It was the Word of God as in the Bible that made The Reformation.
It was in the Bible only that the men who made The Reformation found the things which they taught; and in these things their appeal was solely to the Bible.
The Reformation turns altogether on what is the place of the Bible: and whether a person is of The Reformation or not, depends on what is the place of the Bible to him.
Is the Bible above "the church?" or is "the church" above the Bible?
Is the Bible the supreme standard in the things of religion and faith? or is that standard the Bible and something else?
Is the Bible the standard, in what the Word itself says? or is it the standard through what somebody else says, or through what somebody says that the Bible says or means?
Is it the Bible only? or is it the Bible and tradition?
Through all these tests did the men have to go who made The Reformation.
And it was only by their going through every test, and holding that Word to be itself the Word of God above and independent of all the things of men and "the church," that The Reformation was made. The Roman church holds:--
"The letter of the written Word is dead without the spirit of interpretation, which alone unfolds its hidden meaning. Now this spirit is not granted to every Christian, but to the church.
"Scripture ought, therefore, to be understood in the sense determined by the church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
"Whoever rests not in the doctrine of the Roman church, and the Roman pontiff, as the infallible rule of faith, from which the Holy Scripture itself derives its force and authority, is a heretic."
Wicklif "made the sacred Scriptures the ultimate standard of all law; and declared it to be the great problem of Church evolution, to reform everything according to the principles therein contained."
Accordingly, he said: "The Sacred Scriptures are the highest and the only source of knowledge with regard to the truths of faith. It is necessary to examine all doctrines and determinations by this standard; and we are justified in attacking every doctrine that cannot be derived therefrom."
"They are blasphemers of God, who confidently advise things of a doubtful character: things which are, in the Holy Scriptures, neither expressly commanded nor forbidden."
Because of this high regard for the Scriptures, and knowing their great value to the individual, Wicklif translated the Bible into the English of the common people. This brought upon him the wrath of the churchmen. Henry Knighton wrote:
"Master John Wicklif has translated out of Latin into English, the gospel which Christ delivered to the clergy and doctors of the church that they might administer to the laity and to weaker persons, according to the state of the times and the wants of men, in proportion to the hunger of their souls and in the way which would be most attractive to them.
"Thus was the gospel by him laid more open to the laity, and to women who could read, than it had formerly been to the most learned of the clergy. And in this way the gospel pearl is cast abroad, and trodden under foot of swine."
In this, Knighton expressed "the prevailing view" of even "the better class of the clergy, who ever regarded themselves as tutors over the religious consciousness of the laity, and assumed it as certain that laymen must always be dependent for their religious education on the priests."
The priests were to impart to the laity "just so much of the Bible as seemed to them proper and befitting." To the priests "it was an abuse of the Bible to bestow it all at once upon laymen, who were incapable of understanding it, hence could only be led by it into error."
Wicklif replied: "They would condemn the Holy Ghost, who taught the apostles to speak in divers tongues. They are heretics who affirm that people of the world, and lords, have no need of knowing the law of Christ, but that it is sufficient for them to know only what the priests impart to them orally.
"For the Holy Scriptures are the faith of The Church, and the more familiar the people become with them, in a right believing sense, the better. All believers must stand before the judgment seat of Christ to give an account of the talents committed to them. Therefore all should rightly know these talents and their use, in order that they may know how to render an account of them. For then no answer which must be given through a prelate or a steward, can be of any avail; but each must answer in his own person."
The Roman clergy contended that to understand the Scriptures required "a peculiar sort of preparation which was possible only to the order of priests." Indeed in the University of Oxford it had actually been ordered that even "priests and parsons should not read the Holy Scriptures until they had spent there nine or ten years."
One of the Franciscan Order wrote:--
"The prelates should not tolerate it, that every man according to his inclination should be allowed to read the Bible translated into English; for this has often proved an occasion of falling into heresies. It is not politic that every man should, whenever and wherever he pleases, devote himself to the earnest study of the Bible."
Wicklif replied: "The New Testament is intelligible to all laymen who only do what in them lies to attain to the understanding of it. Whoever observes gentleness and love, he possesses the true understanding of the Holy Scriptures."
To Wicklif all of this meant that the Scriptures alone are all-sufficient. He declared: It is a heresy to affirm that the Gospel, with its truth and freedom, does not suffice for the salvation of a Christian, without the ordinances and ceremonies of sinful and ignorant men."
This meant too that the Scriptures are supreme in all the field of the intellectual as well as in that of the spiritual. For he wrote: "There is no subtlety in grammar, neither in logic, nor in any other science, but that it is found in a more excellent degree in the Scriptures."
Matthias wrote: "The Holy Spirit and the Word are the only true rule for all that relates to man."
"The highest rule, by which every thing is to be tried, is Christ: that single rule which is alone necessary and alone sufficient for all apostles and every man that cometh into the world, in all matters, in every place, and at all times: not only for men, but also for angels, because He is Himself that truth and wisdom that works from one end of being to the other."
