Tenets of Reformers
Tenets of Reformers — Differences of Sects — Doctrine of the Real Presence — Transubstantiation — Consubstantiation — Doctrine of Zwingli — Receptionist or Calvinistic Doctrine — Indulgences, origin of — Leo X. — Augustine Monks — Jacobins — The Conclusions of Luther — Cardinal Cajetan Thomas de Vio — Bull of Leo X. — Diet of Worms — Henry VIII., Defender of the Faith — Zwingli — Diet of Spire — Protestants — Conference of Marpurg — Confession of Augsburg — Death of Zwingli — Conference of Worms — Diet of Spire — ‘Interim’ of Augsburg — Hermann von Wied — Consultation — Antididagma — Quignon's Breviary — Mozarabic Rite.
As this is a historical rather than a doctrinal treatise, we are not concerned with the arguments advanced by the Continental Reformers in favour of their tenets, but it is necessary clearly to understand the difference which lay between the various sects.
Generally, it may be premised that they all upheld the marriage of the clergy, the use of the vernacular language in Christian Rites, and the giving of the Communion in both kinds to the laity; but the chief point underlying all their differences lay in their different aspects of the Holy Communion.
It is difficult to improve on the lucid distinctions drawn by Wakeman which may be expressed somewhat as follows:
1. The Doctrine of the Real Presence. — It was held by all the early Christians, as we have seen in Chapter VIII, that the bread and wine offered and consecrated in the Liturgy were, by consecration, made to be truly and really the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. But as to the manner in which His Body and Blood thus came to be present in the Sacrament, nothing was defined except that it was in an ineffable and spiritual manner.
This is the doctrine maintained by the Anglican Party as being that of the Church of England as reformed, at the present time.
2. Transubstantiation. — About 800–900 there was much speculation as to the exact explanation of the mystery of the Real Presence. Philosophers at that time maintained that every material thing consisted of two parts, one called the ‘substance’, which, though imperceptible to the senses, constituted its essential reality; the other called the ‘accidents’, which were perceptible to the senses and gave it the outward form, taste, or smell which it possessed. Applying this to the Holy Communion, some theologians advanced the theory that the ‘substance’ of the consecrated bread and wine became changed into the ‘substance of the Body and Blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’, but that the ‘accidents’ remained, and the outward appearance of the bread and wine remained as before the consecration.
To this change of ‘substance’ the term transubstantiation was applied. This was the doctrine which was accepted by Pope Alexander II. and for which he chose Archbishop Lanfranc as its chief exponent, as mentioned in Chapter XVII. It received official sanction at the Council of the Lateran in 1215. In England the doctrine was commonly current and the belief in it was enforced by Henry VIII.
3. Wicliffe attacked the doctrine on the philosophical point that it implied that ‘accidents’ could exist without a ‘substance’ in which to adhere, and maintained that the ‘substance’ of the bread and wine co-existed with the ‘substance’ of the Body and Blood of Christ. This theory, adopted by and sometimes attributed to Luther, was subsequently styled ‘Consubstantiation’, but never gained any hold in England.
The subject was further complicated, for the metaphysical meaning of the word ‘substance’ got sometimes lost, since to some it seemed to overthrow the nature of a sacrament by destroying the reality of an outward and visible sign, whilst to others it seemed to involve a materialistic view of the Presence which was described as ‘carnal’ or ‘corporal’. It was to guard against this latter view that the twenty-eighth Article and the Black Rubric in the Communion Service were introduced into the English Prayer Book.
4. The Doctrine of Zwingli. — He was a Swiss reformer at Zurich, who denied that the Sacraments were means by which grace was given, and asserted that they were merely edifying rites, confirmatory of grace, which had already been acquired, and that Our Lord's words at the time of its institution were merely figurative and metaphysical. Thus, the Holy Eucharist became only a Love Feast or Agapé (cf. Chapter VIII.) commemorative of the death of Jesus Christ.
These views, though strongly opposed by Luther, were held by the early Swiss and Dutch reformers, and came over to England in the reign of Henry VIII. After the accession of Elizabeth, they tended to become absorbed by Calvinism.
