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Title: Luther, vol. 4 of 6
Author: Grisar, Hartmann
Language: English
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LUTHER
NIHIL OBSTAT
C. SCHUT, S.T.D.,
_Censor Deputatus._
IMPRIMATUR
EDM. CAN. SURMONT,
_Vic. Gen._
_Westmonasterii, die 10 Julii, 1913._
LUTHER
BY
HARTMANN GRISAR, S.J.
PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF INNSBRUCK
AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE GERMAN BY
E. M. LAMOND
EDITED BY
LUIGI CAPPADELTA
VOLUME IV
LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., LTD.
BROADWAY HOUSE, 68-74 CARTER LANE, E.C.
1915
A FEW PRESS OPINIONS OF VOLUMES I-III.
“His most elaborate and systematic biography ... is not merely a book
to be reckoned with; it is one with which we cannot dispense, if only
for its minute examination of Luther’s theological writings.”--_The
Athenæum_ (Vol. I).
“The second volume of Dr. Grisar’s ‘Life of Luther’ is fully as
interesting as the first. There is the same minuteness of criticism
and the same width of survey.” _The Athenæum_ (Vol. II).
“Its interest increases. As we see the great Reformer in the thick of
his work, and the heyday of his life, the absorbing attraction of his
personality takes hold of us more and more strongly. His stupendous
force, his amazing vitality, his superhuman interest in life,
impress themselves upon us with redoubled effect. We find him the
most multiform, the most paradoxical of men.... The present volume,
which is admirably translated, deals rather with the moral, social,
and personal side of Luther’s career than with his theology.”--_The
Athenæum_ (Vol. III).
“There is no room for any sort of question as to the welcome ready
among English-speaking Roman Catholics for this admirably made
translation of the first volume of the German monograph by Professor
Grisar on the protagonist of the Reformation in Europe.... The
book is so studiously scientific, so careful to base its teaching
upon documents, and so determined to eschew controversies that are
only theological, that it cannot but deeply interest Protestant
readers.”--_The Scotsman._
“Father Grisar has gained a high reputation in this country through
the translation of his monumental work on the History of Rome and the
Popes in the Middle Ages, and this first instalment of his ‘Life of
Luther’ bears fresh witness to his unwearied industry, wide learning,
and scrupulous anxiety to be impartial in his judgments as well as
absolutely accurate in matters of fact.”--_Glasgow Herald._
“This ‘Life of Luther’ is bound to become standard ... a model of
every literary, critical, and scholarly virtue.”--_The Month._
“Like its two predecessors, Volume III excels in the minute analysis
not merely of Luther’s actions, but also of his writings; indeed,
this feature is the outstanding merit of the author’s patient
labours.”--_The Irish Times._
“This third volume of Father Grisar’s monumental ‘Life’ is full of
interest for the theologian. And not less for the psychologist; for
here more than ever the author allows himself to probe into the
mind and motives and understanding of Luther, so as to get at the
significance of his development.”--_The Tablet._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER XXI. PRINCELY MARRIAGES _pages_ 3-79
1. LUTHER AND HENRY VIII OF ENGLAND. BIGAMY INSTEAD OF DIVORCE.
The case of Henry VIII; Robert Barnes is despatched to
Wittenberg; Luther proposes bigamy as a safer expedient
than divorce (1531); Melanchthon’s advice: _Tutissimum
est regi_ to take a second spouse. The conduct of
Pope Clement VII. The Protestant Princes of Germany
endeavour to secure the good-will of the King of
England; final collapse of the negotiations; Luther’s
later allusions to Henry VIII _pages_ 3-13
2. THE BIGAMY OF PHILIP OF HESSE.
The question put by Philip to Luther in 1526; Philip
well informed as to Luther’s views. Bucer deputed by
the Landgrave to secure the sanction of Wittenberg for
his projected bigamy; Bucer’s mission crowned with
success; Philip weds Margaret von der Sale; Luther’s
kindly offices rewarded by a cask of wine; the bigamy
becomes known at the Court of Dresden; the Landgrave is
incensed by Bucer’s proposal that he should deny having
committed bigamy. Luther endeavours to retire behind
the plea that his permission was a “dispensation,”
a piece of advice given “in confession,” and,
accordingly, not to be alleged in public. Some
interesting letters of Luther to his sovereign and
to Hesse; his private utterances on the subject
recorded in the Table-Talk. “_Si queam mutare!_” The
Eisenach Conference; Luther counsels the Landgrave to
tell a good, lusty lie; the Landgrave’s annoyance.
Melanchthon’s worries; an expurgated letter of his
on Landgrave Philip. Duke Henry of Brunswick enters
the field against Luther and the Landgrave; Luther’s
stinging reply: “Wider Hans Worst.” Johann Lening’s
“Dialogue”; how it was regarded by Luther, Menius and
the Swiss theologians. The Hessian bigamy is hushed
up. The Bigamy judged by Protestant opinion; Luther’s
consent to some extent extorted under pressure _pages_ 13-79
CHAPTER XXII. LUTHER AND LYING _pages_ 80-178
1. A BATTERY OF ASSERTIONS.
Luther’s conduct in the matter of the Bigamy an excuse
for the present chapter. His dishonest assurances
in his letters to Leo X, to Bishop Scultetus his
Ordinary, and to the Emperor Charles V (1518-1520);
his real feelings at that time as shown in a letter to
Spalatin; Luther’s later parody of Tetzel’s teaching;
his insinuation that it was the Emperor’s intention
to violate the safe-conduct granted; he calls into
question the authenticity of the Papal Bull against
him, whilst all the time knowing it to be genuine; he
advises _ordinandi_ to promise celibacy with a mental
reservation; his distortion of St. Bernard’s “_perdite
vixi_”; his allusion to the case of Conradin, “slain
by Pope Clement IV,” and to the spurious letter of
St. Ulrich on the babies’ heads found in a convent
pond at Rome. His allegation that his “Artickel” had
been subscribed to at Schmalkalden; his unfairness
to Erasmus and Duke George; his statement, that, for
a monk to leave his cell without his scapular, was
accounted a mortal sin, and that, in Catholicism,
people expected to be saved simply by works; his
advocacy of the “Gospel-proviso”; his advice to the
Bishop of Samland to make a show of hesitation in
forsaking Catholicism _pages_ 80-99
2. OPINIONS OF CONTEMPORARIES IN EITHER CAMP.
Bucer, Münzer, J. Agricola, Erasmus, Duke George, etc.,
on Luther’s disregard for truth _pages_ 99-102
3. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEM. SELF-SUGGESTION AND SCRIPTURAL GROUNDS OF
EXCUSE.
The palpable untruth of certain statements which
Luther never tires of repeating. How to explain his
putting forward as true what was so manifestly false:
The large place occupied by the jocular element; his
tendency to extravagance of language; he comes, by dint
of repetition, to persuade himself of the truth of
his charges. The new theology of mendacity: Luther’s
earlier views consistent with the Church’s; study of
the Old Testament leads him to the theory that only
such untruths as injure our neighbour are real lies;
influence of his teaching on the theologians of his
circle: Melanchthon, Bucer, Bugenhagen, Capito, etc. _pages_ 102-116
4. SOME LEADING SLANDERS ON THE MEDIÆVAL CHURCH HISTORICALLY
CONSIDERED.
Luther’s distortions of the actual state of things
before his coming; admissions of modern scholars. The
olden Catholics’ supposed “holiness-by-works”; on the
relations between creature and Creator; the Lamb of
God; the Eucharistic sacrifice; “personal religion”;
Luther’s plea that he revived respect for the secular
calling; the olden teaching concerning perfection _pages_ 116-131
5. WAS LUTHER THE LIBERATOR OF WOMANKIND FROM “MEDIÆVAL DEGRADATION”?
Luther’s claim to be the saviour of woman and
matrimony; what he says of the Pope’s treatment of
marriage; marriage “a state of sin”; witnesses to the
contrary: Devotional and Liturgical books; Luther’s own
attachment in his younger days to St. Anne. Various
statements of Luther’s to the advantage or otherwise
of woman and the married life; his alteration of
outlook during the controversy on the vow of Chastity;
the natural impulse, and the honour of marriage;
expressions ill-befitting one who aspired to deliver
womankind; practical consequences of the new view
of woman: Matrimonial impediments and divorce; Duke
George on the saying “If the wife refuse then let the
maid come.” Respect for the female sex in Luther’s
conversations. The new matrimonial conditions and the
slandered opponents; the actual state of things in
Late Mediæval times as vouched for in the records. Two
concluding pictures towards the history of woman: A
preacher’s matrimonial trials; the letters of Hasenberg
and von der Heyden and the “New-Zeittung” and “Newe
Fabel” which they called forth _pages_ 131-178
CHAPTER XXIII. FRESH CONTROVERSIES WITH ERASMUS
(1534, 1536) AND DUKE GEORGE († 1539) _pages_ 179-193
1. LUTHER AND ERASMUS AGAIN.
Their relations since 1525; the “_Hyperaspistes_”;
Luther’s attack in 1534 and Erasmus’s “_Purgatio_”;
Luther on the end of Erasmus _pages_ 179-186
2. LUTHER ON GEORGE OF SAXONY AND GEORGE ON LUTHER.
Luther exhorts the Duke to turn Protestant; the Duke’s
answer; how George had to suffer at Luther’s hands;
his true character utterly at variance with Luther’s
picture; the Duke repays Luther in his own coin _pages_ 187-193
CHAPTER XXIV. MORAL CONDITIONS ACCOMPANYING THE
REFORMATION. PRINCELY PATRONS _pages_ 194-227
1. REPORTS FROM VARIOUS LUTHERAN DISTRICTS.
The Duchy of Saxony; the Electorate of Brandenburg; the
Duchy of Prussia; Würtemberg; Duke Ulrich and Luther;
Blaurer and Schnepf; the sad state of things revealed;
the Landgraviate of Hesse; results of Landgrave
Philip’s bad example _pages_ 194-202
2. AT THE CENTRE OF THE NEW FAITH.
The Electorate of Saxony; the morals of Elector Johann
Frederick; the character of his predecessors; Luther’s
relations with them; the records of the Visitations;
Luther compares himself to Lot dwelling in Sodom _pages_ 202-210
3. LUTHER’S ATTEMPTS TO EXPLAIN THE DECLINE IN MORALS.
His candid admissions; his varied explanations of the
state of things: The malice of Satan; the apparent
increase of evil due to the bright light of the
Evangel; his seeming lack of success the best proof of
the truth of his mission; Luther on Wittenberg and its
doings _pages_ 210-218
4. A MALADY OF THE AGE: DOUBTS AND MELANCHOLY.
The habitual depression in which zealous promoters
of the Evangel lived; Melanchthon, Spalatin, Jonas,
Camerarius, etc.; the increase in the number of
suicides; expectation of the end of all; the sad case
of Johann Schlaginhaufen _pages_ 218-227
CHAPTER XXV. IN THE NARROWER CIRCLE OF THE PROFESSION
AND FAMILY. LUTHER’S BETTER FEATURES _pages_ 228-283
1. THE UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR, THE PREACHER, THE PASTOR.
Relations with the Wittenberg students; esteem in
which Luther was held by them; he warns them against
consorting with evil women. The Preacher and Catechist;
the force and practical bearing of Luther’s sermons;
his instructions to others how best to preach; his
discourses at home; the notes of his sermons; what he
says of Our Lady when preaching on the Magnificat; his
staunch fidelity to the great doctrines of Christianity
and his attachment to Holy Scripture; the fine
qualities of his German as evinced in his translations
and elsewhere. The spiritual guide; his concern for
discipline; his circular letters; his strictures on
certain legends; his efforts to re-introduce a new form
of confession and to further the cause of Church-music _pages_ 228-257
2. EMOTIONAL CHARACTER AND INTELLECTUAL GIFTS.
The place of feeling in Luther’s life; an interview
with Cochlæus; his powerful fancy and still more
powerful will; his huge capacity for work _pages_ 257-261
3. INTERCOURSE WITH FRIENDS. THE INTERIOR OF THE FORMER AUGUSTINIAN
MONASTERY.
The better side of the Table-Talk; his friends and
pupils on his kindly ways; his disinterestedness,
love of simplicity, his generosity, his courage when
plague threatened; his occasional belittling of his
own powers; his prayer and his trust in God; his lack
of any real organising talent. Luther’s family life;
his allusions to his wife; his care for his children _pages_ 261-283
CHAPTER XXVI. LUTHER’S MODE OF CONTROVERSY A COUNTERPART
OF HIS SOUL _pages_ 284-350
1. LUTHER’S ANGER. HIS ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE JEWS, THE LAWYERS AND THE
PRINCES.
Sir Thomas More on Luther’s language. Three writings
launched against the Jews; the place of the pig and
donkey in Luther’s stable of metaphor. Luther’s animus
against the Lawyers due to their attachment to the
matrimonial legislation as then established. His attack
on the Princes in his “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt”; his
ire against Albert, Elector of Mayence; his list of the
archbishop’s relics; how the Duke of Brunswick fared _pages_ 284-295
2. LUTHER’S EXCUSE: “WE MUST CURSE THE POPE AND HIS KINGDOM.”
The Pope is the “Beast” and the “Dragon”; Luther’s
language in the Table-Talk, and in the Disputation
in 1539; on the Papal Bearwolf (Werewolf); the Papal
Antichrist; Luther’s wrath against all who dared to
stand up for the Pope; how the Pope deserves to be
addressed _pages_ 295-305
3. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LUTHER’S ABUSIVE LANGUAGE.
His ungovernable temper; reality of certain misuses
against which he thundered; his vexation with those
who, like Carlstadt and Zwingli, seemed to be robbing
him of the credit which was his due; his tendency to be
carried away by the power of his own tongue; his need
for the stimulus and outlet provided by vituperation;
his ill-humour at the smallness of the moral results
obtained; abuse serves to repress his own troubles of
conscience. Connection of Luther’s abusiveness with his
mystic persuasion of his special call; all his anger
really directed against the devil; it is no insult “to
call a turnip a turnip.” The unpleasant seasoning of
Luther’s abuse; some samples; was language of so coarse
a character at all usual at that time? Indignation of
the Swiss _pages_ 306-326
4. LUTHER ON HIS OWN GREATNESS AND SUPERIORITY TO CRITICISM. THE ART OF
“RHETORIC.”
His occasional professions of humility; a number of
typical sayings of Luther referring to his peculiar
standing and his achievements: The predictions
fulfilled in him; the poverty of the exegesis of the
Fathers; his reforms more far-reaching than those
of any Councils; his being alone no better argument
against him than against the Old-Testament Prophets,
who also stood up against the whole world. Harnack’s
dilemma: Was Luther a megalomaniac, or were his
achievements commensurate with his claims? His habit
of giving free rein to his “rhetoric”; its tendency to
extravagance, unseemliness, and, occasionally, to rank
blasphemy; “papist and donkey is one and the same, _sic
volo, sic iubeo_”; his rhetoric a true mirror of his
inward state; his changeableness; his high opinion of
himself to some extent fostered by the adulation of his
friends _pages_ 327-350
CHAPTER XXVII. VOICES FROM THE CAMP OF THE DEFENDERS OF
THE CHURCH _pages_ 351-386
1. LUTHER’S “DEMONIACAL” STORMING. A MAN “POSSESSED.”
Hostile contemporaries ascribe Luther’s ravings to the
devil, others actually hold him to be beset by the
devil; references to his eyes; the idle tale of his
having been begotten of the devil _pages_ 351-359
2. VOICES OF CONVERTS.
Their opinion of Luther and Luther’s opinion of them;
Egranus, Zasius, Wicel and Amerbach _pages_ 360-365
3. LAMENTATIONS OVER THE WOUNDS OF THE CHURCH AND OVER HER
PERSECUTIONS.
The Preface of Cochlæus to his “_Commentaria de actis.
etc., M. L._”; the sermons of Wild, the Mayence
Franciscan, and the complaints laid before the Diet, at
Ratisbon (1541) and Worms (1545) _pages_ 365-369
4. THE LITERARY OPPOSITION.
Was Luther really dragged into controversy by the
tactics of his opponents? A retrospect: The character
of the writings of Tetzel and Prierias; Emser; Eck
and his “Obelisks”; his “_Enchiridion_”; Cochlæus’s
“_Septiceps Lutherus_”; other champions of the Church _pages_ 370-386
CHAPTER XXVIII. THE NEW DOGMAS IN AN HISTORICAL AND
PSYCHOLOGICAL LIGHT _pages_ 387-527
1. THE BIBLE TEXT AND THE SPIRIT AS THE “TRUE TESTS OF DOCTRINE.”
Liberty for the examination of Scripture and Luther’s
autonomy; Luther gradually reaches the standpoint that
the Bible is the only judge in matters of faith; those
only must be listened to who teach “_purum verbum
Dei_.” Experience given by the Spirit; divergent
utterances regarding the perspicuity of Holy Writ;
the Bible a “heresy-book.” Luther not in favour of
verbal inspiration; mistakes of the sacred writers;
which books are canonical, and why? The discord which
followed on Luther’s principle of relying on private
judgment and the “_influxus spiritus_”; he reverts to
the “outward Word” in his controversy with Zwingli and
corroborates it by tradition. What authority, apart
from the Church’s, can lay doubts to rest? The object
of faith: Many articles, or only one? Protestants on
Luther’s self-contradictions; the end of Luther’s
“formal principle” _pages_ 387-420
2. LUTHER AS A BIBLE EXPOSITOR.
Some characteristic of Luther’s exegesis; his respect
for the literal sense; all his reading of the Bible
coloured by his theory of Justification; his exegesis
in the light of his early development _pages_ 420-431
3. THE SOLA FIDES. JUSTIFICATION AND ASSURANCE OF SALVATION.
Connection between the “material principle”
(justification) and the “formal principle” (Scripture
as the only rule) of Luther’s theology, and between
the “material principle” and the theory of the
worthlessness of works and of God’s being the sole real
agent; the theory at variance with the teaching of St.
Augustine. The need of struggling to feel entirely
certain of our personal justification; Luther’s own
failure to come up to his standard; present-day
Protestants on Luther’s main Article “on which the
Church stands or falls” _pages_ 431-449
4. GOOD WORKS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE.
The Church’s teaching; origin of Luther’s new ideas to
be sought in his early dislike for the “Little Saints”
and their doings; the perils of his theory; on the fear
of God as a motive for action. Augustine summoned as a
witness on Luther’s behalf; the witness discarded by
Melanchthon and the Pomeranians; Augustine’s real view;
the new doctrine judged by 16th-century Protestants;
Luther’s utterances in favour of good works; what
charity meant in the Middle Ages; Luther on the
hospitals of Florence _pages_ 449-481
5. OTHER INNOVATIONS IN RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE.
Luther no systematic theologian. The _regula fidei_;
Harnack on Luther’s inconsequence; Paulsen on “Pope
Luther.” Luther’s teaching on the sacraments; on
infant-baptism and the faith it requires; liberal
Protestants appeal to his principles against the
“magical” theory of Baptism; penance an extension of
baptism. Luther’s teaching on the Supper; Communion
merely a means of fortifying faith; Impanation versus
Transubstantiation; theory of the omnipresence of
Christ’s body; Luther’s stead-fastness in his belief
in the Real Presence. Attitude towards the invocation
of the Saints, particularly of the Blessed Virgin. His
views on Purgatory _pages_ 482-506
6. LUTHER’S ATTACK ON THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS.
The place of this sacrifice in the Church previous
to Luther’s time; Luther’s first attacks; the Mass
suppressed at Wittenberg; his “Von dem Grewel der
Stillmesse”; Eck’s reply; Luther undertakes to prove
that the priests’ attachment to the Mass is based
merely on pecuniary grounds; connection between his
attack on the Mass and his theory as a whole. His work
on the “Winkle-Mass”; his dispute with the devil; his
defence of his work on the “Winkle-Mass”; Cochlæus
replies; Luther’s references to the Mass in his
familiar talks, and in his Schmalkalden “Artickel”; a
profession of faith in the Real Presence _pages_ 506-527
VOL. IV.
THE REFORMER (II)
LUTHER
CHAPTER XXI
PRINCELY MARRIAGES
1. Luther and Henry VIII of England. Bigamy instead of Divorce
IN King Henry the Eighth’s celebrated matrimonial controversy the Roman
See by its final decision was energetically to vindicate the cause
of justice, in spite of the fear that this might lead to the loss of
England to Catholicism. The considered judgment was clear and definite:
Rather than countenance the King’s divorce from Queen Catherine, or
admit bigamy as lawful, the Roman Church was prepared to see the
falling away of the King and larger portion of the realm.[1]
In the summer, 1531, Luther was drawn into the controversy raging round
the King’s marriage, by an agent of King Henry’s. Robert Barnes, an
English Doctor of Divinity who had apostatised from the Church and was
residing at Wittenberg, requested of Luther, probably at the King’s
instigation, an opinion regarding the lawfulness of his sovereign’s
divorce.
To Luther it was clear enough that there was no possibility of
questioning the validity of Catherine’s marriage. It rightly appeared
to him impossible that the Papal dispensation, by virtue of which
Catherine of Aragon had married the King after having been the spouse
of his deceased brother, should be represented as sufficient ground for
a divorce. This view he expressed with praiseworthy frankness in the
written answer he gave Barnes.[2]
At the same time, however, Luther pointed out to the King a loophole
by which he might be able to succeed in obtaining the object of his
desire; by this concession, unfortunately, he branded his action as
a pandering to the passions of an adulterous King. At the conclusion
of his memorandum to Barnes he has the following: “Should the Queen
be unable to prevent the divorce, she must accept the great evil and
most insulting injustice as a cross, but not in any way acquiesce in
it or consent to it. Better were it for her to allow the King to wed
another Queen, after the example of the Patriarchs, who, in the ages
previous to the law, had many wives; but she must not consent to being
excluded from her conjugal rights or to forfeiting the title of Queen
of England.”[3]
It has been already pointed out that Luther, in consequence of his
one-sided study of the Old Testament, had accustomed himself more
and more to regard bigamy as something lawful.[4] That, however, he
had so far ever given his formal consent to it in any particular
instance there is no proof. In the case of Henry VIII, Luther felt
less restraint than usual. His plain hint at bigamy as a way out of
the difficulty was intended as a counsel (“_suasimus_”). Hence we can
understand why he was anxious that his opinion should not be made
too public.[5] When, in the same year (1531), he forwarded to the
Landgrave of Hesse what purported to be a copy of the memorandum, the
incriminating passage was carefully omitted.[6]
Melanchthon, too, had intervened in the affair, and had gone
considerably further than Luther in recommending recourse to bigamy
and in answering possible objections to polygamy.
In a memorandum of Aug. 23, Melanchthon declared that the King was
entirely justified in seeking to obtain the male heirs with whom
Catherine had failed to present him; this was demanded by the interests
of the State. He endeavours to show that polygamy is not forbidden by
Divine law; in order to avoid scandal it was, however, desirable that
the King “should request the Pope to sanction his bigamy, permission
being granted readily enough at Rome.” Should the Pope refuse to give
the dispensation, then the King was simply and of his own authority to
have recourse to bigamy, because in that case the Pope was not doing
his duty, for he was “bound in charity to grant this dispensation.”[7]
“Although I should be loath to allow polygamy generally, yet, in the
present case, on account of the great advantage to the kingdom and
perhaps to the King’s conscience, I would say: The King may, with a
good conscience (‘_tutissimum est regi_’), take a second wife while
retaining the first, because it is certain that polygamy is not
forbidden by the Divine law, nor is it so very unusual.” Melanchthon’s
ruthless manner of proceeding undoubtedly had a great influence on the
other Wittenbergers, even though it cannot be maintained, as has been
done, that he, and not Luther, was the originator of the whole theory;
there are too many clear and definite earlier statements of Luther’s
in favour of polygamy to disprove this. Still, it is true that the lax
opinion broached by Melanchthon in favour of the King of England played
a great part later in the matter of the bigamy of the Landgrave of
Hesse.[8]
In the same year, however, there appeared a work on matrimony by the
Lutheran theologian Johann Brenz in which, speaking generally and
without reference to this particular case, he expressed himself very
strongly against the lawfulness of polygamy. “The secular authorities,”
so Brenz insists, “must not allow any of their subjects to have two or
more wives,” they must, on the contrary, put into motion the “penalties
of the Imperial Laws” against polygamy; no pastor may “bless or ratify”
such marriages, but is bound to excommunicate the offenders.[9] Strange
to say, the work appeared with a Preface by Luther in which, however,
he neither praises nor blames this opinion.[10]
The Strasburg theologians, Bucer and Capito, as well as the Constance
preacher, Ambrosius Blaurer, also stood up for the lawfulness of
bigamy. When, however, this reached the ears of the Swiss theologians,
Œcolampadius, in a letter of Aug. 20, exclaimed: “They were inclined to
consent to the King’s bigamy! But far be it from us to hearken more to
Mohammed in this matter than to Christ!”[11]
In spite of the alluring hint thrown out at Wittenberg, the adulterous
King, as everyone knows, did not resort to bigamy. It was Henry the
Eighth’s wish to be rid of his wife, and, having had her removed, he
regarded himself as divorced. After the King had repudiated Catherine,
Luther told his friends: “The Universities [i.e. those which sided
with the English King] have declared that there must be a divorce. We,
however, and the University of Louvain, decided differently.... We
[viz. Luther and Melanchthon] advised the Englishman that it would be
better for him to take a concubine than to distract his country and
nation; yet in the end he put her away.”[12]
When Clement VII declared the first marriage to be valid and
indissoluble, and also refused to countenance any bigamy, Henry VIII
retorted by breaking with the Church of Rome, carrying his country
with him. For a while Clement had hesitated on the question of bigamy,
since, in view of Cardinal Cajetan’s opinion to the contrary, he
found it difficult to convince himself that a dispensation could not
be given, and because he was personally inclined to be indulgent
and friendly; finally, however, he gave Bennet, the English envoy,
clearly to understand that the dispensation was not in his power to
grant.[13] That he himself was not sufficiently versed in Canon Law,
the Pope repeatedly admitted. “It will never be possible to allege the
attitude of Clement VII as any excuse for the Hessian affair” (Ehses).
It is equally impossible to trace the suggestion of bigamy back to
the opinions prevailing in mediæval Catholicism.[14] No mediæval
pope or confessor can be instanced who sanctioned bigamy, while
there are numbers of theologians who deny the Pope’s power to grant
such dispensations; many even describe this negative opinion as the
“_sententia communis_.”[15]
Of Cardinal Cajetan, the only theologian of note on the opposite
side (see above, vol. iii., p. 261), W. Köhler remarks, alluding
particularly to the recent researches of N. Paulus: “It never
entered Cardinal Cajetan’s head to deny that the ecclesiastical
law categorically forbids polygamy.”[16] Further: “Like Paulus, we
may unhesitatingly admit that, _in this case_, it would have been
better for Luther had he had behind him the guiding authority of the
Church.”[17]
* * * * *
Henry VIII, as was only natural, sought to make the best use of the
friendship of the Wittenberg professors and Princes of the Schmalkalden
League, against Rome and the Emperor. He despatched an embassy, though
his overtures were not as successful as he might have wished.
We may describe briefly the facts of the case.
The Schmalkalden Leaguers, from the very inception of the League, had
been seeking the support both of England and of France. In 1535 they
made a determined effort to bring about closer relations with Henry
VIII, and, at the Schmalkalden meeting, the latter made it known that
he was not unwilling to “join the Christian League of the Electors and
Princes.” Hereupon he was offered the “title and standing of patron
and protector of the League.” The political negotiations nevertheless
miscarried, owing to the King’s excessive demands for the event of an
attack on his Kingdom.[18] The project of an alliance with the King
of Denmark, the Duke of Prussia, and with Saxony and Hesse, for the
purpose of a war against the Emperor, also came to nothing.
In these negotiations the Leaguers wanted first of all to reach an
agreement with Henry in the matter of religion, whereas the latter
insisted that political considerations should have the first place.
In the summer, 1535, Robert Barnes, the English plenipotentiary, was
raising great and exaggerated hopes in Luther’s breast of Henry’s
making common cause with the Wittenberg reformers.
Into his plans Luther entered with great zest, and consented to
Melanchthon’s being sent to England as his representative, for the
purpose of further negotiations. As we now know from a letter of
recommendation of Sep. 12, 1535, first printed in 1894, he recommended
Barnes to the Chancellor Brück for an interview with the Elector,
and requested permission for Melanchthon to undertake the journey to
England. Joyfully he points out that “now the King offers to accept
the Evangel, to join the League of our Princes and to allow our
‘_Apologia_’ entry into his Kingdom.” Such an opportunity must not
be allowed to slip, for “the Papists will be in high dudgeon.” Quite
possibly God may have something in view.[19]
In England hopes were entertained that these favourable offers would
induce a more friendly attitude towards the question of Henry’s
divorce. Concerning this Luther merely says in the letter cited: “In
the matter of the royal marriage, the ‘_suspensio_’ has already been
decided,” without going into any further particulars; he, however,
reserves the case to be dealt with by the theologians exclusively.
In August, 1535, Melanchthon had dedicated one of his writings to
the King of England, and had, on this occasion, lavished high praise
on him. It was probably about this time that the King sent the
presents to Wittenberg, to which Catherine Bora casually alludes in
the Table-Talk. “Philip received several gifts from the Englishman,
in all five hundred pieces of gold; for our own part we got at least
fifty.”[20]
Melanchthon took no offence at the cruel execution of Sir Thomas More
or at the other acts of violence already perpetrated by Henry VIII; on
the contrary, he gave his approval to the deeds of the royal tyrant,
and described it as a commandment of God “to use strong measures
against fanatical and godless men.”[21] The sanguinary action of the
English tyrant led Luther to express the wish, that a similar fate
might befall the heads of the Catholic Church at Rome. In the very
year of Bishop Fisher’s execution he wrote to Melanchthon: “It is easy
to lose our tempers when we see what traitors, thieves, robbers, nay
devils incarnate the Cardinals, the Popes and their Legates are. Alas
that there are not more Kings of England to put them to death!”[22] He
also refers to the alleged horrors practised by the Pope’s tools in
plundering the Church, and asks: “How can the Princes and Lords put up
with it?”
In Dec., 1535, a convention of the Schmalkalden Leaguers, at
Melanchthon’s instance, begged the envoys despatched by Henry, who
were on their way to Wittenberg, to induce their master to promote the
Confession of Augsburg--unless, indeed, as they added with unusual
consideration, “they and the King should be unanimous in thinking that
something in the Confession might be improved upon or made more in
accordance with the Word of God.”[23]
Just as in the advances made by the King to Wittenberg “the main
point had been to obtain a favourable pronouncement from the German
theologians in the matter of his divorce,” so too in consenting to
discuss the Confession of Augsburg he was actuated by the thought that
this would lead to a discussion on the Papal power and the question
of the divorce, i.e. to those points which the King had so much at
heart.[24]
On the arrival immediately after of the envoys at Wittenberg they
had the satisfaction of learning from Luther and his circle, that
the theologians had already changed their minds in the King’s favour
concerning the lawfulness of marriage with a brother’s widow. Owing to
the influence of Osiander, whom Henry VIII had won over to his side,
they now had come to regard such marriages as contrary to the natural
moral law. Hence Henry’s new marriage might be considered valid. They
were not, however, as yet ready to draw this last inference from the
invalidity of the previous marriage between the King and Catherine.[25]
Luther, however, became more and more convinced that marriage with a
brother’s widow was invalid; in 1542, for instance, on the assumption
of the invalidity of such a union, he unhesitatingly annulled the
marriage of a certain George Schud, as a “devilish abomination”
(“_abominatio diaboli_”).[26]
The spokesman of the English mission, Bishop Edward Fox, demanded from
Luther the admission that the King had separated from his first wife
“on very just grounds.” Luther, however, would only agree that he
had done so “on very many grounds.” He said later, in conversation,
that his insistence on this verbal nicety had cost him three hundred
Gulden, which he would have received from England in the event of
his compliance.[27] He cannot indeed be accused of having been,
from ecclesiastico-political motives, too hasty in gratifying the
King’s demands in the matter of the divorce. Yet, on the other hand,
it is not unlikely that the desire to pave the way for a practical
understanding was one of the motives for his mode of action. His
previous outspoken declarations against any dissolution of the Royal
marriage compelled him to assume an attitude not too strongly at
variance with his earlier opinion.
After the new marriage had taken place negotiations with England
continued, principally with the object of securing such acceptance
of the new doctrine as might lead to a politico-religious alliance
between that country and the Schmalkalden Leaguers. Luther, however,
stubbornly refused to concede anything to the King in the matter of
his chief doctrines, for instance, regarding Justification or the
rejection of the Mass.
The articles agreed upon at the lengthy conferences held during the
early months of 1536--and made public only in 1905 (see above, p. 9,
n. 4)--failed to satisfy the King, although they displayed a very
conciliatory spirit. Melanchthon outdid himself in his endeavour to
render the Wittenberg teaching acceptable. “It is true that the
main points of faith were not sacrificed,” remarks the discoverer
and editor of the articles in question, “but the desire to please
noticeable in their form, even in such questions as those concerning
the importance of good works, monasteries, etc., is nevertheless
surprising.”[28] Luther himself, in a letter of April 29, 1536, to
the Electoral Vice-Chancellor Burkhard, spoke of the concessions
made in these articles as the final limit; to go further would be
to concede to the King of England what had been refused to the Pope
and the Emperor; “at Augsburg [in 1530] we might have come to terms
more easily with the Pope and the Emperor, nay, perhaps we might do
so even now.” To enter into an ecclesiastico-political alliance with
the English would, he considers, be “dangerous,” for the Schmalkalden
Leaguers “were not all of one mind”; hence the (theological) articles
ought first to be accepted; the League was, however, a secular matter
and therefore he would beg the “beloved Lords and my Gracious Master
to consider” whether they could accept it without a previous agreement
being reached on the point of theology.[29]
Though Luther and the Princes set great store on the projected
alliance, on account of the increase of strength it would have brought
the German Evangelicals, yet their hopes were to be shattered, for the
articles above referred to did not find acceptance in England. Luther
was later on to declare that everything had come to nought because
King Henry wished to be head of the Protestants in Germany, which the
Elector of Saxony would not permit: “Let the devil take the great
Lords! This rogue (‘_is nebulo_’) wanted to be proclaimed head of our
religion, but to this the Elector would in no wise agree; we did not
even know what sort of belief he had.”[30] Probably the King demanded a
paramount influence in the Schmalkalden League, and the German Princes
were loath to be deprived of the direction of affairs.
After all hopes of an agreement had vanished Henry VIII made no secret
of his antipathy for the Lutheran teaching.
The quondam Defender of the Faith even allowed himself to be carried
away to acts of bloodshed. In 1540 he caused Luther’s friend, Robert
Barnes, the agent already referred to, to be burnt at the stake as a
heretic. Barnes had adopted the Lutheran doctrine of Justification. It
was not on this account alone, however, that he was obnoxious to the
King, but also because the latter had grown weary of Anne of Cleves,
whom Barnes and Thomas Cromwell, the King’s favourite, had given him
as a fourth consort, after Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour. Cromwell,
though not favourably disposed to Lutheranism, was executed a few days
before. On April 9, 1536, Luther had written to Cromwell a very polite
letter, couched in general terms,[31] in answer to a courteous missive
from that statesman handed to him by Barnes. From Luther’s letter
we see that Cromwell “had been described to him in too favourable
a light,”[32] as though predisposed to the Lutheran doctrine or to
regard Luther as a divinely sent teacher. Luther deceived himself if
he fancied that Cromwell was ready to “work for the cause”; the latter
remained as unfriendly to Lutheranism proper as the King himself.
In the year of Barnes’s execution Melanchthon wrote the letter to Veit
Dietrich in which he expresses the pious wish, that God would send a
brave murderer to bring the King to the end he deserved.[33]
Luther, on his side, declared: “The devil himself rides astride this
King”; “I am glad that we have no part in his blasphemy.” He boasted,
so Luther says, of being head of the Church of England, a title which
no bishop, much less a King, had any right to, more particularly one
who with his crew had “vexed and tortured Christ and His Church.”[34]
In 1540 Luther spoke sarcastically of the King’s official title:
“Under Christ the supreme head on earth of the English Church,”[35]
remarking, that, in that case, “even the angels are excluded.”[36]
Of Melanchthon’s dedication of some of his books to the King, Luther
says, that this had been of little service. “In future I am not going
to dedicate any of my books to anyone. It brought Philip no good in
the case of the bishop [Albert of Mayence], of the Englishman, or of
the Hessian [the Landgrave Philip].”[37] Still more fierce became his
hatred and disappointment when he found the King consorting with his
sworn enemies, Duke George, and Albert, Elector of Mayence.[38] When
he heard the news of Barnes having been cast into prison, he said:
“This King wants to make himself God. He lays down articles of faith
and forbids marriage under pain of death, a thing which even the Pope
scrupled to do. I am something of a prophet and, as what I prophesy
comes true, I shall refrain from saying more.”[39]
Luther never expressed any regret regarding his readiness to humour the
King’s lusts or regarding his suggestion of bigamy.
The Landgrave Philip of Hesse, however, referred directly to the
proposal of bigamy made to the King of England, when he requested
Luther’s consent to his own project of taking a second wife. The
Landgrave had got to hear of the proposal in spite of the unlucky
passage having been struck out of the deed.
The history of the Hessian bigamy is an incident which throws a curious
light on Luther’s exceptional indulgence towards princely patrons of
the Evangel in Germany.
2. The Bigamy of Philip of Hesse
As early as 1526 Philip of Hesse, whose conduct was far from being
conspicuous for morality, had submitted to Luther the question whether
Christians were allowed to have more than one wife. The Wittenberg
Professor gave a reply tallying with his principles as already
described;[40] instead of pointing out clearly that such a thing was
divinely forbidden to all Christians, was not to be dispensed from by
any earthly authority, and that such extra marriages would be entirely
invalid, Luther refused to admit unconditionally the invalidity of such
unions. Such marriages, he stated, gave scandal to Christians, “for
without due cause and necessity even the old Patriarchs did not take
more than one wife”; it was incumbent that we should be able “to appeal
to the Word of God,” but no such Word existed in favour of polygamy,
“by which the same could be proved to be well pleasing to God in the
case of Christians”; “hence I am unable to recommend it, but would
rather dissuade from it, especially for Christians, unless some great
necessity existed, for instance were the wife to contract leprosy
or become otherwise unfit.”[41] It is not clear whether Philip was
interested in the matter for personal reasons, or simply because some
of his subjects were believers in polygamy.
Luther’s communication, far from diverting the Prince from his project,
could but serve to make him regard it as feasible; provided that the
“great necessity” obtained and that he had “the Word of God on his
side,” then the step could “not be prevented.” By dint of a judicious
interpretation of Scripture and with expert theological aid, the
obstacles might easily be removed.
The Hessian Prince also became acquainted with Luther’s statements on
bigamy in his Commentary on Genesis published in the following year.
To them the Landgrave Philip appealed expressly in 1540; the preacher
Anton Corvinus having suggested that he should deny having committed
bigamy, he replied indignantly: “Since you are so afraid of it, why do
you not suppress what Luther wrote more than ten years ago on Genesis;
did he and others not write publicly concerning bigamy: ‘Advise it I
do not, forbid it I cannot’? If you are allowed to write thus of it
publicly, you must expect that people will act up to your teaching.”[42]
The question became a pressing one for Luther, and began to cast a
shadow over his wayward and utterly untraditional interpretation of the
Bible, when, in 1539, the Landgrave resolved to take as an additional
wife, besides Christina the daughter of George of Saxony, who had now
grown distasteful to him, the more youthful Margeret von der Sale. From
Luther Margeret’s mother desired a favourable pronouncement, in order
to be able with a good conscience to give her consent to her daughter’s
wedding.
_Philip Seeks the Permission of Wittenberg._
Early in Nov., 1539, Gereon Sailer, an Augsburg physician famous for
his skill in handling venereal cases, who had treated the Landgrave
at Cassel, was sent by Philip to Bucer at Strasburg to instruct the
latter to bring the matter before the theologians of Wittenberg. Sailer
was a friend of the innovations, and Bucer was highly esteemed by the
Landgrave as a theologian and clever diplomatist.
Bucer was at first sorely troubled in conscience and hesitated to
undertake the commission; Sailer reported to the Landgrave that, on
hearing of the plan, he had been “quite horrified” and had objected
“the scandal such an innovation in a matter of so great importance and
difficulty might cause among the weak followers of the Evangel.”[43]
After thinking the matter over for three days Bucer, however, agreed to
visit the Landgrave on Nov. 16 and receive his directions. A copy of
the secret and elaborate instructions given him by Philip concerning
the appeal he was to make to Luther still exists in the handwriting of
Simon Bing, the Hessian Secretary, in the Marburg Archives together
with several old copies,[44] as also the original rough draft in
Philip’s own hand.[45] The envoy first betook himself to the meeting of
the Schmalkalden Leaguers, held at Arnstadt on Nov. 20, to confer upon
a new mission to be sent to England; on Dec. 4 he was at Weimar with
the Elector of Saxony and on the 9th he had reached Wittenberg.
The assenting answer given by Luther and Melanchthon bears the date
of the following day.[46] It is therefore quite true that the matter
was settled “in haste,” as indeed the text of the reply states. Bucer
doubtless did his utmost to prevent the theologians from having
recourse to subterfuge or delay.
The above-mentioned instructions contain a sad account of the “dire
necessity” which seemed to justify the second marriage: The Landgrave
would otherwise be unable to lead a moral life; he was urged on by
deep distress of conscience; not merely did he endure temptations of
the flesh beyond all measure, but, so runs his actual confession,
he was quite unable to refrain from “fornication, unchastity and
adultery.”[47] The confession dealt with matters which were notorious.
It also contains the admission, that he had not remained true to his
wife for long, in fact not for more than “three weeks”; on account
of his sense of sin he had “not been to the Sacrament.” As a matter
of fact he had abstained from Communion from 1526 to 1539, viz. for
thirteen years, and until his last attack of the venereal disease.
But were the scruples of conscience thus detailed to the Wittenbergers
at all real? Recently they have been characterised as the “outcome of a
bodily wreck.”
“I am unable to practise self-restraint,” Philip of Hesse had declared
on another occasion, “I am forced to commit fornication or worse,
with women.” His sister Elisabeth had already advised him to take a
concubine in place of so many prostitutes. In all probability Philip
would have abducted Margaret von der Sale had he not hoped to obtain
her in marriage through the intervention of her relations and with
Luther’s consent. A Protestant historian has recently pointed this out
when dealing with Philip’s alleged “distress of conscience.”[48]
Bucer was well able to paint in dismal hues the weakness of his
princely client; he pointed out, “how the Landgrave, owing to his
wife’s deficiencies, was unable to remain chaste; how he had previously
lived so and so, which was neither good nor Evangelical, especially
in one of the mainstays of the party.”[49] In that very year Philip
of Hesse had, as a matter of fact, been ailing from a certain malady
brought upon him by his excesses; he himself spoke of it as a “severe
attack of the French sickness [syphilis], which is the penalty of an
immoral life.”[50]
True to his instructions, Bucer went on to say that the Landgrave
had firmly “resolved” to make use against his unchastity--which he
neither could nor would refrain from with his present wife--of “such
means as God permitted and did not forbid,” viz. to wed a second wife.
The two Wittenbergers had perforce to listen while Bucer, as the
mouthpiece of the Landgrave, put forth as the grounds of his client’s
firm resolve the very proofs from Scripture which they themselves had
adduced in favour of polygamy; they were informed that, according to
the tenor of a memorandum, “both Luther and Philip had counselled
the King of England not to divorce his first wife, but rather to
take another.”[51] It was accordingly the Landgrave’s desire that
they should “give testimony” that his deed was not unjust, and that
they should “make known in the press and from the pulpit what was
the right course to pursue in such circumstances”; should they have
scruples about doing this for fear of scandal or evil consequences,
they were at least to give a declaration in writing: “That were I to
do it secretly, yet I should not offend God, but that they regard it
as a real marriage, and would meanwhile devise ways and means whereby
the matter might be brought openly before the world”; otherwise, the
instructions proceeded, the “wench” whom the Prince was about to take
to himself might complain of being looked upon as an improper person;
as “nothing can ever be kept secret,” “great scandal” would indeed
arise were not the true state of the case known. Besides, he fully
intended to retain his present wife and to consider her as a rightful
spouse, and her children alone were to be the “lawful princes of the
land”; nor would he ask for any more wives beyond this second one. The
Landgrave even piously reminds Luther and Melanchthon “not to heed
overmuch the opinion of the world, and human respect, but to look to
God and what He has commanded or forbidden, bound or loosened”; he,
for his part, was determined not to “remain any longer in the bonds of
the devil.”
Philip was careful also to remind them that, if, after putting
into execution his project, he was able to “live and die with a
good conscience,” he would be “all the more free to fight for the
Evangelical cause as befitted a Christian”; “whatever they [Luther and
Melanchthon] shall tell me is right and Christian--whether it refers
to monastic property or to other matters--that they will find me ready
to carry out at their behest.” On the other hand, as an urgent motive
for giving their consent to his plan, he broadly hinted, that, “should
he not get any help from them” he would, “by means of an intermediary,
seek permission of the Emperor, even though it should cost me a lot
of money”; the Emperor would in all likelihood do nothing without
a “dispensation from the Pope”; but in such a matter of conscience
neither the Pope nor the Emperor were of any great account, since he
was convinced that his “design was approved by God”; still, their
consent (the Pope and Emperor’s) would help to overcome “human
respect”; hence, should he be unable to obtain “consolation from
this party [the Evangelical],” then the sanction of the other party
was “not to be despised.” Concerning the request he felt impelled
to address to the Emperor, he says, in words which seem to convey
a threat, that although he would not for any reason on earth prove
untrue to the Evangel, or aid in the onslaught on the Evangelical
cause, yet, the Imperial party might “use and bind” him to do things
“which would not be to the advantage of the cause.” Hence, it was in
their interest to assist him in order that he might “not be forced to
seek help in quarters where he had no wish to look for it.”
After again stating that he “took his stand on the Word of God”
he concludes with a request for the desired “Christian, written”
testimony, “in order that thereby I may amend my life, go to the
Sacrament with a good conscience and further all the affairs of our
religion with greater freedom and contentment. Given at Milsungen on
the Sunday _post Catharine anno etc._ 39.”
The Wittenberg theologians now found themselves in a quandary. Luther
says: “We were greatly taken aback at such a declaration on account
of the frightful scandal which would follow.”[52] Apart from other
considerations, the Landgrave had already been married sixteen years
and had a number of sons and daughters by his wife; the execution of
the project would also necessarily lead to difficulties at the Courts
of the Duke of Saxony and of the Elector, and also, possibly, at that
of the Duke of Würtemberg. They were unaware that Margaret von Sale
had already been chosen as a second wife, that Philip had secured the
consent of his wife Christina, and that the way for a settlement with
the bride’s mother had already been paved.[53]
The view taken by Rockwell, viz. that the form of the memorandum to be
signed by Luther and Melanchthon had already been drawn up in Hesse
by order of Philip, is, however, erroneous; nor was the document they
signed a copy of such a draft.[54]
It is much more likely that the lengthy favourable reply of the
Wittenbergers was composed by Melanchthon. It was signed with the
formula: “Wittenberg, Wednesday after St. Nicholas, 1539. Your Serene
Highness’s willing and obedient servants [and the signatures] Martinus
Luther, Philippus Melanchthon, Martinus Bucerus.”[55] The document is
now among the Marburg archives.
Characteristically enough the idea that the Landgrave is, and must
remain, the protector of the new religious system appears at the
commencement as well as at the close of the document. The signatories
begin by congratulating the Prince, that God “has again helped him out
of sickness,” and pray that heaven may preserve him, for the “poor
Church of Christ is small and forsaken, and indeed stands in need of
pious lords and governors”; at the end God is again implored to guide
and direct him; above all, the Landgrave must have nothing to do with
the Imperialists.
The rest of the document, apart from pious admonitions, consists of
the declaration, that they give their “testimony that, in a case
of necessity,” they were “unable to condemn” bigamy, and that,
accordingly, his “conscience may be at rest” should the Landgrave
“utilise” the Divine dispensation. In so many words they sanction the
request submitted to them, because “what was permitted concerning
matrimony in the Mosaic Law was not prohibited in the Gospel.”
Concerning the circumstances of the request they, however, declined
“to give anything in print,” because otherwise the matter would be
“understood and accepted as a general law and from it [i.e. a general
sanction of polygamy] much grave scandal and complaint would arise.”
The Landgrave’s wish that they should speak of the case from the
pulpit, is also passed over in silence. Nor did they reply to his
invitation to them to consider by what ways and means the matter
might be brought publicly before the world. On the contrary, they
appear to be intent on burying in discreet silence a marriage so
distasteful to them. It even looks as though they were simple enough
to think that such concealment would be possible, even in the long
run. What they fear is, above all, the consequences of its becoming
common property. In no way, so they declare, was any universal law,
any “public precedent” possible, whereby a plurality of wives might
be made lawful; according to its original institution marriage had
signified “the union of two persons only, not of more”; but, in view
of the examples of the Old Covenant, they “were unable to condemn it,”
if, in a quite exceptional case, “recourse were had to a dispensation
... and a man, with the advice of his pastor, took another wife, not
with the object of introducing a law, but to satisfy his need.”
As for instances of such permission having been given in the Church,
they were able to quote only two: First, the purely legendary case
of Count Ernest of Gleichen--then still regarded as historical--who,
during his captivity among the Turks in 1228, had married his
master’s daughter, and, then, after his escape, and after having
learnt that his wife was still living, applied for and obtained a
Papal dispensation for bigamy; secondly, the alleged practice in
cases of prolonged and incurable illness, such as leprosy, to permit,
occasionally, the man to take another wife. The latter, however,
can only refer to Luther’s own practice, or to that followed by
the teachers of the new faith.[56] In 1526 Luther had informed the
Landgrave that this was allowable in case of “dire necessity,” “for
instance, where the wife was leprous, or had been otherwise rendered
unfit.”[57] Acting upon this theory he was soon to give a decision in
a particular case;[58] in May or June, 1540, he even stated that he
had several times, when one of the parties had contracted leprosy,
privately sanctioned the bigamy of the healthy party, whether man or
woman.[59]
They are at great pains to impress on the Landgrave that he must
“take every possible care that this matter be not made public in the
world,” otherwise the dispensation would be taken as a precedent by
others, and also would be made to serve as a “weapon against them
and the Evangel.” “Hence, seeing how great scandal would be caused,
we humbly beg your Serene Highness to take this matter into serious
consideration.”
They also admonish him “to avoid fornication and adultery”; they had
learnt with “great sorrow” that the Landgrave “was burdened with
such evil lusts, of which the consequences to be feared were the
Divine punishment, illness and other perils”; such conduct, outside
of matrimony, was “no small sin”--as they proceed to prove from
Scripture; they rejoiced, however, that the Prince felt “pain and
remorse” for what he had done. Although monogamy was in accordance
with the original institution of marriage, yet it was their duty to
tell him that, “seeing that your Serene Highness has informed us that
you are not able to refrain from an immoral life, we would rather that
your Highness should be in a better state before God, and live with a
good conscience for your Highness’s own salvation and the good of your
land and people. And, as your Serene Highness has determined to take
another wife, we consider that this should be kept secret, no less
than the dispensation, viz. that your Serene Highness and the lady in
question, and a few other trustworthy persons, should be apprised of
your Highness’s conscience and state of mind in the way of confession.”
“From this,” they continue, “no great gossip or scandal will result,
for it is not unusual for Princes to keep ‘_concubinas_,’ and, though
not everyone is aware of the circumstances, yet reasonable people will
bear this in mind and be better pleased with such a manner of life
than with adultery or dissolute and immoral living.”
Yet, once again, they point out that, were the bigamy to become
a matter of public knowledge, the opinion would gain ground that
polygamy was perfectly lawful to all, and that everyone might follow
the precedent; the result would also be that the enemies of the
Evangel would cry out that the Evangelicals were not one whit better
than the Anabaptists, who were likewise polygamists and, in fact, just
the same as the Turks. Further, the great Lords would be the first
to give the example to private persons to do likewise. As it was,
the Hessian aristocracy was bad enough, and many of its members were
strongly opposed to the Evangel on earthly grounds; these would become
still more hostile were the bigamy to become publicly known. Lastly,
the Prince must bear in mind the injury to his “good name” which the
tidings of his act would cause amongst foreign potentates.
A paragraph appended to the memorandum is, according to recent
investigation, from Luther’s own pen and, at any rate, is quite in
his style.[60] It refers to Philip’s threat to seek the Emperor’s
intervention, a step which would not have been at all to the taste
of the Wittenbergers, for it was obvious that this would cripple
Philip’s action as Protector of the Evangelicals. This menace had
plainly excited and troubled Luther. He declares in the concluding
sentences, that the Emperor before whom the Prince threatened to lay
the case, was a man who looked upon adultery as a small sin; there was
great reason to fear that he shared the faith of the Pope, Cardinals,
Italians, Spaniards and Saracens; he would pay no heed to the Prince’s
request but only use him as a cat’s-paw. They had found him out to be
a false and faithless man, who had forgotten the true German spirit.
The Emperor, as the Landgrave might see for himself, did not trouble
himself about any Christian concerns, left the Turks unopposed and was
only interested in fomenting plots in Germany for the increase of the
Burgundian power. Hence it was to be hoped that pious German Princes
would have nothing to do with his faithless practices.
Such are the contents of Luther and Melanchthon’s written reply. Bucer,
glad of the success achieved, at once proceeded with the memorandum to
the Electoral Court.
This theological document, the like of which had never been seen,
is unparalleled in the whole of Church history. Seldom indeed has
exegetical waywardness been made to serve a more momentous purpose.
The Elector, Johann Frederick of Saxony, was, at a later date, quite
horrified, as he said, at “a business the like of which had not been
heard of for many ages.”[61] Sidonie, the youthful Duchess of Saxony,
complained subsequently, that, “since the Birth of Christ, no one had
done such a thing.”[62] Bucer’s fears had not been groundless “of the
scandal of such an innovation in a matter of so great importance and
difficulty among the weak followers of the Evangel.”[63]
Besides this, the sanction of bigamy given in the document in question
is treated almost as though it denoted the commencement of a more
respectable mode of life incapable of giving any “particular scandal”;
for amongst the common people the newly wedded wife would be looked
upon as a concubine, and such it was quite usual for Princes to
keep. Great stress is laid on the fact that the secret bigamy would
prevent adultery and other immorality. Apart, however, from these
circumstances, the sanctioning, largely on the strength of political
considerations, of an exception to the universal New-Testament
prohibition, is painful. Anyone, however desirous of finding
extenuating circumstances for Luther’s decision, can scarcely fail
to be shocked at this fact. The only excuse that might be advanced
would be, that Philip, by his determination to take this step and
his threat of becoming reconciled to the Emperor, exercised pressure
tantamount to violence, and that the weight of years, his scorn for the
Church’s matrimonial legislation and his excessive regard for his own
interpretation of the Old Testament helped Luther to signify his assent
to a plan so portentous.
_The Bigamy is Consummated and made Public._
The object of Bucer’s hasty departure for the Court of the Elector
Johann Frederick of Saxony was to dispose him favourably towards the
impending marriage. In accordance with his instructions from Hesse, he
was to submit to this Prince the same arguments which had served him
with the two Wittenbergers, for the superscription of the instructions
ran: “What Dr. Martin Bucer is to demand of D. Martin Luther and
Philip Melanchthon, and, should he see fit, after that also of the
Elector.”[64] In addition to this he had in the meantime received
special instructions for this delicate mission to Weimar.[65]
The Landgrave looked upon an understanding with the Elector as
necessary, not merely on account of his relationship with him and out
of consideration for Christina his first wife, who belonged to the
House of Saxony, but also on account of the ecclesiastico-political
alliance in which they stood, which made the Elector’s support seem to
him quite as essential as the sanction of the Wittenberg theologians.
Bucer treated with Johann Frederick at Weimar on 15 or 16 Dec. and
reached some sort of understanding, as we learn from the Elector’s
written reply to the Landgrave bearing the latter date. Bucer
represents him as saying: If it is impossible to remove the scandal
caused by the Landgrave’s life in any other way, he would ask, as a
brother, that the plan should not be executed in any other way than
“that contained in our--Dr. Luther’s, Philip’s and my own--writing”;
upon this he was unable to improve; he was also ready to “lend him
fraternal assistance in every way” should any complications arise from
this step.[66] In return, in accordance with the special instructions
given to Bucer, he received from the Landgrave various political
concessions of great importance: viz. support in the matter of the
Duke of Cleves, help in his difficulties about Magdeburg, the eventual
renunciation of Philip’s title to the inheritance of his father-in-law,
Duke George, and, finally, the promise to push his claims to the
Imperial crown after the death of Charles V, or in the event of the
partitioning of the Empire.
The Elector, like his theologians, was not aware that the “lady” (she
is never actually named) had already been chosen. Margaret von der
Sale, who was then only seventeen years of age, was the daughter of a
lady-in-waiting to Philip’s sister, Elisabeth, Duchess of Rochlitz. Her
mother, Anna von der Sale, an ambitious lady of the lower nobility, had
informed the Landgrave that she must stipulate for certain privileges.
As soon as Philip had received the replies from Wittenberg and Weimar,
on Dec. 23, 1539, the demands of the mother were at once settled by
persons vested with the necessary authority. Even before this, on the
very day of the negotiations with Luther, Dec. 11, the Landgrave and
his wife Christina had each drawn up a formal deed concerning what
was about to take place: Christina agreed to Philip’s “taking another
wedded wife” and promised that she would never on that account be
unfriendly to the Landgrave, his second wife, or her children; Philip
pledged himself not to countenance any claim to the Landgraviate on the
part of any issue by the second wife during the lifetime of Christina’s
two sons, but to provide for such issue by means of territories
situated outside his own dominions.[67] Such was the assurance with
which he proceeded towards the cherished goal.
Several Hessian theologians of the new faith, for instance, the
preacher Dionysius Melander, a personal friend of the Landgrave’s, and
Johann Lening were on his side.[68] To the memorandum composed by
Luther and Melanchthon the signatures of both the above-mentioned were
subsequently added, as well as those of Anton Corvinus, then pastor
at Witzenhausen, of Adam Fuldensis (Kraft), then Superintendent at
Marburg, of Justus Winther--since 1532 Court Schoolmaster at Cassel
and, from 1542, Superintendent at Rotenburg on the Fulda--and of
Balthasar Rhaide (Raid), pastor at Hersfeld, who, as Imperial Notary,
certified the marriage. The signature of the last was, however,
subsequently erased.[69]
About the middle of Jan., 1540, Philip informed the more prominent
Councillors and theologians that he would soon carry out his project.
When everything was ready the marriage was celebrated on March 4 in
the Castle of Rotenburg on the Fulda by the Court Chaplain, Dionysius
Melander, in the presence of Bucer and Melanchthon; were also present
the Commandant of the Wartburg, Eberhard von der Thann, representing
the Elector of Saxony, Pastor Balthasar Rhaide, the Hessian Chancellor
Johann Feige of Lichtenau, the Marshal Hermann von Hundelshausen,
Rudolf Schenk zu Schweinsberg (Landvogt of Eschwege on the Werra),
Hermann von der Malsburg, a nobleman, and the mother of the bride, Anna
von der Sale.[70] The draft of the short discourse still exists with
which the Landgrave intended to open the ceremony. Melander delivered
the formal wedding address. On the following day Melanchthon handed the
Landgrave an “admonition,” i.e. a sort of petition, in which he warmly
recommended to his care the welfare of education. It is possible that
when summoned, to Rotenburg from a meeting of the Schmalkalden League
at which he had been assisting, he was unaware of the object of the
invitation. Subsequent explanations, furnished at the last moment, by
Melander and Lening, seem to have drawn a protest from Melanchthon
which roused the anger of the two preachers. This shows that
“everything did not pass off smoothly at Rotenburg.”[71] Both were, not
long after, stigmatised by Melanchthon as “_ineruditi homines_” and
made chiefly responsible for the lax principles of the Landgrave.[72]
Luther tried later to represent Lening, the “monster,” as the man by
whom the idea of the bigamy, a source of extreme embarrassment to the
Wittenbergers, had first been hatched.[73]
Although the Landgrave was careful to preserve secrecy concerning
the new marriage--already known to so many persons,--permitting only
the initiate to visit the “lady,” and even forbidding her to attend
Divine Worship, still the news of what had taken place soon leaked
out. “Palpable signs appeared in the building operations commenced
at Weissenstein, and also in the despatch of a cask of wine to
Luther.”[74] At Weissenstein, in the former monastery near Cassel, now
Wilhelmshöhe, an imposing residence was fitted up for Margaret von der
Sale. In a letter of May 24, 1540, to Philip, Luther expresses his
thanks for the gift of wine: “I have received your Serene Highness’s
present of the cask of Rhine wine and thank your Serene Highness most
humbly. May our dear Lord God keep and preserve you body and soul.
Amen.”[75] Katey also received a gift from the Prince, for which Luther
returned thanks on Aug. 22, though without mentioning its nature.[76]
On the cask of wine and its destination the Schultheiss of Lohra
spoke “openly before all the peasants,” so Anton Corvinus informed
the Landgrave on May 25, saying that: “Your Serene Highness has taken
another wife, of which he was perfectly sure, and your Serene Highness
is now sending a cask of wine to Luther because he gave your Serene
Highness permission to do such a thing.”[77]
On June 9 Jonas wrote from Wittenberg, where he was staying with
Luther--who himself was as silent as the tomb--to George of Anhalt:
Both in the Meissen district and at Wittenberg there is “much gossip”
(‘_ingens fama_’) of bigamy with a certain von Sale, though, probably,
it was only “question of a concubine.”[78] Five days later, however,
he relates, that “at Würzburg and similar [Catholic] localities the
Papists and Canons were expressing huge delight” over the bigamy.[79]
The behaviour of the Landgrave’s sister had helped to spread the
news. On March 13 the Landgrave, through Marshal von Hundelshausen,
had informed the latter of the fact, as he had formally promised
Margaret’s mother to do. The “lady began to weep, made a great outcry
and abused Luther and Bucer as a pair of incarnate scamps.”[80] She
was unable to reconcile herself to the bigamy or to refrain from
complaining to others. “My angry sister has been unable to hold her
tongue,” wrote the Landgrave Philip on June 8.[81] The Ducal Court of
Saxony at Dresden was anxious for reliable information. Duke Henry was
a patron of Lutheranism, but one of the motives for his curiosity in
this matter is to be found in the fact that the Landgrave was claiming
a portion of the inheritance of the late Duke George, who had died
on April 17, 1539. In accordance with Henry’s orders Anna von der
Sale, as a subject of the Saxon duchy, was removed by force on June
3 from her residence at Schönfeld and carried to Dresden. There the
mother confessed everything and declared, not without pride, that her
daughter Margaret “was as much the rightful wife of the Landgrave as
Christina.”[82] About Whitsun the Landgrave personally admitted the
fact to Maurice of Saxony.
The Court of Dresden at once informed the Elector of Saxony of its
discovery and of the very unfavourable manner in which the news had
been received, and the latter, in turn, communicated it, through
Chancellor Brück, to Luther and Melanchthon.
The Elector Johann Frederick, in view of the change of circumstances,
became more and more vexed with the marriage. To a certain extent he
stood under the influence of Elisabeth Duchess of Rochlitz. In his
case, too, the question of property played a part, viz. whether, in
view of the understanding existing between Hesse and Saxony as to the
succession, the children of the second wife were to become the heirs
in the event of the death of the children of the first wife, this
being what the Landgrave demanded. Above all, however, the cautious
Elector was anxious about the attitude of the Empire and Emperor. He
feared lest steps should be taken against the general scandal which
had been given and to obviate the danger of the spread of polygamous
ideas. Hence he was not far from withdrawing from Luther the favour
he had hitherto shown him, the more so now that the Court of Dresden
was intent on raising trouble against all who had furthered the
Landgrave’s plan.
Meanwhile the news rapidly spread, partly owing to persons belonging
to the Court. It reached King Ferdinand, and, by him, and still more
by Morone, the Nuncio, it was carried to the Emperor.
Morone wrote on June 15, from the religious conference then proceeding
at Hagenau, to Cardinal Farnese at Rome: “During the lifetime of his
first wife, a daughter of Duke George of Saxony of good memory, the
Landgrave of Hesse, has, as we hear, taken a second wife, a lady of
distinction, von der Sale by name, a native of Saxony. It is said,
his theologians teach that it is not forbidden to Christians to have
several wives, except in the case of a Bishop, because there is no
such prohibition in Holy Scripture. I can hardly credit it, but since
God has ‘given them over to a reprobate mind’ [Rom. i. 28] and as the
King has assured me that he has heard it from several quarters, I give
you the report for what it is worth.”[83]
Philip of Hesse, who was already in disgrace with the Emperor on
account of his expedition into Würtemberg and his support of Duke
Ulrich, knew the penalties which he might expect unless he found some
means of escape. The “_Carolina_” (1532) decreed “capital punishment”
against bigamists, no less than against adulterers.[84] The Landgrave
himself was even fully prepared to forfeit one-third of his possessions
should it be impossible to arrive otherwise at a settlement.[85] He
now openly declared--as he had already hinted he would--that, in case
of necessity, he would make humble submission to the Emperor; if the
worst came to the worst, then he would also make public the memorandum
he had received from Wittenberg in order to exculpate himself--a threat
which filled the Elector with alarm on account of his University and of
Luther.
Bucer, the first to be summoned to the aid of the Hessian Court,
advised the Landgrave to escape from his unfortunate predicament by
downright lying. He wrote: If concealment and equivocation should
prove of no avail, he was to state in writing that false rumours
concerning his person had come into circulation, and that no Christian
was allowed to have two wives at the same time; he was also to replace
the marriage-contract by another contract in which Margaret might
be described as a concubine--such as God had allowed to His beloved
friends--and not as a wife within the meaning of the calamitous
Imperial Law; an effort was also to be made to induce the Court of
Dresden to keep silence, or to deny any knowledge of the business, and,
in the meantime, the “lady” might be kept even more carefully secluded
than before.[86]
The Landgrave’s reply was violent in the extreme. He indignantly
rejected Bucer’s suggestion; the dissimulation alleged to have been
practised by others, notably by the Patriarchs, Judges, Kings and
Prophets, etc., in no wise proved the lawfulness of lying; Bucer had
“been instigated to make such proposals by some worldly-wise persons
and jurists whom we know well.”[87] Philip wrote to the same effect to
the Lutheran theologians, Schnepf, Osiander and Brenz, who urged him
to deny that Margaret was his lawful wife: “That, when once the matter
has become quite public, we should assert that it was invalid, this we
cannot bring ourselves to do. We cannot tell a lie, for to lie does
not become any man. And, moreover, God has forbidden lying. So long
as it is possible we shall certainly reply ‘_dubitative_’ or ‘_per
amphibologiam_,’ but to say that it is invalid, such advice you may
give to another, but not to us.”[88]
The “_amphibologia_” had been advised by the Hessian theologians, who
had pointed out that Margaret could best be described to the Imperial
Court of Justice as a “_concubina_,” since, in the language of the
Old Testament, as also in that of the ancient Church, this word had
sometimes been employed to describe a lawful wife.[89] They also
wrote to Luther and Melanchthon, fearing that they might desert the
Landgrave, telling them that they were expected to stand by their
memorandum. Although they were in favour of secrecy, yet they wished
that, in case of necessity, the Wittenbergers should publicly admit
their share. Good care would be taken to guard against the general
introduction of polygamy.[90]
_Dispensation; Advice in Confession; a Confessor’s Secret?_
Was the document signed by Luther, Melanchthon and Bucer a dispensation
for bigamy?
It has been so described. But, even according to the very wording
of the memorandum, the signatories had no intention of issuing a
dispensation. On the contrary, according to the text, they, as learned
theologians, declared that the Divine Law, as they understood it,
gave a general sanction, according to which, in cases such as that of
Philip of Hesse, polygamy was allowed. It is true that they and Philip
himself repeatedly use the word “dispensation,” but by this they meant
to describe the alleged general sanction in accordance with which the
law admitted of exceptions in certain cases, hence their preference
for the term “to use” the dispensation, instead of the more usual “to
beg” or “to grant.” Philip is firmly resolved “to use” the dispensation
brought to his knowledge by Luther’s writings, and the theologians,
taking their cue from him, likewise speak of his “using” it in his own
case.[91]
It was the same with the “dispensation” which the Wittenbergers
proposed to Henry VIII of England. (See above, p. 4 f.) They had no
wish to invest him with an authority which, according to their ideas,
he did not possess, but they simply drew his attention to the freedom
common to all, and declared by them to be bestowed by God, viz. in his
case, of taking a second wife, telling him that he was free to have
recourse to this dispensation. In other words, they gave him the power
to dispense himself, regardless of ecclesiastical laws and authorities.
Another question: How far was the substance of the advice given in the
Hessian case to be regarded as a secret? Can it really be spoken of as
a “counsel given in confession,” or as a “secret of the confessional”?
This question later became of importance in the negotiations which
turned upon the memorandum. In order to answer it without prejudice
it is essential in the first place to point out, that the subsequent
interpretations and evasions must not here be taken into account.
The actual wording of the document and its attendant historical
circumstances have alone to be taken into consideration, abstraction
being made of the fine distinctions and meanings afterwards read into
it.
First, there is no doubt that both the Landgrave’s request for the
Wittenberg testimony and its granting were intended to be confidential
and not public. Philip naturally assumed that the most punctilious
secrecy would be preserved so long as no decision had been arrived
at, seeing that he had made confidential disclosures concerning his
immorality in pleading for a second marriage. The Wittenbergers, as
they explicitly state, gave their reply not merely unwillingly, with
repugnance and with great apprehension of the scandal which might
ensue, but also most urgently recommended Philip to keep the bigamy to
himself. Both the request and the theological testimony accordingly
came under the natural obligation of silence, i.e. under the so-called
confidential seal of secrecy. This, however, was of course broken when
the suppliant on his part allowed the matter to become public; in
such a case no one could grudge the theologians the natural right of
bringing forward everything that was required for their justification,
even to the reasons which had determined them to give their consent,
though of course they were in honour bound to show the utmost
consideration; for this the petitioner himself was alone to blame.
As a matter of fact, however, strange though it may seem, Philip’s
intention all along had been ultimately to make the marriage public.
It cannot be proved that he ever made any written promise to observe
the recommendation of absolute secrecy made by the theologians. Those
who drew up the memorandum disregarded his wish for publicity, and, on
the contrary, “advised” that the matter should be kept a dead secret.
Yet ought they not to have foreseen that a Prince so notoriously
unscrupulous would be likely to disregard their “advice”? The
theologians were certainly no men of the world if they really believed
that the Landgrave’s bigamy--and their memorandum by which it was
justified--would or could remain concealed. They themselves had allowed
a number of other parties to be initiated into the secret, nor was it
difficult to foresee that Philip, and Margaret’s ambitious mother,
would not allow the stigma of concubinage to rest permanently on the
newly wedded bride. The mother had expressly stipulated that Margaret
should be treated as a lawful wife and given this title, and not as a
concubine, though of this the Wittenbergers were not aware.
Further, the theological grounds for the Wittenberg “advice” must not
be lost sight of in considering the question of the obligation of
silence or secrecy. The theologians based their decision on a doctrine
which they had already openly proclaimed. Nor did Luther ever withdraw
from the standpoint that polygamy was lawful; he even proclaimed it
during the height of the controversy raised by the Hessian bigamy,
though he was careful to restrict it to very rare and exceptional
cases and to make its use dependent on the consent of the authorities.
Thus the grounds for the step he had taken in Philip’s favour were
universally and publicly known just as much as his other theological
doctrines. If, however, his teaching on this matter was true, then,
strictly speaking, people had as much right to it as to every other
piece of truth; in fact, it was the more urgent that this Evangelical
discovery should not be put under a bushel, seeing that it would have
been a veritable godsend to many who groaned in the bonds of matrimony.
Hence everything, both on Philip’s side and on that of the theologians,
pointed to publicity. But may, perhaps, the Wittenberg “advice” have
been esteemed a sort of “counsel given in Confession,” and did its
contents accordingly fall under the “secret of Confession”?
The word “Confession,” in its sacramental meaning, was never used in
connection with the affair dealt with at Wittenberg, either in Philip’s
instructions to Bucer or in the theologians’ memorandum, nor does it
occur in any of the few documents relating to the bigamy until about
six months later. “Confession” is first alleged in the letter of excuse
given below which Luther addressed to the Elector of Saxony. It is
true that the expression “in the way of Confession” occurs once in the
memorandum, but there it is used in an entirely different sense and
in no way stamps the business as a matter of Confession. There it is
stated (above, p. 21), that those who were to be apprised of the bigamy
were to learn it “in the way of Confession.” Here the word Confession
is employed by metonymy and merely emphasises the need of discretion.
Here there was naturally no idea of the sacramental seal, or of the
making of a real Confession. In the Middle Ages the term Confession was
not seldom used to denote the imparting of an ordinary confidential
secret, just as the word to confess originally meant to admit, to
acknowledge, or to communicate something secret. This, however, was not
the meaning attached to it by those who sought to shelter themselves
behind the term in the controversies which ensued after the bigamy
had become generally known. To vindicate the keeping secret of his
so-called “advice in Confession,” Luther falls back upon his Catholic
recollections of the entire secrecy required of the Confessor, in other
words, on the sacramental “seal.”
Undoubtedly the Seal of Confession is inexorable; according to the
Catholic view it possesses a sacramental sanction and surrounds, like
a protecting rampart, the sanctuary of the Sacrament of Penance, which
otherwise would be shunned by all. But this absolute and sacramental
obligation of silence attends only the administration of the Sacrament
of Penance.
The idea that Luther and his comrades when signing the “advice” were
dispensing the Sacrament of Penance cannot but raise a smile. In
connection with this matter non-Catholic theologians and historians
would never have spoken as they have done of Luther as a Confessor, had
they been better acquainted with the usages of the older Church. In the
case of such writers all that is known of the system of Confession is
often a few distorted quotations from casuists. Even under its altered
form, as then in use among the Protestants, Confession could only mean
an admission of one’s sins, made to obtain absolution. In Lutheranism,
confession, so far as it was retained at all, meant the awakening and
animating of faith by means of some sort of self-accusation completed
by the assurance given by the preacher of the Divine promise and
forgiveness, a process which bears no analogy to the “testimony”
given by the theologians to Philip of Hesse. In the Catholic Church,
moreover, in whose practice Luther seems anxious to take refuge,
Confession involves an accusation of all grievous sins, contrition, a
firm resolve to amend, satisfaction and absolution. What was there of
all this in the Landgrave’s so-called Confession?[92] Where was the
authority to absolve, even had this been what the Landgrave sought?
How then could there come into play the Seal of Confession, i.e.
any sacramental obligation apart from the purely natural obligation
of keeping silence concerning a communication made in confidence?
Again, Confession, even according to Lutheran ideas, is not made at a
distance, or to several persons simultaneously, or with the object of
securing a signed document.
Apart from all this one may even question whether the Landgrave’s
disclosures were really honestly meant. Not everyone would have taken
them from the outset as intended seriously, or have regarded them as
above suspicion. Melanchthon, for instance, soon began to have doubts.
(See below.) The readiness, nay, eagerness, shown by Philip later to
repeat his Confession to others, to reinforce it by even more appalling
admissions of wickedness, and to give it the fullest publicity, is
really not favourable to the “Confession” idea; on the contrary, it
reminds us of the morbid pleasure which persons habituated to vice and
who have lost all respect whether for themselves or for the virtue
of others, take in speaking openly of their moral lapses. The most
important point to bear in mind is, however, the fact, that with Philip
of Hesse it was a question of a marriage which he intended should be
kept secret only for a time, and further that the Wittenbergers were
aware of Philip’s readiness to lay his case before the Emperor, nay,
even the Pope should necessity arise.[93] Owing to this they could
not be blind to the possibility of the marriage, and, incidentally,
of the Landgrave’s admission of moral necessity, and further of their
own “advice” being all disclosed. Thus the “Seal of Confession” was
threatened from the very first. Philip himself never recognised a
binding obligation of secrecy on the part of the Wittenbergers; on the
contrary, his invitation to them was: Speak out freely, now that the
step has been taken with your sanction! What was Luther’s answer? He
appealed to the Secret of the Confessional and refused to defend the
act before the world and the Empire, but merely “before God”; all he
was willing to do was to vindicate it “before God, by examples such as
that of Abraham, etc., and to conceal it as much as possible.” And yet,
to forestall what will be related below, full publicity would surely
have been the best thing for himself, as then the world would at least
have learnt that he was not desirous of introducing polygamy generally,
and that the whole business had only been made common property through
Philip’s disregard of the recommendation of secrecy. Instead of this,
however, he preferred to profess his readiness (it was probably no
more than a threat) to admit publicly that he had been in the wrong
all along and had acted foolishly; here again, had he been true to his
word, the “Secret of the Confessional” would assuredly have fared badly.
Even in his letter of excuse to the Elector Johann Frederick concerning
his sanction of the bigamy, Luther explained so much of the incident,
that the “Seal of Confession” was practically violated; quite unmindful
of the inviolability of the Seal he here declared, that he would have
preferred to say nothing of the “counsel given in Confession had not
necessity” forced him to do so. But what kind of Seal of Confession was
this, we may ask, which could thus be set aside in case of necessity?
Melanchthon acted differently. He, without any necessity, at once
recounted everything that had happened to a friend in a letter eloquent
with grief. He, the author of the “Counsel of Confession,” felt under
no obligation to regard the Seal. He considers himself liberated,
by Philip’s behaviour, from the obligation even of confidential
secrecy.[94] Bucer expressed himself on Aug. 8, 1540, in a similar
fashion concerning the counsel given to the Landgrave “in Confession”:
Luther would certainly publish and defend it, should the “marriage
have to be admitted” through no fault of the Landgrave’s.[95] No one,
in fact, displayed the slightest scruple regarding the secrecy of the
Confession--except Luther and those who re-echo his sentiments.
According to the above we are justified in saying that the term
“Counsel given in Confession” is in no wise descriptive of the
Wittenberg document. The word “testimony,” or “certificate,” used both
in Philip’s instructions and in an important passage of the document
signed by Luther, Melanchthon and Bucer, is historically more correct;
the terms “opinion” or “memorandum” are equally applicable.
The Wittenbergers gave their testimony or opinion--such is the upshot
of the matter--but no Dispensation or Counsel in Confession in the
sense just determined. They gave a testimony, which was asked for that
it might be made public, but which was given in confidence, which was
moreover based on their openly expressed teaching, though it actually
dealt only with Philip’s own case, a testimony which no longer involved
them in any obligation of secrecy once the marriage had been made
public by Philip, and once the latter had declared his intention of
making the testimony public should circumstances demand it.
_Luther’s Embarrassment on the Bigamy becoming Public._
At the commencement of June, 1540, Luther was in great distress on
account of the Hessian bigamy. His embarrassment and excitement
increased as the tidings flew far and wide, particularly when the Court
of Dresden and his own Elector began to take fright at the scandal,
and the danger of complications arising with the Emperor. On the other
hand, Luther was not unaware of the Landgrave’s doubts as to whether he
would stand by his written declaration. Jonas wrote from Wittenberg on
June 10 to George of Anhalt: “Philip is much upset and Dr. Martin full
of thought.”[96]
On that very day Brück, the Electoral Chancellor, discussed the
matter with both of them at Wittenberg. He acquainted them with his
sovereign’s fears. They had gone too far, and the publication of the
affair had had the most disastrous results; a young Princess and
Landgravine had appeared on the scene, which was not at all what the
Elector had expected; the Court of Dresden was loud in its complaints
and spared not even the Elector; the Dresden people were bringing
forward against Luther what he had taught in favour of polygamy
thirteen years before; the door had now been opened wide to polygamists.
Not long after Luther wrote, that, were it necessary, he would know how
to “extricate himself.”[97] Even before dropping this curious remark he
had shown himself very anxious to make his position secure. It was with
this object in view, that, after his interview with Brück, probably on
the same day, he proceeded to explain the case to his sovereign in the
lengthy letter[98] in which he appeals to Confession and its secrecy.
“Before the world and against the laws of the Empire it cannot be
defended,” but “we were desirous of glossing it over before God as
much as possible with examples, such as that of Abraham, etc. All
this was done and treated of as in Confession, so that we cannot be
charged as though we had done it willingly and gladly, or with joy and
pleasure.... I took into consideration the unavoidable necessity and
weakness, and the danger to his conscience which Master Bucer had set
forth.”
Luther goes on to complain, that the Landgrave, by allowing this
“matter of Confession” and “advice given in Confession” to become to a
certain extent public, had caused all this “annoyance and contumely.”
He relates in detail what Bucer, when seeking to obtain the Wittenberg
sanction, had recounted concerning his master’s immorality, so
contrary to the Evangel, “though he should be one of the mainstays
of the party.” They had at first looked askance at the idea, but, on
being told that “he was unable to relinquish it, and, should we not
permit it, would do it in spite of us, and obtain permission from the
Emperor or the Pope unless we were beforehand, we humbly begged His
Serene Highness, if he was really set on it, and, as he declared,
could not in conscience and before God do otherwise, that he would at
least keep it secret.” This had been promised them [by Bucer]; their
intention had been to “save his conscience as best we might.”
Luther, far from showing himself remorseful for his indulgence,
endeavours in his usual way to suppress any scruples of conscience:
“Even to-day, were such a case to come before me again, I should not
know how to give any other advice than what I then gave, nor would
it trouble me should it afterwards become known.” “I am not ashamed
of the testimony even should it come before the world, though, to
be spared trouble, I should prefer it to be kept secret so long as
possible.” Still, no angel would have induced him to give such advice
“had he known that the Landgrave had long satisfied and could still
satisfy his cravings on others, for instance, as I now learn, on
lady von Essweg.” This lady was perhaps a relative of Rudolf Schenk,
Landvogt of Eschwege on the Werra.[99] We may recall, that the
proposal of taking a “concubine” in place of the too numerous “light
women” had been made to Philip by his sister.[100]
Luther goes on to excuse his conduct still further to the Elector:
“Still less would I have advised a public marriage”; that the second
wife was to become a Princess or Landgravine--a plan at which the
whole Empire would take offence--had been kept from him altogether;
“what I expected was, that, since he was obliged owing to the
weakness of the flesh to follow the ordinary course of sin and
shame, he would perhaps keep an honest girl in some house, and wed
her secretly--though even this would look ill in the sight of the
world--and thus overcome his great trouble of conscience; he could
then ride backwards and forwards, as the great lords do frequently
enough; similar advice I gave also to certain parish priests under
Duke George and the bishops, viz. that they should marry their cook
secretly.”
Though what he here says may be worthy of credence, yet to apply
the term Confession to what passed between Philip and Wittenberg is
surely to introduce an alien element into the affair. Yet he does use
the word three times in the course of the letter and seemingly lays
great stress on it. The Confession, he says, covered all that had
passed, and, because it “was seemly” to “keep matters treated of in
Confession private” he and Melanchthon “preferred not to relate the
matter and the counsel given in Confession” to the Elector; but,
since the Landgrave “had revealed the substance of the Confession
and the advice,” it was easier for him to speak. Hence he would now
reveal the “advice given in Confession; though I should much have
preferred to keep it secret, unless necessity had forced it from me,
now I am unable to do so.” The fact is, however, that the real Seal
of Confession (and of this Luther was quite aware) does not allow the
confessor who has received the Confession to make any communication
or disclosure concerning it; even should the penitent make statements
concerning other matters which occurred in the Confession, under no
circumstances whatsoever, however serious these may be, not even in
the case of danger to life and limb, may “necessity” “force out”
anything. Although in this case Luther had not heard a Confession at
all, yet he refers to the Secret of the Confessional with which he was
acquainted from his Catholic days, and his own former exercise of it:
“I have received in Confession many confidences, both in Popery and
since, and given advice, but were there any question of making them
public I should be obliged to say no.... Such matters are no business
of the secular courts nor ought they to be made public.”
This uncalled-for introduction of Confession was intended to save him
from being obliged to admit his consent publicly; it was meant to
reassure so weak a theologian as the Elector, who dreaded the scandal
arising from Luther’s advice to commit bigamy, and the discussion
of the case before the Imperial Court of Justice; possibly he also
hoped it would serve against that other princely theologian, viz.
the Landgrave, and cause him to withdraw his demand for a public
acknowledgment of the sanction given. His tactics here remind us of
Luther’s later denial, when he professed himself ready simply to deny
the bigamy and his share in it--because everything had been merely a
matter of Confession.
Even in this first letter dealing with the question, he is clearly on
the look-out for a loophole by which he may escape from the calamitous
business.
The publication of the “testimony” was to be prevented at all costs.
But, as a matter of fact, not only did the “Seal of Confession” present
no obstacle, but even the common secrecy referred to above (p. 31) was
no longer binding. This had been cancelled by the indiscretion of the
Landgrave. Moreover, apart from this, the natural obligation of secrecy
did not extend to certain extreme cases which might have been foreseen
by both parties and in the event of which both would recover their
freedom. It should be noted, that Luther hardly made any appeal to this
natural obligation of secrecy, probably because it could not be turned
to account so easily. The Seal of Confession promised to serve him
better in circles so little acquainted with theology.
In the second letter dealing with the bigamy, dated June 27, 1540,
and addressed to Philip’s intimate, Eberhard von der Thann, Luther
speaks with an eye on Hesse.[101] Thann, through Chancellor Brück,
had informed him of what was being said of him there, and had asked
what Luther would advise the Hessian Prince, and whether, in order to
obviate other cases of polygamy in Hesse, it would be advisable for
the authorities to issue an edict against the universal lawfulness
of having several wives. Luther replied, that he agreed with the
Landgrave’s intention as announced by Thann concerning his second
marriage, viz. to wait until the Emperor “should approach His Serene
Highness on the subject”; and then to write to the Emperor: “That he
had taken a concubine but that he would be perfectly ready to put her
away again if other Princes and Lords would set a good example.” If the
Emperor were compelled “to regard the ‘lady’ as a concubine,” “no one
else would dare to speak or think differently”; in this wise the real
state of things would be “covered over and kept secret.” On the other
hand, it would not be at all advisable to issue any edict, or to speak
of the matter, for then “there would be no end or limit to gossip and
suspicions.”
“And I for my part am determined [here he comes to his ‘testimony’
and the meaning he now put on it] to keep silence concerning my part
of the confession which I heard from His Serene Highness through
Bucer, even should I suffer for it, for it is better that people
should say that Dr. Martin acted foolishly in his concession to the
Landgrave--for even great men have acted foolishly and do so, even
now, as the saying goes: A wise man makes no small mistakes--rather
than reveal the reasons why we secretly consented; for that would
greatly disgrace and damage the reputation of the Landgrave, and would
also make matters worse.” To the Elector his sovereign Luther had
said that, even to-day, he “would not be able to give any different
advice” and that he saw no reason to blush for it. Hence it is hard
to believe that he seriously contemplated admitting that he had been
guilty of an act of “folly” and had “acted foolishly.” It will be
shown more clearly below what his object was in threatening such a
repudiation of his advice to the Landgrave.
In his letter to Thann, Luther decides in favour of the expedient
suggested by the Hessian theologians, viz. of the amphibological use
of the word concubine; here it should, however, be noted, that this
term, if used officially to counteract the common report concerning
the new marriage, plainly implied a denial of the reality of the
bigamy.
But how if the Landgrave were directly confronted in a Court of
Justice with the question: Have you, or have you not, married two
wives?
Here belongs the third letter of Luther’s which we have on the subject
and which was despatched to Hesse before the middle of July. It is
addressed to “a Hessian Councillor” who has been identified, with some
probability, as the Hessian Chancellor Johann Feige.[102]
To the addressee, who was acquainted with the whole matter and had
applied to Luther for his opinion on behalf of the Landgrave, the
writer defines his own position still more clearly; if people say
openly that the Landgrave has contracted a second marriage, all one
need answer is, that this is not true, although it is true that he
has contracted a secret union; hence he himself was wont to say, “the
Landgrave’s other marriage is all nonsense.”
The justification of this he finds in the theory of the secrecy of
confession upon which he insists strongly in this letter. Not only
is his own share in the matter _nil_ because ostensibly done in
confession, but the marriage itself is merely a sort of “confession
marriage,” a thing concealed and therefore non-existent so far
as the world is concerned. “A secret affirmative cannot become a
public affirmative ... a secret ‘yes’ remains a public ‘no’ and vice
versa.... On this I take my stand; I say that the Landgrave’s second
marriage is _nil_ and cannot be convincing to anyone. For, as they
say, ‘_palam_,’ it is not true, and although it may be true ‘_clam_,’
yet that they may not tell.”
He is very bitter about the Landgrave’s purpose of making the marriage
and the Wittenberg “advice” public, should need arise. The fate of
the latter was, in fact, his chief anxiety. “In this the Landgrave
touches us too nearly, but himself even more, that he is determined
to do ‘_palam_’ what we arranged with him ‘_clam_,’ and to make of
a ‘_nullum_’ an ‘_omne_’; this we are unable either to defend or
to answer for, and we should certainly come to high words.” The
last sentence was, however, felt by Luther to be too strong and he
accordingly struck it out of the letter.
He also says that the Landgrave’s appeal to his sermon on Genesis
would be of no avail, because he (Luther) had taught, both previous to
and after it, that the law of Moses was not to be introduced, though
some of it “might be used secretly in cases of necessity, or even
publicly by order of the authorities.” But advice extorted from him
in Confession by the distress of a suffering conscience could “not be
held to constitute a true precedent in law.” He here touches upon a
thought to which he was to return in entirely different circumstances:
Neither the preachers, nor the Gospel, lay down outward laws, not
even concerning religion; the secular authorities are the only
legislators; ecclesiastical guidance comprises only advice, direction
and the expounding of Scripture, and has to do only with the interior
life, being without any jurisdiction, even spiritual; as public
men, the pastors were appointed to preach, pray and give advice; to
the individual they rendered service amidst the “secret needs of
conscience.”[103]
He thereby absolves himself from the consequence apparently involved
in the step he had taken, viz. the introduction of polygamy as a
“general right”; it does not follow that: “What you do from necessity,
I have a right to do”; “necessity knows no law or precedent,”
hence a man who is driven by hunger to steal bread, or who kills
in self-defence is not punished, yet what thus holds in cases of
necessity cannot be taken as a law or rule. On the other hand, Luther
will not listen to the proposal then being made in Hesse, viz. that,
in order to counteract the bad example, a special edict should be
issued declaring polygamy unlawful as a general rule, but allowable
in an exceptional case, on the strength “of secret advice given
in Confession”; on the contrary, it would be far better simply to
denounce polygamy as unlawful.
Hence if the Landgrave, so Luther concludes, “will not forsake the
sweetheart” on whom “he has so set his heart that she has become a need
to him,” and if, moreover, he will “keep her out of the way,” then “we
theologians and confessors shall vindicate it before God, as a case
of necessity to be excused by the examples of Genesis. But defend it
before the world and ‘_iure nunc regente_,’ that we cannot and shall
not do. Short of this the Landgrave may count upon our best service.”
The Landgrave was, however, not satisfied with either of these letters,
both of which came into his hands. He wanted from Luther a clear and
public admission of his share in the business, which, to the Prince’s
peril, had now become as good as public, and threatened to constitute a
precedent. By this invitation the Prince naturally released Luther from
all obligation of secrecy. Even the making public of the immorality,
which had served as a pretext for the new marriage, he did not mind
in the least, for his laxity in morals was already a matter of common
knowledge; he discussed his lapses with the theologians as openly as
though all of them had been his confessors and spiritual directors;
he was also quite ready to repeat his admissions, “as in Confession,”
before secular witnesses. Such was the depth of depravity into which
his passions had brought him.
Yielding to pressure brought to bear on him by Saxony, Luther had
meanwhile conceived the idea of publishing a work against polygamy.
The new expedient had indeed been foreshadowed in his last letter. On
June 17, 1540, Jonas wrote to George of Anhalt that Luther might be
expected to write a work “_Contra polygamiam_.”[104] Martin Beyer of
Schaffhausen, on his return from Wittenberg, also brought the news, so
Bullinger was informed, that “Luther was being compelled by the Hessian
business to write a work against the plurality of wives.”[105]
The project was, however, never realised, probably on account of the
insuperable difficulties it involved.
But though this work never saw the light, history has preserved for us
a number of Luther’s familiar conversations, dating from this period
and taken down directly from his lips, utterances which have every
claim to consideration and faithfully mirror his thoughts.
_Luther’s Private Utterances Regarding the Bigamy._
The Table-Talk, dating from the height of the hubbub caused by the
bigamy, affords us a vivid psychological picture of Luther.
Of this Table-Talk we have the detailed and authentic notes from the
pen of Johann Mathesius, who was present. These notes, in their best
form, became known only in 1903, thanks to Kroker’s edition, but,
for the better understanding of Luther’s personality, his intimate
descriptions of what was passing in his mind are of inestimable value.
Conjointly with the principal passage, which probably dates from June
18, 1540, other sayings dropped regarding the same matter may be
considered.[106]
The scene in the main was as follows: The usual guests, among them
the disciples with their note-books, were assembled after the evening
meal in Luther’s house, grouped around the master, who seemed sunk
in thought; Melanchthon, however, was missing, for he lay seriously
ill at Weimar, overwhelmed by anxiety now that his consent to the
bigamy was leaking out. Whilst yet at table two letters were handed
to Luther, the first from Brück, the Electoral Chancellor, the second
from the Elector himself. Both referred to Melanchthon. The Elector
requested Luther to betake himself as soon as possible to Weimar to
his friend, who seemed in danger of death, and informed him at the
same time of the measures threatened by the Landgrave in the matter of
the second marriage.
Luther, after glancing at Brück’s missive concerning Melanchthon, said
to the guests: “Philip is pining away for vexation, and has fallen
into a fever (‘_tertiana_’). But why does the good fellow crucify
himself so about this business? All his anxiety will do no good. I do
wish I were with him! I know how sensitive he is. The scandal pains
him beyond measure. I, on the other hand, have a thick skin, I am a
peasant, a hard Saxon when such × are concerned.[107] I expect I shall
be summoned to Philip.”
Someone thereupon interjected the remark: “Doctor, perhaps the
Colloquium [which was to be held at Hagenau] will not now take place”;
Luther replied: “They will certainly have to wait for us....”
A second messenger now came in with the Elector’s letter, conveying
the expected summons to proceed to Weimar. On the reader the news
it contained concerning the Landgrave fell like the blows of a
sledge-hammer. After attentively perusing the letter “with an earnest
mien,” he said: “Philip the Landgrave is cracked; he is now asking the
Emperor to let him keep both wives.”
The allusion to the Landgrave’s mental state is explained by a former
statement of Luther’s made in connection with some words uttered by
the Landgrave’s father: “The old Landgrave [William II] used to say
to his son Philip: ‘If you take after your mother, then you won’t come
to much; if you take after me, you will have nothing about you that
I can praise; if you take after both of us, then you will be a real
demon.’” Luther had added: “I fear he is also mad, for it runs in the
family.”[108] “And Philip [Melanchthon] said: ‘This [the bigamy] is
the beginning of his insanity.’”[109]
When Luther re-entered, so the narrator continues, “he was as cheerful
as could be, and he said to us: ‘It is grand having something to do,
for then we get ideas; otherwise we do nothing but feed and swill. How
our Papists will scream! But let them howl to their own destruction.
Our cause is a good one and no fault is to be found with our way of
life, or rather [he corrects himself] with the life of those who
take it seriously. If the Hessian Landgrave has sinned, then that
is sin and a scandal. That we have frequently discounselled by good
and holy advice; they have seen our innocence and yet refuse to see
it. Hence they [the Papists] are now forced to look the Hessian _in
anum_[110] (i.e. are witnesses of his shame). But they will be brought
to destruction by [our] scandals because they refuse to listen to the
pure doctrine; for God will not on this account forsake us or His
Word, or spare them, even though we have our share of sin, for He has
resolved to overthrow the Papacy. That has been decreed by God, as we
read in Daniel, where it is foretold of him [Antichrist] who is even
now at the door: “And none shall help him” (Dan. xi. 45). In former
times no power was able to root out the Pope; in our own day no one
will be able to help him, because Antichrist is revealed.’”
Thus amidst the trouble looming he finds his chief consolation in his
fanatical self-persuasion that the Papacy must fall and that he is the
chosen instrument to bring this about, i.e. in his supposed mission to
thwart Antichrist, a Divine mission which could not be contravened.
Hence his pseudo-mysticism was once again made to serve his purpose.
“If scandals occur amongst us,” he continues, “let us not forget that
they existed in Christ’s own circle. The Pharisees were doubtless in
glee over our Lord Christ on account of the wickedness of Judas. In
the same way the Landgrave has become a Judas to us. ‘Ah, the new
prophet has such followers [as Judas, cried the foes of Christ!] What
good can come of Christ?’--But because they refused to open their
eyes to the miracles, they were forced to see ‘_Christum Crucifixum_’
and ... later to see and suffer under Titus. But our sins may obtain
pardon and be easily remedied; it is only necessary that the Emperor
should forbid [the bigamy], or that our Princes should intercede [for
the Hessian], which they are at liberty to do, or that he should
repudiate the step he took.”
“David also fell, and surely there were greater scandals under Moses
in the wilderness. Moses caused his own masters to be slain.... But
God had determined to drive out the heathen, hence the scandals
amongst the Jews availed not to prevent it. Thus, too, our sins are
pardonable, but not those of the Papists; for they are contemners
of God, crucify Christ and, though they know better, defend their
blasphemies.”
“What advantage do they expect of it,” he goes on to ask in an
ironical vein; “they put men to death, but we work for life and take
many wives.” This he said, according to the notes, “with a joyful
countenance and amidst loud laughter.”[111] “God has resolved to vex
the people, and, when my turn comes, I will give them hard words and
tell them to look Marcolfus ‘_in anum_’ since they refuse to look
him in the face.” He then went on: “I don’t see why I should trouble
myself about the matter. I shall commend it to our God. Should the
Macedonian [the Landgrave] desert us, Christ will stand by us, the
blessed Schevlimini [םיבילי כש: Sit at my right hand (Ps. cix. 1)]. He
has surely brought us out of even tighter places. The restitution of
Würtemberg puts this scandal into the shade, and the Sacramentarians
and the revolt [of the Peasants]; and yet God delivered us out of
all that.” What he means to say is: Even greater scandal was given
by Philip of Hesse when he imposed on Würtemberg the Protestant Duke
Ulrich, heedless of the rights of King Ferdinand and of the opposition
of the Emperor and the Church;[112] in the same way the ever-recurring
dissensions on the Sacrament were an even greater scandal, and so was
the late Peasant War which threatened worse things to the Evangelical
cause than the Hessian affair.
“Should the Landgrave fall away from us.”--This fear lest Philip
should desert their party Luther had expressed in some rather earlier
utterances in 1540, when he had described more particularly the
Landgrave’s character and attitude. “A strange man!” he says of him.
“He was born under a star. He is bent upon having his own way, and so
fancies he will obtain the approval of Emperor and Pope. It may be that
he will fall away from us on account of this affair.... He is a real
Hessian; he cannot be still nor does he know how to yield. When once
this business is over he will be hatching something else. But perhaps
death will carry him, or her (Margaret), off before.” A Hessian
Councillor who was present quite bore out what Luther had said: Nothing
was of any avail with the Landgrave, “what he once undertakes he cannot
be induced to give up.” In proof of this those present instanced the
violence and utter injustice of the raid made on Würtemberg. “Because
he is such a strange character,” Luther remarked, “I must let it pass.
The Emperor, moreover, will certainly not let him have his way.”[113]
“No sensible man would have undertaken that campaign, but he, carried
away by fury, managed it quite well. Only wait a little! It [the new
scandal] will pass!” Luther was also ready to acknowledge that the
Landgrave, in spite of the promises and offers of the Emperor and Duke
of Saxony, had remained so far “very faithful” to the Evangel.[114]
In the conversation on June 18, Luther adopts a forcedly light view
of the matter: “It is only a three-months’ affair, then the whole
thing will fizzle out. Would to God Philip would look at it in this
light instead of grieving so over it! The Papists are now Demeas
and I Mitio”; with these words commences a string of word-for-word
quotations from Terence’s play “_Adelphi_,” all concerning the harsh
and violent Demeas, whom Luther takes as a figure of the Catholic
Church, and the mild and peaceable Mitio, in whom Luther sees himself.
In the Notes the sentences are given almost unaltered: “The prostitute
and the matron living in one house.” “A son is born.” “Margaret has
no dowry.” “I, Mitio, say: ‘May the gods direct all for the best!’”
“Man’s life is like a throw of the dice.”[115]
“I overlook much worse things than this,” he continues. “If anyone
says to me: Are you pleased with what has taken place? I reply: No;
oh, would that I could alter it. Since I cannot, I am resolved to bear
it with equanimity. I commit it all to our dear God. Let Him preserve
His Church as it now stands in order that it may remain in the unity
of faith and doctrine and the pure confession of the Word; all I hope
for is that it may never grow worse!”
“On rising from the table he said cheerfully: I will not give the
devil and the Papists the satisfaction of thinking that I am troubled
about the matter. God will see to it. To Him we commend the whole.”
In thus shifting the responsibility from his own shoulders and putting
it on God--Whose chosen instrument, even at the most critical
juncture, he would still persuade himself he was--he finds the most
convenient escape from anxiety and difficulty. It has all been laid
upon us by God: “We must put up with the devil and his filth as long
as we live.” Therefore, forward against the Papists, who seek to
conceal their “sodomitic vices” behind this bigamy! “We may not and
shall not yield. Let them do their dirty work and let us lay odds
on.”[116] With these words he is again quite himself. He is again the
inspired prophet, oblivious of all save his mission to champion God’s
cause; all his difficulties have vanished and even his worst moral
faults have disappeared. But in this frame of mind Luther was not
always able to persevere.
“All I hope for is that it may never grow worse.” The depressing
thought implied in these words lingered in the depths of his soul in
spite of all his forced merriment and bravado. “Alas, my God, what
have we not to put up with from fanatics and scandals! One follows on
the heels of the other; when this [the bigamy] has been adjusted, then
it is certain that something else will spring up, and many new sects
will also arise.... But God will preserve His Christendom.”[117]
Meanwhile the remarkably speedy recovery of his friend Melanchthon
consoled him. Soon after the arrival of the letters mentioned above
Luther set out for Weimar. His attentions to the sick man, and
particularly his words of encouragement, succeeded, so to say, in
recalling him to life. Luther speaks of it in his letters at that time
as a “manifest miracle of God,” which puts our unbelief to shame.[118]
The fanciful embellishment which he gave to the incident when narrating
it, making it into a sort of miracle, has left its traces in his friend
Ratzeberger’s account.[119]
Confident as Luther’s language here seems, when it is a question of
infusing new courage into himself, still he admits plainly enough one
point, concerning which he has not a word to say in his correspondence
with strangers or in his public utterances: A sin, over and above all
his previous crimes, now weighed upon the Hessian and his party owing
to what had taken place. He repeatedly uses the words “sin,” “scandal,”
“offence” when speaking of the bigamy; he feels the need of seeking
consolation in the “unpardonable” sins of the Catholics for the moral
failings of his own party, which, after all, would be remitted by
God. Nor does the Landgrave’s sin consist in his carelessness about
keeping the matter secret. Luther compares his sin to David’s, whose
adultery had been forgiven by God, and reckons Philip’s new sin amongst
the sins of his co-religionists, who, for all their failings, were
destined, with God’s help, to overthrow the Papal Antichrist. “Would
that I could alter it!” Such an admission he would not at any price
make before the princely Courts concerned, or before the world. Still
less would he have admitted publicly, that they were obliged “to put up
with the devil’s filth.” It is therefore quite correct when Köstlin,
in his Biography of Luther, points out, speaking of the Table-Talk:
“That there had been sin and scandal, his words by no means deny.”[120]
Concerning the whole affair Köstlin moreover remarks: “Philip’s bigamy
is the greatest blot on the history of the Reformation, and remains a
blot in Luther’s life in spite of everything that can be alleged in
explanation or excuse.”[121]
F. W. Hassencamp, another Protestant, says in his “Hessische
Kirchengeschichte”: “His statements at that time concerning his share
in the Landgrave’s bigamy prove that, mentally, he was on the verge of
despair. Low pleasantry and vulgarity are mixed up with threats and
words of prayer.” “Nowhere does the great Reformer appear so small
as here.”[122]--In the “Historisch-politische Blätter,” in 1846, K.
E. Jarcke wrote of the Table-Talk concerning the bigamy: “Rarely has
any man, however coarse-minded, however blinded by hate and hardened
by years of combat against his own conscience, expressed himself more
hideously or with greater vulgarity.”[123]
“After so repeatedly describing himself as the prophet of the Germans,”
says A. Hausrath, “he ought not to have had the weakness to seek a
compromise between morality and policy, but, like the preacher robed
in camels’ hair, he should have boldly told the Hessian Princelet: It
is not lawful for you to have her.” Hausrath, in 1904, is voicing the
opinion of many earlier Protestant historians when he regrets “that,
owing to weariness and pressure from without,” Luther “sanctioned an
exception to God’s unconditional command.” “The band of Protestant
leaders, once so valiant and upright,” so he says, “had for once been
caught sleeping. Evening was approaching and the day was drawing in,
and the Lord their God had left them.”[124]
_Luther at the Conference of Eisenach. The Landgrave’s Indignation._
An official conference of theologians and Councillors from Hesse and
the Electorate of Saxony met at Eisenach at the instance of Philip on
July 15, 1540, in order to deliberate on the best means of escaping
the legal difficulty and of satisfying Philip’s demand, that the
theologians should give him their open support. Luther, too, put in an
appearance and lost no time in entering into the debate with his wonted
bluster.
According to one account, on their first arrival, he bitterly
reproached (“_acerbissimis verbis_”)[125] the Hessian theologians.
The report of the Landgrave’s sister says, that his long talk with
Philip’s Chancellor so affected the latter that the “tears streamed
down his cheeks,” particularly when Luther rounded on the Hessian
Court officials for their too great inclination towards polygamy.[126]
Though these reports of the effect of his strictures and exhortations
may be exaggerated, no less than the remark of Jonas, who says, that
the “Hessians went home from Eisenach with long faces,”[127] still it
is quite likely that Luther made a great impression on many by his
behaviour, particularly by the energy with which he now stood up for
the cause of monogamy and appealed to the New Testament on its behalf.
Without denying the possibility of an exception in certain rare cases,
he now insisted very strongly on the general prohibition.
The instructions given to the Hessians showed him plainly that the
Landgrave was determined not to conceal his bigamy any longer, or to
have it branded as mere concubinage; the theologians, so the document
declares, would surely never have advised him to have recourse to
sinful concubinage. That he was not married to his second wife
was a lie, which he would not consent to tell were he to be asked
point-blank; his bigamy was really a dispensation “permitted by
God, admitted by the learned, and consented to by his wife.” If
“hard pressed” he must disclose it. To introduce polygamy generally
was of course quite a different matter, and was not to be thought
of.[128]--Needless to say, Luther was ready enough to back up this last
stipulation, for his own sake as much as for the Landgrave’s.
During the first session of the conference, held in the Rathaus
at Eisenach, Luther formally and publicly committed himself to
the expedient at which he had faintly hinted even previously. He
unreservedly proposed the telling of a lie. Should a situation arise
where it was necessary to reply “yes” or “no,” then they must resign
themselves to a downright “No.” “What harm would it do,” he said on
July 15, according to quite trustworthy notes,[129] “if a man told a
good, lusty lie in a worthy cause and for the sake of the Christian
Churches?” Similarly he said on July 17: “To lie in case of necessity,
or for convenience, or in excuse, such lying would not be against God;
He was ready to take such lies on Himself.”[130]
The Protestant historian of the Hessian Bigamy says in excuse of
this: “Luther was faced by the problem whether a lie told in case
of necessity could be regarded as a sin at all”; he did not have
recourse to the “expedient of a mental reservation [as he had done when
recommending an ambiguous reply]”; he merely absolved “the ‘_mendacium
officiosum_’ [the useful lie] of sinfulness. This done, Luther could
with a good conscience advise the telling of such a lie.”[131]
Nevertheless Luther felt called upon again to return to the alleged
Confession made. He is even anxious to make out that his memorandum
had been an Absolution coming under the Seal of Confession, and that
the Absolution might not be “revealed”: “If the Confession was to be
regarded as secret, then the Absolution also must be secret.”[132]
“He considered the reply given in Confession as an Absolution,” says
Rockwell.[133] Moreover he gave it to be understood, that, should
the Landgrave say he had committed bigamy as a right to which he
was entitled, and not as a favour, then he, Luther, was quit of all
responsibility; it was not the confessor’s business to give public
testimony concerning what had taken place in Confession.[134]
Practically, however, according to the notes of the conference, his
advice still was that the Landgrave should conceal the bigamy behind
the ambiguous declaration that: “Margaret is a concubine.” Under the
influence of the hostility to the bigamy shown by the Saxon Courts
he urged so strongly the Bible arguments against polygamy, that the
Hessians began to fear his withdrawal from his older standpoint.
The Old-Testament examples, he declared emphatically, could neither
“exclude nor bind,” i.e. could not settle the matter either way;
Paul’s words could not be overthrown; in the New Testament nothing
could be found (in favour of bigamy), “on the contrary the New
Testament confirmed the original institution [monogamy]”; therefore
“since both the Divine and the secular law were at one, nothing could
be done against it; he would not take it upon his conscience.” It
is true, that, on the other side, must be put the statement, that
he saw no reason why the Prince should not take the matter upon
his own conscience, declare himself convinced, and thus “set their
[the theologians’] consciences free.” That he still virtually stood
by what had happened, is also seen from his plain statement: “Many
things are right before God in the tribunal of conscience, which,
to the world, must appear wrong.” “In support of this he brought
forward the example,” so the report of the Conference proceeds, “of
the seduction of a virgin and of an illegitimate birth.” He also lays
stress on the principle that they, the theologians, had merely “to
dispense according to God’s command in the tribunal of conscience,”
but were unable to bear witness to it publicly; hence their advice
to the Landgrave had in reality never been given at all, for it was
no business of the “_forum externum_”; the Landgrave had acted in
accordance with his own ideas, just as he had undertaken many things
“against their advice,” for instance, “the raid on Wirtenbergk.”
He was doing the same in “this instance too, and acting on his own
advice.”
Again, for his own safety, he makes a request: “Beg him [the Prince]
most diligently to draw in [to keep it secret],” otherwise, so he
threatens, he will declare that “Luther acted like a fool, and will
take the shame on himself”; he would “say: I made a mistake and I
retract it; he would retract it even at the expense of his own honour;
as for his honour he would pray God to restore it.”[135]
In a written memorandum which he presented during the Conference
he makes a similar threat, which, however, as already shown in the
case of Thann (above, p. 40 f.), it is wrong to take as meaning that
he really declared he had acted wrongly in the advice given to the
Landgrave.
He begs the Landgrave, “again to conceal the matter and keep it
secret; for to defend it publicly as right was impossible”; should
the Landgrave, however, be determined, by revealing it, to “cause
annoyance and disgrace to our Confession, Churches and Estates,”
then it was his duty beforehand to consult all these as to whether
they were willing to take the responsibility, since without them
the matter could not take place and Luther and Melanchthon alone
“could do nothing without their authority. And rather than assist
in publicly defending it, I would repudiate my advice and Master
Philip’s [Melanchthon’s], were it made public, for it was not a public
advice, and is annulled by publication. Or, if this is no use, and
they insist on calling it a counsel and not a Confession,[136] which
it really was, then I should rather admit that I made a mistake and
acted foolishly and now crave for pardon; for the scandal is great and
intolerable. And my gracious Lord the Landgrave ought not to forget
that his Serene Highness was lucky enough in being able to take the
girl secretly with a good conscience, by virtue of our advice in
Confession; seeing that H.S.H. has no need or cause for making the
matter public, and can easily keep it secret, which would obviate all
this great trouble and misfortune. Beyond this I shall not go.”[137]
These attempts at explanation and subterfuge to which the sadly
embarrassed authors of the “testimony” had recourse were keenly
criticised by Feige, the Hessian Chancellor, in the sober, legal
replies given by him at the Conference.[138] He pointed out, that: The
Landgrave, his master, could not now “regard or admit his marriage
to be a mere ‘_liaison_’”; he would indeed keep it secret so far as
in him lay, but deny it he could not without prejudice to his own
honour; “since it has become so widely known”; those to whom he had
appealed, “as the chiefs of our Christian Churches, for a testimony,”
viz. Luther and his theologians, must not now leave him in the lurch,
“but bar witness, should necessity arise, that he had not acted
unchristianly in this matter, or against God.” Philip, moreover, from
the very first, had no intention of restricting the matter to the
private tribunal of conscience; the request brought by Bucer plainly
showed, that he “was publicly petitioning the tribunal of the Church.”
The fact is that the instructions given to Bucer clearly conveyed the
Prince’s intention of making public the bigamy and the advice by which
it was justified.
Hence, proceeded Feige: Out with it plainly, out with the theological
grounds which “moved the theologians to grant such a dispensation!”
If these grounds were not against God, then the Landgrave could take
his stand on them before the secular law, the Emperor, the Fiscal and
the Courts of Justice. Should the theologians, however, really wish to
“repudiate” their advice, nothing would be gained; the scandal would
be just as great as if they had “admitted” it; and further, it would
cause a split in their own confession, for the Prince would be obliged
to “disclose the advice.” Luther wanted to get out of the hole by
saying he had acted foolishly! Did he not see how “detrimental this
would be to his reputation and teaching”? He should “consider what he
had written in his Exposition of Genesis twelve years previously, and
that this had never been called into question by any of his disciples
or followers.” He should remember all that had been done against the
Papacy through his work, for which the Bible gave far less sanction
than for the dispensation, and which “nevertheless had been accepted
and maintained, in opposition to the worldly powers, by an appeal to a
Christian Council.”
Hence the Landgrave must urgently request, concludes Feige, that the
theologians would, at least “until the Council,” take his part and
“admit that what he had done had been agreeable to God.”
The Saxon representatives present at the Conference were, however,
ready to follow the course indicated by Luther in case of necessity,
viz. to tell a downright lie; rather than that the Prince should be
forced to vindicate openly his position it was better to deny it
flatly. They declared, without, however, convincing the Conference,
“that a flat denial was less culpable before God and in conscience--as
could be proved by many examples from Scripture--than to cause a great
scandal and lamentable falling away of many good people by a plain and
open admission and vindication.”[139]
* * * * *
Philip of Hesse was not particularly edified by the result of the
Eisenach Conference. Of all the reports which gradually reached him,
those which most aroused his resentment were, first, that Luther should
expect him to tell a lie and deny the second marriage, and, secondly,
his threat to withdraw the testimony, as issued in error.
Luther had, so far, avoided all direct correspondence with the
Landgrave concerning the disastrous affair. Now, however, he was forced
to make some statement in reply to a not very friendly letter addressed
to him by the Prince.[140]
In this Philip, alluding to the invitation to tell a lie, says: “I will
not lie, for lying has an evil sound and no Apostle or even Christian
has ever taught it, nay, Christ has forbidden it and said we should
keep to yea and nay. That I should declare the lady to be a whore, that
I refuse to do, for your advice does not permit of it. I should surely
have had no need of your advice to take a whore, neither does it do you
credit.” Yet he declares himself ready to give an “obscure reply,” i.e.
an ambiguous one; without need he would not disclose the marriage.
Nor does Luther’s threat of retracting the advice and of saying that
he had “acted foolishly” affright him. The threat he unceremoniously
calls a bit of foolery. “As to what you told my Councillors, viz. that,
rather than reveal my reasons, you would say you had acted foolishly,
please don’t commit such folly on my account, for then I will confess
the reasons, and, in case of necessity, prove them now or later,
unless the witnesses die in the meantime.” “Nothing more dreadful has
ever come to my ears than that it should have occurred to a brave
man to retract what he had granted by a written dispensation to a
troubled conscience. If you can answer for it to God, why do you fear
and shrink from the world? If the matter is right ‘_in conscientia_’
before the Almighty, the Eternal and Immortal God, what does the
accursed, sodomitic, usurious and besotted world matter?” Here he is
using the very words in which Luther was wont to speak of the world
and of the contempt with which it should be met. He proceeds with a
touch of sarcasm: “Would to God that you and your like would inveigh
against and punish those in whom you see such things daily, i.e.
adultery, usury and drunkenness--and who yet are supposed to be members
of the Church--not merely in writings and sermons but with serious
considerations and the ban which the Apostles employed, in order
that the whole world may not be scandalised. You see these things,
yet what do you and the others do?” In thus finding fault with the
Wittenberg habits, he would appear to include the Elector of Saxony,
who had a reputation for intemperance. He knew that Luther’s present
attitude was in part determined by consideration for his sovereign. In
his irritation he also has a sly hit at the Wittenberg theologians:
At Eisenach his love for the “lady” (Margaret) had been looked upon
askance; “I confess that I love her, but in all honour.... But that I
should have taken her because she pleased me, that is only natural, for
I see that you holy people also take those that please you. Therefore
you may well bear with me, a poor sinner.”
* * * * *
Luther replied on July 24,[141] that he had not deserved that the
Landgrave should write to him in so angry a tone. The latter was
wrong in supposing, that he wanted to get his neck out of the noose
and was not doing all that he could to “serve the Prince humbly and
faithfully.” It was not no his own account that he wished to keep his
advice secret; “for though all the devils wished the advice to be made
public, I would give them by God’s Grace such an answer that they would
not find any fault in it.”
It was, so Luther says in this letter, a secret counsel as “all the
devils” knew, the keeping secret of which he had requested, “with all
diligence,” and which, even at the worst, he would be the last to
bring to light. That he, or the Prince himself, was bound to silence
by the Seal of Confession, he does not say, though this would have
been the place to emphasise it. He merely states that he knew what,
in the case of a troubled conscience, “might be remitted out of mercy
before God,” and what was not right apart from this necessity. “I
should be sorry to see your Serene Highness starting a literary feud
with me.” It was true he could not allow the Prince, who was “of the
same faith” as himself, “to incur danger and disgrace”; but, should he
disclose the counsel, the theologians would not be in a position to
“get him out of the bother,” because, in the eyes of the world, “even
a hundred Luthers, Philips and others” could not change the law; the
secret marriage could never be publicly held as valid, though valid
in the tribunal of conscience. He wished to press the matter before
the worldly authorities; but here the Prince’s marriage would never
be acknowledged; he would only be exposing himself to penalties, and
withdrawing himself from the “protection and assistance of the Divine
Judgment” under which he stood so long as he regarded it as a marriage
merely in conscience.
In this letter Luther opposes the “making public of the advice,” which
he dreaded, by the most powerful motive at his command: The result
of the disclosure would be, that “at last your Serene Highness would
be obliged to put away your sweetheart as a mere whore.” He would
do better to allow her to be now regarded as a “whore, although to
us three, i.e. in God’s sight, she is really a wedded concubine”;
in all this the Prince would still have a good conscience, “for the
whole affair was due to his distress of conscience, as we believe,
and, hence, to your Serene Highness’s conscience, she is no mere
prostitute.”
There were, however, three more bitter pills for the Landgrave to
swallow. He had pleaded his distress of conscience. Luther hints,
that, “one of our best friends” had said: “The Landgrave would not
be able to persuade anyone” that the bigamy was due to distress of
conscience; which was as much as to say, that “Dr. Martin believed
what it was impossible to believe, had deceived himself and been
willingly led astray.” He, Luther, however, still thought that the
Prince had been serious in what he had said “secretly in Confession”;
nevertheless the mere suspicion might suffice to “render the advice
worthless,” and then Philip would stand alone.... The Landgrave,
moreover, had unkindly hinted in his letter, that, “we theologians
take those who please us.” “Why do not you [Princes] do differently?”
he replies. “I, at least, trust that this will be your Serene
Highness’s experience with your beloved sweetheart.” “Pretty women are
to be wedded either for the sake of the children which spring from
this merry union, or to prevent fornication. Apart from this I do
not see of what use beauty is.” Marry in haste and repent at leisure
was the result of following our passions, according to the proverb.
Lastly, Luther does not hide from the Landgrave that his carelessness
in keeping the secret had brought not only the Prince but “the whole
confession” into disrepute, though “the good people” belonging to the
faith were really in no way involved in what Philip had done. “If each
were to do what pleased him and throw the responsibility on the pious”
this would be neither just nor reasonable.
Such are the reasons by which he seeks to dissuade the warrior-Prince
from his idea of publishing the fatal Wittenberg “advice,” to impel
him to allow the marriage to “remain an ‘_ambiguum_,’” and “not openly
to boast that he had lawfully wedded his sweetheart.”
He also gives Philip to understand that he will get a taste of the
real Luther should he not obey him, or should he expose him by
publishing the “advice,” or otherwise in writing. He says: “If it
comes to writing I shall know how to extricate myself and leave
your Serene Highness sticking in the mud, but this I shall not do
unless I can’t help it.” The Prince’s allusion to the Emperor’s anger
which must be avoided, did not affright Luther in the least. In his
concluding words his conviction of his mission and the thought of
the anti-Evangelical attitude of the Emperor carry him away. “Were
this menace to become earnest, I should tweak the Emperor’s forelock,
confront him with his practices and read him a good lecture on the
texts: ‘Every man is a liar’ and ‘Put not your trust in Princes.’ Was
he not indeed a liar and a false man, he who ‘rages against God’s own
truth,’” i.e. opposes Luther’s Evangel?
Faced by such unbounded defiance Philip and his luckless bigamy, in
spite of the assurance he saw fit to assume, seemed indeed in a bad
way. One can feel how Luther despised the man. In spite of his painful
embarrassment, he is aware of his advantage. He indeed stood in need of
the Landgrave’s assistance in the matter of the new Church system, but
the latter was entirely dependent on Luther’s help in his disastrous
affair.
Hence Philip, in his reply, is more amiable, though he really
demolishes Luther’s objections. This reply he sent the day after
receiving Luther’s letter.[142]
Certain words which had been let fall at Eisenach had “enraged and
maddened” him (Philip). He had, however, good “scriptural warrant for
his action,” and Luther should not forget that, “what we did, we did
with a good conscience.” There was thus no need for the Prince to
bow before the Wittenbergers. “We are well aware that you and Philip
[Melanchthon] cannot defend us against the secular powers, nor have we
ever asked this of you.” “That Margaret should not be looked upon as a
prostitute, this we demand and insist upon, and the presence of pious
men [Melanchthon, etc.] at the wedding, your advice, and the marriage
contract, will prove what she is.” “In fine, we will allow it to remain
a secret marriage and dispensation, and will give a reply which shall
conceal the matter, and be neither yea nor nay, as long as we can and
may.” He insists, however, that, “if we cannot prevent it,” then we
shall bring the Wittenberg advice “into the light of day.”
As to telling a downright lie, that was impossible, because the
marriage contract was in the hands of his second wife’s friends, who
would at once take him to task.
“It was not our intention to enter upon a wordy conflict, or to set
your pen to work.” Luther had said, that he would know how to get out
of a tight corner, but what business was that of Philip’s: “We care
not whether you get out or in.” As to Luther’s malicious allusion to
his love for the beautiful Margaret, he says: “Since she took a fancy
to us, we were fonder of her than of another, but, had she not liked
us, then we should have taken another.” Hence he would have committed
bigamy in any case. He waxes sarcastic about Luther’s remark, that the
world would never acknowledge her as his wife, hinting that Luther’s
own wife, and the consorts of the other preachers who had formerly been
monks or priests, were likewise not regarded by the imperial lawyers as
lawful wedded wives. He looked upon Margaret as his “wife according to
God’s Word and your advice; such is God’s will; the world may regard
our wife, yours and the other preachers’ as it pleases.”
Philip, however, was diplomatic enough to temper all this with friendly
assurances. “We esteem you,” he says, “as a very eminent theologian,
nor shall we doubt you, so long as God continues to give you His
Spirit, which Spirit we still recognise in you.... We find no fault
with you personally and consider you a man who looks to God. As to our
other thoughts, they are just thoughts, and come and go duty free.”
These “duty-free” thoughts, as we readily gather from the letter,
concerned the Courts of Saxony, whose influence on Luther was a thorn
in the Landgrave’s flesh. There was the “haughty old Vashti” at Dresden
(Duchess Catherine), without whom the “matter would not have gone
so far”; then, again, there was Luther’s “Lord, the Elector.” The
“cunning of the children of the world,” which the Landgrave feared
would infect Luther, had its head-quarters at these Courts. But if it
came to the point, such things would be “disclosed and manifested” by
him, the Landgrave, to the Elector and “many other princes and nobles,”
that “you would have to excuse us, because what we did was not done
merely from love, but for conscience’s sake and in order to escape
eternal damnation; and your Lord, the Elector, will have to admit it
too and be our witness.” And in still stronger language, he “cites” the
Elector, or, rather, both the Elector and himself, to appear before
Luther: “If this be not sufficient, then demand of us, and of your
master, that we tell you in confession such things as will satisfy you
concerning us. They would, however, sound ill, so help me God, and we
hope to God that He will by all means preserve us from such in future.
You wish to learn it, then learn it, and do not look for anything good
but for the worst, and if we do not speak the truth, may God strike
us”; “to prove it” we are quite ready. Other things (see below, xxiv.,
2) make it probable, that the Elector is here accused as being Philip’s
partner in some very serious sin. It looks as though Philip’s intention
was to frighten him and prevent his proceeding further against him.
Since Luther in all probability brought the letter to the cognisance of
the Elector, the step was, politically, well thought out.
_Melanchthon’s Complaints._
Melanchthon, as was usual with him, adopted a different tone from
Luther’s in the matter. He was very sad, and wrote lengthy letters of
advice.
As early as June 15, to ease his mind, he sent one to the Elector
Johann Frederick, containing numerous arguments against polygamy,
but leaving open the possibility of secret bigamy.[143] Friends
informed the Landgrave that anxiety about the bigamy was the cause of
Melanchthon’s serious illness. Philip, on the other hand, wrote, that
it was the Saxon Courts which were worrying him.[144] Owing to his
weakness he was unable to take part in the negotiations at Eisenach.
On his return to Wittenberg he declared aloud that he and Luther had
been outwitted by the malice of Philip of Hesse. The latter’s want of
secrecy seemed to show the treasonable character of the intrigue. To
Camerarius he wrote on Aug. 24: “We are disgraced by a horrid business
concerning which I must say nothing. I will give you the details in
due time.”[145] On Sep. 1, he admits in a letter to Veit Dietrich: “We
have been deceived, under a semblance of piety, by another Jason, who
protested conscientious motives in seeking our assistance, and who
even swore that this expedient was essential for him.”[146] He thus
gives his friend a peep into the Wittenberg advice, of which he was the
draughtsman, and in which he, unlike Luther, could see nothing that
came under the Seal of Confession. The name of the deceitful polygamist
Jason he borrows from Terence, on whom he was then lecturing. Since
Luther, about the same time, also quotes from Terence when speaking at
table about Philip’s bigamy, we may infer that he and Melanchthon had
exchanged ideas on the work in question (the “_Adelphi_”). Melanchthon
was also fond of dubbing the Hessian “Alcibiades” on account of his
dissembling and cunning.[147]
Most remarkable, however, is the assertion he makes in his annoyance,
viz. that the Landgrave was on the point of losing his reason: “This
is the beginning of his insanity.”[148] Luther, too, had said he
feared he was going crazy, as it ran in the family.[149] Philip’s
father, Landgrave William II, had succumbed to melancholia as the
result of syphilis. The latter’s brother, William I, had also been
insane. Philip’s son, William IV, sought to explain the family
trouble by a spell cast over one of his ancestors by the “courtisans”
at Venice.[150] In 1538, previous to the bigamy scandal, Henry of
Brunswick had written, that the Landgrave, owing to the French disease,
was able to sleep but little, and would soon go mad.[151]
Melanchthon became very sensitive to any mention of the Hessian bigamy.
At table, on one occasion in Aug., 1540, Luther spoke of love; no one
was quite devoid of love because all at least desired enjoyment; one
loved his wife, another his children, others, like Carlstadt, loved
honour. When Bugenhagen, with an allusion to the Landgrave, quoted the
passage from Virgil’s “_Bucolica_”: “_Omnia vincit amor et nos cedamus
amori_,” Melanchthon jumped up and cried: “Pastor, leave out that
passage.”[152]
Brooding over the permission given, the scholar sought earnestly for
grounds of excuse for the bigamy. “I looked well into it beforehand,”
he writes in 1543, “I also told the Doctor [Luther] to weigh well
whether he could be mixed up in the affair. There are, however,
circumstances of which the women [their Ducal opponents at Meissen]
are not aware, and understand not. The man [the Landgrave] has many
strange ideas on the Deity. He also confided to me things which I have
told no one but Dr. Martin; on account of all this we have had no small
trouble.”[153] We must not press the contradiction this presents to
Melanchthon’s other statement concerning the Prince’s hypocrisy.
Melanchthon’s earlier letter dated Sep. 1, 1540, Camerarius ventured to
publish in the collection of his friend’s letters only with omissions
and additions which altered the meaning.
Until 1904 this letter, like Melanchthon’s other letter on Luther’s
marriage (vol. ii., p. 176), was only known in the amended form. W.
Rockwell has now published the following suppressed passages from
the original in the Chigiana at Rome, according to the manuscript
prepared by Nicholas Müller for the new edition of Melanchthon’s
correspondence. Here Melanchthon speaks out plainly without being
conscious of any “Secret of Confession,” and sees little objection
to the complete publication by the Wittenbergers of their advice. “I
blame no one in this matter except the man who deceived us with a
simulated piety (‘_simulatione pietatis fefellit_’). Nor did he adhere
to our trusty counsel [to keep the matter secret]. He swore that the
remedy was necessary. Therefore, that the universal biblical precept
[concerning the unity of marriage]: ‘They shall be two in one flesh’
might be preserved, we counselled him, secretly, and without giving
scandal to others, to make use of the remedy in case of necessity.
I will not be judge of his conscience, for he still sticks to his
assertion; but the scandal he might well have avoided had he chosen.
Either [what follows is in Greek] love got the upper hand, or here
is the beginning and foretaste of that insanity which runs in the
family. Luther blamed him severely and he thereupon promised to keep
silence. But ... [Melanchthon has crossed out the next sentence: As
time goes on he changes his views] whatever he may do in the matter,
we are free to publish our decision (‘_edere sententiam nostram_’);
for in it too we vindicated the law. He himself told me, that formerly
he had thought otherwise, but certain people had convinced him that
the thing was quite indifferent. He has unlearned men about him who
have written him long dissertations, and who are not a little angry
with me because I blamed them to their teeth. But in the beginning we
were ignorant of their prejudices.” He goes on to speak of Philip as
“depraved by an Alcibiadean nature (‘_Alcibiadea natura perditus_’),”
an expression which also fell under the red pencil of the first
editor, Camerarius.[154]
_Literary Feud with Duke Henry of Brunswick._
Prominent amongst those who censured the bigamy was the Landgrave’s
violent opponent Duke Henry of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. The Duke, a
leader of the Catholic Alliance formed to resist the Schmalkalden
Leaguers in North Germany, published in the early ‘forties several
controversial works against Philip of Hesse. This brisk and active
opponent, whose own character was, however, by no means unblemished,
seems to have had a hand in the attacks of other penmen upon the
Landgrave. Little by little he secured fairly accurate accounts of the
proceedings in Hesse and at Wittenberg, and, as early as July 22, 1540,
made a general and public reference to what had taken place.[155]
In a tract published on Nov. 3, he said quite openly that the Landgrave
had “two wives at the same time, and had thus rendered himself liable
to the penalties against double marriage.” The Elector of Saxony
had, however, permitted “his biblical experts at the University of
Wittenberg to assist in dealing with these nice affairs,” nay, had
himself concurred in the bigamy.[156]
In consequence of these and other charges contained in the Duke’s
screed, Luther wrote the violent libel entitled “Wider Hans Worst,”
of which the still existing manuscript shows in what haste and frame
of mind the work was dashed off. All his exasperation at the events
connected with the bigamy now become public boils up in his attack on
the “Bloodhound, and incendiary Harry” of Brunswick, and the “clerical
devil’s whores in the Popish robbers’ cave.”[157] Of Henry’s charge
he speaks in a way which is almost more than a mere concealing of the
bigamy.[158] He adds: “The very name of Harry stinks like devil’s
ordure freshly dropped in Germany. Did he perchance desire that not he
alone should stink so horribly in the nostrils of others, but that he
should make other honourable princes to stink also?” He was a renegade
and a coward, who did everything like an assassin. “He ought to be
set up like a eunuch, dressed in cap and bells, with a feather-brush
in his hand to guard the women and that part on account of which
they are called women, as the rude Germans say.” “Assassin-adultery,
assassin-arson indeed became this ‘wild cat,’” etc.
Even before this work was finished, in February, 1541, a pseudonymous
attack upon the Landgrave appeared which “horrified Cruciger,”[159] who
was with Luther at Wittenberg. The Landgrave is here upbraided with
the bigamy, the reproaches culminating in the following: “I cannot but
believe that the devil resides in your Serene Highness, and that the
Münster habit has infected your S.H., so that your S.H. thinks that you
may take as many wives as you please, even as the King of Münster did.”
An anonymous reply to this screed penned by the pastor of Melsungen,
Johann Lening, is the first attempt at a public justification of
Philip’s bigamy. The author only disclaims the charge that the
Landgrave had intended to “introduce a new ‘_ius_.’”[160]
Henry of Brunswick replied to “Hans Worst” and to this vindication
of the bigamy in his “_Quadruplicæ_” of May 31, 1541. He said there
of Luther’s “Hans Worst”: “That we should have roused Luther,
the arch-knave, arch-heretic, desperate scoundrel and godless
arch-miscreant, to put forth his impious, false, unchristian, lousy and
rascally work is due to the scamp [on the throne] of Saxony.” “We have
told the truth so plainly to his Münsterite brother, the Landgrave,
concerning his bigamy, that he has been unable to deny it, but admits
it, only that he considers that he did not act dishonourably, but
rightly and in a Christian fashion, which, however, is a lie and
utterly untrue.” In some of his allegations then and later, such as
that the Landgrave was thinking of taking a third wife “in addition to
his numerous concubines,” and that he had submitted to re-baptism, the
princely knight-errant was going too far. A reply and defence of the
Landgrave, published in 1544, asserts with unconscious humour that the
Landgrave knew how to take seriously “to heart what God had commanded
concerning marriage ... and also the demands of conjugal fidelity and
love.”
Johann Lening, pastor of Melsungen, formerly a Carthusian in the
monastery of Eppenberg, had been the most zealous promoter of the
bigamy. He was also very active in rendering literary service in its
defence. The string of Bible proofs alleged by Philip in his letter
to Luther of July 18 (above, p. 55 f.) can undoubtedly be traced to
his inspiration. In October, 1541, he was at Augsburg with Gereon
Sailer,[161] the physician so skilled in the treatment of syphilis;
a little later Veit Dietrich informed Melanchthon of his venereal
trouble.[162] He was much disliked by the Saxons and the Wittenbergers
on account of his defence of his master. Chancellor Brück speaks
of him as a “violent, bitter man”; Luther calls him the “_Melsingen
nebulo_” and the “_monstrum Carthusianum_”;[163] Frederick Myconius
speaks of the “_lenones Leningi_” and fears he will catch the
“_Dionysiorum vesania_.”
Such was the author of the “_Dialogue of Huldericus Neobulus_,” which
has become famous in the history of the Hessian Bigamy; it appeared in
1541, towards the end of summer, being printed at Marburg at Philip’s
expense.
The book was to answer in the affirmative the question contained in the
sub-title: “Whether it be in accordance with or contrary to the Divine,
natural, Imperial and ecclesiastical law, to have simultaneously
more than one wife.” The author, however, clothed his affirmation in
so pedantic and involved a form as to make it unintelligible to the
uninitiate so that Philip could say that, “it would be a temptation to
nobody to follow his example,” and that it tended rather to dissuade
from bigamy than to induce people to commit it.[164]
This work was very distasteful to the Courts of Saxony, and Luther soon
made up his mind to write against it.
He wrote on Jan. 10, 1542, to Justus Menius, who had sent him a reply
of his own, intended for the press: “Your book will go to the printers,
but mine is already waiting publication; your turn will come next....
How this man disgusts me with the insipid, foolish and worthless
arguments he excretes.” To this Pandora all the Hessian gods must
have contributed. “Bucer smells bad enough already on account of the
Ratisbon dealings.... May Christ keep us well disposed towards Him
and steadfast in His Holy Word. Amen.”[165] From what Luther says he
was not incensed at the Dialogue of Neobulus so much on account of
its favouring polygamy itself, but because, not content with allowing
bigamy conditionally, and before the tribunal of conscience, it sought
also to erect it into a public law. When, however, both Elector and
Landgrave[166] begged him to refrain from publishing his reply, he
agreed and stopped the printers, though only after a part of it had
already left the press.[167]
His opinion concerning the permissibility of bigamy in certain cases he
never changed in spite of the opposition it met with. But, in Luther’s
life, hardly an instance can be cited of his having shrunk back when
attacked. Rarely if ever did his defiance--which some admire--prove
more momentous than on this occasion. An upright man is not unwilling
to allow that he may have been mistaken in a given instance, and, when
better informed, to retract. Luther, too, might well have appealed to
the shortness of the time allowed him for the consideration of the
counsel he had given at Wittenberg. Without a doubt his hand had been
forced. Further, it might have been alleged in excuse for his act, that
misapprehension of the Bible story of the patriarchs had dragged him to
consequences which he had not foreseen. It would have been necessary
for him to revise completely his Old-Testament exegesis on this point,
and to free it from the influence of his disregard of ecclesiastical
tradition and the existing limitations on matrimony. In place of this,
consideration for the exalted rank of his petitioners induced him to
yield to the plausible reasons brought forward by a smooth-tongued
agent and to remain silent.
The tract of Menius, on the same political grounds, was likewise either
not published at all or withdrawn later. The truth was, that it was
desirable that the Hessian affair should come under discussion as
little as possible, so that no grounds should be given “to increase
the gossip,” as Luther put it in 1542; “I would rather it were left to
settle as it began, than that the filth should be stirred up under the
noses of the whole world.”[168]
The work of Neobulus caused much heart-burning among the Swiss
reformers; of this we hear from Bullinger, who also, in his Commentary
on Matthew, in 1542, expressed himself strongly against the tract.[169]
His successor, Rudolf Gualther, Zwingli’s son-in-law, wrote that it
was shocking that a Christian Prince should have been guilty of such a
thing and that theologians should have been found to father, advocate
and defend it.[170]
In time, however, less was heard of the matter and the rumours
died down. A peace was even patched up between the Landgrave and
the Emperor, chiefly because the Elector of Saxony was against the
Schmalkalden League being involved in the Hessian affair. Without
admitting the reality of the bigamy, and without even mentioning
it, Philip concluded with Charles V a treaty which secured for him
safety. Therein he made to the Emperor political concessions of such
importance[171] as to arouse great discontent and grave suspicions in
the ranks of the Evangelicals. At a time when the German Protestants
were on the point of appealing to France for assistance against Charles
V, he promised to do his best to hinder the French and to support the
Imperial interests. In the matter of the Emperor’s feud with Jülich,
he pledged himself to neutrality, thus ensuring the Emperor’s success.
After receiving the Imperial pardon on Jan. 24, 1541, his complete
reconciliation was guaranteed by the secret compact of Ratisbon on June
13 of the same year. He had every reason to be content, and as the
editor of Philip’s correspondence with Bucer writes,[172] what better
could even the Emperor desire? The great danger which threatened was a
league of the German Protestants with France. And now the Prince, who
alone was able to bring this about, withdrew from the opposition party,
laid his cards on the table, left the road open to Guelders, offered
his powerful support both within and outside of the Empire, and, in
return, asked for nothing but the Emperor’s favour. The Landgrave’s
princely allies in the faith were pained to see him forsake “the
opposition [to the Emperor]. For their success the political situation
was far more promising than in the preceding winter. An alliance with
France offered [the Protestants] a much greater prospect of success
than one with England, for François I was far more opposed to the
Emperor than was Henry VIII.... Of the German Princes, William of
Jülich had already pledged himself absolutely to the French King.”[173]
Philip was even secretly set on obtaining the Pope’s sanction to the
bigamy. Through Georg von Carlowitz and Julius Pflug he sought to enter
into negotiations with Rome; they were not to grudge an outlay of from
3000 to 4000 gulden as an “offering.”[174] As early as the end of 1541
Chancellor Feige received definite instructions in the matter.
The Hessian Court had, however, in the meantime been informed, that
Cardinal Contarini had given it to be understood that “no advice or
assistance need be looked for from the Pope.”[175]
Landgravine Christina died in 1549, and, after her death, the
unfortunate marriage was gradually buried in oblivion.--But did
Landgrave Philip, after the conclusion of the second marriage, cease
from immoral intercourse with women as he had so solemnly promised
Luther he would?
In the Protestant periodical, “Die christliche Welt,”[176] attention
was drawn to a Repertory of the archives of Philip of Hesse, published
in 1904,[177] in which a document is mentioned which would seem to
show that Philip was unfaithful even subsequent to his marriage with
Margaret. The all too brief description of the document is as follows:
“Suit of Johann Meckbach against Landgrave Philip on behalf of Lady
Margaret; the Landgrave’s infidelity; Margaret’s demand that her
marriage be made public.” “This sounds suspicious,” remarks W. Köhler,
“we have always taken it for granted that the bigamy was moral only
in so far as the Landgrave Philip refrained from conjugal infidelity
after its conclusion, and now we are confronted with this charge. Is
it founded?” Concerning this new document N. Paulus remarks: “In order
to be able properly to appreciate its importance, we should have to
know more of the suit. At any rate Margaret would not have caused
representations to be made to her ‘husband’ concerning his infidelity
without very weighty reasons.”[178]
In the Landgrave’s family great dissatisfaction continued to be felt
with Luther. When, in 1575, Philip’s son and successor, Landgrave
William IV, was entertaining Palsgravine Elisabeth, a zealous friend
of Lutheranism, he spoke to her about Luther, as she relates in a
letter.[179] “He called Dr. Luther a rascal, because he had persuaded
his father to take two wives, and generally made out Dr. Luther to
be very wicked. Whereat I said that it could not be true that Luther
had done such a thing.”--So completely had the fact become shrouded
in obscurity. William, however, fetched her the original of the
Wittenberg testimony. Although she was unwilling to look at it lest
her reverence for Luther should suffer, yet she was forced to hear it.
In her own words: “He locked me in the room and there I had to remain;
he gave it me to read, and my husband [the Palsgrave Johann Casimir]
who was also with me, and likewise a Zwinglian Doctor both abused Dr.
Luther loudly and said we simply looked upon him as an idol and that
he was our god. The Landgrave brought out the document and made the
Doctor read it aloud so that I might hear it; but I refused to listen
to it and thought of something else; seeing I refused to listen the
Landgrave gave me a frightful scolding, but afterwards he was sorry
and craved pardon.”
There is no doubt that William’s dislike for Luther, here displayed,
played a part in his refusal to accept the formula of Concord in
1580.[180]
So meagre were the proofs made public of Luther’s share in the step
which Philip of Hesse had taken, that, even in Hesse, the Giessen
professor Michael Siricius was able to declare in a writing of 1679,
entitled “_Uxor una_” that Luther’s supposed memorandum was an
invention.[181]
Of the Wittenberg “advice” only one, fairly long, but quite apocryphal
version, was put in circulation during Melanchthon’s lifetime; it
appeared in the work of Erasmus Sarcerius, “On the holy married state,”
of which the Preface is dated in 1553. It is so worded as to leave the
reader under the impression that its authors had refused outright to
give their consent. Out of caution, moreover, neither the authors nor
the addressee are named.[182] In this version, supposed to be Luther’s
actual text, it was embodied, in 1661, in the Altenburg edition of
his works, then in the Leipzig reprint of the same (1729 ff.) and
again in Walch’s edition (Halle, 1740 ff.).[183] Yet Lorenz Beger, in
his work “_Daphnæus Arcuarius_” (1679), had supplied the real text,
together with Bucer’s instructions and the marriage contract, from
“a prominent Imperial Chancery.” The importance of these documents
was first perceived in France. Bossuet used them in his “Histoire des
variations des églises protestantes” (1688).[184] He was also aware
that Landgrave Ernest, of Hesse-Rheinfels-Rotenburg, who returned to
the Catholic Church in 1652, had supplied copies of the three documents
(to Elector Carl Ludwig of the Palatine). In more recent times Max
Lenz’s publication of the Hessian archives has verified these documents
and supplied a wealth of other material which we have duly utilised in
the above.
_Opinions Old and New Regarding the Bigamy._
As more light began to be thrown on the history of the bigamy,
Protestant historians, even apart from those already mentioned, were
not slow in expressing their strong condemnation, as indeed was only to
be expected.
Julius Boehmer, in outspoken language, points to “the unfortunate
fact” that “Luther, in his old age, became weak, nay, flabby in his
moral judgments and allowed himself to be guided by political and
diplomatic considerations, and not by truth alone and an uncorruptible
conscience.”[185]
Walter Köhler, in the “Historische Zeitschrift,” has thrown a strong
light on the person and the motives of the Landgrave.[186] Whilst
admitting that Philip may have suffered from remorse of conscience
and depression, he shows how these were “in great part due to his
physical deterioration, his unrestrained excesses having brought
on him syphilis in its worst form; sores broke out on his hands
and he suffered from trouble with the throat.” His resolution to
commit bigamy also sprang from the same source, “not from a sudden
realisation of the wickedness of his life, but simply from the sense
of his physical bankruptcy.” Besides, as Köhler points out, the
Landgrave’s intention was not at first to marry Margaret, but rather
to maintain her as a kept woman and so render excesses unnecessary.
Philip, however, was unable to get her as a concubine, owing to the
opposition of her mother, who demanded for her daughter the rank of
princess and wife. Hence the idea of a bigamy.
The following indignant reference of Onno Klopp’s must be included
amongst the Protestant statements, since it was written some
time before the eminent historian joined the Catholic Church:
“The revolting story has left a blot on the memory of Luther and
Melanchthon which oceans of sophisms will not avail to wash away.
This, more than any other deed, brought to light both the waywardness
of the new Church and its entire dependence on the favour of
Princes.”[187]
As for the concealment, and the secrecy in which the sanction of the
bigamy was shrouded, G. Ellinger considers, that the decision of
Luther and his friends “became absolutely immoral only through the
concealment enjoined by the reformers.” In consequence of the matter
being made a secret of conscience, “the second wife would seem to the
world a concubine”; hence not only the first wife, but also the second
would suffer degradation. The second wife’s relatives had given their
consent “only on the hypothesis of a real marriage”; this too was what
Philip intended; yet Luther wished him to tell the Emperor that she
was a mere concubine; the Landgrave, however, refused to break the
word he had given, and “repudiated Luther’s suggestion that he should
tell a lie.”[188]
Another Protestant, the historian Paul Tschackert, has recently
characterised the Hessian affair as “a dirty story.” “It is, and must
remain,” he says, “a shameful blot on the German Reformation and the
life of our reformers. We do not wish to gloss it over, still less to
excuse it.”[189]
Yet, notably in modern theological literature, some Protestants have
seemed anxious to palliate the affair. An attempt is made to place the
Wittenberg advice and Luther’s subsequent conduct in a more favourable
light by emphasising more than heretofore the secrecy of the advice
given, which Luther did not consider himself justified in revealing
under any circumstances, and the publication of which the Landgrave was
unjustly demanding. It is also urged, that the ecclesiastical influence
of the Middle Ages played its part in Luther’s sanction of the bigamy.
One author even writes: “the determining factor may have been,” that
“at the critical moment the reformer made way for the priest and
confessor”; elsewhere the same author says: “Thus the Reformation
begins with a mediæval scene.” Another Protestant theologian thinks
that “the tendency, taken over from the Catholic Church,” to treat
the marriage prohibitions as aspects of the natural law was really
responsible; in Luther’s evangelical morality “there was a good lump of
Romish morality, worthless quartz mingled with good metal”; “Catholic
scruples” had dimmed Luther’s judgment in the matter of polygamy; to us
the idea of bigamy appears “simply monstrous,” “but this is a result of
age-long habits”; in the 16th century people thought “very differently.”
In the face of the detailed quotations from actual sources already
given in the present chapter, all such opinions--not merely Luther’s
own appeal to a “secret of confession,” invented by himself--are
seen to be utterly unhistorical. Particularly so is the reference
to the Catholic Middle Ages. It was just the Middle Ages, and the
ecclesiastical tradition of earlier times, which excited among Luther’s
contemporaries, even those of his own party, such opposition to the
bigamy wherever news of the same penetrated in any shape or form.[190]
In the following we shall quote a few opinions of 16th-century
Protestants not yet mentioned. With the historian their unanimous
verdict must weigh more heavily in the scale than modern theories,
which, other considerations apart, labour under the disadvantage of
having been brought forward long after the event and the expressions
of opinion which accompanied it, to bolster up views commonly held
to-day.[191]
The bigamy was so strongly opposed to public opinion and thus
presumably to the tradition handed down from the Middle Ages, that
Nicholas von Amsdorf, Luther’s friend, declared the step taken by
Philip constituted “a mockery and insult to the Holy Gospel and
a scandal to the whole of Christendom.”[192] He thought as did
Justus Jonas, who exclaimed: “Oh, what a great scandal!” and, “Who
is not aghast at so great and calamitous a scandal?”[193] Erasmus
Alber, preacher at Marburg, speaks of the “awful scandal” (“_immane
scandalum_”) which must result.[194] In a letter to the Landgrave in
which the Hessian preacher, Anton Corvinus, fears a “great falling
away” on account of the affair, he also says, that the world will not
“in any way” hear of such a marriage being lawful; his only advice
was: “Your Serene Highness must take the matter to heart and, on
occasion, have recourse to lying.”[195] To tell a deliberate untruth,
as already explained (pp. 29, 53), appeared to other preachers
likewise the only possible expedient with which to meet the universal
reprobation of contemporaries who judged of the matter from their
“mediæval” standpoint.
Justus Menius, the Thuringian preacher, in his work against polygamy
mentioned above, appealed to the universal, Divine “prohibition which
forbids and restrains us,” a prohibition which applied equally to the
“great ones” and allowed of no dispensation. He also pointed out the
demoralising effect of a removal of the prohibition in individual
cases and the cunning of the devil who wished thereby “to brand the
beloved Evangel with infamy.”[196]
Philip had defiled the Church with filth (“_fœdissime_”), so wrote
Johann Brenz, the leader of the innovations in Würtemberg. After such
an example he scarcely dared to raise his eyes in the presence of
honourable women, seeing what an insult this was to them.[197]
Not to show how reprehensible was the deed, but merely to demonstrate
anew how little ground there was for throwing the responsibility on
the earlier ages of the Church, we may recall that the Elector, Johann
Frederick of Saxony, on first learning of the project through Bucer,
expressed his “horror,” and two days later informed the Landgrave
through Brück, that such a thing had been unheard of for ages and
the law of the land and the tradition of the whole of Christendom
were likewise against it. It is true that he allowed himself to be
pacified and sent his representative to the wedding, but afterwards
he again declared with disapproval, that the whole world, and all
Christians without distinction, would declare the Emperor right should
he interfere; he also instructed his minister at the Court of Dresden
to deny that the Elector or the Wittenberg theologians had had any
hand in the matter.[198] Other Princes and politicians belonging to
the new faith left on record strong expressions of their disapproval;
for instance: Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg, Duke Ulrich of
Würtemberg, King Christian III of Denmark, the Strasburg statesman
Jacob Sturm and the Augsburg ambassador David Dettigkofer.[199] To the
latter the news “was frightful tidings from which would result great
scandal, a hindrance to and a falling away from the Holy Evangel.”[200]
All there now remains to do is to illustrate, by statements made by
Protestants in earlier and more recent times, two important points
connected with the Hessian episode; viz. the unhappy part which
politics played in Luther’s attitude, and what he said on lying. Here,
again, during the last ten years there has been a movement in Luther’s
favour amongst many Protestant theologians.
Concerning the part of politics W. Rockwell, the historian of the
bigamy, openly admits, that: “By his threat of seeking protection
from the Emperor for his bigamy, Philip overcame the unwillingness of
the Wittenbergers to grant the requested dispensation.”[201] “It is
clear,” he also says, “that political pressure was brought to bear on
the Wittenbergers by the Landgrave, and that to this pressure they
yielded.”[202]
That consideration for the effect his decision was likely to have on
the attitude of the Landgrave weighed heavily in the balance with
Luther in the matter of his “testimony,” it is scarcely possible
to deny, after what we have seen. “The Hessian may fall away from
us” (above, p. 46), such was one of the fears which undoubtedly had
something to do with his compliance. To inspire such fear was plainly
the object of Philip’s threat, that, should the Wittenbergers not prove
amenable, he would make advances to the Emperor and the Pope, and the
repeated allusions made by Luther and his friends to their dread of
such a step, and of his falling away, show how his threat continued to
ring in their ears.[203]
Bucer declared he had himself agreed to the bigamy from fear lest
Philip should otherwise be lost to the Evangelical cause,[204] and his
feelings were doubtless shared at Wittenberg. Melanchthon speaks not
merely of a possible attempt on Philip’s part to obtain the Emperor’s
sanction to his marriage, but of an actual threat to leave the party
in the lurch.[205] Johann Brenz, as soon as news reached him in
Würtemberg of the Landgrave’s hint of an appeal to the Emperor, saw in
it a threat to turn his back on the protesting party.[206] All three
probably believed that at heart the Landgrave would remain true to the
new faith, but what Luther had chiefly in view was Philip’s position
as head of the Schmalkalden League.
The result was all the more tragic. The compliance wrung from the
Wittenbergers failed to protect the party from the evil they were so
desirous of warding off. Philip’s reconciliation with the Emperor, as
already pointed out, was very detrimental to the Schmalkalden League,
however insincere his motives may have been.
On this point G. Kawerau says:[207] “In the Landgrave’s resolution
to address himself to the Emperor and the Pope, of which they were
informed, they [Luther and Melanchthon] saw a ‘public scandal,’ a
‘_publica offensio_,’ which they sought to obviate by demanding
absolute secrecy.”[208] “But the disastrous political consequences
did, in the event, make their appearance.... The zealously promoted
alliance with François I, to which even the Saxon Elector was not
averse, came to nothing and Denmark and Sweden’s overtures had to
be repelled. The prime-mover in the Schmalkalden League was himself
obliged to cripple the League. ‘The dreaded champion of the Evangel
became the tool of the Imperial policy’ (v. Bezold). From that time
forward his position lacked precision and his strong initiative was
gone.”
