Also Blessed Saint Martin Luther!
"At last meditating day and night, by the mercy of God,
I began to understand that the righteousness of God
is that through which the righteous live by a gift of God,
namely by faith."Here I felt as if I were entirely born again and had entered
paradise itself through the gates that had been flung open."----------------------------------------
It started on All Saints' Eve, 1517, when Luther publicly objected to the way preacher Johann Tetzel was selling indulgences. These were documents prepared by the church and bought by individuals either for themselves or on behalf of the dead that would release them from punishment due to their sins. As Tetzel preached, "Once the coin into the coffer clings, a soul from purgatory heavenward springs!"
Luther questioned the church's trafficking in indulgences and called for a public debate of 95 theses he had written. Instead, his 95 Theses spread across Germany as a call to reform, and the issue quickly became not indulgences but the authority of the church: Did the pope have the right to issue indulgences?
Events quickly accelerated. At a public debate in Leipzig in 1519, when Luther declared that "a simple layman armed with the Scriptures" was superior to both pope and councils without them, he was threatened with excommunication.
Luther replied to the threat with his three most important treatises: The Address to the Christian Nobility, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and On the Freedom of a Christian. In the first, he argued that all Christians were priests, and he urged rulers to take up the cause of church reform. In the second, he reduced the seven sacraments to two (baptism and the Lord's Supper). In the third, he told Christians they were free from the law (especially church laws) but bound in love to their neighbors.
In 1521 he was called to an assembly at Worms, Germany, to appear before Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Luther arrived prepared for another debate; he quickly discovered it was a trial at which he was asked to recant his views.
Luther replied, "Unless I can be instructed and convinced with evidence from the Holy Scriptures or with open, clear, and distinct grounds of reasoning ... then I cannot and will not recant, because it is neither safe nor wise to act against conscience." Then he added, "Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me! Amen."
One legacy that can still be felt today is Luther’s belief that there must be a balance between a simple, accessible musical style and the use of the vernacular in the text. As he put it, “Both text and music, accentuation, melody and gait, must come from the true mother tongue and voice.” Indeed, Luther was a skilled composer, but his true legacy lies in the way he incorporated new texts into the early Protestant church that still speak to us today. The most famous remains “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” the first verse of which reads,
A mighty fortress is our God,
a bulwark never failing;
our helper he, amid the flood
of mortal ills prevailing.
For still our ancient foe
does seek to work us woe;
his craft and power are great,
and armed with cruel hate,
on earth is not his equal.Much more at link: https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/2018/march/martin-luther-musician.html
