Fifteen centuries after Christ, Luther, who was originally
one of the twelve members of a Catholic religious body at the center of the
Papal government and later on initiated the Protestant religious belief,
opposed the Pope on certain points of doctrine such as the prohibition of
monastic marriage, the revering and bowing down before images of the Apostles
and Christian leaders of the past, and various other religious practices and
ceremonies which were accretional to the ordinances of the Gospel. Although at
that period the power of the Pope was so great and he was regarded with such
awe that the kings of Europe shook and trembled before him, and he held control
of all Europe’s major concerns in the grasp of his might—nevertheless because
Luther’s position as regards the freedom of religious leaders to marry, the
abstention from worshiping and making prostrations before images and
representations hung in the churches, and the abrogation of ceremonials which
had been added on to the Gospel, was demonstrably correct, and because the
proper means were adopted for the promulgation of his views: within these last
four hundred and some years the majority of the population of America,
four-fifths of Germany and England and a large percentage of Austrians, in sum
about one hundred and twenty-five million people drawn from other Christian
denominations, have entered the Protestant Church. (‘Abdu’l-Baha, ‘The Secret
of Divine Civilization’)