G. Ellinger, in his study on Melanchthon, writes: “It can scarcely be
gainsaid that Luther and Melanchthon allowed themselves in a moment of
weakness to be influenced by the weight of these considerations.” The
petition, he explains, had been warmly urged upon the Wittenbergers
from a political point of view by Bucer, the intermediary. “If Bucer
showed himself favourable to the Landgrave’s views this was due to
his wish to preserve thereby the Evangelical cause from the loss of
its most doughty champion; for Philip had told him in confidence,
that, in the event of the Wittenbergers and the Saxon Electorate
refusing their consent, he intended to address himself directly to the
Emperor and the Pope in order to obtain sanction for his bigamy.” The
Landgrave already, in the summer of 1534, had entertained the idea of
approaching the Emperor, and in the spring of 1535 had made proposals
to this end. “It can hardly be doubted that in Bucer’s case political
reasons turned the scale.” Ellinger refers both to the admission made
by Melanchthon and to the significant warning against the Emperor with
which the letter of Dispensation closes.[209]
The strongest reprobation of the evil influence exerted over Luther by
politics comes, however, from Adolf Hausrath.[210] He makes it clear,
that, at Wittenberg, they were aware that Protestantism “would assume
quite another aspect were the mighty Protestant leader to go over to
the Pope or the Emperor”; never has “the demoralising character of
all politics” been more shamefully revealed; “eternal principles were
sacrificed to the needs of the moment”; “Philip had to be retained at
any cost.” Hence came the “great moral defeat” and Luther’s “fall.”
This indignant language on the part of the Heidelberg historian of
the Church has recently been described by a learned theologian on the
Protestant side as both “offensive” and uncalled for. Considering
Luther’s bold character it is surely very improbable, that an attempt
to intimidate him would have had any effect except “to arouse his
spirit of defiance”; not under the influence of mere “opportunism”
did he act, but, rather, after having, as a confessor, heard “the
cry of deep distress” he sought to come to “the aid of a suffering
conscience.”--In answer to this we must refer the reader to what
has gone before, where this view, which seems a favourite with some
moderns, has already sufficiently been dealt with. It need only be
added, that the learned author says of the bigamy, that “a fatal
blunder” was made by Luther ... but only because the mediæval confessor
intervened. “The reformer was not able in every season and situation to
assert the new religious principle which we owe to him; hence we have
merely one of many instances of failure, though one that may well be
termed grotesque and is scarcely to be matched.” “Nothing did more to
hinder the triumphal progress of the Reformation than the Landgrave’s
‘Turkish marriage.’” As to the argument drawn from Luther’s boldness
and defiance, a Protestant has pointed out, that we are not compelled
to regard any compliance from motives of policy as “absolutely
precluded”; to say that “political expediency played no part whatever
in Luther’s case” is “going a little too far.” “Did then Luther never
allow any room to political considerations? Even, for instance, in the
question of armed resistance to the Emperor?”[211]
* * * * *
Referring to Luther’s notorious utterance on lying, G. Ellinger, the
Protestant biographer of Melanchthon, says: Luther’s readiness to
deny what had taken place is “one of the most unpleasing episodes in
his life and bears sad testimony to the frailty of human nature.” His
statements at the Eisenach Conference “show how even a great man was
driven from the path of rectitude by the blending of politics with
religion. He advised a ‘good, downright lie’ that the world might be
saved from a scandal.... It is sad to see a great man thus led astray,
though at the same time we must remember, that, from the very start,
the whole transaction had been falsified by the proposal to conceal
it.”[212]
Th. Kolde says in a similar strain, in a work which is otherwise
decidedly favourable to Luther, “Greater offence than that given by the
‘advice’ itself is given by the attitude which the reformers took up
towards it at a later date.”[213]
“The most immoral part of the whole business,” so Frederick von Bezold
says in his “Geschichte der deutschen Reformation,” “lay in the advice
given by the theologians that the world should be imposed upon.... A
man [Luther] who once had been determined to sacrifice himself and
the whole world rather than the truth, is now satisfied with a petty
justification for his falling away from his own principles.”[214] And,
to conclude with the most recent biographer of Luther, Adolf Hausrath
thus criticises the invitation to tell a “downright lie”: “It is
indeed sad to see the position into which the ecclesiastical leaders
had brought themselves, and how, with devilish logic, one false step
induced them to take another which was yet worse.”[215]
This notwithstanding, the following opinion of a defender of Luther
(1909) has not failed to find supporters in the Protestant world: “The
number of those who in the reformation-period had already outgrown
the lax mediæval view regarding the requirements of the love of truth
was probably not very great. One man, however, towers in this respect
above all his contemporaries, viz. Luther. He it was who first taught
us what truthfulness really is. The Catholic Church, which repudiated
his teaching, knows it not even to this day.” “A truthfulness which
disregards all else,” nay, a “positive horror for all duplicity” is,
according to this writer, the distinguishing mark of Luther’s life.
CHAPTER XXII
LUTHER AND LYING
1. A Battery of Assertions.[216]
LUTHER’S frank admission of his readiness to make use of a “good big
lie” in the complications consequent on Philip’s bigamy, and his
invitation to the Landgrave to escape from the dilemma in this way, may
serve as a plea for the present chapter. “What harm is there,” he asks,
“if, in a good cause and for the sake of the Christian Churches, a man
tells a good, downright lie?” “A lie of necessity, of convenience,
or of excuse, all such lies are not against God and for such He will
Himself answer”; “that the Landgrave was unable to lie strongly, didn’t
matter in the least.”[217]
It is worth while ascertaining how Luther--who has so often
been represented as the embodiment of German integrity and
uprightness--behaved in general as regards the obligation of speaking
with truth and honesty. Quite recently a Protestant author, writing
with the sole object of exonerating his hero in this particular,
bestowed on him the title of “Luther the Truthful.” “Only in one
single instance,” so he has it, “did Luther advise the use of a lie of
necessity at which exception might be taken.” In order not to run to
the opposite extreme and make mountains out of mole-hills we shall do
well to bear in mind how great was the temptation, during so titanic a
struggle as his, for Luther to ignore at times the rigorous demands of
truth and justice, particularly when he saw his opponents occasionally
making light of them. We must likewise take into consideration the
vividness of Luther’s imagination, the strength of the ideas which
dominated him, his tendency to exaggeration and other mitigating
circumstances.
There was a time when Luther’s foes were ready to describe as lies
every false statement or erroneous quotation made by Luther, as though
involuntary errors and mistakes due to forgetfulness were not liable to
creep into his works, written as they were in great haste.
On the other hand, some of Luther’s admirers are ready enough to make
admissions such as the following: “In point of fact we find Luther
holding opinions concerning truthfulness which are not shared by
every Christian, not even by every evangelical Christian.” “Luther
unhesitatingly taught that there might be occasions when it was a
Christian’s duty to depart from the truth.”[218]
To this we must, however, add that Luther, repeatedly and with the
utmost decision, urged the claims of truthfulness, branded lying as
“the devil’s own image,”[219] and extolled as one of the excellencies
of the Germans--in which they differed from Italians and Greeks--their
reputation for ever being “loyal, truthful and reliable people”; he
also adds--and the words do him credit--“To my mind there is no more
shameful vice on earth than lying.”[220]
This, however, does not dispense us from the duty of carefully
examining the particular instances which seem to militate against the
opinion here expressed.
We find Luther’s relations with truth very strained even at the
beginning of his career, and that, too, in the most important and
momentous explanations he gave of his attitude towards the Church and
the Pope. Frequently enough, by simply placing his statements side by
side, striking falsehoods and evasions become apparent.[221]
For instance, according to his own statements made in private, he
is determined to assail the Pope as Antichrist, yet at the same
time, in his official writings, he declares any thought of hostility
towards the Pope to be alien to him. It is only necessary to note
the dates: On March 13, 1519, he tells his friend Spalatin that he
is wading through the Papal Decretals and, in confidence, must admit
his uncertainty as to whether the Pope is Antichrist or merely his
Apostle, so miserably had Christ, i.e. the truth, been crucified by
him in the Decretals.[222] Indeed, even in the earlier half of Dec.,
1518, he had been wondering whether the Pope was not Antichrist; on
Dec. 11, writing to his friend Link, he said he had a suspicion, that
the “real Antichrist” of whom Paul speaks ruled at the Court of Rome,
and believed that he could prove that he was “even worse than the
Turk.”[223] In a similar strain he wrote as early as Jan. 13, 1519,
that he intended to fight the “Roman serpent” should the Elector and
the University of Wittenberg allow him so to do;[224] on Feb. 3,[225]
and again on Feb. 20, 1519,[226] he admits that it had already “long”
been his intention to declare war on Rome and its falsifications of
the truth.--In spite of all this, at the beginning of Jan., 1519, he
informed the Papal agent Miltitz that he was quite ready to send a
humble and submissive letter to the Pope, and, as a matter of fact,
on Jan. 5 (or 6), 1519, he wrote that strange epistle to Leo X in
which he speaks of himself as “the dregs of humanity” in the presence
of the Pope’s “sublime majesty”; he approaches him like a “lambkin,”
whose bleating he begs the Vicar of Christ graciously to give ear to.
Nor was all this merely said in derision, but with a fixed purpose to
deceive. He declares with the utmost solemnity “before God and every
creature” that it had never entered his mind to assail in any way
the authority of the Roman Church and the Pope; on the contrary, he
“entirely admits that the power of the Church extends over all, and
that nothing in heaven or on earth is to be preferred to her, except
Jesus Christ alone, the Lord of all things.” The original letter
still exists, but the letter itself was never despatched, probably
because Miltitz raised some objection.[227] Only through mere chance
did the Papal Curia fail to receive this letter, which, compared with
Luther’s real thought as elsewhere expressed, can only be described as
outrageous.[228]
In his dealings with his Bishop, Hieronymus Scultetus the chief pastor
of Brandenburg, he had already displayed a like duplicity.
In May, 1518, he wrote assuring him in the most respectful terms,
that he submitted unconditionally to the judgment of the Church
whatever he was advancing concerning Indulgences and kindred
subjects; that the Bishop was to burn all his scribbles (Theses and
Resolutions) should they displease him, and that he would “not mind
in the least.”[229]--And yet a confidential letter sent three months
earlier to his friend Spalatin mentions, though for the benefit of
him “alone and our friends,” that the whole system of Indulgences now
seemed to Luther a “deluding of souls, good only to promote spiritual
laziness.”[230]
To the Emperor too he also gives assurances couched in submissive and
peaceful language, which are in marked contrast with other statements
which emanated from him about the same time.
It is only necessary to recall his letter of Aug. 30, 1520, to
Charles V.[231] Here Luther seeks to convince the Emperor that he
is the quietest and most docile of theologians; who was “forced to
write only owing to the snares laid for him by others”; who wished
for nothing more than to be ignored and left in peace; and who was
ready at any moment to welcome the instruction which so far had been
refused him.--Very different was his language a few weeks earlier when
writing to Spalatin, his tool at the Electoral Court of Saxony: “The
die is cast; the despicable fury or favour of the Romans is nothing
to me; I desire no reconciliation or communion with them.... I shall
burn the whole of the Papal Laws and all humility and friendliness
shall cease.”[232] He even hopes, with the help of Spalatin and the
Elector, to send to Rome the ominous tidings of the offer made by the
Knight Silvester von Schauenburg to protect him by armed force; they
might then see at Rome “that their thunders are of no avail”; should
they, however, obtain from the Elector his dismissal from his chair
at Wittenberg, then, “with the support of the men-at-arms, he would
make things still warmer for the Romans.”[233] And yet, on the other
hand, Luther was just then most anxious that Spalatin, by means of the
Elector, should represent his cause everywhere, and particularly at
Rome, as not yet defined, as a point of controversy urgently calling
for examination or, at the very least, for a biblical refutation
before the Emperor and the Church; the Sovereign also was to tell the
Romans that “violence and censures would only make the case of Germany
worse even than that of Bohemia,” and would lead to “irrepressible
tumults.” In such wise, by dint of dishonest diplomacy, did he seek
to frighten, as he says, the “timid Romanists” and thus prevent their
taking any steps against him.[234]
If we go back a little further we find a real and irreconcilable
discrepancy between the actual events of the Indulgence controversy
of 1517 and 1518 and the accounts which he himself gave of them later.
“I was forced to accept the degree of Doctor and to swear to preach
and teach my cherished Scriptures truly and faithfully. But then the
Papacy barred my way and sought to prevent me from teaching.”[235]
“While I was looking for a blessing from Rome, there came instead
a storm of thunder and lightning; I was made the lamb that fouled
the water for the wolf; Tetzel escaped scot-free, but I was to be
devoured.”[236]
His falsehoods about Tetzel are scarcely believable. The latter
was, so he says, such a criminal that he had even been condemned to
death.[237]
The Indulgence-preachers had declared (what they never thought of
doing) “that it was not necessary to have remorse and sorrow in
order to obtain the indulgence.”[238] In his old age Luther stated
that Tetzel had even given Indulgences for future sins. It is true,
however, that when he spoke “he had already become a myth to himself”
(A. Hausrath). “Not only are the dates wrong but even the events
themselves.... It is the same with the statement that Tetzel had sold
Indulgences for sins not yet committed.... In Luther’s charges against
Tetzel in the controversy on the Theses we hear nothing of this; only
in the work ‘Wider Hans Worst’ (1541), written in his old age, does he
make such an assertion.”[239] In this tract Luther does indeed make
Tetzel teach that “there was no need of remorse, sorrow or repentance
for sin, provided one bought an indulgence, or an indulgence-letter.”
He adds: “And he [Tetzel] also sold for future sins.” (See vol. i., p.
342.)
This untruth, clearly confuted as it was by facts, passed from
Luther’s lips to those of his disciples. Mathesius in his first sermon
on Luther seems to be drawing on the passage in “Wider Hans Worst”
when he says, Tetzel had preached that he was able to forgive the
biggest past “as well as future sins.”[240] Luther’s friend, Frederick
Myconius, helped to spread the same falsehood throughout Germany by
embodying it in his “_Historia Reformationis_” (1542),[241] whilst in
Switzerland, Henry Bullinger, who also promoted it, expressly refers
to “Wider Hans Worst” as his authority.[242]
In this way Luther’s misrepresentations infected his whole circle, nor
can we be surprised if in this, as in so many similar instances, the
falsehood has held the field even to our own day.[243]
We may mention incidentally, that Luther declares concerning the fame
which his printed “Propositions against Tetzel’s Articles” brought
him: “It did not please me, for, as I said, I myself did not know
what the Indulgence was,”[244] although his first sermons are a
refutation, both of his own professed ignorance and of that which he
also attributes “to all theologians generally.”--Finally, Luther was
very fond of intentionally representing the Indulgence controversy as
the one source of his opposition to the Church, and in this he was so
successful that many still believe it in our own times. The fact that,
long before 1517, his views on Grace and Justification had alienated
him from the teaching of the Church, he keeps altogether in the
background.
At length the Church intervened with the Ban and Luther was summoned
before the Emperor at the Diet of Worms. Three years later, at the
cost of truth, he had already contrived to cast a halo of glory around
his public appearance there. For instance, we know how, contrary to
the true state of the case, he wrote: “I went to Worms although I knew
that the safe conduct given me by the Emperor would be broken”; for the
German Princes, otherwise so staunch and true, had, he says, learned
nothing better from the Roman idol than to disregard their plighted
word; when he entered Worms he had “taken a jump into the gaping jaws
of the monster Behemoth.”[245] Yet he knew well enough that the promise
of a safe conduct was to be kept most conscientiously. Only on the
return journey did he express the fear lest, by preaching in defiance
of the prohibition, he might make people say that he had thereby
forfeited his safe conduct.[246]
Yet again it was no tribute to truth and probity, when, after the
arrival in Germany of the Bull of Excommunication, though perfectly
aware that it was genuine, he nevertheless feigned in print to regard
it as a forgery concocted by his enemies, to the detriment of the
Evangel. In confidence he declared that he “believed the Bull to be
real and authentic,”[247] and yet at that very time, in his “Von den
newen Eckischenn Bullen und Lugen,” he brought forward four reasons for
its being a forgery, and strove to make out that the document was, not
the work of the Pope, but a “tissue of lies” woven by Eck.[248]
His tactics had been the same in the case of an edict directed against
him by the Bishop of Meissen, the first of the German episcopate to
take action. He knew very well that the enactment was genuine. Yet he
wrote in reply the “Antwort auff die Tzedel sso unter des Officials tzu
Stolpen Sigel ist aussgangen,” as though the writer were some unknown
opponent, who ... “had lost his wits on the Gecksberg.”[249]
A similar artifice was made to serve his purpose in the matter of the
Papal Brief of Aug. 23, 1518, in which Cardinal Cajetan received full
powers to proceed against him. He insisted that this was a malicious
fabrication of his foes in Germany; and yet he was well aware of the
facts of the case; he cannot have doubted its authenticity, seeing that
the Brief had been officially transmitted to him from the Saxon Court
through Spalatin.[250]
While, however, accusing others of deception, even occasionally by
name, as in Eck’s case, he saw no wrong in antedating his letter to
Leo X; for this neither he nor his adviser Miltitz was to be called
to account; it sufficed that by dating it earlier the letter appeared
to have been written in ignorance of the Excommunication, and thereby
served Luther’s interests better.[251]
In fact, right through the period previous to his open breach with
Rome, we see him ever labouring to postpone the decision, though a
great gulf already separated him from the Church of yore. Across the
phantom bridge which still spanned the chasm, he saw with satisfaction
thousands passing into his own camp. When on the very point of raising
the standard of revolt he seemed at pains to prove it anything but an
emblem of uprightness, probity and truth.
* * * * *
Passing now to the struggle of his later life, similar phenomena can
scarcely escape the eyes of the unprejudiced observer.
He was proposing untruth and deception when, in 1520, he advised
candidates to qualify for major Orders by a fictitious vow of celibacy.
Whoever was to be ordained subdeacon was to urge the Bishop not to
demand continency, but should the Bishop insist upon the law and call
for such a promise, then the candidates were quietly to give it with
the proviso: “_quantum fragilitas humana permittit_”; then, says
Luther, “each one is free to take these words in a negative sense, i.e.
I do not vow chastity because human frailty does not allow of a man
living chastely.”[252]
To what lengths he was prepared to go, even where members of Reformed
sects were concerned, may be seen in one of his many unjust outbursts
against Zwingli and Œcolampadius. Although they were suffering
injustice and violence, yet he denounced them mercilessly. They were
to be proclaimed “damned,” even though this led to “violence being
offered them”; this was the best way to make people shrink from their
false doctrines.[253] His own doctrines, on the other hand, he says,
are such that not even Catholics dared to condemn them. On his return
to Wittenberg from the Coburg he preached, that the Papists had been
forced to admit that his doctrine did not offend against a single
article of the Faith.[254]--Of Carlstadt, his theological child of
trouble, he asserted, that he wished to play the part of teacher of
Holy Scripture though he had never in all his life even seen the
Bible,[255] and yet all, Luther inclusive, knew that Carlstadt was not
so ignorant of the Bible and that he could even boast of a considerable
acquaintance with Hebrew. Concerning Luther’s persecution of Carlstadt,
a Protestant researcher has pointed to the “ever-recurring flood
of misrepresentations, suspicions, vituperation and abuse which the
Reformer poured upon his opponent.”[256]
Such being his licence of speech, what treatment could Catholics expect
at his hands? One instance is to be found in the use he makes against
the Catholics of a well-known passage of St. Bernard’s.
St. Bernard, says Luther, had declared the religious life to be
worthless and had said: “_Perdite vixi_” (“I have shamefully wasted
my life”). The great Saint of the religious life, the noblest patron
and representative of the virtues of the cloister, Luther depicts
as condemning with these words the religious life in general as
an abominable error; he would have him brand his own life and his
attention to his vows, as an existence foreign to God which he had
too late recognised as such! By this statement, says Luther, he
“hung up his cowl on the nail,” and proceeds to explain his meaning:
“Henceforward he cared not a bit for the cowl and its foolery and
refused to hear any more about it.”[257] Thus, so Luther assures
us, St. Bernard, at the solemn moment of quitting this world, “made
nothing” (“_nihili fecit_”) of his vows.[258]
When quoting the words “_Perdite vixi_” Luther frequently seeks to
convey an admission on the Saint’s part of his having come at last to
see that the religious life was a mistake, and merely led people to
forget Christ’s merits; that he had at last attained the perception
during sickness and had laid hold on Christ’s merits as his only
hope.[259] Even on internal grounds it is too much to assume Luther to
have been in good faith, or merely guilty of a lapse of memory. That
we have here to do with a distorted version of a perfectly harmless
remark is proved to the historian by another passage, dating from
the year 1518, where Luther himself refers quite simply and truly
to the actual words employed by St. Bernard and sees in them merely
an expression of humility and the admission of a pure heart, which
detested the smallest of its faults.[260]
Denifle has followed up the “_Perdite vixi_” with great acumen, shown
the frequent use Luther made of it and traced the words to their
actual context in St. Bernard’s writings. The text does not contain
the faintest condemnation of the religious life, so that Luther’s
incessant misuse of it becomes only the more incomprehensible.[261]
St. Bernard is here speaking solely of his own faults and
imperfections, not at all of the religious life or of the vows. Nor
were the words uttered on his death-bed, when face to face with
eternity, but occur in a sermon preached in the full vigour of manhood
and when the Saint was eagerly pursuing his monastic ideal.
Again, what things were not circulated by Luther, in the stress of his
warfare, concerning the history of the Popes and the Church? Here,
again, some of his statements were not simply errors made in good
faith, but, as has been pointed out by Protestant historians, malicious
inventions going far beyond the matter contained in the sources which
we know to have been at his command. The Popes “poisoned several
Emperors, beheaded or otherwise betrayed others and put them to death,
as became the diabolical spectre of the Papacy.”[262] The bloodthirsty
Popes were desirous of “slaying the German Emperors, as Clement IV did
with Conradin, the last Duke of Suabia and hereditary King of Naples,
whom he caused to be publicly put to death by the sword.”[263] Of this
E. Schäfer rightly says, that the historian Sabellicus, whom Luther
was utilising, simply (and truly) records that: “Conradin was taken
while attempting to escape and was put to death by order of Charles [of
Anjou]”; Clement IV Sabellicus does not mention at all, although it is
true that the Pope was a strong opponent of the Staufen house.[264]
The so-called letter of St. Ulrich of Augsburg against clerical
celibacy, with the account of 3000 (6000) babies’ heads found in a
pond belonging to St. Gregory’s nunnery in Rome, is admittedly one of
the most impudent forgeries found in history and emanated from some
foe of Gregory VII and opponent of the ancient law of celibacy. Luther
brought it out as a weapon in his struggle against celibacy, and,
according to Köstlin-Kawerau, most probably the Preface to the printed
text published at Wittenberg in 1520 came from his pen.[265] The
manuscript had been sent to Luther from Holland. Emser took him to task
and proved the forgery, though on not very substantial grounds. Luther
demurred to one of his arguments but declared that he did not build
merely on a doubtful letter. In spite of this, however, the seditious
and alluring fable was not only not withdrawn from circulation but
actually reprinted. When Luther said later that celibacy had first
been introduced in the time of St. Ulrich, he is again speaking on the
authority of the supposititious letter. This letter was also worked for
all it was worth by those who later took up the defence of Luther’s
teaching.[266]
To take one single example of Luther’s waywardness in speaking of Popes
who were almost contemporaries: He tells us with the utmost assurance
that Alexander VI had been an “unbelieving Marane.” However much we
may execrate the memory of the Borgia Pope, still so extraordinary an
assertion has never been made by any sensible historian. Alexander
VI, the pretended Jewish convert and “infidel” on the Papal throne!
Who could read his heart so well as to detect an infidelity, which,
needless to say, he never acknowledged? Who can credit the tale of his
being a Marane?
* * * * *
When, in July 14, 1537, Pope Paul III issued a Bull granting an
indulgence for the war against the Turks, Luther at once published
it with misleading notes in which he sought to show that the Popes,
instead of linking up the Christian powers against their foes, had ever
done their best to promote dissensions amongst the great monarchs of
Christendom.[267]
In 1538 he sent to the press his Schmalkalden “Artickel” against the
Pope and the prospective Council, adding observations of a questionable
character regarding their history and meaning. He certainly was
exalting unduly the Articles when he declared in the Introduction,
that “they have been unanimously accepted and approved by our people.”
It is a matter of common knowledge, that, owing to Melanchthon’s
machinations, they had never even been discussed. (See vol. iii., p.
434.) They were nevertheless published as though they had been the
official scheme drafted for presentation to the Council. Luther also
put into the printed Artickel words which are not to be found in the
original.[268] The following excuse of his statement as to their having
been accepted at Schmalkalden has been made: “It is evident, that,
owing to his grave illness at Schmalkalden, he never learnt the exact
fate of his Articles.” Yet who can believe, that, after his recovery,
he did not make enquiries into what had become of the Articles on which
he laid so much weight, or that he “never learnt” their fate, though
the matter was one well known to both the Princes and the theologians?
Only after his death were these Articles embodied in the official
Confessions.[269]
Seeing that he was ready to misrepresent even the official proceedings
of his own party, we cannot be surprised if, in his controversies,
he was careless about the truth where the person of an opponent was
concerned. Here it is not always possible to find even a shadow of
excuse behind which he can take refuge. Of Erasmus’s end he had
received accounts from two quarters, both friendly to his cause, but
they did not strike him as sufficiently damning. Accordingly he at
once set in currency reports concerning the scholar’s death utterly at
variance with what he had learnt from the letters in question.[270]
He accused the Catholics, particularly the Catholic Princes, of
attempting to murder him, and frequently speaks of the hired braves
sent out against him. Nor were his friends and pupils slow to take his
words literally and to hurl such charges, more particularly against
Duke George of Saxony.[271] Yet not a single attempt on his life can
be proved, and even Protestants have admitted concerning the Duke
that “nothing credible is known of any attempt on George’s part to
assassinate Luther.”[272] Cochlæus merely relates that murderers had
offered their services to Duke George;[273] beyond that nothing.
Far more serious than such misrepresenting of individuals was the
injustice he did to the whole ecclesiastical life of the Middle Ages,
which he would fain have made out to have entirely fallen away from
the true standard of Christian faith and practice. Seen through his
new glasses, mediæval life was distorted beyond all recognition.
Walter Köhler gives a warning which is to the point: “Protestant
historians must beware of looking at the Middle Ages from Luther’s
standpoint.”[274] In particular was mediæval Scholasticism selected
by Luther and his friends as a butt for attack and misrepresentation.
Bucer admits in a letter to Bullinger how far they had gone in this
respect: “We have treated all the Schoolmen in such a way as to shock
many good and worthy men, who see that we have not read their works but
are merely anxious to slander them out of prudence.”[275]
* * * * *
However desirous we may be of crediting the later Luther with good
faith in his distorted views of Catholic practices and doctrines, still
he frequently goes so far in this respect as to make it extremely
difficult to believe that his misrepresentations were based on mere
error or actual conviction. One would have thought that he would at
least have noticed the blatant contrast between his insinuations
and the text of the Breviary and Missal--books with which he was
thoroughly conversant--and even of the rule of his Order. As a monk
and priest he was perfectly familiar with them; only at the cost of a
violent wrench could he have passed from this so different theological
world to think as he ultimately did of the doctrines of Catholicism.
Döllinger was quite right when he wrote: “As a controversialist Luther
combined undeniably dialectic and rhetorical talent with a degree of
unscrupulousness such as is rarely met with in this domain. One of
his most ordinary methods was to distort a doctrine or institution
into a mere caricature of itself, and then, forgetful of the fact
that what he was fighting was a simple creation of his fancy, to
launch out into righteous abuse of it.... So soon as he touches a
theological question, he confuses it, often of set purpose, and as
for the reasons of his opponents, they are mutilated and distorted
out of all recognition.”[276] The untruthfulness of his polemics is
peculiarly apparent in his attack on free-will. It is impossible,
even with the best of intentions, to put it all, or practically all,
to the account “of the method of disputation” then in use. That
method, the syllogistic one, called for a clear and accurate statement
of the opponent’s standpoint. The controversy round “_De servo
arbitrio_” (fully dealt with in vol. ii., pp. 223-294) has recently
been studied by two scholars, one a Protestant, the other a Catholic,
and both authors on the whole agree at least on one point, viz. that
Luther ascribed to his opponent a denial of the necessity of Grace,
such as the latter never defended, and such as is quite unknown to
Catholics.[277] Indeed, at a later juncture in that same controversy
Luther even declared of the author of the “_Hyperaspistes_” that he
denied the Trinity![278]
Instead of instancing anew all the many minor misrepresentations of
the dogmas and practices of the older Church for which Luther was
responsible, and which are found scattered throughout this work, we may
confine ourselves to recalling his bold assertion, that all earlier
expositors had taken the passage concerning “God’s justice,” in Rom.
i. 17, as referring to punitive justice.[279] This was what he taught
from his professor’s chair and what we find vouched for in the notes
of a zealous pupil of whose fidelity there can be no question. And yet
it has been proved, that, with the possible exception of Abelard, not
one can be found who thus explained the passage of which Luther speaks
(“_hunc locum_”), whilst Luther himself was acquainted with some at
least of the more than sixty commentators who interpret it otherwise.
Significant enough is the fact that he only reached this false
interpretation gradually.
Luther also says that he and all the others had been told it was a
mortal sin to leave their cell without their scapular, though he never
attempts to prove that this was the general opinion, or was even
held by anybody. The rule of his Order rejected such exaggeration.
All theologians were agreed that such trifles did not constitute a
grievous sin. Luther was perfectly aware that Gerson, who was much
read in the monasteries, was one of these theologians; he praised him,
because, though looked at askance at Rome, he set consciences free from
over-great scrupulosity and refused to brand the non-wearing of the
scapular as a crime.[280] Gerson was indeed not favourably regarded
in Rome, but this was for other reasons, not, as Luther makes out, on
account of such common-sense teaching as the above.
Then again we have the untruth he is never tired of reiterating, viz.
that in the older Church people thought they could be saved only by
means of works, and that, through want of faith in Christ, the “Church
had become a whore.”[281] Yet ecclesiastical literature in Luther’s day
no less than in ours, and likewise an abundance of documents bearing on
the point teach quite the contrary and make faith in Christ the basis
of all the good works enjoined.[282] All were aware, as Luther himself
once had been, that outward works taken by themselves were worthless.
And yet Luther, in one of the charges which he repeated again and
again, though at the outset he cannot have believed it, says: “The
question is, how we are to become pious. The Grey Friar says: Wear a
grey hood, a rope and the tonsure. The Black Friar says: Put on a black
frock. The Papist: Do this or that good work, hear Mass, pray, fast,
give alms, etc., and each one whatever he fancies will help him to be
saved. But the Christian says: Only by faith in Christ can you become
pious, and righteous and secure salvation; only through Grace alone,
without any work or merits of your own. Now look and see which is true
righteousness.”[283]
Let us listen for a moment to the indignant voice of a learned Catholic
contemporary, viz. the Saxon Dominican, Bartholomew Kleindienst,
himself for a while not unfavourable to the new errors, who, in 1560,
replied to Luther’s misrepresentations: “Some of the leaders of sects
are such impudent liars as, contrary to their own conscience, to
persuade the poor people to believe, that we Catholics of the present
day, or as they term us Papists, do not believe what the old Papists
believed; we no longer think anything of Christ, but worship the
Saints, not merely as the friends of God but as gods themselves; nay,
we look upon the Pope as our God; we wish to gain heaven by means of
our works, without God’s Grace; we do not believe in Holy Writ; have
no proper Bible and should be unable to read it if we had; trust more
in holy water than in the blood of Christ.... Numberless such-like
horrible, blasphemous and hitherto unheard-of lies they invent and use
against us. The initiate are well aware that this is the chief trick of
the sects, whereby they render the Papacy an abomination to simple and
otherwise well-disposed folk.”[284]
* * * * *
But had not Luther, carried away by his zeal against the Papists, taken
his stand on the assumption, that, against the deception and depravity
of the Papal Antichrist, every weapon was good provided only that it
helped to save souls? Such at any rate was his plea in justification of
his work “An den christlichen Adel.”[285] Again, during the menacing
Diet of Augsburg, when recommending the use of the questionable
“Gospel-proviso,” he let fall the following in a letter: Even “tricks
and failings” (“_doli et lapsus_”), should they occur amongst his
followers in their resistance to the Papists, “can easily be atoned for
once we have escaped the danger.”[286] He even adds: “For God’s Mercy
watches over us.”
In the midst of the double-dealing then in progress Luther again
appealed to Christ in his letter to Wenceslaus Link on Sep. 20, 1530,
where he says: Christ “would be well pleased with such deceit and would
scornfully cheat the [Papist] deceivers, as he hoped,” i.e. raise
false hopes that the Lutherans would yield; later they would find out
their mistake, and that they had been fooled. Here is my view of the
matter, he continues, “I am secure, that without my consent, their
consent [the concessions of Melanchthon and his friends at the Diet]
is invalid. Even were I too to agree with these blasphemers, murderers
and faithless monsters, yet the Church and [above all] the teaching of
the Gospel would not consent.” This was his “Gospel-proviso,” thanks to
which all the concessions, doctrinal or moral, however solemnly granted
by him or by his followers, might be declared invalid--“once we have
escaped the danger.” (See vol. iii., p. 337 ff.)
The underhandedness which he advocated in order that the people might
not be made aware of the abrogation of the Mass, has been considered
above (vol. ii., p. 321). Another strange trick on his part--likewise
for the better furtherance of his cause--was his attempt to persuade
the Bishop of Samland, George von Polenz, who had fallen away from the
Church and joined him, “to proceed with caution”; “therefore that it
would be useful for him [the Bishop] to appear to suspend his judgment
(“_ut velut suspendens sententiam appareret_”); to wait until the
people had consented, and then throw in his weight as though he had
been conquered by their arguments.”[287] Couched in Luther’s ordinary
language this would mean that the Bishop was to pretend to be wavering
between Christ and Antichrist, between hell and the Evangel, though any
such wavering, to say nothing of any actual yielding, would have been
a capital crime against religion. At the best the Bishop could only
hypocritically feign to be wavering in spite of the other public steps
he had taken in Luther’s favour and of which the latter was well aware.
Later, in 1545, considering the “deception and depravity” of the Papacy
Luther thought himself justified in insinuating in a writing against
the Catholic Duke Henry of Brunswick,[288] then a prisoner, that the
Pope had furnished him supplies for his unfortunate warlike enterprise
against the allies of the evangelical confession.
Of this there was not the shadow of a proof. The contrary is clear
from Protestant documents and protocols.[289] The Court of the Saxon
Electorate, where an insult to the Emperor was apprehended, was aghast
at Luther’s resolve to publish the charge concerning the “equipment
from Italy,” and Chancellor Brück hastened to request him to alter the
proofs for fear of evil consequences.[290] Luther, however, was in no
mood to yield; the writing comprising this malicious insinuation and
other falsehoods was even addressed in the form of a letter to the
Saxon Elector and the allied Princes. At the same time the author,
both in the text and in his correspondence, gave the impression that
the writing had been composed without the Elector’s knowledge and only
at the request of “many others, some of them great men,” though in
reality, as Protestants admit, the “work had been written to order,”
viz. at the instigation of the Electoral Court.[291]
“We all know,” Luther says, seemingly with the utmost gravity, in this
work against the Duke, “that Pope and Papists desire our death, body
and soul. We, on the other hand, desire to save them with us, soul
and body.”[292] There is no need to waste words on the intentions here
ascribed to the Papists. As to Luther’s own good intentions so far as
the material welfare of the Papists goes, what he says does not tally
with the wish he so loudly expressed at that very time for the bloody
destruction of the Pope. Further, as regards the Papists’ souls,
what he said of his great opponent, Archbishop Albert of Mayence,
deserves to be mentioned: “He died impenitent in his sins and must be
damned eternally, else the Christian faith is all wrong.”[293] Did
Luther perhaps write this with a heavy heart? Yet he also condemns in
advance the soul of the unhappy Duke of Brunswick, “seeing there is
no hope of his amendment,” and “even though he should feign to repent
and become more pious,” yet he would not be trusted since “he might
pretend to repent and amend merely in order to climb back to honour,
lands and people, which assuredly would be nothing but a false and
foxy repentance.”[294] Hence he insists upon the Princes refusing
to release the Duke. But even his own friends will not consider his
religious motives for this very profound or genuine, for instance,
when he says: Were he to be released, “many pious hearts would be
saddened and their prayers for your Serene Highnesses become tepid and
cold.”[295] His political reasons were no less founded on untruth.
The only object of the League of the Catholic Princes was to seize
upon the property of the evangelical Princes; “they were thinking,
not of the Christian faith, but of the lands of the Elector and the
Landgrave”; they have made “one league after the other” and now “call
it a defensive one, as though forsooth they were in danger,” whereas
“we for our part have without intermission prayed, implored, called
and cried for peace.”[296]
While Luther was himself playing fast and loose with truth, he was not
slow to accuse his opponents of lying even when they presented matters
as they really were. When Eck published the Bull of Excommunication,
which Luther himself knew to be authentic, he was roundly rated for
saying that his “tissue of lies” was “the Pope’s work.”[297] In fact,
in all and everything that Catholics undertake against his cause,
they are seeking “to deceive us and the common people, though well
aware of the contrary.... You see how they seek the truth.... They are
rascals incarnate.”[298] In fighting against the lies of his opponents
Luther, once,--curiously enough--in his writing “Widder die hymelischen
Propheten” actually takes the Pope under his protection against the
calumnies of his Wittenberg opponent Carlstadt; seeking to brand him as
a liar, he declares that he “was notoriously telling lies of the Pope.”
We already know how much Carlstadt had to complain of Luther’s lying
and fickleness.
This leads to a short review of the remarks made by Luther’s then
opponents and friends concerning his want of truthfulness.
2. Opinions of Contemporaries in either Camp
Luther’s work against Duke Henry of Brunswick entitled “Wider Hans
Worst” was so crammed with malice and falsehoods that even some of
Luther’s followers were disposed to complain of its unseemliness. Simon
Wilde, who was then studying medicine at Wittenberg, wrote on April
8, 1541, when forwarding to his uncle the Town Clerk, Stephen Roth of
Zwickau, a copy of the booklet which had just appeared: “I am sending
you a little work of Dr. Martin against the Duke of Brunswick which
bristles with calumnies, but which also [so he says] contains much that
is good, and may be productive of something amongst the virtuous.”[299]
Statements adverse to Luther’s truthfulness emanating from the
Protestant side are not rare; particularly are they met with in the
case of theologians who had had to suffer from his violence; nor can
their complaints be entirely disallowed simply because they came from
men who were in conflict with him, though the circumstance would call
for caution in making use of them were the complaints not otherwise
corroborated.
Œcolampadius in his letter to Zwingli of April 20, 1525, calls Luther a
“master in calumny, and prince of sophists.”[300]
The Strasburg preachers Bucer and Capito, though reputed for their
comparative moderation, wrote of one of Luther’s works on the
Sacrament, that “never had anything more sophistical and calumnious
seen the light.”[301]
Thomas Münzer repeatedly calls his enemy Luther “Dr. Liar” and “Dr.
Lyinglips,”[302] on account of the unkindness of his polemics; more
picturesquely he has it on one occasion, that “he lied from the bottom
of his gullet.”[303]
Bucer complains in terms of strong disapprobation, that, when engaged
with his foes, Luther was wont to misrepresent and distort their
doctrines in order the more readily to gain the upper hand, at least
in the estimation of the multitude. He finds that “in many places” he
has “rendered the doctrines and arguments of the opposite side with
manifest untruth,” for which the critic is sorry, since this “gave
rise to grave doubts and temptations” amongst those who detected
this practice, and diminished their respect for the Evangelical
teaching.[304]
The Lutheran, Hieronymus Pappus, sending Luther’s work “Wider Hans
Worst” to Joachim Vadian, declared: “In calumny he does not seem to me
to have his equal.”[305]
Johann Agricola, once Luther’s friend, and then, on account of his
Antinomianism, his adversary, brings against Luther various charges
in his Notes (see above, vol. iii., p. 278); the worst refer to his
“lying.” God will punish Luther, he writes, referring to his work
“Against the Antinomians”; “he has heaped too many lies on me before
all the world.” Luther had said that Agricola denied the necessity of
prayer or good works; this the latter, appealing to his witnesses,
brands as an “abominable lie.” He characterises the whole tract as
“full of lies,”[306] and, in point of fact, there is no doubt it did
contain the worst exaggerations.
Among the writers of the opposite camp the first place is due to
Erasmus. Of one of the many distortions of his meaning committed by
Luther he says: “It is true I never look for moderation in Luther,
but for so malicious a calumny I was certainly not prepared.”[307]
Elsewhere he flings in his face the threat: “I shall show everybody
what a master you are in the art of misrepresentation, defamation,
calumny and exaggeration. But the world knows this already.... In your
sly way you contrive to twist even what is absolutely true, whenever
it is to your interest to do so. You know how to turn black into
white and to make light out of darkness.”[308] Disgusted with Luther’s
methods, he finally became quite resigned even to worse things. He
writes: “I have received Luther’s letter; it is simply the work of
a madman. He is not in the least ashamed of his infamous lies and
promises to do even worse. What can those people be thinking of who
confide their souls and their earthly destiny to a man who allows
himself to be thus carried away by passion?”[309]
The polemic, Franz Arnoldi, tells Luther, that one of his works
contains “as many lies as words.”[310]
Johann Dietenberger likewise says, referring to a newly published book
of Luther’s which he had been studying: “He is the most mendacious man
under the sky.”[311]
Paul Bachmann, shortly after the appearance of Luther’s booklet “Von
der Winckelmesse,” in his comments on it emits the indignant remark:
“Luther’s lies are taller even than Mount Olympus.”[312]
“This is no mere erring man,” Bachmann also writes of Luther, “but the
wicked devil himself to whom no lie, deception or falsehood is too
much.”[313]
Johann Eck sums up his opinion of Luther’s truthfulness in these
words: “He is a man who simply bristles with lies (‘_homo totus
mendaciis scatens_’)”.[314] The Ingolstadt theologian, like
Bartholomew Kleindienst (above, p. 95), was particularly struck by
Luther’s parody of Catholic doctrine.--Willibald Pirkheimer’s words in
1528 we already know.[315]
We pass over similar unkindly epithets hurled at him by indignant
Catholic clerics, secular, or regular. The latter, particularly,
speaking with full knowledge and therefore all the more indignantly,
describe as it deserves what he says of vows, as a glaring lie, of
the falsehood of which Luther, the quondam monk, must have been fully
aware.
Of the Catholic Princes who were capable of forming an opinion,
Duke George of Saxony with his downright language must be mentioned
first. In connection with the Pack negotiations he says that Luther
is the “most cold-blooded liar he had ever come across.” “We must
say and write of him, that the apostate monk lies like a desperate,
dishonourable and forsworn miscreant.” “We have yet to learn from Holy
Scripture that Christ ever bestowed the mission of an Apostle on such
an open and deliberate liar or sent him to proclaim the Gospel.”[316]
Elsewhere he reminds Luther of our Lord’s words: “By their fruits you
shall know them”: To judge of the spirit from the fruits, Luther’s
spirit must be a “spirit of lying”; indeed, Luther proved himself
“possessed of the spirit of lies.”[317]
3. The Psychological Problem Self-suggestion and Scriptural Grounds of
Excuse
Not merely isolated statements, but whole series of regularly recurring
assertions in Luther’s works, constitute a real problem, and, instead
of challenging refutation make one ask how their author could possibly
have come to utter and make such things his own.
_A Curious Mania._
He never tires of telling the public, or friends and supporters within
his own circle, that “not one Bishop amongst the Papists reads or
studies Holy Scripture”; “never had he [Luther] whilst a Catholic
heard anything of the Ten Commandments”; in Rome they say: “Let us be
cheerful, the Judgment Day will never come”; they also call anyone
who believes in revelation a “poor simpleton”; from the highest to
the lowest they believe that “there is no God, no hell and no life
after this life”; when taking the religious vows the Papists also
vowed they “had no need of the Blood and Passion of Christ”; I, too,
“was compelled to vow this”; all religious took their vows “with a
blasphemous conscience.”
He says: In the Papacy “they did not preach Christ,” but only the Mass
and good works; and further: “No Father [of the Church] ever preached
Christ”; and again: “They knew nothing of the belief that Christ died
for us”; or: “No one [in Popery] ever prayed”; and: Christ was looked
upon only as a “Judge” and we “merely fled from the wrath of God,”
knowing nothing of His mercy. “The Papists,” he declares, “condemned
marriage as forbidden by God,” and “I myself, while still a monk,
was of the same opinion, viz. that the married state was a reprobate
state.”
In the Papacy, so Luther says in so many words, “people sought to be
saved through Aristotle.”[318] “In the Papacy the parents did not
provide for their children. They believed that only monks and priests
could be saved.”[319] “In the Papacy you will hardly meet with an
honest man who lives up to his calling” (i.e. who performs his duties
as a married man).[320]
But enough of such extravagant assertions, which to Catholics stand
self-condemned, but were intended by their author to be taken
literally. He flung such wild sayings broadcast among the masses, until
it became a second nature with him. For we must bear in mind that
grotesque and virulent misstatements such as the above occur not merely
now and again, but simply teem in his books, sermons and conversations.
It would be an endless task to enumerate his deliberate falsehoods. He
declares, for instance, that the Papists, in all their collects and
prayers, extolled merely the merits of the Saints; yet this aspersion
which he saw fit to cast upon the Church in the interests of his
polemics, he well knew to be false, having been familiar from his
monastic days with another and better aspect of the prayers he here
reviles. He knew that the merits of the Saints were referred to only in
some of the collects; he knew, moreover, why they were mentioned there,
and that they were never alleged alone but always in subordination to
the merits and the mediation of our Saviour (“_Per Dominum nostrum
Iesum Christum_,” etc.).
A favourite allegation of Luther’s, viz. that the Church of the past
had regarded Christ exclusively as a stern Judge, was crushingly
confuted in Denifle’s work. The importance of this brilliant and
scholarly refutation lies in the fact, that it is principally founded
on texts and usages of the older Church with which Luther was perfectly
familiar, which, for instance, he himself had recited in the liturgy
and more especially in the Office of his Order year after year, and
which thus bear striking testimony against his good faith in the matter
of his monstrous charge.[321]
It is a matter of common knowledge that, also in other branches of the
history of theology and ecclesiastical life, Denifle has refuted with
rare learning, though with too sharp a pen, Luther’s paradoxical “lies”
concerning mediæval Catholicism. It is to be hoped that this may be
followed by other well-grounded and impartial comments from the pen of
other writers, for, in spite of their monstrous character, some of
Luther’s accusations still live, partly no doubt owing to the respect
in which he is held. Some of them will be examined more closely below.
The principal aim of these pages is, however, to seek the psychological
explanation of the strange peculiarity which manifests itself in
Luther’s intellectual life, viz. the abnormal tendency to level
far-fetched charges, sometimes bordering on the insane.
_An Attempt at a Psychological Explanation._
A key to some of these dishonest exaggerations is to be found in the
need which Luther experienced of arming himself against the Papacy
and the older Church by ever more extravagant assertions. Realising
how unjust and untenable much of his position was, and oppressed by
those doubts to which he often confessed, a man of his temper was
sorely tempted to have recourse to the expedient of insisting yet more
obstinately on his pet ideas. The defiance which was characteristic of
him led him to pile up one assertion on the other which his rhetorical
talent enabled him to clothe in his wonted language. Throughout he was
acting on impulse rather than from reflection.
To this must be added--incredible as it may appear in connection
with the gravest questions of life--his tendency to make fun. Jest,
irony, sarcasm were so natural to him as to obtrude themselves almost
unconsciously whenever he had to do with opponents whom he wished to
crush and on whom he wished to impose by a show of merriment which
should display the strength of his position and his comfortable sense
of security, and at the same time duly impress his own followers. Those
who looked beneath the surface, however, must often have rejoiced
to see Luther so often blunting the point of his hyperboles by the
drolleries by which he accompanies them, which made it evident that
he was not speaking seriously. To-day, too, it would be wrong to take
all he says as spoken in dead earnest; at the same time it is often
impossible to determine where exactly the serious ends and the trivial,
vulgar jest begins; probably even Luther himself did not always know. A
few further examples may be given.
“In Popery we were compelled to listen to the devil and to worship
things that some monk had spewed or excreted, until at last we lost
the Gospel, Baptism, the Sacrament and everything else. After that
we made tracks for Rome or for St. James of Compostella and did
everything the Popish vermin told us to do, until we came to adore
even their lice and fleas, nay, their very breeches. But now God has
returned to us.”[322]
“Everywhere there prevailed the horrid, pestilential teaching of the
Pope and the sophists, viz. that a man must be uncertain of God’s
grace towards himself (‘_incertum debere esse de gratia Dei erga
se_’).”[323] By this doctrine and by their holiness-by-works Pope and
monks “had driven all the world headlong into hell” for “well-nigh
four hundred years.”[324] Of course, “for a man to be pious, or to
become so by God’s Grace, was heresy” to them; “their works were of
greater value, did and wrought more than God’s Grace,”[325] and with
all this “they do no single work which might profit their neighbour in
body, goods, honour or soul.”[326]
A. Kalthoff[327] remarks of similar distortions of which Luther was
guilty: “Hardly anyone in the whole of history was so little able to
bear contradiction as Luther; it was out of the question to discuss
with him any opinion from another point of view; he preferred to
contradict himself or to assert what was absolutely monstrous, rather
than allow his opponent even a semblance of being in the right.”--The
misrepresentation of Catholic doctrine which became a tradition among
Lutheran polemics was in great part due to Luther.--With equal skill
and moderation Duke Anton Ulrich of Brunswick, in his “Fifty Reasons”
for returning to the Catholic Church,[328] protests against this
perversion of Catholic doctrine by Lutheran writers. He had observed
that arguments were adduced by the Lutherans to prove truths which
the Church does not deny at all, whilst the real points at issue were
barely touched upon. “For instance, they bring forward a heap of
texts to prove that God alone is to be adored, though Catholics never
question it, and they teach that it is a sin of idolatry to pay divine
worship to any creature.” “They extol the merits of Christ and the
greatness of His satisfaction for our sins. But what for? Catholics
teach the same, viz. that the merits of Christ are infinite and that
His satisfaction suffices to blot out all the sins of the world,
and thus they, too, hold the Bible doctrine of the appropriation of
Christ’s merits by means of their own good works (1 Peter i. 10).”
Two things especially were made the butt of Luther’s extravagant and
untrue charges and insinuations, viz. the Mass and the religious
life. In his much read Table-Talk the chapter on the Mass is full of
misrepresentations such as can be explained only by the animus of the
speaker.[329] Of religious he can relate the most incredible tales.
Thus: “On the approach of death most of them cried in utter despair:
Wretched man that I am; I have not kept my Rule and whither shall I
flee from the anger of the Judge? Alas, that I was not a sow-herd,
or the meanest creature on earth!”[330] On account of the moral
corruption of the Religious Orders, he declares it would be right,
“were it only feasible, to destroy both Papacy and monasteries at one
blow!”[331] He is fond of jesting at the expense of the nuns; thus he
makes a vulgar allusion to their supposed practice of taking an image
of the Crucified to bed with them, as though it were their bridegroom.
He roundly charges them all with arrogance: “The nuns are particularly
reprehensible on account of their pride; for they boast: Christ is our
bridegroom and we are His brides and other women are nothing.”[332]
It is putting the matter rather too mildly when a Protestant
historian, referring to the countless assertions of this nature,
remarks, “that, in view of his habits and temper, some of Luther’s
highly flavoured statements call for the use of the blue pencil if
they are to be accorded historical value.”[333]
Lastly, we must point to another psychological, or, more accurately,
pathological, element which may avail to explain falsehoods so glaring
concerning the Church of former times. Experience teaches, that
sometimes a man soaked in prejudice will calumniate or otherwise assail
a foe, at first from an evil motive and with deliberate injustice, and
then, become gradually persuaded, thanks to the habit thus formed,
of the truth of his calumnies and of the justice of his proceedings.
Instances of such a thing are not seldom met with in history,
especially among those engaged in mighty conflicts in the arena of the
world. Injustice and falsehood, not indeed entirely, but with regard to
the matter in hand, are travestied, become matters of indifference, or
are even transformed in their eyes into justice and truth.
In Luther’s case the phenomenon in question assumes a pathological
guise. We cannot but perceive in him a kind of self-suggestion by which
he imposed upon himself. Constituted as he was, such suggestion was
possible, nay probable, and was furthermore abetted by his nervous
excitement, the result of his never-ceasing struggle.[334]
It is in part to his power of suggestion that must also be attributed
his success in making his disciples and followers accept even his most
extravagant views and become in their turn missioners of the same.
_The New Theology of Lying._
Another explanation, this time a theological one, of Luther’s disregard
for the laws of truth is to be found in the theory he set up of the
permissibility of lies.
Previously, even in 1517, he, like all theologians, had regarded every
kind of lie as forbidden. Theologians of earlier times, when dealing
with this subject, usually agreed with Augustine and Peter Lombard, the
“_Magister Sententiarum_” and likewise with Gratian, that all lies,
even lies of excuse, are forbidden. After the commencement of his
public controversy, however, strange as it may appear, Luther gradually
came to assert in so many words that lies of excuse, of convenience,
or of necessity were not reprehensible, but often good and to be
counselled. How far this view concerning the lawfulness of lying might
be carried, remained, however, a question to be decided by each one
individually.
Formerly he had rightly declared: A lie is “contrary to man’s nature
and the greatest enemy of human society”; hence no greater insult
could be offered than to call a man a liar. To this he always adhered.
But besides, following St. Augustine, he had distinguished between
lies of jest and of necessity and lies of detraction. Not merely the
latter, so he declared, were unlawful, but, as Augustine taught, even
lies of necessity or excuse--by which he understands lies told for our
own or others’ advantage, but without injury to anyone. “Yet a lie of
necessity,” he said at that time, “is not a mortal sin,” especially
when told in sudden excitement “and without actual deliberation.”
This is his language in January, 1517,[335] in his Sermons on the Ten
Commandments, when explaining the eighth. Again, in his controversy
with the Zwinglians on the Sacrament (1528), he incidentally shows his
attitude by the remark, that, “when anyone has been publicly convicted
of falsehood in one particular we are thereby sufficiently warned by
God not to believe him at all.”[336] In 1538, he says of the Pope and
the Papists, that, on account of their lies the words of Chrysippus
applied to them: “If you are a liar you lie even in speaking the
truth.”[337]
Meanwhile, however, his peculiar reading of the Old Testament, and
possibly no less the urgent demands of his controversy, had exerted an
unfortunate influence on his opinion concerning lies of convenience or
necessity.
It seems to him that in certain Old-Testament instances of such lies
those who employed them were not to blame. Abraham’s lie in denying
that Sarah was his wife, the lie of the Egyptian midwives about the
Jewish children, Michol’s lie told to save David, appear to Luther
justifiable, useful and wholesome. On Oct. 2, 1524, in his Sermons
on Exodus, as it would seem for the first time, he defended his
new theory. Lies were only real lies “when told for the purpose of
injuring our neighbour”; but, “if I tell a lie, not in order to injure
anyone but for his profit and advantage and in order to promote his
best interests, this is a lie of service”; such was the lie told by
the Egyptian midwives and by Abraham; such lies fall “under the grace
of Heaven, i.e. came under the forgiveness of sins”; such falsehoods
“are not really lies.”[338]
In his lectures on Genesis (1536-45) the same system has been further
elaborated: “As a matter of fact there is only one kind of lie, that
which injures our neighbour in his soul, goods or reputation.” “The
lie of service is wrongly termed a lie, for it rather denotes virtue,
viz. prudence used for the purpose of defeating the devil’s malice and
in order to serve our neighbour’s life and honour. Hence it may be
called Christian and brotherly charity, or to use Paul’s words: Zeal
for godliness.”[339] Thus Abraham “told no lie” in Egypt (Gen. xii.
11 ff.); what he told was “a lie of service, a praiseworthy act of
prudence.”[340]
According to his Latin Table-Talk not only Abraham’s lie, but also
Michol’s was a “good, useful lie and a work of charity.”[341] A lie
for the advantage of another is, so he says, an act “by means of which
we assist our neighbour.”
“The monks,” says Luther, “insist that the truth should be told
under all circumstances.”[342]--Such certainly was the teaching
of St. Thomas of Aquin, whose opinion on the subject then held
universal sway, and who rightly insists that a lie is never under any
circumstances lawful.[343] St. Augustine likewise shared this monkish
opinion, as Luther himself had formerly pointed out. Long before
Aquinas’s time this Doctor of the Church, whom Luther was later on
deliberately to oppose,[344] had brought his view--the only reliable
one, viz. that all untruth is wrong--into general recognition, thanks
to his arguments and to the weight of his authority. Pope Alexander
III, in a letter to the Archbishop of Palermo, declared that even
a lie told to save another’s life was unlawful; this statement was
incorporated in the official Decretals--a proof of the respect with
which the mediæval Church clung to the truth.[345]
Some few writers of antiquity had, it is true, defended the lawfulness
of lies of necessity or convenience. For instance, Origen, possibly
under the influence of pagan philosophy, also Hilary and Cassian.
Eventually their opinion disappeared almost completely.
It was reserved for Luther to revive the wrong view concerning the
lawfulness of such lies, and to a certain extent to impose it on his
followers. Theologically this spelt retrogression and a lowering of the
standard of morality hitherto upheld. “Luther here forsook his beloved
Augustine,” says Stäudlin, a Protestant, “and declared certain lies to
be right and allowable. This opinion, though not universally accepted
in the Evangelical Church, became nevertheless a dominant one.”[346]
It must be specially noted that Luther does not justify lies of
convenience, merely when told in the interests of our neighbour, but
also when made use of for our own advantage when such is well pleasing
in God’s sight. This he states explicitly when speaking of Isaac, who
denied his marriage with Rebecca so as to save his life: “This is no
sin, but a serviceable lie by which he escaped being put to death by
those with whom he was staying; for this would have happened had he
said Rebecca was his wife.”[347] And not only the lawful motive of
personal advantage justifies, according to him, such untruths as do
not injure others, but much more the love of God or of our neighbour,
i.e. regard for God’s honour; the latter motive it was, according to
him, which influenced Abraham, when he gave out that Sarah was his
sister. Abraham had to co-operate in accomplishing the great promise
made by God to him and his progeny; hence he had to preserve his life,
“in order that he might honour and glorify God thereby, and not give
the lie to God’s promises.” Many Catholic interpreters of the Bible
have sought to find expedients whereby, without justifying his lie,
they might yet exonerate the great Patriarch of any fault. Luther,
on the contrary, following his own arbitrary interpretation of the
Bible, approves, nay, even glories in the fault. “If,” he says, “the
text be taken thus [according to his interpretation] no one can be
scandalised at it; for what is done for God’s honour, for the glory and
furtherance of His Word, that is right and well done and deserving of
all praise.”[348]
On such principles as these, what was there that Luther could not
justify in his polemics with the older Church?
In his eyes everything he undertook was done for “God’s glory.” “For
the sake of the Christian Church,” he was ready, to tell “a downright
lie” (above, p. 51) in the Hessian affair. “Against the deception
and depravity of the Papal Antichrist,” he regarded everything “as
permissible” for the salvation of souls (above, p. 95); moreover,
was not the war he was waging part of his divine mission? The public
welfare and the exalted interests of his work might therefore at any
time call for a violation of the truth. Was he to be deterred, perhaps,
by the injury his opponents might thereby suffer? By no means. They
suffered no real injury; on the contrary, it all redounded to their
spiritual good, for by ending the reign of prejudice and error their
souls would be saved from imminent peril and the way paved for the
accomplishment of the ancient promises “to the glory and furtherance of
the Word.”
We do not mean to say that Luther actually formed his conscience thus
in any particular instance. Of this we cannot judge and it would be too
much to expect from him any statement on the subject. But the danger of
his doing so was sufficiently proximate.
The above may possibly throw a new light on his famous words: “We
consider everything allowable against the deception and depravity of
the Papal Antichrist.”[349]
_Luther’s Influence on His Circle._
Our remarks on Luther and lying would be incomplete were we not
to refer to the influence his example and theory exercised on his
surroundings and on those who assisted him in establishing the new
Church system.
Melanchthon not only incurred, and justly too, the reproach of
frequently playing the dishonest diplomatist, particularly at the
Diet of Augsburg,[350] but even advocated in his doctrinal works the
Lutheran view that lying is in many cases lawful.
“The lie of convenience,” he says, “is praiseworthy, it is a good
useful lie and proceeds from charity because one desires thereby to
help one’s neighbour.” Hence, we may infer, where the object was to
bring the Evangel home to a man, a lie was all the less reprehensible.
Melanchthon appeals to Abraham’s statement that Sarah was his sister
(Gen. xii. and xx.), and to the artifice of Eliseus (4 Kings vi. 19),
but overlooks the fact that these instances prove nothing in his
favour since there no “neighbour was helped,” but, on the contrary,
untruth was dictated purely by self-love.[351]
During the negotiations carried on between England, Hesse and Saxony
in view of an ecclesiastical understanding, Melanchthon, at the
instance of the Elector of Saxony, drew up for him and the Landgrave,
a document to be sent to Henry VIII of England, giving him information
concerning the Anabaptist movement. His treatment of the matter has
already been referred to (vol. iii., p. 374), but it now calls for
more detailed consideration.
In this writing Melanchthon, to serve the interests of the new
Evangel, had the courage to deny that the movement had made its
appearance in those parts of Germany “where the pure Gospel is
proclaimed,” but was only to be met with “where the people are not
preserved from such errors by sound doctrine,” viz. “in Frisia and
Westphalia.”[352] The fact is that the Anabaptists were so numerous
in the Saxon Electorate that we constantly hear of prosecutions
being instituted against them. P. Wappler, for instance, quotes an
official minute from the Weimar archives, actually dated in 1536,
which states, that the Elector “caused many Anabaptists to be punished
and put to death by drowning and the sword, and to suffer long terms
of imprisonment.”[353] Shortly before Melanchthon wrote the above,
two Anabaptists had been executed in the Saxon Electorate. Beyond
all doubt these facts were known to Melanchthon. The Landgrave of
Hesse refused to allow the letter to be despatched. Feige, his
Chancellor, pointed out the untruth of the statement, “that these
errors only prevailed in places where the pure doctrine was lacking”;
on the contrary, the Anabaptist error was unfortunately to be found
throughout Germany, and even more under the Evangel than amongst the
Papists.[354] An amended version of the letter, dated Sep. 23, 1536,
was eventually sent to the King. Wappler, who relates all this fully,
says: “Melanchthon was obviously influenced by his wish to warn the
King of the ‘plague’ of the Anabaptist heresy and to predispose him
for the ‘pure doctrine of the Evangel.’” “What he said was glaringly
at variance with the actual facts.”[355]
Like Luther, Martin Bucer, too, urged the Landgrave to tell a
deliberate lie and openly deny his bigamy. Though at first unwilling,
he had undertaken to advocate the Landgrave’s bigamy with Luther
and had defended it personally (above, p. 28). In spite of this,
however, when complications arose on its becoming public, he declared
in a letter of 1541 to the preachers of Memmingen, which so far has
received little attention, that the Landgrave’s wrong step, some
rumours of which had reached his ears, should it prove to be true,
could not be laid to his charge or to that of the Wittenbergers. “I
declare before God (‘_coram Deo affirmo_’) that no one has given the
Prince such advice, neither I, nor Luther, nor Philip, nor, so far as
I know, any Hessian preacher, nor has anyone taught that Christians
may keep concubines as well as their wives, or declared himself ready
to defend such a step.”[356] And, again calling God to witness (“_hæc
ego ut coram Deo scripta_”), he declares that he had never written or
signed anything in defence of the bigamy.[357] In the following year
he appeared before the magistrates of Strasburg and, in the presence
of two colleagues, “took God to witness concerning the suspicion of
having advised the Landgrave the other marriage,” “that the latter had
consulted neither him nor any preacher concerning the matter”; he and
Capito had “throughout been opposed to it” (the bigamy), “although
his help had been sought for in such matters by honourable and highly
placed persons.”[358] The reference here is to Henry VIII of England,
to whom, however, he had never expressed his disapproval of bigamy;
in fact he, like Capito and the two Wittenbergers (above, p. 4), had
declared his preference for Henry’s taking an extra wife rather than
divorcing his first.
Bucer (who had so strongly inveighed against Luther’s lies, above,
p. 99), where it was a question of a Catholic opponent like the
Augustinian Johann Hoffmeister, had himself recourse to notorious
calumnies concerning this man, whom even Protestant historians now
allow to have been of blameless life and the “greatest enemy of
immorality.”[359] He accused him of “dancing with nuns,” of “wallowing
in vice,” and of being “an utterly abandoned, infamous and dissolute
knave,” all of them groundless charges at very most based upon mere
hearsay.[360]--This same Bucer, who accused the Catholic Princes
of being double-tongued and pursuing dubious policies, was himself
notorious amongst his own party for his wiliness, deceit and cunning.
Johann Bugenhagen, the Pastor of Wittenberg, when called upon to
acknowledge his share in a certain questionable memorandum of a
semi-political character also laid himself open to the charge of being
wanting in truthfulness (vol. iii., p. 74 f.).
P. Kalkoff has recently made clear some of Wolfgang Capito’s
double-dealings and his dishonest behaviour, though he hesitates to
condemn him for them. Capito had worked in Luther’s interests at the
Court of Archbishop Albert of Mayence, and there, with the Archbishop’s
help, “rendered incalculable services to the Evangelical cause.” In
extenuation of his behaviour Kalkoff says: “In no way was it more
immoral than the intrigues” of the Elector Frederick. On the strength
of the material he has collected J. Greving rightly describes Capito
as a “thoroughbred hypocrite and schemer.”[361] The dealings of this
“eminent diplomatist,” as Greving also terms him, remind us only too
often of Luther’s own dealings with highly placed ecclesiastics and
seculars during the first period of his apostasy. If, in those early
days, Luther’s theory had already won many friends and imitators, in
the thick of the fight it made even more converts amongst the new
preachers, men ready to make full use of the alluring principle, that,
against the depravity of the Papacy everything is licit.
From vituperation to the violation of truth there was but a step amidst
the passion which prevailed. How Luther’s abuse--ostensibly all for
the love of his neighbour--infected his pupils is plain from a letter
in the newly published correspondence of the Brothers Blaurer. This
letter, written from Wittenberg on Oct. 8, 1522, by Thomas Blaurer, to
Ulrich Zasius, contains the following: “Not even from the most filthy
and shameful vituperation [of the hateful Papacy] shall we shrink,
until we see it everywhere despised and abhorred.” What had to be
done was to vindicate the doctrine that, “Christ is our merit and our
satisfaction.”[362] Luther, he says, poured forth abuse (“_convicia_”),
but only to God’s glory, and for the “salvation and encouragement of
the little ones.”[363]
4. Some Leading Slanders on the Mediæval Church Historically Considered
“In Luther’s view the Middle Ages, whose history was fashioned by the
Popes, was a period of darkest night.... This view of the Middle Ages,
particularly of the chief factor in mediæval life, viz. the Church in
which it found its highest expression, is one-sided and distorted.”
Such is the opinion of a modern Protestant historian. He is sorry that
false ideas of the mediæval Church and theology “have been sheltered so
long under the ægis of the reformer’s name.”[364]--“It will not do,” a
lay Protestant historian, as early as 1874, had told the theologians of
his faith, speaking of Köstlin’s work “Luthers Theologie,” “to ignore
the contemporary Catholic literature when considering Luther and the
writings of the reformers.... It is indispensable that the condition
of theology from about 1490 to 1510 should be carefully examined. We
must at all costs rid ourselves of the caricatures we meet with in the
writings of the reformers, and of the misunderstandings to which they
gave rise, and learn from their own writings what the theologians of
that time actually thought and taught.” “Paradoxical as it may sound,
it is just the theological side of the history of the Reformation
which, at the present day, is least known.”[365]
During the last fifty years German scholars have devoted themselves
with zeal and enthusiasm to the external and social aspect of the
Middle Ages. That great undertaking, the “_Monumenta Germaniæ
historica_,” its periodical the “Archiv,” and a number of others
dealing largely with mediæval history brought Protestants to a juster
and more objective appreciation of the past. Yet the theological,
and even in some respects the ecclesiastical, side has been too
much neglected, chiefly because so many Protestant theologians were
scrupulous about submitting the subject to a new and unprejudiced
study. Hence the astonishment of so many when Johannes Janssen, with
his “History of the German People,” and, to pass over others, Heinrich
Denifle with his work on Luther entered the field and demonstrated how
incorrect had been the views prevalent since Luther’s time concerning
the doctrine and the ecclesiastical life of his age. Astonishment in
many soon made way for indignation; in Denifle’s case, particularly,
annoyance was caused by a certain attitude adopted by this author
which led some to reject in their entirety the theologico-historical
consequences at which he arrived, whilst even Janssen was charged with
being biassed. Other Protestants, however, have learned something from
the Catholic works which have since made their appearance in greater
numbers, have acknowledged that the ideas hitherto in vogue were behind
the times and have invited scholars to undertake a more exact study of
the materials.
“The later Middle Ages,” says W. Friedensburg, speaking of the
prevailing Protestant view, “seemed only to serve as a foil for the
history of the Reformation, of which the glowing colours stood out all
the more clearly against the dark background.” “As late as a few years
ago the history of the close of the Middle Ages was almost a ‘_terra
incognita_.’” Only through Janssen, Friedensburg continues, “were we
led to study more carefully the later Middle Ages” and to discover,
amongst other things, that the “majority of the people [_sic_] had
not really been so ignorant of the truth of Christianity,” that “the
Church had not yet lost her power over people’s minds,” that “towards
the end of the Middle Ages the people had already been growing
familiar with the Bible,” and that “sermons in the vulgar tongue had
not been neglected to the extent that has been frequently assumed.”
This author, like H. Böhmer, characterises it as erroneous “to suppose
that Luther was the first to revive regard for Paul and to restore
Paulinism” or “to insist upon the reform of godliness on the model of
the theology of Christ.” Coming to Denifle, he says, that the latter
“on account of his learning was without a doubt qualified as scarcely
any other scholar of our time for the task he undertook. When he
published his ‘Luther’ he could look back on many years of solid and
fruitful labour in the field of mediæval Scholasticism and Mysticism.”
From Denifle’s work it is clear that Luther was “but little conversant
with mediæval Scholasticism, particularly that of Thomas Aquinas.”[366]
“Denifle is right,” wrote Gustav Kawerau in an important Protestant
theological periodical, “and touches a weak spot in Luther research
when he reproaches us with not being sufficiently acquainted with
mediæval theology.” An “examination of the Catholic surroundings in
which Luther moved” is, so Kawerau insists, essential, and Protestants
must therefore apply themselves to “the examination of that theology
which influenced Luther.”[367]
What is, however, imperative is that this theology be, if possible,
examined without Luther’s help, i.e. without, as usual, paying such
exaggerated regard to his own statements as to what influenced him.
Luther, moreover, does not always speak _against_ the Middle Ages;
on occasion he can employ its language himself, particularly when he
thinks he can quote, in his own interests, utterances from that time.
What W. Köhler says of a number of such instances holds good here:
“Luther fancied he recognised himself in the Middle Ages, that is
why his historical judgment is so often false.” In point of fact, as
the same writer remarks, “Luther’s idea of history came from his own
interior experience; this occupies the first place throughout.”[368]
If for “interior experience” we substitute “subjective bias” the
statement will be even more correct.
In returning here to some of Luther’s legends mentioned above (p.
92 f.) concerning the Catholic past and the religious views then
prevailing, our object is merely to show by a few striking examples how
wrong Luther was in charging the Middle Ages with errors in theology
and morals.
One of his most frequently repeated accusations was, that the Church
before his day had merely taught a hollow “holiness by works”; all
exhortations to piety uttered by preachers and writers insisted solely
on outward good works; of the need of cultivating an inward religious
spirit, interior virtues or true righteousness of heart no one had any
conception.
Against this we may set a few Catholic statements made during the years
shortly before Luther’s appearance.
Gabriel Biel, the “standard theologian” of his time, whose works
Luther himself had studied during his theological course, in one of
his sermons distinctly advocates the Church’s doctrine against any
external holiness-by-works. Commenting on the Gospel account of the
hypocrisy and externalism of the Pharisees and their semblance of
holiness, he pauses at the passage: “Except your righteousness exceed
the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees ye shall not enter the
Kingdom of Heaven” (Mt. v. 20). “Hence, if we desire to be saved,” he
says, “our righteousness must not merely be shown in outward works
but must reside in the heart; for without the inward spirit, outward
works are neither virtuous nor praiseworthy, though the spirit may be
so without outward works.” After proving this he again insists: “Thus
true service of God does not consist in externals; on the contrary it
is on the inward, pious acts of the will that everything depends, and
this presupposes a right judgment and the recognition of the spirit.
Hence in the practice of good works we must expend greater care on
the interior direction of the will.” The learned preacher goes on
fervently to exhort his hearers to amend their lives, to be humble, to
trust in Christ and to lead lives of real, inward piety.[369]
Another preacher and theologian with whom Luther was well acquainted
was Andreas Proles († 1503), the founder of the German Augustinian
Congregation to which Luther had once belonged. In the sermons
published by Petrus Sylvius, Proles insists upon the good intention
and interior disposition by which works are sanctified. They are
“smothered,” so he tells his hearers, “if done not out of love for
God but with evil intent, for instance, for the sake of praise, or in
order to deceive, or again, if done in sin or for any bad purpose.”
“Hence ... in the practice of all his works a man must diligently
strive after Divine justice, after a true faith with love of God and
of his neighbour, after innocence and humility of heart, with a good
purpose and intention, since every good work, however insignificant,
even a drink of cold water given to the meanest creature for God’s
sake, is deserving of reward in eternity.... Without charity neither
faith nor good works are profitable unto salvation.”[370]
At about that same time the so-called “holiness-by-works” was also
condemned by the learned Franciscan theologian, Stephen Brulefer.
“Merit,” so he emphasises, “depends not on the number of external
works but on the zeal and charity with which the work is done;
everything depends on the interior act of the will.” Amongst his
authorities he quotes the far-famed theologian of his Order, Duns
Scotus, who had enunciated the principle with the concision of the
scholastic: “_Deus non pensat quantum sed ex quanto_.”[371]
“God wants, not your work, but your heart.” So Marquard of Lindau
writes in his “Buch der X Gepot,” printed in 1483. Before this, under
the heading: “That we must love God above all things,” he declares,
that, whoever does not turn to God with his whole heart cannot merely
by his works gain Him, even though he should surrender “all his
possessions to God and allow himself to be burnt.”[372]
Thus we find in the writings of that period, language by no
means wanting in vigour used in denunciation of the so-called
“holiness-by-works”; hence Luther was certainly not first in the field
to raise a protest.
From their preachers, too, the people frequently heard this same
teaching.
Johann Herolt, a Dominican preacher, very celebrated at the
commencement of the 15th century, points out clearly and definitely in
his sermons on the Sunday Epistles, that every work must be inspired by
and permeated with charity if man’s actions are not to deteriorate into
a mere “holiness-by-works”; a poor man who, with a pure conscience,
performs the meanest good work, is, according to him, of “far greater
worth in God’s sight than the richest Prince who erects churches and
monasteries while in a state of mortal sin”; the outward work was of
small account.[373] Herolt thus becomes a spokesman of “inwardness” in
the matter of the fulfilment of the duties of the Christian life;[374]
many others spoke as he did.
Sound instruction concerning “holiness-by-works” and the necessary
“inwardness” was to be found in the most popular works of devotion at
the close of the Middle Ages.
The “Evangelibuch,” for instance, a sermon-book with glosses on the
Sunday Gospels, has the following for those who are too much devoted
to outward works: “It matters not how good a man may be or how many
good works he performs unless, at the same time, he loves God.” The
author even goes too far in his requirements concerning the interior
disposition, and, agreeably with a view then held by many, will not
admit as a motive for love a wholesome fear of the loss of God; he says
a man must love God, simply because “he is the most excellent, highest
and most worthy Good; ... for a man filled with Divine love does not
desire the good which God possesses, but merely God Himself”; thus, in
his repudiation of all so-called “holiness-by-works,” he actually goes
to the opposite extreme.[375]
Man becomes pleasing to God not by reason of the number or greatness of
his works, but through the interior justice wrought in him by grace;
such is the opinion of the Dominican, Johann Mensing. He protests
against being accused of disparaging God’s grace because at the same
time he emphasises the value of works; he declares that he exalts the
importance of God’s sanctifying Grace even more than his opponents (the
Lutherans) did, because, so he says, “we admit (what they deny, thereby
disparaging the grace of God), viz. that we are not simply saved by
God, but that He so raises and glorifies our nature by the bestowal of
grace, that we are able ourselves to merit our salvation and attain to
it of our own free will, which, without His Grace, would be impossible.
Hence our belief is not that we are led and driven like cattle who know
not whither they go. We say: God gives us His grace, faith and charity,
at first without any merit on our part; then follow good works and
merits, all flowing from the same Grace, and finally eternal happiness
for such works as bring down Grace.”[376]
This was the usual language in use in olden time, particularly in the
years just previous to Luther, and it was in accordance with this
that most of the faithful obediently shaped their lives. If abuses
occurred--and it is quite true that we often do meet with a certain
degree of formalism in the customs of the people--they cannot be
regarded as the rule and were reproved by zealous and clear-sighted
churchmen.
A favourite work at that time was the “Imitation of Christ” by Thomas à
Kempis. Thousands, more particularly amongst the clergy and religious,
were edified by the fervent and touching expositions of the author to
permeate all works with the spirit of interior piety.[377] We know how
strongly he condemns formalism as exemplified in frequent pilgrimages
devoid of virtue and the spirit of penance, and how he does not
spare even the religious; “the habit and the tonsure make but little
alteration, but the moral change and the entire mortification of the
passions make a true religious.”[378]
The practice of works of charity, which at that time flourished
exceedingly among both clergy and laity, offered a field for the
realisation of these principles of the true spirit in which good works
are to be performed. We have countless proofs of how the faithful in
Germany despoiled themselves of their temporal goods from the most
sincere religious motives--out of love for their neighbour, or to
promote the public Divine worship--“for the love of God our Lord,” as a
common phrase, used in the case of numerous foundations, expresses it.
G. Uhlhorn, the Protestant author of the “Geschichte der christlichen
Liebestätigkeit,” also pays a tribute to the spirit which preserved
charity from degenerating into mere “holiness-by-works.” “We should
be doing injustice to that period,” he says of the Middle Ages
generally, “were we to think that it considered as efficacious, i.e. as
satisfactory, mere external works apart from the motive which inspired
them, for instance, alms without love.” In support he quotes Thomas of
Aquin and Pope Innocent III, remarking, however, that even such alms
as were bestowed without this spirit of love were regarded, by the
standard authorities, as predisposing a man for the reception of Grace,
and as deserving of temporal reward from God, hence not as altogether
“worthless and unproductive.”[379]
* * * * *
Another fable concerning the Middle Ages, sedulously fostered by
Luther in his writings, was, that, in those days man had never come
into direct relations with God, that the hierarchy had constituted a
partition between him and Christ, and that, thanks only to the new
Evangel, had the Lord been restored to each man, as his personal
Saviour and the object of all his hopes; Luther was wont to say that
the new preaching had at length brought each one into touch with Christ
the Lamb, Who taketh away our sin; Melanchthon, in his funeral oration
on Luther, also said of him, that he had pointed out to every sinner
the Lamb in Whom he would find salvation.
To keep to the symbol of the Lamb: The whole Church of the past had
never ceased to tell each individual that he must seek in the Lamb of
God purgation from his guilt and confirmation of his personal love of
God. The Lamb was to her the very symbol of that confidence in Christ’s
Redemption which she sought to arouse in each one’s breast. On the
front of Old St. Peter’s, for instance, the Lamb was shown in brilliant
mosaic, with the gentle Mother of the Redeemer on its right and the
Key-bearer on its left, and this figure, in yet older times, had been
preceded by the ancient “_Agnus Dei_.”[380]
Every Litany recited by the faithful in Luther’s day, no less than in
earlier ages and in our own, concluded with the trustful invocation of
the “Lamb of God”; the waxen “_Agnus Dei_,” blessed by the Pope, and so
highly prized by the people, was but its symbol.[381] The Lamb of God
was, and still is, solemnly invoked by priest and people in the Canon
of the Mass for the obtaining of mercy and peace.
The centre of daily worship in the Catholic Church, in Luther’s day
as in the remoter past, was ever the Eucharistic Sacrifice. The Lamb
of God, which, according to Catholic belief, is there offered to the
Father under the mystic elements, and mysteriously renews the sacrifice
of the Cross, was as a well, daily opened, in which souls athirst for
God might find wherewith to unite themselves in love and confidence
with their Redeemer.
It was Luther who, with cruel hand, tore this pledge of hope and
consolation from the heart of Christendom. Inspiring indeed are the
allusions to the wealth of consolation contained in the Eucharist,
which we find in one of the books in most general use in the days
before Luther. “Good Jesus, Eternal Shepherd, thanks be to Thee Who
permittest me, poor and needy as I am, to partake of the mystery of
Thy Divine Sacrifice, and feedest me with Thy precious Body and Blood;
Thou commandest me to approach to Thee with confidence. Come, sayest
Thou, to Me, all you that labour and are burdened, and I will refresh
you. Confiding, O Lord, in Thy goodness and in Thy great mercy, I come
sick to my Saviour, hungry and thirsty to the Fountain of life, needy
to the King of Heaven, a servant to my Lord, a creature to my Creator,
and one in desolation to my loving Comforter.”[382]
The doctrine that the Mass is a renewal of the Sacrifice of Christ
“attained its fullest development in the Middle Ages”; thus Adolf
Franz at the conclusion of his work “Die Messe im deutschen
Mittelalter.” At the close of the Middle Ages it was the rule to
“direct the eyes of the faithful, during the sacrifice on the altar,
to the sufferings and death of the Redeemer in all its touching
and thrilling reality. At the altar a mystery is enacted; Christ
suffers and dies; the priest represents Him, and every act typifies
Christ’s Passion; just as He expired on the cross in actual fact,
so, mystically, He dies upon the altar.”[383] Though some writers of
the period dwell perhaps a little too much on the allegorical sense
then so popular in explaining the various acts of the Mass, yet, in
their conviction that its character was sacrificial and that it truly
re-enacted the death of Christ, they were in perfect agreement with
the past. In the explanations of the Mass everyone was reminded of his
union with Christ; and our Lord’s sufferings “were brought before the
mind of both priest and people”; by this means the “outward ceremonial
of the Mass was made a fruitful source of inward edification.” “The
abundant mediæval literature on the Mass is a proof both of the needs
of the clergy, and of the care displayed by the learned and those in
authority, to instruct them. In this matter the 15th century excels
the earlier Middle Ages.”[384] The very abuses and the formalism which
Franz finds witnessed to in certain mediæval sermons on the Mass,
chiefly in the matter of undue stress laid on the “fruits of the
Mass,” reveal merely an over-estimation on the part of the individual
of his union with Christ, or a too great assurance of obtaining help
in bodily and spiritual necessities; of want of fervour or of hope
there is not the least trace.
It is well worthy of note that Luther, if we may believe what he said
in a sermon in 1532, even in his monastic days, did not prize or love
the close bond of union established with Christ by the daily sacrifice
of the Mass: “Ah, bah, Masses! Let what cannot stand fast fall. You
never cared about saying Mass formerly; of that I am sure. I know it
from my own case; for I too was a holy monk, and blasphemed my dear
Lord miserably for the space of quite fifteen years with my saying of
Masses, though I never liked doing so, in spite of being so holy and
devout.”[385]
In spite of this Luther succeeded in bequeathing to posterity the
opinion that it was he who delivered people from that “alienation from
God” imposed on the world in the Middle Ages; “who broke down the
prohibition of the mediæval Church against anyone concerning himself on
his own account with matters of religion”; and who gave back “personal
religion” to the Christian.
Were Protestants to bestow more attention on the religious literature
of the Later Middle Ages, such statements would be simply impossible.
One of those best acquainted with this literature writes: “During
the last few months the present writer has gone carefully, pen in
hand, through more than one hundred printed and manuscript religious
works, written in German and belonging to the end of the Middle Ages:
catechetical handbooks, general works of piety, confession manuals,
postils, prayer-books, booklets on preparation for death and German
sermonaries. In this way he has learnt from the most reliable sources
not only how in those days people were guided to devout intercourse
with God, but also with what fervent piety the faithful were accustomed
to converse with their Saviour.” Let Protestants, he adds, at least
attempt to vindicate their pet assertions “scientifically, i.e. from
trustworthy sources.”[386]
The relations between the individual and God were by no means
suppressed because the priesthood stood as an intermediary between the
faithful and God, or because ecclesiastical superiors watched over and
directed public worship and the lines along which the life of faith
was to move. If the union of the individual with God was endangered by
such interference on the part of the clergy, then it was endangered
just as much by Luther, who insists so strongly on the preachers being
listened to, and on the ministers taking the lead in things pertaining
to God.
He teaches, for instance: “It is an unsufferable blasphemy to reject
the public ministry or to say that people can become holy without
sermons and Church. This involves a destruction of the Church and
rebellion against ecclesiastical order; such upheavals must be warded
off and punished like all other revolts.”[387]
The fact is, the ecclesiastical order of things to which Luther
attached himself more and more strongly amounted to this, as he
declares in various passages of his Table-Talk. Through the ministers
and preachers, as through His servants, God speaks to man; through
them God baptises, instructs and absolves; what the ministers of
the Gospel say and do, that God Himself does through and in us as
His instruments. Whoever does not believe this, Luther looks on as
damned. In a sermon of 1528, speaking of the spiritual authority
which intervenes between God and man, he exclaims: “God requires for
His Kingdom pious Bishops and pastors, through them he governs His
subjects [the Emperor, on the other hand, so he had said, had not even
to be a Christian since the secular power was all outward and merely
served to restrain evil-doers].[388] If you will not hearken to these
Bishops and pastors, then you will have to listen to Master Hans [the
hangman] and get no thanks either.”[389]
He uses similar language in his sermons on Matthew: “God, by means of
Prophets and Apostles, ministers and preachers, baptises, gives the
sacraments, preaches and consoles; without preachers and holy persons,
He does nothing, just as He does not govern land and people without
the secular power.”[390]
Hence Luther shows himself very anxious to establish a kind of
hierarchy. If then he charges the priesthood of the past with putting
itself between God and man, it is hard to see how he is to avoid
a similar charge being brought forward against himself. Moreover,
at the bottom of his efforts, memories of his Catholic days were
at work, and the feeling that an organised ministry was called for
if the religious sentiment was not to die out completely among the
people. His practical judgment of the conditions even appears here in
a favourable light, for instance, in those passages where he insists
on the authority of rightly appointed persons to act as intermediaries
between God and man, and as vicars and representatives of Christ.
The word Christ spoke on earth and the word of the preacher, are, he
says, one and the same “_re et effectu_,” because Christ said: “He
that heareth you heareth me” (Luke x. 16); “God deals with us through
these instruments, through them He works everything and offers us all
His treasures.”[391] Indeed, “it is our greatest privilege that we
have such a ministry and that God is so near to us; for he that hears
Christ hears God Himself; and he that hears St. Peter or a preacher,
hears Christ and God Himself speaking to us.”[392]
“We must always esteem the spoken Word very highly, for those
who despise it become heretics at once. The Pope despises this
ministry”[393] [!]. God, however, “has ordained that no one should
have faith, except thanks to the preacher’s office,” and, “without the
Word, He does no work whatever in the Church.”[394]
Thus we find Luther, on the one hand insisting upon an authority, and,
on the other, demanding freedom for the interpretation of Scripture.
How he sought to harmonise the two is reserved for later examination.
At any rate, it is to misapprehend both the Catholic Church and
Luther’s own theological attitude, to say that “independent study of
religious questions” had been forbidden in the Middle Ages and was
“reintroduced” only by Luther, that he removed the “blinkers” which
the Church had placed over people’s eyes and that henceforward “the
representatives of the Church had no more call to assume the place of
the Living God in man’s regard.”
* * * * *
Luther also laid claim to having revived respect for the secular
authorities, who, during the Middle Ages, had been despised owing to
the one-sided regard shown to the monks and clergy. He declares that
he had again brought people to esteem the earthly calling, family life
and all worldly employments as being a true serving of God. Boldly he
asserts, that, before my time, “the authorities did not know they were
serving God”; “before my time nobody knew ... what the secular power,
what matrimony, parents, children, master, servant, wife or maid really
signified.” On the strength of his assertions it has been stated,
that he revived the “ideal of life” by discovering the “true meaning
of vocation,” which then became the “common property of the civilised
world”; on this account he was “the creator of those theories which
form the foundation upon which the modern State and modern civilisation
rest.”
The fact is, however, the Church of past ages fully recognised the
value of the secular state and spheres of activity, saw in them a
Divine institution, and respected and cherished them accordingly.
A very high esteem for all secular callings is plainly expressed in
the sermons of Johann Herolt, the famous and influential Nuremberg
Dominican, whose much-read “_Sermones de tempore et de Sanctis_”
(Latin outlines of sermons for the use of German preachers) had, prior
to 1500, appeared in at least forty different editions.
“It has been asked,” he says in one sermon, “whether the labour of
parents for their children is meritorious. I reply: Yes, if only
they have the intention of bringing up their children for the glory
of God and in order that they may become good servants of Christ.
If the parents are in a state of grace, then all their trouble with
their children, in suckling them, bathing them, carrying them about,
dressing them, feeding them, watching by them, teaching and reproving
them, redounds to their eternal reward. All this becomes meritorious.
And in the same way when the father labours hard in order to earn
bread for his wife and children, all this is meritorious for the life
beyond.”[395]--A high regard for work is likewise expressed in his
sermon “To workmen,” which begins with the words: “Man is born to
labour as the bird is to fly.”[396] Another sermon praises the calling
of the merchant, which he calls a “good and necessary profession.”[397]
Another witness to the Church’s esteem for worldly callings and
employments is Marcus von Weida, a Saxon Dominican. In the discourses
he delivered on the “Our Father” at Leipzig, in 1501, he says: “All
those pray who do some good work and live virtuously.” For everything
that a man does to the praise and glory of God is really prayer. A
man must always do what his state of life and his calling demands.
“Hence it follows that many a poor peasant, husbandman, artisan or
other man who does his work, or whatever he undertakes, in such a way
as to redound to God’s glory, is more pleasing to God, by reason of
the work he daily performs, and gains more merit before God than any
Carthusian or Friar, be he Black, Grey or White, who stands daily in
choir singing and praying.”[398]
It is evident that Catholic statements, such as that just quoted from
Herolt, concerning the care of children being well-pleasing to God,
have been overlooked by those who extol Luther as having been the
first to discover and teach, that even to rock children’s cradles
and wash their swaddling clothes is a noble, Christian work. What
is, however, most curious is the assurance with which Luther himself
claimed the merit of this discovery, in connection with his teaching
on marriage.
The Carthusian, Erhard Gross, speaks very finely of the different
secular callings and states of life, and assigns to them an eminently
honourable place: “What are the little precious stones in Christ’s
crown but the various classes of the Christian people, who adorn the
head of Christ? For He is our Head and all the Christian people are
His Body for ever and ever. Hence, amongst the ornaments of the house
of God some must be virgins, others widows, some married and others
chaste, such as monks, priests and nuns. Nor are these all, for we
have also Princes, Kings and Prelates who rule the commonwealth, those
who provide for the needs of the body, as, for instance, husbandmen
and fishermen, tailors and merchants, bakers and shoemakers, and,
generally, all tradesmen.” If the general welfare is not to suffer, he
says, each one must faithfully follow his calling. “Therefore whoever
wishes to please God, let him stick to the order [state] in which God
has placed him and live virtuously; he will then receive his reward
from God here, and, after this life, in the world to come.”[399]
Although Luther must have been well aware of the views really held on
this subject, some excuse for his wild charges may perhaps be found in
his small practical experience, prior to his apostasy, of Christian
life in the world. His poverty had forced him, even in childhood,
into irregular ways; he had been deprived of the blessings of a truly
Christian family-life. His solitary studies had left him a stranger to
the active life of good Catholics engaged in secular callings; the fact
of his being a monk banished him alike from the society of the bad and
impious and from that of the good and virtuous. Thus in many respects
he was out of touch with the stimulating influence of the world; the
versatility which results from experience was still lacking, when, in
his early years at Wittenberg, he began to think out his new theories
on God and sin, Grace and the Fall.
“Whoever wishes to please God let him stick to the order [state] in
which God has placed him.” These words of Gross, the Carthusian, quoted
above, remind us of a comparison instituted by Herolt the Dominican
between religious Orders and the “Order” of matrimony. Commending the
secular calling of matrimony, he says here, that it was instituted by
God Himself, whereas the religious Orders had been founded by men: “We
must know that God first honoured matrimony by Himself instituting it.
In this wise the Order of matrimony excels all other Orders (‘_ordo
matrimonialis præcellit olios ordines_’); for just as St. Benedict
founded the Black Monks, St. Francis the Order of Friars Minor and St.
Dominic the Order of Friars Preacher, so God founded matrimony.”[400]
True Christian perfection, according to the ancient teaching of the
Church, is not bound up with any particular state, but may be attained
by all, no matter their profession, even by the married.
Luther, and many after him, even down to the present day, have
represented, that, according to the Catholic view, perfection was
incapable of attainment save in the religious life, this alone being
termed the “state of perfection.” In his work “On Monkish Vows”
he declares: “The monks have divided Christian life into a state
of perfection and one of imperfection. To the great majority they
have assigned the state of imperfection, to themselves, that of
perfection.”[401]
As a matter of fact the “state of perfection” only means, that,
religious, by taking upon themselves, publicly and before the Church,
the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, bind themselves to
strive after perfection along this path as one leading most surely
to the goal; it doesn’t imply that they are already in possession of
perfection, still less that they alone possess it. By undertaking
to follow all their life a Rule approved by the Church, under the
guidance of Superiors appointed by the Church, they form a “state” or
corporation of which perfection is the aim, and, in this sense alone,
are said to belong to the “state of perfection.” In addition, it was
always believed that equal, in fact the highest, perfection might
be attained to in any state of life. Though the difficulties to be
encountered in the worldly state were regarded as greater, yet the
conquest they involved was looked upon as the fruit of an even greater
love of God, the victory as more splendid, and the degree of perfection
attained as so much the more exalted.
It is the love of God which, according to the constant teaching of the
Church, constitutes the essence of perfection.
The most perfect Christian is he who fulfils the law of charity
most perfectly, and this--notwithstanding whatever Luther may
say--according to what has ever been the teaching of the Church, the
ordinary Christian may quite well do in his everyday calling, and
in the married as much as in the religious state. Even should the
religious follow the severest of Rules, yet if he does not make use
of the more abundant means of perfection at his command but lives in
tepidity, then the ordinary Christian approaches more closely than he
to the ideal standard of life if only he fulfils his duties in the home
with greater love of God.
The Bavarian Franciscan, Caspar Schatzgeyer, Luther’s contemporary, is
right when he says in his work “_Scrutinium divinæ scripturæ_”: “We
do not set up a twofold standard of perfection, one for people in the
world and another for the religious. For all Christians there is but
one order, one mode of worshipping God, one evangelical perfection....
But we do say this, that in cloistral life the attainment of perfection
is easier, though a Christian living in the world may excel all
religious in perfection.”[402] For--such is the ground he gives in a
German work--“it may well happen that in the ordinary Christian state a
man runs so hotly and eagerly towards God as to outstrip all religious
in all the essentials of Christian perfection, just as a sculptor
may with a blunt chisel produce a masterpiece far superior to that
carved by an unskilful apprentice even with the best and sharpest of
tools.”[403]
This may suffice to elucidate the question of the Catholic ideal of
life in respect of Luther’s statements, a question much debated in
recent controversies but not always set in as clear a light as it
deserved.
The preceding remarks on Luther’s misrepresentations of the Church’s
teaching concerning worldly callings lead us to consider his utterances
on the Church’s depreciation of the female sex and of matrimony.
5. Was Luther the Liberator of Womankind from “Mediæval Degradation”?
Luther maintained that he had raised the dignity of woman from the
depths to which it had fallen in previous ages and had revived due
respect for married life. What the Church had defined on this subject
in the past he regarded as all rubbish. Indeed, “not one of the
Fathers,” he says, “ever wrote anything notable or particularly good
concerning the married state.”[404] But, as in the case of the secular
authority and the preaching office, so God, before the coming of the
Judgment Day, by His special Grace and through His Word, i.e. through
the new Evangel, had restored married life to its rightful dignity,
“as He had at first instituted and ordained it.” Marriage, so Luther
asserts, had been regarded as “a usage and practice rather than as a
thing ordained by God. In the same way the secular authorities did not
know that they were serving God, but were all tied up in ceremonies.
The preaching office, too, was nothing but a sham consisting of cowls,
tonsures, oilings,” etc.[405]
In short, by his teaching on marriage he had ennobled woman, whereas
the Catholics had represented matrimony as an “unchristian” state, only
permitted out of necessity, even though they called it a Sacrament.[406]
_Conspectus of Luther’s Distortion of the Catholic View of Marriage._
Luther based his charges chiefly on the canonical enforcement of
clerical celibacy and on the favour shown by the Church to the vow
of chastity and the monastic life. How this proved his contention it
is not easy to see. Further, he will have it, that the Church taught
that true service of God was to be found only in the monastic state,
and that vows were a sure warrant of salvation--though, as a matter
of fact, neither Church nor theologians had ever said anything of the
sort.[407]
In his remarks on this subject in 1527 he openly accused the Papists
of saying that “whoever is desirous of having to do with God and
spiritual matters must, whether man or woman, remain unmarried,” and
“thus,” so he says, “they have scared the young from matrimony, so
that now they are sunk in fornication.”[408]
At first Luther only ventured on the charge, that matrimony had been
“_de facto_” forbidden, though it had not actually been declared
sinful, by the Pope;[409] by forbidding the monks to marry he had
fulfilled the prophecy in 1 Timothy iv. 1 ff., concerning the
latter times, when many would fall away from the faith and forbid
people to marry. “The Pope forbids marriage under the semblance of
spirituality.”[410] “Squire Pope has forbidden marriage, because one
had to come who would prohibit marriage. The Pope has made man to be
no longer man, and woman to be no longer woman.”[411]
As years passed Luther went further; forgetful of his admission that
the Pope had not made matrimony sinful, he exclaimed: To him and to
his followers marriage is a sin. The Church had hitherto treated
marriage as something “non-Christian”;[412] the married state she had
“handed over to the devil”;[413] her theologians look down on it as a
“low, immoral sort of life,”[414] and her religious can only renounce
it on the ground that it is a kind of legalised “incontinence.”[415]
In reality, however, religious, when taking their vow, merely acted
on the Christian principle which St. Augustine expresses as follows:
Although “all chastity, conjugal as well as virginal, has its
merit in God’s sight,” yet, “the latter is higher, the former less
exalted.”[416] They merely renounced a less perfect state for one more
perfect; they could, moreover, appeal not only to 1 Cor. vii. 33,
where the Apostle speaks in praise of the greater freedom for serving
God which the celibate state affords, but even to Luther himself who,
in 1523, had interpreted this very passage in the same sense, and that
with no little warmth.[417]
His later and still more extravagant statements concerning the
Catholic view of marriage can hardly be taken seriously; his
perversion of the truth is altogether too great.
He says, that married people had not been aware that God “had
ordained” that state, until at last God, by His special Grace, and
before the Judgment Day, had restored the dignity of matrimony no less
than that of the secular authority and the preaching office, “through
His Word [i.e. through Luther’s preaching].” The blame for this state
of things went back very far, for the Fathers, like Jerome, “had seen
in matrimony mere sensuality,” and for this reason had disparaged
it.[418]
The Prophet Daniel had foreseen the degradation of marriage under the
Papacy: It is of the Papal Antichrist “that Daniel says [xi. 37], that
he will wallow in the unnatural vice which is the recompense due to
contemners of God (Rom. i. [27]), in what we call Italian weddings and
silent sin. For matrimony and a right love and use of women he shall
not know. Such are the horrible abominations prevailing under Pope
and Turk.”[419] “The same prophet,” he writes elsewhere, “says that
Antichrist shall stand on two pillars, viz.: idolatry and celibacy.
The idol he calls Mausim, thus using the very letters which form the
word Mass.” The Pope had deluded people, on the one hand by the Mass,
and, on the other, “by celibacy, or the unmarried state, fooling the
whole world with a semblance of sanctity. These are the two pillars on
which the Papacy rests, like the house of the Philistines in Samson’s
time. If God chose to make Luther play the part of Samson, lay hold
on the pillars and shake them, so that the house fall on the whole
multitude, who could take it ill? He is God and wonderful are His
ways.”[420]
Luther appeals expressly to the Pope’s “books” in which marriage is
spoken of as a “sinful state.”[421] The Papists, when they termed
marriage a sacrament, were only speaking “out of a false heart,”
and trying to conceal the fact that they really looked on it as
“fornication.”[422] “They have turned all the words and acts of
married people into mortal sins, and I myself, when I was a monk,
shared the same opinion, viz. that the married state was a damnable
state.”[423]
This alone was wanting to fill up the measure of his falsehoods. One
wonders whether Luther, when putting forward statements so incredible,
never foresaw that his own earlier writings might be examined and
his later statements challenged in their light? Certainly the
contradiction between the two is patent. We have only to glance at
his explanation of the fourth and sixth Commandments in his work on
the Ten Commandments, published in 1518, to learn from Luther himself
what Catholics really thought of marriage, and to be convinced that it
was anything but despised; there, as in other of his early writings,
Luther indeed esteems virginity above marriage, but to term the latter
sinful and damnable never occurred to him.
The olden Church had painted an ideal picture of the virgin. By this,
though not alone by this, she voiced her respect for woman, from that
Christian standpoint which differs so much from that of the world.
From the earliest times she, like the Gospel and the Apostle of the
Gentiles, set up voluntary virginity as a praiseworthy state of life.
Hereby she awakened in the female sex a noble emulation for virtue,
in particular for seclusion, purity and morality--woman’s finest
ornaments--and amongst men a high respect for woman, upon whom, even in
the wedded state, the ideal of chastity cast a radiance which subdued
the impulse of passion. Virgin and mother alike were recommended by
the Church to see their model and their guide in the Virgin Mother of
our Saviour. Where true devotion to Mary flourished the female sex
possessed a guarantee of its dignity, from both the religious and the
human point of view, a pledge of enduring respect and honour.
How the Church of olden days continued to prize matrimony and
to view it in the light of a true Sacrament is evident from the
whole literature of the Middle Ages. Such being its teaching it is
incomprehensible how a well-known Protestant encyclopædia, as late as
1898, could still venture to say: “As against the contempt for marriage
displayed in both religious and secular circles, and to counteract the
immorality to which this had given rise, Luther vindicated the honour
of matrimony and placed it in an entirely new light.”
In those days Postils enjoyed a wider circulation than any other
popular works. The Postils, however, do not teach “contempt of
marriage,” but quite the contrary. “The Mirror of Human Conduct,”
published at Augsburg in 1476, indeed gives the first place to
virginity, but declares: “Marriage is good and holy,” and must not be
either despised or rejected; those who “are mated in matrimony” must
not imagine that the maids (virgins) alone are God’s elect; “Christ
praises marriage, for it is a holy state of life in which many a man
becomes holy, for marriage was instituted by our Lord in Paradise”;
from Christ’s presence at the marriage at Cana we may infer that “the
married life is a holy life.”
Other works containing the same teaching are the “Evangelibuch,”
e.g. in the Augsburg edition of 1487, the “Postils on the Four
Gospels throughout the year,” by Geiler of Kaysersberg († 1510),
issued by Heinrich Wessmer at Strasburg in 1522, and the important
Basle “Plenarium” of 1514, in which the author, a monk, writes: “The
conjugal state is to be held in high respect on account of the honour
done to it by God”; he also appends some excellent instructions on the
duties of married people, concluding with a reference to the story
of Tobias “which you will find in the Bible” (which, accordingly, he
assumed was open to his readers).
The “Marriage-booklets” of the close of the Middle Ages form a
literary group apart. One of the best is “Ein nützlich Lehre und
Predigt, wie sich zwei Menschen in dem Sacrament der Ehe halten
sollen,” which was in existence in MS. as early as 1456. “God Himself
instituted marriage,” it tells us, “when He said, ‘Be fruitful and
multiply!’ The Orders, however, were founded by Bernard, Augustine,
Benedict and Dominic; thus the command of God is greater than that of
the teacher,” i.e. the Sacrament excels all Rules made by men, even by
Saints. It also gives a touching account of how marriage is founded on
love and sustained by it.[424]
Another matrimonial handbook, composed by Albert von Eyb, a Franconian
cleric, and printed at Augsburg in 1472, lavishes praise on “holy,
divine matrimony” without, however, neglecting to award still higher
encomium to the state of virginity. Erhard Gross, the Nuremberg
Carthusian, about the middle of the 15th century, wrote a “Novel”
containing good advice for married people.[425] The hero, who was
at first desirous of remaining unmarried, declares: “You must not
think that I condemn matrimony, for it is holy and was established by
God.”[426]
Among the unprinted matrimonial handbooks dating from the period
before Luther’s time, and containing a like favourable teaching on
marriage, are the “Booklet on the Rule of Holy Matrimony,”[427] “On
the Sacrament of Matrimony,”[428] and the excellent “Mirror of the
Matrimonial Order,” by the Dominican Marcus von Weida.[429] Fr. A.
Ebert, the Protestant bibliographer, remarks of the latter’s writings:
“They effectually traverse the charges with which self-complacent
ignorance loves to overwhelm the ages previous to the Saxon
Reformation,” and what he says applies particularly to the teaching on
marriage.[430]
To come now to the preachers. We must first mention Johann Herolt,
concerning whose influence a recent Protestant writer aptly remarks,
that his “wisdom had been listened to by thousands.”[431] The
passage already given, in which he describes marriage as an Order
instituted by Christ (p. 129 f.), is but one instance of his many
apt and beautiful sayings. In the very next sermon Herolt treats
of the preparation which so great a Sacrament demands. In the same
way that people prepare themselves for their Easter Communion, so
they, bride and bridegroom, must prepare themselves for matrimony by
contrition and confession; for “marriage is as much a Sacrament as the
Eucharist.”
A similar view prevailed throughout Christendom.
One of the most popular of Italian preachers was Gabriel Barletta,
who died shortly after 1480. Amongst his writings there is a Lenten
sermon entitled: “_De amore conjugali vel de laudibus mulierum_.” In
this he speaks of the “cordial love” which unites the married couple.
He points out that marriage was instituted in Paradise and confirmed
anew by Christ. Explaining the meaning of the ring, he finds that it
signifies four things, all of which tend to render Christian marriage
praiseworthy. He declares that a good wife may prove an inestimable
treasure. If he dwells rather too much on woman’s physical and mental
inferiority, this does not prevent him from extolling the strength of
the woman who is upheld by Christian virtue, and who often succeeds in
procuring the amendment of a godless husband.[432]
Barletta, in his sermons, frequently follows the example of his
brother friar, the English Dominican preacher, Robert Holkot († 1349),
whose works were much in request at the close of the Middle Ages.[433]
Holkot had such respect for Christian matrimony, that he applies to
it the words of the Bible: “O how beautiful is the chaste generation
with glory; for the memory thereof is immortal.” Since the “_actus
matrimonialis_” was willed by God, it must be assumed, he says,
that it can be accomplished virtuously and with merit.[434] If the
intention of the married couple is the begetting of children for the
glory of God, they perform an act of the virtue of religion; they also
exercise the virtue of justice if they have the intention of mutually
fulfilling the conjugal duties to which they have pledged themselves.
According to him, mutual love is the principal duty of the married
couple.[435] Franz Falk has dwelt in detail on the testimony borne by
the Late Middle Ages to the dignity of marriage.[436]
Commencing with the prayers of the marriage-service and the blessing
of the ring, the prayers for those with child and in child-bed, and
for the churching of women, he goes on to deal with the civil rights
pertaining to the married state and with the Church’s opinion as
witnessed to in the matrimonial handbooks and books of instruction and
edification. With the respect for the Sacrament and the dignity of
the married woman there found expressed, Falk compares the sentiments
likewise found in the prose “novels” and so-called “Volksbücher,”
and, still more practically expressed, in the numerous endowments
and donations for the provision of bridal outfits. “It is quite
incomprehensible,” such is the author’s conclusion, “how non-Catholic
writers even to the present time can have ventured to reproach the
Church with want of regard for the married state.”[437] Of the
information concerning bridal outfits, he says, for instance: “The
above collection of facts, a real ‘_nubes testium_,’ will sufficiently
demonstrate what a task the Church of the Middle Ages here fulfilled
towards her servants and children.... Many other such foundations may,
moreover, have escaped our notice owing to absence of the deeds which
have either not been printed or have perished. From the 16th century
onwards records of such foundations become scarce.”[438]
In the “Internationale Wochenschrift” Heinrich Finke pointed out that
he had examined hundreds of Late-mediæval sermons on the position of
women, with the result, that “it is impossible to discover in them any
contempt for woman.”[439] The fact is, that “there exist countless
statements of the sanctity of marriage and its sacramental character
... statements drawn from theologians of the highest standing,
Fathers, Saints and Doctors of the Church. Indeed, towards the close
of the Middle Ages, they grow still more numerous. The most popular of
the monks, whether Franciscans or Dominicans, have left us matrimonial
handbooks which imply the existence of that simple, happy family
life they depict and encourage.”[440] Finke recalls the 15th-century
theologian, Raymond of Sabunde, who points out how union with God
in love may be reproduced in marriage. Countless theologians are at
one with him here, and follow Scripture in representing the union
of Christ with the Church as an exalted figure of the marriage-bond
between man and wife (Eph. v. 25, 32). Of the respect which the
ancient Church exhibited towards women Finke declares: “Never has
the praise of women been sung more loudly than in the sermons of the
Fathers and in the theological tractates of the Schoolmen.” Here “one
picture follows another, each more dazzling than the last.”[441]
Certainly we must admit, as he does, that it is for the most part the
ideal of virginity which inspires them, and that it is the good,
chaste, virtuous wife and widow whom they extol, rather than woman
_qua_ woman, as a noble part of God’s creation. Their vocation as
spiritual teachers naturally explains this; and if, for the same
cause, they seem to be very severe in their strictures on feminine
faults, or to strike harsh notes in their warnings on the spiritual
dangers of too free intercourse with the female sex, this must not
be looked upon as “hatred of women,” as has been done erroneously on
the strength of some such passages in the case of St. Antoninus of
Florence and Cardinal Dominici.[442]
“Just as Church and Councils energetically took the side of marriage”
when it was decried in certain circles,[443] so the accusation of
recent times that, in the Middle Ages, woman was universally looked
upon with contempt, cannot stand; according to Finke this was not the
case, even in “ascetical circles,” and “still less elsewhere.”[444]
The author adduces facts which “utterly disprove any such general
disdain for woman.”[445]
The splendid Scriptural eulogy with which the Church so frequently
honours women in her liturgy, might, one would think, be in itself
sufficient. To the married woman who fulfils her duties in the home
out of true love for God, and with zeal and assiduity, the Church, in
the Mass appointed for the Feasts of Holy Women, applies the words
of Proverbs:[446] “The price of the valiant woman is as of things
brought from afar and from the uttermost coasts. The heart of her
husband trusteth in her ... she will render him good and not evil all
the days of her life. She hath sought wool and flax and hath wrought
by the counsel of her hands.... Her husband is honourable in the gates
when he sitteth among the senators of the land.... Strength and beauty
are her clothing, and she shall laugh in the latter day. She hath
opened her mouth to wisdom.... Her children rose up and called her
blessed, her husband, and he praised her.... The woman that feareth
the Lord, she shall be praised.”--Elsewhere the liturgy quotes the
Psalmist:[447] “Grace is poured abroad from thy lips,” “With thy
comeliness and thy beauty set out, proceed prosperously and reign....
Therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness
above thy fellows.”
It cannot be objected that the ordinary woman, in the exercise of her
household duties and of a humbler type of virtue, had no part in this
praise. On the contrary, in honouring these Saints the Church was at
the same time honouring all women who had not, by their misconduct,
rendered themselves unworthy of the name. To all, whatever their rank
or station, the high standard of the Saints was displayed, and all
were invited to follow their example and promised their intercession.
At the foot of the altar all were united, for their mother, the
Church, showed to all the same consideration and helpful love. The
honours bestowed upon the heroines of the married state had its
influence on their living sisters, just as the Church’s “undying
respect for virginity was calculated to exercise a wholesome effect on
those bound by the marriage tie, or about to be so bound.”[448]
In Luther’s own case we have an instance in the devotion he showed in
his youth to St. Anne, who was greatly venerated by both men and women
in late mediæval times. The vow he had made to enter the cloister he
placed in the hands of this Saint. The liturgical praise to which we
have just listened, and which is bestowed on her in common with other
holy spouses, he repeated frequently enough as a monk, when saying
Mass, and the words of the Holy Ghost in praise of the true love of
the faithful helpmate he ever treasured in his memory.[449]
How well Luther succeeded in establishing the fable of the scorn in
which the married state was held in the Middle Ages is evident from
several recent utterances of learned Protestants.
One Church historian goes so far, in his vindication of the Reformer’s
statements concerning the mediæval “contempt felt for womankind,”
as actually to lay the blame for Luther’s sanction of polygamy
on the low, “mediæval view of the nature of matrimony.” Another
theologian, a conservative, fancies that he can, even to-day, detect
among “Romanists” the results of the mediæval undervaluing of
marriage. According to Catholics “marriage is not indeed forbidden to
everyone--for otherwise where would the Church find new children?--but
nevertheless is looked at askance as a necessary evil.” Perfection in
Catholic theory consists in absolute ignorance of all that concerns
marriage. One scholar declares the Church before Luther’s day had
taught, that “marriage had nothing to do with love”; “of the ethical
task [of marriage] and of love not a trace is to be found” in the
teaching of the Middle Ages. An eminent worker in the field of the
history of dogma also declares, in a recent edition of his work, that,
before Luther’s day, marriage had been “a sort of concession to the
weak”; thanks only to Luther, was it “freed from all ecclesiastical
tutelage to become the union of the sexes, as instituted _by God_
[his italics], and the school of highest morality.” Such assertions,
only too commonly met with, are merely the outcome of the false ideas
disseminated by Luther himself concerning the Church of olden days.
The author of the fable that woman and marriage were disdained in the
Middle Ages scored a success, of which, could he have foreseen it, he
would doubtless have been proud.
Two publications by Professors of the University of Wittenberg have
been taken as clear proof of how low an opinion the Catholic Middle
Ages had of woman and marriage. Of these publications one, however, a
skit on the devil in Andr. Meinhardi’s Latin Dialogues of 1508--which,
of the two, would, in this respect, be the most incriminating--has
absolutely nothing to do with the mediæval Church’s views on marriage,
but simply reproduces those of the Italian Humanists, though revealing
that their influence extended even as far as Germany. It tells how
even the devil himself was unable to put up with matrimony; since the
difficulties of this state are so great, one of the speakers makes
up his mind “never to marry, so as to be the better able to devote
himself to study.” Despite this the author of the Dialogue entered
the married state. The other publication is a discourse, in 1508, by
Christopher Scheurl, containing a frivolous witticism at the expense
of women, likewise due to Italian influence. This, however, did not
prevent Scheurl, too, from marrying.[450] The truth is that the
Italian Humanists’ “favourite subjects are the relations between the
sexes, treated with the crudest realism, and, in connection with this,
attacks on marriage and the family.”[451] At the same time it cannot
be denied that individual writers, men influenced by anti-clerical
Humanism, or ascetical theologians knowing nothing of the world, did
sometimes speak of marriage in a manner scarcely fair to woman and did
occasionally unduly exalt the state of celibacy.
Against such assertions some of Luther’s finest sayings on woman’s
dignity deserve to be pitted.
_Luther’s Discordant Utterances on the Value of Marriage in his Sermons
and Writings._
Any objective examination of Luther’s attitude towards woman and
marriage must reveal the fact, that he frequently seeks to invest
Christian marriage, as he conceived it, with a religious character and
a spiritual dignity. This he does in language witty and sympathetic,
representing it as a close bond of love, though devoid of any
sacramental character. Nor does he hesitate to use the noble imagery of
the Church when describing his substitute for the Christian marriage of
the past.
“It is no small honour for the married state,” he says in a sermon of
1536, “that God should represent it under the type and figure of the
unspeakable grace and love which He manifests and bestows on us in
Christ, and as the surest and most gracious sign of the intimate union
between Himself and Christendom and all its members, a union than which
nothing more intimate can be imagined.”[452]
In another sermon he praises the edification provided in the married
state, when “man and wife are united in love and serve each other
faithfully”; Luther invites them to thank God “that the married state
is profitable alike to body, property, honour and salvation.” “What,
however, is best of all in married life,” so he insists, “for the sake
of which everything must be suffered and endured, is that God may give
offspring and command us to train it in His service. This is earth’s
noblest and most priceless work, because God loves nothing so well as
to save souls.”[453]
Such exhortations of Luther’s, apart from peculiarities of expression,
differ from those of earlier writers only in that those authors,
relying on the traditional, sacramental conception of the matrimonial
union, had an even greater right to eulogise marriage and the blessing
of children.
Catholic preachers might quite profitably have made use of the greater
part of a wedding discourse delivered by Luther in 1531,[454] though
they might have failed to emulate the force and emphasis with which
it was uttered. His theme there is “that marriage is to be held in
honour”; he quotes Hebr. xiii. 4, “Marriage is honourable in all,
and the bed undefiled”; he continues: “It is true that our flesh is
full of evil lusts which entice us to sin, but to these we must not
consent; if, however, you hold fast to the Word of God and see to it,
that this state is blessed and adorned, this will preserve and comfort
you, and make of it a holy state for you.”[455] It was necessary, he
continues, not merely to fight against any sensual lusts outside of
the marriage bond, but also to cultivate virtue. Conjugal fidelity
must be preserved all the more carefully since “Satan is your enemy
and your flesh wanton.” “Fornication and adultery are the real stains
which defile the marriage bed.” “Married persons are embraced in the
Word of God.” This they must take as their guide, otherwise (here
Luther’s language ceases to be a pattern) “the bed is soiled, and,
practically, they might as well have passed their motions in it.”[456]
Such an emphasising of the religious side of matrimony almost gives
the impression, that Luther was following an interior impulse which
urged him to counteract the effects of certain other statements of his
on marriage. Doubtless he felt the contrast between his worldly view
of matrimony and the higher standard of antiquity, though he would
certainly have refused to admit that he was behindhand in the struggle
against sensuality. In view of the sad moral consequences which were
bearing witness against him, he was disposed to welcome an opportunity
to give expression to such sentiments as those just described, which
tended to justify him both to his listeners and to himself. Nor were
such sentiments mere hypocrisy; on the contrary, they have their
psychological place as a true component part of his picture. On one
occasion Luther bewails the want of attention paid to his excellent
doctrines: “The teachers are there, but the doers are nowhere to be
found; as with the other points of our doctrine, there are but few who
obey or heed us.”[457]
Not infrequently, however, instead of praising the dignity of woman and
the purity of married life, Luther speaks in a far from respectful,
nay, offensive manner of woman, though without perhaps meaning all
that his words would seem to convey. He thereby exposes woman, in
her relations with man, to the danger of contempt, and thus forfeits
the right of posing as the defender of feminine dignity and of the
married state against alleged detractors among the Catholics. His false
aspersions on former days thus stand out in a still more unpleasant
light.
In a sermon of 1524, where it is true he has some fine words on the
indulgent treatment to be meted out to the wife, he says: St. Peter
calls woman the “weaker vessel” (1 Peter iii. 7); he “had given faint
praise to woman,” for “woman’s body is not strong and her spirit, as a
general rule, is even weaker; whether she is wild or mild depends on
God’s choice of man’s helpmate. Woman is half a child; whoever takes a
wife must look upon himself as the guardian of a child.... She is also
a crazy beast. Recognise her weakness. If she does not always follow
the straight path, bear with her frailty. A woman will ever remain a
woman.... But the married state is nevertheless the best, because God
is there with His Word and Work and Cross.”[458]
With those who complain of the sufferings of the mother in pregnancy
and childbirth he is very angry, and, in one sermon, goes so far as
to say: “Even though they grow weary and wear themselves out with
child-bearing, that is of no consequence; let them go on bearing
children till they die, that is what they are there for.”[459]
His description of marriage “as an outward, material thing, like any
other worldly business,[460] was certainly not calculated to raise
its repute;” and in the same passage he proceeds: “Just as I may eat
and drink, sleep and walk, ride, talk and do business with a heathen
or a Jew, a Turk or a heretic, so also I may contract marriage with
him.”[461]
Matrimonial cases had formerly belonged to the ecclesiastical courts,
but Luther now drives the parties concerned to the secular judge,
telling them that he will give them “a good hog,” i.e. a sound
trouncing, for having sought to “involve and entangle him in such
matters” which “really concerned the secular authority.”[462] “Marriage
questions,” he says, “do not touch the conscience, but come within the
province of the secular judge.”[463] Previously, parties whose rights
had been infringed were able to seek redress from the ecclesiastical
tribunals, the sentences of which were enforced by Canon Law under
spiritual penalties, to the advantage of the injured party. Luther, on
the other hand, after having secularised marriage, finds himself unable
to cope with the flood of people clamouring for justice: “I am tired of
them [the matrimonial squabbles] and I have thrown them overboard; let
them do as they like in the name of all the devils.”[464] He is also
determined to rid the preachers of this business; the injured parties
are, he says, to seek for justice and protection “in the latrines of
the lawyers”; his own conduct, he hopes, will serve as a model to the
preachers, who will now repel all who solicit their help.[465]
The increase in the number of matrimonial misunderstandings and
quarrels, the haste with which marriage was entered upon and then
dissolved, particularly in the Saxon Electorate and at Wittenberg, was
not merely the result of the new Evangelical freedom, as Luther and
his friends sadly admitted, but was due above all to the altered views
on marriage. In the new preaching on marriage the gratification of the
sensual impulse was, as will be shown below, placed too much in the
foreground, owing partly to the fanatical reaction against clerical
celibacy and religious vows. “To marry is a remedy for fornication”;
these words of Luther’s were again and again repeated by himself and
others in one form or another, as though they characterised the main
object of marriage. Nature was persistently painted as excessively
weak in the matter of chastity, and as quite captive under the yoke of
passion. People were indeed admonished to curb their passions with the
help of Grace, but such means of acquiring God’s Grace as mortification
and self-conquest were only too frequently scoffed at as mere
holiness-by-works, while as for the means of grace sought by Catholics
in the Sacraments, they had simply been “abolished.”
By his patronage of polygamy, forced on him by his wrong interpretation
of the Bible, Luther put the crowning touch on his contempt for
Christian marriage.[466] This was to relinquish the position of
privilege in which Christianity had established marriage, when,
following the Creator’s intention, it insisted on monogamy.
_Birth of the New Views on Marriage during the Controversy on the Vow
of Chastity._
How did Luther reach his opinion and succeed in endowing it with
credibility and life? A glance at its birth and growth will give us an
instructive insight into Luther’s manner of proceeding.
He had already long been engaged in his struggle with “Popish abuses”
and had already set up all the essential points of his new theology,
before becoming in the least conscious of the supposed contempt in
which marriage was held by the Roman Church. In his exposition of the
Ten Commandments, in 1518, he still speaks of it in the respectful
language of his earlier years; in his sermon on the Married State, in
1519, he still terms it a Sacrament, without hinting in any way that
it had hitherto been considered disreputable. Whether he uses the term
Sacrament in its traditional meaning we do not, of course, know. At any
rate, he says: “Matrimony is a Sacrament, an outward, holy sign of the
greatest, most sacred, worthy and exalted thing that ever has been,
or ever will be, viz. of the union of the Divine and human nature in
Christ.”[467] Enumerating the spiritual advantages of marriage, which
counteract the “sinful lusts therewith intermingled,” he expressly
appeals to the “Doctors” of the Church, and the three benefits they
perceived in matrimony; “first, marriage is a Sacrament,” “secondly,
it is a bond of fidelity,” “thirdly, it brings offspring, which is the
end and principal office of marriage”; a further benefit must be added,
viz. the “training of the offspring in the service of God.”[468]
In his book “On the Babylonish Captivity” (1520) he has already arrived
at the explicit denial to marriage of the name and character of a
sacrament.
But it was only in the war he waged against his own vow of chastity
that the idea arose in his mind, and even then only gradually, that
the true value and excellence of marriage had never hitherto been
recognised. The more he sought for theological grounds on which to
prove the worthlessness of religious celibacy and the nullity of the
vow of chastity, the more deeply he persuaded himself that proofs
existed in abundance of the utter perversity of the prevailing opinions
on matrimony. He began to impute to the Church extravagant views on
virginity, of which neither he nor anyone else had ever thought. He
now accused her of teaching the following: That virginity was the
only state in which God could be served perfectly; that marriage was
forbidden to the clergy because it was disreputable and a thing soiled
with sin; finally, that family life with its petty tasks must be
regarded as something degrading, while woman herself, to whom the chief
share in these tasks belongs and who, moreover, so often tempts man to
sins of incontinence, is a contemptible creature.
All these untruths concerning the ancient Church were purely the
outcome of Luther’s personal polemics.
His system of attack exhibits no trace of any dispassionate examination
of the testimonies of antiquity. But his false and revolting charges
seemed some sort of justification for his attack on religious vows
and clerical celibacy. From such theoretical charges there was but a
step to charges of a more practical character and to his boundless
exaggerations concerning the hideous vices supposed to have been
engendered by the perversion of the divinely appointed order, and to
have devastated the Church as a chastisement for her contempt for
marriage.
In the second edition of the sermon of 1519 on the Married State he
places virginity on at least an equal footing with matrimony. Towards
the end of the sermon he (like the earlier writers) calls matrimony “a
noble, exalted and blessed state” if rightly observed, but otherwise
“a wretched, fearful and dangerous” one; he proceeds: Whoever bears
this in mind “will know what to think of the sting of the flesh,
and, possibly, will be as ready to accept the virginal state as
the conjugal.”[469] Even during his Wartburg days, when under the
influence of the burning spirit of revolt, and already straining at
the vows which bound him, he still declared in the theses he sent
Melanchthon, that “Marriage is good, but virginity better” (“_Bonum
coniugium, melior virginitas_”),[470] a thesis, which, like St. Paul,
he bases mainly on the immunity from worldly cares. This idea impressed
Melanchthon so deeply, that he re-echoes it in his praise of virginity
in the “Apology for the Confession of Augsburg”: “We do not make
virginity and marriage equal. For, as one gift is better than another,
prophecy better than eloquence, strategy better than agriculture,
eloquence better than architecture, so virginity is a gift excelling
marriage.”[471]
But this great gift, to Luther’s mind, was a moral impossibility,
the rarest of God’s Graces, nay, a “miracle” of the Almighty. Hence
he teaches that such a privilege must not be laid claim to, that the
monastic vow of chastity was therefore utterly immoral, and clerical
celibacy too, to say nothing of private vows of virginity; in all such
there lurked a presumptuous demand for the rarest and most marvellous
of Divine Graces; even to pray for this was not allowed.
At the conclusion of his theses for Melanchthon, Luther enforces what
he had said by the vilest calumnies against all who, in the name of the
Church, had pledged themselves to remain unmarried. Were it known what
manner of persons those who profess such great chastity really are,
their “greatly extolled chastity” would not be considered fit “for a
prostitute to wipe her boots on.”
Then follow his further unhappy outbursts at the Wartburg on religious
vows (vol. ii., p. 83 ff.) consummating his perversion of the Church’s
teaching and practice regarding celibacy and marriage. In marriage
he sees from that time forward nothing by the gratification of the
natural impulse; to it every man must have recourse unless he enjoys
the extraordinary grace of God; the ancient Church, with her hatred
of marriage, her professed religious and celibate clergy, assumes in
his imagination the most execrable shape. He fancies that, thanks to
his new notions, he has risen far above the Christianity of the past,
albeit the Church had ever striven to guard the sanctity of marriage
as the very apple of her eye, by enacting many laws and establishing
marriage-courts of her own under special judges. He becomes ever more
reckless in casting marriage matters on the shoulders of the State.
In the Preface to his “Trawbüchlin,” in 1529, he says, for instance,
“Since wedlock and marriage are a worldly business, we clergy and
ministers of the Church have nothing to order or decree about it,
but must leave each town and country to follow its own usage and
custom.”[472]
From that time forward, particularly when the Diet of Augsburg had
embittered the controversy, Luther pours out all the vials of his
terrible eloquence on the bondage in which marriage had been held
formerly, and on the contempt displayed by Rome for it. He peremptorily
demands its complete secularisation.
And yet he ostentatiously extols marriage as “holy and Divine,”
and even says that wedlock is most pleasing to God, a mystery and
Sacrament in the highest sense of the word. Of one of these passages
Emil Friedberg, the Protestant canonist, remarks in his “Recht
der Eheschliessung”: “Luther’s views as here expressed completely
contradict other passages, and this same discrepancy is apparent
throughout the later literature, and, even now, prevents [Protestants]
from appreciating truly the nature of marriage.”[473]
Every impartial observer could have seen that the preference given to
virginity by the Catholic Church, her defence of the manner of life of
those whom God had called to the cloister, and her guardianship of the
celibacy of the priesthood, handed down from the earliest ages, did not
in the least imply any undervaluing of marriage on her part--unless
indeed, as Joseph Mausbach remarks, he was prepared to admit that,
“because one thing is better, its opposite must needs be bad.”
“Who thinks,” continues the same writer, that “preference for gold
involves contempt for silver, or preference for the rose a depreciation
of all other flowers? But these very comparisons are to be met with
even amongst the ancient Fathers.... Why should the Church’s praise of
virginity be always misconstrued as a reproach against matrimony? All
this is mere thoughtlessness, when it is not blind prejudice, for the
Church did everything to prevent any misunderstanding of her praise of
virginity, and certainly taught and defended the sanctity of marriage
with all her power.”[474]
Luther’s judgment was not due so much to mere thoughtlessness as to
his burning hatred of the Papacy; this we see from the vulgar abuse
which, whenever he comes to speak of marriage and celibacy, he showers
on the Pope, the supreme champion of the Evangelical Counsels and of
the priestly ideal of life; on the other hand, it was also to some
extent due to his deeply rooted and instinctive aversion for everything
whereby zealous Christians do violence to nature out of love for God,
from the motive of penance and from a desire to obtain merit.
_The Natural Impulse and the Honour of Marriage._
Ecclesiastical writers before Luther’s day speak frequently and plainly
enough of the impulse of nature, but, as a rule, only in order to
recommend its control, to point out the means of combating excesses,
and to insist on the Sacrament which sanctifies conjugal intercourse
and brings down the blessings we require if the earthly and eternal
purpose of marriage is to be fulfilled.
Luther, however, if we may trust one of his most zealous defenders,
rendered a great service with regard to sexual intercourse in that “he
shook off the pseudo-ascetic spirit of the past.” He demonstrated,
so we are told, particularly in what he wrote to Spalatin about
the “_actus matrimonialis_”[475]--words which some have regarded as
offensive--“that even that act, though represented by his opponents as
obscene, to the faithful Christian who ‘receives it with thanksgiving’
(1 Tim. iv. 4), contained nothing to raise a blush or to forbid its
mention.” According to the “Roman view” it is perfectly true that
“the ‘_actus matrimonialis_’ is sinless only when performed with the
object of begetting children, or in order to fulfil the conjugal
due.”[476] This, he exclaims, “was forsooth to be the sole motive of
conjugal intercourse! And, coupled with this motive, the act even
becomes meritorious! Is there any need of confuting so repulsive a
notion?... Luther’s view is very different. The natural sexual passion
was, according to him, the will and the work of God.” “The effect of
the Roman exaltation of celibacy was to make people believe, that
the motive [of conjugal intercourse] implanted by God, viz. sexual
attraction, must not be yielded to.” This attraction Luther declared
to be the one motive on account of which we should “thankfully avail
ourselves” of matrimony. “This Luther conveys most clearly in his
letter to Spalatin, his intimate friend, shortly after both had
wedded.... We know no higher conception of conjugal intercourse.”
This description does not do justice to the mediæval Catholic teaching
on matrimony, its duties and privileges. This teaching never demanded
the suppression of sensual attraction or love. It fully recognised
that this had been implanted in human nature by God’s wise and
beneficent hand as a stimulus to preserve and multiply the human
race, according to His command: “Be fruitful and multiply.” But the
Church urged all to see that this impulse was kept pure and worthy by
attention to its higher purpose, viz. to the object appointed from
above. Instead of becoming its slave the Christian was to ennoble
it by allowing the motives of faith to play their part in conjugal
intercourse. The Church’s teaching would indeed have been “repulsive”
had it demanded the general repression of the sexual instinct and not
merely the taming of that unruliness which is the result of original
sin, and is really unworthy of man. Had she imposed the obligation to
wage an impossible struggle against it as a thing essentially sinful,
then her teaching might indeed have been described as “repulsive.”
Still it is sufficiently tragic, that, in spite of the gratification
of the sensual impulse of nature playing the principal part in his
new and supposedly more exalted view of conjugal intercourse, Luther
should, on account of the concupiscence involved, characterise the
“_actus matrimonialis_” as a mortal sin. In “_De votis monasticis_,”
his work written at the Wartburg, he says: “According to Ps. 1. 7, it
is a sin differing in nothing from adultery and fornication so far as
the sensual passion and hateful lust are concerned; God, however, does
not impute it to the married, though simply because of His compassion,
since it is impossible for us to avoid it, although our duty would
really be to do without it.”[477] We are already familiar with his
curious and impossible theory of imputation, according to which God is
able to close His eyes to a sin, which nevertheless is really there.
That there is actual sin in the act Luther also insists elsewhere, at
the same time pleading, however, that the sin is not imputed by God,
who, as it were, deliberately winks at it: “In spite of all the good
I say of married life, I will not grant so much to nature as to admit
that there is no sin in it; what I say is that we have here flesh and
blood, depraved in Adam, conceived and born in sin (Ps. 1. 7), and
that no conjugal due is ever rendered without sin.”[478]--The blessing
which God bestowed on marriage, he says elsewhere, fallen human nature
was “not able to accomplish without sin”; “without sin no married
persons could do their duty.”[479]
Hence the following inference would seem justified: Matrimony is
really a state of sin. Such was the opinion, not of the Church before
Luther’s day, but of her assailant, whose opponents soon pointed out
to him how unfounded was his supposition.[480] The ancient Church, by
the voice of her theologians, declared the “_actus matrimonialis_,”
when performed in the right way and to a right end, to be no sin; they
admitted the inevitable satisfaction of concupiscence, but allowed it
so long as its gratification was not all that was sought. According
to Luther--whom the author above referred to has quite rightly
understood--it is different: Sin is undoubtedly committed, but we may,
nay, are bound, to commit it.
With the above, all Luther’s statements on the inevitable strength
of the impulse of nature agree. Though the union of husband and wife
is a rule of the natural law applying to the majority rather than
to the individual, Luther practically makes it binding upon all. In
this connection he seems to be unable to view the moral relation of
the sexes in any other light than as existing for the gratification
of mutual lust, since without marriage they must inevitably fall
into every sort of carnal sin. “It is a necessary and natural thing,
that every man should have a wife,” he says in the lengthy passage
already quoted, where he concludes, “it is more necessary than eating
and drinking, sleeping and waking, or passing the natural motions of
the body.”[481] Elsewhere, in a characteristic comparison, he says:
“Were a man compelled to close his bowels and bladder--surely an utter
impossibility--what would become of him?”[482] According to him, “man
must be fruitful, and multiply, and breed,” “like all other animals,
since God has created him thereto, so that, of necessity, a man must
seek a wife, and a woman a husband, unless God works a miracle.”[483]
Many were they who, during the controversies which accompanied the
schism, listened to such teaching and believed it and were ready to
forgo the miracle in order to follow the impulse of nature; were ready
to indulge their weakness did their state of life prohibit marriage,
or to dissolve the marriage already contracted when it did not turn
out to their taste, or when they fancied they could advance one of
the numerous reasons proclaimed by Luther for its annulment. The
evil effects of such morality in the 16th century (see below, p. 164
ff. and xxiv. 1 and 2), witnessed to on all sides by Lutherans as
well as Catholics, prove conclusively that the originator of the new
matrimonial theories was the last man qualified to reproach the ancient
Church with a want of appreciation for marriage or for woman.
* * * * *
Nor must we look merely at the results. The man’s very character, his
mode of thought and his speech, suffice to banish him from the society
of the olden, earnest moralists. Albeit unwillingly, we must add here
some further statements to those already adduced.[484]
“If a man feels his manhood,” Luther says, “let him take a wife and
not tempt God. ‘_Puella propterea habet pudenda_,’ to provide him a
remedy that he may escape pollution and adultery.”[485]
“The sting of the flesh may easily be helped, so long as girls and
women are to be found.”[486]
Our readers will not have forgotten the reason he gives why women
have so little intellect;[487] or the reproof addressed to him by
Staupitz.[488]
Luther urges early marriage in the words of an old proverb: “To rise
early and to marry young will cause regret to no one.” “It will fare
with you,” he says to the same addressee, “as with the nuns to whom
they gave carved Jesuses. They cast about for others, who at least
were living and pleased them better, and sought how best to escape
from their convent.”[489]--“What greater service can one do a girl
than to get her a baby? This rids her of many fancies.”[490] Here, and
elsewhere too, he is anxious that people should marry, even though
there should not be enough to live upon; God would not allow the
couple to starve if they did their duty.[491]--“A young fellow should
be simply given a wife, otherwise he has no peace. Then the troubles
of matrimony will soon tame him.”[492]
On another occasion (1540) Luther expresses himself with greater
caution about too early matches: “It is not good for young people to
marry too soon. They are ruined in their prime, exhaust their strength
and neglect their studies.” “But the young men are consumed with
passion,” one of those present objected, “and the theologians work
upon their conscience and tell them that ‘To marry young will cause
regret to no one.’” Luther’s reply was: “The young men are unwilling
to resist any temptations.... They should console themselves with the
hope of future marriage. We used to be forbidden to marry in almost
all the Faculties, hence the youths indulged in all kinds of excesses,
knowing that, later on, they would no longer be able to do so. Thus
they sunk into every kind of disorder. But now everybody is allowed
to marry, even the theologian and the bishop. Hence, in their own
interests, they ought to learn to wait.”[493]
At other times he was inclined to promote hasty marriages from motives
of policy, and, without a thought of the dignity of the conjugal union
and the respect due to woman, to use it as a means to increase the
number of his followers.
This happened in the case of many of his converts from the ranks of
the clergy and religious.[494]
In the case of the Bishop of Samland, George von Polenz, and his
adviser, Johann Briesmann, the ex-Franciscan, who both were desirous
of marrying, Luther judged that delay would be disastrous. He urged
them to make haste and be publicly wedded, both having already
contracted a so-called marriage in conscience; in their case there
was “danger in delay,” and, as the saying goes, “If you wait a night,
you wait a year”; even Paul had said we must not receive the grace of
God in vain (2 Cor. vi. 1), and the bride in the Canticle complained
that the bridegroom “was gone,” because she had been tardy in opening
the door (v. 6). A German proverb said, “Wenn das Ferkel beut soll
man den Sack herhalten.” Esau’s lost birthright, and the solemn words
of Christ concerning separation from Him (John xii. 35 f.) were also
made to serve his purpose. “Take it when, where and how you can, or
you won’t get another chance.” A man could not be sure of his own mind
on account of the snares of the devil; a marriage not yet publicly
ratified remained somewhat uncertain.[495]
Before these exhortations reached them both the parties in question
had, however, already taken the public step.
It was in those very days that Luther celebrated his own wedding and
sent his pressing invitation to marry to the Cardinal and Elector
of Mayence, telling him that, short of a miracle, or without some
peculiar grace, it was a “terrible thing” for a man “to be found
without a wife at the hour of death.”[496] It was then, too, that he
sent to Albert of Prussia, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, who
was contemplating marriage, his congratulations on the secularisation
of the lands of the Order and the founding of the Duchy, which he had
even previously strongly urged him to do. In this letter he tells
the Grand Master that it was “God Almighty,” “Who had graciously
and mercifully helped him to such a position [that of a secular
Prince].”[497] The Grand Master’s marriage and consequent breach of
his vow of chastity followed in 1526. He invited Luther to the wedding
and wrote to him, that God had given him “the grace to enter the Order
[of marriage] instituted by Himself” after he had “laid aside the
cross [the sign of the Order] and entered the secular estate.”
It cannot be denied, that in all these marriages which Luther
promoted, or at least favoured, what he had his eye on was the
advantage of the new Church system. Of any raising of the moral
position of women, of any deepening of the significance of marriage,
there is here no trace; these marriages served quite another purpose.
The circumstances attending them were, moreover, frequently far from
dignified. “The Bishop of Samland,” so Philip von Creutz, a Knight
of the Teutonic Order, relates, “gave up his bishopric to the Duke
[Albert] in the presence of the whole assembly.... He caused his mitre
to be broken up and, out of its precious stones and jewels, he had
ornaments made for his wife.”[498]
_Practical Consequences of the New View of Woman: Matrimonial
Impediments, Divorce._
The readiness shown by Luther to annul valid marriages, and the wayward
manner in which he disposed of the impediments fixed by the Church,
were not calculated to enhance respect either for marriage or for woman.
As regards the impediments to marriage we shall here merely refer to
the practical and not uncommon case where a person wished to marry
a niece. Whereas Canon Law, at one with Roman Law, regarded this
relationship as constituting an impediment, which might, however, be
dispensed from by the Pope, Luther at first saw fit to declare it no
impediment at all; he even issued memoranda to this effect, one of
which was printed in 1526 and circulated widely.[499] “If the Pope
was able to dispense,” he said later on concerning this, “why can’t I
too?”[500] In favour of the lawfulness of such marriages he appealed to
the example of Abraham, and in reply to objections declared: “If they
blame the work and example of the holy Patriarch Abraham, then let them
be scandalised.”[501] At a later date, nevertheless, he changed his
mind and held such marriages to be unlawful. His previous statements he
explained by saying that once he had indeed given a different decision,
not in order to lead others into excesses but in order “to assist
consciences at the hour of death against the Pope”; he had merely
given advice in Confession to troubled consciences, and had not laid
down any law; to make laws was not within his province, either in the
State or in the Church. His former memoranda were not to be alleged
now; a certain man of the name of Borner, who, on the strength of them,
had married his niece, had acted very ill and done injustice to his
(Luther’s) decision. The Pope alone, so Luther says, was to blame for
his previous advice--because many, owing to his laws, were reduced to
despair and had come to Luther for help. “It is true that in Confession
and in order to pacify consciences I have advised differently, but
I made a mistake in allowing such counsels to be made public. Now,
however, it is done. This is a matter for Confession only.”[502]
When speaking in this way, in 1544, he probably had in mind his
so-called advice in Confession to Philip of Hesse. He was still acting
on the principle, that advice given in Confession might afterwards be
publicly repudiated as quite wrong; he failed somehow to see that the
case of marriage of uncle and niece was of its very nature something
public.
The multitude of divorces caused him great anxiety. Even the preachers
of the new faith were setting a bad example by putting away their
spouses and contracting fresh marriages. Melander, for instance,
who blessed Philip’s second marriage, after deserting “two wives in
succession without even seeking legal aid, married a third.”[503] At
Gotha, as Luther himself relates, a woman deserted her husband and
her three children, and sent him a message to tell him he might take
another wife. When, however, he had done so the woman again asserted
her claims. “Our lawyers,” Luther complains, “at once took her part,
but the Elector decided she should quit the country. My own decision
would have been to have her done to death by drowning.”[504]
In a still existing letter of 1525, Luther permitted Michael Kramer,
preacher at Domitsch, near Torgau, to contract a third marriage, two
previous ones having turned out unfortunate. Kramer, as a Catholic
priest, had first married a servant maid and, for this, had been sent
to jail by Duke George his sovereign. When the maid proved unfaithful
and married another, Luther, to whom Kramer had attached himself,
declared her to be really “deceased” and told the preacher he might
use his “Christian freedom.” Kramer thereupon married a girl from
Domitsch, where he had been in the meantime appointed Lutheran pastor.
This new wife likewise ran away from him three weeks later. He now
addressed himself to the local board of magistrates, who, conjointly
with him, wrote to Luther, pointing out how the poor man “could not
do without a wife.” Luther thereupon sent a memorandum, addressed to
the “magistrates and the preacher of Domitsch,” in which he allowed a
divorce from the second wife and gave permission for a third marriage,
which, apparently, was more of a success. During the Visitations in
1528 this preacher, who had since been transferred to Lucka, got into
trouble on account of his three marriages, but saved his skin by
appealing to Luther’s letter.[505]
The reader already knows that, according to Luther, a woman who has
no children by her husband, may, with the latter’s consent, quietly
dissolve the marriage and cohabit with another, for instance, with
her brother-in-law; this, however, was to be secret, because the
children were to be regarded as her first husband’s. Should he refuse
his consent, says Luther, “rather than suffer her to burn or have
recourse to adultery, I would advise her to marry another and flee to
some place where she is unknown. What other advice can be given to
one who is in constant danger from carnal lusts?”[506] Duke George of
Saxony, referring to a similar passage in Luther’s work “On Conjugal
Life” (1522),[507] said in a letter to Luther which was immediately
printed: “When was it ever heard of that wives should be taken from
their husbands and given to other men, as we now find it stated in your
Evangel? Has adultery ever been more common than since you wrote: If a
woman has no children by her husband, then let her go to another and
bear children whom her husband must provide for as though he were the
father? This is the fruit of the precious Evangel which you dragged
forth out of the gutter. You were quite right when you said you found
it in the gutter; what we want to know is, why you didn’t leave it
there.”[508]
What Luther had said concerning the refusal to render the conjugal
due: “If the wife refuse, then let the maid come,” attracted more
attention than he probably anticipated, both among his own adherents
and among his foes. It is true, as already pointed out, that the
context does not justify illicit relations outside marriage (see vol.
iii., p. 252 f.), but the words as they stand, to say nothing of the
unlikelihood of any real marriage with the maid, and, finally, the
significance which may have clung to a coarse saying of the populace
possibly alluded to by Luther, all favoured those who chose to make
the tempting phrase a pretext for such extra-matrimonial relations.
When the sermon on marriage in which the passage occurs was published,
Duke George’s representative at the Diet of Nuremberg in 1522 sent his
master at Dresden a copy of the booklet, “which the devilish monk,”
so he writes, “has unblushingly published, though it has cost him the
loss of many followers about here; it would not go well with us poor
husbands, should our naughty wives read it. I shall certainly not
give my wife one.”[509] Duke George replied with a grim jest which
doubtless went the rounds at Nuremberg among those whom the booklet
had offended: “As to what you write,” George says, “viz. that you
won’t let your wife read the little book on marriage, me thinks you
are acting unwisely; in our opinion it contains something which might
serve even a jealous husband like you very well; for it says, that if
your wife refuses to do your will you have only to turn to the maid.
Hence keep a look out for pretty maids. These and similar utterances
you may very well hold over your wife.”[510]
In 1542 Wicel, in his Postils, speaking of the preachers, says: “The
words of St. Paul, ‘Art thou loosed from a wife, seek not a wife,’ 1
Cor. vii. 27, have a very unevangelical sound on the lips of these
Evangelists. How then must it be? Quick, take a wife or a husband;
whether you be young or old, make haste; should one die, don’t delay
to take another. Celebrate the wedding, if it turns out ill, then let
the maid come! Divorce this one and take in marriage that one, whether
the first be living or dead! For chambering and wantonness shall not
be neglected,”--“Since the coming of Christ,” says the same writer
elsewhere, “there have never been so many divorces as under Luther’s
rule.”[511]
Of the unlooked-for effects produced among Luther’s preachers by the
above saying, Sebastian Flasch, an ex-Lutheran preacher and native of
Mansfeld, complained in 1576: “Although the preachers are married, yet
they are so ill-content with their better halves, that, appealing to
Luther’s advice, they frequently, in order to gratify their insatiable
concupiscence, seduce their maids, and, what is even more shameful,
do not blush to misconduct themselves with other men’s wives or to
exchange wives among themselves.” He appeals to his long experience
of Lutheranism and relates that such a “_commutatio uxorum_” had been
proposed to him by a preacher of high standing.[512]--Much earlier
than this, in 1532, Johann Mensing, the Dominican, wrote sadly, that
the state of matrimony was dreadfully disgraced by the new preachers;
“for they give a man two wives, a woman two husbands, allow the man
to use the maid should the wife not prove compliant, and the wife
to take another husband should her own prove impotent.” “When they
feel disposed or moved to what is sin and shameful, they say the
Holy Spirit urges them. Is not that a fine tale that all the world
is telling about Melchior Myritsch of Magdeburg, of Jacob Probst
of Bremen and of others in the Saxon land. What certain mothers
have discovered concerning their daughters and maids, who listened
to such preaching, it is useless to relate.”[513]--The name of the
ex-Augustinian, Melchior Myritsch, or Meirisch, recalls the coarseness
of the advice given by Luther, on Feb. 10, 1525, to the latter’s new
spouse. (See vol. ii., p. 144.)
_Respect for the Female Sex in Luther’s Conversations._
Had Luther, as the legend he set on foot would make us believe, really
raised the dignity of woman and the married state to a higher level, we
might naturally expect, that, when he has to speak of matters sexual
or otherwise repugnant to modesty, he would at least be reticent and
dignified in his language. We should expect to find him surrounded
at Wittenberg by a certain nobility of thought, a higher, purer
atmosphere, a nobler general tone, in some degree of harmony with his
extraordinary claims. Instead we are confronted with something very
different. Luther’s whole mode of speech, his conversations and ethical
trend, are characterised by traits which even the most indulgent of
later writers found it difficult to excuse, and which, particularly his
want of delicacy towards women, must necessarily prove offensive to
all.[514]
Luther was possibly not aware that the word “nun” comes from the Low
Latin “_nonna_,” i.e. woman, and was originally the name given to those
who dwelt in the numerous convents of Upper Egypt; he knew, however,
well enough that the word “monk” was but a variant of “_monachus_.” He
jestingly gives to both the former and the latter an odious derivation.
“The word nun,” he says, “comes from the German, and cloistered women
are thus called, because that is the term for unsexed sows; in the
same way the word monk is derived from the horses [viz. the gelded
horses]. But the operation was not altogether successful, for they are
obliged to wear breeches just like other people.”[515] It may be that
Catherine, the ex-nun, was present when this was said; at any rate she
is frequently mentioned in the Table-Talk as assisting.[516]
He could not let slip the opportunity of having a dig at the ladies
who were sometimes present at his post-prandial entertainments. In
1542 conversation turned on Solomon’s many wives and concubines.
Luther pointed out,[517] that the figures given in the Bible must
be taken as referring to all the women dwelling in the palace, even
to such as had no personal intercourse with Solomon. “One might as
well say,” he continues, “Dr. Martin has three wives; one is Katey,
another Magdalene, the third the pastoress; also a concubine, viz.
the virgin Els.[518] This made him laugh [writes the narrator, Caspar
Heydenreich]; and besides these he has many girls. In the same way
Solomon had three hundred queens; if he took only one every night,
the year would be over, and he would not have had a day’s rest. That
cannot be, for he had also to govern.”[519]
He advised that those who were troubled with doubts concerning
their salvation should speak of improper subjects (“_loquaris de
venereis_”), that was an infallible remedy.[520] In one such case he
invited a pupil to jest freely with his own wife, Catherine. “Talk
about other things,” Luther urges him, “which entirely distract your
thoughts.”[521]
As we know, Luther himself made liberal use of such talk to cheer up
himself and others. Thus, in the presence of his guests, in 1537, he
joked about Ferdinand, the German King, his extreme thinness and his
very stout wife who was suspected of misconduct: “Though he is of
such an insignificant bodily frame,” he says, “others will be found
to assist him in the nuptial bed. But it is a nuisance to have the
world filled with alien heirs.”[522]--This leads him to speak of
adulteresses in other districts.[523]
A coarser tale is the one he related about the same time. A minister
came to him complaining of giddiness and asking for a remedy. His
answer was: “Lass das Loch daheime,” which, so the narrators explain,
meant, “that he should not go to such excess in chambering.”[524]--A
similar piece of advice is given by Luther in the doggerel verses
which occur in his Table-Talk: “Keep your neck warm and cosy,--Do not
overload your belly.--Don’t be too sweet on Gertie;--Then your locks
will whiten slowly.”[525]--On one occasion he showed his friends
a turquoise (“_turchesia_”), which had been given him, and said,
following the superstition of the day, that when immersed in water it
would make movements “_sicut isti qui eveniunt juveni cum a virgine
in chorea circumfertur_,” but, that, in doing so, it broke.[526] On
account of the many children he had caused to be begotten from priests
and religious, he, as we already know, compared himself to Abraham,
the father of a great race: He, like Abraham, was the grandfather of
all the descendants of the monks, priests and nuns and the father of a
mighty people.[527]
We may not pass over here Luther’s frequent use of filthy expressions,
which, though they agree well with his natural coarseness, harmonise
but ill with the high ideals we should expect in one whose vocation
it was to rescue marriage and feminine dignity from the slough of the
Papacy. He is fond of using such words in his abuse of the Popish
teaching on marriage: At one time, he writes, the Papists make out
marriage to be a Sacrament, “at another to be impure, i.e. a sort of
merdiferous Sacrament.”[528] The Pope, who waywardly teaches this and
other doctrines, “has overthrown the Word of God”; “if the Pope’s
reputation had not been destroyed by the Word of God, the devil
himself would have ejected him” (‘_a posteriori_’).[529] Elsewhere he
voices his conviction as to the most fitting epithet to apply to the
Pope’s “human ordinances.” One thing in man, he explains, viz. “the
‘_anus_,’ cannot be bound; it is determined to be master and to have
the upper hand. Hence this is the only thing in man’s body or soul
upon which the Pope has not laid his commands.”[530]
“The greatest blessing of marriage,” he tells his friends, “lies in
the children; this D.G. [Duke George] was not fated to see in his
sons, ‘_quos spectatissima principissa cacatos in lucem ederat_.’”[531]
The Pope and his people, he says in a sermon, had “condemned and
rejected matrimony as a dirty, stinking state.” “Had the creation of
human beings been in the Pope’s power he would never have created
woman, or allowed any such to exist in the world.”[532] “The Pope, the
devil and his Church,” he says in 1539, “are hostile to the married
state.... Matrimony [in their opinion] is mere fornication.”[533]
The Pope, he says, had forbidden the married state; he and his
followers, “the monks and Papists,” “burn with evil lust and love of
fornication, though they refuse to take upon themselves the trouble
and labour of matrimony.”[534] “With the help of the Papacy Satan has
horribly soiled matrimony, God’s own ordinance”; the fact was, the
clergy had been too much afraid of woman; “and so it goes on: If a man
fears fornication he falls into secret sin, as seems to have been the
case with St. Jerome.”[535]
He saw sexual excesses increasing to an alarming extent among the youth
of his own party. At table a friend of the “young fellows” sought
to excuse their “wild, immoral life and fornication” on the ground
of their youth; Luther sighed, at the state of things revealed, and
said: “Alas, that is how they learn contempt for the female sex.”
