25 The Protestant Reformers
The Protestant Reformers The Protestant Reformation was the watershed event in the history of the Western World. It broke the back of the Roman Catholic Church, and limited the power of the Pope. It marked the end of the Dark Ages and ushered in the modern world. No other event in history so dominates the history of Western Civilization.
Men like Martin Luther and John Calvin were outraged at the rampant corruption in the Catholic Church. The priests were, for the most part, immoral, and virtually illiterate. Very few of them could deliver a sermon. They had turned the nunneries into brothels for their own benefit. Religion had become a mockery. The final straw came when, in order to raise money to build St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome, the Pope sent John Tetzel and his assistants all over Europe selling Indulgences. They were described as if they were licenses to sin. They were marketed that way, and the people saw them in that light. People paid their money, and conducted their lives accordingly. At the very risk of their lives, the Reformers stood boldly against such corruption, and Rome trembled. They saw untold multitudes of their own people tortured, crippled, and burned at the stake. But those brave Reformers bearded the lion in his den, and the world has never been quite the same.
They were sincerely looking for a purer and more scriptural form of worship. They stood boldly against the Pope and the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and they suffered for it. In their earlier ministries they stand out as heroic examples, and that testimony rings out over the ages. We cannot read of their heroism without being moved and encouraged. Till the end of time their heroism will stand as a monument to their courage. But it is just as clear, that after an initial bold stand for the truth, almost to a man, the Reformers soon apostatized from their earlier zeal for truth.
They saw what the consequence would be, if they consistently followed their initial course. They would suffer as the Anabaptists were suffering. They counted the cost, and in their later ministry, they denied virtually all they had once advocated. The Waldensians and Anabaptists were what the Reformers claimed to be, and the Reformers hated them for it. They opposed, and persecuted, those humble, God-fearing Waldensians and Anabaptists just as viciously as the Catholics ever did. Their earlier devotion to truth soon disappeared, and it was that spirit of persecution the Reformers handed down to the ages. The Lord said, “No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back is fit for the kingdom is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62). There have never been any more fierce enemies to the truth than those who have once known the truth and departed from it. But we must take time to say in their defense, the Reformers never at any time intended to abandon the Catholic religion. They intended to live and die as good Catholics. They just did not intend to be Roman Catholics. They would not be subject to the Pope of Rome. Calvin and the other Reformers hoped to bring about a reformation, to produce a new form, of the Catholic religion. That is why it is called the Protestant Reformation (literally the re-form-ation). Calvin wanted to restore the Catholic religion to what it had been in the time of Augustine. In that he was totally successful. The Presbyterian Church of Calvin’s day was precisely what the Catholic Church had been in Augus-tine’s day.
More than that, the Reformers all believed in the power of the sword in spreading their religion. They all believed in a state religion established by law. Luther was an Augustin-ian monk. Augustine of Hippo was their guiding light, and they had learned their lessons well.
They opposed the Waldensians and Anabaptists just as bitterly, and just as viciously, as Augustine had opposed the Donatists and Novationists in his day. With that in mind, we must acknowledge that they did not so much apostatize from their earlier intentions, as they were originally misunderstood. It was their intention all along to replace Roman Catholicism with their various brands of Protestant Catholicism. In that they were entirely successful.