iiiy: -^^ 
 
 <^v 
 
 J"
 
 Cije 2.uti)er Cximmemoration anti t|)e 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 
 
 On SUNDAY, NOVEMBER ir, 1883 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM INCE, D.D. 
 
 REGIUS PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY, AND CANON OF CHKIST CHURCH 
 
 RIVINGTONS 
 WATERLOO PLACE, LONDON 
 
 MDCCCLXXXIII
 
 THE LUTHER COMMEMOEATION AND THE 
 CHUECH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 " As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but 
 as the servants of God." — 1 Peter ii. 16. 
 
 It is known, probably, to most here present that 
 this Sunday is being observed throughout Protestant 
 Germany as the commemoration of the 400th 
 anniversary of the birthday of Luther, who was 
 born at Eisleben, in Saxony, on November 10th, 
 1483. No doubt the memory of the great reformer 
 comes l^ome with greater intensity of sympathy to 
 the German than to any other European people. 
 For he is emphatically the German national hero ; 
 he has been the inspiring principle of their later 
 political and ecclesiastical freedom ; he was the 
 virtual creator of their literary language by his 
 translation of the Bible ; some of his hymns have 
 all the might of popular national ballads, and awaken 
 undying enthusiasm on all critical occasions when 
 the hearts of assembled multitudes are deeply stirred. 
 The strength and the weakness of the entire people 
 are reflected in the personal character of the re- 
 former, vehement and impassioned, yet child-like in 
 
 A 2
 
 4 The Ltither Comme^noration 
 
 religion ; ardent for tlie satisfaction of the spiritual 
 wants of the heart and exercised with deep moral 
 problems, yet coarse in his tone, and easily open to 
 the charge of irreverence ; possessed with inflexible 
 determination and fearless courage, yet tender in all 
 the relations of domestic hfe ; simple in his habits 
 and proof against all the allurements of luxury ; 
 confessing a genuine pleasure in the beauties of out- 
 ward nature, in music, in social intercourse ; not a 
 saint of either the ascetic or the pietistic type, but 
 an ardent upholder of Christian liberty and an 
 indomitable controversialist in questions of rehgious 
 faith and practice. 
 
 But the commemoration is being held among many 
 English-speaking communities of the Western con- 
 tinent, notably by many of our own Nonconformist 
 societies. Is there any reason why the Church of 
 England should refuse to take any notice of such a 
 commemoration of a great name in Church history ? 
 Can the University of Oxford, if she wishes to prove 
 herself alive and sensitive to the movements of 
 thought and feeling in the contemporary religious 
 world, be content to preserve a cold and dignified 
 silence on such an occasion ? I answer unhesitat- 
 ingly, No. For whatever opinion we may form as 
 to the personal character of Luther, and whatever 
 judgment we may pronounce on some of the most 
 signal acts of his career, which friends and foes have 
 combined to cover with praise or blame, or apology 
 or invective, history bears witness that Luther rather 
 than any other leading reformer was the mightiest 
 agent in the doctrinal Reformation of the Church of 
 the sixteenth century, and the Church of England 
 
 /^\ 
 
 \ J
 
 and the Church of England. 5 
 
 as a Reformed Ohurcli, when it shook off subjection 
 to the See of Rome as the supreme central authority 
 of Christendom, owed more to Lutheran than to any- 
 other continental influences. 
 
 The first English reformers were disciples of 
 Luther, rather than of Zwingli or Calvin. The 
 distinctly new features, which on the revision of the 
 public services of the Church were added to the 
 sacramental offices, were derived from Lutheran 
 sources. In the office for Holy Communion they 
 come from "the Consultation " of Archbishop Her- 
 mann, drawn up for his diocese of Cologne, by 
 Melancthon under Luther's superintendence ; in the 
 office for Baptism they came more immediately from 
 Luther's own office, composed for the use of Nurem- 
 berg. Many of the Articles are either taken verbatim 
 or slightly modified from the Confessions of Augs- 
 burg and Wiirtemberg. Theologians who look 
 back with fond regret to the medigeval Church may 
 please themselves with the verbal argument that the 
 Church of England is not styled Protestant in any 
 of her official formularies, but if we look to realities, 
 and not mere words, the Church of England is 
 Protestant, since the historical origin of that word 
 implies that she protests against the errors of 
 doctrine and practice prevalent in the unreformed 
 Churches, which hold to the Roman obedience, and 
 though the English and German Reformations took 
 a very difTerent outward form, owing to the diverse 
 political circumstances of the two nations, yet 
 Luther was the ruling spirit of the common Protes- 
 tantism of the two movements. And in the pulpit 
 of the University of Oxford it may be allowable to
 
