5380 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1580.
Nor did Luther or any of the Reformers and sensible Protestants doubt that there always were and are still many true Christians in the Roman communion, notwithstanding all her errors and corruptions, as there were true Israelites even in the darkest periods of the Jewish theocracy. In his controversy with the Anabaptists (1528), Luther makes the striking admission: “We confess that under the papacy there is much Christianity, yea, the whole Christianity, and has from thence come to us. We confess that the papacy possesses the genuine Scriptures, genuine baptism, the genuine sacrament of the altar, the genuine keys for the remission of sins, the true ministry, the true catechism, the Ten Commandments, the articles of the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer. ... I say that under the Pope is the true Christendom, yea, the very élite of Christendom, and many pious and great saints.” ! _ For proof he refers, strangely enough, to the very passage of Paul, 2 Thess. 2:3, 4, from which he and other Reformers derived their chief argument that the Pope of Rome is Anti christ, “the man of sin,” “the son of perdition.” For Paul represents him as sitting “in the temple of God;” that is, in the true church, and not in the synagogue of Satan. As the Pope is Antichrist, he must be among Christians, and rule and tyrannize over Christians? Melanchthon, who
1 “Teh sage, dass unter dem Papst die rechte Christenheit ist, ja der rechte Ausbund der Christenheit, und viel frommer, grosser Heiligen.’’ (Von der Wiedertaufe, Erl. ed. X XVI. 257 sq.) The Roman Catholic Mohler does not fail to quote this passage in his Symbolik, p. 422 sq. He says of Luther’s conception of the church (p. 424), that it is not false, but only onesided (nicht falsch, obgleich einseitig). He virtually admits the Protestant distinction between the visible and the invisible church, but holds that the Catholics put the visible church first as the basis of the invisible, while the Protestants reverse the order.
2 Ibid. p. 258. Critical commentators have long since abandoned this interpretation. Whatever be the wider applicability of this passage, Paul certainly meant a ‘‘mystery of lawlessness”? (not tyranny) already at work in his time (ἤδη ἐνεργεῖται, ver. 7), long before popery existed, or before there was even a bishop of Rome (unless it be Peter). Moreover, ‘‘lawlessness,’’ which is the proper translation of ἀνομία, is not characteristic of popery, but the very opposite. If Paul refers to Rome at all, it is rather as a “‘ restrain-
§ 85. ENLARGED CONCEPTION OF THE CHURCH. 531
otherwise had greater respect for the Pope and the Roman Church, repeatedly expressed the same view.! Luther came nearer the true position when he said that the Roman Church might be called a “holy church,” by synecdoche or ex parte, | with the same restriction with which Paul called the Galatian Christians “churches,” notwithstanding their apostasy from the true gospel.? |
He combined with the boldest independence a strong reverence for the historical faith. He derives from the unbroken tradition of the church an argument against the Zwinglians for the real presence in the eucharist; and says, in a letter to Albrecht, Margrave of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia (April, 1532, after Zwingli’s death): “ The testimony of the entire holy Christian church (even without any other proof) should be sufficient for us to abide by this article, and to listen to no sectaries against it. For it is dangerous and terrible (gefdhrlich und erschrecklich) to hear or believe any thing against the unanimous testimony, faith, and doctrine of the entire holy Christian church as held from the beginning for now over fifteen hundred years in all the world. . . Τὸ deny such testimony is virtually to condemn not only the holy Christian church as a damned heretic, but ing”? force, τὸ κατέχον, vers. 6, 7 (comp. Rom. 13: 1. The term ‘‘ Antichrist’? occurs only in the Epistles of John, and he speaks of “many Antichrists’’ in his own day. In a wider sense all is antichristian that is contrary to the spirit and aim of Christ in any church or any age.
1 In his Judicium de jure reformandi, 1525 (‘‘ Corp. Ref.,’’ I. 767): ‘‘It is written that the Antichrist will have a great and powerful reign in the last times, as Paul says, Antichrist will be seated and rule in the temple of God, that is, in the church.”’ And again in the ‘‘ Apology of the Augsburg Confession”’ (1530), arts. VII. and VIII. (Miiller’s ed., p. 152): “‘ Paulus predicat futurum, ut Artichristus sedeat in templo Dei, hoc est, in ECCLESIA dominetur et gerat officia.”’
2 Com. in Ep. ad Gal. (Erl. ed., I. 40 sq.): *‘ Paulus vocat ecclesias Galatice per synecdochen. ... Sic et nos hodie vocamus ecclesiam romanam sanctam et omnes episcopatus sanctos, etiamsi sint subversi et episcopi et ministri eorum impii. Deus enim regnat in medio inimicorum suorum ; item, Antichristus sedet in templo Dei, et Satan adest in medio filiorum Dei. ... Manet in romana urbe quamquam Sodoma et Gomorra pejore baptismus,
sacramentum, vox et textus evangelii, sacra scriptura, ministeria, nomen Christi, nomen Dei.”’