God's Faithful Care of His Church During the Reformation

The prophet Isaiah had a desire to sing to His well-beloved a song of His beloved touching His vineyard, which is located in a very fruitful hill.

“He fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and made a winepress therein” (Isaiah 5).

This is a figure of His work in giving His people a place in Canaan, a revelation of His care over them, and an earnest reprimand that they, in spite of all his dealings, were yet an unfruitful vine.

The Lord still has a vineyard; He gathers out of the entire human race a congregation unto himself, a church which has been chosen unto eternal life. He defends and preserves her so that she may inherit a perfect salvation, “which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man.” These shall praise Cod for His undeserved mercy. This church is a work of his own hands, and he will be glorified by it.

Our Belgic Confession states in Article 27: “And this holy church is preserved or supported, by Cod, against the rage of the whole world, though she sometimes (for a while) appears very small, and in the eyes of men, to be reduced to nothing, as during the perilous reign of Ahab, the Lord reserved unto Him seven thousand men, who had not bowed their knees to Baal, for the remnant that was left in the midst of Israel, in the days of Elijah the prophet.”

There was and there will always be chaff and wheat on the threshing floor, the visible revelation of the church.

Rev. C Vogelaar is pastor of the Netherlands Reformed Congregation of St. Catharines, Ontario.

Especially during the Middle Ages it was very dark in the church. Everything seemed to be destroyed by the errors and false opinions that were allowed and even promoted by the Roman Catholic Church.

But we see God’s care in the history of the church. When we intend to write some articles periodically concerning church history it is with the purpose to show the preserving faithfulness of the King of Zion over His people although sometimes a small remnant. We need to admonish and to instruct so that the lessons of the past may be useful for today. The attacks of the devil and world, attempting to destroy God’s vineyard and to undermine the foundations of the church, are still the same.

Since October 31 is the day of the remembrance of God’s deeds in giving the Reformation, we desire to deal with this part of the history of God’s church. Also during the dark time before the Reformation there was a remnant who had not bowed their knees to Baal, as in the days of Elijah. But how dark it was!

Corruption of doctrine came in, and with it corruption of morals was also revealed. God’s word teaches us the way of salvation as one of sovereign grace and merciful deliverance. Redemption by the perfect sacrifice of the Lamb of God, forgiveness of sin, remission of guilt and the gift of eternal life are purchased by His perfect work and applied by His Spirit unto lost sinners who were enemies of God and His salvation.

It is the proclamation of the Gospel of good tidings, that was by faith embraced as the truth, wherein God is exalted and man is humiliated.

The truth had to be defended against many attacks. Many errors were distributed by several false teachers already in the New Testament church. Paul had to defend the truth and to instruct the young congregations, when false, deceitful teachings were proclaimed among the young believers. Always there were the attacks of the devil and His allurements to destroy the congregations. The doctrine that man is justified by faith and works entered into the church. The words of the apostle became a sad reality: “Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?”

Another error surfaced and unsettled the doctrine of free and sovereign grace: Pelagianism. A British monk alleged that human nature is not fallen, that there is no hereditary corruption, and that as man has received the power to do good, the only thing needed is an exercise of the will. It was Augustine who was used by God as a champion for the truth against this error. But after being expelled from the Church by Augustine, Pelagianism reasserted itself, indirectly, as Semi-Pelagianism in a seemingly orthodox way. Semi-Pelagianism threw a veil over the saving truth of salvation coming from God, and not from man, a salvation which God gives, but does not sell. The church soon was overspread with gloom and a dreary night ensued, from which many other errors evolved to the destruction of the vineyard.

No sooner was salvation taken out of the hand of God, than it fell into the hands of the priests. They usurped the place of God and souls panting for forgiveness were taught to look only to the church. The priests and bishops became mediators. The way of salvation, which had to be revealed, was now covered with a veil of errors. The church invented a complete system of pardon, and preferred leaning upon it rather than upon the grace of Jesus Christ.