"God alone is the infallible and self-sufficient Being, needing no rules from without to govern His conduct.
"His own will is His rule, and His wisdom is the immutable rule for that.
"Therefore, the Father is the shaping principle from which all things proceed; the Son the shaping principle towards which all things aim; the Holy Ghost the principle in which all things repose. And yet there are not three rules or forms, but one.
"All rules are one. They proceed from one principle and aim at one end. They do not obtain their authority from themselves, nor are they observed in the Church of God on their own account; but they are inseparably included in the same holy law of Christ, which is inscribed by the Holy Spirit on the hearts of believers, which binds many widely separated nations in union with one another, and makes all dwell with one set of manners in the House of Jesus the Crucified."
"In illustration: The Ten Commandments are plain to every one, even to the dullest of understanding, so that no man can pretend that he is embarrassed by them. And Jesus the Crucified, who is the power of God and the wisdom of God, has in a certain manner briefly summed them up in a single precept, requiring love to God and our neighbor. For love is the fulfillment of the law, and love is the perfect law of liberty.
"Jesus, who simplifies everything, has abolished the multitude of sacrifices and ceremonies, and substituted in their place the one heavenly Sacrifice. This was so ordered for the purpose of preserving unity in The Church."
Having all the precepts of the Scriptures summed up in the one New Commandment of the love of Christ; having all the ceremonies of the Scriptures summed up in the one Sacrifice of Christ; and having thus all the thought of the Scriptures met in Christ the sum of all the will and wisdom of God;--upon this, Matthias proclaims the emancipation of the Christian from all precepts, from all prohibitions and from all traditions, of men in The Church.
"While the one commandment of Christ, and His one sacrifice, preserved in The Church greatly promote unity; so on the other hand, the multitudinous prescriptions of men burden and disturb the collective body of The Church of Christ.
"The righteous, they who are actuated by the Spirit of Jesus the Crucified, stand in no need of multiplied human commands and prohibitions; because the Spirit of God guides and teaches them and because they practice the virtues and obey the truths of God spontaneously and cheerfully like a good tree which brings forth good fruit of itself, God ever supplying the power from above.
"Such made free by the indwelling Spirit of Christ, generally feel themselves cramped and confined by the multitude of ordinances, even in the performance of virtuous works.
"No man can possibly invent laws suited to every contingency and relation. The Spirit of God alone can do this, who knows all things and holds them together. And inasmuch as this Spirit is present everywhere and to all men, the spirit of man also which is in himself, which with the Spirit of Christ alone knows what is in man, this alone can give to each man befitting laws and establish them.
"Let not precepts and prohibitions, then, be multiplied in The Church; for by means of them the devil has acquired a great power of involving the people in greater guilt: partly because he takes occasion from these ordinances to tempt them, and partly because these ordinances ensnare men's consciences and make the sins of the unrighteous still heavier.
"And if one should act differently from what these ordinances require, he knows that he must incur the anger of God and His saints or the anathema. They have enthralled the conscience of the people, declaring the transgression of their rules to be a mortal sin.
"For in these days they lay more stress on a failure to observe minutely the order of the liturgy, than on sins of lying, of a sleepy indolence, or covetousness, or anything of a like nature. So that men nowadays are more afraid to transgress one of these human ordinances, than the commandments of God Himself.
"The more ordinances there are the more frequent are transgressions, and the stronger the temptation to transgress.
"Neither do they consider how these multifarious ordinances force the multitude to despise them and the commandments of the Lord at the same time.
"This arises from the fact that he whose mind is turned on many things, is so much the less fitted for single duties; and from the fact that such ordinances, since they relate to sensible and outward things, appear to the communities in a peculiarly clear light, and inspire in them reverence, while the commandments of God are spiritual, and God who ordains them is a Being whom they cannot see.
"Such ordinances, therefore, owing to the constant presence of the lawgiver, make a greater impression on the multitude than the commandments of the invisible God.
"Then again the commandments of God appear to carnal men as every-day matters; while those human ordinances, being something new, make a stronger impression on the minds of the people.
"Again, men are fond of seeking their salvation in such sensible and corporeal things which lie near their capacities; and lose sight of the Crucified, who alone is the salvation of souls. And they settle it fast in their consciences that they can be justified by such visible things, though the spiritual love of Christ may be absent from their hearts.
"I wish that things might be so ordered that no other fear or punishment should ever be held up before subjects than in reference to the words of Jesus Christ and His commands.
"All other--the multiplied laws of men are superfluous and inadequate. They ought not to be called traditions, but superstitions.
