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death, but by imprisonment and exile. John Herrgott, a traveling book-peddler, was beheaded (1527) for revolutionary political opinions, rather than for selling Lutheran books.
In Southern Germany the Edict of Worms was more rigidly executed. Many executions by fire and sword, accompanied by barbarous mutilations, took place in Austria and Bavaria. In Vienna a citizen, Caspar Tauber, was beheaded and burnt, because he denied purgatory and transubstantiation, Sept. 17, 1524.2, In Salzburg a priest was secretly beheaded without a trial, by order of the archbishop, for Lutheran heresy.® George Wagner, a minister at Munich, was burnt Feb. 8, 1527. Leonard Kaser (or Kaiser) shared the same fate, Aug. 18, 1527, by order of the bishop of Passau. Luther wrote him, while in prison, a letter of comfort.*
- But the Anabaptists had their martyrs as well, and they died with the same heroic faith. Hatzer was burnt in Constance, Hiibmaier in Vienna. In Passau thirty perished in prison. In Salzburg some were mutilated, others beheaded, others drowned, still others burnt alive. Unfortunately, the Anabaptists were not much better treated by Protestant governments; even in Zirich several were drowned in the river under the eyes of Zwingli. _The darkest blot on Protestantism is the burning of Servetus for heresy and blasphemy, at .Geneva, with the approval of Calvin and all the surviving Reformers, including Melanchthon (1553). He had been previously condemned, and burnt in effigy, by a Roman- Catholic tribunal in France. Now such a tragedy would be impossible in any church. The same human passions exist, but the ideas and circumstances have changed.
1 See § 93, p. 567, note. 2 Ranke, II. 117'sq. - 8 Tbid. p. 117. 4 Letter dated May 20, 1527, in De Wette, III. 179 sq. But Kiser seems to have been an Anabaptist, which Luther did not know. See Cornelius, Gesch. des Miinsterschen Aufruhrs, 11. 56. 5 Ranke, III. 369.
CHAPTER VII. THE SACRAMENTARIAN CONTROVERSIES.
§ 101. Sacerdotalism and Sacramentalism.
THE Catholic system of Christianity, both Greek and Roman, is sacramental and sacerdotal. The saving grace of Christ is conveyed to men through the channel of seven sacraments, or “ mysteries,” administered by ordained priests, who receive members into the church by baptism, accompany them through the various stages of life, and dismiss them by extreme unction into the other world. A literal priesthood requires a literal sacrifice, and this is the repetition of Christ’s one sacrifice on the cross offered by the priest in the mass from day to day. The power of the mass extends not only to the living, but even to departed spirits in purgatory, abridging their sufferings, and hastening their release and transfer to heaven.
The Reformers rejected the sacerdotal system altogether, and substituted for it the general priesthood of believers, who have direct access to Christ as our only Mediator and Advocate, and are to offer the spiritual sacrifices of prayer, praise, and intercession. They rejected the sacrifice of the mass, and the theory of transubstantiation, and restored the cup to the laity. They also agreed in raising the Word of God, as the chief means of grace, above the sacraments, and in reducing the number of the sacraments. They retained Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, as instituted by Christ for universal and perpetual observance.
But here begins the difference. It consists in the extent
of departure from the sacramental system of the Roman
604 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 15380.
Church. The Lutheran Confession is, we may say, semi-sacramental, or much more sacramental than the Reformed (if we except the Anglican communion).! It retained the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, with the rite of exorcism, and the . corporal presence in the eucharist. The Augsburg Confession makes the sacraments an essential criterion of the church. Luther’s Catechism assigns to them an independent place alongside of the Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer. It adds to baptism and the Lord’s Supper confession and absolution as a third sacrament. At a later period, confirmation was restored to the position of a quasisacrament as a supplement of infant-baptism.
Zwingli and Calvin reduced the sacraments to signs and seals of grace which is inwardly communicated by the Holy Spirit. They asserted the sovereign causality of God, and the independence of the Spirit who “ bloweth where it willeth” (John 8:8). God can communicate his gifts freely as he chooses. We are, however, bound to his prescribed means. The Swiss Reformers also emphasized the necessity of faith, not only for a profitable use of the sacrament (which is conceded by the Lutherans), but for the reception of the sacrament itself. Unworthy communicants receive only the visible sign, not the thing signified, and they receive the sign to their own injury.
The Anabaptists went still farther, and rejected infantbaptism because it lacks the element of faith on the part of the baptized. They were the forerunners of the Quakers, who dispensed with the external sacraments altogether, retaining, however, the spiritual fact of regeneration and
1 Claus Harms, a typical Lutheran of the nineteenth century, published in 1817 Ninety-five Theses against Rationalism in the Lutheran Church, one of which reads thus (I quote from memory): ‘‘ The Catholic Church is a glorious church; for it is built upon the Sacrament. The Reformed Church is a glorious church; for it is built upon the Word. But more glorious than either is the Lutheran Church; for it is built upon both the Word and the Sacrament,”’