Standing alone, a scholarly monk nailed a notice to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, 1517. 
     Little did he know his pounding hammer would set off controversy that would galvanize the growing Protestant movement. Martin Luther, the once timid village boy, never dreamed he would one day be called the "Father of the Reformation." 

     In his Ninety-Five Theses, posted for all to read, he explained how certain practices of the Catholic church in his day did not adhere to the Word of God. With incisive argument, he addressed corruptions and distortions of worship that kept common people from a true understanding of salvation by faith in Christ alone. 
     Pope Leo X called him a "wild boar." His own best friend Philip Melanchthon said he was a "violent physician." Luther admitted the same himself: "God uses coarse wedges for splitting coarse blocks." 

     Born in 1484 to a middle class family, Luther had access to both economic and educational advantages. Although his parents loved him dearly and nurtured him well, Luther later explained that their sometimes excessive discipline encouraged his natural cowardice. 

     It was in a fit of terror in a thunderstorm that he cried out an oath that if God would save him, he would become a monk. Much to his father's disappointment, in 1505 Luther joined the stringent Augustinian order, which emphasized absolute obedience and self-abasement. 

     Even within the safety of the monastery walls, however, Luther carried with him his greatest agony-his fear of God. To Luther, God was unapproachably holy. He was obsessed with God's righteousness and felt crushed by what he saw as God's unattainable demands of perfection. Many nights, in private penance, Luther would beat himself until he bled and fell unconscious. 

     His sole consolation was studying the Bible; it was then he felt closest to God. One day, he meditated on the truth of Romans 1:17: "For in it [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, "But the righteous man shall live by faith."" 
     This was the answer. Luther wept as he accepted Christ's finished work on the cross as full payment for his sin. He was free at last, and new joy filled his heart. When he began preaching and teaching at the University of Wittenberg, people flocked to hear his vibrant messages. 

     Church officials grew angrier by the day. Luther's words, at times caustic and rough, were drawing money and power away from the established church and stirring up both religious and political fervor. The Ninety-Five Theses was a blow that could not be overlooked. 
     In 1521, Luther was ordered to appear before the Diet (Assembly) of Worms and recant. After hours of prayer, Luther gave them this bold yet humble reply: "My conscience is captive to the Word of God. Here I stand. God help me. Amen." 
     Immediately he was declared an outlaw, and his guarantee of safe conduct was revoked. Rumors flew that the church's supporters would capture him and burn him at the stake. God had other plans for him, though, and Luther was unafraid. 
     On his journey home, a band of masked men, really Luther's friends in disguise, "kidnapped" him and rode him to safety on horseback to the castle of Wartburg. In this new refuge, Luther was able to continue writing reform treatises and to complete his translation of the Bible into German, a landmark literary feat. 

     After the Pope died, Luther returned to more routine life in Wittenberg. He married a former nun, Katherine von Bora, in 1525, and had six children, four of whom survived. Until his death in 1546 at age 63, Luther's prodigious energy did not flag. 
     Though battling countless illnesses, ongoing ailments, and bouts of depression, he provided continual guidance for blossoming Reformation activities. He was uncompromising to the last. Biographer Mike Fearon explains Luther's mission: "Though speaking out plainly against sin, he loved sinners and offered them God's righteousness as the only solution." 

Luther At Home 
     At first, Luther insisted he would never marry. But when he helped twelve nuns escape from a convent, he came face to face with Katherine von Bora, the woman who helped a confirmed, forty-one-year-old bachelor change his ways. 
     Although they were not "in love" when they wed, their marriage became a model of romance and deepest affection that has endeared generations. 
     He spoke of his home life with characteristic sparkling wit. 

• "In domestic affairs I defer to Katie. Otherwise, I am led by the Holy Ghost." 
• "Let them [other men] laugh. God and the angels are smiling in heaven." 
• "I am an inferior lord, she the superior; I am Aaron, she is my Moses." 

     Katherine returned his glowing admiration. When Martin died, in bereavement she said: "If I had a principality or an empire and lost it, it would not have been as painful as it is now that the dear Lord God has taken from me this precious and beloved man, and not from me alone, but from the whole world." 

The subject of this address is "John Calvin the Theologian," and I take it that what will be expected of me is to convey some idea of what manner of theologian John Calvin was, and of his quality as a theological thinker.

I am afraid I shall have to ask you at the outset to disabuse your minds of a very common impression, namely, that Calvin's chief characteristics as a theologian were on the one hand, audacity--perhaps I might even say effrontery--of speculation; and on the other hand, pitilessness of logical development, cold and heartless scholasticism. We have been told, for example, that he reasons on the attributes of God precisely as he would reason on the properties of a triangle. No misconception could be more gross. The speculative theologian of the Reformation was Zwingli, not Calvin. The scholastic theologian among the early Reformers was Peter Martyr, not Calvin. This was thoroughly understood by their contemporaries. "The two most excellent theologians of our times." remarks Joseph Scaliger, "are John Calvin and Peter Martyr, the former of whom has dealt with the Holy Scriptures as they ought to be dealt with--with sincerity, I mean, and purity and simplicity, without any scholastic subtleties....Peter Martyr, because it seemed to fall to him to engage the Sophists, has overcome them sophistically, and struck them down with their own weapons."

