CALVIN'S DOCTRINES LEAD. 81 and abominable pollutions. Let hypocrites go now and, retaining depravity in their hearts, endeavor by their works to merit the favor of God."* Here naturally suggest themselves the questions: If not by love of God, if not by leading a life of purity and benevolence, how, under this system, is man to appease an angry and hostile Creator? How is he to escape hell? The Reformer's answer is: By belief, not by acts. Those who have an assurance of election are the elect: but the elect, and the elect only, are saved by vicarious atonement made by the Son of God. † This assurance that we are the favored of God is held by Calvin to be omnipotent to save sinners even though, after obtaining it, they indulge in gross sins. Witness the following passage, occurring in connection with his favorite illustration from Romans ix. 11, 13: "Rebecca, having been divinely assured of the election of her son Jacob, procures him the benediction by a sinful artifice; she deceives her husband, the witness and minister of the grace of God; she constrains her son to utter falsehoods; she corrupts the truth of God by various frauds and impostures." This, Calvin calls, "transgressing the limits of the word;" and he excuses her action: "for," says he, "as the particular error of Jacob did not annul the effect of the benediction, so neither did it destroy the faith which generally predominated in her mind, and was the principle and cause of that action." ↑ Every one knows that Calvin was one of the sternest of moralists, and we cannot rationally suppose that he really intended to palliate vice, or to excuse a vicious life. Observe, however, in what manner, led away by love of a dogma, he lays himself open, in the above passage, to the imputation of glossing over deliberate fraud and imposture, when such sins coëxist with belief in the atonement. Inst., B. 3, C. 14, § 8. + This doctrine will be found, a few pages farther on, graphically set out by the powerful pen of Luther. Inst., B. 3, C. 11, § 31. 82 LUTHER AND CALVIN'S SPIRIT This doctrine of justification by faith alone is very concisely and lucidly set forth in the Augsburg Confession: "Men cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works; but are justified freely, for Christ's sake, through faith, when they believe that they are received into favor and that sins are remitted on account of Christ who, by his death, made satisfaction for our sins. This faith God imputes for righteousness.” * In the above I have italicized the words which prove that the faith which, according to this scheme of redemption, exclusively wins heaven, is a belief of our personal favor with the Almighty, resulting in our election and adoption by Him. Let us now turn from the Genevese divine to his great German co-laborer. We find, as between the two, great difference of character, indeed, but no essential variation in creed. One cannot doubt that, in a general way, Luther assented, verbally at least, to Calvin's system of divinity, as set out in the "Institutes;" since, while he refused the hand of brotherhood to Zwingli because of variance on a single doctrinal point, and even held it to be likely that the Swiss Reformer, after dying for the Protestant cause, would suffer eternal torments because of disbelief in the “real presence," he remained in strict fellowship with Calvin throughout his life. Yet he might have said to the theologian of Geneva with more truth than he did to Ulrich Zwingli: "You have a different spirit from ours." Calvin's religion, like Jove's armed daughter, was the offspring of his brain; Luther's, of his heart. The two had this in common, that they ran the convictions which they had once assumed as * Augsburg Confession, Part 1, Art. 4. "I wish from my heart Zwinglius could be saved, but I fear the contrary; for Christ has said that those who deny him shall be damned.” LUTHER: in Table Talk, p. 324. AND CHARACTER COMPARED. 83 premises, to their legitimate conclusions, with unflinching temerity; but Luther's heart carried him into a region comfortable, genial, even jovial; while Calvin's brain tarried in a limbus, stern in every feature, icy cold, dreary, and, as regards the general fate of humanity, hopeless and implacable. If one would penetrate to the essence of Lutheranism, one must read Luther's own favorite Commentary on the Galatians.* He there summons up, indeed, the same abasing aspect of human nature,† that imparts so lurid a gleam to Calvin's writings; but the heartiness of the man and the unconventional sprightliness. of his style break out over the saddening picture, lighting it up as the aurora borealis illuminates northern wastes. Permit me to recall to your recollection one or two of its more notable passages, in illustration. The one idea (held, of course, in common with Calvin) that pervades the book and which constitutes, in fact, the cornerstone of Luther's entire doctrinal system, † is, that mankind, * Luther thought his own best works to have been, his Commentaries on Deuteronomy, on Galatians, and on the four books of St. John. —See Table Talk, p. 21. + It pervades his other writings also, and it was wont to break out in his conversation. "We have altogether a confounded, corrupt, and poisoned nature, both in body and soul: throughout the whole of man is nothing that is good."