Chapter IV: Theology and Its Battles (21)

§ 139.20. =Hungary and Transylvania.=--From A.D. 1524, Martin
Cyriaci, a student of Wittenberg, wrought in =Hungary= for
the spread of the true doctrine. King Louis II. threatened its
adherents with all possible penalties. But in A.D. 1526 he fell
in battle against the Turks at Mohacz. The election of a new
king resulted in two claimants taking possession of the field;
Ferdinand of Austria secured a footing in the western, and
the Woiwode John Zapolya in the eastern provinces. Both sought
to suppress the Reformation, in order to win over the clergy
to support them. But it nevertheless gained the ascendency,
favoured by the political confusions of the time. =Matthias
Devay=, a scholar of Luther, and for a time a resident in
his house, from A.D. 1521 preached the gospel at Ofen, having
been called thither by several of the leading inhabitants on
Melanchthon’s recommendation, and in A.D. 1533 had a Hungarian
translation of the Pauline epistles printed at Cracow. In
A.D. 1541 Erdösy issued the complete New Testament, which was
also the first book printed in Hungary. At a synod at Erdöd, in
A.D. 1545, twenty-nine ministers drew up a confession of faith
in twelve articles, in agreement with the Augsburg Confession.
But also the Swiss doctrine had now found entrance, and won
more and more adherents from day to day. These adopted at a
council at Czengar, in A.D. 1557, a Calvinistic confession,
with decided repudiation of the Zwinglian as well as the
Lutheran theory of the Lord’s Supper, describing the latter
as an _insania sarcophagica_. The government of Maximilian II.
did not interfere with the progress of the Reformation; but when
Rudolph II. attempted to interfere with violent measures, the
Protestants rose in revolt under Stephen Bocskai, and compelled
the king to grant them complete religious liberty by the Vienna
Peace of A.D. 1606. Among the native Hungarians the Reformed
confession prevailed, but the German residents remained true
to Lutheranism. (Continuation § 153, 3.)--As early as A.D. 1521
merchants had brought into =Transylvania= from Hermanstadt
copies of Luther’s writings. King Louis II. of Hungary, however,
carried his persecution of the evangelicals even into this
territory, which was continued after his death by Zapolya.
In A.D. 1529, however, Hermanstadt ventured to expel all
adherents of the Romish church from within its walls. In
Cronstadt, the work of the Reformation was carried on from
A.D. 1533 by =Jac. Honter=, who had studied at Basel. Since
Zapolya through an agreement with Ferdinand, in A.D. 1538,
was assured of possession for his lifetime of Transylvania,
he acted more mildly toward the Protestants. After his death
the monk Martinuzzi, as Bishop of Grosswardein, assumed the helm
of affairs for Zapolya’s son during his minority, oppressing the
Protestants with bloody persecutions, while Isabella, Zapolya’s
widow, was favourable to them. Martinuzzi therefore handed over
the country to Ferdinand, but was assassinated in A.D. 1551.
After some years Isabella returned with her son, and a =national
assembly at Clausenburg=, in A.D. 1557, gave an organization
to the country as an independent principality, and proclaimed
universal religious liberty. The Saxon population continued
attached to the Lutheran confession, and the Czecks and Magyars
preferred to adopt the Reformed.[397]

§ 139.21. =Spain.=--The connection brought about between Spain
and Germany through the election of =Charles V.= as emperor led
to the very early introduction into the Peninsula of Luther’s
doctrine and writings. Indeed many of the theologians and
statesmen who went in Charles’ train into Germany returned
with evangelical convictions in their hearts, as, _e.g._, the
Benedictine Alphonso de Virves, the fiery Ponce de la Fuente,
both court chaplains of the emperor, and his private secretary
Alphonso Valdez. A layman, Roderigo de Valer, by earnest study
of the Bible attained unto a knowledge of the gospel, and became
the instrument of leading many others into the way of salvation.
The Inquisition confiscated his goods and condemned him to
wear the _san benito_ (§ 117, 2). Juan Gil, a friend of Valer,
Bishop of Tortosa, founded a society for the study of the
Bible. The Inquisition deposed him, and only Charles’ favour
protected him from the stake; but subsequently his bones were
dug up and burnt. Many other prelates also, such as Carranza
of Toledo, Guerrero of Granada, Guesta of Leon, Carrubias of
Ciudad Roderigo, Agostino of Lerida, Ayala of Segovia, etc.,
admitted the necessity for a thoroughgoing revision of doctrine,
without detaching themselves from the pope and the Romish church;
and in this direction they laboured with zeal and success amid
the threatenings of the Inquisition. The first Protestant martyr
in Spain was Francisco san Romano, a merchant who had become
acquainted with Luther’s doctrine at Antwerp. He was led to the
stake at Valladolid, in A.D. 1544. Francis Enzina, in A.D. 1543,
translated the New Testament. He was cast into prison, and the
book prohibited. A complete Spanish Bible was printed by Cassiod.
de Reyna at Basel, in A.D. 1569. In Seville and Valladolid first
of all, and at a later period also in many other Spanish cities,
evangelical congregations held secret services. Even so soon as
about A.D. 1550, the Reformation movement threatened to become
so general and widespread, that a Spanish historian of that age,
Ilesca, in his history of the popes, expresses the conviction
that all Spain would have become overrun with heresy if the
Inquisition had delayed for three months longer to put an
end to the pestilence. But it now applied that remedy in the
largest and strongest doses possible. The measures of the
Inquisition were specially prompt and vigorous during the
reign of =Philip II.=, A.D. 1555-1598. Scarcely a year passed
in which there were not at each of the twelve Inquisition courts
one or more great _autos-de-fé_, in which crowds of heretics
were burnt. And the remedy was effectual. After two decades
the evangelical movement was stamped out. How determinedly the
crusade was carried out is shown by the proceedings in the case
of the Archbishop of Toledo, Barthol. Carranza. This prelate had
published a “Commentary on the Catechism,” in which he expressed
a wish to see “the ancient spirit of our forefathers and of
the early church revived in its simplicity and purity.” The
grand-inquisitor discerned therein Lutheran heresy, and though
he bore one of the highest positions in the Spanish church,
Carranza was kept close prisoner for eight years in the dungeons
of the Inquisition, and after he had at last reached the pope
with his appeal, he was kept for nine years in the castle of
St. Angelo at Rome. There at last, upon his abjuring sixteen
heretical propositions, especially about justification, saint
and image worship, he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment
in the Dominican cloister at Orvieto, but died some weeks after,
in A.D. 1576, in his seventy-third year. At the Quemadero,
the scene of the _autos-de-fé_ of the Madrid Inquisition court,
there were till quite recently discernible the traces of the
human hecatombs that had there been offered up to the insatiable
Moloch of religious fanaticism. The official newspaper of the
capital of the 12th April, A.D. 1869, reports how on the removal
of the soil for the purpose of lengthening a street, the grim
geological archives of the burnings of the Inquisition were laid
bare, while with horrifying minuteness it proceeds to describe
the maximum reached, and the gradual diminution of these papal
atrocities.[398]