It is not to be denied, of course, that Calvin was a speculative genius of the first order, and in the cogency of his logical analysis he possessed a weapon which made him terrible to his adversaries. But it was not on these gifts that he depended in forming and developing his theological ideas. His theological method was persistently, rigorously, some may even say exaggeratedly, a posteriori. All a priori reasoning here he not only eschewed but vigorously repelled. His instrument of research was not logical amplification, but exegetical investigation. In one word, he was distinctly a Biblical theologian, or, let us say it frankly, by way of eminence "the Biblical theologian of his age." Whither the Bible took him, thither he went:where scriptural declarations failed him, there he stopped short. It is this which imparts to Calvin's theological teaching the quality which is its prime characteristic and its real offence in the eyes of his critics--I mean its positiveness. There is no mistaking the note of confidence in his teaching, and it is perhaps not surprising that this note of confidence irritates his critics. They resent the air of finality he gives to his declarations, not staying to consider that he gives them this air of finality because he presents them, not as his teachings, but as the teachings of the Holy Spirit in His inspired Word. Calvin's positiveness of tone is thus the mark not of extravagance but of sobriety and restraint. He even speaks with impatience of speculative, and what we may call inferential theology, and he is accordingly himself spoken of with impatience by modern historians of thought as a "merely Biblical theologian," who is, therefore, without any real doctrine of God, such as Zwingli has. The reproach, if it be a reproach, is just. Calvin refused to go beyond "what is written"--written plainly in the book of nature or in the book of revelation. He insisted that we can know nothing of God, for example, except what He has chosen to make known to us in His works and Word; all beyond this is but empty fancy, which merely "flutters" in the brain. And it was just because he refused to go one step beyond what is written that he felt so sure of his steps. He could not present the dictates of the Holy Ghost as a series of debatable propositions.

Such an attitude towards the Scriptures might conceivably consist with a thoroughgoing intellectualism, and Calvin certainly is very widely thought of as an intellectualist a outrance. But this again is an entire misapprehension. The positiveness of Calvin's teaching has a far deeper root than merely the conviction of his understanding. When Ernest Renan characterised him as the most Christian man of his generation he did not mean it for very high praise, but he made a truer and much more profound remark than he intended. The fundamental trait of Calvin's nature was precisely--religion. It is not merely that all his thinking is coloured by a deep religious sentiment; it is that the whole substance of his thinking is determined by the religious motive. Thus his theology, if ever there was a theology of the heart, was distinctively a theology of the heart, and in him the maxim that "It is the heart that makes the theologian" finds perhaps its most eminent illustration.

His active and powerful intelligence, of course, penetrated to the depths of every subject which he touched, but he was incapable of dealing with any religious subject after a fashion which would minister only to what would seem to him the idle curiosity of the mind. It was not that he restrained himself from such merely intellectual exercises upon the themes of religion, the force of his religious interest itself instinctively inhibited them.

Calvin marked an epoch in the history of the doctrine of the Trinity, but of all great theologians who have occupied themselves with this soaring topic, none have been more determined than he not to lose themselves in the intellectual subtleties to which it invites the inquiring mind; and he marked an epoch in the development of the doctrine precisely because his interest in it was vital and not merely or mainly speculative. Or take the great doctrine of predestination which has become identified with his name, and with respect to which he is perhaps, most commonly of all things, supposed to have given the reins to speculative construction and to have pushed logical development to unwarrantable extremes. Calvin, of course, in the lucid clearness and incorruptible honesty of his thought and in the faithfulness of his reflection of the Biblical teaching, fully grasped and strongly held the doctrine of the will of God as the prima causa rerum, and this too was a religious conception with him and was constantly affirmed just because it was a religious conception--yes, in a high and true sense, the most fundamental of all religious conceptions. But even so, it was not to this cosmical predestination that Calvin's thought most persistently turned, but rather to that soterlological predestination on which, as a helpless sinner needing salvation from the free grace of God, he must rest. And therefore Ebrard is so far quite right when he says that predestination appears in Calvin's system not as the decretum Dei but as the electio Dei.

It is not merely controversial skill which leads Calvin to pass predestination by when he is speaking of the doctrine of God and providence, and to reserve it for the point where he is speaking of salvation. This is where his deepest interest lay. What was suffusing his heart and flowing in full flood into all the chambers of his soul was a profound sense of his indebtedness as a lost sinner to the free grace of God his Saviour. His zeal in asserting the doctrine of two-fold predestination is grounded in the clearness with which he perceived--as was indeed perceived with him by all the Reformers--that only so can the evil leaven of "synergism" be eliminated and the free grace of God be preserved in its purity in the saving process. The roots of his zeal are planted, in a word, in his consciousness of absolute dependence as a sinner on the free mercy of a saving God. The sovereignty of God in grace was an essential constituent of his deepest religious consciousness. Like his great master, Augustine--like Luther, Zwingli and Butzer (Bucer), and all the rest of those high spirits who brought about that great revival of religion which we call the Reformation--he could not endure that the grace of God should not receive all the glory of the rescue of sinners from the destruction in which they are involved, and from which, just because they are involved in it, they are unable to do anything towards their own recovery.

The fundamental interest of Calvin as a theologian lay, it is clear, in the region broadly designated soteriological. Perhaps we may go further and add that, within this broad field, his interest was most intense in the application to the sinful soul of the salvation wrought out by Christ,--in a word in what is technically known as the ordo salutis. This has even been made his reproach in some quarters, and we have been told that the main fault of the Institutes as a treatise in theological science, lies in its too subjective character. Its effect, at all events, has been to constitute Calvin pre-eminently the theologian of the Holy Spirit.

Calvin has made contributions of the first importance to other departments of theological thought. It has already been observed that he marks an epoch in the history of the doctrine of the Trinity. He also marks an epoch in the mode of presenting the work of Christ. The presentation of Christ's work under the rubrics of the three-fold office of Prophet, Priest and King was introduced by him; and from him it was taken over by the entirety of Christendom, not always, it is true, in his spirit or with his completeness of development, but yet with large advantage. In Christian ethics, too, his impulse proved epoch-making, and this great science was for a generation cultivated only by his followers.

