Quotes About Reformation

To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.

I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence.

But Æthelstan was less fortunate in death than Cuthbert, and during the Reformation his remains were destroyed

He who thinks we are to pitch our tent here, and have attained the utmost prospect of reformation that the mortal glass wherein we contemplate can show us, till we come to beatific vision, that man by this very opinion declares that he is yet far short of truth.

Luther's principles for the internal, and Machiavelli's practice for the external, direction of the State were to be the ideal for many generations.

Counter-Reformation, or whatever it be called, did attempt to save the Church from the scandals of the past, and to a certain extent succeeded. But it did so by increased centralisation, and a hardening of temper, alien from earlier movements of reform.

Where the doctrine of truth is corrupted, the hearts of men will not be changed by it nor their lives reformed.

Luther and Calvin were as dogmatic and intolerant as the Church had been. For those who had to decide whether to become Protestant or to remain Catholic, it was a terrible time. For once the original religion fragments, which religion then leads to salvation?

You are not likely to see any general reformation, till you procure family reformation.

Too often historians, beguiled by the theories of anthropologists and sociologists, fascinated by the possibilities of their theoretical categories, have forgotten that the Reformation was the result of a quarrel about faith and salvation.

Cultivating the mind was absolutely essential, Luther held, because people needed to understand both the word of Scripture and the nature of the world in which the word would take root.

For opposing this and similar moves, dedicated Catholics like Bishop John Fisher and Sir Thomas More would go to the block. For urging Henry on toward a more complete Reformation, dedicated Protestants like Robert Barnes and John Frith would join them.

So it was that earnest searching for authentic ancient texts—Latin and Greek, pagan and Christian—was an ongoing European preoccupation for several generations before Protestants deployed the authority of another ancient text, the Bible, as a justification for rejecting traditional Catholic deference to the papacy.

Julius's successor, Leo X (1513–21), was more pious than his predecessors but no less convinced that the measure of papal greatness was an increase in papal lands and a sponsorship of the arts.

The earliest Protestant leaders—Luther in Germany, Zwingli in Zurich, Cranmer in England, Martin Bucer in Strasbourg, Philipp Melanchthon as Luther's closest junior colleague, Peter Martyr from Eastern Europe, John Knox in Scotland, and many more—expected, or at least hoped, that their diligent attention to the great spiritual questions would lead to a general reformation of the one Western church.

Roland Bainton, author of one of the best lives of Luther, once said that in Germany, Luther did all by himself what in England it took Bible-translator William Tyndale, liturgist Thomas Cranmer, preacher Hugh Latimer, hymn-writer Isaac Watts, and several generations of theologians to do.

But the depth of the crisis is also suggested by the multitude of reforming voices, societies, and movements that arose within the Catholic Church during the same period that Protestants began to move away from the church. Such movements are the concern of our next chapter, but it is important to note them now in order to indicate the magnitude of crisis brought about by the failure of Catholic leadership to expend as much energy in the care of souls as in the pursuit of power.

Despite rampant Protestant pluralism, it is still possible to identify general beliefs and practices that have marked most Protestants in most places at most times. Historically considered, Protestantism is an all-inclusive term for religious movements descended directly or indirectly from the 16th-century Reformation in which Martin Luther and John Calvin played leading roles.

The picture of Sibbes—as a Reformer, but a cautious one; as a Puritan, but a moderate one—is consistent with the rest of Sibbes' life and activities in Cambridge and London.36

Rehabilitation: Demonstrate through your actions that you've learned your lesson.

Hier stehe Ich. Ich kann nicht anders.

the Church of Rome, formerly the most holy of all Churches, has become the most lawless den of thieves, the most shameless of all brothels, the very kingdom of sin, death, and hell; so that not even antichrist, if he were to come, could devise any addition to its wickedness.

It seems we must choose between Christ and the Pope. Let the Pope perish.

Thus it has come about that out of the Word they have made Law, out of faith works, out of truth a show; and therefore they have finally been forced to employ the sword.