History of the Great Reformation of the 16th century in Germany, Switzerland by J.H. Merle d'Albany, President of the Theological School of Geneva and member of the Societe Evangelique, Volume 1, printed New York, Robert Carter, 58 Canal Street, and Pittsburgh, 56 Market Street, 1845. Continuation of this writing, Audiobook, History of the Reformation, Book One, State of Europe Prior to the Reformation. The world was tottering on its old foundations when Christianity appeared. The various religions which had sufficed for an earlier age no longer satisfied the nations. The mind of the existing generation could no longer tabernacle in the ancient forms. The gods of the nations had lost their oracles. as the nations had lost their liberty in Rome. Brought face to face in the capital, they had mutually destroyed the illusion of their divinity. A vast void had ensued in the religious opinions of mankind. A kind of deism, destitute of spirit and vitality, hovered for a time over the abyss in which had been engulfed the superstitions of heathenism. But like all negative opinions, it had no power to edify. The narrow prepositions of the several nations had fallen with the fall of their gods. Their various populations melted the one into the other. In Europe, Asia, Africa, all was but one vast empire, and the human family begun to feel its comprehensiveness and its unity. Then the word was made flesh. God appeared amongst men. And as man, to save that which was lost, in Jesus of Nazareth dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. This is the greatest event in the annals of all time. The former ages had been a preparation for it. The latter unroll from it. It is their center and connecting link. From this period, the popular superstitions had no significance, and such feeble relics of them as outlived the general wreck of incredulity, vanished before the majestic orb of eternal truth. The Son of Man lived thirty-three years on this earth, He suffered, he died, he rose again, he ascended into heaven. His disciples, beginning at Jerusalem, traveled over the Roman Empire and the world, everywhere proclaiming their Master, the author of everlasting salvation. From the midst of a people who rejected relationships with others, proceeded a mercy that invited and embraced all. A great number of Asiatics, of Greeks and of Romans, hitherto led by their priests to the feet of dumb idols, believed at their word. Quote, The gospel suddenly beamed on the earth like a ray of sun, unquote, says Euboeus. A breath of life moved over this vast field of death. A new, a holy people was formed upon the earth. and the astonished world beheld in the disciples of the despised Galilean a purity, a self-denial, a charity, a heroism of which they retained no idea. The new religion had two features amongst many others which especially distinguished it from all the human systems which fell before it. One had reference to the ministers of its worship, the others to its doctrine. The ministers of paganism were almost the gods of those human interventions. The priests led the people so long as least as their eyes were not opened. A vast and hardy hierarchy oppressed the world. Jesus Christ dethroned these living idols, abolished this proud hierarchy, took from man what man had taken from God, and reestablished the soul in direct communication with the divine fountain of truth. by proclaiming himself the only master and the only mediator, quote, one is your master even Christ said he, and all ye are brethren, unquote, Matthew 23. As to doctrine, human religions had taught that salvation was of man. The religions of the earth had invented an earthly salvation. They had taught men that heaven would be given to them as a reward. They had fixed its price. And what a price! The religion of God taught that salvation was his gift. and emanated from an amnesty and sovereign grace. God hath given to us eternal life. 1 John 5.11 Undoubtedly, Christianity cannot be summed up in these two points, but they seem to govern the subject especially when historically viewed. And as it is impossible to trace the opposition between truth and error in all things, we have selected its most prominent features. Such were the two principles that composed the religion which then took possession of the empire and of the whole world. The standing of a Christian is in them and apart from them Christianity itself disappears. On their preservation or their loss depended its decline or its growth. One of these principles was to govern the history of the religion, the other its doctrine. They both presided in the beginning. Let us see how they were lost, and let us first trace the fate of the former. The church was in the beginning a community of brethren, all its members were taught of God, and each possessed the liberty of drawing for himself from the divine fountain of life. John 6.45 The epistles which then settled the great question of doctrine did not bear the pompous title of any single man or ruler. We find from the holy scriptures that they began simply with these words, quote, the apostles, elders, and brethren to our brethren, unquote, Acts 15.23. But the writings of these very apostles forewarn us that from the midst of these brethren there shall arise a power which shall overthrow this simple and primitive order, 2 Thessalonians 2. Let us contemplate the former, the formation and trace, the development of this power alien to the church. Paul of Tarsus, one of the chiefest apostles of the new religion, had arrived at Rome, the capital of the empire and of the world, preaching the salvation that cometh from God only. A church was formed beside the throne of the Caesars, founded by this simple apostle. It was at first composed of converted Jews, Greeks, and some inhabitants of Rome. For a while it shone brightly as a light set upon a hill, and its faith was everywhere spoken of. But ere long it declined from its first simplicity. the spiritual dominion of Rome arose as its political and military power had done before, and was slowly and gradually extended. The first pastors or bishops of Rome employed