It is probable however that Calvin's greatest contribution to theological science lies in the rich development which he gives--and which he was the first to give--to the doctrine of the work of the Holy Spirit. No doubt, from the origin of Christianity, everyone who has been even slightly imbued with the Christian spirit has believed in the Holy Spirit as the author and giver of life, and has attributed all that is good in the world, and particularly in himself, to His holy offices. And, of course, in treating of grace, Augustine worked out the doctrine of salvation as a subjective experience with great vividness and in great detail, and the whole course of this salvation was fully understood, no doubt, to be the work of the Holy Spirit. But in the same sense in which we may say that the doctrine of sin and grace dates from Augustine, the doctrine of satisfaction from Anselm, the doctrine of justification by faith from Luther,--we must say that the doctrine of the work of the Holy Spirit is a gift from Calvin to the Church. It was he who first related the whole experience of salvation specifically to the working of the Holy Spirit, worked it out into its details, and contemplated its several steps and stages in orderly progress as the product of the Holy Spirit's specific work in applying salvation to the soul. Thus he gave systematic and adequate expression to the whole doctrine of the Holy Spirit and made it the assured possession of the Church of God.

It has been common to say that Calvin's entire theological work may be summed up in this--that he emancipated the soul from the tyranny of human authority and delivered it from the uncertainties of human intermediation in religious things: that he brought the soul into the immediate presence of God and cast it for its spiritual health upon the free grace of God alone. Where the Romanist placed the Church, it is said, Calvin set the Deity. The saying is true, and perhaps, when rightly understood and filled with its appropriate content, it may sufficiently characterise the effect of his theological teaching. But it is expressed too generally to be adequate. What Calvin did was, specifically, to replace the doctrine of the Church as sole source of assured knowledge of God and sole institute of salvation, by the Holy Spirit. Previously, men had looked to the Church for all the trustworthy knowledge of God obtainable, and as well for all the communications of grace accessible. Calvin taught them that neither function has been committed to the Church, but God the Holy Spirit has retained both in His own hands and confers both knowledge of God and communion with God on whom He will.

The Institutes is, accordingly, just a treatise on the work of God the Holy Spirit in making God savingly known to sinful man, and bringing sinful man into holy communion with God. Therefore it opens with the great doctrine of the testimonium Spiritus Sancti--another of the fruitful doctrines which the Church owes to Calvin--in which he teaches that the only vital and vitalizing knowledge of God which a sinner can attain, is communicated to him through the inner working of the Spirit of God in his heart, without which there is spread in vain before his eyes the revelation of God's glory in the heavens, and the revelation of His grace in the perspicuous pages of the Word. And therefore, it centres in the great doctrine of Regeneration,--the term is broad enough in Calvin to cover the whole process of the subjective recovery of man to God--in which he teaches that the only power which can ever awake in a sinful heart the motions of a living faith, is the power of this same Spirit of God moving with a truly creative operation on the deadened soul. When these great ideas are developed in their full expression--with explication of all their presuppositions in the love of God and the redemption of Christ, and of all their relations and consequents--we have Calvin's theology.

Now of course, a theology which commits everything to the operations of that Spirit of God who "worketh when and where and how He pleases," hangs everything on the sovereign good--pleasure of God. Calvin's theology is therefore, predestination to the core, and he does not fail, in faithfulness to the teachings of Scripture and with clear-eyed systematizing genius, to develop its predestinarianism with fulness and with emphasis; to see in all that comes to pass the will of God fulfilling itself, and to vindicate to God the glory that is His due as the Lord and disposer of all things. But this is not the peculiarity of his theology. Augustine had taught all this a thousand years before him. Luther and Zwingli and Martin Butzer, his own teacher in these high mysteries, were teaching it all while he was learning it. The whole body of the leaders of the Reformation movement were teaching it along with him. What is special to himself is the clearness and emphasis of his reference of all that God brings to pass, especially in the processes of the new creation, to God the Holy Spirit, and the development from this point of view of a rich and full doctrine of the work of the Holy Spirit.

Here then is probably Calvin's greatest contribution to theological development. In his hands, for the first time in the history of the Church, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit comes to its rights. Into the heart of none more than into his did the vision of the glory of God shine, and no one has been more determined than he not to give the glory of God to another. Who has been more devoted than he to the Saviour, by whose blood he has been bought? But, above everything else, it is the sense of the sovereign working of salvation by the almighty power of the Holy Spirit which characterizes all Calvin's thought of God. And above everything else he deserves, therefore, the great name of the theologian of the Holy Spirit.

It would seem that after a time Wyclif's opinions almost died out in England. But meanwhile they, or opinions very like them, were eagerly taken up in Bohemia. If we look at the map of Europe, we might think that no country was less likely than Bohemia to have anything to do with England; for it lies in the midst of other countries, far away from all seas, and with no harbours to which English ships could make their way. And besides this, the people are of a different race from any that have ever settled in this country, or have helped to make the English nation, and their language has no likeness to ours. But it so happened that Richard II of England married the Princess Anne, granddaughter of the blind king who fell at Cressy, and daughter of the emperor Charles IV, who usually lived in Bohemia. And when Queen Anne of England died, and the Bohemian ladies and servants of her court went back to their own country, they took with them some of Wyclif's writings, which were readily welcomed there; for some of the Bohemian clergy had already begun a reform in the Church, and Wyclif's name was well known on account of his writings of another kind.

      Among those who thus became acquainted with Wyclif's opinions was a young man named John Huss. He had been an admirer of Wyclif's philosophical works; but when he first met with his reforming books, he was so little taken with them that he wished they were thrown into the Moldau, the river which runs through Prague, the chief city of Bohemia. But Huss soon came to think differently, and heartily took up almost all Wyclif's doctrines.

