthon’s labours: In the same
year Philip Melancthon had been called to this university by Prince
Frederick to fill the chair of Greek professor, but no doubt with the
intention that I should have him as my colleague in the labours of the
divinity professorship. For his works are sufficiently in proof of what
the Lord hath effected by this his choice instrument, not only in polite
literature, but in theology, although Satan be enraged and all his
party.” Though the early opinions of Luther upon the doctrine of a
philosophical necessity appear to have been occasionally expressed in a
harsh and repulsive manner, yet his followers pertinaciously contend
that even the harshest of them cannot, with propriety, be construed into
a sense favourable to the Calvinistical system. Those of Melancthon in
the first edition of his _Loci Theologici_, although occurring but in
one or two instances, were nevertheless still more offensive, and less
capable of a mitigated interpretation. So far indeed did he carry the
doctrine of divine predetermination as to degrade man to a level with
the brutes, as will be obvious from the following passage in the edition
of 1525. Lastly, divine predestination takes away human liberty. For all
things come to pass according to divine predestination, not only
external works, but also internal thoughts in all creatures.” After the
Diet of Augsburgh in 1530, we hear no more of this obnoxious tenet.
Indeed so early as 1527 these reformers seem to have abandoned it. At
least, when in that year a form of doctrine was drawn up for the
churches of Saxony, free will in acts of morality was thus inculcated:
The human will is so far free as to be able in some sort to perform the
righteousness of the flesh, or civil justice, when it is obliged by the
law and by force not to steal, not to kill, not to commit adultery, &c.
Therefore let ministers teach, that it is in a measure in our own hands
to restrain carnal affections, and to perform civil justice; and let
them diligently exhort men to a strict and proper course of life,
because God also requires this kind of righteousness, and will
grievously punish those men who live so negligent of their duty. For as
we are bound to make a good use of the other gifts of God, so is it
likewise our duty to employ to good purpose those powers which God has
bestowed on nature.” For God takes no delight in that ferocious mode of
life which is adopted by some men, who, after having heard that we are
not justified by our own powers and works, foolishly dream that they
will wait until they be drawn by God, and in the mean time their course
of life is most impure. Such persons God will most severely punish; and
they must therefore be earnestly reprehended and admonished by those
whose province it is to teach in the churches.” This work, which is
generally termed, _Libellus Visitationis Saxonic_, was first composed in
German by Melancthon in 1527, and afterward republished by Luther with a
preface, in which he thus expresses himself: We do not publish these as
rigorous precepts, nor do we again employ ourselves in drawing up
pontifical decrees, but we relate matters of history and public deeds,
and present the confession and symbol of our belief.” The previous
controversy between Luther and Erasmus, on the topic of free will, had
probably tended to produce an amelioration of the doctrinal system of
the Lutheran church. In this view it was not without reason that Erasmus
made the following reflections in a letter dated 1528, soon after he had
seen this production: The Lutheran fever, every succeeding day, assumes
a milder form; so that Luther himself now writes recantations on almost
every thing, and on this account he is considered by the rest as a
heretic and a madman.” Similar caustic remarks occur in other letters of
Erasmus; and as, in those days of high religious excitement, taunts of
this kind were considered too good to be confined as secrets within the
breast of the correspondents to whom they were addressed, it is not
improbable that Luther might be prevented through them, among other
reasons, from making farther doctrinal concessions; it being no uncommon
circumstance in the history of the human mind for persons of otherwise
strong understandings to be under the influence of this pitiable
weakness. That Melancthon not only abandoned but reprehended the
doctrine in 1529, we cannot doubt, because his own express testimony in
proof of it remains on record. In a letter to Christopher Stathmio,
dated March 20th, 1559, which was not long before his death, he notices
the subject in these words: Thirty years ago, not through the desire of
contention, but on account of the glory of God, and for the sake of
discipline, I sharply reprehended the Stoical paradoxes concerning
necessity, because they are reproachful toward God and injurious to
morals. At this time the legions of the Stoics are waging war against
me; but in the answer which I have written in opposition to the Bavarian
inquisition, I have once more pointed out in a modest manner that
opinion (on fate or predestination) in which anxious minds may acquiesce
and be at rest.” On consulting the tract to which his letter alludes, we
find him employing this strong and unequivocal language: I also openly
reject and abhor those Stoical and Manichean furies who affirm that all
things _necessarily_ happen, evil as well as good actions. But
concerning these I refrain at present from any lengthened discussion;
only I entreat young people to avoid these monstrous opinions, which are
contumelious against God, and pernicious to morals.” From the _Loci
Theologici_, in which Melancthon had first introduced this obnoxious
tenet, he expunged _necessity_ in the edition of 1533, and inserted in
its place the opposite one of _contingency_. The following are extracts
from this amended work: The discussion on _the cause of sin_ and that on
_contingency_ have sometimes greatly agitated the church, and excited
mighty tragedies. Men of acute minds collect multitudes of inextricable
and absurd things about both these subjects. Because there is some
danger in them, young people must be warned to abstain from these
interminable disputes, and in preference to search out a simple and
pious opinion, beneficial to religion and morals, in which they may
abide, nor suffer themselves to be withdrawn from it by those fallacious
tricks of disputations. But this is a pious and true sentiment to be
embraced with both hands, and to be retained rather by the whole
heart,--that God is not the cause of sin, and that he does not will sin.
But the causes of sin are the will of the devil, and the will of man.”
But this sentiment being once laid down, that God is not the cause of
sin, it evidently follows that contingency must be granted. The freedom
of the will is the cause of the contingency of our actions.” Neither
must the delirious doatings about Stoical fate, or about necessity, be
conveyed into the church, because they are inextricable and sometimes
injurious to piety and morals.” From these opinions it becomes the pious
to be abhorrent in their ears and in their hearts.” These extracts serve
to prove, that Melancthon reprobated the idea of introducing into the
church the doctrine of Stoical fate, before Calvin had distinguished
himself either as an author or a reformer. Into his subsequent
productions of almost every description Melancthon introduced the
doctrine of contingency, and strenuously defended it, particularly in
the amended edition of his _Loci Theologici_ in 1545. Luther never
formally revoked any of his own writings; but on this last corrected
production of his friend, as we have shown, he bestowed the highest
commendations. Yet he did not scruple publicly to assert, that at the
beginning of the Reformation he had not completely settled his creed. In
the seventh volume of his works this sentence is found: I have also
published the confession of my faith; in which I have openly testified
what and how I believe, and in what articles I think myself at length to
be at rest.” He seems, indeed, to have generally avoided the subject,
from the period of his controversy with Erasmus, to the publication of
his Commentary on Genesis,--his last work of any importance. But in
this, after a long argument to prove that, as we have no knowledge of
the unrevealed Deity, we have nothing to do with those things which are
above our comprehension; and that we are not to reason upon
predestination out of Christianity; he thus apologizes for his former
opinions: “It has been my wish diligently and accurately to deliver
these charges and admonitions; because, after my death, many persons
will publish my books to the world, and by that course will confirm
errors of every kind and their own delirious ravings. But among other
matters I have written, that all things are absolute and necessary; but
at the same time I added, that we must behold God as he is revealed to
us, as we sing in the Psalm, ‘Jesus Christ is the Lord of sabaoth, nor
is there any other God.’ In several other passages I have used similar
expressions. But these people will pass by all such passages, and will
only seize upon those concerning a hidden Deity. You, therefore, who now
hear me, recollect that I have taught this,--We must not inquire
concerning the predestination of a hidden God, but we must abide and
acquiesce in those things which are revealed by calling and by the
ministry of the word.” But in other passages of my different works I
have inculcated the same sentiments, and I now deliver them again with
an audible voice; therefore I am excused.” For the more modern state of
the Lutheran church see NEOLOGY.