Contempt will simply lead to abuse; the true remedy for immorality was
prayerfully to hold conjugal love in honour.[536]
Luther, however, preferred to dwell upon the deep-seated vice of an
anti-matrimonial Papacy rather than on the results of his teaching upon
the young.
“Every false religion,” he once exclaimed in 1542 in his
Table-Talk,[537] “has been defiled by sensuality! Just look at the
|!”--[He must here have used, says Kroker, “a term for _phallus_,
or something similar,” which Caspar Heydenreich the reporter has
suppressed.][538] “What else were the pilgrimages,” Luther goes on,
“but opportunities for coming together? What does the Pope do but
wallow unceasingly in his lusts?... The heathen held marriage in far
higher honour than do the Pope and the Turk. The Pope hates marriage,
and the Turk despises it. But it is the devil’s nature to hate God’s
Word. What God loves, e.g. the Church, marriage, civic order, that he
hates. He desires fornication and impurity; for if he has these, he
knows well that people will no longer trouble themselves about God.”
_The New Matrimonial Conditions and the Slandered Opponents._
It is a fact witnessed to by contemporaries, particularly by Catholics,
that Luther’s unrestraint when writing on sexual subjects, his open
allusions to organs and functions, not usually referred to, and,
especially, the stress he laid on the irresistibility of the natural
impulse, were not without notable effect on the minds of the people,
already excited as they were.
In 1522, after having explained his new views on divorce, he puts
himself the question, whether this “would not make it easy for wicked
men and women to desert each other, and betake themselves to foreign
parts”? His reply is: “How can I help it? It is the fault of the
authorities. Why do they not strangle adulterers?”[539]
Certain preachers of Lutheranism made matters worse by the fanaticism
with which they preached the freedom of the Evangel. So compromising
was their support, that other of Luther’s followers found fault with
it, for instance, the preacher Urbanus Rhegius[540] It was, however,
impossible for these more cautious preachers to prevent Luther’s
principles being carried to their consequences, in spite of all the
care they took to emphasise his reserves and his stricter admonitions.
The Protestant Rector, J. Rivius, complained in 1547: “If you are an
adulterer or lewdster, preachers say ... only believe and you will
be saved. There is no need for you to fear the law, for Christ has
fulfilled it and made satisfaction for all men.” “Such words seduce
people into a godless life.”[541]
E. Sarcerius, the Superintendent of the county of Mansfeld, also
bewailed, in a writing of 1555, the growing desecration of the married
state: Men took more than one wife; this they did by “fleeing to
foreign parts and seeking other wives. Some women do the same. Thus
there is no end to the desertions on the part of both husbands and
wives.” “In many places horrible adultery and fornication prevail, and
these vices have become so common, that people no longer regard them
as sinful.” “Thus there is everywhere confusion and scandal both in
match-making and in celebrating the marriages, so that holy matrimony
is completely dishonoured and trodden under foot.” “Of adultery,
lewdness and incest there is no end.”[542]--These complaints were
called forth by the state of things in the very county where Luther
was born and died.
The convert George Wicel, who resided for a considerable time at
Mansfeld, had an opportunity of observing the effects of Luther’s
matrimonial teaching and of his preaching generally on a population
almost entirely Protestant. He writes, in 1536: “It is enough to
break a Christian’s heart to see so many false prophets and heretics
flourishing in Germany, whose comforting and frivolous teaching fills
the land not merely with adulterers but with regular heathen.”[543]
In an earlier work he had said: “Oh, you people, what a fine manner
of life according to the Gospel have you introduced by your preaching
on Grace! Yes, they cry, you would make of Christ a Moses and a
taskmaster; they, however, make of Him a procurer and an Epicurean by
their sensual life and knavish example.”[544]
Luther, it is true, had an excuse ready. He pleaded that the freedom
of the Gospel was not yet rightly understood. “The masses,” he wrote
to Margrave George of Brandenburg, on Sep. 14, 1531, “have now fallen
under the freedom of the flesh, and there we must leave them for a
while until they have satisfied their lust. Things will be different
when the Visitation is in working order [the first Visitation in the
Margrave’s lands had taken place as early as 1528]. It is quick work
pulling down an old house, but building a new one takes longer....
Jerusalem, too, was built very slowly and with difficulty.... Under
the Pope we could not endure the constraint, and the lack of the Word;
now we cannot endure the freedom and the superabundant treasure of the
Gospel.”[545]
Amidst all these disorders Luther found great consolation in
contemplating the anti-Christian character of the Popish Church and
Daniel’s supposed prophecy of Antichrist’s enmity for woman.[546] His
preachers only too eagerly followed in his footsteps.
George Wicel speaks of the preachers, who, while themselves leading
loose lives, used Daniel’s prophecy against the Catholic view of
marriage.[547] “They mock at those who wish to remain single or who
content themselves with one wife, and quote the words of Daniel: ‘He
shall not follow the lust of women nor regard any gods,’ so that
anyone belonging to this sect who is not addicted to the pursuit of
women, is hardly safe from being taken for Antichrist. The words
of St. Paul in Cor. vii., of Our Lord in Mat. xix., concerning the
third sex of the eunuchs, and of St. John in Apoc. xiv., on those
who have not defiled themselves with women, and, again, of St. Paul
when speaking of the ‘_vidua digama_’ in 1 Tim. v., don’t count a
farthing in this Jovinian school[548].... It is an Epicurean school
and an Epicurean life and nothing else.” With biting satire, in part
the result of the controversy thrust upon him, in part the outcome
of his temper, he had declared shortly before, that Lutheranism was
all “love of women,” was “full of senseless lust for women”; he uses
“gynecophiles” as an adjective to qualify it, and speaks of its
“gynecomania”; by this means men were to become better Christians,
and be more secure of salvation than all the Saints of God ever were
in the ancient apostolic Church. “See there what Satan is seeking by
means of this exalted respect for the love of women, and by his glib,
feminist preachers in Saxony. Hence his and his followers’ concern for
women, to whom they cling so closely that they can hardly get into
their pulpits without them, and, rather than live a celibate life, the
Evangelist would prefer to be the husband, not of one wife, but of
three or four.”[549]
An intimate friend of Luther’s, Johann Brenz, wrote, in 1532, in
a book to which Luther supplied the Preface: “The youngsters are
barely out of the cradle before they want wives, and girls, not yet
marriageable, already dream of husbands.”[550]--After the immoral
atmosphere has brought about their fall, writes Fr. Staphylus, “they
grow so impudent as to assert that a chaste and continent life is
impossible and the gratification of the sexual appetite as essential
as eating and drinking.”[551]--The same author, who returned to the
Catholic Church, also wrote, in 1562: “So long as matrimony was looked
upon as a Sacrament, modesty and an honourable married life was loved
and prized, but since the people have read in Luther’s books that
matrimony is a human invention ... his advice has been put in practice
in such a way, that marriage is observed more chastely and honourably
in Turkey than amongst our German Evangelicals.”[552]
The list of testimonies such as these might be considerably
lengthened.[553]
It would, however, be unfair, in view of the large number of such
statements, to shut our eyes to the remarkable increase, at that
time, in the immorality already prevalent even in Catholic circles,
though this was due in great measure to the malignant influence of the
unhappy new idea of freedom, and to that contempt for ecclesiastical
regulations as mere human inventions, which had penetrated even into
regions still faithful to the Church.[554] Owing to the general
confusion, ecclesiastical discipline was at a standstill, evil-doers
went unpunished, nor could moral obligations be so regularly and
zealously enforced. It is true that favourable testimonies arc not
lacking on both sides, but they chiefly refer to remote Catholic and
Protestant localities. As is usual, such reports are less noticeable
than the unfavourable ones, the good being ever less likely to
attract attention than the evil. Staphylus complains bitterly of both
parties, as the very title of his book proves.[555] Finally, all the
unfavourable accounts of the state of married life under Lutheranism
are not quite so bad as those given above, in which moreover, maybe,
the sad personal experience of the writers made them see things with a
jaundiced eye.
That, in the matter of clerical morals, there was a great difference
between the end of the 15th and the middle of the 16th centuries
can be proved by such ecclesiastical archives as still survive; the
condemnations pronounced in the 16th century are considerably more
numerous than in earlier times.
On the grounds of such data Joseph Löhr has quite recently made a very
successful attempt to estimate accurately the moral status of the
clergy in the Lower Rhine provinces, particularly Westphalia.[556]
He has based his examination more particularly on the records of
the Archdeaconry of Xanten concerning the fines levied on the
clergy for all sorts of offences. The accounts “cover a period of
about one hundred years.”[557] In the 16th century we find a quite
disproportionate increase in the number of offenders. There are,
however, traces, over a long term of years, of a distinct weakening
of ecclesiastical discipline which made impossible any effective
repression of the growing evil.
A glance at the conditions prevailing in the 15th century in the
regions on which Löhr’s researches bear is very instructive.
It enables us to see how extravagant and untrue were--at least with
regard to these localities--the frequent, and in themselves quite
incredible, statements made by Luther regarding the utter degradation
of both clergy and religious owing to the law of celibacy. “Of a total
of from 450 to 600 clergy in the Archdeaconry of the Lower Rhine
(probably the number was considerably higher) we find, up to the end
of the 15th century, on an average, only five persons a year being
prosecuted by the Archdeacon for [various] offences.”[558] “Assuming
a like density of clergy in Westphalia, the number prosecuted by the
ecclesiastical commissioner in 1495 and in 1499 would amount roughly
to 2 per cent., but, in 1515, already to 6 per cent.”[559]
The results furnished by such painstaking research are more reliable
than the vague accounts and complaints of contemporaries.[560] Should
the examination be continued in other dioceses it will undoubtedly do
as much to clear up the question as the Visitation reports did for the
condition of affairs in the 16th century under Lutheranism, though
probably the final result will be different. The Lutheran Visitation
reports mostly corroborate the unfavourable testimony of olden
writers, whereas the fewness of the culprits shown in the Catholic
lists of fines would seem to bear out, at least with regard to certain
localities, those contemporaries who report favourably of the clergy
at the close of the Middle Ages. One such favourable contemporary
testimony comes from the Humanist, Jacob Wimpfeling, and concerns the
clergy of the Rhine Lands. The statement of this writer, usually a very
severe critic of the clergy, runs quite counter to Luther’s general
and greatly exaggerated charges.[561] “God knows, I am acquainted with
many, yea, countless pastors amongst the secular clergy in the six
dioceses of the Rhine, who are richly equipped with all the knowledge
requisite for the cure of souls and whose lives are blameless. I know
excellent prelates, canons and vicars both at the Cathedrals and the
Collegiate Churches, not a few in number but many, men of unblemished
reputation, full of piety and generous and humble-minded towards the
poor.”
Luther himself made statements which deprive his accusations of their
point. Even what he says of the respect paid to the clerical state
militates against him. Of the first Mass said by the newly ordained
priest he relates, that “it was thought much of”; that the people on
such occasions brought offerings and gifts; that the “bridegroom’s”
“Hours” were celebrated by torchlight, and that he, together with his
mother, if still living, was led through the streets with music and
dancing, “the people looking on and weeping for joy.”[562] It is true
that he is loud in his blame of the avarice displayed at such first
Masses, but the respect shown by the people, and here described by him,
would never have been exhibited towards the clergy had they rendered
themselves so utterly contemptible by their immorality as he makes out.
In a sermon of 1521, speaking of the “majority of the clergy,” he
admits that most of them “work, pray and fast a great deal”; that they
“sing, speak and preach of the law and lead men to many works”; that
they fancy they will gain heaven by means of “pretty works,” though
all in vain, so he thinks, owing to their lack of knowledge of the
Evangel.[563] During the earlier period of his change of opinions he
was quite convinced, that a pernicious self-righteousness (that of the
“_iustitiarii_”) was rampant amongst both clergy and religious; not
only in the houses of his own Congregation, but throughout the Church,
a painstaking observance of the law and a scrupulous fulfilment of
their duty by the clergy and monks constituted a danger to the true
spirit of the Gospel, as he understood it. It was his polemics which
then caused him to be obsessed with the idea, that the whole world had
been seized upon by the self-righteous. It was his polemics again,
which, later, made him regard the whole world as full of immoral
clerics.
The extravagance of Luther’s utterances in his fight against clerical
celibacy might perhaps be regarded as due to the secluded life he had
led at Wittenberg during the years he was a monk, which prevented
him from knowing the true state of things. Experience gained by
more extensive travel and intercourse with others might indeed have
corrected his views. But, as a matter of fact, he was not altogether
untravelled; besides visiting Rome and Southern Germany he had been
to Heidelberg, Worms and Cologne. His stay at the latter city is
particularly noteworthy, for there he was in the heart of the very
region of which Wimpfeling had given so favourable an account.
Can he, during the long journey on foot and in his conversations
with his brother monks there, not have convinced himself, that the
clergy residing in that city were by no means sunk in immorality and
viciousness? His visit to Cologne coincided in all probability with the
general Chapter which Staupitz had summoned there at the commencement
of May, 1512. Luther only recalls incidentally having seen there the
bodies of the Three Kings; having swallowed all the legends told him
concerning them; and having drunk such wine as he had never drunk
before.[564]
_Two Concluding Pictures towards the History of Woman._
We may, in conclusion, give two pictures which cast a new and lurid
light on what has gone before.
Luther’s standpoint, and, no less, the confusion which had arisen in
married life and the humiliations to which many women were exposed,
come out clearly in the story of his relations with the preacher
Jodocus Kern and his spouse. Kern, an apostate monk, had wedded at
Nuremberg Ursula Tagler, an ex-nun from the convent of Engelthal. On
Dec. 24, 1524, Luther joyously commended him as “a monk, metamorphosed
into a married man,” to the care of Spalatin.[565] When Kern went to
Saxony in search of a post the girl refused to accompany him until he
had found employment. During his absence she began to regret the step
she had taken, and the letters she received from her former Prioress
determined her to return no more to her husband. The persuasion of her
Lutheran relatives indeed induced her to go to Allstedt after Kern
had been appointed successor to Thomas Münzer in that town, but there
her horror only grew for the sacrilegious union she had contracted.
Coercion was quite fruitless. The minister, at the advice of her own
relatives, treated her very roughly, forced her to eat meat on Good
Friday and refused to listen when she urged him to return to the
Catholic Church. Having made an attempt to escape to Mansfeld, her
case was brought before the secular Courts; she was examined by the
commissioner of Allstedt on January 11, 1526, when she declared, that
it was against her conscience to look upon Kern as her husband, that
her soul was dearer to her than her body and that she would rather
die than continue to endure any longer the bonds of sin. This the
commissioner reported to the Elector Johann, and the latter, on Jan.
17, forwarded her statement to Luther, together with Kern’s account,
for the purpose of hearing from one so “learned in Scripture” “how the
matter ought to be treated and disposed of in accordance with God’s
Holy Writ.”[566]
Luther took a week to reply: The Allstedt woman was suffering such
“temptations from the devil and men, that it would verily be a wonder
if she could resist them.” The only means of keeping her true to
the Evangel and to her duty would be to send her to her people at
Nuremberg. Should, even there, “the devil refuse to yield to God’s
good exhortation” then she would have to “be allowed to go,” and “be
reckoned as dead,” and then the pastor might marry another. Out of
the scandal that the wanton spirit had given through her God might
yet work some good. “The Evangel neither will nor can be exempt from
scandals.”[567]
The unhappy nun was, as a matter of fact, forcibly brought to Nuremberg
and placed amongst Lutheran surroundings instead of being conveyed to
her convent at Engelthal, as the laws of the Empire demanded. From
thence she never returned to Allstedt. Kern, during the proceedings,
had declared that he did not want her against her conscience, and was
ready to submit to the Word of God and to comply exactly with whatever
this imposed. In accordance therewith he soon found a fresh bride.
During the Visitations, in 1533, he was charged with bigamy and was
reprimanded for being a “drinker and gambler,” although his industry
and talents were at the same time recognised. Nothing is known of his
later doings.[568]
* * * * *
Two open letters addressed to Luther by Catholics in 1528 form a
companion picture to the above. They portray the view taken by many
faithful Catholics of Luther’s own marriage.
In that year two Professors at the Leipzig University, Johann Hasenberg
and Joachim von der Heyden, published printed circulars addressed to
Luther and Catherine von Bora, admonishing them--now that ten years had
elapsed since Luther first attacked the Church--on their breaking of
their vows, their desecration of the Sacrament of Matrimony and their
falling away from the Catholic faith.[569] It is probable that Duke
George of Saxony had something to do with this joint attack.[570] It is
also likely that hopes of sterner measures on the part of the Imperial
authorities also helped to induce the writers to put pen to paper.[571]
In any case it was their plan, vigorously and before all the world, to
attack the author of the schism in his most vulnerable spot, where it
would not be easy for him to defend himself publicly. Master Hasenberg,
a Bohemian, was one of George’s favourites, who had made him three
years previously Dean of the Faculty of Arts. He addressed his open
letter to “Martinus Luderus,” the “destroyer of the public peace and
piety.” Von der Heyden, known in Latin as Myricianus or Phrisomynensis
(a Frisian by birth), was likewise a Master, and Papal and academic
Notary at Leipzig. Of the two he was the younger. His letter was
addressed to “Khete von Bhore, Luther’s pretended wife,” and served
as preface to a printed translation he had made of the work: “_De
lapsu virginis consecratæ_,” then attributed to St. Ambrose.[572] Both
epistles, according to one of the answers, must have been despatched
by special messenger and delivered at Luther’s house. They drew forth
printed replies, some of which can be traced to Luther himself, while
Euricius Cordus ridiculed the writers in a screed full of biting
epigram.
The Leipzig letters, the first of which was also published in German,
made a great sensation in German circles and constituted an urgent
exhortation to thousands of apostates estranged from the Church by
Luther’s new doctrine on Christian freedom and on the nullity of vows.
Relentlessly Hasenberg put to Luther the questions: “Who has
blasphemously slandered the pious promise of celibacy which priests,
religious and nuns made to God, and which, throughout the ages,
had been held sacred? Luderus. Who has shrouded in darkness
free-will, good works, the ancient and unshaken faith, and that
jewel of virginity which shines more brightly than the sun in the
Church? Luderus.... Do you not yet see, you God-forsaken man, what
all Christians think of your impudent behaviour, your temerity and
voluptuousness?”
Referring to the sacrilegious union with Bora, he proceeds: “The
enormity of your sin is patent. You have covered yourself with guilt
in both your private and public life, particularly by your intercourse
with the woman who is not your wife.” In his indignation he does not
shrink from comparing the ex-nun to a lustful Venus. He thunders
against Luther: “You, a monk, fornicate by day and by night with a
nun! And, by your writings and sermons, you drag down into the abyss
with you ignorant monks and unlearned priests, questionable folk,
many of whom were already deserving of the gallows. Oh, you murderer
of the people!” “Yes, indeed, this is the way to get to heaven--or
rather to Lucifer’s kingdom! Why not say like Epicurus: There is no
God and no higher power troubles about us poor mortals? Call upon
your new gods, Bacchus, Venus, Mars, Priapus, Futina, Potina, Subigus
and Hymenæus.” His wish for Luther’s spouse is, that she may take to
heart the touching words of St. Ambrose to the fallen nun, so as not
to fall from the abyss of a vicious life into the abyss of everlasting
perdition prepared “for the devil and his Lutheran angels.” And again,
turning to Luther: “Have pity,” he says, “on the nun, have compassion
on the concubine and the children, your own flesh and blood. Send
the nun back to the cloistral peace and penance which she forsook;
free the unhappy creature from the embraces of sin and restore her to
her mother the Church and to her most worthy and loving bridegroom
Christ, so that she may again sing in unison with the faithful the
Ambrosian hymn: ‘_Iesu, corona virginum_.’[573]... This much at least,
viz. the dismissal of the nun, you cannot refuse us, however blindly
you yourself may hurry along the sad path you have chosen. All the
faithful, linked together throughout the world by the golden chain of
charity, implore you with tears of blood; so likewise does your kind
Mother, the Church, and the holy choirs of Angels, who rejoice over
the sinner who returns penitent.”
The writer, who seasons his counsel with so much bitterness, had
plainly little hope of the conversion of the man he was addressing;
his attack was centred on Catharine Bora. This was even more so the
case with von der Heyden, a man of lively character who delighted
in controversy; even from his first words it is clear that he had
no intention of working on her kindlier feelings: “Woe to you,
poor deluded woman.” He upbraids her with her fall from light into
darkness, from the vocation of the cloister into an “abominable and
shameful life”; by her example she has brought “many poor, innocent
children into a like misery”; formerly they had, as nuns, “lived in
discipline and purity,” now they are “not merely in spiritual but
in actual bodily want, nay, the poorest of the poor and have become
the most despicable of creatures.” Many of them now earned a living
in “houses of ill-fame,” they were frequently forced to pawn or sell
their poor clothing, and sometimes themselves; they had hoped for the
true freedom of the spirit that had been promised them, and, instead,
they had been cast into a “horrible bondage of soul and body.” Luther
“in his pestilential writings had mistaken the freedom of the flesh
for the true liberty of the spirit, in opposition to St. Paul, who
had based this freedom solely on the Spirit of the Lord, as in 2 Cor.
iii. 17: ‘Where the Spirit of God is, there is liberty’” Luther’s
preaching on liberty was one big lie, and another was his opinion that
the “vow of virginity, where it was observed, was wicked and sinful,
which statement was contrary to God and the whole of Scripture,” and
more particularly opposed to St. Paul, who strongly condemned those
who broke their plighted faith to Christ; St. Paul had quite plainly
recommended clerical celibacy when he wrote, that he who is without a
wife is solicitous for the things that are the Lord’s, but that the
husband is solicitous for the things of the world, how best he may
please his wife (1 Cor. vii. 32 f.).
Your “Squire Luther,” he says to Bora, “behaves himself very
impudently and proudly”; “he fancies he can fly, that he is treading
on roses and is ‘_lux mundi_’”; he forgets that God has commanded us
to keep what we have vowed; people gladly obeyed the Emperor, yet
God was “an Emperor above all Emperors,” and had still more right
to fealty and obedience. Was she ignorant of Christ’s saying: “No
man having put his hand to the plough and looking back is fit for
the Kingdom of God” (Luke ix. 62)? He reminds her of the severe
penalties imposed by the laws of the Empire on those religious who
were openly unfaithful to their vow, and, particularly, of the eternal
punishment which should move her to leave the “horrid, black monk”
(the Augustinians wore a black habit), to bewail like “St. Magdalene
the evil she had done” and, by returning to the convent, to make
“reparation for her infidelity to God.” St. Ambrose’s booklet on the
fallen nun might lead her, and her companions in misfortune, to a
“humble recognition” (of their sin), “and enable her to flee from
the swift wrath of God and return to the fold of Christ, attain to
salvation together with us all and praise the Lord for all eternity.”
We catch a glimpse of the gulf which divided people’s minds at that
time in the very title of the reply by Euricius Cordus: “The Marburg
literary society’s peal of laughter over the screed against Luther of
two Leipzig poets.”[574]
Two satirical and anonymous replies immediately appeared in print at
Wittenberg, the one entitled: “New-Zeittung von Leyptzig,” of which
Luther “was not entirely innocent,” and the other quite certainly his
work, viz. “Ein newe Fabel Esopi newlich verdeudscht gefunden.”[575]
In the first reply spurious epistles are made to relate how the two
Leipzig letters had been brought by a messenger to Luther’s house,
and had then been carried by the servants unread to the “back-chamber
where it stinketh.” “The paper having duly been submitted to the most
ignominious of uses it was again packed into a bundle and despatched
back to the original senders by the same messenger.”[576]
In his “Newe Fabel” (of the Lion and the Ass) Luther implicitly
includes von der Heyden, all the defenders of the Pope, and the Pope
himself under the figure of the Ass (with the cross on its back);
“there is nothing about the Ass that is not worthy of royal and papal
honours.”[577] The author of the letter he calls an ass’s head and
sniveller; the very stones of Leipzig would spit upon him; he was the
“horse-droppings in which the apples were packed”; his art had brought
on him “such an attack of diarrhœa that all of us have been bespattered
with his filth”; “If you wish to devour us, you might begin downstairs
at the commode,” etc.[578]
We find nothing in either writing in the nature of a reply--of which
indeed he considered the Leipzig authors unworthy--except the two
following statements: firstly, Luther had sufficiently instructed his
faithful wife, and the world in general, “that the religious life
was wrong”;[579] secondly, Ambrose, Jerome, or whoever wrote the
booklet, “had stormed and raved like a demon” in that work, which was
“more heretical than Catholic, against the nun who had yielded to her
sexual instincts; he had not spoken like a Doctor, ... but as one who
wished to drive the poor prostitute into the abyss of hell; a murderer
of souls pitted against a poor, feeble, female vessel.”[580] Hence
Luther’s views are fairly apparent in the replies.
The Church, yea, even the Church of the earliest times, was made to
bear the curse of having degraded woman and of having, by the religious
life, declared war on marriage.
A contemporary, Petrus Silvius, who read Luther’s writings with
indignation and disgust, wrote, in 1530: “Luther, with his usual lies
and blasphemy, calumniates the Christian Church and now says, that she
entirely rejected and condemned matrimony.”[581]
In what has gone before these falsehoods concerning the earlier
degradation and his own exaltation of woman have been refuted at
some length; the detailed manner in which this was done may find its
vindication in the words of yet another opponent of Luther’s, H.
Sedulius, who says: “It must be repeated again and again, that it is an
impudent lie to say we condemn marriage.”[582]
CHAPTER XXIII
FRESH CONTROVERSIES WITH ERASMUS (1534, 1536) AND DUKE GEORGE († 1539)
1. Luther and Erasmus Again
IN reply to Luther’s “_De servo arbitrio_” against Erasmus the latter
had published, in 1526, a sharp retort entitled “_Hyperaspistes_,”
which, in the following year, he enlarged by adding to it a second
part.[583] In this work the author’s able pen brings into the light of
day the weakness of Luther’s objections, his distortion of the Church’s
teaching, his frequent misrepresentations of Erasmus and his own
self-contradictions.
Luther did not then reply to the work of the chief of the Humanists.
In the ensuing years, however, he became painfully aware that the
hostility of Erasmus had lost him many adherents belonging to the
Erasmian school. A great cleavage had become apparent in the scholar’s
circle of friends till then so closely united, the greater number
taking their master’s side against the smaller group which remained
true to Luther. It was in vain that several of Erasmus’s admirers
intervened and besought Luther to spare the feelings of the elder man.
The Wittenberg professor made many cutting allusions to his opponent
and assumed more and more an attitude which foreboded another open
outburst of furious controversy.
With the art peculiar to him, he came to persuade himself, that the
champion of free-will was hostile to the idea of any Divine supremacy
over the human will, scoffed at all religion, denied the Godhead
and was worse than any persecutor of the Church; he was confirmed
in this belief by the sarcastic sayings about his Evangel, to which
Erasmus gave vent in his correspondence and conversations, and which
occasionally came to Luther’s knowledge. It is true that if we look
at the matter through Luther’s spectacles we can understand how
certain darker sides of Erasmus and his Humanist school repelled him.
Luther fixed on these, and, as was his wont, harshly exaggerated and
misrepresented them. The too-great attention bestowed on the outward
form, seemingly to the detriment of the Christian contents, displeased
him greatly; still more so did the undeniable frivolity with which
sacred things, still dear to him, were treated. At the same time it
was strange to him, and rightly so, how little heed the Humanists who
remained faithful to the Church paid to the principle of authority
and of ecclesiastical obedience, preferring to follow the lax example
set by Erasmus himself, more particularly during the first period of
his career; they appeared to submit to the yoke of the Church merely
formally and from force of habit, and showed none of that heart-felt
conviction and respect for her visible supremacy which alone could win
the respect of those without.[584]
Schlaginhaufen has noted down the following remark made by Luther in
1532 when a picture of Erasmus was shown him. “The cunning of his
mode of writing is perfectly expressed in his face. He does nothing
but mock at God and religion. When he speaks of our Holy Christ, of
the Holy Word of God and the Holy Sacraments, these are mere fine,
big words, a sham and no reality.... Formerly he annoyed and confuted
the Papacy, now he draws his head out of the noose.”[585] In the same
year, and according to the same reporter, he declared: “Erasmus is a
knave incarnate.... Were I in good health, I should inveigh against
him. To him the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are something ludicrous....
Erasmus is as sure there is no God as I am that I can see. Lucian
himself was not so bold and impudent as Erasmus.”[586]
At Easter of the following year Veit Dietrich, who lived in Luther’s
house, announced in a letter to Nuremberg, that the storm was about to
break: Luther was arming himself against Erasmus, reading his books
carefully and gathering together his blasphemies. The same writer in
a collection of Luther’s conversations not yet published quotes the
following outbursts: “Erasmus makes use of ambiguities, intentionally
and with malice, this I shall prove against him.... Were I to cut open
Erasmus’s heart, I should find nothing but mockeries of the Trinity,
the Sacraments, etc. To him the whole thing is a joke.”[587]
And yet, at that very time, Erasmus, who, as years passed, had come to
regret his earlier faults of the pen,[588] was engaged in composing
serious and useful works, in which, though not unfaithful to his older
style, he sought to defend the dogmas of religion and the authority of
the Church. In March his “_Explanatio symboli, decalogi et dominicæ
precationis_” was issued at Basle by Froben; another important work
of the same year, appearing in the guise of an exposition of Psalm
lxxxiv., contained counsels how best to restore the unity of the
Church and to root out abuses. Therein he does not deny the duty of
submitting to the Church, but recommends both sides to be ready to
give and take.
When Luther’s little son Hans had, in his Latin lessons, to study some
works composed by Erasmus for the young, his father wrote out for
him the following warning: “Erasmus is a foe to all religion and an
arch-enemy of Christ; he is the very type of an Epicurus and Lucian.
This I, Martin Luther, declare in my own handwriting to you, my very
dear son Johann, and, through you, to all my children and the holy
Church of Christ.”[589]
Luther’s pent-up wrath at length vented itself in print. He had
received a letter sent him from Magdeburg, on Jan. 28, 1534, by
Nicholas Amsdorf, the old friend who knew so well how to fan the flames
of enthusiasm for the new teaching, and who now pointed out Erasmus
as the source whence George Wicel had drawn all his material for his
latest attack on Lutheranism.[590] It was high time, he wrote, that
Luther should paint Erasmus “in his true colours and show that he was
full of ignorance and malice.” This he would best do in a tract “On
the Church,” for this was the Erasmians’ weak point: They stick to the
Church, because “bishops and cardinals make them presents of golden
vessels,” and then “they cry out: Luther’s teaching is heresy, having
been condemned by Emperor and Pope.” “I, on the other hand, see all
about me the intervention and the wonders of God; I see that faith is
a gift of God Who works when and where He wills, just as he raised His
Son Christ from the dead. Oh, that you could see the country folk here
and admire in them the glory of Christ!”
The letter pleased Luther so well that he determined to print it,
appending to it a lengthy answer to Amsdorf, both being published
together.[591]
In this answer, before launching out into invective against Erasmus
he joins in his friend’s enthusiastic praise of the Evangel which has
dawned: “Our cause was heard at Augsburg before the Emperor and the
whole world, and has been found blameless; they could not but recognise
the purity of our teaching.... We have confessed Christ before the evil
generation of our day, and He too will confess us before God the Father
and His angels.” “Wicel, I shall vanquish by silence and contempt, as
my custom is. How many books I have disposed of and utterly annihilated
merely by my silence, Eck, Faber, Emser, Cochlæus and many others could
tell. Had I to fight with filth, I should, even if victorious, get
dirty in the process. Hence I leave them to revel in their blasphemy,
their lying and their calumny.”
He might, he proceeds, leave Erasmus too to dissolve into smoke like
those others. For a long time past he had looked on him as one crazy
(“_delirus_”); since he had given birth to the “_viperaspides_” (i.e.
“brood of vipers,” a play on the title of the “_Hyperaspistes_”) he had
given up all hopes of his theology, but would follow Amsdorf’s advice
and expose his malice and ignorance to the world.
In contradiction to the facts he goes on to declare, that, in his
“_Explanatio symboli_,” of 1533, Erasmus had “slyly planned” to
undermine all respect for the Christian doctrines, and for this
purpose ingratiated himself with his readers and sought to befool
them, as the serpent did in Paradise. The Creed was nothing to him but
a “fable,”--in support of which Luther adduces what purports to be a
verbal quotation--nothing but the “mouthpiece and organ of Satan”; his
method was but “a mockery of Christ”; according to him, the Redeemer
had come into the world simply to give an example of holiness; His
taking flesh of a virgin Erasmus described in obscene and blasphemous
language; naturally the Apostles fared no better at his hands, and he
even said of John the Evangelist, “_meros crepat mundos_” (because
he mentions the “world” too often): there were endless examples of
this sort to be met with in the writings of Erasmus. He was another
Democrites or Epicurus; even what was doubtful in his statements had to
be taken in the worst sense, and he himself (Luther) would be unable
to believe this serpent even should he come to him with the most
outspoken confession of Christianity.
All this he wrote seemingly with the utmost conviction, as though it
were absolutely certain. At about that same time he sent a warning
to his friend Amsdorf not to allege anything against Erasmus, which
was not certain, should he be tempted to write against him.[592]
Yet Luther’s fresh charges were undoubtedly unjust to his opponent,
although his letter really does forcibly portray much that was
blame-worthy in Erasmus, particularly in his earlier work, for
instance, his ambiguous style of writing, so often intentionally vague
and calculated to engender scepticism.[593]
Not even in Luther’s immediate circle did this letter meet with general
approval. Melanchthon wrote, on March 11, 1534, to Camerarius: “Our
Arcesilaus [Luther] is starting again his campaign against Erasmus;
this I regret; the senile excitement of the pair disquiets me.”[594]
On May 12, 1535, he even expressed himself as follows to Erasmus,
referring to the fresh outbreak of hostilities: “The writings published
here against you displease me, not merely on account of my private
relations with you, but also because they do no public good.”[595]
Boniface Amerbach, a friend of Erasmus’s, sent Luther’s letter to his
brother, calling it a “_parum sana epistola_,” and adding, “Hervagius
[the Basle printer] told me recently that Luther, for more than a year,
had been suffering from softening of the brain (‘_cephalæa_’), I think
the letter proves this, and also that he has not yet recovered, for in
it there is no trace of a sound mind.”[596]
Recent Protestant historians speak of the letter as “on the whole hasty
and dictated by jealousy,”[597] and as based “in part on inaccurate
knowledge and a misapprehension of Erasmus’s writings.”[598]
Shortly after this Luther expressed himself with rather more moderation
in a Preface which he composed for Anton Corvinus’s reply to Erasmus’s
proposals for restoring the Church to unity. In this writing he sought
to make his own the more moderate tone which dominated Corvinus’s
works. He represented as the chief obstacle to reunion the opinion
prevalent amongst his opponents of the consideration due to the Church.
Their one cry was “the Church, the Church, the Church”; this has
confirmed Erasmus in his unfounded opposition to the true Evangel, in
spite of his having himself thrown doubt on all the doctrines of the
Church.[599] He could not as yet well undertake a work on the subject
of the Church, such as Amsdorf wished, as he was fully occupied with
his translation of the Bible. In the Preface referred to above he
announced, however, his intention of doing so later. The result was
his “Von den Conciliis und Kirchen,” of 1539, which will be treated of
below.[600]
Erasmus was unwilling to go down to the grave bearing the calumnies
against his faith which Luther had heaped upon him. He owed it to his
reputation to free himself from these unjust charges. This he did
in a writing which must be accounted one of the most forcible and
sharpest which ever left his pen. The displeasure and annoyance which
he naturally felt did not, however, interfere with his argument or
prevent him from indulging in sparkling outbursts of wit. Amerbach had
judged Luther’s attack “insane”; Erasmus, for his part, addressed his
biting reply to “one not sober.” The title of the writing, published
at Basle in 1534, runs: “_Purgatio adversus epistolam non sobriam M.
Lutheri_.”[601]
It was an easy matter for Erasmus to convict the author of manifest
misrepresentation and falsehood.
He repeatedly accuses the writer of downright lying. What he charges
me with concerning my treatment of the Apostle John, “is a palpable
falsehood. Never, even in my dreams, did the words which he quotes as
mine enter my mind.” Such a lie he can have “welded together” only by
joining two expressions used in other contexts.[602]
As for his alleged blasphemy concerning Christ’s birth from the
Virgin Mary, Erasmus protests: “I can swear I never said anything of
the kind either in a letter, as Luther makes out, though he fails
to say which, or in any of my writings.” Moreover he was a little
surprised to find Luther, whose own language was not remarkable for
modesty, suddenly transformed into a champion of cleanliness of
speech: “Everything, bridegroom, bride and even best man, seems of a
sudden to have become obscene to this Christian Luther,” etc.
Erasmus also points out that the passage concerning the Creed being a
mere fable had been invented by Luther himself by means of deliberate
“distortion” and shameful misinterpretation: “No text,” he exclaims,
“is safe from his calumny and misrepresentation.” As for what Luther
had said, viz. that “whoever tells untruths lies even when he speaks
the truth,” and that he would refuse to believe Erasmus even were he
to make an orthodox profession of faith, Erasmus’s retort is: “Whoever
spoke this bit of wisdom was assuredly out of his senses and stood
in need of hellebore” (the remedy for madness). As to the charge of
deliberately leading others into infidelity he does not shrink from
telling Luther, that “he will find it easier to persuade all that
he has gone mad out of hatred, is suffering from some other form of
mental malady, or is led by some evil genius.”[603]
Luther took good care to say nothing in public about the rebuff he had
received from Erasmus; nor did he ever make any attempt to refute the
charge of having “lied.”
In the circle of his intimate friends, however, he inveighed all the
more against the leader of the Humanists as a sceptic and seducer to
infidelity.
After Erasmus’s death he declared that, till his end (1536), he lived
“without God.” He refused to give any credence to the report that
he had displayed faith and piety at the hour of death. Erasmus’s
last words were: “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me. I will
extol the mercies of the Lord and His judgments.”[604] Luther, on the
other hand, in his Latin Table-Talk says: “He died just as he lived,
viz. like an Epicurean, without a clergyman and without comfort....
‘_Securissime vixit, sicut etiam morixit_,’” he adds jestingly. “Those
pious words attributed to him are, sure enough, an invention.”[605]
Erasmus, he says,--revealing for once the real ground of all his
hatred--“might have been of great service to the cause of the Evangel;
often was he exhorted to this end.... But he considered it better that
the Gospel should perish and not be preached than that all Germany
should be convulsed and all the Princes be troubled with risings.”
“He refuses to teach Christ,” he said of him during his lifetime; “he
does not take it seriously, that is the way with all Italians and
with them he has had much intercourse. One page of Terence is better
than his whole ‘_Dialogus_’ or his ‘_Colloquium_’; he mocks not only
at religion but even at politics and at public life. He has no other
belief than the Roman; he believes what Clement VII believes; this
he does at his command, and yet at the same time sneers at it.... I
fear he will die the death of the wicked.”[606] After the scholar’s
decease, Luther naturally desired to find his prophecy fulfilled.
An obvious weapon, one constantly employed against Luther by his foes,
was to twit him with his lies; a reply addressed to him in 1531 by a
friend of George of Saxony, Franz Arnoldi of Cöllen, near Meissen, was
no exception to the rule. In this little work entitled “Antwort auf
das Büchlein,” etc., it is not merely stated that Luther, in his “Auff
das vermeint Keiserlich Edict,” had put forward “as many lies as there
were words,”[607] but it is also pointed out that the Augsburg Edict,
“which is truly Christian and requires no glosses,” had been explained
by him most abominably and shamefully, and given a meaning such as His
Imperial Majesty and those who promulgated or executed it had never
even dreamt of.[608] “He promises us white and gives us black. This has
come down to him from his ancestor, the raging devil, who is the father
of lies.... With such lies does Martin Luther seek to deck out his
former vices.”[609]
2. Luther on George of Saxony and George on Luther
The hostile relations between Luther and Duke George of Saxony found
expression at the end of 1525 in a correspondence, which throws some
light on the origin and extent of the tension and on the character
of both men. The letters exchanged were at once printed and spread
rapidly through the German lands, one serving to enlist recruits to
Luther’s standard, the other constituting a furious attack on the
innovations.[610]
Luther’s letter of Dec. 21, 1525, to the Duke, “his gracious master,”
was “an exhortation to join the Word of God,” as the printed title
runs. Sent at a time when the peasants, after their defeat, had
deserted Luther, and when the latter was attaching himself all the more
closely to those Royal Courts which were well disposed towards him, the
purpose of the letter was to admonish the chief opponent of the cause,
“not so barbarously to attack Christ, the corner-stone,” but to accept
the Evangel “brought to light by me.” He bases his “exhortation” on
nothing less than the absolute certainty of his mission and teaching.
“Because I know it, and am sure of it, therefore I must, under pain
of the loss of my own soul, care, beg and implore for your Serene
Highness’s soul.” He had already diligently prayed to God to “turn
his heart,” and he was loath now “to pray against him for the needs
of the cause”; his prayers and those of his followers were invincibly
powerful, yea, “stronger than the devil himself,” as the failure of all
George’s and his friends’ previous persecutions proved, “though men do
not see or mark God’s great wonders in me.”
It is hard to believe that the author, in spite of all he says, really
expected his letter to effect the conversion of so energetic and
resolute an opponent; nevertheless, his assurances of his peaceable
disposition were calculated to promote the Lutheran cause in the public
eye, whatever the answer might be. He will, he says in this letter,
once again “beseech the Prince in a humble and friendly manner, perhaps
for the last time”; George and Luther might soon be called away by
God; “I have now no more to lose in this world but my carcase, which
each day draws closer to the grave.” Formerly he had, it is true,
spoken “harshly and crossly” to him, as God also does “to those whom He
afterwards blesses and consoles”; he had, however, also published “many
kindlier sermons and booklets in which everyone might discern that I
mean ill to no one but desire to serve every man to the best of my
ability.”
The letter partook of the nature of a manifesto, intended to place the
Catholic-minded Prince publicly in the wrong, if it did not, as was
hardly to be expected, draw him over to the side of the innovators.
The Duke replied, on Dec. 28, in a manner worthy of his status in the
Empire and of the firm attitude he had maintained so far. “As a layman”
he refused to enter upon a “Scriptural disputation” with Luther; it was
not untrue that Luther had attacked him “harshly and contrary to the
ordinance of God and the command of the Gospel”; Luther might, if he
chose, compare his former severity with that of God, but he certainly
would not find, “in the Gospels or anywhere in Scripture,” abusive
epithets such as he employed; for him, as a sovereign, to have had to
put up with such treatment from a man under the ban of the Empire,
had cost him much; he had been compelled to put pressure on himself
to accept “persecution for justice’ sake.” Luther’s “utterly shameful
abuse of our most gracious Lord, the Roman Emperor,” made it impossible
for him to be Luther’s “gracious master.”
Formerly, so George admits, when Luther’s writings “first appeared,
some of them had pleased him. Nor were we displeased to hear of the
Disputation at Leipzig, for we hoped from it some amendment of the
abuses amongst Christians.” Luther, however, in his very hearing
at Leipzig, had advanced Hussite errors, though he had afterwards
promised him privately to “write against them” in order to allay
any suspicion; in spite of this he had written in favour of Hus and
against the Council of Constance and against “all our forefathers.”
He, for his part, held fast to the principle, “that all who acted in
defiance of obedience and separated themselves from the Christian
Churches were heretics and should be regarded as such, for so they
had been declared by the Holy Councils, all of which you deny, though
it does not beseem you nor any Christian.” Hence he would “trouble
little” about Luther’s Evangel, but would continue to do his best to
exclude it from his lands.
“One cause for so doing is given us in the evil fruit which springs
from it; for neither you nor any man can say that aught but blasphemy
of God, of the Blessed and Holy Sacrament, of the most Holy Mother
of God and all the Saints has resulted from your teaching; for in
your preaching all the heresies condemned of old are revived, and
all honourable worship of God destroyed to an extent never witnessed
since the days of Sergius [the monk supposed to have taught Mohammed].
When have more acts of sacrilege been committed by persons dedicated
to God than since you introduced the Evangel? Whence has more revolt
against authority come than from your Evangel? When has there been
such plundering of poor religious houses? When more robbery and
thieving? When were there so many escaped monks and nuns at Wittenberg
as now?”[611] etc.
“Had Christ wanted such an Evangel, He would not have said so often:
Peace be with you! St. Peter and St. Paul would not have said that
the authorities must be obeyed. Thus the fruits of your teaching and
Evangel fill us with horror and disgust. We are, however, ready to
stake body, soul, goods and honour in defence of the true Gospel, in
which may God’s Grace assist us!”
After urgent admonitions offered to Luther “as New-Year wishes,” more
particularly to sever his connection with the nun, he promises him his
assistance should he obey him: “We shall spare no pains to obtain the
clemency of our most gracious Lord the Emperor, so far as is possible
to us here, and you need have no fear of any ill on account of what
you have done against us, but may expect all that is good. That you
may see your way to this is our hope. Amen.”
Few Princes were to suffer worse treatment at Luther’s hands than Duke
George. The Duke frequently retaliated by charging Luther with being a
liar.
He wrote, for instance, in 1531, that Luther simply bore witness to the
fact that the “spirit of lying” dwelt in him, “who speaks nothing but
his own fabrications and falsehood.” “You forsworn Luther,” he says
to him, “you who treacherously and falsely calumniate His Imperial
Majesty.”[612]
Luther’s anger against the most influential Prince in the Catholic
League was not diminished by the fact, that the Duke severely censured
the real evils on the Catholic side, was himself inclined to introduce
reforms on his own, and even, at times, to go too far. Such action on
George’s part annoyed Luther all the more, because in all this the Duke
would not hear of any relinquishing of ancient dogma. Hence we find
Luther, quite contrary to the real state of the case, abusing George
as follows: The Duke was secretly in favour of the new teaching and his
resistance was merely assumed; he was opposed to the reception of the
Sacrament under both kinds, only because he wished to tread under foot
the whole teaching of Christ, to forbid Holy Scripture altogether and
particularly to condemn St. Paul;[613] if he, Luther, were not allowed
to abuse the Duke, then neither might he call the devil a murderer and
a liar.[614] “He is my sworn, personal enemy,” he says, and proceeds in
the same vein: “Had I written in favour of the Pope, he would now be
against the Pope, but because I write against the Pope, he fights for
him and defends him.”[615]
Luther, as his manner was, announced as early as 1522 that “the
Judgment of God would inevitably overtake him.”[616] When the Duke,
in 1539, had died the death of a Christian, Luther said: “It is a
judgment on those who despise the one true God.” “It is an example when
a father and two fine grown-up sons sink into the grave in so short a
time, but I, Dr. Luther, prophesied that Duke George and his race would
perish.”[617] There was, according to Luther, only one ray of hope for
the eternal happiness of the Duke, viz. that, when his son Hans lay
dying in 1537, not so long before his own death, it was reported he
had consoled him in the Lutheran fashion. According to Luther he had
encouraged him with the article on Justification by Faith in Christ and
reminded him, “that he must look only to Christ, the Saviour of the
world, and forget his own works and merits.”[618] Needless to say the
pious thoughts suggested to the dying man were simply those usually
placed before the mind of faithful Catholics at the hour of death.
Luther’s imagination and his polemics combine to trace a picture of
Duke George which is as characteristic of himself as it is at variance
with the figure of the Duke, as recorded in history. He accused the
Duke of misgovernment and tyranny and incited his subjects against
him; and, in his worst fit of indignation, launched against the Duke
the booklet “Widder den Meuchler zu Dresen” (1531).[619] Yet the
Saxons generally did not regard the Duke’s government as tyrannical
or look upon him as an “assassin,” not even the Lutherans who formed
the majority. On the contrary, they were later on to acknowledge,
that, under the Duke’s reign, they had enjoyed “prosperity and peace”
with the Emperor, amongst themselves and with their neighbours. His
firmness and honour were no secret to all who knew him. The King of
France admired his disinterestedness, when, in 1532, he rejected the
proffered yearly pension of at least 5000 Gulden which was to detach
him from the Empire. At the Diet of Worms this Catholic Duke had been
the most outspoken in condemning the proposal made, that Luther should
be refused a safe conduct for his return journey; he pointed out how
much at variance this was with German ways and what a lasting shame it
would bring on the German Princes. As for the rest he favoured the use
of strong measures to safeguard Germany from religious and political
revolution. He also befriended, more than any other German Prince or
Bishop, those scholars who attacked Luther in print.
After the appearance of the libel “Widder den Meuchler zu Dresen,” he
wrote a reply entitled “About the insulting booklet which Martin Luther
has published against the Dresden murderer,” though it was issued in
1531, not under his own name, but under that of Franz Arnoldi.[620]
The work is more a vindication of the Empire’s Catholic standpoint and
of the honour of the Catholics against Luther’s foul suspicions and
calumnies, than a personal defence of his own cause. It is couched in
the language we might expect from a fighter and a sovereign pelted with
filth before the eyes of his own subjects. It hails expressions of the
roughest against Luther, the convicted “rebel against the Emperor and
all authority,” the inventor of “slimy fabrications and palpable lies”
not worth an answer, amongst which was the “downright false” assertion,
that “the Papists are up in arms” against the Protestant Estates.[621]
In order to understand its tone we must bear in mind Luther’s own
method of belabouring all his foes with the coarsest language at his
command.
At the beginning of his writing the Duke says of Luther’s abuse:
“If both Lutherans and Papists could be reformed by vituperation
and abuse, cursing and swearing, then His Imperial Roman Majesty,
Christian kings, princes and lords would have had no need of a
scholar; plenty other people, for instance, worn-out whores, tipsy
boors and loose knaves, might have done it just as well without any
assistance or help of yours.”[622]
The following, taken from the Duke’s writing, carries us back into the
very thick of the excitement of those years:
“Who is the man who, contrary to God, law, justice and all Scripture
and knowledge, has sacrilegiously robbed, stolen and taken from
Christ all the possessions bestowed upon Him hundreds of years ago by
emperors, kings, princes, lords, counts, knights, nobles, burghers
and peasants, all of whom, out of fervent love and appreciation
for His sacred Passion, His rosy blood and guiltless death, gave
their gifts for the establishment of monasteries, parish-churches,
altars, cells, hospitals, mortuaries, guilds, roods, etc., etc.?
Why, Squire Martin, Dr. Luther!--Who has plundered and despoiled the
poor village clergy--who were true pastors of the Church, ministers
of the Sacraments, preachers and guides of souls--of their blood and
sweat, their hardly earned yearly stipend, nay, their sacred gifts
such as tithes, rents, offerings and Church dues, and that without
any permission of the Ordinaries and contrary to God, to honour and
to justice? Why, Dr. Pig-trough Luther!--Who has robbed, plundered
and deprived God during the last twelve years of so many thousand
souls and sent them down with bloody heads to Lucifer in the abyss
of hell? Who, but the arch-murderer of souls, Dr. Donkey-ear Mertein
Luther!--Who has robbed Christ of His wedded spouses--many of whom
(though perhaps not all) had served Him diligently day and night for
so many years in a lovely, spiritual life--and has brought them down
to a miserable, pitiable and wicked mode of life? Shame upon you, you
blasphemous, sacrilegious man, you public bordeller for all escaped
monks and nuns, apostate priests and renegades generally!--Who has
filched, robbed and stolen from his Imperial Roman Majesty, our
beloved, innocent, Christian Prince Charles V., and from kings,
princes and lords, the honour, respect, service, obedience and the
plighted oath of their subjects (not of all, thank God) by false,
seditious and damnable writings and doctrines? Why, sure, Dr.
Luther!--Who has made so many thieves and scoundrels as are now to
be found in every corner, amongst them so many runaway monks, so
that in many places, as I hear, one is not safe from them either in
the streets or at home? Why, Dr. Luther! That nothing might be left
undone, he has also destroyed the religious houses of nuns.--‘_Summa
summarum_,’ there would be so much to tell, that, for the sake of
brevity, it must stick in the pen.... But I will show you from
Scripture who was the first, the second and the third sacrilegious
robber. The first was Lucifer, who, out of pride, tried to rob the
Almighty of His glory, power, praise and service (Is. xiv. 12). He
received his reward. The second was Aman, who stole from God the
highest honour, viz. worship, for, in his malice, he caused himself
to be worshipped as God. He was hanged on a gallows 50 ells high.
Judas Scariothis stole from Christ and His Apostles the tenth penny of
their daily living; he hanged himself. Luther, the fourth sacrilegious
robber, has surpassed all men in iniquity; what his end and reward
will be God alone knows.”[623]
It has been said, that, among the defenders of Catholicism, no voice
was raised which could compare in any way in emphasis and power with
that of Luther. Döllinger in later life considered that, in comparison
with Luther, his opponents could only “stammer”; what they advanced
sounded “feeble, weak and colourless.”[624] Yet, what we have just
quoted from Duke George cannot in fairness be charged with weakness.
Their indignation and fiery zeal inspired other Catholics too to
express with eloquence and rudeness their conviction of the evil
consequences of Luther’s action.
CHAPTER XXIV
MORAL CONDITIONS ACCOMPANYING THE REFORMATION PRINCELY PATRONS
1. Reports from various Lutheran Districts
AFTER Duke George of Saxony had been carried off by death on April 17,
1539, a sudden revulsion in favour of Lutheranism took place in his
land. Duke Henry, his brother, who succeeded him, introduced the new
teaching to which he had long been favourable. Luther came at once
to Leipzig with Melanchthon, Jonas and Cruciger to render at least
temporary assistance, by preaching and private counsel. In July of that
same year an Evangelical Visitation was already arranged by Duke Henry
on the lines of that in the Saxon Electorate; this was carried out by
Luther’s preachers.
Many abuses dating from Catholic times were prevalent amongst both
people and parochial clergy. Concubinage in particular had increased
greatly in the clerical ranks under the influence of the new ideas.
Luther himself boasted of having advised “several parish-priests under
Duke George to marry their cook secretly.”[625] But much greater
disorders than had previously existed crept in everywhere at the
commencement of the change.
Luther himself was soon at a loss to discover any religious spirit
or zeal for ecclesiastical affairs, either in the ruler or in his
councillors. The Duke seemed to him “old, feeble and incapable.” He
complained, on March 3, 1540, to his friend Anton Lauterbach, then
minister at Pirna: “I see well enough, that, at the Dresden Court
there is an extraordinary unwillingness to advance the cause of God or
man; there pride and greed of gain reign supreme. The old Prince can’t
do anything, the younger Princes dare not, and would not even had
they the courage. May God keep the guidance of His Church in His own
Hands until He finds suitable tools.”[626] On the moral conditions
at the Ducal Court he passes a startling and hasty judgment when he
says, writing to his Elector in 1540, that there the “scandals were
ten times worse” than those caused by the Hessian bigamy. He was
annoyed to find that, even after the introduction of the new teaching,
the courtiers and nobles thought only of replenishing their purses.
He speaks of them as the “aristocratic harpies of the land,” and
exclaims: “These courtiers will end by eating themselves up by their
own avarice.”[627] They refused to support the ministers of the Word
and disputed amongst themselves as to whose duty it was to do so;
they did not hide their old contempt for Wittenberg, i.e. for its
theologians and theology, and yet they expected Wittenberg to carry
out the Visitations free of cost. “Even should you get nothing for the
Visitation,” he nevertheless instructs one of the preachers, “still
you must hold it as well as you can, comfort souls to the best of your
power and, in any case, expel the poisonous Papists.”[628]
The unexpected and apparently so favourable change in the Duchy really
did little to dispel his gloom, though he occasionally intones a hymn
of gratitude and admiration for the working of Providence displayed in
the change of rulers.
About this time (1539), in Brandenburg, the Elector Joachim II. also
ushered in the innovations. The rights and possessions of the ancient
Church fell a prey to the spoilers. Luther praised the ruler for going
forward so bravely “to the welfare and salvation of many souls.” He
was, however, apprehensive lest the “roaring of the lion in high
places” might influence the Elector; with the Divine assistance,
however, he would not fear even this.[629] He showed himself strangely
lenient in regard to the Elector’s prudent retention of much more of
the Catholic ceremonial than had been preserved in any other German
land. Even the Elevation of the Sacrament at Mass (or rather at the
sham Mass still in use) was tolerated by Luther; he writes: “We had
good reasons for doing away with the elevation [of the Sacrament] here
at Wittenberg, but perhaps at Berlin you have not.”[630]
In the Duchy of Prussia, formerly ecclesiastical property of the
Teutonic Knights, the way had been paved for the apostasy of these
Knights, all bound by the vow of chastity, by Luther’s alluring tract
“An die Herrn Deutschs Ordens, das sic falsche Keuscheyt meyden und zur
rechten ehlichen Keuscheyt greyffen.”[631] Albert, the Grand Master,
who had visited Luther twice, as already narrated, seized upon the
lands of the Order belonging to the Church and caused himself to be
solemnly invested and proclaimed hereditary Duke of Prussia on April
10, 1525; thereupon Luther sent him his congratulations that God should
have so graciously called him to this new Estate. The Grand Master,
himself a married man, with the assistance of the two apostate Bishops
of Samland and Pomerania, then established Lutheranism. As chief Bishop
he assumed the position of head of the territorial Church, agreeably
with the Protestant practice in the other German lands. The episcopal
jurisdiction was transferred to the civil Consistorial Courts.
Violent appropriation of alien property, as well as illegal assumption
of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, also characterised the advent of the
new faith in Würtemberg. Duke Ulrich, who had been raised to the
throne in 1534 by a breach of the peace of the Empire and contrary to
all law and justice, thanks to the successful raid of Philip of Hesse
(above, p. 47; vol. iii., p. 67 f.), continued to labour under the
stigma attaching to the manner in which he had obtained the Duchy, in
spite of the peace he had patched up with the Emperor. The religious
transformation of the country was however, soon accomplished, thanks to
his pressure.
The chief part in this, so far as Upper Würtemberg was concerned,
devolved on the preacher, Ambrosius Blaurer (Blarer), who favoured the
Zwinglian leanings of Bucer.
Blaurer was openly accused of deception and hypocrisy in the matter
of his profession of faith. Though he had formerly sided with Zwingli
in the denial of the Sacrament, he vindicated his Lutheran orthodoxy
to his patron, the Duke, by means of a formulary[632] tallying with
Luther’s doctrine on the Supper. Subsequently, however, he issued
an “Apology,” in which he declared he had not in the least altered
his views. “Who does not see the deception?” wrote Luther’s friend,
Veit Dietrich; “formerly he made a profession of faith in our own
words, and now he attacks everybody who says he has retracted his
previous opinion.”[633] Luther had been a prey to the greatest
anxiety on learning that Blaurer had become the Duke’s favourite.
“If this be true,” he wrote, “what hope is left for the whole of
Upper Germany?”[634] Much as he had rejoiced at Blaurer’s apparent
retractation in the matter of the Sacrament, he was very mistrustful
of his bewildering “Apology.” “I only hope it be meant seriously,” he
declared; “it scandalises many that Blaurer should be so anxious to
make out that he never thought differently. People find this hard to
believe.” “For the sake of unity I shall, however, put a favourable
interpretation on everything. I am ready to forgive anyone who in his
heart thinks aright, even though he may have been in error or hostile
to me.”[635] Thus he practically pledged himself to silence regarding
the work.
Of “Blaurer’s” doings in Würtemberg, now won over to the new Evangel,
the Bavarian agent, Hans Werner, a violent opponent of Duke Ulrich’s,
wrote: “He preaches every day; yet none save the low classes and
common people, etc., attend his sermons, for these readily accept
the Evangel of mine being thine and thine mine. _Item_, Blaurer has
full powers, writes hither and thither in the land, turns out here
a provost, there a canon, vicar, rector or priest and banishes them
from the country by order of Duke Ulrich; he appoints foreigners,
Zwinglians or Lutheran scamps, of whom no one knows anything; all must
have wife and child, and if there be still a priest found in the land,
he is forced to take a wife.”[636]
In the Würtemberg lowlands, north of Stuttgart, a zealous Lutheran,
Erhard Schnepf, laboured for the destruction of the old Church system;
Duke Ulrich also summoned Johann Brenz, the Schwäbisch-Hall preacher,
to his land for two years.
At Christmas, 1535, Ulrich gave orders to all the prelates in his realm
to dismiss the Catholic clergy in their districts and appoint men of
the new faith, as the former “did nothing but blaspheme and abuse
the Divine truth.”[637] Even the assisting at Mass in neighbouring
districts was prohibited by the regulation issued in the summer of
1536, which at the same time prescribed the attendance of Catholics
at least once every Sunday and Holiday at the preaching of the new
ministers of the Word; under this intolerable system of compulsion
Catholics were reduced to performing all their religious exercises
in their own homes.[638] The violent suppression of the monasteries
and the sequestration of monastic property went hand in hand with the
above. In the convents of women, which still existed, the nuns were
forced against their will to listen to the sermons of the preachers.
Church property was everywhere confiscated so far as the ancient
Austrian law did not prevent it. The public needs and the scarcity of
money were alleged as pretexts for this robbery. The Mass vestments
and church vessels were allotted to the so-called poor-boxes. At
Stuttgart, for instance, the costly church vestments were sold for the
benefit of the poor. In the troubles many noble works of art perished,
for “all precious metal was melted down and minted, nor were cases of
embezzlement altogether unknown.” “The Prince, with the approach of old
age, manifested pitiable miserliness and cupidity.”[639] Unfortunately
he was left a free hand in the use of the great wealth that poured
into his coffers. But, not even in the interests of the new worship,
would he expend what was necessary, so that the vicarages fell into
a deplorable state. In other matters, too, the new Church of the
country suffered in consequence of the way in which Church property
was handled. The inevitable consequence was the rise of many quarrels,
complaints were heard on all sides and even the Schmalkalden League was
moved to remonstrate with Ulrich.[640]
Terrible details concerning the alienation of church and monastic
property are reported from Würtemberg by contemporaries. The preacher
Erhard Schnepf, the Duke’s chief tool, was also his right hand in the
seizure of property. Loud complaints concerning Schnepf’s doings, and
demands that he should be made to render an account, were raised even
by such Protestants as Bucer and Myconius, and by the speakers at the
religious conference at Worms. He found means, however, to evade this
duty. One of those voices of the past bewails the treatment meted out
to the unfortunate religious: “Even were the Würtemberg monks and
nuns all devils incarnate and no men, still Duke Ulrich ought not to
proceed against them in so un-Christian, inhuman and tyrannical a
fashion.”[641]
The relentless work of religious subversion bore everywhere a political
stamp. The leaders were simply tools of the Court. Frequently they
were at variance amongst themselves in matters of theology, and their
people, too, were dragged into the controversy. To the magistrates it
was left to decide such differences unless indeed some dictatorial
official forestalled them, as was the case when the Vogt of Herrenberg
took it into his own hands to settle a matter of faith. In the
struggles between Lutherans and Zwinglians, the highest court of appeal
above the town-Councillors and the officials was the Ducal Chancery.
Ulrich himself did not explicitly side either with the Confession of
Augsburg or with the “_Confessio Tetrapolitana_,” viz. with the more
Zwinglian form of faith agreed upon at the Diet of Augsburg by the four
South-German townships of Strasburg, Constance, Memmingen and Lindau.
The preachers who assembled in 1537 at the so-called Idols-meeting of
Urach, to discuss the question of the veneration of images which had
given rise to serious dissensions amongst them, appealed to Ulrich.
Blaurer inveighed against the use of images as idolatrous. Brenz
declared that their removal in Würtemberg would be tantamount to a
condemnation of the Lutheran Church in Saxony and elsewhere where they
were permitted. The Court, to which the majority of the theologians
appealed, ordered the removal of all images on Jan. 20, 1540.
Distressing scenes were witnessed in many places when the images and
pictures in the churches, which were not only prized by the people,
but were also, many of them, of great artistic value,[642] were broken
and torn to pieces in spite of the warning issued by the authorities
against their violent destruction. The “_Tetrapolitana_” had already
forcibly denounced the use of images.
At Ulm, which so far had refused to accept the “_Tetrapolitana_,”
the magistrates in 1544 decided to adhere to the Confession of
Augsburg and the “_Apologia_.” Blaurer, some years before (1541),
had justifiably complained of the arbitrary action of the civic
authorities and said that every town acted according to its own ideas.
But the preachers were frequently so exorbitant in the material
demands they made on behalf of themselves and their families that the
Town Council of Ulm declared, they behaved as though “each one had the
right to receive a full saucepan every day.”[643]
In place of any amendment of the many moral disorders already
prevailing, still greater moral corruption became the rule among the
people of Würtemberg, as is attested by Myconius the Zwinglian in
1539, and thirty years later by the Chancellor of the University of
Tübingen, Jacob Andreæ.
The former declared that the “people are full of impudence and
godlessness; of blasphemy, drunkenness, sins of the flesh and wild
licentiousness there is no end.”[644] Andreæ directly connects with
the new faith this growing demoralisation: “A dissolute, Epicurean,
bestial life, feeding, swilling, avarice, pride and blasphemy.” “We
have learnt,” so the people said, according to him, “that only through
faith in Jesus Christ are we saved, Who by His death has atoned for
all our sins; ... that all the world may see they are not Papists and
rely not at all on good works, they perform none. Instead of fasting
they gorge and swill day and night, instead of giving alms, they flay
the poor.” “Everyone admits this cannot go on longer, for things have
come to a crisis. Amongst the people there is little fear of God and
little or no veracity or faith; all forms of injustice have increased
and we have reached the limit.”[645]
A General Rescript had to be issued on May 22, 1542, for the whole of
Würtemberg, to check “the drunkenness, blasphemy, swearing, gluttony,
coarseness and quarrelsomeness rampant in the parishes.”[646]
Few bright spots are to be seen in the accounts of the early days of
the Reformation in Würtemberg, if we except the lives of one or two
blameless ministers. It is no fault of the historian’s that there
is nothing better to chronicle. Even the Protestant historians of
Würtemberg, albeit predisposed to paint the change of religion in
bright colours, have to admit this. They seek to explain the facts on
the score that the period was one of restless and seething transition,
and to throw the blame on earlier times and on the questionable
elements among the Catholic clergy from whose ranks most of the
preachers were recruited.[647] But though grave responsibility may rest
on earlier times, not only here but in the other districts which fell
away from the Church, and though those of the clergy who forgot their
duty and the honour of their calling may have contributed even more
than usual to damage the fair reputation of Protestantism, yet the
increase of immorality which has been proved to have endured for a long
course of years, brings the historian face to face with a question not
lightly to be dismissed: Why did the preaching of the new Evangel, with
its supposedly higher standard of religion and morality, especially at
the springtide of its existence and in its full vigour, not bring about
an improvement, but rather the reverse?
This question applies, however, equally to other countries which were
then torn from the Church, and to the persons principally instrumental
in the work.
* * * * *
In Hesse the religious upheaval, as even Protestant contemporaries
conceded, also promoted a great decline of morals.
The bad example given by Landgrave Philip tended to increase the
evil.[648] A harmful influence was exercised not only by the
Landgrave’s Court but also by certain preachers, such as Johann
Lening,[649] who enjoyed Philip’s favour. Elisabeth, Duchess of
Rochlitz, the Landgrave’s sister, and a zealous patron of the Evangel,
like the Prince himself, cherished rather lax views on morality. At
first she was indignant at the bigamy, though not on purely moral
grounds. The sovereign met her anger with a threat of telling the world
what she herself had done during her widowhood. The result was that the
Duchess said no more.[650] The Landgrave’s Court-preacher, Dionysius
Melander, who performed the marriage ceremony with the second wife,
had, five years before, laid down his office as preacher and leader
of the innovations at Frankfort on the Maine, “having fallen out with
his fellows and personally compromised himself by carrying on with his
housekeeper.” He was a “violent, despotic and, at times, coarse and
obscene, popular orator whose personal record was not unblemished.”[651]
A Hessian church ordinance of 1539 complains of the moral
retrogression: Satan has estranged men from the communion of Christ
“not only by means of factions and sects, but also by carnal
wantonness and dissolute living.”[652] The old Hessian historian
Wigand Lauze writes, in his “Life and deeds of Philip the Magnanimous,
Landgrave of Hesse,” that, the people have become very savage and
uncouth, “as though God had given us His precious Word, and thereby
delivered us from the innumerable abominations of Popery and its
palpable idolatry, simply that each one might be free to do or leave
undone whatever he pleased”; “many evil deeds were beginning to be
looked upon by many as no longer sinful or vicious.” He accuses “the
magistrates, ministers and governors” of corrupting the people by
themselves transgressing the “good, Christian regulations” which had
been set up, and charges both preachers and hearers with serving
Mammon, and with “barefaced extortion,” “not to mention other sins and
vices.”[653]
The Hessian theologians and preachers transferred the responsibility
for the abolition of “law and order,” for the increase of the
“freedom of the flesh within the Evangel” and for the falling away
into a “state like that of Sodom and Gomorrha” to the shoulders of
the “magistrates and officials.”[654] The latter, on the other hand,
boldly asserted that the preachers themselves were the cause of the
evil, since they led a “wicked, scandalous life, drinking, gambling,
practising usury and so forth, and were, some of them, guilty of
still worse things, brawling, fighting and wrangling with the people
in the taverns and behaving improperly with the women.”[655] Bucer
himself, Philip’s adviser in ecclesiastical matters, wrote sadly
to the Landgrave, in 1539, from Marburg: “The people are becoming
demoralised and immorality is gaining the upper hand.” “Where such
contempt prevails for God and the authorities there the devil is
omnipotent.”[656]
2. At the Centre of the New Faith
If we glance at the Saxon Electorate we shall find the deep despondency
frequently displayed by Luther concerning the deplorable moral
decadence prevailing there only too well justified.
The downward trend appeared to have set in in earnest and all hope of
remedying affairs seemed lost.[657]
The Court and those in authority not only did little to check the evil
but, by their example, even tended to promote many disorders. The
Elector, Johann Frederick “the Magnanimous” (1532-1547), was addicted
to drink. The banquets which he gave to his friends--in which wine
was indulged in to an extent unusual even in those days when men were
accustomed to heavy drinking--became a byword. Luther himself came to
speak strongly on his excessive drinking. “His only faults,” he laments
in the Table-Talk, “are his drinking and routing too much with his
companions.”[658] “He has all the virtues--but just fancy him swilling
like that!”[659] Yet Luther has an excuse ready: “He is a stout man and
can stand a deep draught; what he must needs drink would make another
man dead drunk.”[660] “Unfortunately not only our Court here but the
whole of Germany is plagued with this vice of drunkenness. It is a
bad old custom in the German lands which has gone on growing and will
continue to grow. Henry, Duke of [Brunswick] Wolfenbüttel calls our
Elector a drunkard and very Nabal with whom Abigail could not speak
until he had slept off his carouse.”[661] We have the Elector’s own
comment on this in a letter to Chancellor Brück: “If the Brunswick
fellow writes that we are a drunken Nabal and Benadad, we cannot
entirely deny that we sometimes follow the German custom”; at any rate
the Brunswicker was not the man to find fault, for he was an even
harder drinker.[662]
Johann Frederick was accused by Philip of Hesse of the grossest
immorality. This happened when the former refused to defend Philip’s
bigamy and when his Superintendent, Justus Menius, who was given
to lauding the Elector’s virtues, showed an inclination to protest
publicly against the Landgrave’s bigamy. This led Philip to write this
warning to his theologian Bucer: “If those saintly folk, Justus Menius
and his crew, amuse themselves by writing against us, they shall have
their answer. And we shall not leave hidden under a bushel how this
most august and quite sinless Elector, once, under our roof at Cassel,
and again, at the time of the first Diet of Spires, committed the
crime of sodomy.”[663]
A. Hausrath remarks concerning this in his “Luthers Leben”: That
Philip was lying “can hardly be taken for granted”;[664] G. Mentz,
likewise, in his recent work, “Joh. Friedrich der Grossmütige,”[665]
says: “It is difficult simply to ignore the Landgrave’s statement, but
we do not know whether the allusion may not be to some sin committed
in youth.” Here belongs also the passage in Philip of Hesse’s letter
to Luther of July 27, 1540 (above, p. 60), where he calls the Elector
to bear witness that he (the Landgrave) had done “the worst.” The
Biblical expression “_peccatum pessimum_” stood for sodomy. Further
charges of a similar nature were even more explicitly laid at the door
of Johann Frederick. A Catholic, relating the proceedings in Brunswick
at the close of the conquest of that country by the Protestant troops
in 1542, speaks of “vices and outrages against nature then indulged in
by the Elector at the Castle as is commonly reported and concerning
which there is much talk among the Court people.”[666] Duke Henry
of Brunswick in a tract of 1544 referred not only to the Elector’s
sanction of the Landgrave’s bigamy, in return for which he was spared
by the latter, but also to the “many other pranks which might be
circumstantially proved against them and which deserved more severe
punishment” than that of the sword.[667] The “more severe punishment”
means burning at the stake, which was the penalty decreed by the laws
of the Empire for sodomy, whereas polygamy and adultery were simply
punished by decapitation. Both sovereigns in their reply flatly denied
the charge, but, evidently, they clearly understood its nature; they
had never been guilty, they said, of “shameful, dishonourable pranks
deserving of death by fire.”[668]
Whatever the truth may be concerning this particular charge which
involves them both,[669] both Landgrave and Elector certainly left
behind them so bad a record that Adolf Hausrath could say: The pair
(but the Landgrave even more than the Elector) did their best “to make
mockery of the claim of the Evangelicals that their Evangel would
revive the morality of the German nation.” He instances in particular
the bigamy, “which put any belief in the reality of their piety to a
severe test and prepared the way for a great moral defeat of Luther’s
cause.”[670]
In the matter of the bigamy attempts were made to exculpate the Elector
Johann Frederick by alleging, that he regarded the Landgrave’s step
not as a real new marriage but as mere concubinage. The fact is,
however, he was sufficiently well informed by Bucer in Dec. 1539,
i.e. from the very beginning, learnt further details two months later
from the Landgrave’s own lips, and declared himself “satisfied with
everything.” When, later, the Elector began to take an unfavourable
view of the business, Philip wrote to Bucer (July 24, 1540), pointing
out that he had nevertheless sent his representative to the wedding.
It is, however, true that the Elector had all along been against any
making public of so compromising an affair and had backed up his
theologians when they urged the Landgrave to deny it.[671]
There is no more ground for crediting Johann Frederick with “strictness
of morals” than for saying that the Elector Frederick the Wise
(1486-1525), under whose reign Lutheranism took root in the land, was
upright and truthful in his dealings with the Pope and the Empire.
The diplomatic artifices by which the latter protected Luther whilst
pretending not to do so, the dissembling and double-dealing of his
policy throws a slur on the memory of one who was a powerful patron
of Lutheranism. Even in Köstlin-Kawerau[672] we find his behaviour
characterised as “one long subterfuge, seeing, that, whilst giving
Luther a free hand, he persisted in making out that Luther’s cause was
not his”; his declaration, that “it did not become him as a layman to
decide in such a controversy,” is rightly branded as misleading.
The Protestant Pietists were loudest in their complaints. In his
“Kirchenhistorie,” Gottfried Arnold, who was one of them, blamed, in
1699, this Elector for the “cunning and the political intrigues” of
which he was suspected; he is angry that this so undevout promoter of
Lutheranism should have written to Duke George, his cousin, “that he
never undertook nor ever would undertake to defend Luther’s sermons
or his controversial writings,” and that he should have sent to his
minister at Rome the following instructions, simply to pacify the Pope:
“It did not become him as a secular Prince to judge of these matters,
and he left Luther to answer for everything at his own risk.”[673] The
same historian also points out with dissatisfaction that the Elector
Frederick, “though always unmarried, had, by a certain female, two sons
called Frederick and Sebastian. How he explained this to his spiritual
directors is nowhere recorded.”[674] The “female” in question was Anna
Weller, by whom he had, besides these two sons, also a daughter.[675]
Against his brother and successor, Johann, surnamed the Constant
(1525-1532), Luther’s friends brought forward no such complaints, but
merely reproached him with letting things take their course. Arnold
instances a statement of Melanchthon’s according to which this good
Lutheran Prince “had been very negligent in examining this thing
and that,” so that grave disorders now called for a remedy. Luther,
too, whilst praising the Elector’s good qualities, declares, that
“he was far too indulgent.”[676] “I interfere with no one,” was his
favourite saying, “but merely trust more in God’s Word than in man.”
The protests of the Emperor and the representations of the Catholics,
politics and threats of war left him quite unmoved, whence his title
of “the Constant”; “he was just the right man for Luther,” says
Hausrath,[677] “for the latter did not like to see the gentlemen of the
Saxon Chancery, Brück, Beyer, Planitz and the rest, interfering and
urging considerations of European politics. ‘Our dear old father, the
Elector,’ Luther said of him in 1530, ‘has broad shoulders, and must
now bear everything.’”
The favour of these Princes caused Luther frequently to overstep the
bounds of courtesy in his behaviour towards them. Julius Boehmer, who
is sorry for this, in the Introduction to his selection of Luther’s
works remarks, that he was guilty of “want of respect, nay, of
rudeness, towards the Elector Frederick and his successor Johann.”[678]
Of Luther’s relations with Johann Frederick, Hausrath says: “It is by
no means certain that the Duke’s [Henry of Brunswick’s] opinion [viz.
that Luther used to speak of his own Elector as Hans Wurst (i.e. Jack
Pudding)] was without foundation; in any case, it was not far from the
mark. With his eternal plans and his narrow-minded obstinacy, Luther’s
corpulent master was a thorn in the side of the aged Reformer.... ‘He
works like a donkey,’ Luther once said of him, and, unfortunately, this
was perfectly true.”[679]
In his will, dated 1537, Luther addressed the following words of
consolation to the princely patrons and promoters of his work, the
Landgrave and the Elector Johann Frederick: It was true they were not
quite stainless, but the Papists were even worse; they had indeed
trespassed on the rights and possessions of others, but this was of no
great consequence; they must continue to work for the Evangel, though
in what way he would not presume to dictate to them.[680]--Melanchthon,
who was so often distressed at the way the Princes behaved on the
pretext of defending the Evangel, complains that “the sophistry and
wickedness of our Princes are bringing the Empire to ruin,” in which
“bitter cry,” writes a Protestant historian, “he sums up the result of
his own unhappy experiences.”[681]
From the accounts of the Visitations in the Electorate we learn more
details of the condition of morality, law and order in this the focus
of the new Evangel. The proximity and influence of Luther and of his
best and most faithful preachers did not constitute any bulwark against
the growing corruption of morals, which clear-sighted men indeed
attributed mainly to the new doctrines on good works, on faith alone
and on Evangelical freedom.
In the protocols of the first Visitation (1527-1529) we read: The
greater number of those entrusted with a cure of souls, are “in an
evil case”; reckless marriages are frequent amongst the preachers;
complaints were lodged with the Electoral Visitors concerning the
preacher at Lucka who “had three wives living.”[682] At a later
Visitation a preacher was discovered to have had six children by two
sisters. Many of the preachers had wives whom they had stolen from
husbands still living. The account of the people whether in town or
country was not much more reassuring; many localities had earned
themselves a bad repute for blasphemy and general adultery. In many
places the people were declared to be so wicked that only “the hangman
and the jailer would be of any avail.” Besides this, the parsonages
were in a wretched state. The foundations had fallen in, or, in many
instances, had been seized by the nobles, the lands and meadows
belonging to the parsonages had been sold by the parish-councils, and
the money from the sale of chalices and monstrances spent on drink.
The educational system was so completely ruined that in the Wittenberg
district, for instance, in which there were 145 town and country
livings with hundreds of chapels of ease, only 21 schools remained.
As early as 1527 Melanchthon had viewed with profound dismay the
“serious ruin and decay that menaces everything good,” which, he
says, was clearly perceived at Wittenberg. “You see,” he writes,
“how greatly men hate one another, how great is the contempt for all
uprightness, how great the ignorance of those who stand at the head of
the churches, and above all how forgetful the rulers are of God.” And
again, in 1528: “No one hates the Evangel more bitterly than those who
like to be considered ours.” “We see,” he laments in the same year,
“how greatly the people hate us.”[683]
His friend Justus Jonas, who was acquainted with the conditions in
the Saxon Electorate from long personal experience, wrote in 1530:
“Those who call themselves Evangelical are becoming utterly depraved,
and not only is there no longer any fear of God among them but there
is no respect for outward appearances either; they are weary of and
disgusted with sermons, they despise their pastors and preachers and
treat them like the dirt and dust of the streets.” “And, besides all
this, the common people are becoming utterly shameless, insolent and
ruffianly, as if the Evangel had only been sent to give lewd fellows
liberty and scope for the practice of all their vices.”[684]
The next Visitation, held seven years later, only confirmed the growth
of the evil. In the Wittenberg district in particular complaints were
raised concerning “the increase in godless living, the prevailing
contempt and blasphemy of the Word of God, the complete neglect of the
Supper and the general flippant and irreverent behaviour during Divine
service.”[685]
Of a later period, when the fruits of the change of religion had still
further ripened, Melanchthon’s friend Camerarius says: “Mankind have
now attained the goal of their desires--boundless liberty to think and
act exactly as they please. Reason, moderation, law, morality and duty
have lost all value, there is no reverence for contemporaries and no
respect for posterity.”[686]
The Elector Augustus of Saxony goes more into particulars when he
writes: “A disgraceful custom has become established in our villages.
The peasants at the high festivals, such as Christmas and Whitsuntide,
begin their drinking-bouts on the eve of the festival and prolong them
throughout the night, and the next day they either sleep through the
morning or else come drunk to church and snore and grunt like pigs
during the whole service.” He reproves the custom of making use of the
churches as wine-cellars, the contempt displayed for the preachers,
the scoffing at sacred rites and the “frequent blasphemy and cursing.”
“Murder and abominable lasciviousness” were the consequences of such
contempt for religion. But any improvement was not to be looked for
seeing that there were hardly any schools remaining, and the cure of
souls was left principally in the charge of ministers such as the
Elector proceeds to describe. The nobles and the other feudal lords,
he says, “appoint everywhere to the ministry ignorant, destitute
artisans, or else rig out their scribes, outriders or grooms as
priests and set them in the livings so as to have them all the more
under their thumb.”[687]
The state of things in Saxony provided the Landgrave with a
serviceable weapon against Luther when the latter showed an
inclination to repudiate the bigamy, or to say he had merely “acted
the fool” in sanctioning it. The passage has been quoted above (p.
56), where the Landgrave exhorted him to pay less attention to the
world’s opinion, but rather to set himself and all the preachers in
the Saxon Electorate to the task of checking the “vices of adultery,
usury and drunkenness which were no longer regarded as sins, and that,
not merely by writings and sermons, but by earnest admonition and by
means of the ban.”
It is true that the conditions which accompanied the introduction of
his new system were a trial to Luther, which he sought to remedy. The
Landgrave could not reproach him with actual indifference. Not merely
by “writings and sermons,” but also by “earnest admonition” and even
by re-introducing the “ban of the Church” he strove to check the
rising tide of moral evil. But the evil was the stronger of the two,
and the causes, for which he himself was responsible, lay too deep. We
have an example of the way in which he frequently sought to curb the
mischief, in his quarrel with Hans Metzsch, the depraved Commandant of
Wittenberg, whom he excluded from the Supper.[688]
He sums up his grievances against the state of things in the
Electorate and at Wittenberg in a letter to Johann Mantel, in which
he calls Wittenberg a new Sodom. He writes to this preacher (Nov.
10, 1539): “Together with Lot (2 Peter ii. 8), you and other pious
Christians, I, too, am tormented, plagued and martyred in this awful
Sodom by shameful ingratitude and horrible contempt of the Divine Word
of our beloved Saviour, when I see how Satan seizes upon and takes
possession of the hearts of those who think themselves the first and
most important in the kingdom of Christ and of God; beyond this I
am tempted and plagued with interior anxiety and distress.” He then
goes on to console his friend, who was also troubled with melancholy
and the fear of death, by a sympathetic reference to the death of
Christ. He then admits again of himself that he was “distressed and
greatly plagued” and “compassed by more than one kind of death in this
miserable, lamentable age, where there is nothing but ingratitude, and
where every kind of wickedness gains the upper hand.... Wait for the
Lord with patience, for He is now at hand and will not delay to come.
Amen.”[689]
3. Luther’s Attempts to Explain the Decline in Morals
Luther quite candidly admitted the distressing state of things
described above without in the least glossing it over, which indeed
he could not well have done; in fact, his own statements give us an
even clearer insight into the seamy side of life in his day. He speaks
of the growing disorders with pain and vexation; the more so since he
could not but see that they were being fomented by his doctrine of
justification by faith alone.
“This preaching,” he says, “ought by rights to be accepted and
listened to with great joy, and everyone ought to improve himself
thereby and become more pious. But, unfortunately, the reverse is now
the case and the longer it endures the worse the world becomes; this
is [the work of] the devil himself, for now we see the people becoming
more infamous, more avaricious, more unmerciful, more unchaste and in
every way worse than they were under Popery.”[690]
The Evangelicals now are not merely worse, but “seven times worse than
before,” so he complains as early as 1529. “For after having heard the
Evangel we still continue to steal, lie, cheat, feed and swill and to
practise every vice. Now that one devil [that of Popery] has been
driven out seven others worse than it have entered into us, as may be
seen from the way the Princes, lords, nobles, burghers and peasants
behave, who have lost all sense of fear, and regard not God and His
menaces.”[691]
From his writings a long, dreary list of sins might be compiled, of
which each of the classes here mentioned had been guilty. In the last
ten years of his life such lamentations give the tone to most of what
he wrote.
“The nobles scrape money together, rob and plunder”; “like so many
devils they grind the poor churches, the pastors and the preachers.”
“The burghers and peasants do nothing but hoard, are usurers and
cheats and behave defiantly and wantonly without any fear of
punishment, so that it cries to heaven for vengeance and the earth
can endure it no longer.” “On all hands and wherever we turn we see
nothing in all classes but a deluge of dreadful ingratitude for the
beloved Evangel.”[692]
“Nowadays the Gospel is preached, and whoever chooses can hear it
... but burghers, peasants and nobles all scorn their ministers and
preachers.”[693]
“I have often said that a plague must fall upon Germany; the Princes
and gentry deserve that our Lord God should play them a trick; there
will be such bloodshed that no one will know his own home.”[694] “Now
that all this [the Evangel] is preached rightly and plainly, people
cannot despise it enough. In old days monasteries and churches were
built with no regard for cost, now people won’t even repair a hole
in the roof that the minister may lie dry; of their contempt I say
nothing, it is enough to move one to tears to witness such scorn.
Hence I say: Take care, you are young; it may be you will live to see
and experience the coming misfortune that will break over Germany. For
a storm will burst over Germany, and that without fail.... I do not
mind so much the peasants’ avarice and the fornication and immorality
now on the increase everywhere, as the contempt for the Evangel....
That peasants, burghers and nobles thus contemn the Word of God will
be their undoing.”[695]
To the question whence the moral decline amongst the adherents of
the new teaching came, Luther was wont to give various answers.
Their difference and his occasional self-contradictions show how his
consciousness of the disorders and the complaints they drew from every
side drive him into a corner.
The most correct explanation was, of course, that the mischief was
due to the nature of his teaching on faith and good works; to this,
involuntarily, he comes back often enough.
“That we are now so lazy and cold in the performance of good works,”
he says, in a recently published sermon of 1528, “is due to our no
longer regarding them as a means of justification. For when we still
hoped to be justified by our works our zeal for doing good was a
marvel. One sought to excel the other in uprightness and piety. Were
the old teaching to be revived to-day and our works made contributory
to righteousness, we should be readier and more willing to do what is
good. Of this there is, however, no prospect and thus, when it is a
question of serving our neighbour and praising God by means of good
works, we are sluggish and not disposed to do anything.”[696] “The
surer we are of the righteousness which Christ has won for us, the
colder and idler we are in teaching the Word, in prayer, in good works
and in enduring misfortune.”[697]
“We teach,” he continues, “that we attain to God’s grace without any
work on our part. Hence it comes that we are so listless in doing
good. When, once upon a time, we believed that God rewarded our works,
I ran to the monastery, and you gave ten gulden towards building a
church. Men then were glad to do something through their works and to
be their own ‘_Justus et Salvator_’ (Zach. ix., 9).” Now, when asked
to give, everybody protests he is poor and a beggar, and says there is
no obligation of giving or of performing good works. “We have become
worse than formerly and are losing our old righteousness. Moreover,
avarice is increasing everywhere.”[698]
Though here Luther finds the reason of the neglect of good works so
clearly in his own teaching, yet on other occasions, for instance, in
a sermon of 1532, he grows angry when his doctrine is made responsible
for the mischief.
Only “clamourers,” so he says, could press such a charge. Yet, at the
same time, he fully admits the decline: “I own, and others doubtless
do the same, that there is not now such earnestness in the Gospel as
formerly under the monks and priests when so many foundations were
made, when there was so much building and no one was so poor as not
to be able to give. But now there is not a town willing to support
a preacher, there is nothing but plundering and thieving among the
people and no one can prevent it. Whence comes this shameful plague?
The clamourers answer, ‘from the teaching that we must not build upon
or trust in works.’ But it is the devil himself who sets down such an
effect to pure and wholesome doctrine, whereas it is in reality due
to his own and the people’s malice who ill-use such doctrines, and to
our old Adam.... We are, all unawares, becoming lazy, careless and
remiss.”[699]
“The devil’s malice!” This is another explanation to which Luther
and others not unfrequently had recourse. The devil could do such
extraordinary and apparently contradictory things! He could even teach
men to “pray fervently.” In the Table-Talk, for instance, when asked by
his wife why it was, that, whereas in Popery “we prayed so diligently
and frequently, we are now so cold and pray so seldom,” Luther put it
down to the devil. “The devil made us fervent,” he says; “he ever urges
on his servants, but the Holy Ghost teaches and exhorts us how to pray
aright; yet we are so tepid and slothful in prayer that nothing comes
of it.”[700] Thus it might well be the devil who was answerable for the
misuse of the Evangel.
On another occasion, in order to counteract the bad impression made on
his contemporaries by the fruits of his preaching, he says: “Our morals
only look so bad on account of the sanctity of the Evangel; in Catholic
times they stood very low and many vices prevailed, but all this was
unperceived amidst the general darkness which shrouded doctrine and the
moral standards which then held; now, on the other hand, our eyes have
been opened by a purer faith and even small abuses are seen in their
true colours.” His words on this subject will be given below.
It even seemed to Luther that the decay of almsgiving and the parsimony
displayed towards the churches and the preachers proved the truth of
the Evangel (“_signum est, verum esse evangelium nostrum_”), for, so
he teaches in a sermon preached at Wittenberg in 1527, “the devil is
the Prince of this world and all its riches, as we learn from the
story of Christ’s Temptation. He is now defending his kingdom from the
Evangel which has risen up against him. He does not now allow us so
many possessions and gifts as he formerly did to those who served him
(i.e. the Papists), for their Masses, Vigils, etc.; nay, he robs us of
everything and spends it on himself. Formerly we supported many hundred
monks and now we cannot raise the needful for one Evangelical preacher,
a sign that our Evangel is the true one and that the Pope’s empire was
the devil’s own, where he bestowed gifts on his followers with open
hands and incited them to luxury, avarice, fornication and gluttony.
And their teaching was in conformity therewith, for they urged those
works which pleased them.”[701]
The observer may well marvel at such strange trains of thought.
Luther’s doctrine has become to him like a pole-star around which the
whole firmament must revolve. Experience and logic alike must perforce
be moulded at his pleasure to suit the idea which dominates him.
It was impossible to suppress the inexorable question put by his
opponents, and the faint-hearted doubts of many of his own followers:
Since our Saviour taught: “By their fruits shall you know them,” how
can you be a Divinely sent teacher if these are the moral effects of
your new Evangel? And yet Luther, to the very close of his career, in
tones ever more confident, insists on his higher, nay, Divine, calling,
and on his election to “reveal” hidden doctrines of faith, strange to
say, those very doctrines to which he, like others too, attributed the
decline.
Concerning his Divine mission he had not hesitated to say in so many
words: Unless God calls a man to do a work no one who does not wish
to be a fool may venture to undertake it; “for a certain Divine
call and not a mere whim” is essential to every good work.[702]
Hence he frequently sees in success the best test of a good work.
In his own case, however, he could point only to one great result,
and that a negative one, viz. the harm done to Popery; the Papacy
had been no match for him and had failed to check the apostasy. The
Papists’ undertaking, such is his proof, is not a success; it goes
sideways “after the fashion of the crab.” “Even for those who had a
sure Divine vocation it was difficult to undertake and carry through
anything good, though God was with them and assisted them; what then
could those silly fools, who wished to undertake it without being
called, expect to do?” “But I, Dr. Martin, was called and compelled
to become a Doctor.... Thus I was obliged to accept the office of a
Doctor. Hence, owing to my work, this which you see has befallen the
Papacy, and worse things are yet in store for it.” To those who still
refused to acknowledge Luther’s call to teach he addresses a sort of
command: St. Paul, 1 Cor. xiv., 30, commanded all, even superiors, to
be silent and obey “when some other than the chief teacher receives a
revelation.” “The work that Luther undertakes,” “the great work of the
Reformation,” he assures all, was given not to the other side, but to
him alone.[703]--It is no wonder that his gainsayers and the doubters
on his own side refused to be convinced by such arguments and appeals
to the work of destruction accomplished, but continued to harp on the
words: “By their fruits you shall know them,” which text they took
literally, viz. as referring to actual fruits of moral improvement.
* * * * *
The “great work of the Reformation,” i.e. of real reform, to which
Luther appeals--unless he was prepared to regard it as consisting
solely in the damage done to the Roman Church--surely demanded that,
at least at Wittenberg and in Luther’s immediate sphere, some definite
fruits in the shape of real moral amelioration should be apparent. Yet
it was precisely of Wittenberg and his own surroundings that Luther
complained so loudly. The increase of every kind of disorder caused him
to write to George of Anhalt: “We live in Sodom and Babylon, or rather
must die there; the good men, our Lots and Daniels, whom we so urgently
need now that things are daily becoming worse, are snatched from us
by death.”[704] So bad were matters that Luther was at last driven to
flee from Wittenberg. The sight of the immorality, the vexation and the
complaints to which he was exposed became too much for him; perhaps
Wittenberg would catch the “Beggars’ dance, or Beelzebub’s dance,” he
wrote; “at any rate get us gone from this Sodom.”[705]
According to his letters, the Wittenberg authorities did not interfere
even in the case of the gravest disorders, but allowed themselves to
be “playthings of the devils”; they looked on whilst the students
“were ruined by bad women,” and “though half the town is guilty of
adultery, usury, theft and cheating, no one tries to put the law in
force. They all simply smile, wink at it and do the same themselves.
The world is a troublesome thing.”[706] “The hoiden-folk have grown
bold,” he writes to the Elector, “they pursue the young fellows into
their very rooms and chambers, freely offering them their love; and I
hear that many parents are recalling their children home because, they
say, when they send their children to us to study we hang women about
their necks.”[707] He is aghast at the thought that the “town and the
school” should have heard God’s Word so often and so long and yet,
“instead of growing better, become worse as time goes on.” He fears
that at his end he may hear, “that things were never worse than now,”
and sees Wittenberg threatened with the curse of Chorazin, Bethsaida
and Capharnaum.[708]
In point of fact he did preach a sermon to the Wittenbergers in which,
like a prophet, he predicts the judgments of heaven.[709]
In another sermon he angrily acquaints them with his determination:
“What am I to do with you Wittenbergers? I am not going to preach to
you any longer of Christ’s Kingdom, seeing that you will not accept
it. You are thieves, robbers and men of no mercy. I shall have to
preach you the ‘Sachsenspiegel.’” They refuse, he says, to give
anything to clergy, church or schools. “Are you still ignorant, you
unthankful beasts (‘_ingratæ bestiæ_’) of what they do for you?” He
concludes: They must make up their minds to provide the needful,
“otherwise I shall abandon the pulpit.”[710]
“Later you will find my prophecy fulfilled,” he cried on one occasion
after having foretold “woes”; “then you will long for one of those
exhortations of Martin Luther.”[711]
His Table-Talk bears, if possible, even stronger witness than his
letters and sermons to the conditions at Wittenberg, for there he
freely lets himself go. Some of the things he says of the town and
neighbourhood, found in the authentic notes of docile pupils, such as
Mathesius, Lauterbach and Schlaginhaufen, are worth consideration.
We hear from Lauterbach not only that Hans Metzsch, the town
Commandant whom Luther had “excommunicated,” continued to persecute
the good at Wittenberg “with satanic malice” and to “boast of his
wickedness,”[712] but that in the same year Luther had to complain
of other men of influence and standing in the town who injured the
Evangel by their example. “So great is the godlessness of those of
rank that one was not ashamed to boast of having begotten forty-three
children in a single year; another asked whether he might not take 40
per cent interest _per annum_.” In the same year Luther was obliged
to exclude from the Sacrament another notorious, highly-placed
usurer.[713]
“The soil of Wittenberg is bad,” he declared, speaking from sad
experience; “even were good, honest people sown here the crop would be
one of coarse Saxons.”[714]
“The Gospel at Wittenberg,” he once said poetically, if we may trust
Mathesius, “is like rain that falls on water, i.e. it has no effect.
The good catch the law and the wicked the Gospel.”[715]
“I have often wondered,” he said in 1532, according to Schlaginhaufen,
“why Our Lord God sent His Word to this unfaithful world of
Wittenberg: I believe that He sent it to Jerusalem, Wittenberg and
such-like places that He might, at the Last Day, be able to reprove
their ingratitude.” And again, “My opinion is that God will punish
severely the ingratitude shown to His Word; for there is not a man of
position or a peasant who does not stamp on the ministers; but the
service of the Word must remain; even the Turk has his ministers,
otherwise he could not maintain his rule.”[716]
Luther’s Evangel had made “law and command” to retreat into the
background as compared with the liberty of the children of God; the
penalties he devised, e.g. his exclusion of persons from the reception
of the Sacrament, proved ineffectual. He would willingly have made
use of excommunication if only “there had been people who would let
themselves be excommunicated.” “The Pope’s ban which kept the people
in check,” he says, “has been abolished, and it would be a difficult
task to re-establish law and command.”[717]
“No, I should not like to endure this life for another forty years,”
so he told his friends on June 11, 1539, “even were God to turn it
into a Paradise for me. I would rather hire an executioner to chop off
my head; the world is so bad that all are turning into devils, so that
they could wish one nothing better than a happy death-bed, and then
away!”[718] “The dear, holy Evangel of Christ, that great and precious
treasure, we account as insignificant, as if it were a verse from
Terence or Virgil.”[719]
He found such disdain of his teaching even in his own household and
family. This it was which caused him, in 1532, to preach a course of
sermons to his family circle on Sundays. No head of a family, least
of all here, could connive at any “contempt of the Word.” To the
question of Dr. Jonas as to the wherefore of these private addresses,
he replied: “I see and know that the Word of God is as much neglected
in my house as in the Church.”[720]
There was no more hope for the world; nothing remains “unspoiled
and incorrupt” although, “now, God’s Word is revealed,” yet “it is
despised, spurned, corrupted, mocked at and persecuted,” even by the
adherents of his teaching.[721]
Luther made Mathesius the recipient of some of his confidences, as
the latter relates in his sermons; on account of the scandals among
the preachers of the neighbourhood he was forced and urged by his own
people to appeal to the Elector to erect a jail “into which such wild
and turbulent folk might be clapped.” “Satan causes great scandals
amongst the patrons and hearers of the new doctrine,” says Mathesius.
The common people have become rough and self-confident and have begun
to regard the ministers as worthless. “Verily,” he exclaims, “the
soul of this pious old gentleman was sadly tormented day by day by
the unrighteous deeds he was obliged to witness, like pious Lot in
Sodom.”[722]
With a deep sigh, as we read in Lauterbach’s Notes, Luther pointed
to the calamities which were about to overtake the world; it was so
perverse and incorrigible that discipline or admonition would be of
no avail. Already there was the greatest consternation throughout
the world on account of the revelation of the Word. “It is cracking
and I hope it will soon burst,” and the Last Day arrive for which we
are waiting. For all vices have now become habitual and people will
not bear reproof. His only comfort was the progress made by studies
at Wittenberg, and in some other places now thrown open to the
Evangel.[723]
But how were the future preachers now growing up there to improve
matters? This he must well have asked himself when declaring, “with
sobs,” as Lauterbach relates, that “preachers were treated in most
godless and ungrateful fashion. The churches will soon be left without
preachers and ministers; we shall shortly experience this misfortune
in the churches; there will be a dearth not only of learned men but
even of men of the commonest sort. Oh, that our young men would study
more diligently and devote themselves to theology.”[724]
In view of the above it cannot surprise us that Luther gradually became
a victim to habitual discouragement and melancholy, particularly
towards the end of his life. Proofs of the depression from which he
suffered during the latter years of his life will be brought forward in
a later volume.
Such fits of depression were, however, in those days more than usually
common everywhere.
4. A Malady of the Age: Doubts and Melancholy
One of the phenomena which accompanied the religious revulsion and
which it is impossible to pass over, was, as contemporary writers
relate, the sadness, discontent and depression, in a word “melancholy,”
so widespread under the new Evangel even amongst its zealous promoters.
Melanchthon, one of Luther’s most intimate friends, furnished on many
occasions of his life a sad spectacle of interior dejection. Of a
weaker and more timid mental build than Luther, he appeared at times
ready to succumb under the weight of faint-heartedness and scruples,
doubts and self-reproaches. (Cp. vol. iii., p. 363 ff.) We may recall
how his anxieties, caused by the scandal subsequent on his sanctioning
of Philip’s bigamy, almost cost him his life. So many are the records
he left behind of discouragement and despondency that his death must
appear in the light of a welcome deliverance. Luther sought again and
again to revive in him the waning consciousness of the Divine character
of their work. It is just in these letters of Luther to Melanchthon
that we find him most emphatic in his assertion that their common
mission is from God. It was to Melanchthon, that, next to himself,
Luther applied the words already quoted, spoken to comfort a dejected
pupil: “There must be some in the Church as ready to slap Satan as we
three; but not all are able or willing to endure this.”[725]
Spalatin, who has so frequently been referred to as Luther’s go-between
at the Electoral Court, and who afterwards became pastor of Altenburg,
towards the end of his life fell into incurable despondency.[726]
Justus Jonas, likewise, was for a considerable time a prey to
melancholy.[727] Hieronymus Weller, one of Luther’s best friends,
confessed to having suffered at times such violent doubts and fears
as would have driven a heathen to commit suicide.[728] The preachers
George Mohr[729] and Nicholas Hausmann (a very intimate friend of
Luther’s[730]) had to endure dreadful pangs of soul; the same was the
case with Johann Beltzius, Pastor at Allerstedt in Thuringia,[731] and
with Simon Musæus, who died at Mansfeld in 1576 as Superintendent and
who composed two works against the devil of melancholy.[732] Nicholas
Selnecker, who died Superintendent at Leipzig, was responsible for the
rearranged edition of Luther’s Table-Talk; according to the title his
hope was to produce a work “which it might console all Christians to
read, especially in these wretched last days.” Elsewhere he confirms
the need of such consolation when he says: “We experience in our own
selves” that sadness is of frequent occurrence.[733]
Wolfgang Capito, the Strasburg preacher, wrote in 1536 to Luther
that his experience of the want of agreement in doctrine had caused
him such distress of mind that he was on the verge of the “malady of
melancholia”; he trusted he would succeed in reaching a better frame
of mind; the burden of gloom, so he comforts himself, was, after all,
not without its purpose in God’s plan in the case of many under the
Evangel. With Capito, too, melancholy was a “frequent guest.”[734]
Bucer wrote in 1532 to A. Blaurer that Capito had often bemoaned “his
rejection by God.”[735]
Joachim Camerarius, the celebrated Humanist and writer, confessed in
a letter to Luther, that he was oppressed and reduced to despair by
the sight of the decline in morals “in people of every age and sex,
in every condition and grade of life”; everything, in both public and
private life, was so corrupt that he felt all piety and virtue was
done for. Of the Schools in particular he woefully exclaimed that it
would perhaps be better to have none than to have “such haunts of
godlessness and vice.” At the same time, however, he makes admissions
concerning faults of his own which may have served to increase
his dejection: He himself, in his young days, had, like others,
disgraced himself by a very vicious life (“_turpissime in adolescentia
deformatum_”).[736]
The Nuremberg preacher, George Besler, fell into a state of
melancholia, declared “in his ravings that things were not going right
in the Church,” began to see hidden enemies everywhere and finally
committed suicide with a “hogspear” in 1536.[737] William Bidembach,
preacher at Stuttgart, and his brother Balthasar, Abbot of Bebenhausen,
both became a prey to melancholia towards the end of their life.[738]
It would, of course, be foolish to think that many good souls, in the
simplicity of their heart, found no consolation in the new teaching
and in working for its furtherance. Of the preachers, for instance,
Beltzius, who has just been mentioned, declares, that, amidst his
sadness Luther’s consolations had “saved him from the abyss of
hell.”[739] Amongst those who adhered in good faith to the innovations
there were some who highly lauded the solace of the Evangel. But,
notwithstanding all that may be alleged to the contrary, we cannot get
over such testimonies as the following.
Felix, son of the above-mentioned William Bidembach, and Court preacher
in Würtemberg, declared in a “Handbook for young church ministers”:
“It happens more and more frequently that many pious people fall into
distressing sadness and real melancholia, to such an extent that they
constantly experience in their hearts fear, apprehension, dread and
despair”; in the course of his ministry he had met with both persons of
position and common folk who were oppressed with such melancholia.[740]
Nicholas Selnecker (above, p. 220) assures us that not only were
theologians perplexed with many “melancholy and anxious souls and
consciences whom nothing could console,” but physicians, too, “never
remembered such prevalence of evil melancholia, depression and sadness,
even in the young, and of other maladies arising therefrom, as during
these few years, and such misfortune continues still to grow and
increase.”[741]
The Leipzig Pastor, Erasmus Sarcerius, speaks in a similar strain of
the “general faint-heartedness prevalent in every class,” who are
acquainted with nothing but “fear and apprehension”;[742] Victorinus
Strigel, Professor at the University of Leipzig, of the “many persons
who in our day have died simply and solely of grief”;[743] Michael
Sachse, preacher at Wechmar, of people generally as being “timid and
anxious, trembling and despairing from fear.”[744]
When the preacher Leonard Beyer related to Luther how in his great
“temptations” the devil had tried to induce him to stab himself, Luther
consoled him by telling him that the same had happened in his own
case.[745]
We are told that in latter life Luther’s pupil Mathesius was a prey to
a “hellish fear” which lasted almost three months; “he could not even
look at a knife because the sight tempted him to suicide.”[746] Later,
his condition improved. The same Mathesius relates how Pastor Musa
found consolation in his gloomy doubts on faith in Luther’s account of
his own similar storms of doubt.[747]
In the 16th century we hear many lamentations in Protestant circles
concerning the unheard-of increase in the number of suicides.
“There is such an outcry amongst the people,” wrote the Lausitz
Superintendent, Zacharias Rivander, “that it deafens one’s ears and
makes one’s hair stand on end. The people are so heavy-hearted and yet
know not why. Amidst such lowness of spirit many are unable to find
consolation, and, so, cut their throats and slay themselves.”[748]--In
1554 the Nuremberg Councillor, Hieronymus Baumgärtner, lamented at
a meeting attended by the clergy of the town: “We hear, alas, how
daily and more than ever before, people, whether in good health or
not, fall into mortal fear and despair, lose their minds and kill
themselves.”[749] In 1569, within three weeks, fourteen suicides
occurred at Nuremberg.[750]--“You will readily recall,” Lucas Osiander
said in a sermon about the end of the century, “how in the years gone
by many otherwise good people became so timorous, faint-hearted and
full of despair that they could not be consoled; and how of these
not a few put an end to their own lives; this is a sign of the Last
Day.”[751]
Luther himself confirms the increase in the number of suicides which
took place owing to troubles of conscience.
In a sermon of 1532 he bemoans, that “so many people are so disquieted
and distressed that they give way to despair”; this was chiefly
induced by the “spirits,” for there “have been, and still are, many
who are driven by the devil and plagued with temptations and despair
till they hang themselves, or destroy themselves in some other
way out of very fear.”[752] He is quite convinced that the devil
“drives” all suicides and makes them helpless tools of his plans
against human life.--It was to this idea that the Lutheran preacher
Hamelmann clung when he wrote, in 1568, that many trusted “that those
who had been overtaken and destroyed by the devil would not be lost
irretrievably.”[753]
Andreas Celichius, Superintendent in the Mark of Brandenburg, was
of opinion that such suicides, such “very sudden and heartrending
murders,” “gave a bad name to the Evangel in the world”; one sees and
hears “that some in our very midst are quite unable to find comfort
in the Evangelical sanctuary.... This makes men distrustful of the
preaching of Jesus Christ and even causes it to be hated.”[754]
Michael Helding, Bishop-auxiliary of Mayence, found a special reason
for the increase in the number of suicides amongst those who had
broken with the Church, in their rejection of the Catholic means of
grace. In a sermon which he delivered towards the end of 1547 at
the Diet of Augsburg he pointed out that, ever since the use of the
Sacraments had been scorned, people were more exposed to the strength
of the evil one and to discouragement. “When has the devil ever
driven so many to desperation, so that they lose all hope and kill
themselves? Whose fault is it? Ah, we deprive ourselves of God’s grace
and refuse to accept the Divine strength which is offered us in the
Holy Sacraments.”[755]
Among the Lutheran preachers the expected end of the world was made
to play a part and to explain the increase of faint-heartedness and
despair.
Mathesius says in his Postils: “Many pine away and lose hope; there is
no more joy or courage left among the people; therefore let us look
for the end of the world, and prepare, and be ready at any moment for
our departure home!” “For the end is approaching; heaven and earth and
all government now begin to crack and break.”[756]
Luther’s example proved catching, and the end of the world became a
favourite topic both in the pulpit and in books, one on which the
preachers’ own gloom could aptly find vent. The end of all was thought
to be imminent. Such forebodings are voiced, for instance, in the
following: “No consolation is of any help to consciences”;[757] “many
pine away in dejection and die of grief”;[758] “in these latter days
the wicked one by his tyranny drives men into fear and fright”;[759]
“many despair for very dejection and sadness”;[760] “many pious hearts
wax cowardly, seeing their sins and the wickedness of the world”;[761]
“the people hang their heads as though they were walking corpses and
live in a constant dread”;[762] “all joy is dead and all consolation
from God’s Word has become as weak as water”;[763] the number of
those “possessed of the devil body and soul” is growing beyond all
measure.[764]
Though the special advantage claimed for the new Evangel lay in the
sure comfort it afforded troubled consciences, many found themselves
unable to arouse within them the necessary faith in the forgiveness of
their sins. Luther’s own experience, viz. that “faith won’t come,”[765]
was also that of many of the preachers in the case of their own uneasy
and tortured parishioners; their complaints of the fruitlessness
of their labours sound almost like an echo of some of Luther’s own
utterances.
“There are many pious souls in our churches,” says Simon Pauli, of
Rostock, “who are much troubled because they cannot really believe
what they say they do, viz. that God will be gracious to them and will
justify and save them.”[766]
The widespread melancholy existing among the parishioners quite as
much and sometimes more so than among the pastors, explains the
quantity of consolatory booklets which appeared on the market during
the second half of the 16th century, many of which were expressly
designed to check the progress of this morbid melancholy.[767]
Selnecker’s work, mentioned above, is a specimen of this sort of
literature. The Hamburg preacher, J. Magdeburgius, wrote: “Never has
there been such need of encouragement as at this time.”[768] The
Superintendent, Andreas Celichius, laments that people “are quite
unable to find comfort in the sanctuary of the Evangel, but, like the
heathen who knew not God, are becoming melancholy and desperate,” and
this too at a time when “God, by means of the evangelical preaching,
is daily dispensing abundantly all manner of right excellent and
efficacious consolation, by the shovelful and not merely by the
spoonful.”[769]--It was, however, a vastly more difficult matter
to find comfort in the bare “_Sola Fides_” than it had been for the
ancestors of these Evangelicals to find it in the Church’s way.
Thanks to their co-operation, it was given to them to experience the
vivifying and saving strength of the Sacraments and of the Eucharistic
Sacrifice, to find example and encouragement in the veneration of
the Saints and in the ritual, to be led to display their faith by
the performance of good works in the hope of an eternal reward, and
to enjoy in all the guidance and help of pastors duly called and
ordained. In spite of all the abuses which existed, their Catholic
forebears had never been deprived of these helps.
Many Protestants were driven by such considerations to return to the
Church. Of this Nicholas Amsdorf complained. Many, he says, “have
fallen away from Christ to Antichrist in consequence of such despair
and doubts,” and the uncertainty in matters of faith is nourished
by the want of any unity in teaching, so that the people “do not
know whom or what to believe”;[770] this was also one of the reasons
alleged by Simon Pauli why “many in the Netherlands and in Austria are
now relapsing into Popery.”[771]
“We find numerous instances in our day,” Laurence Albertus said in
1574, “of how, in many places where Catholics and sectarians live
together, no one was able to help a poor, deluded sectarian in
spiritual or temporal distress, save the Catholic Christians, and
especially their priests; such persons who have been helped admit that
they first found real comfort among the Catholics, and now refuse to
be disobedient to the Church any longer.” Albertus wrote a “Defence”
of such converts.[772]
Johann Schlaginhaufen, Luther’s pupil, with the statements he makes
concerning his own sad interior experiences, brings us back to his
master.[773] Schlaginhaufen himself, even more than the rest, fell
a prey to sadness, fear and thoughts of despair on account of his
sins. Luther, to whom he freely confided this, told him it was “false
that God hated sinners, otherwise He would not have sent His Son”;
God hated only the self-righteous “who didn’t want to be sinners.”
If Satan had not tried and persecuted me so much, “I should not
now be so hostile to him.” Schlaginhaufen, however, was unable to
convince himself so readily that all his trouble came from the devil
and not from his conscience. He said to Luther: “Doctor, I can’t
believe that it is only the devil who causes sadness, for the Law
[the consciousness of having infringed it] makes the conscience sad;
but the Law is good, for it comes from God, consequently neither is
the sadness from Satan.” Luther was only able to give an evasive
answer and fell back on the proximity of the Last Day as a source
of consolation: “In short, why we are so plagued, vexed and troubled
is due to the Last Day.... The devil feels his kingdom is coming to
an end, hence the fuss he makes. Therefore, my dear Turbicida [i.e.
Schlaginhaufen], be comforted, hold fast to the Word of God, let us
pray.” Such words, however, did not suffice to calm the troubled man,
who only became ever more dejected; his inference appeared to him only
too well founded: “The Law with its obligations and its terrifying
menaces is just as much God’s as the Gospel.”
“How doleful you look,” Luther said to him some weeks later. “I
replied,” so Schlaginhaufen relates: “‘Ah, dear Doctor, I was
brooding; my thoughts worry me and yet I can do nothing. I am unable
to distinguish between the Law and the Gospel.’ The Doctor replied:
‘Yes, dear Master Hans, if you could do that then you would be indeed
a Doctor yourself,’ saying which he stood up and doffed his cap....
‘Paul and I have never been able to get so far ... the best thing to
do is to hold fast to the man Who is called Christ.’” In answer to a
new objection Luther referred the young man to the secret counsels
of God, for, according to him, there was a hidden God Who had not
revealed Himself and of Whom men “were unable to know what He secretly
planned,”[774] and a revealed God Who indeed speaks of a Divine
Will that all should be saved; how, however, this was to afford any
consolation it is not easy to see.[775] On other occasions Luther
simply ordered Schlaginhaufen to rely on his authority; God Himself
was speaking through him words of command and consolation. “You are
to believe without doubting what God Himself has spoken to you, for
I have God’s authority and commission to speak to and to comfort
you.”[776]
CHAPTER XXV
IN THE NARROWER CIRCLE OF THE PROFESSION AND FAMILY LUTHER’S BETTER
FEATURES
1. The University Professor, the Preacher, the Pastor
_Relations with the Wittenberg Students._
AMONG the pleasing traits in Luther’s picture a prominent one is the
care he evinced for the students at Wittenberg.
The disagreeable impression caused by the decline of the University
town is to some extent mitigated by the efforts Luther made to check
the corruption amongst the scholars of the University. He saw that
they were supervised, so far as academic freedom permitted, and never
hesitated to blame their excesses from the pulpit. At the same time,
in spite of the growing multiplicity of his labours and cares, he
showed himself a helpful father to them even in temporal matters, for
instance, when he inveighed in a sermon against their exploitation
at the hands of burghers and peasants: They were being sucked dry
and could scarcely be treated worse; this he had heard from all he
knew.[777]
The respect he enjoyed and the example of his own simple life lent
emphasis to his moral exhortations. His eloquent lectures were eagerly
listened to; his delivery was vivid and impressive. People knew that he
did not lecture for the sake of money and, even at the height of his
fame, they gladly pointed to the unassuming life he led at home. He did
not expect any marks of respect from the students, greatly as they, and
not only those of the theological Faculty, esteemed him. Melanchthon
had introduced the custom of making the students stand when Luther
entered the class-room; Luther, however, was not at all pleased with
this innovation and said petulently: “_Doxa, doxa est magna noxa_; who
runs after glory never gets it.”[778]
Oldecop, the Catholic chronicler and Luther’s former pupil, who, as
a youth and before the apostasy, had listened to him at Wittenberg,
remembered in his old age how Luther, without setting himself in
opposition to their youthful jollifications had known how to restrain
them; just as he “reproved sin fearlessly from the pulpit,”[779] so
he earnestly sought to banish temptation from the pleasures of the
students.
We may here recall, that, as early as 1520, Luther had urged that all
bordels should be done away with, those “public, heathenish haunts of
sin,” as he termed them, at the same time using their existence as a
weapon against the Catholic past.[780] The fact that many such houses
were closed down at that time was, however, to some extent due to fear
of the prevalent “French disease.”
When, in his old age, in 1543, the arrival of certain light women
threatened new danger to the morals of the Wittenberg students, already
exposed to the ordinary temptations of the town, Luther decided to
interfere and make a public onslaught at the University. This attack
supplies us with a striking example of his forcefulness, whilst
also showing us what curious ideas and expressions he was wont to
intermingle with his well-meant admonitions.
“The devil,” so he begins, “has, by means of the gainsayers of our
faith and our chief foes [presumably the Catholics], sent here certain
prostitutes to seduce and ruin our young men. Hence I, as an old and
tried preacher, would paternally implore you, my dear children, to
believe that the Wicked One has sent these prostitutes hither, who are
itchy, shabby, stinking and infected with the French disease as, alas,
experience daily proves. Let one good comrade warn the other, for one
such infected strumpet can ruin 10, 20, 30, or even 100 sons of good
parents and is therefore to be reckoned a murderess and much worse
than a poisoner. Let one help the other in this poisonous mess, with
faithful advice and warning, as each one would himself wish to be done
by!”
He then threatens them with the penalties of the Ruler, which
dissolute students had to fear, “in order that they may take
themselves off, and the sooner the better”; “here [at Wittenberg]
there is a Christian Church and University to which people resort to
learn the Word of God, virtue and discipline. Whoever wants to drab
had better go elsewhere.”
Were he able, he would have such women “bled and broken on the
wheel.” Young people ought, however, to resist concupiscence and fight
against “their heat”; it was not to no purpose that the Holy Ghost had
said: “Go not after thy lusts” (Eccl. xviii. 30). He concludes: “Pray
God He may send you a pious child [in marriage], there will in any
case be trouble enough.”[781]
Some polemics have characterised such exhortations of Luther’s as mere
“hypocrisy.” Whoever knows his Luther, knows, however, how unfounded
is this charge. Nor was there any hypocrisy about the other very
urgent exhortation which Luther caused to be read from the pulpit
at Wittenberg in 1542, when himself unable to preach, and which is
addressed to both burghers and students. He there implores “the town
and the University for God’s sake not to allow it to be said of them,
that, after having heard God’s Word so abundantly and for so long,
they had grown worse instead of better.” “Ah, brother Studium,” he
says, “spare me and let it not come to this that I be obliged like
Polycarp to exclaim, ‘O my God, why hast Thou let me live to see
this?’” He points to his “grizzly head” which at least should inspire
respect.[782]
_The Preacher and Catechist._
As a preacher Luther was hard-working, nay, indefatigable; in this
department his readiness of speech, his familiarity with Holy Scripture
and above all his popular ways stood him in good stead. At first he
preached in the church attached to the monastery; later on his sermons
were frequently preached in the parish church, and, so long as his
health stood the strain, he sometimes even delivered several sermons
a day.[783] Even when not feeling well he took advantage of every
opportunity to mount the pulpit. In 1528 he took over the parochial
sermons during Bugenhagen’s absence from Wittenberg,[784] in spite of
being already overworked and ill in body.
All were loud in their praise of the power and vigour of his style.
Mathesius in his “Historien” records a remark to this effect of
Melanchthon’s.[785] Luther frequently laid down, after his own fashion,
the rules which should guide those who preach to the little ones and
the poor in spirit: “Cursed and anathema be all preachers who treat
of high, difficult and subtle matters in the churches, put them to
the people and preach on them, seeking their own glory or to please
one or two ambitious members of the congregation. When I preach here
I make myself as small as possible, nor do I look at the Doctors and
Masters, of whom perhaps forty may be present, but at the throng of
young people, children and common folk, from a hundred to a thousand
strong; it is to them that I preach, of them that I think, for it is
they who stand in need.”[786] And elsewhere: “Like a mother who quiets
her babe, dandles it and plays with it, but who must give it milk
from her breast, and on no account wine or Malmsey, so preachers must
do the same; they ought so to preach in all simplicity that even the
simple-minded may hear, grasp and retain their words. But when they
come to me, to Master Philip, to Dr. Pommer, etc., then they may show
off their learning--and get a good drubbing and be put to shame.” But
when they parade their learning in the pulpit this is merely done “to
impose on and earn the praise of the poor, simple lay-folk. Ah, they
say, that is a great scholar and a fine speaker, though, probably, they
neither understood nor learnt anything.”[787]
“Nor should a preacher consider individual members of his congregation
and speak to them words of comfort or reproof; what he must seek to
benefit is the whole congregation. St. Paul teaches this important
doctrine [2 Cor. ii. 17]: ‘We speak with sincerity in Christ as from
God and before God.’ God, Christ and the angels are our hearers, and if
we please them that is enough. Let us not trouble ourselves about the
world and about private persons! We will not speak in order to please
any man nor allow our mouth to be made the ‘Arschloch’ of another. But
when we have certain persons up before us, then we may reprove them
privately and without any rancour.”[788]
As a preacher he was able often enough to tell the various classes
quite frankly what he found to censure in them. At the Court, for
instance, he could, when occasion arose, reprove the nobles for their
drunkenness, and that in language not of the choicest.[789] He was not
the man to wear kid gloves, or, as an old German proverb he himself
quoted said, to let a spider spin its web over his mouth. A saying
attributed to him characterises him very well, save perhaps in its
latter end: Come up bravely, speak out boldly, leave off speedily.[790]
“I have warned you often enough,” so we read in the notes of a
Wittenberg sermon of Sep. 24, 1531,[791] “to flee fornication, and
yet I see that it is again on the increase. It is getting so bad
that I shall be obliged to say: Bistu do zurissen, sso lop dich der
Teuffl.”[792] The preacher then turns to the older hearers, begging
them to use their influence with the younger generation, to prevail on
them to abstain from this vice.
As to his subject-matter, he was fond of urging Biblical texts and
quotations, wherein he displayed great skill and dexterity. In general,
however, his attacks on Popery are always much the same; he dwells with
tiresome monotony on the holiness-by-works and the moral depravity of
the Papists. Though his theory of Justification may have proved to him
a never-failing source of delight, yet his hearers were inclined to
grow weary of it. He himself says once: “When we preach the ‘_articulum
justificationis_’ the people sleep or cough”; and before this: “No one
in the people’s opinion is eloquent if he speaks on justification; then
they simply close their ears.” Had it been a question of retailing
stories, examples and allegories he could have been as proficient as
any man.[793]
Mathesius has incorporated in his work some of Luther’s directions on
preaching which might prove a good guide to any pulpit orator desirous
of being of practical service to his hearers.[794] Some of these
directions and hints have recently appeared in their vigorous original
in the Table-Talk edited by Kroker.
It was his wish that religious addresses in the shape of simple, hearty
instructions on the Epistles and Gospels should be given weekly by
every father to his family.[795] He himself, in his private capacity,
set the example as early as 1532 by holding forth in his own home on
Sundays, when unable to preach in the church, before his assembled
household and other guests. This he did, so he said, from a sense of
duty towards his family, because it was as necessary to check neglect
of the Divine Word in the home as in the Church at large.[796]
He also himself catechised the children at home, in order, as he
declared, to fulfil the duties of a Christian father; on rising in the
morning he was also in the habit of reciting the “Ten Commandments, the
Creed, the Our Father and some Psalm as well” with the children.
He even expressed the opinion that catechetical instruction in church
was of little use to children, but that in the home it was more
successful and was therefore not to be omitted, however much trouble
it might give. When, however, he adds, that the Papists had neglected
such home teaching and had sacrificed the flock of Christ,[797] he is
quite wrong. The fact is, that, before his day, it was left far too
much to the family to give religious instruction to the children, there
being as yet no properly organised Catechism in schools and churches.
It was only the opposition aroused among Catholics by the religious
changes that led to religious teaching becoming more widespread in
the Catholic schools, and to a catechetical system being organised; a
fuller religious education then served to check the falling away.[798]
How highly, in spite of such apparent depreciation, he valued the
ministerial teaching of the Catechism we learn from some words
recorded by Mathesius: “If I had to establish order, I should see that
no preacher was nominated who had not previously taught the ‘_bonæ
artes_’ and the Catechism in the schools for from one to three years.
Schools are also temples of God, hence the olden prophets were at once
pastors and schoolmasters.”[799] “There is no better way,” he writes,
“of keeping people devout and faithful to the Church than by the
Catechism.”[800]
At Wittenberg an arrangement existed, at any rate as early as
1528,[801] by which, every quarter, certain days were set apart for
special sermons on the articles of the Catechism.[802] The Larger and
the Smaller Catechism published by Luther (see vol. v., xxxiv., 2) were
intended to form the basis of the verbal teaching everywhere. The three
courses of sermons preached by Luther at Wittenberg in May, Sep. and
Nov., 1528, and since edited by George Buchwald, were arranged to suit
the contents of the Greater Catechism and to some extent served Luther
as a preparation for this publication. Luther, in the first instance,
brought out the Smaller Catechism, as we see from certain letters
given by Buchwald, not in book form, but, agreeably with an earlier
ecclesiastical practice, on separate sheets in the shape of tablets
to hang upon the walls; hence what he said on Dec. 18, 1537, of his
being the author of the Catechism, the “_tabulæ_” and the Confession of
Augsburg.[803]
He displayed great talent and dexterity in choosing the language best
suited to his subject. We hear him denouncing with fire and power the
vice of usury which was on the increase.[804] He knows how to portray
the past and future judgments of God in such colours as to arouse the
luke-warm. When treating of the different professions and ways of
ordinary life he is in his own element and exhibits a rare gift of
observation. On the virtues of the home, the education of children,
obedience towards superiors, patience in bearing crosses and any
similar ethical topics which presented themselves to him, his language
is as a rule sympathetic, touching and impressive; in three wedding
sermons which we have of him he speaks in fine and moving words on love
and fidelity in the married state.[805]
In addition to his printed sermons, which were polished and amended for
the press and from which we have already given many quotations on all
sorts of subjects, the hasty, abbreviated notes of his sermons, made by
zealous pupils, give us an insight into a series of addresses full of
originality, outspokenness and striking thoughts. Indeed these notes,
which are becoming better known at the present day, frequently render
the sermons in all their primitive simplicity far better than do the
more carefully arranged printed editions.
Luther, in 1524, according to one of these sets of notes, spoke
on Good Works in the following style: “The Word is given in order
that you may awaken! It is meant to spur you on to do what is good,
not that you should lull yourself in security. When fire and wood
[come together there ensues a fire; so you in like manner, must be
inflamed]. If, however, the effect of the sermon is, that you do not
act towards your brother as Christ does towards you, that is a bad
sign, not, indeed, that you must become a castaway, but that you may
go so far as one day to deny the Word.” “The devil knows that sin
does not harm you, but his aim is to tear Christ out of your heart,
to make you self-confident and to rob you of the Word. Hence beware
of being idle under the influence of Grace. Christ is seen with you
when you take refuge in Him, whether you be in sin or at the hour of
death,” etc. “This is preached to you daily, but we produce no effect.
Christ has bones and flesh, strength and weakness. Let each one see
to it that above all he possess the faith ... the Gospel is preached
everywhere, but few indeed understand it. Christ bore with His
followers. In the same way must we behave towards the weak. And the
day will come when at last they will understand, like the disciples.
But that will never be unless persecution comes.”[806]
_Excerpts from Luther’s Sermons on Our Lady._
In a sermon of 1524 on the Feast of the Visitation, taken down in
Latin by the same reporter and recently published, Luther not only
voices the olden view concerning the virtues and privileges of the
Blessed Virgin but also, incidentally, supplies us with a sample
of his candour in speaking of the faults of his hearers: “You are
surprised that now I preach here so seldom, I, on the other hand,
am surprised that you do not amend. There may possibly be a few to
whom the preaching is of some avail; but the more I preach, the
more ungodliness increases. It is not my fault, for I know that I
have told you all what God gave me [to speak]. I am not responsible
and my conscience is at peace. I have forced you to nothing. We
have introduced two collections. If they are not to your taste, do
away with them again. We shall not force you to give even a single
penny.”[807]--He then deals with the Gospel of the Feast which records
Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, and the canticle of praise with which she
greeted her cousin. He draws apt lessons from it and praises the
virtues and the dignity of the Blessed Virgin in a way that does him
honour: “First of all you see how Mary’s faith finds expression in
a work of charity. Her faith was not idle but was proved real by
her acting as a mere maid, seeking out Elizabeth and serving her.
Her faith was immense, as we also learn from other Gospel-readings.
That is why Elizabeth said to her: ‘Blessed art thou that hast
believed.’... This is a true work of faith when impelled thereby we
abase ourselves and serve others. We, too, hear all this, but the
works are not forthcoming.... Yet where there is real faith, works are
never absent.”
“When Mary was magnified by Elizabeth with words of praise, it was
as though she did not hear them, for she paid no heed to them. Every
other woman would have succumbed to the temptation of vainglory, but
she gives praise to Him to Whom alone praise is due. From this example
all Christians, but particularly all preachers, ought to learn. You
know that God preserves some preachers in a state of grace, but others
He permits to fall.... God must preserve them like Mary so that they
do not grow proud. When God bestows His gifts upon us it is hard not
to become presumptuous and self-confident. If, for instance, I am well
acquainted with Scripture, people will praise me on this account,
and when I am praised, I, as a carnal man, am exposed to the fire;
when on the contrary I am despised, etc. [i.e. this is helpful for my
salvation].... Mary acted as though she did not hear it, and never
even thanked Elizabeth for her praise.”
Mary said, so he continues, “My soul doth magnify the Lord, not
myself; I am a mere creature of God; He might have set another in
my place; I magnify Him Who has made me a Mother.” In this way
Mary teaches us the right use of the gifts bestowed by God, for
she rejoiced only in God. On the other hand, any woman who is even
passably pretty becomes vain of herself, and any man who has riches,
boasts of his possessions. Mary is merely proud that God, as she
says, has regarded her humility. This is the praise which we too
must pay her. We ought to extol her because she was chosen by the
Divine Majesty to be the Mother of His Son. That, she says, will be
proclaimed to the end of the world (“all generations shall call me
blessed”), not on her own account, but because God has done this.
Concerning her own good works and her virginity she was silent and
simply said: “He has done great things in me.” In the same way we
ought to be nothing in our own eyes and before the world, but to
rejoice simply because God has looked down on us, confessing that all
we have comes from Him. In this spirit Mary counted up great gifts;
though she could have said: All that you have just told me is true.
“Ah, hers was a fine spirit; and her example will assuredly endure.”
“The whole world will never attain to it, for the soul that is not
exalted by God’s gifts and depressed by poverty is indeed hard to
find.” By her words, so the speaker continues, Mary condemned the
world, raised herself above it and cast it aside; her language was not
human, but came to her from God.
Though such praise of Mary--from which at a later date Luther
desisted--may be placed to his credit, yet it must be pointed
out, that even the above discourse is disfigured by bitter and
unwarrantable attacks on Catholic doctrine and practice. He even
speaks as though the veneration of Mary did not rest on the principles
we have just heard him expound, viz. on the dignity bestowed by God
on Mary as the Mother of God, and on the virtues with which she was
endowed from on high, such as faith and humility. The Catholic Church,
so Luther complains quite unjustly and falsely, had made of Mary a
goddess (“_fecimus eam Deam_”) and had given her honour and praise
without referring it to God.[808]
The supreme distinction which the Church acknowledges in Mary--viz.
her immaculate conception and exemption from original sin from the
first moment of her soul’s existence--Luther himself accepted at
first and adhered to for a considerable time, following in this the
tradition of his Order.[809]
All honour was to be given to Christ as God; this right and
praiseworthy view, which Luther was indefatigable in expressing,
misled him in the matter of the veneration and invocation of Mary and
the Saints. Of this he would not hear, though such had ever been the
practice of the Church, and though it is hard to see how God’s glory
can suffer any derogation through the honour paid to His servants. In
this Luther went astray; the dogma of the adorable Divinity of Jesus
Christ was, however, always to remain to him something sacred and
sublime.
_Statements to Luther’s advantage from various Instructions. His
Language._
In his sermons Luther was so firm in upholding the Divinity of Christ,
in opposition to the scepticism he thought he detected in other
circles, that one cannot but be favourably impressed. He was filled
with the liveliest sense of man’s duty of submitting his reason to
this mystery; he even goes too far, in recommending abdication of the
intellect and in his disparagement of human reason; what he is anxious
to do is to make all his religious feeling culminate in a trusting
faith in the words: “God so loved the world that He gave His only
begotten Son for us.”
In his sermons and instructions he demands a similar yielding of
reason to faith with regard to the mystery of Christ’s Presence in the
Sacrament, though in this case he had not shrunk from twisting the
doctrine to suit his own ideas. It would hardly be possible to maintain
more victoriously against all gainsayers the need of standing by the
literal sense, or at least of excluding any figurative interpretation
of, the words of institution “This is My Body,” than Luther did in many
of his pronouncements against the Sacramentarians.[810]
With advancing years, and in view of the dissensions and confusion
prevailing in the Reformed camp, he came to insist more and more on
those positive elements, which, for all his aversion for the ancient
Church, he had never ceased to defend. Of this we have a monument in
one of his last works, viz. the “Kurtz Bekentnis,” to which we shall
return later. Embittered by the scepticism apparent in Zwinglianism and
elsewhere, which, as he thought, threatened to sap all religion, he
there obeys his heart’s instincts and gives the fullest expression to
his faith in general and not merely to his belief in Christ’s presence
in the Sacrament.[811]
Concerning the Sacrament of the Altar he gave the following noteworthy
answer to a question put to him jointly, in 1544, by the three princely
brothers of Anhalt, viz. whether they should do away with the Elevation
of the Sacrament in the liturgy. “By no means,” he replied, “for
such abrogation would tend to diminish respect for the Sacrament and
cause it to be undervalued. When Dr. Pommer abolished the Elevation
[at Wittenberg, in 1542] during my absence, I did not approve of it,
and now I am even thinking of re-introducing it. For the Elevation is
one thing, the carrying about of the Sacrament in procession quite
another [at Wittenberg Luther would not allow such processions of the
Sacrament]. If Christ is truly present in the Bread (‘_in pane_’),
why should He not be treated with the utmost respect and even be
adored?”--Joachim, Prince of Anhalt, added, when relating this: “We
saw how Luther bowed low at the Elevation with great devotion and
reverently worshipped Christ.”[812]
Certain controversialists have undoubtedly been in the wrong in making
out Luther to have been sceptical about, or even opposed at heart to,
many of the ancient dogmas which he never attacked, for instance,
the Trinity, or the Divinity of Christ. A few vague and incautious
statements occasionally let slip by him are more than counterbalanced
by a wealth of others which tell in favour of his faith, and he
himself would have been the last to admit the unfortunate inferences
drawn more or less rightly from certain propositions emitted by him.
It is a lucky thing, that, in actual life, error almost always claims
the right of not being bound down too tightly in the chains of logic.
When Luther, for instance, made every man judge of the meaning of the
Bible, he was setting up a principle which must have dissolved all
cohesion between Christians, and thus, of necessity, he was compelled
to limit, somewhat illogically, the application of the principle.
In a passage frequently cited against him, where he shows himself
vexed with the ancient term employed by the Church to express the
Son’s being of the same substance with the Father (“_homoousios_”), it
was not his intention to rail against the doctrine therein expressed,
but merely to take exception to the word. He explicitly distinguishes
between the word and the thing (“_vocabulum et res_”). He says that,
so long as one holds fast to the doctrine (“_modo rem teneam_”)
scripturally defined by the Nicene Council, it was no heresy to
dislike the word or to refuse to employ it.[813] Hence the passage
affords no ground for saying, that “Luther was rash enough to tamper
with the doctrine of the Person of Christ.” On the other hand, the
new doctrine of the omnipresence of the Body of Christ evolved by him
during the controversy on the Sacrament, can scarcely be considered
creditable.[814] His views on the “_communicatio idiomatum_”[815]
in Christ, and particularly on the Redemption,[816] also contain
contradictions not to be explained away.
Contrariwise we must dismiss the charge based on his repugnance for
the word “Threefoldhood,” by which Germans designate the Trinity, as
if this involved antagonism on his part to the mystery itself. He was
referring merely to the term when he said: “It is not particularly
good German and does not sound well, but since it cannot be improved
upon, we must speak as best we can.”[817] An undeniable confession
of faith in the Trinity is contained in this very passage, and in
countless others too.--When abbreviating the Litany he indeed omitted
the invocation “_Sancta Trinitas unus Deus_,” but this was not from
any hostility to the doctrine but from a wish not to have “too many
words.” He left in their old places the separate invocations of the
Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and deemed this quite sufficient.
By his retention of the belief in the three Divine Persons and in the
Divinity of the Redeemer, Luther was instrumental in preserving among
his future followers a treasure inherited from past ages, in which not
a few have found their consolation. We must not be unmindful of how he
strove to defend it from the assaults of unbelief, in his time still
personified in Judaism. He did not sin by debasing the Second Person
of the Trinity, but rather by foisting on God Incarnate attributes
which are not really His; for instance, by arguing that, owing to the
intimacy of the two Natures, Divine and Human, in Christ, His Human
Nature must be as omnipresent as His Divine; or, again, by teaching
that mere belief in one’s redemption and sanctification suffices to
destroy sin; or, again, when his too lively eschatological fancy led
him to see Christ, the Almighty conqueror of the devil and his world,
already on the point of coming to the Judgment. And just as Christ’s
Godhead was the very fulcrum of all his teaching, so he defended
likewise the other Articles of the Apostles’ Creed with such courage,
force and eloquence, as, since his death, few of his followers have
found themselves capable of. About the Person of the Redeemer he wove
all the usual Christological doctrines, His Virgin Birth, His truly
miraculous Resurrection, His descent into Hell, His Ascension and
Second Advent; finally, also, the resurrection of the dead, the future
Judgment, and the everlasting Heaven and everlasting Hell. From the
well-spring of the ancient creed, under God’s Grace, Lutherans without
number have drawn and still continue to draw motives for doing what is
good, consolation amidst affliction and strength to lead pious lives.
“What holiness, devotion and heroic virtue do we not find among
non-Catholics. God’s Grace is not confined within the four walls of
the Catholic Church, but breathes even in the hearts of outsiders,
working in them, when opportunity affords, the miracle of justification
and adoption, and thus ensuring the eternal salvation of countless
multitudes who are either entirely ignorant of the true Church, as
are the upright heathen, or mistake her true form and nature as do
countless Protestants, brought up amidst the crassest prejudice. To
all such as these the Church does not close the gates of Heaven” (J.
Pohle).
* * * * *
It would be superfluous to enumerate amongst Luther’s favourable
traits the respect he always paid to Holy Scripture as the Word of
God, demanding for its infallible revelations a willing faith and the
sacrifice of one’s own whims.
Greatly as he erred in wilfully applying his new, subjective principle
of interpretation and in excluding certain of the Sacred Books, still
the Bible itself he always declared to be an object of the highest
reverence. Thanks to a retentive memory he made his own the words
of Scripture, and even adopted its style. His “enthusiasm for the
inexhaustible riches and Divine character of Holy Scripture,” of
which the earlier Döllinger speaks,[818] has, and with some reason,
been held up by Luther’s followers as the model, nay, the palladium
of Lutheranism as a whole; on the other hand, however, Döllinger’s
accompanying censure on Luther’s “arbitrary misuse” of the Bible-text
must also commend itself not only to Catholics but to every serious
student of the Bible. High praise for Luther’s acquaintance with
Scripture combined with severe blame for his deviation from tradition
are forthcoming from a contemporary of the early years of Luther’s
public career. In a short, unprinted and anonymous work entitled
“Urteil über Luther,” now in the Munich State Library, we read: “In
the fine art of the written Word of God, i.e. the Bible, I hold Martin
Luther to be the most learned of men, whether of those now living on
earth or of those who have departed long since; he is, moreover, well
versed in the two languages, both Latin and German. I do not, however,
regard him as a Christian--for to be learned and eloquent is not to be
a Christian--but as a heretic and schismatic”; he was, it adds, “the
scourge of an angry God.”[819]
In the field of scriptural activity his German translation of the whole
Bible has procured for him enduring fame. Since the birth of Humanism
not a few scholars had drawn attention to the languages in which the
Bible was originally written; Luther, however, was the first who
ventured to make a serious attempt to produce a complete translation of
all the Sacred Books on the basis of the original text.
Thanks to his German version, from the linguistic point of view so
excellent, Protestants down to our own day have been familiar with the
Bible. His rendering of the Bible stories and doctrines, at once so
able and so natural, was a gain not only to the language of religion
but even to profane literature, just as his writings generally have
without question largely contributed to the furtherance of the German
tongue.
The scholarly Caspar Ulenberg, writing on this subject from the
Catholic side in the 16th century, expresses himself most favourably.
“What Luther,” he says, “after consulting the recognised opinion of
Hebrew and Greek experts, took to be the true meaning of the text
under discussion, that he clothed in pure and elegant German, on the
cultivation of which he had all his life bestowed great care. He had
made such progress in the art of writing, teaching and expounding,
that, if we take into consideration the beauty and the brilliance of
his language, so free from artifice, as well as the originality of
his expression, we must allow that he excelled all in the use of the
German tongue so that none can compare with him. Thus it was that
he gained so uncanny an influence over the hearts of his Germans,
that, by caressing and flattering and using the allurements of the
Divine Word, he could make them believe whatever he pleased. In this
translation of the Bible he was, above all, at pains, by means of a
certain elegance and charm of speech, to entice all to become his
readers, and thus to win men’s hearts.”[820]
Luther cannot indeed be called the creator of New-High-German, either
by reason of his translation of the Bible or of his other German
writings. Yet, using as he did the already existing treasure of the
language with such ability, his influence on the German language was
necessarily very great, especially as, owing to the great spread
of his writings in those early days of printing, his works were
practically the first in the literary field, and, indeed, in many
places excluded all others. “Luther’s importance as regards the
language,” declares one of the most recent students of this matter,
“is less apparent in the details of grammar, in which he is sometimes
rather backward, than in the general effect of his exertions on behalf
of New-High-German.” It is of small importance, the same writer
remarks, “if in the mere wealth of common idioms one or other of the
towns even within the confines of his native Saxon land--Grimma,
Leipzig, Dresden--were in advance of the language employed by
Luther.”[821]
Luther’s translation of the Bible will be treated of more in detail
elsewhere (vol. v., xxxiv., 3). Here, however, mention may be made of
the fine quality of the German used in his sermons, his theological and
polemical writings, as well as in his popular works of devotion.
The figures and comparisons in which his sparkling fancy delights,
particularly in the devotional booklets intended for the common people,
his popular, sympathetic and often thoughtful adaptation of his
language to the subject and to the personality of the reader, the truly
German stamp of his phraseology, lending to the most difficult as well
as to the most ordinary subjects just the clothing they require--all
this no one can observe and enjoy without paying tribute to his gift of
description and language.
“His vocabulary was strong and incisive,” Johannes Janssen truly
remarks, “his style full of life and movement, his similes, in their
naked plainness, were instinct with vigour and went straight to the
mark. He drew from the rich mines of the vernacular tongue, and in
popular eloquence and oratory few equalled him. Where he still spoke
in the spirit of the Catholic past his language was often truly
sublime. In his works of instruction and edification he more than once
reveals a depth of religious grasp which reminds one of the days of
German mysticism.”[822]
His first pupils could not sufficiently extol his gift of language.
Justus Jonas in his panegyric on Luther declares, though his words are
far-fetched: “Even the Chanceries have learnt from him, at least in
part, to speak and write correct German; for he revived the use of the
German language so that now we are again able to speak and write it
accurately, as many a person of degree must testify and witness.”[823]
And of the influence of his spoken words on people’s minds Hieronymus
Weller declares, that it had been said of him, his words “made each
one fancy he could see into the very hearts of those troubled or
tempted, and that he could heal wounded and broken spirits.”[824]
_The Spiritual Guide._
Not merely as professor, preacher and writer, but also as spiritual
leader, did Luther exhibit many qualities which add to the attraction
of his picture. Whatever may be the habits of polemical writers, the
historian who wishes to acquit himself properly of his task must not in
so momentous a matter evade the duty of depicting the favourable as
well as the unfavourable sides of Luther’s character.
Though Luther did not regard himself as the pastor of Wittenberg, yet
as much depended on him there as if he had actually been the regular
minister; moreover, as was only to be expected, throughout the Saxon
Electorate as well as in other districts won over to him, he exercised
a certain sway. As can be proved from his letters and other documents,
he freely offered his best services, if only for the good repute of the
Evangel, to abolish scandals, to punish preachers who led bad lives, to
promote attendance at public worship and the reception of communion, to
help on the cause of the schools and the education of the young, and in
every other way to amend the Christian life.
In order to revive discipline at Wittenberg, he tried the effect of
excommunication, though with no very conspicuous success. He took the
brave step of placing the Town Commandant, Hans Metzsch, under a sort
of ban for his notorious disregard of the Church.[825] What he then
told the congregation was calculated to inspire a wholesome dread, and
to recall them to their duties towards God and their neighbour. The
incident was likely to prove all the more effectual seeing that Luther
had on his side both Town Council and congregation, Metzsch having
previously fallen out with them, a fact which undoubtedly emboldened
Luther.[826]
When Antinomianism, with its perilous teaching against the binding
character of the Divine Law, strove to strike root in the Saxon
Electorate, he set himself with unusual vigour to combat the evil,
and in his writings, sermons and letters set forth principles worthy
of being taken to heart concerning the importance of the Commandments
and the perils of self-will. Similar edifying traits are apparent in
his struggle with other “Rotters.” In the elimination of the sectarian
element from the heart of the new faith and in instancing its dangers,
he shows himself very emphatic, and, at times, the force of his
reasoning is inimitable. Neither was he slow to find practical measures
to ensure its extirpation, especially when it threatened the good name
and stability of his work.[827]
He exercised many of the other labours of his ministry by means of his
writings; with the help of his pen and the press, he, in his quality
of spiritual guide, attacked all the many-sided questions of life,
seeking to impart instruction to his followers wherever they might
chance to be. No one so far had made such use of the newly invented art
of printing for the purpose of exerting religious influence and for
spiritual government.
He despatched a vast number of circular-letters to the congregations,
some with detailed and fervent exhortations; his Postils on the
scriptural Lessons for the Sundays and Feast Days he scattered far
and wide amongst the masses; he was also interested in good books
on profane subjects, and exhorted all to assist in the suppression
of obscene romances and tales;[828] he also set to work to purify
Æsop’s Fables--which, under Humanist influence, had become a source of
corruption--from filthy accretions so that they might be of use in the
education of the young.[829] The collection of German Proverbs which he
commenced was also intended to serve for the instruction of youth.[830]
He justly regretted that amongst the Legends of the Saints current
amongst the people there were many historical untruths and
impossibilities. Many of his remarks on these stories do credit to
his critical sense, particularly as in his time very few had as yet
concerned themselves with the revision of these legends. It was far
from advantageous to ecclesiastical literature, that, in spite of
the well-grounded objections raised by Luther and by some Catholic
scholars, deference to old-standing tradition allowed such fictions to
be retained and even further enhanced. “It is the devil’s own plague,”
Luther groans, “that we have no reliable legends of the Saints.... To
correct them is an onerous task.” “The legend of St. Catherine,” he
says on the same occasion to his friends, “is quite at variance with
Roman history. Whoever concocted such a tale must now assuredly be
sitting in the depths of hell.”[831] He goes, however, too far when he
says that the inaccuracies were intentional, “infamous” lies devised by
Popery, and adds: “We never dared to protest against them.”--As though
such literary and often poetic outgrowths of a more childlike age were
not to be regarded as merely harmless, and as though criticism had been
prohibited by the Church. It is true, nevertheless, that criticism had
not been sufficiently exercised, and if Luther’s undertaking and the
controversies of the 16th century helped to arouse it, or, rather, to
quicken the efforts already made in this direction, first in the field
of Bible-study and Church-history and then, more gradually, in that
of popular legendary and devotional literature, no wise man can see
therein any cause for grief.
“An die Radherrn aller Stedte deutsches Lands, das sie christliche
Schulen auffrichten und halten sollen” is the title of one of Luther’s
writings of 1524, in which he urges the erection of schools with such
vigour that the circular in question must be assigned a high place
among his hortatory works: “With this writing Luther will recapture
the affection of many of his opponents,” wrote a Zwickau schoolmaster
after reading it.[832] “Ob Kriegsleutte auch ynn seligem Stande seyn
künden” (1526) is the heading of another broadsheet of his, dealing
with the secular sword, the divinely established “office of war” and
the rights of the authorities. For this Luther made use of Augustine’s
work “_Contra Faustum manichæum_.”[833] It is said that part of the
proofs, without any author’s name, was put into the hands of Duke
George of Saxony; thereupon he remarked to Lucas Cranach: “See, I have
here a booklet which is better than anything Luther could do.”[834] At
a later date Luther urged the people in eloquent words to take up arms
against the Turk, though he had at first been opposed to resistance;
nevertheless, he ever maintained his unfavourable attitude towards
the Empire, already described in vol. iii., even on this question of
such vital importance to Germany. He was relentless in his criticism
of German unpreparedness for war, of the fatal habit of disregarding
danger and of other possible sources of disaster; he also advanced
religious motives for joining in the war, and exhorted all the faithful
bravely to assist by their prayers.
Whilst these and other writings deal with practical questions
affecting public life in which his position and religious ideas
entitled him to interfere, a large number of works and pamphlets are
devoted to domestic and private needs. In his “Trost fur die Weibern
welchen es ungerat gegangen ist mit Kinder Geberen” (1542) he even has
a kind word for such wives as had had a miscarriage, and consoles those
who were troubled about the fate of their unbaptised infants. From
the theological point of view this subject had, however, been treated
better and more correctly by others before his day. He was also at his
post with words of direction and sympathy when pestilence threatened,
as his writing “Ob man fur dem Sterben fliehen muge” (1527) bears
witness. He frequently composed Prefaces to books written by others, in
order to encourage the authors and to help on what he considered useful
works; thus, for instance, he wrote a commendatory Introduction to
Justus Menius’s “_Œconomia Christiana_” (1529).
_The New Form of Confession._
Luther’s pastoral experience convinced him that Confession was
conducive to the maintenance and furtherance of religious life.
He accordingly determined to re-introduce it in a new shape, i.e.
without invalidating the doctrines he had preached concerning faith
and freedom. Hence, at times we find him speaking almost like an
apologist of the Church concerning this practice of earlier ages and
its wholesome effects. He insists, however, that no confession of all
mortal sins must be required, nor ought Confession to be made a duty,
but merely counselled.
In his work “Von der Beicht, ob der Bapst Macht habe zu gepieten”
(1521) he begins one section with the words: “Two reasons ought to make
us ready and willing to confess,” which he then proceeds to expound
quite in the manner of the olden Catholic works of instruction.[835]
Elsewhere he expresses his joy that Confession had been bestowed on the
Church of Christ, especially for the relief of troubled consciences;
Confession and Absolution must not be allowed to fall into disuse; to
despise so costly a treasure would be criminal.
Of Luther himself it is related again and again, that, after having
confessed, he received “Absolution,” either from Pastor Bugenhagen of
Wittenberg or from someone else.
The words Absolution and Confession must not, however, as already
hinted, be allowed to mislead those accustomed to their Catholic sense.
Sometimes in Catholic works we read quotations from Luther which convey
the wrong impression, that he had either retained the older doctrine
practically entire, or at least wished to do so. So little is this the
case, that, on the contrary, when he mentions Confession it is usually
only to rail at the “slavery” of conscience and the spiritual tyranny
of the past.[836] Absolution, according to him, could be received
“from the lips of the pastor, or of some other brother.”[837] Even
the ordinary preaching of the Gospel to the faithful he considers as
“fundamentally and at bottom an ‘_absolutio_’ wherein forgiveness of
sins is proclaimed.”[838] In Confession there was no “Sacrament” in
the sense that Baptism and the Supper were Sacraments, but merely “an
exercise of the virtue of Baptism,” an act in which the simple Word
became a means of grace. The Word was to arouse and awaken in the
heart of the Christian the assurance of forgiveness. The faith of the
penitent is the sole condition for the appropriation of the Divine
promises.[839] Of the way in which Luther in the Smaller Catechism
nevertheless emphasises the significance of the Absolution given by the
confessor,[840] Julius Köstlin says: “These statements of Luther’s are
in several ways lacking in clearness.”[841]
I must, in my trouble, Luther says elsewhere of Confession, seek
for comfort from my brother or neighbour, and “whatever consolation
he gives me is ratified by God in heaven [’_erunt soluta in cœlo_’
(Mat. xviii. 18)]”; “He consoles me in God’s stead and God Himself
speaks to me through him.” “When I receive absolution or seek for
comfort from my brother,” then “what I hear is the voice of the Holy
Ghost Himself.” “It is a wonderful thing, that a minister of the
Church or any brother should be ‘_minister regni Dei et vitæ æternæ,
remissionis peccatorum...._’”[842]
But all such private exercise of the power of the keys
notwithstanding, the public exercise by the ordinary ministers of
the Church was also to be held in honour; it was to take place “when
the whole body of the Church was assembled.”[843] In spite of the
opposition of some he was always in favour of the general absolution
being given during the service.[844] In this he followed the older
practice which still exists, according to which, out of devotion and
not with any idea of imparting a sacrament, the “_Misereatur_” and
“_Indulgentiam_” were said over the assembled faithful after they
had said the “_Confiteor_.” He also drew up a special form for this
general confession and absolution.[845]
But even such public Confession was not, however, to be made
obligatory; the very nature of Luther’s system forbade his setting
up rules and obligations. In the present matter Luther could not
sufficiently emphasise the Christian’s freedom, although this freedom,
as man is constituted, could not but render impossible any really
practical results. Hence Confession, private as well as public, was
not to be prescribed, so much so that “those who prefer to confess to
God alone and thereafter receive the Sacrament” are “quite at liberty
to do so.”[846] For Confession was after all merely a general or
particular confession of trouble of conscience or sinfulness, made in
order to obtain an assurance that the sins were all forgiven.