      Huss made many enemies among the clergy by attacking their faults from the pulpit of a chapel called Bethlehem, where he was preacher. He was, however, still so far in favour with the archbishop of Prague, that he was employed by him, together with some others, to inquire into a pretended miracle, which drew crowds of pilgrims to seek for cures at a place called Wilsnack, in the north of Germany. But he afterwards fell out of favour with the archbishop who had appointed him to this work, and he was still less liked by later archbishops.

      From time to time some doctrines which were said to be Wyclif's were condemned at Prague. Huss usually declared that Wyclif had been wrongly understood, and that his real meaning was true and innocent. But at length a decree was passed that all Wyclif's books should be burnt (AD 1410), and thereupon a grand bonfire was made in the courtyard of the archbishop's palace, while all the church bells of the city were tolled as at a funeral. But as some copies of the books escaped the flames, it was easy to make new copies from these.

      Huss was excommunicated, but he still went on teaching. In 1412, Pope John XXIII proclaimed a crusade against Ladislaus, King of Naples, with whom he had quarrelled, and ordered that it should be preached, and that money should be collected for it all through Latin Christendom. Huss and his chief friend, whose name was Jerome, set themselves against this with all their might. They declared it to be unchristian that a crusade should be proclaimed against a Christian prince, and that the favours of the Church should be held out as a reward for paying money or for shedding of blood. One day, as a preacher was inviting people to buy his indulgences (as they were called) for the forgiveness of sins, he was interrupted by three young men, who told him that what he said was untrue, and that Master Huss had taught them better. The three were seized, and were condemned to die; and, although it would seem that a promise was afterwards given that their lives should be spared, the sentence of death was carried into effect. The people were greatly provoked by this, and when the executioner, after having cut off the heads of the three, proclaimed (as was usual), "Whosoever shall do the like, let him look for the like!" a cry burst forth from the multitude around, "We are ready to do and to suffer the like." Women dipped their handkerchiefs in the blood of the victims, and treasured it up as a precious relic. Some of the crowd even licked the blood. The bodies were carried off by the people, and were buried in Bethlehem chapel; and Huss and others spoke of the three as martyrs.

      By this affair his enemies were greatly provoked. Fresh orders were sent from Rome for the destruction of Wyclif's books, and for uttering all the heaviest sentences of the Church against Huss himself. He therefore left Prague for a time, and lived chiefly in the castles of Bohemian noblemen who were friendly to him, writing busily as well as preaching against what he believed to be the errors of the Roman Church.

The most accomplished musician of the Reformation era, he trashed the grand organ in Zurich's cathedral when he discovered that the music there was nothing more than "high-brow" entertainment devoid of gospel-significance. Superbly educated in Renaissance humanism (including the glories of fine art), he directed the demolition of priceless icons as soon as he saw that they were superstitiously venerated as magic. Sickened at the slaughter of Swiss youth in foreign wars, he helped mobilize military forces in defense of his native land and perished in battle himself.

Zwingli was born on New Year's Day, 1484, seven weeks after Luther. University studies at Berne and Basel equipped him with the "new learning" then capturing younger scholars throughout Europe. When Erasmus, a gifted linguist, sifted and sorted and finally assembled several manuscript-fragments to form a usable Greek testament (without which there would have been no Reformation), Zwingli hand-copied Erasmus's entire Greek text and memorized all of Paul's epistles.

Luther had come to gospel-conviction when tormented by his conscience: "How can an unrighteous sinner get right with the all-holy God?" Zwingli, on the other hand, came to the core of scripture when distressed not at himself but at the plight of his people, defenceless as they were on all life's fronts. Ordained to the priesthood in 1506, he was sent as assistant to a church in the province of Glarus, where he continued his humanist studies and produced his first book, a biblical critique of the social distresses prevalent in Switzerland.

The year 1513 found him accompanying Swiss soldiers-for-hire to Italy. Sickened at the carnage of Switzerland's most able-bodied, and appalled at the greed, coarseness and cruelty fostered in young men who pillaged civilians remorselessly, Zwingli determined that the iniquitous practice of mercenaries would end. He remained undeterred despite opponents who protested that the mountainous regions of Switzerland had to export soldiers in order to acquire the money needed to purchase grain and avert starvation.

Now Zingli's preaching took on a decided gospel-flavour as Luther's influence seeped into him. Soon his bishop transferred him to Zurich, the city where he would remain for the rest of his life and to which his name would be fixed as surely as Luther's was to Wittenberg and Calvin's to Geneva. As there grew in Zwingli the conviction that scripture is the normative witness to Jesus Christ and the primary source of Christian understanding and discipleship, he put aside the mediaeval practice of delivering snippet-sermons from a few prescribed texts (the lectionary) and instead preached straight through the New Testament -- in the course of seven years!

His preaching bore much fruit. One aspect of it was the gospel-freedom that led several parishioners to reject Rome's prohibition of meat during Lent. These people embodied their convictions by eating sausages immediately prior to Easter. Zwingli's bishop, formerly a supporter, now denounced him. Zwingli in turn petitioned a nation-wide church conference to authorize unimpeded preaching of the gospel together with all the implications of the gospel -- chief among which now wasn't sausages but clergy marriages. When the conference dawdled over the last point Zwingli sought to move it along by reminding delegates of what they could expect if the clergy weren't allowed to marry: another 1500 children born to "celibate" priests in one year in one province of Switzerland! (Frustrated at the conference's slowness, Zwingli secretly married Anna Reinhart, a widow with three children. Subsequently Anna and Ulrich had another four. They were publicly "married" several years later.) The city council, long nurtured by the ferment of reform effervescing everywhere in Europe, officially declared Zurich to be Protestant. In yet another of his political victories at this time the city council decreed that none of its citizens could be mercenaries under any flag.

