Dear friends in Christ,
We continue our survey of Church History from the book of Professor E.A.W. Krauss from our St. Louis seminary of a century ago. This month we again look at the church in France, this time about 150 years after the Reformation.
37. LOUIS XIV AND THE CHURCH
1. His Relationship to the Roman Church
For 72 years, from 1643 until 1715, Louis XIV ruled France—to the detriment and misfortune of this country and almost all of Europe. Until 1661 Cardinal Mazarin led the government as an almighty minister. After his death, Louis XIV, now 23 years old, declared that from then on he would rule. He demanded absolute obedience from his subjects, even from the most powerful ones in the state. “I am the state (l’etat c’est moi),” he said. He wanted to be the all in all in France. He was a lover of unrestrained grandeur; he surrounded his court with the greatest splendor; he built one castle after the other; out of self-importance and a thirst for glory he also patronized the arts and sciences, established academies and educational establishments, as well as homes for the poor and sick. The French were pleased with rather formal and solemn behavior; only a few—but not even his Jesuit father confessors—were offended that he was unfaithful to his wife and kept mistresses. Both the great and insignificant imitated him; and even among France’s Catholic clergy unchastity was a common sin that was only spoken about with much laughter. For a long time he lived together in sin with the Marquise of Montespan, the wife of a man he exiled to his lands. He had the longest impure relationship with Mrs. Maintenon, the wife of a poet who fascinated him with witty speech; when her husband died, Louis was secretly married to her in a morganatic marriage [a marriage between one of royal birth and a “commoner” in which it is agreed that any titles or estates of the nobility will not be shared by the commoner or the offspring]. Who had to pay the cost of this wedding, we will yet hear.
We will not speak about the wars of conquest that Louis XIV conducted. He used these conquests, in part, to extend his kingdom and to grow in might and prominence; and he used their plunder to pay the costs of his flamboyant festivals and expensive royal household. Nor will we speak of the disloyal and deceptive politics he used to dishonor his opponents—except to show that his successes always made him more presumptuous and reckless and increasingly hardened his conscience. He certainly tried to be on good terms with the Roman clergy and to keep them free from taxes as much as possible; but this was certainly not because he was pious but rather to have in them trumpeters of his glory and a way to keep the people in blind obedience to his government.
In France’s Roman Catholic Church at that time, the Jesuits had great influence. The famous philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal, in his Provincial Letters, used masterful language to describe with greatest clarity and harsh accuracy the Jesuits’ godless moral destroying ethic. Pascal belonged to the circle of the Jansenists who were centered at the convent of Port Royal. The Jansenists championed St. Augustine’s doctrine [on sin and grace] against the Roman view on sin and grace. The Jesuits succeeded in persuading the pope to condemn Jansenism, and Louis XIV to abolish the nest of the heretics, Port Royal, (1709). This convent was razed to the ground and not even the graves were spared. The corpses were pulled from them and thrown to the dogs. In 1713 Pope Clement XI issued the Bull, Unigenitus. In it he condemned the 101 propositions from the biblical commentary of the Jansenist, Pasquier Quesnel [1634-1719]. Some of those propositions came word for word from Holy Scripture. The Jansenists, who were suppressed and expelled from France, went to Holland, but did not join the Protestants but instead formed separate dioceses.
Louis XIV, who was of one mind with the pope in condemning the Jansenists, who had also opposed his ambitions for power, was in no way always an obedient son of the Bishop of Rome. Louis certainly did not want to break with the pope— he needed him for too many things—but Louis did wanted a French Catholic national church that was largely subject to his will. Therefore he summoned a national synod in Paris in 1681 at which the following “Four Articles of the Gallic Church” were drawn up: 1. The pope is subject to the ecumenical councils. 2. His authority does not extend over temporal things. 3. The French church retains its particular rights and customs that have been in effect from of old. 4. Even in matters of faith the papal decrees are valid only after the consent of the French clergy.
Pope Innocent XI was quite startled when he read these sentences because the bishops were no longer his servants but the king’s! He immediately demanded that the decrees be revoked; but it was in vain. The king made them the law of the land and had the archbishops, bishops and other spiritual authorities sign them. They did so because they had more respect for the king than for the pope. On top of that, the most respected French theologian of that time wrote an extensive work in which he defended “the freedoms of the Gallic church.” Incidentally, in 1870 with Vatican I, there were bishops who did not want to grant that the pope, without a council, is infallible in matters of faith and morals. They primarily took the reasons for their opposition from this book. They did not ground their opposition upon Holy Scripture but upon a human book—and one which is primarily historical. Therefore they also later miserably yielded and ignominiously subjected themselves to the infallible pope.