It was, however, of the utmost importance that the penitents should
declare whether they knew all that was necessary about Christ and
His saving Word, and that otherwise they should be instructed. “If
Christians are able to give an account of their faith,” Luther says
in 1540 of the practice prevailing at Wittenberg, “and display an
earnest desire to receive the Sacrament, then we do not compel them to
make a private Confession or to enumerate their sins.” For instance,
nobody thinks of compelling Master Philip (Melanchthon). “Our main
reason for retaining Confession is for the private rehearsal of the
Catechism.”[847]
In 1532, amidst the disturbance caused by Dionysius Melander, the
Zwinglian faction gained the upper hand at Frankfort on the Maine,
and the preachers, supported by the so-called fanatics, condemned and
mocked at the Confession, which, according to the Smaller Catechism,
was to be made to a confessor, to be duly addressed as “Your
Reverence.” Luther, in his “Brieff an die zu Franckfort am Meyn” (Dec.
1532), accordingly set forth his ideas on Confession, in what manner
it was to be retained and rendered useful.[848] “We do not force
anyone to go to Confession,” he there writes, “as all our writings
prove, just as we do not enquire who rejects our Catechism and our
teaching.” He had no wish to drive proud spirits “into Christ’s
Kingdom by force.” As against the self-accusation of all mortal sins
required in Popery he had introduced a “great and sublime freedom” for
the quieting of “agonised consciences”; the penitent need only confess
“some few sins which oppress him most,” even this is not required of
“those who know what sin really is,” “like our Pastor [Bugenhagen] and
our Vicar, Master Philip.” “But because of the dear young people who
are daily growing up and of the common folk who understand but little,
we retain the usage in order that they may be trained in Christian
discipline and understanding. For the object of such Confession is not
merely that we may hear the sins, but that we may learn whether they
are acquainted with the Our Father, the Creed, the Ten Commandments
and all that is comprised in the Catechism.... Where can this be
better done, and when is it more necessary than when they are about to
approach the Sacrament?”[849]
“Thus, previously [to the Supper], the common people are to be
examined and made to say whether they know the articles of the
Catechism and understand what it is to sin against them, and if they
will for the future learn more and amend, and otherwise are not to
be admitted to the Sacrament.” “But if a pastor who is unable at all
times and places to preach God’s Word to the people, takes advantage
of such time and place as offers when they come to Confession, isn’t
there just the devil of a row! As if, forsooth, he were acting
contrary to God’s command, and as if those fanatics were saints, who
would prevent him from teaching God’s Word at such a time and place,
when in reality we are bound to teach it in all places and at all
times when or wheresoever we can.”[850]
This instruction, which is the “main reason” for retaining Confession,
is to be followed, according to the same letter, by “the _Absolutio_”
pronounced by the preacher in God’s stead, i.e. by the word of the
confessor which may “comfort the heart and confirm it in the faith.”
Of this same word Luther says: “Who is there who has climbed so high
as to be able to dispense with or to despise God’s Word?”[851]
It is in the light of such explanations that we must appreciate the
fine things in praise of Confession, so frequently quoted, which Luther
says in his letter to Frankfurt.
Luther goes on to make an admission which certainly does him honour:
“And for this [the consolation and strength it affords] I myself stand
most in need of Confession, and neither will nor can do without it; for
it has given me, and still gives me daily, great comfort when I am sad
and in trouble. But the fanatics, because they trust in themselves and
are unacquainted with sadness, are ready to despise this medicine and
solace.”
He had already said: “If thousands and thousands of worlds were mine, I
should still prefer to lose everything rather than that one little bit
of this Confession should be lost to the churches. Nay, I would prefer
the Popish tyranny, with its feasts, fasts, vestments, holy places,
tonsures, cowls and whatever I might bear without damage to the faith,
rather than that Christians should be deprived of Confession. For it
is the Christian’s first, most necessary and useful school, where he
learns to understand and to practise God’s Word and his faith, which
cannot be so thoroughly done in public lectures and sermons.”[852]
“Christians are not to be deprived of Confession.” On this, and for the
same reasons, Luther had already insisted in the booklet on Confession
he had published in 1529. The booklet first appeared as an appendix
to an edition of his Greater Catechism published in that year, and is
little more than an amended version of Rörer’s notes of his Palm Sunday
sermon in 1529.[853]
In this booklet on Confession, also entitled “A Short Exhortation to
Confession,”[854] he says of the “secret Confession made to a brother
alone”: “Where there is something special that oppresses or troubles
us, worries us and will give us no rest, or if we find ourselves
halting in our faith,” we should “complain of this to a brother and
seek counsel, consolation and strength.” “Where a heart feels its
sinfulness and is desirous of comfort, it has here a sure refuge
where it may find and hear God’s Word.” “Whoever is a Christian, or
wishes to become one, is hereby given the good advice to go and fetch
the precious treasure.” “Thus we teach now what an excellent, costly
and consoling thing Confession is, and admonish all not to despise
so fine a possession.” As the “parched and hunted hart” panteth
after the fountains, so ought our soul to pant after “God’s Word or
Absolution.”--The zeal expected of the penitent is well described, but
here, as is so often the case with Luther, we again find the mistake
resulting from his false idealism, viz. that, after doing away with
all obligation properly so called, personal fervour and the faith he
preached would continue to supply the needful.
Before Luther’s day Confession had been extolled on higher grounds
than merely on account of the comfort and instruction it afforded. It
had been recognised as a true Sacrament instituted by Christ for the
forgiveness of sins, and committed by Him with the words “Whose sins
you shall forgive,” etc. (John xx. 22 f.), to the exercise of duly
appointed ministers. Yet the earlier religious literature had not
been behindhand in pointing out how great a boon it was for the human
heart to be able to pour its troubles into the ears of a wise and
kindly guide, who could impart a true absolution and pour the balm of
consolation and the light of instruction into the soul kneeling humbly
before him as God’s own representative.
As regards the instruction, on which Luther lays such stress as the
“main reason” for retaining the practice, the Catholic Confession
handbooks of that period, particularly some recently re-edited, show
how careful the Church was about this matter.
Franz Falk has recently made public three such handbooks, of which
very few copies were hitherto known.[855] One of these is the work
of a priest of Frankfurt a. M., Magister Johann Wolff (Lupi), and
was first published in 1478; the second is a block-book containing a
preparation for Confession, probably printed at Nuremberg in 1475;
the third an Augsburg manual of Confession printed in 1504. The
last two were intended more for popular use and give the sins in the
order of the Decalogue. The first, by Wolff, pastor of St. Peter’s
at Frankfurt, consists of two parts, one for children, the other for
“older people, learned or unlearned,” containing examinations of
conscience, very detailed and explicit in some parts, into the sins
against the Ten Commandments, the seven capital sins, and, finally,
the sins committed with “the five outward senses.” The examination of
conscience for children, for the sake of instruction also includes
the Our Father, Hail Mary, Creed and Decalogue, also the list of
capital sins, Sacraments and Eight Beatitudes. The copious Latin tags
from Peter Lombard, Scotus, Gerson, etc., point to the manual having
been meant primarily as a guide for the clergy, on whom an appendix
also impresses the advantages of a frequent explanation of the Ten
Commandments from the pulpit. Schoolmasters too, so the manual says,
should also be urged to instruct on the Commandments those committed
to their care. Luther’s manual on Confession contains so many echoes
of Wolff’s work (or of other Catholic penitential handbooks) that one
of Wolff’s Protestant editors remarks: “Such agreement is certainly
more than a mere chance coincidence,” and, further: “It is difficult
in view of the great resemblance of thought, and in places even of
language, not to assume that the younger man is indebted to his
predecessor.”[856] However this may be, Wolff’s work, though holding
no very high place as regards either arrangement or style, clearly
expresses the general trend of the Catholic teaching on morality
at that time, and refutes anew the unfounded charge that religious
instruction for the people was entirely absent.
“We see how mature and keen in many particulars was the moral sense
in that much-abused period.... The author is not satisfied with
merely an outward, pharisaical righteousness, but the spirit is what
he everywhere insists on.... He also defines righteousness ... as
absolute uprightness of spirit, thankful, devoted love of God and pure
charity towards our neighbour, free from all ulterior motive.” These
words, of the “Leipziger Zeitung” (“Wissenschaftliche Beilage,” No.
10, 1896), regarding the Leipzig “Beichtspiegel” of 1495, Falk applies
equally to Wolff’s handbook for Confession.[857]
This latter instruction dwells particularly on the need of
“contrition, sorrow and grief for sin” on the part of the penitent.
N. Paulus, in several articles, has furnished superabundant proof,
that in those years, which some would have us believe were addicted
to the crassest externalism, the need of contrition in Confession was
earnestly dwelt upon in German religious writings.[858]
Luther, however, even in the early days of his change, under the
influence of a certain distaste and prejudice in favour of his own
pet ideas, had conceived an aversion for Confession. Here again his
opposition was based on purely personal, psychological grounds. The
terrors he had endured in Confession owing to his curious mental
constitution, his enmity to all so-called holiness-by-works--leading
him to undervalue the Church’s ancient institution of Confession--and
the steadily growing influence of his prejudices and polemics, alone
explain how he descended so often to the most odious and untrue
misrepresentations of Confession as practised by the Papists.
What in the depths of his heart he really desired, and what he openly
called for, viz. a Confession which should heal the wounds of the soul
and, by an enlightened faith, promote moral betterment--that, alas, he
himself had destroyed with a violent hand.
In his letter to Frankfurt quoted above he abuses the Catholic system
of Confession because it requires the admission of all mortal sins, and
calls it “a great and everlasting martyrdom,” “trumped up as a good
work whereby God may be placated.” He calumniates the Catholic past by
declaring it did nothing but “count up sins” and that “the insufferable
burden, and the impossibility of obeying the Papal law caused such
fear and distress to timorous souls that they were driven to despair.”
And, in order that the most odious charge may not be wanting, he
concludes: “This brought in money and goods, so that it became an idol
throughout the whole world, but it was no doctrine, examination or
exercise leading to the confession and acknowledgment of Christ.”[859]
The fables which he bolstered up on certain abuses, of which even the
Papal penitentiary was guilty, were only too readily believed by the
masses.[860]
_Church Music._
In order to enliven the church services Luther greatly favoured
congregational singing. Of his important and successful labours in this
direction we shall merely say here, that he himself composed canticles
instinct with melody and force, which were either set to music by
others or sung to olden Catholic tunes, and became hugely popular
among Protestants, chiefly because their wording expresses so well the
feelings of the assembled congregation. One of Luther’s Hymnbooks, with
twenty-four hymns composed by himself, appeared in 1524.[861]
Music, particularly religious music, he loved and cherished, yielding
himself entirely to the enjoyment of its inspiring and ennobling
influence. As a schoolboy he had earned his bread by singing; at the
University he delighted his comrades by his playing on the lute; later
he never willingly relinquished music, and took care that the hours of
recreation should be gladdened by the singing of various motets.[862]
Music, he said, dispelled sad thoughts and was a marvellous cure for
melancholy. In his Table-Talk he describes the moral influence of music
in language truly striking.[863] “My heart overflows and expands to
music; it has so often refreshed and delivered me amidst the worst
troubles,” thus to the musician Senfl at Munich when asking him to
compose a motet.[864] He supplied an Introduction in the shape of a
poem entitled “Dame Music” to Johann Walther’s “The Praise and Prize
of the lovely art of Music” (1538). It commences:[865] There can be no
ill-will here--Where all sing with voices clear--Hate or envy, wrath or
rage,--When sweet strains our minds engage. Being himself conversant
with musical composition, he took pleasure in Walther’s description
of counterpoint and in his ingenious comparison of the sequence of
melodies to a troop of boys at play.
Grauert admirably groups together “Luther’s poetic talent, the gift of
language, which enabled him so to master German, his work for German
hymnology, his enthusiastic love of music, of which he well knew the
importance as a moral factor, and his familiarity with the higher
forms of polyphonic composition.” He also remarks quite rightly that
these favourable traits had been admitted unreservedly by Johannes
Janssen.[866]
2. Emotional Character and Intellectual Gifts
The traits mentioned above could hardly be duly appreciated unless we
also took into account certain natural qualities in Luther from which
his depth of feeling sprang.
A Catholic has recently called him an “emotional man,” and, so far
as thereby his great gifts of intellect and will are not called into
question, the description may be allowed to stand.[867] Especially
is this apparent in his peculiar humour, which cannot fail to charm
by its freshness and spontaneity all who know his writings and his
Table-Talk, even though his witticisms quite clearly often served to
screen his bitter vexation, or to help him to react against depression,
and were frequently disfigured by obscenity and malice.[868] It is a
more grateful task to observe the deep feeling expressed in his popular
treatment of religious topics. Johannes Janssen declares that he finds
in him “more than once a depth of religious grasp which reminds one
of the days of German mysticism,”[869] while George Evers, in a work
otherwise hostile to Luther, admits: “We must acknowledge that a truly
Christian credulity peeps out everywhere, and, particularly in the
Table-Talk, is so simple and childlike as to appeal to every heart.”
Evers even adds: “His religious life as pictured there gives the
impression of a man of prayer.”[870]
The circumstantial and reliable account given by Johann Cochlæus of
an interview which he had with Luther at Worms in 1521 gives us a
certain glimpse into the latter’s feelings at that critical juncture.
After holding a lengthy disputation together, the pair withdrew into
another room where Cochlæus implored his opponent to admit his errors
and to make an end of the scandal he was giving to souls. Both were so
much moved that the tears came to their eyes. “I call God to witness,”
writes Cochlæus, “that I spoke to him faithfully and with absolute
conviction.” He pointed out to him as a friend how willing the Pope and
all his opponents were to forgive him; he was perfectly ready to admit
and condemn the abuses in connection with the indulgences against which
Luther had protested; his religious apostasy and the revolt of the
peasants whom he was leading astray were, however, a different matter.
The matter was frankly discussed between the two, partly in German,
partly in Latin. Luther finally mastered the storm obviously raging
within and brought the conversation to an end by stating that it did
not rest with him to undo what had been done, and that greater and more
learned men than he were behind it. On bidding him farewell, Cochlæus
assured him with honest regret that he would continue the literary
feud; Luther, for his part, promised to answer him vigorously.[871]
Luther’s mental endowments were great and unique.
Nature had bestowed on him such mental gifts as must astonish all, the
more they study his personality. His extraordinary success was due in
great part to these rare qualities, which were certainly calculated
to make of him a man truly illustrious had he not abused them. His
lively reason, quick grasp and ready tongue, his mind, so well stocked
with ideas, and, particularly, the inexhaustible fertility of his
imagination, allowing him to express himself with such ease and
originality, enchanted all who came into contact with him.
Pollich of Mellerstadt, one of the most highly respected Professors
of the Wittenberg University, said of Luther, when as yet the latter
was scarcely known: “Keep an eye on that young monk, Master Martin
Luther, he has a reason so fine and keen as I have not come across
in all my life; he will certainly become a man of eminence.”[872]
Jonas, his friend, assures us that others too, amongst them Lang and
Staupitz, admitted they had never known a man of such extraordinary
talent.[873] Urban Rhegius, who visited him in 1534, in the report he
gives shows himself quite overpowered by Luther’s mind and talent: “He
is a theologian such as we rarely meet. I have always thought much
of Luther, but now I think of him more highly than ever. For now I
have seen and heard what cannot be explained in writing to anyone not
present.... I will tell you how I feel. It is true we all of us write
occasionally and expound the Scriptures, but, compared with Luther, we
are children and mere schoolboys.”[874]
His friends generally stood in a certain awe of his greatness,
though, in their case, we can account otherwise for their admiration.
Later writers too, even amongst the Catholics, felt in the imposing
language of his writings the working of a powerful mind, much as
they regretted his abuse of his gifts. “His mind was both sharp and
active,” such was the opinion of Sforza Pallavicini, the Jesuit
author of a famous history of the Council of Trent; “he was made for
learned studies and pursued them without fatigue to either mind or
body. His learning seemed his greatest possession, and this he was
wont to display in his discourse. In him felicity of expression was
united with a stormy energy. Thereby he won the applause of those
who trust more to appearance than to reality. His talents filled
him with a self-reliance which the respect shown him by the masses
only intensified.”[875] “Luther’s mind was a fertile one,” he writes
elsewhere, “but its fruits were more often sour than ripe, more often
abortions of a giant than viable offspring.”[876] His alert and
too-prolific fancy even endangered his other gifts by putting in the
shade his real intellectual endowments. “His imagination,” Albert
Weiss truly says, “was, next to his will, the most strongly developed
of his inner faculties, and as powerful as it was clear. Herein
chiefly lies the secret of his power of language.”[877]
To his temperamental and intellectual qualities, which undoubtedly
stamped his works with the impress of a “giant,” we must add his
obstinate strength of will and his extraordinary tenacity of purpose.
Were it possible to separate his will from his aims and means, and
to appreciate it apart, then one could scarcely rate it high enough.
Thousands, even of the bravest, would have quailed before the
difficulties he had to face both without and within his camp. The
secret of his success lay simply in his ability to rise superior to
every difficulty, thanks to his defiance and power of will. Humanly
it is hard to understand how all attacks and defeats only served to
embolden him. Protestants have spoken of the “demoniacal greatness”
manifest in Luther, have called him a man of “huge proportions and
power” in whose “breast two worlds wrestled,” and, on account of his
“heroic character,” have even claimed that history should overlook “the
vices proper to heroes.”[878]
Among Catholic writers the earlier Döllinger, for all his aversion for
Luther’s purpose and the weapons he employed, nevertheless says of
him: “If such a one is justly to be styled a great man, who, thanks
to his mighty gifts and powers, accomplishes great things and brings
millions of minds under his sway--then the son of the peasant of Möhra
must be reckoned among the great, yea, among the greatest of men.”[879]
Upon the disputed definition of “greatness” we cannot enter here. (See
vol. vi., xl., 1.) Yet, in view of the intellectual gifts lavished on
Luther, Döllinger’s words are undoubtedly not far away from the mark,
particularly when we consider his gigantic capacity for work and the
amazing extent of his literary labours, distracted though he was by
other cares.
We have already had occasion to give the long list of the works he
penned in 1529 and 1530,[880] and we may add some further examples. In
1521, in which year he lost over five weeks in travelling, not to speak
of the correspondence and other business which claimed his attention
in that exciting period of his life, he still found time to write more
than twenty works of varying length which in the Weimar edition cover
985 large octavo pages; he also translated a book by Melanchthon into
German, commenced his translation of the Bible and his church Postils.
In 1523 he produced no less than twenty-four books and pamphlets, and,
besides this, his lectures on Deuteronomy (247 pages in the Weimar
edition) and a German translation of the whole Pentateuch. He also
preached about 150 sermons, planned other works and wrote the usual
flood of letters, of which only a few, viz. 112, have been preserved,
amongst them being some practically treatises in themselves and which
duly appeared in print. Even in 1545, when already quite broken down
in health and when two months were spent in travelling, he managed
with a last effort, inspired by his deadly hate, to compose even so
considerable a book as his “Wider das Bapstum zu Rom vom Teuffel
gestifft,” as well as other smaller writings and the usual number of
private letters, circulars, and memoranda.[881] At the very end he told
his friend, the preacher Jacob Probst, that he meant to work without
intermission though old and weary, with a failing eyesight and a body
racked with pain.
These labours, of which the simple enumeration of his books gives
us an inkling, even the most fertile mind could have performed only
by utilising every moment of his time and by renouncing all the
allurements to distraction and repose. The early hours of the morning
found Luther regularly in his study, and, in the evening, after his
conversation with his friends, he was wont to betake himself early
to bed so as to be able to enjoy that good sleep, without which, he
declared, he could not meet the demands made upon him.
That, however, behind all his fiery zeal for work, certain moral
influences not of the highest also had a share is obvious from what has
been said previously.
3. Intercourse with Friends. The Interior of the former Augustinian
Monastery
Hitherto we have been considering the favourable traits in Luther’s
character as a public man; turning to his quieter life at Wittenberg,
we shall find no lack of similar evidences.[882] We must begin by
asking impartially whether the notorious Table-Talk does not reveal a
better side of his character.
The question must be answered in the affirmative by every unprejudiced
reader of those notes. Luther’s gifts of mind and temperament, his
versatility, liveliness of imagination, easy use of Scripture and
insight even into worldly matters; further his rare talent of simple
narration, and not seldom the very subjects he chooses give a real
worth to Luther’s Table-Talk, notwithstanding all that may be urged
against it. It is accordingly the historian’s duty faithfully to
portray its better side.
_The more favourable side of the Table-Talk._
Any comprehensive judgment on the Table-Talk as a whole is out of the
question; with its changing forms and colours and its treatment of the
subjects it is altogether too kaleidoscopic. Again, in conjunction
with what is good and attractive, frivolous, nay, even offensive and
objectionable subjects are dealt with, for which the reader is in no
wise prepared.[883]
It is necessary to emphasise the fact--which may be new to some--that
to regard the Table-Talk as a hotch-potch of foul sayings is to do it
an injustice. Catholics, as a matter of course, are used to finding
in anti-Lutheran polemics plentiful quotations from it not at all to
Luther’s credit; of its better contents, a knowledge of which is of
even greater importance in forming an opinion of his character, no hint
is contained in this sort of literature. Some are even ignorant that
Protestant writers have more than compensated for this undue stress on
the unfavourable side of the Table-Talk by the attractive selection
they give from its finer parts.
In point of fact the subject of Luther’s conversations is, not
infrequently, the attributes of God; for instance, His mercy and love;
the duties of the faithful towards God and their moral obligations
in whatever state of life they be placed; hints to the clergy on the
best way to preach or to instruct the young; not to speak of other
observations regarding neighbourly charity, the vices of the age and
the virtues or faults of great personages of that day, or of the past.
Luther was fond of discoursing on subjects which, in his opinion, would
prove profitable to those present, though often his object was merely
to enliven and amuse the company.
The tone and the choice of his more serious discourses frequently show
us that he was not unmindful of the fact, that his words would be
heard by others beyond the narrow circle of his private guests; he was
aware that what he said was noted down, and not unfrequently requested
the reporters to commit this or that to writing, knowing very well
that such notes would circulate.[884] At times, however, he seemed to
become forgetful of this, and allowed observations to escape him which
caused many of his oldest admirers to regret the publication of the
Table-Talk. A large number of statements made by him on the spur of the
moment must, moreover, not be taken too seriously, for they are either
in contradiction with other utterances or are practically explained
away elsewhere.
Thus, for instance, in a conversation in the winter of 1542-1543,
occur the following words which really do him honour: “God has
preserved the Church by means of the schools; they it is that keep
the Church standing. Schools are not very imposing as to their
exterior, yet they are of the greatest use. It was to the schools
that the little boys owed their knowledge of the Paternoster and the
Creed, and the Church has been wonderfully preserved by means of the
small schools.”[885]--Yet, at an earlier date, he had said just the
contrary, viz. that before his day the young had been allowed to drift
to wreck and ruin, owing to entire lack of instruction.
On certain religious subjects he could speak with deep feeling.[886]
Compare, for instance, what he says of Christ’s intercourse with His
disciples.
“In what a friendly way,” Luther remarks, “did He behave towards His
disciples! How charming were all His dealings with them! I quite
believe what is related of Peter, viz. that, after Christ’s Ascension,
he was always weeping and wiping his eyes with a handkerchief till
they grew quite red; when asked the cause of his grief, he replied,
he could not help shedding tears when he remembered the friendly
intercourse they had had with Christ the Lord. Christ indeed treats
us just as He did His disciples, if only we would but believe it; but
our eyes are not open to the fact. It was a real wonder how they [the
Apostles] were so altered in mind at Pentecost. Ah, the disciples must
have been fine fellows to have been witnesses of such things and to
have had such fellowship with Christ the Lord!”[887]
Immediately after this, however, we hear him inveighing against the
Pope with statements incredibly false,[888] whilst, just before, in
another conversation, he had introduced his favourite error concerning
Justification by Faith.[889]
It may suffice to keep to the dozen pages or so[890] from which the
above kindlier samples were extracted, to become acquainted with the
wealth of good interspersed amongst so much that is worthless, and
at the same time to appreciate how lively his mind and his powers of
observation still remained even when increasing years and persistent
bad health were becoming a burden to him.
As to the way in which his then sayings were handed down, we may
state, that, in the winter of 1542-1543, Caspar Heydenreich, who had
already officiated as pastor of Joachimstal, was present at Luther’s
table and wrote down these and other remarks as they dropped from
the speaker’s lips; they were afterwards incorporated in Mathesius’
collection. In the original they are partly in Latin, partly in
German, and betray not the slightest attempt at polish. The reason
that we thus find Latin passages in reports of German conversations is
that the reporter, in order to take down more rapidly what he heard,
at times made use of shorthand, then only employed for Latin. Others
who reported the Table-Talk had recourse to the same device. The
consequence is, that, in the recent German editions of the Table-Talk,
we find in one and the same conversation some sentences in the Old
German Luther actually used, and others in present-day German, the
latter being merely translations from the Latin.
After discoursing at length on the fact that schools ought to be
carefully cherished for the sake of the coming generation of Church
teachers, he says: “The work of the schools is not brilliant in the
eyes of the world, but it is of the greatest utility.” (No. 609; then
follows the praise of the old schools already recorded.)--“Wealth is
the most insignificant thing in the world, the meanest gift in God’s
power to bestow on man. What is it compared with the Word of God?
Indeed, what is it compared with bodily endowments, or with beauty,
or with the gifts of the soul? and yet people fret so much for it.
Material, formal, efficient and final causes here fare badly. For this
reason the Almighty usually gives riches to rude donkeys upon whom He
bestows nothing else” (611).
Luther relates incidentally that his father Hans, who died at Mansfeld
in 1530, when asked on his death-bed whether he believed in the
Apostles’ Creed, replied: “He would indeed be a scoundrel who refused
to believe that.” “That,” aptly remarked Luther, “is a voice from the
old world”; whereupon Melanchthon chimed in: “Happy those who die in
the knowledge of Christ as did your [daughter] Magdalene [† Sep. 20,
1542]; the older we grow the more foolish we become.... When we grow
up we begin to dispute and want to be wise, and yet we are the biggest
fools” (615).
According to Luther, God’s most grievous wrath then rested on the
Jews. They are blinded, pray fanatically and yet are not heard. “Oh,
dear God, rather than remain silent do Thou punish us with pestilence,
the French disease and whatever other dreadful maladies the soldiers
curse. God says: I have stretched out My hands; come, give ear, draw
nigh to Me! [The Jews reply]: We won’t. [God says]: You have Isaias;
hear him. [They scream]: Yah, we will kill him! [God says]: Here is
My Son! [They reply]: Out on Him! Hence Our Lord God now treats them
as we see. That is how abandoned children fare, who refuse to obey
their parents and are therefore deserted by them. No one has ever
written concerning this wrath of God, nor is anyone able to do so; no
eloquence can plumb the depths of this wrath. O Heavenly Father--[this
he said with clasped hands]--allow us to enjoy the sunshine and
permit us not to fall away from the Word! Just fancy, for fifteen
hundred years the Jews have groaned under His Wrath! And what will
be the end of it all? Alas, there will be a dreadful scene in hell!”
(608).
Against the Jews he was very bitter. It was related at table,
that, in spite of the two books Luther had recently published, the
Hebrews stood in favour with the Counts of Mansfeld, and, from
their synagogue, had even dared to hurl at an Eisleben preacher the
opprobrious epithet of Goim. Luther replied that if he were pastor and
Court Chaplain there like Cœlius, or even a simple preacher, he would
at once resign his post. When it was remarked that the Jews knew how
to curry favour with the great, his comment was: “The devil can do
much.” On being asked whether it would be right to box the ears of a
Jew who uttered a blasphemy, he replied, “Certainly; I for one would
smack him on the jaw. Were I able, I would knock him down and stab
him in my anger. If it is lawful, according to both the human and the
Divine law, to kill a robber, then it is surely even more permissible
to slay a blasphemer.” To the observation of one of his guests that
the Jews boasted, that, of the two, the Christians were the worse
usurers, Luther said: “That is quite true. At Leipzigk there are
greater usurers than the Jews. But a distinction must be drawn.” Among
the Jews usury is made the rule, whereas amongst the Christians it is
repressed. “We preach against it and are heartily opposed to it; with
them this is not the case” (628).
In a similar strain, in the dozen pages under consideration, he
touches on many other instructive subjects, whether connected with
questions of the day, or with religion, or the Bible. He portrays with
a clear hand the dominant idea of the Book of Job, in comparison with
which all the dramatic force of the Greek plays was as nothing (616);
he expounds the narratives of Christ’s Prayer in the Garden of Olives,
where He suffered indescribable pains for our sins (626); in answer to
a query he speaks of the anointing of Our Lord’s feet by Magdalene,
and observes, referring to the censure drawn from Judas by his
avarice: “That is the way of the world and the devil; what should be
blamed is praised, and what should be praised is blamed” (627). What
he says of the vast number of the slain, alluded to so frequently in
the Old Testament, was probably also called forth by some questioner
(612). Amidst this recur new invectives against the Jews and their
magic; never ought we to eat or drink with them (619); also against
the Turks and their bigotry and unbelief; the latter resembled the
fanatics in that, like them, they refused to doubt their revelations;
this he proved by certain instances (620). He speaks of the strong
faith of simple Christians with feeling and not without envy (614). He
extols the power of prayer for others, and proves it not merely from
Biblical texts and examples, but also from his own experience; “we,
too, prayed Philip back to life. Verily prayer can do much.... God
does not reward it with a certain, fixed measure, but with a measure
pressed and running over, as He says.... A powerful thing is prayer,
if only I could believe it, for God has bound and pledged Himself by
it” (617).
Dealing with astrology, he demonstrates its folly by a lengthy and
very striking argument; when it was objected that the reformation he
was carrying out had also been predicted by the stars at the time of
his birth, he replied: “Oh no, that is another matter! That is purely
the work of God. You will never persuade me otherwise!” (625).
As to practical questions, he speaks of the doings of the Electoral
marriage courts in certain cases (621); of severity in the up-bringing
of children (624); of the choice of godparents for Baptism (620); of
the authority of guardians in the marriage of their wards (613); and
of what was required of those who dispensed the Supper (618).
On one occasion, when the conversion of the Jews at the end of the
world was being discussed, the “Doctoress” (Catherine) intervened in
the conversation with a Biblical quotation, but her contribution (John
x. 16) was rejected in a friendly way by Luther as mistaken.
In these pages of the Table-Talk unseemly speeches or expressions
such as call for censure elsewhere do not occur, though the Pope and
the Papacy are repeatedly made the butt of misrepresentation and
abuse (610, 616, 619); as was only to be expected, we find here again
Luther’s favourite assertion that the Roman doctrine of works is a
gross error very harmful to souls (623); in support of his opinion
Luther gives a long string of Bible texts.
Apart from the abuse just referred to and some other details these
few leaves, taken at haphazard from the Table-Talk, are certainly not
discreditable to Luther. Beside these might moreover be placed, as we
have already admitted elsewhere, many other pages the contents of which
are equally unexceptionable.
It is naturally not the task or duty of Catholic controversialists to
fill their works with statements from the Table-Talk such as the above;
they would nevertheless do well always to bear in mind that many such
favourable utterances occur in Luther’s works with which moreover the
Protestants are as a rule perfectly familiar. The latter, indeed, who
often are acquainted only with these better excerpts from Luther’s
books, sermons, letters or Table-Talk, are not unnaturally disposed
to view with suspicion those writers who bestow undue prominence on
unfavourable portions of his works, torn from their context.
Unless Catholic polemics contrive to look at things from their
opponents’ point of view, their success must always be limited; short
of this they run the risk of being accused of being ignorant of
what tells in Luther’s favour, or of not giving it due weight. All
controversy should in reality be conducted in a friendly spirit, and,
in the discussion of Luther, such a spirit joined with a broad-minded
appreciation of what is good in the opposite party cannot fail to
be productive of happy results. How far Protestants have acted in
this spirit is, alas, plain to all who have had dealings with them.
There can be no question but that certain excesses perpetrated on the
opposite side go far to explain, if not to excuse, the methods adopted
by some of the champions of Catholicism.
_Kindlier Traits Evinced by Luther._
The great veneration felt for Luther by most of his pupils,
particularly by those who were intimate with him, enables us to see the
impression his talents made on others. It is, of course, probable that
their mental submission to him was in part due to the feeling, that
it was an exceptional honour to be accounted friends of a man famous
throughout the world and so distinguished by his extraordinary success;
yet it is equally certain that it was his own peculiar charm which
caused not merely young students, such as those who noted down the
Table-Talk, but even mature and experienced men, to look up to him with
respect and affection and voluntarily to subject themselves to his mind
and his will. The fact is, in Luther a powerful and domineering talent
existed side by side with great familiarity in consorting with others
and a natural gift of making himself loved. The unshakable confidence
in God on which he and his followers seemed to lean in every reverse
they met, perhaps impressed people more than anything else.
“His earnestness,” wrote a devoted young follower of his, “is so
tempered with gladness and friendliness that one longs to live with
him; it seems as though God wished to demonstrate how blissful and
joyous his Evangel is, not merely by his teaching, but even by
his conduct.” Thus the Swiss student, Johann Kessler, who became
acquainted with Luther after his return from the Wartburg.[891]
Another voice from the same period enthusiastically extols his
friendly ways and his winning speech in his dealings with his pupils,
also the power of his words “which cast such a spell over the hearts
of his hearers that anyone, who is not made of stone, having once
heard him, yearns to hear him again.” Thus his disciple Albert
Burrer.[892]
Mathesius, one of his busier pupils, declares: “The man was full
of grace and the Holy Ghost. Hence all who sought counsel from
him as a prophet of God, found what they desired.”[893] Often, he
remarks, difficult questions from Scripture were submitted to him (in
conversation at table) which he answered both plainly and concisely.
And if anyone contradicted him he took no offence but skilfully put
his gainsayer in the wrong. The Doctor knew so well how to bring in
his stories and sayings and apply them at the proper juncture that it
was a real pleasure and comfort to listen to him.[894] “Amongst his
other great virtues he was very easily contented, and also extremely
kind.”[895]
Spangenberg, Aurifaber, Cordatus and other pupils were, so to speak,
quite under his spell. Hieronymus Weller, whom Luther frequently
sought to encourage in his fits of depression, remarked indeed on one
occasion that the difference in age, and his reverence for Luther,
prevented him from speaking and chatting as confidentially as he would
have liked with the great man.[896] On the other hand, the Humanist,
Peter Mosellanus, who was at one time much attached to him and never
altogether abandoned his cause, says: “In daily life and in his
intercourse with others he is polite and friendly; there is nothing
stoical or proud about him; he is affable to everyone. In company he
converses cheerfully and pleasantly, is lively and gay, always looks
merry, cheerful and amiable however hard pressed by his opponents,
so that one may well believe he does not act in such weighty matters
without God’s assistance.”[897]
Melanchthon, particularly in his early days, as our readers already
know, expressed great reverence and devotion for Luther. “You know,”
he wrote to Spalatin during his friend’s stay at the Wartburg, “how
carefully we must guard this earthen vessel which contains so great a
treasure.... The earth holds nothing more divine than him.”[898] After
Luther’s death, in spite of the previous misunderstandings, he said of
him in a panegyric addressed to the students: “Alas, the chariot of
Israel and the horseman thereof, who ruled the Church in these latter
years of her existence, has departed.”[899]
Luther was often to prove that the strong impression made by his
personality was alone able to gain the day in cases of difficulty,
to break down opposition and to ensure the successful carrying out of
hardy plans. Seldom indeed did those about him offer any objection,
for he possessed that gift, so frequently observed in men of strong
character, of exercising, in every matter great or small, a kind of
suggestive influence over those who approached him. He possessed an
inner, unseen power which seemed to triumph over all, ... even over the
claims of truthfulness and logic;[900] besides this, he was gifted with
an imposing presence and an uncanny glance. He was by no means curt
in his answers, but spoke freely to everyone in a manner calculated
to awaken the confidence and unlock the hearts of his hearers. Of
his talkativeness he himself once said: “I don’t believe the Emperor
[Charles V.] says so much in a year as I do in a day.”[901]
* * * * *
His “disinterestedness which led him to care but little about money and
worldly goods”[902] increased the respect felt for him and his work.
So little did he care about heaping up riches, that, when scolding the
Wittenbergers on account of their avarice, he could say that “though
poor, he found more pleasure in what was given him for his needs than
the rich and opulent amongst them did in their own possessions.”[903]
So entirely was he absorbed in his public controversy that he paid too
little attention to his own requirements, particularly in his bachelor
days; he even relates how, before he took a wife, he had for a whole
year not made his bed, or had it made for him, so that his sweat caused
it to rot. “I was so weary, overworked all the day, that I threw
myself on the bed and knew nothing about it.”[904] He was never used
to excessive comfort or to indulgence in the finer pleasures of the
table. In every respect, in conversation and intercourse with others
and in domestic life, he was a lover of simplicity. In this he was ever
anxious to set a good example to his fellow-workers.
Although he frequently accepted with gratitude presents from the
great, yet on occasion he was not above cautioning givers of the
danger such gifts involved, when the “eyes of the whole world are
upon us.”[905] In 1542, when there was a prospect of his receiving
from his friend Amsdorf, the new “bishop” of Naumburg, presents out
of the estates of the bishopric, he twice wrote to him to refrain
from sending him anything, even a single hare, because “our courtly
centaurs [the selfish and rapacious nobles] must be given no pretext
for venting their glowing hate against us on the trumped-up charge that
we were desirous of securing gain through you.” “They have gulped down
everything without compunction, but still would blame us were we to
accept a paltry gift of game. Let them feed in God’s or another’s [the
devil’s] name, so long as we are not accused of greed.”[906] Döllinger
speaks of Luther as “a sympathetic friend, devoid of avarice and greed
of money, and a willing helper of others.”[907]
He was always ready to assist the poor with open-handed and kindly
liberality, and his friends especially, when in trouble or distress,
could reckon on his charity.
When his own means were insufficient he sought by word of mouth or by
letter to enlist the sympathy of others, of friends in the town, or
even of the Elector himself, in the cause of the indigent. On more
than one occasion his good nature was unfairly taken advantage of.
This, however, did not prevent his pleading for the poor who flocked
to Wittenberg from all quarters and were wont to address themselves to
him. Thus, for instance, in 1539 we have a note in which he appealed to
certain “dear gentlemen” to save a “pious and scholarly youth” from the
“pangs of hunger” by furnishing him with 30 Gulden; he himself was no
longer able to afford the gifts he had daily to bestow, though he would
be willing, in case of necessity, to contribute half the sum.[908]
Many of the feeble and oppressed experienced his help in the law. He
reminds the lawyers how hard it is for the poor to comply with the
legal formalities necessary for their protection. On one occasion, when
it was a question of the defence of a poor woman, he says: “You know
Dr. Martin is not only a theologian and the champion of the faith, but
also an advocate of the poor, who troop to him from every place and
corner and demand his aid and his intercession with the authorities, so
that he would have enough to do even if no other burden rested on his
shoulders. But Dr. Martin loves to serve the poor.”[909]
In 1527, when the plague reached Wittenberg, he stayed on in the
town with Bugenhagen in order at least to comfort the people by his
presence. The University was transferred for the time being to Jena
(and then to Schlieben) and the Elector accordingly urged him to
migrate to Jena with his wife and family. Luther however insisted
on remaining, above all on account of the urgent need of setting an
example to his preachers, who were too much preoccupied with the safety
of their own families. It was then that he wrote the tract “Ob man fur
dem Sterben fliehen muge” (Whether one may flee from death), answering
the question in the negative so far as the ministers were concerned. In
such dire trouble the flock were more than ever in need of spiritual
help; the preachers were to exhort the people to learn diligently
from the Word of God how to live and how to die, also, by Confession,
reception of the Supper, reconciliation with their neighbours, etc., to
“prepare themselves in advance should the Lord knock speedily.”[910]
He displayed the same courage during the epidemic of the so-called
“English sweat,” a fever which, in 1529, broke out at Wittenberg, and
in other German towns, and carried off many victims. Again in 1538 and
in 1539 he braved new outbreaks of the plague at Wittenberg. His wish
was, that, in such cases, one or two preachers should be specially
appointed to look after those stricken with the malady. “Should the lot
fall on me,” he says in 1542, “I should not be afraid. I have now been
through three pestilences and mixed with some who suffered from it ...
and am none the worse.”[911] “God usually protects the ministers of
His Word,” he writes in 1538, “if one does not run in and out of the
inns and lie in the beds; confessions there is no need to hear, for we
bring the Word of Life.”[912] The fact that he could boast of having
braved the plague and remained at his post naturally tended to increase
his influence with his congregation.[913]
He had passed through a severe mental struggle previous to the epidemic
of 1529. Only by dint of despairing efforts was he able to overcome
his terrors of conscience concerning his doctrine and his own personal
salvation. This inner combat so hardened him that he was fearless where
others were terrified and fled. Of his own qualms of conscience he
wrote to a friend in April, 1529: If it be an apostolic gift to fight
with devils and to lie frequently at the point of death, then he was
indeed in this a very Peter or Paul, however much he might lack the
other apostolic characters.[914] Here we have the idea of his Divine
calling, always most to the front in times of danger, which both
strengthens him and enables him to inspire others with a little of his
own confidence. “I and Bugenhagen alone remain here,” he wrote during
the days of the plague, “but we are not alone, for Christ is with
us and will triumph in us and shelter us from Satan, as we hope and
trust.”[915]
* * * * *
We already are acquainted with some of his admissions of his own
weakness and acknowledgments of the greater gifts and achievements of
others--confessions which have been extolled as a proof of his real
humility.
“I have no such foolish humility,” so he says, “as to wish to deny
the gifts God has bestowed on me. In myself I have indeed enough and
more than enough to humble me and teach me that I am nothing. In God,
however, we may well pride ourselves, and rejoice and glory in His
gifts and extol them, as I myself do on account of my German Psalter;
for I studied the Psalter, thanks be to God, with great fruit; but
all to the honour and glory of God to Whom be praise for ever and
ever.” This he wrote to Eobanus Hessus, the poet, in a high-flown
letter thanking him for translating the German Psalter into excellent
Latin.[916] Of his own virtues or sinfulness he preferred to speak
humorously, as his manner was. Thus, he says, for instance, in 1526,
in his suppressed “Widder den Radschlag der Meintzischen Pfafferey,”
that “he had not defiled any man’s wife or child,” “had not robbed
anyone of his goods ... nor murdered or assaulted anyone or given help
or counsel thereto”; his sin consisted in “not pulling a long face but
in insisting on being merry”; also in eating meat on forbidden days.
People might defame his life, but he was not going to heed “the dirty
hogsnouts.”[917]
His statements belittling his own powers and achievements, coming from
a man whose apparently overmastering self-confidence had, from the
beginning, prepossessed so many of his followers in his favour, afford
a subject for psychological study. He seems the more ready to give full
play to his confidence the more he feels his weakness face to face with
the menace of danger, and the more he experiences in the depths of his
soul the raging of doubts which he attributes to the devil.
In the humble admissions he makes he never conceals how much he stands
in need of assistance. He does not hide from himself the fact that
he dreads outward troubles, and is deficient in strong and exalted
virtue. But side by side with his faults, he is fond of gazing on and
extolling God’s gifts in his person. His peculiar form of humility, his
prayer and his trust in God find expression in certain utterances and
experiences, on which no judgment can be passed until we have before
us a larger selection of them, particularly of such as seem to be less
premeditated.
_Prayer and Confidence in God._
Luther’s strangely undaunted confidence and the personal nature of his
reliance on God’s help form part of his mental physiognomy.
He sees around him much distress and corruption and exclaims: “Alas,
we are living outwardly under the empire of the devil, hence we can
neither see nor hear anything good from without.” And yet, he proceeds
in his usual forced tone, “inwardly we are living in the kingdom of
Christ, where we behold God’s glory and His grace! For of Christ
it is said: ‘Rule Thou in the midst of Thine enemies.’” “Hatred is
our reward in this world.” “Our reward is excessive considering the
insignificance of the service we render Christ. But what is the world,
its anger, or its prince? A smoke that vanishes, a bubble that bursts,
such is everything that is opposed to the Lord Whom we serve and Who
works in us.” With these words, so expressive of his determination, he
directs his trusted pupil, Conrad Cordatus, to enter courageously upon
the office of preacher at Stendal in the March.[918]
Again and again he seeks to reanimate his faith and confidence by
calling to mind not merely God’s faithfulness to His promises, but
also his own personal “sufferings” and “temptations,” the only escape
from which, as he believed, lay in the most obstinate and presumptuous
belief in his cause, and in the conviction that God was constantly
intervening in his favour.
“Not only from Holy Scripture,” he said in a conversation in 1540,
“but also from my violent inner combats and temptations have I learnt
that Christ is God incarnate, and that there is a Trinity. I now know
it even better from experience than by faith that these articles are
true. For in our greatest temptations nothing can help us but the
assurance that Christ became man and is now our intercessor at the
right hand of the Father. There is nothing that excites our confidence
to such a degree.... God, too, has championed this article from the
beginning of the world against countless heretics, and even to-day
defends it against Turk and Pope; He incessantly confirms it by
miracles and permits us to call His Son, the Son of God and true God,
and grants all that we ask in Christ’s name. For what else has saved
us even till the present day in so many perils but prayer to Christ?
Whoever says it is Master Philip’s and my doing, lies. It is God Who
does it for Christ’s sake.... Therefore we hold fast to these articles
in spite of the objections of reason. They have remained and will
continue.”[919]
Luther often had recourse to prayer, especially when he found himself
in difficulty, or in an awkward situation from which he could see no
escape; in his letters he also as a rule asks for prayers for himself
and for the common cause of the new Evangel. It is impossible to take
such requests as a mere formality; his way of making them is usually so
full of feeling that they must have been meant in earnest.
In 1534 he wrote a special instruction for the simple and unlearned on
the way to pray.[920] Many parts of this booklet recall the teaching of
the great masters of prayer, though unfortunately it is imbued with his
peculiar tenets.
He urges people to pray fervently against “the idolatry of the Turk,
of the Pope, of all false teachers and devil’s snares”; he also mocks
at the prayers of the “parsons and monks,”[921] unable to refrain
from his bitter polemics even in an otherwise edifying work. Yet the
body of the booklet teaches quite accurately, in a fashion recalling
the directions given by St. Ignatius, how the Our Father and other
daily prayers may be devoutly recited, with pauses after the various
petitions or words, so as to form a sort of meditation. He himself, so
he assures his readers, was in the habit of “sucking” in this way at
the Paternoster, and was also fond of occupying himself with a similar
prayerful analysis of the Psalter.
His regular daily prayer he says elsewhere was the Our Father,
the Creed and the other usual formulas.[922] “I have daily to do
violence to myself in order to pray,” he remarked to his friends,
“and I am satisfied to repeat when I go to bed the Ten Commandments,
the Our Father and then a verse or two; thinking over them I fall
asleep.”[923] “The Our Father is my prayer, I pray this and sometimes
intermingle with it something from the Psalms, so as to put to shame
the vain scoffers and false teachers.”
It must not be overlooked, however, that on extraordinary occasions,
when his hatred of the Papacy was more than usually strong or when
troubles pressed, his prayer was apt to assume strange forms. His
abomination for the Pope found vent, as he repeatedly tells us, in
his maledictory Paternoster.[924] When in great fear and anxiety
concerning Melanchthon, who lay sick at Weimar, he, to use his own
quaint phraseology, “threw down his tools before our God,” to compel
Him, as it were, to render assistance. Another such attempt to do
violence to God is the purport of a prayer uttered in dejection during
his stay in the fortress of Coburg, which Veit Dietrich, who overheard
it, gives us in what he states were Luther’s own words: “I know that
Thou art Our God and Father; hence I am certain Thou wilt put to shame
all those who persecute Thy children. Shouldst Thou not do so, there
will be as much danger for Thee as for us. This is Thy cause, and we
only took it up because we knew Thou wouldst defend it,” etc.[925]
This intimate friend of Luther’s also tells us, that, in those
anxious days, Luther’s conversations concerning God and his hopes for
the future bore an even deeper stamp than usual of sincerity and depth
of feeling. Dietrich was one of Luther’s most passionately devoted
pupils.
“Ah, prayer can do much,” such are Luther’s words in one of the
numerous passages of the Table-Talk, where he recommends its use. “By
prayer many are saved, even now, just as we ourselves prayed Philip
back to life.”[926]
“It is impossible,” he says, “that God should not answer the prayer of
faith; that He does not always do so is another matter. God does not
give according to a prescribed measure, but heaped up and shaken down,
as He says.... Hence James says (v. 16): ‘Pray one for another,’ etc.
‘The continual prayer of a just man availeth much.’ That is one of the
best verses in his Epistle. Prayer is a powerful thing.”[927]
Anyone who has followed Luther’s development and understands his
character will know where to find the key to these remarkable, and at
first sight puzzling, declarations of trust in God and zeal in prayer.
When once the herald of the new religion had contrived to persuade
himself of his Divine call, such blindly confident prayer and trust in
God no longer involve anything wonderful. His utterances, undoubtedly,
have a good side, for instance, his frank admission of his weakness, of
his want of virtue and of the parlous condition of his cause, should
God forsake it. All his difficulties he casts into the lap of the
Almighty and of Christ, in the true Divine sonship of whom he declares
he believes firmly. It must, however, strike anyone who examines his
prayers that he never once expresses the idea which should accompany
all true prayer, viz. resignation into the hands of God and entire
willingness to follow Him, to go forward, or turn back whithersoever
God wills; never do we find him imploring light so as to know whether
the course he is pursuing and the work he has undertaken is indeed
right and pleasing to God. On the contrary, in his prayers, in his
thoughts and amidst all his inner conflicts, he resolutely sets aside
as out of the question any idea of changing the religious attitude he
has once assumed.[928] All his striving is directed towards this one
end, viz. that God will vouchsafe to further his cause and grant him
victory. He, as it were, foists his cause on Heaven. Hence there is
lacking a property imperatively demanded by prayer, viz. that holy
indifference and readiness to serve God in the way pleasing to Him to
which the Psalmist alludes when he says: “Teach me to do Thy Will, O
Lord.”
The dominating idea which both animates his confidence and gives it its
peculiar stamp, also furnishes him with a sword against the Papacy,
with which he lays about him all the more vigorously the more fervently
he prays. In praying he blows into a flame his hatred of all who stand
up for the ancient Church; in his prayers he seems to find all the
monstrous accusations he intends to hurl against her. Yet he himself
elsewhere reminds his hearers, that, as a preparation for prayer, they
must put away all bad feeling, since our Lord warns the man who is at
variance with his brother first to be reconciled to him before coming
with his offering. Luther also impresses on the monks and clergy that
they must not pray for what is displeasing to God ... for instance, for
strength to fulfil their obligation of celibacy or their vows.--Might
they not justly have retorted that he, too, should not insist so
blindly that God should establish his work? And might not the fanatics
and Anabaptists have urged a _tu quoque_ against him when he accused
them of spiritual pride and blind presumption because of their fervent
prayers?
We shall not go out of our way to repeat again what we have already
said of his pseudo-mysticism. But in order to understand rightly
Luther’s prayers and trustfulness, so frequently reminiscent of the
best men of the Catholic past, it is necessary to bear in mind his
peculiar mystic leanings.
_Other Personal Traits. His Family Life._
Luther was able to combine in a remarkable manner his pseudo-mysticism
with practical and sober common sense.
Where it is not a question of his Divine mission, of the rights of
the new Evangel or of politics--of which by nature he was unfitted
to judge--we usually find him eminently practical in his views. His
intercourse with others was characterised by simplicity and directness,
and the tone of his conversation was both vigorous and original. It
was most fortunate for him that his practical insight into things
so soon enabled him to detect the exaggeration and peril of the
movement set on foot by the fanatics. Had he been as incautious as
they, the State authorities would soon have crushed his plans. This
he clearly perceived from the very outset of the movement. Something
similar, though on a smaller scale, happened later in the case of
the Antinomians. Luther was opposed to such extravagance, and, when
friendly admonition proved of no avail, was perfectly ready to resort
to force. Whether, from his own standpoint, he was in a position to set
matters straight in the case of either of the two movements is another
question; the truth is that his standpoint had suspiciously much in
common with both. At any rate his encounter with the fanatics taught
him to lay much less stress than formerly on the “Spirit,” and to
insist more on the outward Word and the preaching of the “Evangel.”
It must also be noted, that, though accustomed to go forward bravely
and beat down all difficulties by main strength, yet in many instances
he was quite open to accommodate himself to circumstances, and to
yield in the interests of his cause, displaying likewise considerable
ingenuity in the choice of the means to be employed. We have already
had occasion more than once to see that he was by no means deficient
in the wisdom of the serpent. He knew how to give favourably disposed
Princes astute advice, particularly as to how they might best encourage
and promote the new Church system. To settle their quarrels and to
restore concord among them he had recourse sometimes to fiery and
even gross language, sometimes to more diplomatic measures. When the
Elector and the Duke of Saxony became estranged by the Wurzen quarrel
Luther frankly advised the former to give way, and jestingly added that
sometimes there might be good reason to “light a couple of tapers at
the devil’s altar.”
He did not, however, possess any talent as an organiser and was,
generally speaking, a very imperfect judge of the social conditions of
his time. (See vol. vi., xxxv.)
Heinrich Böhmer remarks justly: “Luther was no organiser. Not that he
was devoid of interest in or comprehension for the practical needs of
life. He was neither a secluded scholar nor a stiff-necked pedant....
His practical vein, though strong enough to enable him readily to
detect the weak spot in the proposals and creations of others, was,
however, not equal to any independent, creative and efficient action.
However bold, energetic and original as a thinker and writer, as an
organiser he was clumsy, diffident and poor in ideas. In this domain
he is entirely lacking in initiative, decision and, above all, in any
theory he could call his own.” “His regulations for public worship are
no new creation but, more often than not, merely the old, Catholic
ones, reduced and arranged to meet the needs of the evangelical
congregation.... Where he is original he not seldom ceases to be
practical. For instance, his extraordinary proposal that the Latin
service should be retained for the benefit and edification of those
familiar with the language, and his regret that it was no longer
possible to arrange a service in Greek or Hebrew, can scarcely be
characterised as anything but a professor’s whim.”[929]
* * * * *
His domestic life, owing to the simplicity, frugality and industry
which reigned there, presents the picture of an unpretentious family
home.[930]
With Catherine Bora and the children she bore him, he led--apart from
the disturbances arising from his outward controversies and inward
combats--a regular life conducive to his labours. His relations with
his life’s partner, who was absorbed in the management of the little
household, were, so it would appear, never seriously disturbed; he
was as devoted to her as she was to him, striving as she did to serve
him and to lighten his cares. As to her failings, viz. a certain
haughtiness and masterfulness, he winked at them.
In his will dated Jan. 6, 1542, he gives, as follows, his reason for
leaving everything to his “beloved and faithful wife Catherine”: “I do
this first because she, as a pious, faithful and honourable wife, has
always held me dear and in honour and, by God’s blessing, bore me and
brought up five children, who are still alive and whom may God long
preserve.”[931]
Incidentally he praises her complacency and says that she had served
him not only like a wife but like a maid. It is true, however, he says
elsewhere: “Had I to marry another, I should hew myself an obedient
wife out of stone, for I despair of any woman’s obedience.”[932]
His last letters to Bora attest great mutual confidence, even though
he does just hint in his usual joking way at their common faults: “I
think, that, had you been here, you would also have advised us to do
this, so that then for once we should have followed your advice.”
“To my well-beloved housewife Catherine Lutheress, Doctoress,
Zulsdorferess, pork-butcheress and whatever else she may be. Grace to
you and peace in Christ and my poor old love.... I commend to God’s
keeping you and all the household; greet all the guests. [Signed] M.
L., your old sweetheart.” Writing to his wife who was so anxious about
him, he says: “You want to undertake the care of your God just as
though He were not almighty and able to create ten Dr. Martins.... Let
Master Philip read this letter, for I have not had time to write to
him; console yourself with this, that I would be with you were I able,
as you know, and as he perhaps also knows from experience with his
own wife, and understands it all perfectly.” “We are very grateful to
you for your great anxiety that prevents you from sleeping.... Do you
pray and leave the rest to God. It is written: ‘Cast thy care upon the
Lord, and He shall sustain thee’ (Psalm lv.).”[933]
His humour helped to tide him over any minor annoyances for which
Catherine and the inmates of his house were responsible. He preferred
to oppose the shield of jest to Catherine’s obstinacy, to her feminine
desire to interfere in business that was not hers, as well as to
her jealous rule in matters pertaining to the management of the
household. When in his letters he addresses her as “Lord Katey,” and
so forth, his object was to reprove her gently for that imperiousness
under which he himself had sometimes to smart. We learn from outside
sources that her interference was particularly troublesome to others
at the time of Luther’s conflict with the lawyers on the validity of
clandestine marriages, when his wife’s friendly interest in certain
couples concerned displayed itself in loud and over-zealous advocacy
of Luther’s view of the question. It was then that Cruciger, the
Wittenberg theologian, described her as the “firebrand in Luther’s
house.”[934]
He was not merely unable to accustom himself to the humdrum
occupations connected with household management, but the annoyance it
entailed was so repugnant to him that in 1538 he dissuaded a preacher
who wished to marry a second time, telling him that “the management of
a family is in our day the most troublesome thing on earth, so that,
knowing the wickedness of the world, were I a young man I would rather
die than again become a married man, even though, after my Katey, a
queen were offered me in marriage.”[935] Evidently he must have found
something to regret.
Both took their share in the troublesome and unpretentious work of
educating and instructing the children. Luther rightly extols such
labours as great and meritorious in God’s sight, just as he frequently
describes the seemingly lowly callings, which, in the eyes of the
world, are of no account, e.g. marriage, as ennobled by God when
performed by pious Christians in accordance with His Will and to the
benefit of body and soul. (Above, p. 142 f.)
By means of a fairly well-ordered division of the day he found time,
in the intervals of the demands made by his domestic duties, to
devote long hours to the multifarious and exhausting labours of which
we know something. Self-denial in the interests of the cause he had
espoused, renunciation of ease and enjoyment so as better to serve
an end for which he was impassioned, disregard even of the pressing
claims of health--all this is not easily to be matched in any other
writer of eminence and talent occupying so historic a position in
public life. Luther, plagued as he was by extraneous difficulties,
with his professorship, his pulpit and his care for souls, seemed to
revolve the wheel of time. Without unheard-of energy and a fiery,
overmastering enthusiasm for the cause his achievements would indeed
be incomprehensible.
The Catholic, however, when contemplating these traits so far as they
redound to Luther’s credit must deeply regret, that such energy was
not employed in a well-ordered amelioration of the ecclesiastical
system on the basis of the true Christian doctrine and in harmony with
the authority divinely appointed. If he considers these favourable
sides of Luther’s character with befitting broad-mindedness, his grief
can only deepen at the action, characterised by such perversity and
contradiction, by which Luther sought utterly to destroy the existing
Church and her faith as revealed and handed down.
CHAPTER XXVI
LUTHER’S MODE OF CONTROVERSY A COUNTERPART OF HIS SOUL
1. Luther’s Anger. His Attitude towards the Jews, the Lawyers and the
Princes
WHAT above all strikes one in Luther’s mode of controversy is his
utter unrestraint in his scolding and abuse. Particularly remarkable,
especially in his later years, is the language which he has in
readiness for two groups of foes, viz. for Jews and Lawyers; then,
again, we have the invective which, throughout his career, he was
fond of hurling at such Princes and scholars as did not submit to his
teaching.
As, in what follows, and in studying the psychology of his anti-Papal
abuse, we shall have again occasion to encounter unpleasant passages,
we may well make our own the words of Sir Thomas More in his
“_Responsio ad convitia Lutheri_,” where he trounces Luther for his
handling of Henry VIII.: “The gentle reader must forgive me if much
that occurs offends his feelings. Nothing has been more painful to me
than to be compelled to pour such things into decent ears. The only
other alternative would, however, have been to leave the unclean book
untouched.”[936]
_The Jews._
In his earlier days Luther had been more friendly towards the Jews,
and had even cherished the childish hope that many of them would
embrace the new Evangel and help him in his warfare against the Papal
Antichrist. When this failed to come about Luther became more and more
angered with their blasphemy against Christ, their art of seducing the
faithful and their cunning literary attacks on Christian doctrine. He
was also greatly vexed because his Elector, in spite of having, in
1536, ordered all Jews to leave the country, nevertheless, in 1538,
granted them a conditional permit to travel through it; he was still
more exasperated with Ferdinand the German King who had curtailed the
disabilities of the Jews. Luther’s opinion was that the only thing to
do was to break their pride; he now relinquished all hope of convincing
any large number of them of the truth of Christianity; even the
biblical statements, according to which the Jews were to be converted
before the end of the world, appeared to him to have been shorn of
their value.[937]
Hence Luther was, above all, desirous of proving to the faithful that
the objections brought forward by the Jews against Christian doctrine
and their interpretation of the Old Testament so as to exclude the
Christian Messias were all wrong. This he did in three writings which
followed each other at short intervals: “Von den Jüden und jren Lügen,”
“Vom Schem Hamphoras,” both dating from 1542, and “Von den letzten
Worten Davids” (1543). Owing to his indignation these writings are no
mere works of instruction, but in parts are crammed with libel and
scurrilous abuse.[938]
In the first of these tracts, for instance, he voices as follows his
opinion of the religious learning of the Hebrews: “This passage [the
Ten Commandments] is far above the comprehension of the blind and
hardened Jews, and to discourse to them on it would be as useless as
preaching the Gospel to a pig. They cannot grasp the nature of God’s
law, much less do they know how to keep it.” “Their boast of following
the external Mosaic ordinances whilst disobeying the Ten Commandments,
fits the Jews just as well as ornaments do an evil woman”; “yet
clothes, adornments, garlands, jewels would serve far better to deck
the sow that wallows in the mire than a strumpet.”[939]
One point which well illustrates his anti-Semitism is the Talmud-Bible
he invents as best suited to them: “That Bible only should you
explore which lies concealed beneath the sow’s tail; the letters
that drop from it you are free to eat and drink; that is the best
Bible for prophets who trample under foot and rend in so swinish a
manner the Word of the Divine Majesty which ought to be listened to
with all respect, with trembling and with joy.” “Do they fancy that
we are clods and wooden blocks like themselves, the rude, ignorant
donkeys?... Hence, gentle Christian, beware of the Jews, for this
book will show you that God’s anger has delivered them over to the
devil.”[940]
The figure of the sow’s tail pleased him so well that he again used it
later in the same year in his “Vom Schem Hamphoras.” There he alludes
to the piece of sculpture which had originally supplied him with the
idea: “Here, at Wittenberg, outside our parish church there is a sow
chiselled in the stone; under her are piglets and little Jews all
sucking; behind the sow stands a Rabbi, who lifts, with his right hand
the sow’s hind leg and with his left her tail, and is intently engaged
poring over the Talmud under the sow’s tail, as though he wished to
read and bring to light something especially clever. That is a real
image of Schem Hamphoras.... For of the sham wise man we Germans say:
Where did he read that? To speak coarsely, in the rear parts of a
sow.”[941]
The “devil” also is drawn into the fray the better to enable Luther to
vent his ire against the Jews. At the end of the passage just quoted
he says: “For the devil has entered into the Jews and holds them
captive so that perforce they do his will, as St. Paul says, mocking,
defaming, abusing and cursing God and everything that is His....
The devil plays with them to their eternal damnation.”[942]--And
elsewhere: “Verily a hopeless, wicked, venomous and devilish thing
is the existence of these Jews, who for fourteen hundred years have
been, and still are, our pest, torment and misfortune. In fine, they
are just devils and nothing more, with no feeling of humanity for us
heathen. This they learn from their Rabbis in those devils’ aeries
which are their schools.”[943]--“They are a brood of vipers and the
children of the devil, and are as kindly disposed to us as is the
devil their father.”[944]--“The Turk and the other heathen do not
suffer from them what we Christians do from these malignant snakes
and imps.... Whoever would like to cherish such adders and puny
devils--who are the worst enemies of Christ and of us all--to befriend
them and do them honour simply in order to be cheated, plundered,
robbed, disgraced and forced to howl and curse and suffer every kind
of evil, to him I would commend these Jews. And if this be not enough
let him tell the Jew to use his mouth as a privy, or else crawl
into the Jew’s hind parts and there worship the holy thing, so as
afterwards to be able to boast of having been merciful, and of having
helped the devil and his progeny to blaspheme our dear Lord.”[945] The
last clause would appear to have been aimed at the Counts of Mansfeld,
who had allowed a large number of Jews to settle in Eisleben, Luther’s
birthplace.
The temporal happiness which the Jews looked for under the reign of
their Messias, Luther graphically compares to the felicity of a sow:
“For the sow lies as it were on a feather-bed whether in the street
or on the manure-heap; she rests secure, grunts contentedly, sleeps
soundly, fears neither lord nor king, neither death nor hell, neither
devil nor Divine anger.... She has no thought of death until it is
upon her.... Of what use would the Jews’ Messias be to me if he could
not help poor me against this great and horrible dread and misfortune
[the fear of death], nor make my life a tenth part as happy as that of
the sow? I would much rather say: Dear God Almighty, keep Your Messias
for Yourself, or give him to those who want him; as for me, change
me into a sow. For it is better to be a live pig than a man who is
everlastingly dying.”[946]
Such passages as the above are frequently to be met with in Luther’s
writings against the Jews. In them his object plainly was to confute
the misinterpretation of the Bible and the scoffing objections to
which Jewish scholars were given. Yet so utterly ungovernable was the
author’s passion that it spoiled the execution of his noble task. He
scarcely knew how to conduct a controversy without introducing sows,
devils and such like.
Was it really to Luther’s credit that the sty should loom so large in
his struggle with his foes?
Duke George he scolds as the “Dresden pig,” and Dr. Eck as “Pig-Eck”;
the latter Luther promises to answer in such a way “that the sow’s
belly shall not be too much inflated.”[947] The Bishops of the Council
of Constance who burnt Hus are “boars”; the “bristles of their backs
rise on end and they whet their snouts.”[948] Erasmus “carries within
him a sow from the herd of Epicurus.”[949] The learned Catholics of
the Universities are hogs and donkeys decked out in finery, whom God
has sent to punish us; these “devils’ masks, the monks and learned
spectres, from the Schools we have endowed with such huge wealth,
many of the doctors, preachers, masters, priests and friars are big,
coarse, corpulent donkeys, decked out with hoods red and brown, like
the market sow in her glass beads and tinsel chains.”[950]
The same simile is, of course, employed even more frequently of the
peasants. “To-day the peasants are the merest hogs, whilst the people
of position, who once prided themselves on being bucks, are beginning
to copy them.”[951]--The Papists have “stamped the married state under
foot”; their clergy are “like pigs in the fattening-pen,” “they wallow
in filth like the pig in his sty.”[952]--The Papists are fed up by
their literary men, as befits such pigs as they. “Eat, piggies, eat!
This is good for you.”[953]--We Germans are “hopeless pigs.”[954]
Henry of Brunswick is “as expert in Holy Writ as a sow is on the
harp.” Let him and his Papists confess that they are “verily the
devil’s whore-church.”[955] “You should not write a book,” Luther
tells him, “until you have heard an old sow s----; then you should
open your jaws and say: Thank you, lovely nightingale, now I have the
text I want. Stick to it; it will look fine printed in a book against
the Scripturists and the Elector; but have it done at Wolfenbüttel.
Oh, how they will have to hold their noses!”[956]
Another favourite image, which usually accompanies the sow, is
provided by the donkey. Of Clement VII. and one of his Bulls Luther
says: “The donkey pitched his bray too high and thought the Germans
would not notice it.”[957] Of Emser and the Catholic Professors he
writes: “Were I ignorant of logic and philosophy you rude asses
would be after setting yourselves up as logicians and philosophers,
though you know as much about the business as a donkey does about
music.”[958] Of Alveld the Franciscan he says: “The donkey does not
understand music, he must rather be given thistles.”[959] The fanatics
too, naturally, could not expect to escape. All that Luther says of
heavenly things is wasted upon them. “They understand it as little as
the donkey does the Psalter.”[960]
The devil, however, plays the chief part. Luther’s considered judgment
on the Zwinglians, for instance, is, that they are “soul-cannibals and
soul-assassins,” are “endeviled, devilish, yea, ultra-devilish and
possessed of blasphemous hearts and lying lips.”[961]
_The Lawyers._
Luther’s aversion for the “Jurists” grew yearly more intense. His
chief complaint against them was that they kept to the Canon Law and
put hindrances in his way. Their standpoint, however, as regards Canon
Law was not without justification. “Any downright abrogation of Canon
Law as a whole was out of the question. The law as then practised, not
only in the ecclesiastical but even in the secular courts, was too
much bound up with Canon Law; when it was discarded, for instance, in
the matrimonial cases, dire legal complications threatened throughout
the whole of the German Empire.”[962] To this Luther’s eyes were not
sufficiently open.
His crusade against the validity of clandestine engagements which he
entered upon in opposition to his friend and co-religionist, Hieronymus
Schurf, his colleague in the faculty of jurisprudence at the University
of Wittenberg, was merely one episode in his resistance to those who
represented legalism as then established.
In another and wider sphere his relations with those lawyers, who
were the advisers at the Court of his Elector and the other Princes,
became more strained. This was as a result of their having a hand in
the ordering of Church business. Here again his action was scarcely
logical, for he himself, forced by circumstances, had handed over to
the State the outward guidance of the Church; that the statesmen would
intervene and settle matters according to their own ideas was but
natural; and if their way of looking at things failed to agree with
Luther’s, this was only what might have been foreseen all along.
In a conference with Melanchthon, Amsdorf and others in Dec., 1538,
he complained bitterly of the lawyers and of the “misery of the
theologians who were attacked on all sides, especially by the mighty.”
To Melchior Kling, a lawyer who was present, he said: “You jurists
have a finger in this and are playing us tricks; I advise you to
cease and come to the assistance of the nobles. If the theologians
fall, that will be the end of the jurists too.” “Do not worry us,” he
repeated, “or you will be paid out.” “Had he ten sons, he would take
mighty good care that not one was brought up to be a lawyer.” “You
jurists stand as much in need of a Luther as the theologians did.”
“The lawyer is a foe of Christ; he extols the righteousness of works.
If there should be one amongst them who knows better, he is a wonder,
is forced to beg his bread and is shunned by all the other men of
law.”[963]
On questions affecting conscience he considered that he alone, as
theologian and leader of the others, had a right to decide; yet
countless cases which came before the courts touched upon matters of
conscience. He exclaims, for instance, in 1531: Must not the lawyers
come to me to learn what is really lawful? “I am the supreme judge of
what is lawful in the domain of conscience.” “If there be a single
lawyer in Germany, nay, in the whole world, who understands what is
‘lawful _de jure_’ and ‘lawful _de facto_’ then I am ... surprised.”
The recorder adds: “When the Doctor swears thus he means it very
seriously.” Luther proceeds: “In fine, if the jurists don’t crave
forgiveness and crawl humbly to the Evangel, I shall give them such a
doing that they will not know how to escape.”[964]
Thus we can understand how, in that same year (1531), when
representatives of the secular law interfered in the ecclesiastical
affairs at Zwickau against his wishes, he declared: “I will never
have any more dealings with those Zwickau people, and I shall carry
my resentment with me to the grave.” “If the lawyers touch the Canons
they will fly in splinters.... I will fling the Catechism into their
midst and so upset them that they won’t know where they are.”[965] If
they are going to feed on the “filth of the Pope-Ass,” and “to put
on their horns,” then he, too, will put on his and “toss them till
the air resounds with their howls.” This from the pulpit on Feb. 23,
1539.[966]
_The Princes._
With what scant respect Luther could treat the Princes is shown in his
work “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt, wie weyt man yhr Gehorsam schuldig
sey” (1523).[967]
Here he is not attacking individual Princes as was the case, for
instance, in his writings against King Henry of England, Duke George of
Saxony and Duke Henry of Brunswick, hence there was here no occasion
for the abuse with which these polemical tracts are so brimful. Here
Luther is dealing theologically with the relations which should
obtain between Princes and subjects and, according to the title and
the dedicatory note to Johann of Saxony, professes to discuss calmly
and judicially the respective duties of both. Yet, carried away by
vexation, because the Princes and the nobles had not complied with his
request in his “An den christlichen Adel” that they should rise in a
body against Rome, and reform the Church as he desired, he bitterly
assails them as a class.
Even in the opening lines all the Princes who, like the Emperor, held
fast to the olden faith and sought to preserve their subjects in it,
were put on a par with “hair-brained fellows” and loose “rogues.” “Now
that they want to fleece the poor man and wreak their wantonness on
God’s Word, they call it obedience to the commands of the Emperor....
Because the ravings of such fools leads to the destruction of the
Christian faith, the denial of God’s Word and blasphemy of the Divine
Majesty, I neither can nor will any longer look on calmly at the
doings of my ungracious Lords and fretful squires.”[968]
Of the Princes in general he says, that they ought “to rule the
country and the people outwardly; this, however, they neglect. They
do nothing but rend and fleece the people, heaping impost upon impost
and tax upon tax; letting out, here, a bear, and there, a wolf; nor is
there any law, fidelity or truth to be found in them, for they behave
in such a fashion that to call them robbers and scoundrels would be to
do them too great an honour.... So well are they earning the hatred of
all that they are doomed to perish with the monks and parsons whose
rascality they share.”[969]
It is here that Luther tells the people that, “from the beginning a
wise Prince has been a rare find, and a pious Prince something rarer
still. Usually they are the biggest fools or the most arrant knaves
on earth; hence one must always expect the worst from them and little
good, particularly in Divine things which pertain to the salvation of
souls. For they are God’s lictors and hangmen.”[970] “The usual thing
is for Isaias iii. 4 to be verified: ‘I will give children to be their
princes, and the effeminate shall rule over them.’”[971]
We have to look on while “secular Princes rule in spiritual matters
and spiritual Princes in secular things.” In what else does the
devil’s work on earth consist but in making fun of the world and
turning it into a pantomime.
In conclusion he hints to the Princes plainly that the “mob and the
common folk are beginning to see through it all.”[972]
A Protestant writer, in extenuation of such dangerous language against
the rulers, recently remarked: “It never entered Luther’s head that
such words might bring the Princes into contempt and thus, indirectly,
promote rebellion.... If we are to draw a just conclusion from his
blindness to the obvious psychological consequences of his words, it
can only be, that Luther was no politician.”[973]
It may, indeed, be that he did not then sufficiently weigh the
consequences. Nevertheless, in his scurrilous writings against
individual Princes he was perfectly ready to brave every possible
outcome of his vituperation. “What Luther wrote against the German
Princes,” justly remarks Döllinger, “against Albert, Elector of
Mayence, against the Duke of Brunswick and Duke George of Saxony, puts
into the shade all the libels and screeds of the more recent European
literature.”[974]
One of the chief targets for his shafts was the Archbishop of Mayence.
Albert, Elector of Mayence, “is a plague to all Germany; the
ghastly, yellow, earthen hue of his countenance--a mixture of mud
and blood--exactly fits his character; ... he is deserving of death
under the First Table” (viz. because of his transgression of the
first commandments of the Decalogue by his utter godlessness).[975]
It was, however, not so much on account of his moral shortcomings,
notorious though they were, but more particularly because he did
not take his side, that Luther regarded him as a “most perfidious
rogue” (“_nebulo perfidissimus_”). “If thieves are hanged, then
surely the Bishop of Mayence deserves to be hanged as one of the
first, on a gallows seven times as high as the Giebenstein.... For he
fears neither God nor man.”[976] When Simon Lemnius, the Humanist,
praised Archbishop Albert in a few epigrams, Luther’s anger turned
against the poet, whom he soundly rated for making “a saint out of
a devil.” He issued a sort of mandate against Lemnius of which the
conclusion was: “I beg our people, and particularly the poets or his
[the Archbishop’s] sycophants, in future not publicly to praise the
shameful merd-priest”; he threatens sharp measures should anyone at
Wittenberg dare to praise “the self-condemned lost priest.”[977]
The satirical list of relics which, in 1542, he published with a
preface and epilogue against the same Elector amounted practically to
a libel, and was described by lawyers as a lying slander punishable at
law. As a “_libellus famosus_” against a reigning Prince of the Empire
it might have entailed serious consequences for its author.
In it Luther says: The Elector, as we learn, is offering “big pardons
for many sins,” even for sins to be committed for the next ten years,
to all who “help in decking out in new clothes the poor, naked bones”;
the relics in question, during their translation from Halle to
Mayence, had, so Luther tells us, been augmented by other “particles,”
enriched by the Pope with Indulgences, amongst them, “(1) a fine piece
of the left horn of Moses; (2) three flames from the bush of Moses on
Mount Sinai; (3) two feathers and one egg of the Holy Ghost,” etc., in
all, twelve articles, specially chosen to excite derision.
Justus Jonas appears to have been shocked at Luther’s ribaldry and
to have given Luther an account of what the lawyers were saying. At
any rate, we have Luther’s reply in his own handwriting, though the
top part of the letter has been torn away. In the bottom fragment we
read: “[Were it really a libel] which, however, it cannot be, yet I
have the authority, right and power [to write such libels] against the
Cardinal, Pope, devil and all their crew; and not to have the term
‘_libellus famosus_’ hurled at me. Or have the ‘asinists’--I beg your
pardon, jurists--studied their jurisprudence in such a way as to be
ignorant of what ‘_subjectum_’ and ‘_finis_’ mean in secular law?
[the end in his eyes was a good one]. If I have to teach them, I shall
exact smaller fees and teach them unwashed. How has the beautiful
Moritzburgk [belonging to the see of Mayence] been turned into a
donkey-stable! If they are ready to pipe, I am quite willing to dance,
and, if I live, I hope to tread yet another measure with the bride of
Mayence.”[978] Thus the revolting untruths to which his tactics led
him to have recourse, the better to excite the minds of the people,
seemed to him a fit subject for jest; in spite of the wounds which the
religious warfare was inflicting on the German Church he still saw
nothing unseemly in the figure of the dance and the bridal festivity.
An incident of his controversy with the Duke of Brunswick may serve to
complete the picture. In 1540, during the hot summer, numerous fires
broke out in North and Central Germany, causing widespread alarm;
certain alleged incendiaries who were apprehended were reported to
have confessed under torture that this was the doing of Duke Henry
of Brunswick and the Pope. Before even investigations had commenced
Luther had already jumped to the conclusion that the real author was
his enemy, the Catholic Duke, backed up by the Pope and the monks;
for had not the Duke (according to Luther) explained to the burghers
of Goslar that he recognised no duties with regard to heretics?[979]
The Franciscans had been expelled and were now in disguise everywhere
“plotting vengeance”; they it was who had done it all with the
assistance of the Duke of Brunswick and the Elector of Mayence, who,
of course, remained behind the scenes.[980] “If this be proved, then
there is nothing left for us but to take up arms against the monks and
priests; and I too shall go, for miscreants must be slain like mad
dogs.”[981] Hieronymus Schurf, as the cautious lawyer he was, expressed
himself in Luther’s presence against the misuse of torture in the case
of those accused and against their being condemned too hastily. Luther
interrupted him: “This is no time for mercy but for rage!” According
to St. Augustine many must suffer in order that many may be at peace;
so is it also in the law courts, “now and again some must suffer
injustice, so long as it is not done knowingly and intentionally by the
judge. In troublous times excessive severity must be overlooked.”[982]
He became little by little so convinced of the guilt of Henry the
“incendiary” and his Papists, that, in October, 1540, he refers
half-jestingly to the reputation he was acquiring as “prophet and
apostle” by so correctly discerning in the Papists a mere band of
criminals.[983] He also informed other Courts of the supposed truth of
his surmise, viz. that “Harry of Brunswick has now been convicted as an
arch-incendiary-assassin and the greatest scoundrel on whom the sun has
ever shone. May God give the bloodhound and werewolf his reward. Amen.”
Thus to Duke Albert of Prussia on April 20, 1541.[984]
Considerably before this, in a letter to the same princely patron,
he expressly implicates in these absurd charges the Pope, the chief
object of his hate: After telling Albert of the report, that the
Duke of Brunswick “had sent out many hundred incendiaries against
the Evangelical Estates” of whom more than 300 had been “brought to
justice,” many of them making confessions implicating the Duke, the
Bishop of Mayence and others, Luther goes on to say that the business
must necessarily have been set on foot “by great people, for there is
plenty of money.”
“The Pope is said to have given 80,000 ducats towards it. This is the
sort of thing we are compelled to hear and endure; but God will repay
them abundantly ... in hell, in the fire beneath our feet.”[985]
“The Doctor said,” we read in the Table-Talk, taken down by Mathesius
in September (2-17), 1540: “The greatest wonder of our day is that
the majesty of the Pope--who was a terror to all monarchs and against
whom they dared not move a muscle, seeing that a glance from him or a
movement of his finger sufficed to keep them all in a state of fear and
obedience--that this god should have collapsed so utterly that even his
defenders loathe him. Those who still take his part, without exception
do this simply for money’s sake and their own advantage, otherwise
they would treat him even worse than we do. His malice has now been
thoroughly exposed, since it is certain that he sent eighteen thousand
crowns for the hiring of incendiaries.”[986] The perfect seriousness
with which he relates this in the circle of his friends furnishes an
enigma.
His consciousness of all that he had accomplished against the Pope,
combined with his hatred of Catholicism, seems often to cloud his mind.
2. Luther’s Excuse: “We MUST Curse the Pope and His Kingdom”[987]
In Luther’s polemics against the Pope and the Papists it is
psychologically of importance to bear in mind the depth of the passion
which underlies his furious and incessant abuse.
The further we see into Luther’s soul, thanks especially to his
familiar utterances recorded in the Table-Talk, the more plainly does
this overwhelming enmity stand revealed. In what he said privately to
his friends we find his unvarnished thought and real feelings. Far
from being in any sense artificial, the intense annoyance which rings
throughout his abuse seems to rise spontaneously from the very bottom
of his soul. That he should have pictured to himself the Papacy as a
dragon may be termed a piece of folly, nevertheless it was thus that
it ever hovered before his mind, by day and by night, whether in the
cheery circle of his friends or in his solitary study, in the midst of
ecclesiastical or ecclesiastico-political business, when engaged in
quiet correspondence with admirers and even when he sought in prayer
help and comfort in his troubles.
In Lauterbach’s Diary we find Luther describing the Pope as the
“Beast,”[988] the “Dragon of Hell” towards whom “one cannot be too
hostile,”[989] as the “Dragon and Crocodile,” whose whole being “was,
and still is, rascality through and through.”[990] “Even were the
Pope St. Peter, he would still be godless.”[991] “Whoever wishes to
glorify the Blood of Christ must needs rage against the Pope who
blasphemes it.”[992] “The Pope has sold Christ’s Blood and the state
of matrimony, hence the money-bag [of this Judas] is chock-full of
the proceeds of robbery.... He has banned and branded me, and stuck
me in the devil’s behind. Hence I am going to hang him on his own
keys.”[993] This he said when a caricature was shown him representing
the Pope strung up next to Judas, with the latter’s money-bag.
“I am the Pope’s devil,” so he declared to his companions, “hence it
is that he hates and persecutes me.”[994]
And yet the chief crime of this execrated Papacy was its
non-acceptance of Luther’s innovations. The legal measures taken
against him agreeably with the olden law, whether of the State or of
the Church, were no proof of “hatred,” however much they might lame
his own pretensions.
In other notes of his conversations we read: “Formerly we looked at
the Pope’s face, now we look only at his posterior, in which there is
no majesty.”[995] “The city of Rome now lies mangled and the devil
has discharged over it his filth, i.e. the Pope.”[996] It is a true
saying, that, “if there be a hell, Rome is built upon it.”[997]
“Almost all the Romans are now sunk in Epicurism; they trouble
themselves not at all about God or a good conscience. Alack for our
times! I used to believe that the Epicurean doctrine was dead and
buried, yet here it is still flourishing.”[998]
At the very commencement of the Diary of Cordatus, Luther is recorded
as saying: “The Pope has lost his cunning. It is stupid of him still
to seek to lead people astray under the pretence of religion, now that
mankind has seen through the devil’s trickery. To maintain his kingdom
by force is equally foolish because it is impracticable.”[999]--He
proceeds in a similar strain: “The Papists, like the Jews, insist
that everyone who wishes to be saved must observe their ceremonies,
hence they will perish like the Jews.”[1000]--He maliciously quotes
an old rhyme in connection with the Pope, who is both the “head of
the world” and “the beast of the earth,” and, in support of this,
adduces abundant quotations from the Apocalypse.[1001]--When Daniel
declared that Antichrist would trouble neither about God nor about
woman (xi. 37), this meant that “the Pope would recognise neither God
nor lawful wives, that, in a word, he would despise religion and all
domestic and social life, which all turned on womankind. Thus may
we understand what was foretold, viz. that Antichrist would despise
all laws, ordinances, statutes, rights and every good usage, contemn
kings, princes, empires and everything that exists in heaven or on
earth merely the better to extol his fond inventions.”[1002]--It is
difficult to assume that all this was mere rhetoric, for, then, why
was it persisted in? Intentionally hyperbolical utterances are as a
rule brief. In these conversations, however, the tone never changes,
but merely becomes at times even more emphatic.
On the same page in Cordatus we read: “Children are lucky in that they
come into the world naked and penniless; for the Pope levies toll on
everything there is on the earth, save only upon baptism, because he
can’t help it.”[1003] And immediately after: “The Pope has ceased to
be a teacher and has become, as his Decretals testify, a belly-server
and speculator. In the Decretals he treats not at all of theological
matters but merely pursues three self-seeking ends: First, he does
everything to strengthen his domination; secondly, he does his best
to set the kings and princes at loggerheads with each other whenever
he wants to score off one of the great, in doing which he does not
scruple to show openly his malice; thirdly, he plays the devil most
cunningly, when, with a friendly air, he allays the dissensions he had
previously stirred up among the sovereigns; this, however, he only
does when his own ends have been achieved. He also perverts the truth
of God’s Word [thus invading the theological field]. This, however, he
does not do as Pope, but as Antichrist and God’s real enemy.”[1004]
The whole mountain of abuse expressed here and in what follows rests
on this last assumption, viz. that the Pope perverts “the truth of
God’s Word”; thanks to this the Wittenberg Professor fancied he could
overthrow a Church which had fifteen centuries behind it. His hate
is just as deeply rooted in his soul as his delusion concerning his
special call.
According to the German Colloquies the Pope, like Mohammed, “began
under the Emperor Phocas”: “The prophecy [of the Apocalypse] includes
both, the Pope and the Turk.”[1005] Still, the Pope is the “best
ruler” for the world, because he does know how to govern; “he is lord
of our fields, meadows, money, houses and everything else, yea, of our
very bodies”; for this “he repays the world in everlasting curses and
maledictions; this is what the world wants and it duly returns thanks
and kisses his feet.”[1006]--“He is rather the lawyers’ than the
theologians’ god.”[1007]
He is determined to turn me “straightway into a slave of sin” and
to force me to “blaspheme,” but instead of “denying God” I shall
withstand the Pope; “otherwise we would willingly have borne and
endured the Papal rule.”[1008]--“No words are bad enough to describe
the Pope. We may call him miserly, godless and idolatrous, but all
this falls far short of the mark. It is impossible to grasp and put
into words his great infamies;”[1009] in short, as Christ says, “he is
the abomination of desolation standing in the Holy Place.”[1010]
The Pope is indeed the “father of abominations and the poisoner of
souls.” “After the devil the Pope is a real devil.”[1011] “After
the devil there is no worse man than the Pope with his lies and
his man-made ordinances”;[1012] in fact, he is a masked devil
incarnate.[1013] No one can become Pope unless he be a finished
and consummate knave and miscreant.[1014] The Pope is a “lion” in
strength and a “dragon” in craft.[1015] He is “an out-and-out Jew
who extols in Christ only what is material and temporal”;[1016]
needless to say, he is “far worse than the Turk,”[1017] “a mere
idolater and slave of Satan,”[1018] “a painted king but in reality a
filthy pretence,”[1019] his kingdom is a “Carnival show,”[1020] and
he himself “Rat-King of the monks and nuns.”[1021] Popery is full of
murder;[1022] it serves Moloch,[1023] and is the kingdom of all who
blaspheme God.
“For the Pope is, not the shepherd, but the devil of the Churches;
this comforts me as often as I think of it.”[1024]
“Anno 1539, on May 9,” we read in these Colloquies, “Dr. Martin for
three hours held a severe and earnest Disputation in the School at
Wittenberg, against that horrid monster, the Pope, that real werewolf
who excels in fury all the tyrants, who alone wishes to be above all
law and to act as he pleases, and even to be worshipped, to the loss
and damnation of many poor souls.... But he is a donkey-king [he
said] ... I hope he has now done his worst [now that I have broken
his power]; but neither are the Papists ever to be trusted, even
though they agree to peace and bind themselves to it under seal and
sign-manual.... Therefore let us watch and pray!”[1025]
The Disputation, of which all that is known was published by Paul
Drews in 1895,[1026] dealt principally with the question, which had
become a vital one, of armed resistance to the forces of the Empire
then intent on vindicating the rights of the Pope. The Theses solve
the question in the affirmative. “The Pope is no ‘authority’ ordained
by God ... on the contrary he is a robber, a ‘Bearwolf’ who gulps
down everything. And just as everybody rightly seeks to destroy this
monster, so also it is everyone’s duty to suppress the Pope by force,
indeed, penance must be done by those who neglect it. If anyone is
killed in defending a wild beast it is his own fault. In the same way
it is not wrong to offer resistance to those who defend the Pope, even
should they be Princes or Emperors.”[1027]
A German version of the chief Theses (51-70) was at once
printed.[1028]
Among the explanations given by Luther previous to the Disputation
(“_circulariter disputabimus_”) the following are worthy of note: “We
will not worship the Pope any longer as has been done heretofore....
Rather, we must fight against this Satan.”[1029] “The Pope is such a
monstrous beast that no ruler or tyrant can equal him.... He requires
us to worship his public blasphemy in defiance of the law; it is as
though he said: I will and command that you adore the devil. It is
not enough for him to strangle me, but he will have it that even the
soul is damned at his word of command.... The Pope is the devil. Were
I able to slay the devil, why should I not risk my life in doing so?
Look not on the Pope as a man; his very worshippers declare that
he is no mere man, but partly man and partly God. For ‘God’ here
read ‘devil.’ Just as Christ is God-made-flesh, so the Pope is the
devil incarnate.”[1030]--“Who would not lend a hand against this
arch-pestilential monster? There is none other such in the whole
world as he, who exalts himself far above God. Other wolves there
are indeed, yet none so impudent and imperious as this wolf and
monster.”[1031]
In this celebrated Disputation some of the objections are couched in
scholastic language. Such is the following: According to the Bible,
Antichrist is to be destroyed by the breath of God’s mouth and not
by the sword; therefore armed resistance to the Pope and the Papists
is not allowed. Luther replies: “That we concede, for what we say is
that he will escape and remain with us till the end of the world. He
is nevertheless to be resisted, and the Emperor too, and the Princes
who defend him, not on the Emperor’s account, but for the sake of this
monstrous beast.”[1032]--Another objection runs: “Christ forbade Peter
to make use of his sword against those sent out by the Pharisees;
therefore neither must we take up arms against the Pope.” The reply
was: “_Negabitur consequens_,” and Luther goes on to explain: “The
Pope is no authority as Caiphas and Pilate were. He is the devil’s
servant, possessed of the devil, a wolf who tyrannically carries off
souls without any right or mandate.” According to the report Luther
suddenly relapsed into German: “If Peter went to Rome and slew him,
he would be acting rightly, ‘_quia papa non habet ordinationem_,’”
etc.[1033] Justus Jonas and Cruciger also took a part, bringing
forward objections in order to exercise others in refuting them.
This theological tournament, with its crazy ideas couched in learned
terminology, might well cause the dispassionate historian to smile
were it not for the sombre background and the vision of the religious
wars for which ardent young students were being fitted and equipped.
What we have quoted from Luther’s familiar talks and from his
disputations affords overwhelming proof, were such wanting, that
the frenzied outbursts against the Pope we find even in his public
writings, were, not merely assumed, but really sprang from the depths
of his soul. It is true that at times they were regarded as rhetorical
effusions or even as little more than jokes, but as a matter of fact
they bear the clearest stamp of his glowing hate. They indicate a
persistent and eminently suspicious frame of mind, which deserves
to be considered seriously as a psychological, if not pathological,
condition; what we must ask ourselves is, how far the mere hint of
Popery sufficed to call forth in him a delirium of abuse.
In his tract of 1531 against Duke George he boasted, that people would
in future say, that “his mouth was full of angry words, vituperation
and curses on the Papists”; that “he intended to go down to his grave
cursing and abusing the miscreants”;[1034] that as long as breath
remained in him he would “pursue them to their grave with his thunders
and lightnings”;[1035] again, he says he will take refuge in his
maledictory prayer against the Papists in order to “kindle righteous
hatred in his heart,” and even expounds and recommends this prayer
in mockery to his opponent[1036]--in all this we detect an abnormal
feature which characterises his life and temper. This abnormity is
apparent not only in the intense seriousness with which he utters the
most outrageous things, more befitting a madman than a reasonable
being, but also at times in the very satires to which he has recourse.
That the Papacy would have still more to suffer from him after he was
dead, is a prophecy on which he is ever harping: “When I die,” he
remarks, “I shall turn into a spirit that will so plague the bishops,
parsons and godless monks, that one dead Luther will give them more
trouble than a thousand living Luthers.”[1037]
No theological simile is too strange for him in this morbid state of
mind and feeling. As in the case of those obsessed by a fixed idea the
delusion is ever obtruding itself under every possible shape, so, in a
similar way, every thought, all his studies, his practice, learning,
theology and exegesis, even when its bearing seems most remote, leads
up to this central and all-dominating conviction: “I believe that
the Pope is a devil incarnate in disguise, for he is Endchrist. For
as Christ is true God and true man, so also is Antichrist a devil
incarnate.”[1038] And yet, in the past, so he adds with a deep sigh,
“we worshipped all his lies and idolatry.”
He is very painstaking in his anatomy of the Pope-Antichrist.
“The head of Antichrist,” he said, “is both the Pope and the
Turk; a living creature must have both body and soul; the Pope is
Antichrist’s soul or spirit, but the Turk is his flesh or body; for
the latter lays waste, destroys and persecutes the Church of God
materially, just as the Pope does so spiritually.” Considering,
however, that he had unduly exonerated the Pope, he corrects himself
and adds: And materially also; “materially, viz. by laying waste
with fire and sword, hanging, murdering, etc.” The Church, however,
so he prophesies, will nevertheless “hold the field and resist the
Pope’s hypocrisy and idolatry.” He then goes on to make a fanciful
application of Daniel’s prophecy concerning the kingdoms of the world
to the Pope’s downfall. “The text compels us” to take the prophecy
(Apoc. xiii. 7) as also referring to the “Papal abomination.”
“The Pope shall be broken without hands and perish and die of
himself.”[1039]
That the Pope was spiritually destroying the Church he had already
asserted as early as 1520 in his “Von dem Bapstum tzu Rome”: “Of
all that is of Divine appointment not one jot is now observed at
Rome; indeed, if anyone thought of doing what is manifestly such,
it would be derided as folly. They let the Gospel and the Christian
faith perish everywhere and turn never a hair; moreover, every bad
example of mischief, spiritual and secular, flows from Rome over
the whole world as from an ocean of wickedness. All this the Romans
laugh at, and whoever laments it is looked upon as a ‘bon Christian’
[’_cristiano_’], i.e. a fool.”[1040]
The strength of Luther’s delusion that the Pope was Antichrist and
shared the diabolical nature furnishes the chief explanation of the
hopelessly bitter way in which he deals with all those who ventured to
defend the Papacy. On all such he heaps abuse and assails them with
that worst of the weapons at his command, viz. with calumny, calling
into question their good faith and denying to them the character of
Christians.
Johann Eck, so he assured his friends in 1538, “when at Rome, profited
splendidly by the example of Epicurus; his short stay there was
quite sufficient for him. No doubt he possesses great talent and a
good memory, but he is impudence itself, and, at the bottom of his
heart, cares as little about the Pope as he does about the Gospel.
Twenty years ago I should never have thought it possible to find
such Epicureans within the Church.”[1041] Eck is “a bold-lipped and
bloodthirsty sophist.”[1042] In 1532, somewhat more indulgently,
Luther had said of him: “Eccius is no preacher.... He can indeed talk
_ad lib._ of drinking, gambling, light women and boon companions”;
what, however, he says in his sermons he either does not take
seriously or at any rate his heart is not in it.[1043] In 1542,
nevertheless, Luther was heard to say: “I believe he has made himself
over to the devil and entered into a bargain with him how long he will
be allowed to live.”[1044] As was but natural, the man who had “never
really taken the defence of the Pope seriously” died impenitent.
According to Luther he passed away without making any confession,
without even saying, “God be gracious to me.”[1045]
Could we trust Luther, Johannes Fabri, another Catholic opponent,
“blasphemed himself to death.” Surely, thus “to sin deliberately and
of set purpose, exceeds all bounds.”[1046]
Joachim I., Elector of Brandenburg († 1535), who remained faithful to
the Church, was abused by Luther as a “liar, mad bloodhound, devilish
Papist, murderer, traitor, desperate miscreant, assassin of souls,
arch-knave, dirty pig and devil’s child, nay, the devil himself.”
We may recall the epithets he bestowed on Henry VIII. for having
presumed to criticise him: “Crowned donkey, abandoned, senseless man,
excrement of hogs and asses, impudent royal windbag, mad Harry, arrant
fool.”[1047]
Cardinal Cajetan, the famous theologian, was, according to Luther,
“an ambiguous, secretive, incomprehensible, mad theologian, and as
well qualified to understand and judge his cause as an ass would be to
play upon the harp.”[1048] Hoogstraaten, the Cologne Dominican, “does
not know the difference between what is in agreement with and what
contrary to Scripture; he is a mad, bloodthirsty murderer, a blind and
hardened donkey, who ought to be put to scratch for dung-beetles in
the manure-heaps of the Papists.”
Of his attacks on Duke George of Saxony, the “Dresden Assassin,” we
need only mention the parting shaft he flung into his opponent’s
grave: “Let Pharao perish with all his tribe; even though he [the
Duke] felt the prick of conscience yet he was never truly contrite....
Now he has been rooted out.... God sometimes consents to look on
for a while, but afterwards He punishes the race even down to the
children.”[1049]
No one who in any way stood up for the Papal Decrees was safe from
Luther’s ungovernable abuse, not even those statesmen who followed
them from necessity rather than out of any respect for the Church.
Luther is determined, so he says, “not to endure the excrement and
filth of the Pope-Ass.... For goodness’ sake don’t come stirring up
the donkey’s dung and papal filth in the churches, particularly in
this town [Wittenberg].... The Pope defiles the whole world with his
donkey’s dung, but why not let him eat it himself?... Let sleeping
dogs lie, this I beg of you [and do not worry me with the Pope],
otherwise I shall have to give you what for.... I must desist,
otherwise I shall get too angry.”[1050]
With the real defenders of the Papal Decrees, or the olden faith, he
was, however, never afraid of becoming “too angry”; the only redeeming
feature being, that, at times the overwhelming consciousness of his
fancied superiority brings his caustic wit to his assistance and
his anger dissolves into scorn. Minus this pungent ingredient, his
polemics would be incomprehensible, nor would his success have been
half so great.
An example of his descriptions of such Catholics who wrote and
spoke against him is to be found in his preface to a writing of
Klingenbeyl’s. He there jokingly congratulates himself on having been
the means of inducing his opponents to study the Bible in order to
refute him: “Luther has driven these blockheads to Holy Scripture,
just as though a man were to bring a lot of new animals to a
menagerie. Here Dr. Cockles [Cochlæus] barks like a dog; there Brand
of Berne [Johann Mensing] yelps like a fox; the Leipzig preacher of
blasphemy [Johann Koss] howls like a wolf; Dr. Cunz Wimpina grunts
like a snorting sow, and there is so much noise and clamour amongst
the beasts that really I am quite sorry to have started the chase....
They are supposed to be conversant with Scripture, and yet are quite
ignorant of how to handle it.”[1051]
In a more serious and tragic tone he points out, how many of his foes
and opponents had been carried off suddenly by a Divine judgment. He
even drafted a long list of such instances, supplied with hateful
glosses of his own, which he alleged as a proof of the “visible action
of God” in support of his cause.[1052] Johann Koss, the “preacher
of blasphemy,” mentioned above, was given a place in this libellous
catalogue after he had been seized with a stroke of apoplexy in the
pulpit (Dec. 29, 1532). At the instance of Duke George he had been
appointed assistant preacher under Hieronymus Dungersheim, that, by
means of his elocutionary talent, he might defend the town of Leipzig
against the inroads of the new teaching. What particularly incensed
Luther was the use this preacher made of his Postils to refute him
by his own words. The stroke came on him while he was vindicating
the Catholic doctrine of good works. This circumstance, taken in
conjunction with the “place, time and individual,” was for Luther an
irrefutable proof of the intervention of “God’s anger.” “Christ,” he
says, “struck down His enemy, the Leipzig shouter, in the very midst of
his blasphemy.”[1053] The zealous preacher died about a month later.
“None are more pitiable,” Luther says elsewhere of this incident,
“than the presumptuous, such as are all the Papists.”[1054] It was
impossible for him to inveigh with sufficient severity against the
presumption which threatened him on all sides, despite the excessive
kindliness and moderation with which he occasionally credits himself;
for were not those who confronted him “the devil and his hirelings”? He
was forced to combat the frightful presumption of these men who acted
as though they were “steeped in holiness”; for in reality they are
“dirty pig-snouts”; as Papists they are “at the very least, murderers,
thieves and persecutors”; hence let all rise up against the “servers of
idols.”[1055]
“We must curse the Pope and his kingdom and revile and abuse it,
and not close our jaws but preach against it without ceasing. There
are some now who say we are capable of nothing else but of damning,
scolding and slandering the Pope and his followers.” “Yes, and so it
must be.”[1056]
Elsewhere he hints which vilely vulgar terms of opprobrium were to be
applied to the Pope, and, after instancing them, adds: “It is thus
that we should learn to make use of these words.” The Catholic Princes
were also aimed at in this instruction which occurs in one of his
sermons. This discourse, pronounced on Jan. 12, 1531, at a time when
the intervention of the hostile secular powers was feared, was printed
ten years later under the title “Ein trostlich Unterricht wie man
sich gegen den Tyrannen, so Christum und sein Wort verfolgen halten
soll.”[1057]
“Our mad and raving Princes,” he says, “are now raging and blustering
and planning to root out this teaching. Whoever is desirous of devoting
himself to Christ must daily be ready to suffer any peril to life and
limb.” Amongst the grounds for encouragement he adduces is the fact
that even his very foes admitted, “that we preach and teach God’s Word;
the only thing amiss being, that it was not done at their bidding,
but that we at Wittenberg started it all unknown to them.” He calls
the angry Princes “great merd-pots,” who are “kings and rulers of
the pig-sty of the earth where the belly, the universal cesspool,
reigns supreme.” “But we will be of good cheer and put our fingers
to our noses at them”; because we hold fast to Christ therefore we
suffer persecution from the world. “Who is the Pope, that he should
be angry?... A sickly, smelly scarecrow.” “The Pope says: I will
excommunicate you, thrust you down to the abyss of hell. [I tell him]
Stick your tongue in my----. I am holy, am baptised, have God’s Word
and His Promises to proclaim, but you are a sickly, syphilitic sack
of maggots. It is thus that we should learn to make use of these
words.”[1058]
3. The Psychology of Luther’s Abusive Language
_Various Psychological Factors._
Psychologically to appreciate the phenomenon in question we must first
of all take into account Luther’s temperament.
To every unprejudiced observer it must be clear, that, without the
unusual excitability natural to him, many of his utterances would be
quite inexplicable; even when we have given due weight to Luther’s
ungovernable temper and all too powerful imagination they still present
many difficult questions to the observer. Luther himself, as early as
1520, excuses to Spalatin his offensive language on the ground of his
natural “hot-bloodedness”; as everybody knew what his temper was, his
opponents ought not to annoy him as they did; yet these “monsters” only
provoked him the more, and made him “overstep the bounds of modesty and
decency.”[1059] It is perfectly true that some of his foes did provoke
him by their mode of attack, yet on the other hand his own violence
usually put theirs in the shade. (See below, xxvii., 4.)
In addition to his natural impetuosity which furnishes the chief basis
of the phenomenon under consideration, several other factors must
also be envisaged, depending on the objects or persons arousing his
indignation.
It is clear that he was within his rights when he scourged the
anti-Christian blasphemy and seductive wiles of the Jews, however much
he may have been in the wrong in allowing himself to be carried away by
fanaticism so far as to demand their actual persecution. The same holds
good of many of the instances of his ungenerous and violent behaviour
towards “heretics” in his own fold. As against the many and oftentimes
very palpable defects of their position, he knew how to stand up for
truth and logic, though his way of doing so was not always happy, nor
his strictures untouched by his own theological errors.
Nor can it be denied that he was in the right when he assailed the
real, and, alas, all too many abuses of the olden Church. The lively
sense that, at least in this respect, he was in the right may quite
possibly have fed the inward fire of his animosity to Catholics, all
the more owing to his being in the wrong in those new doctrines which
were his principal concern. To the assurance, and the offensive manner
in which he insisted on a reform, his visit to Rome, a distorted
recollection of which ever remained with him, no doubt contributed.
His mind was ever reverting to the dismal picture--by no means an
altogether imaginary one--of the immorality prevailing in even the
highest ecclesiastical circles of Rome.
Rome’s unworthy treatment of the system of indulgences, which had
afforded the occasion of his action in 1517, continued to supply new
fuel for his indignation; to it he was fond of tracing back his whole
undertaking. What increased his anger was the thought that it was this
same Rome, whose ignoble practices both in the matter of indulgences
and in other fields was notorious, who had called him to judgment. It
is painful to the Catholic to have to confess that many of Luther’s
complaints were by no means unfounded. He will, however, call to mind
the better churchmen of those days, who, though indignant at the sad
corruption then prevalent, never dreamt of apostasy, knowing as they
did, that even far worse scandals could never justify a revolt against
the institution appointed by Christ for the salvation of souls.
Even when voicing his real grievances Luther was seldom either prudent
or moderate. He never seems to have quite taken to heart the scriptural
injunction: “Let every man be slow to speak, slow to anger, for the
anger of man worketh not the justice of God.” He expounds in his
Postils the Epistle where the admonition in question occurs,[1060] but
it is curious to note how cursorily he dismisses the words, with which,
maybe, he felt somewhat out of sympathy, though here, as elsewhere, he
refers to the evil consequences of any proneness to anger. On the other
hand, he insists, that “our censures and rebukes” must be in accordance
with the “right and true Word,” i.e. with theology as he understood
it.[1061] He prefers to devote far the greater portion of the
exposition to proving his favourite thesis, that, thanks to the Evangel
now proclaimed, “we have a good and cheerful conscience, stronger than
all fear, sin and temptation, and containing the sure hope of life
everlasting”;[1062] “it is a Word that has power to save your souls;
what more can you desire?”[1063] He seems averse to inculcating that
meekness which the text requires.
* * * * *
One factor which frequently fanned the flames was jealousy, when,
for instance, he had to deal with theological opponents who appeared
to be making too small account of him. The new Evangel, he said, was
endangered by none more than by the “fanatics and sacramentarians”;
to defend his personal position against them had cost him the hardest
struggle of his whole life; no wonder that against them he opened wide
the sluice-gates of his eloquence. He was keenly sensitive to any
slight. “Things are going all wrong in the world,” he sighed in 1532.
“We are already looked upon with contempt, but let us gather up the
fragments when they are cheapest, that is what I advise.”[1064] Of
Carlstadt twelve years previous he had written: “If he has no respect
for me, which of us then will he respect? And what is the good of
admonishing him? I believe he reckons me one of the most learned men
in Wittenberg, and yet he actually tells me to my very face that I am
nobody.... He writes right and left just as he chooses and looks on
poor Wittenberg as quite beneath his notice.”[1065] Luther’s vexation
explains his language. A pity one of the Princes did not let him taste
cold steel; if Carlstadt believed in a God in heaven, then might
Christ never more be gracious to him (Luther); he was no man, but an
incarnation of the evil spirit, etc.
Not merely his former friend Carlstadt but others too he accused of
inordinate ambition because they wished to discredit his discoveries
and his position. “It is the ‘_gloria_’ that does the mischief,” he
said in 1540 in his Table-Talk, “Zwingli was greedy of honour, as
we see from what he wrote, viz. that he had learnt nothing from me.
I should indeed be sorry had he learnt from me, for he went astray.
Œcolampadius thought himself too learned to listen to me or to learn
from me; of course, he too, surpassed me. Carlstadt also declares: ‘I
care nothing for you,’ and Münzer actually declaimed against two Popes,
the new one [myself] and the old.[1066] All who shun us and attack
us secretly have departed from the faith, like Jeckel and Grickel
[Jakob Schenk and Johann Agricola]; they reached their understanding by
their own efforts and learnt nothing from us! Just like Zwingli.” Yet
twenty-five years before (i.e. previous to his great discovery in 1515)
no one “knew anything,” and, twenty-one years before, he, all alone,
under the Divine guidance had put the ball in motion. “Ah, κενοδοξία
[vainglory], that’s the mischief.”[1067]
Jealousy played its part also, when, in 1525, he rounded so violently
upon Zwingli and the Zwinglians at Strasburg. Zwingli’s crime in
his eyes lay not merely in his having, like Œcolampadius, adopted a
divergent doctrine on the Eucharist, but in his claim to have been
before Luther in preaching the Gospel of Christ openly according to
its true meaning.[1068] Both circumstances contributed to Luther’s
ire, which, after finding vent in many angry words, culminated at last
in the rudest abuse of Zwingli and his “devilish” crew. Already in
1525, he wrote in the instruction for the people of Strasburg which he
gave to Gregory Casel, who had come to Wittenberg to negotiate:[1069]
“One of the parties must be the tool of Satan, i.e. either they or
we.”[1070] “Christ can have no part with Belial.” And, before this:
“They [Zwingli and Œcolampadius] disturb our Church and weaken
our repute. Hence we cannot remain silent. If they would be vexed
to see their own reputation suffer, let them also think of ours.”
“They ought to have held their tongues long ago [on the question of
the Sacrament]; now silence comes too late.” He concludes with the
assurance, that their error was refuted by “the Spirit,” and that it
was impossible they could have any certainty concerning their doctrine,
whereas he could justly boast, that he had the experience of the faith
and the testimony of the Spirit (“_experimentum fidei et spiritus
testimonium_”). “They will never win the day. It pains me that Zwingli
and his followers take offence at my saying that ‘What I write must be
true.’”
Apart from the doctrine on the Sacrament, the other thing which helped
to annoy him stands revealed more plainly in the letter addressed on
the same day to the Strasburg preachers: “We dare to boast that Christ
was first made known by us, and now Zwingli actually comes and accuses
us of denying Christ.”[1071] Bossuet was quite right in arguing that
such petty jealousy on Luther’s part is scarcely to his credit.[1072]
He quotes a criticism on Luther’s behaviour by George Calixt, the
famous Lutheran professor of theology at Helmstädt: “The sweetness of
vainglory is so seductive and human weakness so great, that even those
who despise all things and risk their goods, yea life itself, may
succumb to inordinate ambition.” Luther, too, had high aims; “we cannot
be surprised that, even a man so large-minded as Luther, should have
written such things to the people of Strasburg.”[1073]
Offended vanity played a part as great and even more obvious in
Luther’s furious polemics against the literary defenders of the Church.
One cannot help noticing how, especially when they had succeeded in
making out a clear case against him, his answer was a torrent of most
unsparing abuse.
* * * * *
The eloquence which he had at his command also constituted a
temptation. He was well aware of the force with which his impassioned
language carried others away. Very little was thus needed to induce him
to take up this formidable weapon which at least ensured his success
among the masses. He himself revelled in the unquenchable wealth of his
vituperative vocabulary, and with it he caught the fancy of thousands
who loved nothing more than a quarrel. If it be true that all popular
orators are exposed to the temptation to exaggerate, to say things
which are striking rather than correct, and, generally, to court the
applause of the crowd, this danger was even greater in Luther’s case
owing to the whole character of the controversy he had stirred up. In
the midst of a stormy sea one does not speak softly. Luther’s abuse
was, however, powerful enough to be heard above even the most furious
tempest.
For his work Luther required an extraordinary stimulus. He would have
succumbed under the countless and burdensome labours which devolved
on him had he not constantly aroused himself anew by the exercise of
a sort of violence. Vituperation thus became to him a real need. When
he had succeeded thereby in working himself up into a passion his mind
grew clearer and his imagination more vigorous, so that he found it all
the easier to borrow from the lips of the mob that rude language of
which he makes such fell use. He kindles his animation by dwelling on
the “vermin and running sores of Popery.”
In the same way from time to time he found the need of unburdening
himself of his ill-humour. The small success of his labours for the
reform of morals and his other annoying experiences gave him many an
unhappy hour. His bad humour found an outlet in abuse and vituperation,
particularly against the enemies of the Evangel. He himself was unable
to conceal the real grounds of the vexation which he vented on the
Papacy, for, often enough, after storming against the Papists, he
complains bitterly of his own followers’ contempt for the “Word” and of
their evil lives.
After the utterance already recorded: “We must curse the Pope and his
kingdom,” he goes on to levy charges of the worst character against
those of his own party, and pours forth on them, too, all the vials of
his wrath and disappointment. It was in this connection that he said,
that the Evangelicals were seven times worse than before; for the one
devil that had been expelled, seven worse had entered in, so horribly
did they lie, cheat, gorge and swill and indulge in every vice;
princes, lords, nobles, burghers and peasants alike had lost all fear
of God.[1074]
Another example, taken this time from the year 1536. Full of anger
against the Pope he said to a friend who held a high post: “My dear
fellow, do hurl a Paternoster as a curse against the Papacy that it
may be smitten with the Dance of St. Vitus.” He adds: “Don’t mind
my way of speaking, for indeed you know it well; I am coarse and
rough ... so sore beset, oppressed and overwhelmed with business of
all kinds, that, to save my poor carcase I must sometimes indulge
in a little pleasure, for, after all, man is only human”[1075]--an
utterance psychologically valuable. The real reason for the
depression against which he was struggling is, however, clearer in
other letters dating from that time. In them we get a glimpse of his
grievous vexation and annoyance with the false teachers within the
Evangelical fold: “New prophets are arising one after the other. I
almost long to be delivered [by death] so as not to have to go on
seeing so much mischief, and to be free at last from this kingdom
of the devil. I implore you to pray to God that He would grant me
this.”[1076]
Lastly, his outbursts against the Papacy served to cover his own
anxiety of conscience.
In the same way as others who leave their Church, fling themselves
into the turmoil and distractions of the world in order to escape
their scruples, Luther too, allayed the reproach of his conscience by
precipitating himself into the midst of the storm he had evoked; with
this advantage, that the sharp weapons of abuse and scorn he employed
could be turned against the enemy both without and within. Accustomed
as he was to treat the voice of conscience as the voice of Satan, he
willingly clung to the doubtful consolation that the stronger his
abuse of his opponents the greater his own encouragement. The evil
which he detected in Popery seemed to him to load the scale in his own
favour. He even admits this with the most engaging frankness.
“I am quite ready to allow that the Pope’s abomination is, after
Christ, my greatest consolation. Hence those are hopeless simpletons
who say we should not abuse the Pope. Don’t be slow in abuse,
particularly when the devil attacks you on Justification.” He intends
“to infuse courage into himself by considering the abomination and
horror” of the Pope; and to “hold it up under the devil’s nose.”[1077]
Döllinger remarks justly: “Here [in these anxieties of conscience]
is to be found at least a partial psychological explanation of that
wealth of bitter abuse which marks off Luther’s writings from all
other literary products, ancient or mediæval.... Not seldom he sought
to deaden the interior terrors of a reproving conscience with the
noisy clamour of his vituperation.”[1078]
We have just heard Luther promise to hold up the Pope’s abomination to
the devil’s nose. This saying brings us to the principal explanation of
the phenomenon under consideration.
_Connection of Luther’s Abusiveness with his Mystic Persuasion of his
Special Call._
Luther had brought himself to such a pitch as to see in the existing
Church the devil’s kingdom, to overthrow which, with its Antichrist,
was his own sublime mission. This theological, anti-diabolical motive
for his anger and boundless invective, throws all others into the shade.
“Even were I not carried away by my hot temper and my style of
writing,” he says, “I should still be obliged to take the field, as I
do, against the enemies of truth” (“children of the devil” he calls
them elsewhere). “I am hot-headed enough, nor is my pen blunt.” But
these foes “revel in the most horrible crimes not merely against me,
but even against God’s Word.” Did not Christ Himself have recourse
to abuse, he asks, against the “wicked and adulterous generation of
the Jews, against the brood of vipers, the hypocrites and children of
the devil”? “Whoever is strong in the consciousness of the truth, can
display no patience towards its furious and ferocious enemies.”[1079]
The more vividly he persuaded himself of his mission, the blacker
were the colours in which he painted the devil of Popery who refused
to believe in it, and the more strangely did there surge up from
the sombre depths of his soul and permeate his whole being a hatred
the like of which no mortal man had ever known before. In such
outbursts Luther thinks he is “raving and raging [’_debacchari_’]
against Satan”; for instance, in a letter to Melanchthon, dated from
the fortress of Coburg, “from the stronghold full of devils where
Christ yet reigns in the midst of His foes.” Even when unable from
bodily weakness to write against the devil, yet he could at least
rage against him in thought and prayer; “the Pope’s enormities
(‘_portenta_’) against God and against the common weal” supplied him
with material in abundance.[1080]
God had appointed him, so we read elsewhere, “to teach and to
instruct,” as “an Apostle and Evangelist in the German lands” (were
it his intention to boast); for he knows that he teaches “by the
Grace of God, whose name Satan shall not destroy nor deprive me of
to all eternity”; therefore I must unsparingly “expose my back parts
to the devil ... so as to enrage him still more.” To the wrath of
all the devils, bishops, and princes he will pay as little heed as
to the rustle of a bat’s wing, nor will he spare the “traitors and
murderers.”[1081]
As early as 1520 he revealed to an intimate friend the morbidly
exaggerated ideas which moved him: As an excuse for his dreadful
vituperation he alleges his pseudo-mystic conception of the life and
death struggle he was to engage in with the devil, and his sense
of the “_impetus Spiritus_”; this he pleads in extenuation to his
friend, who would appear to have reminded him of the dangers of
pride. “All condemn my sarcasm,” he admits, but, now that the Spirit
has moved him, he may set himself on a line with the “prophets” of
the Old Law who “were so harsh in their invective,” nay, with Paul
the Apostle, whose severe censures were ever present in his mind. In
fact, God Himself, according to Luther, is to some extent present in
these utterances by means of His power and action, and, “sure enough,
intends in this way to unmask the inventions of man.”[1082]
As compared with the interior force with which the idea of his mission
inspired him, all his violence, particularly in his polemics with the
Catholic theologians and statesmen, appeared to him far too weak. Thus
his “Wider Hans Worst” against the Catholic Duke of Brunswick, though
reeking of blood and hate, seemed to him to fall short of the mark
and to be all too moderate, so at least he told Melanchthon, to all
appearance quite seriously.[1083] His inability ever to exhaust his
indignation goes back to the idea expressed by him in the same letter
with such startling candour and conviction as to remind one of the
ravings of a man possessed by a fixed delusion: “It is certain that it
is God Who is fighting.” “Our cause is directed by the hand of God, not
by our own wisdom. The Word makes its way and prayer glows ... hence
we might well sleep in peace were we not mere flesh.” His hint at the
near approach of the Last Judgment, the many signs of which could not
escape notice, more than confirms the pseudo-mystic character both of
his confidence and of his hate.[1084]
On other occasions traces of his pet superstitions are apparent, and,
when we take them together, prove beyond a doubt the unhealthy state
of the mind from which they sprang. For instance, Luther professes to
know particulars of the approaching end of the world concerning which
the Bible says nothing; he also has that curious list of opponents
miraculously slain by the Divine hand, and even fancies he can increase
it by praying for the death of those who, not sharing his opinions,
stood in his way: “This year we must pray Duke Maurice to death; we
must slay him by our prayers, for he is likely to prove a wicked man.”
On the same occasion he also attributes to himself a sort of prophetic
gift: “I am a prophet.”[1085] The foretelling of future events and
the fulfilment in his own person of olden prophecies and visions, and
again the many miracles and expulsions of the devil which accompany the
spread of his teaching, confirm his Evangel and impress the stamp of
Divine approbation on his hatred of Antichrist.[1086] Divine portents,
which, however, no one but Luther would have recognised as such, were
also exploited: the birth of the monstrous Monk-Calf; the Pope-Ass
fished from the Tiber; signs in the heavens and on the earth. The Book
of Daniel and St. John’s Apocalypse supplied him when necessary with
the wished-for interpretation, though his far-fetched speculations
would better become a mystic dreamer than a sober theologian and
spiritual guide of thousands. All this was crowned by the diabolical
manifestations which he himself experienced, though what he took for
apparitions of the devil was merely the outcome of an overwrought
mind.[1087]
This enables us to seize that second nature of his, made up of
superhuman storming and vituperation, and to understand, how, in his
hands, wild abuse of the Papacy became quite a system.
“I shall put on my horns,” he wrote to a friend in 1522, “and vex
Satan until he lies stretched out on the ground. Don’t be afraid, but
neither expect me to spare my gainsayers; should they be hard hit by
the new movement, that is not our fault, but a judgment from above on
their tyranny.”[1088] Shortly after he wrote in a similar strain to
reassure some unknown correspondent concerning his unusual methods
of controversy: “Hence, my dear friend, do not wonder that many take
offence at my writings. For it _must_ be that only a few hold fast
to the Gospel [the friend had pointed out to him that many of his
followers were being scared away by his abuse].... His Highness my
master has admonished me in writing, and many other friends have done
the same. But my reply is ever that I neither can nor will refrain
from it.”[1089]
Abuse becomes almost inseparable from his teaching, or at least seems
entailed by it. “Whoever accepts my teaching with a right heart,”
he says, “will not be scandalised by my abuse.” Indeed, he adds,
emulating Hus, he was ready “to risk his life should persecution or
the needs of the time demand it.” Nor have we any reason to doubt that
his misguided enthusiasm would have rendered him capable of such a
sacrifice.[1090]
In 1531 the Elector Johann sent him a reprimand through Chancellor
Brück on account of the two violent tracts, “Warnunge an seine lieben
Deudschen” and “Auff das vermeint keiserlich Edict.” George of Saxony
had, it appears, complained to the Elector, that these writings
“served in no small measure to incite to rebellion, and also contained
much abuse both of high and low.”[1091] Hereupon Luther, with the
utmost impudence, vindicated his cause to his sovereign: “That
certain persons may have informed your Electoral Highness that the
two writings were sharp and hasty, this is indeed true; I never meant
them to be blunt and kind, and only regret that they were not more
severe and violent”; for all he had said of such “lying, blasphemous,
asinine” opponents--especially considering the danger in which the
Electoral house stood--fell short of the mark; the Prince should bear
in mind that he [Luther] had been “far too mild and soft in dealing
with such evil knots and boughs.”[1092]
But “the knots and boughs” of his literary opponents did not consist
entirely in coarse insults, but largely in the well-grounded
vindication against his unwarranted attacks of the religion of their
fathers, in which they saw the true basis of the common weal. His
opponents had necessarily to take the defensive; Luther, with his
furious words and actions, was in almost every case the aggressor, and
forestalled their writings.
It is plain that, at the very time when he thus explained his position
to the Elector Johann, i.e. about the time of the Diet of Augsburg,
in 1530, he was under the influence of that inner power of which he
had said: “I am carried away I know not by what spirit”; “I am not
master of myself.” He exclaims: “In God’s name and at His command I
will tread upon the lion and adder and trample under foot the lion and
dragon [it is thus that he applies the Messianic prophecy in Ps. xc.
13]; this shall commence during my lifetime and be accomplished after
my death. St. John Hus prophesied of me,” etc.[1093] More than ever
he lays stress on the fact that he has a “Divine mission,” and was
“called by God to a work,” not commenced “of his own initiative”; for
which cause also “God was with him and assisted him.”[1094] He means
to realise his earlier threat (1521): “If I live I shall never make
peace with the Papacy; if you kill me you shall have twice as little
peace. Do your worst, you swine and Thomists. Luther will be to you a
bear in the road and a lion in the path [as Osee says]. He will meet
you everywhere and not leave you in peace until your brazen front and
stiff neck be broken, either by gentleness or by force. I have lost
enough patience already; if you will not amend you may continue to
rage against me and I to despise you, you abandoned monsters.”[1095]
He is now determined to carry out his threat of 1527 even at the cost
of his life: “My teaching shall cry aloud and smite right and left;
may God deny me the gifts of patience and meekness. My cry is: No, No,
No, so long as I can move a muscle, let it vex King, Emperor, Princes,
the devil, or whom it may.... Bishops, priests, monks, great Johnnies,
scholars and the whole world are all thirsting for the gore of Luther,
whose executioners they would gladly be, and the devil likewise and
his crew.... My teaching is the main thing by which I defy not only
princes and kings but even all the devils. I am and remain a mere
sheep.... Not following my own conceit, I may have attacked a tyrant
or great scholar and given him a cut and made him angry, but let him
be ready for thirty more.... Let no one, least of all the tyrants
and persecutors of the Evangel, expect any patience or humility from
me.... What must not my wrath be with the Papists who are my avowed
enemies?... Come on, all together, since you all belong to one batch,
devils, Papists, fanatics, fall upon Luther! Papists from the front,
fanatics from the rear, devils from every side! Chase him, hunt him
down gaily, you have found the right quarry. Once Luther is down you
are saved and have won the day. But I see plainly that words are of no
avail; no abuse, no teaching, no exhortation, no menaces, no promises,
no beseeching serve our purpose.... Well, then, in God’s name, let us
try defiance. Whoever relents, let him go; whoever is afraid, let him
flee; I have at my back a strong Defender.... I have well served the
world and brought Holy Scripture and the Word of God to light in a way
unheard of for a thousand years. I have done my part; your blood be
upon your own head and not on my hands!”[1096]
Nevertheless, at times he appears to have had some slight qualms.
Yet after having described the Papists as “Pope-Asses, slaves of
the Mass, blasphemers, miscreants and murderers of souls,”[1097] he
continues: “Should anyone here say that I confine myself to flinging
coarse epithets about me and can do nothing but slander and abuse, I
would reply, firstly, that such abuse is nothing compared with the
unspeakable wickedness. For what is it if I abuse the devil as a
murderer, miscreant, traitor, blasphemer and liar? To him all this
is but a gentle breeze! But what else are the Pope-Asses but devils
incarnate, who know not penance, whose hearts are hardened and who
knowingly defend their palpable blasphemy.... Hence my abuse is not
abuse at all, but just the same as were I to call a turnip a turnip, an
apple an apple, or a pear a pear.”[1098]
A psychological explanation of Luther’s mania for invective is also to
be looked for in the admixture of vile ingredients which went to make
up his abuse. So frequently had he recourse to such when in a state of
excitement that they must be familiar to every observer of Luther’s
development and general behaviour; it is, however, our duty here to
incorporate this element, so characteristic of his polemics, in our
sketch of the angry Luther.
_The Unpleasant Seasoning of Luther’s Abuse._
The filthy expressions, to which Luther was so prone when angry, are
psychologically interesting, throwing light as they do on the depth
of his passion and on the all too earthly atmosphere which pervades
his abuse. Had Luther’s one object, as writer and teacher, been to
vindicate spiritual treasures he would surely have scorned to make use
of such adjuncts as these in his teaching or his polemics. Even when
desirous of speaking forcibly, as beseemed a man of his stamp, he would
have done so without introducing these disreputable and often repulsive
elements of speech. He was, however, carried away by an imagination
only too familiar with such vulgar imagery, and a tongue and pen much
too ready to speak or write of things of that sort. Unless he places
pressure on himself a man’s writings give a true picture of his inner
standards, and pressure was something which Luther’s genius could never
endure.
Luther had, moreover, a special motive for drawing his creations
from this polluted well. He wished to arouse the lower classes and
to ingratiate himself with those who, the less capable they were of
thinking for themselves or of forming a true judgment, were all the
readier to welcome coarseness, banter and the tone of the gutter.
Amidst their derisive laughter he flings his filth in the face of
his opponents, of the Catholics throughout the world, the Pope, the
hierarchy and the German past.
If at Rome they had to prove that the Keys had been given to St.
Peter “the Pope’s nether garments would fare badly.”[1099] Of the
Papal dispensation for the clergy to marry, which many confidently
expected, Luther says, that it would be just the thing for the devil;
“let him open his bowels over his dispensation and sling it about his
neck.”[1100]--The Princes and nobles (those who were on the other
side) “soiled their breeches so shamefully in the Peasant War that
even now they can be smelt afar off.”[1101]--He declares of the head
of the Church of Rome: “Among real Christians no one is more utterly
despicable than the Pope ... he stinks like a hoopoe’s nest.”[1102]
Of those generally who opposed the Divine Word he says: “No smell is
worse than yours.”[1103]--“Good-bye, beloved Rome; let what stinks go
on stinking.”[1104]
“It is stupid of the Papists to wear breeches. How if they were to get
drunk and let slip a motion?”[1105] This concern we find expressed in
Luther’s “Etliche Sprüche wider das Concilium Obstantiense” (1535).
And it is quite in keeping with other utterances in the same writing.
He there speaks of the “dragons’ heads that peep and spew out of the
hind-quarters of the Pope-Ass,”[1106] and on the same page ventures to
address our Saviour as follows: “Beloved Lord Jesus Christ, it is high
time that Thou shouldst lay bare, back and front, the shame of the
furious, bloodthirsty, purple-clad harridan and reveal it to the whole
world in preparation for the dawn of Thy bright Coming.”
Naturally he is no less unrestrained in his attacks on all who
defended Popery. Of Eck’s ideas on chastity he remarks: “Your he-goat
to your nostrils smells like balsam.”[1107] Of Cardinal Albert of
Mayence and his party he wrote, during the Schönitz controversy:
These “knaves and liars” “bring out foul rags fit only for devils
and men to use in the closet.”[1108] The epithet, merd-priest,
merd-bishop, is several times applied by him to members of the
Catholic hierarchy.[1109] “The poor merd-priest wanted to ease
himself, but, alas, there was nothing in his bowels.”[1110]
The Jurists who still clung to Canon Law he declares “invade the
churches with their Pope like so many swine; yet there is another
place whither they might more seemingly betake themselves if they
wish to wipe the fundament of their Pope.”[1111] The Italians think
that “whatever a Cardinal gives vent to, however vile it be, is a new
article of faith promulgated for the benefit of the Germans.”[1112]
To the Papists who threaten him with a Council he says: “If they are
angry let them ease themselves into their breeches and sling it round
their neck; that will be real balsam and pax for such thin-skinned
saints.”[1113]--The fanatics who opposed his teaching on the Sacrament
were also twitted on the score that “they would surely ease themselves
on it and make use of it in the privy.”[1114] The Princes and
scoundrel nobles faithfully followed the devil’s lead, who cannot
bear to listen to God’s Word “but shows it his backside.”[1115] How
are we best to answer an opponent, even the Pope? As though he were
a “despicable drunkard.” “Give them the fig” (i.e. make a certain
obscene gesture with the fist).[1116]--Such is his own remedy in all
hostility and every misfortune: “I give them the fig.”[1117] His usual
counsel is, however, to turn one’s “posterior” on them.
The Pope is the “filth which the devil has dropped in the Church”;
he is the “devil’s bishop and the devil himself.”[1118]--Commenting
on the Papal formula “_districte mandantes_,” he adds: “Ja, in
Ars.”[1119] They want “me to run to Rome and fetch forgiveness of
sins. Yes, forsooth, an evacuation!”[1120]
Of the Pope’s Bull of excommunication he says “they ought to order his
horrid ban to be taken to the back quarters where children of Adam go
to stool; it might then be used as a pocket-handkerchief.”[1121]--We
must seize hold of the “vices” of the Pope and his clergy and show
them up as real lechers; thus should all those who hold the office of
preacher “set their droppings under the very noses of the Pope and the
bishops.”[1122] “The spirit of the Pope, the father of lies,” wishes
to display his wisdom by so altering the Word of God, that it “reeks
of his stale filth.”[1123]--These people, who, like the Pope, are so
learned in the Scripture, are “clever sophists,” experts in equine
anal functions.[1124] They have “taken it upon themselves to come to
the assistance of the whole world with their chastity and good works,”
but, in reality, they merely “stuff our mouths with horse-dung.”[1125]
Of the alleged Papal usurpations he exclaims: “Were such muck
as this stirred up in a free Council, what a stench there would
be!”[1126]--The same favourite figure of speech helps him against the
Sacramentarians: “What useful purpose can be served by my raking up
all the devil’s filth?”[1127]--This phrase was at least more in place
when Luther, referring to Philip of Hesse’s bigamy, said, that he “was
not going to stir up the filth under the public nose.”[1128]--After
their defeat he refused to comply with the demand of the peasants,
that he should support them in their lawlessness: They want us to lend
them a hand in “stirring up thoroughly the filth that is so eager to
stink, till their mouths and noses are choked with it.”[1129] But it
is to the Pope and his followers that, by preference, he applies such
imagery. “They have forsaken the stool of St. Peter and St. Paul and
now parade their filth [concerning original sin]; to such a pass have
they come that they no longer believe anything, whether concerning
the Gospel, or Christ, or even their own teaching.”[1130]--“This is
the filth they now purvey, viz. that we are saved by our works; this
is the devil’s own poisonous tail.”[1131]--Of those who awaited the
decision of a Council he writes: “Let the devil wait if he chooses....
The members of the body must not wait till the filth says and decrees
whether the body is healthy or not. We are determined to learn this
from the members themselves and not from the urine, excrement and
filth. In the same way we shall not wait for the Pope and bishops in
Council to say: This is right. For they are no part of the body, or
clean and healthy members, but merely the filth of squiredom, merd
spattered on the sleeve and veritable ordure, for they persecute the
true Evangel, well knowing it to be the Word of God. Therefore we can
see they are but filth, stench and limbs of Satan.”[1132]
At the time of the Diet of Augsburg, in 1530, he informed the
delegates of his party: “You are treating, not with men, but with the
very gates of hell.... But they have fallen foul of the wisdom of
God and [the final sentence of this Latin epistle is in German] soil
themselves with their own filthy wisdom. Amen, Amen.”[1133]--The words
“bescheissen” and “beschmeissen” (cp. popular French: “emmerder”) flow
naturally from Luther’s pen. Neobulus, the Hessian defender of the
bigamy, he describes as “a prince of darkness,” who “has ‘defiled’
himself with his wisdom”;[1134] the papal “Jackanapes” who “declare
that the Lutherans have risen in revolt,” have likewise “‘defiled’
themselves with their sophistry.”[1135]
He asserts he can say “with a clear conscience that the Pope is a
merd-ass and the foe of God.”[1136] “The Pope-Ass has emitted a great
and horrible ordure here.... A wonder it did not tear his anus or
burst his belly.” “There lies the Pope in his own dung.”[1137] “The
Popes are so fond of lies and scurrilities that their paunch waxes fat
on them”; they are waiting to see “whether the Pope’s motions will
not ultimately scare the kings.... The Papal hypocrites--I had almost
said the devil’s excrements--boast of being masters over the whole
world.”[1138]
Amidst these unavoidable quotations from Luther’s unpleasant vocabulary
of abuse the historian is confronted again and again with the question:
What relation does this coarser side of Luther’s style bear to the
manners of his times? We have already pointed out how great the
distance is between him and all other writers, particularly such as
treat of religious subjects in a popular or polemical vein; obviously
it is with the latter category of writings that his should be compared,
rather than with the isolated aberrations of certain writers of romance
or the lascivious works produced by the Humanists.[1139] Various
quotations from contemporaries of Luther’s, even from friends of the
innovations, have shown that his language both astonished and shocked
them.[1140] It was felt that none other could pretend to measure
himself beside this giant of invective.
Duke George of Saxony on one occasion told Luther in no kindly way that
he knew peasants who spoke just the same, “particularly when the worse
for drink”; indeed they went one better and “knew how to use their
fists”; among them Luther would be taken for a swine-herd.[1141]
“Their inexhaustible passion for abuse,” wrote a Catholic contemporary
in 1526, “makes me not a little suspicious of the teaching of this
sect. No one is accounted a good pupil of Luther’s who is not an adept
in abusive language; Luther’s own abuse knows no bounds.... Who can
put up with such vituperation the like of which has not been heard for
ages?... Read all this man’s writings and you will hardly find a page
that is not sullied with vile abuse.”[1142]
It is true that the lowest classes, particularly in Saxony, as it
would appear, were addicted to the use of smutty language in which
they couched their resentment or their wit; this, however, was among
themselves. In the writings of the Wittenberg professor of theology,
on the other hand, this native failing emerges unabashed into the
light of day, and the foul sayings which Luther--in his anxiety to
achieve popularity--gathered from the lips of the rabble swept like
a flood over the whole of the German literary field. Foul language
became habitual, and, during the polemics subsequent on Luther’s death,
whether against the Catholics or among the members of the Protestant
fold, was a favourite weapon of attack with those who admired Luther’s
drastic ways.
As early as 1522 Thomas Blaurer, a youthful student at Wittenberg,
wrote: “No abuse, however low and shameful,” must be spared until
Popery is loathed by all.[1143] Thus the object in view was to besmirch
the Papacy by pelting it with mire. When, in 1558, Tilman Hesshusen,
an old Wittenberg student, became Professor of Theology and General
Superintendent at Heidelberg and thundered with much invective against
his opponents and in favour of the Confession of Augsburg, even his
friends asked the question, “whether the thousand devils he was wont
to purvey from the pulpit helped to promote the pure cause of the
Lutheran Evangel?” At Bremen, preaching against Hardenberg, a follower
of Melanchthon’s, he declared, that he had turned the Cathedral into a
den of murderers.[1144] In 1593 Nigrinus incited the people to abuse
the Papists with the words: “Up against them boldly and fan the flames
so that things may be made right warm for them!” George Steinhausen
remarks in this connection in his History of German Civilisation:
“Luther became quite a pattern of violent abuse and set the tone for
the anti-popish ranters, who, most of them, belonged to the lowest
class. On their side the Catholics, for instance, Hans Salat of
Lucern or the convert Johann Engerd, were also not behindhand in this
respect.... The preachers, however, were always intent on egging them
on to yet worse attacks.”[1145]
The manner in which Luther in his polemics treated his opponents, wrote
Döllinger in his “Sketch of Luther,” “is really quite unparalleled.
He never displays any of that kindly charity, which, while hating the
error, seeks to win over those who err; on the contrary, with him all
is abuse and anger, defiance and contemptuous scorn voiced in a tempest
of invective, often of a most personal and vulgar kind.... It is quite
wrong to say that Luther in this respect merely followed in the wake
of his contemporaries; this is clear enough to everyone familiar with
the literature of that age and the one which preceded it; the virulence
of Luther’s writings astonished everybody; those who did not owe him
allegiance were not slow to express their amazement, to blame him and
to emphasise the harmful effects of these outbursts of abuse, whilst
his disciples and admirers were wont to appeal to Luther’s ‘heroic
spirit’ which lifted him above the common herd and, as it were,
dispensed him from the observance of the moral law and allowed him to
say things that would have been immoral and criminal in others.”[1146]
Especially his obscene abuse of the Pope did those of Luther’s
contemporaries who remained faithful to the Church brand as wicked,
immoral and altogether unchristian. “What ears can listen to these
words without being offended?” wrote Emser, “or who is the pious
Christian who is not cut to the quick by this cruel insult and
blasphemy offered to the vicar of Christ? Is this sort of thing
Christian or Evangelical?”[1147]
_Protestant Opinions Old and New._
Erasmus’s complaints concerning Luther’s abusiveness were re-echoed,
though with bated breath, by those of the new faith whose passion had
not entirely carried them away. The great scholar, speaking of Luther’s
slanders on him and his faith, had even said that they were such as to
compel a reasonable reader to come to the conclusion that he was either
completely blinded by hate, or suffering from some mental malady, or
else possessed by the devil.[1148] Many of Luther’s own party agreed
with Erasmus, at any rate when he wrote: “This unbridled abuse showered
upon all, poisons the reader’s mind, particularly in the case of the
uneducated, and can promote only anger and dissension.”[1149]
The Protestant theologians of Switzerland were much shocked by
Luther’s ways. To the complaints already quoted from their letters and
writings may be added the following utterances of Zwingli’s successor,
Heinrich Bullinger, who likewise judged Luther’s offensive tone to be
quite without parallel: Most of Luther’s books “are cast in such a
mould as to give grievous scandal to many simple folk, so that they
become suspicious of the Evangelical cause as a whole.... His writings
are for the most part nothing but invective and abuse.... He sends to
the devil all who do not at once side with him. Thus all his censure
is imbued with hostility and contains little that is friendly or
fatherly.” Seeing that the world already teems with abuse and curses,
Bullinger thinks that it would better befit Luther “to be the salt”
and to strive to mend matters, instead of which he only makes bad
worse and incites his preachers to “abuse and blaspheme.” “For there
are far too many preachers who have sought and found in Luther’s books
a load of bad words.... From them we hear of nothing but of fanatics,
rotters, Sacramentarians, foes of the Sacrament, blasphemers,
scoundrels, hypocrites, rebels, devils, heretics and endless things of
the like.... And this, too, is praised by many [who say]: Why, even
Luther, the Prophet and Apostle of the Germans, does the same!”[1150]
Of Luther’s “Schem Hamphoras” Bullinger wrote: “Were it written,
not by a famous pastor of souls, but by a swine-herd,” it would
still be hard to excuse.[1151] In a writing to Bucer, Bullinger
also protested against endangering the Evangel by such unexampled
abuse and invective. If no one could stop Luther then the Papists
were right when they said of him, and the preachers who followed in
his footsteps, that they were no “Evangelists, but rather scolding,
foul-mouthed buffoons.”[1152]
In answer to such complaints Martin Bucer wrote to Bullinger admitting
the existence of grievous shortcomings, but setting against it
Luther’s greatness as evinced in the admiration he called forth. The
party interests of the Evangel and his hatred of the Papal Antichrist
made him to regard as merely human in Luther, frailties which to
others were a clear proof of his lack of a Divine mission. As Bucer
puts it: “I am willing to admit what you say of Luther’s venomous
discourses and writings. Oh, that I could only change his ways.... But
the fellow allows himself to be carried away by the storm that rages
within him so that no one can stop him. It is God, however, Who makes
use of him to proclaim His Evangel and to overthrow Antichrist.... He
has made Luther to be so greatly respected in so many Churches that
no one thinks of opposing him, still less of removing him from his
position. Most people are proud of him, even those whom he does not
acknowledge as his followers; many admire and copy his faults rather
than his virtues; but huge indeed is the multitude of faithful who
revere him as the Apostle of Christ.... I too give him the first place
in the sacred ministry. It is true there is much about him that is
human, but who is there who displays nothing but what is Divine?” In
spite of all he was a great tool of God (“_admirandum organum Dei pro
salute populi Dei_”); such was the opinion of all pious and learned
men who really knew him.[1153]
Yet Bucer had some strong things to say to Landgrave Philip of Hesse,
regarding Luther’s addiction to abuse. To try and persuade him to
deal courteously with his foes, particularly with the Zürichers after
their “mistaken booklet,” so Bucer writes to the Prince, “would be
like trying to put out a fire with oil. If Master Philip and I--who
have kept rigidly and loyally to the Concord--succeed in turning away
the man’s wrath from ourselves, then we shall esteem ourselves lucky.”
The “foolhardiness” of the Zürichers has “so enraged him, that even
Emperors, though they should be good Evangelicals, would find it hard
to pacify him.” “No one has ever got the better of Dr. Luther in
invective.”[1154]
Fresh light is thrown on the psychological side of Luther’s
controversial methods when we bring together those utterances in which
his sense of his own greatness finds expression. We must observe a
little more closely Luther’s inner thoughts and feelings from the
standpoint of his own ideal.
4. Luther on his own Greatness and Superiority to Criticism The art of
“Rhetoric”
Characteristic utterances of Luther’s regarding his own gifts and
excellencies, the wisdom and courage displayed in his undertaking and
the important place he would occupy in history as the discoverer and
proclaimer of the Evangelical truth, are to be met with in such plenty,
both in his works and in the authentic notes of his conversations,
that we have merely to select some of the most striking and bring them
together. They form a link connecting his whole public career; he never
ceased to regard all his labours from the point of view of his Divine
mission, and what he says merely varies in tone and colour with the
progress which took place in his work as time went on.
It is true that he knew perfectly well that it was impossible to figure
a Divine mission without the pediment and shield of humility. How
indeed could those words of profound humility, so frequent with St.
Paul, have rung in Luther’s ears without finding some echo? Hence we
find Luther, too, from time to time making such his own; and this he
did, not out of mere hypocrisy, but from a real wish to identify his
feelings with those of the Apostle; in almost every instance, however,
his egotism destroys any good impulse and drives him in the opposite
direction.
Luther’s confessions of his faults and general unworthiness are often
quite impressive. We may notice that such were not unfrequently made
to persons of influence, to Princes and exalted patrons on whom his
success depended, and whom he hoped thereby to dispose favourably;
others, however, are the natural, communicative outpourings of that
“colossal frankness”--as it has been termed--which posterity has
to thank for its knowledge of so many of Luther’s foibles. In his
conversations we sometimes find him speaking slightingly of himself,
for instance, when he says: “Philip is of a better brand than I. He
fights and teaches; I am more of a rhetorician or gossip.”[1155]
A passage frequently quoted by Luther’s admirers in proof of his
humility is that which occurs in his preface to the “Psalter”
published by Eobanus Hessus. The Psalms, he says, had been his school
from his youth upwards. “While unwilling to put my gifts before those
of others, I may yet boast with a holy presumption, that I would not,
as they say, for all the thrones and kingdoms of the world, forgo the
benefits, that, by the blessing of the Holy Spirit, I have derived
from lingering and meditating on the Psalms.” He was not going to
hide the gifts he had received from God, and in Him he would be proud,
albeit in himself he found reasons enough to make him humble; he took
less pleasure in his own German Psalter than in that of Eobanus, “but
all to the honour and glory of God, to Whom be praise for ever and
ever.”[1156]
In order to know Luther as he really was we should observe him amongst
his pupils at Wittenberg, for instance, as he left the Schlosskirche
after one of his powerful sermons to the people, and familiarly
addressed those who pressed about him on the steps of the church. There
were the burghers and students whose faults he had just been scourging;
the theologians of his circle crowding with pride around their master;
the lawyers, privy councillors and Court officials in the background,
probably grumbling under their breath at Luther’s peculiarities and
harsh words. His friends wish him many years of health and strength
that he may continue his great work in the pulpit and press; he, on the
other hand, thinks only of death; he insists on speaking of his Last
Will and Testament, of the chances of his cause, of his enemies and of
the threatened Council which he so dreaded.[1157]
“Let me be,” Luther cries, turning to the lawyers, “even in my Last
Will, the man I really am, one well known both in heaven and on earth,
and not unknown in hell, standing in sufficient esteem and authority to
be trusted and believed in more than any notary; for God, the Father
of Mercies, has entrusted to me, poor, unworthy, wretched sinner that
I am, the Gospel of His Dear Son and has made and hitherto kept me
faithful and true to it, so that many in the world have accepted it
through me, and consider me a teacher of the truth in spite of the
Pope’s ban and the wrath of Emperors, Kings, Princes, priests and all
the devils.... Dr. Martin Luther, God’s own notary and the witness of
His Gospel.”[1158]
I am “Our Lord Jesus Christ’s unworthy evangelist.”[1159]
I am “the Prophet of the Germans, for such is the haughty title I must
henceforth assume.”[1160]
“I am Ecclesiastes by the Grace of God”; “Evangelist by the Grace of
God.”[1161]
“I must not deny the gifts of Jesus Christ, viz. that, however small
be my acquaintance with Holy Scripture, I understand it a great deal
better than the Pope and all his people.”[1162]
“I believe that we are the last trump that sounds before Christ’s
coming.”[1163]
Many arise against me, but with “a breath of my mouth” I blow them
over.--All their prints are mere “autumn leaves.”[1164]
“One only of my opponents, viz. Latomus, is worth his salt, he is the
scribe who writes best against me. Latomus alone has really written
against Luther, make a note of that! All the others, like Erasmus, were
but frogs. Not one of them really meant it seriously. Yes indeed all,
Erasmus included, were just croaking frogs.”[1165]
I have been tried in the school of temptations; “these are the exalted
temptations which no Pope has ever understood,” I mean, “being tempted
to blasphemy and to question God’s Judgments when we know nothing
either of sin or of the remedy.”[1166]
Because I have destroyed the devil’s kingdom “many say I was the man
foretold by the Prophet of Lichtenberg; for in their opinion I must be
he. This was a prophecy of the devil, who well saw that the kingdom he
had founded on lies must fall. Hence he beheld a monk, though he could
not tell to which Order he belonged.”[1167]
“Be assured of this, that no one will give you a Doctor of Holy
Scripture save only the Holy Ghost who is in heaven.... He indeed
testified aforetimes against the prophet by the mouth of the she-ass
on which the prophet rode. Would to God we were worthy to have such
doctors sent us!”[1168]
“I have become a great Doctor, this I am justified in saying; I would
not have thought this possible in the days of my temptations” when
Staupitz comforted me with the assurance, “that God would make use of
me as His assistant in mighty things.”[1169]
“St. John Hus” was not alone in prophesying of me that ... “they will
perforce have to listen to the singing of a swan,” but likewise the
prophet at Rome foretold “the coming hermit who would lay waste the
Papacy.”[1170]
When I was a young monk and lay sick at Erfurt they said to me: “Be
consoled, good bachelor ... our God will still make a great man of you.
This has been fulfilled.”[1171]
“On one occasion when I was consoling a man on the loss of his son he,
too, said to me: ‘You will see, Martin, you will become a great man!’ I
often call this to mind, for such words have something of the omen or
oracle about them.”[1172]
“Small and insignificant as they [Luther’s and the preachers’ reforms]
are, they have done more good in the Churches than all the Popes and
lawyers with all their decrees.”[1173]
“No one has expounded St. Paul better” than you, Philip (Melanchthon).
“The commentaries of St. Jerome and Origen are the merest trash in
comparison with your annotations” (on Romans and Corinthians). “Be
humble if you like, but at least let me be proud of you.” “Be content
that you come so near to St. Paul himself.”[1174]
“In Popery such darkness prevailed that they taught neither the Ten
Commandments, nor the Creed, nor the Our Father; such knowledge was
considered quite superfluous.”[1175]
“The blindness was excessive, and unless those days had been shortened
we should all have grown into beasts! I fear, however, that after us it
will be still worse, owing to the dreadful contempt for the Word.”[1176]
“Before my day nothing was known,” not even “what parents or children
were, or what wife or maid.”[1177]
“Such was then the state of things: No one taught, or had heard or
knew what secular authority was, whence it came, or what its office
and task was, or how it must serve God.”--“But I wrote so usefully and
splendidly concerning the secular authorities as no teacher has ever
done since Apostolic times, save perhaps St. Augustine; of this I may
boast with a good conscience, relying on the testimony of the whole
world.”[1178]
Similarly, “we could prove before the whole world that we have preached
much more grandly and powerfully of good works than those very people
who abuse us.”[1179]
“Not one of the Fathers ever wrote anything remarkable or particularly
good concerning matrimony.... In marriage they saw only evil luxury....
They fell into the ocean of sensuality and evil lusts.” “But [by my
preaching] God with His Word and by His peculiar Grace has restored,
before the Last Day, matrimony, secular authority and the preaching
office to their rightful position, as He instituted and ordained them,
in order that we might behold His own institutions in what hitherto had
been but shams.”[1180]
The Papists “know nothing about Holy Scripture, or what God is ... or
what Baptism or the Sacrament.”[1181] But thanks to me “we now have the
Gospel almost as pure and undefiled as the Apostles had it.”[1182]
“Not for a thousand years has God bestowed such great gifts on any
bishop as He has on me; for it is our duty to extol God’s gifts.”[1183]
It is easy to understand what an impression such assurances and
such appeals to the heavenly origin of his gifts must have made on
enthusiastic pupils. Before allowing the speaker to continue we may
perhaps set on record what one of his defenders alleges in Luther’s
favour.[1184] “An energetic character to whom all pretence is
hateful may surely speak quite freely and openly of his own merits
and capabilities.” “Why should such a thing seem strange? Because
now, among well-bred people, conventions demand that, even should
we be conscious of good deeds and qualities in ourselves, we should
nevertheless speak as though unaware of them.” Luther, however, was
“certain that he had found the centre of all truth, and that he
possessed it as his very own; he knew that by his ‘faith’ he had
become something, viz. that which every man ought to become according
to the will of God. This explains that self-reliance whereby he felt
himself raised above those who either continued to withstand the
truth, or else had not yet discovered it.” By such utterances he “only
wished to explain why he feared nothing for his cause.” “Arrogance and
self-conceit are sinful, but he who by God’s grace really is something
must feel proud and self-reliant.” “The only question is whether it
is a proof of pride that he was not altogether oblivious of this,
and that he himself occasionally spoke of it.” “Christ and Paul knew
what they were and openly proclaimed it. Just as Christ found Himself
accused of arrogance, so Paul, too, felt that his boasting would be
misunderstood.” Besides, “Luther, because the title prophet [which he
had applied to himself] was open to misconstruction, writes elsewhere:
‘I do not say that I am a prophet.’”[1185]
The comparison between Christ’s sayings and Luther’s had best
be quietly dropped. As to the parallel with the Apostle of the
Gentiles--his so-called boasting (2 Cor. xi. 16; xii. 1 ff.) and his
frequent and humble admissions of frailty--St. Paul certainly has no
need to fear comparison with Luther. He could have set before the
world other proofs of his Divine mission, and yet he preferred to make
the most humble confessions:
“But for myself I will glory in nothing but in my infirmities,” says
Paul ... “gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities that the
power of Christ may dwell in me; for which cause I please myself
in my infirmities, in reproaches, necessities, in persecutions, in
distresses, for Christ. For when I am weak then am I powerful ...
although I be nothing, yet the signs of my apostleship have been
wrought in you in all patience, in signs and wonders and mighty
deeds.” “For I am the least of the Apostles, who am not worthy to be
called an Apostle because I persecuted the Church of God. But by the
grace of God I am what I am and His grace hath not been void, but I
have laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I but the grace
of God with me.” “But we became little ones in the midst of you, as
if a nurse should cherish her children: so desirous of you, we would
gladly impart unto you not only the Gospel of God but also our own
souls because you were become most dear to us.... You are our glory
and joy” (2 Cor. xii. 5 ff.; 1 Cor. xv. 9; 1 Thess. ii. 7 ff.).
