A Difference of Opinion

In these events lies the secret of the difference of opinion between the Reformers on the Lord’s Supper. 

In the beginning Luther had inclined to the symbolical explanation of the Supper, and even at this time was not decidedly against it. 

But now that Carlstadt preached it, and the fanatics pushed the

symbolism to the length of despising the Supper entirely; and Carlstadt being in a measure, however slight, mixed up with them, Luther having to meet all this, rejected all idea of any symbolical meaning in the words, “This is my body,” and adopted that view from which, to use his own words, he would not be moved by “reason, common sense, carnal arguments,” nor “mathematical proofs.”

In the way in which the subject was brought prominently before him, it appeared to him that, to hold the view of the bread and wine being symbols was akin to fanaticism, if not fanaticism itself. 

And when Carlstadt, after being banished from Saxony, went to Switzerland, and was admitted as pastor and professor of divinity at Basel; and when before this Zwingli’s writings, maintaining the same views, had reached Luther, the whole company was held by Luther to be opponents of the truth; and he being as strenuous against this as against anything else that he deemed error, and his opponents in this holding the truth, and necessarily defending it, it could not but be that the result must be division. 

It is true that in this controversy Luther was stubborn; but in view of all the circumstances amidst which it arose, surely our charity will not be unduly taxed in excusing it. If he had been less strenuous in defending what he held to be true, the world would not have had the Reformation then. 

But however worthily our charity be bestowed in this instance, it fails to be so, when the scenes and the actors have all passed from the stage, when the Reformation has escaped the breakers and rides securely, and his successors stubbornly resist the truth for no other reason than that “Luther believed thus, and so do we;” and so cease to be reformers, and become rigid Lutherans.

Fanaticism

But Carlstadt was impetuous, and while Luther was a captive in the

Wartburg, Carlstadt, being deprived of his counsels, went too far for that present time, and in a measure endangered the Reformation.

In every great religious movement, when the minds of men are unusually stirred, fanaticism is ever ready to break forth and bring reproach upon the truth. 

It was so in the first days of the Reformation, and there has been no exception from that time to the present. 

And in this way the Reformation was endangered by these premature movements under the leadership of Carlstadt. 

---At that very time fanaticism was showing itself in Wittemberg; and when the Reformers spoke against images, with other errors of the Romish church, the slightest spark was soon blown by the fanatics into a most vehement flame; they rushed into the churches, tore down the images and crucifixes, broke them to pieces, and burned them. ------One excess led to another; 

the fanatics pretended to be illumined by the Spirit; 

despised the Supper, and held internal communion instead; 

claimed to have no need of the Bible nor of human learning, 

began to prophesy the destruction of all but the saints; 

and that when that should be accomplished, the kingdom of God would be established upon the earth, the chief fanatic would be put in supreme authority, and he would commit the government to the saints.

Carlstadt was to a certain extent influenced for awhile by these

enthusiasts; but only for awhile, and then only so far as to despise learning and advise his students at the College to return to their homes.

Luther was informed of the state of affairs, and left his retreat, and returned to Wittemberg; and it fell upon him to quench this flame of enthusiasm, to put down this rule of fanaticism.

The Lord’s Supper

It was a natural and an easy step to the next point, the Lord’s Supper
instead of the papal mass. 

--And here opens a new scene of controversy. 

Opposition is not confined between the reformers and the papacy; on this subject it opens between the reformers themselves. 

And the zeal that ought to have been exerted unitedly in maintaining a solid front in attacking the papacy, was in a great measure spent in opposing one another. 

The contending parties on this subject were Luther on one side, and Carlstadt and Zwingli on the other. 

The papal doctrine of the mass is, that the bread and the wine in the sacrament are veritably the actual flesh and blood of the Lord; and that either is as much so as both together; and that therefore it is superfluous to administer both to the laity; and so the bread alone is given instead of bread and wine. This is Trans-substantiation; i.e., “change of substance”. 

Luther renounced this, and held that although the bread and wine are not the real body and blood of the Lord, yet Christ is really present with the bread and wine. This is Con-substantiation; i.e., “with the

substance”. 

Carlstadt and Zwingli denied both, and held, as is now held by Protestants almost everywhere, that the bread and wine are only memorials of the broken body and shed blood of the Lord Christ.