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THE

CHRISTIAN GUARDIAN,

AND

Church of England Magazine.

AUGUST 1, 1823.

MEMOIRS OF THE REFORMERS.

LUTHER.

[Concluded from Page 249.]

FLATTERED by commendations of his learning and abilities, from popes, kings, cardinals, and prelates, and requested by many civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries to exercise his talents against Luther, the erudite and accomplished, but vain and temporizing Erasmus now attacked the man, whose piety he must have revered, whose industry he must have admired, and whose services he must have acknowledged.

In the autumn of 1524, he sent out a dissertation called, "A Diatribe on the Freedom of the Will." On this difficult part of Christian metaphysics he threw little light; but it served his purpose to represent Luther as a blind fatalist or wild predestinarian. To reconcile the prescience of the Deity with the responsibility of man as a free agent, and to prove the compatibility of irresistible grace, to the honour of the mighty God, with a sense of the volitions of human minds, and the contingency of human actions, is a task above the powers of a Luther or an Erasmus; nor can any arguments of an Augustine on the one hand, or a Pelagius on the other, solve those difficulties which must ever attach to this mystery. It has been truly observed, that to attack Luther on the single point of

AUGUST 1823.

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liberty and necessity, was in an oblique and indirect way to allow him superior to his adversaries in other respects. Erasmus very dexterously and artfully chose this subject of dispute, that he might appear to the Romanists to write against the Reformer, and yet that he might avoid censuring his other doctrines opposite to the Romish church. Luther did not reply till the latter part of the following year. He entitled his answer, "On the Bondage of the Will;" and the work was received with such avidity, that the booksellers of Wittenberg, Augsburg, and Nuremberg, strove to outvie each other in the celerity of their numerous editions.

In an analysis of this subtile argumentation it would be difficult to do justice to either disputant, while the limits of the present memoir forbid a detail of their respective reasonings. That we may not, however, entirely pass over the controversy, we shall extract a few remarks of the Saxon Professor, which perhaps have never been exceeded in soundness and sagacity by any of the numerous theologians who have coincided with hinr in sentiment.

"Show me any one instance of a man, who through the pure efficacy of free will, even in the smallest degree, either mortified his appetites or forgave an injury. On the contrary, I can easily show you,

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that the very holy men whom you boast of as free-willers, always in their prayers to God totally lay aside every idea of free-will, and had recourse to nothing but grace, pure grace. So Augustine often, who is entirely on my side in this dispute: so Bernard also, who when dying said, I have lost my time, because I have lived to bad purpose. Nevertheless I grant, that these holy men themselves would sometimes, during their disputes, hold a different language concerning the nature of free-will. And in general I observe, that good men, when they approach the throne of grace, forget the powers of free-will, on which they may have written polemically; and despairing of themselves, have recourse to grace alone. And though they may have exalted the natural resources of man, yet in prayer they forget all this: that is, in affection and practice they are different from what they were in disputation and argument. But who would estimate the character both of good and bad men from the former, rather than the latter?'

"You yourself say, that the hu'man will, since the fall, is so far depraved as to have become the servant of sin, and of itself utterly unable to amend its state. Then, what is free-will, when applied to a faculty, where it is granted that all liberty is lost, and that slavery has commenced under the service of sin, but an empty name? I believe Augustine to have been precisely of the same judgment. It is the Diatribe that is inconsistent; for, if your free-will, according to your first opinion which you call probable, has so lost its liberty that it cannot choose the good, I would wish to know what is the nature of those desires and endeavours, of which you speak as yet left in man's power: certainly, they cannot be good desires, or good endeavours; for you admit that the will cannot choose the good.

Again, you allow, that though desires and endeavours are in a man's power, yet still there is no room for ascribing any effect to their efficacy. Now, who can comprebend such a position? If the will really possess the powers of desire and endeavour, why are not effects proportionate to these powers to be ascribed to them? and if there be no effects whatever, then what proof have you that the will possesses the powers you contend for? There is no escape for Proteus here; for, if these are not monstrous contradictions, what are so?