§ 139.22. =Italy.=--The Reformation made progress in Italy
in various directions. A large number of the humanists
(§ 120, 1) had in a self-sufficient paganism lost all interest
in Christianity, and were just as indifferent toward the
Reformation as toward the old church; but another section were
inclined to favour a reformation after the style of Erasmus.
Both remained in outward connection with the old church. But
besides these there were many learned men of a more decided
tendency, some of them attempting reforms at their own hand,
and so not infrequently rejecting fundamental doctrines of
Christianity, such as the various Anti-trinitarians of that age
(§ 148), some who attached themselves to the German, but more
frequently to the Swiss reformers. Both brought the reforming
ideas before the people by preaching and writing. Almost all the
works of the German and Swiss reformers were immediately after
their publication circulated in Italy in translations, and under
the shield of anonymity scattered broadcast through the land,
before the Inquisition laid hold upon them. Among the princely
supporters of the Reformation movement, the most prominent was
Renata of Este, Duchess of Ferrara, and sister-in-law of the
French king Francis, distinguished as much for piety as for
culture and learning. Her court was a place of refuge and a
rallying point for French and Italian exiles. Calvin stayed
some weeks with her in A.D. 1536, and confirmed her in her
evangelical faith by personal conversation, and subsequently
by epistolary correspondence. Her husband, Hercules of Ferrara,
whom she married in A.D. 1534, at first let her do as she liked,
but in A.D. 1536 expelled Calvin from his dominions, and had his
wife confined, in A.D. 1554, as an obstinate Lutheran heretic,
in the old castle of Este. Still she was allowed to return
to her husband after she had brought herself to confess to a
Romish priest. But when after his death, in A.D. 1560, Alphonso,
her son, put before her the alternative of either recanting
her faith or leaving the country, she returned to France, and
there openly made profession of her faith and attached herself
to the Huguenots. Francis of Guise was her son-in-law, and she
was subjected on account of her Protestantism to the incessant
persecutions of the Guises. She died in A.D. 1575.--We have
seen already, in § 135, 3, that the idea had been mooted of
a propaganda of Catholic Christians in Italy. With a strong
and lively conviction of the importance of the doctrine of
justification by faith they made it the central point of
religious life and knowledge, and thus, without directly
opposing it, they inspired new life into the Catholic church.
The first germ of this movement appeared in the so-called
_Oratory of Divine Love_, an association formed in the beginning
of A.D. 1520 at Rome, after the apostolic model, for mutual
religious edification, consisting of fifty or sixty young, eager
men, mostly of the clerical order. One of the original founders
was Jac. Sadolet, who in this spirit expounded the Epistle
to the Romans. To it also belonged such men as the founder
of the Theatine order (§ 149, 7), Cajetan of Thiene, and John
Pet. Caraffa, Bishop of Chieta, and afterwards Pope Paul IV.,
who sought the church’s salvation rather in the practice of
a rigorous inquisitorial discipline. The sack of Rome (§ 132, 2)
broke up this association in A.D. 1527, but spread its efforts
over all Italy. The fugitive English cardinal, Reginald Pole,
attached himself in Venice to the party of Sadolet. In Ferrara
there was Italy’s most famous poetess, Vittoria Colonna; at
Modena the Bishop Morone, who, although as papal legate in
Germany, a zealous defender of the papal claims (§§ 135, 2;
137, 5), yet in his own diocese even subsequently aided the
evangelical tendencies of his companions with much ardour, and
hence under Paul IV. was cast into the Inquisition, to come out
only under Pius V., after undergoing a three years’ imprisonment.
In Naples there was Juan Valdez, Alphonso’s brother, secretary
of the Spanish viceroy of Naples, and author of the “One Hundred
and Ten Divine Considerations,” as well as a book of Christian
doctrine for the young in the Spanish language. In Siena there
was Aonio Paleario, professor of classical literature, famous as
poet and orator. In Rome there was the papal notary Carnesecchi,
formerly the personal friend of Clement VII. In other places
there were many more. The most conspicuous representative of
the party was the Venetian Gasparo Contarini (§ 135, 3), who
died in A.D. 1542.