 6 The Lilt her Commemoration 
 
 recall the fact that Oxford had very early been 
 affected by the influence of Luther's writings. So 
 early as 1521, i.e., only four years after Luther had 
 begun the great controversy by the publication of 
 his Theses on the church door of Wittenberg, Arch- 
 bishop Warham, the Chancellor, wrote to Cardinal 
 Wolsey, telling him that he had received informa- 
 tion from Oxford that " divers of that University 
 were infected with the heresies of Luther, and of 
 others of that sort, having among them a great 
 number of books of the said perverse doctrine. The 
 lewdness of one or two cankered members had 
 induced no small number of young uncircumspect 
 fools to give ear unto them." ^ 
 
 A complaint was made by Leyland, Bishop of 
 Lincoln, that a certain monk. Dr. Rowham, in 
 preaching before the University at St. Peter' s-in- 
 the-East, " had maintained certain opinions of 
 Luther, comforting erroneous persons in their 
 opinions, saying, ' Fear not them that kill the 
 body.' " Wolsey summoned a conference of Oxford 
 divines to London, who drew up a solemn condem- 
 nation of the new doctrines, which was sent down 
 to Oxford, and publicly affixed on the dial of St. 
 Mark's Church, facing the High Street. Curiously 
 enough, some of the chief advocates of Lutheran 
 views were found among the junior canons of Car- 
 dinal College, whom Wolsey himself had transplanted 
 from Cambridge, and with them were united some 
 of the fellows of the newly-founded Corpus Christi 
 College. 
 
 A warm discussion on the personal character of 
 
 ' Ellis' Original Letters. 3rd Series I. 239.
 
 and the Church of England. y 
 
 Lutlier arose in the University after the final settle- 
 ment of the Church of England in the following 
 century. Towards the end of the reign of James II., 
 when under the patronage of the reigning monarch, 
 a reaction towards the old Papal Church took place ; 
 one of the converts, Abraham Woodhead, of Uni- 
 versity College, wrote a book, entitled, " Consider- 
 ations on the Spirit of Martin Luther, and the 
 Original of the Reformation," in which he violently 
 assailed the character of the reformer, and en- 
 deavoured thereby to disparage the Reformation, in 
 which he had played so important a part. Wood- 
 head was answered by no less a personage than 
 Atterbury, then a young student of Christ Church. 
 
 After successfully vindicating the principle that 
 the truth or falsehood of religious doctrine cannot 
 stand or fall with the personal character of its up- 
 holders, Atterbury sums up his arguments with a 
 remarkable sketch of Luther. " He was a man 
 certainly of high endowments of mind and great 
 virtues ; he had a vast understanding, which raised 
 him up to a pitch of learning unknown to the age 
 he lived in; his knowledge in Scriptures was admir- 
 able, his elocution manly, and his way of reasoning 
 with all the subtilty that these honest, plain truths 
 he delivered would bear ; his thoughts were bent 
 always on great designs, and he had a resolution 
 fitted to go through with them. The assurance of 
 his mind was not to be shook or surprised, and that 
 vapp-qcTLa of his (for I know not what else to call it) 
 before the Diet of Worms, was such as might have 
 become the days of the Apostles. His life was 
 holy, and when he had leisure for retirements,
 
 8 The Luther Commemoration 
 
 severe ; his virtues active chiefly, and homiletical, 
 not those lazy, sullen ones of the cloister. He had 
 no ambition but in the service of God ; for other 
 things, neither his enjoyment nor wishes ever went 
 higher than the bare conveniences of living. He 
 was of a temper particularly averse to covetousness 
 or any base sin ; and charitable even to a fault, 
 without respect to his own occasions. If among 
 this crowd of virtues a failing crept in, we must 
 remember that an Apostle himself has not been 
 irreprovable ; if in the body of his doctrine one flaw 
 is to be seen, yet the greatest lights of the Church, 
 and in the purest times of it were, we know, not 
 exact in all their opinions. Upon the whole, we 
 have certainly great reason to break out in the 
 phrase of the prophec, and say, ' How beautiful upon • 
 the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth 
 glad tidings ! ' " 
 
 We need not adopt entirely as our own this 
 language of Atterbury, we may be sensible that his 
 praise is not sufiiciently discriminating, and that 
 from lack of spiritual sympathy he does not realize 
 the theological importance of Luther's doctrine, and 
 the intensity of the moral impulse produced by it, 
 but it is, at all events, a manly protest against the 
 defamation of a great name. 
 
 No doubt an Academic Society, such as is found 
 in a University, would be naturally predisposed, in 
 the first instance, to give its admiration and sympathy 
 to erudite scholars, who took a less prominent part 
 in the Reformation movement, such as Erasmus and 
 Melancthon, rather than to the impetuous practical 
 reorganizer of the ecclesiastical system, Luther, who
 
 and the Church of England. 9 
 
 retained tlirougliout life so much of the rough- 
 ness of the Saxon peasant. It would be at once 
 unjust and ungenerous to forget the eminent 
 services which these great scholars, each in his 
 measure, rendered to the cause of religious reforma- 
 tion. 
 
