Religious reformer

“ But the direct and personal interest of every man seemed to lie in the right holding of religious truth, and thus the theological aspect of the Reformation tended more and more to supersede its political one. ”

“ But when once, after the complete victory of truth, the divine Reformation shall appear;—then that human Reformation, which till now hath existed, will sink to the ground, and disappear from the world. Then by the universal triumph of Christianity, and the thorough religious regeneration of the age, of the world, and of governments themselves, will dawn the era of a true Christian Illuminism. ”

“ The Reformation, in all its later phases, that is to say, after it ceased to be a protest against moral defects and administrative abuses and became a revolutionary invention of new dogmas and practices, was the result of clever, stupid or perverse minds working overtime on religious problems which could not be solved or even apprehended by the intellect, whether it was that of an acute and highly trained master such as Calvin, or that of any one of the hundred founders of less savage but more curious and uncouth types of "reformed religion." ”

“ For these reasons reform in this particular must move from the people to the government, not from the government to the people.
And here we come to the root of the whole matter, to the field where reform is most needed, that is, in the moral condition of our society. While there are few nations in which there is such a diversity of religious views and multiplicity of religious sects, there are few peoples which are so proverbially irreligious as our own. ”

“ These chapters have presented sufficient historical evidence to show that from the very beginning of the Reformation there appeared a group of men who felt themselves commissioned, like the prophets of old, to challenge the theological systems of the Reformers, and to cry against what proved to be an irresistible tendency toward the exaltation of form and letter in religion. They were men of intense religious faith, of marked mystical type, characterized by interior depth of experience, but at the same time they were men of scholarship, breadth and balance. ”

“ When we remember the century and a half of wars, so largely excited by ecclesiastical motives, which desolated Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, few can withhold their sympathy from the Christian Humanist idea that the path of reformation lay through a great readjustment of the existing conditions of the religious life, rather than through ecclesiastical revolution to a thorough-going reconstruction ”

“ Can the Lord expect, or require, anything less from a people in such unhampered circumstances--from a people so liberally furnished with all means and mercies, than a thorough reformation in all things, civil and religious, according to his word? Why should we suppose it? And would not such an improvement of our precious privileges be equally conducive to the glory of God, and our own present and everlasting good? The auspicious phenomena of the times furnish collateral arguments of a very encouraging nature, that our dutiful and pious endeavors shall not be in vain in the Lord. ”

“ Religious reforms, he freely admits, are necessary, but they ought to be spontaneous developments, emanations from the heart of the believers themselves, in response to changes in the times and social relations. ”

“ As to those who maintain that the inauguration of reforms and the setting up of powerful institutions would in reality be at variance with the good pleasure of God and would contravene the laws of the Divine Law-Giver and run counter to basic religious principles and to the ways of the Prophet—let them consider how this could be the case. ”

“ For men desired reform from very different motives. The ascetic temperament saw nothing but the moral abuses and the corruption of the clergy; the humanist desired a greater freedom of thought, and a certain toleration of divergences of opinion which was abhorrent to the doctrinal reformer. The latter shared with the humanist the wish for a reconstruction of the traditional dogma, but wished to see the line between orthodoxy and heterodoxy drawn with no uncertain hand. ”

“ There is a loud clamour for extensive change in that department. The clamour would be entitled to more respect if they who are the most eager to swell it with their voices were not generally the most ignorant of the real state of the Church, and the service it renders to the community. Reform is the word employed. Let us pause and consider what sense it is apt to carry, and how things are confounded by a lax use of it. The great religious Reformation, in the sixteenth century, did not profess to be a new construction, but a restoration of something fallen into decay, or put out of sight. ”

“ The progress in the arts, science, agriculture, political economy, the mechanic arts, the fine arts, &c., has far outstripped the improvement of our religious institutions, and their relinquishment of the errors and superstitions of the past, and nothing but the most absolute compulsion by the moral force of the progressive spirit of the age has induced the churches to make any improvement in their creeds and doctrines. The spirit of improvement is manifested in every department of business, and in all our numerous institutions but that of our religion. ”

“ Nothing can be worthy the name of Reform that is not based on the Christian religion,—that does not acknowledge the laws of eternal truth and justice,—that does not find its life in Christian charity, and its light in Christian truth. The tendency of reform at the present day is too often to separate itself from religion; for religion cannot work fast enough to satisfy its haste; cannot, at the end of each year, count the steps it has advanced in arithmetical numbers. The reformer asks not always for general growth and advancement in Christian Character ”

“ So long as the new organisation claims to be Christian at all, it must go back for its foundation to Jesus Christ and His Apostles, and he himself can appear only as a reformer, a restorer of what professes, and must profess, to be the religion which they delivered to mankind. ”

“ Do not talk to me and tell me that you are so backslidden and dark, but reform and get the light of God within you. Some get up here and say, "I will live my religion, I will brethren; O pray for me, I will live my religion, if it costs me my life." ”

“ The Reformers had before them not simply the theological desire to define precisely the nature of that authority to which all Christian teaching appeals, but the religious need to cling to the divinely revealed way of salvation and to turn away from all human interposition and corruption. They desire to make known that they trust God rather than man. ”

“ The instrument of reformation is simple; viz. the Word of God as it stands written in the Sacred Scriptures, pure as our forefathers received it, powerful in itself to change the face of the whole universe. The truths of that inspired volume constitute the whole of Christianity; out of it there exists no truth for the Church. Be it yours, then, with the Holy Bible in your hand, to reform the doctrine corrupted by your predecessors! No one can do this work so well as you; no one so much as you is bound to do it by conscience and by special obligation. ”

