Posted on 04/11/2013 6:40:37 AM PDT by Vermont Crank
THE PROTESTANT PRETENDED REFORMATION IS NOT THE WORK OF GOD
CHAPTER I.
Q. Can any one reasonably believe that the change in religion brought about by Luther is the work of God?
A. No one can believe it, unless he be utterly ignorant of the true nature of religion, and very unlearned in the matters of history.
Q. Why do you make this answer?
A. Because, in the first place, the author of the Reformation is not a man of God; secondly, because his work is not the work of God; thirdly, because the means which he used in effecting his purpose are not of God.
Q. Why do you say Luther is not a man of God?
A. Because he has left us in his works abundant proof, that if God saw a need for any reformation in his Church, such a man as Luther would not be selected to carry God's will into effect.
Q. What have you to blame in Luther's works?
A. They are full of indecencies very offensive to modesty, crammed with a low buffoonery well calculated to bring religion into contempt, and interlarded with very many gross insults offered in a spirit very far from Christian charity and humility, to individuals of dignity and worth.
Q. Passing over his indecencies in silence, give us a specimen of his buffooneries and insults. What does he say to the King of England, replying to a book which the King had written against him? (Tom. ii, p. 145.) [pg. 30]
A. He calls the king "an ass," "an idiot," "a fool," "whom very infants ought to mock."
Q. How does he treat Cardinal Albert, Archbishop and Elector of Mayence, in the work which he wrote against the Bishop of Magdeburg? (Tom. vii, p. 353.)
A. He calls him "an unfortunate little priest, crammed with an infinite number of devils." .
Q. What does he say of Henry, Duke of Brunswick? (Tom. vii, p. 118.)
A. That he had "swallowed so may devils in eating and drinking, that he could not even spit any thing but a devil." He calls Duke George of Saxony, "a man of straw, who, with his immense belly, seemed to bid defiance to heaven, and to have swallowed up Jesus Christ himself."
(Tom. ii, p. 90.) CHAPTER II.
Q. Was Luther's language more respectful, when he addressed the Emperor and the Pope?
A. No; he treated them both with equal indignities; he said that the Grand Turk had ten times the virtue and good sense of the Emperor,—that the Pope was "a wild beast," "a ravenous wolf, against whom all Europe should rise in arms."
Q. What do you conclude from Luther's insolent, outrageous, and libertine manner of speaking? A. That he was not the man to be chosen by God to reform his church; for his language is the strongest proof that he was actuated, not by the spirit of God, but by the spirit of the devil.
Q. May not his party say, that they care little about the manner of the man, if his doctrine be true,—that it is not upon him, but upon the word of God, they build their faith?
A. If the Protestant doctrine be true, then God used Luther as a chosen instrument to reestablish his true faith; but no reasonable man can possibly believe the latter; therefore, neither can any reasonable man believe that the Protestant is the true faith.
Q. May it not be objected that there were individual pastors in the Catholic Church as worthless as Luther?
A. Yes; but all the pastors of the Catholic Church were not so at one and the same time, whilst Luther, at the time we speak of, was the first and only teacher of Protestantism. Besides, Christ himself give an unanswerable reply to the objection, (Matth. xxiii:) "The Scribes and Pharisees have sitten in the chair of Moses; all things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do, but according to their works do ye not." Again, some Catholic pastors may have been bad men, but still they were the lawful ministers of God, having succeeded to lawfully commissioned predecessors; but Luther stood alone, he succeeded to none having lawful authority from whom he could derive a mission. In fine, whatever may have been the lives of some vicious Catholic pastors, they taught nothing new, their teaching was the same as that of the best and holiest ministers of the Church. Hence, there was no innovation in matters of faith, or principles of morality. But Luther was the first to teach a new doctrine, unknown in the world before his time.
CHAPTER III.
Q. We are now satisfied that the author of Protestantism was not a man of God; show us that his undertaking was not from God;—what did he undertake?
A. He undertook to show that the Church had fallen into error, separated himself from her, and formed his followers into a party against her.
Q. Could such an undertaking be from God?
A. No; for God has commanded us not to sit in judgment upon the Church, but to hear and obey her with respect; "and if he will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican." (Matth. chap. xviii.)
Q. Was it the particular "territorial" Church of the Roman States, or the Universal Catholic Church, that Luther charged with having erred?
A. It was the Universal Church he dared to calumniate in this manner.
Q. How do you prove this? A. Before the time of Luther, there was no Christian society in the whole world which believed the doctrines afterwards taught by Luther; consequently, he assailed not any particular sect or church, but the faith of the whole Christian world.
