§ 49. THE REFORMATION AND THE PAPACY. 209
aggrandizement, its avarice, its shameless traffic in indul. gences, and all those abuses of power which called forth the one hundred and one gravamina of the German nation? Who will stand up for the bull of excommunication against Luther, with its threats of burning him and his books, and refusing the consolations of religion to every house or community which should dare to harbor him or any of his followers? If that bull be Christian, then we must close our _ eyes against the plain teaching of Christ in the Gospels.
Even if the Bishop of Rome should be the legitimate successor of Peter, as he claims, it would not shield him against the verdict of history. For the carnal Simon revived and reasserted himself from time to time in the spiritual Peter. The same disciple whom Christ honored as the “ Rock,” on whose confession he promised to build his Church, was soon afterwards called “Satan” when he presumed to divert his Master from the path of suffering; the same Peter was rebuked when he drew the sword against Malchus; the same Peter, notwithstanding his boast of fidelity, denied his Lord and Saviour; and the same Peter incurred the severe remonstrance of Paul at Antioch when he practically denied the rights of the Gentile converts, and virtually excluded them from the Church. According to the Roman legend, the prince of the apostles relapsed into his consistent inconsistency, even a day before his martyrdom, by bribing the jailer, and fleeing for his life till the Lord appeared to him with the cross at the spot of the memorial chapel Domine quo vadis. Will the Pope ever imitate Peter in his bitter repentance for denying Christ ?
If the Apostolic Church typically foreshadows the whole history of Christianity, we may well see in the temporary collision between Peter and Paul the type of the antagonism between Romanism and Protestantism. The Reformation was a revolt against legal bondage, and an assertion of evangelical freedom. It renewed the protest of Paul against
2960 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D.:1517 To 1530.
Peter, and it succeeded. It secured freedom in religion, and as a legitimate consequence, also intellectual, political, and civil freedom. It made the Word of God with its instruction and comfort accessible to all. This is its triumphant vindication. Compare for proof Protestant Germany under William I., with Roman-Catholic Germany under Maximilian I.; England under Queen Victoria, with England under Henry VII.; Calvinistic Scotland and Lutheran Scandinavia in the nineteenth century, with Roman Scotland and Scandinavia in the fifteenth. Look at the origin and growth of free Holland and free North America. Contrast England with Spain of the present day; Prussia with Austria; Holland with Portugal; the United States and Canada with the older Mexico and Peru or Brazil. Consider the teeming Protestant litera-. ture in every department of learning, science and art; and the countless Protestant churches, schools, colleges, universities, charitable institutions and missionary stations scattered all over the globe. Surely, the Reformation can stand the test: “ By their fruits ye shall know them.”
NOTES.
Opinions of representative Protestant historians who can not be charged with partisan bias or Romanizing tendency: —
‘‘Whatever judgment,’”’ says LEOPOLD VON RANKE, who was a good Lutheran (Die rdmischen Pdpste, I. 29), ‘‘we may form of the Popes of former times, they had always great interests in view: the care of an oppressed religion, the conflict with heathenism, the propagation of Christianity among the Northern nations, the founding of an independent hierarchical power. It belongs to the dignity of human existence to will and to execute something great. These tendencies the Popes kept in higher motion.”’
In the last volume of his great work, published after his death (Weltgeschichte, Siebenter Theil, Leipzig, 1886, pp. 311-313), RANKE gives his estimate of the typical Pope Gregory VII., of which this is a condensed translation: —
‘‘ The hierarchical system of Gregory rests on the attempt to make the clerical power the basis of the entire human existence. This explains the two principles which characterize the system,—the command of [clerical] celibacy, and the prohibition of investiture by the hands of a layman. By the