The following account of the union between the Lutheran and Calvinistic
churches, as given in the advertisement to Baron Von Wessenberg’s
Correspondence with the Court of Rome,” may not be uninteresting to the
reader: The Germans have just set the noble example of forming a union
between these two branches of the Protestant faith. This union, which
originated, we believe, in the grand duchy of Nassau, has taken place
almost universally throughout Germany; and the separate appellations of
Lutheran and Calvinistic churches have merged in the common appellation
of the Evangelical church. The Lutheran and Reformed churches of Prussia
met in synod together, on the invitation of their monarch, the first of
October, 1817, and soon came to an agreement; and the union was
celebrated on the day of the tri-centenary festival of the Reformation.
A similar synod of the Lutherans and Calvinists in Hesse-Cassel was held
at Hanau in May and June, 1818, and attended with the same result. The
royal confirmation was given to the Bavarian union on the first of
October following. Saxe-Weimar, and most of the other small states have
followed this example. The Protestant Germans have now, therefore, only
one Gospel, one temple, one divine Instructer, and one mode of
communion; and, what is singular, and highly honourable to their
liberality, this union was every where accomplished with the greatest
ease, and without a dissentient voice having been raised against it.”
How different was this result from that of the synods and councils of
other times; and what a change in the state of public opinion does it
indicate! And yet it is to be feared that the _liberality_ from which
this union has resulted, is rather indifference to the grand
peculiarities of the Christian faith than mutual charity.
Luther, an Augustine friar, who was born at Isleben, in Upper Saxony, in
the year 1483. He possessed an invincible magnanimity, and uncommon
vigour and acuteness of genius. He first took offence at the indulgences
which were granted in 1517, by Pope Leo X., to those who contributed
toward finishing St. Peter’s church at Rome, Luther being then professor
of divinity at Wittemberg. Those indulgences promised remission of all
sins, past, present, and to come, however enormous their nature, to all
who were rich enough to purchase them. At this Luther raised his warning
voice; and in ninety-five propositions, which he maintained publicly at
Wittemberg, September 30, 1517, exposed the doctrine of indulgences,
which led him to attack also the authority of the pope. This was the
commencement of that memorable revolution in the church which is styled
the Reformation; though Mosheim fixes the era of the Reformation from
1520, when Luther was excommunicated by the pope.
In 1523 Luther drew up a liturgy, that, in many things, differed but
little from the Mass Book; but he left his followers to make farther
reforms, as they saw them necessary; and, in consequence, the forms of
worship in the Lutheran churches vary in points of minor importance: but
they agree in reading the Scriptures publicly, in offering prayers and
praises to God through the Mediator in their own language, in popular
addresses to the congregation, and the reverend administration of the
sacraments.
The Augsburgh Confession (see _Confessions_) forms the established creed
of the Lutheran church. The following are a few of the principal points
of doctrine maintained by this great reformer, and a few of the
Scriptures by which he supported them.
1. That the Holy Scriptures are the only source whence we are to draw
our religious sentiments, whether they relate to faith or practice, John
v, 39; 1 Cor. iv, 16; 2 Tim. iii, 15–17. Reason also confirms the
sufficiency of the Scriptures; for, if the written word be allowed to be
a rule in one case, how can it be denied to be a rule in another?
2. That justification is the effect of faith exclusive of good works;
and that faith ought to produce good works purely in obedience to God,
and not in order to our justification; for St. Paul, in his Epistle to
the Galatians, strenuously opposed those who ascribed our justification,
though but in part, to works: If righteousness come by the law, then
Christ is dead in vain,” Gal. ii, 21. Therefore it is evident we are not
justified by the law, or by our works; but to him that believeth, sin is
pardoned, and Christ’s righteousness imputed. This article of
justification by faith alone, Luther used frequently to call _articulus
stantis vel cadentis ecclesiæ_;” that by which the church must stand or
fall.
3. That no man is able to make satisfaction for his sins; for our Lord
teaches us to say, when we have done all things that are commanded us,
We are unprofitable servants,” Luke xvii, 10. Christ’s sacrifice is
alone sufficient to satisfy for sin, and nothing need be added to the
infinite value of his atonement.
Luther also rejected tradition, purgatory, penance, auricular
confession, masses, invocation of saints, monastic vows, and other
doctrines of the church of Rome. Luther differed widely from Calvin on
matters of church discipline; and on the presence of Christ’s body in
the sacrament. His followers also deviated from him in some things;
but the following may be considered as a fair statement of their
principles, and the difference between them and the Calvinists: 1. The
Lutherans in Germany reject both Episcopacy and Presbyterianism, but
appoint superintendents for the government of the church, who preside
in their consistories, when that office is not supplied by a delegate
from the civil government; and they hold meetings in the different
towns and villages, to inquire into the state of the congregations and
the schools. The appointment of superintendents, and the presentation
to livings, is generally in the prince, or ecclesiastical courts. The
Swedes and Danes have an ecclesiastical hierarchy, similar to that of
England. 2. They differ in their views of the sacrament of the Lord’s
Supper. All the Lutherans reject _trans_-substantiation, but affirm
that the body and blood of Christ are _materially_ present in the
sacrament, though in an incomprehensible manner: this they called
_con-_substantiation. The Calvinists hold, on the contrary, that Jesus
Christ is only _spiritually_ present in the ordinance, by the external
signs of bread and wine. 3. They differ as to the doctrine of the
eternal decrees of God respecting man’s salvation. The modern
Lutherans maintain that the divine decrees, respecting the salvation
and misery of men, are founded upon the divine prescience. The
Calvinists, on the contrary, consider these decrees as absolute and
unconditional.
The Lutherans are generally divided into the moderate and the rigid. The
moderate Lutherans are those who submitted to the _Interim_ published by
the Emperor Charles V. Melancthon was the head of this party, and they
were called Adiaphorists. The rigid Lutherans are those who would not
endure any change in their master’s sentiments, of whom M. Flaccius was
the head. The Lutherans are partial to the use of instrumental music in
their churches, and admit statues and paintings, as the church of
England does, without allowing them any religious veneration; but the
rigid Calvinists reject these, and allow only the simplest forms of
psalmody. The modern Lutherans, about the close of the seventeenth
century, enlarged their liberality toward other sects, and gave up the
supposed right of persecution; confessing that Christians are
accountable to God only for their religious faith. They admit, also,
into their sacred canon the Epistle of St. James, which Luther rashly
rejected, because he could not reconcile it with St. Paul’s doctrine of
justification; and the Revelation of St. John, which Luther also
rejected, because he could not explain it.
On some of the doctrines of the early German reformers the
following remarks by Archbishop Laurence are entitled to high
consideration:--Against the church of Rome, which always, when
attacked, fled for protection to the shield of scholastical
sophistry, Luther had waged a dauntless, unwearied, and effectual
warfare. He entered the field of contest without distrust or
apprehension, under a rooted persuasion that the victory over
superstition would prove easy at an era when learning had already
begun to extend itself in every direction, and was become closely
allied to theological attainments. When the light of day appeared,
the genuine doctrines of Scripture and the primitive opinions of
antiquity began to be more distinctly perceived, and more
accurately investigated. With an attachment to classical pursuits
arose a zeal for Biblical inquiries. Taste and truth went hand in
hand. Luther, than whom no one was more capable of infusing energy
into the cause in which he had embarked, was of all men the worst
adapted to conduct it with moderation: he was calculated to
commence, but not to complete, reformation. Prompt, resolute, and
impetuous, he laboured with distinguished success in the
demolition of long established error; he also hastily threw
together the rough and cumbrous materials of a better system. But
the office of selecting, modelling, and arranging them was
consigned to a correcter hand. Melancthon was of a character
directly opposite to that of Luther, possessing every requisite to
render truth alluring and reformation respectable; and hence upon
him, in preference, the princes of Germany conferred the honour of
compiling the public profession of their faith. But it ought not
to be concealed, that, previously to the time when Lutheranism
first became settled upon a permanent basis, and added public
esteem to public notice, tenets were advanced, which retarded the
progress of truth more than all the subtleties of scholastic
argument, or the terrors of papal anathema. At the beginning of
the Reformation, as Melancthon frankly observed to Cranmer, there
existed among its advocates stoical disputations respecting fate,
offensive in their nature, and noxious in their tendency. The
duration, however, of these stoical disputations was but short;
and the substitution of a more rational as well as practical
system, for the space of more than twenty years before the
appearance of our Articles, prevented the founders of our church
from mistaking, for the doctrines of the Lutherans, those which
they themselves wished to forget, and were anxious to obliterate.
