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Christian Deism broke radically with the past and had its starting point in the notion that Christianity, as it was known, was perverted and no longer represented in the true and apostolic faith. Many of the titles of most of the Deist's books expressed this dismay over the state of the Christian religion, the need for re-interpretation of the nature of the true gospel and for reform. While most books reflected on the matter, the individual perspectives differed on the questions: Whom to blame for this fall? How to date it? What was the correct issue? The article argues that it was not the contention of the English Deists that some churches had erred in some points, but that all the churches had erred in all points: The entire system of the Christian religion was perverted. Their view of the history of Christianity was intimately connected with their view of the person and significance of Jesus.

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There is agreement among most Reformation scholars that the BullExsurge Domine of June 15, 1520, which threatened Martin Luther with excommunication, constitutes a strange document and an evasive assessment of Luther's theological concerns. 1 The reasons for this agreement are several. 2 Some of Luther's most incisive theological pronouncements-such as his tract on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, of 1520, or that on the Bondage of the Will, of 1525-were unknown to the authors of the Bull, who had to rely on his tracts from the years 1518 and 1519. These clearly did not convey the full range of his theological concern. Moreover, the Bull allowed differing interpretations of certain passages: at one point it seemingly condemned all of Luther's writings, at another only those containing any of the condemned forty-one errors. 3 An additional weakness of the document was that it refrained from identifying the specific censures for the forty-one propositions. The quotations from Luther simply received the label "respective haereticos aut scandalosos aut falsos aut piarum aurium offensos vel simplicium mentium seductivos et ventati catholicae obviantes." 4 This vagueness was especially significant in light of the absence of any explicit verdict as to which sentences were outrightly "heretical."The following marginalia seek to address themselves to one aspect of the Bull that still seems to require adequate documentation, the exactness of the forty-one quotations from Luther, though it would be of equal interest to undertake, on the basis of the dogmatic decisions of the early and medieval Church, a specific classification of these propositions. The task of verifying the quotations from Luther was undertaken several years ago by H. Roos, whose industrious work was subsequently incorporated into the thirty-second edition of H. Denzinger's classic Enchiridion symbolorum. 5 The following observations 1 See, e.g., the comments of R. H. Bainton, Here I Stand (New York, 1950) p. 112; H. Boehmer, Der junge Luther (Stuttgart, 1951) p. 288; J. M. Todd, Martin Luther (Westminster, Md., 1964) p. 166. 2 The Bull is printed in Bullarium Romanum 5, 748-57. 3 Compare here Buliarium Romanum 5, 753, "in libellis... in quibus dicti errores seu eorum aliquis continentur," with p. 755, "Inhibemus praeterea... ne scripta, etiam praefatos errores non continentia, ab eodem Martino ... legere." 4 Bullarium Romanum 5, 752. See also ibid.: "respective quam sint pestiferi, quam perniciosi, quam scandalosi, quam piarum et simplicium mentium seductivi, quam denique sint contra omnem caritatem. .. aut artículos non esse catholicos, nee tamquam tales esse dogmatizandos, sed contra Ecclesiae catholicae doctrinam sive traditionem." 5 "Die Quellen der Bulle 'Exsurge Domine,'" in J. Auer and H. Volk (eds.), Theologie in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Munich, 1957) pp. 909-26.