§ 139.23. The tendency of the thought of these men is most
clearly and fully set forth in the little work, “The Benefit
of Christ’s Death.” At Venice, where it first appeared in
A.D. 1542, within six years 60,000 copies of this tract were
issued, and afterwards innumerable reprints and translations of
it were circulated. Since Aonio Paleario had written, according
to his own statement, a tract of a similar character, he came
to be generally regarded as its author, until Ranke discovered
a notice among the acts of the Inquisition, according to which
the heretical jewel was to be assigned to a monk of San Severino
in Naples, a disciple of Juan Valdez, and afterwards Benrath
succeeded in proving his name to be Don Benedetto of Mantŏva.
The conciliatory spirit of these friends of moderate reform
gave grounds for large expectation, all the more that Paul III.
seemed all through his life to favour the movement. He nominated
Contarini, Sadolet, Pole, and Caraffa cardinals, instituted
in A.D. 1536 a _congregatio præparatoria_, and made Contarini
the representative of the curia at the religious Conference of
Regensburg in A.D. 1541 (§ 135, 3), which sought to bring about
the conciliation of the German Protestants. But just about this
time, probably not without the co-operation of the Jesuit order
founded in A.D. 1540, a split occurred which utterly blasted all
these grand expectations. The zeal of Caraffa set himself at the
head of the opposition, and Paul III., in accordance with his
proposal in his bull _Licet ab initio_ of A.D. 1542, reorganized
the defunct Roman Inquisition after the Spanish model as the
central institution for the uprooting of the Protestant heresy.
This “Holy Office” henceforth pursued its violent career under
the pontificate of Caraffa himself, who mounted the papal
throne in A.D. 1555 as Paul IV. Subsequently, too, under the
obstinate, fanatical, and hence canonized monkish pope Pius V.,
from A.D. 1566 every suspicion of Protestantism was rigorously
and mercilessly punished with imprisonment, torture, the
galleys, the scaffold, and the stake. So energetically was the
persecution carried out against the adherents and the patrons
of the Reformation, that by the end of the century no trace of
its presence was any longer to be found within the bounds of
Italy. One of the last victims of this persecution was Aonio
Paleario. After he had been for three years in the prisons of
the Inquisition, he was strangled and then burnt. A similar
fate had previously befallen Carnesecchi. How thoroughgoing
and successful the Holy Office was in the suppression of
books suspected of a heretical taint appears from the war of
extermination carried on against that _liber perniciosissimus_,
“On the Benefit of Christ’s Death.” In spite of the hundred
thousand copies of the book that had been in circulation, the
Inquisition so carefully and consistently pursued its task
of extirpation, that thirty years after its appearance it was
no longer to be found in the original and after a hundred no
translation even was supposed to exist. In Rome alone a pile
of copies were burnt which reached to the height of a house. In
A.D. 1853 a copy of the original was found in Cambridge, and was
published in London, 1855, with an English translation made by
the Duke of Devonshire in A.D. 1548.[399]

§ 139.24. Among the Italian reformers who shook themselves
entirely free from the papacy, and only by flight into foreign
lands escaped prison, torture, and the stake, the following are
the most important.

1. =Bernardino Ochino=, from A.D. 1538 general of the
Capuchins, became by his glowing eloquence one of the
most popular of Italian preachers. The study of the Bible
had led him to accept the doctrine of justification when,
in A.D. 1536, he was called to Naples as Lenten preacher.
He was there brought into close contact with Juan Valdez,
who confirmed him in his evangelical tendencies, and made
him acquainted with the writings of the German reformers.
In order to escape arrest and the Inquisition, he fled
in A.D. 1542 to Geneva, and wrought successively at Basel,
Augsburg, Strassburg, and London. After the death of
Edward VI. he was obliged to make his escape from England,
went as preacher to Zürich, adopted Socinian views,
and even justified polygamy. He was consequently deposed
from his office, fled to Poland, and died in Moravia in
A.D. 1565.[400]

2. =Peter Martyr Vermilius=, an Augustinian monk and popular
preacher. The study of the writings of Erasmus, Zwingli,
and Bucer led him to quit the Catholic church. He fled to
Zürich, became professor in Strassburg, and on Cranmer’s
invitation came to England, where he was made professor
in Oxford. When Mary came to the throne, he returned to
Strassburg, and died as professor at Zürich in A.D. 1562.

3. =Peter Paul Vergerius= in A.D. 1530 accompanied Campegius
to the Diet of Augsburg as papal legate (§ 132, 6); was
sent again, in A.D. 1535, to Germany by Paul III., in
order to get the German princes to agree to the holding
of the council at Mantua (§ 134, 1), and on this point he
conferred personally but unsuccessfully with Luther. On
his return home, in A.D. 1536 the pope conferred upon him,
in recognition of his faithful service, the bishopric of
his native city, Capo d’Istria. In A.D. 1540 we find him
again present during the religious conference at Worms
(§ 135, 2), where his conciliatory efforts called down on
him the displeasure of the pope and the suspicion of his
enemies as a secret adherent of Luther. In order to clear
himself of suspicion he studied Luther’s writings with the
intention of controverting them, but had his heart opened
to gospel truths, and was obliged to betake himself to
flight. At Padua the dreadful end of the jurist Speira,
who had abjured his evangelical convictions, and feeling
that he had committed the unpardonable sin died amid the
most fearful agonies of conscience, made an indelible
impression upon him. He now, in A.D. 1548, formally joined
the evangelical church, wrought for a long time in the
country of the Grisons, not as a member of the Reformed but
of the Lutheran church, and died as professor at Tübingen
in A.D. 1565.

4. The Piedmontese =Cœlius Secundus Curio= was the youngest
of a family of twenty-three, and was early left an orphan.
He studied at Turin, where an Augustinian monk, Jerome
Niger, made him acquainted with the writings of Luther and
others. Unweariedly devoted to spreading the gospel in the
various cities of Italy, he was repeatedly subjected by
the persecution of the Inquisition to severe imprisonment,
but always managed to escape in almost a miraculous way.
At last he found, in A.D. 1542, on the recommendation of
the Duchess Renata, an asylum in Switzerland, first of all
in Bern; then he taught in Lausanne for four years, and
in Basel for twenty-two. He died at Basel in A.D. 1569.
His latitudinarian theology gave no offence among the
liberal-minded folk of Basel, but he was looked upon
with much displeasure by the theologians of Geneva, whose
prosecutions of heretics he had condemned; and even from
Tübingen, Vergerius, who had been his intimate friend,
brought the charge of Pelagianism against him.

