To these two principles may be added, as a third, the social principle, which affects chiefly the government and discipline of the Church, namely, the universal priesthood of believers, in opposition to the exclusive priesthood of the clergy. Protestantism emancipates the laity from slavish dependence on the teaching and governing priesthood, and gives the people a proper share in all that concerns the interests and welfare of the Church; in accordance with the teaching of St. Peter, who applies the term clergy (xλñpoç, heritage, 1 Pet. v. 3) to the congregation, and calls all Christians 'living stones' in the spiritual house of God, to offer up 'spiritual sacrifices,' 'a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people,' setting forth the praises of him who called them out of darkness into his marvelous light' (1 Pet. ii. 5, 9; comp. v. 1-4; Rev. i. 6; v. 10; xx. 6). It is impossible to reduce the fundamental difference between Protestantism and Romanism to a single formula without doing injustice to the one or the other. We should not forget that there are evangelical elements in Romanism, as there are legalistic and Romanizing tendencies in certain schools of Protestantism. But if we look at the prevailing character and the most prominent aspects of the two systems, we may draw the following contrasts: Protestantism corresponds to the Gentile type of Apostolic Christianity, as represented by Paul; Romanism, to the Jewish type, as represented by James and Peter, though not in Peter's Epistles (where he prophetically warns against the fruitful germ of the Papacy, viz., hierarchical pride and assumption), but in his earlier stage and official position as the Apostle of circumcision. Paul was called afterwards, somewhat irregularly and outside of the visible succession, as the representative of a new and independent apostolate of the Gentiles. The temporary collision of Paul and Peter at Antioch (Gal. ii. 11) foreshadows and anticipates the subsequent antagonism between Protestantism and Catholicism. Protestantism is the religion of freedom (Gal. v. 1); Romanism, the religion of authority. The former is mainly subjective, and makes religion a personal concern; the latter is objective, and sinks the individual in the body of the Church. The Protestant believes on the ground of his own experience, the Romanist on the testimony of the Church (comp. John iv. 42). Protestantism is the religion of evangelism and spiritual simplicity; Romanism, the religion of legalism, asceticism, sacerdotalism, and ceremonialism. The one appeals to the intellect and conscience, the other to the senses and the imagination. The one is internal, the other external, and comes with outward observation. Protestantism is the Christianity of the Bible; Romanism, the Christianity of tradition. The one directs the people to the fountain-head of divine revelation, the other to the teaching priesthood. The former freely circulates the Bible, as a book for the people; the latter keeps it for the use of the clergy, and overrules it by its traditions. Protestantism is the religion of immediate communion of the soul with Christ through personal faith; Romanism is the religion of mediate communion through the Church, and obstructs the intercourse of the believer with his Saviour by interposing an army of subordinate mediators and advocates. The Protestant prays directly to Christ; the Romanist usually approaches him only through the intercession of the blessed Virgin and the saints. Protestantism puts Christ before the Church, and makes Christliness the standard of sound churchliness; Romanism virtually puts the Church before Christ, and makes churchliness the condition and measure of piety.1 Protestantism claims to be only one, but the most advanced portion of the Church of Christ; Romanism identifies itself with the whole Catholic Church, and the Church with Christianity itself. The former claims to be the safest, the latter the only way to salvation. Protestantism is the Church of the Christian people; Romanism is the Church of priests, and separates them by education, celibacy, and even by their dress as widely as possible from the laity. Protestantism is the Christianity of personal conviction and inward experience; Romanism, the Christianity of outward institutions and sacramental observances, and obedience to authority. The one starts This is no doubt the meaning of Schleiermacher's famous formula (Der Christliche Glaube, Vol. I. § 24): 'Protestantism makes the relation of the individual to the Church dependent on his relation to Christ; Catholicism, vice versa, makes the relation of the individual to Christ dependent on his relation to the Church.' His pupil and successor, Dr. Twesten, puts the distinction in this way: Catholicism emphasizes the first, Protestantism the second, clause of the passage of Irenæus: "Where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church and all grace.' from Paul's, the other from James's doctrine of justification. The one lays the main stress on living faith, as the principle of a holy life; the other on good works, as the evidence of faith and the condition of justification. Protestantism proceeds from the invisible Church to the visible; Rome, vice versa, from the visible to the invisible.1 Protestantism is progressive and independent; Romanism, conservative and traditional. The one is centrifugal, the other centripetal. The one is exposed to the danger of radicalism and endless division; the other to the opposite danger of stagnation and mechanical and tyrannical uniformity. The exclusiveness and anti-Christian pretensions of the Papacy, especially since it claims infallibility for its visible head, make it impossible for any Church to live with it on terms of equality and sincere friendship. And yet we should never forget the difference between Popery and Catholicism, nor between the system and its followers. It becomes Protestantism, as the higher form of Christianity, to be liberal and tolerant even towards intolerant Romanism. § 38. THE EVANGELICAL CONFESSIONS OF FAITH. The Evangelical Confessions of faith date mostly from the sixteenth century (1530 to 1577), the productive period of Protestantism, and are nearly contemporaneous