5. The Receptionist or Calvinistic Doctrine. — Like Zwingli, Calvin held that sacraments were primarily seals of grace already given, and denied that the Consecration of the bread and wine had any effect upon it. But he asserted that the Eucharist was not a mere commemorative rite, but that Jesus Christ did communicate the benefit of His Body and Blood to the soul of the worthy receiver.
The ‘Presence’ therefore became only a subjective presence in the soul of a worthy receiver and not an objective presence in the Sacrament itself, so that the bread and wine became merely tokens, not channels, of a grace that was being given.
“This view, equally with that of Zwingli, eviscerated the Liturgy from all idea of worship and made what had been the universal service of Divine Worship in the Church since the times of the Apostles into a pious exercise of personal devotion, but enriched the Zwinglian idea by associating it with the benefit of the reception, in the soul, of Christ's Body and Blood.”
Peter Martyr, Bucer, and Ridley, who taught it to Cranmer, held this view, which became prevalent in the time of Elizabeth, until the doctrine of the Real Presence was emphasized afresh by Andrewes under James I.
Further, apart from any question of its misuse or extortion, it is of importance to understand what was the theological meaning of an Indulgence.
It was not a Papal permission to commit sin, nor really a pardon for sin already committed, though no doubt it was often represented as such.
“According to theologians, the commission of sin involved two consequences — guilt, which put the sinner out of right relations with God and was removed by Absolution; and punishment, which had to be worked out either by penance in this life or in purgatory. An indulgence was the remission of the whole or part of the punishment thus due, and was acquired by the performance of certain specified good works with a right disposition or the payment of a certain sum of money in commutation of the required acts of penance.”
Unless clearly understood, it is liable to complete misapprehension on the one hand or abuse on the other.
For the sake of raising money for the Crusades, Pope Urban II. (1088–99) first sold Indulgences to those who were not able for some reason or other to take part in them. In course of time, the Court of Rome used this means of raising money for any other sort of purpose. Leo X. (1513–22) gave to his sister Magdalene, who was married to Francesco Cibo, a natural son of Pope Innocent VIII. (1484–92), the profits that accrued from the sale of Indulgences or Pardons in the province of Saxony and a greater part of Germany. Magdalene, for acquiring these sums, made use of one Arembold, a Genoese merchant who was made a bishop.
The Collectors appointed by Arembold were so excessive in their vaunting of the worth and efficacy of these Indulgences and so irregular and debauched in their ways that all Germany was offended, and Martin Luther, an Augustine monk, first took up cudgels against them. The Augustine monks before this had been usually the distributors of Pardons in Germany, but Arembold employed the Jacobins; John Stupits, the Vicar-General of the Augustines, had publicly resented this change. This may have assisted the publicity of the ninety-five Conclusions against the Doctrine of Indulgences which Luther issued in 1517 at Wittenberg.
John Tetzel, a Jacobin of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, and John Ekius, Professor at Ingolstadt, endeavoured to confute them, and in this they were supported by Silvester Prieras, a Jacobin, Master of the Vatican.
To support their cause they enlarged on the authority of the Pope, which Luther opposed and maintained to be liable to error and inferior to that of Councils, as laid down by the Council of Constance. Luther was cited to appear at Rome in 1518, but at the instance of the Duke of Saxony the matter was referred to Cardinal Cajetan Thomas de Vio, the Papal Legate. Luther had two conferences with him at Augsburg, and finally offered to desist and write no more, but the Cardinal demanded a Recantation which Luther would not make. Leo X. then published a bull in November 1518, authorizing the Indulgences and asserting their validity; Luther in reply appealed from the bull to a Council. This led to a further bull dated 15th June 1520, from Leo X., which condemned forty-two of the articles of Luther's doctrine, ordered his books to be burnt and declared him excommunicate unless within two months he recanted and burnt his writings. This may be noted as the definite separation of the Lutherans from the Church of Rome, for, whereas the Universities of Louvain and Cologne burnt Luther's writings, Luther obtained a sentence from the University of Wittenberg condemning the Papal bull and the decretals to the flames. At the same time, Luther issued a manifesto accusing the Pope as a tyrant for having usurped a supremacy over kings and princes and corrupted the Doctrines of the Church. For this, in 1521, after being heard before the Emperor Charles V. at the Diet of Worms, an Edict was issued against him, but he was hidden for nine months by the Elector of Saxony.
