Crossword-Solution: CHURCHDOM 9 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 22

And it was only when in this battle the Pope and the hierarchy sought to rob him of his evangelical doctrine of salvation, and of the joy and comfort he derived from the knowledge of redemption by Christ, that, from his stand on the Bible, he laid his hands upon the strongholds of this Churchdom.

Luther's controversy with Erasmus, the most important of the champions of Catholic Churchdom, had terminated, it will be remembered, so far as Luther was concerned, with his treatise 'On the Bondage of the Will.' To the new tract which Erasmus published against him, in two parts, in 1526 and 1527, and which, though insignificant in substance, was violent and insulting enough in tone, Luther made no reply.

Even in this summary of belief, intended as it was for common acceptance and for submission to a Council, Luther emphasised, with all the fulness and keenness peculiar to himself throughout the struggle, his antagonism to Roman Catholic dogma and Churchdom.

But nothing is more foreign to the spirit of caste than the fundamental idea of the Gospel, and between Christianity as represented by it and priestdom (by no means to be confounded with churchdom) the antagonism is irreconcilable.

His convictions made him a vehement antagonist of churchdom because of its stiffness of creed and laxness of practice.