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What Do We Owe to the Reformation?’ J C Ryle ‘Why Protestant Truth Still Matters’ Garry Williams

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What Do We Owe to the Reformation?’ J C Ryle ‘Why Protestant Truth Still Matters’ Garry Williams PROTESTANT TRUTH September–October 2017 • Vol 23, No 5 What we owe to the Is the Son of God eternally subordinate Would we invite Luther to Reformation Page 81 to the Father? Page 87 our church? Page A96 Head Office 184 Fleet Street London EC4A 2HJ Tel: 020 7405 4960 [email protected] www.protestanttruth.com All subscriptions, changes of address and circulation queries should be addressed to the Head Office Honorary Editor Edward Malcolm 96 Price Martin Luther £1.75 per copy (bi-monthly) Subscription (per annum including postage) UK £14.00 81 What we owe to the Reformation Non-UK (Air) £18.00 83 In the News Non-UK (Surface) £15.00 85 Comfort in Christ’s leaving Advertising 87 Is the Son of God eternally subordinate to Approved advertisements welcomed the Father? Full page £80.00 91 Wickliffe Preacher engagements Half page £55.00 Quarter page £40.00 92 Children’s Page 94 Thomas Cranmer and the Bankers Bank of Scotland authority of Scripture London Chief Office 96 Protestant Perspectives PO Box 1000 BX2 1LB 97 Book Review Sort Code 12–01–03 Account Number 00652676 Registered Charity Number 248505 Cover photograph © 2011 Roland Fischer What we owe to the Reformation The Editor ow important is the Protestant Refor- John. Even these parts are not complete, due to mation to you? Five hundred years have the ravages of age. Beza gave the manuscript be- H passed since Martin Luther published cause religious wars in Europe posed a real dan- his 95 Theses. Our modern age considers events ger to the survival of much of the source material that old to be of no relevance; we have a very for the Reformation. Codex D is not a particularly short-sighted view of both the past and the fu- valuable manuscript, in that it differs from the ture. Students of history will know that what standard text in too many places. Its real inter- resulted from the Martin Luther’s challenge is of est lies in the fact that it is a diglot, consisting of lasting importance. pages of Greek beside pages of Latin. Neither is In the first place, the Protestant Reforma- a translation of the other, but both are indepen- tion was a revival of true religion. The way of dent. In other words, two different Bibles were in salvation had been lost, and the worship of the existence from an early time: scholars date the triune God had been replaced with a ritual that beginning of the manuscript to around ad 250. had very little to do with biblical worship. Rather (It has had a somewhat chequered history, with than teaching that sinners are justified by faith, indications of around a dozen different hands as the Apostle Paul taught in, for instance, the making corrections to if over a long period.) The Epistle to the Romans, the Church prior to the Latin is a form of the Old Latin which preceded Reformation taught that salvation is to be had Jerome’s translation, known as the Vulgate. That by doing what the Church teaches. In particular, was the version used in the Western Church, with submission to baptism, confession and penance, all its errors. When Greek-speaking scholars be- and attendance at the mass, conferred grace on gan to migrate to the West, following the sack of the individual. Application could be made to the Constantinople in 1203, they brought their man- saints, and to the treasury of merit, to make up uscripts with them. Among them were copies any shortfall in the amount of grace needed to of the New Testament in Greek. When Erasmus counterbalance the sins a person had commit- began to study them he was moved to produce ted. Worship was therefore not a matter of giving an edition of the Greek text, which he published praise to our Lord Jesus Christ for saving us from alongside his new Latin translation in 1516. Over our sins, but of engaging in a ritual that had form the next two decades he revised the Greek, and but lacked content. others continued the work into the seventeenth In the second place, the Protestant Reforma- century, culminating in the Received Text of 1633. tion was a rediscovery of the true text of the Bi- All the Reformation Bibles, in English, German, ble. Before the Reformation the Church believed Dutch, Italian, French and other languages, came that the Latin Bible was the pure and unadulter- about because a reliable text was available, and ated Word of God. In 1581 Theodore Beza gave because scholars had the skills to translate from Cambridge University a manuscript of part of Greek and Hebrew accurately. the New Testament. It is known as Codex Beza In the third