“We can only estimate correctly the Reformation, when we rightly understand the state of things in the Church which called for it. If it was not necessary, it ought not to have taken place. If there were no great evils to be rectified, the Reformation was not needed. And the evils that called for it, must have been of the most serious and aggravated nature, otherwise so great a remedy as the Reformation was not justifiable.

“What were those evils? In what consisted the “falling away” from the purity and simplicity of Christ, which constituted the necessity of the Reformation? …I will set nothing down in malice; but I will deal in well known facts of history, which no intelligent man can dispute. My discourse will consist largely of word for word quotations from standard Church historians.” — Emanuel Greenwald

Level of Difficulty: Primer: No subject matter knowledge needed.

Emanuel Greenwald, D. D. (1811-1885) was “a good man and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith.” He trained under the renowned Dr. David F. Schaeffer, “walking 14,000 miles in getting his education”.

Rev. Greenwald was the first president of the Board of Trustees of Capitol University, Columbus and established the first English Lutheran church of Columbus. As first editor of the Lutheran Standard he fought the “New Measures”. He served the latter part of his life as pastor in Easton, PA, and as president of the East Pennsylvania Synod. “Yet, warrior as he was to the end, battling during his last days against vice, Atheism and Romanism, he never forfeited the respect of good men by coarseness of language or unseemly ebullitions of temper. Like John, he was a ‘son of thunder,’ and at the same time a ‘beloved disciple’”.

Book Contents

• Preface
• 1 St. Paul’s Church Of Rome
• 2 The Papacy
• 3 Doctrines Of The Church Of Rome
  • 1 The Council of Trent has placed the apocryphal books on an equality with the inspired Word of God
  • 2 The Roman Church regards oral tradition as of equal authority with the written Word of God
  • 3 The Church of Rome has a very defective doctrine concerning the nature of original sin, or the natural depravity of the human heart
  • 4 The Roman Church teaches according to her Semi-Pelagian theory, that man is justified not by faith alone, but by works also
  • 5 The Church of Rome requires compulsory enumeration of all sins in confession
  • 6 The Roman Church teaches that “the Mass is an unbloody sacrifice for sins”
  • 7 The Roman Church teaches the Invocation of Saints
• 4 Rome: A Persecuting Church
• 5 Necessity Of The Reformation
• 6 Reform Before The Reformation
• 7 Historical Sketch Of The Reformation
• Copyright Notice

Publication Information

• Lutheran Library edition first published: 2017-09-18
• Updated: v6.2021-04-13
• Copyright: CC BY 4.0