themselves in the beginning in converting to the faith of Christ the towns and villages that surrounded the city. The necessity which the bishops and pastors felt of referring, in cases of difficulty, to an enlightened guide, and the gratitude which they owed to the Metropolitan Church, led them to maintain an intimate union with her. As is generally the consequence in such circumstances, this reasonable union soon degraded into dependence, The bishops of Rome regarded as a right the superiority which the neighboring churches had voluntarily yielded. The encroachments of power from a large portion of all history, the residence of those whose rights are invaded, forms the other part, and the ecclesiastical power could not escape that intoxication which lends those who are lifted up to seek to raise themselves still higher. It felt all the influence of this general weakness of human nature. Nevertheless, the supremacy of the Roman bishop was at first limited to the overlooking of the churches in the territory lawfully subjected to the perfect prefect of Rome. but the rank which this imperial city held in the world offered to the ambition of its first pastors a prospect of wider sway. The consideration which the different Christian bishops enjoyed in the second century was in proportion to the rank of the city over which they presided. Rome was the greatest, the richest, and the most powerful city in the world. It was the seat of the empire, the mother of nations. Quote, all the inhabitants of the earth are hers, unquote, said Julian, and Claudian declares her to be the, quote, fountain of laws, unquote. If Rome be the queen of cities, why should not her pastors be the king of bishops? Why should not the Roman Church be the mother of Christendom? Why should not all nations be her children, and her authority be the universal law? It was natural to the heart of man to reason thus. Ambitious Rome did so. Hence it was that when heathen Rome fell, she bequeathed to the humble minister of the God of Peace, seated in the midst of her own ruins, the proud titles which her invincible sword had won from the nations of the earth. The bishops of the other parts of the empire, yielding to the charm that Rome had exercised for ages over all nations, followed the example of the campaign and aided the work of usurpation. They willingly rendered to the bishop of Rome something that honor which was due to this queen of cities, nor was there at first anything of dependence in the honor thus yielded. They acted toward the Roman pastor as equals toward an equal, but usurped power swells like the avalanche. Exhortations at first simply fraternal soon became commands to the mouth of the Roman pontiff. A chief place amongst equals appeared to him a throne. The bishops of the West favored this encroachment of the Roman pastors either from jealousy or of that of the Eastern bishops or because they preferred subjection to a Pope. to the dominion of a temporal power. On the other hand, the theological sects which distracted the East strove, each for itself, to gain an interest at Rome, hoping to triumph over its opponents by the support of the principle of the Western churches. Rome carefully recorded these requests and intercessions and smiled to see the nations throw themselves into her arms. She negated, neglected, too, no opportunity of increasing and extending her power. The praises, the flattery, the exaggeration, compliments paid to her, and her being consulted by other churches, became in her hands as titles and documents of her authority. Such is the heart of man exalted to a throne, flattery intoxicate him, and his head grows dizzy. What he possesses impels him to aspire after more. The doctrine of the Church, and of the necessity of its visible unity, which had gained footing as early as the third century, favored the pretensions of Rome. The great bond which originally bound together the members of the Church was a living faith in the heart by which all were joined to Christ as their One Head. But various causes therealong conspired to originate and develop the idea of a necessity for some exterior fellowship. Men accustomed to the associations and political forms of an earthly country carried their views and habits of mind into the spiritual and everlasting kingdom of Jesus Christ. Persecutions, powerless to destroy or even to shake the new community, compressed it into the form of a more compacted body. To the errors that arose in the schools of deism, or in the various sects which was opposed to the truth, one and universal, received from the apostles and preserved in the church. All this was well, so long as the invisible and spiritual church was identical with the invisible and outward community. But soon a great distinction appeared. The form and the vital principle parted asunder. The semblance of identical and external organizations was gradually substituted in place of the internal and spiritual unity which is the very essence of a religion proceeding from God. Men suffered the precious perfume of faith to escape, while they bowed themselves before the empty vase that had held it. Faith and the heart no longer knit together and won the members of the church. Then it was that other ties were sought, and Christians were united by means of bishops, archbishops, popes, mitres, ceremonies, and canons. the living church retiring by degree to the lonely sanctuary of a few solitary souls, an exterior church was substituted in place of it, and installed in all its forms as our divine institution, salvation no longer flowing forth from that word which was now hidden, It began to be affirmed that it was conveyed by means of certain invented forms, and that none could obtain it without resorting to such means. No one, it was said, can by his faith attain to everlasting life. Christ communicated to the apostles and the apostles to the bishop. the unction of the Holy Spirit, and this Spirit is found only in this order of communication. In the beginning of the gospel, whosoever had received the Spirit of Jesus Christ was esteemed a member of the church. Now the order was inverted, and no one unless a member of the church was counted to have received the Spirit of Jesus Christ. As soon as the notion of a supposed necessity for a visible unity of the church had taken root, another error began to spread, namely that it was needful that there should be some outward representative of that unity. Though no trace of any primacy of St. Peter above the rest of the apostles appears in the Gospels, although the idea of a primacy is at variance with the mutual relations of the disciples as, quote, brethren, unquote, and even with the spirit of the dispensation which requires all the children of the Father to minister to one another. 