As we descend to particulars, it will be necessary to keep our eye
upon one prominent doctrine, which was eminently conspicuous in
all the controversies of the Lutherans,--the doctrine of COMPLETE
REDEMPTION BY CHRIST, which in their idea their adversaries (the
Papists) disregarded, who denied in effect the depravity of our
nature, believed the favour of Heaven in this life recoverable by
what was denominated _merit of congruity_, and, in the life to
come, by that which was termed _merit of condignity_, and founded
predestination upon merits of such a description; thus in every
instance, while retaining the name of Christians, rendering
Christianity itself superfluous. In opposition to opinions so
repugnant in many respects to reason, and in almost all so
subversive of Scripture, the Lutherans constantly pressed the
unsophisticated tenet of the atonement, not contractedly in a
Calvinistical, but comprehensively in a Christian, point of
view,--in one in which both Calvinists and Arminians alike embrace
it.
Upon original sin the doctrine of the schoolmen was no less fanciful and
remote from every Scriptural idea, than flattering to human pride. They
contended that the infection of our nature is not a mental but a mere
corporeal taint; that the body alone receives and transmits the
contagion, while the soul in all instances proceeds immaculate from the
hands of her Creator. This disposition to disease, such as they allowed
it to be, was considered by some of them as the effect of a peculiar
quality in the forbidden fruit; by others, as having been contracted
from the poisonous breath of the infernal spirit which inhabited the
serpent’s body. On one point they were all united; by preserving to the
soul the bright traces of her divine origin unimpaired, they founded on
a deceitful basis an arrogant creed, which, in declaring peace and
pardon to the sinner, rested more upon personal merit than the
satisfaction of a Saviour. In commenting upon the celebrated _Book of
Sentences_, a work once not much less revered than the Scriptures
themselves, the disciples of Lombard never failed to improve every hint
which tended to degrade the grace of God and exalt the pride of man.
Original sin the Romish schoolmen directly opposed to original
righteousness; and this they considered not as something connatural with
man, but as a superinduced habit or adventitious ornament, the removal
of which could not prove detrimental to the native powers of his mind.
When, therefore, they contemplated the effects of the fall, by confining
the evil to a corporeal taint, and not extending it to the nobler
faculties of the soul, they regarded man as an object of divine
displeasure, not because he possessed that which was offensive, but
because he was defective in that which was pleasing to the Almighty.
Adam, they said, received for himself and his posterity the gift of
righteousness, which he subsequently forfeited; in his loins we were
included, and by him were virtually represented: his will was ours, and
hence the consequence of his lapse is justly imputable to us his
descendants. By our natural birth, therefore, under this idea, we are
alienated from God, _innocent_ in our individual persons, but _guilty_
in that of him from whom we derived our existence; a guilt which,
although contracted through the fault of another, yet so closely adheres
to us that it effectually precludes our entrance at the gate of
everlasting life, until the reception of a new birth in baptism. Thus
they contended, that the sin of Adam conveys to us solely imputed guilt;
the corporeal infection which they admitted not being sin itself, but
only the subject matter of it,--not _peccatum_, but, according to their
phraseology, _fomes peccati_, a kind of fuel which the human will
kindles or not at pleasure. Such was the outline of the doctrine
maintained in the church of Rome. The tenet of the Lutherans, on the
other hand, is remarkable for its simplicity and perspicuity. Avoiding
all intricate questions upon the subject, they taught that original sin
is a corruption of our nature in a general sense, a depravation of the
mental faculties and the corporeal appetites; that the resplendent image
of the Deity, which man received at the creation of the world, although
not annihilated, is nevertheless greatly impaired; and that, in
consequence, the bright characters of unspotted sanctity, once deeply
engraven on his mind by the hand of the living God, are become
obliterated, the injury extending to his intellect, and affecting as
well his reason and his will as his affections and passions. To conceive
that inclination to evil incurs not in itself the disapprobation of
Heaven, appeared to them little better than an apology for crime, or at
least a dangerous palliation of that which the Christian’s duty compels
him not only to repress but abhor.
The case of Cornelius, whose prayers and alms are said to have ascended
up for a memorial before God, was often quoted, by the advocates of the
church of Rome, to prove the merit of works before the reception of
grace; to prove the human will capable, by its own inherent rectitude,
of deserving the favour and approbation of Heaven. The Lutherans, on the
other hand, contended, that the argument supported not the conclusion
drawn from it, and was therefore irrelevant; that the works of Cornelius
were not the _causes_ but the _effects_ of grace; and that this is
sufficiently apparent from the context, in which he is described as a
devout man, who feared God and prayed continually.” The disciples of
Lombard, in whatever mode disposed to pervert reason and annihilate
Scripture, universally held, that neither before nor after the fall was
man in himself capable of meriting heaven; that by the gratuitous
endowments of his creation, even in paradise, he was only enabled to
preserve his innocence, and not to sin; and that he was utterly
incompetent to proceed one step farther, efficaciously to will a
remunerable good, and by his natural exertions to obtain a reward above
his nature; original righteousness being reputed not a connate quality,
but a supernatural habit. Thus, he could resist evil, but not advance
good to perfection; could in some sense live well, by living free from
sin, but could not without divine aid so live as to deserve everlasting
life. For such a purpose they asserted that grace was necessary, to
operate upon his will in its primary determinations, and to co-operate
with it in its ultimate acts. It was, therefore, in the loss of this
celestial aid, this superadded gift, and not in any depravity of his
mind, that they supposed the principal evil derivable from his lapse to
consist; a loss, however, which, by a due exertion of his innate
abilities, they deemed to be retrievable; and hence sprung that
offensive doctrine of human sufficiency which, in the Lutheran’s eye,
completely obscured the glory of the Gospel, and which, when applied to
the sinner’s conscience, taught the haughty to presume, and the humble
to despair. According, then, to the system under consideration, the
favour of God in this life, and his beatific vision in the life to come,
are both attainable by personal merit; the former by _congruous_, as it
was termed, the latter by _condign_; the one without, the other with,
the assistance of grace. By our natural strength, it was said, we can
fulfil the commands of God as far as their obligation extends; yet was
it added, that we cannot fulfil them according to the intention of the
divine Legislator; an intention of rewarding only those who obey them in
virtue formed by charity, under the influence of a quality rather
regulating the tendency, than augmenting the purity, of the action. They
stated, that we may so prepare ourselves for grace as to become entitled
to it congruously, not as to a debt which in strict justice God is bound
to pay, but as to a grant which it is congruous in him to give, and
which it would be inconsistent with his attributes to withhold. This
favourite doctrine was supported by every denomination of scholastics,
and by every individual of the church of Rome. Congruous merit was
universally esteemed a pearl above all price, the intrinsic value of
which attracted the regard, and conciliated the benevolence, of the
Almighty. According to their conception, we are endowed with an innate
propensity to good, which vice itself can never obliterate, and are able
not only to reverence and adore the supreme Being, but to love him above
other objects. They supposed man competent no less to the efficient
practice, than to the barren admiration, of holiness; enabled as well to
obey the laws, as to love the goodness, of the Almighty; and, if not to
deserve the rewards, at least to discharge the obligations, of religion.