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"A Christian should know, that nothing is contingent in the mind of the Supreme Being, who foresees and orders all events according to his own eternal, unchangeable will. This is a thunderbolt to the notion of free-will. For hence all events, though to our minds contingent, are necessary and unchangeable as they respect the Divine will. The Divine will cannot be deceived or disappointed. Contingency implies a changeable will, such as in God does not exist. Nevertheless, I wish we had a better word than necessity, which is commonly made use of in this dispute. For it conveys to the understanding an idea of restraint, which is totally contrary to the act of choosing. In fact there is no restraint, either on the divine or the human will; in both cases, the will does what it does, whether good or bad, simply, and as at perfect liberty, in the exercise of its own faculty. This unchangeableness and infallibility in God is the ground of all our hope and confidence. If his will were liable to contingencies, what dependence could there be on his promises? But let God be true, and every man a liar.' Your notions, my Erasmus, destroy peace of conscience, and all the comforts of his Spirit, and lead to impieties and blasphemies almost worse than Epicurean. Not that you intend all this: no, I do not believe you

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would teach such things designedly. But learn hence, how a man who undertakes a bad cause may be led on to advance most dangerous doctrines.

"So long as the operative grace of God is absent from us, every thing we do has in it, a mixture of evil; and, therefore, of necessity our works avail not to salvation. Here I do not mean a necessity of compulsion, but a necessity as to the certainty of the event. A man who has not the Spirit of God does evil willingly and spontaneously. He is not violently impelled against his will, as a thief is to the gallows. But the man cannot alter his disposition to evil; nay, even though he may be externally restrained from doing evil, he is averse to the restraint, and his inclination remains still the same. Again, when the Holy Spirit is pleased to change the will of a bad man, the new man still acts voluntarily; he is not compelled by the Spirit to determine contrary to his will, but his will itself is changed; and he cannot now do otherwise than love the good, as before he loved the evil.

"What can the advocates for the free powers of man say to the declaration of St. Paul, Being justified freely by his grace?' Freely: what does that word mean? How are good endeavours and merit consistent with a gratuitous donation? Perhaps you do not insist on a merit of condignity, but only of congruity. Empty distinctions! Nay, Erasmus owns, that he defends free-will in order that he may find some place for merits: and he is perpetually expostulating, that, where there is no liberty, there can be no merit; where there is no merit there is no room for reward. To be brief, St. Paul represents justification as a perfectly free gift, without any consideration of merit; and that along with this free gift are bestowed also the kingdom of God and life eternal. Then, where are the desires, the endeavours, the merits of free-will?

and what are their uses? Suppose we admit that the advocates of free-will allow only exceedingly little to that faculty; they nevertheless make that little the foundation of justification, because they represent the grace of God as obtained by that little.

"In my judgment my opponents are at bottom worse than the Pelagians. The Pelagians speak plainly and openly. They call a thorn a thorn, and a fig a fig. They ingenuously assert a real worthiness in their merits; and by this worthiness, or dignity of merit, they purchase the favour of God. Whereas, those with whom I have to do, imagine that the favour of God is to be bought at a very small price, namely, the meritorious use of that extremely small degree of liberty, which has escaped the wreck of our original depravity. But how does St. Paul, in one word, confound in one mass all the asserters of every species and of every degree of merit, All are justified freely, and without the works of the law?' He who affirms the justification of all men who are justified, to be perfectly free and gratuitous, leaves no place for works, merits, or preparations of any kind; no place for works either of condignity or of congruity; and thus, at one blow, he demolishes, both the Pelagians with their complete merits, and our Sophists with their petty performances."

Brief as this reference has been to Luther's controversy with Erasmus on the subject of free-will, in which he advanced positions, differing probably from the exact sentiments of many of his followers in the present day, it will be equally advisable to avoid a detail of that lengthened dispute in which he was engaged, both before and after this period, with the leading Reformers, on the mode of the Saviour's presence in the Sacrament. Melchior Adam, the great biographer of these worthies, discovers piety. and judgment in glancing as slight

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ly as possible at a contest, which, leading to curious and unprofitable discussion, was the too frequent cause of betraying the disputants, not only into intricate argunient, but also into bitter expression. Looking back with reverence and admiration on such characters as were then employed in laying the foundations of that Protestant temple, in whose different courts the tribes of reformed Christendom are accustomed to worship, we reluctantly advert to a season which produced confusion among the builders, and gave occasion to Romanists to represent the erection of a shrine for Jehovah as the rearing a tower of Babel. It may teach us a lesson of humility and self-distrust, when we see such persons departing in any measure from the spirit of that Gospel, which breathes " peace on earth, and good will towards men; and too nearly realizing, in their literary warfare, the fabled colony that sprung from the dragon's teeth. Accustomed as we are to witness examples of devotion and charity in various religious denominations, and arrived at an age in the church when much sympathy of feeling appears to co-exist with difference of opinion, we are led to trust, that thousands who are divided in sentiment on the doctrine of the Lord's Supper, may yet be fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God. We would lose the remembrance of this stained page in the history of the Reformation, in the soothing reflection, that a day is coming when the man of humble heart will be reckoned in the "sacramental host of God's elect;" whether he hold the transubstantiation of the Romish, the consubstantiation of the Lutheran, the concomitance of the English, or the negation of the Zuinglian communion; or whether, with the refined mysticism of another society, he agrees with none of these conflicting opinions, but be

lieves he has discovered the more excellent way, in feeding spiritually on the body and blood of a Redeemer, without the use of their external symbols.