5. =Galeazzo Carraccioli=, Marquis of Vico, on his mother’s
side a nephew of Paul IV., was led by intercourse with
Juan Valdez and the preaching of Peter Martyr to abandon
the gay, worldly life of the Neapolitan court for one of
religious earnestness and devotion, and by means of a visit
to Germany in company with the emperor he was confirmed in
his evangelical convictions. In order to be able to live
in the undisturbed profession of his faith, he fled, in
A.D. 1551, to Geneva. Neither the tears nor the curses of
his aged father, who had hurried after him to that place,
nor the promise of indulgence from his papal uncle, nor
the complaining, the tears, and despair of his tenderly
loved wife and children, whom at great risk he had visited
at Vico in A.D. 1558, were able to shake the steadfastness
of his faith. But equally in vain were his incessant
entreaties and tears to induce his wife and children to
come and join him on some neutral territory, where he might
be allowed to follow the evangelical and they the Catholic
confession. On the ground of this obstinate and persistent
refusal, the Genevan consistory, with Calvin at its head,
at last granted him the divorce that he claimed, and in
A.D. 1560 Carraccioli entered into a second marriage. Down
to his death, in A.D. 1586, by his active and industrious
life he afforded a pattern, and by his successful labours
he proved a powerful support to the Italian congregation
in Geneva, whose pastor, Balbani, raised to him a well
deserved memorial in the history of his life, which he
published in Geneva in A.D. 1587.

6. To the sketch of these noble reformers we may now add the
name of a woman who is well deserving of a place alongside
of them for her singular classical culture, her rich poetic
endowment, and her noble and beautiful life. Fulvia Olympia
Morata, of Ferrara, in her sixteenth year began to deliver
public lectures in her native city, where she enjoyed the
friendship and favour of the Duchess Renata. She married
a German physician, Andrew Grunthler, went with him to
his home at Schweinfurt, and there attached herself to
the Protestant church. When that city was plundered by
the Margrave Albert in A.D. 1553 (§ 137, 4), they lost all
their property. She died in A.D. 1555 at Heidelberg, where
Grunthler had been appointed professor of medicine.[401]

§ 139.25. =The Protestantizing of the Waldensians=
(§ 108, 10).--The news of the Reformation caused great
excitement among the Waldensians. Even as early as A.D. 1520
the Piedmontese _barba_, or minister, Martin of Lucerne,
undertook a journey to Germany, and brought back with him
several works of the reformers. In A.D. 1530 the French
Waldensians sent two delegates, George Morel and Peter Masson,
who conferred verbally and in writing with Œcolampadius at
Basel, and with Bucer and Capito at Strassburg. The result
was, that in A.D. 1532 a synod was held in the Piedmontese
village of Chauvoran, in the valley of Angrogna, at which
the two Genevan theologians Farel and Saunier were present. A
number of narrow-minded prejudices that prevailed among the old
Waldensians were now abandoned, such as the prohibition against
taking oaths, the holding of magisterial offices, the taking of
interest, etc.; and several Catholic notions to which they had
formerly adhered, such as auricular confession, the reckoning
of the sacraments as seven, the injunction of fasts, compulsory
celibacy, the doctrine of merits, etc., were abandoned as
unevangelical, while the Reformed doctrine of predestination
was adopted. On this foundation the complete Protestantizing
of the whole Waldensian community now made rapid progress, but
called down upon them from every side bloody persecutions. In
Provence and Dauphiné there were, in A.D. 1545, four thousand
murdered, and twenty-two districts devastated with fire. Their
remnants got mixed up with the French Reformed. When the
Waldensian colonies in Calabria were told of the Protestantizing
of their Piedmontese brethren, they sent, in A.D. 1559,
a delegate to seek a pastor for them from Geneva. Ludovico
Pascale, by birth a Piedmontese Catholic, who had studied
theology at Geneva, was selected for this mission; but soon
after his arrival he was thrown into prison at Naples, and
from thence carried off to Rome, where in A.D. 1560 he went
with all the martyr’s joy and faith to the stake erected for
him by the Inquisition. In the trials of this man Rome for
the first time came to understand the significance and the
attitude of the Calabrian colonies, and now the grand-inquisitor,
Alexandrini, with some Dominicans, was sent for their conversion
or extermination. The flourishing churches were in A.D. 1561
completely rooted out, amid scenes of almost incredible
atrocity. The men who escaped the stake were made to toil
in the Spanish galleys, while their wives and children were
sold as slaves. In Piedmont, the duke, after vain military
expeditions for their conversion, which the Waldensians, driven
to arms had successfully withstood, was obliged to allow them,
in the Peace of Cavour of A.D. 1561, a restricted measure of
religious liberty. But when the violent attempts to secure
conversions did not cease, they bound themselves together, in
A.D. 1571, in the so-called “Union of the Valleys,” by which
they undertook to defend one another in the exercise of their
evangelical worship.--Continuation, § 153, 5.

§ 139.26. =Attempt at Protestantizing the Eastern Church.=--The
opposition to the Roman papacy, which was common to them and the
eastern church, led the Protestants of the West to long for and
strive after a union with those who were thus far agreed with
them. A young Cretan, =Jacob Basilicus=, whom Heraclides, prince
of Samos and Paros, had adopted, on his travels through Germany,
Denmark, and Sweden had come into friendly relations with
Melanchthon and others of the reformed party, and attempted,
after he entered upon the government of his two islands in
A.D. 1561, to introduce a reformation of the local church
according to evangelical principles. But he was murdered in
A.D. 1563, and with him every trace of his movement passed
away.--In A.D. 1559 a deacon from Constantinople, =Demetrius
Mysos=, spent some months with Melanchthon at Wittenburg
[Wittenberg], and took with him a Greek translation of the
Augsburg Confession, of which, however, no result ever came.
At a later period, in A.D. 1573, the Tübingen theologians,
Andreä, Luc. Osiander, and others, reopened negotiations with
the patriarch Jeremiah II. (§ 73, 4), through a Lutheran pastor,
Stephen Gerbach, who went to Constantinople in the suite of
a zealous Protestant nobleman, David of Ungnad, ambassador
of Maximilian II. The Tübingen divines sent with him a Greek
translation of the Augsburg Confession, composed by Mart.
Crusius, with a request for his judgment upon it. The patriarch,
in his reply in A.D. 1576, expressed himself candidly in regard
to the errors of the book. The doctors of Tübingen wrote in
vindication of their formula, and in a second answer, in
A.D. 1579, the patriarch reiterated the objections stated in
the first. After a third interchange of letters he declined all
further discussion, and allowed a fourth epistle, in A.D. 1581,
to remain unanswered.--Continuation, § 152, 2.