Impressed, therefore, with such exalted notions of human ability, and
forgetful of the Christian propitiation for sin, the sophists of the
schools maintained, that the soul of man possesses in the freedom, or
rather in the capacity, of her WILL a faculty almost divine. Stimulated
by the most upright propensities, and undepraved in her noblest powers,
she directs her progress in the path of truth and the road to bliss, by
the pure and inextinguishable light of an unperverted reason. Although
mutable in her decisions, nevertheless complete controller of her
conduct, she becomes at pleasure either the servant of righteousness or
the slave of sin; and, disdaining to be anticipated by God himself,
prevents him in his supernatural gifts by a previous display of her own
meritorious deeds, challenging, as a congruous right, that which only
could have been otherwise conferred as a favour undeserved. By the bare
observance of my holy order,” exclaimed the secluded devotee, I am able
not solely to obtain grace for myself, but, by the works which I then
may do, can accumulate merit sufficient both to supply my own wants and
those of others; so that I may sell the superabundance of my acquired
treasure.” Can we be surprised that a reformer of Luther’s manly
disposition, who wrote without reserve and reasoned without control,
when adverting to opinions of so noxious a tendency, should sometimes,
from excess of zeal, lose sight of moderation in his censures? The
Lutherans commenced the attack upon these unscriptural dogmas, under a
persuasion that the position of their opponents militated against the
leading principles of Christianity. If man,” they said, be capable of
pleasing God by his own works abstractedly considered, without divine
assistance, where is the necessity, and what is the utility, of that
assistance?” They argued, that, were it possible for the moral virtues
of the mind by their own efficiency to render our persons acceptable to
God and obtain his lost favour, no need would exist of any other
satisfaction for sin, and thus the whole scheme of Gospel redemption
would have been fruitless, and Christ have died in vain. While,
therefore, the doctrine of the atonement presented nothing but _a cloud
and darkness to their adversaries, it gave light by night to these_; on
them it shone, amidst surrounding gloom, with lustre unobscured. Luther
advanced a proposition which proved highly offensive to the Papists, and
which they never ceased to condemn and calumniate. His assertion was,
that he who exerts himself to the utmost of his ability still continues
to sin. On the other side, unassisted man was thought incapable of
performing an action remunerably good, or, as it was usually termed,
condignly meritorious, even before his lapse; and that consequently, in
his fallen state, all to which he was conceived competent by his innate
strength was _not to sin_. When Luther therefore drew up his thesis for
public disputation against the tenet of congruous works, if little
delicacy, yet some caution, and much discrimination, appeared requisite.
Had he stated them to be thus good in a scholastic sense, he would have
completely lost sight of his object, and allowed more than even his
opponents themselves. Had he described them as not demeritorious, or, in
other words, not sinful, he would have precisely maintained the adverse
position, and might consequently have spared his labour, at the same
time that he would have tacitly acknowledged them to possess, what he
could not consistently with truth attribute to them, every natural
perfection of virtue and holiness. Under what denomination, then, could
he class them, except under that of _sinful_? a denomination which he
the more readily adopted because, even among his adversaries themselves,
the words SIN and GRACE, as he remarked, were in general immediately
opposed to each other. Anxious to rescue Christian theology from the
grasp of those who embraced only to betray, the Lutherans laboured to
restore that importance to the doctrine of redemption with which the
Scriptures invest it, but of which, by a subtle perversity, it had been
deprived. The principal object, therefore, in their view evidently was,
to Christianize the speculations of the schools; and the principal drift
of their argument is to prove, that human virtue, how extravagantly
soever extolled by a vain philosophy, is wholly insufficient (because
imperfect) to merit the favour of Heaven. Allowing no medium between
righteousness and unrighteousness, the approbation and disapprobation of
the Almighty, characterizing that as sinful which is confessedly not
holy, and thus annihilating every ground of self-presumption, they
inculcated the necessity of contemplating with the eye of faith those
means of reconciliation which Christianity alone affords. But it has
been insinuated, that the Lutheran doctrine went to prove man’s total
inability to extricate himself from crime, until the arrival of some
uncertain moment, which brings with it a regeneration from on high, the
sudden transfusion of a new light and new virtues. But those who thus
conceive of it are not probably aware, that Melancthon, the venerable
author of the Augsburgh Confession, warmly reprobates this precise idea,
which he denominates _a Manichean conceit and a horrible falsehood_.
Upon the abstract question of free will it is indeed true, that
Melancthon, no less than Luther, at first held opinions which he was
happy to retract. But when this is acknowledged it should be added, that
he made ample amends for his indiscretion by not only expunging the
offensive passages from the single work which contained them, but by
introducing others of a nature diametrically opposite. And although the
more inflexible coadjutor of Melancthon was too lofty to correct what he
had once made public, and too magnanimous to regard the charge of
inconsistency which his adversaries urged against him; yet what his
better judgment approved clearly appears from a preface written not long
before his death; in which, while he expressed an anxiety to have his
own chaotic labours, as he styled them, buried in eternal oblivion, he
recommended in strong terms, as a work admirably adapted to form the
Christian divine, that very performance of his friend which was
remarkable for something more than a mere recantation of the opinions
alluded to. It was not against any conceived deficiency in the quality
of our virtue that they argued, but against its supposed competency,
whether wrought in or out of grace, with greater or less degrees of
purity, to effect that which the oblation of Christ alone accomplishes.
Upon both points Luther treated the doctrine of his adversaries as
altogether frivolous, and incapable of corroboration by a single fact.
Futile, however, as the scholastical tenet appeared to be, although
deficient in proof and unsupported by example, upon this, he remarked
with indignation and grief, was founded the whole system of papal
delusion.
Justification was on both sides supposed to consist entirely in the
remission of sins. The popish scholastics, on this head, were
remarkably distinct in their ideas, and express in their language.
They represented it as an effect produced by the infusion of divine
grace into the mind; not as a consequent to a well spent life, but as
preceding all remunerable obedience, as the intervening point between
night and day, the gloom of a guilty and the light of a self-approving
conscience; or, in other words, and to adopt their own phraseology, as
the exact boundary where merit of congruity ends and where merit of
condignity begins, the infallible result of a previous disposition on
our part, which never fails of alluring from on high that supernatural
quality which, being itself love, renders the soul beloved. While the
Lutherans, however, adhered to the general import of the term as
understood in the schools, they waged an incessant warfare upon
another point; while they allowed that justification consists in the
remission of sin, they denied that this remission is to be acquired by
the merit of the individual. Their scholastic opponents maintained
that man is justified in the sight of God in consequence of his own
preparation, and on account of his personal qualities. They, on the
other band, argued with an inflexibility which admitted of no
compromise, that, possessing not merits of his own to plead, man
freely received forgiveness through the mercy of God solely on account
of the merits of Christ. The effective principle, therefore, or
_meritorious cause of justification_, was the great point contested.
The doctrine of the popish divines, explained more at large, was this:
When the sinner, conscious of his past transgressions, inquired where
he was to seek the expiation of his crime, and deliverance from the
dreadful consequences of it, the general answer was, _In the merit of
penitence_; a merit capable of annihilating guilt, and appeasing the
anger of incensed Omnipotence. He, they argued, who, having disobeyed
the laws of Heaven, is desirous of returning into that state of
acceptance from which he has fallen, must not expect free forgiveness;
but previously by unfeigned sorrow of heart deserve the restoration of
grace, and, with it, the obliteration of his offences. To effect this
desirable purpose he is bound strictly to survey and detest his former
conduct, accurately to enumerate his transgressions and deeply feel
them; and, impressed with a due sense of their magnitude, impurity,
and consequences, to condemn his folly and deplore his fault, which
have made him an outcast of Heaven, and exposed him to eternal misery.