The man who wrote the defense of the Gallic freedoms and, of course, by it became even more valued and important to the king was Bishop Jacob Benignus Bossuet. He was an extremely gifted and skillful man, but was certainly no bishop after the heart of God. He was trained by the Jesuits, had already obtained the tonsure as an eight year old boy and as a youth of 16 passed a shining test of his presence of mind and his talent as orator. In the Hotel de Rambouillet before a lustrous gathering, he gave an extempore sermon on an assigned theme so that the Jesuits could rightly boast of such a product of their ability to educate. He gave the funeral sermon for the widowed French Queen Anna of Austria; he gained his fame by the flowers he scattered upon the graves of the great French. With him there was always a man who would deliver the funeral sermons. He rose higher in honor and rank. Louis XIV spent appalling sums for balls and theatre and was reprimanded for it by a Capuchin monk. Louis asked Bossuet for his judgment on these things. Bossuet was no Nathan [2 Sam. 12.7] and answered with all the smoothness of a courtier, “Majesty, there are strong reasons against it, but great and lofty examples for it.” Of course, from then on, Louis XIV followed those examples since Bossuet himself had indeed referred him to the loftiest examples.
In 1671 Bossuet wrote a work in which he wanted to persuade France’s Protestants to become Roman Catholic. It had the title, Exposition of the Doctrine of the Catholic Church On the Disputed Articles (Exposition de la doctrine de l’eglise catholique sur les matieres de controverse). As a rule, such polemical works were usually strong, coarse, scornful, and venomous. The French Reformed had already read enough of them. However, Bossuet struck another tone, one that was polite and inviting. He addressed his opponents mostly: “My sirs of the alleged Reformed religion.” Of course, sarcasm was also hiding behind this address. He always spoke as if he were giving them credit for loving the truth and righteousness and for having a disposition toward godliness. He always took pains to demonstrate to them that they had merely misunderstood the Catholic doctrine. If he would only first make Catholic doctrine understandable to them, they would certainly come to it.
I can best show by the example of the doctrine of the invocation of the saints of how he tried to attract and win the Reformed for Rome. He developed the following argument: You Reformed greatly err when you think we Roman Catholics worship the saints. We worship only God, Him alone. We only invoke the saints. There’s a difference, isn’t there? Or do you want to be regarded as worshipping your neighbor when you ask him for help in a difficulty? Certainly not! So, in the future, don’t say any more that we Catholics worship the saints!
But I hear that you do not want to invoke the saints because you think that it diminishes Christ’s office as intercessor and that He loses some of His glory by this. It’s good that you do not to want to diminish Christ’s glory. Yet I have heard about you that one person will say to the other: “Pray for me! Include me in your prayer.” And you do it. That too must then be regarded as damaging the merits of Christ—which is certainly something that you do not support.
For it is certain: if the intercession of the living does not harm the merits of Christ, then certainly also the intercessions of the dead, the dead saints, do not do so either.
But I already know what you are thinking. You think: I see and hear a brother on earth and he sees and hears me; thus I can speak to him asking for his intercession. The dead saints, however, must obviously be all knowing and present everywhere and, in fact, also almighty if they are to hear and grant my call for their help. But only God is all knowing and almighty and present everywhere. Very well, says Bossuet, for the present we grant the last sentence—that the dead saints are unable to hear when you call them. But, you dear Reformed, holy mother Church in no way demands that you imagine that the dead saints are all knowing and all present. It is not necessary that this is the way that they come to know your requests. You also certainly have a doctrine of angels. The angels report in heaven when a sinner on earth repents and so of course the dead saints in heaven also hear of it and rejoice. You know that the angels of children, of men in general, always see the face of the Father in heaven. What in the entire world could keep you from believing that when, for example, you call upon St. Mary or St. Peter, the angels who surround you, who hear your prayer on earth, carry up your desire for intercession into heaven and deliver it to its address! Up, you beloved, and invoke with us the dear saints!
Now there was no lack of Protestants who answered the crafty Bossuet: You lie! Your church does not teach that is it is just as good, but instead that it is better and preferable to invoke the dead saints instead of going to living fellow Christians for their intercession.
You lie! Your church teaches that for the sake of the merits of the saints God must hear their intercessions. It is indeed taught at the expense of Christ’s suffering and merit. But we ask our fellow Christians to pray for us that God would be gracious to us not for their sake but rather only for Christ’s sake.
You lie! Your church explicitly teaches that the dead saints can hear us and want to help.
You lie to us when you say that the invocation of the saints or veneration of the saints is not worship and not a sin against the First Commandment. God’s Word [Mt. 4.10] says not only, “You shall worship the Lord your God” but also expressly adds, “and him only shall you serve.” And because you lie and deceive in this way, we will not fall into your trap.
