I. The Reformation Angel:

Revelation X 1-13

"And I saw another strong Angel coming down out of heaven, arrayed with a cloud; and the rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as the sun, and his feet, as pillars of fire; and he had in his hand a little book open: and he, set his right foot upon the sea, and his left upon the earth; and he cried with a great voice, as a lion roareth."

"Another" Angel, not one of the seven who sounded the Trumpets, nor of the four who had been loosed. A "strong" Angel, in reference to the force with which the Reformation burst upon the world from heaven. In the interventions of the Lord, those attributes or emblems are chosen and put forth which best suit the action He is about to take. Here is described the action of Him who is the Head and King and Lord of His church, and the object of His intervention is the vindication of His honour, and the fresh revelation of His own grace and Gospel. Hence the epithets and characteristics here chosen for the description of this Angel of the Reformation.

Not only has this Angel Divine attributes, but He also appears in similar glory to that displayed to St. John in the opening Vision of this Book. He calls the witnesses for Christian truth "MY witnesses" (Revelation XI 3); see also 8. He is "arrayed with a cloud." No created angel has such glory as to need this shrouding. "The rainbow was upon His head"; that is, the rainbow of the Covenant, round the throne (Revelation iv. 3), because He comes from that throne. His "face was as the sun" (Revelation 1. 16) shedding heavenly light upon the scene. His descent, in this Vision, with life-giving luster, on the Roman earth, was a prefiguration of the outburst of Gospel light vouchsafed by Him at the Reformation. That great movement had its origin in the positive recognition of Christ as the Sun of Righteousness, the only source of light, life, and justification, to the soul of man. "His feet as pillars of fire"; compare Revelation i. 15.

"In his hand a little book open." A book small in size; not sealed, but opened and remaining open in His left hand. The prophetic book of Revelation v. 1 was a large roll, opened gradually seal by seal, in the inner sanctuary, in the heaven of God's presence. This one was small, and appeared already opened on the theatre of the world; though it was closed before, it was now brought by the Lord open to the earth. Its opening and public display are represented as the accompaninlent of the light of the Reformation; and it is the book that afterwards is taken and devoured, by the representative of the Reformers.

The book is a symbol of the doctrine contained therein, and its open display, like everything else enacted outside of the inner sanctuary, pictured, some event or fact that was to happen on the " Roman earth, in the, manner and in the order of things here shown-the opening again, for the freest study by everybody of the long forgotten and forbidden Book of God, and the worldwide publication of the doctrines it contains, A closed Bible has ever been the traditional policy of the Papacy, while an open Bible is the motto of the true Church of Christ. Therefore the little book open " in the hand of the angel is a symbolical prophecy of the unfolding and open publication of the Word of God,

"His right foot upon the sea, and his left upon the earth." An act of taking possession, of claiming both as His own, asserting His rights to this world as His inheritance. Nor did He quit either ground till, in one and the other, there had been accomplished the overthrow of a part of the usurper's power; by the fall of a tenth part of the Great City, and by the killing of seven thousands a pledge of total overthrow still future. The great work of the Reformation was not to be confined to any one locality; it was intended to bless the world; continents and islands, and those who go down to the sea in ships, were to feel its blessed influence.

There appears in the action of the Angel, in planting his feet on sea and land, and roaring as a lion, a singular abruptness and decision; the most obvious explanation of which is that it is an indignant reference to some signal usurpation of His rights, and to the triumph of some enemy and rival, at the time in question. This is the principle of allusive reference and implied contrast. The epoch of the usurper's triumph is the epoch of the Lord's intervention.

"It was not the formation of the church, but its re-formation after its ruin by Roman ism. Not a first beginning but a second. Pentecost formed the church; Popery de-formed it; Protestantism re-formed it."

Luther's Discovery of Christ the Saviour

This was the secret origin and beginning of the Reformation The Reformation passed from the mind of Luther into the mind of Western Europe." The different phases of the Reformation succeeded each other in the soul of Luther, its instrumental originator, before their accomplishment in the world." Hence the importance of tracing the early development of the Reformation in the spiritual history of the Reformer himself, the master-spirit, under God, of that great revolution.

Of these phases the two which gave rise to all the rest, and without which the rest cannot be accounted for or explained, were the Discovery of Christ in the fullness of His grace, and the Discovery of the predicted Antichrist in the Papacy and the Papal system.

"To Germany belongs the undying merit of having restored Christianity to a purer form than it had presented since the first ages of the Church of having re-discovered the true religion. Armed with this weapon, Germany was unconquerable. Its convictions made themselves a path through all the neighboring countries.... In these opinions, there is a force that convinces and satisfies all minds." (Ranke. Hist. of Popes, Book 1, chap. 3.)

"To understand the nature of the Reformation, as it rose and spread in Germany we must become familiar with the life of him who was its centre and its chief" (Hardwick.)