“God has appointed me for the whole of the German land,” Luther
continues, “and I boldly vouch and declare that when you obey me in
this [the founding of Evangelical schools] you are without a doubt
obeying not me but Christ, and that, whoever obeys me not, despises,
not me, but Christ [Luke xx. 16]. For I know well and am certain of
what and whereto I speak and teach.”[1186]
“And now, dear Germans, I have told you enough; you have heard your
prophet; God grant we may obey His words.”[1187]
As Germany does not obey “misery” must needs overtake it; “when I pray
for my beloved Germany I feel that my prayer recoils on me and will not
ascend upwards as it does when I pray for other things.... God grant
that I be wrong and a false prophet in this matter.”[1188]
“Our Lord God had to summon Moses six times; me, too, He has led in
the same way.... Others who lived before me attacked the wicked and
scandalous life of the Pope; but I assailed his very doctrine and
stormed in upon the monkery and the Mass, on which two pillars the
whole Papacy rests. I could never have foreseen that these two pillars
would fall, for it was almost like declaring war on God and all
creation.”[1189]
“I picked the first fruits of the knowledge and faith of Christ, viz.
that we are justified by faith in Christ and not by works.”[1190]
“I am he to whom God first revealed it.”[1191]
“Show me a single passage on justification by faith in the Decrees,
Decretals, Clementines, ‘_Liber Sextus_’ or ‘_Extravagantes_’” in
any of the Summas, books of Sentences, monkish sermons, synodal
definitions, collegial or monastic Rules, in any Postils, in any
work of Jerome and Gregory, in any decisions of the Councils, in any
disputations of the theologians, in any lectures of any University, in
any Mass or Vigil of any Church, in any “_Cæremoniale Episcoporum_,”
in the institutes of any monastery, in any manual of any confraternity
or guild, in any pilgrims’ book anywhere, in the pious exercises of
any Saint, in any Indulgence, Bull, anywhere in the Papal Chancery or
the Roman Curia or in the Curia of any bishop. And yet it was there
that the doctrine of faith should have been expressed in all its
fulness.[1192]
“My Evangel,” that was what was wanting. “I have, praise be to God,
achieved more reformation by my Evangel than they probably would have
done even by five Councils.... Here comes our Evangel ... and works
wonders, which they themselves accept and make use of, but which they
could not have secured by any Councils.”[1193]
“I believe I have summoned such a Council and effected such a
reformation as will make the ears of the Papists tingle and their heart
burst with malice.... In brief: It is Luther’s own Reformation.”[1194]
“I, who am nothing, may say with truth that during the [twenty] years
that I have served my dear Lord Christ in the preaching office, I have
had more than twenty factions opposing me”; but now they are, some
of them, extirpated, others, “like worms with their heads trodden
off.”[1195]
“I have now become a wonderful monk, who, by God’s grace, has deposed
the Roman devil, viz. the Pope; yet not I, but God through me, His
poor, weak instrument; no emperor or potentate could have done
that.”[1196]
In point of fact “the devil is not angry with me without good reason,
for I have rent his kingdom asunder. What not one of the kings and
princes was able to do, that God has effected, through me, a poor
beggar and lonely monk.”[1197]
How poor are the ancient Fathers in comparison! “Chrysostom was a
mere gossip. Jerome, the good Father, and lauder of nuns, understood
precious little of Christianity. Ambrose has indeed some good sayings.
If Peter Lombard had only happened upon the Bible he would have
excelled all the Fathers.”[1198]
“See what darkness prevailed among the Fathers of the Church concerning
faith! Once the article concerning justification was obscured it became
impossible to stem the course of error. St. Jerome writes on Matthew,
on Galatians and on Titus, but how paltry it all is! Ambrose wrote
six books on Genesis, but what poor stuff they are! Augustine never
writes powerfully on faith except when assailing the Pelagians.... They
left not a single commentary on Romans and Galatians that is worth
anything. Oh, how great, on the other hand, is our age in purity of
doctrine, and yet, alas, we despise it! The holy Fathers taught better
than they wrote; we, God be praised, write better than we live.” Had
Gregory the Great at least refrained from spoiling what remained! “He
broke in with his pestilent traditions, bound men down to observances
concerning flesh-meat, cowls and Masses, and imposed on them his
filthy, merdiferous law. And in the event this dreadful state of things
grew from day to day worse.”[1199]
“On the other hand, it is plain that I may venture to boast in God,
without arrogance or untruth, that, when it comes to the writing of
books I am not far behind many of the Fathers.”[1200]
“In short the fault lay in this, that [before I came], even in the
Universities the Bible was not read; when it was read at all it had
to be interpreted in accordance with Aristotle. What blindness that
was!”[1201]
But then my translation of Holy Scripture appeared. Whereas the
Schoolmen never were acquainted with Scripture, indeed “never were at
home even in the Catechism,”[1202] all admit my Bible scholarship. On
one occasion “Carlstadt said to the Doctors at Wittenberg: My dear
sirs, Dr. Martin is far too learned for us; he read the Bible ten years
ago and now if we read it for ten years, he will then have read it for
twenty; in any case, therefore, we are lost.” “Don’t start disputing
with him.”[1203]
“Nevertheless I never should have attained to the great abundance of
Divine gifts, which I am forced to confess and admit, unless Satan had
tried me with temptations; without these temptations pride would have
cast me into the abyss of hell.”[1204]
“The Papists are blind to the clear light of truth because it was
revealed by a man. As though Elias, who wrought such great things
against the servants of Baal, was not likewise a man and a beggar.
As though John the Baptist, who so brilliantly put to flight the
Pharisees, was not a man too. One’s being a man does not matter
provided one be a man of God. For heroes are not merely men.”[1205]
Certain statements of contemporaries, both Catholics and Protestants,
sound like interjections in the midst of Luther’s discourse. They
point out how unheard-of was his demand that faith should be placed
in him alone to the exclusion of all Christian authorities past and
present. “What unexampled pride is this,” exclaims the learned Ulrich
Zasius, who in earlier days had favoured Luther’s more moderate plans
of reform, “when a man demands that his interpretation of the Bible
should be given precedence over that of the Fathers of the Church
herself, and of the whole of Christendom!”[1206] “He has stuck himself
in the Pope’s place,” cries Thomas Münzer, and does the grand as
though, forsooth, he had not come into the world in the ordinary way,
but “had sprung from the brain.” “Make yourself cosy in the Papal
chair,” is Valentine Ickelsamer’s comment, since you are determined to
“listen only to your own song.”[1207]
Luther concludes his address to his followers by replying first of all
to the frequent objection we have just heard Zasius bring forward:
“I, Dr. Martin Luther by name, have taken it upon me to prove for
further instruction each and every article in a well-grounded work....
But first I must answer certain imputations made by some against me.”
“They twit me with coming forward all alone and seeking to teach
everybody. To this I reply that I have never put myself forward and
would have been glad to creep into a corner; they it is who dragged me
out by force and cunning.”[1208]
“But who knows whether God has not raised me up and called me to this,
and whether they have not cause to fear that they are condemning God in
me? Do we not read in the Old Testament that God, as a rule, raised up
only one prophet at a time? Moses was alone when he led the people out
of Egypt; Helias was alone in the time of King Achab; later on Helisæus
was also alone; Isaias was alone in Jerusalem, Oseas in Israel,
Hieremias in Judea, Ezechiel in Babylon, and so on.”[1209]
“The dear Saints have always had to preach against and reprove the
great ones, the kings, princes, priests and scholars.”[1210]
“I do not say that I am a prophet, but I do say that the Papists have
the more reason to fear I am one, the more they despise me and esteem
themselves. God is wonderful in His works and judgments.... If I am not
a prophet yet I am certain within myself that the Word of God is with
me and not with them; for I have Scripture on my side, but they, only
their own doctrine.”[1211]
“There were plenty donkeys in the world in Balaam’s time, yet God did
not speak through all of them, but only through Balaam’s ass.”[1212]
“They also say that I bring forward new things, and that it is not to
be supposed that all others were in the wrong for so long. To this
reproof the ancient prophets also had to listen.... Christ’s teaching
was different from what the Jews had heard for a thousand years. On the
strength of this objection the heathen, too, might well have despised
the Apostles, seeing that their ancestors had believed otherwise for
more than three thousand years.”[1213]
“I say that all Christian truth had perished amongst those who ought to
have been its upholders, viz. the bishops and learned men. Yet I do not
doubt that the truth has survived in some hearts, even though only in
those of babes in the cradle.”[1214]
“I do not reject them [all the Doctors of the Church] ... but I refuse
to believe them except in so far as they prove their contentions from
that Scripture which has never erred.... Necessity forces us to test
every Doctor’s writings by the Bible and to judge and decide upon them.
The standing as well as the number of my foes is to me a proof that I
am in the right.”[1215]
“Were I opposed only by a few insignificant men I should know that
what I wrote and taught was not from God.... Truth has ever caused
disturbance, and false teachers have ever cried ‘Peace, peace.’”[1216]
“They say they don’t want to be reformed by such a beggar....” “Daniel
has arisen in his place and is determined to perform what the angel
Gabriel has pointed out to him; for the same prophet told us how
he would rise up at the end of the world. That he is now doing.”
“God has made Luther a Samson over them; He is God and His ways are
wonderful.... Let good people say the best they can of me and let the
Papists talk and lie to their hearts’ content.”[1217]
Neither councils nor reformations will help them. “They wish to reform
and govern the Church according to their own lights and by human
wisdom; but that is something that lies far above the counsel of men.
When our Lord God wished to reform His Church He did so ‘_divinitus_,’
not by human methods; thus it was at the time of Josue, of the Judges,
Samuel, the Apostles and also in my own time.”[1218]
Even should our work be frustrated, yet the “power of the Almighty
could make a new Luther out of nothing.” In this wise “God raised up
Noe when He was obliged to destroy the world by the deluge. And, in
Abraham’s time, when the whole world was plunged in darkness and under
the empire of Satan, Abraham and his seed came as a great light; and He
drowned King Pharao and slew seven great nations in Canaan. And again
when Caiphas crucified the Son of God ... He rose again from the dead
and Caiphas was brought to nought.”[1219]
“Christ was not so greatly considered, nor had He ever such a number of
hearers as the Apostles had and we now have; Christ Himself said to His
disciples: ‘You will do greater works than I,’ and, truly enough, at
the time of the Apostles, and now amongst us, the Gospel and the Divine
Word is preached much more powerfully and is more widely spread than at
the time of Christ.”[1220]
It is true that “my conviction is, that, for a thousand years,
the world has never loathed anyone so much as me. I return its
hatred.”[1221]
It “is probable that my name stinks in the nostrils of many who wish
to belong to us, but you [Bugenhagen] will put things right without my
troubling.” Formerly the decisions of the Councils ranked above God’s
Word, “but now, thank God, this would not be believed among us even by
ducks or geese, mice or lice.” “God has no liking for the ‘expectants’
[those who looked for a Council], for He will have His Word honoured
above all angels, let alone men or Councils, and will have no waiting
or expectancy. Our best plan will be to send them to the devil in the
abyss of hell, to do their waiting there.”[1222]
“So the Council is going to be held at Trent. Tridentum, however,
signifies in German, ‘divided, torn asunder, dissolved,’ for God
will scatter it and its Legates. I believe they do not know what
they are doing or what they mean to do. God has cursed them with
blindness.”[1223] “Nay, under Satan’s rule they have all gone mad; they
condemn us and then want our approval.”[1224] “The Council is worthy
of its monsters. May misfortune fall upon them; the wrath of God is
verily at their heels.”[1225] “They look upon us as donkeys, and yet do
not realise their own dense stupidity and malice.”[1226]
“Should we fall, then Christ will fall with us, the ruler of the world.
Granted, however, that He is to fall, I would rather fall with Christ
than stand with the Emperor.” “Put your trust in your Emperor and we
will put our trust in ours [in Christ], and wait and see who holds the
field. Let them do their best, they have not yet got their way.” They
shall perish. “I fear they wish to hear those words of Julius Cæsar:
‘They themselves have willed it!’”[1227]
Should I be carried to the grave, for instance, as a victim of the
religious war, people will say at the sight of the Popish rout
that will ensue: “Dr. Martin was escorted to his grave by a great
procession. For he was a great Doctor, above all bishops, monks and
parsons, therefore it was fitting that they should all follow him into
the grave, and furnish a subject for talk and song. And to end up, we
shall all make a little pilgrimage together; they, the Papists, to the
bottomless pit to their god of lying and murder, whom they have served
with lies and murders; I to my Lord, Jesus Christ, Whom I have served
in truth and peace; ... they to hell in the name of all the devils, I
to heaven in God’s name.”[1228]
* * * * *
No mortal ever spoke of himself as Luther did. He reveals himself as
a man immeasurably different from that insipid portrait which depicts
him as one who made no claim on people’s submission to his higher light
and higher authority, but who humbly advanced what he fancied he had
discovered, an ordinary human being, even though a great one, who was
only at pains to convince others by the usual means in all wisdom and
charity. Everyday psychology does not avail to explain the language
Luther used, and we are faced by the graver question of the actual
condition of such a mind, raised so far above the normal level. “We
have,” says Adolf Harnack, “to choose between two alternatives: Either
he suffered from the mania of greatness, or his self-reliance really
corresponded with his task and achievements.”[1229]
Luther, at the very commencement of the tract which he published soon
after leaving the Wartburg, and in which he describes himself as
“Ecclesiastes by the grace of God,” says: “Should you, dear Sirs, look
upon me as a fool for my assumption of so haughty a title,” I should
not be in the least surprised; he adds, however: “I am convinced of
this, that Christ Himself, Who is the Master of my teaching, calls me
thus and regards me as such”; his “Word, office and work” had come
to him “from God,” and his “judgment was God’s own” no less than his
doctrine.[1230] The bishops of the Catholic world may well have raised
their eyebrows at the tone of this work, couched in the form of a
Bull and addressed to all the “Popish bishops”; the following year it
was even reprinted in Latin at Wittenberg in order to make it known
throughout the world. Bossuet’s words on the opening lines of the
tract well render the feeling of apprehension they must have created:
“Hence Luther’s is the same call as St. Paul’s, no less direct and
no less extraordinary!... And on the strength of this Divine mission
Luther proceeds to reform the Church!”[1231]--We should, however,
note that Luther, in his extraordinary demands, goes far beyond any
mere claim to a Divine call. A heavenly vocation might perfectly well
have been present without any such haughty treading under foot of the
past, without any such conceit as to his own and his fellow-workers’
achievements, and without all this boasting of prophecies, of victories
over fanatics and devils, and of world-wide fame, rather, a true
vocation would dread anything of the kind. Hence, in the whole series
of statements we have quoted, commencing with the title of Ecclesiastes
by the Grace of God, which he adopted soon after his Wartburg
“baptism,” we find not only the consciousness of a mission conferred
on him at the Wartburg, but also an altogether unique idea of his own
greatness which no one who wishes to study Luther’s character must lose
sight of. We shall have, later on, to ask ourselves whether those were
in the right who looked upon this manifestation as a sign of disease.
* * * * *
Luther’s language would be even more puzzling were it not certain that
much that he said was not really meant seriously. With him rhetoric
plays a greater rôle than is commonly admitted, and even some of his
utterances regarding his own greatness are clearly flowers of rhetoric
written half in jest.
Luther himself ingenuously called his art of abusing all opponents
with the utmost vigour, “_rhetorica mea_.” This he did in those
difficult days when it was a question of finding some means of escape
in connection with the threatening Diet of Augsburg: “By my rhetoric
I will show the Papists that they, who pretend to be the champions of
the faith and the Gospel, have there [at Augsburg] made demands of
us which are contrary to the Gospel; verily I shall fall upon them
tooth and nail.... Come, Luther most certainly will, and with great
pomp set free the eagle [the Evangel] now held caught in the snare
(‘_aquilam liberaturus magnifice_’).”[1232] So much did he trust his
rhetorical talent that on another occasion he told the lawyers: “If I
have painted you white, then I can equally well paint you black again
and make you look like regular devils.”[1233] Amidst the embarrassments
subsequent on Landgrave Philip’s bigamy Luther’s one ray of hope was in
his consciousness, that he could easily manage to “extricate” himself
with the help of his pen; at the same time, when confiding this to
the Landgrave, he also told him quite openly, that, should he, the
Landgrave, “start a literary feud” with him, Luther would soon “leave
him sticking in the mud.”[1234]
We have already heard him say plainly: “I have more in me of the
rhetorician or the gossip”;[1235] he adds that his only writings which
were strictly doctrinal were his commentaries on Galatians and on
Deuteronomy and his sermons on four chapters of the Gospel of St.
John; all the rest the printers might well pass over, for they merely
traced the history of his conflict; the truth being that his doctrine
“had not been so clear at first as it is now.” And yet he had formerly
written much on doctrine; as he once said in a conversation recorded
in Schlaginhaufen’s notes of 1532: “I don’t care for my Psalter,
it is long and garrulous. Formerly I was so eloquent that I wanted
to talk the whole world to death. Now I can do this no longer, for
the thoughts won’t come. Once upon a time I could talk more about a
little flower than I now could about a whole meadow. I am not fond of
any superfluity of words. Jonas replied: The Psalter [you wrote] is,
however, of the Holy Ghost and pleases me well.”[1236]
That he avoided “any superfluity of words” later in life is not
apparent. What he says of himself in the Table-Talk, viz. that he
resembled an Italian in liveliness and wealth of language, holds
good of him equally at a later date; on the other hand, his remark,
that Erasmus purveyed “words without content” and he content without
words,[1237] is not true of the facts.
An example of his rhetorical ability to enlarge upon a thought is
found in the continuation of the sentence already mentioned (p. 331):
“Before my day nothing was known.”
“Formerly no one knew what the Gospel was, what Christ, or baptism,
or confession, or the Sacrament was, what faith, what spirit, what
flesh, what good works, the Ten Commandments, the Our Father, prayer,
suffering, consolation, secular authority, matrimony, parents or
children were, what master, servant, wife, maid, devils, angels,
world, life, death, sin, law, forgiveness, God, bishop, pastor, or
Church was, or what was a Christian, or what the cross; in fine, we
knew nothing whatever of all a Christian ought to know. Everything
was hidden and overborne by the Pope-Ass. For they are donkeys,
great, rude, unlettered donkeys in Christian things.... But now,
thank God, things are better and male and female, young and old, know
the Catechism.... The things mentioned above have again emerged into
the light.” The Papists, however, “will not suffer any one of these
things.... You must help us [so they say] to prevent anyone from
learning the Ten Commandments, the Our Father and Creed; or about
baptism, the Sacrament, faith, authority, matrimony or the Gospel....
You must lend us a hand so that, in place of marriage, Christendom may
again be filled with fornication, adultery and other unnatural and
shameful vices.”[1238]
A particular quality of Luther’s “rhetoric” was its exaggeration. By
his exaggeration his controversy becomes a strangely glaring picture
of his mind; nor was it merely in controversy that his boundless
exaggeration shows itself. Sometimes, apparently, without his being
aware of it, but likewise even in the course of his literary labours
and his preaching, things had a tendency to assume gigantic proportions
and fantastic shapes in his eyes. Among his friends the aberrations
into which his fondness for vigorous and far-fetched language led him
were well known. It was certain of his own followers who dubbed him
“_Doctor Hyperbolicus_” and declared that “he made a camel of a flea,
and said a thousand when he meant less than five.” This is related
by the Lutheran zealot, Cyriacus Spangenberg, who dutifully seeks to
refute the “many, who, though disciples of his,” were in the habit of
making such complaints.[1239]
His “rhetoric,” in spite of a literary style in many respects
excellent, occasionally becomes grotesque and insipid owing to the
utter want of taste he shows in his choice of expressions. This was
particularly the case in his old age, when he no longer had at his
command the figures of speech in which to clothe decently those all
too vigorous words to which, as the years went by, he became more and
more addicted. In the last year of his life, for instance, writing to
his Elector and the Hessian Landgrave concerning the “Defensive league”
of those who stood up for “the old religion,” he says: God Himself has
intervened to oppose this league, not being unaware of its aims; “God
and all His angels must indeed have had a terrible cold in the head not
to have been able to smell, even until this 21st day of October, the
savoury dish that goes by the name of Defensive league; but then He
took some sneeze-wort and cleared His brain and gave them to understand
pretty plainly that His catarrh was gone and that He now knew very well
what Defensive league was.”[1240] Luther does not seem to feel how much
out of place such buffoonery was in a theologian, let alone in the
founder of a new religion. Even in some of his earlier writings and in
those which he prized the most, e.g. in the Commentary on Galatians, a
similar want of taste is noticeable. It is also unnecessary to repeat
that even his “best” writings, among them the work on Galatians,
are frequently rendered highly unpalatable by an excess of useless
repetitions. Everybody can see that the monotony of Luther’s works is
chiefly due to the haste and carelessness with which they were written
and then rushed through the press.
In considering Luther’s “rhetoric,” however, our attention perforce
wanders from the form to the matter, for Luther based his claim to
originality on his art of bringing forward striking and effective
thoughts and thus charming and captivating the reader. In his thoughts
the same glaring, grotesque and contradictory element is apparent as
in his literary style and outward conduct. Much is mere impressionism,
useful indeed for his present purposes, but contradicted or modified
by statements elsewhere. Whatever comes to his pen must needs be put
on paper and worked for all it is worth. Thus in many instances his
thoughts stray into the region of paradox. Thereby he seemed indeed to
be rendering easier the task of opponents who wished to refute him, but
as a matter of fact he only increased the difficulty of dealing with
him owing to his elusiveness.
Even down to the present day the incautious reader or historian is all
too frequently exposed to the temptation of taking Luther at his word
in passages where in point of fact his thoughts are the plaything of
his “rhetoric.” Anybody seeking to portray Luther’s train of thought is
liable to be confronted with passages, whether from the same writing or
from another composed under different influences, where statements to
an entirely different effect occur. Hence, when attempting to describe
his views, it is essential to lay stress only on statements that are
clear, devoid of any hyperbolical vesture and frequently reiterated.
He was not, of course, serious and meant to introduce no new rule
for the interpretation of Scripture when he pronounced the words so
often brought up against him (“_sic volo, sic iubeo_”) in connection
with his interpolation of the term “alone” in Rom. iii. 28;[1241] yet
this sentence occupies such a position in a famous passage of his
works that it will repay us to give it with its context as a typical
instance:
“If your Papist insists on making much needless ado about the word
‘alone,’ tell him smartly: Dr. Martin Luther will have it so and
says: Papist and donkey is one and the same. ‘_Sic volo, sic iubeo;
sit pro ratione voluntas._’ For we will not be the Papists’ pupils
or disciples, but their masters and judges, and, for once in a way,
we shall strut, and rap these asses’ heads; and as Paul boasted to
his crazy saints, so I too will boast to these my donkeys. They are
Doctors? So am I. They are learned? So am I. They are preachers? So am
I. They are theologians? So am I. They are disputants? So am I. They
are philosophers? So am I. They are dialecticians? So am I. They are
lecturers? So am I. They write books? So do I. And I will boast still
further: I can expound the Psalms and the Prophets; this they can’t
do. I can interpret; they, they can’t.”
He proceeds in the same vein and finally concludes: “And if there is
one amongst them who rightly understands a single preface or chapter
of Aristotle, then I will allow myself to be tossed. Here I am not too
generous with my words.”--And yet there is still more to follow that
does not belong to the subject! Having had his say he begins again:
“Give no further answer to these donkeys when they idly bray about the
word ‘_sola_,’ but merely tell them: ‘Luther will have it so and says
he is a Doctor above all the Doctors of the Papacy.’ There it shall
remain; in future I will despise them utterly and have them despised,
so long as they continue to be such people, I mean, donkeys. For there
are unblushing scoundrels amongst them who have never even learnt
their own, viz. the sophists’, art, for instance, Dr. Schmidt, Dr.
Dirty Spoon [Cochlæus] and their ilk. And yet they dare to stand in my
way.”
He nevertheless seeks to give a more satisfactory answer, and admits,
“that the word ‘alone’ is not found in either Latin or Greek text, ...
at the letters of which our donkeys stare like cows at a new gate.
They don’t see that the meaning of the text requires it.”[1242]--The
last assertion may be taken for what it is worth. The principal thing,
however, is that he introduced the interpolation with a meaning of
his own, though he could not have held that his doctrine of a dead
faith (for this was what his “faith alone” amounted to) really tallied
with the Apostle’s teaching. On this point he is quite silent in
his strange answers. He is far more concerned in parrying the blows
with his rhetorical artifice. His appeal to the will of Dr. Martin
Luther may be termed the feint of a skilful swordsman; his whole
treatment of the matter is designed to surprise, to puzzle and amuse,
and, as a matter of fact, could impress only the populace. It is not
without reason that Adolf Harnack speaks of the “strange logic of his
arguments, the faults of his exegesis and the injustice and barbarity
of his polemics.”[1243]
The strange controversial methods of his rhetoric give, however, a true
picture of his soul.
All this inconstancy and self-contradiction, this restless upheaval
of assertions, now rendered doubtful by their palpable exaggeration,
now uncertain owing to the admixture of humour they contain, now
questionable because already rejected elsewhere by their author, all
this mirrors the unrest of his soul, the zigzag course of his thought,
in short a mind unenlightened by the truth, which thrives only amidst
the excitement of conflict and contradiction. Moderation in resolve
and deed is as little to his taste as any consistent submission of
his word to the yoke of reflection and truthfulness. He abandons his
actions as well as his most powerful organ, his voice, to the impulse
and the aims of the moment. He finds no difficulty, for instance, even
in his early days, in soundly rating his fellow-monks even in the
most insulting and haughty manner, and in assuring them in the same
breath of his “peaceable heart” and his “perfect calm,” or in shifting
the responsibility for his earlier outbursts of anger on God, Who so
willed it and Whose action cannot be withstood. All this we find in
his letter in 1514 to the Erfurt Augustinians, where his singular
disposition already reveals itself.[1244] No less easy was it to him at
the commencement of his struggle to protest most extravagant humility
towards both Pope and Emperor, to liken himself to a “flea,” and yet to
promise resistance to the uttermost. He was guilty of exaggeration in
his championship of the downtrodden peasants before the war, and, when
it was over, was again extravagant in his demand for their punishment.
With an all too lavish hand he abandons Holy Scripture to each one’s
private interpretation, even to the “miller’s maid,” and yet, as soon
as anyone, without the support of “miracles,” attempted to bring
forward some new doctrine differing from his own, he withdrew it with
the utmost imperiousness as a treasure reserved.
As in style, so in deed, he was a chameleon. This he was in his inmost
feelings, and not less in his theology.[1245]
In one matter only did he remain always the same, on one point
only is his language always consistent and clear, viz. in his
hatred and defiance of the Church of Rome. Some have praised his
straightforwardness, and it must be admitted, that, in this particular,
he certainly always shows his true character with entire unrestraint.
This hate permeates all his thoughts, his prayer, all his exalted
reflections, his good wishes for others, his sighs at the approach of
death. Even in his serious illness in 1527 he was, at least according
to the account of his friend Jonas, principally concerned that God
should not magnify his enemies, the Papists, but exalt His name
“against the enemies of His most holy Word”; he recalls to mind that
John the Evangelist, too, “had written a good, strong book against the
Pope” (the Apocalypse); as John did not die a martyr, he also would be
content without martyrdom. Above all, he was not in the least contrite
for what he had printed against the doctrines of the Pope, “even though
some thought he had been too outspoken and bitter.”[1246] In his second
dangerous illness, in 1537, Luther declared even more emphatically,
that he had “done right” in “storming the Papacy,” and that if he
could live longer he would undertake still “worse things against that
beast.”[1247]
* * * * *
Luther’s over-estimation of himself was partly due to the seductive
effect of the exaggerated praise and admiration of his friends, amongst
whom Jonas must also be reckoned. They, like Jonas, could see in
him nothing but the “inspiration of the Holy Ghost.”[1248] Luther’s
responsibility must appear less to those who lay due stress on the
surroundings amidst which he lived. He was good-natured enough to give
credence to such eulogies. Just as, moved by sympathy, he was prone
to lavish alms on the undeserving, so he was too apt to be influenced
by the exaggerations of his admirers and the applause of the masses,
though, occasionally, he did not fail to protest.
This veneration went so far that many, in spite of his remonstrances,
placed him not only on a level with but even above the Apostles.[1249]
His devoted pupils usually called him Elias. He himself was not
averse to the thought that he had something in common with the fiery
prophet. As early as 1522 Wolfgang Rychard, his zealous assistant
at Ulm, greets him in his letters as the risen Elias, and actually
dates a new era from his coming. In this the physician Magenbuch
imitated him, and the title was as well received by Melanchthon and
the other Wittenbergers as it was by outsiders.[1250] In the Preface
which Luther wrote in 1530 to a work by the theologian Johann Brenz,
he contrasts the comparative calmness of the preacher to his own
ways, and remarks that his own uncouth style vomited forth a chaos
and torrent of words, and was stormy and fierce, because he was ever
battling with countless hordes of monsters; he had received as his
share of the fourfold spirit of Elias (4 Kings xix.), the “whirlwind
and the fire” which “overthrew mountains and uprooted rocks”; the
Heavenly Father had bestowed this upon him to use against the thick
heads, and had made him a “strong wedge wherewith to split asunder
hard blocks.”[1251]
When, in 1532, his great victory over the Sacramentarians was
discussed in the circle of his friends, the words of the Magdeburg
Chancellor, Laurentius Zoch, recurred to him: “After reading my books
against the Sacramentarians he said of me: ‘Now I see that this man is
enlightened by the Holy Ghost; such a thing as this no Papist could
ever have achieved,’” and so, Luther adds in corroboration, “he was
won over to the Evangel; what I say is, that all the Papists together,
with all their strength, would not have been able to refute the
Sacramentarians, either by authority [the Fathers] or from Scripture.
Yet I get no thanks!”[1252]
Not his admirers only, but even his literary opponents contributed, at
least indirectly, to inflate his rhetoric and his assurance; his sense
of his own superiority grew in the measure that he saw his foes lagging
far behind him both in language and in vigour.
Amongst the Catholic theologians of Germany there were too few able
to compete with him in point of literary dexterity. Luther stood on a
pinnacle and carried away the multitude by the war-cry he hurled over
the heads of the Catholic polemists and apologists who bore witness to
the ancient truths, some well and creditably, others more humbly and
awkwardly. The apparent disadvantage under which the Catholic writers
laboured, was, that they were not so relentless in treading under foot
considerations of charity and decency; unlike him, they could not
address fiery appeals to the passions in order to enlist them as their
allies, though traces far too many of the violence of the conflict are
found even in their polemics. Amongst them were men of high culture and
refinement, who stood far above the turmoils of the day and knew how to
estimate them at their true worth. They felt themselves supported by
the Catholics throughout the world, whose most sacred possessions were
being so unjustly attacked.
CHAPTER XXVII
VOICES FROM THE CAMP OF THE DEFENDERS OF THE CHURCH
1. Luther’s “demoniacal” storming. A man “possessed”
WE have plenty descriptions of Luther from the pen of literary
opponents, and they have a perfect right to be taken into account, for
they are so many voices courageously raised in defence of the heirloom
of the faith. What has led to this being so often passed over is the
fear lest their censure should be taken as prejudice, and, needless to
say, what they tell us must be carefully weighed. Much depends on the
circumstances in which they wrote, on the character of the writers,
on the content of their statements and on how far they differ from
or agree with other witnesses and the known facts. Several striking
passages from their writings, in so far as they are confirmed either by
Luther himself or by his followers, have already been utilised in the
present work and have served to complete our picture of Luther’s mind.
Catholic polemists all agree on one point, viz. that the bitter and
unkindly ways of their adversary were a clear proof that he had no
Divine call. Like Erasmus, they too contend that no man who excited
such great commotion and was so insatiable in abuse and vituperation
could be honestly furthering God’s cause. Like Erasmus, they too
question whether such unheard-of presumption could “be combined with
an apostolic spirit or did not rather denote madness.” They compare
his inconstancy, his passion and his fickleness to a “restless, stormy
sea.” His slanderous tongue, which so unsparingly lashed the olden
Church and its doctrines, reminds them of the “roaring lion,” who,
according to St. Peter, “goeth about seeking whom he may devour,” or
of the “fiery darts” of the wicked one against whom St. Paul utters
a warning. With pain and horror they call to mind the seven-headed
beast of the Apocalypse, that rises out of the deep, bearing names of
blasphemy and with a “mouth that speaks great things and profanities.”
Their strictures cannot be examined in detail here, but we may instance
a trait which is common to many of these writers and which, though kept
in the background as not altogether relevant to the discussion, yet
deserves consideration as a proof of the effect that Luther’s unbounded
hate, his abuse and his arrogance had on the feelings and judgment
of contemporaries. Their keen sense of religion made them ascribe
his behaviour to the devil, and to assume, or at least to suspect,
that he was in some way possessed. It is curious to note how many
unhesitatingly have recourse to this explanation.
“We must regard it as a sure sign of demoniacal possession,” wrote
Johann Hoffmeister, Prior of the Colmar Augustinians, “that Luther
should thus persistently enjoin on preachers as a duty to go on
cursing and denouncing from the pulpit, though he himself sees and
bewails the fact, that contempt for religion, godlessness and every
vice is steadily gaining ground in Germany. What can we expect
unfortunate youths to learn from such abuse and reviling in the
churches?”[1253]
“Luther is the devil’s own bellows,” wrote Paul Bachmann, Abbot of
Altzelle, in 1534, “with which the devil blows up a whirlwind of
error, scandal and heresy.”[1254] He goes even further and appeals to
what he had heard from Luther’s brother monks concerning the scene in
choir, when, falling into a fit, Luther had frantically protested that
he was not the man possessed (vol. i., p. 17).[1255]
Bachmann adds: “Luther is the cruel monster that John the Apostle saw
rising out of the deep, with open jaws to utter abuse and blasphemy.”
“This is no mere mistaken man, but the wicked devil himself to whom no
lying, deceit or falsehood is too much.”[1256]
Even from men who had long sided with Luther we hear similar things;
for instance, Willibald Pirkheimer of Nüremberg says bluntly: “Luther,
with his impudent and defiant tongue, betrays plainly enough what is
in his heart; he seems to have gone quite mad, or to be agitated by
some wicked demon.”[1257]
Erasmus declared that people, rather than credit his calumnies,
would say that he was steeped in vengefulness, mentally deranged, or
possessed by some sinister spirit.[1258]
Even Luther’s brother monk at Erfurt, Johann Nathin, who had been
struck with wonder at the young monk’s sudden conversion, remarked
later, when the two had gone different ways, that “a spirit of
apostasy had entered him,” which was corrupting all the clergy.[1259]
Johann Cochlæus thinks that Luther’s unholy doctrine resembles a
dragon with seven heads; such a monster hailed, not from God, but
from the devil.[1260] He allows himself to be carried so far away by
his conviction that Luther was possessed, as to scorn all caution and
to take literally a certain rhetorical statement of Luther’s, where
he tells us that he had eaten more than a bushel of salt with the
devil, and that he had held a disputation with him on the Mass.[1261]
Cochlæus here lays great stress on the views and reports of Luther’s
former associates in the monastery.[1262]
Under the impression made on him by the vehemence of Luther’s language
and his whole conduct, Hieronymus Emser declared subsequently to
Luther’s so-called “great Reformation Writings”: “This monk who has
gone astray differs from the devil only in that he carries out what
the wicked one inspires him with.”[1263] Emser, too, appeals to
Luther’s former associates in the monastery: Luther “was possessed by
the evil spirit from his youth upwards,” he says, “as is well known in
his monastery at Erfurt, where he made his profession.”[1264]
Kilian Leib, a contemporary defender of the Church in the Eichstätt
district, tells in his Annals of the impression made upon those
present by Luther’s behaviour at the Diet of Worms: He displayed such
pride in his manner and conduct that we seemed to have before us the
image of the enemy of mankind. The latter must have dwelt within him
and instructed him, if indeed he does not still do so.[1265] He quotes
with approval Emser’s first statement, and, from Cochlæus, the passage
where Luther speaks of his eating salt with the devil.[1266]
Hieronymus Dungersheim, the opponent to whom we owe Nathin’s remark,
given above, upbraids Luther, the “child of Belial,” for his “devilish
writings” “whereby he, and Satan through him, blasphemes Christ.”[1267]
Aleander the Nuncio reported on April 17, 1521, from the Diet of
Worms, that some regarded Luther as mad, others as “possessed”; he
also mentions on the testimony of others how Luther, on his arrival,
“had gazed about him with the eyes of a demon.”[1268]
The Reichstagsabschied of Worms speaks of Luther as “led by the evil
spirit,” nay, “as the wicked enemy himself clad in human form.”[1269]
In the tract against a pamphlet of Luther’s published by Duke George
of Saxony, in 1531 under Franz Arnoldi’s name, we read at the very
commencement, that Luther was losing many of his adherents because he
showed his hand “so clearly and plainly in his writings, that, as they
said, Luther must certainly be possessed of the devil, indeed of the
whole legion that Christ drove out of the man possessed and into the
herd of swine who forthwith went raving mad and ran headlong into the
sea”: “By the fruits [of his words] we may recognise the spirit.”[1270]
Johann Dietenberger, as early as 1524, in his “Against the unchristian
book of Martin Luther on the abuse of the Mass,” says: “There is no
doubt whatever that the horrid, damnable Lutheran doctrine has been
brought into the world by the devil, otherwise it would not be so
utterly beastly and contentious, quarrelsome and fickle, and so fitted
for everything evil.” “These are all manifest lies, nothing but abuse,
slander and blasphemy, devilish lies and works by which Luther the
arch-liar has driven the world to the devil.” He calls Luther “the
devil’s hired messenger” and says of his manner of writing: “Here
everything reeks of devils; nothing that the devilish man writes can
stand without the devil who endevils all his products.”[1271]
The Ratisbon Benedictine, Christopher Hoffmann († 1534), in his
sermons to the Chapter preached before 1525 represents Luther as an
apostate and as “_dæmone plenus_.”[1272]
The anonymous “_Iudicium de Luthero_” included in a German codex
at Munich and dating from the early years of the controversy, also
deserves to be mentioned. The author indeed praises Luther’s learning
all too generously, but then goes on to say, that he looked on him
as “no Christian,” and to speak of the “devil’s brood” by whom Martin
Luther is possessed.[1273]
Berthold of Chiemsee in his “Tewtsche Theologey” considers that in
his day false teaching has been spread abroad “by a horrid devil,”
who makes use of wicked men; the “devil, with his wicked company, has
stirred up heresy.”[1274]
Petrus Sylvius, in 1534, after a lengthy discourse on Luther’s
“seductive and damnable” manner of “slandering and blaspheming,” says,
that he was “in very truth a possessed and devilish man.”[1275]
In order the better to explain how these and many other of Luther’s
contemporaries came to see a diabolical influence in his work, we
may quote a few words from Johann Adam Möhler’s lectures on Church
History (published posthumously): “We find Luther in 1520 and 1521
displaying a feverish literary activity that arouses in the reader a
horrible misgiving. An uneasy sense of discomfort oppresses us, and a
secret shudder runs through our frame when we think of the boundless
selfishness and presumption which holds sway in this man; we seem to
be standing within the inner circle where that sinister power rules,
which, from the beginning of the world, has ever been seeking to taint
the history of our race.”[1276]
Luther himself, as early as 1518, alludes to opponents of his who
descried in him the influence of the devil. In a letter to Trutfetter,
his old master, he says: “They speak of me from the pulpit as a
heretic, a madman, a tempter and one possessed by I know not how many
devils”; but “let people say, hearken to and believe what, where and
as much as they will, I shall do what God inspires me to do.”[1277]
* * * * *
Paolo Vergerio, the Nuncio, whose detailed account of his interview
with Luther has already been related (vol. iii., p. 426 ff.), speaks,
like Aleander, of his “strange look,” which, the longer he observed
it, the more it reminded him of persons he had formerly seen whom
some regarded as possessed; his eyes were restless and uncanny, and
bore the stamp of rage and anger. “Whether he be possessed or not,”
he says, “in his behaviour he is the personification of presumption,
wickedness and indiscretion.”[1278]
The statements regarding Luther’s eyes made by various persons who
knew him would appear to have furnished many with a ground for
thinking him under some diabolical spell. “Luther’s dark and sparkling
eyes, deep-set and keen ... must indeed have made an even greater
impression than the best of Cranach’s portraits.”[1279]
While his friends, Melanchthon for instance, saw in them the
expression of a high-minded and noble nature and a “leonine
glance,”[1280] many Catholics, like Vergerio, saw the reflection of
a spirit hostile to God. At Worms, as already related, Aleander had
said, though only on the strength of hearsay, that Luther had “the
eyes of a demon,” and a Spanish account from Worms also remarks: “his
eyes forebode no good.”[1281] Cardinal Cajetan, in his examination of
Luther at Augsburg, stated, that he would confer no more with him;
“he has deep-set eyes and strange fancies in his head.”[1282] The
University Professor, Martin Pollich, of Melrichstatt (Mellerstadt),
seems to have let fall a similar remark during Luther’s early years
at Wittenberg; he too mentioned his “deep-set eyes” and “strange
fancies.” It may be, however, that Luther, who tells us this,
erroneously puts into Pollich’s mouth the remark actually made by
Cajetan.[1283] It was Pollich also who often declared, that this monk
would one day overthrow the system of teaching which had hitherto
prevailed in all the Universities.[1284] Johannes Dantiscus, a
Pole, who visited Luther during a journey through Germany and who
subsequently became Bishop of Culm and Ermeland, expresses himself
very frankly. He says: His eyes were keen and sparkled strangely, as
is sometimes the case with those possessed.[1285] Luther’s own pupil,
Johann Kessler, also found something uncomfortable about his glance:
He had “jet-black brows and eyes that sparkled and twinkled like
stars, so that it was no easy thing to fix them.”[1286]
In the above statement concerning Luther’s look and the likelihood of
his being possessed, Vergerio also has a passing allusion to a certain
crude tale then current which quite befitted the taste of the age and
which he gives for what it may be worth in his official report, viz.
that Luther was begotten of the devil.[1287] This tale also found its
way into several Catholic works written in that credulous and deeply
agitated period.
It was not the first time such things had been invented concerning a
person who was an object of ill-will in that age when prejudice told
so strongly.
Luther himself was in the habit of speaking of the actual occurrence
of diabolical births and of the “_diabolus incubus_”;[1288] he not
only did not rise above the vulgar beliefs handed down by a credulous
past, but even imparted to them, at least so far as the power of
the devil went, a still worse shape. He never tired of filling the
imagination of the reader with diabolical images (vol. v., xxxi., 4);
and he spoke of persons possessed as though the world were replete
with them.
If we could trust Cochlæus, Luther’s brother monks would seem
to have partly been responsible for the report not merely of a
diabolical possession (“_obsessio_, _circumsessio_”), but also of
a certain wilful league with the devil entered into by the young
Augustinian. They could not forget the “singularity” of the young
monk, particularly that once, during his fit in choir whilst the
Gospel of the man possessed was being read, he had cried out, “I am
not he.” Cochlæus, who had some intercourse with the Augustinians at
Nuremberg, hints in his Commentaries at the “secret intercourse with
the demon” of which Luther was suspected, and immediately afterwards
refers, though under a misapprehension, to Luther’s own remark about
eating salt with the devil, and holding a disputation with him.[1289]
The passage frequently attributed to Cochlæus, viz. that it was
notorious “the devil Incubus was Luther’s father,” and son of the
devil his “real name, therefore remain the devil’s son as long as you
live,”[1290] was, however, never penned by him. But he was aware of
the reports on this subject already in circulation and never saw fit
to treat them with the contempt they deserved.
All the passages quoted above regarding Luther’s being possessed of
the devil are in every instance quite independent of this stupid tale:
they are based throughout on the character of Luther’s writings and on
his public behaviour.
The first to relate anything concerning Luther’s diabolical parentage
was, according to N. Paulus, Petrus Sylvius in his polemics of
1531-1534.[1291] He recounts with perfect seriousness the information
which he says he had from an “honest, god-fearing woman,” who had
heard it from some former female friends of Luther’s mother to whom
the latter had herself disclosed the fact: “At night time, when the
doors were locked, a beautiful youth dressed in red had frequently
visited her before the Carnival,” etc. Some such idle tale may have
reached the ears of the Legate Vergerio during his travels through
Germany in that same decade. Possibly he may have expressed himself
in private with greater credulity concerning this story than in his
official report, for Contarini goes so far as to write that Vergerio
“had found that Martin was begotten of the devil.”[1292]
The silly story ought to have made all Luther’s later critics more
cautious, even with regard to the statements regarding Luther’s
obsession by the Evil One. The few Catholic writers, who have ventured
even in our own day to assert that Luther was possessed, should have
been deterred from entering a region so obscure and where the danger
of missing one’s way is so great. Even in the case of persons still
living it is rash and often morally impossible to diagnose a case of
possession; much more is this the case when the person in question has
so long been dead.
2. Voices of Converts
Of the Catholic writers, those in particular were sure of a hearing
amongst the educated, who for a long while and until it revealed itself
in its true colours, had been inclined to Lutheranism. Such was, for
instance, the case with several of the pupils and admirers of Erasmus.
Among these were Ulrich Zasius and Silvius Egranus, who, though ready
to criticise Luther severely, were not wanting in words of praise. The
latter was a good type of the half-fledged convert.
Silvius Egranus (see vol. iii., p. 402), for instance, wrote: “I do
not deny that Luther has spirit and inventive genius, but I find
him utterly wanting in judgment, learning and prudence.... Luther’s
foolhardy abuse, his defiance and violence, breed nothing but
unutterable confusion. Nowhere do I see Christian godliness flourishing
in the hearts of men, nay, owing to Luther, it is not safe even to
speak of the Gospel of Christ or of Paul.”[1293] “I declare that
Luther’s doctrine is a web of sophisms, is neither ecclesiastical nor
Apostolic, but closely related to that sophistical buffoonery and
strong language to which he is ever having recourse.”[1294]--Ulrich
Zasius, a Humanist, and at the same time learned in the law, after
changing his views, publicly took the field against Luther even in
official academical discourses; he maintained nevertheless that he
had been led by Luther to a deeper knowledge of the spirit of Christ;
his skill and talent he never even questioned; he declared: “There is
something in Luther’s spirit that meets with my approval.”[1295] What
alienated him from Luther was not only his attack on the authority
of the Pope--with the grounds of which Zasius was well acquainted
from his study of Canon Law--but his denial of the merit of good
works. This contention seemed to him diametrically opposed to Holy
Scripture. “You reject [meritorious] good works,” he says to Luther’s
followers, “and yet I know One Who says: Their works shall follow
them.”[1296] He finds it necessary to reprove Luther sharply for
his unmeasured, nay, shameless boasting of his gifts, for exciting
enmity, strife, dissension and factions, and for inciting to ill-will
and murder. “What shall I say,” he exclaims, “of the boldness and
impudence with which Luther interprets the Testaments, both Old and
New, from the first chapter of Genesis to the very end, as a tissue
of menaces and imprecations against Popes, bishops and priests, as
though through all the ages God had had nothing to do but to thunder
at the priesthood.”[1297] Elsewhere he bewails with noble indignation
the fate of his beloved fatherland: “Luther, the foe of peace, and the
most worthless of men, has let loose the furies over Germany so that we
must regard it as a real mercy if speedy destruction does not ensue.
I should have much to write upon the subject if only my grief allowed
me.”[1298]
Zasius and Egranus, however, like others in a similar walk of life
and who were disposed to seek a compromise, never attacked the new
teachers, their reputation and their supposed wisdom as decidedly as
did those whose deeper knowledge of theology taught them how dangerous
the errors were.
* * * * *
One well equipped for the literary struggle with Luther was the convert
George Wicel, a priest who had married and settled down as a Lutheran
pastor and then, after a thorough study of holy Scripture and the
Fathers, had resigned his post and published an “_Apologia_” at Leipzig
in 1533 to justify his return to the Church of his Fathers.
In a multitude of polemical treatises, often couched in caustic
language, he exposed the untenability and the innate contradictions
of the Wittenberg doctrines. Of this hated “apostate” Luther speaks
in a characteristic letter of 1535.[1299] He writes to the Mansfeld
Chancellor, Caspar Müller, about a new work of Wicel’s: This
Masterlet, as he hears--for he himself “read none of their books”--has
again been throwing sweetmeats to his swine, the Catholics. “Such
guests are well served by such a cook.”
Owing to his stay at Wittenberg and Eisleben, Wicel was well fitted to
paint a reliable picture of the morals there prevailing. He utilised
his experiences in his “_Retectio Lutheranismi_” (1538), and summed
up his case against Luther as follows: “The life of the great mass
of Evangelicals is so little Evangelical that I have thousands and
thousands of times felt most heartily ashamed of it.... Only too
quickly have most of them sucked in the poisonous doctrine, that works
are of no avail and that sin is not imputed to the believer.”[1300]
Concerning one phenomenon, which Luther himself bewails as a very
pest, viz. the fear of death, which had become the rule since the
prevalence of the new teaching, Wicel had some severe things to say;
this was strangely at variance with the confidence which Luther’s
Evangel was supposed to impart. “Is it not a deep disgrace,” he says,
“that those who, formerly, when they were the followers of Antichrist,
to use their own Lutheran phrase, did not fear the plague at all,
or at any rate not much, now, as ‘Christians,’ display such abject
terror when it comes? Hardly anyone visits the sick and no one dares
to assist those stricken with the plague. No one will even look at
them from a distance, and all are seized with a strange panic. Where
is that all-prevailing faith that is now so often extolled, where is
their love for their neighbour? Tell me, I adjure you in the name of
Christ, whether there has ever been less trust or less charity amongst
Christians?”[1301]
In the conversations held in that same year in the intimate circle
at Wittenberg, and preserved for us by Lauterbach the Deacon, Luther
frequently alluded to Wicel; at that time the latter was in the midst
of his successful literary labours against the Lutherans, and his
proposals for reunion, though by no means wholly satisfactory, had
even led Duke George of Saxony to summon him to his Court. Luther,
with a hatred quite comprehensible under the circumstances, calls him,
according to Lauterbach, “the most treacherous of men, insatiable in
his jealousy, a scoundrel who does not even deserve an answer”; Wicel
himself, he tells us, was well aware he was defending, against his
better feelings, a cause altogether wrong; the ungrateful slanderer
richly deserved death; only thanks to Luther’s kindness, had he
found a decent means of livelihood. “Let us despise him! We must be
silent, pray and bless,” so he concludes, “and not bring new faggots
to feed the flames.”[1302] Luther knew perfectly well that any “new
faggots” he might have brought would have burst into flame under
Wicel’s ardent pen, to his own disadvantage. He does not shrink from
indignantly describing Wicel elsewhere as a “sycophant and venomous
traitor,”[1303] and as “a man full of malice and presumption.”[1304]
He comes along and “boasts of the Fathers. I do not even read his
works, for I know his Fathers well; but we have one only Father,
Who is in Heaven and Who is over all Fathers.”[1305] Particularly
sensitive was he to Wicel’s strictures on his doctrine of good
works, that heel of Achilles of the new Evangel. Wicel, “with scorn
and mockery,” says, “that we have taught that, ‘whoever has once been
converted can sin no more, and whatever he does is right and good.’
But the same thing happened to St. Paul and he too had to listen to
slanderers, who, because he taught that people might be saved without
the works of the law and merely by faith in Christ, said: ‘Then let us
do what is evil and sin lustily that good may come of it,’ etc. Let us
pray against such blasphemy.”[1306]
Of the consequences of the new teaching levelled at the meritorious
nature of good works, Wicel had said at the end of his “_Apologia_”:
“The Lutheran sect has opened wide the flood-gates to immorality and
disorder, so that everybody laments and sighs over it. If there be
anything god-fearing, good, moral or right to be found in this sect,
then it was there before, and did not originate with it. For, show me
seven men in seven thousand, who, having been formerly godless and
wicked, have now, because they are Lutherans, become good and full
of the fear of God. I could, however, point out some, such as had
previously led a devout, peaceable, inward and harmless life, who are
now quite changed by this Evangel. May but the Lord grant them to
see and acknowledge what misery they have excited within the German
nation. Amen.”[1307]
Among Wicel’s “blasphemies,” as Luther calls them, were some that
traversed the latter’s assertions that the holy works of penitents
and ascetics were utterly worthless, and that the business of a
house-agent or tax-collector, provided one went about it in faith,
ranked higher than all the pious works of any monk or hermit.[1308]
“The wretched man,” exclaims Luther, angry because of his inability to
answer the objection, “most idly attacks us; he has no respect for the
labours of their calling which God has commanded each man to perform
in his state of life; all this he disregards and merely gapes at
superstitious, grand and showy works”;[1309] “and yet Paul extols the
ordinary works of the faithful and lays great stress on them.”[1310]
This was one of his habitual falsehoods, viz. to make out that Wicel
and his other opponents looked down on lowly and commonplace works
and the unobtrusive performance of the duties of one’s calling, more
particularly in the life of the world. In reality, however, they
recognised in the most large-minded way the high value of the duties
of any worldly calling when done in a religious spirit, and repudiated
with perfect justice the charge brought against Catholicism of
undervaluing the ordinary virtues of the good citizen.
The zealous Wicel was not perturbed by Luther’s attacks. He continued
to damage the Lutheran cause by his writings, though the position he
took up in ecclesiastical matters was not always well advised.
Another convert, Veit Amerbach (Amorbach), one of the most capable
Humanists of the day, after abandoning the Catholic communion lectured
first at Eisleben and then in the philosophical faculty at Wittenberg,
till, owing to his patristic studies and after personal conferences
with Luther and Melanchthon, he returned to the bosom of the Church
in 1543, and at once found a post as lecturer at the University
of Ingolstadt. As he declared in a written statement handed to
Melanchthon, it was particularly the doctrines of Justification and
of the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome that compelled him to side with
antiquity and to oppose the innovations.
Too high-minded to abuse his former associates (he even refrained
from writing against them), Luther nevertheless, on hearing of his
conversion, declared that he would surely turn out later a blasphemer.
“You know,” Luther wrote to Lauterbach, “Vitus Amerbach, who left
us to go to Ingolstadt, was a man who was never really one of us (1
John ii. 19); he will imitate Eck in his blasphemy of our Word, and
perhaps do even worse things.”[1311] Amerbach having pointed out
that the greatest authorities both of East and West had acknowledged
the Pope’s leadership in the Church, Luther replies in Table-Talk in
1544: “Whence do they get the rotten argument, that the Church must
have Rome for its outward head? All history is against anything of
the kind. The whole of the West was never under the Pope, nor the
whole of the East. It is mere pride on Amerbach’s part! O God, this
is indeed a fall beyond all other falls! I am sorry about him, for he
will occasion great scandal. Poor people, they think not of their last
hour.”[1312] “Ah, it is said of them: They went out from us, from the
Apostles. But whence came the devil? From the angels surely. Whence
the prostitutes if not from virgins? Whence the knaves if not from the
ranks of the pious? Evil must needs come from good.”[1313]
Amerbach’s opinion of the innovations and of the work of the devil was
a different one.
In the Preface to his collection of the Capitularies of Charles the
Great and Lothair,--the solitary passage in which he alludes to the
upheaval he had witnessed, though he refrains from any reference to
his former colleagues--he expresses his cherished hope that the
Church will ultimately be restored to unity under the successor
of Peter; the most pressing thing was to set some bounds to the
extraordinary and utterly unrestrained abuse and vituperation, which
was not a little promoted by the avarice and filthy venality of the
printers, but which the authorities did nothing to prevent. “At times,
when I reflect on this disorder,” he says, “it seems to me that men
are not filled merely with gall and wormwood, but are verily led and
set in motion by devils incarnate. But otherwise it cannot be, so
long as, within the Church, the faithful are split up into opposing
factions. And would that the populace alone were to blame! I am very
much deceived if in any of the books of history even one other example
is to be met with of such madness, such furious, poisonous railing and
drunken invective.”[1314]
3. Lamentations over the Wounds of the Church and over Her Persecutions
With the defenders of the Church the depravity of Luther’s teaching,
and the immense injury which his work of apostasy was doing to souls,
weighed far more heavily than any of the charges we have heard advanced
against his person.
In the beginning, it is true, they were chiefly concerned in refuting
his new and daring propositions. But, as the years passed and the
ruin increased, startling accounts of the sad state of religion more
and more often find a place in their polemics, the writers urging
against Lutheranism the decay of faith and morals which had followed
in its train. In their words we can feel even to-day the fervour
and the profound anxiety with which they sought to admonish their
contemporaries against the destroyer of the Sanctuary and his seductive
ways.
When Johann Cochlæus composed the Preface to his “_Commentaria de
actis et scriptis Martini Lutheri_,” he could not refrain, at the
sight of the state of Germany, from giving lively expression to his
grief.
To him “the greatest misfortune, which no tears can sufficiently
deplore,” is “the fall of so many immortal souls, destined by the
grace of baptism for life everlasting.” “This unhappy strife regarding
belief,” he writes at the commencement, “has torn them from the
bosom and the unity of the Church and will bring them to eternal
destruction!” In addition to this there is “a frightful subversion
of all things such as no previous heresy had ever brought about.”
The bond of charity and concord which unites Christian people has
been loosened, discipline undermined, reverence for God destroyed,
wholesome fear extinguished, obedience cast aside, and in their lieu
prevails “sinfulness and a freedom that is alien to God.”[1315] In
the body of the work he describes with pain and indignation how the
uncalled preachers behaved. “They come,” so he says in one passage,
“and prate of that false freedom which is to set us free from all laws
of Church, Pope, bishops and Councils. With a cloud of Scriptural
texts they undertake to prove, that fasting, prayers, vigils and other
penitential works are no good whatever, that Christ has sufficiently
atoned for our sins, that faith alone suffices, that our good works,
far from being deserving, are really sinful, and so forth. In glibness
of tongue and in energy they are not to be outdone.”[1316]
Johann Wild, Cathedral preacher at Mayence, also describes in moving
words the grievous wounds that were being inflicted on the Church. He
was a Franciscan Observantine and was distinguished in his Order for
his learning and success. After having been from 1528 preacher at the
friary church at Mayence, he was appointed in 1539 to the pulpit of
the Cathedral, which he retained till his death in 1554. To him it was
in part due that what was then the ecclesiastical metropolis of the
Rhine Province was preserved in the Catholic faith. He was a type of
those men who attempted to meet the spiritual needs of the day, not
by loud-voiced polemics, but in a conciliatory and peaceable fashion,
and who insisted that the first requirement was to instruct the people
thoroughly in the faith, and to raise the moral tone of the faithful.
Luther’s name he does not mention once in the many volumes of his
sermons, but the complaints are none the less heart-felt that he pours
forth concerning the devastation wrought in the Lord’s vineyard,
warning his hearers and exhorting them to pity, labour and prayer in
the interests of Catholicism, now in such dire straits.
“Woe to all those,” he cries, “who by their preaching have made the
world so frivolous and fearless of God! Our forefathers were better
advised in this matter. They too preached grace, but they did not
forget penance.”[1317] “But now we see, how, by dint of sermons
lacking all sense of modesty and urging faith alone, all fear of God
is driven out of the hearts of men.”[1318] “One thing, viz. faith,
has been extolled to the skies, the other, viz. good works, has been
trodden in the mire. The result is that we are now for the most part
merely Christians in name, but, so far as works are concerned, more
depraved and wicked than even Jews or Turks. Yet they expect it to
be said of them: These are Evangelical preachers, comforting folk,
who know how to quiet people’s consciences.”[1319] “All sorts of
wickedness, injustice and frivolity increase from day to day.” “Since
ever there were Christians in the world a godly life has never been
so little esteemed as now.”[1320] This, according to him, is the
chief cause of all the “very grievous sufferings of the Church,” in
comparison with which the spoliation of the clergy was nothing, of the
loss of souls, and ruin of religious life. “The cause of the Church’s
pain is that her children have been and are so lamentably led astray,
that they refuse any longer to acknowledge their own mother, but
avoid and flee from her, despise her old age, mock at her wrinkles,
laugh at her feebleness, pay no heed to her admonitions, transgress
her laws, forsake her doctrine, reject her commands, despise her
sacraments, cling to her enemies, wallow in every sort of sin and
defile themselves with all kinds of errors. Who can tell all the
misery which is now to be met with among Christians by reason of their
sins and errors?” How should this not cause pain to the Church, our
loving Mother?[1321]--When the discord was on the point of breaking
out into an armed conflict, this patriot, deeply moved at the sight of
the dissensions that ravaged the Fatherland, exclaimed: Germany has
become a byword to her neighbours. “Everybody wants a bit of us.” We
have to submit to bitter scorn. They say: “Ha, these are the haughty
Germans who help to destroy all other countries and have a finger
in every war; now they are going to set to on each other.... Is it
not a lamentable thing that foreigners and aliens should speak thus
derisively of us?... We must lay it before God and beg Him to forgive
those whose fault it is that we cannot reach any agreement. I have
always feared this outcome, yet I ever furthered and counselled peace
and unity.”[1322]
In a writing presented at the Diet of Ratisbon in 1541 by Duke
William of Bavaria, the acts of violence committed by the protesting
Estates for years past were thus summarised: “The Protestants clamour
for peace and justice, but in their actions they violate both.”
The Catholic Estates “are continually molested on account of their
religion, and great loss and injury are inflicted on them. Contrary
to the commandment of God, in defiance of law and Christian usages,
the Protestants forbid them to preach the Gospel and the Word of God
openly; their churches and monasteries are seized by force, their
subjects enticed away from them by all manner of devices and taken
under the shelter of the Protestants; their religious foundations and
property are torn from them mercilessly and used for alien purposes,
the graves and monuments of the pious dead, both high and low, are
desecrated and destroyed; the pictures and images of our Saviour Jesus
Christ, of the chaste Virgin Mary and the dear Saints are pitifully
damaged and smashed to pieces.” “The Catholics have no dearer wish
than for peace and order and justice; they too were clamouring for
these, and not like the Protestants, trying at the same time to upset
them. All they asked was to be left in the enjoyment of their holy
Christian faith and the ordinances of the Christian Church, and
not to have their goods violently taken from them.”[1323]--These
complaints were, however, ineffective, as the Protestant party had
already the upper hand in the College of Electors.
At the Diet of Worms in 1545 the complaints were renewed on the
Catholic side: “The Protestants have made themselves masters of
churches and monasteries and have driven into misery all who wished
to abide by the old faith. They have invaded bishoprics and have been
reckless of justice and peace; have constrained the poor inhabitants
to embrace their religion, as, for instance, in the land of Brunswick,
where they had no other right than the might of the sword. They
trample under foot and oppress everything, and then complain of being
themselves oppressed.” “They are insatiable in their demands and are
for ever producing fresh cards to play, at every Diet putting forward
fresh claims which they insist on having conceded to them before
they will take part in the transactions or vote supplies.”[1324] The
Catholics further declared in the sittings of a committee at Worms, in
answer to the charges of their opponents concerning the real abuses
which prevailed among the bishops and elsewhere: “Scandals and abuses
innumerable certainly existed and were openly flaunted, and were
growing worse and worse nowadays, because, owing to the perilous times
and the teaching of novel sects and preachers, all good works were
being abandoned, and unbelief and contempt for religion was becoming
the custom among high and low. Many thousand livings stood vacant and
the people were without helm or rudder.” “Where were the schools and
the Divine worship? Where the foundations and endowments for the poor
which had been so numerous twenty or thirty years ago?” “What the
Protestants call proclaiming the Word of God is for the most part, as
they themselves complain, mere slander and abuse of the Pope and the
clergy and a general reviling of mankind.” The pulpit has “degenerated
into a chair of scurrility at which foreign nations are shuddering.”
Not many years before Luther had openly exhorted the preachers to
“denounce the Duke of Brunswick in their sermons as a servant of the
devil, likewise the Archbishop of Mayence and all followers of the
Pope.”[1325]
“If we wish to discover the causes of the war which is undoubtedly
at hand,” so the Cologne doctor, Carl van der Plassen, who was well
acquainted with the conditions in Germany, wrote from the Diet
of Worms, “we must bear in mind all that has happened in Germany
since the subjugation of the peasants by the Princes and municipal
authorities, all the countless violations of human and Divine law, of
the public peace, of property, civic rights, conscience and honour.
Let us but reckon up the number of churches and monasteries which
have been destroyed and pillaged during these twenty years, and
all the accompanying crime and iniquity. And to what purpose have
these stolen goods been applied? What has become of all the Church
property, all the treasures?... A new religion has been forced upon
the people by might and by stratagem, and they have been forbidden
under threat of punishment to carry on the old service of God, with
its rites and Christian usages. Is this the vaunted freedom of the
Gospel, to persecute and coerce others, to imprison them or drive them
into exile? Everything that was formerly reverenced has now fallen
into contempt, with the result that right and property are no longer
respected; the endless disturbances in matters of religion have upset
the whole national equilibrium; discipline, loyalty and respectability
have vanished.... What misery results from want of clergy and schools
even in the lands which have remained Catholic! Princes and towns,
making their boast of the Gospel, have not been satisfied with
introducing the new Church system into their own territories, but
have invaded the Catholic bishoprics and secular dominions and turned
everything topsy-turvy in order to set up their own institutions. The
Schmalkalden confederates extend their operations from year to year
and grow more and more audacious. At this moment they are actually
preaching a war of extermination against the Pope and his adherents.
There will be no checking them if the sword of the Emperor is not used
to restrain them, as it ought to have been long ago.”[1326]
Another Catholic contemporary complains in similar fashion: “Religion
is perverted, all obedience to the Emperor destroyed, justice
set aside and insolence of all sorts everywhere encouraged.” The
Emperor “has tried many and various means of putting a stop to this
insubordination, but all measures have been fruitless and he must
now wield in earnest the sword that God put into his hands to bring
back his and our fatherland to peace, order and unity.”[1327] In the
Emperor’s own circle the conviction had ripened that so much injustice
had been done to Catholics and so much detriment to the Church, that
armed intervention was the only course that remained. “Things had come
to such a pass in Germany,” said the Imperial Chancellor Granvell to
Farnese, the Papal Legate, about the time of the Diet of Worms, “that
neither the Emperor’s nor the Pope’s name any longer carried any
weight; indeed, it was to be feared that the Protestants looked upon
the opening of the Council as a signal for war, and that they would at
once begin to equip themselves not merely for the sake of being ready
for any emergency, but rather in order to suppress the Catholics and
to make an attack on Italy, the object of their bitter hatred.”[1328]
4. The Literary Opposition
Most of those who opposed Luther in the literary field have already
made their appearance in the various episodes narrated in the foregoing
pages. In the present section, which is in the nature of a retrospect
and amplification of certain points, we must first touch on the
charge frequently put forward by Luther, viz. that it was the furious
polemics of his foes which drew from him his violent rejoinders, and,
particularly in the earlier part of his career, drove him to take the
field against Rome.
We have already repeatedly admitted the too great acrimony of some
of the writings against Luther, the exasperation they frequently ill
conceal and their needlessly strong and insulting language; of this
we saw instances in the case of Tetzel, Eck, Prierias, Emser and many
others.[1329]
It can, however, readily be proved by a comparison with Luther’s
own writings, that the champions of the Church fell far short of
their opponent, generally speaking, in the matter of violence and
contemptuous satire. Luther not only maintained in this respect his
supremacy as a speaker, but the small account he made of truth[1330]
lent an immense advantage to his overwhelming invective. It is
also easy to discern a difference in the writings directed against
his revolutionary movement, according as they were written earlier
or later. At first, when it was merely a question of exposing his
theological errors, his opponents were comparatively calm; the first
counter theses and the discussions to which they led are replete with
the ponderous learning of the Schoolmen, though, even there, we find
occasional traces of the indignation felt that the sanctuary of the
faith should have been attacked in so wanton a fashion. But after the
actual subversion of the Church had begun and the social peril of
the radical innovations had revealed itself, the voices of Luther’s
opponents grow much harsher. Many, in their anguish at the growing
evil, do not spare the person of the man responsible for it all, whose
own methods of controversy, unfortunately, became a pattern even to his
foes. At no time, not even in a warfare such as that then going on, can
all the things be justified which were said by Augustine Alveld, Franz
Arnoldi, Johann Cochlæus, Paul Bachmann, Duke George, King Henry VIII
and even, occasionally, by Sir Thomas More.
What helped to poison the language was, on the one hand, the coarse
tone then generally prevalent amongst the German people, which
contrived to find its way into the literary treatment of theological
questions to an extent never heard of before, and, on the other,
the love of the Humanists for mockery and satire, to which end they
ransacked the storehouse of antiquity, classical or otherwise. Among
earnest Catholics the most powerful factor was overpowering indignation
at the sight of such ruthless trampling under foot of the religion of
their forefathers and of a faith so closely bound up with the greatness
of the fatherland and with every phase of life. Their indignation led
them to utter things that were less praiseworthy than the feeling which
inspired them.
Besides this, there was a great temptation to use, as the best way of
testifying to their abhorrence for the opponent of religious truth,
that drastic language handed down by past ages, indeed largely borrowed
from the Bible, particularly from the Prophets of the Old Testament. Of
this, not theological writers only, but even official ecclesiastical
documents, had made such liberal use, that scholars had it at their
finger-tips. Even in our own day such mediæval thunders are still
sometimes heard rumbling, particularly among the Latin races. When
dealing with the Bull of Excommunication against Luther, we already
had occasion to remark that much in it was due to the after-effects
of the older habits of speech usual in earlier condemnations.[1331]
It may be mentioned of Hadrian VI that in a stern missive addressed
in 1522 to Frederick the Elector of Saxony, he denounced Luther as a
“serpent” infecting heaven and earth with the venom of its tongue, as
a “boar” laying waste the vineyard of the Lord, as a “thief” who broke
in pieces the cross of Christ, as a man with “diabolical, impious and
pestilential lips.” He also, in the words of Scripture, tells the
Prince that Luther, whom he was protecting, is a devil who has assumed
the appearance of an angel of light.[1332]
As regards the beginnings of the controversy, both series of Theses
advanced by Johann Tetzel in 1517 against Luther’s attack on the system
of indulgences, are exclusively of a technical nature and never even
mention by name the originator of the controversy.[1333]
Luther, on the other hand, after the publication of the ninety-five
Theses, in his German sermon on Indulgences and Grace,[1334] addressed
himself directly to the populace. He poured out his scorn on the
school-opinions of the theologians and the “bawling” of the envious;
they seek, he says, your “pennies,” not your souls, and preach for the
sake of their “money-box.” He appealed very cleverly to their more
sordid instincts, hinting that the money might be better spent on the
poor in their own neighbourhood than on the building of St. Peter’s;
at the end, sure of his success with the multitude, he abused those
who called him a heretic, as “darkened intellects who had never even
sniffed a Bible ... and had never grasped their own teaching.”
What was the nature of Tetzel’s reply? His “Vorlegung” of the
Sermon,[1335] being intended for the people, was naturally written
in German, but in the wearisome style of the Latin theology of the
Schools. In point of matter and logical accuracy it was indeed far
superior to Luther’s superficialities, but the clumsy German in which
it was couched and the number of quotations it borrowed from the
Fathers could only make it distasteful to the reader. It is hardly
possible to recognise in its language the popular orator who was such
a favourite with the people. The seriousness of his tone contrasts
strangely with Luther’s airy style. It is easy to believe his honest
assurance, that he was ready to submit his views to the judgment of
the learned and to the ecclesiastical authorities, and to risk even
life itself for the holy Faith of the Catholic past. Only towards the
end of the short work, when refuting Luther’s twentieth proposition,
does Tetzel, not very skilfully, retaliate upon his opponent--though
even here he does not name him--for the coarse and abusive language
he had used in this thesis. Tetzel says, it would be seen from a
consideration of their reasons which of the two it was who had “never
sniffed a Bible,” never grasped his own teaching and applied to the
study of theology “a brain like a sieve”; which of the two was the
schismatic, heretic, etc.
In his reply to the “Vorlegung,” which he published in his own name
under the title “Eyn Freiheyt dess Sermons Bebstlichen Ablass,”[1336]
Luther spared no venom: Sun and moon might well wonder at the light of
wisdom displayed by such a poetaster; evidently he had a superabundance
of paper and leisure; but his artificial flowers and withered leaves
must be scattered to the winds; he had dared to treat “the scriptural
text, which is our comfort (Rom. xv. 4), as a sow would treat a sack of
oats.” His opponent’s offer to risk a trial by fire or water for the
Faith, he treats with the utmost scorn and derision: “My honest advice
to him would be, modestly to restrict himself to the juice of the grape
and to the steam that arises from the roast goose to which he is so
partial.”--Some Protestants have urged that Luther’s rudeness of tone,
here displayed for the first time, may be explained by his opponent’s
example. How little this defence of Luther accords with the true state
of the case is plain from the above.
As regards Silvester Prierias the matter stands somewhat differently.
The “_Dialogus_,” composed by the Master of the Palace in hot haste
in reply to Luther’s “arrogant Theses on the power of the Pope” (the
ninety-five Indulgence Theses he had nailed to the door of the Castle
Church at Wittenberg), a work written with all the weighty scholarship
of the Schoolmen and criticising each thesis in detail, contained in
its thirty-three octavo pages a number of exaggerations and words
calculated to offend.
The lively Southerner was not content with proving that much in
Luther’s Theses was provocative, contrary to dogma, criminal,
seductive, sarcastic, etc., but, even in the Dedication to Leo X, he
starts off by saying that: Luther had dared to rise up against the
truth and the Holy See, but that he, the writer, would see whether
“his iron nose and brazen neck were really unbreakable.”[1337]
Luther preferred to “snap secretly” rather than to put forward plain
doctrines.[1338] “If it is in the nature of dogs to snap, then I
feel sure you must have had a dog for your father, for you are ever
ready to bite.”[1339] Luther having in one passage put forward a
statement that was true, Prierias tells him: “You mix a little truth
with much that is false, and thus you are a spiritual leper, for you
have a spotted skin that shines partly with true, partly with false
colours.”[1340] Referring to the building of St. Peter’s at Rome, he
says to Luther rather maliciously: “You blame in the case of the first
church of Christendom what was extolled when other churches were being
built. Had you received a fat bishopric from the Pope with a plenary
indulgence for the erection of your church, then, perhaps, you would
have found friendly words in plenty and have belauded the Indulgences
on which now you pour contempt.”[1341]
These are lapses in style which a high official of the Pope should
have known better than to commit.
Yet it is clear from Luther’s reply that they did not exasperate him
nearly so much as did Prierias’s energetic repudiation of his teaching
and his calm exposure of the untenable nature of his assertions. What
alarmed him was the fact that a highly placed Papal dignitary should
have shown the contrast between his innovations and the theology
and practice of the Church; he now perceived clearly the practical
consequences of his undertaking and the direct entanglement it would
involve with Rome. Hence the frame of mind in which he composed his
“_Responsio ad Dialogum_,” etc. (1518),[1342] was not due so much to
his opponent’s personalities as to the whole aspect of affairs, to the
shakiness of his own position and to his fierce determination to win
respect for and to further at the expense of Rome the new doctrine
which he now had ready-made in his mind. Whoever recalls the spirit
which breathes in his Commentary on Romans and the violent language
found in his sermons and letters even before 1518, will readily
estimate at its true worth the statement, that what drove him onwards
was the insolence of Prierias. Unfortunately, Prierias’s “Dialogue”
shares the fate of the Latin works which appeared in Germany in
defence of Catholicism in the early days of the struggle with Luther:
Save by a few theologians, they are never read, and, indeed, even were
they read, it is doubtful whether they would be rightly understood
except by those familiar with Scholasticism; hence discretion in
passing judgment is doubly necessary.
In the Reply of 1518 now under consideration, Luther, in view of the
person and position of his opponent, and of the possible consequences,
is more restrained in his abuse than in other writings soon to follow.
Yet, anxious as he was to furnish a real answer to the criticisms of
an author so weighty, we find irony, rudeness and attempts to render
ridiculous the “senile” objections of the “Thomaster,” the “sophist”
and all his “taratantara,” intermingled with unwarrantable attacks on
“Thomistic” theology, that storehouse whence his opponent purloined
“his phrases and his shouting.” The reply opens with the words: “Your
Dialogue, Reverend Father, has reached me; it is a rather high-flown
writing, quite Italian and Thomistic.” It also ends in the same vein.
“If for the future you don’t bring into the arena a Thomas armed with
better weapons, then don’t expect to find again such consideration as I
have just shown you. I have bridled myself so as not to return evil for
evil. Good-bye.”
When, in 1519, the Dominican whom he had thus insulted published,
first a “_Replica_” in the form of a short letter addressed to Luther,
and then the “_Epitome_” (an abstract of his investigations into
the theological questions then under discussion), it was impossible
for Luther to complain of any too harsh treatment; the tone of the
“_Replica_,” although dealing with Luther’s attacks on the person of
the Roman scholar, falls immeasurably short of his assailant’s in point
of bitterness. It is conciliatory, indeed proffers an olive-branch,
should the Wittenberg professor retract the new doctrines which Rome
was determined to condemn.[1343] As for the “_Epitome_,” it is merely
a theological review of the doctrines involved, which it clearly
states and establishes whilst vigorously refuting all opinions to the
contrary. It is accompanied by a grave warning to Luther not to impugn
the authority of the Roman Church.[1344]
This was, however, sufficient to let loose the anger of the German
Reformer, who meanwhile had advanced considerably, and whose wrath now
manifested itself in his rejoinders. Such was his presumption that he
actually reprinted in Germany both works of Prierias as soon as they
had been published; the “_Replica_” he introduced with the derisive
remark, that, as the author had threatened to give birth to more, they
must pray that he might suffer no abortions.[1345] His reprint of the
“_Epitome_” in 1520 was accompanied by contemptuous and satirical
annotations, and by a preface and postscript where he breaks out into
the language already described, about Antichrist seated in the Temple
of God in the Roman Babylon, about the happiness of the separated
Greeks and Bohemians and about the washing of hands in the blood of the
Popish Sodom.[1346] It was the seething ferment in Luther’s own mind,
not anything that Prierias had said, that was really responsible for
such outbursts. The flood-gates had now been thrown open, and even from
the Catholic side came many a wave of indignation to lend acrimony to
the contest.
Referring to Luther’s words on bloodshed, we hear, for instance, Thomas
Murner speaking of “the furious bloodhound, Martin Luther of execrable
memory, the blasphemous, runaway monk and murderous bloodhound, who
wants to wash his hands in the blood of the priests!”[1347]
How far Hieronymus Emser allowed himself to go in his hostility
to Luther is plain from his first tract, “_A venatione Luteriana
Ægocerotis assertio_,” of Nov., 1519, in which he replies to an attack
of Luther’s on an epistle he (Emser) had sent to Provost Johann
Zack. Luther, in the title, had addressed him as the “he-goat” (“_ad
Ægocerotem_”) on account of the goat’s head figuring in his coat of
arms. Emser retorts: “It is plainly beyond your ability to send out
into the world any writing of yours that is not replete with houndish
fury and bristles, as it were, with canine fangs. Your father is
Belial, the ancestor of all insolent monks.” He paints a frightful
picture of Luther’s career and character the better to prove that such
a man had no right to sit in judgment on him.
Luther’s “An den Bock zu Leyptzck,” dating from the beginning of 1520,
was replied to by Emser in his “An den Stier zu Wittenberg,” whereupon
Luther retorted with “Auff des Bocks zu Leypczick Antwort,” to which
Emser replied in his pamphlet: “Auff des Stieres tzu Wiettenberg
wiettende Replica,” and his larger work “Against the Unchristian book
of M. Luther to the German Nobility”; this Luther countered by his
“Auff das ubirchristlich ... Buch Bocks Emssers.”
During the years 1521-1522 Emser wrote no less than eight tracts
against the Wittenberg Professor. The Humanist and clever man of
letters has left therein many a witty page; a refreshing sincerity
is one of his characteristics.[1348] On the whole, however, what F.
A. Scharpff says applies to these and the later polemics of this
zealous champion of the Church: They “are composed in a tone of violent
personality, nor does either combatant seek any longer to restrain the
‘Old Adam,’ as both at the outset had pledged themselves to do.”[1349]
* * * * *
Another of Luther’s earliest literary opponents was Johann Eck, the
author of the “Obelisks,” on the Indulgence Theses. Like the works
of Tetzel and Prierias, this tract is chiefly concerned in a calm
discussion of the matter in dispute, though it does not refrain from
occasionally describing this or that opinion of Luther’s as a “rash,
corrupt, impudent assertion,” as an insipid, unblushing error, a
ridiculous mistake, etc. The severest remark, however, and that which
incensed Luther beyond all the rest was, that certain passages in the
Indulgence Theses, owing to a confusion of ideas, made admissions
“containing Bohemian poison,” i.e. savouring of the errors of
Hus.[1350] Subsequent to this Eck, however, wrote to Carlstadt a letter
which was intended for Luther, where he says in a conciliatory tone:
“To offend Martin was never my intention.”[1351] Nor did he at first
print his “Obelisks,” but merely sent the tract to his bishop and his
friends. Luther, on the other hand, had the work printed in August,
1518, together with his own “Asterisks,” and, after circulating them
privately among his acquaintances, finally published them together.
In the “_Asterisci_” he speaks of the behaviour of Eck, his quondam
“friend,” as most insidious and iniquitous (“_insidiossissimum
iniquissimum_”), and mocks at his “grand, not to say high-flown,”
preface. He says: “Hardly was I able to refrain from laughter”;
Eck must have written his “Obelisks” during the Carnival; wearing
the mask of genius he had produced a chaos. His writing adduced
nothing concerning the Bible, the Fathers and the Canons, but was all
arch-scholastic; had he, Luther, wished to peripateticise he could,
with one puff, have blown away all these musty cobwebs, etc.[1352]
Johann Eck, who was professor of theology at the University of
Ingolstadt and at the same time parish-priest and preacher, enjoyed a
great reputation among the Catholics on account of his works against
Luther, particularly those on the Primacy, on Purgatory, the Mass and
other Catholic doctrines and practices, no less than on account of his
printed sermons and his general activity on behalf of the Church.
The indefatigable defender of the Church composed amongst other
writings the “_Enchiridion locorum communium adv. Lutherum et alios
hostes ecclesiæ_” (1525). The work was of great service and formed an
excellent guide to many.
In this well-arranged and eminently practical book the questions then
under debate are dealt with for the instruction of Catholics and the
confutation of heretics; excerpts from Scripture and from the Fathers
are in each instance quoted in support of the Catholic teaching, and
then the objections of opponents are set forth and answered. Not
only were the Church, the Papal Primacy, Holy Scripture, Faith and
Works, the Sacraments, the Veneration of the Saints, Indulgences,
Purgatory and other similar points of doctrine examined in this way,
but even certain matters of discipline and the ecclesiastico-political
questions of the day, such as payments to Rome, the ornaments of the
churches and the ceremonies of Divine Worship, the use of Latin in
the Mass, the disadvantage of holding disputations with heretics, and
even the question of the Turkish war. Hence the work amounted to a
small arsenal of weapons for use in the controversial field. The tone
is, however, not always moderate and dispassionate. The author was
clear-sighted enough to avoid the pitfall into which other writers
lapsed who cherished undue hopes of a settlement by give and take.
In much that he says he still speaks from the mediæval standpoint,
for instance, concerning the death penalty due to heretics; this
he defends on the strength of the identical passages from the Old
Testament to which Luther and his followers appealed for the putting
to death of blasphemers and apostates from the true faith.
Eck had the satisfaction of seeing his “_Enchiridion_,” within four
years, reprinted four times in Bavaria, twice at Tübingen, and
at Cologne, Paris and Lyons. Before 1576 it had been reimpressed
forty-five times. In the midst of his other literary works and his
fatiguing labours as preacher and professor at the University of
Ingolstadt, the scholar never forgot his useful “_Enchiridion_,” but
amended it and added to it as occasion demanded. In 1529, in a new
edition which he dedicated to Conrad von Thuengen, bishop of Würzburg,
he looks back in the dedicatory preface on the ten years that had
passed since his disputation at Leipzig, and voices his grief at the
immense advance the apostasy had made with the course of time.
“People have outgrown themselves,” Eck exclaims, “they exalt
themselves against God just as Lucifer once did, but like him too they
fall into the abyss and come to despise the teaching of God.” “Whoever
does not hold fast to the tradition of the Church and to the unanimous
consent of the Fathers and the Councils must fall into the cesspool of
the worst errors.” These words are characteristic of Eck’s unwavering
adherence to authority.
He goes on to apply this to Luther: “Luther and those who follow him
prefer to rise up in their foolish daring rather than bow to the rule
of faith; they open their offensive mouth against the holy Fathers and
the whole Church; they exalt their own judgment with momentous and
arrogant blindness above that of the most august representatives of
the teaching office.” True enough Luther had begun softly by merely
publishing some theses against the system of indulgences with which
many might still agree; but then he had gone on step by step and had
increased his partisans by proclaiming a Christian freedom which in
reality savoured more of Mohammed. It is our sins, Eck admits, that
are the cause of the unhappy success of his work. “From the poisoned
root new and corrupt shoots are constantly springing up, and of their
new sects we see no end. In our unhappy days we have experienced the
fury of the iconoclasts; Capharnaites have arisen to whom Christ’s
presence in the Sacrament is a hard saying; Anabaptists, who refuse
baptism to children but bestow it on adults, and, amongst these
teachers, every day fresh divisions arise so that the heretics are
even more prolific than rabbits. Yes, God is angry with us and allows
this because we do not turn to Him with powerful and fervent prayer.”
He then goes on to encourage the Bishop of Würzburg to offer vigorous
resistance and points modestly to his own self-sacrificing labours.
“However much heresy may gain the upper hand, the watchmen of Sion
must not keep silence; their voice must ring out like a clarion
against the Philistines who scoff at the hosts of the Lord. We must
oppose them with all the powers of our mind and defend the Tower of
David, guarded, as Scripture says, with a thousand shields. This,
zealous men, equipped with holy learning, have already done. I myself,
as the least of all, have also entered the arena and exposed myself to
the teeth of the wild beasts. At Leipzig I stood up and disputed for
twenty days with Luther, the Prince of Dragons, and with Carlstadt; at
Baden [in Switzerland, in 1526] too, I had to sustain a combat for
several days with Œcolampadius the Capharnaite, and his comrades. I
have also wrestled with them from a distance in several little works
which I published in Germany and Italy.”
Again, in 1541, in the evening of his days († 1543), in an eighth
edition of the “_Enchiridion_” dedicated to Cardinal Alexander
Farnese, while urging him to increased efforts for the bringing about
of a Council, he could point to his own three-and-twenty years of
incessant conflict with heresy. “O God,” he cries at the sight of the
extent to which the evil had grown, “what times are ours!” “Every
bulwark against arbitrary private judgment has been torn down; Luther
has taught all how to dare all things. Since he has overthrown the
authority of the Councils, the Popes, the Holy Fathers and all the
Christian Universities, every man, no matter how mad or hair-brained
he may be, is free to teach his new fancies to mankind.”[1353]
Yet the author seeks to revive hope and confidence in his own mind and
in that of his Catholic readers, and, to this end, quotes on the last
page the saying of St. Jerome, which he applies to the misfortunes
of his own day: “During the years of persecution the priests of the
Church must tell the faithful boldly and confidently: Your churches
will be rebuilt; have no fear, peace and unity will once more enter
in.--Yes truly, by God’s Mercy there will come an end to the heresies
of Luther, Zwingli, Œcolampadius, Blaurer, Osiander, Schnepf and all
their ilk, and the olden truth of faith will flourish again. Grant
this, Good Jesus, and grant it speedily!” Invocations such as these
accord well with the exhortations to pray for the erring which Eck was
fond of introducing in this as well as in his other books.
Eck’s writings in defence of the faith include learned as well as
popular works, and he was also indefatigable in his labours in the
ministry.[1354]
Johann Cochlæus, who like Eck was one of the more famous of Luther’s
opponents, had a keen and versatile mind († 1552). He first made
Luther’s personal acquaintance at Worms,[1355] and entered the lists
against him in 1522 with his “_De gratia sacramentorum_”; from that
time forward he kept a watch on all that Luther wrote, so as to be
in readiness to reply to or refute it as occasion arose. He himself
gives us the long list of his publications against Luther, in his
“_Commentaria de actis ... Lutheri_,” the work in which he sums up his
recollections of the struggles of his time.
From these “_Commentaria_” of Cochlæus, despite the disparaging
treatment accorded them by Sleidanus, “more is to be gleaned concerning
the history of the Reformation than from many bungling Protestant
eulogies.” Such, at least, is the opinion of C. Krafft, himself a
Protestant.[1356]
The writer sought after the truth and wrote with honest indignation. In
spite of disappointments, and even privations, he remained faithful to
the Church, making during his career many a sacrifice for his cherished
convictions; he himself relates how he could not find a printer for his
works against Luther and was forced himself to defray a part of the
expense of publication, whereas every press was eager to print Luther’s
books owing to the demand anticipated.
If, in Cochlæus’s writings, too great passion is often apparent, this
may well have been due to that depraved humanism and neo-classicism
under the influence of which, more perhaps than any other Catholic
man of letters, he stood. We have an instance of this in his
“Seven-headed Luther,” which he composed in 1529 at Dresden, whither
he had been summoned on Emser’s death.[1357] This book, like his later
“Commentaries,” denotes the climax of his polemics. In the dedication
he says that the seven-headed monster could not have been born either
of God or of Nature, since neither God nor Nature was capable of such
an abortion; rather, it must be an offspring of the evil one, who had
deceived man and worked him harm, in Paradise under the guise of a
serpent, and, often later, under the form of fauns, satyrs, Sileni and
various enchantments. In Africa, according to the ancients, there had
been a dragon with three or four heads, and Geryon, whom Hercules slew,
had also had three heads. But a monster with seven heads, such as was
Luther with his sevenfold doctrine, had never been ushered into the
world by any country, but must be a creation of the devil. The wicked,
perverse, insane apostate monk, long since destined to damnation,
had no scruple in deceiving and assailing every upright man with
lies, mockery, blasphemy and every kind of nastiness, or in pouring
forth seditious falsehoods and insults like an infuriated lioness.
The seven-headed hoodman, or hooded dragon, was causing all too much
confusion in Germany with his seven heads and was polluting it all with
his deadly poison. King Saul, he continues, had sinned in not rooting
out the people of Amalek. But to whom did the name of Amalek apply more
aptly than to the Lutherans? For Amalek’s was a bestial nation, living
bestially according to the flesh, just as the Lutherans--particularly
their idol, viz. this monk with his nun--were now doing. In this
mad devil’s minister not one crumb of any kind of virtue remained,
etc.[1358]
Apart from his too rhetorical and acrimonious tone other unsympathetic
features met with in Cochlæus are his frequent petitions to high
dignitaries of the Church, in Germany and even in Rome, for material
assistance; his complaints that he was not taken seriously enough; his
too great eagerness, during the first years of the struggle, to hold a
disputation with Luther; too much pushfulness and sometimes a certain
credulity, not to speak of occasional lapses into a frivolity which,
like his rhetoric, recalls the more blatant faults of Humanism and
ill beseemed a man anxious to censure the morals of his opponents. He
deemed it right and proper, for instance, to write under an assumed
name a work against the Reformers’ wives and matrimonial relationships,
where, in colloquial form and in a manner highly offensive, he
introduces much that was mere tittle-tattle and quite without
foundation. His authorship of this “Private Conversation” has been
proved up to the hilt in recent times.[1359]
Among the ranks of the opponents of Lutheranism Johann Faber and
Frederick Nausea, both of them bishops of Vienna, hold a high place.
The efforts of these two theologians to elucidate controverted points
and to refute Luther were much appreciated in the Catholic circles of
that day.
In the more popular field quite a number of good speakers and writers
belonging to various Religious Orders, particularly the German
Dominicans, distinguished themselves for their zeal in the campaign
against Lutheranism. Johann Mensing, who became a licentiate at
Wittenberg in 1517 and was Luther’s best-hated opponent, was a member
of the Order of St. Dominic; so also was Augustine von Getelen, of
whose sermons the Lutheran preacher Martin Undermark admitted, that,
“with his tongue he was able to sway the people as he pleased”;[1360]
Matthias Sittardus, Johann Dietenberger and Ambrosius Pelargus were
also all Dominicans, nor did they confine themselves to preaching, but
were all of them authors of publications suited to the times. Michael
Vehe, another Dominican, was renowned for his ability to wield the
pen in German not less than for his Latin discourses from the pulpit.
His brother friar, Johann Fabri, earned praise as a preacher and as
a clever popular writer. The Protestant preacher H. Rocholl wrote of
him: “The turn of what he writes gives proof of great eloquence and
his language is oratorically fine; his exhortations are also from an
homiletic point of view quite excellent.”[1361] Antonius Pirata of the
Dominican friary at Constance received the following encomium from
Erasmus in a letter to Laurinus: “He is a respected man of good morals
and profound learning, who displays in his sermons an eloquence truly
wonderful.”[1362] Conrad Köllin and Jacob Hoogstraaten also adorned the
Dominican Order in Germany at that time with their learning, though
their interest lay more in scholastic theology than in popular works.
All the above belonged to the German province of a single Order, and,
altogether, quite thirty Dominicans might be enumerated who engaged
in controversy with Luther. Amongst the polemists hailing from other
Orders and deserving honourable mention was the zealous and scholarly
Franciscan Caspar Schatzgeyer, also another Franciscan, Thomas Murner,
to whom we shall return immediately, the Augustinian Johann Hoffmeister
and the Carmelite Eberhard Billick.[1363]
The reason that the old Orders, with the exception of the Dominicans,
did not furnish more controversialists was in great part due to the
disastrous effect of the apostasy on their houses. Many of their
subjects, deluded by Lutheranism, forsook their cells, and those
who remained were frequently exposed to severe persecution. Many
monasteries were not only deprived of their means of subsistence, but,
owing to the new spirit of the age and the material difficulties of the
monastic life, the supply of novices began to run short.
During this period of the German Church’s distress the secular clergy
were not behindhand in furnishing tried combatants, though the
influence of the new ideas and the decline in morals, particularly
during the preceding thirty or forty years, had brought ecclesiastical
life and learning to an even lower level than before. There were,
however, still some cheering examples to be met with. Conspicuous
amongst the veterans who opposed Luther’s teaching and innovations,
were, in addition to those already mentioned, Michael Helding,
auxiliary bishop and preacher at Mayence (later bishop of Merseburg),
and Conrad Wimpina of Leipzig and Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, the author
of a good Latin collection of works against Luther entitled “On the
sects and errors,” etc. (1528).[1364] The Lutheran cause suffered
considerably at the hands of these writers.
Thomas Murner, the famous Alsatian preacher and writer, a new Sebastian
Brant even mightier than the former, entered the lists against Luther
and made full use of the satirical style he had cultivated even
earlier. Even Protestants have admitted his principal work against
Luther (1522) to be a highly incisive and significant production,
whilst a recent editor of his works describes him as the most weighty
of Luther’s literary opponents in Germany.[1365] There is certainly no
question of his “wanton, cheerful, nay, bacchantic humour,” and of his
wealth of caustic irony; he enters into Luther’s arguments and proofs,
and refutes them, more particularly those taken from the Bible. Murner
speaks a very simple and pithy language, though not loath to have
recourse occasionally to coarse words, of which an example has been
given above (p. 376). Luther paid him out by “amusing his readers with
an account of the lice on Murner’s cowl, and by circulating a lampoon
alleged to have been sent him from the Rhine, but, at any rate, printed
at Luther’s own instance.”[1366]
* * * * *
Not one of those who took the field against Luther and pitted their
strength against his was really a match for him in energy, in ability
to handle the language, in wealth of fancy or in power over the people.
To every clear-sighted observer it must have been apparent that truth
and logic were on the side of the Catholic controversialists, but,
unfortunately, not one of them was able to rival in effectiveness the
writings of the Wittenberg Professor.
Here and there, in certain ruder passages, we can easily see how his
opponents are clumsily endeavouring to retort upon their readier and
more inventive foe in language almost identical with his own. Luther,
however, stands alone in the originality of his abuse. But if his
adversaries, as was too often the case, overstepped the bounds of
moderation of language, we must bear in mind their pain and indignation
at the unspeakable injustice done to the Church of their fathers.
In those rude encounters people were only too apt to forget that,
according to Christ’s command, charity must be displayed even towards
those who err. Yet the Church had received as part of her heirloom
the injunction set by her Founder against the practice of the Jewish
synagogue and its saying, “Hate thy enemy” (Mt. v. 42). “But I say to
you: Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for
them that persecute and calumniate you.”
It was on principles such as these that, for all his glowing zeal for
the glory of God, Bl. Pierre Favre (Faber) acted, that gentle and
enlightened preacher of the true Catholic reformation, who, since
1540, had been labouring in the dioceses of Spires, of Mayence and
of Cologne. It was on these principles that he formed his gifted
pupil Bl. Peter Canisius, the first German Jesuit, who completed the
Exercises under him at Mayence, and, three years before Luther’s death,
on May 8, 1543, joined the Society which had now been approved by the
Church. Of the followers of the new religion, Favre expresses himself
as follows: “May Jesus Christ, the Saviour of all men, Who knows that
His written Word does not suffice to touch the human mind, soften and
move their hearts by His divine Grace.” “No other arguments promote
their conversion better than good works and self-sacrifice, even to
laying down one’s life.”[1367] “I never cease grieving,” so he wrote to
Ignatius, the General of the Order, “at the fall of the noble German
nation, once the incomparable pearl of the Church and the glory of
Christendom.” Through the head of the Society he sought to convince its
members that his own way of dealing with the apostasy was the best.
“Those who wish to be of service to the false teachers of to-day,” he
writes, “must above all be distinguished by charity and real esteem for
their opponents, and banish from their minds every thought that might
in any way lessen their regard for them.”[1368]
When Pierre Favre set about his work for the preservation of the
German Church, Luther was already at the heyday of his success. Favre
accompanied the Spanish ambassador Ortiz to the religious Conference
at Worms in 1540, and to the Diet of Ratisbon in 1541. Those two
years bore convincing witness to the fact, that the progress of the
innovations could no longer be checked by the authority either of
Church or State.
But, before proceeding to examine Luther’s work at its zenith, we must
scrutinise his doctrine a little more closely.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE NEW DOGMAS IN AN HISTORICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL LIGHT
1. The Bible text and the Spirit as the “True Tests of Doctrine”
LUTHER’S theological opinions present an attractive field to the
psychologist desirous of studying his character. They are in great
part, as has been several times shown, the result of his experiences,
inward or outward, and appear peculiarly suited to meet his own
case. Hence an examination of his doctrines will be of great value,
particularly towards an understanding of his inner history.
The specifically Lutheran doctrine of the Bible as sole judge in
matters of faith, i.e. the old, so-called “formal principle” of
Protestantism, deserves to be considered first, though, in point of
time, it was not the first to be reached by Luther. Actually it was
first broached by the author of the schism only when the opposition
between his newly discovered views and the Church’s teaching determined
him to set aside both her claim to act as judge, and all other outward
authority on doctrine. Refusing to be bound by the Church, in place of
the teaching office with its gift of infallibility, which, according
to the belief of the ancient Church, guards the treasure of revelation
and therefore also decides on the sense of Holy Scripture, Luther set
up as supreme arbiter the letter of the Bible. From this source, so
he teaches, the faithful draw the doctrines of the faith, each one
according to his ability and enlightenment.
The interpretation of the Sacred Books, in his view, takes place under
the illumination of the Holy Ghost, and such an illumination he claimed
first and foremost for himself. “Any believer who has better grounds
and authority from Scripture on his side, is more to be believed than
the Pope or a whole Council.”[1369]
_Liberty for the Examination of Scripture and Luther’s Autonomy._
Luther only gradually reached his teaching concerning the supremacy of
Holy Scripture.
His examination at Augsburg drew forth from him his first statements
on this subject. In the postscript to his own report of the interview
he places Holy Scripture first amongst the theological sources, adding
that it was merely being corrupted by the so-called sacred Decrees
of the Church;[1370] in his appeal to the Council he also places the
Bible and its decision (i.e. his interpretation) above the Pope. Even
then, however, he admitted the authority of the Council side by side
with that of the Bible only in so far as he confidently looked to the
Council for a decision in his favour. The fact that about this time
he fancied he could descry Antichrist in the Pope reveals at once the
wide gulf he was about to create between all ecclesiastical authority
and Scripture privately interpreted.--Without having as yet formally
proclaimed the new principle on Holy Scripture, he nevertheless
declared at the Leipzig Disputation, that Scripture ranked above a
Council,[1371] and that Œcumenical Councils had already erred in
matters of faith. Only when driven into a corner by his defence of the
heresy of Hus, and after fruitless evasions, were these admissions
wrung from him by Eck. Any light thus thrown on the matter by the
Catholic speaker was, however, at once obscured by the following
ambiguous clause added by Luther: “Councils have erred, and may err,
particularly on points which do not appertain to faith.”[1372]
Immediately after the Leipzig Disputation, in a letter addressed
by himself and Carlstadt to the Elector, Luther lays it down that
“a layman with the Scripture on his side is more to be believed in
than the Pope and a Council without Scripture.”[1373] Then, in the
“_Resolutiones super propositionibus Lipsiæ disputatis_,” he gives
utterance to an assertion behind which he seeks to shelter his views:
“Faith does not originate in authority but is produced in the heart
only by the Holy Ghost, though man is indeed moved to faith by word
and example.”[1374]
Yet, as though he himself wished to demonstrate the perils his new
principle involved, not merely for the interpretation of the Bible but
even for the integrity of the Sacred Books, he makes in the very same
writing, on ostensibly intrinsic grounds, his famous onslaught on the
Epistle of St. James which had been urged against him. Because this
canonical Epistle tells against his doctrine of Justification, he will
have it that, “its style is far beneath the dignity of an Apostle and
is not to be compared with that of Paul.”[1375] Already at the Leipzig
Disputation he had attacked the second Book of the Machabees, which
did not suit his views, again for intrinsic reasons and because it ran
counter to true doctrine; the Church had indeed admitted it into the
Canon, but “she could not raise the status of a book nor impart to it
a higher value than it actually possessed.”[1376]
From that time forward Luther gives the most varied expression to the
principle of the free interpretation of Scripture: He declares, that
the Bible may be interpreted by everyone, even by the “humble miller’s
maid, nay, by a child of nine if it has the faith.”[1377] “The sheep
must judge whether the pastors teach in Christ’s own tone.”[1378]
“Christ alone, and none other than the Crucified, do we acknowledge as
our Master. Paul will not have us believe him or an angel (Gal. i. 8,
12) unless Christ lives and speaks in him.” He is at pains to inform
“the senseless Sophists, the unlearned bishops, monks and priests, the
Pope and all his Gomorrahs” that we were baptised, not in the name of
any Father of the Church, “but in the name of Jesus Christ.”[1379]
“That a Christian assembly or congregation has the right and the power
to judge of doctrine and to appoint and dismiss preachers” is the title
of one of Luther’s writings of 1523.[1380] Later we meet the downright
declaration: “Neither Church, nor Fathers, nor Apostles, nor angels
are to be listened to except so far as they teach the pure Word of God
(‘_nisi afferant et doceant purum verbum Dei_’).”[1381]
In his bias against his foes he does not pause to consider that the
very point at issue is to discern what the “pure Word of God” is, for,
where it exists, any opposition on the part of “Church, Fathers and
Apostles” is surely inconceivable. It is merely an echo of his early
mystic theories when, in a dreamy sort of way, he hints, that the pure
Word manifests itself to each believer and reveals itself to the world
without the intervention of any outward authority. It was clearly mere
prejudice in his own favour which led him to be ruled by the one idea
that the “pure Word of God” was to be found nowhere but in his own
reading of the Bible.
How greatly he allowed himself to be deceived by such fancies is
already apparent in Luther’s earliest known statements on Scripture
at the very beginning of the public controversy. His devotion to
Biblical study from his youth, and the academic laurels he had won
in this branch of learning, led him, consciously or not, to find
in himself an embodiment of Holy Scripture. Only in this way can
we explain his strange language concerning the Bible in his “Eyn
Freiheyt dess Sermons” against Tetzel. Here, at the very commencement,
instead of setting quietly about his task, which was to defend his
new interpretation against the tradition, objected by his opponent,
he sings a pæan in praise of the unassailable Divine Word. “All who
blaspheme Scripture with their false glosses,” he writes, “shall perish
by their own sword, like Goliath (1 Kings xvii. 51).... Christ’s
doctrine is His Divine Word. Whence it is forbidden, not only to
this blasphemer [Tetzel], but to any angel in heaven, to change one
letter of it. For it is written: ‘God does not deny what He has once
said,’ Job xiii. [xiv.], and in the Psalter [cxviii. 89]: ‘For ever,
O Lord, Thy word standeth firm.’ Not a jot or tittle of the most
insignificant letter of the law of God shall pass; everything must
be fulfilled.”[1382] Here Tetzel becomes a rude ass, “who brays at
Luther,” reminding the latter of a “sow” that defiles the venerable
Scripture.[1383]
How uncalled for his emphatic words quoted above on the value of the
Bible really were can be more readily perceived now from a distance;
for his opponents’ esteem and that of the Church generally for the
Word of God was certainly not behind his, whilst the Church provided
a safeguard for Holy Scripture which Luther was unwilling to admit.
But in those days, in the midst of the struggle, such praises showered
by Luther on Holy Writ served to make people think--not at all to his
disadvantage--that he was the herald and champion of the Bible, which
the Popish Church did not reckon at its true worth, whereas, all the
while, he should have been striving to show that his contentions really
had the support of Scripture. Even later his misleading cry was ever:
Back to the sacred stronghold of the Bible! Back to the “true, pure and
undefiled Word of God!”
“Thy Word is the Truth” was his habitual battle-shout, though about
this there had never been the least dispute.
“Against all the sayings of the Fathers,” he says in 1522 in his reply
to King Henry VIII, “against all the arts and words of angels, men and
devils I set the Scriptures and the Gospel.... Here I stand and here
I defy them.... The Word of God I count above all else and the Divine
Majesty supports me; hence I should not turn a hair were a thousand
Augustines against me, and am certain that the true Church adheres
with me to God’s Word.” “Here Harry of England must hold his tongue.”
Harry would see how Luther “stood upon his rock” and that he, Harry,
“twaddled” like a “silly fool.”[1384]
_Experience given by the Spirit._
The “rock” on which Luther’s interpretation of the Bible rests is a
certain inward feeling and perception by the individual of the Bible’s
teaching.
In the last resort it is on an inward experience of having been taught
by the Spirit the truth and meaning of the Divine words that the
Christian must firmly take his stand. Just as Luther believed himself
to have passed through such an experience, so, according to him, all
others must first reach it and then make it their starting-point.
This is the Spirit from on High that co-operates with the Word of
Scripture.
“Each man must believe solely because it is the Word of God and
because he feels within that it is true, even though an angel from
heaven and all the world should preach against it.”[1385] We must not
regard the “opinion of all Christendom” but “each one for himself
alone” must believe the Scriptures.[1386] “The Word itself must
content the heart and embrace and seize a man and, as it were, hold
him captive till he feels how true and right it is.”
“Hence every Christian can learn the truth from Scripture,” so
a present-day Protestant theologian describes Luther’s then
teaching;[1387] “he is bound by no human school of interpretation, but
the plain sense of Scripture and the experience of his heart suffice.”
He adds: “This might of course draw down upon Luther the charge of
subjectivism.” “What Luther said of the ‘whisper’ of the word of
forgiveness is well known. Thus [according to Luther] God can, when
necessary, work without the use of any means.” Thanks to the “whisper”
the Bible becomes a sure guide, “for [according to him] the Holy Ghost
always works in the heart the selfsame truth.” “From the peculiar
religious standpoint of his own experience of salvation,” Luther,
so the same theologian admits, determined his “attitude towards
Scripture.” In this we have one of the results of his “personal
experience.”
“How it comes to pass,” says Luther, “that Christ thus enters the
heart you cannot tell; but your heart feels plainly, by the experience
of faith, that He is there indeed.”[1388] “When the Holy Ghost
performs His office then it proceeds.”[1389] “No one can rightly
understand God or the Word of God unless he receives it directly from
the Holy Ghost.”
When his friend Carlstadt, together with whom Luther had at first
insisted on Scripture only, later struck out a path of his own in
doctrine and ecclesiastical practice while continuing to appeal to
Scripture and to his own enlightenment, even the controversy with him
and the “fanatics” failed to make Luther relinquish in theory his
standpoint concerning the Bible and the Spirit as the one source and
rule of faith. He became, however, more cautious in formulating it and
endeavoured at least to leave a back door open. He was less insistent
in his assertion that the Spirit instructed, by the inward Word, each
one who read the Scriptures; so much the more did he emphasise the
supposed “clearness of the outward Word,” viz. the Bible, and deprecate
any wanton treatment of it (by anyone save himself); at the same time
he began to lay stress on the outward side of the Church, on the
preaching office and the administration of the Sacraments.[1390] The
fanatics he reproves for “merely gaping at the Spirit in their hearts,”
whereas the outward articles must necessarily precede this.[1391] At
times what he says almost looks like a repudiation of his earlier
theory of enlightenment through the Spirit; for instance, when he
describes how the fanatics wait “till the heavenly voice comes and God
speaks to them.”[1392] Now, the outward Word of the Gospel, proclaimed
by men truly “called,” is to be the guiding star amidst the mischief
wrought by the sectarians; this outward Word, so he now fancies, will
surely avail to decide every issue, seeing that it is so clear; only
by dint of juggling could the sense of the Bible, as manifest in the
outward Word, be distorted; looked at fairly it at once settled every
question--needless to say in Luther’s favour; to understand it, all
that was needed was the “natural language,” the “Lady Empress who far
excels all subtle inventions.”[1393]
As to the alleged clearness of the word of Scripture it is sufficient
to recall that he himself indirectly challenged it by accusing the
whole Church of having misunderstood the Bible, and to consider
the abyss that separated his interpretation, even of the most
vital texts, from that of the scholars of the past. “Though we had
the Bible and read it,” he says, “yet we understood nothing of
it.”[1394]--Nevertheless he fancied he could save his theory by
appealing to the clearness of the text and the assistance rendered
by a knowledge of languages. “St. Paul wills” (1 Cor. xiv. 29), so
Luther says, in a writing on the schools, “that Christians should judge
all doctrine, though for this we must needs be acquainted with the
language. For the preacher or teacher may indeed read the Bible through
and through as much as he chooses, but he will sometimes be right and
sometimes wrong, if there be no one there to judge whether he is
doing it well or ill. Thus in order to judge there must be skill or a
knowledge of tongues, otherwise it is all to no purpose.”[1395]
But above all, as he impresses on the reader in the same tract, he
himself had thrown light on the Bible by his knowledge of languages;
his interpretation, thanks to the “light” of the languages, had
effected “such great things that all the world marvels and must confess
that now we have the Gospel almost as pure and undefiled as the
Apostles had it, that it is restored to its pristine purity, and is
even more undefiled than at the time of St. Jerome or Augustine.”[1396]
His willingness, expressed from time to time, to submit himself or any
other teacher to the judgment of anyone possessed of greater learning
and a more profound spiritual sense, attracted many enlightened minds
to his party.[1397]
Luther’s self-contradiction in speaking, first, of the great clearness
of the Bible, and then of its great obscurity, cannot fail to strike
one.
“Whoever now wants to become a theologian,” he says, for instance,
“enjoys a great advantage. For, first, he has the Bible which is now so
clear that he can read it without any difficulty.” “Should anyone say
that it is necessary to have the interpretation of the Fathers and that
Scripture is obscure, you must reply, that that is untrue. There is no
book on earth more plainly written than Holy Scripture; in comparison
with all other books it is as the sun to any other light.”[1398]
Elsewhere he says: “The ungodly sophists [the Schoolmen] have asserted,
that in Holy Scripture there is much that is obscure and not yet
clearly explained,” but according to him they were not able to bring
forward one vestige of proof; “if the words are obscure in one passage,
they are clear in another,” and a comparison makes everything plain,
particularly to one who is learned in languages.[1399]--Thus the Bible,
according to a further statement, is “clearer, easier and more certain
than any other writing.”[1400] “It is in itself quite certain, quite
easy and quite plain; it is its own explanation; it is the universal
argument, judge and enlightener, and makes all clear to all.”[1401]
Later, however, the idea that Holy Scripture was obscure preponderated
with him. Two days before his death Luther wrote in Latin on a piece
of paper, which was subsequently found on his table, his thoughts on
the difficulty of understanding Scripture: “No one can understand the
Bucolics of Virgil who has not been a herdsman for five years; nor his
Georgics unless he has laboured five years in the fields. In order to
understand aright the epistles of Cicero a man must have been full
twenty years in the public service of a great State. No one need fancy
he has tasted Holy Scripture who has not ruled Churches for a hundred
years with prophets like Elias and Eliseus, with John the Baptist,
Christ and the Apostles.”[1402] In all likelihood his experiences with
the sectarians in his own camp led him towards the end of his life to
lay more stress on the difficulty of understanding the Bible.
Even with the “plain, arid Scripture” and a clear brain it may easily
happen, as he says, to a man to fall into danger through the Bible, by
looking at it from “his own conceit,” as “through a painted glass,”
and “seeing no other colour than that of the glass.”[1403] Such people
cannot then be set right, but become “masters of heresy.”[1404] All
heresy seems to him to come from Scripture and to be based on it.
There is no heretic, he says in a sermon in 1528, who does not appeal
to Scripture; hence it came about that people called the Bible a
heresy-book.[1405] The “heresy-book” was a favourite topic with him.
Two years earlier he had used the expression twice on one day,[1406]
and in 1525, when complaining in a sermon that the fanatics decked
themselves out with Scripture, he said: “Thus it is true what people
say, viz. that Holy Scripture is a heresy-book, i.e. a book that the
heretics claim for themselves; there is no other book that they misuse
so much as this book, and there has never been a heresy so bad or so
gross that it has not sheltered itself behind Scripture.”[1407] These
preachers from among the fanatics, he says, boast of the voice of God
and of the Spirit, but they were never sent; let them prove by miracles
their Divine mission![1408]
Thus he had retracted nothing of his strange doctrine concerning
private enlightenment; on the contrary, when not actually dealing with
the sectarians, he still declared with that persistence of which he
was such a master and which shrank from no self-contradictions, that
the Spirit alone taught man how to understand the Scriptures, now that
man, owing to original sin, was quite unable to grasp even the plainest
passages. “In it [the Bible] not one word is of so small account as to
allow of our understanding it by reason.”[1409] Only by virtue of the
higher light by which he understood Scripture could a man “impartially
prove and judge the different spirits and their doctrines.” This he
wrote in his “_De servo arbitrio_” at a time when he had already
engaged upon the struggle with the “Heavenly Prophets.”[1410] And to
these principles he remained faithful till death without, however, as
a Protestant scholar repeatedly points out of the several sides of
Luther’s theology, “explaining more clearly” their relation to the
difficulties involved.
* * * * *
Concerning the inward Word or the enlightenment by the Spirit some
words of Luther’s in 1531 may be given here.
In that year he preached on the Gospel of St. John. He dwelt at
some length on his favourite passage: “Whoever believeth in Me hath
everlasting life,” and its context. Here, speaking repeatedly of the
outward and the inward Word, he insists especially on the former and
particularly on the hearing of sermons with faith, though so far was
he from relinquishing the inward Word that he combines it in a strange
way with the outward, and finally arrives once more at his earlier pet
idea: Whoever is taught inwardly by the Spirit is free to judge and
decide on all things.
“The Lord Christ intends,” so he explains, “that we should hold fast
and remain by the outward, spoken Word, and thereby He has put down
reason from its seat,” i.e. has repudiated the objections of the
fanatics who differed from him. Christ, according to Luther, exhorts
us “diligently to listen to and learn the Word.”[1411] The beginning
of Justification is in this, that “God proclaims to you the spoken,
outward Word.”[1412] To this end God has His messengers and vicars.
“When you hear a sermon from St. Paul or from me, you hear God the
Father Himself; yet both of us, you and I, have one schoolmaster
and doctor, viz. the Father ... only that God speaks to you through
me.”[1413] Here he does not enter into the question of his mission,
though he shows plainly enough that he was not going to be set aside.
“God must give the spoken Word,” “otherwise it does not make its way.
But if you are set on helping yourselves, why then should I preach? In
that case you have no need of me.... We may be angered and stupefied
over it” (viz. at the apparent divergence between the Word of God and
reason), yet we must listen and weigh “the Word that is preached by
the lips of Christ.”[1414]
Excellent as this exhortation may be so far as St. Paul was concerned,
the speaker is at no pains to supply his hearer with any proof of his
own saying, viz. “that God speaks to you through me.” He insists upon
it, however, and now comes the intervention of the Spirit: God must
“inspire the conviction that it is His Word”[1415] which has been
heard. “Without the Word we must not do anything, but must be taught
by God.”[1416] “When the heart can feel assured that God the Father
Himself is speaking to us [when we listen to a sermon], then the Holy
Ghost and the light enter in; then man is enlightened and becomes a
happy master, and is able to decide and judge of all doctrine, for he
has the light, and faith in the Divine Word, and feels certain within
his breast that his doctrine is the very Word of God.”[1417] When you
“feel this in your heart, then account yourself one of the disciples
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will allow Him to be Master and
surrender yourself to Him. In this way will you be saved.”[1418]
The real breathing of the Spirit of God, however, confirms the
utterances only of the “preaching office,” viz. Luther’s and the
Lutherans’. This he proclaims in the following words: “The true
breathing and inspiration of the Holy Ghost is that which is wafted
through the preaching office and the outward Word.”[1419]
In what follows, for the better understanding of Luther’s attitude
towards the Bible, we shall examine two consequences of his subjective
ways, viz. their effect on the inspiration and the Canon of Scripture,
and the exegetical disagreement which was the result of the principle
of inward experience, also the means he chose to remedy it.
_Inspiration and the Canon of Scripture._
In the matter of the inspiration of Scripture Luther never went so
far as the fanatical enthusiasts of later Lutheranism, who, in their
systems, taught an actual verbal inspiration, according to which the
writers of the Bible had not merely been impelled, enlightened, and
infallibly preserved from error, but had received every word from
God. On the contrary, owing to his wanton handling of the Bible, he
takes the inspiration of its writers so widely and vaguely that the
very idea of inspiration is practically evaporated. The Bible is
indeed, according to him, an outcome of the inspiration of God and
is the writing and Word of the Holy Ghost (“_Spiritus auctor est
libri_”),[1420] and may accordingly be described as “the Holy Ghost’s
own especial book, writing and Word”--which he sometimes explains
almost as though he had been a believer in verbal inspiration.[1421]
The fact is, however, that he sees “in the sacred writers no other form
of spiritual illumination than that displayed in the verbal preaching
of the Divine witnesses.”[1422] “Moreover we occasionally find him
questioning whether in certain passages the Holy Ghost ... is really
so unquestionably present as in other parts of Scripture.” The truth
is “he never formulated any detailed theory of Scriptural inspiration.
With Luther the action of the Holy Ghost, on the witnesses of both Old
Testament and New, is always one and the same, whether they proclaim
the Word verbally or by writing; nowhere do we meet with the thought
that they were under the influence of any other inspiration when they
wrote.”[1423]
The freedom he allowed himself, no less in the matter of inspiration
than in the principle of the Bible only, explains the distinction he
so often makes between the character and importance of the various
parts of the “Word of God,” which he will have one keep in view when
searching in Scripture for the truths of faith. In passages where
religion is not concerned, particularly in historical statements, he
believes that the tools of the Holy Ghost both could and did err.[1424]
He thinks that “the predictions of the prophets concerning the Kings
and secular affairs often turned out wrong.”[1425] The inspiration
of the Apostles (and Evangelists) in the New-Testament writings was
merely a part of their general “office,” not a “special inspiration” in
the nature of a “second power added to and independent of it.” “The
predominant importance of the Apostles he traces back to their general
inspiration in the sense described above.”[1426]
Catholic doctors before Luther’s day had showed themselves far more
jealous of the sacredness of the Bible, as regards both the idea of
inspiration and the equal value of all the books, and their every part.
In spite of this Luther would have it that he had been the first to
make the Bible respected.
One point deserving of consideration as an instance of Luther’s
wantonness is his attitude towards the Canon of the Sacred Books.
How was he to prove that this or that book was to be included amongst
the writings which constituted the Word of God, now that he had
rejected the testimony of ecclesiastical tradition? According to the
teaching of the ancient Church, it was tradition and the authority of
the Church which vouched for the canonical character of the books of
the Bible. Luther was confronted with this objection by Johann Eck
at the Leipzig Disputation, who quoted the well-known words of St.
Augustine, that he was compelled “to believe the Gospel only on the
authority of the Catholic Church.”[1427] No longer recognising the
authority of the Church, Luther met the objection by some strange
evasions.[1428] When at last he saw that no other meaning could be read
into the passage he threw it overboard and wrote: “If this meaning
be not in St. Augustine’s words then it were better to repudiate his
saying. For it is contrary to Scripture, to the Spirit and to all
experience.”[1429] Even for the inspired value of the books included in
the Canon he appealed in his arbitrary fashion, not to the infallible
Church, but to the “inward testimony of the Spirit.”
He could hardly escape being thus thrown back on this inward, mystical
attestation, seeing that, according to him, human reason is of little
assistance in the matter. Here the “inner sense” has to come in and,
just as under the illumination of the Spirit of God, it imparts
certainty concerning the meaning of the Bible, so also it discerns
the dignity and godly value of Scripture. For obvious reasons, here
again, he fails to favour us with any “clearer explanation” of his
theory. One thing, however, emerges clearly, viz. that the feeling of
certainty regarding both the meaning and the contents is practically
identical with the feeling that the writing in question is Divine;
since the Spirit from on High teaches me the truth which lies in the
sense of Scripture, so also it must teach me that it is Scripture; the
apprehension of the sense and of the Divine character of the sacred
pages is one and the same.[1430]
It is thus that Luther clothes in intangible, mystical language the
vital question of religion here involved; at the Leipzig Disputation he
had used terms no less elusive: Every book that really belongs to the
Canon has authority and certainty “_per se ipsum_.”[1431] His mystical
words were the outcome of deep-seated tendencies within him; Tauler’s
language, which Luther had so skilfully made his own, was to assist him
in concealing the obscurity and lack of logic inherent in his views.
In reality, nevertheless, like the Catholics, he accepted the Canon of
Holy Scripture as handed down by antiquity; only that he granted to the
subjective influence of the “testimony of the Spirit” a far-reaching
and destructive force. He arbitrarily struck out of the Canon quite
a number of authentic writings,[1432] which will be enumerated
elsewhere[1433] together with his statements concerning them. His
literary opponents had a right to represent to him that so “strange
and arbitrary”[1434] a proceeding was merely a result of his theory
that the sacred books must prove their character and value to each man
individually. At any rate, his attitude towards the Bible cannot be
regarded as at all logical.[1435]
_Inward Assurance and Disagreements Without._
The second consequence of Luther’s biblical subjectivism which we
have to consider lies outside him. It is the disconcerting divergence
in interpretation which was the immediate result of his doctrine of
“inward experience,” to correct which he had recourse to some curious
remedies.
First of all we may append some further quotations from his writings
to those already adduced. The significance of this remarkable side
of the psychology of his doctrine is often not fully appreciated,
because it seems scarcely believable that Luther should have ventured
so far into the airy region of idealism. And yet, on the other hand,
we have here the principal reason for describing the new doctrine as
something interior, and as one doing better justice to our feelings
and personality, which was Luther’s own claim and, after him, that of
Protestants generally. The difficulty, however, is that almost every
sentence of Luther’s regarding the part played by “inward assurance”
in respect of the Bible, raises the question how that oneness of
interpretation which he ever presupposes, is to escape shipwreck, even
in the case of essential doctrines.
As early as Jan. 18, 1518, in his advice to Spalatin on the reading of
Scripture, Luther had appealed to the mystic “influence,” telling him
to distrust himself and to rely solely on the “_influxus Spiritus_”;
this appeal he supports on his own inward experience.[1436] In this
case his experience, however, mainly concerned the confirmation of
his chief doctrine; for it was under an inspiration from on High that
he had begun to feel his way to the new Evangel of Justification (see
vol. iii., p. 110 ff.). But what was to be done when others, too, laid
claim to a similar experience and inspiration?
At a later date he described to his friends how he had learnt to
understand Scripture “_in maximis agonibus et tentationibus_”; it
was thus he had found in the Bible the Divinity of Christ and the
articles on the Trinity; even now he was more certain of these truths
by experience than by faith.[1437] Even the absolute predestination
of the damned to hell, the entire absence of free-will for doing what
is good and other extravagant opinions questioned even by his own
followers, he declares he had learned directly from the Bible. In
1534 he places Scripture side by side with inward experience (or the
Spirit), as the warrant--even in the case of others--for all knowledge
of things Divine.
This he likewise applies to the Apostles’ Creed.[1438] In 1537 he said
in a sermon at Schmalkalden, “not only did all this [what is professed
in the Creed] take place as we read in the Word of the Gospel, but the
Holy Ghost also writes it inwardly in our heart.”[1439] He accepts
the teaching of the Apostles’ Creed because he has convinced himself
that it is based on Holy Writ.[1440] But how if others are not thus
convinced? Were they too to be fastened to the dogma?
R. Seeberg gives a good account of Luther’s views on the character
of the dogmas of the ancient Church.[1441] “He treats the symbols of
the ancient Church with great respect, particularly the Apostles’
Creed which contains all the chief articles of faith.[1442] But this
does not mean that he believes in each creed or Council as such.” “In
his work ‘Von den Conciliis’ with masterly historical criticism [?]
he denies all binding authority even to the ancient Councils”; even
the Council of the Apostles passed resolutions which were afterwards
rescinded, and so did the Nicene Council. “Dogma is true,” so runs
Luther’s teaching as given by Seeberg, “only so far as it agrees
with Scripture; in itself it is of no authority. But the truth of
Scripture is one that is attested interiorly. Hence we can say that
the Holy Ghost produces in us the assurance of the true doctrine [of
the Apostles’ Creed].”[1443]--The page-heading where these words occur
runs: “Luther’s independence of dogma.”
A highly important statement on the interior instruction that goes on
when we read Scripture is contained in Luther’s quite early work “_De
Captivitate Babylonica_” (1520): The soul, he says there, referring
to a misunderstood passage of St. Augustine’s on a well-known fact in
the natural order, is so affected by the truth, that, thanks to it,
it is able to judge rightly and surely of all things; it is forced
to confess with unfailing certitude that this is the truth, just as
reason affirms with unfailing certitude that three and seven make ten;
the same is the case with all real Christians and their spiritual
sense which, according to 1 Cor. ii. 15, judges all things and is
judged of no man.[1444]--The last words of the Apostle refer, however,
to the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, bestowed for a while by God
on some few Christians in the early days of the Church, and cannot
apply to the ordinary conditions of later times.
Luther simply ignores the objection, that, if every man is judge,
unutterable discord must ensue. The way in which he contrived so
long to conceal this from himself is psychologically remarkable. For
instance, in one of the principal passages where this objection should
have been faced, viz. in his work against King Henry VIII, he glosses
over the difficulty with the assertion that, even under the Pope,
there was also no unity of doctrine; he then consoles himself with
the words of Christ (John vi.), that all true Christians “shall be
taught of God” and that every one that hath heard the Father cometh
to the Saviour; the Spirit of God makes all to be one and effects an
“_idem docere, idem confiteri, idem sequi_.”--We can only wonder at
the idealism that could expect such results in a world inhabited by
human beings.--In the end, however, since this was scarcely to be
looked for, “external unity would be sufficiently safeguarded by the
one Baptism and one Supper,” whereby all “testify to the oneness of
their faith and spirit.”[1445] At any rate, he is confident that the
true explanation (viz. his own) of the truths of salvation will gain
the upper hand. For the Church cannot perish.
In point of fact Luther really fancies himself justified in appealing
to this entirely new meaning put by him on the promise to the Church
that she shall never perish; she is indestructible because true
believers will always be there to maintain Luther’s interpretation of
revelation and of the imputed righteousness of Christ, and because any
general falling away from the truth is not to be thought of. Even
though very many, indeed the greater number, deny the true Scripture
teaching, still, many others remain, as, of yore, the seven thousand
when Israel fell away from God. According to him even these may be
held captive all their life in some error concerning the faith and
reach the right road and faith in the grace of Christ only on their
death-bed, according to the promise in John x. 28.[1446] In view
of the darkness prevalent in former ages this appears to him to
suffice in order to enable us to say that the Church has not really
perished,[1447] and to save the cause of private enlightenment on the
Bible. For this must stand fast, viz. that the Spirit of God most
surely bears witness to the contents of the Divine Word in the hearts
of the hearers and readers. “Luther,” says a Protestant exponent of
his theology, “laid this down time after time.” “His statements on
this subject cannot fail, however, to raise certain questions in our
minds.”[1448]
They gave rise to questions in his own day, and to something more than
mere questions. The bitter theological dissensions already hinted
at were the result. The inevitable divergency in the interpretation
of the Bible was seen everywhere, and a hundred different opinions,
some based on the inward assurance given by the “Spirit of God,”
some on the reflections of reason, took the field. We know to
what an extent Luther had to suffer from the discord born of his
principle, not merely from such comparatively unimportant persons
as Jacob Schenk[1449] and his “disgracefully arrogant” colleague,
Johann Agricola, not merely from the fanatics and Anabaptists who
found in the Bible a different teaching on Baptism, divine worship
and morality, or from the Zwinglians with their divergent biblical
interpretation of the Eucharist, but even, so to speak, in his own
family, from Melanchthon, who was rash enough to incline to the Swiss
reformed doctrines and to fight shy of the stricter Lutheranism.
“The presumption,” Luther declares, strangely enough, “is really
unbearable, that people should rise up against the authority of the
Church,” despise the teaching of the best and ablest, and only worship
their own views in Holy Scripture. “The name of the Church should be
held in high honour.”[1450] He forbore, however, to specify which
Church he meant, and moreover he had set himself above every Church.
“All other forms of arrogance,” he declares, “can be endured and allow
of improvement, as in the healing art, in philosophy, in poetry,
in mechanics and in the case of the young.... But that shocking
‘_arrogantia theologiæ_’ is the source of all evil, and a consuming
fire.”[1451]
So little did he succeed in repressing “theological arrogance,” but
rather, by his action, threw open the doors to it, that in 1525 he
was forced to lament:[1452] “There are as many sects and beliefs as
there are heads. This fellow will have nothing to do with baptism,
another denies the Sacrament, a third believes that there is another
world between this and the Last Day. Some teach that Christ is not
God, some say this, some that.... There is now no rustic so rude but
that, if he dreams or fancies anything, it must be the whisper of the
Holy Ghost and he himself a prophet.... There is no one who does not
wish to be cleverer than Luther; they all want to try their steel
on me.... They speak like madmen; I have during the year to listen
to many such wretched folk. In no other way can the devil come so
close to me, that I must admit. Formerly the world was full of noisy,
disembodied spirits giving themselves out to be the souls of men; now
it is full of uproarious spirits with bodies, who all declare that
they are real angels.”[1453]
He has this crumb of comfort: The world is the devil’s playground; and
uproars there must be.[1454]
“This is all due,” he says finally, truly and aptly, “to their
bringing their conceit with them to the study of Scripture, which
has to submit to being judged, moulded and led by their head and
reason,”[1455]--surely a bitter punishment for throwing over the
divinely appointed authority of the Church, which decides on the sense
of the Bible.
“By thus making individual experience the test,” remarks a Protestant
theologian, “the door seemed opened wide to neverending dissension....
Luther did not succeed in carrying his theory to its right conclusion.
Indeed we even find him formulating thoughts which seem to tend
back to the old, mechanical authority of Scripture.” According to
this writer, Luther’s conception of Scripture presented certain
“imperfections” which, “even in principle, were practically at
variance with it; these, however, disappeared as the fanatic movement
taught Luther their disastrous effects.” The same writer asks finally:
“But was it really a question merely of ‘imperfections’ which did not
endanger the very essence of his views?”[1456]
“What did Luther set up, instead of tradition, as a principle of
interpretation?” another Protestant theologian recently queried. He
answers: “In theory, that Scripture interprets itself; in practice
however, as it doesn’t, his own theology.”[1457]
_Remedies against Disagreement. The Outward Word._
Since the harmony of the “Spirit,” which Luther had so confidently
looked for, failed to show itself in people’s minds and not a glimmer
of hope of any future agreement was visible, he found it necessary to
insist far more strongly than heretofore on the outward Word;[1458]
this was to check unwelcome inward revelations, to put everything
in order and to be a bulwark against unusual views. “Now that the
Apostles have preached the Word,” so runs one of his most interesting
pronouncements on this subject,[1459] “and left us their writings,
so that there is nothing more to reveal than what they have written,
there is no need of any special new revelation, or miracles. This we
know from the writings of the Apostles.” It would be a different matter
if all were filled with the Holy Ghost and His gifts; “were this so
it would be an easy thing to preach and to govern and all would go
on quite smoothly and well, as indeed it ought. But unfortunately
this is not the case, and those who have the Holy Ghost and a right
understanding are not so common,” but “there are plenty who fancy they
have mastered Scripture and have the Holy Ghost without measure.”
These want to be thought “far more deeply and profoundly initiated”
than Luther himself, and “much more learned than we are.” This he is
not unwilling to allow, but on one thing he must insist, viz. on the
“Word!” “This old and tried doctrine of the Apostles” he has “again
brought to light,” having found “all this darkened by the Pope and
his human teaching”; “by the Grace of God we have brought it to light
once more”; “it is the very same as the Apostles first taught. But it
has not been brought to light again without a revelation of the Holy
Ghost.... He had to illumine our minds that Holy Scripture might be
rightly viewed and understood”; hence “no other word or revelation is
to be expected” “contrary to this doctrine, even were an angel from
heaven visibly to bring” a new doctrine. Everyone can see “that God is
tempting the people, particularly in these latter days of which it is
said, that the devil shall rule mightily over Christendom by means of
Antichrist.”--Here, consequently, his teaching is put on a level with
the “outward Word.”
The outward Word, according to other passages where Luther is rather
more reticent concerning the “revelation” he had received, was that
plain and unassailable Bible teaching on which all “Spirits” must
agree without any danger of divergency. This Word he now identifies
with preaching. Preaching, however, is part of the office, and both
office and preaching were controlled by Luther; indeed the office had
been instituted chiefly by him and his sovereign. Hence, in effect, the
outward Word is still Luther’s word.
“Faith,” we read of the outward Word, seemingly contradicting the
freedom Luther had formerly proclaimed, “comes of hearing, i.e. from
preaching, or from the outward Word. This is the order established by
God and He will not derogate from it. Hence contempt for the outward
Word and for Scripture is rank blasphemy, which the secular authorities
are bound to punish, according to the second Commandment which enjoins
the punishment of blasphemy.” This occurs in the booklet officially
circulated in 1536 among the pastors of the Saxon Electorate.[1460]
A Protestant researcher who has recently made a special study of
the “Inquisition” in the Saxon Electorate has the following remark
concerning this statement, which is by no means without a parallel
in Luther’s works: “Thus even contempt for Scripture--here meaning
contempt for Luther’s interpretation of the Bible text--was already
regarded as ‘rank blasphemy’ which it was the duty of the authorities
to punish. To such a pass had Evangelical freedom already come.”[1461]
In order to uphold his own reading of the Bible against others which
differed from his, Luther incidentally appealed with the utmost vigour,
as the above examples show, to the Church, to tradition and to the
Fathers, whose authority he had nevertheless solemnly renounced.
This was the case especially in the controversies on the Zwinglian
doctrine of the Supper. In defending the Real Presence and the literal
sense of the words of consecration, Luther was in the right. He could
not resist the temptation to adduce the convincing testimony of
tradition, the voice of the “Church” from the earliest ages, which
spoke so loudly in defence of the truth. It was then that he wrote
the oft-quoted words to Albert of Brandenburg, in order to retain
him on his side and to preserve him from Zwinglian contamination:
“That Christ is present in the Sacrament is proved by the books and
writings, both Greek and Latin, of the dear Fathers, also by the daily
usage and our experience till this very hour; which testimony of all
the holy Christian Churches, even had we no other, should suffice to
make us remain by this article.”[1462] It is true that elsewhere we
find him saying of the tradition of the Fathers: “When the Word of God
comes down to us through the Fathers it seems to me like milk strained
through a coal-sack, when the milk must needs be black and nasty.”
This meant, he says, “that the Word of God was in itself pure and
true, bright and clear, but by the teaching of the Fathers, by their
books and their writings, it was much darkened and corrupted.”[1463]
“And even if the Fathers agreed with you,” he says elsewhere, “that
is not enough. I want Holy Writ, because I too am fighting you in
writing.”[1464]
In his controversy with Zwingli, Luther even came to plead the cause
of the Catholic principle of authority. In his tract of 1527, “Das
diese Wort Christi, ‘Das ist mein Leib’ noch fest stehen,” he declared
that Zwingli’s interpretation of the Bible had already given rise to
“many opinions, many factions and much dissension.” Such arbitrary
exegesis neither can nor may go any further. “And if the world is to
last much longer, we shall on account of such dissensions again be
obliged, like the ancients, to seek for human contrivances and to
set up new laws and ordinances in order to preserve the people in
the unity of the faith. This will succeed as it succeeded before. In
fine, the devil is too clever and powerful for us. He hinders us and
stops the way everywhere. If we wish to study Scripture he raises up
so much strife and dissension that we tire of it.... He is, and is
called, Satan, i.e. an adversary.” He here attributes to the devil
the defects of his own Scriptural system, and puts away as something
wrong even the very thought that it contained faults, another trait
to his psychological picture: “The devil is a conjurer.” “Unless God
assists us, our work and counsel is of no avail. We may think of it as
we like, he still remains the Prince of this world. Whoever does not
believe this, let him simply try and see. Of this I have experienced
something. But let no one believe me until he has himself experienced
it.”[1465] There is no doubt, that, in 1527, Luther did have to go
through some severe struggles of conscience.
The Swiss held fast to “Scripture” and to their own “Spirit.”
H. Bullinger, the leader of the Zwinglians, proved more logical than
Luther in his interpretation of the new principle of Scripture. In his
book on the difference between the Evangelical and Roman doctrines
(Zürich, 1551) he deliberately rejected quite a number of traditional,
Catholic practices which Luther had spared; for instance, the use
of religious pictures in the churches, ceremonies, the liturgical
chants, confession, etc. With this same weapon he attacked not only
Catholicism, but also Luther’s doctrine of the Real Presence in the
Blessed Sacrament and the whole Church system as introduced by the
Wittenbergers.
Luther, for his part, in order to retain the Bible on his side, used
a very arbitrary method of Scripture interpretation both against the
Swiss theologians and against Catholicism and its defenders. In many
cases it was only his peculiar exegesis (to be considered below,
xxviii., 2) that furnished him with the Scriptural arguments he needed.
Thus, in his attitude towards Scripture, the Wittenberg Professor
wavers between tradition, to which he frequently appeals almost
against his will, and that principle of independent study of the Bible
under enlightenment from on high, which is ever obtruding itself
on him. The latter principle he never denied, in spite of his sad
experiences with the doctrine that everyone who is taught by the Holy
Ghost can draw from Scripture his own belief, and, according to St.
Paul, with the help of this light, test the teaching and opinions of
all.[1466] Yet--strange as it may seem on the part of an assailant of
authority--the last word on matters of faith belongs, according to
him, to authority. This is his opinion for practical reasons, because
not everyone can be expected, and but few are able, to undertake the
task of finding their belief for themselves in the Bible. Moreover,
what one may possibly have learnt from Scripture at the cost of toil
and with the help of inspiration, cannot so readily become the common
property of all. On the other hand, according to Luther, the “_exterius
iudicium_” which is supported by the “_externa claritas_” of Scripture,
as interpreted by himself and proclaimed with authority by the
preachers, was intended for all.[1467]
_The Way of Settling Doubts Concerning Faith. Assurance of Salvation
and Belief in Dogma._
When we come to examine Luther’s teaching on the nature of the faith
which is based on the Bible and to enquire how doubts regarding this
Bible teaching were to be quieted, we are again faced by the utmost
waywardness.
In his “Von beider Gestallt des Sacramentes” (1522), Luther says of
belief in the truths of revelation generally: “And it is not enough
for you to say: Luther, Peter or Paul has said it, but you must feel
Christ Himself in your own conscience and be assured beyond all doubt
that it is really the Word of God, even though all the world should be
against it. So long as you have not this feeling it is certain that
you have not tasted the Word of God, but are still hanging by your
ears on the lips or the pen of man and not clinging with all your
heart to the Word.” Since Christ is the one and only teacher it is
plain “what horrid murderers of souls those are [viz. the Papists] who
preach to souls the doctrines of men.”[1468]
The whole passage is of the utmost practical importance, because in
it Luther seeks to solve the question anxiously asked by so many: Who
will assure us that all that we are now told that we must believe if
we do not wish to lose our souls, is really the teaching of Christ?
To this he here gives an answer which is intended to satisfy even one
in danger of death and to instruct him fully on the matter of his
salvation.
The olden Church had given her faithful a clear answer which set every
doubt at rest: The warrant for our belief is the authority of the
Church instituted by Christ and endowed by God with infallibility. In
effect the voice of the General Councils, the decisions of an unbroken
line of vicars of Christ on the Papal throne, the teaching of the
hierarchy everywhere and at every time, the consensus of the faithful,
in brief, the outward testimony of Christ’s whole Church, aroused in
all hearts the happy certainty that the faith offered was indeed the
revelation of God; people, indeed, believed in God and in His Word,
but what they believed was what the Church proposed for belief. The
Church also declared, though not in the same sense as Luther, “_Fides
non ullorum auctoritate sed Spiritu solo Dei oritur in corde_.”[1469]
The Church taught, what the Council of Trent emphasised anew, viz.
that, by the action of the Holy Ghost alone, i.e. by the supernatural
Grace of God which exalts the powers of man, faith attains to what is
requisite for salvation.
Luther, who overthrew the authority of the Church’s teaching office,
was unable to provide the soul in its struggle after faith with any
guarantee beyond his own authority to take the Church’s place. In his
“Von beider Gestallt des Sacramentes” he refers to Christ Himself
the man oppressed by doubt and fear, viz. to a court of appeal
inaccessible to the seeker, and this he did at a time when he himself
had started all kinds of discussions on the sense of the Gospel, and
when Christ was being claimed in support of the most widely divergent
views. He refers the enquirer to Christ, because here he deems it
better not to say plainly “hold fast to me,” though elsewhere such an
admonition was not too bold a one for him to give. “Think rather for
yourself,” such is his advice, “you have death or persecution in front
of you, and I cannot be with you then nor you with me. Each one must
fight for himself and overcome the devil, death and the world. Were
you at such a time to be looking round to see where I was, or I to
see where you were, or were you disturbed because I or anyone else on
earth asserted differently, you would be lost already and have let the
Word slip from your heart, for you would be clinging, not to the Word,
but to me or to some other; in that case there is no help.”[1470]
He thus leaves the anxious man “to himself” at the most awful of
moments; elsewhere, too, he does the same. When he invites every man to
“taste the Word of God” betimes and to “feel” how directly “the Master
speaks within his heart,” this is merely a roundabout way of repeating
the comfortless warning that “each one must fight for himself.” In
other words, what he means is: I have no sure warrant to give in the
stead of the Church’s authority; you must find out for yourself whether
you have received the true Word of Christ by consulting your own
feelings.
In addition to this, in the opinion of many Protestant theologians,
the faith to be derived from the Bible which everyone must necessarily
arrive at was very much circumscribed by Luther. “Man’s attitude
towards Christ and His saving Grace” loomed so large with him, that
it “decided the question whether a man was, or was not, a believer.”
If, in the Protestantism of to-day, Luther’s “idea of faith” is
frequently taken rather narrowly, it must be admitted that in many of
his statements and demands he himself goes even further. We have here
to do with that “two-sidedness in his attitude towards Scripture,”
which “is apparent at every period of his life.”[1471] If we keep to
the earlier and more “liberal” side of his “Evangelical conception of
faith,” then indeed the trusting and confident assumption of such a
relationship with Christ would certainly be “decisive in the question
whether a man was a believer or not, and Luther himself frequently used
this criterion, for instance, when he answers as follows the question:
Who is a member of the Church and whom must one regard as a dear
brother in Christ: ‘All who confess Christ as sent by God the Father
in order to reconcile us by His death and to obtain grace for us’;
or again elsewhere: ‘All those who cling to Christ alone and confess
Him in faith,’ or, yet again: All those ‘who seek the Lord with all
their heart and soul, and trust only in God’s mercy.’[1472] In such
utterances we have the purely religious conception of Evangelical faith
clearly summarised.” (Cp. above, vol. iii., p. 13.)
Agreeably with this conception of faith, some Protestants have
contended that Luther should have been much more broad-minded with
regard to doubts and to doctrines which differed from his own; his
opposition to other views, notably to those of the Zwinglians, brought
him, however, to another conception of faith, to one more closely
related to the Catholic theory. According to Catholic doctrine, faith
is a firm assent to all that God has revealed and the Church proposes
for belief. It is made up of many articles, not one of which can be set
aside without injury to the whole. Luther, so we are told, “owing to
his controversy with Zwingli, ran the risk of exchanging his conception
of faith for this one [the Catholic one], according to which faith is
the acceptance of a whole series of articles of faith.”
In reality he did not merely “run the risk” of reaching such a
doctrine; he had, all along, even in earlier days, been moving on
these same lines, albeit in contradiction with himself. It was in fact
nothing altogether new when he wrote in the Articles of Schwabach:
“Such a Church is nothing else than the faithful in Christ, who
believe, hold and teach the above Articles.”[1473] The faith for
which he wishes to stand always comprised the contents of the oldest
Creeds, and he prefers to close his eyes to the fact that they were
really undermined by his other propositions. By these articles he is
determined to abide. Hence it is hardly fair to appeal to him in favour
of their abrogation, and any such appeal would only serve to emphasise
his self-contradiction. Luther himself, when dealing with opponents,
frequently speaks of the breaking of a single link as being sufficient
to make the whole chain fall apart. “All or nothing” was his cry,
viz. the very same as Catholics had used against his own innovations.
In short, in his “two-sidedness,” he, quite generally, seeks a sure
foothold against difficulties from within and from without in the
principle of authority in its widest meaning, and, when trying to
safeguard the Apostles’ Creed and the “œcumenical symbols,” he appeals
expressly to the Catholic past. He says that by thus vindicating the
Apostles’ Creed and that of Nicæa he wished to show that he “was true
to the rightful, Christian Church, which had retained them till that
day.”[1474] The Fathers preserved them and, as in the case of the
Athanasian Creed, supplemented and enlarged the traditional formulas,
the better to counter heretics; Luther is even willing to accept
new terms not found in Scripture, but coined by the Church, such as
“_peccatum originale_” or “_consubstantialis_” _ὁμοούσιος_,[1475] since
they might profitably be employed against false teachers.
_Protestant Objections to Luther’s so-called “Formal Principle.”_
“It is not for us to tone down or conceal the contradictions which
present themselves,” writes a Protestant theologian who has made
Luther’s attitude towards Scripture the subject of particular study.
“... Even judged by the standard of his own day Luther does not display
that uniformity which we are entitled to expect.... The psychological
motives in particular are very involved and spring from different
sources. The very fact that throughout his life he exhibited a certain
obstinacy and violence towards both himself and others, must render
doubtful any attempt to trace everything back to a single source.
Obstinacy always points to contradictions.” This author goes so far
as to say: “We might almost give vent to the paradox, that only in
these contradictions is uniformity apparent; such a proposition would,
however, hold good only before the court of psychology.” “To-day it is
not possible to embrace Luther’s view in its entirety.”[1476]
In an historical account of Luther’s teaching (and it is in this that
most Protestant scholars are interested) we must, as we advance,
ever keep in view Luther’s whole individuality with all its warring
elements. The difficulty thus presented to our becoming better
acquainted with his views is, however, apparent from the words already
quoted from one of Luther’s biographers concerning Luther’s wealth of
ideas, which also, to some extent, apply even to his statements on
dogma: “Every word Luther utters plays in a hundred lights and every
eye meets with a different radiance which it would gladly fix.”[1477]
In spite of the difficulties arising from this character of the
Wittenberg Doctor, early orthodox Lutheranism taught that he had set up
the “_sola scriptura_” as the “formal principle” of the new doctrine.
According to eminent authorities in modern Protestantism, however, this
formal principle was stillborn; it was never capable in practice of
supporting an edifice of doctrine, still less of forming a community of
believers. Hence the tendency has been to make it subservient to the
“Evangelical” understanding of the Bible.
Thus F. Kropatscheck, the author of the learned work “Das
Schriftprinzip der lutherischen Kirche” (1904), says candidly,
“that the formal principle of Protestantism [Scripture only] does
not suffice in itself as a foundation for the true Christian life
whether of the individual or of a community.” “Where the Evangelical
content is lacking, the formal principle does not rise above sterile
criticism.”[1478]
Kropatscheck’s examination of the mediæval views on Scripture led him
moreover to recognise, that, in theory at least, the Bible always
occupied its due place of honour; its content was, however, so he
fancies, not understood until Luther rediscovered it as the Gospel
of the “forgiveness of sins through Christ.”[1479] So far, according
to him, did esteem for Scripture as the Word of God go in the Middle
Ages, that he even ventures to characterise the formula “_sola
scriptura_” as “Catholic commonplace”;[1480] this, however, he can
only have intended in the sense in which it was read and supplemented
by another Protestant theologian: “In practice this did not exclude
the interpretation of Scripture on the lines of tradition.”[1481]
“The so-called formal principle,” the above work goes on to say, with
quite remarkable fairness to the past, “was much more utilised in
the Middle Ages than popular accounts would lead us to suppose. To
the Reformation we owe neither the formula (‘_sola scriptura_’) nor
the insisting on the literal sense, nor the theory of inspiration,
nor scarcely anything else demanded on the score of pure scriptural
teaching.”[1482] “Almost all” the qualities attributed to Holy
Scripture in the early, orthodox days of Protestantism “are already to
be met with in the Middle Ages.”[1483]
In the same work Kropatscheck rightly sums up the teaching on the
inspiration of the canonical books, of St. Thomas Aquinas, the
principal exponent of the mediæval biblical teaching, doing so in
a couple of sentences the clearness and conclusiveness of which
contrast strangely with the new doctrine: “The effect of inspiration,”
according to this Doctor of the Church, implies, negatively,
preservation from error, positively, an enlightenment, both for the
perception of supernatural truth and for the right judging of natural
verities. Beyond this, a certain impulse from on high was needed to
move the sacred scribes to write the burden of their message.[1484]
That in the past the doctrine of interpretation was bound up with the
doctrine of inspiration, is, according to the statements of another
Protestant writer, P. Drews,[1485] expressed as follows by the
Catholic voice of Willibald Pirkheimer: “We should have to look on
ourselves as reprobate were we to despise even one syllable of Holy
Scripture, for we know and firmly believe that our salvation rests
solely and entirely on the Gospel. Hence we have it daily in our hands
and read it and regard it as the guide of our lives. But no one can
blame us if we place greater reliance on the interpretation of the
holy, ancient Fathers than on some garbled account of Holy Scripture,
since it is, alas, daily evident that there are as many different
readings of the Word of God as there are men. Herein lies the source
of all the evils and disorders, viz. that every fool would expound
Scripture, needless to say, to his own advantage.”[1486]
Protestant theologians have recently been diligent in studying
Luther’s teaching on the Bible. The conclusions arrived at by O.
Scheel, who severely criticises Luther, have several times been
quoted in this work. K. Thimme, in a scholarly work entitled “Luthers
Stellung zur Heiligen Schrift,”[1487] has pointed out that Luther,
who “affirms the existence of real inaccuracies in Holy Scripture,”
nevertheless, in the very year that he expressed contempt for certain
books of the New Testament, loudly demanded “the firmest belief
(‘_firmissime credatur_’), that nothing erroneous is contained in the
canonical books.”[1488]
A. Galley, a theologian to whom it fell to review the book, declared,
that, unfortunately, in spite of this and other essays on the subject,
no sure and decisive judgment on Luther’s attitude towards Holy
Scripture had yet been arrived at.[1489]--Does this not, perhaps,
amount to saying that any ultimate verdict of harmony, truth and
absence of contradictions is out of the question?
R. Seeberg in one work emphasises “Luther’s independent and critical
attitude towards the books of the Old and New Testament Canon.”
“Scripture is to be believed not on the external authority of the
Church but because it is revelation tested by experience.... Scripture
was to him the standard, test and measure of all ecclesiastical
doctrine, but this it was as the expression of the experienced
revelation of God.”[1490]
This statement Seeberg further explains elsewhere: “Though, in his
controversies, Luther pits Scripture as the ‘Divine law’ against all
mere ecclesiastical law [viz. the Church’s dogma], yet he regarded it
as authoritative simply in so far as it was the original, vigorous
witness to Christ and His salvation. Considered in this light,
Scripture, however, cannot be put side by side with justifying
faith as the second principle of Protestantism. The essential and
fundamental thought is faith.”--What Seeberg here says is quietly
aimed at the later, orthodox, Lutheran theologians who took from
Luther the so-called formal principle of Protestantism, viz. the
doctrine of the verbal inspiration of the Bible. “How is it possible,
in view of Luther’s reprobation of certain things in the Bible ...
and his admission that it contained mistakes, to imagine any verbal
inspiration?”[1491]
Seeberg has also a remarkable account of Luther’s views on the
relation to Scripture of that faith which in reality is based on
inward experience: “The specific content of Scripture” is “Christ,
His office and kingdom.” To this content it is that faith bears
witness by inward experience (see above, p. 404 f.). For faith is
“the recognition by the heart of the Almighty love revealed to us in
God.... This recognition involves also the certainty that I am in
the Grace of God.” “The truth of Scripture is something demonstrated
inwardly,” etc. “The external, legal founding of doctrine upon dogma
is thus set aside, and an end is made of the ancient canon of Vincent
of Lerins. Even the legal [dogmatic] application of Scripture is in
principle done away with.” Of the extent to which Luther carried out
these principles the author says in conclusion: “That his practice was
not always exemplary and devoid of contradiction can merely be hinted
at here.”[1492]
It would have been better to say straight away that no
non-contradictory use of contradictory principles was possible.