So far he can proceed by that operation of the mind which they
denominated ATTRITION, and which, being within the sphere of his
natural powers, they regarded as _congruous piety meritorious of
justification_, as a preparation of the soul more or less necessary to
receive and merit justifying grace. When, therefore, he is arrived at
this point, ATTRITION ceases and CONTRITION commences; the habit of
sin is expelled, while that of holiness is superinduced in its stead,
and with the infusion of charity, the plastic principle of a new
obedience, justification becomes complete. But even here it was not
conceived that a total deliverance takes place; a liberation from
guilt and _eternal_ punishment is effected, but not from _temporal_,
which is never remitted unless either by the infliction of some
personal suffering or satisfactory compensation required of him who is
already justified and approved by Heaven. However, to accomplish this
remaining object, nothing more is wanting than a continuation, to a
sufficient intensity, of that compunction of heart which is now
denominated CONTRITION, grace supplying the defects of nature, and
enabling penitential merit not only to justify, but to obtain
exemption from punishment of every species. But so great appeared to
the popish scholastics the frailty of man and the severity of God,
that no inconsiderable difficulty occurred in the due application of
this favourite doctrine to individuals; for the means of expiation,
they imagined, ought always to be proportionate to the magnitude of
the offences. How,” they reasoned, are we to be assured that our
contrition has been either sufficient or sincere, and whether it has
been so in the obliteration not only of one crime, but of all; whether
it has atoned for past transgressions of every kind, the number of
which may perplex, as well as their guilt confound, us?” Instead,
therefore, of penitence in its strictest acceptation as a perfect
virtue, God, they said, in condescension to human infirmity, has
substituted for general practice _the sacrament of penitence_, which,
for the attainment of full remission, requires only a moderate
compunction of soul, with confession to the priest, and the discharge
of such satisfaction as he may enjoin. And, still lower to reduce the
terms of acceptance, they even argued that it is not absolutely
necessary for the penitent to experience an entire conversion of
heart, but only not to oppose the impediment of mortal crime, to feel
some displeasure at his past conduct, and to express a resolution of
amending it in future. But, after all, and in spite of the boasted
authority of the keys, complete confidence in divine forgiveness was
never inculcated; for it was neither the interest nor the inclination
of the church of Rome to teach the simple doctrine of Christian faith,
but rather to involve it in metaphysical obscurity. Under the pretext,
therefore, of relieving the throbbing breast from its apprehensions,
they had recourse to numerous inventions for propping the insecure
fabric of penitential hope; asserting, among other extravagancies,
that the sacraments are in themselves efficacious by virtue of their
own operation, exclusively of all merit in the recipient; and that the
sacrament of the altar, in particular, acts so powerful in this
respect as to communicate grace not only to those who partake of it,
but to others from whom it is received by substitution, provided its
operation be not hindered by confessedly flagrant immorality. So
deeply rooted in the minds of the papists had become the persuasion of
its thus effecting the best of purposes, and that even without the
necessity of an actual participation of it by him upon whom the
benefit is conferred, that the celebration of the mass was universally
regarded as the means of appeasing the anger of Heaven, and obtaining
pardon and peace, of procuring divine assistance for the living, and,
for the dead, deliverance from the bitter pains of purgatory. Nor by
the sacraments alone, but by every good external work, as well as
internal disposition, was justifying grace supposed to be merited
_congruously_, and satisfaction for sin to be made _condignly_. In
monastical institutions, likewise, were found no mean materials for
similar purposes; for in those feigned religions,” as the homily _On
Good Works_ describes them, the devotees boasted of having lamps which
ran always over, able to _satisfy_ not only for their own sins, but
also for all other their benefactors, brothers and sisters of
religion, as most ungodly and craftily they had persuaded the
multitude of ignorant people; keeping in divers places marts or
markets of merits, being full of their holy relics, images, shrines,
and works of overflowing abundance, ready to be sold.” Yet, whether
the dubious penitent was instructed to derive consolation from the
efficacy of the sacraments, from his own personal qualities, or from
any of what Cranmer aptly termed “the fantastical works of man’s
invention,” it should be observed that he was not directly taught to
consider these as wholly superseding the virtue of repentance, but as
supplying his deficiencies in the performance of it; an incongruous
system of atonement, fabricated by the avarice of Rome, and the
obsequiousness of scholastical philosophy, to augment the treasures
and extend the influence of the church, to extinguish the light of
Gospel truth, and, while keeping the world at large in ignorance, to
hold the conscience of the individual in slavery. Upon the whole,
then, the scholastics maintained that justification is unattainable
without repentance, at least, without some degree of attrition on our
part; but in the common apprehension of the doctrine even this seems
to have been forgotten, and merit of congruity considered in a general
point of view as alone efficacious. Thus good works of every species
preceding grace were said to deserve it, and, by deserving grace, to
deserve the justifying principle. And always were they careful to
impute the cause of forgiveness, not to the mercy of God in Christ,
but to the sole change in the individual, to his transmutation from a
state of unrighteousness to one of righteousness, to his possession of
a quality which renders him a worthy object of divine approbation. For
in every instance personal merit was conceived to be the solid basis
upon which rests the complete remission of sin. Upon no one point,
perhaps, has the opinion of Luther been more misrepresented than upon
this. Some have ascribed to it a solifidian tendency, if not of the
most enthusiastical, at least, of the most unqualified, description.
But it seems indeed impossible accurately to comprehend the position
which he maintained, if we examine it in an insulated point of view,
unless we connect it with that of which in the church of Rome it
properly formed a part, and from which he never intended to separate
it,--the doctrine of penitence. In opposing the absurdity of papal
indulgences, (the first impiety against which his manly mind
revolted,) a ray of light, before unnoticed, darted upon him, and
opened a completely new scene, which, while it stimulated his efforts
as a reformer, animated his hopes as a Christian. Hence, averting with
disdain from the speculations of sophists, and turning to the sacred
page of revelation, he there beheld an affiance very different from
what the schools inculcated; and thus, while _their_ vain language
was, Repent, and trust to the efficacy of your contrition, either with
or without extraneous works, according to the degree of its intensity,
for the expiation of your offences;” _his_, more Scriptural and more
consoling, became simply this: Repent, and trust not for expiation to
your own merits of any kind, but solely to those of your Redeemer.”
Rejecting the dreams of their adversaries with respect to the nature
and effects of this important duty, they represented it as consisting
of two essential parts, CONTRITION and FAITH, the latter as always
associated with the former. Hence, in the Apology of their Confession,
they repeatedly declared a disavowal of all faith, except such as
exists in the contrite heart. Far was it from their intention to
encourage the presumptuous or fanatical sinner in a false security;
their object was very different and laudable,--they laboured to fix
the eye of him who both laments and detests his offences, upon the
only deserving object of human confidence and divine complacency.
Properly, then, as they frequently remarked, their doctrine of
justification was appropriated to troubled consciences, at every
period of true repentance, and particularly at the awful hour of
death, when the time for habitual proofs of amendment has elapsed, and
when the past appears replete with guilt and the future with terror.
At such moments, they taught not, with the schools, an affiance in
human merit, but in the gratuitous mercy of God through Christ: to
contrition, as a preparatory qualification or previous requisite, they
added faith; and from faith they deemed every principle of real piety
and virtue inseparable. Good works, or the outward fruits of an inward
renovation of mind, were said to _follow_ remission of sins;
_internal_ necessarily preceding _external_ reformation. For the
individual, they argued, must himself be good before the action can be
so denominated, be justified before it can be deemed just, and
accepted before it can prove acceptable,--distinguishing between the
primary admission into God’s favour, and the subsequent preservation
of that favour.