A huge controversy exploded over the nature of Christ's presence in the Lord's Supper. Summoned to the castle in Marburg (1529) Luther and Zwingli squared off in a formidable debate that settled nothing. Luther foamed, "Before I drink mere wine with the Swiss I shall drink blood with the pope." Little did he know that Zwingli never advocated "mere wine". Luther feared having the living person of Jesus Christ disappear from the Lord's Supper. Zwingli feared the superstition of suggesting that Christ's people bite their Lord and chew on him during the communion service. Luther accused Zwingli of an empty celebration. Zwingli accused Luther of cannibalism. They simply talked past each other. In addition, Luther failed utterly to appreciate the ecclesial dimension of Zwingli's eucharistic understanding: the Lord's Supper bespeaks not only the presence and power of Jesus Christ but also the transformed fellowship of believers, a fellowship characterized by love, mutual concern and service.

When Emperor Charles V, supported by Austrian troops, threatened Protestant Switzerland, Zwingli rescinded his condemnation of war and insisted that the citizens of Zurich be protected. He helped organize the defensive forces, even accompanying them into the conflict. Wounded terribly at the battle of Capel, an enemy soldier recognized him as Zurich's leader and leapt to impale him with a sword-thrust.

The 47-year old had spent his life on behalf of the people he loved, much more involved politically than the other Reformers. No aspect of the city's communal life had escaped him. He worked as tirelessly to procure foodstuffs as he did to have divorces granted on the grounds of wife-beating, desertion, mental cruelty and sheer incompatibility.

His love for his people shone most brightly when plague overtook the city and he spent himself self-forgetfully on behalf of the sick and the dying, only to be plague-infested himself. When he had survived the pestilence he wrote his "plague-hymn", with its first stanza,

Help me, O Lord,
My strength and rock;
Lo, at the door
I hear death's knock.

When death knocked at his door in 1531 his memorable watchword was still on his lips: "Not to fear is the armour!"

Whether the Son of a King, upon his father's death, though unable by reason of his tender age to conduct the government of the kingdom, is nevertheless by right of inheritance to be regarded as a lawful magistrate, and as such to be obeyed as of divine right?

That person is, in my opinion, to be esteemed as a lawful King, who is ordained according to the just laws of the country. And thus it is clear that Edward VI of happy memory was ordained. For his father on his death-bed appointed him King, and so claimed for him the right of sovereignty, which they say is hereditary. The States of the kingdom acknowledged him, as they testified by his coronation. They provided him with counselors, endued as he was with great gifts of God: nor was anything wanting to that kingdom, which is wont to be looked for in the most prosperous kingdom elsewhere. He was therefore a lawful Sovereign, and his laws and ordinances demanded obedience; and he ruled the kingdom after a more godly manner than the three most wise and prosperous kings of that country who immediately preceded him.

Whether a Female can preside over, and rule a kingdom by divine right, and so transfer the right of sovereignty to her Husband?

The Law of God ordains the woman to be in subjection, and not to rule; which is clear from the writings of both the Old and the New Testament. But if a woman in compliance with, or in obedience to the laws and customs of the realm, is acknowledged as Queen, and, in maintenance of the hereditary right of government, is married to a Husband, or in the meantime holds the reins of government by means of her counselors, it is a hazardous thing for godly persons to set themselves in opposition to political regulations; especially as the Gospel does not seem to unsettle or abrogate hereditary rights, and the political laws of kingdoms; nor do we read that Philip the eunuch, by right of the Gospel, drove out Candace from the kingdom of Ethiopia. And if the reigning Sovereign be not a Deborah, but an ungodly and tyrannous ruler of the kingdom, godly persons have an example and consolation in the case of Athaliah. The Lord will in His own time destroy unjust governments by His own people, to whom He will supply proper qualifications for this purpose, as He formerly did to Jerubbaal, and the Maccabees, and Jehoiada. With respect, however, to her right of transferring the power of government to her Husband, those persons who are acquainted with the laws and customs of the realm can furnish the proper answer.

Whether obedience is to be rendered to a Magistrate who enforces idolatry and condemns true religion; and whether those authorities, who are still in military occupation of towns and fortresses, are permitted to repel this ungodly violence from themselves and their friends.

The history of Daniel, and the express command of God, Matthew x., and the examples of the Apostles in Acts IV. and v., as also that of many of the martyrs in ecclesiastical history, teach us that we must not obey the king or magistrate when their commands are opposed to God and His lawful worship; but rather that we should expose our persons, and lives, and fortunes to danger. This power is the power of darkness, as the Lord says in the Gospel. And Eusebius records, in the ninth book and eighth chapter of his Ecclesiastical History, that the Armenians took arms against their lawful sovereigns, the Roman emperors, who desired to force them to idolatry. And this conduct of theirs is not reproved. Those very Armenians, many years after, by reason of the ungodliness of the kings of Persian, slew their ungodly commanders, and revolted to the Emperor Justin, as is recorded by Evagrius (Eccl. Hist. v.8). For the Holy Scripture not only permits, but even enjoins upon the magistrate a just and necessary defense.

But as other objects are often aimed at under the pretext of a just and necessary assertion or maintenance of right, and the worst characters mix themselves with the good, and the times too are full of danger; it is very difficult to pronounce upon every particular case. For an accurate knowledge of the circumstances is here of great importance; and as I do not possess such knowledge, it would be very foolish in me to recommend or determine anything specific upon the subject. For even Paul, we read, made use of the Roman soldiery against those who plotted against him, and was right in doing so: yet at another time, though under almost the same or similar circumstances, he is recorded to have used only the arms of patience, and none else. There is need, therefore, in cases of this kind of much prayer, and much wisdom, lest by precipitance and corrupt affections we should so act as to occasion mischief to may worthy persons. Meanwhile, however, death itself is far preferable to the admission of idolatry.

