Gentiles alike are "saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus" (Acts 15:11). Yet even after the
settlement of the controversy by the Jerusalem compromise Paul got into a sharp conflict with Peter
at Antioch on the same question, and protested against his older colleague for denying by his timid
conduct his better conviction, and disowning the Gentile brethren. It is not accidental that the Roman
Church professes to be built on Peter and regards him as the first pope; while the Reformers appealed
chiefly to Paul and found in his epistles to the Galatians and Romans the bulwark of their
anthropology and soteriology, and their doctrine of Christian freedom. The collision between Paul
and Peter was only temporary; and so the war between Protestantism and Romanism will ultimately
pass away in God’s own good time.
The Reformation began simultaneously in Germany and Switzerland, and swept with
astonishing rapidity over France, Holland, Scandinavia, Bohemia, Hungary, England and Scotland;
since the seventeenth century it has spread by emigration to North America, and by commercial
and missionary enterprises to every Dutch and English colony, and every heathen land. It carried
away the majority of the Teutonic and a part of the Latin nations, and for a while threatened to
overthrow the papal church.
But towards the close of the sixteenth century the triumphant march of the Reformation
was suddenly arrested. Romanism rose like a wounded giant, and made the most vigorous efforts
to reconquer the lost territory in Europe, and to extend its dominion in Asia and South America.
Since that time the numerical relation of the two churches has undergone little change. But the
progress of secular and ecclesiastical history has run chiefly in Protestant channels.
In many respects the Roman Church of to-day is a great improvement upon the Mediaeval
Church. She has been much benefited by the Protestant Reformation, and is far less corrupt and far
more prosperous in Protestant than in Papal countries. She was driven to a counter-reform which
abolished some of the most crying abuses and infused new life and zeal into her clergy and laity.
No papal schism has disgraced her history since the sixteenth century. No pope of the character of
Alexander VI. or even Leo X. could be elected any more. She lives chiefly of the past, but uses for
her defence all the weapons of modern warfare. She has a much larger membership than either the
Greek or the Protestant communion; she still holds under her sway the Latin races of both
hemispheres; she satisfies the religious wants of millions of human beings in all countries and
climes; she extends her educational, benevolent and missionary operations all over the globe; she
advances in proportion as Protestantism degenerates and neglects its duty; and by her venerable
antiquity, historical continuity, visible unity, centralized organization, imposing ritual, sacred art,
and ascetic piety she attracts intelligent and cultured minds; while the common people are kept in
ignorance and in superstitious awe of her mysterious authority with its claim to open the gates of
heaven and hell and to shorten the purgatorial sufferings of the departed. For good and evil she is
the strongest conservative force in modern society, and there is every reason to believe that she
will last to the end of time.
Thus the two branches of Western Christendom seem to hold each other in check, and ought
to stimulate each other to a noble rivalry in good works.
The unhappy divisions of Christendom, while they are the source of many evils, have also
the good effect of multiplying the agencies for the conversion of the world and facilitating the free
growth of every phase of religious life. The evil lies not so much in the multiplicity of denominations,
which have a mission to fulfil, as in the spirit of sectarianism and exclusivism, which denies the
rights and virtues of others. The Reformation of the sixteenth century is not a finale, but a movement
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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