II. The Churches of the Reformation.

§ 140. THE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER OF THE
LUTHERAN CHURCH.[402]

In the Lutheran Church, that specifically German type of Christianity which from the days of Charlemagne was ever panting after independent expression reached its maturity and full development. The sacred treasure of true catholicity, which the church of early times had nurtured in the form of Greek-Roman culture, is taken over freed from excrescences, and enriched by those acquisitions of the Middle Ages that had stood the proof. Its vocation was to set forth the “happy mean” between the antagonistic ecclesiastical movements and struggles of the West, and to give its strength mainly to the development of sound doctrine. And if it has not exerted an equal influence in all departments, paying most attention to the worship and least to matters of constitution, it cannot, on the other hand, be denied that even in those directions an effort has been made to modify the violent contradiction of extremes (§ 142, 1, 2).

=The Mediate and Mediating Attitude of the Lutheran Church=
shows itself in its fundamental conception of the essence of
Christianity as the union of the Divine and human, of which the
prototype is found in the Person of Christ, and illustrations of
it in the Scriptures, the church, the sacraments, the Christian
life, etc. In the varied ways in which this union is conceived
of lies the deepest and most inward ground of the divergence
that exists between the three western churches. The Catholic
church wishes to _see_ the union of the Divine and human;
the Lutheran, wishes to _believe_ it; the Reformed, wishes to
_understand_ it. The tendency prevails in the Catholic church
to confound these two, the Divine and the human, and that indeed
in such a way that the human loses its human character, and its
union with the Divine is regarded as constituting identity. The
Reformed church, again, is prone to separate the two, to look
upon the Divine by itself and the human by itself, and to regard
the union as a placing of the one alongside of the other, as
having not an objective but a merely subjective, not a real but
a merely ideal, connection. But the Lutheran church, guarding
itself against any confusion as well as any separation of the
two elements, had sought to view the union as the most vital,
rich, and inward communion, interpenetration, and reciprocity.
In the view of the Catholic church the human and earthly, which
is so often a very imperfect vehicle of the Divine, in which the
Divine often attained to a very incomplete development, is to be
regarded as in and by itself already the Divine. So is it in the
idea of the church, and hence the doctrine of a merely external
and visible church, which as such is only the channel of
salvation. So is it in the historical development of the church,
and hence the absolute authority of tradition and the reversal
of the true relations between Scripture and tradition. So too
is it with the doctrine of the sacraments, and hence the idea
of an _opus operatum_ and of transubstantiation. So in regard
to the priesthood, hence hierarchism; so in regard to the idea
of sanctification, and hence semipelagianism and the doctrine
of merits. Thoroughly antagonistic to all this was the view of
the Reformed church. It was inclined rather to sever completely
the Divine in Christianity from its earthly, visible vehicle,
and to think of the operation of the Divine upon man as merely
spiritual and communicated only through subjective faith.
It renounced all tradition, and thereby broke off from all
historical development, whether normal or abnormal. In its
doctrine of Scripture, the literal significance of the word
was often exalted above the spirit; in its doctrine of the
church, the significance of the visible church over that of the
invisible. In its doctrine of the Person of Christ, the human
nature of the glorified Saviour was excluded from a personal
full share in all the attributes of His divinity. In the
doctrine of the sacraments, supernatural grace and the earthly
elements were separated from one another; and in the doctrine
of predestination the Divine foreknowledge of man’s volitions
was isolated, etc. The Lutheran church, on the other hand, had
at least made the effort to steer between those two extremes,
and to bind into a living unity the truth that lies at the
foundation of both. In the Scripture it wishes as little to
see the spirit without the word, as the word without the spirit;
in history it recognises the rule and operation of the Spirit
of God within the human and ecclesiastical developments; and it
rejects only the false tradition which has not had its growth
organically from Holy Scripture, but rather contradicts it.
In its doctrine of the church it holds with equal tenacity to
the importance of the visible church and that of the invisible.
In its doctrine of the Person of Christ it affirms the perfect
humanity and the perfect divinity in the living union and richly
communicating reciprocity of the two natures. In its doctrine
of the sacraments it gives full weight as well to the objective
Divine fact which heavenly grace presents in earthly elements
as to the subjective condition of the man, to whom the sacrament
will prove saving or condemning according as he is a believer
or an unbeliever. And, finally, it expresses the belief that
in the Divine decree the apparent contradiction between God’s
foreknowledge and man’s self-determination is solved, while it
regards predestination as conditioned by the foreknowledge of
God; whereas Calvinism reverses that relation.

§ 141. DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES IN THE
LUTHERAN CHURCH.[403]

Even during Luther’s lifetime, but much more after his death, various doctrinal controversies broke out in the Lutheran church. They arose for the most part upon the borderlands either of Calvinism or of Catholicism, and were generally occasioned by offence taken at the attitude of the more stiff and dogged of Luther’s adherents by those of the Melanchthonian or Philippist school, who had irenical and unionistic feelings in regard to both sides. The scene of these conflicts was partly in the electorate of Albertine Saxony and in the duchy of Ernestine Saxony. Wittenberg and Leipzig were the headquarters of the Philippists, and Weimar and Jena of the strict Lutherans. There was no lack on either side of rancour and bitterness. But if the Gnesio-Lutherans went far beyond the Melanchthonians in stiffnecked irreconcilableness, slanderous denunciation, and outrageous abuse, they yet showed a most praiseworthy strength of conviction, steadfastness, and martyrlike devotion; whereas their opponents not infrequently laid themselves open to the charge, on the one hand, of a pusillanimous and mischievous pliability, and, on the other hand, of using unworthy means and covert, deceitful ways. Their controversies reached a conclusion after various alternations of victory and defeat, with often very tragic consequences to the worsted party, in the composition of a new confessional document, the so called _Formula Concordiæ_.