"It would be a salutary thing, and calculated to restore peace and union to Christendom, to root up that whole plantation, and once more sum up the whole in that one single precept: to bring back the Christian Church to those sound and simple beginnings, where it would be needful to retain but a few, and these only the apostolic laws." All other--the inventions of men should be regarded simply as counsels. Thus human laws are to be recognized only as such; and the commandments of God to remain in their dignity, and as such to be reverenced and obeyed.
"I speak to all. Let him who is capable of receiving it, receive it: So have I gathered from the Holy Scriptures, and I believe, that all the above-named works of men, ordinances and ceremonies, will be utterly extirpated, cut up by the roots and cease. And God alone will be exalted, and His word will abide forever.
"And the time is close at hand when these ordinances shall be abolished."
Huss set it as a maxim, that, "The precepts of Scripture, conveyed through the understanding, are to rule the conscience: in other words, God speaking in the Bible, and not the church speaking through the priesthood, is the one infallible Guide of men."
"The glory of Christ, and of His bride, The Church, consists particularly in the practical imitation of the life of Christ in this: that a man put away all inordinate affections, and all human ordinances that would obstruct him in the pursuit of his object.
The theological faculty of the University of Prague declared:--
"To say that the ordinances of the holy fathers, and the praiseworthy customs in the church, are not to be observed because they are not contained in Holy Scripture, is an error."
Along with that they designated many other such "errors," and then declared that all these "errors" were from "the one cause" that the party of Huss--
"admitted no other authority than the sacred Scriptures, explained in their own sense and in contrariety with the doctrine of the church and of entire Christendom."
Luther said:
"It is the most impudent of all things to affirm in The Church, and among Christians anything that Jesus has not taught.
"The Christian believer has no other authority than the Holy Scriptures--they constitute Divine law."
And in replying to a papal attack, Luther laid down the fundamental principles of The Reformation, thus:
The Word of God, the whole Word of God, and nothing but the Word of God."
How true to the Scriptures is all this, will easily be seen from only a few references.
First, the Scriptures as the Word of God: "When ye received the Word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men; but as it is in truth, The Word of God: which effectually worketh also in you that believe." 1 Thess. 2:13; Acts 7: 1-4.
"Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 2 Peter 1:21.
"The Spirit of God spake by me." 2 Sam. 23:2; Acts 28:25; Heb. 3:7.
Next, the all-sufficiency of that Word: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for--
"doctrine, for
"reproof, for
"correction, for
"instruction in righteousness:
"that the man of God may be perfect,
"thoroughly furnished unto all good works."
"His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue.
"Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature: having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust." 2 Peter 1:3, 4.
"For the Word of God is living and powerful, . . . and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." Heb. 4:13.
Next, to the exclusion of everything else. In the presence of that Word, the wicked is to forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
"For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isa. 55:7,9.
And Jesus said: "When ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do." Luke 17:10.
All that is duty is commanded.
For anyone to do as duty what is not commanded of God, is to undertake to do more than his duty.
But God is the Author of duty; and by Him all that is duty is commanded. Then for any one to think of doing more than duty, is at once to put himself beyond God and above God.
Therefore, for any one to do as duty, as of obligation, anything that is not commanded by God, is to go beyond God and is to put himself or the source of the obligation--is to put man--above God.
And that is precisely the story of the Roman church: "the church" has "authority to command men"; "the church" has "authority" to "oblige men under sin!" And by doing things commanded by the church, but that are not commanded by God, men can make up for their failures to do what is commanded by God!
In all that, there can be made "a show of wisdom in willworship," and a show of worship in a voluntary and ostentatious "humility"; but in it all there is no help for man against the indulgence of his earthly nature.
It is all only the provision of Error, that fosters the passions instead of sanctifies the soul.
Error only fosters the passions. Truth only sanctifies the soul.
God would have His sanctifying truth, as that truth is in spirit and in truth, to reach the heart and life of man.
To this end He has given His word covering in completest detail "the whole duty of man"--"all things that pertain to life and godliness"; and has carefully excluded every thing that is not commanded in that word. Rev. 22:18, 19.
Thus He would shut out from man, all human, hindering, burdensome, mischievous, things; and would shut in man with Himself, in His holy audience-chamber alone, that man may hear His word as that Word is.
And there, with His Word of Truth alone, and with the Spirit of Truth alone to take that Word and make it plain to the mind and seal it upon the heart, God would sanctify unto Himself the soul of man according to the gracious destiny that He fixed for him before the world was.
By this sanctifying Word of divine Truth, in The Reformation, Christ is cleansing The Church from everything that is not of Him, preparatory to her soon-coming glorious Presentation. This is what meant The Reformation in the minds of the men of God who began it.
This is what means The Reformation now in the time of its finishing in the finishing of the Mystery of God.
And that is why that in its beginning, in its revival, now, and unto its finishing in the glorious Presentation of The Church, the fundamental principles of The Reformation are just these three:
1. The Word of God.
2. The whole Word of God.
3. Nothing but the Word of God.