I am spending my old age in exile, far away from my native country, banished from my church I loved so dearly, my school, and my city—where I was able to accomplish a few things by God’s grace—separated from my beloved friends and brethren: all of this in order to live now in a country that may be kind a gracious to me, but whose language I do not know, whose food I cannot get used to, whose way of life is unfamiliar—and finally, a country in which I see no clear perspective of achieving something for the Lord through my efforts.

And so for the most part they seem to have learned only these things from the gospel of Christ: first to reject the tyranny of the Roman Antichrist and the false bishops.  Next, to throw off the yoke of any kind of discipline, penitence, and universal religion which was left in the papacy, and establish and do all things according to the desire and whim of their flesh. Thus it was not displeasing to them to hear that we are justified by faith and not by good works, in which they had no interest. They never seriously considered what was explained to them about the nature and power of true faith in Christ, and how necessary it is to be prolific in good works.  A number of them accepted some preaching of the gospel only in order that they might confiscate the rich properties of the Church.

De Regno Christi

The history of the Reformation is a secular history by the definitions that we use (to the extent that “secular” can have a coherent definition, anyway). It is about the world that was changed dramatically in the 1500s, roughly.

If you teach it as the time when someone important to your tradition taught a doctrine your group agrees with, and transmitted it to you, you are really not teaching much of the Reformation.

The Reformation is when God broke down the medieval order so completely that it had to be replaced with a new order. Remaining Roman Catholic or being an atheist would not mean you were outside the Reformation, any more than being a Frenchmen living in Washington DC from 1860 to 1865 would put you outside the Civil War (That analogy probably works more closely with the atheist. Sorry. I’m in a hurry.)

I didn’t start this post intending to mention this, but it would be interesting to interview secular (including atheist) and Christian historians and ask if there is a difference between “church history” and “cultural history.” I think the secular historians would think you must be silly to even ask such an impossible question. But there may be one or two Christian historians who insist that they are entirely separate.

Thomas Jefferson would laugh at such a wall.

PS.  Why I wrote “another note”