§ 141.1. =The Antinomian Controversy=, A.D. 1537-1541,
which turned upon the place and significance of the law under
the Christian dispensation, lay outside the range of the
Philippist wranglings. =John Agricola=, for a time pastor
in his native town of Eisleben, and so often called Master
Eisleben, in A.D. 1527 took offence at Melanchthon for having
in his visitation articles (§ 127, 1) urged the pastors so
earnestly to enjoin upon their people the observance of the
law. He professed, indeed, for the time to be satisfied with
Melanchthon’s answer, which had also the approval of Luther,
but soon after he had, in A.D. 1536, become a colleague of both
in Wittenberg, he renewed his opposition by publishing adverse
theses. He did not contest the pedagogical and civil-political
use of the law outside of the church, but starting from the
principle that an enjoined morality could not help man, he
maintained that the law has no more significance or authority
for the Christian, and that the gospel, which by the power
of Divine love works repentance, is alone to be preached.
Melanchthon and Luther, on the contrary, held that anguish
and sorrow for sin are the fruits of the law, while the saving
resolution to reform is the effect of the gospel, and insisted
upon a continued preaching of the law, because from the
incompleteness of the believer’s sanctification in this world
a daily renewing of repentance is necessary. After several years
of oral and written discussion, Agricola took his departure from
Wittenberg in A.D. 1540, charging Luther with having offered him
a personal insult, and was made court preacher at Berlin, where,
in A.D. 1541, having discovered his error, he repudiated it in
a conciliatory exposition. The reputation in which he was held
at the court of Brandenburg led to his being at a subsequent
period made a _collaborateur_ in drawing up the hated Augsburg
Interim (§ 136, 5). As his antinomianism every now and again
cropped up afresh, the _Formula Concordiæ_ at last settled
the controversy by the statement that we must ascribe to
the law, not only a _usus politicus_ and _usus elenchticus_
for terrorizing and arresting the sinner, but also a _usus
didacticus_ for the sanctifying of the Christian life.

§ 141.2. =The Osiander Controversy, A.D. 1549-1556.=--Luther
had, in opposition to the Romish doctrine of merits, defined
justification as purely an act of God, whose fruit can be
appropriated by man only by the exercise of faith. But he
distinguished from justification as an act of God _for_ man,
sanctification as the operation of God _in_ man. The former
consists in this, that Christ once for all has offered Himself
up on the cross for the sins of the whole world, and that
now God ascribes the merit of the sacrificial death of Christ
for every individual as though it had been his own, _i.e._
juridically; the believer is thus declared, but not made
righteous. The believer, on the ground of his having been
declared righteous, is made righteous by means of a sanctifying
process penetrating the whole earthly life and constantly
advancing, but in this world never absolutely perfect, which
is effected by the communication of the new life which Christ
has created and brought to light. =Andrew Osiander= proposed
a theory that diverged from this doctrine, and inclined
toward that set forth in the Tridentine Council (§ 136, 4),
but distinguished from the Romish view by decided attachment
to the Protestant principle of justification by faith alone.
He had been from A.D. 1522 pastor and reformer at Nuremberg,
and had proclaimed his ideas without thereby giving offence.
This first happened when, after his expulsion from Nuremberg
on account of the interim, he had begun to announce his
peculiar doctrine in the newly founded University of Königsberg,
where he had been appointed professor by Duke Albert of
Prussia in A.D. 1549 (§ 126, 4). Confounding sanctification
with justification, he wished to define the latter, not
as a declaring righteous but as a making righteous, not as
a juridical but as a medicinal act, wrought by an infusion,
_i.e._ a continuous influx of the righteousness of Christ.
The sacrificial death of Christ is for him only the negative
condition of justification, its positive condition rests upon
the incarnation of Christ, the reproduction of which in the
believer is justification, which is therefore to be referred not
to the human but rather to the Divine nature in Christ. Along
with this, he also held by the conviction that the incarnation
of God in Christ would have taken place in order to complete
the creation of the image of God in man even had the fall
never happened. The main point of his opposition was grounded
upon this: that he believed the juridical theory to have
overlooked the religious subjective element, which, however, is
still present in faith as the subjective condition of declaring
righteous. The keen and bitter controversy over these questions
spread from the university among the clergy, and thence to the
citizens and families, and soon came to be carried on on both
sides with great passionateness and heat. The favour publicly
shown to Osiander by the duke, who set him as Bishop of Samland
at the head of the Prussian clergy, increased the bitterness
felt toward him by his opponents. Among these was Martin
Chemnitz, a scholar of Melanchthon, and from A.D. 1548 rector
of the High School at Königsberg. Also Professor Joachim Mörlin,
a favourite pupil of Luther, Francis Staphylus, who afterwards
went back to the Romish church (§ 137, 8), and Francis Stancarus
of Mantua, a man who bears a very bad reputation for his
fomenting of quarrels, were among Osiander’s most inveterate
foes. Stancarus carried his opposition to Osiander so far
as to maintain that Christ has become our righteousness only
in respect of His human nature. The opinions received from
abroad were for the inmost part against Osiander. John Brenz,
of Württemburg [Württemberg], however, clined rather to favour
Osiander’s view than that of his opponents, while Melanchthon,
in giving utterance to the Wittenberg opinion, endeavoured by
removing misunderstandings to reconcile the opposing parties,
but on the main point decided against him. Even Osiander’s death
in A.D. 1552 did not put an end to the controversy. At the head
of his party now appeared the court preacher, John Funck, who,
standing equally high in favour with the duke, filled all
positions with his own followers. In his overweening conceit
he mixed himself up in political affairs, and put himself in
antagonism with the nobles and men of importance in the State.
A commission of investigation on the Polish sovereignty at
their instigation found him guilty of high treason, and had
him beheaded in A.D. 1566. The other Osiandrianists were deposed
and exiled. Mörlin, from A.D. 1533 general superintendent of
Brunswick, was now honourably recalled as Bishop of Samland,
reorganized the Prussian church, and in conjunction with
Chemnitz, who had been from A.D. 1554 preacher in Brunswick,
where he died in A.D. 1586 as general superintendent, composed
for Prussia a new doctrinal standard in the _Corpus doctrinæ
Pruthenicum_ of A.D. 1567.[404]