 Erasmus, by his Greek edition of the New Testa- 
 ment, aided in placing the sources of Christian 
 truth in their primitive purity within the easier 
 reach of men. But he was rather the literary than 
 the religious Christian. With no deep theological 
 convictions, and no strong spiritual yearnings, he 
 was too timid and too fond of ease to enter upon 
 the struggle which demanded a martyr's spirit ; he 
 could not brave unpopularity in breaking with the 
 dominant system ; when the crisis came he turned 
 back from want of courage. The gentle Melancthon, 
 with his many-sided learning, with a wider culture 
 and greater elegance of style than his master, helped 
 in the internal furtherance of the Heformation by 
 his scientific methodization of doctrine. But a 
 great social movement, whether in Church or State 
 life, can only be effected by the iron will and in- 
 trepid courage of practical energy triumphing over 
 opposition. Luther described himself as the rough- 
 hewer and pioneer, Melancthon as the quiet tiller 
 and planter, sowing and watering at his leisure. 
 Deep learning may undermine the belief in a corrupt 
 theology, but only an intense moral earnestness, 
 combined with a strong practical personality, can 
 reform a Church. 
 
 In estimating the services of Luther towards 
 religious truth and liberty, we are under no necessity 
 
 A 3
 
 lo The Luther Commemoration 
 
 of expressing unqualified adhesion to all his pre- 
 sentations of doctrine or ajoproval of every act of his 
 policy. For instance, we find ourselves unable both 
 from personal conviction and from loyalty to our 
 own Church to accept his doctrine of the manner of 
 the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The literal 
 interpretation of the words of institution which 
 seemed to Luther to necessitate, if we are faithful 
 to the word of Scripture, belief in the theory of 
 consubstantiation, is open to the same objection as 
 the theory of transubstantiation, as implying a 
 corporal rather than a spiritual presence, and is 
 hard to reconcile with belief in the existence of the 
 glorified body of Christ in heaven. And again 
 Luther's doctrine of the universal priesthood of all 
 Christians, which, rightly understood, is an un- 
 doubted principle of the theology of the New 
 Testament, is at times pressed by him with such an 
 exaggerated one-sidedness that it comes into conflict 
 with the truth that a ministry in the Church is a 
 Divine appointment. The officers of the Church are 
 not only delegates and representatives of the con- 
 gregation, but ambassadors of God and ministers of 
 Christ, and the historic continuity of the ordination 
 of ministers, though not an indispensable condition 
 of the organization of a Christian community, is a 
 witness to communion with the one Holy Catholic 
 and Apostolic Church not lightly to be surrendered, 
 But when these and other like reservations are 
 made, members of the Church of England may 
 gratefully call to mind the inestimable advantages 
 which they, in common with the members of the 
 Reformed Protestant Churches throughout the world,
 
 a7id the Chui^ch of Engimid. 1 1 
 
 owe to Luther for his vindication of two or three 
 grand vital principles of Christian life. 
 
 First, we owe to Luther the revival and reassertion 
 in its full prominence of the doctrine of justification 
 or salvation of man by faith alone, and not on 
 account of his own works or deservings, and thereby 
 the restoration of peace, joy, and freedom to the 
 Christian life. This profound spiritual truth, so 
 dear to the troubled soul, so liable to perversion by 
 the ungodly, was the master-thought of Luther's 
 own personal religion, it was the point of departure 
 for all his subsequent career of reformation. No 
 doubt it was his manful and indignant protest 
 against the shameless falsehood and venality of the 
 system of indulgences, as propagated by men like 
 Tetzel, which proved to be the spark lighting up the 
 great fire of the Reformation ; but the spiritual truth 
 which, when realized in its full consequences, was 
 destined to overthrow the contemporary ecclesiastical 
 system, was that which was revealed to his con- 
 sciousness in the inward experience of his monastic 
 life at Erfurt. Distracted, then, by the torments of 
 a self-accusing conscience, terrified by the thought 
 of God as an angry Judge, weighed down by the 
 contrast between his own sinfulness and the 
 righteousness of God, he sought peace in vain by 
 the performance of the most painful external exercises 
 of penance. In mental agony he bemoaned his own 
 wretchedness, and comfort came to him when the 
 touching and simple words of one of the elder 
 brethren of his convent, recalling to his mind the 
 familiar words of the Creed, " I believe in the 
 forgiveness of sins," taught him that he must
 