1 Peter 4.10. Acknowledging but one master in head, and, though the Lord Jesus had rebuked his disciples whenever their carnal hearts conceived desires of preeminence, a primacy of St. Peter was invented and supported by misrepresented texts. and men proceeded to acknowledge in that apostle and in his pretended successor the visible representative of visible unity and head of the whole church. The constitution of the Our church contributed further to the exaltation of the Roman papacy. As early as the first three centuries, the church of the metropolitan cities had been held in peculiar honor. The Council of Nice, in its sixth canon, named especially three cities, whose churches, according to it, held an anciently established authority over those of the surrounding provinces. These were Alexandria, Rome, and Antioch. The political origin of this distinction may be discerned in the name which was at first given to the bishops of these cities. They were called Exarchs. like the political governors. In latter times they bore the more ecclesiastical name of patriarch. It is in the Council of Constantinople that we find this title first used. This same council created a new patriarch to that of Constantinople itself, the new Rome, the second capital of the empire, Rome at this period shared the rank of the patriarchs with these three churches. But when the invasion of Muhammad had swept away the bishoprics of Alexandria and Antioch, When the sea of Constantinople fell away, and in latter times even separated itself from the West, Rome alone remained, and the circumstances of the times causing everything to rally around her, she remained from that time without rival. New and more powerful partisans Then all the rest soon came to her assistance. Ignorance and superstition took possession of the church and delivered it up to Rome, blindfold and manacled. Yet this bringing into captivity was not effected without a struggle. Divorces of particular churches frequently asserted their independence. This courageous remonstrance was especially heard in pro-Councilor Africa and in the East. To silence the cries of the churches, Rome found a new ally, princes, who in those troublesome times often saw their thrones tottering. offered their adherence to the Church in exchange for her support. They yielded to her spiritual authority on condition of her paying them with secular dominion. They left her to deal at will with the souls of men, provided only she would deliver them from their enemies. The power of the hierarchy in the ascending scale and of the imperial power, which was declining, leaned thus one toward the other, and so accelerated their twofold destiny. Rome could not lose by this. An edict of Theodosius II and of Valentinian III proclaimed the bishop of Rome ruler in the whole church. Justinian issued a similar decree. These decrees did not contain all that the popes pretended to see in them. But in those times of ignorance it was easy for them to gain reception for that interpretation which was most favorable to themselves. The dominion of the emperors in Italy, becoming every day more precarious, the bishops of Rome took advantage of it. to withdraw themselves from their dependence. But already the forests of the North had poured forth the most effectual promoters of papal power. The barbarians who had invaded the West and settled themselves therein, but recently converted to Christianity, ignorant of the spiritual character of the Church, and feeling the want of an external pomp of religion, prostrated themselves in a half-savage and half-heathen state of mind at the feet of the chief priest of Rome. At the same time, the people of the West also submitted. First the Vandals, then the Ostrogoths, a short time after the Burgundians and the Alains, then the Visigoths, and at last the Lombards and the Anglo-Saxons came bowing the knee to the Roman Pontiff. It was the sturdy shoulders of the idolatrous Children of the North which elevated to the supreme throne of Christendom a pastor of the banks of the Tiber. These events occurred in the West at the beginning of the 7th century, at the precise period that the Mohammedan power arose in the East and prepared to overrun another division of the earth. From that time the evil continued increasing. In the 8th century we see the bishops of Rome on the one hand resisting the Greek emperors, their lawfully sovereign and endeavoring to expel them from Italy, whilst on the other hand they caught the French mayors of the palace and demand from this new power, now arising in the west, a share in the wreck of the empire. We see Rome establishing her usurped authority between the east, which she repelled, and the west, which she courted. thus erecting her throne upon two resolutions, alarmed by the process and progress of the Arabs who had made themselves masters of Spain and boasted that they would speedily traverse the Pyrenees and the Alps and proclaim the name of Muhammad on the seven hills. terrified at the daring of Aristophole, who, at the head of the Lombards, threatened to put every Roman to death, and brandished his sword before the city gates. Rome, in the prospect of ruin, turned on all sides for protection, and threw herself into the arms of the Franks. The usurper Pepin demanded the confirmation of his claim to the throne. The pope granted it, and in return obtained his declaration in defense of the Republic of God. Pepin recovered from the Lombards