The unfathomable depths of divine predestination and predetermination
human reason in vain attempts to sound, finite faculties to scan
infinite, or the limited intellect of man to comprehend the immensity of
the Godhead. Erasmus, a peculiar favourite with the reformers of our own
country, when contemplating this inexplicable subject, observed, that in
the Holy Scriptures there are certain secret recesses, which God is
unwilling for us too minutely to explore; and which, if we endeavour to
explore, in proportion as we penetrate farther, our minds become more
and more oppressed with darkness and stupefaction; that thus we might
acknowledge the inscrutable majesty of the divine wisdom, and the
imbecility of the human mind.” Congenial, also, with the feelings and
sentiments of Erasmus upon this point were those of Luther. To acquire
any knowledge,” he remarked, of a deity not revealed in Scripture, to
know what his existence is, his actions and dispositions, belongs not to
me. My duty is only this; to know what are his precepts, his promises,
and his threatenings. Pernicious and pestilent is the thought of
investigating causes, and brings with it inevitable ruin, especially
when we ascend too high, and wish to philosophize upon predestination.”
How differently Calvin felt upon the same subject, and with what little
reserve, or rather with what bold temerity, he laboured to scrutinize
the unrevealed Divinity, is too well known to require any thing beyond a
bare allusion to the circumstance. His sentiments, however, were much
less regarded than some are disposed to allow; and upon this particular
question, so far were they from having attained their full celebrity at
the period when the articles of the church of England were framed, that
they were not taught without opposition even in his own unimportant
territory of Geneva. For at that precise era he was publicly accused (by
Sebastian Castellio) of making God the author of sin; and although, not
contented with silencing, he first imprisoned and afterward banished his
accuser, yet he could not expel the opinions of his adversary. While the
church of Rome maintained a predestination to life of one man in
preference to another individually _on account of personal merit_, the
Lutherans taught a gratuitous predestination of Christians collectively,
of those whom God has chosen in Christ out of mankind; and by this
single point of difference were the contending opinions principally
contradistinguished. With us the system of Calvin still retains so many
zealous advocates, that to a modern ear the very term PREDESTINATION
seems to convey a meaning only conformable with _his_ particular system.
It should, however, be observed that this word was in familiar use for
centuries before the Reformation, in a sense, very different from what
Calvin imputed to it, not as preceding the divine prescience, but as
resulting from it, much in the same sense as that in which it has since
been supported by the Arminians. Yet, obvious as this appears, writers
of respectability strangely persuade themselves, that, immediately prior
to the Reformation, the doctrines of the church of Rome were completely
Calvinistical; a conclusion to which, certainly, none can subscribe who
are sufficiently conversant with the favourite productions of that time.
So far, indeed, was this from being the fact, that Calvin peculiarly
prided himself on departing from the common definition of the term,
which had long been adopted by the adherents of the schools, and
retained with a scrupulous precision. For while they held that the
expression _predestinati_ is exclusively applicable to the elect, whom
God, foreknowing as meritorious objects of his mercy, predestinates to
life; and while they appropriated that of _præsciti_ to the non-elect,
whose perseverance in transgression is simply foreknown; Calvin, on the
other side, treating the distinction as a frivolous subterfuge,
contended that God, decreeing the final doom of the elect and non-elect
irrespectively, predestinates both, not subsequently but previously to
all foreknowledge of their individual dispositions, especially devotes
the latter to destruction through the medium of crime, and creates them
by a fatal destiny to perish. Whatever, therefore, modern conjecture may
have attributed to the popish scholastics, it is certain that, abhorring
every speculation which tends in the remotest degree to make God the
author of sin, they believed that only salutary good is predestinated;
grace to those who deserve it _congruously_, and glory to those who
deserve it _condignly_. They maintained that almighty God, before the
foundations of the world were laid, surveying in his comprehensive idea,
or, as they phrased it, in his prescience of simple intelligence, the
possibilities of all things before he determined their actual existence,
foresaw that, if mankind were created, (although he willed the salvation
of all, and was inclined to assist all indifferently, yet) some would
deserve eternal happiness, and others eternal misery; and that therefore
he approved and elected the former, but disapproved or reprobated the
latter. Thus, grounding election upon foreknowledge, they contemplated
it, not as an arbitrary principle, separating one individual from
another under the influence of a blind chance or an irrational caprice;
but, on the contrary, as a wise and just principle, which presupposes a
diversity between those who are accepted and those who are rejected.
Hence it was, that in order to systematize upon this principle of
election, and to show how consistent it is as well with the justice as
the benevolence of the Deity, the will of God was considered in a double
point of view, as _absolute_ and _conditional_, or, in the technical
language of the schools, as _antecedent_ and _consequent_. In the first
instance, by his absolute or antecedent will, he was said to desire the
salvation of every man; in the latter, by his conditional or consequent
will, that only of those whom he foresaw abstaining from sin and obeying
his commandments: the one expressed his general inclination, the other
his particular resolution upon the view of individual circumstances and
conditions. To the inquiry, why some are unendowed with grace, their
answer was, Because some are not willing to receive it, and not because
God is unwilling to give it.” He,” they said, offers his light to all.
He is absent from none; but man absents himself from the present Deity,
like one who shuts his eyes against the noon-day blaze.” To the
foregoing statement it should be added, that they held an election, or
rather an ordination, to grace (which they expressly asserted to be
defectible) distinct from an election to glory; that according to them,
a name may be written in the book of life at one period, which at
another many be erased from it; and that predestination to eternal
happiness solely depends upon final perseverance in well doing. On the
whole it is evident, that they considered the dignity or worthiness of
the individual as the meritorious basis of predestination; merit of
congruity as the basis of a preordination to grace, and merit of
condignity as that of a preordination to glory. Thus, not more
fastidious in the choice of their terms than accurate in the use of
them, while they denied that the prescience of human virtue, correctly
speaking, could be the primary cause of the divine will, because nothing
in time can properly give birth to that which has existed from eternity,
they strenuously maintained it to be a secondary cause, the ratio or
rule in the mind of the Deity which regulated his will in the formation
of its ultimate decisions. Although in the established confession of
their faith the Lutherans avoided all allusion to the subject of
predestination, it was nevertheless introduced into another work of
importance, and of considerable public authority, the _Loci Theologici_
of Melancthon, a production which was every where received as the
standard of Lutheran divinity. Both Luther and Melancthon, after the
Diet of Augsburgh, kept one object constantly in view,--to inculcate
only what was plain and practical, and never to attempt philosophizing.
But to what, it may be asked, did the Lutherans object in the theory of
their opponents when they themselves abandoned the tenet of necessity?
Certainly, not to the sobriety and moderation of that part of it which
vindicated the justice, and displayed the benevolence, of the Almighty;
but, generally, to the principles upon which it proceeded; to the
_presumption_, in overleaping the boundary which Heaven has prescribed
to our limited faculties, and which we cannot pass without plunging into
darkness and error; and to its _impiety_ in disregarding, if not
despising, the most important truths of Christianity. A system of such a
nature they hesitated not to reject, anxious to conduct themselves by
the light of Scripture alone, nor presuming to be wise above what God
has been pleased to discover. Maintaining not a particular election of
personal favourites, either by an absolute will, or even a conditional
one, dependent upon the ratio of merit, but a general election of all
who, by baptism in their infancy, or by faith and obedience in mature
years, become the adopted heirs of Heaven; they conceived this to be the
only election to which the Gospel alludes, and, consequently, the only
one upon which we can speak with confidence, or reason without
presumption. If it be observed, that the selection of an integral body
necessarily infers that of its component parts, the answer is obvious:
The latter, although indeed it be necessarily inferred by the former, is
nevertheless not a prior requisite, but a posterior result of the divine
ordination. What they deemed absolute on the part of God was his
everlasting purpose to save his elect in Christ, or real Christians
considered as a whole, and contrasted with the remainder of the human
race; the completion of this purpose being regulated by peculiar
circumstances, operating as inferior causes of a particular segregation.