§ 141.3. Of much less importance was the =Æpinus Controversy=
about Christ’s descent into hell, which John Æpinus, first
Lutheran superintendent at Hamburg, in his exposition of the
16th Psalm, in A.D. 1542, interpreted, after the manner of the
Reformed theologians, of His state of humiliation, and as the
completion of the passive obedience of Christ in the endurance
of the pains of hell; whereas the usual Lutheran understanding
of it was, that it referred to Christ’s triumphing over the
powers of hell and death in His state of exaltation. An opinion
sent from Wittenberg, in A.D. 1550, left the matter undetermined,
and even the Formula of Concord was satisfied with teaching
that Christ in His full personality descended into hell in
order to deliver men from death and the power of the devil.--An
equally peaceful settlement was brought about in the =Kargian
Controversy=, A.D. 1563-1570, about the significance of the
active obedience of Christ, which the pastor of Anspach, George
Karg or Parsimonius, for a long time made a subject of dispute;
but afterwards he retracted, being convinced of his error by the
Wittenberg theologians.

§ 141.4. =The Philippists and their Opponents.=--Not long after
the Augsburg Confession had been accepted as the common standard
of the Lutheran church two parties arose, in which tendencies of
a thoroughly diversant character were gradually developed. The
real basis of this opposition lay in the diverse intellectual
disposition and development of the two great leaders of the
Reformation, which the scholars of both inherited in a very
exaggerated form. Melanchthon’s disciples, the so-called
Philippists, strove in accordance with their master’s example
to make as much as possible of what they had in common, on the
one hand, with the Reformed and, on the other hand, with the
Catholics, and to maintain a conciliatory attitude that might
aid toward effecting union. The personal friends, scholars,
and adherents of Luther, on the contrary, for the most part
more Lutheran than Luther himself, emulating the rugged decision
of their great leader and carrying it out in a one-sided manner,
were anxious rather to emphasise and widen as far as possible
the gulf that lay between them and their opponents, Reformed
and Catholics alike, and thus to make any reconciliation and
union by way of compromise impossible. Luther attached himself
to neither of these parties, but tried to restrain both from
rushing to extremes, and to maintain as far as he could the
peace between them.--The modification of strict Augustinianism
which Melanchthon’s further study led him to adopt in the
editions of his _Loci_ later than A.D. 1535 was denounced by
the strict Lutherans as Catholicizing, but still more strongly
did they object to the modification of the tenth article of the
Augsburg Confession which he introduced into a new rendering
of it, the so-called _Variata_, in A.D. 1540. In its original
form it stood thus: _Docent, quod corpus et sanguis Domini
vere adsint et distribuantur vescentibus in cœna Domini et
improbant secus docentes_. For these words he now substituted
the following: _Quod cum pane et vino vere exhibeantur corpus
et sanguis Christi vescentibus in cœna Domini_. This statement
was indeed by no means Calvinistic, for instead of _vescentibus_
the Calvinists would have said _credentibus_. Yet the arbitrary
and in any case Calvinizing change amazed the strict Lutherans,
and Luther himself bade its author remember that the book
was not his but the church’s creed. After Luther’s death the
Philippist party, in the Leipzig Interim of A.D. 1519, made
several other very important concessions to the Catholics
(§ 136, 7), and this led their opponents to denounce them as
open traitors to their church. Magdeburg, which stubbornly
refused to acknowledge the interim, became the city of refuge
for all zealous Lutherans; while in opposition to the Philippist
Wittenberg, the University of Jena, founded in A.D. 1548 by the
sons of the ex-elector John Frederick according to his desire,
became the stronghold of strict Lutheranism. The leaders on
the Philippist side were Paul Eber, George Major, Justus Menius,
John Pfeffinger, Caspar Cruciger, Victorin Strigel, etc. At
the head of the strict Lutheran party stood Nicholas Amsdorf
and Matthias Flacius. The former lived, after his expulsion
from Naumburg (§ 135, 5), an “exul Christi,” along with the
young dukes at Weimar. On account of his violent opposition to
the interim, he was obliged, in A.D. 1548, to flee to Magdeburg,
and after the surrender of the city he was placed by his ducal
patrons in Eisenach, where he died in A.D. 1565. The latter,
a native of Istria, and hence known as Illyricus, was appointed
professor of the Hebrew language in Wittenberg in A.D. 1544,
fled to Magdeburg in A.D. 1549, from whence he went to Weimar
in A.D. 1556, and was called to Jena in A.D. 1557.

§ 141.5. =The Adiaphorist Controversy=, A.D. 1548-1555, as
to the permissibility of Catholic forms in constitution and
worship, was connected with the drawing up of the Leipzig
Interim. That document described most of the Catholic forms
of worship as _adiaphora_, or matters of indifference, which,
in order to avoid more serious dangers, might be treated
as allowable or unessential. The Lutherans, on the contrary,
maintained that even a matter in itself unessential under
circumstances like the present could not be treated as
permissible. From Magdeburg there was poured out a flood
of violent controversial and abusive literature against the
Wittenberg renegades and the Saxon apostates. The altered
position of the latter from A.D. 1551 hushed up in some measure
the wrath of the zealots, and the religious Peace of Augsburg
removed all occasion for the continuance of the strife.