 12 The Liither Co77tmenioration 
 
 believe in reference to himself that God had, through 
 the death and passion of His Son, procured for him 
 the forgiveness of all his sins. Then he began to 
 p3rceive that this truth, that man is justified by 
 faith without the works of the law, was the original 
 doctrine of St. Paul and his fellow- Apostles ; then 
 he saw that so long as he was attempting to earn 
 God's favour by his own good works, he was living 
 in the spirit of a servant towards an exacting master, 
 and not in that of a son towards a loving Father ; 
 then with the self-renouncing faith in the Divine 
 promise of forgiveness, he entered into the glorious 
 liberty of the children of God, and knew the joy of free 
 and pure love. Deeper study of St. Paul's Epistles 
 led Luther on to the fuller and more far-reaching 
 development of this evangelical doctrine, which had 
 been obscured and thrust out of sight by the current 
 teaching: of the Mediaeval Church. Formalism there 
 reio^ned supreme. A vast hierarchical ecclesiastical 
 system had interposed itself between God and the 
 soul of the individual man. ReHgion had become a 
 service of fear. The great promise of forgiveness 
 of sins through the mediation of Christ, of which 
 baptism was the seal and pledge to each Christian, 
 was lost sight of ; every sin was to be confessed in 
 all its circumstances to a priest, as wielding the 
 authority of the Church, and absolution was to be 
 obtained only upon the condition of the performance 
 of certain penances, such as multiplied recitation of 
 prayers, pilgrimages, bodily macerations; a rigid 
 observance of external ceremonies was enforced on 
 pain of spiritual penalties ; beyond the grave were 
 the dim mysterious sufferings of purgatory, the
 
 and the Church of England. 13 
 
 relaxation of wliicli rested only with the Supreme 
 Ruler of the Church ; external good works as the 
 satisfaction to God for sin superseded the necessity 
 of true contrition of heart, and faith in the all- 
 sufficient atonement of Christ was terribly enfeebled 
 by the doctrine that the mass was a propitiatory 
 sacrifice for the sins of the living and the dead. The 
 doctrine of justification by faith which Luther 
 revived, and which our own Church has formally 
 accepted in her 11th Article, broke through this 
 hard bondage and tyranny, and pointed the way to 
 Christian freedom and joy. It brought men into 
 direct personal relation with God, and allayed the 
 fears of a self-accusing conscience, conscious of sin, 
 by directing men to place an absolute trust in the 
 certainty of God's promise of forgiveness of sins to 
 the penitent and believing soul. Faith in the 
 promises of God as declared to mankind in Christ 
 Jesus the Lord, and, applicable therefore to each 
 individual, was proclaimed as the leading principle 
 of the Gospel. Sacraments, ordinances, ceremonies, 
 were all subordinate to this. This faith was not a 
 mere subjective consciousness of forgiveness, but 
 was based upon the word and promise of God. The 
 Christian life was no longer to be regarded as a 
 laborious eflfort to stand right in the sight of God, 
 by a perpetual course of external good works, it was 
 a joyful sense of God's reconciling love, which 
 manifested itself in the performance of all duties 
 towards God and towards man. Of course, it was 
 inevitable that this doctrine of justification by faith 
 only should be exposed to the charge of anti- 
 nomianism and be thought prejudicial to morality. 
 
 A 4
 
 14 The Luther Coimiicuioratioyi 
 
 It was capable of being abused by fanatical libertines. 
 In handling it there was especial need of the 
 apostolic warning that Christians should not " use 
 their liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the 
 servants of God." 
 
 Luther, though he may occasionally in the heat 
 of controversy have used exaggerated language in 
 depreciation of legal righteousness, is most careful 
 in his formal discussion of the doctrine to guard it 
 against perversion. This caution is nowhere more 
 emphatically displayed than in his famous treatise 
 on Christian liberty, written in 1520, Hear his 
 own clear language: " Although the Christian man 
 is inwardly, as to his spirit, fully and abundantly 
 justified by faith, yet he still remains in this mortal 
 life upon earth, in which he must of necessity 
 govern his own body, and have intercourse with 
 men. Now here begin good works. Here is no 
 sitting down at ease. Here certainly begins a care 
 that the body, by fastings, watchings, labours, and 
 other moderate disciplines, be exercised and brought 
 into subjection to the spirit, so that it may obey, 
 and be conformable to the inward man and to faith, 
 and may not rebel or wander. But these works are 
 not to be done with this opinion, that by them any 
 one may become righteous before God, but with 
 this view only, that the body may be brought into 
 subjection and purified from its lusts, so that its 
 eye might never be so much as turned, but with a 
 desire to avoid concupiscence. We do not reject 
 good works, but, on the contrary, we strenuously 
 maintain and teach them, for we do not condemn 
 the works for themselves, but for that impiously
 
 and the Chtirch of England. 1 5 
 
 added false opinion of seeking righteousness by 
 them. Behold, this is the true Christian life ; here 
 is the true faith which worketh by love, that is, 
 which goes forth with joy and delight in the work 
 of perfect freedom ; it serves its neighbours freely 
 and spontaneously, because its own treasure is 
 richly filled with the overflowing abundance which 
 it possesses by faith." 
 
 The true relation between faith and works is 
 illustrated by the Scriptural comparison of the tree 
 and the fruits. " Good pious works never make a 
 good pious man, but a pious man does good works, 
 for it is evident that the fruits do not bear the tree, 
 nor do trees grow upon the fruits, but the trees 
 bear the fruit, and the fruits grow upon the trees ; 
 the trees must be before the fruits. He who will 
 do good works must therefore not begin with the 
 works, but with the person who is to do the 
 works." 
 
