3. The Reformers declare that Christ is the only revealer of God.
' W^e would never recognize the Father's grace and mercy,' says Luther in his Large Catechism, ' were it not for our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is the mirror of the Father's heart.' ' We are not affrayed to cal God our Father,' says the Scots Confession, ' not sa meikle because He has created us, quhilk we have in common with the reprobate, as for that He has given us His onely Son.' The instructions issue<l by the Synod which met at Bern in 1.5tJ2 are very emphatic upon this thought, as may be seen from the headings of the various articles : (Art. 2) ' That the whole doctrine is the unique Christ' (Das die gantze leer der eynig Christus si/e) ; (Art. 3) ' That God is revealed to the people in Christ alone ' ; (Art. 5) ' That the gracious God is perceived through Christ alone, without any other mediation ' ; (Art. 6) 'A Christian sermon is entirely about and from Christ.' It is said under the third article, 'His Son, in whom we see the Work of God and His Fatherly heart toward us . . . which is not the case where the preacher talks nuich about God in the heathen manner, and does not exhibit the same God in the face of Christ.'
The means of this revelation are the SiDirit, which all the Confessions unite in declaring to be the gift of Christ, and the Holy Scriptures. The claim of the mediseval Church to be the sole trust- worthy exponent of the Scriptures had barred the way to Christ through the Word, and had driven men to .seek contact with Him in the sacraments, a region where they were more at the mercy of ecclesiastical assumi)tion. Tlie Church itself had used the Bible chiefly as a quarry for proof-texts of ecclesiastical dogmas. But for the Reformers the Scriptures are the plain man's guide to Christ. In them Christ Himself speaks to each soul.
In the Fornnila of Concord it is said that Christ ' offers Him- self in the Word as Redeemer.' The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England say : ' Both in the Ol? and in the NT ever- lasting life is offered to mankind by Christ.' The Scots Con- fession says : ' We believe arid confess the Scriptures of God sufficient to instruct and make perfect the man of God. So do we avow the authority of the same to be of God, and neither to depend on man or angels.' In the decrees of the Bern Synod (1532) Scripture is called ' a witness to, a means of access to, and a remembrancer of Christ.' And again it is said that ' the Scripture leads us to Christ and teaches (Him) as the Saviour.'
We tlius see clearly that the Reformers' con- ception of Christ as the revealer of God at once restored the Scriptures to their rightful place in pojmlar religion, and gave to the Bible a new unity. To the media'val Cliurch it had been a
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CHRIST IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
difficult collection of isolated doctrinal texts ; to the Reformers it formed a complete book with one centre, the Person of the Redeemer.
i. The conception that Christ filled the whole sphere of God, which was for the Reformers a fundamental and experimental fact, enabled them to construct a spiritual doctrine of the sacraments, which they opposed to that of the mediaeval Church. It would be unfair to ignore the germ of an evangelical idea even in the materialistic Romish doctrine of transubstantiation. While the way to Christ through the Scripture was barred by the refusal of the Church to place the Bible in the hands of the people, here was one way in which the common man might suppose he got into direct contact Avith his Redeemer. We see this religious use of this doctrine in its crudest form in the hymn of St. Francis :
' Oh, how pure and worthy should be the priest Who touches the living, glorified Jesus. Let the whole earth tremble, Let the heavens thrill with joy, When Christ the Son of God descends upon the altar.'
What made the sacrament holy to Francis was the personal presence of Christ. Nevertheless, the ordinary attitude to the sacraments was grossly superstitious. The doctrine of transubstantiation, interpreting the presence of Christ in a material sense, practically annulled the reference to Christ altogether, and made the sacrament an exhibition of the magic powers of the priesthood. The sacra- ments were looked upon as magical channels of Divine grace. The accepted doctrine was, in the words of the decrees of the Council of Florence, that ' while these others (the sacraments of the OT) do not convey gTace but only figure the grace given by the Passion of Christ, these sacraments of ours both contain grace and confer it upon the worthy receiver.' Thus in theory, as in practice, the sacraments usurped the place of Christ. Now, although it was the various theories about the sacraments that caused the chief differences among the Reformers themselves, — Luther, with his mediaeval philosophy, insisting that, by virtue of Divine omnipresence, the words, ' This is my body,' might be literally and physically true ; Calvin, with his more spiritual doctrine, insisting that the presence of Jesus is in spiritual power ; Zwingli, casting overboard the whole question of the real presence and dwelling only on the memorial aspect of the feast, — still, with all their varying ideas, the Reformers united on the thoughts that the efficacy of the sacraments de- pended entirely on the promises of Christ contained in His word, and that the virtue in the sacra- ments consisted in the presence of Christ to the believing communicant. What was received in the sacrament was not a vague, mysterious, not to say magical, grace, but Christ Jesus Himself. He gave Himself in the sacraments, in whatever way His presence might be explained. The efficacy of the sacrament depends on Christ, not on any magical powers of priests ; and what is received in the sacraments is not any mysterious grace, but Christ Himself.