with the Tridentine standards of the Church of Rome. They are the work of an intensely theological and polemical age, when religious controversy absorbed the attention of all classes of society. They embody the results of the great conflict with the Papacy. A smaller class of Confessions (as the Articles of Dort and the Westminster Standards) belongs to the seventeenth century, and grew out of internal controversies among Protestants themselves. The eighteenth century witnessed a powerful revival of practical religion and missionary zeal through the labors of the Pietists and Moravians in Germany, and the Methodists in England and North America, but, in its ruling genius, it was irreligious and revolutionary, and undermined the authority of all creeds. In the nineteenth century a 1 This is the distinction made by Möhler, who thereby inconsistently admits the essential truth of the Protestant distinction between the visible and invisible Church, which Bellarmin denies as an empty abstraction. new interest in the old creeds was awakened, and several attempts were made to reduce the lengthy confessions to brief popular summaries, or to formularize the doctrinal consensus of the different evangelical denominations. The present tendency among Protestants is to diminish rather than to increase the number of articles of faith, and to follow in any new formula the simplicity of the Apostles' Creed; while Romanism pursues the opposite course. The symbols of the Reformation are very numerous, but several of them were merely provisional, and subsequently superseded by maturer statements of doctrine. Some far exceed the proper limits of a creed, and are complete systems of theology for the use of the clergy. It was a sad mistake and a source of incalculable mischief to incorporate the results of every doctrinal controversy with the confession of faith, and to bind lengthy discussions, with all their metaphysical distinctions and subtleties, upon the conscience of every minister and teacher. There is a vast difference between theological opinions and articles of faith. The development of theology as a science must go on, and will go on in spite of all these shackles. As to the theology of the confessions of orthodox Protestantism, we may distinguish in them three elements, the cecumenical, the Augustinian, and the evangelical proper. 1. The œcumenical element. In theology and Christology the Protestant symbols agree with the Greek and Roman Churches, and also in the other articles of the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds from the creation of the world to the resurrection of the body. 2. The Augustinian element is found in anthropology, or the doctrines of sin and grace, predestination, and perseverance. Here the Protestant confessions agree with the system of Augustine, who had more influence upon the reformers than any uninspired teacher. The Latin Church during the Middle Ages had gradually fallen into Pelagian and semi-Pelagian doctrines and practices, although these had been condemned in the fifth century. The Calvinistic confessions, however, differ from the Lutheran in the logical conclusions derived from the Augustinian premises, which they hold in common. 3. The Evangelical Protestant and strictly original element is found in soteriology, and in all that pertains to subjective Christianity, or the personal appropriation of salvation. Here belong the doctrines of the rule of faith, of justification by faith, of the nature and office of faith and good works, of the assurance of salvation; here also the protest against all those doctrines of Romanism which are deemed inconsistent with the Scripture principle and with justification by faith. The papacy, the sacrifice of the mass, transubstantiation, purgatory, indulgences, meritorious and hypermeritorious works, the worship of saints, images, and relics are rejected altogether, while the doctrine of the Church and the Sacraments was essentially modified. 39. THE LUTHERAN AND REFORMED CONFESSIONS. Literature. MAX. GÖBEL: Die religiöse Eigenthümlichkeit der luther, und reformirten Kirche. Bonn, 1837. (This book started a good deal of discussion in Germany on the peculiar genius of the two churches.) C. B. HUNDESHAGEN: Die Conflicte des Zwinglianismus, Lutherthums, und Calvinismus in der Ber- M. SCHNECKENBURGER: Vergleichende Darstellung des luther. und reform. Lehrbegriffs. Stuttgart, 1855, 2 vols. (Very acute and discriminating.) Comp. the introduction by Güder, the editor. PHILIP SCHAFF: Germany; its Universities, Theology, and Religion. Philadelphia, 1857, Ch. xviii. and IX., Lutheranism and Reform and the Evang. Union, pp. 167-185. Essays on the same subject by LÜCKE, in the Deutsche Zeitschrift, Berlin, for 1853, Nos. 3 sqq.; HagenBACH, in the Studien und Kritiken for 1854, Vol. I. pp. 23-34. JUL MÜLLER (Professor in Halle): Lutheri et Calvini sententiæ de Sacra Cœna inter se comparatæ, Halle, 1858. Also in his Dogmatische Abhandlungen, Bremen, 1870, pp. 404-467. Catholicism assumed from the beginning, and retains to this day, two distinct and antagonistic types, the Greek and the Roman, which represent a Christian transformation of the antecedent and underlying nationalities of speculative Greece and world-conquering Rome. In like manner, but to a much larger extent (as may be expected from the greater liberty allowed to national and individual rights and peculiarities), is Protestantism divided since the middle of the sixteenth century into the LUTHERAN and the REFORMED Confessions. To the former belong the established churches in most of the German States, in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and all others which call themselves after Luther; the Reformed-in the historical and Continental sense of the term'-embraces the national evangelical churches of Switzerland, France, Holland, some parts of Germany, England, Scotland, with their descendants in America and the British colonies. The designation Reformed is insufficient to cover all the denominations and sects which have sprung directly or indirectly from this 1 As used in all Continental works on Church history and symbolics. It means originally the Catholic Church reformed of abuses, or regenerated by the Word of God. |