§ 101. SACERDOTALISM AND SACRAMENTALISM. 605
communion with Christ, which the sacraments symbolize to the senses. The Quakers protested against forms when they were made substitutes for the spirit, and furnished the historic proof that the spirit in cases of necessity may live without forms, while forms without the spirit are dead.
It was the will of Providence that different theories on the means of grace should be developed. ‘These theories are not isolated ; they proceed from different philosophical and theological standpoints, and affect other doctrines. Luther was not quite wrong when he said to Zwingli at Marburg: “ You have a different spirit.” Luther took his stand on the doctrine of justification by faith; Zwingli and Calvin, on the doctrine of divine causality and sovereignty, or eternal election. Luther proceeded anthropologically and _ soteriologically from man to God; Zwingli and Calvin proceeded theologically from God to man.
The difference culminates in the doctrine of the eucharistic presence, which called forth the fiercest controversies, and still divides Western Christendom into hostile camps. The eucharistic theories reveal an underlying difference of views on the relation of God to man, of the supernatural to the natural, of invisible grace to the visible means. The Roman doctrine of transubstantiation is the outgrowth of a magical supernaturalism which absorbs and annihilates the natural and human, leaving only the empty form. The Lutheran doctrine implies an interpenetration of the divine and human. The commemorative theory of Zwingli saves the integrity and peculiar character of the divine and human, but keeps them separate and distinct. The eucharistic theory affects Christology, the relation of church and state, and in some measure the character of piety. Lutheranism inclines to the Eutychian, Zwinglianism to the Nestorian, Christology. The former fosters a mystical, the latter a practical, type of piety.
Calvin, who appeared on the stage of public action five years after Zwingli’s, and ten years before Luther’s, death,
606 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 τὸ 1530.
advocated with great ability a eucharistic theory which medi. ates between the Lutheran realism and the Zwinglian spiritualism, and which passed into the Reformed confessions Luther had to deal with Zwingli, and never came into contact with Calvin. If he had, the controversy might have taken a different shape; but he would have maintained his own view of the real presence, and refused the figurative interpretation of the words of institution.
With the doctrine of the eucharist are connected some minor ritualistic differences, as the use of the wafer, and the kneeling posture of the communicants, which the Lutherans retained from the Catholic Church; while the Reformed restored the primitive practice of the breaking of bread, and the standing or sitting posture. Some Lutheran churches retained also the elevation of the host; Luther himself declared it a matter of indifference, and abolished it at Wittenberg in 1542.1
§ 102. The Anabaptist Controversy. Luther and Hiibmaier.
LUTHER: Von der Wiedertaufe, an zwei Pfarrherrn. Wittenberg, 1528. In WALCH, XXVIII. 2648 sqq.; ἘΠ]. ed. XX VI. 254-294. Justus MENIUs: Der Wiedertdufer Lehre und Geheimniss, with a Preface by LUTHER, 1530. In the Erl. ed. LXIII. 290 sqq. MELANCHTHON: Contra Anabaptistas Judicium, ‘‘ Corp. Reform.” I. 953 sqq.
On the Baptist side the writings of HUBMAIER, or, as he wrote his name, HUBMOR, which are very rare, and ought to be collected and republished. CALVARY, in ‘ Mittheilungen aus dem Antiquariate,”’ vol. I. Berlin, 1870, gives a complete list of them. The most important are Von dem christlichen Tauf der Gldubigen (1525); Eine Stimme eines ganzen christlichen Lebens (1525); Von Ketzern und ihren Verbrennern ; Schlussreden (Aziomata); Ein Form des Nachtmals Christi; Von der Freiwilligkeit des Menschen (to show that God gives to all men an
1“ Yom Anbeten des Sacraments des heil. Leichnams Christi’’ (1528), addressed to the Bohemians (Erl. ed. XXVIII. 389, 404, 410); Kurzes Bekenntniss vom heil. Sacrament (1544), Erl. ed. XXXII. 420 sqq. In a letter to Buchholzer in Berlin, Dec. 4, 1589 (De Wette, V. 236), Luther reports that the elevation was given up at Wittenberg. But this must refer to the castle church, for in the parish church it continued till June 25, 1542, when Bugenhagen abolished it. See Kostlin, II. 588 and 683.