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The Spread of Protestantism in the 1500's Essay

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The Spread of Protestantism in the 1500's During sixteenth century Europe a wave of religious dissatisfaction swept the European continent. There were cries for the restructuring of the Catholic Church. These cries grew into more than just a simple remodeling of the Catholic faith they grew into the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther is credited for the reformation movement against the Catholic Church that began in 1517. The reformation began because of the corruption in the Catholic Church and the enormous amount of power the church had over Europe. During the sixteenth century the Catholic Church had tremendous sovereignty over the population of Europe. It was almost impossible to fight the Catholic Church because of the …show more content…

Protestant doctrine varied greatly from the doctrines of Catholicism. The main deviance in Protestant doctrine in is the answer of how a person obtains salvation. In Catholic doctrine a person obtains salvation through good works and penance. Luther felt that there is no amount of good works a person could perform to be worth of everlasting salvation. In "Justification by Faith Alone" Luther says, "… I grasp that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith" (Luther 261). Luther's statement means that the way to obtain salvation is to believe and trust Jesus Christ and God (Kagen 357). Also Protestantism emphasized scripture over ritual. Luther attacked the catholic ritual in his “Babylonian Captivity of the Church.” He said that only two of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church were biblical. Those two sacraments are baptism and the Eucharist. The Catholic Church’s policy of selling indulgences was another important part of the Catholic Church Luther attacked. He thought the idea that a person could buy their way to salvation was utterly wrong. He went on to say that the pope was not infallible (Kagen 360). That idea went completely against what the Catholic Church believed. These were some of the ways that Protestant Doctrine differed from Catholic Doctrine. Protestantism spread in a very unique way. The spread of

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