“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’”.