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Reformation: Presbyterian Church
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The term reformation is an historic term that goes back almost four centuries in its Christian use. It refers to the period of time and connected events when Christians attempted to return to the authority of Scripture. The desire of the reformation movement and the reformers was not to change God’s word or to pick and choose what they wanted to believe. It was an attempt to bring the church back into accord with the word of God. Following the death of the Apostles of Christ the Christian church begin to fall away. Though much good came of various so called church councils and what not, much error ... transpired and eventually the religious world was left generally in darkness and apostasy with the true Christian faith and church covered by the debris of man made churches, structures, and beliefs.
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Very little in the Reformation was stable. Not only did the formulation of religious ideas take place amidst wars, persecution and plague, but the very language which the evangelical groups conscripted to their cause formed a brilliant prism, whose diverse colours transformed as it was manipulated. Terms such as church, authority, nation and even reformation itself were variously and often in contradictory ways used in the sixteenth century.'
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The idea of reformation had a long history in Western thought before 1500, with two main meanings: to modify in general (to reform) and to improve something by returning it to its original state (to re-form, or restore). St. Augustine's statement that "man is not able to reform himself as he is able to deform himself" durably connected reformation with individual conversion and divine grace, although during the Middle Ages the word could refer to any systematic change. Because the term implied renewal or even rebirth, it could ... be associated with the renaissance of classical learning. By the late 1300s, the "reformation" of monasteries became a central goal of the Observant movements that sought to restore the principles of their orders' founders, and by the 1400s, calls for a "reformation in head and members" of the entire church had become loud.
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The vision of Spurling was to see ultimate reformation that yielded the restoration of the church. Though he birthed the idea in the Christian Union it found expression in the Holiness Church at Camp Creek most fervently. They eventually called a meeting for June 13th, 1903 to search the Bible to see if they could find the Church of God. Their aim was evidently restoration. Following a time of intense prayer an intercession atop the nearby Burger Mountain A.J. Tomlinson descended the mountain and entered the home of Brother Bryant were the meeting called to find the Bible church was already under way.
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Human emotions, to which the Reformers appealed in the most various ways, were another means of spreading the Reformation. The very ideas which these innovators defended -- Christian freedom, license of thought, the right and capacity of each individual to found his own faith on the Bible, and other similar principles -- were very seductive for many. The abolition of religious institutions which acted as a curb on sinful human nature (confession, penance, fasting, abstinence, vows) attracted the lascivious and frivolous. The warfare against the religious orders, against virginity and celibacy, against the practices of a higher Christian life, won for the Reformation a great number of those who, without a serious vocation, had embraced the religious life from purely human and worldly motives, and who wished to be rid of obligations towards God which had grown burdensome, and to be free to gratify their sensual cravings. This they could do the more easily, as the confiscation of the property of the Churches and monasteries rendered it possible to provide for the material advancement of ex-monks and ex-nuns, and of priests who apostasized. In the innumerable writings and pamphlets intended for the people the Reformers made it their frequent endeavour to excite the basest human instincts.
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Sola Scriptura ([B]y Scripture alone) was one of the watchwords of the Reformation. This doctrine maintains that Scripture, as contained in the Bible, is the only authority for the Christian in matters of faith, life and conduct. The teachings and traditions of the church are to be completely subordinate to the Scriptures. Roman Catholicism, on the other hand, holds Scripture and Tradition to be of the same inspired Deposit of Faith.
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