 Modern theology, perhaps not unnaturally, recoils 
 from the hard scholastic theories of imputed or 
 infused righteousness with which the doctrine of 
 justification by faith was encumbered in the pro- 
 gress of the Reformation controversy ; yet in the 
 long-run, in prospect of the hour of death and the 
 day of judgment, we all practically confess that our 
 own good works cannot put away our sins, and 
 endure the severity of God's judgment. High 
 Churchmen and Low Churchmen, Churchmen and 
 Nonconformists, sing with fervour the now classic 
 hymn,— 
 
 " In my hands no price I bring, 
 Simply to Thy Cross I cling." 
 
 All our life, we feel, ought to be one long protracted
 
 1 6 The Luther Commemoration 
 
 act of repentance towards God, and faitli in our 
 Lord Jesus Christ. It has been said that although 
 the evangehcal doctrine is rejected by the Roman 
 Church, it nevertheless lives within her pale as a 
 hidden esoteric tradition, and is practically embraced 
 by thousands, in place of the outward tradition 
 which in theory is maintained. It is remarked by 
 Martensen ^ that the doctrine is virtually implied in 
 the old custom of the Roman Church, clearly sym- 
 bolical, of holding a crucifix before the dying. For 
 what else could this custom mean, except that the 
 man now in the solemn hour of death must rely, not 
 upon his own merits, not upon the merits of the 
 saints, but solely upon the crucified Christ as the 
 only Mediator ? 
 
 The doctrine of free grace was the primitive 
 doctrine of St. Paul. It did not stand in such 
 prominence in the succeeding centuries, because 
 theology was then more objective, and concerned 
 itself rather with establishing orthodox belief, 
 touching the Godhead and the Person of Christ. 
 
 When the system of the mediaeval Church threat- 
 ened to extinguish its apprehension altogether, by 
 interposing the priesthood between God and the 
 soul, and making absolution by the Church the 
 absolute condition of reconciliation with God, it was 
 reasserted by such precursors of the Reformation as 
 John Huss ; but it was reserved to Luther to revive 
 it as the article of a standing or falling Church, and 
 to proclaim its significance as the guarantee for 
 Christian liberty, and the motive force of a real, and 
 not a mere conventional, morality. Its proclamation 
 * " Christian Dogmatics," p. 39-i.
 
 a7id the Church of England. 1 7 
 
 ■was a call to immediate conscious fellowsMp of men 
 with God. It taught men to work from life rather 
 than for life. Faith led up to the perfect love which 
 " casteth out fear." 
 
 A second great service rendered by Luther to the 
 Christian world was the reinforcement of the doc- 
 trine of the supremacy of Holy Scripture as the 
 rule of faith. The primitive deposit of religious 
 doctrine emanating from Christ Himself and His 
 Apostles had in the course of the ages received vast 
 accretions ; pious opinions originally held by indivi- 
 dual teachers had been elevated into necessary 
 dogmas ; theories elaborated by a subtle scholastic 
 philosophy had been put upon the same level as the 
 foundation facts of the Gospel; the Church had 
 claimed for itself absolute power of adding new 
 articles of faith, and not merely of more clearly 
 formulating " the faith once delivered to the saints ;" 
 traditions, even of late origin, were forced upon the 
 acceptance of all members of the Church, and not 
 merely on the clergy ; the final issue of this tendency 
 to enlarge the area of necessary truth, is exhibited 
 in the decree of the Council of Trent passed in the 
 very year of Luther's death, which declared that the 
 Church receives and venerates with equal feeling of 
 piety and reverence, all the books of the Old and 
 New Testament, and also the traditions relating as 
 well to faith as to morals, as having, either from the 
 mouth of Christ Himself, or from the dictation of 
 the Holy Ghost, been preserved by continuous 
 succession in the Church. 
 
 The rule of faith thus propounded was not the 
 primitive teaching contained in the original written
 
 1 8 The Luther Commemoration 
 
 documents of the Christian Church, but this com* 
 bined with a supposed traditional revelation con- 
 cerning doctrine not to be found in the sacred 
 writings, and which is equally certain, equally Divine, 
 and equally to be embraced and reverenced with the 
 sacred writings. The power of declaring the whole 
 body of Christian doctrine was attributed to the 
 Church as represented by a general Council, under 
 the sanction of the Pope. Infallibility was claimed 
 for the decisions of such Council. The authority of 
 the Church became an arbitrary tyranny over the 
 faith and conscience of its members, and was en- 
 forced by physical no less than by spiritual penalties. 
 "When thoughtful men began to reflect upon the 
 history of theological beliefs, they could not but 
 perceive that oral tradition had been grievously 
 corrupted ; that many proofs of lately-accepted 
 doctrine rested upon forged documents, notably 
 those which were appealed to as establishing the 
 papal supremacy, that the official theology of the 
 Church contained portions distinctly contradictory 
 to the doctrine of Holy Scripture. Councils and 
 Popes had proved no security against the intro- 
 duction of false doctrines. All private judgment 
 was suppressed by the prohibition of the reading of 
 the Bible in vernacular translations without licence. 
 Against this mental and spiritual tyranny the Re- 
 formation was a protest. Luther and his adherents 
 at the beginning of their movement proclaimed that 
 there was no sure doctrine, but such as is conform- 
 able to the Word of God, that the Lord forbids the 
 teaching of any other, and that they were resolved 
 by the grace of God to maintain the pure and
 