For, persuaded of his good will toward all men without distinction, of
his being indiscriminately disposed to promote the salvation of all, and
of his seriously (not _fictitiously_, as Calvin taught) including all in
the universal promise of Christianity, they imputed to him nothing like
a partial choice, no limitation of favours, no irrespective exclusion of
persons; but assuming the Christian character as the sole ground of
individual preference, they believed that every baptized infant, by
being made a member of Christ, not by being comprised in a previous
arbitrary decree, is truly the elect of God, and, dying in infancy,
certain of eternal happiness; that he who, in maturer years, becomes
polluted by wilful crime, loses that state of salvation which before he
possessed; that nevertheless by true repentance, and conversion to the
Father of mercy and God of all consolation, he is again reinstated in
it; and that, by finally persevering in it, he at length receives the
kingdom prepared for every sincere Christian before the foundation of
the world. Can any man, whom prejudice has not blinded, rank these
sentiments with those of Calvin? It may seem almost unnecessary to
subjoin, that the Lutherans held the defectibility of grace; its
indefectibility being a position supported but by those who think that
the Redeemer died for a selected few alone. Upon the whole then it
appears, that the Lutherans, affecting not in any way to philosophize,
but committing themselves solely to the guidance of Scripture, differed
from the church of Rome in several important particulars. For, although
on some points they coincided with her, although they inculcated, with
equal zeal and upon a better principle, both the universality and the
defectibility of grace, as well as a conditional admission into the
number of the elect, they nevertheless were entirely at variance with
her upon the very foundation of the system. Thus while their opponents
taught, that predestination consists in the prospective discrimination
of individuals by divine favour, according to the foreseen ratio of
every man’s own merit,--works of congruity deserving grace here, and
works of condignity eternal life hereafter, and that in this way it
principally rests upon human worth; the Lutherans, disclaiming every
idea of such a discrimination, placed it upon the same basis as they
assumed in the case of justification,--that of an effectual redemption
by Christ. Instead, therefore, of holding the election of individuals as
men _on account of personal dignity or worthiness_, they maintained the
election of a general mass as Christians _on account of Christ alone_;
adding that we are admitted into that number, or discarded from it, in
the eye of Heaven, proportionably as we embrace or reject the salvation
offered to all, embracing it with a faith inseparable from genuine
virtue, or rejecting it by incredulity and crime. For neither in this,
nor in the instance of justification, did they exclude repentance and a
true conversion of the heart and life, as _necessary requisites_, but
only as _meritorious causes_, from the contemplation of God’s omniscient
intellect. Let those,” said Luther, who wish to be elected avoid an evil
conscience, and not transgress the divine commandments.” Instructed then
by the unerring page of truth, they asserted no other predestination
than what is there expressly revealed; that of the good and gracious
Father of mankind, who from eternity has been disposed to promote the
happiness and welfare of all men, has destined Christ to be the Saviour
of the whole world, and withholden from none the exalted hope of the
Christian calling. Convinced that this is the only predestination which
Christianity discloses, and consequently the only one which we can
either with safety or certainty embrace, they discouraged every attempt
at investigating the will, out of the word, of God; every attempt at
effecting impossibilities, at unveiling the secret counsels of Him who
shrouds his divine perfections in darkness impervious to mortal eyes.
With such investigations, indeed, the world had already been
sufficiently bewildered by the scholastics, who, endowed with a ready
talent at perplexing what before was plain, and at rendering
abstruseness still more abstruse, had made the subject totally
inexplicable, vainly labouring to develope with precision that
mysterious will upon which the wise must ever think it _folly_, and the
good _impiety_, to speculate. Disquisitions of this presumptuous nature,
from a personal experience of their mischievous tendency, Luther abjured
himself, and deprecated in others. Are we, miserable men,” he exclaimed,
“who as yet are incapable of comprehending the rays of God’s promises,
the glimmerings of his precepts and his works, although confirmed by
words and miracles, are we, infirm and impure, eager to comprehend all
that is great and glorious in the solar light itself, in the
incomprehensible light of a miraculous Godhead? Do we not know, that God
dwells in splendour inaccessible? And yet do we approach, or rather do
we presume to approach it? Are we not aware, that his judgments are
inscrutable? And yet do we endeavour to scrutinize them? And these
things we do, before we are habituated even to the faint lustre of his
promises and precepts, with a vision still imperfect, blindly rushing
into the majesty of that light which, secret and unseen, has never been
by words or miracles exhibited. What wonder, then, if, while we explore
its majesty, we are overwhelmed with its glory?” For a farther account
of the Lutheran views on predestination, see the last pages of the
article CALVINISM.
After this very ample exposition of the sentiments of the German
reformers on the chief points of Christian doctrine, it is only
necessary to give a few additional particulars in corroboration of some
portions of the preceding statement. The high estimation in which Luther
held the productions of the judicious Melancthon is apparent from a
passage in the preface to the first volume of Luther’s works, dated
1545. In that year also appeared the last amended edition of
Melancthon’s Common Places,” to which he alludes. Long and earnestly,”
he says, have I resisted the importunity of those who have wished me to
publish my works, or, to speak more correctly, my confused and
disorderly lucubrations; not only because I was unwilling that the
labours of the ancients should be turned aside by my novelties, and that
the reader should be hindered from perusing them, but likewise because
now, by the grace of God, a great number of methodical books are extant;
among which the _Common Places_ of our Philip claim the preference, for
by them a divine and a bishop may be abundantly and satisfactorily
confirmed, so as to become powerful in the word of the doctrine of
piety, especially when the Holy Bible itself can now be procured in
almost every language. But the want of order in the matters to be
discussed in my books induced, nay compelled, me to render them a sort
of rude and indigested chaos, which it would now require even on my part
no small exertion to digest into a methodical form. Under the influence
of such motives as these, I was desirous that all my productions should
be buried in perpetual oblivion, that they might give place to others of
a better description.” In this preface Luther also gives the following
testimony to the general usefulness of Melancthon’s labours: In the same
year Philip Melancthon had been called to this university by Prince
Frederick to fill the chair of Greek professor, but no doubt with the
intention that I should have him as my colleague in the labours of the
divinity professorship. For his works are sufficiently in proof of what
the Lord hath effected by this his choice instrument, not only in polite
literature, but in theology, although Satan be enraged and all his
party.” Though the early opinions of Luther upon the doctrine of a
philosophical necessity appear to have been occasionally expressed in a
harsh and repulsive manner, yet his followers pertinaciously contend
that even the harshest of them cannot, with propriety, be construed into
a sense favourable to the Calvinistical system. Those of Melancthon in
the first edition of his _Loci Theologici_, although occurring but in
one or two instances, were nevertheless still more offensive, and less
capable of a mitigated interpretation. So far indeed did he carry the
doctrine of divine predetermination as to degrade man to a level with
the brutes, as will be obvious from the following passage in the edition
of 1525. Lastly, divine predestination takes away human liberty. For all
things come to pass according to divine predestination, not only
external works, but also internal thoughts in all creatures.” After the
Diet of Augsburgh in 1530, we hear no more of this obnoxious tenet.
Indeed so early as 1527 these reformers seem to have abandoned it. At
least, when in that year a form of doctrine was drawn up for the
churches of Saxony, free will in acts of morality was thus inculcated:
The human will is so far free as to be able in some sort to perform the
righteousness of the flesh, or civil justice, when it is obliged by the
law and by force not to steal, not to kill, not to commit adultery, &c.