Q. Are you quite sure, that it is incontestably true, that no Christian body every believed, before Luther's time, the new doctrines be began then to propagate?
A. So sure, that we have Luther's own authority for it. His words are, (Tom. ii, p. 9, b.:) "How often has not my conscience been alarmed? How often have I not said to myself:—Dost thou ALONE of all men pretend to be wise? Dost thou pretend that ALL CHRISTIANS have been in error, during such a long period of years?"
Q. What was it that gave Luther most pain, during the time he meditated the introduction of his new religion?
A. A hidden respect for the authority of the Church, which he found it impossible to stifle.
Q. How does he express himself on this matter? (Tom. ii, p. 5.)
A. "After having subdued all other considerations, it was with the utmost difficulty I could eradicate from my heart the feeling that I should obey the Church." "I am not so presumptuous," said he, "as to believe, that it is in God's name I have commenced and carried on this affair; I should not wish to go to judgment, resting on the fact that God is my guide in these matters." (Tom. p. 364, b.)
CHAPTER IV.
Q. What think you of the schism caused by Luther? Can one prudently believe that it is the work of God?
A. No; because God himself has forbidden schism as a dreadful crime: St. Paul (1st Corinth. chap. i. ver. 10) says: "Now I beseech you, brethren by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no SCHISMS among you; but that you be perfect in the same mind and same judgment."
Q. What idea did Luther himself entertain about schism before he blinded himself by his infuriated antipathy to the Pope?
A. He declared, that it was not lawful for any Christian whatever to separate himself from the Church of Rome.
Q. Repeat the very words of Luther touching this important matter.
(Tom. i, p. 116, b.) A."There is no question, no matter how important, which will justify a separation from the Church." Yet, notwithstanding, he himself burst the moorings which bound him to the Church, and, with his small band of ignorant and reckless followers, opposed her by every means in his power.
Q. What do you remark on historical examples of conduct similar to this ever since the birth of Christianity?
A. That in every age, when a small body detached itself from the Church, on account of doctrinal points, it has been universally the case, that the small body plunged by degrees deeper and deeper into error and heresy, and in the end, brought by its own increasing corruption into a state of decomposition, disappeared and perished. Of this we have hundreds of examples; nor can Lutherans or Calvinists reasonably hope, that their heresy and schism can have any other end. They are walking in the footsteps of those who have strayed from the fold of truth,—from the unity of faith; and they can have no other prospect, than the end of so many heresies that have gone before them..
CHAPTER V.
Q. Why have you said, that the means adopted by Luther, to establish his new religion, were not of God? What were those means?
A. That he might secure followers, he employed such means as were calculated to flatter the passions of men; he strewed the path to heaven—not like Christ with thorns, but like the devil—with flowers; he took off the cross which Christ had laid on the shoulders of men, he made wide the easy way, which Christ had left narrow and difficult.
Q. Repeat some of Luther's improvements upon the religion of Christ
. A. He permitted all who had made solemn vows of chastity, to violate their vows and marry; he permitted temporal sovereigns to plunder the property of the Church; he abolished confession, abstinence, fasting, and every work of penance and mortification.
Q. How did he attempt to tranquillize the consciences he had disturbed by these scandalously libertine doctrines?
A. He invented a thing, which he called justifying faith, to be a sufficient substitute for all the above painful religious works, and invention which took off every responsibility from our shoulders, and laid all on the shoulders of Jesus Christ; in a word, he told men to believe in the merits of Christ as certainly applied to them, and live as they pleased, to indulge every criminal passion, without even the restraints of modesty.
Q. How did he strive to gain over to his party a sufficient number of presumptuous, unprincipled, and dissolute men of talent, to preach and propagate his novelties?
A. He pandered to their passions and flattered their pride, by granting them the sovereign honor of being their own judges in every religious question; he presented them with the Bible, declaring that each one of them, ignorant and learned, was perfectly qualified to decide upon every point of controversy.
Q. What did he condescend to do for Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, in order to secure his support and protection?
A. He permitted him to keep two wives at one and the same time. The name of the second was Margaret de Saal, who had been maid of honor to his lawful wife, Christina de Saxe. Nor was Luther the only Protestant Doctor who granted this monstrous dispensation from the law of God; eight of the most celebrated Protestant leaders signed, with their own hand, the filthy and adulterous document.
Q. Does the whole history of Christianity furnish us with even one such scandalous dispensation derived from ecclesiastical authority?
A. No; nor could such brutal profligacy be countenanced even for a moment, seeing that the Scripture is so explicit on the subject. Gen. ii, Matth. xix, Mark x, speak of two in one flesh, but never of three. But Luther and his brethren were guided, not by the letter of the Scripture, but by the corrupt passions, wishes, and inclinations of men. To induce their followers to swallow the new creed, they gave them, in return, liberty to gratify every appetite.
