A. Justification through Faith was the center and foundation of the Protestant Reformation.

A. Justification through Faith was the center and foundation of the Protestant Reformation. 

1. "Unqualified centrality! Centrality in all doctrine and life! That was the place of 

the doctrine of justification in the Reformation." Geoffrey J. Paxton, The Shaking 

of Adventism, pg. 36. 

2. "Why would Luther heroically die rather than take back his teaching, which may 

be summed up in Justification by Faith? Because he held it "the article of the

standing and the falling of the church..." The Romanists agreed with Luther that 

justification was the ground for the real Armageddon, the decisive battle 

between Christ and Antichrist." Four Hundred Years, Edited by Prof. W. H. T. 

Dau, pg. 62. 

3. "It was by the doctrine of Justification by Grace through faith, as by a ray of light 

from heaven shining into their hearts, that the Reformers, in whose souls the

work of the great spiritual revival was first wrought before it took effect on the

face of Europe, obtained relief from the bondage of legal fear, and entered into 

the liberty wherewith Christ makes His people free… And it was mainly to the

influence of this one truth, carried home to the conscience 'in demonstration of 

the Spirit and with power,' that they ascribed their success, under God, in 

sweeping away the whole host of scholastic errors and superstitious practices, 

by which, in the course of many preceding centuries, men had corrupted the 

simpler faith and worship of the primitive church… that truth (Justification 

through faith), which has herefore been unanimously recognized as the 

distinctive principle of the Reformation..." James Buchanan, The Doctrine of 

Justification, pg. 8-10. 

4. "The church had fallen, because the great doctrine of justification by faith in the 

Saviour had been taken away from her. It was necessary, therefore, before she 

could rise again, that this doctrine should be restored to her. As soon as this 

fundamental truth should be re-established in Christendom, all the errors and observances that had taken its place - all that multitude of saints, of works, 

penances, masses, indulgences, etc., would disappear." J. H. Merle d'Aubigne, 

History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, pg. 29. 

5. "Now it is known that the doctrine of justification gave the first occasion to the 

whole work of reformation, and was the main hinge whereon it turned. This 

those mentioned declared… that the vindication thereof alone deserved all the 

pains that were taken in the whole endeavor of reformation." John Owen, The 

Works of John Owen, Vol. 5, pg. 6.