But a number of apathetic and lazy members of the Reformed church were deceived by Bossuet’s smooth speech of lies and deceptions and lured back to Rome. The news of this brought joy to the heart of the pope. On top of that, in order to make himself a good friend with the pope once again, Louis XIV got the idea to exterminate the Reformed faith completely from France.
Louis XV, the grandson of Louis XIV, who was an even more immoral and dissolute person than Louis XIV was, once replied when his Jesuit father confessor timidly indicated that a person could certainly fear for his soul’s salvation, “Impossible! For I am the anointed of the Lord.” Louis XIV was still not so completely devoid of all basic notions of religion as his grandson was after him. Sometimes his conscience struck him on account of his immoral way of life. His father confessor, the Jesuit, Pere la Chaise, persuaded him that there was no better way he could blot out his sin than by persecuting the Reformed heresy and heretics and that by this he would again be pleasing to God. His concubine, Lady Maintenon, who had been raised a Huguenot [French Reformed] but then became a staunch Roman Catholic, told him the same thing day and night. The Jesuits had promised her that if she destroyed the Protestants, they would see to it that she would marry the king. It was all her fault.
When he came to the throne, Louis XIV had vowed and solemnly sworn to the Huguenots that they would be allowed every freedom according to the Edict of Nantes because they had supported the royal house. But he began to persecute them and increasingly did so until the edict was abolished on 22 October 1685.
So far Professor Krauss
BRING YOUR POINSETTA TO CHURCH CHRISTMAS EVE! You can help beautify our sanctuary on Christmas Eve by bringing a poinsettia to church with you. Then bring it home with you to enjoy and beautify your home as you celebrate Jesus’ birth. Remember our Christmas Eve Service of Lessons and Carols is at 7 pm.
LWML NEWS: We have had a very good month. Thanks to all you ladies for your help providing refreshments for the Circuit Convocation and Reformation Service! Without all your help we would never have done it.
This year we are blessed to begin Advent and thus the new Church Year on 30 November, which is also the day the Church remember St. Andrew. What makes this day special for us is that we can celebrate both at our Fifth Sunday Lunch after service. It will be a pot luck so be sure to join us.
Our bake/craft sale will be 07 December. We look forward to lots of goodies. Thank you all!
Finally, our next event is the Christmas cookie exchange on 21 December. We may need to have a short meeting next month to plan our Epiphany dinner.
God Bless and have a blessed Advent season,
Carol, Pres.
SUNDAY SCHOOL NEWS: Our Sunday School children are saving their change and collecting it to buy farm animals for people in a poor countries. If you want to help them, you can give your change to one of our Sunday School children to add to their collection box. The children also hosted a breakfast after service on 23 November and thank you for your free-will offerings you gave. Please continue to pray for our Sunday School that the children may continue to grow in Christ.
LUTHER COMMENTS ON THE LAST DAY/ JUDGMENT DAY
One of the themes of Advent is our Lord’s return on the Last Day in judgment. The readings for the Second Sunday in Advent reflect this thought quite well. Luther notes:
This is what Christ means when He asserts here: This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world [John 3.19]. As if He were to say: “it is a grand and blessed light which shines into your hearts and says: ‘Fear not the wrath of God, for God is gracious to you.’ Even if your sin and your conscience plague and oppress you and you stand in awe of God’s judgment, you must realize that all has been changed and that judgment has been abolished. Instead of harboring fear of the Final Judgment you must yearn and long for it, since it does not denote your judgment at all but your redemption.” At that time we shall be delivered from the last enemy, death (1 Cor. 15.26); our bodies will rise again from the grave. Devil, death, and worms will cease; and God’s disfavor will end. This judgment will draw you from the grave and deliver you from all evil. Therefore the Day of Judgment will be a time of rejoicing for you, far more so than the wedding day is for the bride; for this terrible Day has been converted into a happy and desirable Day for you. Thus all is well if you believe. But those who love darkness more than light will experience the reverse. They must live in dread of the Last Day. For the believer, the thought of this Day is comforting, since condemnation and the terrible judgment are gone. [AE, XXII, 385-6]
THE SEASON OF ADVENT—A SEASON OF REPENTANCE
BEGINS FOUR SUNDAYS BEFOR CHRISTMAS
ADVENT is a season of preparation by repentance. It is not as “deep” a time of repentance as Lent, but in Advent we still hear St. John the Baptizer [Matthew 3.2]: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” and Jesus saying [Mark 1.15]: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
Luther notes: John comes as the voice of the one crying out and preaches to all a baptism of repentance and undeniably establishes as the truth that all people have sin. One type of person believes John as the voice of the Gospel. They regard such shocking preaching to be true and so they are humbled and obey with trembling. They acknowledge that they are sinners even though they themselves may or may not be aware of some sin because they believe John more than themselves. Thus they are capable of seizing grace; they hunger for righteousness; they are anxious for comfort; they are spiritually poor, alone and willing to be led. Therefore Christ, the kingdom of heaven—He, the One who comes to save sinners—comes in them.