CHAPTER VI.
Q. If neither the author of Protestantism, nor his work itself, nor the means he adopted to effect his purpose, are from God, what are his followers obliged to?
A. They are obliged, under pain of eternal damnation, to seek earnestly and re-enter the true Church, which seduced by Luther, they abandoned: If they be sincere, God will aid them in their inquiry.
Q. What is the situation of the man who does not at once acquit himself of this obligation?
A. He is the victim of mortal heresy and schism; the thing he calls a church has no pastors lawfully sent or ordained; hence, he can receive none of the Sacraments declared in Scripture to be so necessary to salvation.
Q. What think you of those (they are many) who are at heart convinced that the Catholic Church is the only true one, and are still such cowards as to dread making a public profession of their faith?
A. "He," says our Saviour—Luke, ix chap., 26 ver., "who shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him the Son of Man shall be ashamed, when he shall come in his majesty." .
Q. What think you of those who are inclined to Catholicism, but out of family considerations neglect to embrace it?
A. Our Saviour, in the 10th chap. of St. Matth., tells such, that he who loves father or mother more than God, is unworthy of God.
Q. What say you to those who become Protestants, or remain Protestants from motives of worldly gain or honor?
A. I say with our Saviour, in the 8th chap. of St. Mark, "What will it avail a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?"
Dear BiPolar Bob. I concede that you have Free Will but I do not concede the “correctness” of the errors of the SDAs that you appear to embrace.
You concede that I have Free Will? That’s great. It came from God and not a church. You do not concede the “correctness” of the errors of the SDAs that you appear to embrace.. Well now, that’s a mouthful. A little more on the details of the errors and a little less of the namecalling, demagoguery or whatever you’re doing. Just what errors and be explicit. Did God rest on the seventh day or not? Did Moses? Did Jesus? Tell us more on these supposed errors and use the Bible, please.
The errors of The SDAs?
http://tinyurl.com/d2hdjd2
I would have cited the New Testament but seeing as how every single word of it was written by a Catholic to other Catholics in an already existing Catholic Church, I assumed you'd find it suspect.
If we wish to have an eye out for reasoning from conclusions, RC apologists do that all the day long, filtering out ALL which does not support their own conclusions.
There is much focus upon the early heresies of such as Marcion, but there and against other heresies we find the church reliant upon what? Not their own authority, but the fullness of the Gospels (all four books, not just Luke), the complete collection of Pauline Epistles, and Acts.
None of the churchmen who argued Chritian theology from those collected works, putting down those whom would accept only lesser NT canon, or add to it gnosticisms, themselves wrote that which they relied upon. Instead, they held up a standard for what by them had been recieved.
If Dunbar confirms the authority of the capital "C" Church (which can ONLY be the Catholic Church in your own eyes, correct?) then upon what does that authority rely, but upon those written works they themselves recieved, handed down over several centuries before the process of canonization was forced by the existence of heresies? What did the church combat those heresies with, but with those works which can indeed be shown to have come from the Apostles? That is what Dunbar was referencing in the below;
From this perspective the sharp reaction of the Fathers to Marcion and the Gnostics is to be seen, not as a de novo selection of an alternative canon, but rather as a making explicit of what had always been implicit in the life of the Church.
If there is confirmation of authority, it was reliant upon (what eventually came to be known as) the NT writings, and how such was understood then. Departures from those texts --- not allowed. Interpretations of those texts --- forever open to inspection themselves, or else there arising Sola Ecclesia, a "whatever we tell you" approach. We can see that in Luther's day, that sadly limited "sola" could itself produce heresies within the Church. Looking around and finding a few grotesque errors, Luther kept looking and found more fault with sola ecclesia, he himself being an ecclesiastic, showing himself in process to be more concerned with recovering what was originally recieved, but less interested in the ecclesiastical organization which was clearly enough shown at that time to have departed from the very basics of the Gospel message found within the texts.
Go back and re-read my post. I didn’t say you called me a name. But this correctness of SDA nonsense you spouted. I didn’t quote or refer to any SDA so drop that line of defense now. It’s a strawman argument. Your link is totally about SDA and nothing about what I said. Again tilting at windmills. You did nothing to answer my questions. You might read 2Peter 1:20,21 which states that “holy men spoke of God as they were moved by the Holy Spirit”. Nothing about Catholics there. You are Catholic obsessed by your rantings. None of the Apostles (including Peter) were Catholic in any sense of the usage of the word today. If you want to try and answer my original questions - go ahead. If not, concede you’re in over your head and all you can do is say Catholic over and over as many times in a sentence that you can.
