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

fitted them for their work; it opened blind eyes, and subdued stubborn
hearts. The Reformation is its work and its trophy. However manifold the
occasions of the Reformation, THE WORD, under God, was its cause.
The Bible in the Middle Ages
The Word of God kindled the fire of the Reformation. That Word lay
smouldering under the ashes of centuries; it broke forth into flame, in
Luther and the other Reformers; it rendered them lights which shone and
burnt inextinguishably; through them it imparted itself to the nations; and
from the nations it purged away the dross which had gathered for ages.
"The Word of God," says St. Paul, "is not bound." Through the centuries
which followed the corruption of Christianity, the Word of God was still in
being. In lonely cloisters it was laboriously copied. Years were sometimes
spent in finishing a single copy of it, in the elaborate but half barbaric
beauty which suited the taste of those times. Gold and jewels, on the
massive covers, decorated the rich workmanship; costly pictures were
painted as ornaments on its margin; the choicest vellum was used for the
copies; the rarest records of heathen antiquity were sometimes erased to
make way for the nobler treasures of the Oracles of the Most High. There
are single copies of the Word, from that mid-world of history, which are a
store of art, and the possession of one of which gives a bibliographical
renown to the city in whose library it is preserved.
No interdict was yet laid upon the reading of the Word, for none was
necessary. The scarcity and costliness of books formed in themselves a
barrier more effectual than the interdict of popes and councils. Many of the
great teachers in the Church of Rome were devoted students of the Bible.
From the earliest writings of the Fathers, down to the Reformation, there is
an unbroken line of witnesses for the right of all believers freely to read the
Holy Scriptures. No man thought of putting an artificial limitation on its
perusal; on the contrary, there are expressions of regret in the medieval
Catholic writers that, in the nature of the case, so few could have access to
these precious records.
In communities separate from the Church of Rome, the