32 4 ORIENTATION.
Certainly, Luther must first be utterly divested of his faith, and the authorship of his sermons, catechisms and hymns must be called in question, before he can be appealed to as the father of Rationalism. He would have sacrificed his reason ten times
rather than his faith.
Zwingli was the most clear-headed and rationalizing among the Reformers." He did not pass through the discipline of
‘monasticism and mysticism, like Luther, but through the liberal
culture of Erasmus. He had no mystic vein, but sound, sober, practical common sense. He always preferred the plainest sense of the Bible. He rejected the Catholic views on original sin, infant damnation and the corporeal presence in the eucharist, and held advanced opinions which shocked Luther and even Calvin. But he nevertheless reverently bowed before the divine authority of the inspired Word of God, and had no idea of setting reason over it. His dispute with Luther was simply a question of — interpretation, and he had strong arguments for his exegesis, as even the best Lutheran commentators must confess.
Calvin was the best theologian and exegete among the Reformers. He never abused reason, like Luther, but assigned it the office of an indispensable handmaid of revelation. He constructed with his logical genius the severest system of Protestant orthodoxy which shaped French, Dutch, English and American theology, and fortified it against Rationalism as well as against Romanism. His orthodoxy and discipline could not keep his own church in Geneva from becoming Socinian in the eighteenth century, but he is no more responsible for that than Luther for the Rationalism of Germany, or Rome for the infidelity of Voltaire. Upon the whole, the Reformed churches in England,
with vehement denunciations of the Schwéirmergeister and Sacramentirer (the sectaries and Zwinglians). See Werke, ed. Walch XII. col. 1530 sqq. It is noteworthy that Luther first abused reason in his book on the Slavery of the Human Will against the semi-Pelagianism of Erasmus. But his assaults on Aristotle and the scholastic theology began several years earlier, before 1517.
1 Luther felt this when he told him at Marburg: “You have a different spirit.”
89, THE REFORMATION AND RATIONALISM. 33
Scotland and North America, have been far less invaded by Rationalism than Germany.
2. Let us now consider the application of the principle of free inquiry to the Bible.’
The Bible, its origin, genuineness, integrity, aim, and all its circumstances and surroundings are proper subjects of investigation ; for it is a human as well as a divine book, and hasa history, like other literary productions. The extent of the Bible, moreover, or the canon, is not determined by the Bible itself or by inspiration, but by church authority or tradition, and| was not - fully agreed upon till the close of the fourth century, and even then only by provincial synods, not by any of the seven cecumenical councils. It was therefore justly open to reinvestigation.
The Church of Rome, at the Council of Trent, settled the canon, including the Apocrypha, but without any critical inquiry or definite theological principle; it simply confirmed the traditional usage, and pronounced an anathema on every one who does not receive all the books contained in the Latin Vulgate.” She also checked the freedom of investigation by requiring conformity to a defective version and a unanimous consensus of the fathers, although such an exegetical consensus does not exist except in certain fundamental doctrines,
The Reformers re-opened the question of the extent of the canon, as they had a right to do, but without any idea of sweep-
‘Comp. here the Critical Introductions to the Bible, and especially Reuss, Histoire du Canon des Saintes Ecritures, Strasbourg, 1863. Ch. XVI. p. 308 sqq-; Hunter’s Engl. transl. (1884) p. 290 sqq.
* Sess. IV. (April 8th, 1546): “Si quis autem libros ipsos integros cum omnibus suis partibus, prout in ecclesia catholica legi consueverunt, et in veteri Vulgata Latina editione habentur, pro sacris et canonicts non susceperit et traditiones preedictas sciens et prudens contempserit, anathema sit.’ Schaff, Creeds II. 82. There were, however, protesting voices in the council: some desired to recognize the old distinction between Homologumena and Antilegomena; others simply an enumeration of the sacred books used in the Catholic church, without a dogmatic definition. Sarpi censures the council for its decision, and there are Catholic divines (as Sixtus Senensis, Du Pin, Jahn), who, in spite of the decision, make a distinction between protocanonical and deuterocangnical books,