—Table Talk, p. 119. So the other Reformers, for example Melancthon: "Anima, luce vitaque cœlesti carens, sua quærat, non cupiat, non velit, nisi carnalia,” etc.-Loci Communes, p. 18 (Ed. Augusti). "Luther arrived at the doctrine of the atonement through Christ wholly independently of works: this afforded him the key to the Scriptures, and became the main prop to his whole system of faith."—RANKE: Hist. of the Popes, vol. i. p. 186. He says: {{ All the Luther himself took the same view of this tenet. other articles of our faith are comprehended in that of justification; and if that remain sound then all the rest are sound."-Commentary on Galatians, at chap. iii. verse 13. And again (same verse): This is the principal article of all Christian doctrine, which the Popish schoolmen have altogether darkened." So, in his preface to the Commentary on the Galatians, his chief com 84 CLOTHING CHRIST WITH OUR SINS. even down to the latest generations, steeped in sin through Adam's transgression, can be saved from an eternal hell only by a transfer of all human sins to Jesus Christ. Do you remember how vividly he sets this out? "God sent his only son into the world and laid upon him all the sins of all men, saying: 'Be thou Peter, that denier; Paul, that persecutor, blasphemer, and cruel oppressor; David, that adulterer; be thou that sinner that did eat the apple in Paradise, that thief which hanged upon the cross; in brief, be thou the person who hath committed the sins of all men : see, therefore, that thou pay and satisfy them.' Here now cometh the law and saith: 'I find him a sinner and indeed such an one as hath taken upon him the sins of all men; therefore let him die upon the cross.' And so he setteth upon him and killeth him. By this means the whole world is purged and cleansed from all sins. Therefore, where sins are seen and felt, there are they indeed no sins; for, according to Paul's divinity, there is no sin, no death, no malediction any more in the world, but only in Christ. * But some man will say: 'It is very absurd and slanderous to call the Son of God a cursed sinner.' I answer: If thou wilt deny him to be a cursed sinner, deny also that he was crucified and died. This is a singular consolation for all Christians, so to clothe Christ with our sins." t It is curious to note how the man's intense perception of a plaint against Catholicism is: "the infinite and horrible profanation and abomination which always hath raged in the Church of God, and even at this day ceaseth not to rage, against this only and grounded rock, which we hold to be the article of our justification."-Preface, p. 1. * One might almost suppose, from such passages, that Luther held universalist doctrines. Very far from it. "God, in this world, has scarce the tenth part of the people; the smallest number only will be saved. If now thou wilt know why so few are saved and so infinitely many damned, this is the cause: the world will not hear Christ."-Table Talk, pp. 41, 43. + Commentary on Galatians, at chap. iii. verse 13. CHARITY WORTHLESS? 85 single favorite doctrine like this led him on, step by step, until, like Aaron's rod before Pharaoh, it swallowed up all the rest. Speaking of "the phantastical opinions of the Papists concerning the justification of works," he says: "They do imagine a certain faith formed and adorned with charity. By this, they say, sins are taken away and men are justified before God. But what else is this, I pray you, but to unwrap Christ and to strip him quite out of our sins, and to look upon them, not in Christ, but in ourselves. Yea, what is this else but to take Christ clean away, and to make him utterly unprofitable to Again, he declared it to be blasphemy, inspired by the devil, to say that faith without works was dead, or to assert that faith, unfruitful of works, was not omnipotent to gain heaven for the believer. One would read with incredulity in these modern days, if the original was not still extant in proof, such a passage as the following: "The perverters of the Gospel of Christ teach that even that faith which they call faith infused (fides infusa), not received by hearing nor gotten by any working, but created in man by the Holy Ghost, may stand with deadly sin, and that the wickedest men may have this faith. Therefore, they say, if it be alone it is idle and utterly unprofitable. Thus they take from faith her office and give it unto charity: so that faith is nothing, except charity, which they call the form and perfection thereof, be joined withal. This is a devilish and blasphemous kind of doctrine. For if charity be the form and perfection of faith (as they dream), then am I by and by constrained to say that charity is the chief part of the Christian religion, and so I lose Christ, his blood and his benefits; and now I rest altogether in a moral doing even as the Pope, the heathen philosopher, and the Turk." † Yet again: "The true doing of the law is a faithful and a * Commentary on Galatians, at chap. iii. verse 13. |