Dealing with a work by K. Eger (“Luthers Auslegung des Alten
Testamentes”), W. Köhler said: “Any interpretation not limited by
practical considerations ... was quite unknown to Luther, hence we
must not seek such a thing in him.... Our best plan is to break with
Luther’s principle of interpretation.” And, before this: “Luther’s
principle of interpretation is everywhere the ‘_fides_,’ and what
Luther has to offer in the way of sober, ‘historical’ interpretation
is no growth of his own garden but a fruit of Humanism.... Just as
the Schoolmen found their theology in the Old Testament, so he did
his.”[1493]
Luther’s method of interpretation, however, presents much that calls
for closer examination.
2. Luther as a Bible-Expositor
“Luther in his quality of Bible-expositor is one of the most
extraordinary and puzzling figures in the domain of religious
psychology.”[1494]
_Some Characteristics of Luther’s Exegesis._
It is true that some of Luther’s principles of exegesis are excellent,
and that he has a better perception than many of his predecessors
of the need of first ascertaining the literal sense, and, for this
purpose, of studying languages. He is aware that the fourfold sense
of Holy Scripture, so often wrongly appealed to, must retire before
the literal meaning, and that we must ever seek what the sacred writer
really and obviously meant, in whatever dress we find his ideas
clothed. Some quite excellent observations occur in his works on the
danger of having recourse to allegorical interpretations and of not
taking the text literally.
Luther himself, it is true, in his earlier postils, frequently makes
use of the allegory so dear to mediæval writers, often investing what
he says in poetic and fantastic forms. Later on, however, he grew more
cautious. Here again the abuse of allegory by the fanatics had its
effect. In addition to this his constant efforts to prove his doctrine
against theological gainsayers within and without his camp, forced him
in his arguments to use the literal sense of the Bible, or at least
what he considered such. The advantages of his German translation of
the Bible will be spoken of elsewhere (see vol. v., xxxiv., 3).
Yet he lacked one thing essentially required of an expositor, viz.
theological impartiality, nor was he fair to those means by which the
Church’s interpreters were guided in determining the sense of Scripture.
Concerning the latter, it is enough to remember how lightheartedly
he threw overboard the interpretation of the whole of the Christian
past. His wantonness, which led him to esteem as of no account all
the expositions and teachings of previous ages, deprived his exegesis
of much help and also of any stable foundation. Even considered from
the merely natural standpoint, real progress in religious knowledge
must surely be made quietly and without any sudden break with what has
already been won by the best minds by dint of diligent labour.
The rock on which Luther suffered shipwreck was however above all his
complete lack of impartiality. In his work as expositor his concern was
not to do homage to the truth in whatever shape he might encounter it
in the texts he was interpreting, but to introduce into the texts his
own ideas. Bearing in mind his controversy and his natural temperament,
this cannot, however, surprise us. Hence it is not necessary to take
too tragically the tricks he occasionally plays with Bible texts. Some
of these have been most painstakingly examined,[1495] and, indeed, it
was not without its advantages to have the general complaints raised
thus verified in individual instances. Thanks to his investigations
Döllinger was able to write: “False interpretations of the most obvious
and arbitrary kind are quite the usual thing in his polemics. It would
hardly be possible to carry this further than he did in his writings
against Erasmus in the instances quoted even by Planck. Indeed,
examples of utter wilfulness and violence to the text can be adduced in
great number from his writings.” Most frequently, as Döllinger points
out, “his interpretation is false, because he foists his own peculiar
ideas on the biblical passages, ideas which on his own admission he
reached not by a calm and dispassionate study of the Bible, but under
conditions of painful mental disturbance and anxiety of conscience.”
To this he was urged by the unrest certain Bible-sayings excited in
him; in such cases, as Döllinger remarks, he knew how “to pacify his
exegetical conscience by telling himself, that all this disquiet
was merely a temptation of the devil, who wanted to puzzle him with
passages from Scripture and thus drive him to despair.”[1496]
The whole of his exegesis is pervaded by his doctrine of Justification.
In this sense he says in the preface to Galatians, the largest of his
exegetico-dogmatic works: “Within me this one article of faith in
Christ reigns supreme. Day and night all my ideas on theology spring
from it and return thereto.”[1497]
“The article of Justification,” he declares, in a disputation in 1537,
“is the master and prince, the lord, regent and judge of every form of
doctrine, which preserves and rules all ecclesiastical knowledge and
exalts our consciousness before God.”[1498]
Two years before this (1535) he expressed himself still more strongly
in a disputation: “Scripture is not to be understood against, but
for, Christ. Hence it must either be made to apply to Him--or not be
regarded as true Scripture at all.”[1499]
His highly vaunted idea of Justification he sought to apply first
and foremost to those books or passages of the Bible which, as he
expressed it, “preach Christ.” Though giving the first place in the
canonical regard to those writings where Christ is most strongly and
fully preached and but scant favour (when he does not reject them
entirely) to those where this is not the case, he yet contrives to
introduce his own particular Christ into many parts of Scripture which
really say nothing about Him. Everything that redounds to the honour
of Christ, i.e. to the exaltation of His work of grace in man, as
Luther understood it, must be forced into Scripture, while everything
that tends to assert man’s powers and the need of his co-operation
must be expunged, since Christ cannot arrive at His right which He
has from the Father except through the utter helplessness of man. The
Bible must nowhere know of any inner righteousness on man’s part that
is of any value in God’s sight; it must never place on the lips of
Christ any demand, any praise or reward for human effort. All sacred
utterances which contradict this are, so he says, in spite of his
preference for the literal sense, not to be taken literally. Thus,
when the Bible says man _shall_, it does not follow that he _can_;
God rather wishes thereby to convince man of his helplessness; nay,
what is said in this connection of man and his works really applies
to Christ, Who has done everything for us and makes it all ours by
faith.[1500]
“There were times in his life when the antithesis between faith and
works so dominated him and filled his mind, that the whole Bible
seemed to him to have been written simply to illustrate and emphasise
this doctrine of Justification.”[1501]
Two portions of Holy Scripture, viz. the Epistles to the Romans and to
the Galatians, according to him, hold the first place in their eulogy
of Christ, by their recommendation of faith in Him alone. Hence “all
questions and all the more obscure passages of Scripture are to be
solved and explained by these two epistles.”[1502] If, in the Bible,
good works are extolled or almsgiving praised, the word “_fide_” must
always be understood, since the meaning cannot but be that such works
are profitable by faith.[1503]
In the case of the Evangelists, Matthew and Luke in particular,
we must expound their writings in accordance with the doctrine of
Justification through Christ and man’s own helplessness. “Scripture
must be interpreted according to this article.... When Matthew and
Luke speak of good works, they are to be understood and judged
according to this rule.”[1504]
Thus, in all questions of exegesis the “preaching of Christ” is
conclusive. We must, first of all, see whether each book commonly
reckoned to form part of the Bible really “preaches Christ,” and, where
this is so, the same thoughts will control everything else.[1505]
In the question of the relation of faith to the interpretation of
Scripture, Luther hobbles strangely. On the one hand the Bible is to
be interpreted strictly according to faith, on the other, faith is to
be won solely from the Bible. The former proposition he thus explains
in a sermon: It is a command that the interpretation of Scripture must
“rhyme with faith and not teach anything contrary to or differing from
what faith teaches.” True faith, however, is that which is directed
against the power of works, so that any interpretation of the Bible
which contradicts this is wrong. Whatever teaches us “to have a good
conscience towards God, except by faith alone and without any works,
neither resembles nor rhymes with faith.”[1506] Of the content of faith
we are assured above all by inward experience and the Spirit. It is
indeed on the “feeling and sentiment” that, in the case of faith, i.e.
the acceptance of the Gospel message of salvation, Luther lays the
chief stress.[1507] “If you feel it not, you have not the faith, the
Word merely rings in your ears and hovers on your lips like foam on
water.”[1508]
Luther is just as determined in proving faith from Scripture as
he is in making Scripture subservient to and dependent on faith.
“Without Scripture faith soon goes,” he exclaims after labouring to
bring forward arguments from the Bible in support of the new faith
in Christ.[1509] “Whatever is advanced without being attested by
Scripture or a revelation need not be believed.”[1510] “To this wine
no water must be added”;[1511] to this sun no lantern must be held
up![1512] “You must take your stand on a plain, clear and strong word
of Scripture, which will then be your support.”[1513]
The worst of it is, as O. Scheel aptly remarks, that Luther pits his
Christ against Scripture and thus makes the latter void.[1514]
On the one hand, according to Adolf Harnack, Luther, when making
faith the rule of Bible interpretation, becomes a “mediæval exegete”
and borrows from the past even his types and allegories. Yet he cuts
himself adrift in the most decided fashion from the mediæval exegesis,
“not merely when it is a question of Justification,” but even “in
regard to such Scripture passages as contain nothing whatever about the
doctrine of Justification and faith, or only alien matter.”[1515]
For instance, he finds righteousness by works condemned and faith
exalted in the very first pages of the Bible; for Cain, his brother’s
murderer, “clung to works and lost the faith,” that was his misfortune;
whereas Abel held aloof “from free-will and the merit of works” and
“kept the faith in a pure conscience.” “The same thing happened later
with Isaac and Ismael, Jacob and Esau, and others.”--Yet, in spite of
such condemnation of works, many passages, particularly in the New
Testament, seem to tell in favour of works. This, however, is only
due to the fact that at the time of the New Testament writers it was
desirable to raise up a bulwark against any too great esteem for faith.
Thus it was really not meant quite seriously; in the same way even he
himself, so he says, had been obliged to oppose this excessive esteem
for faith, because, in his day, and owing to his preaching, the people
“wanted merely to believe, to the neglect of the power and fruit of
faith” (in good actions).[1516]
Owing to his habit of ever reading the Bible through the glass of his
doctrine of Justification, his handling of Rom. xi. 32 (in the Vulgate:
“_Conclusit Deus omnia in incredulitate ut omnium misereatur_”) was
such that Döllinger found in it no less than “three falsifications of
the words of Paul.”[1517]
Luther’s marginal glosses to his translation of the Bible are open to
plentiful objections, for their purpose is to recall the reader as
often as possible to the basic theories of his doctrine.[1518]
Some Protestants have been exceedingly frank in characterising the
strained relations often noticeable between Luther’s exegesis and true
scholarship.
Friedrich Paulsen, in his “Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts,” when
dealing with the demand made by the “exegesis of the Reformation,”
viz. that the reader must cling to the plain text and letter of
Scripture, says: “Luther by no means considered himself bound to
the letter and the grammatical sense of the text of Scripture. Where
the letter was in his favour, he indeed used it against others, the
Swiss, for instance, but, where it was not, he nevertheless stands
by his guns and knows what Scripture _ought_ to have said. Everybody
knows with what scant regard he handled certain books of Scripture,
estimating their value according as they agreed more or less with his
teaching, and even amending them a little when they failed to reach
his standard or to present the pure doctrine of justification by faith
‘alone’ in a light sufficiently strong.... In order to understand
Scripture it is necessary [according to Luther] to know beforehand
what it teaches; Scripture is indeed the rule of doctrine, but,
_vice versa_, doctrine is also the rule of Scripture which must be
interpreted ‘_ex analogia fidei_.’”[1519]
Referring to Luther’s interpretation of the Epistle to the Romans,
Adolf Hausrath pithily observes: “Luther read this Epistle to the
Romans into everything and found it everywhere.” Though Hausrath makes
haste to add that this was because “his personal experiences agreed
with those of the Epistle to the Romans,” still, his reference to the
psychological basis of the phenomenon is quite in place. “He had been
led to draw from Scripture one basic principle which to him was the
embodiment of truth, viz. Justification by Faith. That only which ran
counter to this ‘faith alone’ was to be set aside.”[1520]
_Luther’s Exegesis in the Light of His Early Development._
With the help of the newly published Commentary on Romans, written by
Luther in his youth (vol. i., p. 184 ff.), we can trace the beginnings
of his curious exegesis more easily than was possible before.
What we want first of all is a key to that more than human confidence
which prompts the new teacher to blend in one his own interpretation
and the actual text of the Bible and to say, “_My_ word is the truth.”
This key is to be found in his early history. It was then, in those
youthful days when he began morbidly to brood over the mysteries of the
Epistle to the Romans, all unable to grasp the profound thoughts it
contained, that the phenomenon in question made its first appearance.
We must call to mind that the young and ardent University professor,
though deficient in humility and in the capacity to assimilate the
sublime teachings of the Epistle to the Romans, stood all the more
under the spell of two misleading ideas which had long dominated him,
viz. on the one hand, the supposed depth and transforming power of
the knowledge of Scripture he had already acquired and, on the other,
the need of assailing the self-righteous and hypocritical Little
Saints and all excessive esteem for good works. In the latter respect
the passages in Romans on works, faith and merit--of which he failed
to see the real meaning--became dangerous rocks on which Luther’s
earlier religious convictions suffered hopeless shipwreck. So greatly
was he attracted and, as it were, fascinated by the light that seemed
to him to stream in on his soul from this Epistle, that he came to
see the same thing everywhere. Its suggestive power over him was all
the greater because in his then pseudo-mystical train of thought he
was fond of comparing himself to the Apostle and of fancying, that,
as in that case so in his, inner self-annihilation would lead to his
receiving similar favours from God. This self-annihilation in Luther’s
case was, however, a morbid one.
Luther, in his younger days, had also been grievously tormented with
thoughts on predestination. He now fancied, according to what he
supposed was Paul’s teaching, that to abandon oneself in the hands of
God, without will, strength or wish, was the sole means by which he
and all other men could find tranquillity. Thus, on the strength of
misunderstood inward experiences, he hailed the Epistle to the Romans
and, a little later, the Epistle to the Galatians, as the only guide
along the strange paths of his future exegesis.
His supposed “experiences of God” became the ruling power by which,
thanks to an exegesis entirely new, he was to bring salvation to the
whole of mankind.
Hitherto, in spite of all his diligence in the study of the Bible,
any idea of upholding his own new interpretation against the existing
doctrines of the Church had been altogether foreign to him. In his
first manuscript notes and in the Commentary on the Psalms which has
only recently come to light, likewise in his earlier sermons, he
still looks at everything from the Catholic standpoint; the Church’s
authority is still the appointed guardian and interpreter of Holy
Scripture. There the Bible is to him unquestionably the divinely
inspired book and the true Word of God, though it is, not the
individual’s, but the Church’s duty to draw from its inexhaustible
treasures arguments in her own defence and in refutation of the
teaching of the heretics. To the teaching of Scripture and to the
infallible interpretation of the Church based on the tradition of the
Fathers, everyone, so he then held, must submit as Christ Himself had
ordained.
Even then, however, he was already convinced that he had received an
extraordinary call to deal with Holy Scripture. The very admiration
of his fellow-monks for his familiarity with his red leather copy
of the Bible, fostered the self-love of the youthful student of the
Scriptures. This Staupitz increased by his incautious reference to
the future “great Doctor,” and by his general treatment of Luther.
The written Word of God in which the wide-awake and quick-witted monk
felt himself at home more than any of his fellows quite evidently
became so much his own peculiar domain, that, in his opinion, Bible
scholarship was the only worthy form of theological learning and ruled
every branch of Divine knowledge. He even went further, attributing
all the corruption in the Church to “neglect of the Word,” i.e. to
ignorance of and want of compliance with the Bible Word. On the
strength of his accounted profounder knowledge of the “Word,” he also
reproves the “holy-by-works.” Even previous to the lectures on Romans,
his conviction of the antithesis between human works and Christ’s
grace made him read everywhere Christ into Scripture; the Bible, so he
says, must be taken to the well-spring, i.e. to the Cross of Christ,
having done which we may then be “quite certain to catch” its true
meaning. Before Luther’s day others in the Church had done the same,
though within lawful limits. Among contemporary Humanists even Erasmus
had insisted on Christ’s being made the centre of Scripture.[1521]
Widely as Luther, in his Commentary on Romans, already diverges
from the Church’s interpretation of St. Paul regarding the doctrine
of Justification, yet he still admits, at least in theory, the
principle of authority both in the interpretation of the Bible and in
general.[1522] He rejects without compunction all those heresies which
deviate from the Church’s guidance. In practice, however, he sets
himself above the teaching of the Fathers where-ever this runs counter
to his views; St. Augustine is forced to witness in his favour even
at the expense of the other representatives of tradition, and, as for
mediæval scholasticism, it is treated as though it were not at all one
of the links in the venerable chain of tradition. On the other hand,
Luther allows his exegesis to be influenced by those later and less
reputable exponents of scholasticism with whom alone he was acquainted.
On such lines as these did his exegesis of the Bible proceed; on the
one hand there was his excessive regard for his own acquaintance
with Scripture, and, on the other, his pseudo-mysticism leaning for
its support on misunderstood interior revelations and illuminations.
A certain sense of his vocation as the Columbus of the Bible ever
accompanies him from that time forward.
This psychological condition manifests itself in utterances contained
in the lectures on Romans and in later works.
“Here,” so he writes in the lectures, “a great stride has been made
towards the right interpretation of Holy Scripture, by understanding
it all as bearing on Christ ... even when the surface-sense of the
letter does not require it.”[1523] “All Scripture deals everywhere
with Christ alone.”[1524] “All this is said, written or done that
human presumption may be humbled and the grace of God exalted.”[1525]
He is ever reading his own thoughts into the oftentimes obscure words
of St. Paul, though, that he is so doing is evident neither to his
hearers nor to himself. That same eloquence and wealth of imagery are
to be found here which are to characterise his later expositions.
“Quite unmistakably his language, thought and imagery throughout the
work is that of the mystic,” remarks the editor of the Commentary.
“How much Tauler--whom Luther extols so highly, even when as yet he
was so little acquainted with him--has taken possession of Luther’s
mind and influences his language, would be clear from the Commentary
on Romans, even were Tauler’s name not mentioned in it.”[1526]
With the mental attitude assumed quite early in his career the scant
regard for Humanism and philosophy he evinces in this Commentary well
agrees; further, his use of the Bible as a whip with which to lash
unsparingly the abuses rampant in the Church, another peculiarity
which was to remain in his treatment of Scripture. The better to
appreciate his first attempts at exegesis we may recall, that, even
then, he was concerned for the text and its purity, and that, no
sooner was Erasmus’s Greek edition of the New Testament published,
than Luther, who had now reached chapter ix. of the Epistle, began to
use it for his lectures.[1527]
That Luther’s first attempts in the exegetical field were so
successful was in great part due to his personal gifts, to his
eloquence and to his frankness. Oldecop, a pupil of his, who remained
true to the Church, wrote as an old man, that, being as he was then
twenty-two years of age, he “had taken pleasure in attending Martin’s
lectures.”[1528] The lectures on Romans commenced immediately after
Oldecop’s matriculation. Christopher Scheurl, the Humanist Professor
of Law, reckoned the new exegete among the best of the Wittenberg
theologians and said: “Martin Luther, the Augustinian, expounds St.
Paul’s Epistles with marvellous talent.”[1529]
In the matter of private interpretation as against the Church’s, in
these earliest exegetical efforts, he remained, outwardly at least,
true to the traditional standpoint, until, little by little, he forsook
it, as already described (above, p. 387 ff.). Even his academic Theses
of Sept., 1517 (“Against the Theology of the Schools”), based though
they were on a misapprehension of Scripture, conclude with the
assurance, that, “throughout, he neither intended nor had said anything
contrary to the Church or at variance with her doctrines.”[1530]--Then,
however, with startling suddenness the change set in.
When, after the storm aroused by the publication of the Indulgence
Theses, he wrote his German “Sermon von dem Ablass und Gnade,”[1531] he
appealed in it repeatedly to the Bible as against the “new teachers,”
i.e. the Schoolmen, and indeed in as confident a manner as though he
alone were learned in Scripture. He says on the first page: “This I
say: That it cannot be proved from any Scripture, etc. Much should I
like to hear anyone who can testify to the contrary in spite of the
fact that some doctors have thought so.” And at the end he sums up as
follows: “On these points I have no doubt, and they have sufficient
warrant in Scripture. Therefore you too should have no doubt and send
the Scholastic doctors about their business!” Shortly before this, in a
letter about the Scholastic theologians of his day, particularly those
of Leipzig, he declares: “I could almost swear that they understand
not a single chapter of the Gospel or Bible.”[1532] He was, however,
greatly cheered to hear that, thanks to his new interpretation of the
Bible, prelates, as well as the burghers of Wittenberg, were all saying
“that formerly they had neither known nor heard anything of Christ or
of His Gospel.”[1533]
After Tetzel had attacked his Sermon and accused Luther of falsifying
the sacred text, and of cherishing heretical opinions, the latter
indited his “Eyn Freiheyt dess Sermons Bepstlichen Ablass und Gnad
belangend,” where he emphasises even more strongly and pathetically
the supremacy of Holy Scripture over all outward authority: “Even
though all these and a thousand others of the holiest of doctors had
held this or that, yet their opinion is of no account compared with a
single verse of Holy Writ.... They are not in the least to be believed,
because the Scripture says: The Word of God no one may set aside or
alter.”[1534]
Carlstadt, whom Luther himself had instructed, outdid his master and
advocated entire freedom for the private interpretation of Scripture
before Luther could make up his mind to do this. He did not shrink
from making his own the following defiant Thesis: “The text of the
Bible does not take precedence merely of one or several Doctors of
the Church, but even of the authority of the whole Church.”[1535] It
was only after Luther, thanks to his obstinacy and curious methods of
reasoning, had extricated himself from his examination at Augsburg,
and fled, that he admitted in the statements already given (p. 388)
that the word of Scripture was to be set in the first place, and,
that, in its interpretation, no account need be made of ecclesiastical
authority.[1536] This prelude to Luther’s new exegetical standpoint,
more particularly towards the end, was marked by much fear, doubt and
anxiety of conscience. He was worried, to such an extent that his
“heart quaked for fear,” by a number of Scripture passages and still
more by the question: Could the Author of Scripture hitherto have
really left His work open to such dire misunderstanding?
While his powerful rhetoric, particularly when it came to polemics,
was able to conceal all the failings of his exposition of the Bible,
his real eloquence, his fervour and his popular ways of dealing with
non-controversial things imparted to his pulpit-commentaries no less
than to his written ones a freshness of tone which improved, stimulated
and inspired his followers with love for Holy Scripture and also
brought them Bible consolation amidst the trials of life.
3. The Sola Fides. Justification and Assurance of Salvation
The two propositions considered above, fundamental though they are, of
the Bible being under the enlightenment of the Spirit the sole rule of
faith, and of the untrustworthiness of ecclesiastical authority and
tradition, far from having been the first elements to find their place
in Luther’s scheme, were only advanced by him at a later date and in
order to protect his pet dogma.
His doctrine of Justification was the outcome of his dislike for
“holiness-by-works,” which led him to the theory of salvation by
faith alone, through the imputation of the merits of Christ without
any co-operation on man’s part, or any human works of merit. This
doctrine, from the very first as well as later, was everything to
him. This it was which he made it his earliest task to elaborate, and
about it he then proceeded to hang the other theories into which he
was forced by his conflict with the Church and her teaching, some of
which were logically connected with his main article, whilst, in the
case of others, the connection was only artificial. Later exponents of
Lutheranism termed his doctrine of Justification the material principle
of his theology, no doubt in the same sense as he himself reckons it,
in a sermon of 1530 in his postils, as: “the only element, article or
doctrine by which we become Christians and are called such.”
This Evangel, Luther’s consoling doctrine, as a matter of fact was
simply the record of his own inner past, the most subjective doctrine
assuredly that ever sought to enlist followers. As we know, it is
already found entire in his Commentary on Romans of 1515-1516.
In order to strengthen, in himself first and then in others, the
assurance of salvation it comprised, he amplified it by asserting
the believer’s absolute certainty of salvation; this was lacking in
his Commentary on Romans, though even then he was drifting towards
it. It was only in 1518-1519 that he developed the doctrine of the
so-called “special faith,” by which the individual assures himself of
pardon and secures salvation. Thereby he transformed faith into trust,
for what he termed fiducial faith partook more of the nature of a
strong, artificially stimulated hope; it really amounted to an intense
confidence that the merits of Christ obliterated every sin.
Of faith in this new sense he says that it is _the_ faith. “To have
the Faith is assentingly to accept the promises of God, laying hold
on God’s gracious disposition towards us and trusting in it.”[1537]
In spite of this he continues in the old style to define faith as
the submission of reason to all the truths revealed, and even to
make it the practical basis of all his religious demands: Whoever
throws overboard even one single article of faith will be damned;
faith being one whole, every article must be believed.[1538] We can
understand how opponents within his own camp, of whom he demanded
faith in the doctrines he had discovered in the Bible, when they
themselves failed to find them there, ventured to remind him of his
first definition of faith, viz. the fiducial, and to ask him whether a
trustful appropriation of the merits of Christ did not really meet all
the demands of “faith.” Recent Protestant biographers of Luther point
out that Zwingli was quite justified in urging this against Luther.
Attacked by Luther on account of his discordant teaching on the Lord’s
Supper, and that on the score of faith, Zwingli rudely retorted: “It is
a pestilential doctrine, by a perversion of the word faith which really
means trust in Christ, to lower it to the level of an opinion”; with
this behaviour on Luther’s part went “hand in hand a similar change in
his conception of the Church founded on faith.”[1539]
_Some Characteristics of the New Doctrine of Justification._
If we take Luther’s saving faith we find that, according to him, it
produces justification without the help of any other work or act on
man’s part, and without contrition or charity contributing anything
to the appropriation of righteousness on the part of the man to be
justified.
Any contrition proceeding from the love of God, or at least from
that incipient love of God such as Catholicism required agreeably
with both revelation and human psychology, appeared to Luther
superfluous; in view of the power of man’s ingrained concupiscence it
amounted almost to a contradiction; only the fear of God’s Judgments
(“_timor servilis_”), so he declares (vol. i., p. 291), with palpable
exaggeration, had ruled his own confessions made in the monastery.
At any rate, he was in error when he declared that this same fear
had been the motive in the case of Catholics generally. He persuaded
himself that this fear must be overcome by the Evangel of the imputed
merits of Christ, because otherwise man can find no peace. The part
played by the law is, according to him, almost confined to threatening
and reducing man to despair, just as he himself had so often verged on
hopelessness through thinking of his own inevitable reprobation; the
assurance of salvation by faith, however, appears to every Christian as
an angel of help and consolation even minus any repudiation of sin on
the part of man’s will, for, owing to the Fall, sin cannot but persist.
When he attempts to prove this by his “experiences,” we must remind the
reader how uncertain his statements are, concerning his own “inward
feelings” during his monastic days. It will be pointed out elsewhere
(vol. vi., xxxvii.) that these “recollections,” with their polemical
animus, were of comparatively late growth, though they would have been
of far greater service at the outset when still quite fresh.
A more solid basis for estimating the value of his doctrine of
Justification is afforded by its connection with his other theological
views. As we know, he regarded original sin and the concupiscence
resulting from it as actual sin, still persisting in spite of baptism;
he exaggerated beyond measure man’s powerlessness to withstand
the concupiscence which remains with him to the end. Owing to the
unfreedom of the will, the devil, according to Luther, holds the
field in man’s heart and rules over all his spiritual faculties. The
Divine Omnipotence alone is able to vanquish this redoubtable master
by bestowing on the unhappy soul pardon and salvation; yet sin still
reigns in the depths of the heart. No act of man has any part in
the work of salvation. Actual grace is no less unknown to him than
sanctifying grace. Good works are of no avail for salvation and of no
importance for heaven, though, accidentally, they may accompany the
state of grace, God working them in the man on whom He has cast His eye
by choosing him to be a recipient of faith and salvation. Such election
and predestination is, however, purely God’s work which man himself can
do absolutely nothing to deserve.--Thanks to these errors, the “_sola
fides_” and assurance of salvation stand bereft of their theological
support.
We must, however, revert to one point again and examine it more closely
on account of its historical and psychological importance. This is
Luther’s doctrine of the slavery of the will, and of God’s being the
sole agent in man.
This doctrine, already expressed in his Commentary on Romans in
connection with his opinion on unconditional predestination,[1540]
he was afterwards to expound with increasing vehemence.[1541] He
was delighted to find his rigid views expressed in the Notes of the
lectures on Romans and 1 Corinthians, which Melanchthon delivered in
1521 and 1522. These Notes he caused to be printed, and sent them to
the author with a preface cast in the form of a letter.[1542]
In this letter he assumes the whole responsibility for the
publication, and assures Melanchthon that “no one has written better
than you on Paul.” “I hold that the Commentaries of Jerome and Origen
are the merest nonsense and rubbish compared with your exposition....
They, and Thomas too, wrote commentaries that are filled with their
own conceits rather than with that which is Paul’s or Christ’s,
whereas on the contrary yours teaches us how to read Scripture and to
know Christ, and thus excels any mere commentary, which is more than
one can say of the others hitherto in vogue.”
Such praise for Melanchthon’s work, indirectly intended to recoil upon
his own doctrine, caused Erasmus to remark of the Preface: “How full
of pride it is!”[1543]
The doctrine of the unfreedom of the will as here expressed by
Melanchthon who then was still the true mouthpiece of Luther, though
free from Luther’s rhetorical exaggerations, remains extremely harsh.
It contains, for instance, the following propositions: “Everything in
every creature occurs of necessity.... It must be firmly held that
everything, both good and bad, is done by God.” “God does not merely
allow His creatures to act, but it is He Himself Who acts.” As He
does what is good, so also He does what is indifferent in man, such
as eating and drinking and the other animal functions, and also what
is evil, “such as David’s adultery and Manlius’s execution of his
son.” The treason of Judas was not merely permitted of God, but, as
Augustine says, was the effect of His power. “It is a huge blasphemy
to deny predestination, the actuality of which we have briefly proved
above.”[1544]
Ten years later Melanchthon had grown shy of views so monstrous;
he thought it advisable to repudiate this book, and, in 1532, he
dedicated a new Commentary on Romans to the Archbishop of Mayence,
whom he was anxious to win over. In the preface he says, that he no
longer acknowledged (“_plane non agnosco_”)[1545] the earlier work
which had appeared under his name. Later, after Luther’s death, he
went so far as to demand the severe punishment of those who denied
free-will and questioned the need of good works for salvation.[1546]
Luther, on the other hand, as we know, never relinquished his
standpoint on the doctrine of free-will. Beside his statements
already quoted may be put the following: The will is not only unfree
“in everything,”[1547] but is so greatly depraved by original sin,
that, not content with being entirely passive in the matter of
Justification, it actually resists God like the devil. “What I say
is, that the spiritual powers are not merely depraved, but altogether
annihilated by sin, not less in man than in the devils.... Their
reason and their will seek those things alone which are opposed to
God. Whatever is in our will is evil and whatever is in our reason is
mere error and blindness. Thus, in things Divine, man is nothing but
darkness, error and depravity, his will is evil and his understanding
nowhere.”[1548]
From such a standpoint all that was possible was a mere outward
imputation of the merits of Christ, no Justification in the sense
in which it was taken by the ancient Church, viz. as a supernatural
regeneration by means of sanctifying grace.
Any reliable proofs, theological or biblical, in support of this
altogether novel view of Justification will be sought for in vain in
the works of Melanchthon and Luther. When Luther speaks of the power of
faith in the merits of Christ and of the promises of faith concerning
eternal life, as he does, for instance, in the written defence which
he handed to Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg, his words and the Bible
passages he quotes merely express what the Church had always taught
concerning the necessity and efficacy of faith as the condition of the
supernatural life to be further developed in the soul by God’s Grace
and man’s co-operation.[1549] In spite of this, in that very writing
he alleges that he has satisfactorily proved that Justification is
effected by fiducial faith.
“No one can be justified,” he there writes, “but by faith, in the sense
that he must needs believe with a firm faith (‘_certa fide credere_’)
that he _is_ justified, and not doubt in any way that he is to attain
to grace; for if he doubts and is uncertain, he will not be justified,
rather he spits out the grace.”[1550]
His doctrine of faith alone and of the imputed merits of Christ, was,
of all his theological opinions, the one which underwent the least
change during his lifetime.[1551] Until old age he continued to lay
great stress on it both in the University Disputations and in his
sermons and writings.[1552] Even the inferences drawn from it by Johann
Agricola in his Antinomian theses did not cause Luther to waver in the
least.
In the Schmalkalden Articles he declares explicitly that Justification
consists merely in God’s “looking upon” the sinner “as righteous
and holy.”[1553] According to one of his sermons our righteousness
comes “altogether from without and rests solely on Christ and His
work”;[1554] elsewhere he says, with the utmost assurance: The
Christian is “righteous and holy by virtue of a foreign or outward
holiness.”[1555]
In view of such statements undue stress must not be laid on that
Luther says in another passage, which recalls the teaching of the
olden Church, viz. that the Spirit of God dwells in the righteous, and
fills him with His gifts, nay, with His very “substance,”[1556] and
that it was this Spirit which gave him the “feeling and the certainty”
of being in a state of grace.[1557] This is much the same as when
Luther describes man’s active love of God whereby he becomes united
and “one kitchen” with God,[1558] whilst, nevertheless, insisting that
the strength of the _sola fides_ must never be the least diminished
by work. “No work must be added to this” (to faith), he says in his
postils, “for whoever preaches that guilt and penalty can be atoned for
by works has already denied the Evangel.”[1559] Only at times does he
allow himself to follow the voice of nature speaking on behalf of man’s
co-operation; this he does, for instance, in the passage just referred
to, where he admits that human reason is ever inviting man to take a
share in working out his salvation by means of his own works.[1560]
The forgiveness which God offers “must be seized and believed. If you
believe it you are rid of sin and all is right.” “This all the Gospels
teach.”[1561] Unfortunately there are “many abandoned people who misuse
the Gospel ... who think that no one must punish them because the
Gospel preaches nothing but forgiveness of sins. To such the Gospel
is not preached.... To whom is it preached? To those who feel their
misery,” i.e. to those who are sunk in remorse of conscience and in
fears, similar to, or at least faintly resembling, those he had himself
once endured. When he applies the words of Psalm 50 to the yearning,
the prayers and the struggles of those who thirst for salvation: “A
contrite and humbled heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise,” he finds
himself again, all unconsciously, on the road to the Church’s olden
view on man’s share in repentance.
What we read in the important notes “_De iustificatione_,” written
during Luther’s stay in the fortress of Coburg and only recently
published, differs not at all from his ordinary, purely mechanical
view of Justification.[1562] These notes are from Luther’s amanuensis,
Veit Dietrich, and record some conversations concerning a work Luther
had planned in reply to the objections against the new doctrine of
Justification. Dietrich entitled the collection “_Rhapsodia_.”[1563]
It is not surprising that at a later date Luther hesitated to appeal
to St. Augustine in support of his doctrine so confidently as he once
had done. Augustine and all the Doctors of the Church are decidedly
against him. On the publication of the complete edition of his works
in Latin Luther expressed himself in the preface very diplomatically
concerning Augustine: “In the matter of imputation he does not explain
everything clearly.”[1564] Naturally the greatest teacher on grace,
who lays such stress on its supernatural character and its gifts in
the soul of the righteous, could not fail to disagree with him, seeing
that Luther’s system culminates in the assurance, that grace is the
merest imputation in which man has no active share, a mere favour on
God’s part, “_favor Dei_.”[1565]
Augustine’s views of the powers and the end of man in the natural as
well as the supernatural order have been clearly set forth in their
connection with the trend of present-day scholarship by an eminent
Catholic researcher. The latter points out that a strong revulsion
against Luther’s idea of outward imputation has shown itself in
Protestantism, and that the “historical theology” of our day largely
acknowledges the existence of the Catholic doctrine “in the olden
ecclesiastical and, indeed, even in the New-Testament world.” The same
holds good of Augustine as of Paul. “Not the ‘_sola fides_,’ but the
renewal of the interior man, a ‘true and real new creation,’ was the
essence of Paul’s doctrine of justification.”[1566]
_The Striving after Absolute Certainty of Salvation._
Luther was chiefly concerned in emphasising the indispensable necessity
of particular faith in personal justification and personal salvation.
Whereas the Church had required faith in our real, objective redemption
by Christ, Luther demanded over and above a further faith in one’s
subjective redemption, in spite of the difficulty which circumstances
might present to the attaining of this assurance. It was something
very different when the olden theologians taught that there were
signs from which the good man’s state of grace might be inferred
with moral certainty, and that such signs were, for instance, the
determination to commit no grievous sin, the desire to perform good
works more especially such as were difficult, joy and peace of soul
in God, and, above all, the consciousness of having done everything
that was necessary for reconciliation with God. That, by such marks,
it was “possible to arrive at the practical certainty of being in a
state of grace” had been taught by Gabriel Biel, with whom Luther
was acquainted.[1567] Later on, the Council of Trent laid down as
the Catholic doctrine, against the Lutheran theory of absolute faith
in personal justification, “that no good Christian may doubt of the
mercy of God, of the merits of Christ or the efficacy of grace,” but
that at the same time “no one can know with the certainty of faith
which precludes all possibility of error that he has attained to God’s
grace.”[1568]
Luther’s teaching was quite different.
He writes, for instance, in the larger Commentary on Galatians, which,
as we know, he regarded next to his work “_De servo arbitrio_” as
his principal legacy to posterity: “We must perceive and recognise
it as certain that we are the temple of the Holy Ghost.”[1569] “The
heart must be quite certain that it is in a state of grace and that
it has the Holy Ghost.”[1570] It is true, he says, that, “because
we feel the opposite sentiments of fear, doubt, sadness, etc., we
fail to regard this as certain.”[1571] Yet do this we must: “We must
day by day struggle (‘_luctari_’)[1572] towards greater and greater
certainty.” We should exercise ourselves in the feeling of certainty,
risk something to secure it; for it rests with our own self-acquired
ability to believe ever firmly and steadfastly, even as we believe
the truths of faith, that we are really justified. All depends on
the practice and experience just referred to. “This matter, if it is
to be achieved, cannot be learnt without experience. Everyone should
therefore accustom himself resolutely to the persuasion that he is in
a state of grace and that his person and deeds are pleasing [to God].
Should he feel a doubt, then let him exercise faith; he must beat down
his doubts and acquire certainty, so as to be able to say: I know that
I am pleasing [to God] and have the Holy Ghost, not on account of any
worth or merits of my own, but on account of Christ, Who for our sakes
submitted Himself to the law and took away the sins of the world.
In Him I believe.”[1573] “The greatest art consists in this, that,
regardless of the fact that we commit sin, we can yet say to the law:
I am sinless.”[1574]
“And even when we have fought very hard for this, it will still cost
us much sweat.”
It is thus that Luther was led to speak from his own inner experience,
of which we have plentiful corroboration. In the passage last quoted,
he proceeds: “The matter of justification is difficult and delicate
(‘_causa iustificationis lubrica est_’), not indeed in itself, for in
itself it is as certain as can be, but in our regard; of this I have
frequent experience.”[1575]
We are already acquainted to some extent with the struggle against
himself, and the better voices within him, which the unhappy man had
to wage; this distress of soul remains to be treated of more in detail
later (vol. v., xxxii.). It may, however, be pointed out here that he
knew how to make this struggle part of his system; even when depressed
by one’s painful inability to reach this unshaken consciousness of
salvation he still insists that one must feel certain; faced by doubts
and fears on account of his sins, man must summon defiance to his aid,
then, finally, he will come to rest secure of his personal salvation.
“We must cling with all sureness to the belief that not merely our
office but also our person is well-pleasing to God.”[1576] It is true
that men see, “how weak is the faith even of the pious. We would
assuredly joyfully give thanks to God for His unspeakable gift could
we but say with entire certainty: Yes, indeed, I am in a state of
grace, my sin is forgiven me, I have the Spirit of Christ and I am the
son of God. We feel, however, in ourselves emotions quite contrary,
viz. fear, doubt, sadness, etc., hence we do not venture to make the
assertion.”[1577] Others might infer from this the uselessness of all
such vain efforts. Luther, however, would not be the man he is were he
not to declare: On the contrary, “we must daily struggle more and more
from uncertainty to certainty!” “Christ Himself,” so he argues, “is
quite certain in His Spirit that He is pleasing to God.... Hence we
too, seeing that we have the Spirit of Christ, must be certain that we
too stand in grace ... on account of Him Who is certain.”[1578]
The last argument is the more noteworthy in that it demonstrates so
well the vicious circle involved in Luther’s conclusion.
It amounts to this: In order to possess grace and reconciliation you
must believe that you have grace and reconciliation. What guarantee
has one of the certainty of this belief? Nothing but the inward
consciousness to be evolved in the soul that it has indeed the grace
of Christ which covers over all that is evil in it.
As Luther says, “If you are to be saved you must be so sure within
yourself of the Word of grace, that even were all men to say the
contrary, yea all the angels to deny it, you could yet stand alone and
say: I know this Word is true.”[1579]
In practice, nevertheless, Luther was content with very little in the
matter of this strength of certitude: “If I have Him [Christ], I am
sure that I have everything.... What is still wanting in me is, that I
cannot yet grasp it or believe it perfectly. So far as I am able now
to grasp it and believe it, so far do I possess it, and if I stick to
it this will go on increasing.” But “still there remains an outward
feeling of death, of hell, of the devil, of sin and of the law. Even
though you feel this, it is merely a warfare that seeks to hinder you
from attaining to life everlasting.... We should say: I believe in
Christ Jesus, He is mine, and so far as I have Him and believe in Him,
thus far am I pious.”[1580]--“Yet believe it I cannot.”[1581]
Luther, according to the legend which he evolved later when defending
his doctrine of faith alone and Justification, had started from the
intense inward need he felt of certainty of salvation, and with the
object, as he says, of “finding a Gracious God.” By his discovery
regarding Justification, so his admirers say, he at last found and
retained for the rest of his life the sense of a merciful God. The
strange thing is, however, that in his severe and protracted struggles
of conscience he should, at a later date, have again arrived at this
very question: “How can I find a Gracious God?”
He writes in 1527 to Melanchthon: “Like a wretched, reprobate worm
I am molested by the spirit of sadness.... I desire nothing and
thirst after nothing but a Gracious God.” So greatly was he involved
in inward contests that he says: “I am scarce able to drag on my
existence; of working or writing I dare not think.”[1582] “Satan is
busy,” he exclaims to his friend Wenceslaus Link during these storms,
“and would fain make it impossible for me to write; he wants to drag
me down to him in hell. May God tread him under foot. Amen!”[1583]
With very many of his followers the assurance of salvation failed
to hold good in the presence of death. “We not only do not feel it
[this assurance],” so he makes them say, “but rather the contrary.”
He admits the phenomenon and seeks to account for it; nay, in his
usual way, he makes capital out of it. “In God’s sight,” he says,
“the matter is indeed so [i.e. as promised by his doctrine of
Justification], but not yet in our eyes and in those of the world;
hence our fears still persist until we are released by death.”[1584]
“Whoever feels weak let him console himself with this, that no one
succeeds perfectly in this [in the attainment of certainty].” “That
is one of the advantages enjoyed by heretics,” he cries, “to lull
themselves in security.... Nothing is more pestilential than security.
Hence, when you feel weak in the faith you must rouse yourself; it is
a sign of a good disposition and of the fear of God.”[1585]--Readers
of Luther must be prepared for surprising statements.
It is true that he laments bitterly the increase of the fear of death
among the new believers. In the case of epidemics he sees to his
regret that everybody is “scared and takes to flight.” Far greater
than ever under Popery, so he says, “is now, under the strong light of
the Evangel, men’s fear of losing their life.”[1586] For this again he
has an explanation to hand. When, for instance, the plague spread to
Wittenberg in 1538 he wrote: Whence comes all this fear? “Formerly,
under Popery, the people were not so much afraid. The reason is this:
In Popery we trusted in the merits of the monks and of others, but
now each one has to trust to and depend on himself.”[1587] Elsewhere,
with the same object of reassuring himself and others, he says: The
Evangel with its clear light of truth causes the holiness of God
to be better perceived and thus leaves more room for the sense of
fear. This he here reckons as an advantage over Popery, though, as
a rule, his grievance against Catholicism had been that it excited
fearsomeness by the gloomy legal spirit which prevailed in it and by
its ignoring of God’s mercy.--We shall not be far wrong if we regard
such statements as dictated more by psychological than by theological
considerations.
“It is a great thing,” says Luther, referring to his doctrine of
faith alone, “to lay claim to righteousness; then man dares to say:
I am a son of God; whereas the state of grace affrights him....
Without practice (‘_sine practica_’) no one is able to repudiate
righteousness-by-works and to preach faith alone.”[1588] He bewails
“that we are too blind to be able to seize upon the treasure of
grace.... We refuse to call ourselves holy,” in spite of the certainty
which faith brings us. Here our opponents, the Papists and the
Sacramentarians, are not nearly so well off; at least they could not
“quiet their conscience” as he could do by his method, because, owing
to their works, they were always in doubt as to their own salvation.
(At any rate, they were in no state of “pestilential security.”)
“They are always in doubt and wondering: Who knows whether it is
really pleasing to God?” Yet they cling to works and “say Anathema to
Jesus.”[1589]
“I have to labour daily,” he says, “before I can lay hold on Christ”;
he adds: “That is due to force of habit, because for so many years [in
Popery] I looked upon Christ as a mere judge. It is an old, rotten
tree that is rooted in me.... We have, however, now again reached the
light; in my case this occurred when I was made a Doctor.... But know
this, that Christ is not sent to judge and to punish, not to bite and
to slay sinners as I used to fancy and as some still think.”[1590]
His extraordinary esteem for the new doctrine of the power of faith
alone and the assurance of salvation, would furnish quite a riddle to
one not aware of the constitution of his mind.
So greatly did he prize this doctrine, that, according to the
testimony of Melanchthon, he referred to it all other articles of
faith, even that of creation. “The article of the forgiveness of
sins,” he says, “is the foundation on which the article of the
creation of the world rests.”[1591] “If we drop this article then we
may well despair. The reason why heretics and fanatics [Papists and
sectarians] go astray is simply their ignorance of this doctrine.
Without it it is impossible to contend with Satan and with Popery,
still less to be victorious.”[1592]--Thanks to such statements as
these Luther’s article of Justification came to be termed the article
on which the Church stands or falls.
_The “Article on which the Church Stands or Falls”: According to Modern
Protestants._
Protestant scholars are far from sharing Luther’s high regard for his
dogma of Justification, and what they say throws a curious light on the
fashion in which he deceived himself.
Amongst the Protestant voices raised in protest against this doctrine,
the following deserve to be set on record. It is clear, says K. Hase,
that the Catholic doctrine is more closely related to the “Protestant
view now prevailing”; he avers, that the “Protestant theologians of
our day, even those who are sticklers for the purity of Lutheranism,
have described saving faith as that which works by love, quite
agreeably to the scholastic conception of the ‘_fides formata_,’ and
have opposed to it a pretended Catholic dogma of Justification by good
works.”[1593]
This well-known controversial writer when expressing it as his opinion
that Luther’s doctrine of Justification is now practically discarded,
was not even at pains to exclude the conservative theologians of his
party: “Döllinger[1594] is quite right in charging the so-called ‘old
believers’ amongst us with having fallen away from the Reformer’s
dogma of Justification as strictly and theologically defined.”[1595]
Thus oblivion seems to be the tragic fate of Luther’s great
theological discovery, which, if we are to believe what he says, was
to him the light of his existence and his most powerful incentive in
his whole work, and which figured so prominently in all his attacks
on Rome. Was it not this doctrine which played the chief part in his
belief in the utter corruption of the Church of earlier days, when,
instead of prizing the grace of Christ, everything was made to depend
on works, which had led to the ruin of Christendom, to the debasement
of the clergy and to the transformation of the Pope into Antichrist?
The sole authority of Scripture, Luther’s other palladium, had
already suffered sadly since the Revolution period, and now the
doctrine of Justification seems destined to a like fate. Albert
Ritschl was pronouncing a severe censure when he declared, “that,
amongst the differences of opinion prevalent in the ranks of the
evangelical theologians, the recognition of two propositions [the
sole authority of Scripture and Justification by imputation] was the
minimum that could be expected of anyone who wished to be considered
Evangelical.”[1596] For the fact is that the minimum required by
Ritschl, is, according to the admission of Protestant critics
themselves, frequently no longer held by these theologians.
Of the Lutheran doctrine of Justification here in question, P.
Genrich, a theologian, in his work on the idea of regeneration,
says: “If we glance at the process of salvation as described in
the evangelical theological handbooks of the 19th century, we may
well be astonished at the extraordinary divergencies existing as
regards both the conception of regeneration, and the place it is to
occupy in the system of doctrine. There are hardly two theologians
who entirely agree on the point.”[1597]--Of the practical side of
the Lutheran doctrine in question the same writer states: “It is an
almost universal complaint that this chief article of Evangelical
faith is not of much use when it is a question of implanting and
fostering piety, in the school, the church or in parish-work. Perhaps
the preacher says a few words about it ... the teacher, too, feels
it his duty to deal with it in his catechetical instructions....
Justification by faith is extolled in more or less eloquent words as
the treasure of the Reformation, because Church history and theology
have taught us so to regard it. But at heart one is glad to be
finished with it and vaguely conscious that all one said was in vain,
and that, to the children or congregation Justification still remains
something foreign and scarcely understood.”[1598] Genrich himself lays
the blame on the later formularies of Lutheranism for the mistaken
notion of a righteousness coming from without; yet the formularies of
Concord surely voiced Luther’s teaching better than the new exponents
who are so disposed to tone it down.[1599]
Of the actual theory of Luther, de Lagarde wrote some fifty years
ago: “The doctrine of Justification [Luther’s] is not the Evangel....
It was not the basic principle of the Reformation, and to-day in
the Protestant Churches it is quite dead.” De Lagarde did not allow
himself to be misled by the flowery language concerning personal
religious experience which is all that remains of Luther’s doctrine in
many modern expositions of it.[1600]
“Research in the domain of New-Testament history and in that of
the Reformation,” says K. Holl, “has arrived at conclusions closely
akin to de Lagarde’s.... It has been made impossible simply to set
the Protestant doctrine of Justification on the same level with the
Pauline and with that of the Gospel of Jesus.” Amongst the Protestant
objections to the doctrine, he instances “its narrowness, which
constitutes a limitation of the ethical insupportable to present-day
tastes.” He attempts to explain, or rather to amend, Luther’s theory,
so as to give ethics its due and to evade Luther’s “paradox of a God,”
Who, though inexorable in His moral demands, Himself procures for the
offender salvation and life. As the new dogma originally stood “both
its Catholic opponents and the Anabaptists were at one in contending
that Luther’s doctrine of Justification could not fail to lead to
moral laxity. Protestant theologians were not able to deny the weight
of this objection.” In point of fact it involves an “antinomy, for
which there is no logical solution.”[1601]
The same author writes elsewhere concerning the assurance of salvation
which, according to Luther, accompanies justifying faith: Luther,
standing as he did for predestinarianism, “clearly abolished thereby
the possibility of attaining to any certainty of salvation. All his
life Luther allowed this remarkable contradiction to remain, not
because it escaped his notice, but because he had no wish to remove
it.” Holl finds, moreover, in Luther’s opinions on Predestination “the
climax of the thoughts underlying his doctrine of Justification”; “the
strength of [justifying] faith has to be tested by one’s readiness to
submit even to the sentence [of damnation].”[1602]
In conclusion we may cite what W. Köhler says of the unreasonableness
of Luther’s denial of free-will, according to which either God or the
devil sits astride man’s back.
“With the rejection of man’s pure passivity, or, as Luther says,
of his being ridden by the Lord God, Luther’s theology suffers a
set-back, and the Catholic polemics of the 16th century receive a
tardy vindication.” Only owing to his “lucky lack of logic” did Luther
steer clear of the disastrous moral consequences of such a view; “in
practice” he still laid stress on good works in spite of the danger
that the “feeling of security” and the idea of “sinlessness” might
lead people “to sink into the mire.” His doctrine, however, in itself
leads “either to his usual thought: We are sinners after all, or to
extravagant praise of the Divine mercy which flings ‘black sheep’ into
the ‘kingdom of grace.’”[1603]
Evangelical theologians generally are, however, full of admiration
for the spirit in which Luther, thanks to his “inward experiences,”
convinced both himself and others of the certainty of Justification.
His “experience of God” had at any rate made him capable of an “heroic
faith” and, by his “risking all for God,” he pointed out to the
religion of the heart the true road to contentment for all future
time. Luther’s doctrine of Justification was the “final deepening of
the sense of personal religion” (K. Holl).
The objections on this point, raised against Luther in his own camp,
are all the more significant seeing he made all religion to consist in
the cloaking of sin and the pacifying assurance of forgiveness; his
Evangel had come as a “solace for troubled consciences”; it is “nothing
else but forgiveness, and is concerned only with sin, which it blots
out, covers over, sweeps away and cleanses so long as we live.”[1604]
Thanks to it the long-forgotten true conception of the Kingdom of God
had at last been happily brought again to light.
The title of a sermon of Luther’s printed in 1525 expresses this idea
as follows: “A Sermon on the Kingdom of Christ, which consists in the
Forgiveness of Sins,” etc. The words of Christ to the man sick of the
palsy (Mat. ix. 2) form the subject: “Be of good heart, son, thy sins
are forgiven thee.” “These words,” the preacher says, “indicate and sum
up shortly what the Kingdom of Christ is.” Since the Kingdom of Christ
must be defined in relation to the question: “How must we behave with
regard to God?” it cannot and must “not be regarded otherwise” than
according to these words: “Thy sins are forgiven thee”; for “this is
the chief thing, viz. that which can quiet the conscience.” “Whence it
follows that the Kingdom of Christ is so constituted that it contains
nothing but comfort and forgiveness of sins.” The chief fault of our
reason is its “inclination, everywhere manifest, to forsake this faith
and knowledge and to fall back upon works.”
In Holy Scripture the object of the Kingdom of Christ is differently
given. There it culminates in the glory of God. God’s glorification is
the real aim of Christ’s coming, and must also be the supreme object of
every believer. This does not in the least tally with that trumped-up
holiness-by-works which Luther saw in Catholicism. This far higher,
general, Catholic thought of God’s glory pervades the first petitions
of the prayer taught by our Saviour Himself in the Our Father:
“Hallowed be Thy Name,” etc.; only in the fifth petition do we hear of
the forgiveness of sins for which, indeed, every human creature must
implore. In the Our Father we acknowledge first of all our obligation
to serve God with all our powers and strive to comply with our duty of
glorifying His name. Hence Catholic religious instructions have never
commenced with “the simple forgiveness of sin,” with attempts to cloak
it and to induce a fancied security in the sinner; their purpose has
ever been to show that man is created to serve God and to honour Him,
and that he can best do so by imitation and love of Christ.
This high object, the only one worthy of man and his spiritual powers,
leads us to consider the doctrine of good works.
4. Good Works in Theory and Practice
Man is naturally disposed to believe that, built as he is, he must take
his share in working out his salvation, if he be in sin, by preparing
himself with God’s help to enter the state of grace and then by seeking
to retain it by means of good works.
The Church before Luther had taught, as she still does, and that on
the strength of Holy Writ, that such co-operation on man’s part, under
God’s assistance, is quite essential. Though the attaining to and
the perseverance in the Divine sonship is chiefly the work of God,
yet it is also man’s, carried out with the aid of grace. She assured
the faithful, that, according to the order graciously established by
God and warranted by Scripture, all good works have their value for
temporal and eternal reward. She sought indeed to kindle religious
fervour by pointing to the promises held out, yet she had no wish to
see man stop short at the thought of his reward, but rather expected
him to rise to a more perfect love. Generosity, so she taught, was in
no way impaired by the prospect of reward, on the contrary such hopes
served as stepping-stones to facilitate the ascent.[1605]
Luther, owing to his implacable, personal aversion to any good works or
human co-operation, laid violent hands on this so reasonable scheme of
salvation.
_Nature and Origin of the New Doctrine of Works._
Luther demanded that no importance should be set on co-operation by
means of works in the business of Justification, because salvation was
to be looked for from on high with simple faith and blind confidence.
After reconciliation, too, man must not vainly fancy that he is capable
of deserving anything by good works even by the greatest penances,
sacrifices or deeds of love, but the doing of good must be allowed to
follow simply as the effect of the Spirit of Christ now received, in
those feelings towards God which Christ produces in us and in that love
of our neighbour which is indispensable to human society.
Further light may be thrown on this standpoint of Luther’s by some
traits from his inward history and writings.
Here we cannot fail to notice echoes of his transition period, of his
conflict with his brother-monks and those pious folk who were intent on
good works and the heaping up of merits; of his subsequent remissness
in his vocation and in the performance of his duties as a monk; finally
of his later prejudice, largely a result of his polemics, against so
many of the Church’s public and private practices, of penance, of
devotion and of the love of God. He closed his eyes to the fact, that
he could have found no more effectual means of increasing amongst his
followers the growing contempt for moral effort, neglect of good works
and the gradual decline in religious feeling.
His estrangement from what he was pleased to call “holiness-by-works”
always remained Luther’s principal, ruling idea, just as it had been
the starting-point of his change of mind in his monastic days.[1606]
His chief discovery, viz. the doctrine of Justification, he was fond
of parading as an attack upon works. It is only necessary to observe
how persistently, how eagerly and instinctively he seizes the smallest
pretext to launch in his sermons and writings a torrent of abuse on the
Catholic works. It is as though some unseen hand were ever ready to
open the sluice-gates, that, whether relevant or not to the matter on
hand, his anger might pour forth against fasting, and the ancient works
of penance, against “cowls and tonsures,” against the recitation of the
Office in choir, rules, collections, pilgrimages and Jubilees, against
taking the discipline, vows, veneration of the Saints and so many other
religious practices.[1607] In his habitual slanders on works, found on
his lips from the beginning[1608] to within a few weeks of his death,
we can hardly fail to see the real link which binds together his whole
activity. As against the Popish doctrine of works he is never weary
of pointing out that his own doctrine of works is based on Christ;
“it allows God to be our Lord God and gives Him the glory,” a thought
that pleased him all the more because it concealed the error under a
mantle of piety; this deceptive idea already casts its shadow over
the very first letter in his correspondence which touches on the new
doctrine.[1609]
Johann Eck could well answer: “Luther is doing us an injustice when
he declares that we by our works exclude Christ as Mediator.... On
the contrary, we teach, that, without Christ, works are nothing....
Therefore let him keep his lies to himself; the works that are done
without faith, he may indeed talk of as he likes, but, as for ours,
they proceed from the bottom rock of faith and are performed with the
aid of Divine grace.”[1610]
Equally deceptive was the idea, so alluring in itself, that Luther’s
doctrine of works bore the stamp of true freedom, viz. the freedom
of the Gospel. Here, again, we can only see a new expression of his
profound alienation from works and from the sacrifice entailed by
self-conquest. He is desirous, so he says, of hoisting on the shield
the freedom of the man who is guided solely by God’s Spirit. But will
this not serve as an excuse for weakness? Here we seem to find an
after-effect of that late-mediæval pseudo-mysticism which had once
been a danger to him, which went so far as to demand of the righteous
complete indifference to works, and, that, in language apparently most
affecting and sublime.
These two thoughts, that Christ would thus be restored to His place
of honour and man secure evangelical freedom, were a great temptation
to many hearers of Luther’s call to leave the Catholic Church. In
all great intellectual revolutions there are always at work certain
impelling ideas, either true ones which rightly prove attractive, or
false ones which yet assume the appearance of truth and thus move
people’s minds. Without the intervention of the two thoughts just
referred to, the spread of the religious movement in the 16th century
is not fully to be explained.
How many of the apostles and followers of the new preaching were really
moved by these two thoughts must even then have been difficult to
determine. Noble and privileged souls may not have been wanting amongst
them. The masses, however, introduced so earthly an element into these
better and pious ideals that the ideals only remained as a pretext, a
very effective pretext indeed, to allege for their own pacification and
in extenuation of their other aims. Great watchwords, once put forward,
often serve as a useful cloak for other things. In this respect the
demand for the freedom of the Gospel proved very popular. The age
clamoured to be set free from bonds which were proving irksome, for
instance, to mention but one point, from exorbitant ecclesiastical
dues and spiritual penalties. Hence evangelical freedom was readily
accepted as synonymous with deliverance, and, in time, ceased to be
“evangelical” at all.
That Luther’s doctrine of works and of the freedom bestowed by Christ
the fulfiller of the Law, embodied a great moral danger, is now
recognised even by Protestants.
“How terribly dangerous,” a Protestant Church-historian says, “is
that ‘To be for ever and ever secure of life in Christ’ in the sense
in which Luther understands it! We Protestants are merely toning it
down when we find in it simply the consciousness of being supported
by God; to Luther it is much more ... it is a feeling of spiritual
mastery.” The author quotes as descriptive of Luther’s attitude the
characteristic watchword from his writing “Von der Freyheyt eynes
Christen Menschen”: “The Christian is so far exalted above everything
by faith that he becomes spiritually lord over all, for there is
nothing that can endanger his salvation.” To these we may append
Luther’s spoken words: “This is Christian freedom ... to have no need
of any work in order to attain to piety and salvation”; a Christian
may say: I possess “such a Saviour that I need have no fear of death,
and am certain of life for ever and ever; I can snap my fingers at
the devil and his hell, and am no longer called upon to tremble
before the wrath of God.”[1611] The same writer also points out,
that, according to Luther, this happy believer “remains for all this
inwardly (‘_intrinsece_’) a sinner and is righteous only outwardly
(‘_extrinsece_’).” From such teaching as this respect for works was
bound to suffer: the question of “religion and morality,” whether from
the point of view of religion in the process of salvation or from the
point of view of morals in social action, could not be satisfactorily
solved thereby. “In both cases morality comes short. Theologically
no sufficient bulwark is erected against misinterpretation.” “Luther
had trouble enough, and through his own fault, in stemming the
incroachments of immorality.”
More strongly, and with the frankness usual in the polemics of his
day, Willibald Pirkheimer, Luther’s former friend, voices the same
thought when he speaks of the “not evangelical, but rather devilish
freedom” which, owing to the preaching of the new “evangelical truth,”
had made itself so “shockingly” felt amongst so many apostates, both
male and female, and had induced him, after long hesitation, to betake
himself back to the Catholic fold.[1612]
Before quoting the opinion of other critics of the preaching against
works in his own time, we may give Luther the chance to describe the
extent of his opposition to the olden doctrine.
He is determined, as he says as early as 1516, “to root out utterly
the stupid, fleshly affectation that trusts in such works.”[1613]
“Many graces and merits,” so he taught even then, “lead man from God;
we are so ready to rely on good works, more than on God Himself”; yet
we should rather, “in absolute nakedness, pay homage to God’s mercy
from the bottom of our heart.”[1614] “The multitude of our sins must
not arouse despair, what should make us distrustful is any striving
after good works”; we “ought rather to take refuge in the mercy of
God.” The sense of good works is our ruin, for it induces in us “a
feeling of self-righteousness.”[1615] The latter words portray his own
psychological state at that time. It was these lax ideas that led to
his quarrel with the Observantines amongst his brethren and with the
so-called “Little Saints.” Here also we have an echo from the world
of thought already described as the real starting-point of his sad
development.
During this crucial period of his mental growth he preached in 1515
on the glad tidings of the Gospel; it was “glad” because it taught us
“that the law had already been fulfilled by Christ, so that it was
no longer necessary for us to fulfil it, but only, by faith, to hang
it about the Man who had fulfilled it and become conformed to Him,
because Christ is our Righteousness, Holiness and Redemption.”[1616]
Later he comes to speak still more strongly. He fully admitted it
was natural to all men, himself included, to turn to good works in
trouble of conscience; it was beyond reason not to rest on them,[1617]
yet, according to him, in solacing our conscience we must pay no
heed either to sin or to works, but put our whole trust in the
righteousness of Christ; we must, to quote him literally, “set up
grace and forgiveness, not only against sin, but also against good
works.”[1618] It is true that he protests that he has no intention to
exclude works (other statements of his in favour of good works will
be quoted in due time), yet he abases them to a level which fails to
explain why Christ and the Apostles so earnestly recommended them
and promised an eternal reward for their performance. Luther assures
us that good works form “worldly righteousness”; that love of our
neighbour is enjoined for the welfare of society and because we live
together; yet he steadfastly condemns as a “shameful delusion,” the
view “that works are of any value to righteousness in the sight of
God.”[1619]
Who of his contemporaries could deny that Luther preached a
wonderfully simple and easy road to “life everlasting”? If this and
the “forgiveness of sins” were to cost no more than he insists upon
elsewhere, viz. “that you hear the Word and believe it when you have
heard it; if you believe it, then you have it without any trouble,
expense, delay or pains; thus does the Gospel of Christ and the
Christian teaching do everything with a few short words, for it is
God’s own Word.”[1620]
Worthy of notice in connection with his ideas of evangelical freedom
(see above, p. 453, and vol. ii., p. 27 ff.) is the significant use
he makes of the term applied in the New Testament to all Christians,
viz. members of a “royal priesthood,” which Luther takes as meaning
that all believers have a certain supremacy over sin.
As every Christian, so he teaches, by virtue of the universal
priesthood possesses authority to “proclaim the Gospel,” as everyone,
“man, woman or maid,” is qualified to “teach” who “knows how to and is
able,” so the “Spirit of Christ encourages” all without exception and
makes of each one “a great Lord and King of all.” But, “where works
are preached, there the right of primogeniture is taken from us,” and
this privilege of “royal and priestly dignity disappears completely.”
Sometimes the devil tries to force us to sin, for “he is a servant
and has his own way. If he forces me to sin then I run to Christ and
invoke His help; then he is ashamed. The more he does, the greater his
shame. Thus this power is omnipotent. ‘Thou hast set all things under
his feet’ [Ps. viii. 8], we are told. ‘We shall judge the angels,’
says St. Paul [1 Cor. vi. 3]. That is our right of primogeniture which
we must ascribe, not to ourselves, but to Christ. But when Christ has
cleansed you, then you do what is good, not for yourself [by gaining
merit], but for others.”--Such a doctrine he could truly say the
Papists failed to understand. But he adds further: They cannot even
pray; “with their prayers they merely mock God.”[1621]
If all the faithful are, as the new Evangel teaches, by virtue of their
right of primogeniture great Lords and Kings, then that fear of God’s
chastisements is no longer justified which the ancient Church had
always put forward as one of the motives for performing good works and
leading a moral life. On the contrary, we are not to open our hearts
too readily to such fear. Luther’s injunctions concerning fear of the
Judge go to form a further chapter in the psychological and historical
criticism of his doctrine of works. Here we see plainly his instinctive
aversion to the views and practice of the olden Church.
The Catholic doctrine of fear had been expressed with wonderful
simplicity in the “Imitation of Christ,” already widely read in the
years previous to the Reformation: “It is well, my son, that so long
as love avails not to restrain thee, fear of eternal punishment
should at least affright thee from evil. Whoever disregards fear will
not long be able to persevere in good.”--“Consider how thou mayest
answer for thyself before the stern judge”: “Now thy labour is still
fruitful, now thy contrition still cleanses and makes satisfaction.”
“At the day of judgment the man who has mortified his flesh here
below will rejoice more than he who has indulged it in luxury.”--The
“Imitation” desires, however, that fear should be allied with
confidence and love. “Look on Me,” it makes Christ say, “let not thy
heart be troubled nor afraid. Believe in Me and trust in My mercy.
When thou thinkest thou art far from Me, I am often closest to thee.”
“If thou but trust in the Lord,” it says again, “strength will be
given thee from above.” “Thou hast no need to fear the devil if thou
art armed with the cross of Christ.” Nor do we meet in this book with
any trace of that frozen fear which Luther represented as prevalent in
the monasteries, on the contrary it insists no less on love: “In the
cloister no one can persevere unless he be ready for the love of God
to humble himself from the bottom of his heart.”
In order to supply a suitable background for his new doctrine, Luther
made out Catholic antiquity to have fostered both in theory and in
practice a craven fear, of which in reality it knew nothing at all. By
excluding the elements of trust and love, he reduced Catholic life to
the merest state of fear, as though this had actually been the sphere
in which it moved; he charges it with having cultivated that servile
fear which would at once commit sin were there no penalty attached;
he also finds in monastic life an element of excitement and confusion
which, as our readers already know, was really peculiar to his own
personal temperament at one time.
Far more characteristic than such calumnies is his own attitude to
that fear of God’s judgments which is just and indispensable.
Not as though, generally, he did not recommend and praise the “fear
of God.” This, however, falls beside the mark since such a fear may
exist without any adverting to the punishments of the judge, and,
as Luther himself puts it, not altogether incorrectly, is more “an
awe that holds God in honour and which is always expected of the
Christian, just as a good child should fear his father.”[1622] This is
the “_timor reverentialis_,” to use the earlier theological term. But
to the actual fear of the Divine judgments as an expiatory and saving
motive, Luther gives no place whatever; neither in the justification
of the sinner, seeing that he makes faith the one condition for its
attainment, or subsequent to justification and in the state of grace,
because there all that obtains is confidence in the covering over of
sin by grace, while the state of grace, in his opinion, of its own
nature necessarily works what is good. The Law and its threats, is,
in his opinion, useful “for revealing sin” in order that, knowing
this, “grace may be sought and obtained”; “thus the Law works fear and
wrath, whereas grace works hope and mercy.”[1623]
Fear, in reality, is contemptible; it “is there because sin prevails,”
hence it is not found in the pious, not even in Old-Testament
times.[1624] “Let us,” he cries, “cast at our feet all free-will....
Nature and free-will cannot stand before God, for they fear lest He
should fall upon them with His club.... Where the Holy Spirit does
not whisper to the heart the Evangelical promises, man looks upon God
as a devil, executioner, taskmaster and judge.... To the devil with
such holiness!”[1625] The above is no mere momentary outburst; it is
a theological system and the expression of his deep psychological
prejudice. We are carried back to his monastic days and to the theory
which fear led him to invent to allay his own personal agitation, but
to which he could hold fast only by dint of doing violence to himself.
When he came to see, that, to preserve the people from moral
degradation, fear of the Judgments of God had to be preached, he
urged that it should be emphasised and declared it quite essential.
This he did particularly in his instructions for the Visitation of
the Saxon Electorate, which accordingly contain what is practically
a repudiation of his teaching. The reasonable and wholesome fear of
the judge, which he would have preached to the “simple people” for
the moving of their hearts, in spite of all his protests has surely
a right and claim to work on the minds not merely of the “simple”
but even of the educated, and accordingly to be urged even by the
theologians.
Luther’s attitude here was as ambiguous as elsewhere, for instance,
in the case of his whole doctrine of grace and justification, no less
than in its premises, viz. unfreedom, concupiscence and original sin.
Everywhere we meet with contradictions, which make it almost impossible
to furnish any connected description of his doctrinal system.
_Augustine as the Authority for the New Doctrine of Works._
We have an example of Luther’s want of theological acumen in his appeal
to Augustine in support of his doctrine of works.
In order to understand this we must recollect that, from the beginning,
Luther had described his new theology as simply that of Augustine the
great Father of the Church. Of Augustine’s--of whom he said in 1516
that he had not felt the slightest leaning towards him until he had
“tumbled on” his writings[1626]--he had merely read in 1509 a small
number of works, and he became acquainted with what were for him the
more important of this Father’s writings only after he had already
largely deviated from the Church’s doctrine.[1627] Even later, his
knowledge of Augustine was scanty. He was, however, as a monk, fond of
identifying his own new doctrine of grace with Augustine’s;[1628] he
tried to enlist the help of his colleague, Amsdorf, by a present of
St. Augustine’s works; in this he was completely successful.[1629] On
May 18, 1517, he wrote to Lang on the state of things at Wittenberg,
the triumphant words already quoted: “Our theology and St. Augustine
are making happy progress with God’s help and are now paramount at
the University,” etc.[1630] From that time forward he was fond of
saying, that Augustine was opposed “to Gabriel Biel, Thomas of Aquin
and the whole crowd of Sententiaries, and would hold the field against
them because he was grounded on the pure Gospel, particularly on
the testimony of Paul.”[1631] To what extent he really in his heart
believed this of Augustine must remain a moot question.
“Luther,” says Julius Köstlin, one of the best-known authorities on
Luther’s theology, “could, indeed, appeal to St. Augustine in support
of the thesis that man becomes righteous and is saved purely by God’s
gracious decree and the working of His Grace and not by any natural
powers and achievements [which is the Catholic doctrine], but not
for the further theory that man is regarded by God as just purely by
virtue of faith ... nor that the Christian thus justified can never
perform anything meritorious in God’s sight but is saved merely by the
pardoning grace of God which must ever anew be laid hold of by faith”
[i.e. the specifically Lutheran theses on faith and works]. The same
author adds: “Only gradually did the fundamental difference between the
Augustinian view, his own and that of Paul become entirely clear to
Luther.”[1632]
When this happened it is hard to say; at any rate, his strictures on
Augustine and the Fathers in his lectures of 1527 on the 1st Epistle of
St. John, and in his later Table-Talk prove, that, as time went on he
had given up all idea of finding in these authorities any confirmation
of his doctrine on faith alone and works.[1633]
However his convictions may have stood, he certainly, in his earlier
writings, claimed Augustine in support of his doctrine of the absence
of free-will, particularly on account of a passage in the work
“_Contra Julianum_,” which Luther repeats and applies under various
forms.[1634] There can, of course, be no question of St. Augustine’s
having actually been a partisan, whether here or elsewhere, of the
Lutheran doctrine of the “enslaved will.” “These and other passages
from St. Augustine which Luther quotes in proof of the unfreedom of
the will really tell against him; he either tears them from their
context or else he falsifies their meaning.”[1635] He is equally
unfair when, in his Commentary on Romans and frequently elsewhere,
he appeals to this Doctor of the Church in defence of his opinion,
that, after baptism, sin really still persists in man,[1636]
likewise in his doctrine of concupiscence in general,[1637] where
he even fails to quote his texts correctly. He alters the sense of
Augustine’s words with regard to the keeping of God’s commandments,
the difference between venial and mortal sin, and the virtues of
the just.[1638] Denifle, after patiently tracing Luther’s patristic
excursions, angrily exclaims: “He treats Augustine as he does Holy
Scripture.”[1639]
Deserving of notice, because it explains both his repeated quotations
from Augustine and his advocacy of the motive of fear, is a lengthy
admonition of 1531 couched in the form of a letter on the defence of
the new doctrine of faith alone and of works. The letter was written
by Melanchthon to Johann Brenz, but it had the entire approval of
Luther, who even appended a few words to it.[1640] While clearly
throwing overboard Augustine, it is nevertheless anxious to retain him.
The letter discussed the objections alleged by Brenz, the influential
promoter of the innovations in Suabia, against Luther’s doctrine of
Justification, particularly as formulated in the Augsburg Confession,
and against Melanchthon’s appeal therein to St. Augustine; Brenz
urged that some effort on man’s part certainly intervened in the work
of pardon. In the reply Augustine is practically given up. Brenz
is told that he is wrong in clinging to Augustine’s fancy (“_hæres
in Augustini imaginatione_”) which puts our righteousness in the
fulfilment of the Law. “Avert your eyes from such a regeneration of
man and from the Law and look only to the promises and to Christ....
Augustine is not in agreement with the doctrine of Paul [read ‘of
Luther’], though he comes nearer to it than do the Schoolmen. I quote
Augustine as in entire agreement (_prorsus_ _ὁμόψηχος_), although
he does not sufficiently explain the righteousness of faith; this
I do because of public opinion concerning him.” What he means is:
Since Augustine is universally held in such high esteem, and has been
instanced by us, for this reason I too quote him as though on this
point he agreed entirely with Paul, which, as a matter of fact, is not
the case.[1641]
Melanchthon next deals more closely with the new idea of
righteousness. He hints that, in the Augsburg documents, he had not
been able to speak as he was now doing to Brenz,[1642] although, so he
persuades himself, he was really saying the same then as now. He gives
Brenz what, compared with Luther’s blunt words at the end, is a very
polished rendering of the Wittenberg doctrine. “Dismiss the fancy of
Augustine entirely from your mind,” he concludes, “and then you will
readily understand the reason [why only faith can justify]; I hope
that then you will find in our ‘Apologia’ [of the Confession] some
profit, though in it I was obliged to express many things with that
timidity which can only be understood in struggles of conscience (‘_in
certaminibus conscientiarum_’). It is essential to bring to the ears
of the people the preaching of the Law and of penance, but the above
true doctrine of the Gospel must not be lost sight of.”--To retire
with his holed theology into the mystic obscurity of the “struggles of
conscience” was an art that the pupil had learnt from his master.
Luther, unlike Melanchthon, was no adept on the tight-rope; in his
postscript he bluntly dismisses the Law, penance and all works so
far as they are intended to assist in sanctification as Brenz like
the Papists thought; his cry is “Christ alone.” Not even in “love
or the gifts that follow from it,” does our salvation lie; in this
work nothing within ourselves plays any part, therefore “away with
all reference to the Law and to works,” away too, with the thought
of “Christ as Rewarder!” “In the stead of every ‘_qualitas_’ in
myself, whether termed faith or love, I simply set Jesus Christ
and say: This is my righteousness, this is my ‘_qualitas_’ and my
‘_formalis iustitia_,’ as they call it.” Thus only had he everything
in himself, thus only did Christ become the “way, the truth and the
life” to him, without “effecting this in me from without; in me, not,
however, through me, He Himself must remain, live and speak.” Of
Augustine Luther indeed says nothing in this passage, but he could
not have expressed more strongly the purely mechanical conception of
justification, nor have rejected more emphatically every human work,
even man’s co-operation under grace.
With this decision Brenz in his letters to Luther and Melanchthon
declared himself satisfied, likewise with the instruction received,
“which was worthy of a place in the canon of Scripture.”
It is unfortunate, however, that Conrad Cordatus, one of Luther’s
favourite pupils, when consigning to his Notes the joint declarations
of Luther and Melanchthon, should have registered a protest against
“Philip’s innovations.” His quarrel with Philip Melanchthon on
the doctrine of Justification was one of the many phases of the
dissensions called forth in the Protestant camp by the “article on
which the Church stands or falls.”[1643]
Against any citation of St. Augustine the Lutheran theologians and
preachers in Pomerania protested during the negotiations for the
formula of Concord. By thus falsely alleging this Father, they said in
their declaration at the Synod of Stettin in 1577, a formidable weapon
was placed in the hands of their Catholic opponents of which they had
not failed to avail themselves against the Protestants; they were also
assuming the responsibility for a public lie: “Augustine’s book ‘_De
spiritu et littera_’ teaches concerning Justification what the Papists
teach to-day.” In the following year they declared against the form
of the “first ‘_Confessio Augustana_,’ as published at Wittenberg
in 1531 by Luther and our other fathers,” again on the ground that
“there Augustine’s ‘_consensus_’ is alleged.”[1644] In Mecklenburg
the strictures of the Synods of Pomerania were accepted as perfectly
warranted. David Chytræus, Professor at Rostock and once a member of
Melanchthon’s household, stated about that time, that Erhard Schnepf,
the Würtemberg theologian, who was of the same way of thinking as
Johann Brenz, had declared in 1544, i.e. during Luther’s lifetime,
in a public discourse at Tübingen, that in the whole of Augustine
there was not a syllable concerning the righteousness of Christ being
imputed to us by faith.[1645] When Chytræus adds that Augustine “was
_ὁμόψηχος_ with the Papists,” it is very likely that he was countering
the opposite use of this same word by Melanchthon in the passage
mentioned above; the latter’s epistle to Brenz had then already been
printed.
The real teaching of St. Augustine is best seen in his anxiety that man
should co-operate with all the power furnished by the assistance of
God’s grace, in the attainment of his salvation. The wholesome fear of
God he reckons first, after the necessary condition of faith has been
fulfilled. Of the acts of moral preparation (fear, hope, love, penance
and good resolutions) for obtaining the grace of Justification from
God, he regards fear as the element, without which a man “never, or
hardly ever,” reaches God.[1646] To show the necessity of works and a
good intention he appeals to texts in the Epistle of St. James rejected
by Luther, where we read: “You see that by works a man is justified and
not by faith only” (ii. 24). Here he goes so far as to suggest that
James probably spoke so explicitly of works because the passages on
faith in Paul’s Epistles had been misunderstood by some.[1647]
“We say,” so he teaches in opposition to Luther concerning the
destruction of sin in man by baptism, “that baptism brings the
remission of all sins, and not merely erases them, but actually
removes them (‘_auferre crimina non radere_’); the roots of sin do not
remain in the corrupt flesh, so that the sins have not to grow again
and be again cut off like the hair of our heads.”[1648]
The righteousness which is bestowed on the sinner is, in his view, no
imputed righteousness of Christ but a personal righteousness actually
residing in man. Hence he explains that the “Justice of God,” referred
to in Rom. iii. 21 f., is not that whereby God is just, but that with
which He provides the impious man when justifying him; in the same
way the “faith of Christ” mentioned there is “not a faith by which
Christ believes, but the faith that is in us.” “Both are ours, but
they are ascribed to God and Christ because bestowed on us by the
Divine favour.”[1649] The righteousness bestowed on us is “that which
Adam lost by sin”; Adam’s righteousness was a quality inherent in him,
not the imputed righteousness of Christ.[1650] It is also the same
grace which is infused into adults in Justification and which children
receive in baptism.[1651] By sanctifying grace the soul is inwardly
ennobled, “for when nature’s Creator justifies it by grace, it ceases
to be an object of horror and becomes a thing of beauty.”[1652] The
Holy Ghost dwells in us and “God gives us therewith no less a gift
than Himself.”[1653] Thus “as the soul is the life of the body, so God
is the life of the soul.”[1654]
Our state of grace may, however, be dimmed, and that not only by lack
of faith; for it has its enemies in imperfections and sins. “Though
our righteousness is a true one, yet in this life the forgiveness
of sins plays a greater part than the perfection of virtue.”[1655]
“If our will turns against God, we separate ourselves from Him, and
the light which enlightened us during His presence at once changes
into darkness.”[1656] In order to prevent any such danger on the
part of the will, Augustine frequently reminds his readers of such
exhortations of our Saviour, as: “If thou wilt enter into life, keep
the commandments.” “He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he
it is that loveth me.”
Man is also spurred to be faithful, so he says, by the merit of good
works. “God Himself has become our debtor,” so he said when preaching
to the assembled faithful; “not as though He had received something
from us, but because He has promised what He pleased. To a man we
speak differently and say: You are my debtor because I have given to
you. To God we say, on the contrary: Thou art my debtor because Thou
hast made me promises; ... in this sense therefore we may urge on God
our demands and say: Give what Thou hast promised, for we have done
what Thou didst command.”[1657]
To recommend the practice of good works out of love of God and zeal
for His honour, and to heap up merit for heaven, is the purpose of
long and eloquent portions of the literary legacy which Augustine left
behind him. The whole of the book “_De fide et operibus_” and long
chapters of his “_Enchiridion_” were written with this object. In the
former work he introduces, for instance, the Judgment scene described
by our Saviour, and says: “Those who are placed on the left hand of
Christ, according to this passage (Mat. xxv. 41), He will reproach
not for not having believed in Him, but for not having performed
good works. How could this be true if we were to attain to salvation
without keeping the commandments or by faith alone (‘_per solam
fidem_’), which without works is dead? Christ wished to impress on us
that no one can promise himself eternal life by a dead faith, minus
works. Hence He causes all the nations who have received the same
spiritual food [of faith] to be separated out before Him, and clearly
it is such as have believed but have not performed good works who
will say: When did we see Thee suffering this and that [and did not
minister to Thee]? They had fancied that by a dead faith they could
attain to everlasting life.”[1658]
The voice of the bishop of Hippo, supported by the whole Church whose
doctrine was also his, was re-echoed by later ecclesiastical writers
who made greedy use of his works; nor were the exhortations of the
Fathers without result among the faithful. Later Fathers frequently
discourse on the testimony of Holy Writ in favour of works just as
Augustine had done; the following texts were frequently adduced: “God
will render to every man according to his works”; “Not the hearers
of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be
justified”; “The Son of Man will come and render to every man according
to his works” (Rom. ii. 6, 13; Mat. xvi. 27).
Gregory the Great, who trained himself on Augustine’s model, states,
in a homily to his congregation: “Possibly we may say to ourselves: I
believe, hence I shall be saved. This is only true when we prove our
faith by our works.” “Then are we true believers when we execute in
work what we confess in our faith.”[1659]
A faith proved by works was the sign manual of the Middle Ages. Nor did
Luther and his preachers ever complain of the lack of works of piety in
the days previous to the Reformation, although they thought it their
duty to blame the spirit in which those works had been performed.
What, however, did Luther and his followers think of the moral
consequences of the preaching directed against all merit of good works?
_The New Doctrine of Works in Practice, as Judged by Lutheran Opinion
in the 16th Century._
We have already listened to Luther’s own complaints and those of many
of his contemporaries concerning the parlous state of morals amongst
the adherents of the new teaching, and the almost entire absence of
any practical fruits of piety under the amended Gospel.[1660] Since
the mainstay of the innovations was the doctrine of grace and works
it is necessary to seek out more closely the connection between the
new doctrine of works and the sad moral results of the revolt against
the Church. Luther himself makes no odds about referring to these
results and their real cause: “The surer we are of the freedom won by
Christ, the more indolent do we become”; “because we teach that man
attains to grace without any works whatever, we grow lazy”; he almost
wishes “that the old teaching again came into its own.”[1661] Only his
shortsightedness and the psychological effect of his passionate temper
prevented his foreseeing the inevitable consequences of his theory of
the all-sufficiency of faith and of his reckless denunciation of the
regard for commandments and works previously obtaining. How little his
own frequent exhortations to lead a moral life and to perform works
of Christian charity (see below, p. 472 ff.) could prevail against the
fell charm of the doctrine of Evangelical freedom, remained hid from
his eyes, until the extent of the moral corruption and the growing
savagery of the people in certain regions began to frighten him and to
cause him to long ardently for the end of the world and even to predict
its imminence.
There was some truth in what he said, viz. that, as the world was
constituted, if one preached faith (i.e. the justifying faith so much
belauded by him) works went to the wall, and that, on the other hand,
“faith” must needs perish wherever works were preached.[1662] The two
were indeed self-exclusive, however much, in his recommendation of
works, he might affirm the contrary.
This is not the place to point out anew the dangers inherent in
Luther’s doctrine of justification, for we have already seen the
necessary result of one of its presuppositions, viz. the denial of
free-will, and how right Erasmus was when he urged against Luther,
that, on this assumption, all laws and commandments, even those of
Scripture, were simply superfluous. A Protestant has aptly remarked,
that, in the last instance, “the difference between good and evil
becomes quite illusory”; we might well ask: “How can we feel ourselves
responsible towards God ... if we do nothing and God works all in all?”
Luther himself even goes so far as to make Scripture teach that “the
will not only desires nothing good, but is even unaware of how much
evil it does and of what good is.”[1663] Since the imputed merits of
Christ are, as a matter of fact, merely like a screen set up in front
of the soul, many might naturally feel tempted to extenuate and excuse
all that the sin which persists in man still does behind it.
To appreciate the peculiar nature of the danger it is necessary to take
Luther’s teaching, not by itself, but in conjunction with the mental
atmosphere of the day. We must of course take it for granted that
many of his followers refrained from putting into practice Luther’s
teaching in its entirety, for instance, his peculiar doctrine of the
lack of free-will. Many well-disposed Lutherans whose good faith was
above suspicion, doubtless remained more or less outside the influence
of such ideas, were actuated by good religious motives and expressed
them in Christian works. Assisted by the grace of God, which is at the
disposal of all men of good-will, they, all unknowingly, were gaining
merit in heaven. On the other hand, the ill-disposed, those who sought
the enjoyments of life--and of such there were thousands--found a
sanction in the Wittenberg doctrine for neglecting good works. In the
case of many the “joyful tidings” could not under the circumstances
of the age be expected to produce any other result. We have only to
think of what was going on all about; of the prevalent yearning after
release from irksome bonds; of the unkindly feeling towards rulers,
both ecclesiastical and secular; of the seething discontent among the
peasants on account of their oppression and toilsome duties; of the
spirit of independence so vigorous in the towns; of the boundless
ambition of the mighty; of the influence, sometimes sceptical,
sometimes immoral, of Humanism, and of the worldliness and degradation
of so many of the clergy and monks, to be able to understand how
momentous was the effect of Luther’s doctrine of justification and his
preaching concerning works.
We know on the one hand from many examples with what zest the newly-won
promoters of Lutheranism--for the most part former ministers of the
Church who had discarded their calling--concentrated their attacks on
the practice of good works, and, on the other, how the better-disposed
followers of the new doctrine admitted the danger to works accruing
from Luther’s views and even their actually evil consequences.
The declamation of the preachers against works was partly intended to
silence their own scruples. At any rate it was the speediest method
of obtaining a numerous following. The preachers were obliged to
deal in some way with the objection constituted by the existence of
far greater religious zeal in the olden Church than amongst the new
believers; they solved it by denouncing zeal for “outward works.” They
were also frequently obliged to extenuate their own laxity of morals,
and this they did in the most convenient fashion by branding moral
strictness as pharisaical holiness-by-works.
Thus it came about that some, even of the more cautious and moderate
Lutherans, for instance Urban Rhegius, complained that the preachers
were confining themselves to the denunciation of works and to
proclaiming the power of faith alone, as though the great gift of the
new religious system merely spelt release from everything displeasing
to the flesh; there they came very near justifying the constant
assertion to this effect of the defenders of Catholicism, indeed the
Catholics’ most effective weapon.
Rhegius, who died in 1541, as General Superintendent of Lüneburg,
summed up his experiences of the effect on the people of Luther’s
doctrine of Evangelical freedom, in the sermons he delivered at Hall
in the Tyrol: “The rude, carnal people here think that the Law has
been abolished and that we are released from it, so that we can do
as we please; hence, quite shamelessly and to the disgrace of the
Evangel, they say: To steal and to commit adultery is no longer
sinful, for the Law is no more of any account. Alas, what crass
blindness has fallen upon this people, that they think the Son of God
came into the world and suffered so much on account of sin in order
that we might lead a shameful, dissolute and bestial life.”[1664]
A man of no great firmness of character, he had previously been
episcopal vicar at Constance, and could speak from experience of
the condition of things amongst the preachers of both Southern and
Northern Germany.
He accused them of being responsible for the disastrous consequences,
but forgot to seek the real cause in the doctrine itself. According to
him not only did no two preachers agree in their preaching, so that
the people complained they did not know which religion to follow,
but too many were in the habit of speaking, “as though it were
possible without doing penance and without any contrition or sorrow
for sin to believe Christ’s Gospel and rest secure in the proffered
forgiveness.”[1665] They gave vent to utterances such as these: “Our
works are no good and stink in God’s nostrils. He does not want them.
They only make hypocrites. Faith alone does all. If only you believe,
you will become pious and be saved.”[1666]
In 1535 he had recourse to the pen in order to impress on the
preachers “How to speak with caution,” as the title of his work runs.
In this tract, published in German and Latin, he attempts to show
from a number of instances “how the preachers run off the track on
one side or the other,” and how many of them “merely destroy and fail
to build.”[1667] Anxious to drive home Luther’s doctrine of good
works, in the chapter devoted to this subject,[1668] he mentions
six different ways in which good works were profitable, which the
preachers were not to forget. In all six, however, the real advantage
and necessity of good works is not established on its true foundation.
The curious tract was an imitation and enlargement of a work published
in 1529 under the title: “Anweisung wie und was wir Ernst von Gots
Gnaden Hertzog zu Braunswick und Leuneburg unseres Fürstenthumbs
Pfarhern und Predigern zu predigen befohlen.”[1669] The secular rulers
were often obliged, as in this instance, to intervene in order to
safeguard the new faith from preachers who were either thoughtless, or
too logical, or in some cases half crazy.
The complaints current among Luther’s friends about the bad effects of
the doctrine of justification were even heard long after the tumults
of the earliest religious struggles were over.
For this reason we are not justified in making out the decline which
followed in the train of the new system of faith to have been merely
an episode in the history of civilisation and simply the inevitable
after-effect of the great upheaval in the intellectual world. It has
been argued that far-reaching and disturbing changes in public life
are usually accompanied by an increase of immorality among the masses,
and also that the disorders dating from Catholic times bore fruit only
when brought in contact with the new religion. Unfortunately in the
present case we have to do with conditions which, as later witnesses
show, persisted even when tranquillity had once more been restored and
when the fruits of the new ideas should already have ripened. “What is
here disclosed,” justly remarks Döllinger, “was the result of a system
already firmly established, no mere after-effect of former conditions,
but a true home produce continuing to flourish even when the thousand
ties which had once linked human life and consciousness with the olden
Church had long been torn and rent asunder, and when the memory of
the doctrines, imagery, practices and institutions of that Church had
either been completely forgotten by the people, or were known to them
only through controversial references made in the pulpits and in the
manuals of religious instruction.”[1670]
Andreas Hyperius, Professor at the University of Marburg and the best
theological authority in Hesse († 1564), in view of the low religious
and moral standards of the Protestants which he had had occasion to
notice during his many journeys, declared that it was necessary,
particularly in the pulpit, to be more reticent on the article of
Justification by faith alone. Not indeed that he was unwilling to
have this preached, yet he did not consider it advisable to continue
to “declaim to the masses with such violence on faith alone,” as had
hitherto been done. The state of the Church most urgently required
that the people, who already troubled themselves little enough
about doing good, should be spurred on to good works and, as far as
possible, brought back to a faith productive of fruit.[1671] Elsewhere
he describes with indignation the generally prevailing indifference
towards the poor; this annoyed him all the more, as he was well aware
of the loving care displayed towards them by both clergy and laity in
the past.[1672]
In a document dealing with Luther’s (or rather Flacius’s) doctrine of
man’s passivity in the work of conversion, the theologians of Leipzig
and Wittenberg, in 1570, attributed to it the prevailing corruption.
“The masses,” they said, “have been led into a wild, dissolute and
godless life.... There is hardly a spot to be found in the whole world
where greater modesty, honesty and virtue are not to be met with than
amongst those who listen daily to God’s Word.”[1673]
Thirty years later Polycarp Leyser, the Wittenberg Professor and
Superintendent, who stood for the strictest form of Lutheranism,
declared: “The moral corruption to-day is so great everywhere that
not only pious souls but even nature herself gives vent to uneasy
groans”; as the cause of it all he mentions the delusion under which
many members of the new Church laboured, viz. of fancying themselves
excellent Christians so long as they boasted loudly of faith and
repeated Scripture passages concerning the unspeakable mercy of God
Who received sinners into His favour without any co-operation on their
part, even though meanwhile they led the most shameful life.[1674]
“All these people have ever the faith in their mouths,” wrote Wolfgang
Franz, the Wittenberg professor of theology, in an admonition to the
Lutheran preachers (1610); “they are ever prating of faith and of
nothing but faith, and yet no one can adequately describe how brimful
they are of vice and sin.” For this the preachers were chiefly to
blame, because they dinned Justification by faith alone into the
people’s ears without further explaining it; hence many of their
hearers, who did not even know the Our Father, could discourse on
faith more learnedly than St. Paul; they fancied that if only they
protested now and then during their lifetime that they believed in
Jesus Christ, their salvation was assured; they thought that if a
murderer who died after committing his crime had only time to confess
Jesus with his lips he would at once soar up to heaven.[1675]
Johannes Rivius, Rector of Freiberg, and a personal friend of
Luther’s, declared the very year after Luther’s death that his
experience had shown him that the Lutheran peasants knew neither
what they should believe nor how they ought to live, and troubled
themselves little about it; the people might well be taken for
Epicureans were they not perpetually boasting of their faith in
Christ. He bewailed his times, distinguished as they were beyond
all past ages by their immorality; corruption of morals had indeed
grown so bad that ungodliness and Epicureanism had quite ousted
Christianity.[1676]--Not long after, in another writing, he continued
his description of the moral decay, and again and again points to
the cause, viz. the false ideas of faith, law and works. “By far
the greater number of people to-day take not the slightest pains to
restrain the lusts of the flesh; ... they indulge in every kind of
impiety, while at the same time boasting of faith and bragging of
the Gospel.... When the people hear nowadays that there is no other
satisfaction for sin than the death of the Redeemer, they fancy they
can sin with impunity and give themselves up to luxury.... How many
are there who practise real penance though making so brave a show of
faith?... They say: ‘Even should you be stained with every vice, only
believe and you will be saved; you need not be scared by the Law, for
Christ has fulfilled it and done enough for men!’ Such words [which
Luther himself had used] give great scandal to pious souls, lead men
astray into a godless life and are the cause of their continuing to
live hardened in vice and shame and without a thought of amendment;
thus such views only serve to encourage the ungodly in vice and
deprive them of every incentive to amend their lives.”[1677]
If the leaders of the innovations could speak in such a way then yet
stronger charges against the doctrine of Justification and its effects
may be expected from Luther’s opponents.
Johann Haner of Nuremberg, who there, in 1534, turned his back on the
new faith, wrote a small book on the interpretation of Scripture which
is accounted among the best and calmest of the period. The Preface
shows that it was the sight of the immoral outcome of Luther’s views
on faith and grace which led him to revert to Catholicism. Without
mentioning Luther’s name he tells us that in his book he is going “to
withstand all false, fleshly confidence,” “all freedom of the spirit
which leads to destruction”; the object of his attack is that faith
which is “a mere presumptuous laying claim to grace, and that Evangel
which opens the door to licence of every kind,” while “telling us
to trust solely in an alien righteousness, viz. the righteousness
of Christ”; “these anti-Evangelicals, as they ought to be called,
by their roguery and their carnal mind had turned topsy-turvy the
teaching which led to true piety.”[1678]
To Wicel the convert Haner wrote a letter which was one of the causes
of his expulsion from Nuremberg by the preachers and the magistrates.
Here he said: “By the worthless dogma of Justification by faith alone,
which is their alpha and omega, they have not merely loosed all the
bonds of discipline in the Church, but also abolished all penance
towards God and all unity and friendship among the brethren. Never
since the earliest heresies in the Church has there been seen so
poisonous and noxious a dogma, the effect of which has been none other
than to make the word of the Cross foolishness to us, and to cause
both charity towards the brethren and the spirit of repentance towards
God to wax cold.”[1679]
From Protestant Nuremberg it also was that Willibald Pirkheimer the
patrician, as early as 1528, after his own return to the Church, wrote
to a friend at Vienna, the architect Tschertte, “I confess that in
the beginning I was a good Lutheran, just like our departed Albert
[Dürer]. For we hoped that the Roman knavery and the roguery of the
monks and priests would be amended. But now we see that matters
have become so much worse, that, in comparison with the Evangelical
scoundrels, those other scamps are quite pious.” The Evangelicals
with their “shameful and criminal behaviour” wished nevertheless “not
to be judged by their works,” and pointed to their faith. But “when
a man acts wickedly and criminally he shows thereby that he is no
honest man, however much he may boast of his faith; for without works
faith is dead, just as works are dead without faith.... The works show
plainly that there is neither faith nor truth there, no fear of God,
or love of our neighbour, but a discarding of all honesty and clean
living, art and learning.... Almsgiving has ceased, for these knaves
have so abused it that no one will give any longer.”[1680]
A few years before this, Othmar Luscinius, an Alsacian theologian,
then one of the most weighty scholars of Germany, who, save for
having taken a passing fancy for Luther, remained true to the Church,
described the “rude Christians,” “whom really we ought to pity, who of
the articles necessary for Justification take those only that please
them and are sweet, viz. faith and the Evangel, arguing: ‘I have only
to believe and I shall be saved’; as for the other, which is bitter
and far from easy, viz. the putting to death of the old Adam, that
they take good care to leave alone.”[1681]
The above is sufficient to show that there was a consensus of opinion
in tracing back the moral decadence to the Lutheran doctrine of works.
As against this there is a certain strangeness in the explanation
variously given by Protestants of this real retrogression: The
complaints of Luther and his preachers, so they aver, only prove
that they were dissatisfied, as it was their right and duty to be,
with what had been achieved in the moral order.--At any rate, the
distressing results of the doctrine of faith alone proved strikingly
how ineffectual had been all Luther’s exhortations to good works.
_Luther’s Utterances in Favour of Good Works._
Many and earnest are Luther’s exhortations to prove our faith by works
of love towards God and our neighbour; to sinners he frequently speaks
of the path of penance which they must tread; conversion he wishes to
be accomplished with lively faith and the state of grace preserved
by practical piety. It was assuredly not the lack of such counsels
which occasioned the decline described above; this was rather due
to the system itself, combined with the evil effects of the general
overthrow of the old ecclesiastical law and practice which safeguarded
morals, and with the contempt aroused for the sacraments, for public
worship and the spiritual authorities. History must, however, allow
Luther’s exhortations on behalf of good works and the keeping of the
commandments to speak for themselves.
We may begin with his thesis: “We are bound to bring our will into
entire conformity with the Divine Will.”[1682] In accordance with
this, in his “Von der Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen,” he does not
fail to speak agreeably with the teaching of the olden Church of the
assistance God gives for the zealous keeping of the commandments.
“If you desire to keep all the commandments, to be rid of your evil
lusts and of sin as the commandments enjoin and demand, then believe
in Christ, for in Him I make bold to promise you all grace and
righteousness, peace and freedom. If you believe, then you have it;
if you do not believe, you have it not. For what is impossible to
you with all the works of the Law, of which there must be many though
all to no profit, will be short and easy to you by faith.... The
promises of God give both the command and the fulfilment.”[1683] What
he means to say is, that, by faith, we receive grace in order to wage
a successful “conflict with sin.” Grace is, however, equivalent to
faith. “Without grace,” he had already taught before, “man cannot keep
God’s commandments.” “The old man ... is led by concupiscence.” “But
to faith all things are possible through Christ.”[1684]
Elsewhere he clearly teaches that faith alone is not nearly enough;
to rely exclusively on this must indeed be termed “folly”; with the
assistance of grace man must also keep the Law.[1685]
In spite of all he has to say against Moses and his harsh and
terrifying “Law”--the Ten Commandments inclusive--when he is busy
exalting the Evangel, he nevertheless has occasionally high praise for
the Decalogue on account of its agreement with the law of nature. His
exposition of it contains much that is worth taking to heart.[1686]
Faith, he points out, shows us whence the strength for keeping the Ten
Commandments is to be drawn.[1687]
The Christian, according to a lengthy and beautiful passage in the
Church Postils (in a sermon for the Feast of the Conception), must
“struggle and fight” against his lusts and must seek to resist the
darts of the wicked one.[1688] “If we have been baptised and believe,
we have received grace, and this contends with the evil inclinations
within us and expels and destroys original sin; then good and honest
desires for humility, chastity, longanimity and all the virtues awaken
in us, and at once good works begin to be performed with a cheerful
heart. All this is done by the grace which we receive in baptism by
faith in Christ; it is impossible for such grace to remain idle, but
it must needs bring forth good works.”
Emphatic admonitions to preserve chastity and a reminder of the
religious means to be employed are also frequent with him, for
instance, in his “Von guten Wercken,” written in 1520 at Spalatin’s
instigation, to repel the charge that his teaching was antagonistic
to any striving after virtue, to morality or Christian works. He
dedicated the writing to Duke Johann, the brother of the Saxon
Elector. Chastity, he there says, is indeed a hard matter, but it must
be acquired. “Even were no other work commanded besides chastity we
should all of us have enough to do, so dangerous and furious is the
[contrary] vice.... To get the better of all this requires labour
and trouble, and in fact all the commandments of God teach us how
important is the rightful performance of good works, nay that it is
impossible of our own strength even to plan a good work, let alone
commence and accomplish it.... This work of chastity, if it is to
be preserved, impels us to many other good works, to fasting and
temperance, in order to resist gluttony and drunkenness, to watching
and early rising, in spite of our laziness and love for slumber,
to strive and to labour in overcoming idleness. For gluttony and
drinking, too much sleep, idleness and loitering are the weapons of
unchastity.... These exercises, however, must not be carried further
than is necessary to subdue unchastity, not to the extent of damaging
our frame. The strongest weapons of all are prayer and the Word of
God.... Thus you see that each one finds enough to do in himself and
good works in plenty to perform. Yet now no one makes use of prayer,
fasting, watching and labour for this purpose, but looks upon these
works as an end in themselves, though the performance of these works
of the Law ought to be regulated daily so as to be ever more and more
purified [the sentence contains Luther’s usual perversion of Catholic
doctrine and practice]. Other things also have been mentioned as to
be avoided, such as soft beds and clothing, unnecessary adornments,
the society, sight and conversation of men or women, and much else
conducive to chastity. In all this no one can lay down a fixed rule
and measure. Each one must decide for himself what things and how
many are helpful to chastity, and for how long.” Here he even pays a
tribute to the monasteries founded in bygone ages to teach the “young
people discipline and cleanliness.” Finally he insists that “a good,
strong faith” “helps greatly in this work,” since “faith ever liveth
and doth all our works.”[1689]
The ravings of the fanatics repeatedly furnished him with an occasion
to emphasise good works more strongly and even to speak of a faith
working by love.
His dislike for their lawless behaviour and their praise of the
Spirit, to some extent directed against ordinary works, called him
into the arena. To call back the disturbers to a more moral life and
to the considerations of charity, he appealed to them to “exercise
themselves in the faith that worketh by charity” (Gal. v. 6). Even
the Epistle of James now appeared to him good enough to quote,
particularly the verse (i. 22): “Be ye doers of the the Word, and
not hearers only, deceiving your own selves”; from this Epistle he
also borrows the comparison of a dead faith, viz. of a faith not made
living through charity, with the face as seen in a glass, which is
merely the semblance of a countenance and not the reality.[1690]
It was the fanatics again who in 1530 drew from him some eloquent
statements in favour of good works, because, so he said, they had
misrepresented his doctrine that “Good works neither make a man pious
nor blot out sin.” They said “they would give their good works for
a groat,” and that all good works were not worth a peppercorn. Here
he professes to see great danger in contempt for good works and the
perversion of his teaching by the “devil’s lying tongue.” Good works,
according to him, are rather to be esteemed very highly because they
are God’s own. “If it is a good work, then God has wrought it in and
by me”; “it was done for the honour and glory of God and for the
profit and salvation of my neighbour.” He himself had been far from
questioning this and had merely taught that works did not conduce
to piety, i.e. “to justify the soul and to placate God”; this, on
the contrary, was “entirely the work of the One true God and of His
grace.”[1691]
Just as during his public career Luther looked upon such statements
as all the more useful seeing they blunted the edge of the awkward
inferences drawn from the new Evangel, and served to vindicate his
action from the charge of loosening the bonds of morality, so, at the
close of his days, he was obliged in a similar way to hark back to the
defence of good works against Antinomianism, of which the principal
spokesman was Johann Agricola. It is true that the Antinomians based
their contempt for the Law, which they said was harmful, and for the
excessive respect for commandments and good works which, according to
them, still prevailed, on nothing less than Luther’s own teaching. In
reality it was to his advantage that their exaggerations forced him to
explain away much that he had said, or at least to exercise greater
caution. The encounter with Agricola the Antinomian will be described
later (vol. v., xxix., 3). In spite of his being thus compelled to
take the Law and good works under his wing in this controversy, Luther
never, then or later, put forward the true relation of the Law to the
Gospel nor the real foundation of good works.[1692] He became involved
in contradictions, and to the end of his days it became more and more
apparent how forced had been the introduction into his theology of
good works and the keeping of the Law.
Nicholas Amsdorf, Luther’s intimate friend and most docile pupil,
published in 1559 a tract entitled “That the proposition ‘Good works
are harmful to salvation’ is a good and Christian one preached both by
St. Paul and by Luther.” Their “harmfulness” resided in their being
regarded as meritorious for salvation. We may wonder what Luther
would have thought of this writing had he been alive? In any case the
Lutheran Formula of Concord of 1577 contains a mild protest against it:
“The assertion that good works are necessary is not to be reprehended,
seeing that it may be understood in a favourable sense”;[1693] it
also appeals to what had been laid down in the Augsburg Confession;
it could “not be gainsaid that, in both the Confession and the
‘_Apologia_,’ the words: ‘Good works are necessary,’ are frequently
used.”[1694]
As for the attitude of the Augsburg Confession, it declares concerning
works--a declaration for which Melanchthon’s cautious pen was solely
responsible--“We also teach that such faith [in Christ, whereby man is
justified] must produce good fruit and good works, and that we must
perform all manner of good works which God has commanded, for God’s
sake.”[1695]
No one was so much concerned as Melanchthon in insisting that the
performance of good works should be represented as indispensable to
the people, particularly from the pulpit. It vexed him, the more
prudent of the two, to hear Luther again and again, and that often in
hyperbolical and paradoxical form, laying such stress on faith alone.
How far Melanchthon’s name may justifiably be quoted against what was
undesirable in the olden Protestant teaching on works, should be clear
from what has already been said concerning this theological henchman of
Luther’s (cp. vol. iii., p. 347 ff.).
Luther’s admirers are wont to quote the following utterance of his
when praising his attitude towards works: “Good, pious works never
made a good, pious man, but a good, pious man performs good, pious
works. Wicked works never made a wicked man, but wicked men perform
wicked works.”[1696] That “wicked deeds never made a wicked man” he
probably found some difficulty in really convincing many. If Luther
meant that an unjust man or sinner, who is not cleansed by faith in
Christ, can never act but wickedly, then it is the same error as we
find in other passages and which is repeated in connection with the
words just quoted: “Unless a man believes beforehand and is a Christian
[’consecrated by faith’] all his works are of no account, but are vain,
foolish, criminal and damnably sinful.” This is surely as much beside
the mark as the above statement of Luther’s concerning the relation
between a “pious man” and “pious works.” Of supernatural works that are
meritorious for heaven what Luther adds is indeed correct: “Hence,
in every instance the person must first be good and pious previous to
all works, and the good works follow and proceed from a good and pious
person.” We must, however, decline to accept Luther’s other inferences,
viz. that the sinner is not in a position to perform natural good
works of his own, and that the just man does not become more righteous
through good works.
Hence Luther’s statement, however apparently ingenious, cannot remove
the unfavourable impression produced by his doctrine of works. That it
was highly valued by its author is plain from the number of times he
repeats it under different forms. “Works do not make a Christian, but a
Christian performs works,” so he exclaimed in a sermon in 1523, summing
up in these specious words the instruction he had just given, viz.
that the faithful must struggle to remove whatever of evil there is in
them, and that they must “work good to their neighbour,” but not on
any account try “to blot out sin by works, for this would be to shame
and blaspheme God and Christ and to disgrace their own heritage,” viz.
Justification by faith alone.[1697]
_Works of Charity. Luther and the Ages of the Past._
For the purpose of recommending the Lutheran doctrine of works it
is sometimes urged that Luther, while slighting other works of less
account, assigned a place of honour to active works of charity, done
for the sake of our neighbour, that he placed them on a firmer moral
basis than they had hitherto occupied and promoted them so far as the
unfavourable circumstances of his age allowed. A few words on the
conception and particularly on the practice of charity as advocated by
him may serve as a fit conclusion to the present section.
First, we may mention that Luther is disposed to exaggerate the
importance of works of charity done to our neighbour.
It was an unjustifiable and paralysing restriction on the pious
impulse towards works pleasing to God that Luther embodied in the
rule he repeatedly lays down regarding works, viz. that they must be
directed exclusively towards the benefit of others. “On this earth,”
so he teaches in his Church postils, “man does not live for the sake
of works, nor that they may profit him, for he has no need of them,
but all works must be done for the sake of our neighbour.” “Thus must
all works be done, that we see to it that they tend to the service of
other people, impart to them the right faith and bring them to Christ’s
Kingdom.” They bring them the “right faith” when they serve to “quiet
their conscience.” Thus even here the Kingdom of God, which consists in
the forgiveness of sins, must also play its part.
Catholic doctrine recognises a wider field for good works. It regards
as such even the works which the faithful perform directly for
their own soul without any reference to their neighbour, such as
self-conquest in contending against one’s own passions, or those works
which are concerned primarily with honouring God whether in public
worship or in the private life of the Christian. Luther himself, at
least incidentally, also knows how to speak of the value of such works,
though thereby he contradicts his other statements like the above.
If, however, we neglect the principle, we have to admit, that Luther’s
frequent exhortations to neighbourly charity and kindness contain some
fine and truly Evangelical thoughts. With deep feeling he expresses his
sorrow that his admonitions are not heeded to the extent he would have
wished.
In his statements already quoted concerning the corruption of morals
consequent on the change of religion, we have heard him several
times lamenting the notorious falling off in private benevolence and
the quite remarkable decrease of public works of Christian charity.
Everywhere avarice reigns supreme, so we have heard Luther repeatedly
exclaim, and a reprehensible indolence in the doing of what is good
has spread far and wide; everything is now different from what it had
been “in the time of the monks and parsons,” when people “founded
and built” right and left, and when even the poorest was anxious to
contribute.[1698]
His defenders now declare, that he “unlocked the true source of
charity” by denying any meritorious character to works, thus sending
to limbo the imperfect, mediæval motive of charity and substituting a
better one in its place, viz. a “grateful love springing from faith.”
Luther’s own words have been used to decry earlier ages, as though
charity then had “merely had itself in view,” people in those days
having been intent solely on laying up merit “for them and theirs.”
It is perfectly true that the Catholic Church gladly emphasises the
reward charity brings to the giver.
If in the times previous to Luther’s day, both in the Middle Ages and
before, the Church frequently extolled the temporal and everlasting
reward of charity, and if this proved to the faithful an incentive,
she could at least in so doing appeal to those passages in the Gospel
itself which promise to the charitable a heavenly recompense. Yet the
thought of this reward did not exclude other high and worthy motives.
So little were such motives slighted in the mediæval practice of
charity, that, side by side with the heavenly reward, the original
deeds of foundations, gifts and pious legacies still extant allege all
kinds of other reasons, for instance, compassion for the helpless and
concern for their bodily and spiritual welfare, or the furtherance
of the common good by the establishment of institutions of public
utility. One formula frequently used, which, taken literally, seems
actually to ignore all merit and reward, runs variously: “For God’s
sake only”; “for God”; or, “in order to please Him with temporal
goods.” Thus the author of the “Wyhegertlin für alle frummen
Christenmenschen,”[1699] a German work of edification, wrote in 1509:
“Thanks to God’s grace there are still in our towns many hundreds
of brothers and sisters who have united themselves out of Christian
charity and compassion for the purpose of serving the poor sick
people, the infirm, plague-stricken and lepers, purely for God’s sake.”
Duke George of Saxony, in his reply to Luther’s “Widder den Meuchler
zu Dresen,” really expresses the motive for the active Catholic
charity formerly so lavishly displayed, when he speaks of the great
possessions given by past ages of which the religious revolt had
robbed the Church; of the “gifts freely given by nobles, burghers and
peasants out of ardent Christian love and gratitude for His sacred
bitter Passion, bright blood and guiltless death, to cloisters,
parish churches, altars, chapels, cells, hospitals, religious houses,
crafts,” etc.[1700]
Neither did such motives or the motive of reward curtail the spirit of
charity towards the close of the Middle Ages, as some Protestants have
chosen to assert. On the contrary they served to animate it.
On the basis of the data furnished by German archives a modern
historian remarks of those times: “The spirit of Christian
charity showed itself most active in the foundation of benevolent
institutions, in which respect hardly any age can compare with the
15th century.”[1701] “Towards the close of the Middle Ages the gifts
to hospitals, pest-houses and hostels were simply innumerable”; such
is the opinion of another researcher.[1702] Even G. Uhlhorn, in his
“Geschichte der christlichen Liebestätigkeit,” had to admit: “No
period did so much for the poor as the Middle Ages,” though, agreeably
to the standard of his peculiar Lutheranism, this author would fain
make out that good works then were done out of mere egotism.
Other Protestant authorities allow, that, even according to Luther’s
own admission, the Catholic charity far exceeded that displayed by
the new faith. “Here” (among the Catholics), says one historian,
“Confraternities for the care of the poor and sick arose in the 16th
and 17th centuries which far surpassed anything hitherto known in the
purity of their aims and their extraordinary achievements.... Among
the Catholics the reform in the nursing of the sick proceeded from
Spain, which also produced the men who loomed largest in the Catholic
Counter-Reformation, viz. the Jesuits and the Dominicans. From Spain
came the model of the modern hospital with the nursing staff as we
now know it.” “The Protestant communities during the two centuries
which followed the Reformation showed a great lack of fruitfulness as
regards works of charity.” “The hospitals in the Protestant districts,
with few exceptions, were and remained bad, nor was anything done to
improve them.”[1703]
Although Luther’s praiseworthy efforts to awaken charity were not
altogether wasted, yet neither his success in some localities nor the
supposed purer and higher spirit he introduced into deeds of love
were so apparent as to bear comparison with the charity so sedulously
cultivated on the Catholic side. On the contrary, his complaints
confirm the suspicion that in Lutheran circles works of charity were
as a rule lamed by the lack of that very spirit of piety which should
have been so manifest. (More in vol. vi., xxxv., 4.)
In 1528 he told the inhabitants of Wittenberg: “This week your
offerings will be solicited. I hear that people say they will give
nothing to the collectors, but will turn them away. Well, thank
God! You most ungrateful creatures, who are so grudging with your
money, refuse to give anything, and, not satisfied with this, heap
abuse on the ministers of the Church! I wish you a happy year. I am
so horrified, that I do not know whether to continue preaching any
longer to you, you rude brutes who cannot give even four half-pence
ungrudgingly.” It was a disgrace, he says, that so far the fiscal
authorities had been obliged to provide for the churches, the schools
and the poor in the hospitals, whom it was the people’s duty as
Christians to support. “Now that you are called upon to give four
beggarly half-pence, you feel it a burden.” “Deceivers will come
who will wax fat at your expense as happened formerly [in Catholic
times]. I am sorry that you have arrived at such a glorious state of
freedom, free from all tyrants and Papists, for, thankless brutes
that you are, you don’t deserve this Evangelical treasure. Unless you
mend your ways and act differently I shall cease to preach to you in
order not to cast pearls before swine and to give what is holy to the
dogs, and shall proclaim the Gospel to my real students who are the
poor beggar-men. Formerly you gave so much to the wicked seducers [the
Catholic clergy] and now ...!”[1704] Already, the year before, he had
vigorously complained from the pulpit, though, as it would appear, all
to no purpose: “Amongst those who hear the Word, faith is dull and
charity has grown cold and hope is at an end, etc. There is no one who
pities his brother’s distress. Once upon a time we gave a hundred, two
hundred, five hundred, or even a thousand pieces of gold to the monks,
canons or priests for the building of monasteries and churches. To-day
no one can be found who will give a coin, let alone a piece of gold,
for the poor. For this reason God sends His judgments on the world
and curses the earth on account of the contempt for His Word and His
Evangel; but we may look for yet worse things in the future.”[1705]
Amongst the reminiscences of his journey to Italy, Luther retained
a kindly memory of the charity as practised by the Catholics,
particularly at Florence. We read in Lauterbach’s Diary on Aug. 1,
1538: “Then Luther spoke of charity in Italy and how the hospitals
there were cared for. They are located in princely buildings, are
amply supplied with food and drink, the servants are most diligent
and attentive, the physicians very skilled, the bedding and clothing
are perfectly clean and the beds are even painted. When a patient is
brought in, he has at once to strip, an inventory of his clothes is
made in the presence of a notary and they are then kept carefully for
him. Then he is dressed in a white shirt and put in a nice painted bed
with clean sheets, and after a little while two physicians are at his
bedside; servants come and bring him food and drink in perfectly clean
glass goblets, which they do not touch even with a finger, carrying
everything on a tray. Even the greatest ladies come there, muffled
up completely so as to be unrecognisable, in order to serve the poor
for some days, after which they return to their homes. At Florence I
have seen what great care is bestowed on the hospitals. Also on the
foundling homes where the children are admirably installed, fed and
taught, are all dressed alike and in the same colour and treated in a
right fatherly way.”[1706]
5. Other Innovations in Religious Doctrine
The absence of any logical system in Luther’s theological and moral
views is so far from being denied by Protestants who know his theology
that they even reproach Luther’s opponents for expecting to find logic
in him. No system, but merely “the thought-world of a great religious
man” is, so they say, all that we may look for in his works; it is
true that he had a “general religious theory,” but it was “faulty,
in its details not seldom contradictory, and devised for a practical
and polemical object.” “Luther was no dogmatic theologian or man of
system,” hence his individual sayings must not always be treated as
though they were parts of a system.
There can be no doubt that this is a defect in a teacher who comes
forward as the founder of a denomination and as the restorer of
Christian doctrine, and who, in his quality of “Prophet of the
Germans,” declares: “Before me people knew nothing.” After all,
precision and coherence of doctrines form a test of their truth.
In reality the facts of the case are only indicated in a veiled way
in the Protestant admissions just recorded. The truth is, as the
reader has already had many an occasion to see, that, with Luther,
one assertion frequently invalidates the other. Even in the field
of moral teaching we find him at utter variance with himself, and
his contradictions become particularly glaring as soon as he passes
from theory to practice. Here it is easy to seize the “consummate
contradictions of his theology,” of which a present-day Protestant
theologian ventures boldly to speak; we may also subscribe to what this
same writer says, viz. that Luther hardened his heart against certain
consequences of his own religious principles.[1707] (Cp. p. 415, 447;
vol. ii., p. 312, etc.)
_The Regula Fidei._
Such a denial of the consequences of the principles of his doctrine
lies first and foremost in the fact that Luther summed up in a Rule
of Faith the various dogmas to which it was his intention to remain
true. The “_regula fidei_,” such as he wished to bequeath to posterity,
he saw expressed in the Confession of Augsburg, and in the oldest
Œcumenical Creeds of the Church.
It has already been seen that the radicalism involved in his religious
attitude should by rights have issued in a freedom, nay, licence, which
would have rendered impossible any binding formularies of faith.
It is also the opinion of most modern Protestant theologians that
the definition of doctrine which began with the Confession of
Augsburg, or in fact with the Articles of Marburg, really constituted
an unjustifiable encroachment on the freedom of religious thought
inaugurated by Luther. Luther indeed invested these doctrinal
formularies with all the weight of his authority, yet, according to
these theologians, they represented a “narrowing” of the Evangelical
ideas advocated by him; nor can it be gainsaid that the revolutionary
ideas for which Luther stood from about 1520 to 1523 justify such
strictures.[1708]
“This promising spring,” writes Adolf Harnack, a representative of
theological freedom, “was followed by no real summer. In those years
Luther was lifted above himself and seemed to have overcome the
limitations of his peculiar temperament.”... But Luther unfortunately
reverted to his limitations. Nor were they “merely a light vesture,
or as some would fain have us believe, due simply to lack of
comprehension on the part of Melanchthon and other henchmen, for
Luther himself saw in them the very foundation of his strength and
made the fullest use of them as such.”[1709]
In other words, his contradiction with his own original principles
became to him, so to speak, a second nature. He was in deadly earnest
with the dogmas which he retained, and which were comprised in the
official Articles of faith. In so far, therefore, he may be said to
have turned away from the consequences of his own action and to have
striven to slam the door which he had opened to unbelief and private
judgment.
Of the Confession of Augsburg, the most important of these
declarations of faith, Harnack says: “That the Gospel of the
Reformation found masterly expression in the ‘_Augustana_,’ that I
cannot admit. The ‘_Augustana_’ founded a teaching Church; on it must
be laid the blame for the narrowing of the movement of reform. Could
such a thing have been written previous to 1526, or even previous to
1529?”
After admitting elsewhere the advantages of the Confession of
Augsburg, Harnack proceeds: “It is possible by retracing our steps
to arrive through it at the broader Evangelical ideas without which
there would never have been a Reformation or an ‘_Augustana_.’ With
regard to their author, however, it is no use blinking the fact,
that here Melanchthon undertook, or rather was forced to undertake,
a task to which his gifts and his character were not equal.”[1710]
“In the theology of Melanchthon the moralist, who stands at the side
of Luther the Evangelist, we discern attempts to amend Luther’s
theology.... Melanchthon, however, felt himself cramped by having to
act as the guardian of Lutheranism. We cannot take it ill if Lutherans
prefer to err with Luther their hero, rather than submit to be put in
Melanchthon’s leading-strings.”[1711]
Harnack and those who think like him are even more antagonistic to
the later creeds of Lutheranism than to the Confession composed by
Melanchthon. “The ‘symbolic age’ when the ‘Lutheran Church’ gave
‘definite expression’ to her will is nothing more than a _fable
convenue_. ‘This Lutheran Church as an actual body,’ says Carl
Müller, ‘never really existed and the spokesmen of the strictest
Luther faction were just the worst enemies of such a union.... Thus
to speak of creeds of the Lutheran Church involves an historic
impossibility.’”[1712] According to these theologians Protestantism
must hark back to Luther’s original principles of freedom. Moreover,
argues Harnack, Protestantism has on the whole already reverted to
this earlier standpoint. “We are not forsaking the clear testimony
of history when we find in Luther’s Christianity and in the first
beginnings of the Reformation all that present-day Protestantism has
developed, though amidst weakness and constraint; nor when we state
that Luther’s idea of faith is still to-day the moving spirit of
Protestantism, however many or however few may have made it their
own.”[1713] Luther’s “most effective propositions,” according to him,
may well be allowed to stand as the “heirloom of the Evangelical
Churches”; it is plain that they do not lead to a mere “dogmatic
Christianity,” but to true Christianity consisting in the “disposition
which the Father of Jesus Christ awakens in the heart through the
Gospel.” Luther himself has only to be rightly appreciated and
“allowed to remain Luther.”[1714]
Harnack repeatedly insists that Luther by setting aside all authority
on dogma, whether of the Church, the hierarchy or tradition, also
destroyed the binding character of any “doctrine.” By his attack on
all authority he dealt a mortal blow at the vital principle of the
ancient Church, traceable back to the second century. According to him
“every doctrinal formulary of the past required objective proof”; this
objective proof was to him the sole authority. “How then could there
be authority when the objective proof failed or seemed to demonstrate
the contrary?” To judge of the proof is within the province of each
individual, and, according as he is constituted, the result will
be different. “Luther--even at the most critical moment, when he
seemed to stand in the greatest need of the formal authority of the
letter--did not allow himself to be overawed or his mouth to be closed
even by the Apostles’ Creed.” He indeed “involved himself later in
limitations and restrictions,” “but there can be no doubt ... that by
his previous historic behaviour towards them he had undermined all the
formal authorities of Catholicism.”[1715]
On this fundamental question of the possibility of a “_regula fidei_”
in Luther’s case, we may listen to the opinion of another esteemed
Protestant historian of late years.
Friedrich Paulsen, in his much-prized “Geschichte des gelehrten
Unterrichts,” writes: “The Word of God does not suffice as a
‘_regula fidei_,’ but a personal authority is also needed to decide
on questions of doctrine, this is what the Luther of 1535 says and
thereby confutes the Luther of 1521, who refused to allow anyone on
earth to point out to him the faith unless he himself could gather
its truth from the Word of God. Had Luther abided by his rejection of
all human authority he should have declared: On the interpretation of
Scripture there is no final court of appeal, each one believes or errs
at his own peril.... What Luther had relied on in 1521 against the
Papists, viz. inability to refute him from Scripture, was used against
him in his own struggle with the ‘fanatics.’... For the confuting of
heretics a rule of faith is needed, and what is more, a living one
to decide in each case. The principle of 1521, to allow no authority
on earth to prescribe the faith, is anarchical. On these lines there
can be no ‘Church’ with an ‘_examen doctrinæ_’ of its candidates and
Visitations of the clergy. This the Reformers also saw and thus there
was nothing left for them, if they were to retain a ‘Church,’ than
to set up their own authority in the stead of the authority of Pope
and Councils. On one vexatious point they were, however, at a loss:
Against the later Luther it was always possible to appeal to the
Luther of Worms. The starting-point and _raison d’être_ of the whole
Reformation was the repudiation on principle of all human authority
in matters of faith; after this, to find Luther installed as Pope,
was scarcely pleasing. If anyone stands in need of a Pope he would
surely be better advised in sticking to the real one at Rome.... The
hole in Luther’s teaching still remains a hole in the principle of
the Protestant Church to-day: There can be no earthly authority in
matters of faith, and: Such an authority there must be, this is an
antinomy which lies at its very root. Nor is the antinomy accidental,
but lies in the very nature of the matter and is expressed as often as
we speak of the ‘Protestant Church.’ If there is to be a Church ...
then the individual must submit himself and his ‘faith’ to the ‘faith’
of the community.” Paulsen, who had spoken of “Luther as Pope,” refers
to Luther’s own remark when taking his seat with Bugenhagen in the
carriage in which he went to meet Vergerio the Papal Nuncio: “Here go
the German Pope and Cardinal Pomeranus, God’s chosen instruments”;
Luther’s remark was of course spoken in jest, but the jest “was only
possible against a background of bitter earnest”; Luther frequently
dallied with this idea; “for the position Luther occupied, ages even
after his death, there really was no other comparison to be found....
With the above jest Luther reduced himself ad absurdum.”[1716]--Such
censures are in reality more in place than those eulogies of Luther’s
exclamation at Worms in 1521 on the freedom of Bible conviction, into
which orthodox Protestant biographers of Luther sometimes lapse.
_Some Peculiarities of the New Doctrine on the Sacraments, Particularly
on Baptism._
The theological pillars of the edifice of public worship are the
seven sacraments, the visible signs ordained by Christ by which grace
is given to our souls. Held in honour even by the Nestorians and
Monophysites as witnesses to ecclesiastical antiquity, they enfold and
hallow all the chief events of human life. Luther debased the effect
of the sacraments by making it something wholly subjective, produced
by the recipients themselves in virtue of the faith infused into them
by God, whereas the Church has ever recognised the sacraments as
sublime and mysterious signs, which of themselves work in the receiver
(“_ex opere operato_”) according to the extent of his preparation,
Christ having made the grace promised dependent on the outward signs
instituted by Himself. Luther, on the other hand, by declaring the
sacraments mere symbols whereby faith is strengthened, operative only
by virtue of the recipient’s faith in the pardon and forgiveness of
his sins, reduced them to the status of empty pledges for soothing
and consoling consciences. Only later did he again come nearer to the
Catholic doctrine of the “_opus operatum_.” With his view, however,
that the sole object of the sacraments is to increase the “_fides
specialis_,” we arrive again at the point which for Luther is the sum
total of religion, viz.: “mere forgiveness.”
He was not at all conscious of the contradiction involved in his
vigorous insistence on the absolute necessity of the sacraments for
salvation. From his standpoint Carlstadt was far more logical when he
said: “If Christ [alone] is peace and assurance [of salvation], then
lifeless creatures [the sacramental, outward signs] can surely not
satisfy or make secure.”[1717]
Luther raised no objection to infant baptism. He also wished it, and
baptism in general, to be given in the usual way in the name of the
Trinity. But how did he try to solve the difficulty arising from his
theory of the sacraments: If the sacrament only works in virtue of the
faith of the receiver and the effect is merely an increase of faith,
of what advantage can it be to the infant who is incapable of belief?
He endeavoured to remedy the defect with the help of the faith of the
congregation.
Meeting difficulties on this line he did not shrink from claiming a
perpetually recurring miracle, and proposed to assume that, during the
act of baptism, the new-born infant was momentarily endowed by God with
the use of reason and filled with faith.
In his “_De captivitate babylonica_” he had already attempted to cut
the Gordian knot presented by infant baptism by this assumption,
which, however arbitrary, is quite intelligible from his psychological
standpoint. Thanks to the believing prayer of the congregation who
present the children for baptism, so he said, faith is infused into
them and they thus become regenerate. In 1523 he states that children
have a hidden faith. “From that time onwards the tendency of his
teaching was to require faith from candidates for baptism.... Even
after the Concord he continued to speak exactly as before.”[1718] The
Bible teaches nothing about infant baptism. Yet Luther declares in 1545
in a set of theses: “It is false and outrageous to say that little
children do not believe, or are unworthy,” while at the head of the
theses these words stand: “Everything that in the Church, which is
God’s people, is taught without the Word of God, is assuredly false and
unchristian.”[1719]
It is of interest to follow up his arguments for the faith of
infants. In 1522 already he had attempted in a letter to prove to
Melanchthon the possibility of such unconscious faith. He referred
him to the circumstance, which, however, is irrelevant, “that we
retain the faith while asleep or otherwise engaged.” Moreover, since
to him who believes, everything is possible with God, so, too, to the
congregation which prays for the children; the children are presented
by the congregation to the Lord of all, and He, by His Omnipotence,
kindles faith in them. In the same letter, aimed at the Anabaptists,
who were then beginning to be heard of, we find an emphatic appeal
to the authority and belief of the Church (“_totius orbis constans
confessio_”), which, as a rule, Luther was so ruthless in opposing.
“It would be quite impious to deny that infant baptism agrees with
the belief of the Church; to do so would be tantamount to denying the
Church”; it was a special miracle that infant baptism had never been
attacked by heretics; there was therefore good reason to hope that
Christ, now, would trample the new foemen “under our feet.” Luther
forgets that the ancient Church was not hampered by such a heel of
Achilles as was his own teaching, viz. that the sacraments owed
all their efficacy to faith. We can, however, quite understand his
admission to Melanchthon: “I have always expected that Satan would lay
violent hands on this weak spot, but he has chosen to stir up this
pernicious quarrel, not through the Papists, but with the help of our
own people.”[1720] The rise of the Anabaptist heresy was indeed merely
a natural reaction against Luther’s doctrine of baptism.
Seeing that the doctrine of baptism is of such importance to the
Christian Church, we may be permitted to consider the inferences
regarding the sacrament of baptism drawn in modern times from Luther’s
conception of it, and from his whole attitude towards faith and
Christianity. A domestic dispute among the Protestants at Bremen in
1905 on the validity of baptism not administered according to the
usages of the Church, led to a remarkable discussion among theologians
of broader views, some of whom went so far as to argue in Luther’s name
and that of his Reformation, that baptism should be abolished.
Johannes Gottschick in “Die Lehre der Reformation von der Taufe”
(1906) defended the opinion that, according to the real views of the
Reformers, baptism was valid even when conferred without any mention
of the Trinity.--O. Scheel, on his side, pointed out in his book
“Die dogmatische Behandlung der Tauflehre in der modernen positiven
Theologie” (1906), that a contradiction with the principle of the
Reformation was apparent even in Luther’s own theology, inasmuch as,
according to this principle, baptism should merely be the proclaiming
of the Word of God; in the ceremony of baptism, according to the
Reformation teaching, which should be taken seriously, “the Word
is all”; baptism is the solemn declaration that the child has been
received into the congregation and the bestowal on it of the promise
of salvation, hence requires no repetition. “As to when the Word works
faith [in them] we do not know, nor is it necessary that theology
should know”; the power of God knows the day and the hour.[1721]--The
question: “Can baptism be regarded rightly as the exclusive act of
reception into the Church?” was answered negatively by Rietschel
in an article under that title in the “Deutsche Zeitschrift für
Kirchenrecht,”[1722] in which he too appeals to Luther. At any rate
Rietschel’s conclusion is, that, since Luther makes the Christian
state dependent on faith, the baptismal act as such cannot, according
to him, be of any essential importance; he thinks it possible to
complete Luther’s doctrine on baptism in the light of that of Zwingli
and Calvin, who were of opinion that the children of Christian
parents, by their very birth were received into the Church.
Luther’s attitude towards these questions was treated of more in
detail by the editor of the Deutsch-Evangelische Blätter, Erich Haupt,
Professor of theology at Halle.[1723]
Haupt agrees with Gottschick as to the possibility of discarding
the Trinitarian formula in baptism, in that, like Rietschel, all he
considers necessary is the liturgical retention of some definite form
of words. He also subscribes in principle to Rietschel’s contention
that it is possible to enter the Church without baptism. Going even
further, however, he declares with regard to Luther, that it was not
even necessary to borrow from Zwingli and Calvin as Rietschel had
proposed. “I believe the admission that salvation may be secured even
without baptism, is a necessary corollary of Luther’s theories taken
in the lump. One thing that lies at the bottom of Luther’s doctrine of
the sacraments is that the salvation bestowed by a sacrament is none
other than that communicated by the word of the preacher.... Nay, the
sacrament is merely a particular form in which the Evangel comes to
men.” But wherever there is faith, there is communion with God, and
faith may be wherever there is the Word of God. Just as it was said of
the Supper: “_crede et manducasti_,” so also it might be said: “_crede
et baptizatus es_.” “To deny this would not merely be to ascribe a
magical and mechanical effect to the sacrament, but would also imply
the denial of the first principle of all Evangelical Christianity,
viz. that for man’s salvation nothing further is necessary than to
accept in faith the offer of God’s grace given him in the Gospel.
In this the Reformation was simply holding to the words of Scripture
(Mk. xvi. 16),” where, in the second part (“He that believeth not
shall be condemned”), baptism is not mentioned.[1724]--Haupt, like
Rietschel, draws attention to the fact, that, according to Luther,
the unbelieving Christian, in spite of baptism, is inwardly no better
than a heathen.[1725] Nevertheless Haupt is unwilling to allow that
all children of Christian parents should simply be declared members
of the Christian Church on account of their birth and regardless of
baptism; for canonical reasons, to be considered Christians, they
must be inducted into the congregation by the act of baptism,[1726]
although it is “a logical outcome of the Reformer’s opinions that
instances may occur where the Gospel awakens faith, and thereby
incorporates in the congregation people who have never been baptised;
but this is the invisible congregation of the ‘_vere credentes_,’ not
the outward, visible, organised Church.” In order to enter children
into the latter, the parents must express their wish; this is the
meaning of the ceremony of baptism; the fact remains, that, dismissing
the magical effect formerly ascribed to baptism, the principal thing
is, “not Christian parentage as such, but the will of the parents as
expressed in some way or other.”[1727]
These vigorous attempts to shelter such ultra-modern views behind
Luther’s authority, and to make him responsible for consequences of
his doctrine, which he had been unwilling to face, have a common
ground and starting-point.
Wilhelm Herrmann, the Marburg theologian, in the “Zeitschrift für
Theologie und Kirche,” thus expresses himself on the subject.[1728]
“Christians are becoming more and more conscious,” he says, “that a
religion which must base its origin on an assent to ‘dogmas revealed
by God’ is at variance with elements of scholarship which they can
no longer deny.” He speaks of the “distress of conscience into which
the Church, by her demanding assent to revealed doctrine, plunges
people as soon as, under the influence of education, they have
come to see what alone can induce honest assent to any idea” (viz.
the fact “that one evolves it for oneself”). Luther was himself
scarcely acquainted with such trouble of conscience concerning faith,
notwithstanding the many spiritual troubles he had to endure. On the
contrary, he unhesitatingly sought and found a source of strength
in supernatural faith. Herrmann continues: “We should be unable to
escape from this difficulty had not the true Christian understanding
of faith, i.e. of religion, been recovered at the Reformation.” From
that standpoint “any demand for an assent to revealed doctrine may
well be repudiated.” For it was the teaching of Luther’s Reformation
that faith “must be experienced as the gift of God if it is to be the
‘_nova et spiritualis vita_’ essentially ‘_supra naturam_.’” This,
however, could not be required of all. The demand is subversive of
faith itself and “embodies the false Roman principle” that everything
depends on the “decision to acquiesce in a doctrine,” and not on the
“experienced power of a personal life.” “To lend a hand and clear a
path for the chief discovery of the Reformation is the grandest task
of theology within the Protestant Church.”[1729]
Luther by so incessantly emphasising personal religious experience and
by his repudiation of all objective ecclesiastical authority capable
of putting before mankind the contents of faith, certainly came very
near that which is here represented as the “chief discovery” of the
innovations undertaken by him (see above, pp. 403, vol. iii., 8 ff.).
But what would the Wittenberg “lover of the Bible and Apostle of the
Word” have said to the claim of modern scholars who wish simply to
surrender revelation? The passages in which he so indignantly censures
the unbelief of his day cannot but recur to one.[1730]
Luther arbitrarily reduced the sacraments to two; “there remain,” he
says, “two sacraments; baptism and the Supper.”[1731] With regard to
Penance his attitude was wavering and full of contradiction. In later
years he again came nearer to the Catholic teaching, arguing that
Penance must also be a sacrament because, as he said in 1545, “it
contains the promise of and belief in the forgiveness of sins.”[1732]
He had much at heart the retention of confession and absolution under
some shape or form as a remedy against the moral disorders that were
creeping in.[1733] Yet, according to him, Penance was only to be
regarded as the “exercise and virtue of baptism,”[1734] so that the
number of the sacraments underwent no actual increase.
Here, as everywhere else, the changeableness of Luther’s doctrinal
opinions is deserving of notice. The numerous instances where he
relinquishes a position previously held and virtually betakes himself
to another, are scarcely to the credit either of his logic or of his
foresight. Such wavering and groping hither and thither is the stamp of
error. In the “Histoire des variations” which might be written on the
fate of Luther’s views even during his lifetime, much would be found
truly characteristic of them.
One sacramentarian doctrine, which to the end of his life he would
never consent to relinquish, was, as we know, the Presence of Christ
in the Supper. And relentless as he was in combating the Sacrifice of
the Mass (see below, p. 506 ff.), yet he insisted steadfastly on the
literal acceptance of Christ’s words of institution: “This is My Body.”
_His Teaching on the Supper._
Luther’s retention of the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist may to
some extent be explained by the influence which, side by side with
the Bible, tradition and the authority of the Church still exercised
over him, at least on such points as did not call for modification
on account of his new doctrine of Justification. He had grown up in
this faith, and was accustomed to give practical proof of it even
when on other scores he had already broken with the Church. In this
matter Scripture presented no difficulty. Had he shared Zwingli’s
rationalistic leanings it is likely that, like him, he might have
sought for some other interpretation of the words of institution than
the obvious and literal one. It is also possible that the mysticism to
which he was addicted in early years may have contributed to make him
acknowledge the “_mysterium tremendum_” of the Sacrament, as he terms
it in the language of olden days.
It is true there came a time--according to him the year 1519-1520--when
he felt strongly tempted to throw the Sacrament overboard, because,
as he says in the well-known words, “I could thus have given a great
smack in the face to Popery.” At that time I “wrestled and struggled
and would gladly have escaped.” But from the plain text of the Bible,
he had, so he declares, been unable to free himself. This statement,
which is on the whole worthy of belief, we find in “Eyn Brieff an die
Christen zu Straspurg” which he published in 1525, and it is further
corroborated by the fact, that he there refers to two men who had been
anxious to move him to the denial of the Presence of Christ, but who
had failed to convince him. The two, whose names he does not mention,
were probably Cornelius Hendriks Hoen, a Dutchman, and Franz Kolb of
Baden, whose letters to Luther, in 1522 and 1524, trying to induce him
to accept the Zwinglian sense of the Sacrament, still exist.[1735]
When Carlstadt began his attack on the Real Presence, this, in view of
the then situation, so Luther declares in his letter to the people of
Strasburg, merely “confirmed his opinion.” “Even had I not believed
it before, I should at once have known that his opinions were nought,
because of his worthless, feeble stuff, devoid of any Scripture and
based only on reason and conceit.” Offended vanity and annoyance with
Carlstadt were here not without their effect on Luther; to deny this
would argue a poor acquaintance with Luther’s psychology. It is true
that the arguments of his opponent were very weak; it was not without
reason that Luther speaks of his “stuff and nonsense” and “ridiculous
tales.” He ranks the objections of the two letter-writers mentioned
above higher than the proofs adduced by Carlstadt; at least they “wrote
more skilfully and did not mangle the Word quite so badly.” Luther
was, however, tactless enough to give the Strasburgers a glimpse of
the secondary motives which led him to defend the Presence of Christ
so strongly and defiantly from that time forward. He complains that
Carlstadt was making such an ado as though he wanted “to darken the sun
and light of the Evangel,” so “that the world might forget everything
that had been taught them by us [by Luther] hitherto.” “I have up
till now managed well and rightly in all the main points, and whoever
says the contrary has no good spirit; I trust I shall not spoil it in
the matter of the externals on which alone prophets such as these lay
stress.”[1736]
It is unnecessary to show anew here how Luther’s later defence of
the Real Presence in the Eucharist against the Zwinglians contains
indubitable evidence in its virulence that Luther felt hurt. This
personal element is, however, quite insufficient for one to base upon
it any suspicion as to the genuineness of his convictions.
If, on the other hand, we consider the strange and arbitrary form he
gave to the doctrine of the Supper, more particularly by insisting
that the sole aim and effect of communion is to inspire faith in the
personal forgiveness of sins, then his belief in the presence of
Christ appears to a certain extent to harmonise with his peculiar
theological views. Amidst the storm of his struggle after certainty of
salvation the pledge of it which Christ bestows in the Sacrament seems
to him like a blessed anchor. That this Body was “given” for us, and
this blood shed for us, and that the celebration is in memory of the
saving death of Christ, as the very words of institution declare, was
frequently brought forward by him as a means to reassure anxious souls.
The need of strengthening our faith should, according to him, impel us
to receive the Sacrament.
He demands accordingly of others the same traditional faith in the
Eucharist in which he found his own stay and support. While clinging
to the literal interpretation of the words of the Bible, he, as we
already know, is quite ready to appeal to the “dear Fathers” and to the
whole of the Church’s past, at least when thereby he hopes to make an
impression.[1737] To such lengths does he go in the interests of the
confirmation of faith to which he strives to attain by means of this
indispensable Sacrament.
He overlooks the fact, however, that his view of the Supper, according
to which its only purpose is to be a sign for the stimulating of saving
faith, in reality undermines the doctrine of the Real Presence. True
to his theory of the Sacrament and of faith he reduces the Supper
to an outward sign destined to confirm the forgiveness of sins. One
might ask: If it is merely a sign, is so sublime a mystery as the Real
Presence at all called for? And, if it is a question of assurance,
how can we be rendered secure of our salvation by something which is
so far removed above the senses as the belief in the Real Presence of
Christ, or by an act which makes such great demands on human reason?
Luther’s theory requires a sign which should appeal to the senses and
vividly remind the mind of the Redemption and thus awaken faith. This
is scarcely the case in the Eucharist where Christ is invisibly present
and only to be apprehended by “the Word.” If bread and wine are merely
to call forth a remembrance of Christ which inspires faith, then the
Zwinglian doctrine of the Sacrament fulfils all that is required.
Luther does not face this difficulty, but Protestants were not slow to
urge it against him.[1738]
* * * * *
A peculiarity of Luther’s teaching on the Sacrament is to be found
in his two theories of Impanation and Ubiquity. Impanation, viz. the
opinion that the substance of the bread persists in the Sacrament
and that Christ is present together with the bread, served him as
a means to escape the Catholic doctrine of a change of substance
(Transubstantiation). With the help of the theory of Ubiquity which
affirmed the presence everywhere of the Body of Christ, he fancied he
could extricate himself from certain difficulties raised by opponents
of the Sacrament. The history of both opinions presents much that is
instructive. Here, however, we shall consider only the second, viz. the
ubiquity of Christ’s Body.
The theory of the omnipresence of the Body of Christ which Luther
reached together with his doctrine of the Supper, like his other
theory of the faith of infants, shows plainly not only of how much
his imagination was capable, but also what curious theses he could
propound in all calmness and serenity. Thus we hear him asserting that
the Redeemer, the Lord of Creation, is present, in His spiritualised
Body, everywhere and penetrates all things! He is present bodily at the
right hand of God according to the Scriptures; but the right hand of
God is everywhere, hence also in the consecrated Bread and Wine lying
on the altar; consequently the Body and Blood of Christ must be there
too.[1739] To the question how this comes about, he replies: “It is
not for us to know,” nor does reason even understand how God can be in
every creature.
Much more important is it, so he says, that we should learn to seize,
grasp and appropriate this ever-present Christ. “For though Christ is
everywhere present, He does not everywhere allow Himself to be seized
and laid hold of.... Why? Because it is one thing for God to be present
and another for Him to be present _to you_. He is present to you then
when He pledges His Word to it and binds Himself by it and says: Here
you shall find Me. When you have His Word for it, then you can truly
seize Him and say: Here I have Thee, as Thou hast said.”[1740] In this
way Christ assures us of His presence in the Sacrament, and invites
us, so Luther teaches, to partake of Him in the Bread of the Supper.
This, however, is practically to explain away the presence of Christ in
the Bread (to which Luther adheres so firmly) and to dissolve it into
a purely subjective apprehension. Nevertheless, at least according to
certain passages, he was anxious to see the Sacrament adored and did
not hesitate to do so himself.[1741]
To the belief that Christ’s Body is truly received in Communion he held
fast, as already stated, till the end of his life.
The report, that, in the days of extreme mental tension previous to
his last journey to Eisleben, he abandoned the doctrine of the Real
Presence, hitherto so passionately advocated, in order to conciliate
the Zwinglians or Melanchthonians, is a fable, put into circulation by
older Protestant writers.[1742] In view of the proofs, met with up to
the very last, of his belief to the contrary, we may safely dismiss
also the doubtful account to be mentioned directly which seems to
speak in favour of his having abandoned it.
Luther’s “Kurtz Bekentnis” of September, 1544, certainly was true to
his old standpoint and showed that he wished “the fanatics and enemies
of the Sacrament, Carlstadt, ‘Zwingel,’ Œcolampadius, Stinkfield
[Schwenkfeld] and their disciples at Zürich, or wherever else they
be, to be sternly condemned and avoided.”[1743] In his last sermon at
Wittenberg on Jan. 17, 1546, he warned his hearers against reason,
that “fair prostitute and devil’s bride,” and, indirectly, also
against the Sacramentarians and those who attacked his doctrine of
the Supper. George Major relates that when he was sent, on Jan. 10,
1546, by Luther to the religious conference at Ratisbon he found
scribbled on his door these words: “Our professors must be examined on
the Supper of the Lord”; Luther also admonished him not to endeavour
to conceal or pass over in silence belief in the Real Presence. On
his journey Luther said much the same in the sermons he delivered
at Halle and Eisleben; even in his last sermon at Eisleben we find
the Sacramentarians described as seducers of mankind and foes of the
Gospel.[1744]
That Luther changed his opinion is the purport of a communication,
which, after his death, Melanchthon is said to have made to A. R.
Hardenberg, a friend of his. Hardenberg speaks of it in a document
in his own handwriting preserved in the Bremen municipal archives.
There he certainly affirms that Melanchthon had told him how that
Luther, before his last journey, had said to him: People have gone
too far in the matter of the Supper; he himself had often thought
of writing something so as to smooth things down and thus allow the
Church again to be reunited; this, however, might have cast doubts on
his doctrine as a whole; he preferred therefore to commend the case to
God; Melanchthon and the others might find it possible to do something
after his death.[1745]--Evidently it is our duty to endeavour to
understand and explain this account, however grounded our suspicions
may be. One recent Protestant writer has justly remarked: “There must
be something behind Hardenberg’s testimony”[1746]; and another, that
it “cannot be simply set aside.”[1747]
J. Hausleiter, in 1898, seems to have given the most likely
explanation of it:[1748] After Luther’s death Amsdorf complained
bitterly that the Wittenberg edition of Luther’s German works, then
in the press, had not preserved the real Luther undefiled; he pointed
out, that, in the second volume, Luther’s violent attack on the
Sacramentarians had been omitted where (at the end of the work “Das
diese Wort Christi ‘Das ist mein Leib, etce.,’ noch fest stehen,”
1527) he had said that the devil with the help of Bucer and his denial
of the Sacrament had “smeared his filth” over Luther’s books; that
Bucer was a “sly, slippery, slimy devil”; where Luther had spoken of
Bucer’s “poisonous malice, murderous stabs and arch-scoundreldom,”
thanks to which he had “defiled, poisoned and defamed” Luther’s
teaching, and where a protest was registered against the assertion
that “to begin with,” Philip too had taught the same as the
Sacramentarians, viz. that there is “nothing but bread in the Lord’s
Supper.”[1749] It was known that those pages had been suppressed in
the new edition at Luther’s own hint. This was stated by George Rörer,
Luther’s former assistant, who supervised the correction. He said,
“he did this with the knowledge and by the request and command of
Luther, because M. Bucer, who had there been so severely handled as a
notable enemy of the Sacrament, had since been converted.” Of any real
conversion of Bucer there can be no question, but as he was then doing
good work at Ratisbon in the interests of the new Evangel it may be
that Luther--perhaps moved thereto by his Electer at the instance of
the Landgrave of Hesse--consented to display such indulgence. This may
well have formed the subject of the communication Hardenberg received
from Melanchthon, only that the one or the other, or possibly both,
in the interests of the movement hostile to Luther’s Sacramental
teaching, distorted and exaggerated the facts of the case, and thus
gave rise to the legend of Luther’s change of views.
Support for it may also have been seen in the circumstance that
Luther, in spite of Melanchthon’s defection on the doctrine of the
Sacrament, never broke off his relations with him. In his severe
“Kurtz Bekentnis” (1544) he forbore from attacking Melanchthon
either openly or covertly. Even in 1545, in the Preface to his own
Latin works, Luther bestowed his well-known eulogy on Melanchthon’s
“_Loci theologici_.”[1750] It has been pointed out elsewhere that the
services his friend rendered him had been and continued to be too
important to allow of Luther’s breaking with him.[1751]
Though Luther was unflinching in his advocacy of the Presence of Christ
together with his pet theories of Impanation and Ubiquity, yet he waged
an implacable war on the Sacrifice of the Mass. As, however, we have
reserved this for later consideration we shall here only point out,
that both his doctrine and his practice with regard to the Sacrament of
the Altar suffered by his unhappy opposition to the Mass in which it is
celebrated and offered, even more so than by the modifications he had
already introduced into the older doctrine.
_Invocation of the Saints._
Among those doctrines of the Church from which Luther cut himself
adrift only little by little and at the expense of a wrench, must be
numbered those dealing with the invocation of the Saints and with
Purgatory.
The grand and inspiring belief of the Church in the Communion of
Saints, which weaves a close and common band between the living and
those souls who have already passed into heaven and those, again, who
are still undergoing purification, had at first taken deep root in
Luther’s mind. Later on, however, the foundations of this doctrine
became more and more undermined, partly owing to his theories on the
Church and the Mediatorship of Christ, partly and even more so by
his ardent wish to strike a deadly blow at the practical life of the
Catholic Church and all that “Popish” worship had erected on this
particular doctrine. Veneration of the Saints and intercession for
the dead loomed very large among the religious practices dear to the
Christian people, though, at that time, they were disfigured by abuses.
Luther adroitly used the abuses as a lever for his work.
As late as 1519, in one of his sermons, he urged his hearers to
call upon the angels and the Saints; just as on earth one Christian
may pray for another and be asked for his prayers, so, as he
justly remarks, is it also with the Saints in heaven.[1752] In his
Church-postils, however, he raises his voice to condemn the “awful
idolatry” by which (so he thought) the “trust” which we should
repose on God alone was put in the Saints.[1753] From that time
he never tires of declaring that there was “no text or warrant in
Scripture for the worship of the Saints”; all he will sanction is the
humble petition to the Saints: “Pray for me.”[1754] He required the
Wittenberg Canons to erase from the liturgical prayers all reference
to the intercession of the saints, as misleading and likely to give
offence;[1755] this, in spite of the fact that the liturgical prayers
of the Church’s earliest days loudly voice the opposite view. The
“Sendbrieff von Dolmetzscheñ” of 1530 gives even stronger expression
to his abhorrence for all invocation of the Saints. There he says that
the light of the Gospel was now so bright that no one could find any
excuse for remaining in darkness.[1756]
In his Schmalkalden Articles the invocation of Saints has become one
of the “abuses of Endchrist”; for “though the angels in heaven pray
for us,” so he explains, again reverting to the ancient teaching of
the Church, “and also the Saints on earth, and, perhaps, even those in
heaven, yet it does not follow that we are to invoke the angels and
the Saints.”[1757]
_Mary._
As long as he admitted the invocation of Saints, Luther assigned a
prominent place to that of the Blessed Virgin. “She is to be invoked,”
he writes in 1521, “that God may give and do according to her will what
we ask.”[1758] After he had changed his mind concerning the saints, he
was unwilling to allow this any longer.