 and the Church of England. 1 9 
 
 exclusive teacMng of His only word, such as is 
 contained in the books of tlie Old and New Testa- 
 ment, without adding thereto what may be contrary 
 to it. That is the principle which is enshrined in 
 the standards of our own Church. These with no 
 faltering utterance declare that whatsoever is not 
 read in Holy Scripture nor may be proved thereby 
 is not to be required of any man that it should be 
 believed as an article of the faith. Things ordained 
 by Councils as necessary to salvation have neither 
 strength nor authority unless it may be declared 
 that they be taken out of Holy Scripture. The 
 Church is a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ, but 
 is limited by it in determining controversies of faith. 
 A third great service which Luther rendered to 
 Christendom was that he effectually prepared the 
 way to ecclesiastical and political liberty, by enabling 
 Europe to break away from the absolute supremacy 
 of the Papacy. There had been during the century 
 preceding his era signs of murmuring and disaffec- 
 tion against the dominion over faith and conscience, 
 and over many departments of civil life, exercised 
 by the Papacy, but these had been nearly silenced 
 by persecution or had only leavened the lower 
 classes of men ; they had not enabled men to throw 
 off the yoke. We, after the experience of three 
 centuries and more of spiritual independence, can 
 afford to look calmly and dispassionately upon the 
 claims of the Pope to the spiritual empire of man- 
 kind. Even among the nations which still own 
 obedience to the See of Rome, the old proud pre- 
 tensions of that power are curtailed and restrained 
 by rigid law. But in the beginning of the 16th
 
 20 The Luther Commemoration 
 
 century the Papacy was still a mighty tyranny. It 
 claimed for itself that the lordship of the whole 
 earth had been given over to it by Christ. It depre- 
 ciated temporal sovereignty as being ignoble and 
 inferior, and indebted to its consecration by the 
 Church for its warrant for exacting allegiance from 
 its subjects. It exempted from the jurisdiction of 
 the State all its own officers, bishops, priests, monks, 
 nuns, even when they were guilty of grievous civil 
 crimes : it had a vast independent system of ad- 
 ministration of justice, invested with the power of 
 punishing disobedience and heresy, if necessary, 
 by the extreme civil penalty of death — it had the 
 empire at its service. It had extinguished the 
 liberty of national churches — a confederation of 
 co-ordinate bishops had now been subjugated to a 
 spiritual monarchy — the Pope claimed to be the 
 infallible interpreter of Scripture, the only authority 
 who had the right of summoning a general Council. 
 It was the courage and undaunted energy of Luther 
 which struck the mightiest blow in shattering tliis 
 ecclesiastical autocracy. 
 
 In his soul-stirring address to the Christian 
 nobility of the German nation he appealed to the 
 princes and laity to help him in asserting the rights 
 of each national church to reform itself, to recog- 
 nize the laity as an integral part of the Church, 
 entitled to a voice in its government, to refuse to 
 accept the Pope alone or the hierarchy alone as 
 lords over God's heritage. He sent forth a trumpet 
 call to all enlightened Christian men to break down 
 the three walls with which the dominant Papal 
 system had fenced itself in, the first being the rigid
 
 and the ChzircJi of England. 21 
 
 distinction between the clergy and laity by wliicli 
 the Church had been identified with the clergy ; the 
 second the infallibility of the Pope and his exclusive 
 right to interpret Scripture ; the third the sole right 
 of the Pope to call a Council. He made an earnest 
 plea for the gathering of a free national Council, or 
 ultimately a free general Council, in which reforma- 
 tion both of doctrine and of discipline should be 
 effected on the basis of Scripture. Of this book, 
 which may be described as a great anti-Papal blast, 
 4000 copies were circulated in one month, and 
 largely leavened public opinion both in Germany 
 and England. We all know how the Pope answered 
 the call to reformation by a bull of excommunication 
 — how Luther, judging reform from within the Papal 
 Court to be hopeless, proclaimed his open revolt 
 from the Roman supremacy by the symbolical act of 
 publicly burning the bull. But in the conflict with 
 the Papacy, Luther stood at his highest pitch of 
 greatness as displayed in fearlessness and righteous 
 enthusiasm, when, spite of the risks against which 
 even an imperial safeconduct could only dubiously 
 guarantee him, he stood before the Emperor Charles 
 V. and the assembled princes and prelates in the 
 Diet of Worms (1521) and made the memorable 
 reply to the demand for a recantation : " Unless I 
 am conquered and convinced by the testimony of 
 the Holy Scriptures, or by open, clear, and distinct 
 grounds and reasons — for I believe neither Pope nor 
 Councils alone, because it is manifest that they have 
 often been mistaken and contradicted themselves — 
 unless my conscience is taken captive by the Word 
 of God, I can and will recant nothing, for it is
 
 22 The Luther Commemoration 
 
 neitlier safe nor prudent to do auglit against one'^s 
 conscience. Here I stand — I can do no otherwise 
 — God help me — Amen." 
 
