Join with me in prayer. Lord God, we give thanks to you for your works of old and for your redemption that you have worked through Jesus Christ and the preserving of this gospel and of your church from age to age. We pray that you would instruct us as we study your works this day, that we would be edified by it. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Yesterday we, or not yesterday, last week we finished the series on the Westminster Confession of Faith, and the plan is for this Sunday and next Sunday to have a two-part series on the Reformation, for Reformation Day, but particularly on the life and thought of one of the reformers of the 16th century, Martin Bucer. And Martin Bucer is not maybe one of the top two or three well-known reformers, but he maybe should be. He was certainly one of the influential reformers during the 1500s. And one reason that I want to look at him today is because by studying his life, you learn about a lot of the Reformation, because he was everywhere. And you get a good slice of the whole period simply by looking at his life. And the next week we're going to look more at some of his teachings, some of the books that he wrote, some of the emphases that he had in his teachings. But today I want to look at his life and have more than enough material to cover. So let's get started. I would summarize his life as the man who would not quit to spread Christ's kingdom and to achieve Christian unity. It was a big project that he set about, that he aimed at, and he wasn't completely successful, or at least he did not live to see the success that he hoped for, and some of that is still not happened yet. But he had a big vision for the kingdom of God and gave it his life. Now, his name is Butzer, although it's usually spelled B-U-C-E-R, which is kind of the Latinized form of it. If it was in German, it would be B-U-T-Z-E-R. Bootser. His father and grandfather were coopers making barrels for the wine that was grown in their region right along the border of what was then the Holy Roman Empire and France. It was part of the Holy Roman Empire. Nowadays, it's in France, but it's right along that region. near the Rhine River. He was born November 11th and was probably baptized on that day as well. That was the St. Martin of Tours Day, the saint that was commemorated on that day, which is why he's named Martin. And it's also the day that Martin Luther was baptized. That's why they ended up with the same name. Martin Luther was a few years older, but had been born November 10th. 1483. But Martin Bucer, 1491, the year before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, you know, to discover the new world, Martin Bucer was born. He was born in Celestat, a free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire. And he grew up, he studied Latin at the Latin school in his hometown, and then he joined the town's Dominican monastery. It seems that he was somewhat forced by his grandfather, who saw an opportunity there. And so he continued his study as a Dominican friar. The Dominican order was especially given to study, and so he continued his studies there. In 1516, he was ordained as a priest and continued his studies in two other towns, Mainz and Heidelberg. If you looked at his library, and as he became more Protestant in a few years, he felt like it was a good time to come up with a will. So that's how we know what his library consisted of at that time, because that was most of his belongings. And a lot of Thomas Aquinas and Erasmus. And Erasmus was one who was kind of paving the way for the Reformation. He never broke from the Roman Catholic Church, but eagerly wanted to see reform happen in the church, especially in morals, and to kind of strip off some of the extraneous stuff that had accumulated over time and go back to the basics, to Christ. And so Butzer was already thinking of these things. In 1517, Martin Luther publishes 95 Theses on the church door, famously protesting against the practice of indulgences. And it was the next year, in 1518, that Martin Luther came to town. Martin Luther came to Heidelberg. The Dominican order was holding a disputation, a public debate, where Martin Luther and others would discuss various theses that he presented. And Martin Bucer attended, because he was right there. He was one of those Dominican friars. And Bucer appreciated how Luther built upon Erasmus and went even further with these things. He said in a letter about that time, although our chief men refuted him with all their might, their wiles were not able to make him move an inch from his propositions. His sweetness in answering is remarkable. His patience in listening is incomparable. In his explanations, you would recognize the acumen of Paul, not of Scotus. His answers, so brief, so wise, and drawn from the holy scriptures, easily made all his curers his admirers. On the next day, I had a familiar and friendly conference with the man alone, and a supper rich with doctrine rather than with dainties. He lucidly explained whatever I might ask. He agrees with Erasmus in all things, but with this difference in his favor, that what Erasmus only insinuates, he teaches openly and freely. Would that I have more time to write you of this. He brought it about that at Wittenberg, the ordinary textbooks have been all abolished, while the Greeks and Jerome and Augustine and Paul are publicly taught." And so you see a number of things here. Bootser appreciates Martin Luther's defense of justification by faith alone, which was a prominent thing at that disputation, distinguishing between the the work of the law to convict us, but that doesn't really