The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

of men. The princes and people of the great Germanic races were ripest
for its reception, and were the first to give it their full confidence. Such a
triumph of the Gospel had not been witnessed since the times of the
Apostles. The corner-stone of the purified temple of the Holy Ghost was
laid anew--nay, it also seemed as it were the very top-stone which was laid,
while the regenerated nations shouted, ‘Grace, grace!' unto it. The Gospel
won its second grand triumph over the Law, and a second time Paul
withstood Peter to the face because he was to be blamed. In place of a
bare, hard set of words, of a lifeless and mechanical formalism, there
reappeared the idea, the spirit, and the life, in the whole boundless fulness
and divine richness in which they had appeared in the primitive Church." 94
To comprehend the Reformation, it is necessary to trace the essential idea
of Christianity through its whole history. "The Greek Church saw in
Christianity the revelation of the Logos, as the Supreme Divine Reason.
Christianity was to it the true philosophy. The Church of the West, the
Roman Catholic Church, laid its grand stress on the Organism of the
Church. There dwelt the truth, and there the life-controlling power." 95
"Catholicism had unfolded itself into a vast system of guarantees of
Christianity; but the thing itself, the Christianity they were to guarantee,
was thrown into the shade. The antithesis between spurious and
94 Wigger's Statistik, i. 92.
95 Luthardt, Dogm. S I1, 3.