place, the Protestant Reforma- Cantabrigiensis, or Codex D. It consists of most of tion was a restoration of biblical practices. We the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and 3 find within the pages of the New Testament 81 certain warnings concerning the troubles that seen to be the means by which the gospel is to be would arise in the Church. See, for instance, Acts declared, and the men who were called to preach 20:28–31, where Paul warned the Ephesian elders trusted that the Lord would use the means he had of ‘grievous wolves’ who would enter in from given. outside, and that ‘of your own selves shall men In the fifth place, the Protestant Reformation arise, speaking perverse things’. The subsequent was the means of overthrowing the gasping pow- history of the Church shows that warning to have er of the Pope. Rome has claimed the primacy for been entirely accurate. Heresy broke out in place her bishop over all the other bishops (however after place, and time after time. The legacy of we understand that word). The Bishop of Rome the early ecumenical councils, and of the creeds believes he is the universal father, He claims to they formulated, stands as a testimony to the be the heir to Peter, to whom, Rome teaches, was hard-fought and hard-won battle for orthodoxy. given the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whoev- Orthodoxy began to lose ground to practices that er sits on Peter’s chair is therefore the representa- arose during the early centuries, which, in time, tive of Christ on earth. All authority in the Church became the new orthodoxy. Any who challenged derives from this office, so that all bishops, cardi- transubstantiation, purgatory, the invocation of nals, priests and so on act as representatives of the saints, and the adoration of relics was liable to se- Pope. He has power over all the people on earth, vere punishment, including death. But when the from the lowliest commoner to the most majestic Protestant Reformation arrived, people began to monarch. All must bow before him. The Protes- see that the Bible did not support these beliefs. In tant Reformers, and some who preceded them, fact, the Bible contradicted and condemned them. saw in the papacy the fulfilment of Paul’s warn- In the fourth place, the Protestant Reforma- ings in 2 Thessalonians 2, concerning the man of tion was a revival of expository preaching. The sin ‘who opposeth and exalteth himself above all Church had never ceased to preach, though what that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that passed for preaching during the late mediaeval he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing period was nothing like the preaching that would himself that he is God’ (v.4). The greatest exposi- become standard. Then, preaching consisted of tion of this passage was made by Bishop Chris- stories with morals, aimed at either frightening topher Wordsworth in his treatise, Is the papacy people away from sinful behaviour, or encourag- predicted by St Paul? It is a masterly treatment of ing them to acts of charity from the examples of the Greek text, and he proves that the Pope is the the saints. Priests and friars would make up sto- great enemy of Christ. The Reformers all took this ries if they could not find a true one that fitted view, and delighted that the light of the gospel, as the point they wished to make. Many of the sto- rediscovered in the true text of the Bible, was the ries included fantastic elements, such as talking instrument by which the Pope’s pretended power horses. When the Protestant Reformation came, could be dispersed, and men and women, as well men began to preach with a new-found fervour. as nations, could be freed from his malevolent in- There was now a sense of urgency. Preachers un- fluence and superstitious teaching. Why so many derstood the grave danger in which people lived so-called Protestant churches are in thrall to the without the knowledge of the truth, and public Bishop of Rome today is a mystery—or would preaching, as well as the more regular preaching be, were it not for Paul’s warnings of the failings in churches, became a feature of the Reformation within the church, as we saw in Acts 20. times. The Bible was their source, salvation was Our debt to the Protestant Reformation is their theme, and the glorifying of Christ their enormous. There was a time when these things aim. Sermons that have survived from the period were well known. They are hardly known at all put much modern preaching to shame. There was today, but they should be. Let us be clear as to genuine conviction, and confidence in the grace the benefits and blessing we enjoy because of the and power of God to perform a work of grace in Protestant Reformation.
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