Owing, however, to the after effects of his Catholic education, here
particularly noticeable in him, we meet with many beautiful sayings of
his in support of the worship of Mary, although as time went on he grew
ever more hostile to it.
“You know,” so he says in a sermon published in 1522, “that the honour
paid to the Mother of God is so deeply implanted in the heart of man
that we dislike to hear it spoken against, but would much rather it
were fostered and encouraged.”[1759]
“O Blessed Mother,” he had already said, “O most worthy Virgin, be
mindful of us and grant that the Lord may do great things in us
also.” Such were his words in 1516 in a sermon on the Feast of the
Assumption.[1760]
In the same year, on the Feast of our Lady’s Conception, he speaks
of her name, which he says is derived from “_stilla maris_,”
and extols her as the one pure drop in the ocean of the “_massa
perditionis_.”[1761] To his admission here that her conception was
immaculate he was still true in 1527, as has already been shown; after
1529, however, the passage containing this admission was expunged
when the sermon in question was reprinted.[1762] In his home-postils
he says of her conception: “Mary the Mother was surely born of sinful
parents, and in sin, as we were”; any explanation of the universal
belief to the contrary and of his own previous statements he does not
attempt.[1763]
Owing to his belief in the Divinity of the Son, Luther continued to
call Mary the “Mother of God.” Even later he shared the Catholic
view that Mary by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost and at the
birth of the Saviour had been sanctified by God as the instrument of
the great mystery of the Incarnation through her Divine Son.[1764]
He was also firm in accepting the Virginity of the Mother of God as
expressed in the Apostles’ Creed. Nevertheless, according to his own
confession, this appealed to him less than her “wifehood,” and when
praising her he prefers to dwell on the latter, i.e. on the Virgin’s
motherhood.[1765] Mary was to him ever a Virgin, before, during and
after childbirth, and, in the last sermon he delivered at Eisleben
before his death, he insists on this perpetual Virginity, says she
ever remained a “pure, chaste maid,” and praises her humility,
because, though a “most pure and most holy Virgin,” yet after the
birth of her Son, obediently to the Law, she came to the Temple to be
purified.[1766]
Luther’s work on the Magnificat (1521), of which we have already
spoken (p. 237, n. 1), marks a turning-point. Although much that it
says of the greatness, dignity and virtues of Mary might well be
quoted, yet it contains some curiously superfluous warnings, for
instance, not to look on Mary as a “helpful goddess.”[1767] In spite
of any abuse which may possibly have mingled with her worship, the
Catholic people were well able to distinguish between the veneration
and confidence given to her and those acts of worship which belong
solely to God. Catholicism allowed full play to the deepest and
warmest feelings towards the ideal of the purest of women, without in
any way detracting from the exclusive rights of her Divine Son; on the
contrary, devotion to the Mother tended only to increase the honour
paid to the Son.
His “Exposition of the Magnificat” has frequently been taken as a
proof of Luther’s great piety. It indeed contains many good thoughts,
even apart from those relating to Mary, but in numerous passages the
author uses his pen for a highly prejudiced vindication of his new
teachings on the state of grace.
It should also be borne in mind that the printers started on the
book just before the Diet of Worms, and that it was intended to
attract and secure the support of the future rulers of the Saxon
Electorate. Luther was also engaged at that time on his exceedingly
violent screed against Catharinus, in which he attempts to reveal the
Pope in his true character as Antichrist. When, after the Diet of
Worms, he continued his work on the Magnificat he was certainly in
no mood to compose a book of piety on Mary. The result was that the
book became to all intents and purposes a controversial tract, which
cannot be quoted as a proof of his piety or serenity of mind during
those struggles. Luther’s Magnificat is as little a serious work of
edification and piety as his exposition of certain of the Psalms,
which appeared almost simultaneously and was also directed “against
the Pope and the doctrine of men.”
In the “Prayer-book” which Luther prepared for the press he retained
the “Hail Mary” together with the “Our Father” and the “I believe,”
but he cut it down to the angel’s greeting, as contained in the Bible,
and taught that thereby honour was merely to be given God for the
grace announced to Mary.[1768] He frequently preached, e.g. in 1523,
on the wrong use of this prayer.[1769]
In the Augsburg Confession, Melanchthon, when rejecting the invocation
of the Saints, made no exception in favour of Mary. Yet in the
“_Apologia_” of the Confession also composed by him, he says, that
“Mary prays for the Church,” that she is “most worthy of the greatest
honour” (“_dignissima amplissimis honoribus_”), but is not to be made
equal to Christ, as the Catholics fancied.[1770]
Luther did not merely reproach the Catholics for making a goddess of
Mary; he even ventured some remarks scarcely to the credit of the
Mother of God; for a while, so he says, she had possessed only a
small measure of faith and God had sometimes allowed her to waver;
such statements were due to his idea that all Christians, in order to
preserve a firm faith in their hearts, must ever be waging battle. On
these statements, Eck, in his Homilies, was very severe.[1771]
An attitude hostile to all the Catholic veneration for Mary is
expressed by Luther in a sermon in 1522 on the Feast of our Lady’s
Nativity, included in his church-postils. It is true that we “owe
honour to Mary,” he says, rather frigidly, at the very beginning, “but
we must take care that we honour her aright.” He proceeds to explain
that “we have gone too far in honouring her and esteem her more highly
than we should.” For in the first place we have thereby “disparaged”
Christ, the Redeemer, and “by the profound honour paid to the Mother
of God derogated from the honour and knowledge of Christ”; secondly,
the honour due to our fellow-men and the love of the poor has thereby
been forgotten. If it is a question of honouring anyone on account of
his holiness, “then we are just as holy as Mary and the other Saints,
however great, provided we believe in Christ.” That she “has a greater
grace,” viz. a higher dignity as the Mother of God, “is not due to any
merit of hers, but simply because we cannot all be Mothers of God;
otherwise she is on the same level with us.”[1772]
Of the anthem “_Salve Regina_,” which is “sung throughout the world to
the ringing of great bells,” he says, that it was a “great blasphemy
against God,” for it terms Mary, the mother of mercy, our life, our
sweetness and our hope. “The ‘_Regina Caeli_’ is not much better,
since it calls her Queen of Heaven.” Why should her prayers have so
much value, he asks, as though unaware of the explanations given by
so many ecclesiastical writers, particularly by St. Bernard. “Your
prayers, O Christian, are as dear to me as hers. And why? Because if
you believe that Christ lives in you as much as in her then you can
help me as much as she.”[1773]
In this discourse again he ventures on the calumny on the Catholic
veneration of Mary, of which he was to make such frequent use later;
it is equivalent to adoration; “To seek to make of Mary an idol, that
we cannot and may not do. We will not have her as a mediator, but as
an advocate [to this Luther always clung] we will gladly accept her,
like the other Saints. But people have put her above all the choirs
of angels.”[1774] Neither here nor elsewhere does he attempt to prove
her alleged adoration or the idolatry of the Catholics; when, a little
further on, he launches forth against the pilgrimages made by common
folk to churches and chapels of our Lady, he is straying from the
subject and dealing with a practice of the faithful, quite harmless
and wholesome in itself, whatever abuses it may then have involved.
The veneration for the holy Mother of the Redeemer, that high ideal
of humility and purity of heart, so devoid of the slightest trace of
sensuality, springs from the soil of humility, chastity and pure,
unselfish love. Luther’s whole mental outlook was not too favourable
to such necessary dispositions. His moral character, as exhibited
more particularly during the period after his stay at the Wartburg
and previous to his marriage, scarcely harmonised with the delicate
blossoms of this cultus, nor can we be surprised, looking at it
psychologically, that the chief alteration in his views took place
just at this time.
That hostile instinct, shared by so many heretics in their attitude
towards the most holy of women, outweighed in his soul the vestiges
of Catholic feeling he still retained. Malice impelled him to blacken
the honour which the people loved to pay to Mary; this he strove to
paint as mere idolatry, seeking unceasingly to affix this stigma on
Catholicism. Controversy stifled in him the impulse to that pious
veneration which he himself had admitted to be so well-founded and so
natural.
_Purgatory._
In the Schmalkalden Articles the olden doctrine of Purgatory was
rejected by Luther as follows: Purgatory, “with all its pomp, worship
and traffic, must be held to be nothing more than a mere phantom of the
devil,” born of “that dragon’s tail” the Mass.[1775]
Although in this condemnation Luther’s customary polemical exaggeration
of abuses clearly plays a part, yet from his Indulgence Theses and
“Resolutions” down to the sentence in the Articles of Schmalkalden the
working of his mind can clearly be traced, expressed as it is, now in
rejection on principle, and on theological or biblical grounds, now
in opportunist and cynical attacks on the Church’s ancient doctrine
of Purgatory. The temporal penalties which, according to the teaching
of the Church, must be paid by the suffering souls notwithstanding
their state of grace, found no place in Luther’s new theory of a faith
which covered over everything. According to the usual view venial sins
also are forgiven in the next world, thanks to the purifying pains of
Purgatory. But of venial sins as distinct from grievous sins Luther
refused to hear. He had nothing but evasive replies to the objection
which presented itself of its own accord, viz. that mortals when they
die often seem ripe neither for heaven nor for hell.[1776]
At first Luther was content to modify merely the doctrine of Purgatory
which is so deeply implanted in the consciousness of the Christian, by
denying that it was capable of making satisfaction while nevertheless
asserting his belief in the existence of a place of purgation (“_mihi
certissimum est, purgatorium esse_”);[1777] then he devoted himself
to countering the many legends and popular tales of the appearance
of ghosts, a comparatively easy task.[1778] The Pope, he went on to
say, had merely made Purgatory an article of faith in order to enrich
himself and his followers by Masses for the Dead, though in fact “it
may be that only very few souls go there.”
Later he preferred to think, that God had in reality told us
practically nothing about the existence or non-existence of Purgatory,
or of the condition of the Saints in heaven; the preachers would do
well, he says, gradually to wean the people from their practices in
this regard; they had merely to decline to discuss the question of the
dead and of the Saints in heaven. He was indeed unwilling to sever
the close ties, so dear to the Catholic, binding the faithful to the
deceased members of his family and to the beloved patterns and heroes
of former days, yet his writings do tend in that direction.
From 1522 onward he inclined strongly to the idea that those who passed
away fell into a deep sleep, from which they would awaken only on the
day of Judgment; those who had breathed their last in the faith of
Christ would all, so he fancies, sleep as in Abraham’s bosom; but since
this depended on the “good pleasure of God,” it was not forbidden “to
pray for the dead”; the petition must, however, be cautiously worded,
for instance, as follows: “I beseech Thee for this soul which may be
sleeping or suffering; if it be suffering, I implore Thee, if it be Thy
Divine Will, to deliver it.” After praying thus once or twice, then
“let it be.”[1779] In 1528 we still meet, in his writings, with similar
concessions to the olden teaching and practice.[1780]
In 1530, however, his writing “Widderruff vom Fegefeur,”[1781] made an
end of all concessions; here he is compelled to combat the “shouting
and boasting of the Papists,” for the “lies and abominations of the
sophists with regard to Purgatory” had passed all endurance. He now
wants the sleep of the soul to be understood as a state of happy peace,
and when it becomes a question of answering the Bible passage alleged
by the Catholics, viz. 2 Machabees xii. 45 f., where it is said of the
offering made for the fallen, that it is “a holy and wholesome thought
to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from sins,” Luther simply
strikes out this book from the Canon of Scripture, as indeed he had
done even previously; the Church, so his curious argument ran, could
not bestow more authority and force on a book than it possessed of
itself, because the sacred books must themselves bear witness to their
inspiration.
* * * * *
It would be superfluous to enumerate in detail the other points of
theology on which he set himself to oppose the Catholic teaching he had
himself in earlier days advocated, sometimes on excellent grounds. We
know his exclamation: Were I to teach to-day everything that I formerly
taught, particularly in the beginning, then “I should be obliged to
worship the Pope.” Moreover, not only were there contradictions due to
his falling away from doctrines of the Church which he had formerly
vindicated, but also many others resulting from his modification of his
own views, or implied in his new opinions.
His views on indulgences, satisfaction, penance and contrition,
original sin and predestination, on marriage, priestly ordination,
spiritual jurisdiction and secular authority, on Councils and the Roman
Primacy, have already been dealt with historically in what has gone
before. Other points of doctrine will have to be discussed elsewhere
in a different connection; for instance, the far-reaching question of
the Church and her visibility and invisibility, and--what is of no less
importance for a due appreciation of the man--the end of all and the
devil.
One only point, on which indeed Luther opposed the doctrine and
practice of the Church with all his heart and soul, must here be
considered more closely.
6. Luther’s Attack on the Sacrifice of the Mass
All Luther’s new doctrines referred to above might be regarded in the
light of attacks on the Church’s teaching and practice. None of his
theological views were put forward by him merely to be discussed in the
calm domain of thought. They are always quickened by his hatred of the
Church and the antichristian Papacy. This holds good in particular of
his antagonism to the sacrificial character of the Mass.
By his violent assault on the Mass he robbed the churches and public
worship of the Holy Sacrifice,[1782] and removed the very focus of
Divine service in the Church.
Whereas to the Catholic Church the celebration of the Sacrament of
the Altar was always a true sacrifice of praise, thanksgiving and
atonement, which Christ, as the High Priest, offers to the Eternal
Father through the instrumentality of a priest, according to Luther it
is merely a memorial on the part of the congregation, which stimulates
faith and gives a public testimony to God’s glory.[1783] In 1538 he
characterised the struggle against the Mass as one vital to the new
faith;[1784] he was very well aware how closely allied it was with the
worship to which he himself had once been devoted: “Had any man twenty
years ago tried to rob me of the Mass, I should have come to blows with
him.”[1785]
Sacrifice is the supreme and at the same time the most popular
expression of the worship of God. “From the rising of the sun even to
the going down,” the Prophet Malachias had prophesied (i. 11), “my name
is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and
there is offered to my name a clean oblation,” viz. the Eucharist. The
common oblation throughout Christendom formed a sublime bond uniting
all the Christian nations of the earth in one holy family. The words of
Christ concerning the “Body that is given for you,” and “Blood that is
shed for you” were rightly regarded as proving both the institution of
the common sacrifice and its atoning power.
Luther not only burst asunder the bond of unity, but also overthrew the
altar of sacrifice. It is against the correct idea of Divine worship to
deprive it of all sacrifice, and to make its principal object consist
in the edification and instruction of the congregation, as Luther
decreed. Here again we see Luther’s individualism and the stress he
laid on the subjective side, even to the extent of robbing religion of
the sacrifice of the Lamb, which had the misfortune to be independent
of fortuitous piety. The very walls of his temples seemed to utter a
chill protest against being given over to a worship so entirely at the
mercy of the feelings of the visitor. Luther was against the abuses
connected with the Mass, and so were all well-instructed Catholics.
But the latter argued, that, in spite of the abuses, the Mass must be
honoured as the sacrifice on which the spiritual life rests. To the
many contradictions of which he was guilty Luther added a further one,
viz. of advocating as a purer and higher worship, one that does not
even come up to the true standard of worship. (See vol. v., xxix., 9).
Luther’s deep-seated and almost instinctive antipathy to the Sacrifice
of the Mass affords us, in its various phases, a good insight into
his plan of campaign. On no other point does his hate flame forth
so luridly, nowhere else is he so defiant, so contemptuous and so
noisy--save perhaps when attacking Popery--as when assailing the
Sacrifice of the Mass, that main bulwark of the Papacy. One thing
is certain; of all the religious practices sacred to Catholics none
was branded by him with such hideous and common abuse as this, the
sublimest mystery of faith and of Divine Love.
_First Attacks. “On the Abomination of the Silent Mass.”_
In spite of Luther’s assurance given above of his former high regard
for the Mass, he must quite early have grown averse to it, probably at
the time when his zeal in the religious life first began to flag.
Even in 1516 we learn from his correspondence that he rarely found
time for its celebration or for the recitation of the Canonical
Hours.[1786] At a much later date he lets fall the remark, that he had
never liked saying Mass.[1787] In view of his disturbed state of soul
we can readily credit what he says, viz. that, in the monastery Gabriel
Biel’s book on the Mass, in which the dignity of the Holy Sacrifice
is extolled with the voices of antiquity, had often made his heart
bleed.[1788] It is rather curious, that, according to his own account,
it was on the occasion of his first Mass after ordination that his
morbid state of fear showed itself strongly for the first time.[1789]
No less remarkable is it that his most extravagant self-reproaches
for his past life had reference to his saying Mass. He tells us how,
even long after his apostasy, he had often been brought to the verge
of despair by the recollection of the terrible sin of saying Mass
whereby he had at one time openly defied and offended God. He morbidly
persuades himself that he had been guilty of the most frightful
idolatry; that, as a priest and monk, he had performed the most
criminal of actions, one subversive of all religion, in spite of his
having done so in ignorance and in perfect good faith.[1790]
In his sermons on the Commandments, published in 1518, we still find a
tribute to the Sacrifice of the Mass as Catholics understood it.[1791]
But in his “Sermon von dem hochwirdigen Sacrament des heyligen waren
Leychnams Christi” of 1519 he is curiously reticent concerning the
nature of the Mass, whilst expressly recommending and praising the
communion of the congregation--under both kinds--as the work of that
faith “wherein strength lies.”[1792]
The first open attack on the Holy Sacrifice was made in his “Sermon
von dem newen Testament das ist von der heyligen Messe” (1520). The
latter appeared almost simultaneously with his “An den christlichen
Adel” and prepared the way for his subversive treatment of the Mass
in his “_De captivitate babylonica_.” In the Sermon he declared
that it was “almost the worst abuse,” that in the older Church the
Eucharistic celebration had been turned into a sacrifice to be offered
to God.[1793] Statements such as these predominate in the virulent
chapter devoted to the Mass in the “_De captivitate babylonica_”:
Christ’s sacrifice on the cross had been made out to be insufficient
and the Sacrifice of the Mass set up in its place; the Supper was the
Lord’s work for us, but, by ascribing a sacrificial value to the Mass,
it becomes a work of man for God, whereby man hopes to please God.
The close ties connecting the Sacrifice of the Mass with both the
Church’s ancient traditions and the institution of Christ are here
ruthlessly torn asunder. A lurid and grossly exaggerated account of
the abuses which had arisen in connection with the money-offerings for
Masses served to stimulate the struggle, essentials faring as badly as
what was merely accidental.
At the Wartburg the “Spirit” of the place further excited Luther’s
hatred of the Mass. He poked fun at the “Mass-priest” who served the
stronghold and wrote to Melanchthon: “Never to all eternity shall I
say another Low Mass.”[1794] This he says in the same letter which
witnesses to his inner contest with the monastic vows, and in which we
find the sentence: “Be a sinner and sin boldly but believe more boldly
still.”[1795] At the time of his spiritual baptism in the Wartburg
he also wrote both his “_De abroganda missa_” and his “_De votis
monasticis_.” The former he published in 1522, also in a German version
entitled “Vom Missbrauch der Messen.”
This was the bugle-call to the struggle he immediately commenced at
Wittenberg against the continued celebration of Mass by the Catholic
clergy in the Castle and Collegiate churches of the town. We have
already treated of the phases of that campaign in which his impetuosity
and intolerance manifested itself in all its nakedness.[1796] From the
inglorious combat, thanks to the help of the mob, he was to come forth
victorious. On Christmas Day, 1524, for the first time, there was no
Mass, and in the following year Justus Jonas wrote of the completion
of the work: “On the Saturday after the Feast of St. Matthew the
Apostle and Evangelist, the whole Pope ... was flung out of All
Saints’ church at Wittenberg, together with the stoles, albs, etc.;
the olden ceremonies were replaced by pious ones such as accord with
Scripture.”[1797]
Luther was convinced that the “whole Pope” could not be destroyed
throughout the world save by the abolition everywhere of the Mass.
“When once the Mass has been put away,” he declares in 1522, in his
screed against Henry VIII., “then I shall think I have overthrown the
Pope completely.”[1798]
In this writing his consciousness of his mission and his defiant
insistence on the new teaching were largely directed against that
palladium of the old Church: “Through me Christ has begun to reveal the
abomination standing in the Holy Place” (Dn. ix. 27). It is in denying
the sacrificial character of the Mass that he uses those odd words of
bravado: “Here I stand, here I sit, here I remain, here I defy with
contempt the whole assembly of the Papists,” etc.[1799]
The last act in his warfare on the Mass at the Collegiate church of
Wittenberg had been anticipated by Luther’s stormy sermon against the
Canon of the Mass (Nov. 27, 1524).[1800] This identical sermon, taken
down by his pupil George Rörer, formed the groundwork of the writing
he published in 1525, “Von dem Grewel der Stillmesse so man den Canon
nennet.”[1801]
Here he proceeds on the curious assumption, only to be explained by
his perverted enthusiasm, that the mere bringing to light of the
Canon (i.e. of the principal part of the Mass, which includes the
Consecration and which the priest reads in silence) will suffice to
bring about the fall of the whole Eucharistic ritual. The passionate,
cynical commentary which he appended to the translation, was, however,
far more effective.
The author seems not in the least to realise that the Canon of the
Mass is one of the most ancient and most authentic echoes of the early
Western Church. It contains sublime religious ideas couched in the
simple yet impressive language of the remotest ages of the Church when
she was still in touch with classical culture.[1802] Yet Luther’s
opinion is that: “It must have been composed by some unlettered
monk.”[1803]
He concludes the booklet with a specimen of his usual language: “See,
there you have heard the holy, silent Mass and now know what it is,
that you may stand aghast at it and cross yourself as though you saw
the devil as large as life.” He exhorts the reader to thank God, that
“such an abomination has been brought to light,” and “that the great
whore of Babylon has been exposed.”
At the same time he tells the secular authorities that it is
their bounden duty to interfere “by means of the law” against
such defamation of the name of God; “for when an impudent rascal
openly blasphemes God in the street, or curses and swears, and the
authorities permit it, they become in the sight of God partners in his
wickedness. And if in some regions it is forbidden to curse or swear,
much more just were it that the secular lords should here do something
to prevent and to punish, because such blaspheming and defaming in the
Mass is quite as public and as open as when a knave blasphemes in the
street. If one is punishable, the other is surely no less so.”[1804]
Thus Luther’s attacks on the Mass in a fatal way became one of the
quicksands on which the theory of freedom of conscience and worship
which he had put forth at the commencement suffered shipwreck.[1805]
Even in the question of the Mass at Wittenberg he had formerly
insisted, in opposition to Carlstadt’s violent proceedings, that no
religious compulsion should be exercised; this he did, for instance,
in the sermons he preached against Carlstadt’s undertaking and
particularly in that on Low Masses,[1806] where he declared that
faith cannot he held captive or bound, that each one must see for
himself what is right or wrong and is not simply to fall in with
the “general opinion or to yield to compulsion.” His words were an
honourable declaration in favour of freedom of conscience. And now,
in his warfare against his fantastic caricature of the Mass, not
theoretically only but in practice too (for besides Wittenberg, there
was also Altenburg and Erfurt)[1807] he placed the Mass, the most
sacred centre of the Church’s worship, on a level with criminal deeds
and invited the magistrates to treat it as a sacrilege, since it was
the duty of authority “to check all outbreaks of wickedness.”[1808]
When Johann Eck took up his pen to refute Luther’s “Von dem Grewel
der Stillmesse” he felt it almost superfluous to prove how unfounded
the latter’s assertions were, that, by the sacrifice of the Mass,
Catholics “denied in deed and in their heart that Christ had blotted
out sin”[1809] by His Sacrifice on Golgotha, or that they maintained,
that, not the merits of Christ, but rather “our works, must effect
this.”[1810] He enters at greater length into the theological proofs
of the truly sacrificial character of the consecration and of the
correctness and value of the Canon, supplementing the biblical passages
on the Sacrifice of the New Covenant by the clear and definite witness
of tradition.[1811]
He and his Catholic readers were, however, quite prepared to find
Luther refusing even to listen to such proofs taken from tradition.
“Ah, bah, tradition this way, tradition that!” he had already cried,
with regard to this very question, when striving to shake himself free
of the fetters of the Church’s doctrine.
Eck, however, also attacked Luther from another point. Luther had
placed in the very forefront of his writing the assertion, that he had
never advised the people to have recourse to violent measures, whether
with regard to the Mass or the Catholic worship generally, or invited
them to revolt; in the preface Eck accordingly promises to take him
to task both concerning the Canon and for his responsibility in the
rising. “I shall, please God, prove Luther a liar on both counts.” He
convicts him of inciting to revolt on the strength of “five proofs”
taken from various works of his.
The pecuniary aspect of the Mass supplied Luther and the preachers with
an effective means of exciting the people which they were not slow to
seize. The abuses, real or apparent, of the system of Mass-stipends,
were worked to their utmost by the demagogues.
In Luther’s extravagant language the Sacrifice of the Mass is simply
made to appear a rich field for vulgar greed of gain, discovered
and exploited by the Papists because it filled their pockets. The
amount brought in by Masses for the Dead was chiefly to blame for the
spread of the Mass. “This invention [Masses for the Dead] has been
worth money to them,” he cries, “so that they need not say Mass for
nothing.”[1812] “At All Saints’, here at Wittenberg, the money is
godlessly thrown away [by foundation-Masses, annual commemorations,
etc.]; the three Mass-priests there, ‘three pigs or paunches,’”
celebrate it “in the house of infamy simply because they worship
money.”[1813]
Many of the apostles of the new faith preached in the same strain
as Luther. Others, as Stephen Agricola for instance states he did,
were content to scourge “the great superstition and hindrance to the
true honour of God,” i.e. the abuses. Agricola, if we may trust him,
“was loath to see Masses for the dead said for money, as this should
be done out of pure charity.”[1814] When, later, Flacius Illyricus
made similar charges against the Catholics on the pretext of the alms
given for Masses, the Dominican, Johann Fabri, replied: “What do you
sectarians do gratis? People can never give enough for your preaching,
your psalm-singing, your Supper, etc., so that yearly a very large sum
has to be spent on your support.... Why then do you abuse the poor
priests who take payment for their work and unkindly twit them for
saying Mass solely for money? What answer would you make were I to
say: You too, Illyricus, preach for the sake of money?”[1815]
The charges of self-seeking and avarice had, however, in some
places so strong an effect as to lead to popular risings against
the celebration of Mass. This recalls the account given by Erasmus
of the ready success he had noticed attended the addresses of the
preachers: “The Mass has been abolished,” he writes, “but what more
holy thing has been set in its place?... Their churches I have
never entered. I have occasionally seen those who listened to their
sermons come out like men possessed, with anger and fury writ large
upon their faces.... They walked like warriors who have just been
harangued by their general. When have their sermons ever produced
penance and contrition? Do they not devote most of their time to abuse
of the clergy and their lives?... Are risings rare amongst these
evangelicals? And do they not resort to violence on the slightest
provocation?”[1816]
The peaceable union of Christians before the Altar of Sacrifice in
the “Mystery of Faith” had made way for warfare. The absence of
the sacrifice avenged itself, however, in the Churches given over
to the new religion by the dreariness and utter desolation of the
sacred buildings once so full of life; not to mention the dreadful
controversies, the bare “ministry of the Word” and the one-sided effort
to make of the Supper simply a source of edification and increase of
faith, could not suffice to attract the multitude to the Eucharistic
celebration. The great sacrifice, which by its own infinite worth and
quite independently of its power to edify, glorifies God in His Temple,
and so powerfully stimulates the faithful to unite their offering
with the sacramental oblation, had been torn from the midst of the
congregation.
* * * * *
If we seek here for the connecting link between Luther’s bitter
hostility to the Mass and his system as a whole, we shall find, that,
granted the doctrine of the imputation of the merits of Christ by faith
alone, the Eucharistic Sacrifice had no real place left. Luther said in
1540: “Where the ‘_locus_’ [’_iustificationis_’] is rightly taught and
stands, there can be nothing evil; for the _antecedens_, ‘faith alone
justifies,’ spells the fall of the Mass,” etc.[1817]
In the new faith everything turned on the saving and the pacification
of the sinner by virtue of a sort of amnesty furnished by the merits
of Christ’s death on the cross. Faith alone secures all the fulness of
the Redeemer’s work of satisfaction; no ordinance of Christ, sacrament,
sacrifice or priesthood can assist in the work of clothing the soul
with the mantle of these Divine merits; anything of the sort would only
diminish the dignity and the efficacy of the confidence of faith. Only
what promotes the personal faith which saves--that master-key to the
forgiveness, or better, to the cloaking of sin--is here admitted, but
no work, no “_opus operatum_” of Christ’s institution, which, through
sacrament and sacrifice, imparts grace to the faithful Christian who is
duly prepared to seek salvation; on the contrary, according to Luther,
such institutions, which the ancient Church looked upon as sacred, only
detract from the merits of Christ.
And since, in his view, every Christian by his faith is a priest, the
hierarchy falls, and thus sacrifice too, at least as the prerogative of
a special sacerdotal class, also ceases to exist.
Hence the warfare on behalf of the Evangel of faith alone and against
sacerdotalism, naturally, and of necessity, led to the warfare against
the Mass. This particular combat, in which (as in the attack on the
Church’s visible head, viz. the Pope) Luther’s animosity against the
Catholics reached its culminating point, necessarily occupied a place
in the forefront, because the Mass, which united the congregation
before the altar, was the most public and most tangible expression of
Catholic life and the one most frequently seen.
Luther’s theological perversions of the Church’s doctrine of the
sacrifice of the Mass, in the above works and elsewhere, are all
the more astonishing, seeing that Gabriel Biel, the theologian,
with whom he was so well acquainted and whose “_Sacri canonis
missæ expositio_” he had studied with keen interest, had, in his
exposition of the ancient doctrine of the Mass, forestalled these
very misrepresentations, almost as though he had actually foreseen
them.[1818] The respected Tübingen University-Professor, in this
explanation of the Mass, which appeared in 1488, was frequently
reprinted, and was much used by both parish clergy and preachers,
insists, in close unison with the past, that there was but one great
and atoning sacrifice of the cross, and that the sacrifice of the Mass
did not in the least detract from it but rather applied it to the
individual believer. He points out with great emphasis the uniquely
sublime character of the sacrifice on Calvary (“_unica oblatio et
perfectissimum sacrificium_”), in its fourfold aspect as a sacrifice
of praise, thanksgiving, petition and atonement. In support of this he
quotes a number of passages from the Bible: “By it [the sacrifice on
the cross] our sins are blotted out (Romans iv.). Through it we have
found grace whereby we are saved (Hebrews v.): for, being consummated
by suffering, He (Christ) became to all who obey Him the cause of
eternal life. By the one oblation of the cross He hath for ever
perfected them that are sanctified (Hebrews x.),” etc. “If you seek
the blotting out of sins, behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the
sins of the world; if you seek thanksgiving, Christ gives thanks to the
Father; if you seek for deliverance from evil, He heals and sets us
free.”[1819] In several passages he dwells in detail on the idea of the
saving Lamb of God, once in connection with the thrice-repeated _Agnus
Dei_ of the Mass.
But, a comparatively short time after, another was to come, who would
assert that the world had long ago lost the Lamb of God, and who
presumed to take upon himself the task of pointing Him out anew to all
men and of making Him profitable to souls.
In unison with Fathers and theologians, Biel sums up the mutual
relations between the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacrifice on the
Cross in the words: “Although Christ was once only offered visibly in
the flesh, yet He is daily offered concealed under the appearances of
bread and wine, though painlessly, for the Sacrifice of the Mass is the
representation and memorial of the sacrifice consummated on the Cross
and produces the same effects.”[1820]
When describing more minutely its efficacy for the obtaining of grace
and forgiveness of sins he dwells on the thought, that it has no
quasi-magical effect, but acts “according to man’s preparation and
capacity,” so that the Holy Sacrifice does not by any means blot out
sin if man’s heart is still turned away from God: to souls that show
themselves well-disposed it brings contrition and sorrow for sin
and finally forgiveness.[1821] Unlike Baptism and Penance, it does
not reconcile the soul with God directly, but only indirectly, by
arousing the spirit of penance which leads to the wholesome use of
the sacraments and appeases the anger of the Heavenly Father by the
offering of His Son, and prevents Him withdrawing the help of His
grace. Biel elucidates the idea of sacrifice, deals with the figurative
sacrifices of the Old Testament, which found their fulfilment in the
clean oblation (Mal. i. 10 f.) to be offered from the rising of the sun
even to the going down, with the twofold efficacy of the Mass (“_ex
opere operato_” and “_ex opere operante_”)[1822] and many other points
which Luther unjustly attacks; with the lawfulness of private Masses,
with or without any Communion of the faithful, with the advantage of
Masses for the souls of the faithful departed, with Mass-stipends[1823]
which he defends against the charge of simony, and with the practice of
repeating silently certain portions of the Mass, an ancient usage for
which he gives the reasons.[1824]
_“On the Corner-Mass.” Continuation of the Conflict._
In his war against the Mass Luther was never to yield an inch. His “Von
dem Grewel der Stillmesse” was followed by fresh pronouncements and
writings which bear witness to the intensity of his hatred.
The occasion for another lengthy writing against the Mass and the
hierarchy seems to have been furnished in 1533 by the religious
conditions in the province of Anhalt, where the Princes, under pressure
from their Catholic neighbours, had begun to tolerate the former
worship and the saying of Mass. In Dec. of that year Luther published
his booklet “Von der Winckelmesse und Pfaffen Weihe.”[1825]
It was designed primarily as a protest against “the ecclesiastical
jurisdiction and Ordination,” i.e. against the hierarchy and
priesthood, and broadly hinted to the “bishops and priests” that their
Order was doomed to destruction. At the Diet of Augsburg he declared
his followers had “very humbly informed the Pope and the bishops, that
we had no wish forcibly to infringe on their rights and authority in
ecclesiastical matters, but that, so long as they did not compel us
to any unchristian doctrines, we were quite ready to be ordained and
governed by them, and even to assist them in their administration,”
but his overtures having been rejected, nothing remained for him but
to await the end of the priesthood when God should “in good time” so
dispose. “God is wonderful”; He had “overthrown by His word” so much
“papistical Mammon-service and idolatry”; “He would also be able to
wipe away the rancid Chresam,” i.e. to make an end of the bishops and
priests in whose ordination Chrism was used.[1826] Towards the end
of the tract he returns to the attack on priestly ordination. He is
determined “again to adjudge and commit to the Churches the call, or
true ordination and consecration to the office of pastor.” The members
of the Church must have the “right and authority to appoint people to
the office,” and to entrust it to simple believers of blameless lives,
even “without Chrism or butter, grease or lard.”[1827]
The greater portion of the writing is, however, devoted to the
“Corner-Mass,” i.e. the Mass generally, which according to the Catholic
doctrine is equally valid whether celebrated by the priest alone in a
lonely chapel or amid a concourse of faithful who unite their prayers
with his and communicate. For reasons readily understood, Luther
prefers to use the contemptuous term “Corner-Mass.”
Towards the end he himself sums up the thoughts on the Mass which he
has just submitted:[1828]
He had the best grounds for “being affrighted,” that he and others
“had once said the Corner-Mass so devoutly.” After the reasons he had
advanced, everyone, particularly the Papists to-day, must be driven
to despair at the frightful idolatry of the Mass; yet they “wantonly
persist in their abomination.” “They pervert Christ’s ordinance, say
their Mass not merely in disobedience to God, but also blasphemously
and without any command, give the sacrament to no one but keep it for
themselves alone, and, to make matters worse, are not even certain
whether they are receiving merely bread and wine or the Body and Blood
of Christ, because they do not follow Christ’s ordinance.”
Here he plainly enough questions the presence of Christ under the
consecrated elements in the “Corner-Mass” and has thus made a notable
stride forward in his hostility.
“Nor can anyone be certain,” so he continues his summing up, “whether
they [the priests, in the Canon of the Mass] pronounce the Words [of
institution] or not; hence no one is bound to believe their secret
antics. Neither do they preach to anyone, though Christ commanded it.”
In his opinion it was essential both that the words of institution
should be spoken aloud, in order to stimulate faith, and that the
service should include the preaching of the Word--minor matters,
which, however, became of the greatest importance to him when once he
had reduced it all to the status of a mere ceremonial of edification.
He boldly concludes. “It is also impossible that they [the Popish
sayers of Masses] can be right in their faith.” For, as already
demonstrated, “one and the same man could not believe aright and
yet knowingly rage against the Word of God. Hence they can neither
pray, nor offer thanks in such a way as to be acceptable to God. And,
finally, over and above these abominations and crimes, they actually
dare to offer to God this sacrament (if what is disgraced by so much
blasphemy and abomination can be called a sacrament) and to barter and
sell it to other Christians for money.”
The book on the “Winckelmesse” is celebrated for the disputation
between Luther and the devil which it describes. The devil sets
forth the proofs against the Mass with marvellous skill, and, by his
reproaches, drives the quondam monk into desperate straits. Here Luther
is describing the deep remorse of conscience which he will have it he
had to endure on account of his Masses. He is, however, merely using a
literary artifice when he introduces the devil as the speaker; of this
there will be more to say later.[1829] Here, in addition to a letter,
which so far has received but little attention, in which he himself
furnishes the key to the form in which he casts his argument,[1830]
we may mention the fact that Luther’s first draft of his writing on
the “Winckelmesse,” which has recently been examined, gives a portion
of the devil’s arguments against the Mass and without any reference
to the devil, as the author’s own; only later on was the devil made
the spokesman for Luther’s ideas.[1831] We can see that it was only
as the work proceeded that there occurred to Luther the happy thought
of making the devil himself speak, not so much to reveal to the world
the worthlessness of the Mass, as to cast if possible poor Luther into
despair, because of his former Mass-sayings, and to reveal the utter
perversity of the Papists, who, far from being in despair, actually
boasted of the Mass.
Luther expected great things from his ruthless attack and from
the scene in which the devil appears. It would be, so he fancied,
a “test of the wisdom and power of the Papacy.”[1832] His friend
Jonas, in a letter of Oct. 26, 1533, speaking of the yet unpublished
“Winckelmesse,” calls it a real “battering-ram” to be used against the
Papacy; it was long since the Professor had been heard speaking in
such a way of the Mass, the Pope and the priests.[1833] Those of the
preachers who were fallen priests rejoiced at the advice they found
in the book for the quieting of their consciences when tempted by the
devil, and at its hint that they should rub their anointed hands with
soap and lye the better to obliterate the mark of the Beast.
The writing was translated by Jonas into Latin, but his rendering was a
very free and rhetorical one.
The interest it aroused was increased by the negative attitude which
Luther seemed to assume towards the Real Presence. To many of his
followers Luther seemed to come to an opinion not far removed from the
Zwinglian denial of the Presence. Luther learned that Prince Johann of
Anhalt and others had expressed their anxiety lest the booklet “should
be understood as though I agreed with the fanatics and enemies of
the Sacrament.” Hence he at once issued a fresh writing entitled: “A
Letter of D. Mart. Luther to a good friend concerning his book on the
Corner-Masses” (1534).[1834]
To attack the Sacrament and the Real Presence was, he there declared,
far from his thoughts. I shall prove “that I do not hold, nor ever
shall hold to all eternity, with the wrong doctrine of the foes of the
Sacrament--or to speak quite plainly--with that of Carlstadt, Zwingli
and their followers.”[1835] But by this he stood: “Whoever, like the
Papists, did not celebrate the Sacrament according to the ordinance of
Christ, had no right to say Christ was there”; “a counterfeit florin,
struck contrary to the King’s order, can never be a good one.”[1836]
“May God bestow on all pious Christians such a mind, that, when they
hear the Mass spoken of, they quake with fear and cross themselves as
they would at the sight of some abomination of the devil.”[1837]
* * * * *
Johann Cochlæus at once replied to the “Winckelmesse” with an appeal
to the correctness of ecclesiastical tradition. In the same year he
published Innocent the Third’s “_De sacro altaris mysterio_” and
Isidore of Sevilla’s “_De ecclesiasticis officiis_.” These venerable
witnesses of Christian antiquity had, he declared, “a better claim
to be believed than Luther’s furies.” In addition to this he also
wrote a popular theological defence in the vernacular “On the Holy
Mass and Priestly ordination” (Leipzig, 1534). In this writing he
begins by emphasising the claims of ecclesiastical tradition and the
teaching office of the Church: “The Church understands Scripture far
better and more surely, thanks to the Holy Spirit promised by Christ
and duly sent her, than Luther does by his evil spirit.” He laid down
the principle which he urged was the only true and reliable guide in
the controversies of the age: Hold fast to the teaching of the Church
rather than to the subjective interpretations of the Bible, which
are often so divergent. He was not, however, altogether happy in his
choice of expressions, for instance, when he exclaims: “Bible hither,
Bible thither!” for this might well have given the impression, that,
on his side, small account was made of the Bible. In reality this was
merely his way of retorting on Luther’s: “Tradition hither, Tradition
thither.” The theologian, who elsewhere is careful to set its true
value on the Bible, seeks in this way to brand the tricks played with
the Bible; similar phrases then in use were the one we already know,
“Bible, Babble, Bubble,” and Luther’s own sarcastic saying: “The Bible
is a heresy-book.”[1838]
Cochlæus not only brought forward, in support of the Mass, besides Holy
Scripture, that tradition which Luther had treated so scornfully, but
also replied to his opponent’s perversions and charges on all the other
counts. Of the grievous disorders which Luther said had come under
his notice during his stay in Rome, what Cochlæus says is much to the
point: “It is quite possible, that, among so many thousands from all
lands, there may have been some such desperate villains. But it is not
seemly that Luther on that score should seek to calumniate pious and
devout monks and priests and make the people distrustful of them.”[1839]
* * * * *
In his familiar conversations Luther repeatedly reveals the
psychological side of his attack on the Mass.
He said in 1540: “From the earliest years [of the revolt against
the Church] I was grievously tempted by the thought: ‘If the Mass
is really the highest form of Divine worship, then, Good God, how
wickedly have I behaved, towards God!’” He sought to stifle the voice
of conscience, which he called a temptation, by insisting still more
strongly on the worthlessness of the Mass.[1840] “But this is quite
certain,” he says, “the Mass is Moasim.”[1841] Moasim, according to
Dan. xi. 38, was the idol to be set up by Antichrist, in the letters
of whose name, according to Luther, we find the word “Mass”; this
idol, he says, was honoured with “silver, gold and precious stones,”
because the Mass helps to bring in such great wealth.
“From the Mass,” he said in the same conversation, “came every sort of
ungodliness, it was an ‘_abominanda abominatio_,’ and yet it was held
in such honour.”--In another conversation in the same year we hear him
say: “the Canon was looked upon as so sacred that to attack it was
like attacking both heaven and earth. When first I wrote against the
Mass and against the Canon I could hardly hope that people would agree
with me.... But when my writing [the ‘Sermon on the New Testament,
i.e. the Mass,’ 1520] was published, I found that many had shared my
temptation; they thanked me for deliverance from their terror.”[1842]
In Luther’s efforts to deliver himself and others “from their terror”
and to convince himself that “this is quite certain,” lies the
sole explanation of his wild statements that his former saying of
Mass--though undoubtedly done in good faith, and, at first, even with
pleasure and devotion[1843]--was his worst sin,[1844] and that he
would rather have “kept a bawdy house or been a robber than to have
blasphemed and traduced Christ for fifteen years by the saying of
Masses,”[1845] and, again, that “no tongue can tell the abomination of
the Mass, nor can any heart believe its wickedness. It would not have
been astonishing had God destroyed the world on account of the Mass,
as He will without a doubt soon do by fire.”[1846] The Mass embodies
a “pestilential mistake of the self-righteousness of the _opus
operatum_.” In the Popish Mass an ignorant priest, who does not even
know Latin, takes it on himself to blot out the sins of others.[1847]
Equally evident, according to the Table-Talk, was the pestilent side
of the Mass as a pecuniary concern. It is on this account that Luther
is fond of calling it the foundation of Popery, as though the Papacy
were erected on wealth.[1848] His historical knowledge of the actual
facts is as great here as it is when, in his Table-Talk, he makes
private Masses originate in the time of Pope Gregory I († 604).[1849]
Incidentally he describes quite frankly one way in which he had
endeavoured to overthrow the Mass: At first it had seemed to him
impossible to achieve its fall because its roots were so deeply
imbedded in the human heart. “But when once the Sacrament is received
under both kinds, the Mass will not stand much longer.”[1850]--We have
already had occasion to describe the underhand measures he recommended
in the warfare against the Mass (Vol. ii., p. 321 f.).
In part at least, he could congratulate himself on the success of his
unholy efforts. “If our Lord God allows me to die a natural death, He
will be playing a nasty trick on the Papists, because they will have
failed to burn the man who has thus brought the Mass to nought.”[1851]
Denunciation of the Mass naturally occupies a place in Luther’s
Articles of Schmalkalden.[1852] Since the latter were incorporated in
the “Symbolic Books” of the Lutheran Evangelical Church and figure
in the Book of Concord with the three oldest Œcumenical Creeds, the
Confession of Augsburg, etc., as writings “recognised and accepted as
godly truths by our blessed forefathers and by us,” condemnation of the
Mass became as much a traditional canon within the Protestant fold as
Luther himself could have desired.
In the Schmalkalden Articles we find, after the first article on
Justification by Faith alone, a second article on the office and work
of Jesus Christ which declares: “That the Mass among the Papists must
be the greatest and most frightful abomination” because it is “in
direct and violent opposition” to the first article, according to
which the Lamb of God alone delivers man from sin, not “a wicked or
pious minister of the Mass by his work.” The Mass is a “work of men,
yea, of wicked knaves,” a source “of unspeakable abuses by the buying
and selling of Masses,” defended by the Papists only because they
“know very well, that if the Mass falls, the Papacy too must perish.”
Over and above all this, that dragon’s tail, which is the Mass, has
produced much filth and vermin and many forms of idolatry: First of all
Purgatory; for the execrable market of Masses for the dead produced
that “devilish spectre” of Purgatory. Secondly, “on account of it
evil spirits have performed much trickery by appearing as the souls
of men”; the devils “with unspeakable roguery” demanded Masses, etc.
“Thirdly, pilgrimages, whereby people ran after Masses, forgiveness of
sins, and the Grace of God, for the Mass ruled everything” and caused
men to run after “hurtful, devilish will-o’-the-wisps.” “Fourthly, the
brotherhoods” with their Masses, etc., are also “contrary to the first
article of the Atonement.” “Fifthly, the holy things” (relics) were
also “supposed to effect forgiveness of sin as being a good work and
worship of God like the Mass.” “Sixthly, here belong also the beloved
Indulgence” in which “Judas incarnate, i.e. the Pope, sells the merits
of Christ.”--Hence even Indulgences are made out to be one of the
unhappy consequences of the Mass!
* * * * *
It is a relief, after such lamentable utterances which could only have
been accepted by people whom prejudice in Luther’s favour had rendered
blind, to recall the clear statements--so full of conviction--on the
Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament, which occur in the very
writings in which Luther attacks the Mass. Our second volume concluded
with a cheering confession on the part of the Wittenberg Professor of
his faith in the Trinity and Incarnation, a confession which both did
him honour and expressed those consoling and incontrovertible truths
which constitute the common treasure of the Christian creeds. The
present volume also, after the sad pictures of dissent of which it is
only too full, may charitably end with the words in which Luther voices
his belief in the Sacrament of the Altar, the lasting memorial of
Divine Love, in which our Lord never ceases to pray for unity amongst
those bidden as guests to His table.
“I hereby confess before God and the whole world that I believe and do
not doubt, and with the help and grace of my dear Lord Jesus Christ
will maintain even to that Day, that where Mass is celebrated according
to Christ’s ordinance whether amongst us Lutherans or in the Papacy,
or in Greece or in India (even though under one kind only--though that
is wrong and an abuse), there is present under the species of the
Bread, the true Body of Christ given for us on the cross, and, under
the species of wine, the true Blood of Christ shed for us; nor is it
a spiritual or fictitious Body and Blood, but the true natural Body
and Blood taken of the holy, virginal, and really human body of Mary,
without the intervention of any man but conceived of the Holy Ghost
alone; which Body and Blood of Christ now sitteth at the right hand of
the Majesty of God in the Divine Person, which is Christ Jesus, true,
real, and eternal God, with the Father of Whom He is begotten from all
eternity, etc. And that same Body and Blood of the Son of God, Jesus
Christ, not only the Saints and those who are worthy, but also sinners
and the unworthy truly handle and receive, bodily though invisibly,
with hands, mouth, chalice, paten, corporal, or whatever else be used
when it is given and received in the Mass.”
“This is my faith, this I know, and no one shall take it from me.”
He had always, so he insists, by his testimony upheld the “clear, plain
text of the Gospel” against heresies old and new, and withstood the
“devil’s malice and work in the service and for the betterment of my
dear brothers and sisters, in accordance with Christian charity.”[1853]
END OF VOL. IV
FOOTNOTES:
[1] On Clement the Seventh’s earlier hesitation to come to a decision,
see Ehses in “Vereinsschr. der Görresgesell.,” 1909, 3, p. 7 ff., and
the works there referred to; also Paulus, “Luther und die Polygamie”
(on Enders, “Luthers Briefwechsel,” 9, p. 92, n.) in the “Lit. Beilage
der Köln. Volksztng.,” 1903, No. 48, and “Hist.-pol. Blätter,” 135,
1905, p. 89 ff.; Pastor, “Hist. of the Popes” (Engl. trans.), 10, pp.
238-287. See below, p. 6 f.
[2] To Robert Barnes, Sep. 3, 1531, “Briefwechsel,” 9, pp. 87-8. At the
commencement we read: “_Prohibitio uxoris demortui fratris est positivi
iuris, non divini_.” A later revision of the opinion also under Sep. 3,
_ibid._, pp. 92-8.
[3] “Briefwechsel,” _ibid._, p. 88. In the revision the passage still
reads much the same: “Rather than sanction such a divorce I would
permit the King to marry a second Queen ... and, after the example of
the olden Fathers and Kings, to have at the same time two consorts or
Queens” (p. 93).
[4] See vol. iii., p. 259.
[5] “Briefwechsel,” 9, p. 87 _seq._
[6] Luther’s “Briefwechsel,” 9, p. 91, n. 15. Cp. W. W. Rockwell, “Die
Doppelehe des Landgrafen Philipp von Hessen,” Marburg, 1904, p. 214, n.
1, and below, p. 17, n. 2.
[7] Memorandum of Aug. 23, 1531, “Corp. ref.,” 2, p. 520 _seq._; see
particularly p. 526: Bigamy was allowable in the King’s case, “_propter
magnam utilitatem regni, fortassis etiam propter conscientiam regis....
Papa hanc dispensationem propter caritatem debet concedere._” Cp. G.
Ellinger, “Phil. Melanchthon,” 1902, p. 325 f., and Rockwell, _ibid._,
p. 208 ff.
[8] Cp. Th. Kolde, “Zeitschr. f. KG.,” 13, 1892, p. 577, where he
refers to the after-effect of Melanchthon’s memorandum, instanced
in Lenz, “Briefwechsel Philipps von Hessen,” 1, p. 352, and to the
material on which Bucer relied to win over the Wittenbergers to the
Landgrave’s side (“Corp. ref.,” 3, p. 851 _seq._).
[9] “Wie in Ehesachen und den Fällen, so sich derhalben zutragen, nach
göttlichem billigem Rechten christenlich zu handeln sei,” 1531. Fol. D.
2b and D. 3a. Cp. Rockwell, p. 281, n. 1.
[10] The Preface reprinted in “Werke,” Erl. ed., 63, p. 305.
[11] Enders, “Luther’s Briefwechsel,” 9, p. 92.
[12] Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 199: “_Suasimus Anglo, tolerabiliorem
ei esse concubinatum quam_” to distract his whole country and nation,
“_sed tandem eam repudiavit_.”
[13] Cp. Paulus in the “Hist.-pol. Bl.,” 135, 1905, p. 90.
[14] [Though, of course, the hesitation evinced previously by St.
Augustine (“_De bono conjugali_,” “P.L.,” xl., col. 385) must not be
lost sight of. _Note to English Edition._]
[15] Cp. Paulus, _ibid._, 147, 1911, p. 505, where he adds: “And yet
mediæval casuistry is alleged to have been the ‘determining influence’
in Luther’s sanction of bigamy! Had Luther allowed himself to be guided
by the mediæval theory and practice, he would never have given his
consent to the Hessian bigamy.”
[16] “Hist. Zeitschr.,” 94, 1905, p. 409. Of Clement VII, Köhler
writes (_ibid._): “Pope Clement VII, who had to make a stand against
Henry VIII of England in the question of bigamy, never suggested a
dispensation for a second wife, though, to all appearance, he was not
convinced that such a dispensation was impossible.”
[17] “Theol. JB. für 1905,” Bd. 25, p. 657, with reference to
“Hist.-pol. Bl.,” 135, p. 85.
[18] Cp. Janssen, “Hist. of the German People,” Eng. Trans., 6, pp. 1
ff.
[19] Letter published by Th. Kolde in the “Zeitschr. für KG.,” 14,
1894, p. 605.
[20] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 106, in 1540. Cp. “Corp. ref.,” 2, p.
995.
[21] “Corp. ref.,” 2, p. 928. Melanchthon’s language, and Luther’s too,
changed when, later, Henry VIII caused those holding Lutheran opinions
to be executed. See below, p. 12 f.
[22] Beginning of Dec., 1535. “Briefwechsel,” 10, p. 275: “_Utinam
haberent plures reges Angliæ, qui illos occiderent!_”
[23] “Corp. ref.,” 2, p. 1032, n. 1383. Cp. Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 369.
[24] Thus G. Mentz, the editor of the “Wittenberger Artickel,” drawn up
for the envoys from England (“Quellenschriften zur Gesch. des Prot.,”
Hft. 2, 1905), pp. 3 and 4. He points out, p. 7, that King Henry, in a
reply to Wittenberg (March 12, 1536, “Corp. ref.,” 3, p. 48), requested
“support in the question of the divorce” and desired certain things to
be modified in the “_Confessio_” and the “_Apologia_.’”
[25] For full particulars concerning the change, see Rockwell, _loc.
cit._, 216 ff. The latter says, p. 217: “Luther’s opinion obviously
changed [before March 12, 1536].... Yet he expressed himself even in
1536 against the divorce [Henry the Eighth’s]; the prohibition [of
marriage with a sister in-law] from which the Mosaic Law admitted
exceptions, might be dispensed, whereas the prohibition of divorce
could not be dispensed,” and, p. 220: “In the change of 1536 the
influence of Osiander is unmistakable.... Cranmer, when at Ratisbon
in 1532, had visited Osiander several times at Nuremberg, and finally
won him over to the side of the King of England.” At the end Rockwell
sums up as follows (p. 222): “The expedient of bigamy ... was approved
by Luther, Melanchthon, Grynæus, Bucer and Capito, but repudiated by
Œcolampadius and Zwingli. Hence we cannot be surprised that Luther,
Melanchthon and Bucer should regard favourably the Hessian proposal
of bigamy, whereas Zwingli’s successors at Zürich, viz. Bullinger and
Gualther, opposed it more or less openly.”
[26] On Feb. 16, 1542, “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p. 436. Cp. _ibid._,
p. 584, Letter of Jan. 18, 1545.
[27] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 152, in 1540.
[28] Mentz, _loc. cit._, p. 11.
[29] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 52, p. 133 (“Briefwechsel,” 10, p. 327).
[30] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 174, in 1540.
[31] “Briefwechsel,” 10, p. 324.
[32] _Ibid._, p. 326.
[33] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 400, with reference to “Corp. ref.,” 3, p.
1076.
[34] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 537, where the words have been
transferred to July 10, 1539.
[35] Cp. “Corp. ref.,” 2, p. 1029.
[36] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 178.
[37] _Ibid._, p. 145.
[38] _Ibid._, p. 198.
[39] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 145. On account of his cruelty he says
of Henry VIII, in Aug., 1540: “I look upon him not as a man but as a
devil incarnate. He has added to his other crimes the execution of the
Chancellor Cromwell, whom, a few days previously, he had made Lord
Chief Justice of the Kingdom” (_ibid._, p. 174).
[40] For Luther’s previous statements in favour of polygamy, see vol.
iii., p. 259 ff.; and above, p. 4.
[41] To Philip of Hesse, Nov. 28, 1526, “Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 411 f.
[42] “Briefwechsel des A. Corvinus,” ed. Tschackert, 1900, p. 81.
[43] “Briefwechsel Landgraf Philipps des Grossmütigen von Hessen mit
Bucer, hg. und erläutert von Max Lenz” (“Publikationen aus den Kgl.
preuss. Staatsarchiven,” Bd. 5, 28 und 47 = 1, 2, 3), 1, 1880, p.
345. Cp. N. Paulus, “Die hessische Doppelehe im Urteile der protest.
Zeitgenossen,” “Hist.-pol. Bl.,” 147, 1911 (p. 503 ff., 561 ff.) p. 504.
[44] We quote the instructions throughout from the most reliable
edition, viz. that in “Luthers Briefwechsel,” 12 (1910, p. 301 ff.),
which G. Kawerau continued and published after the death of Enders.
[45] “Philipps Briefwechsel,” ed. Lenz, 1, p. 352.
[46] Best given in “Luthers Briefwechsel,” 12, p. 319 ff. Cp. “Luthers
Werke,” Erl. ed., 55, p. 258 ff.; “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p. 237,
which gives only the Latin version; “Corp. ref.,” 3, p. 851 _seq._;
“Hist.-pol. Bl.,” 18, 1846, p. 236 ff.
[47] “Luthers Briefwechsel,” 12, p. 301.
[48] W. Köhler, “Die Doppelehe des Landgrafen Philipp von Hessen”
(“Histor. Zeitschr.,” 94, 1905, p. 385 ff.), p. 399, 400.
[49] Luther’s letter, June, 1540, to the Elector of Saxony (below,
p. 37) ed. Seidemann from a Kiel MS. in his edition of “Lauterbachs
Tagebuch,” p. 196 ff.
[50] Thus Philip to his friend, Duke Ulrich of Würtemberg, Oct., 1540,
when seeking to obtain his agreement to the bigamy. Ulrich, however,
advised him to give up the project, which would be a great blow to the
Evangel. F. L. Heyd, “Ulrich, Herzog von Württemberg,” 3, p. 226 ff.
[51] Cp. above, p. 3 ff.; also Enders’ “Luthers Briefwechsel,” 12, p.
308, where it is pointed out that in the copy of the letter to Henry
VIII sent to Hesse (_ibid._, 9, p. 81 ff.) the passage in question
concerning bigamy was omitted; the Landgrave Philip, however, learnt
the contents of the passage, doubtless from Bucer.
[52] Letter of Luther to the Elector of Saxony. See above, p. 16, n. 3,
and below, p. 37 f.
[53] Cp. W. W. Rockwell, “Die Doppelehe des Landgrafen Philipp von
Hessen,” Marburg, 1904, p. 30 ff.
[54] This error has been confuted by Th. Brieger on good grounds in the
“Untersuchungen über Luther und die Nebenehe des Landgrafen Philipp,”
in “Zeitschr. f. KG.,” 29, p. 174 ff.; _ibid._, p. 403 ff. “Hist.
Jahrb.,” 26, 1905, p. 405 (N. Paulus).
[55] Dec. 10, 1539, “Luthers Briefwechsel,” 12, p. 326.
[56] [Unless the reference be to certain reputed _consulta_ of Gregory
II or of Alexander III. Cp. “P.L.,” lxxxix., 525, and Decr. IV, 15,
iii. _Note to English Ed._]
[57] See above, p. 14.
[58] Cp. Luther’s “Consideration,” dated Aug. 23, 1527, concerning
the husband of a leprous wife, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 53, p. 406
(“Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 80), where he says: “I can in no wise prevent
him or forbid his taking another wedded wife.” He here takes for
granted the consent of the leprous party.
[59] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 141.
[60] Cp. the remarks in “Luthers Briefwechsel,” 12, p. 327 f., and
Brieger, _loc. cit._, p. 192.
[61] Seckendorf, “Commentarius de Lutheranismo,” 3, 1694, p. 278.
[62] E. Brandenburg, “Politische Korrespondenz des Herzogs Moritz von
Sachsen,” 2, 1903, p. 101.
[63] Sailer to Philip of Hesse, Nov. 6, 1539, “Briefwechsel Philipps,”
1, p. 345; above, p. 15. Other similar statements by contemporaries are
to be found in the article of N. Paulus (above, p. 15, n. 1).
[64] “Luthers Briefwechsel,” 12, p. 301.
[65] “Philipps Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 356 ff., and Burkhardt, “Luthers
Briefwechsel,” p. 388.
[66] “Philipps Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 308. Cp. Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 30.
[67] Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 31.
[68] _Ibid._, p. 37.
[69] “Luthers Briefwechsel,” 12, pp. 326 and 328.
[70] Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 43.
[71] _Ibid._, p. 41 f.
[72] Melanchthon to Camerarius, Sep. 1, 1540, first fully published by
Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 194.
[73] To Justus Menius, Jan. 10, 1542, “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p.
426. To Chancellor Brück, soon after Jan. 10, 1542, _ibid._, 4, p. 296.
Melanchthon wrote to Veit Dietrich on Dec. 11, 1541, concerning Lening:
“_Monstroso corpore et animo est_.”
[74] Thus Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 48 f.
[75] “Philipps Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 362 f. Rockwell’s statement, p.
45, that Luther had been offered 200 Gulden by the Landgrave as a
present, but had refused the gift, is, in both instances, founded on a
misunderstanding. Cp. N. Paulus, “Hist. Jahrb.,” 1905, p. 405.
[76] Luther to the Landgrave, Aug. 22, 1540, “Philipps Briefwechsel,”
1, p. 389.
[77] “Briefwechsel des Corvinus,” (see p. 14, n. 2), p. 79. Paulus,
_ibid._, p. 563.
[78] “Briefwechsel des Jonas,” ed. G. Kawerau, 1, p. 394.
[79] “Briefwechsel des Jonas,” ed. G. Kawerau, p. 397.
[80] Account of the Marshal in “Philipps Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 335.
[81] To Anthony von Schönberg, in Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 51, according
to information taken from the archives.
[82] Rockwell, _loc. cit._, p. 53.
[83] Rockwell, _loc. cit._, p. 60.
[84] “_Carolina_,” ed. Köhler, 1900, p. 63. Cp. the Imperial Law
“_Neminem_” in “_Corp. iur. civ., Cod. Iustin._,” ed. Krüger, 1877,
p. 198. Bucer pointed out to the Landgrave, that “according to the
common law of the Empire such things were punished by death.” “Philipps
Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 177; cp. pp. 178, 180.
[85] He declared on Jan. 3, 1541: “This much and not more the law may
take from us.”
[86] On July 8, 1540, _ibid._, p. 178 ff. Before this, on June 15, he
had exhorted the Landgrave to hush up the matter as far as possible
so that the whole Church may not be “defiled” by it. _Ibid._, p. 174,
Paulus, _loc. cit._, p. 507.
[87] “Philipps Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 185 f.
[88] _Ibid._, p. 183.
[89] _Ibid._, p. 341.
[90] “_Analecta Lutherana_,” ed. Kolde, p. 353 _seq._ Cp. Rockwell,
_loc. cit._, p. 71, n. 1.
[91] E. Friedberg remarks in the “Deutsche Zeitschr. f. KR.,” 36, 1904,
p. 441, that the Wittenbergers “did not even possess any power of
dispensing.”
[92] Cp. N. Paulus, “Das Beichtgeheimnis und die Doppelehe Philipps
usw.,” “Hist.-pol. Bl.,” 135, 1905, p. 317 ff.
[93] Cp. Rockwell, _loc. cit._, pp. 154, 156.
[94] Yet in a later missive to Philip of Hesse (Sep. 17, 1540) he too
speaks of the “counsel given in Confession in case of necessity.” Here,
however, he bases his injunction of silence on other considerations.
[95] “Philipps Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 208.
[96] “Briefwechsel des Jonas,” 1, p. 394.
[97] “Briefwechsel,” 13, p. 79.
[98] Ed. by Seidemann, “Lauterbachs Tagebuch,” p. 196 ff., with the
notice, “Written in April or June, 1540.” Rockwell gives the date more
correctly, as, probably, June 10 (pp. 138, 364).
[99] Cp. “Briefwechsel,” 13, p. 82, n. 4, the remark of G. Kawerau.
“The regret felt by Luther was caused by the knowledge that the
Landgrave had already a ‘concubine of his own’ and had not been
satisfying his lusts merely on ‘common prostitutes’; had he known this
at the time he gave his advice he would certainly have counselled
the Landgrave to contract a sort of spiritual marriage with this
concubine.” Köstlin had seen a difficulty in Luther’s later statement,
that he would not have given his counsel (the advice tendered did not
specify the lady) had he known that the Landgrave had “long satisfied,
and could still satisfy, his craving on others,” etc. That there is
really a difficulty involved, at least in Luther’s use of the plural
“others,” seems clear unless, indeed, Kawerau would make Luther counsel
the Landgrave to contract “spiritual marriage” with all these several
ladies. Elsewhere Luther describes as a “harlot” a certain Catharine
whom Kawerau (_ibid._) surmises to have been this same Essweg. By her
Philip had a daughter named Ursula whom, in 1556, he gave in marriage
to Claus Ferber.
[100] “Philipps Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 160. The Landgrave to Bucer. He
was to tell his sister “that she must surely recollect having told him
that he should keep a concubine instead of having recourse to numerous
prostitutes; if she was willing to allow what was contrary to God’s
law, why not allow this, which is a dispensation of God?”
[101] “Luthers Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 6, p. 267 f., and, better, in
Rockwell, p. 165, after the original.
[102] “Briefe,” 6, p. 263 _seq._ For the address see Rockwell, _ibid._,
p. 166, where the date is fixed between July 7 and 15, 1540.
[103] Cp. vol. iii., p. 30 ff.
[104] “Briefwechsel des Jonas,” 1, p. 397 f.
[105] Thus Gualther from Frankfort, Sep. 15, 1540, to Bullinger, in
Fueslin, “_Epistolæ_,” p. 205. Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 176.
[106] The chief passage will be found in Kroker (Mathesius,
“Tischreden,” p. 156 f.) more correctly than in Loesche (Mathesius,
“Aufzeichnungen,” p. 117 ff.). It is headed “_De Macedonico negotio_,”
because in Luther’s circle Philip of Hesse was known as the
“Macedonian.” Where no other reference is given our quotations are
taken from this passage.
[107] On the sign, see present work, vol. iii., p. 231.
[108] Philip’s father and his uncle William I (the elder brother) died
insane. (See below, p. 61.)
[109] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 143.
[110] On the Marcolfus legend (again to be mentioned on the next page),
cp. vol. iii., p. 268, n. 4; F. H. von der Hagen, “Narrenbuch,” Halle,
1811, p. 256 ff., and Rockwell, pp. 160 and 163, where other instances
are given of Luther’s use of the same figure.
[111] “‘_Ipsi tamen occidunt homines_ [heretics], _nos laboramus pro
vita et ducimus plures uxores.’ Hæc lætissimo vultu dixit, non sine
magno risu._”
[112] Cp. _ibid._, p. 139.
[113] _Ibid._, p. 133. He speaks in the same way of the Emperor on p.
160.
[114] _Ibid._, p. 139. May 21 to June 11, 1540.
[115] For the quotations from Terence, see Rockwell, p. 164. Cp.
Kroker, _ibid._, p. 158.
[116] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 153.
[117] _Ibid._, p. 138.
[118] To Johann Lang, July 2, 1540, “Briefe,” 4, p. 298: “_miraculo Dei
manifesto vivit_.”
[119] Ratzeberger, p. 102 f. Cp. present work, vol. iii., p. 162.
[120] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 526.
[121] _Ibid._, p. 478.
[122] Thus Hassencamp, vol. i., p. 507, though he was using the earlier
editions of the Table-Talk, which are somewhat more circumspect.
[123] Vol. xviii., p. 461.
[124] “Luthers Leben,” 2, 1904, p. 403 f.
[125] Gualther, in Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 186, n. 1.
[126] _Ibid._
[127] _Ibid._
[128] “Philipps Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 369 f.
[129] _Ibid._, p. 373. Concerning the notes which the editor calls the
“Protokoll,” see N. Paulus in “Hist.-pol. B1.,” 135, 1905, p. 323 f.
[130] _Ibid._, p. 375.
[131] Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 179. The Protestant theologian Th. Brieger
says (“Luther und die Nebenehe,” etc., “Preuss. Jahrb.,” 135, 1909, p.
46): “As is known, in the summer of 1540, when the matter had already
been notorious for months, Luther gave the Landgrave the advice,
that he should give a flat denial of the step he had taken.... ‘A
lie of necessity was not against God; He was ready to take that upon
Himself.’--Just as in our own day men of the highest moral character
hold similar views concerning certain forms of the lie of necessity.”
[132] “Philipps Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 373.
[133] P. 182.--Rockwell (p. 181, n. 4) also reminds us that Luther
had written to the Elector: “In matters of Confession it is seemly
that both the circumstances and the advice given in Confession” should
be kept secret. Luther, in “Lauterbachs Tagebuch,” p. 196, see p.
37, n. 2. The Elector wrote to the Landgrave in a letter dated June
27, 1540 (quoted by Rockwell, _ibid._, from the archives), that the
marriage could not be openly discussed, because, otherwise, “the Seal
of Confession would be broken in regard to those who had given the
dispensation.” In this he re-echoes Luther.--Rockwell, p. 182 (cp.
p. 185, n. 3), thinks, that Luther was following the “more rigorous”
theologians of earlier days, who had taught that it was “a mortal sin
for the penitent to reveal what the priest had told him.” This is not
the place to rectify such misunderstandings.
[134] Cp. Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 175, with a reference to Luther’s
statement of July 17: If the Landgrave would not be content with a
dispensation, “and claimed it as a right, then they were quit of their
advice” (“Philipps Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 375). It is difficult to follow
Luther through all his attempts to evade the issue.
[135] “Philipps Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 373 f. “Anal. Luth.,” ed. Kolde,
p. 356 _seq._
[136] “Bichte,” not “Bitte,” is clearly the true reading here.
[137] “Briefe,” 6, p. 272 f., dated July 20, 1540.
[138] Kolde, _loc. cit._, p. 357-360.
[139] Kolde, _loc. cit._, p. 362 _seq._
[140] Dated July 18, 1540, “Philipps Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 380 ff.
[141] “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 6, p. 273 ff.
[142] On July 27, “Philipps Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 385 ff.
[143] Rockwell, _loc. cit._, p. 190. Cp. p. 61.
[144] _Ibid._, p. 192, from Philip’s letter to Luther, on July 18.
[145] Rockwell, _loc. cit._, p. 193.
[146] _Ibid._, p. 194.
[147] “_Alcibiadea natura non Achillea._” “Corp. ref.,” 3, p. 1079. Cp.
4, p. 116. Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 194.
[148] “_Hæc sunt principia furoris._” Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 143.
Above, p. 45.
[149] _Ibid._, on the same day (June 11, 1540), Luther’s statement.
Above, p. 44.
[150] Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 159, n. 2; p. 4, n. 1.
[151] _Ibid._, p. 102.
[152] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 175, 7-24 Aug., 1540.
[153] To the Elector Johann Frederick, March, 1543, see Rockwell p.
199 f., from archives. Rockwell quotes the following from a passage in
which several words have been struck out: “I have always preferred that
he [...?] should deal with the matter, than that he should altogether
[...?].” Was the meaning: He preferred that Luther should be involved
in such an affair rather than that he [the Landgrave] should desert
their party altogether? Other utterances of Melanchthon’s and Luther’s,
given above, would favour this sense.
[154] Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 194. Text of Camerarius in “Corp. ref.,” 3,
p. 1077 _seq._
[155] _Ibid._, p. 103.
[156] “Ergründete ... Duplicä ... wider des Churfürsten von Sachsen
Abdruck,” etc. The work is directed primarily against the Elector
Johann Frederick, the “drunken Nabal of Saxony,” as the author terms
him.
[157] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 26², p. 58.
[158] _Ibid._, p. 77: “Concerning the Landgrave, whom he abuses as
bigamous, an Anabaptist and even as having submitted to re-baptism,
though in such ambiguous terms as to suit a cardinal or a weather-cock,
so that were his proofs asked for he could twist his tongue round
and say, that he was not sure it was so, but merely suspected it ...
of this I will not now say much. The Landgrave is man enough and has
learned men about him. I know of one Landgravine in Hesse [one only
bore the title], who is and is to be styled wife and mother in Hesse,
and, in any case, no other will be able to bear young Princes and
suckle them; I refer to the Duchess, daughter of Duke George of Saxony.
And if her Prince has strayed, that was owing to your bad example,
which has brought things to such a pass, that the very peasants do not
look upon it as sin, and have made it difficult for us to maintain
matrimony in honour and esteem, nay, to re-establish it. From the very
beginning none has abused matrimony more grievously than Harry of
Wolffenbüttel, the holy, sober man.” That is all Luther says of the
Hessian bigamy.
[159] Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 107, on the writing of “Justinus Warsager”
against the Landgrave, with a reference to “Corp. ref.,” 4, p. 112.
[160] Cp. Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 108.
[161] “Philipps Briefwechsel,” 3, 1891, p. 186, n. 1.
[162] On Dec. 11, 1541. Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 117, n. 1.
[163] To Justus Menius, Jan. 10, 1542, “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p.
426. Cp. above, p. 25 f., for Luther’s opinion that Lening had been the
first to suggest the plan of the bigamy to the Landgrave. For other
points in the text, see Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 117 f. Koldewey remarks
of Lening, that “his wretched servility and his own lax morals had made
him the advocate of the Landgrave’s carnal lusts.” (“Theol. Studien und
Kritiken,” 57, 1884, p. 560.)
[164] The Landgrave to Sailer, Aug. 27, 1541, in “Philipps
Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 148, and to Melanchthon.
[165] See above, note 163.
[166] In the letter to Melanchthon, quoted p. 66, note 2, Philip says,
that if Luther’s work had not yet appeared Melanchthon was to explain
to him that the Dialogue of Neobulus tended rather to dissuade from,
than to permit bigamy, “so that he might forbear from such [reply], or
so moderate it that it may not injure us or what he himself previously
sanctioned and wrote [i.e. in the Wittenberg testimony].”
[167] Printed in “Werke,” Erl. ed., 65, p. 206 ff.
[168] Luther to the Electoral Chancellor, Brück, “shortly after Jan.
10,” “Briefe,” 6, p. 296, where he also approvingly notes that Menius
had not written “‘_contra necessitatem et casualem dispensationem
individuæ personæ_,’ of which we, as confessors, treated”; he only
“inveighed ‘_contra legem et exemplum publicum polygamiæ_,’ which we
also do.” Still, he finds that Menius “excuses the old patriarchs too
feebly.”
[169] Cp. his outburst against “those who teach polygamy” in his “In
evangelium s. Mt. Commentaria,” Tiguri, 1543, p. 179.
[170] To Oswald Myconius, Sep. 13, 1540, in Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 325:
“_pudet imprimis inter theologos talium authores, tutores et patronos
posse reperiri_.”
[171] Cp. Janssen, “Hist. of the German People” (_Engl. Trans._), 6, p.
149 f.; and Rockwell, _ibid._, pp. 130, 132.
[172] Max Lenz, in “Philipps Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 497.
[173] Max Lenz, in “Philipps Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 499.
[174] “Briefwechsel,” _ibid._, p. 368 f.
[175] Feige to the Landgrave, July 19, 1541, published by Rockwell,
_ibid._, p. 331; cp. p. 100 f.
[176] No. 35, August 30, 1906.
[177] “Das politische Archiv des Landgrafen Philipp von Hessen;
Repertorium des landgräfl. polit. Archivs,” Bd. 1. (Publikationen aus
den Kgl. preuss. Staatsarchiven, Bd. 78). Year 1556, No. 27.
[178] Köln. Volksztng., 1906, No. 758.
[179] K. v. Weber, “Anna Churfürstin zu Sachsen,” Leipzig, 1865, p. 401
f. Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 132 f.
[180] Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 133. William IV wrote a curious letter
to Cœlestin on this “great book of discord and on the ‘_dilaceratio
ecclesiarum_’”; see G. Th. Strobel, “Beiträge zur Literatur, besonders
des 16. Jahrh.,” 2, 1786, p. 162.
[181] “_Theologos Witenbergenses et in specie Megalandrum nostrum
Lutherum consilio suo id factum suasisse vel approbasse, manifeste
falsum est._” Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 134.
[182] Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 131.
[183] Altenburg ed., 8, p. 977; Leipzig ed., 22, p. 496; Walch’s ed.,
10, p. 886. (Cp. Walch, 10², p. 748.) See De Wette in his edition of
Luther’s Letters, 5, p. 236, and Enders-Kawerau, in “Briefwechsel,” 12,
p. 319.
[184] Page 221.
[185] “Luthers Werke für das deutsche Volk,” 1907, Introd., p. xvi.
[186] Bd. 94, 1905, p. 385 ff.
[187] “Studien über Katholizismus, Protestantismus und
Gewissensfreiheit in Deutschland,” Schaffhausen, 1857 (anonymous), p.
104.
[188] “Phil. Melanchthon,” pp. 378, 382.
[189] “Die Entstehung der lutherischen und reformierten Kirchenlehre,”
Göttingen, 1910, p. 271.
[190] That the death penalty for bigamy also dated from the Middle Ages
need hardly be pointed out.
[191] For the proofs which follow we may refer to the selection made
by N. Paulus (“Hist.-pol. Bl.,” 147, 1911, p. 503 ff., 561 ff.) in the
article “Die hessische Doppelehe im Urteile der protest. Zeitgenossen.”
[192] Amsdorf’s “Bedenken,” probably from the latter end of June, 1540,
published by Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 324.
[193] “Briefwechsel des Jonas,” 1, pp. 394, 396. Above, p. 27, n. 1.
Further details in Paulus, _ibid._, p. 562.
[194] Jonas, _ibid._, p. 397.
[195] P. Tschackert, “Briefwechsel des Anton Corvinus,” 1900, p. 79.
Paulus, _ibid._, p. 563.
[196] G. T. Schmidt, “Justus Menius über die Bigamie.” (“Zeitschr. f.
d. hist. Theol.,” 38, 1868, p. 445 ff. More from it in Paulus, p. 565.
Cp. Rockwell, _ibid._, p. 126.)
[197] Th. Pressel, “_Anecdota Brentiana_,” 1868, p. 210: “_Commaculavit
ecclesiam temeritate sua fœdissime_.”
[198] Paulus, _ibid._, p. 569 f.
[199] _Ibid._, p. 570 ff.
[200] Fr. Roth, “Augsburgs Reformationsgesch.,” 3, 1907, p. 56.
[201] _Ibid._, p. 95.
[202] _Ibid._, p. 154.
[203] See above, p. 18, 21 f., 46, 62 n. 2.
[204] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 475. Cp. Kolde, “Luther,” 2, p. 489, and
“RE. für prot. Theol.,” 15³, p. 310.
[205] “_Defectionem etiam minitabatur, si nos consulere ei nollemus._”
To Camerarius, Aug. 24, 1540, “Corp. ref.,” 3, p. 1079. Cp. p. 863.
Above, p. 62.
[206] “_Hoc fere tantumdem est ac si minatus esset, se ab Evangelio
defecturum._” Pressel, p. 211.
[207] Möller, “Lehrb. der KG.,” 3³, p. 146 f.
[208] The scandal lay rather elsewhere. According to Kawerau Luther’s
“principal motive was his desire to save the Landgrave’s soul by means
of an expedient, which, though it did not correspond with the perfect
idea of marriage, was not directly forbidden by God, and in certain
circumstances had even been permitted. The questionable nature of this
advice is, however, evident,” etc.
[209] “Phil. Melanchthon,” pp. 378, 382.
[210] “Luthers Leben,” 2, p. 393 ff.
[211] O. Clemen, “Zeitschr. f. KG.,” 30, 1909, p. 389 f. Cp. the views
of the Protestant historians, K. Wenck, H. Virck and W. Köhler, adduced
by Paulus (_loc. cit._, p. 515), who all admit the working of political
pressure.
[212] “Phil. Melanchthon,” pp. 382, 383.
[213] Bd., 2, p. 488 f.
[214] Page 736.
[215] “Luthers Leben,” 2, p. 403.
[216] The larger portion of the present chapter appeared as an article
in the “Zeitschr. für kath. Theol.,” 29, 1905, p. 417 ff.
[217] See above, p. 51.
[218] W. Walther, “Theol. Literaturblatt,” 1904, No. 35. Cp. Walther,
“Für Luther,” p. 425 ff.
[219] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 9², p. 306.
[220] _Ibid._, 39, p. 356.
[221] Fuller proofs will be found scattered throughout our earlier
volumes.
[222] “Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 450.
[223] _Ibid._, p. 316.
[224] To Christoph Scheurl, _ibid._, p. 348.
[225] To Johann Lang, _ibid._, p. 410.
[226] To Willibald Pirkheimer, _ibid._, p. 436.
[227] “Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 444. Concerning the date and the keeping
back of the letter, see Brieger, “Zeitschr. für KG.,” 15, 1895, p. 204
f.
[228] Strange to say, this document has not been taken into
consideration by G. Sodeur, in “Luther und die Lüge, eine
Schutzschrift” (Leipzig, 1904). In the same way other sources throwing
light on Luther’s attitude towards lying have been passed over. That
his object, viz. Luther’s vindication, is apparent throughout, is
perhaps only natural. How far this object is attained the reader may
see from a comparison of our material and results with those of the
“Schutzschrift.” The same holds of W. Walther’s efforts on Luther’s
behalf in his art. “Luther und die Lüge,” and in his “Für Luther.” See
above, p. 81, n. 1. See also N. Paulus, “Zu Luthers Doppelzüngigkeit”
(“Beil. zur Augsburger Postztng.,” 1904, No. 33); “Hist. Jahrb.,” 26,
1905, p. 168 f.; “Hist.-pol. Bl.,” 1905, 135, 323 ff.; “Wissenschaftl.
Beil. zur Germania,” 1904, Nos. 33, 35.
[229] On May 22, 1518, “Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 149.
[230] On Feb. 15, 1518, _ibid._, p. 155.
[231] “Briefwechsel,” 2, p. 469.
[232] July 10, 1520, _ibid._, p. 432.
[233] _Ibid._, Schauenburg’s letter, _ibid._, p. 415.
[234] _Ibid._, p. 433.
[235] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 3, p. 386; Erl. ed., 25², p. 87.
[236] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 26², p. 72.
[237] _Ibid._, p. 70, 68 f.
[238] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 30, 2, p. 284; Erl. ed., 24², p. 367. On
indulgences for the departed, see our vol. i., p. 344.
[239] Hausrath, “Luthers Leben,” 2, 1904, p. 432.
[240] Historien (1566), p. 11.
[241] Ed. Cyprian., p. 20.
[242] “Reformationsgesch. von H. Bullinger,” ed. Hottinger u. Vögeli,
1, 1838, p. 19.
[243] One such tale put in circulation by the Lutherans in the 16th
century has been dealt with by N. Paulus in “Gibt es Ablässe für
zukünftige Sünden?” (“Lit. Beil. der Köln. Volksztng.,” 1905, No.
43.) Here, in view of some modern misapprehensions of the so-called
Confession and Indulgence letters, he says: “They referred to future
sins, only inasmuch as they authorised those who obtained them to
select a confessor at their own discretion for their subsequent sins,
and promised an Indulgence later, provided the sins committed had been
humbly confessed. In this sense even our modern Indulgences promised
for the future may be said to refer to future sins.”
[244] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 26², p. 71.
[245] To Count Sebastian Schlick, July 15, 1522, “Opp. lat. var.,” 6,
p. 385 (“Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 433).
[246] To Count Albert of Mansfeld, from Eisenach, May 9, 1521, “Werke,”
Erl. ed., 53, p. 74 (“Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 144).
[247] To Spalatin, (11) October, 1520, “Briefwechsel,” 2, p. 491:
“_credo veram et propriam esse bullam_.”
[248] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 6, p. 592; Erl. ed., 24², p. 29 ff.
[249] _Ibid._, p. 138=27, p. 80, in February, 1520.
[250] Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, pp. 214, 759.
[251] The letter was written after Oct. 13, 1520, but is dated Sep.
6, the Excommunication having been published on Sep. 21. Cp. Miltitz
to the Elector of Saxony, Oct. 14, 1520, in Enders, “Briefwechsel
Luthers,” 2, p. 495, n. 3.
[252] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 6, p. 441 f.; Erl. ed., 21, p. 323 f.
[253] Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 279: “It was much better and safer to
declare them damned than saved.”
[254] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 32, 1906, p. 133, sermons here printed for
the first time.
[255] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 2, p. 240.
[256] Barge, “Andreas Bodenstein von Carlstadt,” 2, p. 223.
[257] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 47, p. 37 f.
[258] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 8, p. 658; “Opp. lat. var.,” 6, p. 360
[259] _Ibid._, p. 601=p. 278.
[260] _Ibid._, 1, p. 323=1, p. 338; 1, p. 534=2, p. 142.
[261] Denifle, “Luther,” 1², p. 44. Denifle has shown that the passage
in question occurs in the form of a prayer in St. Bernard’s “Sermo
XX in Cantica” “P.L.,” 183, col. 867: “_De mea misera vita suscipe
(Deus), obsecro, residuum annorum meorum; pro his vero (annis) quos
vivendo perdidi, quia perdite vixi, cor contritum et humiliatum Deus
non despicias. Dies mei sicut umbra declinaverunt et præterierunt sine
fructu. Impossibile est, ut revocem; placeat, ut recogitem tibi eos in
amaritudine animæ meæ._” Denifle points out that the sermon in question
was preached about 1136 or 1137, about sixteen years before Bernard’s
death, thus certainly not in his last illness.
[262] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 26², p. 249.
[263] _Ibid._, p. 145; cp. p. 204.
[264] “Luther als Kirchenhistoriker,” Gütersloh, 1897, p. 391,
referring to Sabellicus, “Rhapsod. hist. Ennead.,” 9, 8.
[265] Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, p. 766, p. 350, n. 1. For the literature
dealing with the Ulrich fable, see N. Paulus, “Die Dominikaner im
Kampfe gegen Luther,” p. 253; and particularly J. Haussleiter,
“Beiträge zur bayerischen KG.,” 6, p. 121 f.
[266] Cp. Mathesius, “Historien,” p. 40, and Flacius Illyricus in his
two separate editions of the letter. Flacius also incorporated the
Ulrich letter in his “Catalogus testium veritatis” and repeatedly
referred to it in his controversial writings. See J. Niemöller’s
article on the mendacity of a certain class of historical literature
in the 16th century, “Flacius und Flacianismus” (“Zeitschr. f. kath.
Theol.,” 12, 1888, pp. 75-115, particularly p. 107 f.).
[267] Cp. Knaake, “Zeitschr. für luth. Theol.,” 1876, p. 362.
[268] Cp. Kolde on Luther’s “private print,” in Müller,
“Bekenntnisschriften”^[10], p. xxvi., n. 1.
[269] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 397 f.
[270] For proofs from Luther’s correspondence, vol. xi., see the
article of N. Paulus in the “Lit. Beil. der Köln. Volksztng.,” 1908, p.
226. On Erasmus, see below, p. 93.
[271] “Ratzebergers Chronik,” ed. Neudecker, p. 69 f.
[272] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 662, p. 307, n. 1.
[273] Joh. Karl Seidemann, “Beiträge zur RG.,” 1845 ff., p. 137.
[274] “Katholizismus und Reformation,” p. 45.
[275] Letter to Bullinger, 1535, “Corp. ref.,” 10, p. 138.
[276] “Luther, eine Skizze,” p. 56 f.; “KL.,” 8², col. 342 f.
[277] K. Zickendraht, “Der Streit zwischen Erasmus und Luther über die
Willensfreiheit,” Leipzig, 1909, admits at least concerning some of
Luther’s assertions in the “_De servo arbitrio_,” that “he was led away
by the wish to draw wrong inferences from his opponent’s premises”; for
instance, in asserting that Erasmus “outdid the Pelagians”; by reading
much into Erasmus which was not there he brought charges against him
which are “manifestly false” (p. 81). Luther sought “to transplant
the seed sown by Erasmus from its native soil to his own field” (p.
79); the ideas of Erasmus “were interpreted agreeably to Luther’s own
ways and logic” (cp. p. v.); it would not be right “simply to take
for granted that Luther’s supposed allies (such as Laurentius Valla,
‘_De libero arbitrio_’; cp. ‘Werke,’ Erl. ed., 58, p. 237 ff.) in the
struggle with Erasmus, really were what he made them out to be” (p.
2).--H. Humbertclaude, “Erasme et Luther, leur polémique sur le libre
arbitre,” Paris, 1910, lays still greater stress on the injustice done
to Erasmus by Luther.
[278] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 531; “Opp. lat. var.,” 7, p. 523.
Cp. Enders, “Luthers Briefwechsel,” 9, p. 253, n. 3, and our vol. ii.,
p. 398 f.
[279] “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 7, p. 74. Cp. our vol. i., p. 400 f.
[280] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichnungen,” p. 41.
[281] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 58, p. 391 (“Tischreden”).
[282] Cp. e.g. the summarised teaching of an eminent theologian, Denis
the Carthusian, in Krogh-Tonning, “Der letzte Scholastiker,” 1904.
[283] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 58, p. 391.
[284] From Kleindienst, “Ein recht catholisch Ermanung an seine lieben
Teutschen,” Dillingen, 1560, Paulus, “Die deutschen Dominikaner,” etc.,
1903, p. 276.
[285] To Johann Lang, Aug. 18, 1520, “Briefwechsel,” 2, p. 461: “_Nos
hic persuasi sumus, papatum esse veri et germani illius Antichristi
sedem, in cuius deceptionem et nequitiam ob salutem animarum nobis
omnia licere arbitramur._” This must not be translated “to their
deceiving and destruction,” but, “against their trickery and malice.”
The passage strictly refers to his passionate work “An den christlichen
Adel,” but seems also to be intended generally.
[286] To Melanchthon, Aug. 28, 1530, “Briefwechsel,” 8, p. 235. Cp.
vol. ii., p. 386. Luther says: “_dolos et lapsus nostros facile
emendabimus_”; thus assuming his part of the responsibility. The
explanation that he is speaking merely of the mistakes which
Melanchthon might make, and simply wished “to console and sympathise
with him,” is too far-fetched to be true. In his edition of the
“Briefwechsel” Enders has struck out the word “_mendacia_” after
“_dolos_,” though wrongly, as we shall see in vol. vi., xxxvi., 4.
According to Enders the handwriting is too faint for it to be accepted
as genuine. As there is no original of the letter the question remains
how it came into the old copies which were in Lutheran hands. In any
case, such an interpolation would be more difficult to understand than
its removal. Cp. also Luther’s own justification of such _mendacia_ in
1524 and 1528, given below on p. 109 ff.
[287] To the apostate Franciscan Johann Briesmann, July 4, 1524,
“Briefwechsel,” 4, p. 360. These instructions to the preacher who
was to work for the apostasy of the Teutonic Order in Prussia are
characteristic of Luther’s diplomacy. Cp. the directions to Martin
Weier (above, vol. ii., p. 323).
[288] “Briefe,” 6, p. 386 ff.
[289] Cp. v. Druffel in the “SB. der bayer. Akad., phil.-hist. Kl.,” 2,
1888, and “Forschungen zur deutschen Gesch.,” 25, p. 71.
[290] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 693, p. 612, n. 1.
[291] _Ibid._, p. 612.
[292] “Briefe,” 6, p. 401.
[293] _Ibid._, p. 386.
[294] _Ibid._
[295] _Ibid._, p. 387.
[296] _Ibid._, p. 391.
[297] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 6, p. 592; Erl. ed., 24², p. 29.
[298] _Ibid._, 26, p. 532 f. = 63, p. 276.
[299] G. Buchwald, “Simon Wilde” (“Mitt. der deutschen Gesellschaft zur
Erforschung vaterländ. Sprache und Altertums in Leipzig,” 9, 1894, p.
61 ff.), p. 95: “_libellum calumniis refertissimum_.”
[300] “Zwinglii Opp.,” 8, p. 165: “_calumniandi magister et sophistarum
princeps_.”
[301] Letter to J. Vadian, April 14, 1528, “Die Vadianische
Briefsammlung,” 4, p. 101. “Mitt. zur vaterl. Gesch. von St. Gallen,”
28, 1902.
[302] “Neudrucke deutscher Literaturwerke,” Hft. 118, 1893, pp. 19, 29,
etc.
[303] Cp. Münzer in Enders, “Luthers Briefwechsel,” 4, p. 374, n. 6.
_Ibid._, p. 373, n. 1, “the mendacious Luther.”
[304] “Vergleichung D. Luthers und seines Gegenteiles vom Abendmahl
Christi,” 1528, p. 23.
[305] “Vadianische Briefsammlung,” 6, p. 16 (“Mitt. z. v. G. v. S.G.”,
30, 1, 1906): Pappus calls the book: “_librum famosissimum, plaustra
et carros convitiorum. Misereor huius tam felicissimi ingenii, quod
tantis se immiscet sordibus; et profecto, ut est Lutherus vertendo et
docendo inimitabilis, ita mihi iam quoque videtur calumniando non parem
habere._” Letter of April 13, 1541. Pappus was Burgomaster of Lindau.
[306] E. Thiele, “Theol. Stud. und Krit.,” 1907, p. 265 f.
[307] “Ep.,” 1, 18; “Opp.,” 3, col. 1056.
[308] “_Hyperaspistes_,” 1, 9, col. 1043.
[309] Letter to George Agricola, in Buchwald, “Zeitschr. für kirchl.
Wissenschaft und kirchl. Leben,” 5, Leipzig, 1884, p. 56.
[310] “Antwort auf das Büchlein,” 1531. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 25², p. 89.
[311] “_De votis monasticis_,” 1, 2, Colon., 1524, Bl. S 5´: “_Omnium
mendacissimus, qui sub cœlo vivunt, hominum_.”
[312] “Lobgesang auff des Luthers Winckelmesse,” Leipzig, 1534, Bl. E
2´. The author was Abbot of Altzelle.
[313] “Ein Maulstreich dem lutherischen lügenhaften, weit aufgesperrten
Rachen,” Dresden, 1534.
[314] See above, vol. ii., p. 147.
[315] See vol. ii., p. 40: “_Quum ita frontem perfricuerit, ut a nullo
abstineat mendacio_,” etc.
[316] Letter of George, in Hortleder, “Von den Ursachen des deutschen
Krieges Karls V,” pp. 604, 606. Denifle, 1², p. 126, n. 3.
[317] Vol. ii., p. 395 f.
[318] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 27, p. 286.
[319] _Ibid._, p. 86.
[320] _Ibid._, p. 210. The last three passages are from sermons
preached by Luther at Wittenberg in 1528 when doing duty for Bugenhagen.
[321] “Luther,” 1², p. 400 ff. We may discount the objection of
Protestant controversialists who plead that Luther at least described
correctly the popular notions of Catholics. The popular works then
in use, handbooks and sermons for the instruction of the people,
prayer-books, booklets for use in trials and at the hour of death,
etc., give a picture of the then popular piety, and the best refutation
of Luther’s statements.
[322] “Werke,” Erl. ed.. 5², p. 378.
[323] Cp. “Comment. in Gal.,” 2, p. 175. “Opp. lat, exeg.,” 16, p. 197
_seq._ Köstlin, “Luthers Theol.,” 2², p. 218.
[324] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 7², p. 255.
[325] _Ibid._
[326] _Ibid._, p. 256. “The Pope’s teaching and all the books and
writings of his theologians and decretalists did nothing but revile
Christ and His Baptism, so that no one was able to rejoice or comfort
himself therewith”; this he knew, having been himself fifteen years a
monk. _Ibid._, 19², p. 151, in a sermon of 1535, “On Holy Baptism.”
Even in the learned disputations of his Wittenberg pupils similar
assertions are found: The Papists have ever taught that the powers of
man after the Fall still remained unimpaired (“_adhuc integras_”), and
that therefore he could fulfil the whole law; doctrines no better than
those of the Turks and Jews had been set up (“_non secus apud Turcas et
Iudæos_,” etc.). “Disputationes,” ed. Drews, p. 340.
And so Luther goes on down to the last sermon he preached at Eisleben
just before his death: The Pope destroyed Baptism and only left works,
tonsures, etc., in the Church (_ibid._, 20², 2, p. 534); the “purest
monks” had usually been the “worst lewdsters” (p. 542); the monks had
done nothing for souls, but “merely hidden themselves in their cells”
(p. 543); “the monks think if they keep their Rule they are veritable
saints” (p. 532).
In his accusations against the religious life we find him making
statements which, from his own former experience, he must have known
to be false. For instance, when he says, that, in their hypocritical
holiness, they had regarded it as a mortal sin to leave their cell
without the scapular (“Werke,” Erl. ed., 44, p. 347; 38, p. 203; 60,
p. 270). Denifle proves convincingly (1², p. 54), that all monks were
well aware that such customs, prescribed by the Constitutions, were
not binding under sin, but merely exposed transgressors to punishment
by their superiors.--Luther also frequently declared, that in the Mass
every mistake in the ceremonies was looked upon as a mortal sin, even
the omission of an “_enim_” or an “_æterni_” in the Canon (_ibid._, 28,
p. 65), and that the incorrect use of the frequently repeated sign of
the cross had caused such apprehension, that they were “plagued beyond
measure with the Mass” (_ibid._, 59, p. 98). And yet his own words
(“Werke,” Weim. ed., 6, p. 164) show he was aware that such involuntary
mistakes were no sin: “_cum casus quispiam nullum peccatum fuerit_.”
[327] “Das Zeitalter der Reformation,” Jena, 1907, p. 221.
[328] “Cinquante raisons,” Munich, 1736, 29, p. 37. Above, vol. iii.,
p. 273, n. 2.
[329] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 395 ff.
[330] Cp. _ibid._, 31, p. 279.
[331] “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 1, p. 227.
[332] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 5², p. 430 f.: “Yet how few can ever have
had such a thought, much less expressed it?” Denifle-Weiss, 17²,
p. 774. Speaking of this passage, Denifle rightly remarks: “I have
frequently pointed out that it was Luther’s tactics to represent wicked
Catholics as typical of all the rest.” Here again Denifle might have
quoted Luther against Luther, as indeed he often does. In one passage
(“Werke,” Erl. ed., 17², p. 412) Luther points out quite correctly,
that to make all or even a class responsible for the faults of a few is
to be guilty of injustice.
[333] “Theol. Stud. und Krit.,” 1908, p. 580.
[334] “There are passionate natures gifted with a strong imagination,
who gradually, and sometimes even rapidly, come to take in good faith
that for true, which their own spirit of contradiction, or the desire
to vindicate themselves and to gain the day, suggests. Such a one was
Luther.... It was possible for him to persuade himself of things which
he had once regarded in quite a different light.” Thus Alb. M. Weiss,
“Luther,” 1², p. 424. Ad. Hausrath rightly characterises much of what
Luther says that he had learnt of Rome on his trip thither, as the
“product of a self-deception which is readily understood” (“Luthers
Leben,” 1, p. 79). “During a quarrel,” aptly remarks Fénelon, “the
imagination becomes heated and a man deceives himself.”
[335] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 1, p. 510 f.; “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 12, p. 200
_seq._
[336] In his “Vom Abendmal Christi Bekentnis” (“Werke,” Weim. ed.,
26, p. 241 ff.; Erl. ed., 30, p. 152 ff.), he frequently asserts this
principle.
[337] “_Si mentiris, etiam quod verum dicis mentiris._” “Werke,” Erl.
ed., 25², p. 214 in “Eines aus den hohen Artikeln des Bepstlichen
Glaubens genant Donatio Constantini.”
[338] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 16, p. 15; Erl. ed., 35, p. 18. The passage
in vindication of the Egyptian midwives was not merely added later.
[339] “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 5, p. 18.
[340] _Ibid._, 3, p. 139 _seq._
[341] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 420. Cp. Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,”
p. 85: “_Mentiri et fallere differunt, nam mendacium est falsitas cum
studio nocendi, fallacia vero est simplex_.”
[342] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 27, p. 12, Sermon of Jan. 5, 1528.
[343] “Summa theol.,” 2-2, Q. 111, a. 3.
[344] “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 6, p. 288.
[345] “Corp. iur. can.,” ed. Friedberg, 2, p. 812. Yet a champion
of Luther’s “truthfulness” has attempted to prove of Alexander III,
that “the objectivity of good was foreign to him,” and that he taught
that the end justifies the means. As K. Hampe has pointed out in the
“Hist. Zeitschr.,” 93, 1904, p. 415, the letter from the Pope to Thomas
Becket (“P.L.,” 200, col. 290), here referred to, has been “quite
misunderstood.” The same is the case with a letter of Gregory VII to
Alphonsus of Castile, which has also been alleged to show that a Pope
“had not unconditionally rejected lying, nay, had even made use of it.”
Gregory on the contrary declares that even “a lie told for a pious
object and for the sake of peace” was a sin (“_illud peccatum esse non
dubitaveris, in sacerdotibus quasi sacrilegium coniicias_.” “P.L.,”
148, col. 604). Cp. Hampe, _ibid._, p. 385 ff.; N. Paulus, “Lit.
Beilage der Köln. Volksztng.,” 1904, No. 51.
[346] “N. Lehrb. der Moral,” Göttingen, 1825, p. 354. Sodeur (“Luther
und die Lüge”) says that in his teaching on lies Luther led the way
to “a more profound understanding of the problem” (p. 2), he taught
us “to act according to simple and fundamental principles”; “under
certain conditions” it became “a duty to tell untruths, not merely on
casuistic grounds as formerly [!], but on principle; Luther harked back
to the all embracing duty of charity which constitutes the moral life
of the Christian” (p. 30); he desired “falsehood to be used only to the
advantage of our neighbour,” “referring our conduct in every instance
to the underlying principle of charity” (p. 32 f.). Chr. Rogge, another
Protestant, says of all this (“Türmer,” Jan., 1906, p. 491): “I wish
Sodeur had adopted a more decided and less apologetic attitude.”
W. Walther, in the article quoted above (p. 81, n. 1), admits that
Luther taught “in the clearest possible manner that cases might occur
where a departure from truth became the Christian’s duty.... It is
probable that many Evangelicals will strongly repudiate this thesis,
but, in our opinion, almost everybody follows it in practice”; if
charity led to untruth then the latter was no evil act, and it could
not be said that Luther accepted the principle that the end justifies
the means. It was not necessary for Walther, having made Luther’s
views on lying his own, to assure us, “that they were not shared by
every Christian, not even by every Evangelical.” As regards the end
justifying the means, Walther should prove that the principle does not
really underlie much of what Luther says (cp. also above, p. 94 f.).
Cp. what A. Baur says, with praiseworthy frankness, in a work entitled
“Johann Calvin” (“Religionsgeschichtl. Volksb.,” Reihe 4, Hft. 9), p.
29, concerning the reformer of Geneva whom he extols: “Consciously,
or unconsciously, the principle that the end justifies the means
became necessarily more and more deeply rooted in Calvin’s mind, viz.
the principle that the holy purpose willed by God justifies the use
of means--the employment of which would otherwise appear altogether
repugnant and reprehensible to a refined moral sense--at least when no
other way presents itself for the attainment of the end. To renounce
the end on account of the means appeared to Calvin a betrayal of
God’s honour and cause.” And yet it is clear that only a theory which
“transcends good and evil” can approve the principle that the end
justifies the means.
We may add that, according to Walther (“Die Sittlichkeit nach Luther,”
1909, p. 11 f.), Luther, in view of the exalted end towards which
the means he used were directed, “gradually resolved” to set the law
of charity above that of truth; he did not, however, do this in his
practical writings, fearing its abuse; yet Luther still contends that
Abraham was permitted to tell an untruth in order “to prevent the
frustration of God’s Will,” i.e. from love of God (_ibid._, p. 13).
[347] “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 6, p. 289.
[348] “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 3, pp. 139-144.
[349] To Johann Lang, Aug. 18, 1520, above, p. 95, n. 3.
[350] See vol. ii., p. 384 ff.
[351] “Corp. ref.,” 20, p. 573.
[352] The document in “Corp. ref.,” 3, p. 578.
[353] “Die Stellung Kursachsens und des Landgrafen Philipp von Hessen
zur Täuferbewegung,” Münster, 1910, p. 75.
[354] Cp. Lenz, “Briefwechsel Philipps,” 1, p. 320.
[355] _Loc. cit._, p. 74 f.
[356] “Corp. ref.,” 10, p. 156 _seq._ N. Paulus in “Hist.-pol. Bl.,”
147, 1911, p. 509.
[357] “_Quod defendam ipsum facinus, equidem nullum [scriptum] scripsi
aut subscripsi._” Paulus, _ibid._, p. 511.
[358] F. W. Hassenkamp, “Hessische KG.,” 1, p. 510. Paulus, _ibid._, p.
512.
[359] H. Rocholl, in N. Paulus’s art. on the Catholic lawyer and
writer, Conrad Braun († 1563), in “Hist. Jahrb.” (14, 1893, p. 517
ff.), p. 525.
[360] Paulus, “Johann Hoffmeister,” 1891, p. 206, and in “Hist.
Jahrb.,” _loc. cit._
[361] “Theol. Rev.,” 1908, p. 215.
[362] Bd. 1, 1908, p. 66: “_Nullis conviciis parcemus quantumvis
turpibus et ignominiosis_,” etc.
[363] Luther’s friend Jonas also distinguished himself in controversy
by the character of the charges he brings forward against his opponents
as true “historia.” (See above, vol. iii., p. 416, n. 3.)
[364] W. Köhler, “Luthers Werden” (“Prot. Monatshefte,” 1907, Hft. 8-9,
p. 292 ff., p. 345 ff., p. 294).
[365] W. Maurenbrecher, “Studien und Skizzen zur Gesch. der Reform.,”
pp. 221, 220.
[366] “Fortschritte in Kenntnis und Verständnis der RG.” (“Schriften
des Vereins für RG.,” No. 100, 1910, pp. 1-59, pp. 4, 5, 7, 8, 10,
12, 16 f.). The author’s standpoint is expressed on p. 13: “It is
self-evident that this does not in any way detract from Luther’s
importance.... Luther merely stands out all the more as the last link
of the previous evolution,” etc. On p. 17 he declares that the author
of “Luther und Luthertum” lacked entirely the “sense of truth.” See
the passage from Böhmer in “Luther im Lichte der neueren Forschung,”²,
1901, p. 144.
[367] “Theol. Stud. und Krit.,” 1908, p. 581.
[368] “Luther und die KG.,” 1, 1900, p. 363.
[369] “Sermo 60 in Dom. 6 post. Trin.” (“_Sermones de tempore_,”
Tubingæ, 1500).
[370] “Sibend und Acht ader letzte Sermon,” Lipsie, 1533. On this work
cp. Paulus, “Die deutschen Dominikaner,” p. 66, n. 2.
[371] “_Reportata in quatuor S. Bonaventuræ sententiarum libros, Scoti
subtilis secundi_,” Basileæ, 1501. L. 2 d. 5 q. 6.
[372] Bl. 2. On the work, see Hasak, “Der christl. Glaube des deutschen
Volkes beim Schluss des MA.,” 1868, p. 67 ff.
[373] “_Sermones super epistolas dominicales_,” s. l. e. a. Bl. 51.
N. Paulus quotes more of Herolt’s sayings in “Johann Herolt und
seine Lehre, Beitrag zur Gesch. des religiösen Volksunterrichts am
Ausgang des MA.” (“Zeitschr. f. kath. Theol.,” 26, 1902, p. 417 ff.,
particularly p. 429).
[374] Paulus, _ibid._, pp. 429, 430.
[375] “Evangelibuch,” Augsburg, 1560, Bl. 15. Cp. the Basle
“_Plenarium_,” 1514, Bl. 25.
[376] “Errettunge des christl. Bescheydts,” usw., 1528, 32, Bl. 4º, h.
2.
[377] “_De imitatione Christi_,” 1, 15; and 3, 4.
[378] _Ibid._, 1, 17, 19.
[379] Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1884, p. 143.
[380] See the figures in Grisar, “_Analecta Romana_,” 1, tab. 10-12.
[381] On the origin of the waxen “_Agnus Dei_” and its connection with
the oldest baptismal rite, see my art. in the “Civiltà Cattolica,” June
2, 1907. From the beginning it was a memorial of the baptismal covenant
and served as a constant stimulus to personal union with Christ.
[382] “_De imit. Christi_,” 4, 1, 2.
[383] Freiburg, i/B., 1902, p. 730 f.
[384] _Ibid._, p. 737 f.
[385] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 20², 2, p. 407.
[386] N. Paulus, “Köln. Volksztng.,” 1903, No. 961. Cp. Paulus “Der
Katholik,” 1898, 2, p. 25: “Had Luther’s intention been merely to
impress this fundamentally Catholic message on Christendom [the
trustful relations between the individual and God] there would never
have been a schism.”
[387] “Corp. ref.,” 4, pp. 737-740.
[388] Cp. our vol. ii., p. 297.
[389] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 27, p. 418.
[390] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 45, p. 184.
[391] Mathesius, “Tischreden” (Kroker), p. 186.
[392] Mathesius, “Tischreden” (Kroker), p. 230.
[393] _Ibid._, p. 193.
[394] _Ibid._, p. 323.
[395] “Sermo 25 de tempore.”
[396] “Sermo 55 de tempore.”
[397] “Sermones super epistolas dominicales.” Sermo 15.
[398] “Eine nutzliche Lere,” usw., Leipzig, 1502, c. 1.
[399] In a “Novelle,” published by Ph. Strauch in the “Zeitschr. für
deutsches Luthertum,” 29, 1885, p. 389.--For further particulars of
the respect for worldly callings before Luther’s day, see N. Paulus,
“Luther und der Beruf” (“Der Katholik,” 1902, 1, p. 327 ff.), and in
the “Lit. Beil. der Köln. Volksztng.,” 1903, No. 20, p. 148; likewise
Denifle, “Luther,” 1², p. 138 ff.
[400] “Sermo 25 de tempore.”
[401] “Cp. Hist. Jahrb.,” 27, 1906, p. 496 ff. (N. Paulus on O. Scheel).
[402] Basle, 1522, B. 1´.
[403] “Von dem waren christl. Leben,” Bl. C. 3´.
[404] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 61, p. 178.
[405] _Ibid._
[406] What follows has, it is true, no close relation to “Luther
and Lying”; the author has, however, thought it right to deal
with the matter here because of the connection between Luther’s
misrepresentations of the Middle Ages and his calumny against Catholic
times, both of which were founded, not on the facts of the case, but on
personal grounds. Cp. below, p. 147.
[407] Denifle, “Luther und Luthertum,” 1², p. 71 ff., pp. 155, 238, 242.
[408] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 24, p. 55.
[409] Cp. Denifle, _ibid._, p. 239 f.
[410] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 2, p. 152; Erl. ed., 28, p. 194. “Wyder
den falsch genantten geystlichen Standt.”
[411] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 14, p. 157.
[412] _Ibid._, 24, p. 123 f.
[413] _Ibid._, 27, p. 26.
[414] “Werke.” Erl. ed., 18², p. 92.
[415] _Ibid._, 31, p. 297.
[416] Sermo 343, n. 7; Denifle, 1², p. 243, refers also to “De bono
coniugali,” n. 9, 27, 28.
[417] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 12, p. 138 f.: “A married man cannot give
himself up entirely to reading and prayer, but is, as St. Paul says,
‘divided’ and must devote a great part of his life to pleasing his
spouse.” The Apostle says that though the “troubles and cares of the
married state are good, yet it is far better to be free to pray and
attend to the Word of God.”--Luther is more silent concerning our
Lord’s own recommendation of virginity (“_Non omnes capiunt verbum
istud, sed quibus datum est_,” etc., Mat. xix. 11 f.). Of his attitude
towards voluntary virginity we have already spoken in vol. iii., 246 ff.
[418] “Werke.,” Erl. ed., 61, p. 178 (Table-Talk).
[419] _Ibid._, 64, p. 155. From his glosses on the Bible.
[420] _Ibid._, 31, p. 390. From the “Winckelmesse,” 1534.
[421] _Ibid._, 44, p. 376.
[422] _Ibid._, p. 25², p. 432; cp. p. 428.
[423] “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 6, p. 283: “_Ipse ego, cum essem adhuc
monachus, idem sapiebam, coniugium esse damnatum genus vitæ_.”
[424] And yet a Protestant has said quite recently: “The Church
persistently taught that love had nothing to do with marriage.” As
though the restraining of sexual love within just limits was equivalent
to the exclusion of conjugal love.
[425] Ed. Ph. Strauch, “Zeitschr. für deutsches Altertum,” 29, 1885,
pp. 373-427.
[426] P. 385.
[427] Munich State Library, cod. germ., 757.
[428] _Ibid._, cod. 756.
[429] Heinemann, “Die Handschriften der Herzogl. Bibliothek zu
Wolfenbüttel,” 2, 4, p. 332 f.
[430] “Überlieferungen zur Gesch.,” etc., 1, 2, p. 204 f.
[431] “N. kirchl. Zeitschr.,” 3, 1892, p. 487.
[432] “Sermones Fratris Barlete,” Brixie, 1497 and 1498, several times
republished in the 16th century. See sermon for the Friday of the
fourth week of Lent.
[433] “_Opus super Sapientiam Salomonis_,” ed. Hagenau, 1494 (and
elsewhere), “_Lectio_” 43 and 44, on Marriage. Cp. _ibid._, 181, the
“_Lectio_” on the Valiant Woman, and in his work, “_In Proverbia
Salomonis explanationes_,” Paris, 1510, “_Lectio_” 91, with the
explanation of Prov. xii. 4: “A diligent woman is a crown to her
husband.”
[434] Luther, on the other hand, declares: “The work of begetting
children was not distinguished from other sins, such as fornication and
adultery. But now we have learnt and are assured by the Grace of God
that marriage is honourable.” “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 7, p. 116.
[435] On Barletta and Holkot, cp. N. Paulus in “Lit. Beil. der
Köln. Volksztng.,” 1904, Nos. 19 and 20; and his art., “Die Ehe in
den deutschen Postillen des ausgehenden MA.,” and “Gedruckte und
Ungedruckte deutsche Ehebüchlein des ausgehenden MA.,” _ibid._, 1903,
Nos. 18 and 20. See also F(alk) in “Der Katholik,” 1906, 2, p. 317 ff.:
“Ehe und Ehestand im MA.,” and in the work about to be quoted. Denifle,
“Luther,” 1, has much to say of the Catholic and the Lutheran views of
marriage.
[436] “Die Ehe am Ausgange des MA., Eine Kirchen- und kulturhist.
Studie,” 1908 (“Erläut. und Ergänz. zu Janssens Gesch. des d. Volkes,”
6, Hft. 4).
[437] “Die Ehe am Ausgange des MA., Eine Kirchen- und kulturhist.
Studie,” 1908 (“Erläut. und Ergänz, zu Janssens Gesch. des d. Volkes,”
6, Hft. 4), p. 67.
[438] _Ibid._, p. 66.
[439] “Die Stellung der Frau im MA.,” Oct. 1 and 8, 1910, p. 1253.
[440] _Ibid._, p. 1299.
[441] _Ibid._, p. 1248.
[442] Cp. F. Schaub, “Hist. Jahrb.,” 26, 1905, p. 117 ff., on H.
Crohns, who, in order to accuse St. Antoninus and others of “hatred of
women,” appeals to the “Witches’ Hammer”: “It is unjust to make these
authors responsible for the consequences drawn from their utterances by
such petty fry as the producers of the ‘Witches’ Hammer.’” Cp. Paulus,
“Hist.-pol. Bl.,” 134, 1904, particularly p. 812 ff.
[443] Finke, _ibid._, p. 1249.
[444] _Ibid._, p. 1256.
[445] _Ibid._, p. 1258.--Finke’s statements may be completed by the
assurance that full justice was done to marriage by both theologians
and liturgical books, and that not merely “traces” but the clearest
proofs exist, that “mutual help” was placed in the foreground as the
aim of marriage. Details on this point are contained in Denifle’s
“Luther und Luthertum,” 1², p. 254 ff. The following remark by a
writer, so deeply versed in mediæval Scholasticism, is worthy of note:
“There is not a single Schoolman of any standing, who, on this point
[esteem for marriage in the higher sense], is at variance with Hugo
of St. Victor, the Lombard, or ecclesiastical tradition generally.
Though there may be differences in minor points, yet all are agreed
concerning the lawfulness, goodness, dignity and holiness of marriage”
(p. 261). “It is absolutely ludicrous, nay, borders on imbecility,”
he says (_ibid._) with characteristic indignation, “that Luther
should think it necessary to tell the Papists that Adam and Eve were
united according to the ordinance and institution of God” (“Opp. lat.
exeg.,” 4, p. 70). He laments that Luther’s assertions concerning
the contempt of Catholics for marriage should have left their trace
in the Symbolic Books of Protestantism (“Confess. August.,” art. 16,
“Symb. Bücher^[10],” ed. Müller-Kolde, p. 42), and exclaims: “Surely
it is time for such rubbish to be too much even for Protestants.”
Jos. Löhr (“Methodisch-kritische Beitr. zur Gesch. der Sittlichkeit
des Klerus, bes. der Erzdiözese Köln am Ausgang des MA.,” 1911,
“Reformations-geschichtl. Studien und Texte,” Hft. 17, pp. 77-84) has
dealt with the same matter, but in a more peaceful tone.
[446] Prov. xxxi. 10 f.: “_Mulierem fortem quis inveniet?_” etc. The
Lesson of the Mass _De communi nec virginum nec martyrum_.
[447] The Gradual of the same Mass, taken from Psalm xliv.
[448] Falk, _op. cit._, p. 71.
[449] Cp. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 61, p. 207 (Table-Talk). In his
translation of the Bible Luther quotes the German verse: “Nought so
dear on earth as the love of woman to the man who shares it” (“Werke,”
Erl. ed., 64, p. 113), in connection with Proverbs xxxi. 10 ff.
(“_Mulierem fortem_,” etc.). In the Table-Talk he quotes the same when
speaking of those who are unfaithful to their marriage vow in not
praying: “People do not pray. Therefore my hostess at Eisenach [Ursula,
Cunz Cotta’s wife, see vol. i., p. 5 f., and vol. iii., p. 288 f.]
was right in saying to me when I went to school there: ‘There is no
dearer thing on earth than the love of woman to the man on whom it is
bestowed’” (“Werke,” Erl. ed., 61, p. 212). Luther’s introduction of
the phrase in connection with the passage on the “_Mulier fortis_” was
an injustice, and an attempt to prove again the alleged contempt of
Catholicism for the love of woman.
[450] N. Paulus, “Zur angeblichen Geringschätzung der Frau und der Ehe
im MA.,” in the “Wissensch. Beil. zur Germania,” 1904, Nos. 10 and 12.
[451] Pastor, “Hist. of the Popes” (Eng. Trans.), 5, p. 119.
[452] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 19², p. 246 f.
[453] _Ibid._, 16², p. 536 ff.
[454] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 34, 1, p. 51 ff.
[455] _Ibid._, p. 58.
[456] _Ibid._, pp. 66, 68.
[457] _Ibid._, 30, 3, p. 278; Erl. ed., 25², p. 6. “Warnunge an seine
lieben Deudschen,” 1531.
[458] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 15, p. 420.
[459] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 16², p. 538.
[460] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 10, 2, p. 283; Erl. ed., 16², p. 519. Cp.
present work, vol. iii., p. 263 and p. 241 ff.
[461] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 61, p. 205 (Table-Talk).
[462] Cp. the passages in the Table-Talk on marriage and on women,
“Werke,” Erl. ed., 61, pp. 182-213, and 57, pp. 270-273.
[463] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 61, p. 205.
[464] “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p. 25. Cp. Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,”
p. 121; “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 421; 2, p. 368. Cp.
Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 440.
[465] “Briefwechsel,” 10, p. 266: “_reicio ... ubi possum_.” There are,
however, some instances of sympathy and help being forthcoming.
[466] See above, pp. 3 ff., 13 ff., and vol. iii., 259 ff.
[467] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 2, p. 168; Erl. ed., 24², p. 63. Second
edition of the Sermon.
[468] _Ibid._, p. 168 f.=63 f.
[469] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 2, p. 170; Erl. ed., 24², p. 66.
[470] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 8, p. 330 f.; “Opp. lat. var.,” 4, p. 353
_seq._ “Iudicium de votis monasticis.” Cp. vol. iii., p. 248.
[471] “Apol. Conf. Augustanæ,” c. 23, n. 38; Bekenntnisschriften,
^[10], p. 242: “_Ita virginitas donum est præstantius coniugio._”
[472] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 74; Erl. ed., 23, p. 208.
[473] Leipzig, 1865, p. 159. Friedberg adduces passages from H. L.
v. Strampff, “Uber die Ehe; aus Luthers Schriften zusammengetragen,”
Berlin, 1857. Falk, “Die Ehe am Ausgang des MA.,” p. 73. Th. Kolde
says, in his “M. Luther,” 2, p. 488, that the reformers, and Luther
in particular, “lacked a true insight into the real, moral nature
of marriage.” “At that time at any rate [1522 f.] it was always the
sensual side of marriage to which nature impels, which influenced
him. That marriage is essentially the closest communion between
two individuals, and thus, by its very nature, excludes more than
two, never became clear to him or to the other reformers.” Kolde,
however, seeks to trace this want of perception to the “mediæval
views concerning marriage.” Cp. Denifle, 1¹, p. 285. Otto Scheel, the
translator of Luther’s work on Monastic Vows (“Werke Luthers, Auswahl,
usw., Ergänzungsbd.,” 1, p. 199 ff.), speaks of Luther’s view of
marriage as “below that of the Gospel” (p. 198).
[474] “Die kath. Moral,” 1902, p. 118.
[475] On Dec. 6, 1525, “Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 279. See vol. iii., p.
269. The passage was omitted by Aurifaber and De Wette probably because
not judged quite proper.
[476] Aug., “De bono coniug.,” c. 6, n. 6; c. 7, n. 6. According to
Denifle, 1¹, p. 277, n. 2, the Schoolmen knew the passages through the
Lombard “Sent.,” 4, dist. 31, c. 5. He also quotes S. Thom., “Summa
theol.,” Supplem., q. 41, a. 4; q. 49, a. 5; q. 64, a. 4: “_ut sibi
invicem debitum reddant_.”
[477] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 8, p. 654; “Opp. lat. var.,” 6, p. 355. On
the text, see Denifle, 1², p. 263, n. 3.
[478] _Ibid._, 20, 2, p. 304; Erl. ed., 16², p. 541. “On Married Life,”
1522.
[479] _Ibid._, 12, p. 114. Cp. “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 4, p. 10.
[480] N. Paulus, “Hist. Jahrb.,” 27, 1906, p. 495, art. “Zu Luthers
Schrift über die Mönchsgelübde”: “Luther’s false view of the sinfulness
of the ‘_actus matrimonialis_’ was strongly repudiated by Catholics,
particularly by Clichtoveus and Cochlæus.”
[481] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 2, p. 276; Erl. ed., 16², p. 511. “Sermon
on the Married Life,” 1522.
[482] _Ibid._, 12, p. 66; Erl. ed., 53, p. 188.
[483] _Ibid._, p. 113.
[484] Cp. vol. iii., p. 264 ff.
[485] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 101. Then follows a highly
questionable statement concerning a rule of the Wittenberg Augustinian
monastery, in which Luther fails to distinguish between “_pollutiones
voluntariæ_” and “_involuntariæ_,” but which draws from him the
exclamation: “All the monasteries and foundations ought to be
destroyed, if only on account of these shocking ‘_pollutiones_’!”
[486] Mathesius, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 73, where some improper remarks may
be found on the temptation of St. Paul (according to the notes, on
account of St. Thecla) and that of St. Benedict, who, we are told,
rolled himself in the thorns to overcome it.
[487] See vol. iii., p. 267, n. 10.
[488] _Ibid._, p. 122: “_Scribis, mea iactari ab iis qui lupanaria
colunt_.”
[489] “Briefe,” ed. by De Wette, 6, p. 419, undated.
[490] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 373. To a bridegroom in 1536.
[491] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 15, p. 364 f.; Erl. ed., 41, p. 135.
Brandenburg, “Luther über die Obrigkeit,” p. 7.
[492] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 437.
[493] _Ibid._, p. 219.
[494] See vol. ii., pp. 115-28.
[495] To Spalatin, June 10, 1525, “Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 189 f. Enders
(p. 191) would refer the above passages to Luther’s own marriage, but
G. Bossert (“Theol. Literaturztng.,” 1907, p. 691) makes out a better
case for their reference to Polenz and Briesmann. Two persons at least
are obviously referred to: “_Quod illi vero prætexunt, certos sese
fore de animo suo, stultum est; nullius cor est in manu sua, diabolus
potentissimus est_,” etc. Luther evidently felt, that, until the
persons in question had been bound to the new Evangel by their public
marriages, their support could not be entirely reckoned on.
[496] On June 2, 1525, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 53, p. 308 (“Briefwechsel,”
5, p. 186). See vol. ii., p. 142.
[497] On May 26, 1525, “Werke,” _ibid._, p. 304 (“Briefwechsel,” 5, p.
179).
[498] Janssen, “Hist. of the German People” (Eng. Trans., 5, p. 114).
[499] Advice to this effect is found in letters of Dec. 22, 1525, and
Jan. 5, 1526, both addressed to Marquard Schuldorp of Magdeburg, who
married his niece, “Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 283 (and p. 303). The second
letter, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 53, p. 364, was printed at Magdeburg in
1526. In the first letter he says, that though the Pope would in all
likelihood refuse to grant a dispensation in this case, yet it sufficed
that God was not averse to the marriage. “They shall not be allowed to
curtail our freedom!”
[500] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 337, in 1544.
[501] In the second letter to Schuldorp. Cp. N. Paulus, “Hist.-pol.
Bl.,” 135, 1905, p. 85.
[502] Mathesius, _ibid._ For further explanation of this statement, cp.
Luther’s letter of Dec. 10, 1543, to D. Hesse, “Briefe,” 5, p. 606 ff.
He there says of his decision on the lawfulness of this marriage: “_Est
nuda tabula, in qua nihil docetur aut iubetur, sed modeste ostenditur,
quid in veteri lege de his traditum sit.... In consolationem
confessorem seu conscientiarum mea quoque scheda fuit emissa contra
papam._” He insists that he had always spoken in support of the
secular laws on marriage and against the reintroduction of the Mosaic
ordinances. “_Ministrorum verbi non est leges condere, pertinet hoc ad
magistratum civilem ... ideo et coniugium debet legibus ordinari. Tamen
si quis casus cogeret dispensare, non vererer occulte in conscientiis
aliter consulere, vel si esset publicus casus, consulere, ut a
magistratu peteret dispensationem._”
[503] Rockwell, “Die Doppelehe Philipps,” p. 86.
[504] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 374, Jan., 1537.
[505] Luther’s memorandum, Aug. 18, 1525, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 53, p. 326
(“Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 228). Cp. Enders’ Notes to this letter.
[506] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 6, p. 558; “Opp. lat. var.,” 5, p. 98 _seq._
“_De captivitate babylonica_.”
[507] _Ibid._, 10. 2, p. 278; Erl. ed., 16², p. 513 f.
[508] Dec. 28, 1525, “Luthers Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 289.
[509] Dec. 19, 1522, “Akten und Briefe des Herzogs Georg von Sachsen,”
ed. F. Gess, I, 1905, p. 402.
[510] Jan. 1, 1523, _ibid._, p. 415. Cp. N. Paulus, “Hist.-pol. Bl.,”
137, 1906, p. 56 f.
[511] “Postille,” Mainz, 1542, 4b. Döllinger, “Die Reformation,” 1, p.
52.
[512] “_Professio catholica_,” Coloniæ, 1580 (reprint), p. 219 _seq._
Janssen-Pastor, “Gesch. des deutschen Volkes,” 8^[14], p. 456.
Several replies were called forth by this over-zealous and extremely
anti-Lutheran polemic.
[513] “Vormeldung der Unwahrheit Luterscher Clage,” Frankfurt/Oder,
1532. N. Paulus, “Die deutschen Dominikaner,” etc., p. 33.
[514] Cp. above, p. 152 f.
[515] Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 340. Mathesius, “Aufzeichnungen,” p. 252.
[516] Cp., for instance, present work, vol. iii., p. 268, and vol. ii.,
p. 378.
[517] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 281.
[518] This was Elisabeth Kaufmann, a niece of Luther’s, yet unmarried,
who lived with her widowed sister Magdalene at the Black Monastery.
The “pastoress” was the wife of the apostate priest Bugenhagen, Pastor
of Wittenberg, who, during Bugenhagen’s absence in Brunswick, seems to
have enjoyed the hospitality of the same great house. The “many girls”
are Luther’s servants and those of the other inhabitants.
[519] Aurifaber suppressed the end of this conversation. Cp. “Werke,”
Erl. ed., 61, p. 201.
[520] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 3, p. 221.
[521] Cp. vol. iii., p. 175 f. Cp. p. 179.
[522] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 390.
[523] Cp. vol. v., xxxi., 5.
[524] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 396.
[525] _Ibid._, p. 415.
[526] _Ibid._, p. 405 f.
[527] Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 426. See vol. iii., p. 273. Akin to
this is his self-congratulation (above, p. 46), that he works for the
increase of mankind, whereas the Papists put men to death.
[528] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 25², p. 430.
[529] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 405.
[530] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 388.
[531] _Ibid._, 61, p. 193. The last words are omitted in the two old
editions of the Table-Talk by Selnecker and Stangwald.
[532] _Ibid._, 20², p. 365. At the marriage of the apostate Dean of
Merseburg.
[533] _Ibid._, 25², p. 373; cp. p. 369 and above, vol. iii., p. 251, n.
3.
[534] _Ibid._, 61, p. 204 (Table-Talk).
[535] “Werke,” _ibid._, p. 205 (Table-Talk).
[536] _Ibid._, p. 211.
[537] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 262.
[538] For similar instances of the use of such signs see vol. iii., p.
231. The Nuremberg MS. of the Mathesius collection substitutes here,
according to Kroker, a meaningless phrase. The MS. in the Ducal Library
at Gotha, entitled “Farrago” (1551), omits it altogether.
[539] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 2, p. 289; Erl. ed., 16², p. 525. On the
“strangling,” cp. vol. iii., p. 253, n. 3.
[540] “Wie man fürsichtiglich reden soll,” ed. A. Uckeley, Leipzig,
1908, according to the 1536 German ed. (“Quellenschriften zur Gesch.
des Protest.,” Hft. 6).
[541] “_De stultitia mortalium_,” Basil., 1557, 1, 1, p. 50 _seq._
Denifle, 1², p. 287.
[542] “Von werlicher Visitation,” Eisleben, 1555, Bl. K. 3. Denifle,
1², p. 280.
[543] “Annotationen zu den Propheten,” 2, Eisleben, 1536, fol. 88.
Döllinger, “Die Reformation,” 1, p. 48.
[544] “Ein unüberwindlicher gründlicher Bericht was die Rechtfertigung
in Paulo sei,” Leipzig, 1533. Döllinger, _ibid._, p. 40.
[545] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 54, p. 253 (“Briefwechsel,” 9, p. 103).
[546] Dan. xi., 37. Cp. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 64, p. 155.
[547] “Annotationen zum A.T.,” 2, fol. 198´. Döllinger, _ibid._, p. 106.
[548] The passages referred to are, according to the text of the
Vulgate: 1 Cor. vii. 32: “_Qui sine uxore est, sollicitus est quæ
Domini sunt_,” etc. _Ibid._, 38: “_Qui non iungit (virginem suam)
melius facit._” _Ibid._, 40: “_Beatior erit, si sic permanserit_,”
etc. Mat. xix. 12: “_Sunt eunuchi, qui se ipsos castraverunt propter
regnum Dei. Qui potest capere capiat._” Apoc. xiv. 3 f., of those who
sing “the new song before the throne” of the Lamb: “_Hi sunt, qui cum
mulieribus non sunt coinquinati, virgines enim sunt. Hi sequuntur agnum
quocunque ierit. Hi empti sunt ex hominibus primitiæ Deo et Agno._”
1 Tim. v. 12, of those widows dedicated to God who marry: “_Habentes
damnationem, qui primam fidem irritam fecerunt_.”--Against Jovinian St.
Jerome wrote, in 392: “Adv. Iovinianum” (“P.L.,” 23, col. 211 _seq._),
where, in the first part, he defends virginity, which the former had
attacked, and demonstrates its superiority and its merit.
[549] “Annotationen zum A.T.,” 2, 1536, fol. 198´, on Daniel xi., 37.
Döllinger, _ibid._, p. 105 f.
[550] “Homiliæ XXII,” Vitebergæ, 1532. Denifle, “Luther und Luthertum,”
1², p. 278.
[551] “_De corruptis moribus utriusque partis_,” Bl. F. III. In the
title page the author’s name is given as Czecanovius; this is identical
with Staphylus, as N. Paulus has shown in the “Katholik,” 1895, 1, p.
574 f.
[552] F. Staphylus, “Nachdruck zu Verfechtung des Buches vom rechten
Verstandt des göttlichen Worts,” Ingolstadt, 1562, fol. 202´.
[553] Cp. the quotations in Denifle (1², Preface, p. 15 ff.),
commencing with one from Billicanus: “By the eternal God, what
fornication and adultery are we not forced to witness”; also those on
pp. 282 ff., 805 f.
[554] Cp. Janssen-Pastor, “Gesch. des deutschen Volkes,” 8^[14], pp.
378 f., 384 ff., 392.
[555] See above, p. 167, n. 3.
[556] J. Löhr, “Methodisch-kritische Beiträge zur Gesch. der
Sittlichkeit des Klerus, besonders der Erzdiözese Köln, am Ausgange des
MA.” (“Reformationsgesch. Studien und Texte,” Hft. 17, 1910).
[557] Page 44.
[558] Page 59.
[559] Page 65. That all offenders without exception were punished is of
course not likely.
[560] _Ibid._, pp. 1-24.--For the 16th and 17th centuries we refer the
reader to J. Schmidlin, “Die kirchl. Zustände in Deutschland vor dem
Dreissigjährigen Kriege nach den bischöflichen Diözesanberichten an den
Heiligen Stuhl,” Freiburg, 1908-1911 (“Erläuterungen usw. zu Janssens
Gesch.,” 7, Hft. 1-10). In the “Hist. Jahrb.,” 31, 1910, p. 163, we
read of the reports contained in the first part of the work: “They
commence by revealing the sad depths to which Catholic life had sunk,
but go on to show an ever-increasing vigour on the part of the bishops,
in many cases crowned with complete success.”
[561] “_De vita et miraculis Iohannis Gerson_,” s.l.e.a. (1506), B
4b; Janssen-Pastor, 1^[18], p. 681. Wimpfeling is, however, answering
the Augustinian, Johann Paltz, who had attacked the secular clergy;
elsewhere he witnesses to the grave blots on the life of the secular
clergy.
[562] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 400 (“Tischreden”). Cp. Lauterbach,
“Tagebuch,” p. 186: “_Cum summo fletu spectatorum_.”
[563] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 7, p. 239; Erl. ed., 16², p. 234.
[564] We may here remark concerning Luther’s stay at Cologne (passed
over in vol. i., p. 38 f., for the sake of brevity), that at the
Chapter then held by Staupitz--to whose party Luther had now gone
over--the former probably refrained, in his official capacity, from
putting in force his plans for an amalgamation of the Observantines and
the Conventuals of the Saxon Province. There is no doubt that Luther
came to Cologne from Wittenberg, whither he had betaken himself on his
return from Rome. After the Chapter at Cologne he made preparations
for his promotion. Possibly the project of securing the Doctorate was
matured at Cologne. He speaks of the relics of the Three Kings in
a sermon of January 5th, of which two accounts have been preserved
(“Werke,” Weim. ed., 34, 1, p. 22: “I have seen them.” “I too have seen
them”). In the so-called “Bibelprotokollen,” of 1539, he says (_ibid._,
p. 585): “At Cologne I drank a wine _quod penetrabat in mensa manum_”
(which probably means, was so fiery that soon after drinking it he felt
a tingling down to his finger-tips). “Never in all my life have I drunk
so rich a wine.” Cp., for the Cologne Chapter, Kolde, “Die deutsche
Augustinerkongregation,” p. 242 f., and for the same and Luther’s
Cologne visit, Walter Köhler, “Christl. Welt,” 1908, No. 30; N. Paulus,
“Hist.-pol. Bl.,” 142, 1908, p. 749; and G. Kawerau, “Theol. Stud, und
Krit.,” 81, 1908, p. 348. Buchwald refers to a statement of Luther’s on
a monument at Cologne (“Werke,” Erl. ed., 62, p. 371=“Tischreden,” ed.
Förstemann, 4, p. 625) in “Werke,” Weim. ed., 34, 2, p. 609.
[565] “Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 86.
[566] _Ibid._, p. 308.
[567] Jan. 25, 1526, _ibid._, p. 312.
[568] Cp. Enders on the letter last quoted.
[569] “Briefwechsel Luthers,” 6, p. 322 f. Hasenberg’s Latin letter,
Aug. 10, 1528, p. 334 ff.; v. der Heyden’s German one of same date.
[570] Cp. Duke George’s fierce letter to Luther of Dec. 28, 1525
(“Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 285 ff.), which was also printed forthwith. He
will speak freely and openly to him, he says: “Seek the hypocrites
amongst those who call you a prophet, a Daniel, the Apostle of the
Germans and an Evangelist.” “At Wittenberg you have set up an asylum
where all the monks and nuns who, by their robbing and stealing,
deprive us of our churches and convents find refuge.” “When have more
acts of sacrilege been committed by people dedicated to God than
since your Evangel has been preached?” Did not Christ say: “By their
fruits you shall know them”? All the great preachers of the faith have
been “pious, respectable and truthful men, not proud, avaricious or
unchaste.” “Your marriage is the work, not of God, but of the enemy....
Since both of you once took an oath not to commit unchastity lest
God should forsake you, is it not high time that you considered your
position?”--The greater part of the letter was incorporated by Cochlæus
in his _Acta_ (p. 119).
[571] On p. 336 von der Heyden says: Luther is “beginning to draw in
his horns and is in great fear lest his nun should be unyoked.”
[572] Nicetas, Bishop of Romatiana, may be the author of this anonymous
work, printed in “P.L.,” 16, col. 367-384.
[573] For the full text of this anonymous hymn (incorporated in the
Office for Virgins in the Breviary), see “P.L.,” 16, col. 1221.
[574] “_Literarii sodalitii apud Marpurgam aliquot cachinni super
quodam duorum Lypsiensium poetarum in Lutherum scripto libello effusi_”
(Marburgæ), 1528.
[575] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 26, p. 539 ff. (with the editor’s opinion on
the authorship); Erl. ed., 64, pp. 324-337.
[576] _Ibid._, p. 540=339. The writing aptly concludes: “_... tuo,
vates, carmine tergo nates_.”
[577] _Ibid._, p. 548=330.
[578] _Ibid._, p. 547=327 f.
[579] _Ibid._, p. 544=344.
[580] _Ibid._, p. 553 f.=335 f.
[581] “Sermones dominicales des gnadenreichen Predigers Andree Prolis”
(with notes), Leipzig, 1530, fol. K. 4´.
[582] “_Apologeticus adv. Alcoranum Franciscanorum pro Libro
Conformitatum_,” Antverpiæ, 1607, p. 101.
[583] “Opp.,” ed. Lugd., 9, col. 1249 _seq._
[584] See vol. ii., p. 242 ff.
[585] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichnungen,” p. 29.
[586] _Ibid._, p. 96 f.
[587] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 311.
[588] See vol. ii., p. 249 ff.
[589] “Luthers Briefwechsel,” 9, p. 368 f.
[590] _Ibid._, p. 382.
[591] _Ibid._, 10, p. 8 ff., about March 11, 1534.
[592] On March 31, 1534, “Briefwechsel,” 10, p. 36.
[593] At the conclusion Luther says of the young people: “_Hac levitate
et vanitate paulatim desuescit a religione, donec abhorreat et penitus
profanescat_.” And: “_Dominus noster Iesus, quem mihi Petrus non
tacet Deum, sed in cuius virtute scio et certus sum me sæpius a morte
liberatum, in cuius fide hæc omnia incepi et hactenus effeci, quæ ipsi
hostes mirantur, ipse custodiat et liberet nos in finem. Ipse est
Dominus Deus noster verus._”
[594] “Corp. ref.,” 2, p. 709: _γεροντικὰ πάθη_.
[595] _Ibid._, 3, p. 69.
[596] On April 15, 1534, Burckhardt-Biedermann, “Bonif. Amerbach,”
1894, p. 297. Enders, “Luthers Briefwechsel,” 10, p. 24.
[597] Enders, _ibid._, p. 23.
[598] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 312.
[599] “Opp. lat. var.,” 7, p. 526, _seq._
[600] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 25², p. 278 ff.
[601] “Opp.,” 3, col. 1494 _seq._
[602] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 663, admits that Luther’s charge was
“groundless.”
[603] Most of the above passages from Erasmus’s reply are quoted by
Enders, p. 25 ff. The outspoken passage last quoted is given in Latin
in vol. iii., p. 136. n. 2.
[604] Quoted by Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 663, p. 313, n. 1.
[605] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 275: “_Vixit et decessit
ut Epicureus sine aliquo ministro et consolatione.... Multa
quidem præclara scripsit, habuit ingenium præstantissimum, otium
tranquillum.... In agone non expetivit ministrum verbi neque
sacramenta, et fortasse ilia verba suæ confessionis in agone ‘Fili
Dei miserere mei’ illi affinguntur._” Cp. Luther’s words in 1544
in Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 343: “He died ‘_sine crux et sine
lux_’”; here again Luther says he had been the cause of many losing
body and soul and had been the originator of the Sacramentarians.
See our vol. ii., p. 252, n. 1, for further details of Erasmus’s
end. We read in Mathesius, p. 90 (May, 1540): “The Doctor said: He
arrogated to himself the Divinity of which he deprived Christ. In his
‘_Colloquia_’ he compared Christ with Priapus [Kroker remarks: ‘Erasmus
did _not_ compare Christ with Priapus’], he mocked at Him in his
‘Catechism’ [’_Symbolum_’], and particularly in his execrable book the
‘_Farragines_.’”
[606] See the whole passage in “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 272 _seq._
[607] “Luthers Werke,” Erl. ed., 25², p. 89. See above, p. 101.
[608] “Werke,” _ibid._, p. 92.
[609] _Ibid._
[610] Luther to Duke George, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 53, p. 338 ff.
(“Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 281, with amended date and colophon). George to
Luther, “Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 285 ff.
[611] More in the same strain above, p. 173, n. 4.
[612] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 25², p. 134.
[613] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 58, p. 411, Table-Talk.
[614] _Ibid._, 31, p. 250 ff.
[615] _Ibid._, 61, p. 343, Table-Talk.
[616] To the Elector Frederick of Saxony, March 5, 1522, “Werke,” Erl.
ed., 53, p. 107 (“Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 296).
[617] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 61, p. 343 f., Table-Talk.
[618] _Ibid._, 58, p. 412 (Table-Talk), where Luther bases his tale on
a remark of the Protestant Elector Johann Frederick of Saxony.
[619] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 413 ff.; Erl. ed., 25², p. 108 ff.
See our vol. ii., p. 295 f.
[620] “Luthers Werke,” Erl. ed., 25², p. 129 ff.
[621] P. 135.
[622] P. 130.
[623] P. 144.
[624] “Wiedervereinigung der christl. Kirchen,” p. 53.
[625] Above, p. 38, and vol. iii., p. 262.
[626] Letters ed. De Wette, 5, p. 271.
[627] To Johannes Cellarius, minister at Dresden, Nov. 26, 1540,
Letters ed. De Wette, 5, p. 229.
[628] _Ibid._, cp. the letter to Wenceslaus Link of Oct. 26, 1539,
“Briefwechsel,” 12, p. 270: “_Proceres veteri odio despiciunt
Wittembergam_.”
[629] Letter of Dec. 4, 1539, “Briefwechsel,” _ibid._, p. 313.
[630] To Provost George Buchholzer at Berlin, Dec. 4, 1539, _ibid._,
p. 316. At the Wittenberg Schlosskirche the elevation had gone before
1539, and soon after was discontinued throughout the Saxon Electorate.
It was retained, however, in the parish church of Wittenberg until
Bugenhagen did away with it on June 25, 1542. Luther reserved to
himself the liberty of re-introducing it should heresy or other reasons
call for it. He had retained the elevation at Wittenberg for a while as
a protest against Carlstadt’s attacks on the Sacrament, at least such
was the reason he gave in May, 1542, to Landgrave Philip, who wanted
its abrogation. Cp. Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 578.
[631] Dec., 1523, “Werke,” Weim. ed., 12, p. 232 ff.; Erl. ed., 29, p.
16 ff. (“Briefwechsel,” 4, p. 266).
[632] Cp. Enders, _ibid._, 10, p. 98, n. 7.
[633] Letter to Coler, April 30, 1535. Enders, _ibid._, p. 151, n. 5.
[634] To Justus Jonas, Dec. 17, 1534, “Briefwechsel,” 10, p. 98.
[635] To Erhard Schnepf at Stuttgart, May 15, 1535, _ibid._, p. 150.
[636] Letter to the Chancellor Leonard v. Eck, Jan. 21, 1535, in Wille,
“Anal. zur Gesch. Oberdeutschlands, 1534-1540” (“Zeitschr. für die
Gesch. des Oberrheins,” 37, p. 263 ff.), p. 293 f.
[637] G. Bossert in “Württemberg. KG.,” ed. Calwer Verlagsverein, Calw.
1893, p. 335.
[638] Cp. _ibid._, p. 336.
[639] _Ibid._, p. 347.
[640] _Ibid._, p. 348.
[641] Hans Werner to Chancellor Eck, Jan. 14, 1536, Wille, _ibid._, p.
298.
[642] Bossert, _ibid._, remarks, p. 333: “_Many_ mediæval works of art
were preserved.”
[643] _Ibid._, p. 356.
[644] In Heyd, “Ulrich Herzog von Würtenberg,” 3, p. 89.
[645] The passages are given in greater detail in “Erinnerung nach dem
Lauf der Planeten gestellt,” Tübingen, 1568, and “Dreizehn Predigten
vom Türken,” Tübingen, 1569, in Döllinger, “Die Reformation,” 2, pp.
376-378.
[646] Bossert, _ibid._, p. 357.
[647] Thus, e.g. Bossert, _loc. cit._, and in other studies on
Würtemberg Church-History in the 16th century, called forth by
Janssen’s work.
[648] Cp. above, _passim_.
[649] See above, p. 65.
[650] “Briefwechsel Philipps von Hessen,” 1, p. 334 f.
[651] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 315 f. On his marriage, see above, p. 157.
[652] A. L. Richter, “Die evangel. Kirchenordnungen des 16.
Jahrhunderts,” 1, p. 290.
[653] “Leben,” etc. (“Zeitschr. des Vereins für hess. Gesch.,” Suppl.
2, Bd. 1 und 2), 1, p. 379 ff.
[654] Neudecker, “Urkunden aus der Reformationszeit,” p. 684 ff.
Janssen, “Hist. of the German People” (Eng. Trans.), 6, pp. 88-91.
[655] Hassencamp, “Hess. KG. im Zeitalter der Reformation,” 2, p. 613
f. Janssen, _ibid._
[656] “Briefwechsel Philipps,” 1, p. 121 f. Janssen, _ibid._
[657] Cp. above, _passim_, and vol. iii., p. 324; vol. ii., pp. 123
ff., 218 ff. 344, 349 f.
[658] Mathesius, “Tischreden” (Kroker), p. 173.
[659] _Ibid._, p. 100.
[660] _Ibid._, p. 373.
[661] Hausrath, 2, p. 391.
[662] Letter of Feb. 9, 1541. See G. Mentz, “Johann Friedrich
der Grossmütige,” 3, Jena, 1908, p. 344, according to certain
“archives.”--Steinhausen (“Kulturgesch. der Deutschen,” p. 508), calls
the Elector Johann Frederick quite simply a “drunkard.” He points out
that Anna of Saxony died of drink and that the Saxons, even in the 15th
century, were noted for their drinking habits.
[663] Letter of Jan. 3, 1541, “Briefwechsel Philipps,” ed. Lenz, 1, p.
302.
[664] “Luthers Leben,” 2, Berlin, 1904, p. 391.
[665] 3 Teil, Jena, 1909, p. 343 f.
[666] Janssen, “Hist. of the German People” (Eng. Trans.), 6, p. 213.
[667] Hortleder, “Von den Ursachen des Teutschen Kriegs Karls V. wider
die Schmalkaldische,” 1, Gotha, 1645, p. 1837.
[668] _Ibid._, p. 1869 f.
[669] N. Paulus, who examined the matter more closely in the “Hist.
Jahrb.,” 30, 1909, p. 154, comes to the conclusion that Mentz in
his Life of Johann Frederick has not laid sufficient weight on the
testimony of the witnesses.
[670] “Luthers Leben,” 2, p. 391 f.
[671] Cp. above, _passim_.
[672] Vol. i., p. 601.
[673] Frankfurt, 1699, 2, p. 44.
[674] _Ibid._
[675] “Allg. deutsche Biographie,” 7, p. 781 (Flathe).
[676] Hausrath, _loc. cit._, 2, p. 67.
[677] _Ibid._, p. 68.
[678] “Martin Luthers Werke für das deutsche Volk,” 1907, p. xiii.
[679] Hausrath, _ibid._, 2, p. 390.
[680] “Briefwechsel,” 11, p. 209, from the original at Weimar,
written by Bugenhagen: “_Utcunque sint in quibusdam peccatores et
non in omnibus puri, calumniantibus hoc etiam vel forte accusantibus
adversariis, tamen confidant de Domini bonitate_,” etc. And before
this, concerning the “_adversariorum clamores ‘Rapiunt bona
ecclesiastica,’_” etc., they were to comfort themselves, “_quia non
sic rapiunt, quemadmodum quidam alii; video enim eos per hæc bona
curare quæ sunt religionis. Si quid præterea ipsis ex talibus bonis
accedit, quis potius ea susciperet? Principum sunt talia, non nebulonum
papistarum._” The general spoliation of church property disturbed his
mind, as we can see, but he overcomes his scruples, and persuades
himself that their action, like his own, was really directed against
Antichrist: “_Iube meis verbis, ut faciant in Deo confidenter pro causa
evangelii quicquid Spiritus sanctus suggesserit; non præscribo eis
modum. Misericors Deus confortet eos, ut maneant in ista sana doctrina
et gratias agant, quod sunt liberati ab Antichristo._”
[681] Ellinger, “Melanchthon,” p. 588.
[682] This ex-priest, Michael Kramer, first took a wife at Cunitz, and
when she began to lead a bad life, married a second at Dommitzsch “on
the strength of an advice secured.” On account of matrimonial squabbles
he married a third time, after obtaining advice from Luther through the
magistrates. C. A. Burkhardt, “Briefwechsel Luthers,” p. 87; cp. his
“Gesch. d. sächs. Kirchen- und Schulvisitationen,” p. 48.
[683] “Corp. ref.,” 1, pp. 888, 913, 982. Döllinger, “Reformation,” 1,
pp. 362 f., 369. Above, vol. iii., p. 324.
[684] Quoted in Janssen, “Hist. of the German People” (Eng. Trans.), 5,
p. 100 f.
[685] From Burkhardt, _ibid._ Janssen, _ibid._
[686] Janssen, _ibid._, 6, p. 521, given as Melanchthon’s words.
[687] A. L. Richter, “Die evangel. Kirchenordnungen des 16. Jahrh.,”
2, pp. 181, 192 f. Janssen, _ibid._, p. 523. W. Schmidt (“Kirchen-
und Schulvisitationen im sächs. Kurkreis von 1555,” 1907, Hft. 1-2,
“Schriften des Vereins für RG.,” No. 90) fancies he can discern a
certain improvement in ecclesiastical life and in the school system
about the year 1555.
[688] For the way Metzsch was dealt with, see Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,”
pp. 163, 167. “Briefe,” 6, p. 213 f. Below, vol. v., xxx., 3.
[689] “Briefe,” 5, p. 223 f.
[690] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 1², p. 14, “Hauspostille.”
[691] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 28, p. 763; Erl. ed., 36, p. 411, conclusion
of the “Auslegung über etliche Kapitel des fünften Buches Mosis,” 1529.
[692] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 9², p. 330 f., “Kirchenpostille.”
[693] _Ibid._, 4², p. 4, “Hauspostille.”
[694] _Ibid._
[695] _Ibid._, p. 6.
[696] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 27, p. 443.
[697] “Comment, in ep. ad Galatas,” 2, p. 351.
[698] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 27, p. 443, according to another set of notes
of the sermon quoted in n. 1.
[699] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 18², p. 353.
[700] _Ibid._, 59, p. 6. Cp. Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 95.
[701] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 24, p. 455.
[702] _Ibid._, 30, 3, p. 386; Erl. ed., 25², p. 86, “Auff das vermeint
Edict,” 1531.
[703] “Werke,” Weim. ed., p. 385 ff.=86 f.
[704] March 9, 1545, “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p. 722, letter called
forth by the death of George Held Forchheim, to whom the Prince was
much attached.
[705] To Catherine Bora, end of July, 1545, “Briefe,” 5, p. 753.
[706] To Justus Jonas, June 18, 1543, “Briefe,” 5, p. 570.
[707] On Jan. 22, 1544, “Briefe,” 5, p. 615.
[708] “Vermahnung,” Feb. or Nov., 1542, “Briefe,” 6, p. 302.
[709] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 34, 2, p. 80 ff.; Erl. ed., 18², p. 23 ff.
[710] _Ibid._, 27, p. 408 f., in the newly published sermons of 1528.
[711] _Ibid._, p. 418 f.
[712] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 167.
[713] _Ibid._, p. 153.
[714] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” 179.
[715] Mathesius, “Aufzeichnungen,” p. 402.
[716] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichnungen,” p. 139.
[717] _Ibid._, p. 138.
[718] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 3, p. 185.
[719] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 57, p. 323 (Table-Talk).
[720] “Colloq.,” ed. Rebenstock, 2, p. 19.
[721] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 57, p. 95 f. (Table-Talk).
[722] “Historien,” p. 136´. Cp. Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 126 and
_ibid._, Introduction, p. 72; Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 13. See above,
p. 210.
[723] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 70, Khummer.
[724] _Ibid._, p. 80.
[725] Above, vol. iii., p. 410.
[726] G. Wagner, “Georg Spalatin,” Altenburg, 1830, p. 105 f. Cp.