their conquest from the emperor, but instead of restoring them to that prince, he deposited the keys of the conquered cities on the altar of St. Peter's, and with uplifted hand swore that it was not in the cause of man that he had taken alms, but to obtain from God the remission of his sins and to do homage for his conquest to Saint Peter. Thus did France establish the temporal power of the Popes. Charlemagne appeared At one time we see him climbing the stairs of St. Peter, devoutly kissing the steps. Again he presents himself, but it is as master of all the nations composing the Western Empire and of Rome itself. Leo III decided to confer the rank on one who had already possessed the power, and in the year 800, on Christmas Day, he placed the crown of the Roman Emperors on the brow of the son of Pepin. From this period the Pope belonged to the Empire and of the Franks, and his connection with the East was at an end. Thus losing his hold on a decayed tree, nodding to its fall, in order to graft himself upon a wild but vigorous sapling, little could he then have dared to hope for the elevation that awaited his successes among the German nations to which he thus joined himself. Chalmeny bequeathed to his feeble successors only the wreck of his own power. In the ninth century, Disunion everywhere weakened the civil authority. Rome perceived that this was the moment to exalt herself. What better opportunity could offer for achieving the Church's independence of the state than when the crown of Charles was broken and its fragments scattered over its former empire? It was then that the pretended decretals of Insidious appeared. In this collection of alleged decrees of the popes, the most ancient bishops, contemporaries of Tactus and Quintilian, were made to speak the barbarous Latin of the ninth century. The customs and constitutions of the Franks were gravely attributed to the Romans in the time of the emperors. Popes quoted the Bible in the Latin translation of St. Jerome, who lived one, two, and three centuries after them. And Vicar Bishop of Rome in the year 192 wrote to Trophilius who was Archbishop of Alexandria in 385. The imposter who had fabricated this collection endeavored to prove that all bishops derived their authority from the Bishop of Rome, who held his own immediately from Christ. He not only recorded all the successive acquisitions of the Pontiffs, but carried them back to the earliest times. The Popes did not blush to avail themselves of this contemptible imposture. As early as 865, Nicholas I selected weapons from this repository to attack princes and bishops. This barefaced fabrication was for ages the arsenal of Rome. Nevertheless the vices and atrocities of the pontiffs were such as suspended for a time the object of the decretals. The papacy signalized its sitting down at the table of kings by shamefully liberations and intoxications and madness reigned in its orgies. About this time, tradition places upon the papal throne a girl named Joan, who had taken refuge at Rome with her lovers, and whose sex was betrayed by the pains of childbirth coming upon her in the midst of a solemn procession. But let us not needlessly exaggerate the shame of the Roman pontiffs. Women of abandoned character reigned at this period in Rome. The throne was effected to exalt itself above the majesty of kings, was sunk in the filth of vice. Theodora and Masora installed and deposed at their pleasure the pretended teachers of the Church of Christ. and placed on the throne of St. Peter their lovers, their sons, and their grandsons. These two well-authenticated charges may have given rise to the tradition of the female Pope Joan. Rome was one vast scene of debauchery wherein the most powerful families in Italy contended for preeminence. The counts of Tuscany were generally vicious victorious in these contests. In 1033 this family declared to place upon the patrifical throne under the name of Benedict XI a young boy brought up in debauchery. This child of 12 years of age continued when Pope in the practice of the same scandalous vices another party elected in his stead Sylvester III and Benedict with a conscience loaded with adulteries and hands stained with homicide at last sold the papacy to a Roman ecclesiastic. The emperors of Germany roused to indignation by these enormities, purged Rome with the sword. In 1047, a German bishop, Leo XI, possessed himself of the pontifical throne. The empire, using its right as suzerain, raised up the triple crown from the mitre and preserved the degraded papacy by giving it to suitable chiefs. In 1046, Henry III deposed the three rival popes, and pointing with his finger on which glittered the ring of the Roman patricians, designated the bishop to whom St. Peter's keys should be confided. Four popes, all Germans, and chosen by the emperor, succeeded. Whenever the pontiff of Rome died, a deputation from its churches repaired to the imperial court, just as the envoys of other dioceses to solicit the nomination of a bishop to succeed him. The emperors were not sorry to see the popes reforming abuses, strengthening the influence of the church, holding councils, choosing and disposing prelates in spite of foreign princes, for in all this the papacy, by its pretensions, did but exalt the power of the reigning emperor, its suzerain lord. Thus such excesses were full of peril to his authority. The power thus gradually acquired might at any moment be directed against the emperor himself, and the reptile, having gained strength, might turn against the bosom that had warmed it. And this result followed. The papacy arose from its humiliation and soon trampled under the foot the princes of the earth. To exalt the papacy was to exalt the Church, to aggrandize religion, to ensure to the spirit the victory over the flesh, and to guard the conquest of the world. Such were its maxims in these ambitious found its advantage and fascination its excuse. The whole of this new policy is personified in one man, Hildebrand. The next edition of this reading will continue with Hildebrand. At this time we will close and wait for another chapter.