 From that day forth the Eeformation entered 
 upon a new stage. It was no longer a question of 
 scholastic and theological disputation. It passed 
 into the arena of state policy and diplomacy. Like 
 the Gospel at its first commencement, it seemed 
 destined to bring upon the earth not peace but a 
 sword. It separated whole nations — it originated 
 religious wars — it stirred Europe to its foundations. 
 It triumphed in the leading Teutonic nations — it 
 was eventually hurled back in the Latin races. But 
 it has broken for ever the absolute monarchy of the 
 Pope. We Englishmen, who are free from the yoke 
 which our fathers were not able to bear, we members 
 of the English Church, which accepts the Royal 
 supremacy as a guarantee of the freedom of our 
 national Church from an external spiritual jurisdic- 
 tion, and of the sacredness of civil government and 
 of the obedience due by the clergy to the laws of 
 the country of which they are citizens, should be 
 ungrateful if we did not own our obligations to the 
 solitary monk who defied the Pope in the cause of 
 Christian freedom. Our fathers had felt the iron 
 enter so deeply into their soul that, in the first 
 outburst of newly-recovered independence, they 
 inserted in the public Litany a petition which grates 
 on the ear of modern sensibility, " From the tyranny 
 of the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable 
 enormities, Good Lord, deliver us." It was happily 
 removed in the days of Queen Elizabeth, even when 
 the memories of the fires of the Marian persecution
 
 and the Church of England. 2 3 
 
 were still fresh, but it was a cry of anguish of soul 
 uttered to heaven by men who had suffered under 
 the oppression. We can view things at this distance 
 more impartially, and admit the value of the Roman 
 supremacy as an engine of civilization at a certain 
 phase of European history ; but when we regard 
 the crushing despotism into which it subsequently 
 developed, we cannot lament, but thankfully hail 
 its downfall — and that downfall is imperishably 
 associated witli the name of Luther. 
 
 It is doubtless easy for criticism, especially if 
 animated by the spirit of a very narrow partisan- 
 ship, to blame severely particular acts of the con- 
 duct of the great reformer, and to refuse any 
 expression of enthusiastic admiration for a character 
 in which grave errors and weaknesses may be 
 detected. Alas ! if we are to bestow admiration 
 upon a faultless character, we shall have to be silent 
 as to most of the great men who have made the 
 world's history. And the disputants on either side 
 in the great struggle of the Reformation will alike 
 fall under condemnation. It would be dishonest for 
 us to refrain from lamenting that Luther indulged, 
 even in his last days, in unjustifiable words of bitter 
 invective against his fellow-Protestants, who did not 
 hold his own views on the doctrine of the Eucharist, 
 and tolerated coarse caricatures of his theological 
 opponents on the title-pages of some of his con- 
 troversial works. It was the manner of the age. 
 If we look at the books exhibited this very month 
 in the British Museum, we find that exactly the 
 same thing was done on the other side. Luther and 
 the Pope alike are depicted as servants of the Prince
 
 24 The Luther Commeinoration 
 
 of Evil. The names of Anti-Christ and Satan are 
 freely bandied about by both parties. We cannot 
 sympathize with such a method of conducting con- 
 troversy, but let us be equitable in our judgment. 
 Let us not try the sixteenth century by the standard 
 of the nineteenth. Comedy and satire were allowed 
 then within the sacred region of theology, without 
 offence to popular taste. Let us hope that we have 
 gained in refinement and reverence, and be thankful 
 for the improvement. But the right and genuine 
 way of estimating the great men of the world's 
 history, is to view them in their grand totality, to 
 study the main purpose of their lives, and the great 
 principles of which they have been the pioneers and 
 advocates ; to consider how far the world has been 
 better, owing to the permanent influence of their 
 life's labours. And if we judge that, spite of its 
 partial success and some attendant evils, the 
 reformation of religion in the sixteenth century has 
 been a blessing to Christendom, there ought to be 
 no unwillingness on our part to recognize that the 
 foremost agent in that movement was the heroic 
 Martin Luther, 
 