Luther’s letter to Spalatin, quoted in vol. iii., p. 197, n. 1, where
he tells him: “_Tristitia occidet te_”; by his (Luther’s) mouth
Christ had raised up Melanchthon from a similar state induced by the
“_spiritus tristitiæ_”; such continuous sorrow over sin was an even
greater sin; he was still inexperienced “in the battle against sin or
conscience and the law”; now, however, he must look upon Luther as St.
Peter, who speaks to him as he did to the lame man: “In the name of
Christ, arise and walk”; Christ did not wish him to be “crucified with
sorrow”; this came from the devil.--We do not learn that these words
had any effect.
[727] Cp. above, vol. iii., p. 416.
[728] Döllinger, “Die Reformation,” 2, p. 193.
[729] “Fortgesetzte Sammlung,” Leipzig, 1740, p. 519.
[730] M. Hempel, “Libellus H. Welleri,” Lipsiæ, 1581, p. 60.
[731] H. Weller, Preface to Beltzius, “On Man’s Conversion,” Leipzig,
1575.
[732] He wrote “Against the grievous plague of Melancholy,” Erfurt,
1557, and “A useful instruction against the demon of melancholy,” 1569
(s.l.). In the latter work he says in the Preface that he considered
himself all the more called to comfort “sad and sorrowful hearts”
because he himself “not seldom lay sick in that same hospital.”
[733] “We experience in our own selves, that our hearts become
increasingly stupid, weak and timid, and often know not whence it comes
or what it is.” “Der ganze Psalter,” Bd. 2, Nürnberg, 1565, p. 94.--On
his edition of the Table-Talk, cp. “Luthers Werke,” Erl. ed., 57, p.
xvi.
[734] Cp. Kolde, “Analecta,” p. 231, where Capito’s letter to Luther of
June 13, 1536, is given. The letter is also in Luther’s “Briefwechsel,”
10, p. 353. Capito there laments, “_me deiectiorem apud me factum, adeo
ut in morbum melancholicum prope inciderim. Hilaritatem, si potero,
revocabo._” The internal dissensions, which pained and distressed him
to the last degree, were the immediate cause of his sadness, so he
declares.
[735] C. Gerbert, “Gesch. der Strassburger Sektenbewegung zur Zeit der
Reformation,” Strasburg, 1889, p. 183 f.
[736] Kolde, “Analecta,” p. 462 _seq._
[737] Contemporary account in J. C. Siebenkees, “Materialien zur
Nürnberg. Gesch.,” 2, Nuremberg, 1792, p. 754.
[738] Fischlin, “_Memoria theologorum Wirtembergensium_,” 1, Ulmæ,
1720, pp. 144, 171.
[739] Cp. Beltzius, “Vom Jammer und Elend menschlichen Lebens und
Wesens,” Leipzig, 1574, Bl. 3´.
[740] “Handbuch,” etc., Frankfurt a. M., 1613, p. 725 f. (1 ed., 1603).
[741] “Der ganze Psalter,” Bd. 2, Nuremberg, 1565, p. 94.
[742] Sarcerius, “Etliche Predigten,” etc., Leipzig, 1551, Bl. C 2´.
[743] Strigel, “Ypomnemata 1,” Lipsiæ, 1565, p. 219.
[744] Sachse, “Acht Trostpredigten,” Leipzig, 1602, Bl. A 5´.
[745] Mathesius, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 213 f. On the Disputation held at
Leipzig by Beyer, the ex-Augustinian, see vol. i, p. 316.
[746] G. Loesche, “Joh. Mathesius,” 1, Gotha, 1895, p. 223.
[747] Mathesius, “Historien,” p. 147´.
[748] “Fest-Chronika,” 2 Tl., Leipzig, 1602, Bl. 2´ (1 ed., 1591).
[749] G. Th. Strobel, “Neue Beyträge zur Literatur,” 1, Nuremberg,
1790, p. 97.
[750] Hondorf-Sturm, “Calendarium Sanctorum,” Leipzig, 1599, p. 338.
[751] L. Osiander, “Bauren-Postilla,” 4 Tl., Tübingen, 1599, p. 188.
[752] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 18², p. 365.
[753] Hocker-Hamelmann, “Der Teufel selbs,” 3 Tl., Ursel, 1568, p. 130.
[754] Celichius in a work on suicide: “Nützlicher und nothwendiger
Bericht von den Leuten, so sich selbst aus Angst, Verzweiffelung oder
andern Ursachen entleiben und hinrichten,” Magdeburg, 1578, Bl. A 2, S
5, R 5´.
[755] Helding, “Von der hailigisten Messe,” Ingolstadt, 1548, p. 7.
[756] “Postilla oder Auslegung der Sonntagsevangelien,” Nuremberg,
1565, p. 14.
[757] Selnecker, “Tröstliche schöne Spruch für die engstigen Gewissen,”
Leipzig, 1561, Preface.
[758] Georg Major (a Wittenberg Professor), “_Homiliæ in Evangelia
dominicalia_,” 1, Wittenbergæ, 1562, p. 38.--Johann Pomarius, preacher
at Magdeburg: “People are growing so distressed and afflicted that they
droop and languish,” etc., the Last Day is, however, “at the door.”
“Postilla,” Bd. 1, Magdeburg, 1587, p. 6 f.
[759] Nikol. Kramer, “Würtzgärtlein der Seelen,” Frankfurt a. M., 1573,
Bl. V., 3´. Still more emphatically the preacher Sigismund Suevus
(“Trewe Warnung für der leidigen Verzweiffelung,” Görlitz, 1572, p. A
3´): The devil raves and rages in these latter days like a mad dog and
tries above all to make people despair.
[760] Christoph Irenæus, preacher at Eisleben, “Prognosticon,” 1578,
(s.l.), Bl. D d 3.
[761] Joh. Beltzius, “Vom Jammer,” etc., Bl. B 3´.
[762] Ruprecht Erythropilus, preacher at Hanover, “Weckglock,” etc.,
Frankfurt a. M., 1595, p. 181 f.
[763] Valerius Herberger, preacher at Fraustädt, “Herzpostilla,” Bl. 1,
Leipzig, 1614, p. 16 ff.
[764] Andreas Celichius, “Notwendige Erinnerung,” etc., Wittenberg,
1595, Bl. A 3 ff. He enumerates with terror thirty possessed persons
in Mecklenburg alone, among whom, however, he probably includes many
who were simply mad. “Here, in the immediate vicinity,” he says,
“three preachers have lost their minds, and would even appear to be
bodily possessed.” J. Moehsen (“Gesch. der Wissenschaften in der Mark
Brandenburg,” Berlin, 1781, p. 500) rightly remarked: “The plentiful
writings and sermons on the devil’s power, ... on the portents of the
Last Judgment, such as comets, meteors, bloody rain, etc., cost many
their reason during the latter half of the 16th century.”
[765] Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 452: “‘_Articulus fidei_’ won’t go home,
‘_ideo tot accidunt tristitiæ_’”
[766] “Extract oder Ausszug aus der Postill,” Magdeburg, 1584, p. 16 f.
[767] See N. Paulus, “Die Melancholie im 16 Jahrh.” (“Wiss. Beilage
zur Germania,” 1897, No. 18), p. 137 ff.; on p. 140 he refers to G.
Draudius, “Bibl. libr. germ.,” for the titles of many such works of
consolation. For the above description we have made use of this rich
article by Paulus and of his other one: “Der Selbstmord im 16. Jahrh.,”
_ibid._, 1896, No. 1.
[768] “Eyne schöne Artzney, dadurch der leidenden Christen Sorge und
Betrübnus gelindert werden,” Lübeck, 1555, p. 145.
[769] _Op. cit._, Bl. A 3´, R 5.
[770] “Fünff fürnemliche Zeichen ... vor dem jüngsten Tag,” Jena, 1554,
Bl. B 4´.
[771] _Op. cit._, Magdeburg, 1584, p. 733.
[772] “Verthädigung deren, so sich diser Zeit ... in den Frid der
römischen Kirchen begeben,” Dillingen, 1574, p. 72 f.
[773] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” pp. 9, 76, 88.
[774] Luther to Count Albert of Mansfeld, Dec. 8, 1542, “Briefe,” 5, p.
514. Cp. vol. ii., pp. 290 and 268 f.
[775] Luther to Count Albert of Mansfeld, Dec. 8, 1542, “Briefe,” 5, p.
514. Cp. vol. ii., pp. 290 and 268 f.
[776] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 21.
[777] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 27, p. 418 f., in the sermons of 1528,
recently published.
[778] Mathesius, “Historien,” p. 154´; Kroker, “Mathesius’ Tischreden,”
Einleitung, p. 70.
[779] Oldecop, “Chronik,” ed. Euling, p. 40.
[780] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, pp. 687, 572, n.
[781] May 13, 1543, “Briefe,” 5 (De Wette and Seidemann), p. 560.
[782] 1542, possibly Feb. or Nov. “Briefe,” 6, p. 302. Cp. the Rector’s
exhortation to the students on Feb. 18, 1542, “Corp. ref.,” 4, p. 780
_seq._
[783] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 3, p. 178.
[784] Published from notes taken at the time.
[785] “Historien,” p. 216.
[786] He says this to Pastor Bernard of Dölen, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 59,
p. 272 f. Cp. Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 140.
[787] “Werke,” _ibid._, p. 273.
[788] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 389.
[789] See above, vol. iii., p. 309.
[790] Cp. Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 184: “_Prædicator ascendat
suggestum, aperiat os et desinat_,” etc. See, _ibid._, No. 316a, also
pp. 139 and 196.
[791] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 34, 2, p. 214.
[792] “Luthers Sprichwörtersammlung,” ed. E. Thiele, Weimar, 1900, No.
483.
[793] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 3, p. 113 _seq._
[794] “Historien,” pp. 144, 148, 151, etc.
[795] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 21, p. 31.
[796] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 265.
[797] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 82.
[798] The lack of religious instruction in the schools is confirmed by
Falk, “Die pfarramtlichen Aufzeichnungen des Florentius Diel zu Mainz
(1491-1518),” 1904, p. 17.
[799] “Historien,” 12 Predigt.
[800] To Margrave George of Brandenburg, Sep. 14, 1531, “Werke,” Erl.
ed., 54, p. 253 (“Briefwechsel,” 9, p. 103).
[801] See vol. v., xxxiv., 2.
[802] Cp. O. Clemen, “Zeitschrift für KG.,” 1909, p. 382.
[803] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 352. Agricola had excused himself
by saying he had not attacked Luther but Cruciger and Rörer. Luther
replied: “_Catechismus, tabulæ, confessio Augustana, etc., mea, non
Crucigeri nec Rœreri sunt_.”
[804] See vol. vi., xxxv., 6, on his attitude to the taking of interest.
[805] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 18², pp. 89 ff., 105 ff.; 19², p. 243 ff. Cp.
above, p. 142.
[806] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 15, p. 437.
[807] _Ibid._, p. 641 ff., “Collections” is our amendment for
“Lections.”
[808] Luther must have known that in Catholic worship the Divine Son
is more honoured by the veneration of Mary than she herself. That
adoration was paid to God alone and not to Mary he could see from
the text of the prayers of the ancient Church. Luther, for instance,
was acquainted with the Invitatories of the Office for the Feasts of
Mary’s Nativity and Assumption, the first of which commences with the
words: “Let us celebrate the birth of the Virgin Mary,” and then at
once adds: “Let us adore her Son Christ our Lord”; while the second
sets Our Lord in the first place and says: “Come, let us adore the King
of Kings Whose Virgin Mother was to-day assumed into Heaven.” Thus
in the Liturgy which he himself had celebrated, the leading thought,
that Christ was honoured in Mary, ran through the celebration of all
her Feasts, from that of her entrance into this life to that of her
exit. The Hymns to the Mother of God in Luther’s day concluded as they
do now: “Jesu, to Thee be glory, Who wast born of a virgin,” etc. Any
adoration of the Blessed Virgin as of a “goddess” was so alien to the
people that it would have been rejected with indignation.
In the same way that the Invitatories just quoted expressly reserve
adoration for the Divine Son, so the veneration of the Mother of God
in the Church’s Offices is justified on exactly the same grounds as
those which, according to Luther, result from the mystery of the
Visitation and from the Magnificat. The Church has always extolled Mary
simply in the spirit of the Magnificat.--Luther himself had published
a printed exposition of the Magnificat in 1521. There he still speaks
of the Blessed Virgin in the usual way (“Werke,” Weim. ed., 7, p.
545 f.; Erl. ed., 45, p. 214 f.). At the commencement of the work he
invokes her assistance with the words: “May the same tender Mother
of God obtain for me the spirit to interpret her song usefully and
practically ... that we may sing and chant this Magnificat eternally
in the life to come. So help us God. Amen” (p. 546 = 214). In the same
way, at the close, he expresses his hope that a right understanding
of the Magnificat “may not only illumine and teach, but burn and live
in body and soul; may Christ grant us this by the intercession and
assistance of His dear Mother Mary. Amen” (p. 601 = 287). Thus he was
then still in favour of the invocation and intercession of the Holy
Mother of God, whereas later he set aside the invocation of any Saint,
and declared it to be one of “the abuses of Antichrist.” (See Köstlin,
“Luthers Theologie,” 1², p. 370 ff.)--Luther wrote his exposition of
the Magnificat in the spirit which must inspire every theologian who
studies the canticle, and which had been even stronger in him during
his Catholic period. At the same time he obviously wished to work upon
the wavering and cautious Court of the Elector, and for this reason
dedicated this work, which, though peaceful in tone, contained hidden
errors, to Prince Johann Frederick in a submissive letter. It should
be noted that Luther wrote this dedication soon after receiving his
summons to Worms. It is dated March 10, 1521 (_ibid._, p. 545=212. Cp.
“Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 109).
[809] He admitted this belief handed down in the Catholic Schools,
though not proclaimed a dogma till much later, in the sermon he
preached in 1527 “on the day of the Conception of Mary the Mother of
God”: “It is a sweet and pious belief that the infusion of Mary’s soul
was effected without original sin; so that in the very infusion of her
soul she was also purified from original sin and adorned with God’s
gifts, receiving a pure soul infused by God; thus from the first moment
she began to live she was free from all sin” (“Werke,” Erl. ed., 15²,
p. 58). The sermon was taken down in notes and published with Luther’s
approval. The same statements concerning the Immaculate Conception
still remain in a printed edition published in 1529, but in the later
editions which appeared during Luther’s lifetime they disappear. (Cp.
N. Paulus, “Lit. Beil. der Köln. Volksztng.,” 1904, No. 41.) In a work
of 1521 he says: Mary not only kept God’s commandments perfectly but
also “received so much grace that she was quite filled with it, as we
believe” (“_Rationis Latomianæ confutatio_,” “Werke,” Weim. ed., 8. p.
56; “Opp. lat. var.,” 7, p. 416). As Luther’s intellectual and ethical
development progressed we cannot naturally expect the sublime picture
of the pure Mother of God, the type of virginity, of the spirit of
sacrifice and of sanctity to furnish any great attraction for him, and
as a matter of fact such statements as the above are no longer met with
in his later works.
[810] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 23, pp. 64-302; Erl. ed., 30, pp. 16-150.
[811] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 32, pp. 397-425.
[812] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 341.
[813] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 8, p. 117 f.; “Opp. lat. var.,” 5, p. 505
_seq._
[814] Köstlin, “Luthers Theologie,” 2², p. 145 f.
[815] _Ibid._, p. 192 ff.
[816] _Ibid._, pp. 148-200.
[817] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 1², p. 1 f.; 12², p. 408.
[818] Döllinger, “Luther, eine Skizze,” p. 58; “KL.,” 8², col. 343.
[819] “Cod. germ. Monacensis,” 4842, Bl. 1, 2´.
[820] “Gesch. Luthers,” German edition, Mayence, 1836, p. 463 f.
[821] E. Gutjahr, “Zur Entstehung der neuhochdeutschen Schriftsprache”;
“Studien zur deutschen Rechts- und Sprachgesch.,” 2, Leipzig, 1906.
[822] “Hist. of the German People” (Eng. Trans.), 3, p. 238.
[823] “Leichenrede” of Feb. 19, 1546, commencement; “Luthers Werke,”
ed. Walch, 21, p. 362* ff.
[824] “Wellers Deutsche Schriften,” Tl. 3, p. 215. Before this Weller
remarks: “For he was equal to the greatest prophets and Apostles in
spirit, strength, wisdom, ability and experience.” He attributes to
him “a prophetical spirit, notable strength, generosity and a power
of faith such as we read existed in the prophet Elias....” Great
persecutions and temptations had been his masters and teachers; they it
was who had taught him the art of speaking.
[825] Above, p. 210.
[826] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, pp. 27, 37.
[827] On the inner connection between his own teaching and
Antinomianism and on his controversy with Agricola, see vol. v., xxix.,
2 and 3.
[828] Cp. Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 504.
[829] See vol. v., xxxiv., 2.
[830] E. Thiele, “Luthers Sprichwörtersamml.,” Weimar, 1900.
[831] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 346.
[832] “Briefe an Stephan Roth,” ed. Buchwald (“Archiv des deutschen
Buchhandels,” 16, 1893), p. 37; Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, p. 548.
[833] L. Cardauns, “Die Lehre vom Widerstande des Volkes,” Bonn, 1903,
p. 125.
[834] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 10.
[835] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 8, p. 176; Erl. ed., 27, p. 367.
[836] Cp. vol. i., pp. 290 ff., 379 ff., 384 f.; vol. ii., p. 59 ff.
[837] Köstlin, “Luthers Theologie,” 2², p. 251; “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 9,
p. 23; “Werke,” Weim. ed., 26, p. 220; Erl. ed., 23, p. 40 f.; 46, p.
123.
[838] “An den Rat zu Nürnberg, Gutachten Luthers und Melanchthons”
(April 18, 1533); “Werke,” Erl. ed., 55, p. 8 (“Briefwechsel” 9, p.
292).
[839] Köstlin, _ibid._, p. 252 f.
[840] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 21, p. 17 f.
[841] Köstlin, _ibid._, p. 249.
[842] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 44, p. 107 ff.; 46, p. 292; “Opp. lat. exeg.,”
11, p. 136. See also Köstlin, _ibid._, p. 250. Absolution may also be
sent by one far away, as Luther wrote to Spalatin: “_Audi et crede
iis quæ Christus per me tibi loquitur. Neque enim erro, quod scio,
aut satanica loquor. Christus loquitur per me et iubet, ut fratri tuo
in communi fide in eum credas. Ipse absolvit te ab hoc peccato et
omnibus._” Aug. 24, 1544, “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p. 680.
[843] _Ibid._, 44, p. 109.
[844] At Nuremberg Osiander had opposed the general absolution, and
then, in spite of a memorandum from Wittenberg to the contrary (above,
p. 349, n. 3), persisted in his opposition so that the magistrates
made another application to Wittenberg on Sep. 27 (“Briefwechsel,” 9,
p. 337) and again got a similar reply (“Werke,” Erl. ed., 55, p. 27;
“Briefwechsel,” 9, p. 343). In the new “memorandum” it was also stated
that the public and the private absolution were real absolutions; but
Osiander was not to be compelled to give the general absolution.
[845] “Briefwechsel,” 12, p. 398. Form of Absolution dated Feb. 15,
1540, for the Nurembergers. The editor remarks: “The questionable point
in this form, viz. that the Absolution was attached to an eventuality
(‘should God to-day or to-morrow call one of you from this vale of
tears’), and might thus be regarded as valid only in this event, can
merely be hinted at here.”
[846] These words were added by Luther in 1538 to his “Unterricht der
Visitatorn” (1528); “Werke,” Weim. ed., 26, p. 220; Erl. ed., 23, p. 40
f.; Köstlin, _ibid._, p. 251.
[847] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 185.
[848] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 558 ff.; Erl. ed., 26², p. 372
(“Briefwechsel,” 9, p. 251).
[849] P. 565 ff.=381 ff.
[850] P. 567 f.=383, 385.
[851] P. 569=386.
[852] P. 569=385.
[853] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 29, p. 133 f.
[854] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 23, p. 87 ff.
[855] “Drei Beichtbüchlein nach den Zehngeboten aus der Frühzeit der
Buchdruckerkunst,” Münster, 1907 (“Reformationsgesch. Studien und
Texte,” Hft. 2).
[856] F. W. Battenberg, “Beichtbüchlein des Mag. Wolff,” Giessen, 1907,
pp. 189, 205.
[857] Falk, _ibid._, p. 13. Falk also quotes (p. 14) a noteworthy
observation of Luthmer’s (“Zeitschr. für christl. Kunst,” 9, p. 5):
“The close of the 15th century was the time when the Decalogue, as
the starting-point for Confession, was most frequently commentated,
described and depicted pictorially. For those unable to read, tables
with the Commandments luridly pictured hung in the churches, schools
and religious institutions, and the books on this subject were
abundantly illustrated with woodcuts.”
[858] “Die Reue in den deutschen Beichtschriften des ausgehenden MA.,”
in “Zeitschr. für kath. Theol.,” 28, 1904, pp. 1-36. “In den deutschen
Erbauungsschriften des ausgehenden MA.,” _ibid._, pp. 440-485. “In
den deutschen Sterbebüchlein des ausgehenden MA.,” _ibid._, pp.
682-698.--Cp. also, Luzian Pfleger, “Die Reue in der deutschen Dichtung
des MA.” (“Wiss. Beil. zur Germania,” 1910, Nos. 45-47).
[859] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, pp. 566, 568 f.; Erl. ed., 26², pp.
382, 385.
[860] Cp. on the abuses of the Penitentiary and for an elucidation of
certain misunderstandings, E. Göller, “Die päpstl. Pönitentiarie von
ihrem Ursprung bis ... Pius V.,” 2 vols., Rome, 1907-1911.
[861] More on Luther and Hymnology in vol. v., xxxiv., 4.
[862] See Mathesius, “Tischreden,” pp. 111, 150, 389: “_egregias
cantilenas post cœnam cecinerunt_.” He himself on one occasion sung
“_octavo tono_,” _ibid._, p. 332; cp. p. 391.
[863] Cp., e.g., “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 307; “Colloq.,” ed.
Bindseil, 3, p. 148 _seq._
[864] See vol. ii., p. 171 f.
[865] The whole in Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 503.
[866] Grauert, “Heinrich Denifle,”² 1906, p. 7.
[867] “He possessed all the gifts which go to make an emotional man,
as is apparent everywhere; depth, however, and true inwardness were
not his.” A. M. Weiss, “Lutherpsychologie,”² p. 223. What he says of
Luther’s “depth” must be read in the light of what is said in the text
above.
[868] See vol. v., xxxi., 5.
[869] Above, p. 244.
[870] Evers, “Martin Luther,” 6, p. 701. Further details on Luther’s
prayers below, p. 274 ff.
[871] The account by Cochlæus, taken from a special print of 1540
“of which sufficient account has hardly been made,” in Enders,
“Luthers Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 174 ff. New edition of the “_Colloqium
Cochlæi_,” by J. Greving, in “Flugschriften aus den ersten Jahren der
Reformation,” 4, Hft. 3, Leipzig, 1910.
[872] So Jonas declares in his funeral address on Luther. “Luthers
Werke,” ed. Walch, 21, p. 362* ff.
[873] _Ibid._
[874] In Uhlhorn, “Urbanus Rhegius,” 1861, p. 159 f.
[875] “Storia del Concilio di Trento,” 1, 4, Roma, 1664, 1, p. 58. Here
we read: “Non essendo povero di letteratura, ne pareva ricchissimo,
perchè portava tutto il suo capitale nella punta della lingua.”
[876] 6, 10 (i., p. 691); Denifle (“Luther und Luthertum,” 1², p. 24)
calls Luther “not merely talented, but in many points very much so.”
_Ibid._, p. xxv., he enumerates Luther’s “good natural qualities,”
which he is ready to prize.
[877] “Lutherpsychologie,”² p. 225.
[878] Seeberg, “Luther und Luthertum in der neuesten kath. Beleuchtung”
(a reply to Denifle), 1904.
[879] “Luther, eine Skizze,” p. 51; “KL.”² 8, col. 339.
[880] Vol. iii., p. 298 f.; and vol. ii., p. 160.
[881] Cp. H. Böhmer, “Luther im Lichte der neueren Forschung,”² p. 115.
[882] There is no sufficient ground for charging the earlier
Catholic accounts of Luther with having said nothing of his better
side. It is true that in self-defence, and following the usual
method of controversy, they did insist rather too much on what was
objectionable--the Jesuits of the 16th and 17th centuries being no
exception to the rule--without sufficiently discriminating between
what was true and what was false (B. Duhr, S.J., “Gesch. der Jesuiten
in den Ländern deutscher Zunge,” 1907, p. 681). Luther himself
was, however, partly to blame for this, owing to the quantity of
unfavourable material he provided. But, after the first heat of battle
was over, even in the days of Caspar Ulenberg, the Cologne parish
priest, who, in 1589, wrote a biography of Luther, there have always
been numbers of Catholic writers ready to admit the good there was in
Luther. At the present day appreciative passages abound both in general
encyclopædias and in handbooks written for students. To mention some
examples, H. Brück (“Lehrb. der KG.”) speaks of Luther’s “sparkling
imagination, his popular eloquence, which was its consequence, and of
his indefatigable capacity for work”; also of his “disinterestedness.”
J. Alzog says (“Universalgesch. der christl. Kirche”): “He did not
lack the deeper religious feeling which seeks its satisfaction.” J.
A. Möhler (“KG.”) writes: “He may be compared for his power to the
great conquerors of the world; like them, too, he knew no other law
than his own will.” J. v. Döllinger (as yet still a Catholic) says of
him (“KL.”²), that he was a “sympathetic friend, free from avarice
and greed of money,” and ever “ready to assist others”; “he possessed
undeniably great rhetorical talent in dialectic and a wonderful gift of
carrying men away.” In Herder’s “Konversationslexikon,” 5³ (1905), we
read of Luther: “In the circle of his friends ... he knew how to speak
thoughtfully of matters of theology.... His family life had its finer
side ... he was a staunch advocate of conjugal fidelity in his sermons
and elsewhere.... What he taught concerning the dignity of worldly
callings was in many instances quite right and true.... In the works
he intended for edification he gave his followers stimulating food for
thought, drawn from the treasure-house of the truths of Christianity
and of nature.... He promoted a more diligent study of Holy Scripture
and the cause of positive theology to much effect. His art of using
his native tongue was of great service in furthering the language.
His translation of the whole Bible stands as a linguistic monument to
him.... The powerful hymns he composed are also treasured by the whole
Protestant world.”
[883] For the collections of the Table-Talk see vol. iii., p. 218 ff.
[884] See vol. iii., p. 223.
[885] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 311.
[886] Cp. the emotion which accompanied another fine utterance spoken
“_ex pleno et accenso corde_” (Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 23). There
Luther was speaking of the profundity of the Word of God and of
reliance on His Promises. See also below, p. 265.
[887] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 309.
[888] _Ibid._, p. 311, with the heading “_Papæ tyrannis_.”
[889] _Ibid._, p. 310.
[890] _Ibid._, pp. 310-322.
[891] In his “Sabbata,” ed. Götzinger in the St. Gallen “Mitteilungen
zur vaterländ. Gesch.,” 1869; new edition, St. Gallen, 1902, p. 76 ff.
[892] Burrer’s letter, in Baum, “Capito,” 1860, p. 83.
[893] “Historien,” p. 147.
[894] Cp. _ibid._, pp. 142, 143.
[895] _Ibid._, p. 153´.
[896] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 510.
[897] In F. S. Keil, “Luthers Lebensumstände,” 1, 1764, p. 2. Cp.
Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, p. 243 f.
[898] Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, p. 442. Cp. above, vol. iii., p. 322.
[899] “_Vita Lutheri_,” in “_Vitæ quattuor reformatorum_,” p. 14.
[900] See our remarks above, p. 112 ff., on the way he came to believe
in the truth of the falsehoods he so often repeated and even to
convince his pupils of it too.
[901] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 283.
[902] Jos. Hundhausen, “Kirche oder Protestantismus,” a Catholic work,
Mayence, 1883, p. 225.
[903] In a sermon of 1528, “Werke,” Weim. ed., 27, p. 408 f.
[904] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 510.
[905] See vol. ii., p. 133.
[906] To Amsdorf, Feb. 6 and 12, 1542, “Briefe,” 5, pp. 432, 434.
[907] “Luther, eine Skizze,” p. 51; “KL.,” 8², col. 339.
[908] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 495.
[909] To Anton Unruhe, Judge at Torgau, June 13, 1538, “Werke,” Erl.
ed., 55, p. 205 (“Briefwechsel,” 11, p. 371).
[910] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 23, p. 323 ff.; Erl. ed., 317 ff. N. Paulus
(“Hist.-pol. Bl.,” 133, 1904, p. 201) also points out the “Courage
which Luther showed in the time of the plague,” also his “liberality,
his cheerful, sociable ways, how easily he was contented and how
tirelessly he laboured.” George Evers (“Martin Luther,” 6, p. 6)
recognises, amongst many other good qualities, the courage he showed
during the plague.
[911] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 285.
[912] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 188.
[913] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 31.
[914] To Justus Jonas, April 19, 1529, “Briefwechsel,” 7, p. 87.
[915] To Nicholas Hausmann, Aug. 20, 1527, “Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 77.
[916] Aug. 1, 1537, “Briefwechsel,” 11, p. 254.
[917] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 65, p. 26. It may be remarked incidentally
that possibly Luther was not aware, that, not long before, the people
of Wittenberg, though no longer Catholic, had been shocked at his
eating meat on fast days. In 1523 the people, who still kept the
old custom of the Church, as a traveller remarks, were disposed to
regard the overflow of the Elbe as Heaven’s judgment on Luther’s
and his preachers’ laxity in the matter. See the account of Bishop
Dantiscus, of Ermeland, who visited Wittenberg in that year, in Hipler,
“Kopernikus und Luther,” Braunsberg, 1868, p. 72: “I heard from the
country people on my way much abuse and many execrations of Luther and
his co-religionists,” etc.
[918] Letter of Dec. 3, 1544, “Briefe,” p. 702.
[919] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 94.
[920] “Einfeltige Weise zu beten,” “Werke,” Erl. ed., 23, p. 215 ff.
[921] Pp. 217, 221 f. The booklet was dedicated to Master Peter
Balbier. This master, after having stabbed in anger a foot-soldier, was
sentenced to death. Luther’s intercession procured the commutation of
the sentence into one of banishment.
[922] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 59, p. 6, “Tischreden.” The whole section in
question, “Tischreden vom Gebete,” really belongs here.
[923] _Ibid._, p. 28.
[924] Cp. _ibid._, p. 24, and above, vol. iii., p. 437.
[925] Dietrich to Melanchthon, June 30, 1530, “Corp. ref.,” 2, p. 159.
Cp. vol. iii., p. 162, his prayer for F. Myconius who was sick, which
concludes: “My will be done. Amen.”
[926] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 315.
[927] _Ibid._
[928] For more on this subject see vol. v., xxxii., 5. We see this even
in his prayers at the Wartburg.
[929] “Luther im Lichte der neueren Forschung,”¹ p. 130 f. In the
second edition the closing chapter containing these passages is
omitted. The comparison with Calvin made by Böhmer in this same chapter
on Luther’s talent for organisation, is also worthy of notice. “At that
time Luther hardly had his equal as pastor, preacher and writer, but,
unlike Calvin, he was no born organiser or church-founder. Hence, as
soon as he was confronted with the great problem how to organise the
evangelical movement now becoming more and more powerful, he ceased
to be the one leader and commander of the Reformation. It is true he
always remained the supreme authority to his own followers; he reigned
indeed, but did not govern; he no longer inspired, instructed or guided
his fellow-workers individually. In this respect, also, Calvin was his
exact opposite. His position at the outset was incomparably more humble
than that of Luther. Yet his reputation grew constantly, till Church
and State in Geneva unhesitatingly obeyed him, whilst his sphere of
action went on extending till his very death, till finally it embraced
the greater part of Western Europe” (p. 131 f.). “Down to the year
1689, nay, down to the 19th century, the nations of the West were still
engaged in the solution of the political problems with which Luther’s
reform had confronted them. For these Luther himself had but slight
comprehension. If anything, he rendered their solution more difficult.
He, however, took more interest in the legal reforms which had become
necessary in consequence of his undertaking” (p. 136).
[930] “Luther’s domestic life displays, as a whole, a not unpleasant
picture, and its description would form the kindliest portion of a life
which really does not offer much that is pleasing.” Thus Georg Evers,
“Martin Luther,” 6, p. 1.
[931] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 56, p. 2 f.
[932] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 487.
[933] Letters of Jan. 25 to Feb. 14, 1546, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 56, pp.
149, 151-154.
[934] “Corp. ref.,” 5, p. 314: “_Fax domestica_.” The cause of Caspar
Beier, the clandestinely married student, with regard to which she
fanned the flames of Luther’s anger, was, according to Cruciger, “none
of the best,” Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, pp. 687, 571, n. 1, and p. 569 f.
[935] To Bernard v. Dölen, Aug. 31, 1538, “Briefwechsel,” 11, p. 398.
[936] “Opp.,” Lovanii, 1566, f. 116´.
[937] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 316.
[938] Cp. Reinhold Lewin, “Luthers Stellung zu den Jüden” (“N. Stud.
zur Gesch. der Theol. und Kirche,” 10), 1911.
[939] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 135.
[940] _Ibid._, p. 177 f.
[941] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 298.
[942] _Ibid._
[943] _Ibid._, p. 242.
[944] _Ibid._, p. 244 f.
[945] _Ibid._, p. 244 f.
[946] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 261. Cp. vol., iii., p. 289 f.
[947] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 7, p. 271; Erl. ed., 27, p. 206.
[948] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 65, p. 79.
[949] See vol. ii., p. 280.
[950] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 15, p. 50 f.; Erl. ed., 22, p. 196.
[951] Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 137.
[952] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 19, p. 306; Erl. ed., 40, p. 250 f.
[953] To Caspar Müller, March 18, 1535; “Briefwechsel,” 10, p. 137.
[954] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 23, p. 149; Erl. ed., 30, p. 68. See above,
vol. iii., 93 f.
[955] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 26², p. 56 f.
[956] _Ibid._, p. 86.
[957] _Ibid._, 25¹, p. 192.
[958] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 7, p. 676; Erl. ed., 27, p. 292.
[959] _Ibid._, 6, p. 302=27, p. 110.
[960] _Ibid._, 26, p. 351=30, p. 224.
[961] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 32, p. 404.
[962] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 469.
[963] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 2, p. 289 _seq._ The date, Dec. 4, 1538,
must be taken for what it is worth.
[964] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichnungen,” p. 14.
[965] _Ibid._, p. 8 f.
[966] On Invocavit Sunday, Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 471.
[967] See vol. ii., pp. 297, 305 ff.
[968] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 11, p. 246 f.; Erl. ed., 22, p. 62 f.
[969] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 11, p. 265 = 86.
[970] _Ibid._, p. 267 f. = 89.
[971] _Ibid._, p. 268 = 90.
[972] _Ibid._, p. 270 = 92 f.
[973] E. Brandenburg (“Schriften des Vereins für RG.,” No. 70, Halle,
1901), p. 21.
[974] “Die Reformation,” 3, p. 265.
[975] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 139 f.
[976] _Ibid._
[977] “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p. 504 f.; 6, p. 319 ff.;
“Briefwechsel des Justus Jonas,” ed. G. Kawerau, 2, p. 84. The “printed
Mandate” was affixed to the church door. Cp. E. Michael (“Zeitschr. f.
kath. Theol.,” 19, 1895), p. 455 ff.
[978] “Briefe,” ed. De Wette & Seidemann, 6, p. 320 ff.
[979] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 179, Aug., 1540.
[980] _Ibid._, p. 180.
[981] _Ibid._, p. 171. Still more strongly against the Franciscans on
p. 180.
[982] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 222.
[983] _Ibid._, p. 226 f.
[984] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 55, p. 301.
[985] _Ibid._, p. 292 f. Letter of Oct. 10, 1540. De Wette, 5, p. 308,
also has 80,000 ducats. In the passage that follows Luther speaks of
18,000 crowns.
[986] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 213.
[987] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 28, p. 762; Erl. ed., 36, p. 410. See below,
p. 304.
[988] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 171.
[989] P. 64.
[990] P. 25.
[991] P. 149.
[992] P. 64.
[993] P. 30.
[994] P. 163.
[995] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 62, p. 439, “Tischreden.”
[996] _Ibid._
[997] _Ibid._, p. 441, and Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichnungen,” p. 100.
[998] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 190. Cp. Schlaginhaufen, p. 5.
[999] P. 2.
[1000] P. 3.
[1001] P. 7.
[1002] P. 9.
[1003] P. 9.
[1004] P. 10.
[1005] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 62, p. 391, “Tischreden.”
[1006] _Ibid._, 60, p. 227 f., in chapter xxvii. of the Table-Talk.
[1007] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 62, p. 68.
[1008] _Ibid._, 57, p. 80.
[1009] _Ibid._, 60, p. 206.
[1010] _Ibid._, p. 183.
[1011] _Ibid._, p. 214.
[1012] _Ibid._, 62, p. 222.
[1013] _Ibid._, 60, p. 180.
[1014] _Ibid._, p. 195.
[1015] P. 305.
[1016] _Ibid._, p. 200.
[1017] _Ibid._, 61, p. 149.
[1018] _Ibid._, 57, p. 206.
[1019] _Ibid._, 60, p. 255.
[1020] _Ibid._
[1021] _Ibid._, p. 185.
[1022] _Ibid._, p. 291.
[1023] _Ibid._, 57, p. 367 f.
[1024] _Ibid._, 60, p. 379, chapter xxvii.
[1025] _Ibid._, p. 184.
[1026] “Disputationen Dr. Martin Luthers, 1535-1545,” ed. P. Drews, pp.
532-584. Cp. the Theses already published in Luther’s “Opp. lat. var.,”
4, p. 442 _seq._
[1027] They are thus summed up by Drews (p. 533).
[1028] Thesis 56: “_Papa est illud monstrum, de quo Daniel dicit, quod
adversatur omni Deo, etiam Deo deorum_.”--Thesis 58: “_Nostri Germani
vocant Beerwolf, quod Græci, si forte notum illis fuisset, dixissent_
ἀρκτόλυκον” (i.e. “Bearwolf”).--Thesis 59: “_Hoc animal lupus est
quidem, sed a dæmone arreptus, lacerat omnia et elabitur omnibus
venabulis et armis_.”--Thesis 60: “_Ad quod opprimendum necessarius est
concursus omnium pagorum_,” etc.--Thesis 61: “_Nec est hic expectanda
iudicis sententia aut consilii auctoritas_,” etc.--Thesis 66: “_Ita
si papa bellum moverit, resistendum est ei sicut monstro furioso et
obsesso seu vere ἀρκτολύκῳ._”--Thesis 68: “_Nec curandum, si habeat
militantes sibi principes, reges vel ipsos cæsares, titulo ecclesiæ
incantatos_.”
[1029] Drews, p. 544.
[1030] _Ibid._, p. 549. Given in Luther’s German Works, Jena ed., 7, p.
285, and Halle ed. (Walch), 19, p. 2438 f.
[1031] _Ibid._, p. 552.
[1032] _Ibid._, p. 559, Jena ed., 285´, Walch, p. 2440.
[1033] _Ibid._, p. 566.
[1034] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 470; Erl. ed., 25², p. 127.
[1035] _Ibid._
[1036] _Ibid._ See above, p. 208. Cp. Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 111:
“_Quando frigeo in corde ... oppono contra me impietatem papæ_,” etc.;
“Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 107 f.; “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 2, p. 294.
[1037] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichnungen,” p. 74.
[1038] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 180.
[1039] _Ibid._, p. 177 f.
[1040] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 6, p. 287 f.; Erl. ed., 27, p. 90.
[1041] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 190.
[1042] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 286; Erl. ed., 25², p. 16.
[1043] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichnungen,” p. 118.
[1044] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” ed. Kroker, p. 269.
[1045] _Ibid._, p. 307.
[1046] _Ibid._, p. 249; cp. p. 115.
[1047] See vol. ii., p. 153.
[1048] Letter to Carlstadt, Oct. 14, 1518, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 53, p. 4
(“Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 249).
[1049] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 206. Cp. what he says of Duke George,
above, p. 190.
[1050] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 295.
[1051] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 63, p. 274. On Brand of Berne cp. N. Paulus,
“Die deutschen Dominikaner im Kampfe mit Luther,” 1903, pp. 16-45; on
p. 29 f. there is a remark of Luther’s on the “poor smoking ‘brand’
which escaped the fire of Berne,” rightly taken by Paulus to apply to
Mensing (Seckendorf, Walch, De Wette and Enders were of a different
opinion).--J. Koss, the Leipzig preacher, is again described by Luther
in a letter to N. Hausmann (Jan. 2, 1533, “Briefwechsel,” 9, p. 260) as
a “preacher of blasphemy.”
[1052] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 158. Under the heading “_Mortes
persecutorum_,” the list commences with the words: “_Pauci præsentia
Dei miracula observant_.” It contains the names of Richard von
Greifenklau, Archbishop of Troves, Ernest Count of Mansfeld, Count
Wartenberg, Dr. Matthias Henning, son of Henning the lawyer, Cæsar
Pflug, Chancellor of Treves, and, besides, a Catholic preacher at
Leipzig, a minister who had fallen away from Lutheranism at Kunewalde,
a monk who was alleged to have spoken against the Apostle Paul, and
a Silesian Doctor of Divinity. Then followed various additions. Cp.
N. Paulus, “Luther über das schlimme Ende seiner Gegner” (“Katholik,”
1899, 2, pp. 490-505).
[1053] Letter to Nicholas Hausmann, Jan. 2, 1533, “Briefwechsel,” 9, p.
260.
[1054] Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 289.
[1055] All of the above expressions are taken from the first pages of
“Widder den Radschlag der Meintzischen Pfafferey” (1526).
[1056] _Ibid._, 28, p. 868=36, p. 410.--For the tone of Luther’s
polemics against his theological opponents among both the Catholics
and the Protestants, cp. vol. ii., p. 153 f., where the opinions of
contemporaries, and friends of Luther’s immediate circle are given.
For further criticisms of Catholic contemporaries see below, p. 251
ff., also vol. v., xxxiii., on the extreme tension of Luther’s polemics
against Popery towards the end of his life.
[1057] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 34, 1, p. 83 ff.
[1058] Cp. below, p. 320, n. 15, and p. 323, n. 2.
[1059] Letter written soon after Feb. 18, 1520, “Briefwechsel,” 2, p.
329 f.
[1060] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 8², p. 277 ff., on the Epistle James i.
16-21, on the 4th Sunday after Easter.
[1061] _Ibid._, p. 286.
[1062] P. 282.
[1063] P. 288.
[1064] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichnungen,” p. 115 f.
[1065] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 18, p. 89; Erl. ed., 29, p. 166, “Widder die
hymelischen Propheten.”
[1066] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 167.
[1067] _Ibid._, p. 169.
[1068] See vol. iii., p. 379 f.
[1069] Letter of Nov. 5, 1525, to Gregory Casel, “Briefwechsel,” 5, p.
263 ff.
[1070] “_Summa, utros oportet esse Sathanæ ministros, vel ipsos, vel
nos._”
[1071] To the Strasburg preachers, Nov. 5, 1525: “_Christum a nobis
primo vulgatum audemus gloriari, at huius negationis iam traducit nos
Zwinglius_.” _Ibid._, p. 262.
[1072] “Hist. des variations des églises protestantes,” Paris, 1702, 1,
p. 69.
[1073] “Iudicium de controversiis theol. inter Luther. et Ref.,” 1650,
c. 53.
[1074] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 28, p. 763; Erl. ed., 36, p. 411.
[1075] To Caspar Müller, Chancellor at Mansfeld, Jan. 19, 1536,
“Werke,” Erl. ed., 55, p. 119 (“Briefwechsel,” 10, p. 290).
[1076] To the preacher, Balthasar Rhaide, Jan. 17, 1536,
“Briefwechsel,” 10, p. 288. Cp. p. 293: “_Vides, quantas illi nobis
faciant turbas, qui a nobis exierunt_,” and before this: “_Spero, quod
non discedes a forma doctrinæ quam hic hausisti_.”
[1077] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 129; “Tischreden,” Döllinger. “Die
Reformation,” 3, p. 251, erroneously quotes the passage as being in
Walch: it does, however, occur in Förstemann, “Tischreden,” 3, p. 136
f. The commencement is remarkable: “At times I consider the Pope and
say: What after all is the Pope that I should honour him, even though
you [the devil] magnify him? See what an abomination he has wrought
and works even to-day! Before myself I set Christ and the forgiveness
of sins, but under Satan’s nose I put the abominations of the Pope.
The abomination and the horror is so great that I am encouraged and am
quite ready to allow that,” etc.
[1078] “Die Reformation,” 3, p. 251.
[1079] To Spalatin, soon after Feb. 18, 1520, “Briefwechsel,” 2, p. 329
f.
[1080] July 31, 1530, _ibid._, 8, p. 157.
[1081] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 19, p. 261; Erl. ed., 65, p. 25; “Widder den
Radschlag,” etc., 1526.
[1082] Aug. 19, 1520, to Wenceslaus Link, “Briefwechsel,” 2, p. 463.
[1083] April 12, 1541, “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p. 342: “_Miror, quid
mihi acciderit, ut tam moderatus fuerim_.”
[1084] _Ibid._, p. 341: “_Certum est ipsum [Christum] pedetentim
descendere de throno ad iudicium illud exspectatissimum; multa sunt
nimis signa, quæ id mihi persuadent_.”
[1085] Döllinger, “Die Reformation,” 3, p. 266, from the notes of one
of his table-companions: Cod. Manh., 355. Coll. Camerar. v. (Ms. Bibl.
Monac.), fol. 148 a.
[1086] Cp. vol. iii., 148 f. See also “Luthers Briefwechsel,” ed. C. A.
H. Burkhardt, 1866, p. 357.
[1087] Cp. our vol. vi., xxxvi., 3.
[1088] To Spalatin, July 26, 1522, “Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 435.
[1089] Aug. 28, 1522, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 53, p. 349 (“Briefwechsel,” 3,
p. 447). Cp. the letter to Spalatin of Nov. 11, 1521, “Briefwechsel,”
3, p. 246 f.
[1090] Cp. letters of Nov. 11, 1517, and Feb., 1520, “Briefwechsel,” 1,
p. 126, and 2, p. 345.
[1091] April 13, 1531, in Seidemann, “Beitr. zur RG.,” 1. p. 207;
Enders, “Luthers Briefwechsel,” 8, p. 389, n. 1.
[1092] April 16, 1531, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 54, p. 225 (“Briefwechsel,”
8, p. 388).
[1093] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 387; Erl. ed., 25², p. 87, at the
end of “Auff das vermeint Edict.”
[1094] Cp. _ibid._, p. 386=86 f.
[1095] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 10, 2, p. 188; “Opp. lat. var.,” 6, p. 397,
in “_Contra Henricum regem Anqliæ_,” 1522.
[1096] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 23, p. 27 ff.; Erl. ed., 30, p. 3 ff. in
“Auff des Königs zu Engelland Lesterschrift,” 1527.
[1097] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 311; Erl. ed., 25[9], p. 38,
“Warnunge an seine lieben Deudschen,” 1531.
[1098] _Ibid._
[1099] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 26², p. 175.
[1100] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 486; Erl. ed., 31, p. 154.
[1101] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 41, p. 17.
[1102] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 16, p. 469; Erl. ed., 36, p. 81.
[1103] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 38, p. 176.
[1104] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 7, p. 7; Erl. ed., 53, p. 46.
[1105] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 31, p. 404.
[1106] _Ibid._, p. 393.
[1107] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 7, p. 674; Erl. ed., 27, p. 290.
[1108] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 29.
[1109] Cp. _ibid._, 64, p. 324.
[1110] “Briefe,” 6, p. 373.
[1111] _Ibid._, 5, p. 622.
[1112] “Werke,” Weim. ed, 30, 2, p. 485; Erl. ed., 31, p. 154.
[1113] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 26², p. 148.
[1114] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 23, p. 149; Erl. ed., 30, p. 68.
[1115] _Ibid._, 33, p. 673=48, p. 407.
[1116] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 42, p. 67.
[1117] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 19, p. 400; Erl. ed., 41, p. 30.
[1118] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 44, p. 296.
[1119] _Ibid._, 45, p. 153.
[1120] _Ibid._, 44, p. 257.
[1121] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 30, 2, p. 495; Erl. ed., 31, p. 167.
[1122] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 44, p. 321.
[1123] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 30, pp. 3, 335; Erl. ed., 25², p. 52.
[1124] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 20², 2, p. 562.
[1125] _Ibid._, 20², 1, p. 19.
[1126] _Ibid._, 25², p. 253.
[1127] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 26, p. 429; Erl. ed., 30, p. 282.
[1128] “Briefe,” 6, p. 296.
[1129] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 19, p. 43; Erl. ed., 29, p. 378.
[1130] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 44, p. 318.
[1131] _Ibid._, p. 316.
[1132] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 33, p. 458; Erl. ed., 48, p. 222.
[1133] On June 30, 1530, to Johann Agricola, “Briefwechsel,” 8, p. 57.
[1134] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 65, p. 207.
[1135] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 468; Erl. ed., 25², p. 125.
[1136] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 26², p. 216.
[1137] _Ibid._, p. 216 f.
[1138] _Ibid._, p. 205.
[1139] Calvin also suffered, though in a less degree, from this mania
for invective; of him and of the excuse some have sought in the tone
and habits of the age a recent French historian says: Even though such
abuse was not entirely unparalleled, “yet it cannot but surprise and
grieve us in the case of a religious reformer.” H. Lemonnier, “Histoire
de France,” ed. E. Lavisse, 5, 2, 1904, p. 230, dealing with French
Calvinism.
[1140] See our vol. ii., p. 153 ff.
[1141] In the reply “Auf das chmähbüchlein,” usw., “Werke,” Erl. ed.,
25², p. 143, published under Arnold’s name.
[1142] Thus F. Polygranus, O.S.F., in his “_Assertiones quorundam
ecclesiæ dogmatum_,” printed at Cologne in 1571, Bl. 10: “_insatiabilis
maledicendi libido ... a seculis inauditæ conviciorum voces_.”
[1143] To Ulrich Zasius, Oct. 8, 1522, “Briefwechsel der Brüder
Blaurer,” 1, 1908, p. 66.
[1144] Cp. “KL.,” 5², col. 1958 f.
[1145] “Gesch. der deutschen Kultur,” p. 514.
[1146] “Luther, eine Skizze,” p. 57 f.; “KL.,” 8², p. 343.
[1147] “Wider das unchristenliche Buch M. Luthers,” ed. Enders in
“Neudrucke deutscher Literaturwerke,” vol. i., 1889, p. 132.
[1148] “Opp.,” 10, col. 1557.
[1149] _Ibid._, col. 1155: “_ista tam effrenis in omnes maledicentia_,”
etc.
[1150] “Wahrhaffte Bekanntnuss der Dieneren an der Kilchen zu Zürych,”
Zürych, 1545, Bl. 130 f.
[1151] _Ibid._, Bl. 10.
[1152] To Bucer, 1543, Lenz, “Briefwechsel Philipps,” 2, p. 224.
Another remark of Bullinger’s is given above, vol. iii., p. 417.
[1153] To Bullinger, 1543, Lenz, _ibid._, p. 226. Cp. what Bucer said,
in our vol. ii., p. 155.
[1154] On May 19, 1545, Lenz, _ibid._, p. 343.
[1155] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 59, p. 279, Table-Talk.
[1156] On Aug. 1, 1537, “Briefwechsel,” 11, p. 255, printed in the
2nd edition of the Psalter of Hessus of 1538.--The following remark
of Luther’s on those who wanted to call themselves after him has also
been quoted: “Fool that you are, just listen: First of all I beg
people to leave my name out and to call themselves, not Lutherans,
but Christians. What has Luther to do with it? The doctrine is not
mine, nor was I ever crucified for anyone. St. Paul, 1 Cor. iii. [4,
5], would not hear of Christians being called Pauline or Petrine, but
simply Christians. How then should I, poor smelly sack of maggots that
I am, suffer the children of Christ to be called by my unholy name?
Hence, dear friend, let us do away with party names and be called after
Christ, Whose teaching we follow. It is only right that the Papists
should have a party name, because they are not content with Christ’s
teaching and name, but insist on being Popish; let them then be the
Pope’s, since he is their master. As for me, I neither am nor wish
to be anyone’s master. I share with the congregation the teaching of
Christ Who alone is our Master. Mt. xxiii.[8].” “Werke,” Weim. ed.,
8, p. 685; Erl. ed., 22, p. 55 f., “Vormanung sich zu vorhuten fur
Auffruhr,” 1522. He blames those who, by their stupid zeal, “cause
calumny and a falling away from the holy Evangel,” and “affright” the
people and prevent their accepting it. Just then it was to his interest
to represent his teaching as peaceable and his action as moderate. Cp.
pp. 677, 682 f.=46, 51, 53.
[1157] We have chosen this somewhat unusual setting for the following
collection of Luther’s sayings in order to prevent monotony. The texts,
indeed, belong to various times, but there are periods in Luther’s
history, for instance, about the time of the Diet of Augsburg, and in
1540 and 1541, when, within a short chronological space, he contrived
to make a vast number of statements regarding his greatness; for this
reason the above arrangement is not altogether untrue to the reality.
[1158] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 56, p. 2, and “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p.
422. Words taken from his Will of Jan. 6, 1542, by which he intended
to show the lawyers (who questioned his power to make a valid Will on
account of his marriage) that he was not bound by the formalities on
which they insisted.
[1159] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 366; Erl. ed., 25², p. 75.
[1160] _Ibid._, p. 290=22.
[1161] _Ibid._, 10, 2, p. 105=28, p. 143.
[1162] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 26², p. 124.
[1163] “Briefe,” 5, p. 754.
[1164] _Ibid._, 1, p. 101.
[1165] Mathesius, “Aufzeichnungen,” p. 70.
[1166] _Ibid._, p. 73.
[1167] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 143. Cp. “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1,
p. 442. See above, vol. iii., p. 165 f.
[1168] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 6, p. 460; Erl. ed., 21, p. 349. “An den
christl. Adel,” 1520.
[1169] “Briefwechsel,” 8, p. 159.
[1170] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 387; Erl. ed., 25², p. 87. See
above, vol. iii., p. 165.
[1171] Mathesius, “Historien,” p. 4.
[1172] “Briefwechsel,” 8, p. 160.
[1173] “Briefe,” ed. De Wette, 5, p. 716.
[1174] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 2. p. 309 f.; “Opp. lat. var.,” 7, p.
491; “Briefe,” 2, p. 238 (“Briefewechsel,” 3, p. 438).
[1175] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 151.
[1176] _Ibid._, p. 193.
[1177] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 317; Erl. ed., 25², p. 46 f.
[1178] _Ibid._, 30, 2, p. 109 f.=31, p. 34 f. “Vom Kriege widder die
Türcken,” 1529.
[1179] _Ibid._, 36, p. 447=18², p. 334. Sermon of 1532.
[1180] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 61, p. 178, Table-Talk.
[1181] Cp. vol. iii., p. 131 f., and above, p. 102.
[1182] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 15, p. 39; Erl. ed., 22, p. 184.
[1183] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 61, p. 422.
[1184] W. Walther, “Für Luther, wider Rom,” pp. 526-543.
[1185] Other Protestant writers are of a different opinion. Friedrich
Paulsen says in his “Gesch. des Unterrichts,” 1², 1896, p. 178: “It is
certain that humility towards men, respect for human wisdom and human
laws, did not enter into Luther’s make. He is altogether deficient in
that humility towards the actual Church which is so characteristic of
St. Augustine, Luther’s great predecessor in theology. The more Luther,
during the course of his life, passes from the position of a mere
heretic to that of head of a new Church, the more does that formula [My
cause is God’s own] become tinged with bitterness, with obstinacy and
with pride.”
[1186] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 15, p. 27 f.; Erl. ed., 22, p. 171. “An die
Radherrn,” etc., 1524.
[1187] _Ibid._, 30, 2, p. 588=17², p. 421. “Das man Kinder zur Schulen
halten solle,” 1530.
[1188] _Ibid._, p. 585 f.=420.
[1189] _Ibid._, 62, p. 443 f., Table-Talk.
[1190] “Opp. lat. var.,” 1, p. 20. Preface to the edition of the Latin
works (1545).
[1191] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 3, p. 8; Erl. ed., 28, p. 212.
[1192] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 61, p. 445 f., Table-Talk (in Latin).
[1193] _Ibid._, 31, p. 389 f. “Ein Brieff von seinem Buch der
Winckelmessen,” 1534.
[1194] _Ibid._, 63, pp. 271, 274, Table-Talk.
[1195] Preface to his Commentary on Galatians, Irmischer, 1, p. 9.
[1196] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 58, p. 243.
[1197] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 143.
[1198] Mathesius, “Historien,” p. 153.
[1199] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 123.
[1200] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 63, p. 403, Preface, 1539.
[1201] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichnungen,” p. 121.
[1202] _Ibid._, p. 41.
[1203] _Ibid._, from Veit Dietrich’s “Aufzeichnungen.”
[1204] _Ibid._, p. 9.
[1205] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 123.
[1206] To Ambros. Blaurer, Dec. 21, 1521, “Briefwechsel der Brüder
Blaurer,” 1, p. 42 ff. R. Stintzing, “Ulr. Zasius,” 1857, p. 231, Cp.
p. 371.
[1207] Münzer and Ickelsamer in our vol. ii., p. 377.
[1208] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 7, p. 310 f.; Erl. ed., 24², p. 57. “Grund
und Ursach aller Artickel,” 1521.
[1209] _Ibid._, p. 311=58.
[1210] _Ibid._
[1211] _Ibid._, p. 313=59.
[1212] _Ibid._
[1213] _Ibid._
[1214] _Ibid._
[1215] _Ibid._, p. 315=61.
[1216] _Ibid._, p. 317=61 f.
[1217] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 31, p. 389 f.
[1218] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 186.
[1219] “Briefe,” 6, p. 402.
[1220] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 57, p. 94.
[1221] Mathesius, “Aufzeichnungen,” p. 113.
[1222] “Briefe,” 5, p. 418 f.
[1223] _Ibid._, p. 743.
[1224] _Ibid._, p. 746.
[1225] _Ibid._, p. 750.
[1226] _Ibid._, p. 777.
[1227] To Melanchthon, June 30, 1530, “Briefwechsel,” 8, p. 51 f.,
during the Diet of Augsburg.
[1228] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 279; Erl. ed., 25², p. 8.
[1229] “Theol. Literaturztng.,” 1911, No. 10, col. 304. Harnack adds:
“Towards God he remained humble; this humility was, however, couched in
a language which must have affrighted the monkish devotees.”
[1230] “Wyder den falsch genantten Standt des Bapst und der
Bischoffen,” with the sub-title: “Martin Luther, by God’s grace
Ecclesiastes at Wittenberg, to the Popish Bishops my service and to
them knowledge in Christ.” “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 2, p. 105 ff.; Erl.
ed., 28, p. 142 ff. The book was partly written at the Wartburg (see
Introd. in the Weim. ed., 10, 2, p. 93 f.), and was published in 1522,
probably in Aug.
[1231] Bossuet, “Hist. des variations,” Paris ed., 1702, 1, p. 26.
[1232] To Spalatin, Aug. 28, 1530, “Briefwechsel,” 8, p. 232.
[1233] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 26, p. 275.
[1234] Above, p. 58.
[1235] Above, p. 327.
[1236] P. 28. Cp. Lauterbach, “Tagebuch” (Khummer), p. 141; Cordatus,
“Tagebuch,” p. 118.
[1237] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 62, p. 346 f. Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 90
and 427.
[1238] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 317 ff.; Erl. ed., 25², p. 46 f.,
in the “Warnunge an seine lieben Deudschen,” 1530.
[1239] Spangenberg, “Theander Lutherus, Von des werthen Gottes Mannes
Doctor Martin Luther 21 Predigten” (preached after 1562), Ursel, s. a.
Bl. 12´.
[1240] Letter written after Oct. 24, 1545, “Briefe,” 6, p. 392.
[1241] “For we account a man to be justified by faith _alone_ without
the works of the law.” Cp. vol. v., xxxiv. 3.
[1242] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 2, p. 635 f.; Erl. ed., 65, p. 107 (cp.
“Briefwechsel,” 8, p. 249), in the “Sendbrieff von Dolmetzscheñ,”
which is in fact no “letter” but a polemical treatise in the form of a
letter, published by Wenceslaus Link in September, 1530, at Luther’s
instance.
[1243] “Dogmengesch.,” 3^[4], p. 817.
[1244] Letter of Jan. 16, 1514, “Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 17 f.
[1245] On his theology cp. the numerous instances given in Denifle,
e.g., 1², pp. 467, 469, 657. P. 466: “He is always playing with
grotesque ideas.” Cp. also, _ibid._, p. 454 f.
[1246] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 3, p. 162.
[1247] “Briefe,” 6, p. 185 f., in the so-called “first Will.”
[1248] Jonas, in his panegyric on Luther.
[1249] Cp. e.g. Mathesius, “Tischreden,” pp. 83 and 126.
[1250] For proofs see Enders, “Luthers Briefwechsel,” 4, p. 89, n. 3.
Cp. vol. ii., p. 162 f., vol. iii., p. 322 and above, p. 269.
[1251] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 2, p. 650; “Opp. lat. var.,” 7, p. 512.
[1252] Schlaginhaufen, “Anfzeichnungen,” p. 31.
[1253] “Dicta memorabilia,” Coloniæ, 1543, p. 13´. Cp. N. Paulus,
“Hoffmeister,” p. 53, n. 4.
[1254] “Lobgesang auff des Luthers Winckelmesse,” Leipzig, 1534, Bl.
D 2´. The author says, that Luther himself admits in his “Von der
Winckelmesse” that he had received his ideas on the Mass “through the
disputation and revelation of the devil” (Bl. A 2).
[1255] “Czu Errettung den schwachen Ordenspersonen ... eyn trostlich
Rede,” Dresden, 1534, B1. C 3´: “His brother monks who were with him
in the Convent at Erfurt, say, that once, when the Gospel ‘Jesus was
casting out a devil and it was dumb’ was being read, Luther fell down
and lay for some time screaming, ‘I am not dumb, I am not dumb.’”
Bachmann also mentions the same incident in “Ein Maulstreich dem
Lutherischen ... Rachen, das Closterleben zu lestern” (Dresden, 1534),
B1. B 2. Cp. O. Clemen, “Paul Bachmann” (“N. Archiv f. sächs. Gesch.,”
26, 1905, p. 30). In “Ein Maulstreich” he also says: “What sort of an
attack would that be, Luther, were I to write or relate what some say,
viz. that the devil Incubus was your father! I will, however, refrain
from doing so and not bring this charge against you.” (B1. B 1´). He
thinks he has stronger evidence for Luther’s possession than for this
legend.
[1256] Cp. above, p. 101.
[1257] Letter of 1529 to Prior Kilian Leib of Rebdorf, in Döllinger,
“Reformation,” 1, p. 533, and J. Schlecht, “Leibs Briefwechsel,” p. 12,
from Leib, “Verantwortung des Klosterstandes,” Bl. 170´: “_vel a malo
dæmonio agitari_.”
[1258] In his “Purgatio adv. epistolam non sobriam Lutheri,” 1534,
“Opp.,” 10, col. 1557: “_a sinistro quopiam agitari genio_” (for the
whole passage see vol. iii., p. 136, n. 2). It is worth while to
select from this reply of Erasmus, and from his “_Hyperaspistes_”
against Luther, some passages in which he expresses doubts as to
Luther’s mental equilibrium, or as to his sobriety. In his “Purgatio”
(_c._ 1548) Erasmus says of certain propositions of Luther’s: “_Num
hæc tam delira videntur esse mentis sobriæ?_” And before this: “_Sed
longe perniciosior est philautiæ et odii temulentia quam vini_” (_c._
1546). “_Demiror, si Martinus febri caruit, quum hæc deliramenta
inauspicatis illineret chartis_” (_c._ 1545). “_Ipsa febris non posset
loqui febrilius_” (_c._ 1546). “_Arbitror, Orestem olim dixisse
saniora, etiam extra lucida intervalla_” (_c._ 1547). “_Hic nihil
crepat nisi Satanas, Diabolos, Larvas, Lamias, Megæras, aliasque
voces plus quam tragicas. Fortassis ex abundantia cordis os loquitur;
certe hæc esse solent venturæ insaniæ præsagia_” (_c._ 1542). “_Quæ
cum scribit, videtur sibi mire δεινός; verum hæc δείνωσις sobriis
videtur esse mera insania_” (_c._ 1543). Martin may wish to make him
out an unbeliever, but his readers were more likely to look upon him
himself as mad (“_citius lymphatum_,” etc., _c._ 1557, first passage
given above).--In the first book of his “_Hyperaspistes_” (_ib._) he
writes: “_Hæc enim tam stulta aut alius addidit tuo libro, aut non
eras sobrius, quum scriberes_” (_c._ 1281). “_Totus enim hic sensus
sapit culinam, in qua non sobrius videtur hæc scripsisse_” (_c._ 1367).
“_Si qui hæc scribit, sobrius est, ego nunquam vidi temulentem_” (_c._
1371). “_Quis non videt hæc sine mente scribi, nec agere Lutherum,
quum hæc scribit, sed agi spiritu quodam maledicentiæ_” (_c._ 1394).
“_An hic Lutherus videtur fuisse sobrius?_” (_c._ 1411; in connection
with Luther’s assertion that God had wrought the evil in Pharaoh).
“_Non est sobrius, ut paucis dicam, non vino fortassis aut cerevisia,
sed philautia et dulcedine quadam maledicendi, qua nunquam satiatur,
quantumvis sese ingurgitaverit_” (_c._ 1477). “_Quam multa hic
delirat Lutherus, sine mente fundens verba_” (_c._ 1472).--Luther’s
contemporary, Caspar Schatzgeyer, a Franciscan of kindly ways, speaks
like Erasmus and describes Luther’s “De votis monasticis” as the work
either of a drunken man or of one possessed (“_Replica_,” s. l. et.
a., Augsb., 1522, f. E 1), the Paris theologian, Jodocus Clichtovæus
(“Antilutherus,” Paris., 1524, f. 124´), speaks of it in the same
way.--All these statements, with those already given, are worth the
consideration of pathologists; though emanating from opponents, their
number gives them importance.
[1259] Dungersheim, “Erzeigung,” p. 15. His authority is a statement
twice made by Nathin, first (see above, p. 352, n. 3), that Luther as a
young monk fell into a fit in choir during the reading of the Gospel on
the man possessed, “and had raved like one possessed,” and then a later
more detailed explanation of the same incident.
[1260] “Septiceps Lutherus ubique sibi suis scriptis contrarius,”
Dresdæ, 1529 (dedication).
[1261] “Commentaria de actis et scriptis M. Lutheri” (ed. Mogunt.,
1549), p. 1.
[1262] _Ibid._
[1263] “Auff des Stieres tzu Wiettenberg wiettende Replica,” end. In
Enders, “Luther und Emser,” 2, p. 25 f.
[1264] “Auss was Grund und Ursach Luthers Dolmetschung ... verbotten
worden sey,” 1523. In “Zu Luthers Vorred zum Römerbrief,” Bl. 65´.
[1265] “Historia sui temporis,” ed. Aretin (“Beitr. zur Gesch. und
Lit.,” 7, Munich, 1806, p. 535 ff.), p. 666: “_Quam elata cervice
tumidisque moribus expresserit prodideritque superbiam, ut sathanæ
veteris vel etiam præsentanei hospitis illius et præceptoris quædam in
eo imago spectaretur_.”
[1266] _Ibid._, p. 663.
[1267] “Dadelung,” p. 14.
[1268] Brieger, “Aleander und Luther,” pp. 147, 143. Kalkoff, “Die
Depeschen Aleanders vom Wormser Reichstage”², 1897, p. 171.
[1269] “Reichstagsakten unter Kaiser Karl V,” 1, p. 718 ff.
[1270] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 25², p. 129 f.
[1271] Quoted by W. Walther, “Für Luther,” p. 213. _Ibid._, 214, from
Dietenberger’s work against Luther’s doctrine of auricular Confession:
To speak and teach as Luther did was to have “a compact and alliance
with the poison of the devil and with eternal death.” _Ibid._, similar
statements from Emser and others.
[1272] O. Kronseder, “Christophorus Hoffmann,” 1898, p. 57, with
reference to Cod. Monac. lat. 14626, p. 326.
[1273] Cod. Monac. germ., 4842, Bl. 2. Cp. above, p. 242.
[1274] Ed. Reithmeier, p. 2, 165.
[1275] N. Paulus, “Die deutschen Dominikaner,” p. 63.--What the
Catholics thought will be better understood when we remember that
even H. Bullinger, in his “History of the Reformation” (ed. Hottinger
and Vœgeli, 2, Frauenfeld, 1838, p. 239), says of Luther’s “Kurtz
Bekentnis” of 1544: “Although he had previously written much that was
illogical, insulting and even blasphemous, yet he outdoes himself in
the shameful, wanton and offensive words he uses in this booklet. He
bursts for very devils ... and acts _like a man possessed_.”
[1276] “KG.,” ed. Gams, 3, 1868, p. 105 f.
[1277] Letter of May 9, 1518, “Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 188.
[1278] Ed. Friedensburg (“Nuntiaturberichte aus Deutschland,”
1533-1559, vol. i.), p. 541, report on Nov. 13, 1535.
[1279] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 518.
[1280] “Melanchthoniana,” ed. O. Waltz (“Zeitschr. f. KG.,” 4, 1880, p.
324 ff.; see also above, vol. i., p. 279, n. 2.) According to Erasmus
Alber, a personal acquaintance, friend and admirer of Luther’s, the
latter had a “fine, open and brave countenance and hawk’s eyes.” Cp.
Alber, “Wider die verfluchte Lehre der Carlstadter,” Bl. f. 3 ff.; see
Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 518.
[1281] “Reichstagsakten unter Kaiser Karl V,” 2, p. 632: “en los ojos
no ben señalado.”
[1282] According to Myconius, “Historia Reformationis,” p. 30 _sq._
(written after 1541). Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 97: “_Cardinalis Augustæ
dixit de me: iste frater habet profundos oculos, ideo et mirabiles
phantasias in capite habet_.”
[1283] Pollich’s remark (“Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 3, p. 154, from
Rebenstock) has been characterised quite wrongly by O. Waltz
(“Zeitschr. f. KG.,” 2, 1878, p. 627) as spurious and a late
interpollation. As a matter of fact it had merely been excluded from
the Table-Talk by Aurifaber; see Seidemann in “Zeitschr. f. KG.,” 3,
1879, p. 305. Cp. vol. i., p. 86, n. 5.
[1284] Above, vol. i., p. 86.
[1285] Letter of Aug. 8, 1523, in Hipler, “Nikolaus Kopernikus und
Luther,” 1868, p. 73. Höfler, “Adrian VI,” p. 320, n. 2, quotes a
remark of Dantiscus on Luther: “_affirmans eum esse dæmoniacum_.”
Janssen-Pastor, “Gesch. des deutschen Volkes,” 2^[18], p. 194, n. 3.
[1286] “Sabbata,” St. Gallen, 1902, p. 65.
[1287] He refers simply to what he knew from some of Luther’s intimate
friends “concerning his birth and past life up to the time of his
becoming a monk.”
[1288] In his Exposition of the Ten Commandments, published in 1518
and frequently reprinted during his lifetime, “Werke,” Weim. ed.,
1, p. 407; “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 12, p. 18: “Among the devils there
are ‘_incubi_’ and ‘_succubi_,’ of which I shall speak more fully
immediately,” which he then proceeds to do. The children are, according
to him, abortions. According to a statement in the Table-Talk, however,
they were “devils with bodies like the mother’s,” or stolen children,
or changelings, like one he wished to have drowned because the devil
constituted the soul in its body (“Werke,” Erl. ed., 6O, pp. 37-42). In
his exposition of Genesis (cap. vi.) Luther admits the existence and
activity of the said “_incubi_.” He declares he had heard from many
persons credible instances and had himself met with such (!), and even
appeals to St. Augustine (“_Hoc negare impudentiæ videtur_,” “_De civ.
Dei_,” 15, c. 23); he remarks, however, that it was altogether false to
believe that “anything could be born of a union of devil and man”; on
the contrary, those taken for the devil’s offspring, some of whom he
had seen, had either been distorted by the devil though not actually
begotten by him, or were real devils who had either assumed flesh
in appearance or borrowed it elsewhere with the devil’s help. “Opp.
lat. exeg.,” 2, p. 127. Cp. N. Paulus, “Hexenwahn und Hexenprozess
vornehmlich im 16. Jahrh.,” Freiburg, 1910, p. 35 f.
[1289] “Commentaria,” p. 2: “_sive ex occulto aliquo cum dæmone
commercio_.”
[1290] The writing in question, “Ein Maulstreich,” etc., is not by
Cochlæus but by Paul Bachmann. See above, p. 352, n. 3.
[1291] Paulus (p. 356, n. 3), p. 63 f., from Sylvius, “Zwei
neugedruckte Büchlein,” 1533, p. 3´, and “Die letzten zwei Büchlein,”
1534. Cp. also his work of 1531, “Ein besonder nützliches ... Büchlein.”
[1292] Friedensburg (above, p. 356, n. 6), p. 554.
[1293] Letter to Bartholomew Golsibius, in Weller, “Altes aus allen
Theilen der Gesch.,” 1, p. 178. Döllinger, “Reformation,” 1, p. 133.
[1294] Letter to Nicholas Œcander; Weller, _ibid._, 2, p. 780 f.;
Döllinger, _ibid._, 135.
[1295] “Epistolæ,” ed. Riegger, Ulmæ, 1774, p. 72. Döllinger, _ibid._,
p. 178.
[1296] R. Stintzing, “Ulrich Zasius,” Basle, 1857, p. 230, from the
letter of Zasius to Thomas Blaurer, Dec. 21, 1521. “Briefwechsel der
Brüder Blaurer,” 1, 1908, p. 42 ff.
[1297] Stintzing, _ibid._
[1298] _Ibid._, p. 97. Döllinger, _ibid._, p. 179.
[1299] On March 18, 1535, “Briefwechsel,” 10, p. 137.
[1300] “Retectio,” Hb _seq._ Döllinger, “Reformation,” 1, p. 57 f.
[1301] _Ibid._, G 2b: “_cepit omnium animos mirus pavor_,” etc.
Döllinger, _ibid._, p. 61.
[1302] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 159. Cp. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p.
323.
[1303] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 159.
[1304] _Ibid._, p. 161 f.
[1305] _Ibid._, p. 147.
[1306] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 60, p. 323.
[1307] See A. Räss, “Die Convertiten seit der Reformation,” 1, 1866,
where the “Apologia” is reprinted, p. 184. Cp. Wicel’s remarks above,
p. 165 f.
[1308] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 117; “Werke,” Erl. ed., 58, p. 420 f.
[1309] “Werke,” _ibid._
[1310] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 118.
[1311] On Feb. 3, 1544, “Briefe,” 5, p. 629.
[1312] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 342.
[1313] _Ibid._
[1314] “Præcipuæ constitutiones Caroli M.,” etc., Ingolst., 1545, præf.
f. A 3a, A 8a; Döllinger, _ibid._, 1, p. 160.
[1315] “Comment.,” p. 1.
[1316] _Ibid._, p. 56.
[1317] N. Paulus, “Johann Wild” (3. “Vereinsschr. der Görres-Ges.,”
1893), p. 15.
[1318] _Ibid._
[1319] _Ibid._, p. 34.
[1320] _Ibid._, p. 35.
[1321] _Ibid._, p. 40.
[1322] _Ibid._, p. 13 f.
[1323] “Corp. ref.,” 4, pp. 450-455; Janssen, “Hist. of the German
People” (Engl. Trans.), 6, p. 152 f.
[1324] Janssen, _ibid._, p. 264 f.
[1325] _Ibid._, p. 264 f. Passages taken from Luther’s writing, “An die
Pfarherrn wider den Wucher zu predigen,” “Werke,” Erl. ed., 23, p. 282
ff.
[1326] On May 29, 1545. Janssen, _ibid._, p. 286 f.
[1327] Hortleder, “Von Rechtmässigkeit usw. Karls V.,” 1645, p. 486 ff.
Janssen, _ibid._, p. 288.
[1328] M. J. Schmidt, “Neuere Gesch. der Deutschen,” 1, 1785, p. 23 f.
Janssen, _ibid._
[1329] See above, _passim_.
[1330] See, for instance, above, pp. 96 ff., 102 ff.
[1331] Vol. ii., p. 48.
[1332] “_Transfiguratur coram te satanas ille in angelum lucis._” The
text in Raynaldus, “_Annales eccles._,” ann. 1522, n. 72.
[1333] At the end of the second series of Theses (“Luthers Werke,” Erl.
ed., “Opp. lat var.,” 1, p. 312) occur the words, “_bestia, quæ montem
tetigerit_,” the sole quotation from that sort of biblical language
mentioned above.
[1334] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 1, p. 239 ff.; Erl. ed., 27, p. 4 ff.
[1335] Löscher, “Reformationsacta,” 1, p. 484 ff.
[1336] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 1, p. 380 ff.; Erl. ed., 27, p. 10 ff.
[1337] “Opp. lat. var.,” 1, p. 345.
[1338] _Ibid._, p. 368.
[1339] _Ibid._, p. 370.
[1340] _Ibid._, p. 351.
[1341] _Ibid._, p. 365.
[1342] _Ibid._, 2, p. 1 _seq._
[1343] _Ibid._, p. 68 _seq._
[1344] _Ibid._, p. 81 _seq._
[1345] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 2, p. 50; “Opp. lat. var.,” 2, p. 68.
[1346] _Ibid._, 6, pp. 328-348=2, pp. 79-108. See the actual words
in our vol. ii., p. 12 f. Cp. vol. i., p. 338 f., for the first
interchange of amenities between the two champions.
[1347] In W. Walther, “Für Luther,” p. 215.
[1348] G. Kawerau (“Hieronymus Emser,” 1898, p. 2) remarks that it must
be admitted of Emser, “that he was an honest curmudgeon, averse to all
subterfuge and pretence, amazingly frank in his admissions concerning
himself, and, in controversy, very rude. Only rarely do we see him
departing from this frankness.”
[1349] “KL.,” 4², col. 483.
[1350] “Lutheri Opp. lat. var.,” 1, p. 410.
[1351] _Ibid._, p. 408, in the editor’s Introduction to the “Asterisks”
and “Obelisks.”
[1352] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 1, p. 281; “Opp. lat. var.,” 1, p. 411.
[1353] “_Enchiridion_,” Ingolst., 1556, f. 167, 167´. In the prefatory
letter of dedication to Cardinal Farnese, Eck expresses himself in
his usual manner against the ill-advised attempts of Catholics at
mediation: “_Hinc parum profecit conventus Ratisponensis_ (1541) _in
causa fidei et plurimorum fidelium exspectationem fefellit_.”--In
the matter of religious conferences and disputations Eck had ripe
experience on his side. Though once very ready to accept a challenge to
dispute, he nevertheless wrote later in the “_Enchiridion_” concerning
controversies with heretics: “_Hæretici non quærunt disputationem
nisi multis malitiis involutam.... Fraudulenter obtendunt disputare
non coram doctis et literatis ac in theologia exercitatis, sed coram
indoctis, vulgaribus laicis_”; the learned men at the Universities
would otherwise have already tackled Luther. After mentioning the other
disadvantages of the disputations he concludes: “_Catholici ergo debent
vitare disputationem cum huiusmodi_” (_ibid._, p. 163 _seq._).
[1354] The state of his Ingolstadt parish and Eck’s pastoral labours
have recently been placed in a clear and favourable light by J. Greving
in his “Johann Ecks Pfarrbuch,” 1908 (“RGl. Stud. und Texte,” Hft. 4-5).
[1355] See above, p. 258.
[1356] “Z. f. preuss. Gesch.,” 5, p. 481.
[1357] “Septiceps Lutherus, ubique sibi suis scriptis contrarius, in
visitationem Saxonicam editus,” Dresdæ, 1529; in part repeated in the
“_Commentaria_,” 1549, F. 196 C.
[1358] Cp. _ibid._, F. III´ _seq._: “_Non ex Deo sed ex diabolo esse
tantam in doctrina dissensionem.... Cucullatus draco iste noster_,”
etc.--M. Spahn, “Joh. Cochläus,” Berlin, 1898.
[1359] N. Paulus, “Katholik,” 1894, 2, p. 571 ff.
[1360] N. Paulus, “Die deutschen Dominikaner,” etc., p. 78.
[1361] _Ibid._, p. 258.
[1362] _Ibid._, p. 315.
[1363] N. Paulus, “Schatzgeyer,” 1898; “Hoffmeister,” 1891; A. Postina,
“Billick,” 1901.
[1364] J. Negwer, “Conrad Wimpina,” Breslau, 1909 (in “KGl. Abh.”)
[1365] Karl Goedeke, Introd. to his edition of Murner’s
“Narrenbeschwörung,” Leipzig, 1879. Janssen, “Hist. of the German
People” (Engl. Trans.), 11, p. 333.
[1366] Goedeke, _ibid._
[1367] “Memoriale B. Petri Faber,” ed. Marc. Bouix, Paris, 1873, pp.
378, 370.
[1368] Dan. Bartoli, “Opere,” 5, Torino, 1825, pp. 110, 116. Cp. B.
Duhr, “Gesch. der Jesuiten,” etc., 1, 1907, 3 ff. Not all the members
of the Order to which Favre and Canisius belonged were faithful to
Favre’s principles in the controversy against Luther and his teaching,
particularly during the excited polemics of the 17th century. Many, at
their own costs, disregarded those laws of urbanity which Bellarmine,
for instance, ever respected in his controversial writings. Such was
the case, for instance, with Conrad Vetter, † 1622 (K. A. J. Andreæ).
[1369] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 2, p. 404; “Opp. lat. var.,” 3, p. 247. He
refers to Panormitanus, “De elect.,” c. Significasti.
[1370] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 2, p. 18 ff.; “Opp. lat. var.,” 2, p. 385
_seq._
[1371] _Ibid._, p. 288=p. 75.
[1372] _Ibid._, p. 303=p. 97 _seq._: “_Concilium aliquando errasse,
præsertim in iis quæ non sunt fidei_.” Cp. the following: “_conciliorum
statuta in iis quæ sunt fidei, sunt omnimodo amplectenda_.”
[1373] Letter of Aug. 18, 1519, “Briefe,” 1, p. 315; “Werke,” Erl. ed.,
53, p. 19 (“Briefwechsel,” 2, p. 12). At Worms in 1521 he had declared
in this same sense, that he would not submit, “_nisi convictus fuero
testimoniis scripturarum aut ratione evidente; nam neque papæ neque
conciliis solis credo, cum constet eos et errasse sæpius et sibi ipsis
contradixisse; victus sum scripturis a me adductis et capta conscientia
in verbis Dei_.” “Werke,” Weim. ed., 7, p. 883; cp. p. 853.--He writes
emphatically in reply to King Henry VIII (see p. 391): “_Ego vero
adversus dicta patrum, hominum, angelorum, dæmonum pono non antiquum
usum, non multitudinem hominum, sed unius maiestatis æternæ verbum,
evangelium.... Dei verbum est super omnia._” “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 2,
p. 214 f.; “Opp. lat. var.,” 6, p. 437.
[1374] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 2, p. 429; “Opp. lat. var.,” 3, p. 287.
[1375] _Ibid._, p. 425=p. 278.
[1376] _Ibid._, p. 324=p. 131.
[1377] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 3, p. 359; Erl. ed., 16², p. 446.
[1378] _Ibid._, 11, p. 409=22, p. 143.
[1379] _Ibid._, 8, p. 484 f.=28, p. 32.
[1380] _Ibid._, 11, p. 408 ff.=22, p. 141 ff.
[1381] In his “Com. in Ep. ad. Galatas,” 1, p. 104.
[1382] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 1, p. 383 f.; Erl. ed., 27, p. 11.
[1383] _Ibid._, p. 385 = 13.
[1384] _Ibid._, 10, 2, p. 256 f.=28, p. 379 f.
[1385] _Ibid._, p. 90=340. “Von Menschen leren tzu meyden,” 1522.
[1386] _Ibid._, p. 90=341. See below, Luther’s denial of the
Augustinian “_Non crederem evangelio_,” etc.
[1387] Otto Scheel, “Luthers Stellung zur Heiligen Schrift,” Tübingen,
1902 (“Sammlung gemeinverständl. Vorträge und Schriften aus dem Gebiet
der Theol. und RG.,” No. 29), p. 38 (on p. 37 the last quotation is
also given with an incorrect reference) and p. 41 f.
[1388] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 19, p. 489; Erl. ed., 29, p. 334. “Sermon
von dem Sacrament,” 1526.
[1389] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 15, p. 565: “_Quod est eius opus? Quod_
drive into the heart _prædicationem Christi, qui non_ fails. Christ
failed, _quia multis prædicaverit et nihil effecit; Spiritus sanctus_
presses the word _in cor.... Si etiam_ a hundred thousand _verbum
prædicatur, nihil facit; cum Spiritus sanctus hoc suum officium facit,
tum_ it makes its way.”
[1390] Cp. above, vol. iii., pp. 12 ff., 398.
[1391] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 18, p. 181; Erl. ed., 29, p. 260.
[1392] _Ibid._, p. 137=209 (“Widder die hymelischen Propheten”): “Do
you see how the devil, the enemy of divine order, opens his mouth at
you with the words, ‘spirit, spirit, spirit’?” etc.
[1393] _Ibid._, p. 180=258.
[1394] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 50, p. 85.
[1395] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 15, p. 42; Erl. ed., 22, p. 187. “An die
Radherrn aller Stedte deutsches Lands, das sie christliche Schulen
auffrichten und halten sollen,” 1524.
[1396] _Ibid._, p. 39=184.
[1397] At the German Protestant Congress at Berlin in 1904, Dr. Max
Fischer of Berlin appealed to the above writing of Luther’s as a proof
that the latter had relinquished his idea of the Bible being in the
hands of each individual the sole source of doctrine. “That this, as a
foundation of all doctrine, is impossible in Protestantism,” he said,
speaking from his standpoint, “has long been admitted, and we have
simply to bear in mind how Protestant theology has come to examine
freely, not only the contents of the Bible, but the Bible itself.
Theology has no rights other than those enjoyed by any other branch of
worldly learning.” In the sequel the writer declared himself against
the Divinity of Christ and any set system of doctrine. According to
him particular doctrines, even those of the Apostles’ Creed, were of
no importance. “He has all the faith required who makes his faith for
himself.” (See the report of the discourse in the “Köln. Volksztng.,”
1904, No. 834.) We may compare this principle with Luther’s own on
freedom. The same principles were recently invoked in the case of the
Protestant Pastor Jatho of Cologne, when he was charged with being an
unbeliever. On his dismissal from office his friends declared that
“a chain had been riveted on free and unbiassed research in Prussian
Protestantism, and that the official representatives of Protestantism
had banned that spirit of personal Christianity which once had impelled
Luther to nail up his Theses to the door of the Castle-church at
Wittenberg.” (“Köln. Ztng.,” 1911, No. 712; cp. “Köln. Volksztng.,”
1911, No. 545.) During the trial Jatho, too, had appealed to his
“inward experience” and personal knowledge. (“Köln. Volksztng.,” 1911,
No. 592.)
[1398] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 8, p. 236; Erl. ed., 39, p. 133.
[1399] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 18, p. 606=“Opp. lat. var.,” 7, p. 124. “De
servo arbitrio.”
[1400] _Ibid._, 7, p. 317=24, p. 58.
[1401] _Ibid._, 7, p. 97=“Opp. lat. var,” 5, p. 161.
[1402] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 57, p. 16, Table-Talk.
[1403] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 23, p. 75; Erl. ed., 30, p. 22.
[1404] _Ibid._
[1405] Sermon of Aug. 2, 1528. “Werke,” Weim. ed., 27, p. 287.
[1406] On Dec. 23, 1526, he said in his afternoon sermon, speaking of
the sermon that morning: “_Hodie dixi, biblia esse hæresium librum_,”
“Werke,” Weim. ed., 16, p. 624. And as a matter of fact the notes
contain the passage, _ibid._, 20, p. 588.
[1407] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 17, 1, p. 362.
[1408] _Ibid._, p. 360.
[1409] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 15², p. 144.
[1410] “With reference to this Luther declares (‘_De servo arbitrio_’):
In the words of Scripture which lie open to us and all the world,
no one, owing to the darkening of the mind, is able to discern the
smallest iota so long as he has not the Spirit of God; no one possesses
the inner sense or the true knowledge requisite--‘_nihil horum sentiunt
aut vere cognoscunt_’--no one believes that God exists and that he is
His creature. For him the ‘_iudicium interius_,’ in the Christian who
has attained to the true light and his salvation through the Spirit
of God, consists in being able to test with certainty all doctrines
and beliefs (1 Cor. ii. 15). This individual judgment is essential for
every Christian and for his faith; it does not, however, profit others:
For them the ‘_exterius iudicium_’ is intended, which is exercised by
the preacher of the Word.” Köstlin, “Luthers Theol.,” 1², p. 380.
[1411] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 33, p. 145; Erl. ed., 47, p. 353. From Notes
of the Sermon published in 1564.
[1412] _Ibid._, p. 161=367; cp. p. 165=371.
[1413] P. 148=356.
[1414] P. 152=360.
[1415] P. 150=358.
[1416] P. 152=359.
[1417] P. 146=354.
[1418] P. 148=356.
[1419] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 5², p. 251, Hauspostille. Sermon of 1533.
[1420] “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 7, p. 313, “Enarr. in Genes.”
[1421] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 63, p. 415, in the Preface to the second part
of the first complete edition of his works (compiled from his writings).
[1422] Köstlin, _ibid._, 2², p. 36.
[1423] Köstlin, _ibid._, and p. 15, 30.
[1424] _Ibid._, p. 35.
[1425] Cp. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 8², p. 23 f., where Luther says, the
predictions of the prophets (or of the Apocalypse) concerning wars,
the Kings, etc., were “things pleasing to the inquisitive ... but were
unnecessary prophecies, for they neither taught nor furthered the
Christian faith”; in those prophecies “concerning Kings and worldly
events” the Prophets had “often been wrong.”
[1426] Thus O. Scheel (above, p. 392, n. 2), p. 67 f.
[1427] “_Ego vero evangelio non crederem, nisi me catholicæ ecclesiæ
commoveret auctoritas ... qua infirmata iam nec evangelio credere
potero._” “Contra epistolam fundamenti Manichæorum,” c. 5.
[1428] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 2, pp. 429-432; “Opp. lat. var.,” 3, pp.
284-288. “Resol. super propos. Lipsienses.”
[1429] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 2, p. 90; Erl. ed., 28, p. 341.
[1430] According to Köstlin (“Luthers Theol.,” 2², p. 10 ff.), it was
only the orthodox Lutherans after his day who developed this into
the doctrine of the “_testimonium Spiritus Sancti_,” which assures
every reader of the canonicity of the books of the Bible. In reality,
however, Luther himself already stood for this “_testimonium_.” Thanks
to it he judged of the relative importance of the Sacred Books and only
“allowed himself to be determined by the spirit speaking to him out of
them.” Thus Köstlin himself, 1², p. 319.
[1431] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 2, p. 325; “Opp. lat. var.,” 3, p. 131:
“_Non potest ecclesia plus tribuere auctoritatis aut firmitatis libra,
quam per se ipsum habeat_.” The question, however, was who was to
attest this authority.
[1432] See our vol. v., xxxiv., 3.
[1433] O. Scheel (above, p. 392, n. 2), p. 47, after having instanced
Luther’s adverse criticism of the Epistle of St. James and the
prophetical books, remarks: “He took exception to the Epistle of Jude,
to Hebrews and to the Apocalypse. The Book of Esther deserved no
place in the Canon any more than the second Book of Machabees, though
the first was worthy of canonisation. [It was, as Luther says in the
Preface to his German translation of it (Erl. ed., 63, p. 104), ‘not
unworthy of being included amongst the sacred writings of the Hebrews,’
because in the history of Antiochus it gives us a picture of the fall
of the real Antichrist, viz. Popery!] Luther makes a distinction even
between the books he does not impugn. Of the Pauline writings he gives
the first place to Romans, just as he places St. John’s first among
the Gospels. He esteems the synoptics less highly because they record
the works and deeds of Christ and not the message of righteousness by
grace.” Scheel notes (p. 49 f.), that Luther’s criticism was based,
not on learned historical arguments, but on the “religious stimulus”
these writings supplied, viz. on the extent to which they might prove
of service to his doctrine, i.e. on “inward considerations.” “The fact
that the Epistle of James says nothing of Christ and Justification
by grace was ground enough for Luther to reject it. Analogous is the
case of the Epistle to the Hebrews.... From all this it is evident
how much Luther placed religious criticism in the foreground and what
secondary importance he attached to historical criticism.” He cares
little whether a writing is apostolic or not; what he wants to know is
whether its contents agree with what he has perceived to be the kernel
of Scripture. “He did not even shrink from impugning the authority
of the Apostles in favour of a higher standard” (p. 52). Scheel then
deals with the statements more favourable to Luther made by J. Kunze
(“Glaubensregel, heil. Schrift und Taufbekenntnis,” Leipzig, 1899,
pp. 509, 521) and H. Preuss (“Die Entwicklung des Schriftprinzips bei
Luther bis zur Leipziger Disputation,” Leipzig, 1901, p. 99). “With
Luther’s independent criticism of Scripture,” he says (p. 64 f.), “the
assumption of the inspiration of Scripture hardly agrees.... Kunze
also denies that the effect of the mediæval doctrine of inspiration
appears at all in Luther; the belief that the Apostles spoke by the
Holy Ghost should not be identified with the doctrine of inspiration
in its concrete and historical shape.” True enough Kunze admits (p.
504, n. 1) “some after-effects” of that doctrine upon Luther, but the
question is “how such after-effects were compatible with the uniform
theory of Scripture,” which he finds in Luther. On the consistency of
Luther’s theory, see Scheel’s remarks below, p. 407.--Adolf Harnack
repeatedly declares, that Luther’s attitude towards the Bible was
characterised by “flagrant contradictions” (“Dogmengesch.,” 3^[4], pp.
868, 878; cp. pp. 771 f., 791 f.), because his criticism “demolished
the external authority of the written Word.”--Of Luther’s treatment of
the Apocalypse, G. Arnold, the spokesman and historian of the Pietists,
complains in his Church History (Frankfurt edition, vol. ii., 1699, p.
39); he said of it “very much what all the fanatics said, viz. that
each one might believe concerning it what his Spirit inspired him with;
his [Luther’s] Spirit could not agree with the book, and the fact that
Christ was neither taught nor recognised in it was sufficient for him
not to esteem it highly.” Arnold also complains that, in the Preface to
the Apocalypse (“now usually omitted”), Luther says, “that it was too
bad of John to command and threaten about this book,” etc.; the book,
according to Luther, was neither apostolic nor prophetical, indeed not
by the Holy Ghost at all, seeing that it did not treat of faith or
Christian doctrine but merely of history.
[1434] Köstlin, _ibid._, 2², p. 29.
[1435] F. Loofs (“Dogmengesch.,”^[4] p. 747) says that Luther
reintroduced the Catholic ideas he had “vanquished,” and made this
“burden in Protestantism heavier than it had ever been before.” Cp.
above, p. 398 f.
[1436] Jan. 18, 1518, “Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 142.
[1437] Mathesius, “Aufzeichnungen,” p. 52.
[1438] In this remarkable passage of his exposition of 1 Cor. xv.
(1534, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 51, pp. 102-104), he exhorts all to “hold
fast to the doctrine and preaching for which we have both sure
Scripture and also inward experience. These should be the two witnesses
and the two test-stones of true doctrine.” He here inveighs against the
fanatics because they taught, “what not one of them had experienced,”
“an uncertain delusion of which not one of them had had any
experience.” “None of the fanatics are able to prove their contention
either by their own experience or by that of others.” Of himself,
however, he could say: “I have experienced it; for I too was once a
pious monk,” etc.; then follows the legend of his life in the monastery
and of how, before his discovery of the sense of the text on which his
new teaching rested, he had never known what it was to have a “gracious
God.” “Hence, whoever wishes not to err, let him look to these two
points, whether he is able to bear witness to his doctrine out of
Scripture and a sure inward experience, as we can to our doctrine and
preaching.”
[1439] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 23, p. 250. “An Exposition of the Christian
Faith,” 1537. Before this: “This is to have the Holy Ghost, when we
experience in our hearts the Creation and Redemption.” “The Pope and
his people do not feel this in their hearts.”
[1440] “All the articles which he believed he had repeatedly drawn from
Scripture.” “Werke,” Weim. ed., 26, p. 500; Erl. ed., 30, p. 363. “Vom
Abendmal Christi Bekentnis,” 1528.
[1441] “Lehrb. der DG.,” part 2, Erlangen, 1898, p. 289 f.
[1442] Seeberg refers to “Werke,” Erl. ed., 28, pp. 413 f., 346 f.; 9¹,
p. 29 ff.; 13¹, p. 221 f.; 20¹, p. 297 f.
[1443] Reference to “Werke,” Erl. ed., 23, pp. 249, 267; 20¹, p. 148.
[1444] Weim. ed., 6, p. 561; “Opp. lat. var.,” 5, p. 102. Köstlin,
“Luthers Theol.,” 1², p. 302.
[1445] _Ibid._, 10, 2, p. 219=6, p. 444: “_Hic dicent: Si singulorum
est ius iudicandi et probandi, quis erit modus, si iudices dissenserint
et unusquisque secundum suum caput iudicarit?_” etc.
[1446] _Ibid._, 18, p. 649 f.=7, p. 171. “De servo arbitrio.” Köstlin,
_ibid._, 1², p. 381.
[1447] Hence his confession: “_Credo ecclesiam sanctam catholicam, ut
impossibile sit, illam errare etiam in minimo articulo_.” “Werke,”
_ibid._
[1448] Köstlin, _ibid._, 2², p. 39.
[1449] Above, vol. iii., p. 401.
[1450] Vol. iii., p. 400.
[1451] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 193.
[1452] Cp. above, vol. iii., p. 389.
[1453] “To the Christians at Antwerp” early in April, 1525. “Werke,”
Erl. ed., 53, p. 342; “Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 151.
[1454] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 53, p. 343.
[1455] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 20, p. 571; Erl. ed., 41, p. 210.
[1456] O. Scheel, _ibid._, pp. 38, 55. Cp. F. Loofs, above, p. 403, n.
1.
[1457] W. Köhler, “Theol. Literaturztng.,” 1902, No. 21, p. 576, review
of H. Preuss, “Die Entwicklung des Schriftprinzips bei Luther.”
[1458] Above, _passim_.
[1459] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 50, pp. 85-88.
[1460] P. Wappler, “Inquisition und Ketzerprozesse in Zwickau zur
Reformationszeit,” Leipzig, 1908, p. 69. The booklet was written by
Melanchthon but was certainly circulated with Luther’s approval.
[1461] Wappler, _ibid._
[1462] Letter of Feb. or beginning of March, 1532, “Werke,” Weim. ed.,
30, 3, p. 552; Erl. ed., 54, p. 288 (“Briefwechsel,” 9, p. 157).
[1463] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 62, p. 50, Table-Talk, in connection with
some words reported to have been uttered by Andreas Proles, which,
however, were certainly meant by him in a different sense.
[1464] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 7, p. 632; Erl. ed., 27, p. 235.
[1465] _Ibid._, 23, p. 69=30, p. 19 f.
[1466] “Opp. lat. var.,” 6, p. 441. Here he says in his “Contra regem
Angliæ”: “_De doctrina cognoscere et iudicare pertinet ad omnes et
singulos Christianos et ita pertinet, ut anathema sit, qui hoc ius uno
pilo læserit.... Nunc autem (Christus) non solum ius, sed præceptum,
iudicandi statuit, ut hæc sola auctoritas satis esse queat adversus
omnium pontificum, omnium patrum, omnium conciliorum, omnium scholarum
sententias.... Huic subscribunt ferme omnes omnium prophetarum
syllabæ.... Habet hic Henricus noster aut ullus impurus Thomista, quod
istis obganniat? Nonne obstruximus os loquentium iniqua?_”
[1467] Köstlin, “Luther’s Theol.,” 1², p. 379.
[1468] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 2, p. 23; Erl. ed., 28, p. 298.
[1469] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 2, p. 429 f.; “Opp. lat. var.,” 3, p. 287.
[1470] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 2, p. 23; Erl. ed., 28, pp. 298, 299.
Cp. above, p. 397, n. 1, also pp. 398 and 400, on the “_iudicium
interius_.”
[1471] The last words are from Scheel. See above, p. 392, n. 2, p. 76.
[1472] Cp. “Werke,” Weim. ed., 28, p. 580 ff.; Erl. ed., 36, p. 234 f.;
52, p. 392.
[1473] Article 12. “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 181; Erl. ed., 24²,
p. 343. G. Kawerau adds, when quoting this passage (Möller’s “Lehrb.
der KG.,” 3³, p. 104), “It is here, therefore, that the ‘Communion of
Saints’ begins to become Luther’s confessional Church.”--The Articles
of Schwabach, which were sent by Luther to the Elector after the
Conference of Marburg (above, vol. iii., p. 381), probably on Oct.
7, 1529, were mainly intended to oppose the Zwinglians. It is when
repudiating them, as non-Christians, that Luther puts forward the above
conception of the Church.
[1474] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 23, p. 252 ff., in the preface to his edition
of these Creeds, and the “_Te Deum_,” 1538.
[1475] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 8, p. 117; “Opp. lat. var.,” 5, p. 505.
[1476] Scheel, _ibid._, p. 75.
[1477] Above, vol. iii., p. 21.
[1478] Vol. i., p. 58.
[1479] P. 459.
[1480] P. 440.
[1481] W. Köhler in his review of Kropatscheck (“Theol.
Literaturztng.,” 1905, col. 453 ff.).
[1482] P. 459. For proofs that, in the Middle Ages, the Bible occupied
its due position in the faith and life of Christians, cp. K. Holzhey,
“Die Inspiration der hl. Schrift in den Anschauungen des MA.,” 1895.
[1483] Instructive indeed are the detailed proofs given in
Kropatscheck’s work of how the heretical Waldenses, and, after them,
Wiclif and Hus, used the “_sola scriptura_” against tradition and the
authority of the Church. The example of the Waldenses had already
shown that it was quite impossible to use the principle without
accepting at the same time certain of the doctrines of the Church (p.
17 ff.). With Hus “the formula ‘_sola scriptura_’ rings again and
again in his writings as a battle-cry” (p. 76). He wants the “_lex
Christi_” and no “_leges novæ_,” hence, no Decretals, indulgences,
Crusade-Bulls, priesthood or celibacy. The revolutionary force of the
formula is noticeable in Hus and still more in the later Hussites;
they declared the “Law of Grace” to be sufficient even for civil
life, and, as “avengers of Scripture,” proclaimed war on those lords
who thought differently, the Princes and the monasteries. Wiclif,
“a Bible theologian from head to foot,” who even finds in Scripture
all the wisdom and learning of the world, and describes it as a book
everyone can understand, registered a success which was “great” only
in the revolutionary sense. The Bible standpoint of Occam, to which
Kropatscheck also devotes attention, has something in common with that
of Luther (cp. Kropatscheck, “Occam und Luther,” in “Beiträge zur
Förderung christl. Theol.,” 1900, p. 49 ff.). Kropatscheck emphasises
the fact, that Occam, in his opposition to the Pope, had conceded to
“the whole Church” the right of interpretation, and, like Marsilius of
Padua, wished to set aside man-made laws for the Bible and the law of
nature. The history of the Middle Ages and the “apocalyptic, political
and social” trends connected with Holy Scripture show how dangerous and
subversive any arbitrary treatment of the Bible could be. The written
Word of God becomes a weapon wherewith to rouse the passions against
the highest powers, an excuse for gross millenarianism and libertinism,
and a veritable mine to be exploited by stupid, crazy fanatics.--Cp.,
on Kropatscheck, M. Buchberger, in “Theol. Revue,” 1906, p. 118 ff.;
his review concludes as follows: “that no solid foundation can be won,
but that everything totters without an authoritative, and, in the last
instance, infallible, exponent of Holy Scripture. The call for such an
exponent is the final conclusion powerfully borne in on the mind.”
[1484] _Ibid._, p. 433.
[1485] “W. Pirkheimers Stellung zur Reformation,” 1887, p. 117.
[1486] From Pirkheimer’s “Oratio apolog.,” for the Convent of St. Clare
at Nuremberg, in “Opp.,” ed. M. Goldast, 1610, p. 375 _seq._
[1487] Gütersloh, 1903, p. 84 ff.
[1488] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 2, p. 195; “Opp. lat. var.,” 6, p. 408.
[1489] “Theol. Literaturblatt,” 1905, col. 41.
[1490] “Grundriss der DG.,” etc.³, Leipzig, 1910, p. 130.
[1491] “Lehrbuch der DG.,” 2nd part, Erl., 1898, p. 289.
[1492] Pp. 288, 283, 290 f.
[1493] “Theol. Literaturztng.,” 1901, col. 272. O. Ritschl (“DG.,” 1,
1908, p. 69 ff.) judges more favourably.
[1494] Döllinger, “Die Reformation,” 3, p. 156.
[1495] Döllinger, _ibid._, pp. 156-173. Denifle, “Luther und
Luthertum,” 1², pp. 80 f., 668 ff., 675, 688, 716, and _passim_.
[1496] “Luther, eine Skizze,” p. 59; “KL.,” 8², p. 344.
[1497] “Comm. in Gal.,” 1, p. 3, Irmischer.
[1498] “Disputationes,” ed. Drews, p. 119: “_Articulus iustificationis
est magister et princeps, dominus, rector et iudex super omnia genera
doctrinarum, qui conservat et gubernat omnem doctrinam ecclesiasticam
et erigit conscientiam nostrum coram Deo_.”
[1499] “Disputationes,” p. 11, n. 41.
[1500] Döllinger, “Die Reformation,” 3, p. 158.
[1501] _Ibid._
[1502] “Briefe,” 6, p. 424, undated, and to a person unnamed: “_Ex his
duabus epistolis omnes, quæ incident, quæstiones, vel alioqui scripturæ
loca obscuriora interpretator_.”
[1503] _Ibid._, p. 434. Written in a Bible: “_Ad omnia dicta scripturæ,
quibus videtur iustitia operum statui, respondebis ex Ebre. 11, hac
voce: Fide_,” etc.
[1504] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 33, p. 165 f.; Erl. ed., 47, p. 371. In the
Exposition of John vi.-viii. (1530-1532).
[1505] Cp. _ibid._, Erl. ed., 63, p. 157.
[1506] _Ibid._, 8², p. 23. Cp. p. 24: “But know that Pope, Councils
and the whole world in all their teaching are subject to the meanest
Christian, even to a child of seven who has the faith, and that they
must accept his opinion.”
[1507] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 8, p. 357; Erl, ed., 14², p. 47; cp. p.
379=78.
[1508] _Ibid._, 13², p. 231; cp. Weim. ed., 10, 2, p. 23; Erl. ed., 28,
p. 298.
[1509] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 15², p. 145 f.
[1510] “_Quod sine scripturis asseritur aut revelatione probata,
opinari licet, credi non est necesse._” “Werke,” Weim. ed., 6, p. 508;
“Opp. lat. var.,” 5, p. 30. Cp., _ibid._, 2, pp. 297, 279, 309-15=3,
pp. 89, 62, 106-15.
[1511] _Ibid._, 8, p. 141 f.; Erl. ed., 27, p. 323 f.; cp. p. 143
f.=325 f.
[1512] _Ibid._, p. 235=39, p. 132.
[1513] _Ibid._, 10, 3, p. 22 f.=28, p. 223. Cp. R. Seeberg, “Lehrb. der
DG.,” p. 285 f.
[1514] Scheel gives Luther’s views on p. 45 as follows: “What is not
taught by Christ is not apostolic even should Peter and Paul teach it.
But all that preaches Christ is apostolic even should Judas, Annas,
Pilate or Herod teach it. (“Werke,” Erl. ed., 63, p. 157.)... Hence
Luther replies to his opponent, ‘You appeal to the slave, i.e. to
Scripture, and not even to the whole or the most excellent part of it.
This slave I leave for you; as for me, I appeal to the Lord, Who is
King of Scripture.’” (“Comm. in Gal.,” 1, p. 387, Irmischer.) Scheel
quotes the “Comm. in Gen.,” 1, p. 539: “_Si adversarii scripturam
urserint contra Christum, urgemus Christum contra scripturas_.” He says
finally, p. 74: “Luther found himself in Scripture just as the simple
man finds in the outward world the answer to his own world of sense;
with the unerring instinct of genius he found the essence of Scripture
which was at the same time the essence of his own being.”
[1515] “Lehrb. d. DG.,” 3^[4], p. 867.
[1516] Döllinger, “Die Reformation,” 3, p. 158.
[1517] _Ibid._, p. 160. For the liberty which Luther permitted himself
in his translation of the sacred text, see vol. v., xxxiv., 3.
[1518] Cp. Döllinger, _ibid._, pp. 151-156.
[1519] “Gesch.,” etc., 1², 1896, p. 199.
[1520] “Luthers Leben,” 2, p. 190 f.
[1521] On the strength of the biblical labours of Erasmus and of
Reuchlin, Zwingli did not scruple to call into question Luther’s
assertion that it was he who drew “the Bible out from under the bench.”
“Zwinglis Werke” (1828 ff.), 2, 2, p. 21.
[1522] See our vol. i., p. 224 f.
[1523] Lectures on the Epistle to the Romans, 1515-1516, ed. J. Ficker,
1908, Glosses, p. 4.
[1524] _Ibid._, Scholia, p. 240: “_Universa scriptura de solo Christo
est ubique_.”
[1525] _Ibid._, p. 253.
[1526] _Ibid._, Introduction, p. lxii.
[1527] _Ibid._, p. lv., and vol. i., p. 242 f.
[1528] Quoted by Ficker, p. lvii.
[1529] “Scheurls Briefbuch,” ed. Soden and Knaake, 2, p. 2; Ficker,
_ibid._, p. lxv.
[1530] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 1, p. 228; “Opp. lat[. missing?] var.,” 1,
p. 321.
[1531] _Ibid._, p. 239 ff.; Erl. ed., 27, p. 4 ff.
[1532] To Johann Sylvius Egranus, March 24, 1518, “Briefwechsel,” 1, p.
174.
[1533] To Jodocus Trutvetter, May 9, 1518, _ibid._, p. 186.
[1534] “Werke,” Weim ed., 1, p. 384 f.; Erl. ed., 27, p. 12 f.
[1535] Löscher, “Reformationsacta,” 2, p. 80.
[1536] In the postscript to the “Acta Augustana,” “Werke,” Weim. ed.,
2, pp. 18, 21 f.; “Opp. lat. var.,” 2, pp. 385 _seq._, 391 _seq._
[1537] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, l, p. 54. Cp. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 15²,
p. 542, and “Disputationes,” ed. Drews, p. 640. Denifle-Weiss, 1², pp.
672, 675, 727 ff.
[1538] Cp., in “Luthers Werke in Auswahl,” ed. Buchwald, 2 suppl.,
1905, p. 43, O. Scheel’s remarks on the writing “De votis monasticis”
(Weim. ed., 8, p. 583; “ Opp. lat. var.,” 6, p. 252), where Luther says
that whoever denies the virginity of Mary plays havoc with the whole
faith.
[1539] Thus A. Berger, “M. Luther,” Tl. 2, pp. 98, 100. Cp. this
author’s view (on p. 100): “This means an obscuring and impoverishing
of the faith as discovered and laid down by himself.” The following
observation of Berger’s is remarkable: “Luther, as theologian, was
merely the restorer of primæval Christianity, such as he understood it;
Zwingli, however, understood it otherwise” (p. 102).
[1540] See vol. i., p. 193.
[1541] See vol. ii., p. 223 ff.
[1542] “Ph. Melanchthonis Annotationes in Epistolas Pauli ad Rhomanos
et Corinthios,” Norimbergæ, 1522. The later editions are quoted in
“Corp. ref.,” 15, p. 441. In this volume Bindseil has not reprinted
the writing owing to Melanchthon’s retractation of it (see next page).
It should, however, have been printed as an historical document.--The
introductory preface, in “Briefe,” 2, p. 239, dated July 29, 1522
(“Briefwechsel,” 2, p. 438).
[1543] Letter of March 12, 1523. Cp. “Zeitschr. für KG.,” 2, p. 131.
[1544] Owing to the rarity of the work, to which even the editor of
the “Briefwechsel” had not access, we give in Latin the passages
referred to from the copy contained in the Munich State Library: H
1´: “_Necessario omnia eveniunt in omnibus creaturis.... Itaque sit
hæc certa sententia, a Deo fieri omnia tam bona quam mala._” H 2´:
“_Nos vero dicemus, non solum permittere Deum creaturis ut operentur,
sed ipsum omnia proprie agere, ut, sicut fatentur, proprium Dei opus
esse Pauli vocationem ita fateantur, opera Dei propria esse sive quæ
media vocantur, ut comedere, bibere, communia cum brutis, sive quæ
mala sunt, ut Davidis adulterium, Manlii severitatem animadvertentis
in filium.... Iam cum constet, Deum omnia facere, non permissive, sed
potenter, ut Augustini verbo utamur, ita ut sit eius proprium opus Iudæ
proditio sicut Pauli vocatio_,” etc.--For Melanchthon’s statement in
his “_Loci_” of the Lutheran denial of free-will, see above, vol. iii.,
p. 346.
[1545] “Corp. ref.,” 15, p. 441.
[1546] Melanchthon in his letter to the Elector August of Saxony,
April, 1559. N. Paulus, “Luther und die Gewissensfreiheit,” Munich,
1905, p. 52 f. Cp. above, vol. iii., p. 347.
[1547] See vol. ii., p. 265.
[1548] “Comm. in Ep. ad. Gal.,” 1535, vol. i., p. 255. Denifle-Weiss,
1², p. 514. Cp. Luther’s Sermon of 1523 on the Feast of the
Circumcision, “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 1, 1, p. 508; Erl. ed., 15², p.
199: It had been shown long before by the institution of circumcision
“that no one could reach God and be saved by works, but only by faith.
This is insisted upon throughout the whole of Scripture by teaching
and example. Sin in us is not merely a work or deed, but our real
nature and essence; for this reason does God circumcise that member
which pertains to birth and by which human nature is perpetuated.”
On the same page we find the following: “Nature is depraved through
and through so that no will is left for what is good”; “our nature
is all poisoned and crammed with sin,” etc.--The sermon in which the
singularly outspoken statement concerning circumcision occurs is also
found in the postils. Some unbecoming language is also met at the
commencement of the passage in question where Luther says: “It is quite
true that God’s works and commandments are folly to nature and reason;
God’s way of acting is mad enough”; Luther, however, hastens to add,
“but if we keep our heads and look into it attentively, we shall soon
see that all is done in the wisest manner.”
[1549] Document of Oct. 14, 1518, “Briefwechsel,” 1 (p. 250 ff.), p.
256 ff.
[1550] Cp. our vol. i., p. 384.
[1551] Cp. Köstlin, “Luthers Theol.,” 2², p. 175, on passages dating
from 1532 and 1539.
[1552] “Disputationes,” pp. 429, 431 (of 1538).
[1553] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 25², p. 202.
[1554] _Ibid._, 2², p. 257.
[1555] “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 19, p. 43 _seq._: “_iustus et sanctus aliena
seu extrinseca sanctitate_.”
[1556] _Ibid._, 10, p. 110: “_non tantum per dona, sed quoad
substantiam_.”
[1557] Cp. the passages in Köstlin, _ibid._, p. 201 f.
[1558] “Werke,” Er. ed., 18², p. 312.
[1559] _Ibid._, 14², p. 287. In the light of this we can better
understand the words which occur quite early in a writing of Luther’s:
“_Non iusta agendo iusti efficimur_, as Aristotle taught, but _iusti
fiendo et essendo operamur iusta_.” To Spalatin, Oct. 19, 1516,
“Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 64. See below, xxviii., 4.
[1560] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 14², p. 285 f.
[1561] _Ibid._, p. 282. Cp. above, vol. iii., p. 226 f., also pp. 181
ff., 186 f., 194.
[1562] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 2, p. 652. First published by G. Berbig,
“Der Veit-Dietrich-Codex in der Nürnb. Stadtbibliothek,” 1907.
[1563] Cp. Th. Kolde in the “Beitr. z. Bayerischen KG.,” 14, 1908, p.
139 ff. Kolde rightly refers Luther’s words to Melanchthon, viz. that
he would send him a writing, “_si volet Christus, de iustificationis
loco_” (Aug. 24, 1530, from the fortress of Coburg, “Briefwechsel,” 8,
p. 204), to the above work, and disagrees with Enders’ remark on the
subject.
[1564] “Opp. lat. var.,” 1, p. 23: “_De imputatione non clare omnia
explicat_.”
[1565] Cp. Denifle-Weiss, 1², p. 521.
[1566] J. Mausbach, “Die Ethik des hl. Augustinus,” 2, 1909, p. 98.
[1567] Cp. Denifle-Weiss, _ibid._, p. 742, n. 3.
[1568] Sess. VI. c. 9.
[1569] “In Ep. ad. Gal.,” 2, p. 161.
[1570] _Ibid._, p. 164.
[1571] _Ibid._, p. 165.
[1572] _Ibid._, p. 166. Cp. above, p. 437, and vol. i., p. 385 ff. on
this certainty of faith.
[1573] “In Ep. ad. Gal.,” 2, p. 166.
[1574] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 201.
[1575] “In Ep. ad. Gal.,” 1, p. 101.
[1576] _Ibid._, 2, p. 164.
[1577] _Ibid._, p. 165.
[1578] _Ibid._
[1579] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 17², p. 230.
[1580] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 33, p. 163; Erl. ed., 47, p. 369.
[1581] Above, vol. iii., pp. 202 ff., 226.
[1582] Oct. 27, 1527, “Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 109.
[1583] Nov. 22, 1527, “Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 121.
[1584] “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 23, p. 264 _seq._, in the exposition of
Isaias, 1532, Denifle-Weiss, _ibid._, p. 738, n. 1.
[1585] _Ibid._, p. 143. Denifle-Weiss, _ibid._, n. 2.
[1586] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 188.
[1587] To Wenceslaus Link, Oct. 26, 1539, “Briefe,” 5, p. 219.
[1588] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 53.
[1589] _Ibid._, p. 57 _seq._
[1590] “Luthers ungedruckte Predigten,” ed. G. Buchwald, 3, Leipzig,
1885, p. 50.
[1591] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 201.
[1592] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 54.
[1593] K. Hase, “Hdbch. der prot. Polemik,”^[4] p. 264.
[1594] “Kirche und Kirchen,” p. 428 f.
[1595] _Ibid._, p. 269.
[1596] “Gesch. des Pietismus,” 1, Bonn, 1880, p. 38.
[1597] “Die Lehre von der Wiedergeburt, die christl. Centrallehre, in
dogmengeschichtl. und religionsgeschichtl. Beleuchtung,” Leipzig, 1907,
p. 229.
[1598] P. 120 f.
[1599] On the Confession of Augsburg and Melanchthon’s alterations
in Luther’s teaching, and on Melanchthon’s own change of views, cp.
O. Ritschl, “Der doppelte Rechtfertigungsbegriff in der Apologie der
Augsburgischen Konfession” (“Zeitschr. f. Theol. u. Kirche,” 1910, pp.
292-338).
[1600] On de Lagarde see “Theol. Revue,” 1908, col. 345. G. Esser, in
his review there of Genrich’s work, remarks of the alleged “religious
experiences”: “We hear the familiar rhapsodies concerning personal
experience, religion that has to be lived and cannot be reduced to any
formulas, and then again, experiences are discussed which have to be
differentiated from others, vital experiences which must be accurately
formulated, in short, a constant revolving in a circle, and a language
that is always vague.” Before this Esser had said: “What can the word
Justification mean to those who have lost all idea of the supernatural
and of grace, and have so changed the idea of ‘faith’ that nothing
remains but a vague religious sentiment, a venture of the will to
affirm the value of a higher world in the face of worldly wisdom.”
[1601] “Die Rechtfertigungslehre im Lichte der Gesch. des
Protestantismus,” 1906 (“Sammlung ... Vorträge und Schriften aus dem
Gebiet der Theol.,” No. 45), pp. 2, 3, 42, 10, 16.
[1602] “Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesungen über den
Römerbrief mit bes. Rücksicht auf die Frage der Heilsgewissheit”
(“Zeitschr. f. Theol. und Kirche,” 1910, p. 245 ff.), pp. 287, 289.
[1603] W. Köhler, “Katholizismus und Reformation,” pp. 54-58. Of this
description O. Clemen remarks in the “Zeitschr. f. KG.,” 1909, p. 380:
“Those pages have attracted special attention where Köhler shows that,
in the Catholic criticism of Luther’s doctrine of salvation, as unfair
to ethical requirements, there lies a grain of truth.”
[1604] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 24, p. 355; cp. Erl. ed., 14², pp. 191, 195,
198 f., 205, 211 f.
[1605] On the teaching of antiquity see Bellarmin, “De iustificatione,”
5, n. 10 _seq._
[1606] See vol. i., p. 118 ff.
[1607] Cp. e.g., “Werke,” Weim. ed., 6, p. 683 f.; 10, 2, p. 126;
Erl. ed., 22, p. 54; 28, p. 164; 53, p. 288. Vol. 15², p. 282, he
speaks of the “lousy works,” and, pointing out that Christ had become
the fulfiller of the Law, says: “They [the Papists] boast of their
works.”--This is for him the real object of attack; he is determined to
inveigh against the “_unus furor, velle per opera coram Deo agere_,”
and says of the Catholics: “_opera quibus erga homines utendum est,
offerunt Deo_.” “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 2, p. 187; “Opp. lat. var.,” 6,
p. 396.
[1608] “My struggle has been first of all against all trust in works,
on which the world insists and struts.” “Werke,” Erl. ed., 58, p. 382,
Table-Talk.
[1609] To George Spenlein, the Memmingen Augustinian, April 8, 1516,
“Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 29: against the “_tentatio præsumptionis in
multis et iis præcipue qui iusti et boni esse omnibus viribus student;
ignorantes iustitiam Dei, quæ in Christo est nobis effusissime et
gratis donata, quærunt in se ipsis tamdiu operari bene, donec habeant
fiduciam standi coram Deo, veluti virtutibus et meritis ornati; quod
est impossibile fieri_.” Cp. Weim. ed., 1, p. 347; “Opp. lat. var.,”
1, p. 236, where he speaks against the “_affectus propriæ iustitiæ_”
and declares that the sense of good works performed led men to fall. P.
347=237: the wish to have remained always pure was simply foolish, etc.
[1610] “Opera,” Pars II. Ingolstadtii, 1531, p. 95: “_Calumniatur
Ludderus. quod per opera sua Christum excludant mediatorem_,” etc.
[1611] W. Köhler, “Denifles Luther,” p. 42, referring to Luther’s
Works, Erl. ed., 32, p. 261.
[1612] From Kilian Leib, “Verantwortung des Klosterstandes,” fol. 170´.
Cp. Döllinger, “Reformation,” 1, p. 5, 33; 2nd ed., p. 587.
[1613] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 1, p. 349; “Opp. lat. var.,” 1, p. 239.
[1614] _Ibid._, p. 348=238.
[1615] _Ibid._, p. 347=236.
[1616] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 1, p. 105.
[1617] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 14², p. 212 f.
[1618] _Ibid._, p. 213.
[1619] _Ibid._, p. 221.
[1620] _Ibid._, 6², p. 157, Hauspostille. Cp. above, p. 438, n. 9.
[1621] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 15, p. 432, in the notes taken of a sermon
of 1524.
[1622] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 18², p. 349.
[1623] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 1, p. 369, Thesis 16.
[1624] Cp. “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 9, p. 360; 10, p. 159; 11, p. 121.
[1625] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 16, p. 397; Erl. ed., 36, p. 6 f.
[1626] To Spalatin, Oct. 16, 1516, “Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 64: “_qui
(Augustinus) apud me, antequam in libros eius incidissem, ne tantillum
quidem favoris habuit_.” Other Augustinians made more account of this
Saint, popularly regarded as their founder.
[1627] Cp. Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, pp. 75, 109 f.
[1628] _Ibid._, p. 127.
[1629] “Stud. und Krit.,” 1878, p. 698; Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, p. 134.
[1630] “Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 100: “_Theologia nostra et S. Augustinus
prospere procedunt_,” etc.
[1631] Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, p. 137; here it is first stated: “Luther’s
theology was regarded by him and his friends as simply that of the
great Father Augustine.”
[1632] _Ibid._, p. 138.
[1633] Cp. Döllinger, “Die Reformation,” 3, p. 364.
[1634] August., “_Contra Jul._,” 1, 2, c. 8, n. 23. Cp. Denifle-Weiss,
1², pp. 486 ff, 511, 512, 513.
[1635] Thus Denifle-Weiss, _ibid._, p. 508.
[1636] _Ibid._, pp. 460 f., 467.
[1637] _Ibid._, p. 469.
[1638] _Ibid._, p. 472.
[1639] _Ibid._
[1640] Melanchthon and Luther to Brenz, end of May, 1531, “Luthers
Briefwechsel,” 9, p. 18.
[1641] Thus Wrampelmeyer, editor of Cordatus’s “Tagebuch,” on the copy
of the letter in Cordatus, p. 383.
[1642] For the course pursued by Melanchthon when drawing up the
portion of the Confession in question, see vol. iii., p. 329 f.
[1643] “Tagebuch,” ed. Wrampelmeyer, p. 385: “_Hactenus Philippus ille
cum sua novitate_.” The differences between Cordatus and Melanchthon
related to the doctrine of Justification under another aspect. On these
dissensions, see Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 445 ff.; on the want of unity
on Justification generally amongst Luther’s pupils, see Döllinger, “Die
Ref.,” 3, pp. 372-591.
[1644] Döllinger, _loc. cit._, p. 367 f.
[1645] _Ibid._, p. 370.
[1646] “De catechizandis rudibus,” c. 5.
[1647] Lib. 83, quæst., q. 76; “Enarr. 2 in psalm. 31,” n. 3; “De fide
et operibus,” c. 14, n. 21.
[1648] “Contra II epist. Pelag.,” 1, c. 13, n. 26.
[1649] “De spiritu et littera,” c. 9.
[1650] _Ibid._
[1651] “De peccato et merito,” 1, 9.
[1652] “De Trinitate,” 15, 8, 14.
[1653] “De fide et symbolo,” c. 9.
[1654] “In Psalm. LXX,” serm. 2, n. 3.
[1655] “De civitate Dei,” 19, 27.
[1656] “Super Genesi ad litt.,” 8, 12.
[1657] Sermo 158, c. 2. Similarly “In Psalm.” LXXXIII and CIX.
[1658] “De fide et op.,” c. 10.
[1659] “Homil. 29 in Evang.”
[1660] See particularly above, pp. 195-218.
[1661] Cp. p. 212.
[1662] He says in a frequently misquoted paragraph (“Werke,” Erl. ed.,
18², p. 352 f.) in so many words: “The world ever remains the same;
either it exalts faith wrongly [as do the ‘secure pseudo-Christians’ on
his side whose ‘faith is not rooted aright,’ p. 351] or it wishes to
be over-holy but without faith [like the Papists]. If we discourse on
faith and grace, then no one will perform good works; if we insist on
works, then no one will have anything to do with faith; few indeed are
those who keep to the true middle course and even pious Christians find
it difficult.”--This was certainly quite true of the piety he taught.
[1663] Thus M. Staub, “Willensfreiheit ... bei Luther,” Zürich, 1894,
p. 39, 2 ff. Cp. the passage in Luther’s book “De servo arbitrio,”
Weim. ed., 18, p. 697; “Opp. lat. var.,” 7, p. 238: “_Quid potest
robustius contra liberum arbitrium dici, quam ipsum esse nihili, ut
non modo non velit bonum, sed nec sciat quidem, quantum faciat mali et
quid sit bonum_.” This he proves from the words of Christ on the cross:
“They know not what they do”! “_An est hic obscuritas in ullo verbo?...
Hoc clarissimum verbum Christi_,” etc.
[1664] Urban Rhegius, “Eine Summe christl. Lehre,” Augsburg, 1527, fol.
5. Döllinger, “Ref.,” 2, p. 58.
[1665] “U. Rhegii Deutsche Bücher und Schriften,” 2, Nürnberg, 1562, p.
234. Döllinger, _ibid._, p. 59.
[1666] U. Rhegius, “Wie man fürsichtiglich reden soll,” ed. A. Uckeley,
Leipzig, 1908, according to the 1536 German edition (“Quellenschriften
zur Gesch. des Protest.” 6), in Uckeley’s summary, p. 7.
[1667] Uckeley, _ibid._
[1668] _Ibid._, p. 45.
[1669] _Ibid._, p. 9, reprinted by Uckeley.
[1670] “Die Reformation,” 2, p. vii. f.
[1671] “Hyperii Varia opuscula theol.,” tom. 2, Basil., 1580, p. 734.
Döllinger, _ibid._, 2, p. 216.
[1672] _Ibid._, tom. 1, Basil., 1570, p. 871; cp. p. 881. Döllinger,
_ibid._, 2, p. 215.
[1673] “Wahrhaftiger Bericht,” etc. (referring to the Altenburg
Colloquy), 1507, Fol. D 2, Döllinger, “Reformation,” 2, p. 261 f.
[1674] “Fortgesetzte Sammlung von alten und neuen theol. Sachen,” 1750,
p. 676 ff. Döllinger, 2, p. 565.
[1675] “Wolfg. Franzii Disputationes in August. Confess. Artic.
posterior.,” Disput. 10, “De bonis operibus”; in Pfeiffer, “Consilia
theol.,” p. 943 _seq._ Döllinger, 2, p. 570.
[1676] Ioh. Rivius, “De stultitia mortalium,” p. 32. Döllinger, 2, p.
600.
[1677] _Ibid._, p. 50 _seq._, and “Opp.,” 1614, pp. 275, 305, 370, 672.
Döllinger, 2, p. 601 ff.
[1678] “Haneri Prophetia vetus ac nova,” Lips., 1534, Præf., Fol. B, a.
Döllinger, 1, p. 129 f.
[1679] “Epistolæ duæ J. Haneri et G. Wicelii,” 1534, Fol. A 2 b, 3 a.
Döllinger, 1, p. 127 f.
[1680] In C. G. Murr, “Journal zur Kunstgesch. und Literatur,” Tl. 10,
Nürnberg, 1781, p. 40 ff. Döllinger, 1, p. 169. Cp. our vol. ii., p. 40.
[1681] Luscinius (Nachtigall), “Evangel. Historie,” 1525, pp. 445, 449.
Döllinger, 1, p. 550.
[1682] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 1, p. 228; “Opp. lat. var.,” 1, p. 321, n.
97.
[1683] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 7, p. 24; Erl. ed., 27, p. 180.
[1684] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 1 p. 145 f.; “Opp. lat. var.,” 1, p. 235
_seq._
[1685] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 14², pp. 179 f., 182.
[1686] _Ibid._, 21, p. 34 ff.
[1687] _Ibid._, p. 94.
[1688] _Ibid._, 15², p. 54.
[1689] _Ibid._, 16², p. 210 f.; cp. Weim. ed., 6, p. 268 f.; 9, p. 293
f.
[1690] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 3, p. 3 f.; Erl. ed., 28, p. 208.
[1691] _Ibid._, 30, 3, p. 214=63, p. 295, Preface to “Der Wiedertauffer
Lere” of Justus Menius.
[1692] “Opp. lat. var.,” 4, pp. 419 _seq._, 434.
[1693] “Solida declaratio,” 4, n. 15. “Symbolische Bücher^[10],” p. 627.
[1694] _Ibid._, n. 14.
[1695] Art. 6. Cp. Art. 20. “Symbolische Bücher,”^[10] pp. 40, 44.
[1696] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 7, p. 32; Erl. ed., 27, p. 191, “Von der
Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen.”
[1697] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 17², p. 11. Cp. above, p. 438, n. 7.
[1698] Cp. above 472 f., 210, 194 f., and _passim_. To supplement
what he there says on the scarcity and smallness of contributions
towards Divine worship and preaching we may add two other utterances of
Luther’s given by Möhler (“KG.,” 3. pp. 149 and 160): Nobles, burghers
and peasants were all intent on letting the clergy starve that the
Evangel might cease to be proclaimed.--“Unless something is done soon,
there will be an end in this land to Evangel, pastors and schools; they
will have to run away, for they have nothing, and go about looking like
haggard ghosts.”
[1699] Mayence, 1509, Bl. 7.
[1700] “Luthers Werke,” Erl. ed., 25² (where the whole of the Duke’s
reply is printed), p. 144.
[1701] S. Riezler, “Gesch. Bayerns,” 3, 1889, p. 809.
[1702] R. Wackernagel (“Basler Zeitschr. f. Gesch.,” 2, 1903, p. 181).
[1703] Dietrich, “Über Gesch. der Krankenpflege” in
Liebe-Jacobsohn-Meyer, “Hdb. der Krankenversorgung und Krankenpflege,”
1, Berlin, 1899, p. 47 ff.
[1704] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 27, p. 409 ff. (from notes).
[1705] _Ibid._ 24, p. 454 (from notes).
[1706] Cp. “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 2, p. 283; “Werke,” Erl. ed., 58,
p. 425 f., Table-Talk.
[1707] A. Harnack, “Dogmengesch.,” 3³, p. 733 ff.; 3^[4], p. 819 ff.
[1708] See above, vol. iii., p. 5 ff.
[1709] “DG.,” 3^[4], p. 811.
[1710] P. 684, n. 1.
[1711] P. 895.
[1712] P. 811. Carl Müller, “ Preuss. Jah..,” 63, Hft, 2, p. 147.
[1713] “DG.,” 3³, p. 616 (omitted in the 4th edition).
[1714] _Ibid._, p. 808, and 3^[4], p. 896 f.
[1715] 3^[4], p. 857 f.
[1716] Vol. 1², p. 213 ff.
[1717] Cp. Möhler, “Symbolik,” 30. Cp. above, vol. iii., p. 10 f.
[1718] Köstlin, “Luthers Theol.,” 2², p. 237 f.
[1719] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 65, p. 170, “Wider die xxxii. Artikel der
Teologisten von Löven.”
[1720] To Melanchthon from the Wartburg, Jan. 13, 1522, “Briefwechsel,”
3, p. 273 f. Because reason is “diametrically opposed to faith” and
gleams only like “a smudge on a lantern” (p. 156), people, so he says,
“would believe better were they a little less reasonable” (p. 162). But
“even though it were true, which it is not,” and even were we to allow
that infants do not believe at all, are without reason and cannot grasp
the Word of God, would their baptism therefore “be wrong”? Even then it
would have its value.
[1721] P. 256.
[1722] Vol. 17, No. 2.
[1723] “Deutsch-Ev. Bl.,” 32, 1907, p. 651 ff. _Ibid._, p. 713 ff.
[1724] P. 651.
[1725] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 6², p. 162. Cp. Rietschel, _ibid._, p. 274.
[1726] P. 653.
[1727] P. 717.
[1728] Vol. 18, 1908, p. 148.
[1729] The better to understand the strange (though by no means unique)
attitude of this professor of theology, see the “Zeitschr. für Theol.
und Kirche,” 18, pp. 228 ff., 389 ff., and more particularly 74 ff.,
where he defends his proposals for the remedy of the “lamentable state
of present-day Protestantism”; also 17, 1907, pp. 1 ff., 315 ff.--On
the above question see also Ernst Bunge, “Der Lehrstreit über die
Kindertaufe innerhalb der Lutherischen Kirche,” Cassel, 1900, with
Preface by Ad. Stöcker.
[1730] Cp. above, vol. ii., p. 398 ff.
[1731] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 26, p. 508; Erl. ed., 30, p. 371 in “Vom
Abendmal Christi Bekentnis,” 1528.
[1732] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 65, p. 173: “Widder die xxxii. Artikel der
Teologisten von Löven.” Cp. Köstlin, “Luthers Theol.,” 2², p. 247.
[1733] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 26, p. 507; Erl. ed., 30, p. 371. Cp. p. 582
ff.
[1734] _Ibid._, p. 508=371. In the passage, Erl. ed., 21, p. 140,
immediately after the portion of the sentence cited by Köstlin: “The
third sacrament which has been called Penance,” there follows: “Which
is nothing else but baptism; for,” etc.
[1735] Dec. 15, 1524, “Werke,” Weim. ed., 15, p. 394; Erl. ed.,
53, p. 274 (“Briefwechsel,” 5, p. 83). On the pair, see Enders,
“Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 412.
[1736] P. 393 f.=273 f.
[1737] Above, p. 410.
[1738] K. Jäger (“Luthers religiöses Interesse an seiner Lehre von
der Realpräsenz,” Giessen, 1900) examines the writings dating from
the period previous to the Sacramentarian controversy and rightly
comes to the conclusion, first, that Luther had above all an ethical
interest in regarding as he did the Sacrament of the Altar as a means
of strengthening faith by making known the redeeming death of Christ;
secondly, that he held fast to the Real Presence on the strength of
the traditional faith of the Church without going any deeper into its
grounds. Faith in the Real Presence was, however, no suitable means
of strengthening the certainty of salvation, because the Presence
there does not appeal to the senses nor does it serve as a sign of
the forgiveness of sins as Luther supposed. To postulate it primarily
on the authority of the Church was to contradict the principles of
Lutheranism.--P. 27: According to Luther, by partaking of it we are to
be convinced in a “peculiarly vivid and lively manner of God’s Grace.”
The partaking of these “signs” was, according to Luther, necessary for
us, “because we are still living in sin and our certainty of salvation
is ever exposed to attack, and it is useful or suitable because here
the Grace of God is offered to each man in a manner that appeals to the
senses. Thus the assurance arising from sensible perception is to serve
to strengthen and support religious certainty of salvation.” “This is
the sole religious importance that can be attributed to the sacramental
Body and Blood of Christ.” Nevertheless, “from that very point of view
of the religious interest involved in the Supper, which we have seen
above to be Luther’s main concern (p. 28), we are forced to deny the
Real Presence.” “What is to strengthen our faith in God’s grace must
not itself be the object of faith, but, as is evident, must force
itself upon our mind by a higher certainty, or to speak more correctly,
by a clearer certainty, such as attaches to sensible perception....
A fact which in the last instance itself calls for confirmation, and
which in every instance is perceptible only to faith, cannot reasonably
serve to support another fact which is of the utmost importance to our
life of faith.”
[1739] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 23, p. 143; Erl. ed., 30, p. 65, in the
writing “Das diese Wort Christi ‘Das ist mein Leib etce.,’ noch fest
stehen.” 1527.
[1740] _Ibid._, p. 151=69.
[1741] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 341.
[1742] See the passages of Buchholzer and Trabe, two Protestants, in
Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 694.
[1743] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 32, p. 397.
[1744] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 616.
[1745] Cp., the reprint in Köstlin-Kawerau.
[1746] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 616.
[1747] F. Loofs, “DG.,”^[4] p. 863.
[1748] “N. kirchl. Zeitschr.,” 9, p. 831 ff.; 10, p. 455 ff.
[1749] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 23, p. 279 f.; Erl. ed., 30, p. 147 ff.: “I,
innocent man, am made the devil’s scavenger.... There was really no
need so to defame my beloved book behind my back.”
[1750] “Opp. lat. var.,” 1, p. 15.
[1751] Above, vol. iii., p. 346 ff.
[1752] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 2, p. 696: Erl. ed., 21, p. 272. Köstlin,
“Luthers Theol.,” 1², pp. 253, 371.
[1753] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 7², p. 71 f.
[1754] Cp. Köstlin, _ibid._, p. 372.
[1755] To the Provost, Canons and whole Wittenberg Chapter, Aug. 19,
1523, “Briefwechsel,” 4, p. 212: “_Quamvis privato affectui spiritualis
viri indulgendum sit, tamen manifestam et publicam religionem in his
tolerare non licet propter scandalum ignorantium et infirmorum, qui
relicta fide huc adfluunt_.”
[1756] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 2, p. 632 ff.; Erl. ed., 65, p. 119 ff.
Cp. “Conf. Aug.,” art. 21, and “Apol.,” ad art. 21. Below, p. 501.
[1757] Pars II. art. 2, “Symbol. Bücher,”^[10] p. 305.
[1758] _Ibid._, 7, pp. 575=45, p. 252. Exposition of the Magnificat.
[1759] _Ibid._, 10, 3, p. 313=15², p. 495. Church-postils, Sermon on
Mary’s Nativity.
[1760] _Ibid._, 1, p. 79=“Opp. lat. var.,” 1, p. 118. Sermon on the
Assumption, Köstlin, “Luthers Theol.,” 1², p. 86.
[1761] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 1, p. 107; “Opp. lat. var.,” 1, p. 150.
[1762] Above, p. 238, n. 1.
[1763] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 6², p. 433.
[1764] _Ibid._, 19², p. 29 ff.; 37, p. 71. Köstlin, _ibid._, 2, p. 135.
[1765] Cp., _ibid._, Erl. ed., 7², p. 276.
[1766] _Ibid._, 20², 2, pp. 530-532.
[1767] _Ibid._, Weim. ed., 7, pp. 568, 573 f.; Erl. ed., 45, pp. 245,
250 f.
[1768] Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, p. 574 f.
[1769] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 11, p. 59 f. On March 11, 1523.
[1770] Müller-Kolde, “Symb. Bücher,”^[10] p. 227.
[1771] “Hom. de temp.,” Aug. Vindel., 1533 (“Opp.,” tom. 5, pars 1),
fol. 55´.
[1772] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 3, p. 113 ff; Erl. ed., 15², p. 495 f.
[1773] _Ibid._, p. 321 f. = 499.
[1774] _Ibid._, p. 325 = 501.
[1775] Müller-Kolde, _ibid._, p. 303.
[1776] K. Hase, “Hdb. der prot. Polemik,” Buch 2, Kapitel 6: “Most
mortals are too good for hell, but assuredly not good enough for
heaven. We may as well openly admit that there is something not quite
clear here in the Protestantism of the Reformation.”
[1777] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 1, p. 555; “Opp. lat. var.,” 1, p. 177.
Resolutions on the Indulgence Theses. Thesis 15.
[1778] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 1, 1, p. 585; Erl. ed., 10², p. 354.
[1779] Cp., _ibid._, Erl. ed., 13², p. 2 ff.; 15², p. 521; 17², p. 55.
[1780] In the “Bekentnis” also, _ibid._, Weim. ed., 26, p. 508; in Erl.
ed., 30, p. 370, prayer for the dead is left optional.
[1781] _Ibid._, Erl. ed., 31, p. 184 ff.
[1782] That a sacrifice had been made of the Mass appeared to him
“Idolatry and a shameful abuse,” a “twofold impiety and abomination”;
its abomination no tongue could express. “Werke,” Weim. ed., 8, pp.
489, 493; Erl. ed., 28, pp. 38, 45 f.; 60, pp. 403 f., 396.
[1783] Köstlin, “Luthers Theol.,” 2², p. 243. There were, however,
always some voices raised amongst Protestants to demand that the
“Sacrifice and Atonement” under some shape or form should be insisted
on more than the sermon. The Presence of Christ, as taught by Luther,
although this Presence did not involve a sacrifice, was made use of to
oppose any further denuding of worship. “No longer is the Sacrifice and
the Atonement which takes place at the Altar to be the centre of Divine
worship,” Pastor E. Strack wrote in 1904, in “Der alte Glaube,” 1903-4,
5, col. 1255, “but, according to modern views, God is merely present
in the listening congregation by virtue of the Word preached from
the pulpit. Hence the pulpit becomes the central point, the altar an
accessory. To this we cannot agree. Without atonement we have no God;
hence no altar either ... and no pulpit.”
[1784] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 24: “_Stante missa Lutherus est
damnatus, ruente missa totum fundamentum papæ corruit_.”
[1785] _Ibid._, p. 19: “_nam ego toto pectore illam adorabam_.” But cp.
below, p. 509, n. 2.
[1786] Above, vol. i., p. 275.
[1787] _Ibid._, p. 276.
[1788] Lauterbach, “Tagebuch,” p. 18.
[1789] Cp. vol. i., p. 15 f. and, besides the references given there,
a passage from George Rörer’s MS. of the Table-Talk, given by E.
Kroker, “Archiv für RG.,” 5, 1908, p. 354, where Luther, in a paroxysm
of terror at the words of the Canon “_offero tibi Deo vivo æterno_
[_sic_],” says: “_Sic perterrefiebam, ut ab altari discedere cogitabam,
et fecissem, nisi me retinuisset meus præceptor, quia cogitavi_: Who is
He with Whom you are speaking? From that time forward I said Mass with
terror, and I am thankful to God that He has released me from it.”
[1790] On a solemn occasion, at the conclusion of his “Vom Abendmal
Christi Bekentnis,” in 1528, he has it, that, though he had “spent his
youth damnably,” yet his having been a monk and his having said Mass
had been his greatest sins. See below, p. 524.
[1791] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 1, p. 443 ff.; “Opp. lat. exeg.,” 12, pp.
81, 83 _seq._
[1792] _Ibid._, 2, p. 738 ff.; Erl. ed., 27, p. 25 ff.
[1793] _Ibid._, 6, p. 364 ff.=27, p. 155 ff.
[1794] Aug. 1, 1521, “Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 208.
[1795] Above, vol. iii., p. 194 ff.
[1796] Vol. ii., pp. 88 f., 327 ff.
[1797] To Spalatin, Sep. 23, 1525. Cp. “Briefwechsel des Jonas,” 1, p.
94.
[1798] See vol. ii., p. 320.
[1799] _Ibid._
[1800] _Ibid._, p. 328.
[1801] On Rörer’s work and its connection with the writing mentioned,
see Weim. ed., 18, p. 22 ff.
[1802] F. Probst, “Die Liturgie der drei ersten Jahrh.,” 1870, p. 349
ff. P. Drews, “Zur Entstehungsgesch. des Kanons der röm. Messe,” 1902,
p. 39 ff. F. X. Funk, “Über den Kanon.” (“Hist. Jahrb.,” 24, 1903),
pp. 62 ff., 283 ff. (against Drews). A. Baumstark, “Liturgia romana e
liturgia dell’ esarcato, Origini del canon missæ romanæ,” 1904 (see
“Hist. Jahrb.,” 25, 1904, p. 859; cp., _ibid._, 31, 1910, p. 596).
P. Drews, “Untersuchungen über die sog. klementinische Liturgie,” 1
Tl., 1907 (see “Hist. Jahrb.,” 28, 1907, p. 166). N. Gihr, “Das hl.
Messopfer”^[10], 1907.
[1803] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 119, in 1540.
[1804] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 18, p. 36; Erl. ed., 29, p. 132 f.
[1805] Cp. vol. ii., p. 311.
[1806] Köstlin, “Luthers Theol.,” 1², p. 338. “Werke,” Erl. ed., 28,
pp. 216 ff., 258 ff.
[1807] Vol. ii., pp. 326 ff., 336 ff.
[1808] After Köstlin (_ibid._, p. 340), who quotes from “Werke,” Erl.
ed., 22, p. 49 (Weim. ed., 8, p. 687 f.), Luther’s passage against the
Princes, who allow everything to slide: they ought to draw the sword,
not indeed to “put the priests to death,” but to “forbid by word and
then put down by force whatever they do that is over or against the
Gospel.”
[1809] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 18, p. 29; Erl. ed., 29, p. 124.
[1810] _Ibid._, p. 33=129.
[1811] “Auf Luthers Greuel wider die heilige Stillmess Antwort,” 1525.
[1812] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 18, p. 31; Erl. ed., 29, p. 126.
[1813] Cp. Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, p. 527.
[1814] Cp. “Hist. Jahrb.,” 12, 1891, p. 776, where N. Paulus quotes for
the first time a memorandum (1523) of Johann Staupitz against Stephen
Agricola, which corroborates his statement mentioned before (_ibid._,
p. 309 ff.), that Staupitz was quite Catholic in his views on matters
of faith.
[1815] “Antwort auf das ... Geschwetz M. Flaccii Illyrici,” 1558, p.
121 f. Quoted by Paulus, _ibid._, p. 776.
[1816] “Opp.,” 10, col. 1578 _seq._ Döllinger, “Die Reformation,” 1, p.
13 f.
[1817] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 236.
[1818] For this excellent work, which for the most part reproduces
the lectures of Magister Egeling Becker, see A. Franz, “Die Messe
im deutschen MA.,” Freiburg, 1902, pp. 542-554. The comprehensive
“_Expositio_,” comprising 51 “signatures,” consists of 89 Lectures
addressed to the clergy. Franz characterises it as “a work which, by
its theological thoroughness and its moderately ascetical views, was
calculated to promote learning amongst the clergy and render them more
worthy of exercising their greatest and finest privilege” (p. 554).
[1819] Lectio 85, F.
[1820] _Ibid._: “_Quamvis autem semel oblatus est Christus in aperta
carnis effigie, offertur nihilominus quotidie in altari velatus_,” etc.
Of the numerous witnesses to the ancient belief of the Church, Joh.
Ernest Grabe notes in his Oxford edition of Irenæus (1702) with regard
to a statement of his on this subject (4 c. 17, al. 33): “What Irenæus
here teaches of the sacrificial character of the Eucharist, Ignatius
and Justin taught before him, and Tertullian and Cyprian after. It is
clearly vouched for in Clement of Rome’s Epistle to the Corinthians.”
“There is no doubt that Irenæus and the other Fathers, both those who
had seen the Apostles, as well as their immediate successors, regarded
the Eucharist as the Sacrifice of the New Law, and ... presented at the
altar the consecrated elements of Bread and Wine to God the Father in
order to figure the bloody Sacrifice which He Himself had offered on
the cross in His flesh and Blood, and in order to obtain the fruits of
His death for all for whom it was offered.” Gregory the Great taught
with antiquity (Hom. 37 in Evang. c. 7): “_Quoties ei (Deo) hostiam suæ
passionis offerimus, toties nobis ad absolutionem nostram passionem
illius reparamus_,” and in his Dialogues, which contributed greatly
to the high esteem of Masses for the dead (we are here considering
the doctrine, not the legends), he says of the Sacrifice of the Mass:
“_Hæc singulariter victima ab æterno interitu animam salvat, quæ illam
nobis mortem Unigeniti per mysterium reparat.... Pro nobis iterum in
hoc mysterio sacræ oblationis immolatur_” (“Dial.,” 4, 58; cf. 59). The
well-known Lutheran theologian Martin Chemnitz wrote in his “Examen
concilii Tridentini” (1565-1573), that it could not be denied that
the Fathers, when speaking of the celebration of the Supper, make use
of expressions descriptive of Sacrifice, such as “_sacrificium_,”
“_immolatio_,” “_oblatio_,” “_hostia_,” “_victima_,” “_offerre_,”
“_sacrificare_,” “_immolare_” (t. 2, p. 782). Cp. J. Döllinger, “Die
Lehre von der Eucharistie in den ersten drei Jahrh.,” 1826. J. A.
Möhler, “Symbolik,” §§ 34 and 35.
[1821] Lectio 85, under L.: “_Si eos dispositos inveniat, eis gratiam
obtinet virtute illius unius sacrificii, a quo omnis gratia in nos
influxit, et per consequens peccata mortalia in eis delet ... in
quantum gratiam contritionis eis impetrat_.”
[1822] Lectio 26, under F.
[1823] Lectio 28.
[1824] _Ibid._, L. 17 (E.). Master Egeling discusses this even more
in detail. Franz says (_ibid._, p. 548), speaking of Egeling’s MS.,
of which he makes use: “The remarkable length at which he vindicates
the Church’s rule that the Canon be recited silently is not without
significance. It would appear that this gave offence to the people.”
Luther seized upon this popular prejudice as a weapon in his war on the
Mass.
[1825] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 31, p. 308 ff. New edition by G. Kawerau in
“Neudrucke deutscher Literaturwerke,” No. 50, Halle, 1883.
[1826] “Werke,” _ibid._, p. 308.
[1827] _Ibid._, p. 374 f.
[1828] P. 372.
[1829] Vol. v., xxxi., 4.
[1830] To Nic. Hausmann at Dessau, Dec. 17, 1533, “Briefwechsel,” 9,
p. 363, where he calls the writing a “_novi generis libellus_,” which
challenged the Papists to see whether they had an answer ready to give
the devil when lying on their death-beds.
[1831] A. Freytag, in Koffmane, “Die handschriftl. Überlieferung
von Werken Luthers,” 1907, pp. 16 and 11, where in Luther’s rough
notes the words first occur: “_primum argumentum diaboli_.” Freytag,
however, is of opinion, that “Luther’s account of the disputation with
the devil certainly [?] had its origin in the Reformer’s tormenting
mental experiences, and that he had been actually assailed by accusing
thoughts concerning his former share in the abomination of private
Masses.” Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 308, speaking of the disputation, also
refers to the “anguish of soul” which overwhelmed him “owing to his own
former share in so great a crime as he now more fully recognised it to
be.” Cp. our vol. v., xxxii.
[1832] In the letter to Hausmann (above, n. 2): “_Lutherum hoc libello
tentare papatus sapientiam et potentiam_.”
[1833] To Spalatin; only an extract extant. See Jonas’s “Briefwechsel,”
1, p. 201: “_Lutherus scribit utilissimum, fortissimum arietem, quo
quatietur, ut ferreus murus, papatus_.”
[1834] “Werke,” Erl. ed., 31, p. 378 ff.
[1835] _Ibid._, p. 379.
[1836] P. 383.
[1837] P. 384.
[1838] On “Bible, Babble, Bubble,” see above, vol. ii, pp. 365, 370; on
the “Heresy-book,” see above, p. 396.
[1839] Bl. A. 3.
[1840] In this sense G. Kawerau’s remark on the “Winckelmesse” is
much to the point: “It is of interest on account of the insight it
affords into the Reformer’s efforts to arrive at certainty concerning
the fundamentals of his religious views.” In the Introduction to the
edition quoted above, p. 519 n. 1.
[1841] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 132.
[1842] _Ibid._, p. 119.
[1843] See the letter written before his first Mass, “Briefwechsel,” 1,
p. 10.
[1844] See “Werke,” Weim. ed., 26, p. 508; Erl. ed., 30, p. 372. Above,
p. 509 n. 3.
[1845] Above, vol. iii., p. 130.
[1846] “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 1, p. 122.
[1847] _Ibid._, p. 119.
[1848] _Ibid._, p. 120.
[1849] _Ibid._ On Gregory the Great, see above, p. 517 n. 2.
[1850] _Ibid._, p. 119.
[1851] _Ibid._, p. 122.
[1852] Symbol. Bücher^[10], p. 301 ff. “Luthers Werke,” Erl. ed., 25²,
p. 174 ff.
[1853] “Brieff von seinem Buch der Winckelmessen,” “Werke,” Erl. ed.,
31, p. 381 f.
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