To which party must godly persons attach themselves, in the case of a religious Nobility resisting an idolatrous Sovereign?

I leave this to be decided by the judgment of godly persons, who are well acquainted with all the circumstances, who look up in all things to the word of God, who attempt nothing contrary to the Laws of God, who obey the impulses of the Holy Ghost, and who are guided by circumstances of place, time, opportunity, persons, and things, without making any rash attempt, and who can therefore be directed more safely by their own sense of duty than by the consciences of others. But I would advise them, above all things, that those causes may be removed, on account of which hypocrites are predominant; iniquities, I mean, that we may become reconciled to God by a true repentance, and implore His counsel and assistance. He is the only and the true deliverer; and, as we read in the books of Judges and Kings, and the Ecclesiastical histories, has never been wanting to His Church. Let us lift up our eyes to Him, waiting for His deliverance, abstaining in the meantime from all superstition and idolatry, and doing what He reveals to us in His word.

Melanchthon participated in numerous visitations. These resulted in a growing concern with the poor educational system of his time. Melanchthon was not only active in educational reforms in his function as a university professor, but he also wrote numerous textbooks and founded schools and universities. He developed the concept of higher Latin schools, which are precursors of the contemporary German high school (Gymnasien). His suggestions for educational reform were influenced by the humanist ideal of education and Luther's as well as his own Reformation ideas.

The Reformation thus cannot be imagined without Melanchthon. This is also true with respect to the numerous functions he executed during Congresses and the Religious Dialogues of the 1520s-1540s, in which Melanchthon often served as the leading negotiator of the Reformation movement.

Luther thought so highly of Melanchthon that he wanted to appoint him the leader of the Reformation in case he would not return alive from the Congress in Worms, which, in fact, ended in Luther's banishment. Indeed, Melanchthon would take over this function after Luther's death and would remain the not entirely undisputed head of the Reformation until his own death in 1560.

The Protestant mystic Jacob Boehme was born in Altseidenberg, Silesia.  He received only an elementary education but was an enthusiastic student of the Bible and the works of the alchemist Paracelsus. Apprenticed to a cobbler in his youth, Boehme later opened his own shop in Görlitz, Saxony.

From an early age he saw visions, and throughout his life he claimed to be divinely inspired.  In his manuscript The Morning Redness Arising, written in 1612, he recorded his visions and expounded the attributes of God.  The work was condemned as heretical by local ecclesiastical and civil authorities, and Boehme was forced to flee to Dresden, Saxony. There he was cleared of charges of heresy and allowed to return to Görlitz.  His best-known treatises include Of the Three Principles of the Nature of God, (1619) and The Way to Christ, (1624), The Signature of all Things, and Mysterium Magnum.

As well as alchemical themes his writings contain Kabbalistic concepts.  Boehme describes the absolute nature of God as the abyss, the nothing and the all, the primordial depths from which the creative will struggles forth to find manifestation and self-consciousness.  The Father, who is groundless Will (c.f. Kabbalah - Keter the first principle is identified with Will), issues forth the Son, who is Love.

Boehme held that everything exists and is intelligible only through its opposite. Thus, he believed, evil is a necessary element in goodness, for without evil the will would become inert and progress would be impossible. Evil is a result of the striving of single elements of Deity to become the whole; conflict ensues as man and nature strive to achieve God.  God himself, according to Boehme, contains conflicting elements and antithetical principles within His nature.  (c.f. Sri Aurobindo - the Supermind (Godhead Truth-Consciousness) contains and reconciles all opposites wthin Itself

Although Boehme's style is very turgid and heavy, his works were widely read and popular in Germany, the Netherlands, and Great Britain. His English followers called themselves Behmenists. Many of them later were absorbed into the Quaker movement.  Boehme's writings have influenced modern Western thought in both philosophy and theology.  He exerted a profound influence on the philosophies of Baader, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer. His ideas have also had a formative influence on Theosophy.

English Baptist preacher and writer, John Bunyan was born in Elstow, England near Bedford where he spent most of his life. Although today he is regarded as a literary genius, he had little formal education. At the age of 16, this rough and profane young man enlisted in the army of Parliament and saw active duty during the English civil war. In 1647 at the age of 19, he married a young woman who persuaded him to attend church with her regularly where he heard the Gospel. After deep and prolonged soul struggle he made a complete surrender to Christ and was converted, after which he was baptized and joined the Baptist church of Bedford.

Soon he began to preach there and also in the surrounding villages which caused the people to recognize in him elements of leadership as well as ability as an expositor of the scriptures. Continuing in his trade as a tinker, he witnessed wherever he went. He spent his holidays and Sundays preaching in barns, shops, village greens, as well as in the open air. Such great crowds began to follow him that it led to his arrest and imprisonment in 1660 for conducting a "conventicle," a religious meeting without the permission of the state church. When offered his freedom if he would promise not to preach, he refused and chose jail. While imprisoned he studied, preached, wrote, and supported his family by making and selling shoe laces.

It was while a prisoner that he wrote his immortal "Pilgrim's Progress." In 1672 he was released and immediately resumed his ministry. During the last sixteen years of his life he was active as pastor, writer, helper, counselor, organizer, administrator, and pastor-in-chief to a multitude of churches and young ministers. Bunyan was a champion for the cause of religious liberty and freedom of conscience in spiritual matters. One who knew him well wrote, "The grace of God was magnified in him and by him, and a rich anointing of the Spirit was upon him; and yet this great saint was always in his own eyes the chiefest of sinners and the poorest of saints." He died in 1688 after riding forty miles in a driving rain on horseback to London to preach. He was always a poor man, yet through his example, his ministry, and especially his pen, he bequeathed inestimable riches to posterity.

His language was not our;
‘Tis my belief God spake;
No tinder has such powers.

