Stubbes introduced here two of the principal criticisms of Christmas that would underpin the radical Protestant critique in the years to come: the observation that the holiday is the occasion for riotous behavior and the assertion that Christians should not regard days other than the Sabbath as special.Christmas in the Crosshairs, 28
But what will they say? Is it not Christmas? must we not be merry? Truth it is, we ought both then and at all times besides to be merry in the Lord, but not otherwise, not to swill and gull in more then will suffice nature, nor to lavish forth more at that time, then at any other times.
in Christmas time there is nothing else used but cards, dice, tables, masking, mumming, bouling, & such like fooleries. And the reason is, for that they think they have a commission and prerogative that time, to do what they list and to follow what vanity they will. But do they think that they are privileged at that time to do evil?
I have read of two citizens in London in 1583, who, having defiled themselves with adultery on the Lord's-day, were immediately struck dead with fire from heaven. If all who are now guilty of this sin were to be punished in this manner, it would rain fire again, as on Sodom.Ten Commandments, 157
Urbanus Regius, an eminent Dutch divine, meeting with Luther about Coburg, he spent a whole day in conference with him, of which himself writeth, ¹ that he never had a more quickening, comforting day all his lifetime.
The reformers argued that the laity were to receive both the bread and the wine, rejecting the medieval practice by which men and women received only the Eucharistic wafer.Zwingli, 105-105
the cohabitation of priests with women was almost universally accepted, even if the derogratory term 'priest whore' was widely used. Formally, church law had long prescribed what was in fact the reality. It has been reckoned that by the early 1520s there were about 1,300 children of priests in the diocese, and for each one the bishop collected money, known as a cradle tax.God\'s Armed Prophet, Zwingli
Before anyone among us had heard the name of Luther, I had begun in 1516 to preach the Gospel of Christ. When I entered the pulpit, I did not preach the words from the Gospel lesson appointed for the mass that morning, but rather from the biblical text alone.
The Francis I, who in 1516 took Leonardo to France (where Leonardo died), is the same Francis I to whom Calvin (1509-1564) addressed his Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536.How Should We Then Live, 85
Ecstatic to find so great a precedent as Alfred the Great, the sixteenth-century Anglican ministers began publishing biographies on Alfred and Anglo-Saxon editions of the Bible.The Life of Alfred the Great, 192
It was in this context that his friend Johannes Agricola (1492-1566) drew what he thought were the logical conclusions of this radical contrast between law and gospel the abolition of any role for the law in the Christian life. He expounded this "antinomianism" first in debate with Philip Melanchthon and then later with Luther himself.The Whole Christ (p. 139). Crossway