Myconius, who was a monk for a long time, but afterwards one of Luther’s fellow-laborers, has given us a picture of that dark time. Christ’s suffering and merits were either treated as a piece of idle history, or as no more to be believed than Homer’s fables. Christ was held forth as a stern Judge ready to condemn all who did not apply to the intercession of the saints or to papal indulgences. In our Lord’s place these figured as intercessors: first, the virgin Mary, and then the saints, the catalogue of whom the popes were constantly enlarging. Mediators gave the benefit of their prayers only to those who “deserved” it.

Moreover, a seller of indulgences went about Wittenberg, retailing his wares, with his head set off with a large feather claimed to be taken from one of the wings of the archangel Michael. Dealers in relics traversed the country and it was a lucrative business. The kingdom of heaven had disappeared and men had introduced a shameless market into the place it had occupied here on earth.

God’s house was made an house of merchandise, as the Savior admonished His people in John 2:10. If such was religion, what must the morals have been in the church?

The disorderly lives of the priests were a shame for the church. The annals of those times mention many scandals. Although celibacy was a law for clergymen, many priests lived in concubinage, and had children. A German bishop happening one day to be present at a great festival, stated publicly that in one year eleven thousand priests had been presented to him, to pay tax for the women they lived with, and for the children they had borne them.

Moreover, bishops were sunk in grievous ignorance. One bishop said: “Greek is a new language of late invention against which a man needs to be on his guard. As for Hebrew, it is certain that all who learn it become Jews.” A cardinal finding a respectable scholar engaged in translating the Epistle to the Romans, said to him, “Cease from such childish work, such foolishness is unbecoming for a man of sense.” So he revealed his despising of the truth in his great ignorance.

The church had lost its vital energy and there it lay, all but lifeless, and the devil seemed to have destroyed the vineyard. And yet the Lord did not forsake His vineyard completely, but visited her.

It was, as we read in Psalm 80:12-13. The Lord had “broken down her hedges so that all they which pass by the way do pluck her? The boar out of the wood doth waste it and the wild beast of the field doth devour it.” Oh, what a sad situation also exists in some areas in our days! In many churches the truth is darkened, the lie proclaimed, and the people deceived. God’s children receive stones instead of bread.

Also when the Gospel of the saving work of Christ is proclaimed, faith as a work of man is preached, and man goes to Jesus and accepts Him without ever becoming a lost sinner. They are saved, without having experienced: Thy bruise is incurable and thy wounds are grievious. Experiential preaching is despised. Christ is proclaimed as the Savior, but the way to Him in which room is made for Him through a stripping of self righteousness is not explained.

The Lord visited that decayed church. We have to remember this and tell it to our children. God prepared that great change, the Reformation, by raising up many witnesses to the truth, although most of them did not have clear knowledge of the truth.

We can mention men such as Peter Waldo, a rich merchant of Lyons (1170), Wycliff in England who changed the court of appeal from the pope to the Scripture (1360) and John Huss in Bohemia, who spoke a century earlier than Luther. Thus, there were still living members of the body, disciples of Christ, in that decayed Church.

A monk Arnoldi, prayed in his quiet cell daily, “Oh, my Lord Jesus Christ, I believe that Thou alone art my redemption and my righteousness.” Christopher, the bishop of Basel, inscribed in a picture painted in glass, this confession as his motto: “My hope is in the cross of Christ; I seek for grace and not for works.”

When it is the time of God’s pleasure, He effects great ends by small means. God took Reformers, prepared them and used them for the Reformation of the church, to bring the light of God’s word upon the candlestick again, to glorify His work of sovereign grace, as he did in the heart of them personally also. The renewal wrought in Luther’s heart was the preparation for his work of reformation in the church.

As a lost sinner, who learned the impossibility of saving himself, he has experienced, “but with God all things are possible.” He was saved in the same way as Paul, “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law” (Rom. 3:28).

Personal reformation of corrupt nature is necessary for us, too. May the Lord give and bless, to that end, the pure preaching of His Word, so that we as poor, naked sinners may hunger and thirst after the only righteousness — may lose our life and find it in Christ. Then He will receive the honor of His own work and His church may receive His salvation as new creatures wherein God will be glorified and honored.

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