"That the Reformation was able to establish itself in the shape which it assumed was due to the one fact, that there existed at the crisis a single person of commanding mind as the incarnation of the purest wisdom which then existed in Germany in whose words the bravest, truest, and most honest men saw their own thoughts represented; and because they recognized this man as the wisest among them, he was allowed to impress on the Reformation his "own individuality" The traces of that one mind are to be seen to-day in the mind of the modern world. Had there been no Luther the English, American and German peoples would be thinking differently would be acting differently would be altogether different men and women from what they are at this moment." (Froude: Luther.)

Luther Finds a Bible

AD. 1503. Luther had found a Vulgate Bible in the University Library of Erfurt. In that Bible the Reformation lay hid. Study of the book led to deep conviction of sin, with a sense of God's anger, and of the need of propitiation.

In 1505 he entered the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt, but found there neither holiness nor peace. "O my sin, my sin!" was the bitter cry of his soul. Staupitz, Vicar-General of the Augustines, who had himself passed through like experience, was sent by God to open to him the Scriptures, and to explain to him God's love and mercy to man, shown in Christ crucified; His death, the expiation for sin; His perfect righteousness the sinner's trust.

"Would you," said he, "have merely the semblance of a sinner, and the semblance of a Saviour?" "Seek repentance in contemplating God's love in Christ Jesus. Love Him who has thus first loved you."

He Finds Christ, and Peace

He received the words as the voice of the Divine Spirit. With the eye of faith he beheld Christ beaming upon this lost world and his own sinful soul, as the Sun of Righteousness, with the rainbow of the Covenant of Mercy, "O happy sin," exclaimed he, "which hast found such a Redeemer!

When Staupitz quitted Erfurt, a new dawn had risen upon Luther. But the work was not yet finished. The Vicar-General had prepared the way; God reserved its accomplishment for an humbler instrument. In the second year of his abode in the Convent, he was brought by illness to the brink of the grave. All his distresses and fears were aroused at the approach of death. One day, as he lay overwhelmed with despair, an aged monk entered his cell, and addressed a few words of comfort to him. The venerable man was incapable of following up that soul in all its doubt and difficulties, as Staupitz had done; but with great simplicity he reminded Luther of the article in his Creed, I believe in the remission of sins," expounding it in such a way as to bring out more consciously man's personal trust in a free redemption. Hence the origin of the peculiar emphasis that Luther placed upon this doctrine all the rest of his life.

One passage, Romans i. 17, caused Luther great perplexity in regard to the doctrine of Justification. He had been taught to understand the righteousnes5 of God of the active righteousness in virtue of which God punishes sinners; but he finally learnt that it meant God's passive righteousness by which, in mercy, He justifies mankind through faith in Christ.

"Luther found the Gospel in Romans, and found in it a power which made him the greatest conductor of spiritual force since Paul, which directly regenerated one half of Christendom, and indirectly did much to reform the other half" (Expositor's Greek Testament.)

Study of the Bible, trials, illnesses, and the like, tested and confirmed him in these comfortable truths, While at Rome, long cherished ideas and early associations induced his momentary return to old outward superstitions; but while climbing the Pilate staircase, a voice as from heaven sounded in his ears, "The Just shall live by faith." This put an end to his superstitions. It was in Rome itself that God gave him the clear view of that fundamental doctrine of Christianity.

Now to be Set Before Others

Luther had now to act as God's chosen minister, and to set all this before others.

In 1509 he had been made Professor, in the University at Wittenberg. On October 18, 1512, he was received as Licentiate in Divinity, and took the following oath: "I swear to defend the evangelical truth with all my might." Next day there was conferred on him the insignia of Doctor of Divinity. He was made, Doctor of the University ad Biblia, and was called to devote himself to the study of the Bible. This solemn oath was Luther's call to the Reformation, his vocation as a Reformer. From this period he no longer sought the truth, for himself alone; he sought it also for the Church at large.

This was the third epoch of his development. His entrance into the cloister had turned his thoughts towards God; the knowledge of the remission of sins and of the righteousness of faith had emancipated his soul; his Doctor's oath gave him that baptism of fire by which he became a Reformer of the Church,

Christ and His Word

This was the tenor of his, teachings: "Thou, Jesus, art my righteousness; I am Thy sin. Thou hast taken on Thyself what was mine; Thou hast given me what is Thine." The eyes of men were now directed to the true Sun of Righteousness to the Angel and to His little Book, that is, to Christ and to His pure Word, instead of to the impostures and substitutes that had deceived mankind hitherto; and many looked, and felt the healing. They saw for themselves, with amazed eyes, the blessed Redeemer of mankind. Here are two great principles of the Reformation: Justification by Faith and the Supremacy of Holy Scripture.

The Roaring of the Lion

Up to this epoch the glorious manifestation of Gospel light had been comparatively noiseless, tranquil, A matter for the individual in the secret of his soul. There had been simply a revelation of Himself by the Lord Jesus to the favoured ones, in His character of the Sun of Righteousness, and of the Rainbow-vested Angel of the Covenant, mighty to save.