“ When Christianity itself was in such need of reform, when Christians could scarcely be distinguished from pagans in love of display, and in egotistical ends, how could it reform the world? When it was a pageant, a ritualism, an arm of the state, a vain philosophy, a superstition, a formula, how could it save, if ever so dominant? The corruptions of the church in the fourth century are as well authenticated as the purity and moral elevation of Christians in the second century. ”

“ Our hope is that the world’s religious leaders and the rulers thereof will unitedly arise for the reformation of this age and the rehabilitation of its fortunes. Let them, after meditating on its needs, take counsel together and, through anxious and full deliberation, administer to a diseased and sorely-afflicted world the remedy it requireth. ”

“ In vain men sought to establish reforms, and through them bring back the religion of Jesus Christ, and the Church of Christ. To do that, however, was beyond the power of these men, however good their intentions. ”

“ I am convinced that all religion is vice; experience has taught me to believe so, and it is not in the power of even the Archbishop himself to convince me to the contrary. I feel proud in being called an Infidel, and wish that all mankind felt as I do. What a reformation, what a glorious reform we should have! ”

“ The Reformation was the work of all sorts of people with all sorts of motives. And it is only within very recent times that we have begun to realize how religious discontent played only a minor rôle in this great upheaval and that it was really an unavoidable social and economic revolution with a slightly theological background. ”

“ One is tempted to ask, whether it be credible, that we of this age should have much advantage over our Reformers, in respect of religious knowledge, when both had an opportunity of deriving it from the same source? You will apprehend the meaning of this question, if you reflect, that our Reformers had not their religious system to fetch out of the dark rolls of ancient tradition, and much less to create, or fashion for themselves, out of their own proper stock of ingenuity and invention. ”

“ The doctrines of the Reformation, adapted as they were to the strong individualism of the Germanic races, prepared the hearts of men for the doctrines of political liberty and constitutional government of the [Pg 28] succeeding century. The Reformation banished the idea that men must seek salvation through the intercession of priests and popes, who, however sacred, are only fellow-men, and set up the idea that each soul has direct access to God. With the Bible as a guide and his own conscience as a judge, each man was accountable only to one divine sovereign. ”

“ Yet all acknowledge that you have something superior, that you have light and intelligence that others do not enjoy; that God has opened up the heavens to your minds, and taken away the vail from your understandings. And you say that there is a God, that you understand His character, that He has revealed Himself to you, and that you have left all and come to the mountains, and what is the cry here? Why the people need reforming, there is necessity for reformation. ”

“ Here we can see the reason that no church in any age of the world has inaugurated any great system of reform for the improvement of society, but has made war on nearly every reform set on foot by that class of people which it has chosen to stigmatize as "infidels." Such a religion will decline and die in the exact ratio of the enlightenment and progress of society. ”

“ Protestants wish not its destruction, but its reformation.
Some there may be, who, in their zeal for truth, would pull the whole edifice to pieces; but this is not God's method: he destroys what is evil, and saves what is good. It is reformation, not annihilation, that this Church needs. ”

“ This should be the model of all Christian reformers. He that believeth shall not make haste is the true motto of Christian reform.
And these great multitudes, to whose hands no special, [57] individual power is given—they are only minute workers in a narrower sphere. Daily toils, small economies, the ordering of the material cares of life, are all their lot. Before them in their way they can see the footsteps of Jesus. ”

“ Religious reform had been inaugurated at the same time as political freedom, but as yet it had not been condensed and embodied either in doctrine or in ecclesiastical organization and discipline. {211} There was an urgent need of moral reform, for the ancient creeds and authorities had strangely tolerated the decay of public morality; and their downfall had been followed by an increase of licence and profligacy. Religious reform made moral reform all the more necessary, but did not succeed in accomplishing it. ”

“ In medicine, physical science, commercial interests, politics, and even ethics, the reformer has been confronted with theological affirmations that have barred his way, which were all defended as of vital importance, and were all compelled to yield before the secularizing influence of civilization. ”

“ It is, indeed, my honest conviction that the great holiness reform can not go forward with the sweeping power and permanent triumph that God designs it should until the gospel be so preached and consecration become so thorough that the blood of Christ may reach and wash away every vestige of denominational distinction, and "perfect into one"—yea, one indeed and in truth—all the sanctified. ”

“ The Eternal One who loved righteousness could be served in no other way than in furthering justice. Religion became social reform, aflame with the enthusiasm of holy ideals; of ideals seen to be eternal realities, as the shadows cast by The Living God, moving on to accomplish the good pleasure of His will.
To conserve the new spirit of brotherhood which they awakened, they embodied in the book of the Law, that constituted the Magna Charta of the Reformation, a development of a gracious usage of the people. ”

“ Brethren, your calamities are due, in my opinion, to the loss of religion in the world and the lack of virtue among individuals. What is needed for the reformation of mankind is a new interest in the church--a revival of faith. If every man will purify his own heart, all hearts will then be pure; and when the hearts of all are pure, and filled with the divine sentiment of justice and brotherhood, no man will be disposed to treat his neighbor unjustly. ”

“ The restraints of civil law are acknowledged to be salutary and necessary, and the influence of public opinion on the conduct of men is not to be despised; but after exhausting all our ingenuity in planning schemes of reformation, the preaching of the Gospel will maintain its importance, as the most successful and only effectual means of producing radical reformation among men. But in speaking of the good effects of the Christian religion, it would be unpardonable to confine our views to the present world. ”