§ 141.6. =The Majorist Controversy, A.D. 1551-1562.=--The
strict Lutherans from the passing of the interim showed toward
the Philippist party unqualified disfavour and regarded them
with deep suspicion. When in A.D. 1551, George Major, at that
time superintendent at Eisleben, in essential agreement with
the interim, one of whose authors he was, and with Melanchthon’s
later doctrinal views, maintained the position, that good
works are necessary to salvation, and refused to retract
the statement, though he somewhat modified his expressions
by saying that it was not a _necessitas meriti_, but only
a _necessitas conjunctionis s. consequentiæ_; and when also
Justus Menius, the reformer of Thuringia, superintendent
at Gotha, vindicated him in two tractates,--Amsdorf in the
heat of the controversy set up in opposition the extreme
and objectionable thesis, that good works are injurious to
salvation, and even in A.D. 1559 justified it as “a truly
Christian proposition preached by St. Paul and Luther.”
Notwithstanding all the passionate bitterness that had mixed
itself up with the discussion, the more sensible friends of
Amsdorf, including even Flacius, saw that the ambiguity and
indefiniteness of the expression was leading to error on both
sides. They acknowledged, on the one hand, that only faith,
not good works in themselves, is necessary to salvation, but
that good works are the inevitable fruit and necessary evidence
of true, saving faith; and, on the other hand, that not good
works in themselves, but only trusting to them instead of
the merits of Christ alone, can be regarded as injurious to
salvation. Major for the sake of peace recalled his statement
in A.D. 1562.

§ 141.7. =The Synergistic Controversy,
A.D. 1555-1567.=--Luther in his controversy with Erasmus
(§ 125, 3), as well as Melanchthon in the first edition of his
_Loci_, in A.D. 1521, had unconditionally denied the capacity
of human nature for independently laying hold upon salvation,
and taught an absolute sovereignty of Divine grace in conversion.
In his later edition of the _Loci_, from A.D. 1535, and in
the Augsburg Confession of A.D. 1540, however, Melanchthon
had admitted a certain co-operation or synergism of a remnant
of freewill in conversion, and more exactly defined this in
the edition of the _Loci_ of A.D. 1548 as the ability to lay
hold by its own impulse of the offered salvation, _facultas se
applicandi ad gratiam_; and though even in the Leipzig Interim
of A.D. 1549 the Lutheran shibboleth _solê_ was constantly
recurring, it was simply with the object of thoroughly excluding
any claim of merit on man’s part in conversion. Luther with
indulgent tolerance had borne with the change in Melanchthon’s
convictions, and only objected to the incorporation of it
in the creed of the church. But from the date of the interim
the suspicion and opposition of the strict Lutherans increased
from day to day, and burst forth in a violent controversy when
John Pfeffinger, superintendent at Leipzig, also one of the
authors of the detested interim, published, in A.D. 1555, his
_Propositiones de libero arbitrio_, in defence of Melanchthon’s
synergism. The leaders of the Gnesio-Lutherans, Arnsdorf in
Eisenach, Flacius in Jena, and Musacus in Weimar, felt that
they durst not remain silent, and so they maintained, as alone
the genuine Lutheran doctrine, that the natural man cannot
co-operate with the workings of Divine grace upon him, but
can only oppose them. By order of the Duke John Frederick
they prepared at Weimar, in A.D. 1559, as a new manifesto of
the restored Lutheranism, a treatise containing a refutation
of all the heresies that had hitherto cropped up within the
Lutheran church. One of those invited to take part in the work,
Victorin Strigel, professor at Jena, was made to suffer for
the sympathy which he evinced for synergism by enduring close
and severe imprisonment. The duke, however, soon again became
more favourable to Strigel, who in A.D. 1560 vindicated himself
at a public disputation in Weimar against Flacius, and was soon
afterwards called to Leipzig. When in A.D. 1561 the duke set up
a consistory in Weimar, and transferred to it the right hitherto
exclusively exercised in Jena of ecclesiastical excommunication
and the censorship of theological books, and the Flacian party
opposed this “Cæsaro-papism” with unmeasured violence, all the
adherents of the party were driven out of Jena and out of the
whole territory, and their places filled with Melanchthonians.
This victory of Philippism, however, was of but short duration.
In order to regain the lost electoral rank, the duke allowed
himself to be beguiled into taking part in the so-called
Grumbach affair. He was cast into the imperial prison, and
his brother John William, who now assumed the government,
hastened, in A.D. 1567, to restore the overthrown theological
party. Even in electoral Saxony interest in the Catholicizing
synergism, at least, after Melanchthon’s death, in A.D. 1560,
was gradually lost sight of in proportion as the controversy
about the Calvinistic doctrine of the Lord’s Supper gradually
gained prominence.

§ 141.8. =The Flacian Controversy about Original Sin=,
A.D. 1560-1575.--In the heat of the controversy with Strigel
at the conference at Weimar, in A.D. 1560, Flacius had
committed himself to the statement that original sin in man
is not something accidental, but something substantial. His
own friends now urged him to retract this proposition, which
his opponents had branded as Manichæan. Its author had not
indeed intended it in the bad sense which it might be supposed
to bear. Flacius, however, was of a character too dogged and
obstinate to agree to recall what he had uttered. Expelled
with the rest of the Lutherans in A.D. 1562, and not recalled
with them in A.D. 1567, he wandered without any fixed place of
abode, driven away from almost every place that he entered, until
shortly before his death he recalled his overhasty expression.
He died in the hospital at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, in A.D. 1575.
In him a powerful character and an amazing wealth of learning
were utterly lost in consequence of unpropitious circumstances,
which were partly his fault and partly his misfortune.