help us to get justified. Rather, it's through faith in Christ that we receive that justification. And Bootser, embracing these things, We also see that it's a return back to the sources, both to the Bible, first and foremost, and Luther would go to the Bible as a supreme authority over church tradition or even the Pope himself, but also to the early church. He mentions Jerome and Augustine and the Greek fathers, and that's something that Martin Bucer would appreciate very much. But he also, in his letters, agreed with Martin Luther about justification by faith alone. But he was quick to add that the works themselves were not being rejected, but only a trust in works. That for the justified, God's law is the law of the spirit, for the Holy Spirit rules us according to it. That it is the law of grace, the law by which God's grace is active. And so you have an emphasis in Booth, so that's going to be more typical of the Reformed school of thought more broadly, that yes, we are justified by faith alone, that it is not of works, but works have a place, certainly afterwards, that the law is a good thing for the believer as a guide to direct us in service to our God. Which Lutherans would affirm, but there is a degree of emphasis there that began to develop Well, Martin Bucer realized a few years later that there was going to be an effort to clamp down on the spread of these ideas within the Order. He wanted to get out, and so he sought a release from his vows, and he was able to obtain a release from his vows so that he was no longer a Dominican friar. He took refuge in a castle, kind of like Martin Luther would later do. And he actually tried to convince Luther to not go to the Diet of Worms, to not bring things to a head quite yet. But Luther went, and Butzer went as well, and saw Luther stand upon the word of God alone to not recant his works before the emperor and his imperial diet. That's their assembly. And so it was only a few days after that diet, in fact, that he was released from the Dominican order. And then it was the next year that Martin Butzer married a former nun who had been placed in a convent by her relatives when she was a young girl, and yet who had left the nunnery, and Martin Butzer married her. Her name was Elizabeth. If that story sounds familiar, Martin Luther would do something very similar later on. And he married Elizabeth. He was going to go to Wittenberg to complete his studies. And so he was going to go to Strasburg to drop off his wife to stay with his parents. Well, he finished that for just a year or so. But on the way, they stopped in a little town called Wittenberg. Wissemburg, and the preacher there convinced him to stay and help him to reform that town. And so he ended up staying there for about six months. They preached, they did the best they could. In fact, Bützer preached once every day and twice on Sundays and holidays, working through the books of the Bible. And since he now was out in the open advocating for reformation, got the attention of the bishop and was excommunicated. A powerful nobleman forced him and his fellow preacher to flee in the dead of night, both of them with their pregnant wives, as they went to Strasbourg. And so he arrived as a refugee, not there to drop off his wife anymore, but now as a refugee to stay. Strasbourg would be his home for many years. It was about 25,000 people, a large city along the Rhine River, a free imperial city, so it's not under a territorial lord, but directly under the emperor, and so it had more flexibility to order its affairs and to embrace the Reformation. Same area as his hometown. So in 1523, he joined several other preachers in that town who were seeking to reform the church. He became a chaplain. He started lecturing, first in Latin and then eased into lecturing in German. While he was there, over the course of a year, many of the leading priests, more than four or five, were married and excommunicated just like Bucer. So they were all in it together, having married and been excommunicated by the local bishop. But they continued to preach because the city stood by them, and they continued on with their work. Now, in 1524, an issue arose, or began to arise, over the Lord's Supper. You know, we practice the Lord's Supper, right? It's an important practice of the Church, and certainly they all, Protestants, rejected the Roman Catholic understanding of the sacrifice of the mass, that the Lord's Supper was to be sacrificed to God or a sacrifice offered again to God. They also rejected the idea that the substance was transformed into the substance of the body and blood, but there was some disagreements between Luther in Germany and Zwingli in Switzerland. And Bützer had come at least closer to Zwingli's idea to believe that the body and blood of Christ is not physically present in the bread and wine, but that by faith we feed upon Christ in the supper. But he wanted to see everyone agree. So the preachers in Strasbourg began to try to get everyone together. Let's find a way that we can agree on this. But that would prove a very difficult task. At the same time, Butzer engaged with Anabaptists in Strasbourg who had come as refugees to their city, bringing other ideas of saying that you need to be rebaptized and only those who make a profession of faith should be baptized, and that we should retreat from society and not hold public office and not fight wars. And Butzer had some sympathies with them because they did emphasize the need for church discipline, the importance of the Holy Spirit, But he criticized them for things like downplaying Christ-saving work for the sake of emphasizing