Читать книгу History of the Reformation - Thomas M. Lindsay - Страница 44

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The biographies of some of the leaders of the Reformation, when they relate the childish reminiscences of the writers, bear unconscious witness to the kind of religion which was taught to the children in pious burgher and peasant families. We know that Luther learned the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer. He knew such simple evangelical hymns as “Ein kindelein so lobelich,”74 “Nun bitten wir den heiligen Geist,” and “Crist ist erstanden.” Children were rocked to sleep while the mothers sang:

“Ach lieber Heere Jhesu Christ

Sid Du ein Kind gewesen bist,

So gib ouch disem Kindelin

Din Gnod und ouch den Segen den.

Ach Jhesu, Heere min,

Behüt diz Kindelin.

Nun sloff, nun sloff, min Kindelin,

Jhesus der sol din bülli sin,

Der well, daz dir getroume wol

Und werdest aller Tugent vol.

Ach Jhesus, Heere min,

Behüt diz Kindelin.”75

These songs or hymns, common before the Reformation, were sung as frequently after the break with Rome. The continuity in the private devotional life before and after the advent of the Reformation is a thing to be noted. Few hymns were more popular during the last decade of the fifteenth century than the “In dulci Jubilo” in which Latin and German mingled. The first and last verses were:

“In dulci jubilo,

Nun singet und seid froh!

Unsers Herzens Wonne

Leit in præsepio,

Und leuchtet als die Sonne

Matris in gremio.

Alpha es et O,

Alpha es et O!

Ubi sunt gaudia?

Nirgends mehr denn da,

Da die Engel singen

Nova cantica,

Und die Schellen klingen

In regis curia.

Eya, wär'n wir da,

Eya, wär'n wir da!”

This hymn continued to enjoy a wonderful popularity in the German Protestant churches and families until quite recently, and during the times of the Reformation it spread far beyond Germany.76 In the fifteenth-century version it contained one verse in praise of the Virgin:

“Mater et filia

Du bist, Jungfraw Maria.

Wir weren all verloren

Per nostra crimina,

So hat sy uns erworben

Celorum gaudia.

Eya, wär'n wir da,

Eya, wär'n wir da!”

which was either omitted in the post-Reformation versions, or there was substituted:

“O Patris charitas,

O Nati lenitas!

Wir weren all verloren

Per nostra crimina,

So hat Er uns erworben

Cœlorum gaudia.

Eya, wär'n wir da,

Eya, wär'n wir da.”77

Nor was direct simple evangelical instruction lacking. Friedrich Mecum (known better by his Latinised name of Myconius), who was born in 1491, relates how his father, a substantial burgher belonging to Lichtenfels in Upper Franconia, instructed him in religion while he was a child. “My dear father,” he says, “had taught me in my childhood the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and the Creed, and constrained me to pray always. For, said he, ‘Everything comes to us from God alone, and that gratis, free of cost, and He will lead us and rule us, if we only diligently pray to Him.’ ” We can trace this simple evangelical family religion away back through the Middle Ages. In the wonderfully interesting Chronicle of Brother Salimbene of the Franciscan Convent of Parma, which comes from the thirteenth century, we are told how many of the better-disposed burghers of the town came to the convent frequently to enjoy the religious conversation of Brother Hugh. On one occasion the conversation turned upon the mystical theology of Abbot Giaocchino di Fiore. The burghers professed to be greatly edified, but said that they hoped that on the next evening Brother Hugh would confine himself to telling them the simple words of Jesus.

The central thought in all evangelical religion is that the believer does not owe his position before God, and his assurance of salvation, to the good deeds which he really can do, but to the grace of God manifested in the mission and the work of Christ; and the more we turn from the thought of what we can do to the thought of what God has done for us, the stronger will be the conviction that simple trust in God is that by which the pardoning grace of God is appropriated. This double conception—God's grace coming down upon us from above, and the believer's trust rising from beneath to meet and appropriate it—was never absent from the simplest religion of the Middle Ages. It did not find articulate expression in mediæval theology, for, owing to its enforced connection with Aristotelian philosophy, that theology was largely artificial; but the thought itself had a continuous and constant existence in the public consciousness of Christian men and women, and appeared in sermons, prayers, and hymns, and in the other ways in which the devotional life manifested itself. It is found in the sermons of the greatest of mediæval preachers, Bernard of Clairvaux, and in the teaching of the most persuasive of religious guides, Francis of Assisi. The one, Bernard, in spite of his theological training, was able to rise above the thought of human merit recommending the sinner to God; and the other, Francis, who had no theological training at all, insisted that he was fitted to lead a life of imitation simply because he had no personal merits whatsoever, and owed everything to the marvellous mercy and grace of God given freely to him in the work of Christ. The thought that all the good we can do comes from the wisdom and mercy of God, and that without these gifts of grace we are sinful and worthless—the feeling that all pardon and all holy living are free gifts of God's grace, was the central thought round which in mediæval, as in all times, the faith of simple and pious people twined itself. It found expression in the simpler mediæval hymns, Latin and German. The utter need for sin-pardoning grace is expressed and taught in the prayer of the Canon of the Mass. It found its way, in spite of the theology, even into the official agenda of the Church, where the dying are told that they must repose their confidence upon Christ and His Passion as the sole ground of confidence in their salvation. If we take the fourth book of Thomas à Kempis' Imitatio Christi, it is impossible to avoid seeing that his ideas about the sacrament of the Supper (in spite of the mistakes in them) kept alive in his mind the thought of a free grace of God, and that he had a clear conception that God's grace was freely given, and not merited by what man can do. For the main thought with pious mediæval Christians, however it might be overlaid with superstitious conceptions, was that they received in the sacrament a gift of overwhelming greatness. Many a modern Christian seems to think that the main idea is that in this sacrament one does something—makes a profession of Christianity. The old view went a long way towards keeping people right in spite of errors, while the modern view does a great deal towards leading them wrong in spite of truth.

All these things combine to show us how there was a simple evangelical faith among pious mediæval Christians, and that their lives were fed upon the same divine truths which lie at the basis of Reformation theology. The truths were all there, as poetic thoughts, as earnest supplication and confession, in fervent preaching or in fireside teaching. When mediæval Christians knelt in prayer, stood to sing their Redeemer's praises, spoke as a dying man to dying men, or as a mother to the children about her knees, the words and thoughts that came were what Luther and Zwingli and Calvin wove into Reformation creeds, and expanded into that experimental theology which was characteristic of the Reformation.

When the printing-press began in the last decades of the fifteenth century to provide little books to aid private and family devotion, it is not surprising, after what has been said, to find how full many of them were of simple evangelical piety. Some contained the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed, and occasionally a translation or paraphrase of some of the Psalms, notably the 51st Psalm. Popular religious instructions and catechisms for family use were printed. The Catechism of Dietrich Koelde (written in 1470) says: “Man must place his faith and hope and love on God alone, and not in any creature; he must trust in nothing but in the work of Jesus Christ.” The Seelenwurzgartlein, a widely used book of devotion, instructs the penitent: “Thou must place all thy hope and trust on nothing else than on the work and death of Jesus Christ.” The Geistliche Streit of Ulrich Krafft (1503) teaches the dying man to place all his trust on the “mercy and goodness of God, and not on his own good works.” Quotations might be multiplied, all proving the existence of a simple evangelical piety, and showing that the home experience of Friedrich Mecum (Myconius) was shared in by thousands, and that there was a simple evangelical family religion in numberless German homes in the end of the fifteenth century.