Protestantism Insists That Each Individual Must Come to God Directly Through Faith in Christ, the One Mediator, Not Through Priests, Pope, Mary, or the Church

What were the great doctrines that the Protestants affirmed and for which they have sought to stand throughout the centuries?
First of all, the soul’s direct relation with Christ Himself. In other words, Luther, Calvin, Ecolampadius, all the great reformers, William Farel, and many others, some of whom laid down their very lives for the truth’s sake, insisted on this, that the statement of Scripture as given in the First Epistle of Timothy, chapter 2, verses 5-6, be taken exactly as it stands, “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.”
How can anyone, in the face of a Scripture like that, anyone who professes to believe that this blessed Book is the Word of the living God, believe in Mary or the saints as mediators? And mark you, our Roman Catholic friends profess to believe, just as truly as we Protestants, that this Book is the Word of the living God. They insist on it. We honor them for it. We insist on it, too. But they tell us we can understand the Word only as we read it in the light of the teachings of the church. But we turn to the Word and read this to them, “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.” It does not say, “Let him hear what the church says to him,” but “what the Spirit saith unto the churches.” God’s Word is addressed to the churches of God and the churches of God are responsible to hear what is written in this Book.
One of the first fundamental statements is that which I quoted, “There is one mediator [only one], one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom for all.” And therefore we, as Protestants, insist that each individual soul is responsible to God and must deal directly with our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. We search our New Testament in vain to find any intervening priestly class coming in between believers and the blessed Son of God Himself. There is not a shred of evidence in the New Testament that there was ever such a person as an officiating priest in the Early Church. There is no such word used. There is no such individual mentioned. But, on the other hand, all believers are called priests and that by the blessed Apostle Peter himself. Catholics tell us that Peter was the first pope, and that the pope speaks ex cathedra, with absolute authority. And the Apostle Peter, addressing all believers, calls them “a holy priesthood” and also “a royal priesthood.” But Peter does not know anything, Paul does riot know anything, no other New Testament writer knows anything of an intermediary class coming, in between people and God. Christ is the one mediator between God and man; not Christ’s blessed mother, precious and wonderful as her life was. When our blessed Lord was here on earth, as He was on His way to the cross, an excited, emotional woman shouted out, “Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked,” that is, “Blessed be your mother,” and Jesus said, “Rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.” He would not have anybody glorifying His mother and turning away from Himself. He alone is the mediator between God and men. There is no other.
The last recorded mention that we have of the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ is in the first chapter of the book of Acts and there we read that the disciples were gathered together for prayer in an upper room in Jerusalem with Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with the women, the holy, godly women. Notice, they were not praying to Mary; they were praying with Mary. She knelt with them as on one common level, and together their prayers were going up to the Lord. That is the last mention of Mary, the mother of our Lord, in the Word of God. There is not another passage that refers to her in all the New Testament after that time. I know, of course, the application that is often made of that mystic woman in the twelfth chapter of Revelation, the woman who has a crown of twelve stars upon her head, the moon under her feet, and clothed with the sun, but as you study that, it would take a strange imagination to make that refer to the blessed virgin Mary. It refers clearly to the people of Israel. It is God’s marvelous picture of the nation of Israel, of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God, blessed forever.
Shall we then as Protestants give up the great truth that we go to God directly through His Son? We cannot afford to do it. We dare not do it. We have found such joy, we have found such peace, we have found such blessed assurance in coming to Christ direct that we could not think of turning to any other, neither His mother, nor saints, nor a priesthood on earth. We will put no mediator between our souls and God save our blessed Lord Jesus Christ.