them as an ethical model, something that some of the Anabaptists did, and for their separation from the community and political responsibility. Bootser was far from being a person who was going to abandon society and to just go off on their own. forsake these responsibilities to their neighbors. He wanted to see the whole city, in fact the whole empire, in fact the whole world, to embrace the reign of Christ. So he wrote a book, Faithful Warning, against the Anabaptists. At that same year, the Holy Roman Empire, their emperor allowed local princes to decide religious issues because he needed their support for wars against the Turks and the French. In 1528, he, Bucer, participated with Zwingli and a reformer with a really fun name, Eckel Ampatius. They went and had a big debate. Have you ever seen a debate? Have you ever been to a debate? You know, some debates last for, what, two hours, three hours? This debate lasted three weeks. And it was held with 250 theologians in the audience. And it was in the city of Bern. Because the city of Bern was going to decide whether to be Protestant or Roman Catholic. And so they were going to have it all out there in the open, let's sort through the issues. And Zwingli spoke the most, but Martin Bucer was second. In the amount of times he spoke up, those three reformers all representing the reformed idea. And the day after it ended, the city magistrates embraced the Reformation and abolished the mass. Well, in 1529, Strasbourg itself suspended the mass. Technically, they suspended it until it could be proven to be worship that was pleasing to God. And they never got around to that. That was never proved. So it was kind of permanently suspended. Unfortunately, the emperor had succeeded in his wars. That had given more freedom to the Protestants in Germany because the emperor needed them on his side. But he actually had sacked Rome, confusing politics at the time. But now he was trying to undo the earlier agreement, allowing this religious liberty. And there were a group of princes that protested this. And so what did they get called? Protestants! Yes, that's where the term came about. Well, with that political climate and those threats out there, the need for unity was all the more important among the Protestants. And so there was a colloquy called the Marburg Colloquy to try to get the northern German reformers and the southern and Swiss reformers to get together and to agree on their doctrines so that they could work together. They agreed on 14 of the articles that were being discussed. They even agreed on half of the 15th, but they did not agree on how Christ was present in the Lord's Supper. Zwingli on the one side, Luther on the other side. Butzer, being on the Reformed side with Zwingli, but earnestly trying to bring them together, he thought that this was something that they could bridge over, that both sides were Christians, both sides were brothers, though they disagreed on this. Let's find something that would work. But a divide between the Lutheran and Reformed branches began to emerge. But Butzer was not going to give up. That's usually the way the story is told, that the colloquy happened, they didn't reach agreement, and then there were two separate branches ever after. But at the time, that wasn't a given. Butzer was going to devote another decade, at least, to trying to bring the two sides together. Even a few days later, a few weeks later, meeting with Luther, meeting with Melanchthon, sending messengers to Zwingli. In the 1530s, the Protestants offered confessions to the emperor, the Augsburg Confession, and a slightly different confession that Strasbourg had issued. But after Melanchthon explained the Augsburg Confession, forced the cities like Strasbourg were able to subscribe to it and join the Schmalkaldic League, a league of defense among the Protestants to defend themselves in that time. But in the meantime, Bützer was traveling and was busy. He was trying to spread the Reformation, so he went to the cities of Ulm and the cities of Augsburg to help them organize the Reformation and to preach. He was especially talented in preaching and teaching and doing things in person. He was a writer as well, but in his writings he could be a little verbose, a little overdoing it sometimes. try to write a book, it ends up being 600 pages and harder for people to read. But if he's there in person, much more effective. And so he helps spread the Reformation in several cities. He also is trying to bring these parties together. And so from 1534 onward, he spends a few months each year traveling to spread the Reformation, build Protestant unity, as his biographer says, Butzer practically covered 7,500 miles during the six years under consideration, 1534 to 1539. In other words, about 1,250 miles a year. Now that's a lot of travel, especially in those days. We're not talking about by car, right? Maybe by horse at best. and so was devoted to this. In 1536, Bootser and other theologians gathered in Luther's house. Luther was in poor health, but they came to his house to try to come to an agreement once again. Despite a rocky start, where Luther kind of lashed out a little bit, they were able to explain themselves to Luther. come to actually a formula, an agreement that worked for both sides, that sought to do justice to Luther's concern that there be an objective Christ that is offered in the supper, that it's not just a subjective thing that you impute to the supper, and the concerns of the Reformed that it is by faith that we feed on Christ, not simply by receiving these things in our mouths. And so they achieved the Wittenberg