The great truth which the early Reformers preached -salvation by faith without works of human merit—spread with a rapidity resembling the light of heaven. In a short time it had traveled over the greater part of Europe. In the year 1530 Luther, writing to the Elector, speaks of his dominions as if they were a millennial scene. "It gives me great pleasure," says the Reformer, "when I see that boys and girls can now understand, and speak better concerning God and Christ, than formerly could have been done by the colleges, monasteries, and schools of the papacy, or than they can do even yet. There is thus planted in your highness's dominions a very pleasant paradise, to which there is nothing similar in the whole world." The ground had been cleared of monasteries and convents, and covered with churches and schools.
Hesse, as well as Saxony, we have seen evangelized, and planted with churches and schools, and all regulated by the government. In Franconia, Silesia, East Friesland, Prussia, Brunswick, Luneburg, and Anhalt, the light of the gospel was spreading. Many of the free cities had opened their gates to the preachers of the new doctrines, and were now rejoicing in the truth, and boldly witnessing for it. The rapid conquests of the Reformation in Switzerland, which we have examined with some care, fall within the limits of our period. Along the chain of the Jura, by the shores of Leman, to the gates of Geneva, the light of the gospel had traveled. In Denmark and Sweden the gospel had gained a firm footing, and Bohemia, Moravia, and Hungary had been revived. Even in the court of Francis I. and in the Sorbonne, renowned for its orthodoxy, there were true believers in the doctrine of justification by faith alone; but the state ever was and is Roman Catholic; and dearly she has had to pay in her terrible revolutions for her rejection of the truth, and the persecution of its witnesses. In England, the followers of Wycliffe were revived, and the persecuted Lollards again lifted up their heads, and testified for the truth with fresh courage. The king, the parliament, and the people threw off the yoke of Rome in 1533, and Henry was declared supreme head of the British church. The authority of the Roman pontiff was then abolished in England. But the details of this important event will form a distinct theme for our "Short Papers," the Lord willing.
As early as 1528, Luther's tracts and Tyndal's New Testament had done their blessed work in Scotland. The noble, gentle, and accomplished Patrick Hamilton was burned at the stake in the center of the large area before the gate of St. Salvator's college, Aberdeen, on a charge of "holding and maintaining divers heresies of Martin Luther."
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