In his The Babylonian Captivity of the Church Luther made clear how justification by faith reshaped his doctrine of the church. He argued that Rome’s sacramental system held Christians “captive.” He attacked the papacy for depriving the individual Christian of his freedom to approach God directly by faith, without the mediation of priests, and he set forth his own views of the sacraments. To be valid, he said, a sacrament had to be instituted by Christ and be exclusively Christian. By these tests Luther could find no justification for five of the Roman Catholic sacraments. He retained only
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