The other type of person, however, knows their own righteousness. They do not believe that it is true they have sins to repent nor do they think the demand “Repent!” applies to them. They interrupt: “But we are righteous; we don’t know of any sin.” They do not want to hear the strange sound of the Gospel, that they commit sin and are fools. Instead, they believe that the Gospel is false and a lie….
Sins are only forgiven those who truly do not feel them in themselves; that is called repenting. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent”, He willed the entire life of His believers on earth should be a constant or unceasing repentance” [95 Theses: #1].
Faith Lutheran Voters’ Meeting was held on 09 November 2014
On the Supreme Comfort Placed in the Doctrine that the Body and Blood of Christ are Truly Present in the holy LORD’s Supper and Received with the Mouth
[Translated by Pr. Joel Basely from Volume 4 #16 (04 April 1848) of Walther’s Der Lutheraner]
…even if we did not know why God does something, we would nevertheless have to call everything that he does good and humbly respect it, for he is the LORD who buries his most exalted divine wisdom under what reason considers to be foolishness. Nevertheless, it is clearly easy to prove that faith in the presence of the body and blood of Christ under the blessed elements is not an insignificant matter, but is rather rich in the sweetest of comforts. The venerable Martin Chemnitz, a coauthor of the Formula of Concord, has a most lovely way of describing this. One of the things he writes is this:
“First, our faith must grasp Christ, who is by nature the God-man, which enables his drawing near us, who is our kinsman and brother, for life, which is an attribute of his divinity, dwells, and is at the same time a treasure hidden in the flesh that he received. Therefore since we, weighed down by the burden of sins, could not approach Christ as he rules in his glory, so he comes to us in order to grasp us according to the nature by which he is our brother, and since our frailty could not bear the brightness of his glory in this life, so he is present under the bread and wine and imparts his body and blood to us with them.
Second, through sins we were estranged from the life of the Godhead, so that our frailty could not bear that the deity confront it directly, so Christ has not only taken on our nature but rather also presents the same to us again since he distributes his body and blood to us in the holy LORD’s Supper, so that he mediates our receiving him and elevates us by imparting his humanity there as a communion and a binding to the Godhead.
Third, our nature was created in the beginning in the likeness of God and therefore adorned with every heavenly and divine gift, which wealth was lost in Adam, as the head of our race, but through the fall those gifts were not only lost, but rather our nature was ruined through sins and destroyed through death. Therefore God’s Son has taken upon himself our nature, yet without sins; condemned sins in the same, destroyed death and filled the same with life. And so he has sanctified the human nature, first in his own person, but so that we can be assured that this also effects our miserable nature in us and is truly imparted to us, Christ in the holy LORD’s Supper again distributes to us even the nature which he has received from us and by which he had presented himself to us in the beginning.
Fourth, the doctrine of the Gospel proclaims in general that through the offering of his body and the shedding of his blood Christ has reconciled the wrath of the Father and has won an eternal atonement. But anxious and fearful minds are made terrified and disturbed through seeing their sins, their unworthiness and weakness, and through all sorts of afflictions, that they begin to doubt if they are allowed to appropriate the promises of the Gospel to themselves individually. Therefore in the holy LORD’s Supper Christ imparts to them even the body which he offered for us in death, and even the blood which was shed for us and through this he confirmed the giving and the appropriation of the promises of the Gospel through this certain and steadfast pledge.
Fifth, the human nature of Christ is located in the glory of the Father after he has laid aside his weaknesses, but our nature, even if we have the promise of the hope of glorification, is still flecked with dust, weighed down in weariness and beset with all the darts of Satan, the world and the flesh. Therefore, that our faith not be destroyed, Christ distributes to us his body and blood to make us sure through this pledge that we someday shall be as is his now glorified body.
Sixth, the New Testament is the covenant of grace in the forgiveness of sins. Before God this has been sanctified and confirmed through the shedding of Christ’s blood. Now so that we might be sure of this, that we should remain forever in this covenant, he has therefore imparted to us his blood in the holy LORD’s Supper, as it has been confirmed by the shedding of the same.
Seventh, the holy LORD’s Supper has been instituted for the remembrance of the benefits of Christ and for the strengthening of faith. But since true faith is grasping ever tighter onto Christ (Phil. 3.12), there through the grasping of his life giving flesh, he wants to awaken, preserve and confirm his true remembrance in us.
Eighth, Christ binds himself with us most closely in the holy LORD’s Supper through the nature according to which he is our head, namely, through his body and blood; therefore even through the nature received and related to us, he makes himself active and mighty in the faithful, so that since the head himself is in us, we also are mutually active towards one another as his members. (Scriptum de coena.)
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