Therefore let ministers teach, that it is in a measure in our own hands
to restrain carnal affections, and to perform civil justice; and let
them diligently exhort men to a strict and proper course of life,
because God also requires this kind of righteousness, and will
grievously punish those men who live so negligent of their duty. For as
we are bound to make a good use of the other gifts of God, so is it
likewise our duty to employ to good purpose those powers which God has
bestowed on nature.” For God takes no delight in that ferocious mode of
life which is adopted by some men, who, after having heard that we are
not justified by our own powers and works, foolishly dream that they
will wait until they be drawn by God, and in the mean time their course
of life is most impure. Such persons God will most severely punish; and
they must therefore be earnestly reprehended and admonished by those
whose province it is to teach in the churches.” This work, which is
generally termed, _Libellus Visitationis Saxonic_, was first composed in
German by Melancthon in 1527, and afterward republished by Luther with a
preface, in which he thus expresses himself: We do not publish these as
rigorous precepts, nor do we again employ ourselves in drawing up
pontifical decrees, but we relate matters of history and public deeds,
and present the confession and symbol of our belief.” The previous
controversy between Luther and Erasmus, on the topic of free will, had
probably tended to produce an amelioration of the doctrinal system of
the Lutheran church. In this view it was not without reason that Erasmus
made the following reflections in a letter dated 1528, soon after he had
seen this production: The Lutheran fever, every succeeding day, assumes
a milder form; so that Luther himself now writes recantations on almost
every thing, and on this account he is considered by the rest as a
heretic and a madman.” Similar caustic remarks occur in other letters of
Erasmus; and as, in those days of high religious excitement, taunts of
this kind were considered too good to be confined as secrets within the
breast of the correspondents to whom they were addressed, it is not
improbable that Luther might be prevented through them, among other
reasons, from making farther doctrinal concessions; it being no uncommon
circumstance in the history of the human mind for persons of otherwise
strong understandings to be under the influence of this pitiable
weakness. That Melancthon not only abandoned but reprehended the
doctrine in 1529, we cannot doubt, because his own express testimony in
proof of it remains on record. In a letter to Christopher Stathmio,
dated March 20th, 1559, which was not long before his death, he notices
the subject in these words: Thirty years ago, not through the desire of
contention, but on account of the glory of God, and for the sake of
discipline, I sharply reprehended the Stoical paradoxes concerning
necessity, because they are reproachful toward God and injurious to
morals. At this time the legions of the Stoics are waging war against
me; but in the answer which I have written in opposition to the Bavarian
inquisition, I have once more pointed out in a modest manner that
opinion (on fate or predestination) in which anxious minds may acquiesce
and be at rest.” On consulting the tract to which his letter alludes, we
find him employing this strong and unequivocal language: I also openly
reject and abhor those Stoical and Manichean furies who affirm that all
things _necessarily_ happen, evil as well as good actions. But
concerning these I refrain at present from any lengthened discussion;
only I entreat young people to avoid these monstrous opinions, which are
contumelious against God, and pernicious to morals.” From the _Loci
Theologici_, in which Melancthon had first introduced this obnoxious
tenet, he expunged _necessity_ in the edition of 1533, and inserted in
its place the opposite one of _contingency_. The following are extracts
from this amended work: The discussion on _the cause of sin_ and that on
_contingency_ have sometimes greatly agitated the church, and excited
mighty tragedies. Men of acute minds collect multitudes of inextricable
and absurd things about both these subjects. Because there is some
danger in them, young people must be warned to abstain from these
interminable disputes, and in preference to search out a simple and
pious opinion, beneficial to religion and morals, in which they may
abide, nor suffer themselves to be withdrawn from it by those fallacious
tricks of disputations. But this is a pious and true sentiment to be
embraced with both hands, and to be retained rather by the whole
heart,--that God is not the cause of sin, and that he does not will sin.
But the causes of sin are the will of the devil, and the will of man.”
But this sentiment being once laid down, that God is not the cause of
sin, it evidently follows that contingency must be granted. The freedom
of the will is the cause of the contingency of our actions.” Neither
must the delirious doatings about Stoical fate, or about necessity, be
conveyed into the church, because they are inextricable and sometimes
injurious to piety and morals.” From these opinions it becomes the pious
to be abhorrent in their ears and in their hearts.” These extracts serve
to prove, that Melancthon reprobated the idea of introducing into the
church the doctrine of Stoical fate, before Calvin had distinguished
himself either as an author or a reformer. Into his subsequent
productions of almost every description Melancthon introduced the
doctrine of contingency, and strenuously defended it, particularly in
the amended edition of his _Loci Theologici_ in 1545. Luther never
formally revoked any of his own writings; but on this last corrected
production of his friend, as we have shown, he bestowed the highest
commendations. Yet he did not scruple publicly to assert, that at the
beginning of the Reformation he had not completely settled his creed. In
the seventh volume of his works this sentence is found: I have also
published the confession of my faith; in which I have openly testified
what and how I believe, and in what articles I think myself at length to
be at rest.” He seems, indeed, to have generally avoided the subject,
from the period of his controversy with Erasmus, to the publication of
his Commentary on Genesis,--his last work of any importance. But in
this, after a long argument to prove that, as we have no knowledge of
the unrevealed Deity, we have nothing to do with those things which are
above our comprehension; and that we are not to reason upon
predestination out of Christianity; he thus apologizes for his former
opinions: “It has been my wish diligently and accurately to deliver
these charges and admonitions; because, after my death, many persons
will publish my books to the world, and by that course will confirm
errors of every kind and their own delirious ravings. But among other
matters I have written, that all things are absolute and necessary; but
at the same time I added, that we must behold God as he is revealed to
us, as we sing in the Psalm, ‘Jesus Christ is the Lord of sabaoth, nor
is there any other God.’ In several other passages I have used similar
expressions. But these people will pass by all such passages, and will
only seize upon those concerning a hidden Deity. You, therefore, who now
hear me, recollect that I have taught this,--We must not inquire
concerning the predestination of a hidden God, but we must abide and
acquiesce in those things which are revealed by calling and by the
ministry of the word.” But in other passages of my different works I
have inculcated the same sentiments, and I now deliver them again with
an audible voice; therefore I am excused.” For the more modern state of
the Lutheran church see NEOLOGY.
The following account of the union between the Lutheran and Calvinistic
churches, as given in the advertisement to Baron Von Wessenberg’s
Correspondence with the Court of Rome,” may not be uninteresting to the
reader: The Germans have just set the noble example of forming a union
between these two branches of the Protestant faith. This union, which
originated, we believe, in the grand duchy of Nassau, has taken place
almost universally throughout Germany; and the separate appellations of
Lutheran and Calvinistic churches have merged in the common appellation
of the Evangelical church. The Lutheran and Reformed churches of Prussia
met in synod together, on the invitation of their monarch, the first of
October, 1817, and soon came to an agreement; and the union was
celebrated on the day of the tri-centenary festival of the Reformation.
A similar synod of the Lutherans and Calvinists in Hesse-Cassel was held
at Hanau in May and June, 1818, and attended with the same result. The
royal confirmation was given to the Bavarian union on the first of
October following. Saxe-Weimar, and most of the other small states have
followed this example. The Protestant Germans have now, therefore, only
one Gospel, one temple, one divine Instructer, and one mode of
communion; and, what is singular, and highly honourable to their
liberality, this union was every where accomplished with the greatest
ease, and without a dissentient voice having been raised against it.”
How different was this result from that of the synods and councils of
other times; and what a change in the state of public opinion does it
indicate! And yet it is to be feared that the _liberality_ from which
this union has resulted, is rather indifference to the grand
peculiarities of the Christian faith than mutual charity.