In my very young years I had a gravity and stayedness of mind and spirit not usual in young children: insomuch that when I saw old men behave lightly and wantonly toward each other, I had a dislike thereof raise in my heart, and I said within myself, "If ever I come to be a man, surely I shall not do so, nor be so wanton."
At the age of nineteen he gained deep personal assurance of his salvation and began to travel as an itinerant preacher seeking a return to the simple practices of the New Testament. He abhorred technical theology and preached a faith born of experience, freshly fed, and guided by the immediate presence of the Holy Spirit.

Fox was persecuted almost daily, yet his power of endurance was phenomenal. He was beaten with dogwhips, knocked down with fists and stones, brutally struck with pike staves, hard beset by mobs, incarcerated eight times in the pestilential jails, prisons, castles and dungeons: yet he went straight forward with his mission as though he had discovered some fresh courage which made him impervious to man's inhumanity.

He undertook as far as possible to let the new life in Christ take its own free course of development in his ministry. He shunned rigid forms and static systems and for that reason he refused to head a new sect, or to start a new denomination, or to begin a new church. He would not build an organization of any kind. His followers at first called themselves, "Children of the Light" and later adopted the name, "The Society (or Fellowship) of Friends."

Fox preached and travelled for forty years throughout England, Scotland, Holland, and America. His life demonstrated the truth of his famous saying, "One man raised by God's power to stand and live in the same spirit as the apostles and prophets can shake the country for ten miles around."

On any list of great English theologians, the name of Richard Hooker would appear at or near the top. His masterpiece is The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Its philosophical base is Aristotelian, with a strong emphasis on natural law eternally planted by God in creation. On this foundation, all positive laws of Church and State are developed from Scriptural revelation, ancient tradition, reason, and experience.

The occasion of his writing was the demand of English Puritans for a reformation of Church government. Calvin had established in Geneva a system whereby each congregation was ruled by a commission comprising two thirds laymen elected annually by the congregation and one third clergy serving for life. The English Puritans (by arguments more curious than convincing) held that no church not so governed could claim to be Christian.

Hooker replies to this assertion, but in the process he raises and considers fundamental questions about the authority and legitimacy of government (religious and secular), about the nature of law, and about various kinds of law, including the laws of physics as well as the laws of England. In the course of his book he sets forth the Anglican view of the Church, and the Anglican approach to the discovery of religious truth (the so-called via media, or middle road), and explains how this differs from the position of the Puritans, on the one hand, and the adherents of the Pope, on the other. He is very heavy reading, but well worth it. (He says, on the first page of Chapter I: "Those unto whom we shall seem tedious are in no wise injuried by us, seeing that it lies in their own hands to spare themselves the labor they are unwilling to endure." This translates into modern English as: "If you can't take the intellectual heat, get out of the kitchen. If you can't stand a book that makes you think, go read the funny papers.")

The effect of the book has been considerable. Hooker greatly influenced John Locke, and (both directly and through Locke), American political philosophy in the late 1700's. Although Hooker is unsparing in his censure of what he believes to be the errors of Rome, his contemporary, Pope Clement VIII (died 1605), said of the book: "It has in it such seeds of eternity that it will abide until the last fire shall consume all learning."

Hooker's best short work is his sermon, "A Learned discourse of Justification." In an earlier sermon, Hooker had expressed the hope of seeing in Heaven many who had been Romanists on earth. A Puritan preacher took him to task for this, saying that since the Romanists did not believe the doctrine of Justification by Faith, they could not be justified. Hooker replied at length in this sermon, in which he sets forth the Doctrine of Justification by Faith, and agrees with his opponent that the official theology of Rome is defective on this point; he defends his assertion that those who do not rightly understand the means that God has provided for our salvation may nonetheless be saved by it, in which connection he says (I quote from memory): "God is no captious sophister, eager to trip us up whenever we say amiss, but a courteous tutor, ready to amend what, in our weakness or our ignorance, we say ill, and to make the most of what we say aright." His sermon is often bound with the Laws, and is also available in the paperback volume Faith and Works (ed. Philip Edgecumbe Hughes, Morehouse-Barlow, Wilton CN 06897, ISBN 0-8192-1315-2)

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, certainly would have concurred. In his Journal entry for August 15, 1750, he wrote, "I was fully convinced of what I had long suspected, 1. That the Montanists, in the second and third centuries, were real, scriptural Christians; and, 2. that the grand reason why the miraculous gifts were so soon withdrawn, was not only that faith and holiness were well nigh lost; but that dry, formal, orthodox men began even then to ridicule whatever gifts they had not themselves, and to decry them all as either madness or imposture."

Wesley clearly believed that the gifts of the Holy Spirit were relevant for the church in any age. He defined them. He described them. He experienced them. He defended them.

Although Wesley never emphasized certain gifts such as predictive prophecy or tongues and their interpretation, he did regret their loss to Christians in general. In his sermon, "The More Excellent Way," he writes, "The cause of this [decline of spiritual gifts following Constantine] was not, (as has been vulgarly supposed,) `because there was no more occasion for them,' because all the world was become Christians. This is a miserable mistake; not a twentieth part of it was then nominally Christian. The real cause was, `the love of many,' almost of all Christians, so called, was `waxed cold.' The Christians had no more of the Spirit of Christ than the other Heathens. The Son of Man, when he came to examine his Church, could hardly `find faith upon earth.' This was the real cause why the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost were no longer to be found in the Christian Church; because the Christians were turned Heathens again, and had only a dead form left."

Obviously the implication here is that when the church recovers its first love, the gifts of the Holy Spirit will be available to enable its several parts to minister effectively within their own spheres of influence. Although the "more excellent way" is the way of love, Wesley still insisted that we may "covet earnestly" such gifts as evangelism to "sound the unbelieving heart," or the gift of knowledge to understand both the providence and the grace of God, or the gift of faith "which on particular occasions,...goes far beyond the power of natural causes" (Works, 7:27).

