Ancient History unveils the primitive face of the Church. To this
I appeal. Certainly, the more ancient historians, whom our
adversaries also habitually, consult, are enumerated pretty well
as follows: Eusebius, Damasus, Jerome, Rufinus, Orosius,
Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret Cassiodorus, Gregory of Tours,
Usuard, Regino, Marianus, Sigebert, Zonaras, Cedrinus,
Nicephorus. What have they to tell? The praises of our religion,
its progress, vicissitudes, enemies. Nay, and this is a point I
would have you observe diligently, they who in deadly hatred
dissent from us,--Melancthon, Pantaleon, Funck, the Centuriators
of Magdeburg,--on applying themselves to write either the
chronology or the history of the Church, if they did not get
together the exploits of our heroes, and heap up the accounts of
the frauds and crimes of the enemies of our Church, would pass by
fifteen hundred years with no story to tell.
Along with the above-mentioned consider the local historians, who
have searched with laborious curiosity into the transactions of
some one particular nation. These men, wishing by all means to
enrich and adorn the Sparta which they had gotten for their own,
and to that effect not passing over in silence even such things
as banquets of unusual splendour, or sleeved tunics, or hilts of
daggers, or gilt spurs, and other such minutiae having any smack
of revelry about them, surely, if they had heard of any change in
religion, or any falling off from the standard of early ages,
would have related it, many of them; or, if not many, at least
several; if not several, some one anyhow. Not one, well-disposed
or ill-disposed towards us, has related anything of the sort, or
even dropped the slightest hint of the same.
For example. Our adversaries grant us,--they cannot do
otherwise,--that the Roman Church was at one time holy,
Catholic, Apostolic, at the time when it deserved these
eulogiums from St. Paul: _Your faith is spoken of in the whole
world. Without ceasing I make a commemoration of you. I know
that when I come to you, I shall come in the abundance of the
blessing of Christ. All the Churches of Christ salute you. Your
obedience is published in every place_ (Rom. i. 8, 9; xv. 29;
xvi. 17, 19): at the time when Paul, being kept there in free
custody, was spreading the gospel (Acts xxviii. 31) : at the
time when Peter once in that city was ruling _the Church
gathered at Babylon_ (1 Peter v. 13): at the time when that
Clement, so singularly praised by the Apostle (Phil. iv. 3) was
governing the Church: at the time when the pagan Caesars, Nero,
Domitian, Trajan, Antoninus, were butchering the Roman Pontiffs:
also at the time when, as even Calvin bears witness, Damasus,
Siricius, Anastasius and Innocent guided the Apostolic bark. For
at this epoch he generously allows that men, at Rome
particularly, had so far not swerved from Gospel teaching. When
then did Rome lose this faith so highly celebrated? when did she
cease to be what she was before? at what time, under what
Pontiff, by what way, by what compulsion, by what increments,
did a foreign religion come to pervade city and world? What
outcries, what disturbances, what lamentations did it provoke?
Were all mankind all over the rest of the world lulled to sleep,
while Rome, Rome I say, was forging new Sacraments, a new
Sacrifice, new religious dogma? Has there been found no
historian, neither Greek nor Latin, neither far nor near, to
fling out in his chronicles even an obscure hint of so
remarkable a proceeding?
Therefore this much is clear, that the articles of our belief are
what History, manifold and various, History the messenger of
antiquity, and life of memory, utters and repeats in abundance;
while no narrative penned in human times records that the
doctrines foisted in by our opponents ever had any footing in the
Church. It is clear, I say, that the historians are mine, and
that the adversary's raids upon history are utterly without
point. No impression can they make unless the assertion be first
received, that all Christians of all ages had lapsed into gross
infidelity and gone down to the abyss of hell, until such time as
Luther entered into an unblessed union with Catherine Bora.