THE KING’S BUSINESS
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Cajetan, to cite Luther to Augsberg at once, and if he did not recant to send him bound to Rome; but the Elector, Frederic of Sax ony, would not arrest Luther as desired. A LOYAL REFORMER. The contest in Luther’s mind between loyalty to the Pope and the growing convic tion that Bible truth demanded his boldly opposing him, is well shown in his letter written early in the year 1518 to his old master at Erfurt, in which he says: “I absolutely believe that it is impos sible to reform the church unless the can ons, the decretals, the scholastic theology, philosophy and logic, as they are now treat ed, are utterly rooted up, and new studies put in their place. I may seem to you no logician, nor perhaps am I ; but one thing I know, that in defense of this opinion I fear no man’s logic.” But his great reluctance to oppose the Pope, even at this stage of his Convictions, is seen in his letter to Frederic, Elector of Saxony, of January 5 or 6, 1519, in which he stated that he would humbly submit and recognize that he had been too hot and hasty, and promising to admonish every one to follow the Roman church, and to obey and- honor her. Luther’s sincerity in this letter is borne out by his all along de siring reform, and not contemplating revo lution. A Roman Catholic writer character izes Luther’s development as a “growth from- a harmless, necessary reformer into that of a noxious rebel.” Professor Ramsay emphasizes the re markable fact that though, as the narrative in the Acts shows, Paul was often led by the Holy-Spirit where to go and preach, his visit to the Galatians came about by acci dent: “Ye know,” says St. Paul, “how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the Gospel, unto you at the first” (Gal. 4:13). Thus the great Scripture armory from which Luther "got his ammunition against Rome, would, humanly speaking, never have existed had it not been for the seeming accident of Paul’s illness. God’s truth, however apparently acciden tal in its' manifestation, contains within it
self the dynamic force sufficient for all our needs. Truly is it “quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb. 4 :12). LIKE UNTO PAUL How thoroughly suitable the truths so emphatically brought out by Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians were to the condi tions Luther had to meet in his own per sonal experience and in that of the Romish church! What could have better fitted him for the controversies he was forced to en gage in ? The Epistle to the Galatians is a strong, sustained argument almost from be ginning to end. And this cup of divine truth, when taken.in hand to drink from, forged a two-edged sword to fight with and supplied the necessary energy to wield it against the enemy. Luther doubtless did not for a long time realize what was clearly the fact, that “all things were working to gether for good” and that “the things that happened to him were turning out for the furtherance of the Gospel.” When John Eck, probably the ablest de bater of the day, won a dialectical advant age over Luther and thus directed the world’s attention to the subjects of discus sion, it also obliged Luther to examine more deeply his own views and thus to obtain a clearer insight into their stability. The net result, as Creighton puts it, was “that Eck’s reputation was staked updn crushing Luther; that two parties began to form in Germany; and that the time for con ciliation was past.” ON THE ANVIL- As Beard tersely says: “It was on the anvil of controversy that Luther’s doctrines were beaten out.” But still the practical rather than the dogmatic side continued to. fill his vision, he even yet seemed curiously unconscious of the course to which he was drifting. How controversy drew out his fire and energy may be seen in his reply to the epitome-of Prierios, which came out in the spring of 1520. To this; which af-
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