 Lastly, we hear murmurs of an objection that we 
 Englishmen have nothing to do with Luther; he 
 was not one of ourselves, he was a foreigner, he did 
 not reform the Church of England. Let Protestant 
 Germany commemorate her national hero ; what is 
 he to us ? I confess that it is diflficult to restrain 
 some feeling of indignation when confronted with 
 such narrow insular prejudices, which cannot rise to 
 the conception of principles of national and ecclesias- 
 tical freedom transcending the petty limits of our
 
 and the Church of England. 2 5 
 
 owu country, Christendom is not bounded even by 
 Pan- Anglicanism. If the Church of England is true 
 to the spirit of her noblest representatives in the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, she will not be 
 ashamed to boast her connection with the Reforma- 
 tion, and the theological as distinct from the political 
 influences which effected that movement may be 
 traced in large measure to Luther, Melancthon, and 
 their Saxon fellow-workers. It is perfectly true 
 that the English Reformation differed in many points 
 from the German. It was guided more decidedly 
 by ancient precedent ; it preserved a more unbroken 
 historical continuity w~ith the past by the retention 
 of the episcopal form of government, and by the 
 universal employment in its worship of a prayer- 
 book, which was a revision of the old liturgical offices 
 purified from mediasval accretions. I hope that in 
 this respect it is not an insular prejudice to believe 
 that the Church of England has an enormous 
 advantage over the chief forms of continental Pro- 
 testantism, which may, perhaps, some day enable it 
 to realize the celebrated confession of the Romanist 
 writer, Count de Maistre, that " If ever there should 
 be a movement towards reunion among the Christian 
 bodies, it seems likely that the Church of England 
 should be the one to give it impulse, for while it 
 touches us of the Roman Church with the one hand, 
 it touches with the other those with whom we have 
 no point of contact." 
 
 The weakness of Protestantism lies in its internal 
 divisions ; the strength of Romanism is in its unity. 
 Yet we dare not purchase unity at the price of truth, 
 and by submission to an authority, which by assert-
 
 26 The Luther Commemoration 
 
 ing its own infallibility makes reconciliation impossi- 
 ble. It would, however, be a noble ambition for the 
 Church of England if under her leadership the 
 Churches of the Reformation could be brought into 
 more active sympathy with one another, if they 
 could be taught to tolerate a diversity in ritual and 
 practice, with a substantial unity in doctrine ; if the 
 articles and confessions of each separate community, 
 necessitated by the controversies of the sixteenth 
 century, could be held as having, indeed, a local use, 
 but being altogether subordinate to the Catholic 
 truths proclaimed in the Nicene and Apostles' Creeds. 
 The task is rendered intensely difficult for the Church 
 of England by the unhappy secessions from her pale 
 at home of organized communities of Christians, 
 which tend to raise up foes out of her own house- 
 hold. The task is even more difficult now than it 
 was 200 years ago. 
 
 In a century which we frequently condemn as dead 
 and apathetic, efforts were made to accomplish it. 
 
 The notion of a Foedus Evangelicumy which was to 
 unite all national Protestant Churches, was present 
 in 1707 to the mind of Archbishop Sharp, who 
 entered into a correspondence with Lutheran 
 divines of the Court of Frederick I. of Prussia for 
 a greater approximation between the English and 
 Lutheran Churches by the introduction of a moderate 
 Episcopacy and a common liturgy.^ In 1719, Arch- 
 bishop Wake attempted a like work of mutual con- 
 ciliation. " He desired to be on terms of cordial 
 friendship with the Reformed Churches, notwith- 
 standing their points of difference from that of 
 
 ' " Life of Arclibishop Sharp," vol. i. p. 405.
 
 and the Church of England. 27 
 
 England. He could wish they had a moderate 
 Episcopal government, according to the primitive 
 model, nor did he yet despair of it, if not in his own 
 time, perhaps in days to come. He would welcome 
 a closer union among all reformed bodies, at almost 
 any price. Any approximations in Church govern- 
 ment or Church offices which might conduce to it 
 he should, indeed, rejoice in."* It is not a sign of 
 improvement that we in the nineteenth century have 
 receded even from the aspiration after such a unity 
 of sympathy. Men of all ecclesiastical parties in the 
 Church of England freely avail themselves of the 
 theological literature of eminent German Protestant 
 theologians. If there were more intercourse we 
 might, perhaps, impart, in return to the German 
 Protestant Churches, a measure of our own practical 
 energy in Church life, and stir them up to feel that 
 a revival of the positive principles of the Reformation 
 would be a remedy alike of dead orthodoxy and 
 undogmatic liberalism. The task before the Chris- 
 tian Church of our time is not the same as that 
 which Luther achieved. The modern Church has to 
 vindicate the true and independent position of the 
 Christian faith, in reference to the truths revealed 
 by science, and the intricate problems of our complex 
 social phenomena. Progress must be the Church's 
 watchword, nor can she rest content only with the 
 formulae in which the controversies either of the 
 fourth or the sixteenth century issued ; but it would 
 augur ill for the Church's success in performing the 
 work allotted to her, if the present generation, with a 
 proud and pitiful self-conceit, were to be unmindful 
 
 ■• " The Englisli Church in the Eighteenth Century," Abbey and 
 Overton, vol. i. p. 355.
 
 28 Luther and the Church of England. 
 
 of the pioneers of progress and reform in earHer 
 generations, and be satisfied with enjoying the fruit 
 of their labours while denying them even the poor 
 recompense of a grateful commemoration.
 
 jAan»rj±<ii^HMMi