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

Huss and Jerome of Prague, reveal his large catholic heart. Nor even in the
ardor of his bitterest conflict with Rome did he ignore the truly Christian
elements and great blessings which had been perpetuated in the Church of
the West. He distinguished between Popery in the Church of Rome, and
the Church of Rome. herself, and between the false living representatives of
the Roman Church, and her ancient, true representatives. From the true
ancient Roman Church as known in the writings of the earliest Fathers,
neither Luther nor the Lutheran Church ever separated. It was the true old
Roman Church which in the Reformation revived, over against the modern
corrupted Church of Rome. Not destruction, not revolution, but
reformation, was that at which Luther aimed, and reformation is not
revolution, but the great preventive of it. If Europe passed through
revolutionary convulsions in and after the sixteenth century, it was not
because Reformation was accepted, but because it was resisted.
Lutheranism not High-Churchism.
Against. the High-Churchism, which makes dividing walls of forms,
ceremonies, modes of government, the Lutheran Church enters a living
protest. "Where," says Luther, "the Gospel is rightly and purely preached,
there must be a Holy Christian Church." 128 "The Holy Church Universal
is preeminently a fellowship whose internal bond is faith and the Holy
Spirit in the heart, and whose outward token is the pure Word and the
incorrupt Sacraments. The Church is a communion of saints, to wit, the
assembly of saints who are in the fellowship of the same Gospel or
doctrine, and of the same Holy Spirit, who renews, sanctifies, and governs
the heart." 129 The unchanging marks of the Church are "the pure doctrine
of the Gospel and the Sacraments. That Church which has these is alone
properly the pillar of the truth, because it retains the pure Gospel, and as
St. Paul saith, the foundation, that is the true knowledge of Christ, and true
faith in him."
With every external human thing alike there is no unity if the parts of
a communion are alien in faith. On the other hand, with every external
human thing diverse, there is unity
128 Werke, Jena, vi. 109, (103.)
129 Apology, (Art. IV.)