Some argue that Wesley sounded somewhat ambivalent at times with regard to some of the more "extraordinary" gifts as they surfaced within the 18th century Evangelical Revival (no doubt concerned about the charges of "enthusiasm" against the people called Methodist). However, on at least one occasion Wesley defended the gifts of the Spirit. In a letter to Conyers Middleton (Works, 10:1-79), Wesley defined, described, and defended a whole host of spiritual gifts, including: "1. Casting out devils; 2. Speaking with new tongues; 3. Escaping dangers, in which otherwise they must have perished; 4. Healing the sick; 5. Prophecy, foretelling things to come; 6. Visions; 7. Divine dreams; And, 8. Discerning of spirits" (Works, 10:16). Although the order and even the mention of some "gifts" not normally associated with the biblical accounts (such as visions and dreams) may seem a bit strange, the fact remains that Wesley believed that the gifts of the Holy Spirit were not only important but also were active during the 18th century Evangelical Revival.

When Middleton charged "that the silence of all the apostolic writers on the subject of the gifts, must dispose us to conclude they were then withdrawn," Wesley immediately responded: "O Sir, mention this no more. I entreat you, never name their silence again. They speak loud enough to shame you as long as you live" (Works 10:23).

Healing

Let us examine the gift of healing. I have frequently said that it is not a sin to be sick or to die. It is, however, a sin for sickness and death to go unchallenged because there is no one to pray.

Wesley clearly believed that the gift of healing tapped the supernatural power of God. Again, in response to Middleton's insistence that no "miraculous healing" had ever been proved, Wesley responded, "Sir, I understand you well. The drift of the argument is easily seen. It points at the Master, as well as his servants; and tends to prove that, after all this talk about miraculous cures, we are not sure there were ever any in the world. But it will do no harm. For although we grant, (1) That some recover, even in seemingly desperate cases; and, (2) That we do not know, in any case, the precise bounds between nature and miracle; yet it does not follow, Therefore, I cannot be assured there ever was a miracle of healing in the world. To explain this by instance: I do not precisely know how far nature may go in healing, that is restoring sight of the blind; yet this I assuredly know, that if a man born blind is restored to sight by a word, this is not nature, but miracle" (Works, 10:22).

James 5:14-16 exhorts Christians to pray for and anoint the sick with oil. Surely it is good to know that both Wesley and the Scriptures are on the side of those whose only hope for earthly ministry is in securing "weapons with divine power for demolishing strongholds" (2 Cor. 10:4).

"Casting out devils"

In a sermon preached from the lectionary text (Mark 1:21-28) at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary a few years ago, I reminded the students that it was not my task to convince anyone of the existence of demons; their first appointment usually took care of that. Instead, it was my task to be faithful to the biblical accounts of a power available for "demolishing strongholds," demonic or otherwise. Wesley might well have been pleased.

The letter written to Conyers Middleton is Wesley's most definitive statement on the gifts of the Holy Spirit (although written in the sometimes confusing style of rebuttal and controversy). As with the gift of healing, Wesley makes reference both to Scripture and experience.

In his sermon, "A Caution Against Bigotry," Wesley attempts to set the biblical and theological stage for "casting out devils." He writes, "In order to have the clearest view of this, we should remember, that (according to the scriptural account) as God dwells and works in the children of light, so the devil dwells and works in the children of darkness. As the Holy Spirit possesses the souls of good men, so the evil spirit possesses the souls of the wicked."

As he does with regard to all of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, Wesley responds to Middleton on the subject of "deliverance" openly and plainly: "The testimonies concerning this are out of number, and as plain as words can make them. To show, therefore, that all these signify nothing, and that there were never any devils cast out at all, neither by the Apostles, nor since the Apostles, (for the argument proves both or neither,) is a task worthy of you" (Works, 10:41).

Middleton then claims that "those who were said to be possessed of the devil, may have been ill of the falling sickness...the ordinary symptoms of an epilepsy." As for the "evidence of devils speaking and answering to all questions," Middleton simply shrugs. He accounts for these "by the arts of imposture, and contrivance between the persons concerned in the act." Wesley's reply is straightforward: "Is not this something extraordinary, that men in epileptic fits should be capable of so much art and contrivance?" (Works, 10:41-42).

To Middleton's charge that even the Church Fathers "were either induced by their prejudices to give too hasty credit to these pretended possessions, or carried away by their zeal to support a delusion which was useful to the Christian cause" (a sentiment not unheard of today), Wesley insists that "not one of these Fathers made any scruple of using the hyperbolical style, (that is, in plain English, of lying,) as the eminent writer declares" (Works, 10:42).

As to how these "demons" might be overcome, Wesley is adamant: "All this is indeed the work of God. It is God alone who can cast out Satan. But he is generally pleased to do this by man, as an instrument in his hand; who is then said to cast out devils in his name, by his power and authority. And he sends whom he will send upon this great work; but usually such as man would never have thought of: For `his ways are not as our ways, neither his thoughts as our thoughts.' Accordingly, he chooses the weak to confound the mighty; the foolish to confound the wise; for this plain reason, that he may secure the glory to himself; that `no flesh may glory in his sight'" (Works, 5:484).

Speaking in tongues

Although there is no record that Wesley himself ever spoke in tongues, there is evidence that he believed that this gift of the Holy Spirit was a legitimate gift for the Church of any age. I offer but two quotations from his letter to Middleton.

In response to Middleton, Wesley writes: "Since the Reformation, you say, `This gift has never once been heard of, or pretended to, by the Romanists themselves.' But has it been pretended to (whether justly or not) by no others, thou