The Beggars of the Sea

The Dutch Reformation has a fascinating history. Here is one of my favorite scenes from their war with the Spanish in 1573:

Since their oppressors called them beggars, that was the name they [Dutch Protestants] would give themselves. The leather bag of a beggar became the banner of rebellion…

But Philip was not a king to be swayed by his subjects’ opposition. He had declared, with vehement sincerity, that he had no desire to be “lord of heretics.”

The Protestant cause was therefore desperate. Its only hope seemed to be in the beggars of the sea, while its armies were repeatedly and roundly defeated. The crisis came at the siege of Leiden, an important trading center that had declared itself for Protestantism, and which the Spanish had surrounded. An army sent by William of Orange to break the siege was defeated by the Spnaish, and in that battle two of William’s brothers were killed. All was lost when William, whose enemies called him “the Silent” or “the Sly,” suggested that the dikes be opened, thus flooding the land around Leiden. This implied the destruction of many years of hard work, and the loss of a great deal of arable land. But the citizens agreed. In spite of an incredible shortage of food, the besieged continued their resistance during the four months that it took the sea to reach Leiden. Riding the flood, the beggars of the sea also arrived, shouting that they would rather be Turkish than Popish. Lacking naval support, the Spanish were forced to abandon the seige.

~Justo Gonzalez The Story of Christianity Vol. 2 pg. 98,100

Consistent Summaries

In order to make this clear again in the fewest words, I declare that they [the body and blood of the Lord] are truly given and offered to us, by both words and symbols, which signify them powerfully and most effectively. We truly receive in communicating when with full and solid assent of faith we grasp those things offered by the signification of words and signs. It follows that we are most closely joined to Christ; and whom we have obtained in baptism by the benefit of regeneration, him we put on still more and more by the sacrament of food, since nature provides that we are nourished by the same things of which we consist. If we wish to be saved, we should always take care that Christ dwell in us and we in him, until we are wholly converted into him, and so changed that nothing of ours remains, of inborn death I mean, or corruption and sin.

~ Peter Martyr Vermigli The Dedication to Thomas Cranmer in Treatise on the Eucharist pg. 20

For as God, regenerating us in baptism, ingrafts us into the fellowship of his Church, and makes us his by adoption, so we have said that he performs the office of a provident parent, in continually supplying the food by which he may sustain and preserve us in the life to which he has begotten us by his word.

~ John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion 4.17.1

And so we utterly condemn the vanity of those who affirm the sacraments to be nothing else than naked and bare signs. No, we assuredly believe that by Baptism we are engrafted into Christ Jesus, to be made partakers of his righteousness, by which our sins are covered and remitted, and also that in the Supper rightly used, Christ Jesus is so joined with us that he becomes the very nourishment and food for our souls. Not that we imagine any transubstantiation of bread into Christ’s body, and of wine into his natural blood, as the Romanists have perniciously taught and wrongly believed; but this union and conjunction which we have with the body and blood of Christ Jesus in the right use of the sacraments is wrought by means of the Holy Spirit, who by true faith carries us above all things that are visible, carnal, and earthly, and makes us feed upon the body and blood of Christ Jesus, once broken and shed for us but now in heaven, and appearing for us in the presence of his Father. Notwithstanding the distance between his glorified body in heaven and mortal men on earth, yet we must assuredly believe that the bread which we break is the communion of Christ’s body and the cup which we bless the communion of his blood. Thus we confess and believe without doubt that the faithful, in the right use of the Lord’s Table, do so eat the body and drink the blood of the Lord Jesus.

~ John Knox Scots Confession of Faith chapter 21