George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

[74] ruined, and could not but ruin, the moral and in-

Chap. II.}

tellectual faculties of the functionary by whom it was exercised. The earth, wrapt in thickest darkness, sighed for the dawn.

The son of a miner, of the peasant class in Eisleben, trained in the school of Paul of Tarsus and the African Augustine, kindled a light for the world. He taught that no man impersonates the authority of God; that the pope is right in denying the divinity of the emperor, but that he blasphemes in arrogating divinity to himself. No power over souls belongs to a priest; ‘any Christian, be it a woman or a child, can remit sins just as well as a priest;’¹ clergy and laity, all are of one condition; all men are equally priests; ‘a bishop's ordination is no better than an election;’² ‘any child that creeps after baptism is an ordained priest, bishop, and pope.’³ ‘The priest is nothing but an office-holder.’⁴ ‘The pope is our school-fellow; there is but one master, and his name is Christ in heaven;’ and, collecting all in one great formulary of freedom, he declared: Justification is by faith; by faith alone, ‘sola fide;’ every man must work out his own salvation; no other—not priest, nor bishop, nor pope, no, not all the prophets—can serve for the direct connection of the intelligent reason of the individual with the infinite and eternal intelligence.

The principle of justification by faith alone solved every problem. It is freedom against authority; self-activity against superstitious trust in other men.