The association of the German princes attached to the old system of religious worship, was counteracted by an union of the states favourable to the reformed doctrines established at Torgau, May 14, 1526, for mutual defence against all persecutions on account of religion. A diet was soon after held at Spires, at which Ferdinand of Austria presided, his Imperial brother being fully occupied with the troubled state of his dominions in Spain and Italy. The Romanists insisted on the execution of the Edict of Worms, and the Lutherans demanded a full and complete toleration. It was at length determined, that a general council should be convened within the year, and in the mean time the Princes and States were to act, in regard to the Edict, in such a manner as to answer for their conduct before God and the Emperor.

The cause of Reformation was now indirectly promoted by disgust conceived on the part of Charles himself against Clement VII. who, jealous of his victories over Francis I. had formed a league with that monarch and the Venetians against the Austrian ascendancy. In a manifesto to the Pontiff he reprobated his duplicity of conduct, and appealed to a general council. In a letter to the College of Cardinals, he required them, in case of refusal by Clement, to summon a council by their own authority. These papers were generally read in Germany; and while the people saw the head of the Empire reviling the head of the Church, they were in some degree prepared for the strange intelligence that followed, that the Imperialists had actually sacked Rome, and treated the Vicar of Christ himself with so little ceremony as to cap

ture his sacred person. These events were improved by the friends of the Reformation to the advantage of their cause and the increase of their party.

After having escaped, through divine mercy, a death by poison which had been planned by his enemies, who two years before had employed a Polish Jew for this iniquitous purpose, our Reformer was called, in 1527, to sustain much affliction in body and temptation in mind. An infectious disorder prevailed at Wittenberg, and the Elector ordered the academics to retire to Jena, but Luther thought it his duty not to desert his flock. He seems to have been preserved from an immediate attack of the epidemic, while he suffered extremely from constitutional infirmity, and some disorder in the region of the heart. He experienced great depression of spirits. His mind was deeply affected with the rapacious proceedings of some interested nobles who injured the ecclesiastical revenues; and he was harassed with the disputes concerning the Sacrament, as well as grieved at the schismatical measures of the Anabaptists. To his friend Jonas he wrote; "I am bearing the anger of God, because I have sinned against him. The Pope, Emperor, Princes, Bishops, all hate and persecute me; and as if these were not enough, my own brethren trouble me. Sin, death, Satan and his angels, rage without ceasing. And what must support and comfort me, if Christ too should leave me, for whose sake I am thus hated? But no; he will not forsake a miserable sinner, and one who is less than the least of all his mercies. How often do I wish Erasmus and the Sacramentarians were tried as am for one quarter of an hour! How safely may I say, they would convert and be healed. But now mine enemies live and are mighty; yea, they add trouble upon trouble, and per

secute him whom God hath smitten. But enough: let me not be querulous or impatient under the rod of Him, who smites and heals, who kills and makes alive. Blessed be his holy will! It cannot but be, that one whom the world and its prince thus hate must belong to Christ. If ye were of the world, the world would love its own." To Armsdoff he used this language: "It pleases God, that I, who have been used to comfort others, should need to be comforted. I have but one prayer, which I hope you will join me in, that Christ may do with me according to his pleasure, but preserve me from ungratefully rebelling against Him, whom I have hitherto served and proclaimed, though with much and grievous inperfection. Satan seeks to seize on Job, and to sift Peter with his brethren, but Christ will vouchsafe to say, Touch not his life;' and,

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I am thy salvation. I hope he will not be offended with me for ever. I wish to reply to the Sacramentarians, but unless I gain some mental strength I shall not be able *."

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It was on the sixth of July, that his friends were more particularly alarmed on account of his state of health. He had been much troubled in mind in the early part of the day, and had requested the society of Bugenhagen, as the minister of his parish, to whom he spoke as one not likely to survive, if the hand of God should lie heavy upon him, acknowledged his offences, whether arising from warmth of temper or otherwise, and entreated pastoral consolation. Feeling afterwards somewhat relieved, he sat down to dinner with some persons of quality, and after the repast, walked in his garden conversing with Jonas for two hours; but, on returning to the house, was seized with a fainting fit. Having been sprinkled with cold water he recovered, and

Epist. L. ii. pp. 323, 344.

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