It was after this Edict that Henry VIII. wrote his treatise in support of the Seven Sacraments, and the authority of the Pope against the doctrines of Luther, for which Pope Leo X. gave him the title of ‘Defender of the Faith’.
About this time Zwingli, who was a Canon at Zurich, opposed Friar Samson, a Cordelier of Milan, who had raised 120,000 crowns by the sale of Indulgences. In 1521 the Bishop of Constance exhorted the Senate to banish Zwingli, but after an assembly of all the divines Zwingli persuaded the Senate to order that the reformed religion should be preached with full liberty. As has been shown, there was a divergence of opinion between Luther and Zwingli on the doctrine of the Eucharist, which the Roman Catholics did their best to foment at the Diet of Spire in 1529. It was against the Edict of Spire, which sought to put the Edict of Worms into execution, that the Elector of Saxony and five other princes, together with fourteen German towns, protested and appealed to the Emperor and a free Council. From this protestation the followers of Luther and Zwingli were called Protestants.
The Landgrave of Hesse sought to heal these dissensions and assembled a Conference at Marpurg, but to no effect. Luther, writing shortly after, said that he would not expose the princes of his party to a greater hatred of the Romanists by adopting the expressions of the Zwinglians, which were detested by all men.
In 1530 the Emperor held a Diet at Augsburg, at which the Lutherans presented their Confession of Faith. Luther gave the heads of it, and it was put into form by the more moderate Melanchthon. This document became well known as the ‘Confession’ of Augsburg.
In 1531 there was a war between the Roman Catholic and the Protestant Cantons in Switzerland, in which Zurich joined. The Protestants were defeated in a battle on 11th October, and Zwingli, who took part, was killed.
In 1541 the Emperor Charles V. held a Conference at Worms, when John Ekius, Julius Fluggius, and John Groper argued for the Catholics, and Melanchthon, Martin Bucer, and John Pistorius argued for the Protestants, after which the Emperor decreed an ‘interim’ under which all were allowed free exercise of religion until a General or National Council of Germany. In 1543 the Diet at Spire extended this until the Council of Trent, which, in fact, lasted from 1545 to 1563. But in 1548 Charles at Augsburg formulated the great Interim by which all Germany was to be governed in matters of religion until the Council of Trent should define them.
In 1543 Hermann von Wied, Prince Archbishop of Cologne, had a scheme of reformation drawn up and submitted, not only to the Landtag at Bonn, but to the leading Lutheran divines; a work known as Hermann's Consultation was produced through the labours of Melanchthon and Martin Bucer, both of whom had acted as spokesmen for the Protestants at the Conference at Worms in 1541.
This book in the main was doctrinal, but, in the middle of it, forms were given for the different rites of the Church. The Chapter of Cologne opposed this scheme and issued a work in reply, called Antididagma. Both of these works had a considerable effect on the Prayer Book produced by Cranmer.
Mention must be made of another work which had a considerable influence on the Prayer Book, and that was Quignon's Breviary, which was published in 1535 and again in 1537. Clement VII., with the object of getting the clergy to be more regular in saying their office, employed Cardinal Francis de Quignones, a Spanish Franciscan, to simplify the Breviary by removing some of the difficulties and curtailing it. It was never intended to be publicly recited in church, and when this began to be done, it was put an end to by Papal decree of Paul IV. in 1558. In it the Psalter was rearranged, the lessons reduced to one from the Old Testament, one from the New Testament, and one from the Lives of the Saints or a homily, or from the Epistles or Acts of the Apostles.
Finally, owing to Henry VIII.'s Spanish marriage, it is impossible to believe that Cranmer was unacquainted with the Mozarabic Missal and Breviary, which Cardinal Ximénes had caused to be revived in 1500–1502; cf. Chapter XV. p. 67; though it is difficult to distinguish any part of the reformed Liturgy as being specially attributable to this source apart from the Gallic origin of the Use at Rouen, which, as we have seen, was the origin of the Sarum Use, so noticeable for its bowings and lack of genuflection and for its standard lights, phari (from which the modern French word phare, a lighthouse or motor-car head-light, is derived).