But now was to be added the roaring as a lion against the usurper. The calm was now to end, and the fiery conflict to begin between those two mighty antagonistic principles, Christ and Antichrist. At this point the Reformation first appears before the public eye, but its manifestation could not be understood except in the light of what has preceded.

What Luther and the Reformers did afterwards on deliberation, and with their own consciousness, is attributed to St. John as their representative in the Vision. But here the voice is ascribed to the Angel. Luther himself felt it so to be the voice of one Mightier speaking through him. The words ran like fire through the nations of Europe, and were propagated with marvellous rapidity throughout all the Roman world. All heard the mighty voice, loud as the roaring of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, re-asserting His claims against the usurper, and striking terror into His foes.

Tetzel and the Indulgences

Tetzel and his indulgences precipitated the conflict. Approaching Wittenberg, at Juterboch, four miles distant, he advertised his wares for sale; proclaiming the Papal Bulls of grace and indulgence, setting forth the Pope as the heaven-sent dispenser of mercy as the sun, the source of all divine light, grace and salvation. Luther was more especially stirred by discovering that some of his own parishioners had gone with the multitude to Juterboch, and had bought Letters of Indulgence; and, in the confessional, they spoke of not abandoning their sins, trusting to the Indulgences.

"Though disciplined to habits of submission, and by nature indisposed to break away from the traditions of the past, he was nevertheless unable to repress the storm of holy indignation that arose within him on beholding the practical substitution of man's righteousness for Christ's, of justification by the law for justification by faith." (Hardwick.)

The Theses : October 31, 1517

Then was the spirit of Reformer kindled within him. Little thinking of the effect they were to produce, he published his celebrated Ninety-five Theses against Indulgences, October 31, 1517-the epoch of the Reformation, The most memorable day in modern European history (Froude).

With a rapidity power and effect unparalleled, unintended, unexpected as the voice of a Mightier through Luther, their sound echoed through continental Christendom and insular England. Those ever-memorable propositions were felt by friends and foes to be a mortal blow to the whole Papal system, and presently to the Papal supremacy; to will-worship, superstition, priestly domination, and all that tribe of errors.

Both on the mainland and in the island there had been implanted in men's minds a view of Christ's glory rights and headship in His church, such as could never again be wholly extinguished, notwithstanding that the Papacy then had the support of most of the Powers of the world.

The truths most prominently asserted in the Theses were the Pope's utter insufficiency to confer forgiveness or salvation, but the all-sufficiency of Christ; the participation of the true penitent in the blessing of forgiveness and all the riches of Christ, by God's free gift, and independently of Papal indulgence or absolution; and that the true and precious treasure of the church is not the merits of the saints, but the Gospel of the glory and grace of God.

Their Wide and Rapid Diffusion

The Theses spread as with the speed of lightning. A month had not elapsed before they were at Rome. "In a fortnight they were in every part of Germany and in four weeks they had traversed nearly the whole of Christendom, as if the very angels had been their messengers, and had placed them before the eyes of all men. No one can believe the noise they made." All this must be estimated according to the ideas and facilities of those days, in regard to rapidity of communication.

"Frequently in after years, as Luther contemplated the immense and unexpected consequences of this courageous attack, he was astonished at himself and could not understand how he had ventured to make it. An invisible and mightier hand than his held the clue, and led the herald of truth along a path that was still hidden from him, and from the difficulties of which he would perhaps have shrunk, if he had foreseen them, and if he had advanced alone and of his own accord." (D 'Aubigné.)

Luther was indeed in Rome, but not of Rome. When he wrote the Theses, he thought he was a Papist, but his spirit was essentially anti-Papist. Even in those Theses, imperfect as they were, there was a proclamation of Jesus as the sole meritorious justifier of man from sin, in direct contradiction to the Papal system of Justification by works of merit, penances, indulgences, and so on; and therein a witnessing for Christ before the world in His noblest character and office, against the whole Papal religious system, though Luther at the time knew it not.

Christ's Witnesses again Living

Christ's witnesses lived again in Luther and the Reformers, and testified for Him and for His truth. Except the Resurrection of the Lord Himself, there is not in all ecclesiastical history any example of such a sudden, mighty, and triumphant resuscitation of His cause and church from a state of deep depression, as was exhibited in the protesting voice of Luther, and the public outburst of the glorious Reformation.

The sudden contrast forces itself upon every writer of history, Romanist or Protestant; and the figure of a revival, resuscitation, or resurrection, is so natural and appropriate that it is perpetually applied to the Reformation by writers of differing sentiments and creeds.

Just as the Fifth Lateran Council, with the name of Rome and the Roman state or church on its lips as the new and holy Jerusalem, had met for the last time, and separated; a light from God's Spirit was shed upon the scene, amid which the deception faded away like a dissolving view, and the great city stood revealed in her true colours. It was a discovery of permanent and most practical importance.