Concord. And Bützer got most of the southern German cities to subscribe to it, again, traveling from place to place, explaining it, trying to get them to agree to it. But he failed to get the Swiss to respond. And even though under Bollinger's leadership, they came closer to Bützer's position, it still didn't quite achieve all that he had hoped for. But after that point, Bootster would start to shift his focus more on the whole Holy Roman Empire. Because he didn't just want Protestant unity, he wanted the whole church reformed and unified. He wanted the whole Holy Roman Empire and even beyond that. This was his missionary zeal. And so from 1539 to 1549, that would be his focus. At the time, though, John Calvin came to Strasburg, a young man, younger than Martin Bootser, and actually lived on the house behind Martin Bootser's house, and they would be able to talk. And in fact, Martin Bootser formed something of a mentor for John Calvin, who I think was maybe about 30 or so late 20s at the time had just been kicked out of Geneva and so for three years John Calvin would minister to some French refugees in Strasbourg and would also learn from Bootser and taught school and got married because Martin Bootser was good at finding wives for fellow reformers and was able to help arrange that and And John Calvin went, along with Martin Bucer, to several colloquies between Protestants and Catholics. They culminated in the Colloquy of Regzenburg. The Protestants were led by Martin Bucer and Philip Melanchthon, and they engaged with others like Johannes Eck, and others on the Catholic side. And they actually reached agreement on several things, including justification by faith, but they failed to reach agreement on transubstantiation and papal authority. That papal authority was always a hard one to overcome. Well, he was more suspicious than some of the ones who signed it. There was a formula that they were able to both agree to, but as time went along, it did not receive ratification, you could say, by the authorities back home, both by the Pope and by, say, Martin Luther in Wittenberg. But the parties there were able to find a formula that both would agree to. And I forget if Eck was one who signed it or whether he was participating in it earlier or not. I think there was another person, and I forget his name, it ends with an I, it was like an Italian name, who was on the Roman Catholic side, who was especially open to justification by faith alone, or a formula that could incorporate that, but then failed to, first of all, reach agreement on some of these other important things, but also then kind of to get the whole catholic church to to back him up but this is also before the council of trends it was before the roman catholic church had taken a dogmatic position on the issue and so there are a lot more possibilities of what could happen uh... at the time even at the council of trend there was a debate on the issue among the roman catholics but the council of trends was held under papal authority and so it wasn't really incorporating uh... the protestant voice in its one hope of people like martin boots or was to have a national church council of the holy roman empire that wouldn't be under papal authority to try to solve the issue for the whole church there. But that never quite came about. Instead, the council at Trent was held. And that really hardened the Roman Catholic line on the issue of justification by faith. At around the same time, the plague hit Strasbourg, and Martin's wife, Elizabeth, died. And as she died, she asked Martin and a newly widowed friend of hers to marry after her death, because her friend had also lost her husband, a good friend of Martin's, and this friend's name was Wibrandus, the widow, Wibrandus. In fact, she had been widowed three times. She's been called the Bride of the Reformation because she married four times. Martin Bucer was her fourth husband, and three of them were leading reformers. Two of her husbands, in fact, had been friends and fellow reformers with Bucer, Ecolumpatius in Basel and Capito in Strasbourg itself. And so she married Bucer as his second wife after his first wife died, and she would outlive him as well. Martin Luther died in 1546. At that same year, the emperor launched a war to subdue the Protestants. Butzer had sensed that it was now or never, and things were starting to look dire. And this war ended with the victory of the emperor. So in 1548, he issued the Augsburg Interim. It's called an interim because he said, until the Council of Trent finishes its deliberations, we're going to force the Protestants basically to conform, but we're also going to give them a number of concessions that they're going to be able to continue to practice some of their desired ways until that time. And it wasn't evenly enforced across the empire, but Strasbourg was in a position that was vulnerable to the emperor's forces. Bootser was trying to encourage a city to stay firm, to hold out, to persist in its ways, but he was forced instead to flee England. So just as he had arrived as a refugee, he would also leave as one, and was forced to go with his wife to England. In England, Bootser was made a Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, He wrote a book on the Kingdom of Christ for King Edward VI. It's a great book. We'll maybe talk about it next week. He wrote a commentary on the new Book of Common Prayer. In England, they had just turned the worship service from the Latin Mass into a substantially reformed English service, but there was still work to be done, and the king realized that they needed to continue to reform