I think about it often, and I enjoy hearing similar accounts, so I figured I would share.
And yes, all glory to God....He is so merciful.
http://tinyurl.com/cnjszlm
So we wil just have to agree to disagree about the putative necessity of everyone keeping one part of the Old Law
Dear BipolarBob. When we can not agree on the meaning of the words you wrote then there is little chance of us agreeing on the New Testament; and, because the topic of Sabbath Worship is only tangentially related to the topic of this post, I will simply cease to engage with you on this topic.
I assure you there are no hard feelings on my part.
Far more interesting to me is the idea of Freedom of worship and I plan to devote a post to that in the future. Me and thee will just have to disengage on the matter of history for the moment as that is tangential to this post
I would be happy to come back to it on another post as you appear to be very well read and I think it'd be a blast to have an exchange with you over that topic
Jesus is not his name, Yahoshua is his full name, and Yeshua was the common short form.
Why would you want to call him by any name but his own?
Wow, I did not know you were a person of such limited IQ to not understand me. On post #282 I asked three simple questions. They were Did God rest on the seventh day or not? Did Moses? Did Jesus? You are telling me you cannot answer those. Then go on to quote your Churchs teaching with no Biblical back-up. If you cannot answer those three simple questions, what are doing posting anyways? You told Daniel1212 there was only one religion, but can't answer three simple questions about that one religion.
There is no disputing by me that the Fathers (you call them “churchmen, right?) relied on Scripture. I emphasize that they did not speak in isolation or merely claim their thoughts were obvious from a plain reading of Scripture vouchsafed by the Holy Spirit - period, end of story.
Rather, they asserted that their beliefs revealed and defined with ever greater precision, what had been delivered to the universal church beginning with the Apostles and handed down by faithful men.
(I am talking first millennium. See my post 275 regarding what I will not respond to. Catholic is not capitalized in that world.)
Out of curiosity, since I do not regularly post to these threads, can you explain the thief on the cross, if this is true?
If you say so. I shall proceed to abhor myself.
The Church teaches that those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation.
Peace be with you
Thank you for the answer. I was hoping to hear it from the OP since he used the exclusionary term “no’.
And also with you.
And so, Dismas can be seen as "joining the Catholic Church" in that his repentance of his sin and his recognising that Jesus as the Messias is equivalent to the Baptism of desire; and it is Baptism that is the Sacrament that starts an individual on the road to becoming a full member of the Catholic Church.
The Council of Trent Traches:
Baptism Made Obligatory After Christ's Resurrection The second period to be distinguished, that is, the time when the law of Baptism was made, also admits of no doubt. Holy writers are unanimous in saying that after the Resurrection of our Lord, when He gave to His Apostles the command to go and teach all nations: baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, the law of Baptism became obligatory on all who were to be saved.
This is inferred from the authority of the Prince of the Apostles when he says: Who hath regenerated us into a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead;' and also from what Paul says of the Church: He delivered himself up for it: that he might sanctify it, cleansing it by the laver of water in the word of life. By both Apostles the obligation of Baptism seems to be referred to the time which followed the death of our Lord. Hence we can have no doubt that the words of the Saviour: Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God, refer also to the same time which was to follow after His Passion. Also, we Catholics have always taught that although Jesus instituted the Holy Sacraments as the usual means by which He dispense His graces and Saves us if we cooperate with His Sanctifying Grace, we also teach that he is not bound by His Sacraments and, thus Dismas.
Thank you for the reply. I see nothing in Scripture which indicates your claim to be true, but I appreciate your effort.
Peace be with you.
Do you want to turn this into another dissection of Sola Scriptura versus Catholicism? If so, as a prerequisite it must be established that to avoid the rehashing of the things that have been posted literally thousands of times in these threads:
- A definition of Sola Scriptura that explains your position on Sola Scriptura as meaning the sufficiency of scripture or the exclusivity of Scripture
- Where or how Scripture itself establishes that it alone is all that is necessary or authorized for Salvation.
- Scripture must give us either a table of contents or a criteria for what qualifies as Scripture and what does not qualify.
- A Scriptural based instruction for the proper interpretation of Scripture that resolves the many disputes to orthodox interpretation within and among the thousands of individuals, churches and institutions who profess Sola Scriptura as the basis for their doctrines and dogmas.
- An explanation of why those who profess Scripture Alone need to employ ministers and reverends and publish many thousands of books and blogs to supplement and clarify what Scripture they contend alone provides.
When you have laid the firm basis for these we can discuss any of your doctrinal differences with the Catholic Church and its Magisterium.
Peace be with you
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