it, and so he asked Martin Bucer, I forget if it was the king or Cranmer, the archbishop. One of them asked Martin Bucer to give his opinion, and so he wrote a book of several hundred pages with different suggestions for improvements, and While he wouldn't see it happen, because he would die before it happened, a number of his suggestions were adopted in 1552. Among his friends and supporters were two future Archbishops of Canterbury and two noble women, Lady Jane Grey and Lady Catherine Willoughby. But he was sick and dying. He had been through a lot. He was in his late 50s, but he had kept the candle burning on both ends at night and morning, traveling on the road every year. As his biographer says, the situation of the church in Germany tormented and anguished Bucer until his very death. Did not the very same fate threaten England? Should it respond with the same indifference to God's word now revealed so openly and clearly? On the afternoon of February 28th, 1551, Bucer urged those surrounding his deathbed to do all they could to make his grand design for the kingdom of Christ come true. That very night he died at only 59 years of age. And so he died in England as an exile, as one who had seen the Reformation happen in Germany, and yet it seems to be in grave danger as the emperor was clamping down upon it. He saw the Reformation in England, which had taken place, and yet there was many difficulties in England. And in fact, his thoughts were somewhat prophetic because Queen Mary, Tudor, would become queen in England just two years after him as King Edward died. And his friend Lady Jane Grey reigned for nine days and was executed. And so Queen Mary reigned and put many of the reformers to death. Many other Englishmen had to flee, including Bootser's friend, Peter Martyr Vermiglie, who had come as a refugee to England, now had to flee from England. But by the providence of God, in 1552, temporary arrangement had allowed Protestants freedom in the Holy Roman Empire, determining basically whatever the religion of the local ruler, that can be the religion of that territory. And that was confirmed in 1555 by the Peace of Augsburg. And so it's just in time for these exiles from England to then go to cities like Strasbourg and Zurich and Geneva, where they were able to, in fact, become more reformed and then come back to England and Scotland and continue the Reformation. As one maybe less significant but interesting connection to St. Charles County is that one of its early settlers was Jacob Zumwalt. There's a high school named after him, a park named after him. But his father was from Strasburg, from that city of Martin Bucer. And in his marriage record of 1800, he's listed as a Calvinist. His wife was listed as a Lutheran. But by 1807, they became Methodists, probably because the Methodists were the first ones to come out here with the circuit rider. And so, the Methodist Church ended up being the first one to be established. But just as one of the many, obviously, repercussions of that work of Reformation, you had people like Jacob Zumwalt, you know, who even came here to Missouri many, many years later. Any questions about Martin Bucer and his life? There's a lot there. Right, what were they called before the term Protestant was coined? I think you probably had several different terms, depending on whether you liked them or not. You know, heretics is probably what some people called them. But some, I think already we're starting to call them Lutheran, but probably evangelical would be more of their preferred term. It means something a little different than it means today, but that would be a popular term for referring to Protestants. Yeah. There's a lot more history there that could be looked at, but next week we'll look at some of his teachings and writings. which of course play a role in all of this history as well. But one thing I just, the way I opened is also will close that something that was seen in Martin Bootser's life, but I would say also in pretty much all the reformers' life, that they, were not content to stay at the status quo. You know, having reformed one city to stop there. Zwingli died on the battlefield because there was a war that was started because the Catholic cantons were not allowing Protestant preachers to go into their provinces. He wanted all of Switzerland to receive the gospel and to be reformed. John Knox wanted not merely a small remnant in Scotland, but he wanted to see all of his land embrace the gospel and for the church to be reformed. You would have the same for Latimer and Cranmer in England. or for John Calvin to see not only Geneva but his native France to be reformed, to send out preachers to spread the gospel throughout the lands. Same for Martin Bucer, especially in his homeland of the Holy Roman Empire, as well as beyond with people like John Calvin that would later return to Geneva to continue the Reformation elsewhere. But as something for us to not quit, even though these goals might not be achievable, sometimes they had success, sometimes they didn't, but as something for us to pursue even as we pray that God's kingdom would come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Let's pray. Dear Father, we thank you for your kindness to us and the success that you have given your gospel over the years through men like Martin Bucer. That your word is still proclaimed today and that we have access to it. We pray that you would indeed spread the kingdom of your beloved son. and that you would reform your church and to bring it into the unity of the truth, unity in Christ. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.